first game/rookie mistake

[planet psyrum]

Played my first game of 40k today, and damn I'm hooked. Who knew pushing plastic dudes and rolling dice was so much fun.

I started this thread to make myself feel better after making a rookie mistake. I play necrons and i played against orks today. The mission was kill points and deployment was dawn of war. I was already at a disadvantage because we both had 9 kill points, but his squads were quite a bit larger. So i went into the game thinking to have him walk in foot to me while I shot him up. I stuck a unit of warriors in the center of the board that had veil of darkness. He deployed his big unit/hq right infront of them 12" away, i thought perfect. First turn I veiled them out of their and had some pretty good distance between us to about him up. That was good until I made two rookie mistakes. First and the worst, was he shot a krak missile at my squad of heavy destroyer and destroyer lord. I took the wound on a heavy destroyer, who failed, then took a morale check which I failed, and then ran off the board. There goes 28% of my 1000pt army. If i would have put it in my lord none of that happens. Plus he got 2 killpoints right there, which he won by. Second rookie mistake, not knowing about the waaagh! I was jammed up against my board edge with his big bad unit closing the gap. I figured i was 13-14" away, and that I should just shoot once instead of moving up and rapid firing, thinking i had one more turn. NOPE, he waagh!ed and there went another kill point.

Help me feel better, what was some of your first game/rookie mistakes?

[Yriel_The_Angelic]

Back in the olden days of the beautiful 3.5 Chaos Codex i had a Night lords army. They had stealth and for some reason i NEVER put them in cover. Every game i would lose because A) I never put them in cover and/ or B) when they were in cover i forgot bout the stealth rule .__.

[gruebot]

Well, I've been playing for a long time so its hard to say. But I guess I'ld have to go with underestimating my enemies forces or overestimating my own. This usually hapens with Space Marine Scouts. Whenever I play against them I don't bother going after them cause they never hit. Thern somehow my opponent is able to get one or two VERY lucky(in my opinion) game changing shots out of them. but when I run them(with camo cloaks & Sgt. Telion in a building with bolstered defense from Lysander) they still miss every shot & die rediculously easily! And for some reason I all ways go back to that unit and think "Mabey this time they'll - WAIT A MINUTE! That unit SUCKS!"

[Yriel_The_Angelic]

Well, I've been playing for a long time so its hard to say. But I guess I'ld have to go with underestimating my enemies forces or overestimating my own. This usually hapens with Space Marine Scouts. Whenever I play against them I don't bother going after them cause they never hit. Thern somehow my opponent is able to get one or two VERY lucky(in my opinion) game changing shots out of them. but when I run them(with camo cloaks & Sgt. Telion in a building with bolstered defense from Lysander) they still miss every shot & die rediculously easily! And for some reason I all ways go back to that unit and think "Mabey this time they'll - WAIT A MINUTE! That unit SUCKS!"


I have to agree with you.
Me: Scouts? psh they're a push over.
4 turns later
Me: I CANNOT! believe that 5 man scout unit tied up in close combat my obliterators for 4 turns! *face palm*

[Toaster36]

I've never had much issue with strategy, but when I picked my first army I wanted one that was good at assaults so I picked 'Nids. I quickly found out that I despise painting and maybe a horde army with a 20+ step painting process was a bit much for my first army.

My genestealer heavy force performed great in the tournaments and campaign at my FLGS back in 4th despite the fact practically my whole army was just coated with black primer. Recently I started a Necron force and am not going to make the same mistake. They will be fully painted before I even base them to play with.

Learn from your mistakes. C'est la vie.

[Silverclaw]

You really should not feel bad about making mistakes in your first game, everybody does it and it is the best way to learn and get better.

[Mr. Furious]

I was so bewildered(and a little drunk) during my first game that I don't remember much. I know I borrowed some Blood Angels to play with, I know I was completely lost and thought that no one could ever possibly learn all of the nuances to this game and I distinctly remember laughing my butt off and having a great time.

As far as remembering any mistakes I made.....that was many beers ago and I try to focus on the positives ;)

[Headrush]

I play BA, and in my first few games I'd put Mephiston way out in the open during deployment and run him straight up the middle of the table. He didn't live too long :(

[Drunkencorgimaster]

I came to the tournament wearing white and it was after September. Then I used the salad fork on pasta. Then I made an elephant joke, and it turned out there was a guy standing right behind me who was one of John Merrick's grandkids. Man did I feel stupid!

[gythku]

When i started playing i asked my friends for a debrief of the game, most players are willing to help you or at the very least they like to sound right and tell you what you did wrong. :p

[Jenn]

Sounds like he made a couple of rules mistakes himself. First of all, in Dawn of War, the player who deploys second cannot deploy any models within 18" of a model deployed by player one. Second I'm not sure if I'm reading this right or not but it sounds like he used his Waaagh! on turn one which is also against the rules.

I think your biggest mistake may have been putting your destroyer lord in with a heavy destroyer. those two units should never hang out together mainly because they are completely at odds in their battlefield roles Heavy destroyers/ Destroyers should always be moving away from the enemy, sniping at them from a safe distance where as destroyer lords should be looking for backfield non dedicated combat units to attack to disrupt the enemy battle plans. This of course could have been made more readily apparent by Games Workshop, but such is life.

Also, I'm curious how you came out to 9 kill points in a 1000 point list.

As for mistakes I made when I first started playing...

