The Dice are not the Boss

 

A strategy guide for intermediate wargamers with an emphasis on Warhammer: Age of Sigmar

By Gabriel Cobaugh

 

Introduction

I love teaching. I take great pleasure in breaking down complex topics, walking someone through a problem, and helping it “click” for them. I also love Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. I began to collect models in 2020, and I have helped several of my friends get into the hobby since then. earning this game of ours is complicated. Not only are there the core rules with the many phases, abilities, and restrictions, but there are also the many warscrolls of your army and their battle traits. I have watched many players gain confidence in all the How’s of warhammer: How to move through a turn, how to quickly look up a rule, how to keep a faint outline of your opponent’s army abilities in mind.

But I see a lot of players hit the same wall, once they’ve conquered the How: The Why and the What. Why did I lose that game? What do I need to do to win the next? Answering these questions requires a deeper understanding of fundamental concepts, and there are two usual ways to gain that understanding. Either, you torturously figure it out yourself through trial and error, or you absorb it piecemeal from others. You hear enough people tell you that a Bloodthirster on the charge can kill X-Y Chaos Chosen, Y-Z Blue Horrors, or that enemy ability Q will spell your doom, and obey the common wisdom until you see for yourself. Some of us are lucky enough to have a very skilled player in our playgroups, who can dispense wisdom through words or by beating us senseless on the tabletop over and over.

I would like this guide to be another resource for players looking to level up in wargaming. In my six years of playing, I’ve won the Michigan GT twice in three years, and attended the World Championship of Warhammer with those Golden Tickets. I won Best Destruction with Ogors at Adepticon in 2024. In 2025, I was ranked second in the world with Skaven according to the ITC BCP stats. I hope these accomplishments lend a little weight to what I have to say, and convince you to give this guide an hour of your time.

The last thing I want to note in this introduction is that I believe community is the most fulfilling, entertaining, and engaging part of Warhammer. I was welcomed into my local community by a total stranger walking up to me, introducing himself with a huge smile, and sending me a discord invite. I have met more affable chaps than I can count, and my closest circle of friends more than tripled (which, if you’re living that post-college life, you know how miraculous that is). You may have just gotten into Warhammer, and maybe the only person you know who plays is your buddy you split a starter box with. If your playgroup is similarly small, I urge you to ask around at your local game stores. See if there are any regular events, weekly warhammer open play nights, or posters with group info. If you don’t find any fliers, put up one of your own. You may just be starting something beautiful yourself. I have filled many happy hours with Warhammer, but the warmth I brought into the lives of others as we played and talked about the game… that has made it truly special.

 

Before The Table

Your Goals

I had an old boss drill this hierarchy into me when I was young, and it has stuck with me ever since. It has totally dictated how I plan and order my thoughts. It draws a chain between the concepts of Goals, Strategies, and Tactics. To most, these words are considered synonymous. So, I think a brief explanation is in order. Your goals are the highest level deliverables you can think of in a game. The absolute basics, and the more nuanced ones:

• I want to control more objectives for more turns of the game than my opponent
• I want to score all my tactics and prevent my opponent from scoring theirs
• I want to remember and utilize the battleplan rules and how best to score
• I want to stay hydrated while I play
• I want to have a blast using every heal effect in my army book

Your strategies are the ways you plan to achieve your goals.

• I’m going to swarm the objectives with hordes to control them and keep them.
• I’m going to make listbuilding choices to minimize the potential scoring of tactics against me.
• I’m going to reread the battle plan frequently.
• I’m going to make sure I always have easy access to water
• I’m going to include resilient units that can benefit from all that healing.

Finally, your tactics are the specific tasks you do to achieve those strategies.

• I’m going to include my -1 to hit aura to protect my weak horde models.
• I will only take tanky heroes so “Kill a Hero” tactics are harder to score against me.
• I will pick up and reread the battleplan after the priority roll every round.
• I will bring a water bottle with a built-in straw because I find it the most convenient to use.
• I will choose a model that has a chance to avoid death the first time it’s destroyed in a battle to guarantee there’s a healing target.

