I have some specific things I want to address, but I think a general commentary on the topics of luck and chances may be in order.
On Luck
I don't believe in luck, at least not as something you can manipulate or as some sort of cosmic force that influences our actions and the results of those actions. Luck, magic, wishing/hoping, divine influence, and superstitions of this ilk are, in my opinion, a bunch of BS and the excuses of those who do not prepare, do not wish to understand reality, and do not accept personal responsibility.
Will I toss out the occasional "good luck" to someone? Sure! Just like I'll enjoy going to a 'magic' show or say "oh my god" when something really grabs my attention. You don't have to believe in a thing to make use of language that surrounds it.
So, the point here is that I don't chalk things up to luck (good or bad) even though I may, at times, curse my "luck."
On Chances
While I don't believe in luck, I do believe in chances, odds, and likelihood. These are the sorts of things I can evaluate and incorporate into my plans. Where this ties into what someone might think of as "luck" is how I seem to be able to buck the odds on a personal level, and how I will use this knowledge to assess what I need to do to achieve a desired outcome.
I'll give you a story from my past. Many years ago I had a friend that played Titan Legions/Space Marine (older version of Epic) with me 50 out of 52 weekends one year. More often than not, I lost. I didn't mind the losing so much (didn't
like it, of course, but it didn't put me off playing), but I did mind
how I lost. It always felt like I had a decent plan, that I put my stuff in position to succeed, and that I stood a good chance to win. Yet it eluded me so often. Even my opponent would tell me that he was sure he had been outmaneuvered and was about to lose, only to have things turn around. Magnus the Red has a shot that hit on a 2+ a killed whatever it hit, but I swear he would hit barely half the time for me. That was just one example. So, after about 15 games, we started charting my rolls on a very old computer. We set up a list of every type of dice-odds the game called upon me to encounter. We noted the odds of success for each and then tracked each and every single roll I made in each category. I'm not kidding. Tens of thousands of rolls over about 35 - 40 games. All tracked and evaluated.
Know what? It turns out I am about 35% less "lucky" than the odds say I should be. Seeing it there in a solid analysis definitely helped me come to grips with why I often utter the phrase "Just give me average - I'll take average."
That analysis was a real eye-opener.
Once I started to accept this as if it were the expected norm
for me I started to do better. When the odds said I needed to commit three shots to something to make it work, I would commit four. When the casting value of a spell says I should be able to pull it off with two dice, I use three dice. When people say a Tomb Prince is good enough and that a BSB is wasted in a TK army, I take a King and a BSB so that I don't fail, for example, swift reforms. It goes through everything I do in gaming. I over commit so that I can get the same results that others get from a standard commitment.
This means I cast fewer spells, have fewer units, don't declare charged that should make it "on average" and so on. I simply don't do it because I know it would work for me unless I stack the deck in my favor by at least 35%.
With my
luck I needed to overdo things to make the
chance of success reasonable.
Now, with all that said, maybe some of my past comments, and those in the future, will make more sense to readers. On I go to specific responses...
phatmotha-phucka said:
Miscasts happen,
Cascades happens,
Below 4+ happens
=> Yeah, too often it seems. It's why I don't play TK without Khatep - ever - anymore. That re-roll staff is just far, far too important.
...the Slann being "awesome" due to Soul Of Stone.
=> A 1 pip shift won't help me. It would not have in this game for sure. Besides, I could not take my Old Blood if I spent more than 5 more points on the Slann. I cannot drop Loremaster since if I did, I'm pretty sure I would not get the spells I wanted.
just think what the game would have looked like if you hadnt.
=> True. It would have gone much better for me. I could have taken more of the things I know how to use and enjoy playing with. The Slann had so very little impact on the game that he ended up being a detriment that I somehow managed to overcome.
Its not fair to judge its use by 1 game, especially not when you both cascade of the the table.
=> It's not one game. It's accumulated experience. A wizard failing to do his job is the expected norm for me. I've used him once or twice before too, and never been impressed.