I started right after the 4th edition Tyranid codex came out, I was notorious for doing stupid things that the codex didnt allow, like give my warriors leaping and wings or my hive tyrant wings and extended carapace. I always got in trouble for giving my units upgrades that werent allowed. Also I had this nasty habit of attacking vehicles with my hormagaunts, for some reason I always forgot that they just simply couldnt do a damn thing to that rhino over there, but I sure as hell was gonna try. Also I loved sending my flyrant out ahead of the rest of my army completely solo... I could never figure out why he always ended up being the first thing that died. Ahh, the innocence of youth...

[kingsfan2099]

You will make mistakes in your first 10 games at least. Takes time to learn the rules and even more time to develop tactics to counter all the armies you'll come up against.

[kellyj]

Regardless of mikstakes, its still a game ruled by the variance of the dice.
I just had an IG on IG game. Turn 1 I killed his Medusa with a Valk. His turn 1 he Immobilized the Valk with his Valk.
Thats OK, he's got alot in reserve and I'll shoot him up piecemeal as he comes in.
Until his outflanking reserves come in (Master of the Fleet) on turn 2 and I end up with 2 Valks each with a PCS (2xmelta, 2x flamer) AND a 6 strong Ogrin unit (Scouts, outflanking thanks to CREEEEEED!!!!) all coming in on my side of the board.
The game went down hill pretty fast from their.

[MercyKiller]

Completely new to the game and being unfamiliar with the intricacies of the unit statistics, I charged a unit of assault terminators with my Necron warriors. I thought it was a friendly game and they would give me pointers, but they took advantage of my naivete. =[

[Trepanation]

I wish I had only made dumb mistakes in my first game. I still make them on a fairly consistent basis, in part because I can never play regularly anymore. The dumbest mistake I made recently was to completely forget about my Combat Drugs for my Wyches until around turn 4.

[marsdonut]

People shake their head when I bring my Tau to game. Their codex may be outdated, but they have rules in place to prevent themselves from assaulting, and thats pretty awesome. (Firewarriors and Kroot? Both their rifles are rapidfire. Can't win combats you're not destined to fight, but when you do... all the better :D)

On the minimum to getting better, I would say build a list every day. Whether you have the model or not, just make a list. Experiment with the points and get comfortable with the system that loves numbers.

What I have done to learn the game is saved every list I have made, and put that into a binder. In that binder, I have written out several pages of notes about the game at large, mostly about rules I hear about and things I forgot to do. Every now and then, I'll take a glance during a game and check whether I was repeating a foul, and in hopes of correcting it, I'll record date/time and inform my opponent if there was a rules gaff ("Sorry, that guy is actually fearless!"). And I'll insist we continue playing without trying to roll back time, because mistakes happen and hey, I can still have fun now that I know better.

Now, what I don't try to do is find someone brand new and exploit them. Because I have had opponents like that and they ruined the experience for everyone they corrupt. I am also starting to become accustomed to /giving/ opponents the benefit of the doubt in terms of cover or templates. (Quick glance, yea, I see 5, but I'll say you hit 6. Go ahead and roll to wound.) I think I learned that behavior from watching Shawn from "bluetablepainting" and I think its good to have a super positive attitude in gaming. (Comment about BTP: Their youtube battle reports reflect awful rule misunderstandings, but if you tune out the bad and recognize what they did wrong, you're going in the right direction.)

@Kelly: Took me several tries, but I read that as "Regardless of milkshakes, ..." XD

[Ironwolf]

My first game/rookie mistake was in 3rd when equipping my long fangs with all plasma not knowing bout the gets hot rule and trusting too much in rapid fire bolters while letting my grey hunters get charged but a near full size boyz squad:eek:.

[pgarfunkle]

Back in 3rd I teleported a squad off the table edge because I completely forgot about the likely hood off scatter. Very annoyed with myself.

[Geachinator]

My first game I charged out of cover with my Ork Nobs and my assault distance was just short of those squishy 'ummies, well I can say try not to land yourself in front of a platoon of IG with autocannons my unit turned out to be the squishy one in the end....

[kellyj]

Mistakes can be recovered from.
Milkshakes just hang on your waistline and give you gamer-gut.

[Urza8188]

hmmmm my 1st rookie mistake ehh? Probably picking tau as my 1st army. That's a pretty major mistake. Small errors in deployment very easily cost you the game. In all honesty Ive played a couple dozen games or so and I'm still making a lot of mistakes that cost me the game. The plus side of this is that i seldom make the same mistake twice and I am learning everything NOT to do to win a game.....the hard way....

For example I will never deploy my 215pt HQ in open LOS w/o cover in a dawn of war game vs dark eldar and assume i'm far enough out where they wont get shot down instantly. I will never run another suicide deep striking crisis squad because even with the devilfish bonus you're only gonna land where you want like 50% of the time. I will never run 3 skyray missile ships on my heavy slots again when railguns are cheaper more effective and don't have limited ammo. (well maybe for a pretty fluff list :) ) I will never say anything even remotely like "ohhhh i'm sure those 2 squads can handle that paladin squad themselves"......LOL!

I could go on and on but i'm sure you get the point. GL in your future games and most importantly have fun.

OHHH also kill that ******* fast DE skimmer on turn 5 with one of your 6 railguns in that capture and control game (that you SHOULD have in the bag because you wiped out 50% of the enemy 1st turn) BEFORE HE FLIES HALFWAY ACROSS THE MAP TO CONTEST YOUR OBJECTIVE AND BY SOME MIRACLE KILLS YOUR LAST TROOP ON HIS OBJECTIVE AND YOU ROLL ENDGAME BEFORE YOU CAN GET ANOTHER TROOP OVER TO IT! yeah that was a fun lesson......LOL......FML