Don’t make the mistake of confusing your tactics for goals. For example, Bob thinks his goal is to keep his hero model 12” away from any enemy units so he can’t be charged. He sets this goal because he’s played three games now where his precious hero gets trampled by enemies that run at it and slay it. But, ONLY staying 12” away is not going to keep that hero alive. If Bob started with the goal of “Keep my hero I love playing with alive no matter what,” the following strategy/tactic tree might shake out:

• Keep the hero out of range of enemy units
  • Figure out the opponent’s various threat ranges, from shooting to magic to movement speeds
• Identify key “hero-killer” threats in the enemy list

  • Look for key phrases like “anti-hero” or “ignore Guarded Hero”

• List build with hero-support abilities

  • Include units with abilities to buff my hero to make it more survivable

If Bob keeps failing to keep his hero alive, a more systematic approach might help him see what he is missing.

Evaluating Probabilities

There are lots of ways to predict a dice roll. You can plug every single data point into an online calculator to plot the exact average results. You can rely on mnemonics like “a 4+ on a D6 roll is a coin toss” or “+1 to a D6 roll is a 15% increase in success” to vaguely picture the impact of an ability. You can rely on personal past experience with a unit’s performance to inform your choices. Though, that one tends to lead a lot of people astray, so I’d have caution there. Maybe your big centerpiece model has whiffed all its attacks in the last four games you’ve played, and it feels totally useless. But, the reasons it’s in your list are still valid, even if variance has gotten you in the short run. And yes, four games is a short run, statistically, no matter how big of a time investment it is for you to get those games in. I do respect how big of an investment it can be.

Whatever strategy you use, your ultimate goal is to project what will happen after a big dice roll. An intermediate, useful goal is to be able to mentally walk through a single attack, wound, armor save, ward save sequence and come out with an expected damage. A more advanced goal would be to use that knowledge to inform how you commit your units on the battlefield. If you can figure that your hammer unit will be tied up for more than two combat phases with that enemy unit next to it, that will better inform all the decisions you make up to that point. Maybe you realize you can’t afford for your hammer to be tied up for any more than two combats. Then you either include more buff effects so your hammer can punch through quicker, or you just avoid that enemy unit that would clog you up.

Another key concept to consider is economies of scale. A bonus to dice rolls is more impactful the more dice rolls it affects (AKA force multipliers). So a +1 to a roll of one die usually isn’t as meaningful as a +1 to a roll of 80 dice. I have often seen an understanding of this concept affect how players evaluate spending a command point on an All Out Defense or on a Rally. If the dice pool attacking you is small enough, using All Out Defense may only save you one or two damage, which would leave “Heal 2-4” with a higher potential upside. But, if your All Out Defense is affecting slightly more armor saves, it will start to minorly, then majorly, outweigh the rally roll.

Economies of scale become even more apparent when examining horde units vs elite units. When you roll 80 dice, the law of averages begins to take over and you can be reasonably sure of the result. Huge variance swings can still happen, but it is much easier for 5 dice to all turn up 1s. This is an intuitive concept, but it’s important to remember how this informs your decisions in a game. If you ever put a unit in a situation where it “needs” to perform well to justify being there, you create the opportunity for disaster.

On the flip side, you can put your opponent in positions where they “need to have it.” If a key unit has an opportunity to repeat a critical dice roll (casting a buff spell, rolling for a crucial ability, or making long range attacks while at full strength), you can try to limit their opportunities to do so by being aggressive. There may be games where your only chance at victory is to make them fail that one roll, and in those cases the probabilities are much more clear to perceive and evaluate.

The most important element of evaluating probabilities is emotionally divorcing yourself from the results of random chance. When I first started playing, I went through years of frustration hoping for (or even worse, planning on) unlikely dice outcomes. Shoot for the middle, enjoy it when you nail a 11” charge, and accept that failing a 3” charge is beyond your control.

Unit Roles

The more you understand how the pieces of your army fit together, the more you will be able to assign them roles. We wargamers use a helpful glossary of terms to describe roles that cover a lot of the basics: screen, Hammer, Anvil, Support, etc.. Identifying a unit’s role helps you better fit it into strategies that achieve your goals. It also helps you understand how a unit’s role might change based on lots of things: 

• Whether you run a dedicated support piece for that unit
• How you deploy and move the unit throughout a game
• How damaged it is
• What models your opponent is using

Many of us have had a big, beloved monster model we had a blast playing with. Then, we encounter an enemy army composed entirely of units that counter that big, beloved monster, and our former centerpiece is now lurking in the corner, securing a flank objective. You might feel deflated about using it that way, but that may be far more helpful to securing victory than sending it straight into the fray like you usually do. Understanding why your hammer becomes a flanker will also help you identify when it becomes a mere screen. “Sorry, Archaon, but you have two health left and you’re not going to survive the next anything they throw at you. Please float there and die for one more turn while we score all these objectives, thanks boss!” 

