A word on _real_ psychology: veterans, help out!

[Lakissov]

Frankly, this topic has been triggered by an old thread that got suddenly resurrected recently. It dealt with shooting and also covered partly the psychological effects of it. Also, I've been giving psychology some thought now and again myself. So, let's move to the topic:

How to use psychology in battle

An important point here: this is not about the "psychology" rule in BRB, this is about the human psychology that most people fall victim to.

So, the question to the veterans is: how in general do you use psychology in your battles and also what particular techniques do you use?

A word of caution: I am not in any way talking about "tricks" - the one-trick ponies that you can use against your opponent only if he hasn't yet been fooled with it. I am talking about "strategies" and "techniques". "Strategies" in this context are general imperatives of behaviour that need being taken care of with regard to psychology, while "techniques" are the certain minor ways of exploiting psychology to accomplish certain aims. The main difference between "techniques" and "tricks" here is that your opponent does not typically get immunity to you using a technique once he has seen you use it, while a trick is a one-use-against-any-opponent thing.

So, the aim of the post is to ask the veterans for the strategies and techniques that they use in order to expoit psychology. Another use of knowing those is that as long as you know them you can be ready to withstand to them.

Let me illustrate this with a few examples of psychology usage that I borrowed from the "shooting" thread:

1. Technique: Having a certain area covered by strong shooting means that the opponent will try to avoid that area (this is where our troops will break through).

So, this is a technique that we can use. We deploy an RBT early against an area where we would like to gain supremacy (be it for getting some flanking forces to the enemy's back line or for straightforward advancement of the main anvil and hammers). The opponent generally tries to avoid that area. Moreover, that is not just a "trick" - it takes quite some analytical capability to understand our plan; moreover, once the opponent has understood our tactic, he is faced with the unpleasant choice - put your own forces under fire or let the enemy advance through the open area. What can one do against it? Deploying a fast hitty force and screening it with something is the only way out of this dillema that I see.

2. Strategy: - Having an advantage in shooting compared to the opponent usually means that the opponent will try to rush forward and try to close in CC as quickly as possible.

What does that mean for us? Well, it means, that the opponent will be much easier to lure into traps (by baiting) if he thinks that actually making a charge is going to bring him closer to your lines. Get your counter charges prepared.

Also, if you face an opponent that is shootier than you, don't just rush forward. think about the consequenses of your actions and instead of pursuing every opportunity to move forward try to think of how your movement is going to reflect upon your strategy.

3. Neither strategy nor technique, but still psychology: Keeping enemy heroes within units (as they fear your shooting) can sometimes mean that, due to decreased mobility, their heroes are not where they should be.

Implication of this is that you always have to keep an eye on your own heroes, considering two things: where are they most useful (within the certain unit or in some other place) and whether they can be really hit easily (calculate the probilities and get yourself calmed - sometimes one can bear a certain amount of shooting. Don't just let your thinking get locked in the typical "hide your heroes in units" approach.

Not inspired by "shooting thread":

4. Technique: threatening an enemy mage (even in a unit) with e.g. your Dark Riders can lead to the mage using his spells to damage your DR instead of taking care of the more important things.

Again, this is not just a one time trick, as the opponent actually faces not just bluffing which he can identify once he has seen it in another game but a credible threat. Which also means that we can't avoid it easily either. What is important, however, is that a player who thinks a lot about psychology is going to identify this as a psychological technique and actually weight what is more important - to kill the threat to the mage or to accomplish some other, probably more important, task; a player that does not see the psychological attack can simply panic (oh my God, my mage is in danger!) and act without actually weighting the priorities.



So, now, as I am not by far an experienced player, I urge all of you veterans to come forward and share your psychological strategies and techniques. In fact, probably we can identify some more strategies based on techniques if we have ehough of the latter...

[Neknoh]

There are some easy, easy tricks, for instance, every game, put an assassin down next to the board, however, don't use one every game, this will ensure your opponent being weary on wether or not to use it.

