Oh no, Fittsy missed a week! Is everything alright? I’m sure that’s what at least 2 of the readers have thought recently. Work has been a bit busy and I had a 3 day Necromunda Campaign Weekend. Also, I’m because of that I haven’t been hitting the AoS tables as much and although I’ve got a few ideas to throw words at… most of them need a bit more time to swirl around in the old brain until they’re ready.

I did hit up another RTT (Age of Hiltown VII), little shout-out to the crew over there who set up and ran a really lovely tournament with a great bunch of players!

I ended up going 2-1 with the same Nighthaunt list but up against 3 uncommon matchups for me which was good for getting some more practice in against Kroak (I believe there were also some other Seraphon on the table), a mixed Ogors list, and FEC against Luca who I travelled there with. That was the most exciting of the three games where it was pretty close and grindy with plenty of tactical play on both sides and in the end I timed out but with just enough time to score my last battle tactic to pull in a win. Lady Olynder’s Control Score reduction was what pushed the game in my favour… which is making me look at more options to manipulate control score with my lists. I’m really looking forward to trying out the new Nighthaunt terrain and have been playing around with some new lists to lean into that.

We’ve got just over a week to wait for the new GHB which is always an interesting time to be in… some people are slowing down a bit waiting for the new scenarios and season rules. I bet a lot of you are waiting to see what other surprises we will have in those rules!

I think that’s enough stereotypical waffle from me to start things off. It’s time to start talking about proactive and reactive players. Apologies in advance, this is going to be a wordy one with zero picture from here on out.

What is this proactive/reactive stuff?

This is a way to describe different styles of play… this is something that people with too much time to think about how they play keep themselves busy sometimes when not actually playing. Is it perfect? Fuck no. You may have also heard about the Johhny, Timmy and Spike classifications which stems from MtG and goes a bit deeper into what the player tries to get from their experiences… Plastic Craic has some good coverage about that and list building over here.

Proactive and Reactive at its core

A proactive player focuses on anticipating, initiating, and preparing

                Prevention and long-term solutions

A reactive player focuses on responding, following, and adapting

                Immediate solutions and problem solving

That sounds a bit wanky and I’m definitely no psychologist so I tried to keep it top level. You’re here for Age of Sigmar coverage (or have accidentally come across this for some other random reason… if so, you should give AoS a try, it’s a lot of fun)… so what do these two types of play look like on the tabletop?

Proactive:

Going in with an overall game plan

List may lean heavily into one archetype

Pushing problems on your opponent for them to deal with (i.e. pinning)

Aggressive play with an aim to create opportunities

Reactive:

List may contain problem solving units or a spread of units to give you play against different types of opponents

Watching opponent’s play and reacting to their moves and focus

Adapting to changes in the game state over the turns

More defensive countering opponent’s play

What type of player am I?

I thought I was reactive… but I’ve since realised that although I may not be someone who plays classic proactive lists (alpha strike, ranged spam), I am definitely proactive leaning and my reactiveness tends to take a back seat to how can I react to force more decisions on my opponent.

Thanks to Darren Watson at Onwards AoS for pointing this out to me!

I represent primarily the aspects of having an army which has a plan on the table top and I am definitely an aggressive player (always be charging) even if I don’t push damage heavy armies around. I prefer consistency in my armies which is why I don’t lean heavily on the magic phase or random attacks characteristics (which might explain my absolutely terrible run with Skaven).

How can we use this?

The game starts before the game… so here we can think about our lists. Does the overall list play into our strengths? Am I using units which fit to how I play? When we look at top players and coverage of their lists or interviews… for sure we see different aspects of each of these represented with some all-comer lists performing incredibly well and others which represent clearly thought-out plans carried out.

Take a look at your lists and take a chance to reflect on whether you think the list fits you as a player (not just in the context of this but more generally too). You might find you’ve got a unit which you feel constantly underperforms even though you keep seeing it in top lists… maybe it doesn’t suit your play style.

You might realise like me that you’re a proactive player… do you have a plan for each battleplan or matchup? No, like me, that might leave you feeling bewildered and flustered at the tabletop. Sit down, think things through a bit. I made the decision to choose a plan before turn 1 starts and see it through… Trying to see what would happen and play reactively led to some pretty bad losses for me.

You’ll find of course that you probably lean into one aspect or the other. Something I’ve been looking at in the last weeks is to watch others playing (online or in person) and thinking about how what they do differs to how I play it and tring to think about whether their plays are proactive or reactive. In my own games, I’m then using that to give me a better idea of how they’re going to react to my moves.

I’ll end this section with a bit of a thought… I realise that I although I’m proactive, I certainly maintain certain reactive elements within my armies where I have units which can utilise their movement to start reacting in the later turns (that’s a strangely proactive thought). I’m not going to switch over to a completely reactive playstyle but I certainly do intend to work more problem solving elements into my decisions as I play. Maybe this will work… maybe not but as much as I do like to lean into my strengths, I also recognise I need to think about my weaknesses too.

Rounding things out

Is this crucial to being a better player? No, I don’t think so… but it can help. As with many of these topics of diving deeper into how we think about how we play, similar effects can be achieved organically. You might choose to play your reps, shuffle your list, change how you react and slowly come to more or less the same conclusion as you would by thinking things through in advance. You may just use your gut feel and come to exactly the same point too.

Either which way, I hope this gives you some food for thought… maybe like me you’ve thought of yourself as one or the other but now see things a little differently. Maybe you’ve never thought about it before. Let me know here in the comments or jump on Discord… I’m always keen to hear other viewpoints and then I’ve got the chance to learn more too.

Fingers crossed, this gets you an extra Win where you might have had a loss out there. Get out there and get those Ws!