I see many players rush to include their favorite models in their lists, gleefully select which support pieces they’ll include for the golden child, then struggle to fill out the last 850 points of their army. They enjoyed picking their meat and potatoes, but the plate still needs rice and broccoli to fill it out. Understanding what roles their first units fill will lead you to where you’re lacking. I want to elaborate on some of these common terms a bit more.

Anvil

An anvil is a unit that can take a concerted hit from an enemy hammer, or can endure through multiple rounds of combat. Because the anvil will be on the battlefield for longer, its positioning is more important. Retreating from combat and repositioning is usually costly and difficult, so it’s important to pick your ground carefully to maximize the impact of your resilience. If an anvil can be ignored because it’s in the middle of nowhere, it’s not doing its job.

Screen/Chaff

This is also a defensive unit, but no points are being invested in durability. Its impact is much more potent and immediate, because it’s generally absorbing the assault of a unit worth significantly more points than it. Positioning of a screen depends a lot on what kinds of threats it is protecting against. It might be snug against your troops if the threat could fly over it, or it might be positioned further away if the enemy has abilities that can close the distance after the charge phase. To newer players, including a unit in your army just to throw it away can feel bad, but the strength of a screen is that it invalidates your opponent’s strength. It doesn’t matter if an enemy hammer can deal 100 damage, if 90 of that is wasted on your screen.

Any unit has the potential to become a screen, given the course of the game. It is the last stop for all other unit roles, after damage or debuffs have taken their toll.

Hammer

Every unit in your army fights, but a hammer is designed for punching through a large quantity of damage efficiently. A hammer naturally defends itself by wiping out the units it’s in combat with. While getting your hammer in early allows you to deal more damage, it also commits it to a section of the battlefield. Hammers also have significant value as a deterrent or potential threat.

Support

This unit is in your list primarily for the abilities it can use on other units. It’s important to look ahead to the phase where a support unit does its thing, and ensure that it’s properly positioned. It’s very easy for a support piece to be left behind when its favored targets charge off into the fray. Even when a support piece can’t do its primary job, all units have the fallback of being bodies on the board. It can screen against deepstrikes or teleportation, or provide control for an objective so it isn’t left entirely unattended.

Flanker

These units primarily value mobility over combat prowess or resiliency. That mobility can come from high movement, teleportation, or out of phase movements. They generally avoid combat, but can pounce on weak targets. Even when a flanker can engage with an enemy that won’t meaningfully hurt it, doing so may rob your unit of its main utility: that mobility.

Studying the Rules

Have you read the Core Rules like a book, back to front? Did you absorb the basics of the game through verbal instruction, only when it became relevant? Do you punctuate your knowledge of fundamentals with the painful memories of being punished for your ignorance? Studying the core rules like a textbook isn’t always the best way to internalize them, but everyone should read them at least once. Age of Sigmar is a game of specifically written mechanics, keywords, and half inch measurements. FAQs, army specific updates, and seasonal rules are spread across multiple documents which can make assembling a complete picture difficult. But, you do a service to yourself and your opponent by being an expert in your own army before you show up to the table. Figure out what kind of learner you are and develop a system that works for you: route memorization, note cards, shortcuts, reminder tokens, or whatever else suits your fancy.

One of the most important benefits of being more intimately familiar with the rules is being able to spot when your opponent has gotten it wrong. This is an incredibly complicated game, with strange interactions from the core rules to the army rules to the warscroll rules to the ability rules. I think a fair, default assumption is that any mistakes are honest, but you should also feel comfortable asking for clarification when something doesn’t sound right. This is especially true when two new players are playing, and especially poignant because they are least likely to have developed that instinct. Sometimes you only discover that a rule was misplayed after the game is already over. I urge you to have patience with yourself and/or your opponent: every game of warhammer should be the product of two players giving it their best effort.

Warhammer is a game of mental resources as much as it’s a game of dice and tactics. It requires calories and time to process the impact of a rule or ability on a given battlefield. The more you can become comfortable with at home, the less of your finite resources you’re using at the table.