Another great way is to park a chariot in a palce on the map, your opponent will not move anything into that position of fear for being charged, this frees up quite large an area to put a unit of Dark Riders with a mounted sorceress in for the DR's to act as a secure firing platform for the Sorceress to cast spells from

[Kezef]

A good trick i have found is to deploy an assassin using the scout rule in a unit of Shades.

It's amazing how paranoid people are about assassins when they are in full sight. The Shade bodyguard protects him from shooting and your opponent suddenly gets very worried about a Pyscho with a 12 inch charge hitting the flank of his army.

Also the traditional method of killing skirmishes is to charge with light cavalry, try charging a unit with an assassin in with light cavalry and see what happens *evil grin*

You can pin down a whole flank just because the other guy is scared of what one model can do. If the other guy doesn't fall prey to fear you show him what a tooled up assassin can do and he's guaranteed to fear him the following game.

win/win

[Bauglir]

although i don't really know anything about psychology in a scientific sense, it has occurred to me in games that specific units in each army tend to cause fear or terror not in a warhammer but a very real sense by making opponents avoid these units or try to take them out with shooting, magic. monsters are an obvious example, and also executioners ( they get shot down quickly for this particular reason). this works both ways though. i hate putting anything in shooting range of a jezzail battery, and i avoid plague censer bearers like the plague (pun intended). every army has units that scares the shiz out of their opponents although that is not always based on actual gaming value or effectiveness of the units.

[Silverwarlock]

Im going to restart playing my chaos

I have large herds (that fill lots of space and look angry (and are slaaneshi painting so they have pink and purple and clear flesh)), 2 large chaos giants with lots of colors and looking very agressive

these seem like the heart of the army ...

then I have 2 small units of less flashy painted MDs ... and a demon prince that looks tiny compared to giants ... these units are the real killers, but the ennemy usually pay attention to the giants

[Lakissov]

All right, I can see two techniques:

- usage of painting to bring out some models and let them attract more attention than they deserve. can work with many opponents
- using the stereotypes that persist regarding certain units, e.g. jezzails/execs/dwarven cannons. can people expand the list?

more techniques? strategies?

[Ant]

1 word is all that is needed to sum up how to use psycology in your favor in warhammer:

Confidence.


If you can play the game in such a way as to show your opponent that you are confident that you are the better player and you know how to win you are already half way there. I've won numerous games that by rights I should have lost after turn 2 sinply because the person I was playing thought I was better than them.

If you are playing against somebody you think is a better player then you tend to make more mistakes. Mainly because you think too much, and react to what they do too much. If you aren't daunted by your opponent you are much more likely to stick to your original battleplan and play your army in the way that you know it works.

There are loads of things you can do to show your opponent how confident you are, but really you can't fake it, you just have to believe you can win. For example when Rabbit plays he tends to everything very quickly, which tends to put me on a back foot every now and again, giving me less time to think since I play at a slightly slower pace. Now Rabbit doesn't do this deliberately to put his opponent off, it is just the way he plays and shows that he knows what he is doing and is confident in his ability. Conversely, if he is losing, or gets caught in a trap or outplayed in someway, he occasionally slows the pace of his turns slightly, because he's lost a bit of his confidence against that player. I've noticed that once one player is more confident than the other, then they usually win.

So basically, if you start a game thinking you are going to lose, you will.

Be careful though not to confuse confidence with arrogance. You will be surprised how often a player sees a friendly army across the table, thinks 'easy' then loses because they don't bother to think during the game or they've underestimated their opponent. I try to avoid that mentality when playing, even against a weak player with a fairly weak army. if you don't think, you can still be beaten.

