Dealing With Mathhammer Players

Approaching 40K I often take the human approach in my outlook and tactical thinking- looking to exploit the human frailties of my opponent through psychology, and jedi mind tricks. Friendly games are one thing, but in a tourney I go full spectrum. That pre-game back and forth banter as we are setting up, the questions I’m asking about your army, all of it is probes for information to exploit. I try to get a feel of how you think and play and what I can exploit. Now before you think I’m a total jerk, and cats who have met me in person can vouch for me (I hope!)- I’m a cool dude, but a lot of this is Art of War 101. You are playing a dude that gets upset easily? Ask him about his army and the unit he talks about the most- often his HQ is his trigger- kill that unit off the table and you have lit the fuse. I also ask about your army to get a snapshot on how you “think” 40K should be played. You think you are going to roll over me with those ork nobz? I’ll play along and send out a unit for you to chase after and hit, once we get mid way I’ll start moving and running away with that unit just to light that fuse.

But what about those mathammer players? The guys who see only numbers and percentages in the game, one guy in particular I’m thinking about wins all the time just because of this- they are immune to my jedi mind tricks- they are the Watto’s of 40K.

How do you deal with them?

My solution is to get them to roll dice! When you roll dice in 40K bad things happen despite the laws of averages, %, etc. There is a human element to rolling the dice- Jawaballs rolls “1” almost every other die, for real! Mathammer dudes will hash it out, and enough bad die rolls will throw their game off since dice are not “supposed” to roll like that. Another tactic I use is to go against the logic of the game- like assaulting with Necron warriors en mass, etc. Things that make no sense often throw off guys like this, where the more emotional counterparts seem to just brush it off.