Prepare your Body

We all know how to properly take care of ourselves, and this isn’t a guide for physical wellness. But it’s worth a few sentences to remind you that your brain is a machine that performs better when maintained. You literally think better and more clearly when you are rested, hydrated, fed, and fit. Your emotions and headspace are just as important and benefit from mindful maintenance. I hope the next big tournament can be the motivation you need to finish painting your minis and also to have a solid breakfast the day of.

At The Table

Now, we arrive at the space where we’re going to play. We’ve studied our rules, set our goals, built our lists, painted our minis, and packed up our boxes. There are more than twenty different factions in Age of Sigmar 4th edition, and unless you are the most enfranchised player, it is impossible to remember every battle trait, health characteristic, and enhancement. You and your opponent hopefully have that pregame chat about what your armies can do, but time and again I’ve specifically explained an ability only for my opponent to be shocked when I use it on turn 3, two hours later. That infodump conversation is necessary, and in the spirit of fair play, but it can be more helpful if you approach it with clear ideas about what you want to take away.

Your Opponent’s Army and Gameplan

When surveying your opponent’s models at the start of the game, you should strive to assess what their plan is for the game you’re about to play. It’s impossible to exactly predict their moves, but if you can grasp the general gist of what they’re trying to do, you may end up with a pretty good idea of what those moves will be. There are several elements to that, but two key ones are identifying enemy unit roles and key factors. 

Delivery Mechanisms

There are a dozen different ways for your opponent to shove their units into yours, and each requires a slightly different defense. You should be mindful of abilities that allow teleportation of units, and what restrictions there are on the placement of the units. Excessively high movement speeds can be achieved with a large movement characteristic, abilities that allow run and charge or add dice to charge rolls, or abilities that grant extra inches of movement in other phases. If a map is split right down the center, and you deploy your models outside of 9” of enemy territory, you and your opponent will start the game a minimum of 18” apart. If a unit can cover just 11”, it will be making its charge roll on turn 1, on average.

Line Jumpers

Most army lists have a soft, tender backline of fragile heroes or ranged attackers that are protected by your frontline units. Any enemy that can reach those areas without slogging and killing its way through your frontline can catch you unaware. Teleportation also falls into this category, as does the FLY ability or abilities that allow your enemy to pass through your models.

Hammers

You want to know where the main damage potential of your opponent’s army lies. While bad dice rolls always happen, you should not expect anything your opponent’s hammers catch to survive unless it is a dedicated anvil. High rend characteristics, high damage characteristics, the potential for mortal damage, and economies of scale (such as abilities that add a dice for each of the models in your unit) can be clues of these units. If your opponent’s hammers are layered deep and protected within your opponent’s deployment, you can expect them to strike when an opening appears and not before. If they’re deployed as close as possible to you, you’ll need to be ready to see them as soon as possible.

Traps

Generally, a trap is a unit that it is just not worth it to engage. This could be for many reasons. An enemy might have a reliable method of striking first. It might be resilient enough to survive whatever you can throw at it and punch back with enough strength to make an unfavorable trade. It might be layered in so many defensive abilities that even your dedicated hammers will be dealing single digits of damage every turn. It could have such a reliable escape mechanism that you’ll never actually be able to pin it down to kill it. Just because it’s not worth it to engage a trap unit doesn’t mean you’ll have a choice when the time comes in the game. But, identifying such units early may allow you to avoid them, contain them, or line up the proper tool to take them down. 

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If an enemy unit has an ability that doesn’t fall into one of these broad categories, I tend to ignore it. Many, many abilities make units “better in combat,” and while there is sometimes counterplay, they tend to just do their thing then attack. Failing to regard gamechanger abilities like the ones above can quickly lead to disaster. Those are the ones you want to analyze. 

Deployment

This may be the most critical point of the whole game, and the point least respected by intermediate players. It is the last time you have total control of your gameplan, and it sets the stage for the entire rest of the game. Fast or teleporting units can radically change their position on the board, but a slower unit is very likely to clash with the enemy unit set up opposite it. Even a fast unit, if deployed to a far flank, is going to struggle to make its presence known on the other. A unit properly positioned in deployment can spend its first turn getting to the exact position it needs to to score a Battle Tactic, and a screen deployed with the threats you’re facing in mind can soak a turn 1 alpha strike without needing to spend resources repositioning it. It’s a very easy phase to practice at home, and a couple pictures of unit positions can provide easy fodder for strategic discussions with friends. Deployment is the first point in the game where you’re making decisions based on what your opponent is doing, so it’s also your first opportunity to make mistakes. It should be the origin of any reflection you do on a game loss.