Try my build for
2 more games with high
3 games with WD
(2 games is a line, 3 games is a pattern)
Its an official Challenge!
if not for personal fun then for the accomplishment.
In return I will of course play slannless for an equal amount of game.
Can we agree that Tournaments are "off the table" ?
Ok. Why not?
Putzfrau said:
If no slann will you use an old blood carno?
=> The carnosaur is the main thing I had to drop to include the Frog, so when I go back to not using the Frog anymore, he'll be back in as a mount for my ScarVet BSB.
GCPD said:
Isn't there an argument that this is just poor luck, though, which could affect anything? I mean, in one of my games yesterday my Oldblood General fluffed all his attacks and only hit once, broke from combat and got run down, costing me 350 VPs (spoiler alert). That doesn't mean I think he's garbage though, just that I got unlucky (compounded by a poor tactical decision).
=> This goes back to what I said at the top. I
expect "poor luck" and am rarely disappointed.
Also (and this could be a fun forum topic all on its own), think of the nature of magic 'luck' vs combat (or shooting or...) 'luck.'
Magic has so much going against it. You have to get the spells you want. You have to roll high enough when casting, but not so high as to hose the rest of your phase with a miscast. Your opponent (and this is a HUGE one) actually gets to make choices to stop your actions (the only phase in the game that allows this). You have to get enough on the Winds to give yourself options.
Magic, unlike any other aspect of Warhammer, has a resource pool. If you take three cannons, they all get to shoot every turn if you like, and even when one of them messes up, the other two don't care at all. If you take two characters with 5 Attacks each and put them in a unit, they will each get all their Attacks no matter how it goes for either of them. There is no "Max 40 Attacks per Combat Phase" nor is there "If one guy hits with all his Attacks, d6 other Attacks have to go away from another Character" and so on.
Magic just has so much more working against it that when it
does fail, it has a dramatic impact on the rest of your plan. It's why, as I often point out, the main rulebook itself has that little sidebar that tells us that a good general never builds a plan around magic (so, yeah, don't get me going on why they made an entire Army Book where that is
exactly what you must do (Tomb Kings)).
The number of things that happen in a series of combat rolls is much less and the result significantly less dire when it all goes to hell.
There is no roll at the start of he combat phase that tells you that the points you invested in 4 combat units cannot be fully used. You don't have to check to see if you will be allowed to use all the Attacks on the profile each turn. You pay X, you get to use Y. Magic is not like that. You could spend 600 points on magic and never cast a single spell all game.
Plus, and I need to emphasize this again, magic is the only part of the game where your opponent can deny your actions so actively. With a wave of his hand (scroll) he can shut you down, and even without that the system is set up to give him access to a counter-action mechanism (dispel dice) that has nothing to do with his army and costs him zero points to use (though he can
enhance this mechanism if he chooses).
There are no "Dispel Cannon" scrolls or piles of dice that he can roll to tell you that you are not allowed to even make your Attacks with your combat hero. Magic is the only part of the game that lets your opponent so casually and easily deny your ability to use the several hundred points you invested.
Markhaus said:
I am now hating high magic. The spells cost too much to cast (which makes you bound for hell), they are unreliable, and trading out a spell at the end of the magic phase for a better spell just tells me I should have picked a better lore.
=> I look at it differently. My game was actually set up to work out exactly how I wanted. I got Fiery Convocation off on the Grave Guard at a point when I no longer would need to use that spell. I planned to then turn it in for Wildform, which would not have been useful to me earlier in the game, so that the Saurus could take on the Grave Guard unit,. It was the perfect chance to make use of the flexibility of the lore attribute. Too bad I miscast.
Confused walk between's 16 with apotheosis cost of 10. Rereading the lore I see hand of glory and apotheosis are cheaper than I thought.
=> I know you edited the comment about boosted Apotheosis maybe still only giving one wound back, but there is another thing about the boosted version. Even if you still end up only getting one would back, at least the boosted one also makes you cause Fear. It's not a huge deal, I know, but it's something.
) its the way if the game and even if that backs up your statement on unreliable magic in general it also points towards the Slann being "awesome" due to Soul Of Stone.
