Litanies of the Faithful

In order, the three best games ever created are:

1. Chess
2. Magic the Gathering
3. Warhammer 40k

Now you might think is wrong, I don’t care.

Chess, like Warhammer and unlike Magic is an open information game. Strategically, there are many similarities between chess and Warhammer, and by applying strategies, lessons, and tactics employed in chess into our Warhammer games, I believe we can become better players.

Strategies in chess are never ending. There are different openings, approaches, variations, tactics, attacks, defenses, the list goes on. There have been tens of thousands of books written about chess strategy, analysing games, discussing tactics, or simply lessons on strategy. I am going to be taking some of these chess strategies and seeing how they can be applied to Warhammer games to help guide thinking during the game.

These strategies may not apply to list building so much as decisions many players struggle with during the game itself. It can also help with your mentality and approach to loses, using them to learn and improve your game in the future. Let’s get started.

NB. While there are always caveats to strategy depending on the game state, moves your opponents are making, and what army you are playing, these general chess principles can help advise strategy and thought processes during a game of Warhammer.

Thinking

In chess, most players believe that thinking or calculation can be boiled down to, ‘I go here, and you go there, I take that, and you recapture…’ and so on. However, they may not realize that these are actually two distinct types of thinking: precise thinking and fuzzy thinking.

When it’s your move in chess, in any position, it is likely that there are some moves that just have to be calculated. Sequences of captures, or checks, or threats of mate, or attacks on undefended pieces have to be worked out in fine detail. Once they have been worked out, and you have identified the dangers, and traps that lay in wait on the battlefield, then you can take time to enjoy the scenery and fumble your way through a few sequences of unforced moves to see what takes your fancy, the technique of thinking is simple:

First calculate the calculable

In chess, captures and heavy threats force the opponent’s reply, similarly in Warhammer, putting units in threatening places, such as firing lanes, or a big brick of terminators onto an objective in the middle of the board forces the same thing. You must develop the technique to calculate these sequences in chess, or, in Warhammer, to calculate the likelihood of ‘can I expose this unit without it dying?’ or ‘does this unit reliably kill the terminator brick in combat/kill enough of them to contest the objective?’. Only once you’ve completed these calculations, and no clear advantageous continuation emerges, it is time to move onto the fuzzy though of looking for the most promising path through the forest of incalculable possibilities (in Warhammer this may be where an uppy/downey unit would go, or a unit spiking offensive/defensive rolls).

Warhammer is a very complex game, and initially the best you may hope for is recognising forcing moves, such as staying out of range of a big shooting unit or avoiding a charge from some angry world eaters. with experience, however, calculating the calculable becomes an automatic technique of thinking. Then you can move onto the more interesting part of the game, the interplay of strategy (fuzzy thought), and tactics (precise thought).

Develop your pieces

One of the fundamental principles of chess is developing your pieces, that is moving your pieces out from their starting squares, ready for battle.

General convention dictates you would not move each piece more than once in the opening, however, there are caveats to this such as the main line of the Ruy Lopez, where white moves his bishop four times.

Similarly to Warhammer, your aim in the opening should be to get your units into play as quickly as possible, so that they can co-operate with one another, rather than getting in each other’s way, and assist the more important plan of conquering territory and gaining board space. If a unit takes more than one turn to reach its more effective position, then so be it. What is important is to avoid wasting time. Don’t move a unit onto an objective, or staging position, then change your mind in the next turn and move it to another. While it is generally inadvisable to let your opponent gain time (or tempo) by chasing your units around the board, there is nothing wrong with letting them be chased if the chasing moves are non-developing ones, that being moves or decisions which leads to your opponent not scoring Victory points or stopping you from scoring victory points.

Nothing wastes time like time-wasting.

What a waste of time it is being indecisive with the placement or movement of a unit spending two or three turns to achieve something that could have been accomplished in one, while your opponent has gained space and tempo in reply. Every move made in the opening (first turn) should play its part in grand design (including deployment). Some of these moves should be positive – getting on with scoring secondaries and moving onto objectives; some will be negative – solely designed to disrupt your opponent’s aims; and some will be provocative – designed to tempt a weakening reply – such as baiting a charge to heroic intervene with a stronger unit. But when the middlegame is reached, or in Warhammer terms battle round 3-4 comes around, everything should be fitting together in a coordinated way. Nothing pointless, and no waste of time.

Planning

“The best-laid plans of mice and men oft’ go awry” – Robert Burns.

If you told me that in a game of Warhammer you hadn’t thought ‘Theres no way this doesn’t work out’, and then it didn’t work out, I would call you a liar. As Warhammer is a dice game, there is the potential for literally anything to happen in any situation, although most of the time averages do check out.

That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t have a plan though. The worst sin, they say, is to not have a plan at all, and to simply lurch from activation to activation, reacting to circumstances rather than dictating events. It is true that some armies prefer to play reactively, but even in this there is planning involved.

In fact, as many games are lost through pursuing bad plans as are won by pursuing good ones.

One of the most effective strategies – especially as a mid-table or lower-level player – is to wait for your opponent to have an idea or tactic, then show them what is wrong with it. In most matchups there is no such thing as a correct plan, only a flexible set of options and decisions that need to be put into action according to options selected by the opponent.

The closest you can come to any sort of plan is to ask yourself one simple question: ‘Where would I like to see my units in 2/3 turns time?’, you can extend on this by saying ‘Where would I like to see my units by the end of the game?’, or even be more specific ‘Where would I like to see my units by the end of the first phase?’.

When you have calculated and considered all the threats, overwatches, heroic interventions, defensive and offensive stratagems that may be played, and satisfied yourself that there is nothing you can do to immediately win the game, nor any defensive task that demands immediate attention, such as re-capturing your home objective, the questions above are the ones you want to ask. You then put your answer into actions and make decisions that move you closer towards victory.

Your opponent’s reply may cause you to have to change your plans, and redesign your ideal strategy, but two players impeding each other’s plans is most of the game of Warhammer, and the first time you actually succeed in carrying out your strategy successfully, and then win a game of Warhammer thanks to the strategy, you will feel a sense of accomplishment and understanding in how you designed, and implemented that strategy in an expected way. Having plans work is essential for reinforcing this way of thinking, and although dice rolls can play foul, most of the time undertaking this thought process will lead to more winning chances.

I hope you took something away from this post and can understand how general chess principles and strategies can be applied to situations in Warhammer games. I’ll definitely be writing more posts similar to this one with more chess ideas and strategies, I may even try to include examples from my own games. If you have anything you would like me to write about comment below!

Cya nerds.

If you are interested, the lessons and strategies discussed in this article are taken from the book:

Improve your chess by William Hartston