Movement

I firmly believe that movement is the most powerful ability in warhammer. Plenty of things can lay waste to whole units in the blink of an eye, but if they never get to you to do so, none of them matter. If a flanker sneaks behind you and steals an objective, a 100 point chaff unit and a 500 point hammer both look about the same when they turn around and run into that corner. High mobility is better than low mobility (obviously), but if you’re using whatever mobility you do have intelligently, I think it has the greatest impact on the game. Intelligent movement allows you to pick your fights, avoid the ones you don’t want, and draw your opponent’s units apart in ways they don’t want. Every single opportunity you have to move a model should be considered. Retreats, teleportations, pile-in moves, out of phase moves, even recurring models can gain you extra distance or close a crucial gap in your defenses. It almost feels odd that this is just a subsection of this guide, because I believe mastering movement should be one of your top priorities to improve your game.

I’ll never forget a game I played many years ago. My opponent deployed a very potent hammer unit, that cost a quarter of their army points, on the far side of the board. I was struck with the clear, immediate thought: “I’m not going to have to deal with that unit for three battlerounds.” Sure enough, it spent the first turn circling cautiously around the board edge. Then, too late, my opponent realized it was safe but irrelevant, and that unit spent the next two rounds sprinting for the action to try and get there in time to make a difference.

Sequencing Of Abilities

Understanding the timing of when abilities are used can add a ton of equity to your game. This ties into both your understanding of the core rules and your own overlapping army abilities. Every phase of the game, you have abilities whose ordering affects how the rest of your turn will play out. If you fail to cast buff spell A on a unit, you may elect not to cast buff spell B on it at all. If you had led with the less important spell B, it might then be wasted because spell A was really necessary for that unit to move forward. If you charge with a minor flanking unit first and fail your charge, you have to evaluate using Forward to Victory to reroll that charge without knowing if your hammer unit has made it in yet. If you attack with Unit X, your opponent may be able to pull slain models from the target unit leaving the further away Unit Y unable to reach it at all. The examples are innumerable, but you should always pause whenever you have a choice of how to order your effects.

The Double Turn

This is one of the most contentious elements of Age of Sigmar for many players: some love it, some hate it. Some of the haters claim it introduces such a huge, unpredictable element of variance to the game that it makes strategy impossible. The blow of a double turn you aren’t prepared for can be so devastating that it ends the game on the spot. But, I argue that is also the double turn’s greatest strength. Dice games can never be totally “solved” like chess or Chinese checkers. Play the same list against the same list on the same battleplan ten times, and every game will turn out differently due to that variance at the core of the game.

I have never played other warhammer properties that lacked the double turn, so I always took it for granted as a feature of the game. When I was a newer player, I felt the sting of a double turn blowout, but over time I realized it is a strategic element you can plan for like any other. If you have identified your opponent’s gameplan, you can see the ingredients of such a blowout coming together well before the next turn’s priority roll. Whether it’s setting up screens or simply hanging so far back that your opponent couldn’t even get to you on their double turn, there are a thousand different ways you can mitigate the double. It’s equally important to understand when you can’t afford to mitigate it anymore. Many a game of warhammer has been lost by being overcautious, and sometimes you just need to push forward, leave yourself exposed, and pray the priority roll goes your way. It may feel like a bad choice when you lose that roll, but it may have been your highest percentage play for winning that game.

What is your Path to Victory?

It’s essential to have a Plan A going into a game of warhammer. It’s very important to have a Plan B and a Plan C. Knowing how your list functions, what each piece is supposed to do, and responding to changing battlefield conditions is the key to taking your play to the next level. It’s equally important to know when to throw all of that out. I call it the “bean counter phase,” when all your plans have been disrupted, 80% of both players' armies are dead, and you’re scrapping for every victory point you can find. When you find yourself in one of these rare games, your buff piece can abandon its pet unit, your backline support hero can sprint away unescorted, and your long range snipers can charge into melee combat. When both players’ killing power has been dispersed, the game comes down to its constituent pieces: bodies on the board controlling space on that board. 