[Kezef]

although i don't really know anything about psychology in a scientific sense, it has occurred to me in games that specific units in each army tend to cause fear or terror not in a warhammer but a very real sense by making opponents avoid these units or try to take them out with shooting, magic. monsters are an obvious example, and also executioners ( they get shot down quickly for this particular reason). this works both ways though. i hate putting anything in shooting range of a jezzail battery, and i avoid plague censer bearers like the plague (pun intended). every army has units that scares the shiz out of their opponents although that is not always based on actual gaming value or effectiveness of the units.

I've noticed the same. I use 3 big infantry blocks. 20 executioners and two sets of 20 spearmen.

The executioners take all kinds of hell and then the spearmen charge. It's amazing what 20 spearmen can do when you have the BSB with the Hydra banner in the middle. Executioners are not actualy that good, but they look so cool they take all the flak.

[Ostron]

A few techniques I've noticed/used lately:

Building off of bauglir's comments, the list I've been playing (And winning with) lately features a lord on a manticore. However, I usually keep him out of action and/or unassailable for the first part of the game, which causes my opponents to do one of two things: forget about him, or try to maneuver their army to get a shot at him, sometimes with disatrous results.

Following off of that, the rest of my army is pretty much MSU, and most of the time my opponent can't figure out what to concentrate on if they can't get at the manti, since none of the units look like obviously good targets. So they end up concentrating on nothing and letting me decide where to attack.

[Narathiel]

Pyschology is a great reason to include lots of magic, a terror causing dragon/hydra/manticore or a erally hitty unit. But especially reapers are a good example.

Normally reapers do not do much on the battle field; especially statistically they erally fail (see hall of fame thread on this)
But once they have managed to do something important you've done what you wanted to. The opponent is scared of you and if you deploy them in a certain way it will definitely influence his movement decisions a lot.

That's the only reason reapers are used IMHO.

cheers
nathy

[Vorchild]

I've found that most times, when you're playing against vets, psychology doesn't do all that much in terms of game winning. Psychology, in terms of how people perceive you, can affect your soft scores though as can reputation.

But Ant has it right on the money. Play with confidence and you'll force your opponent to think more. The more someone thinks, the more they'll tend to overthink something and make a mistake.

In general though, I wouldn't advise doing aything more than simply being confident in your game and with your army and just having a good time playing the game. You'll have more fun, in a competitive scenrio you'll get better soft scores, and in the end, psychology is such a small factor against someone who knows their army well and who is cofident in turn.

[Rasputinii]

Ant is right. However you can also take it the other way, play like you don't know what you are doing and lure your opp in to a false sense of security. Harder one to do though...

[Xerasi]

I realy must agree with Ant, confidence works wonders. I personally always plan my movement phase in the opponents movement phase, because there I know where most things will be, and what will typically happen. When I then get the turn, I have usually figured his traps out, and move accordingly, and almost as fast as I can without rushing.

This doesn't always work, but against 95% of the players I usually face, they are scared, just because I move with the confidence so it might be a trap, even if it will first spring out a turn or two later. This realy tends to make my opponents think more, and thus make more mistakes.

I can also at times point out that a single unit has but two options, where both will grant me advantage (after I've made a trap for it). This often makes the opponent nervous, or determind to stop the trap, something they usually do successfully, but only by making a gap somewhere els in their army.

I also enjoy placing a unit of 10 strong spearmen, or something els directly infront of my opps. strongest/favorit unit. only being a couple of inches away usually leeds to 2 different options. Charge my unit, or stay where the opp is.

Not using the chosen knights are wrong for the medicore player, allowing me to have a nice trap for them when they go through. This is actually how I play most of the game: "You have two options, you can do either this or that, what of the two evils do you prefer?"

This works perfectly against the offensive minded opponents, and against players that doesn't have the same experience that I have, but by playing this way I have a much harder time beating a shooting army (actually not SAD, but HE, Emp, Dwarfs etc) as I cant force them to take the choice where they somewhere along the way will make a mistake.

Playing in this way has at least made me undefeated in my last 10 turny games against offensive armies (8 wins and 2 draws iirc)

Xerasi