Sportsmanship

It is human nature to get invested in things we care about. If you’ve gotten this far in this guide, you care about Warhammer: about winning and improving. My desire to win is what keeps me dialed in for the three hours of one game, or the nine hours of a three round day. My disappointment when a dice roll or six doesn’t go my way is equally real - and valid. But, there are better and worse ways to handle those feelings. Most of us have had the experience of playing against a person who, faced with bad variance or caught off guard by an ability they forgot, lapses into a nonstop rant about the unfairness of the game. Even if this dialog isn’t pointed at you directly, it can rob the game of its joy and tone. 

Each of us has to work out how to be a better sport ourselves, but we are very prone to making excuses for ourselves. If you regularly get angry while playing warhammer, the game actions and outcomes are just catalysts. You need to address that anger with yourself, away from the table. That anger makes the game less fun for you and your opponent, but it also impacts how you play. Many a victory has been salvaged from a disastrous turn, but if you’re tilted and already playing the blame game, you’re less likely to accurately assess the board state. Here are some points I’ll leave you with:

• Dice are not bullshit. They are random. 
• Celebrate big moments for both sides.
• It’s your opponent’s job to beat you, not to make you feel better about being beaten.
• Complaining is toxic and builds up anger. It is usually focused on blame and things you can’t control.
• Venting is a healthy expression of emotion, without fixation, to a consenting audience.

On the other side of the table, if you see your opponent struggling with anger, I hope you have grace. Some people can shake it off, given a little time. Sometimes they just need someone to acknowledge that their dice rolls have indeed been below average. I have a hard and fast rule about warhammer: if one or both parties don’t want to play anymore, the game should be over.

After the Table

Why did you lose the game? Why did you win? Correctly answering these questions is the thing that most leads players astray. Finding the right answers will help you dig deeper into your gameplay and address the less obvious areas of improvement. 

Results Oriented Thinking

Looking at the results of dice rolls when learning and improving is a trap. Maybe your combat activation came up all 1s and 2s, or maybe your opponent rolled some truly heroic armor saves and wards. That doesn’t mean the play you made didn’t have the highest statistical likelihood of success. I have no problem betting on average results when I put together a gameplan (see evaluating probabilities). If I can bet on less than average and still achieve my aims, even better. Different players have different availability to play games each week, each month. It’s very possible to have three low variance games in a row, but while that may be one player’s bad day, it may be another’s bad summer. It can be difficult to maintain statistical clarity over such a time frame. 

Even if you roll well, it can be tempting to look at when your centerpiece model died on turn 3, your line collapsed, and the enemy took every objective and say “that’s when I lost.” But you may have lost when you put that centerpiece model in the wrong place one round before. You may even have lost in deployment, setting up your units in such a way as to make that round 3 confrontation inevitable. Whenever you’re confronted with an “oh shit” moment, try to ask yourself “when was the last opportunity I had to avoid this?”

Post Game with your Opponent

Many of us love sharing the good and bad beats of our games with our friends. I find it very interesting to hear these stories from my friends, not only because I want to vicariously share their experience of playing the game, but also because I like to listen to what they decide to tell. No one is going to appreciate the impact of the game you played more than your opponent. They are an expert in the army and the list they just pitted against you. They approached the table with an entirely different strategy, tactics and thinking, and may have different ideas about what the most pivotal moments were. There may have been a moment in your game where you made a simple decision that seemed like a no-brainer, while your opponent was silently sweating that you would pick option C, which would destroy them and which never occurred to you. Those moments especially are a goldmine of insight into the gameplans of your opponents and of other armies, generally. But, before you start interrogating your opponent, ensure they are up for that kind of conversation. I’ve finished games that left me frazzled, needing a quiet solitary moment to recharge, more than I needed to talk about how my screen dying in one shot was impactful.

What is Good Practice?

Playing warhammer is fun, but just playing may not be what you need to skill up at the game. You can deploy your army alone at home and map out how you want your turn one movement to go, tweaking unit positions, managing “wholly within” auras, and lining up turn one movements. You could set aside an evening with a friend and play battleround 1 three times over. Getting in the Practice Mindset is being willing to set aside the flow of a regular competitive game to target specific things you want to work on. It’s perfectly valid to say “this hammer wipes that half strength screen nine times out of ten” and just pull the screen. That one time out of ten when you totally flub your roll may happen naturally in a tournament, but it might pull a practice game off course. This has the added benefit of speeding up your iteration. You can learn more from three practice games with shortcuts than you can with one. On the other hand, you can only practice pulling out of a bad situation when variance or your opponent’s strategy have really put you on the back foot. It’s harder to artificially set up those kinds of situations.

The benefits of playing someone better than you are obvious. They’re going to see lines of play you don’t, and punish you for it. But you can get “good practice” even with players who are much less experienced than you. Where a newer player chooses to move and commit their units may not be optimal, but it continually presents you with new scenarios to consider from a learning perspective. Let’s say, for example, that a less skilled opponent overcommits to one side of the board, leaving their other side open. While a more experienced player may not have given you this opportunity, you’ll need to figure out how much of your own troops you commit to that opportunity. Maybe your opponent’s forces will now push through your defensive line more quickly than you anticipated, or maybe some of their troops in the back are still close enough to threaten whatever you use to punch through on the weak side. You can also constantly be asking yourself “what should they do from this board state to beat me?” Don’t be afraid to offer suggestions and turn a practice game into a dialog, instead of a stone-faced poker match. However, you should always be respectful of your opponent’s time. Some people only get one game per month, so ask whether they are up for this different kind of play beforehand.

Many of us like to take pictures of cool board states. It’s so satisfying when two fully painted armies come together on a table of similarly finished terrain. But those pictures can be a valuable memory aid for your reflection on games. Remembering to snap pictures of key moments, even after you’ve been playing for two and a half hours, is a habit you need to work to cultivate. Those moments could be when two important units come together, but it could also be a tricky bit of unit movement. I often take pictures of particularly heinous or spectacular dice rolls as well, to help me separate the rush of victory/defeat from wide swings in variance over which I have no control.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading so far! I hope this guide was useful in sparking new lines of thinking and supercharging your wargaming growth. I’ve included some additional resources below if you’re interested in learning more. If you found this guide useful, it is my most ardent hope that you share it with your wargaming friends. I believe communities flourish when we have communal resources: tournaments at local gamestores, warhammer barbecues, and videos and documents we can dissect and discuss together.

Previous Strategy Works

If I want to write a work that assists people on their warhammer journey, I would be remiss to not mention the incredible works that came before me. To that end, I must mention The Honest Wargammer Warbook, a production by Rob. It’s a wonderful guide to figuring out what kind of wargamer you want to be, and the strategy tips he discusses touch on a lot of what I want to cover here. I want to call particular attention to these points he raises:

• Learn the strengths and weaknesses of your army range
• Memorize your own stats
• Understand your role in a game vs your opponent’s role
• No turn 1 plan survives contact with the enemy

I think the “types of players” that Rob discusses are evocative, fun, and perfectly describe so many of the players I know and love. I think I shake out as a Mover and a Math-Hammerista, and the exact opposite of a Quickie. I live for sucking up every minute of a tournament round with gaming, not because of slow play but because of an incredible back and forth slug match, running into the final turn to decide it all. Finding those games is what drives me to tournaments.

They remind me of the Timmy Johnny, and Spike player archetypes first proposed by Mark Rosewater in December 2013. Rosewater and Co. have since added several more “psychographic profiles,” but back in the beginning I used to hotly debate with my friends what percent of our gaming souls were dedicated to each of the three pillars.

I highly recommend you read these two documents, and find them as useful and fun as I did.

How Do You Learn?

I suggest you learn about the VARK model of learning, created by New Zealand educationalist Neil Flemming in 1987. He proposes that people learn best via different methods: Visual, Auditory, Reading/writing, and Kinesthetic. There have been studies done since that show no conclusive proof of the existence of these learning styles, that each person has a particular style that suits them best. But over years and years of learning, I feel confident that I’m a reader. When it comes to learning my opponent’s army rules, they can give me a four minute long prepared speech that will go in one ear and out the other, or I can glance at the written rules and absorb the vital info in a quiet 45 seconds. 

In addition to learning what kind of warhammer player you are, learning how you learn will guide your road to improvement. You may need to read the core rules front to back and back to front. You may be super locked in during that introductory chat with a new opponent and have a list of prepared questions. You may be jotting notes down throughout the game and referencing them months later. You may be feeling the reminder tokens leave your hands as you place them next to your units, the physical feedback fixing it in your memory. If you find any part of playing warhammer odious, consider changing up how you approach it, mentally. Getting better will not always be easy, but it is supposed to be FUN, and I advise you to reexamine any experiences or patterns that make you feel like you don’t want to do this anymore.