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Eh, the sky is always falling in forum land.
I see why people are afraid of the snazy new formations and how they think its all a cash grab ect. But I'm not too terribly worried, I play the game for fun and have it every game. You can talk with opponents and discuss such things before hand, and most people will say "sure I wolnt run my decurion if you really don't want it"
As for competitive play, (which I have no part in) these sort of things always seem to work themselves out, adlance serpent spam they have all come and gone with counters and new builds and the world has continued to spin.

You're overfocusing on a single formation here. The Galdius Strike Force has the one saving grace of being somewhat awkward to fit into an 1850/2000pt game with two Demi-companies, but not so a Decurion, Eldar Warhost, or a Demi-Company with it's special rules run alongside a Skyhammer Annihilation force or the like.

except the demi company by itself doesn't have very good special bonuses. if I take a demi company I get an extra tactical doctrine and OS on my units. a pretty minimal advantage. about the worst you get over a CAD is OS on a centurion squad.

the doctrines are nice, I play ultramarines and a gladius force to net me 7 uses of doctrines is very tempting (I'm a fluff bunny more then anything though, so I tended to often deploy along similer lines anyway) but yeah I don't see the GSF as being a "much have" for space marines. and depending on what I'm playing I'd be more inclined to use a CAD

 Gavik Dross wrote:
Eh, the sky is always falling in forum land.

"Discussion" which you clearly do not wish to have.

I see why people are afraid of the snazy new formations and how they think its all a cash grab ect. But I'm not too terribly worried, I play the game for fun and have it every game. You can talk with opponents and discuss such things before hand, and most people will say "sure I wolnt run my decurion if you really don't want it"

Nice you have an "understanding" group to play with and being able to have your way.

As for competitive play, (which I have no part in) these sort of things always seem to work themselves out, adlance serpent spam they have all come and gone with counters and new builds and the world has continued to spin.

Many of these configurations have not "worked themselves out" just new levels of power formations are "the new black" for GW.
Since you do not try to "compete" this discussion has little relevance to you.
This is a hobby of some import to people: precious free time.
Customer dissatisfaction has relevance.
Of course the world will spin, but the obvious tone of condescension is rude however.
Other than the advice of "Find relaxed people to play with." anything to add?

We are noticing a trend that GW is rolling the rules AND models into competitive formations you have to buy together to get.
Truly a "pay to win" style of game.
The "Skyhammer Annihilation Force" for instance for a mere $611 with rules not in your codex.
This is the nickers in a knot thing that you seemed to have missed.

 Gavik Dross wrote:
and how they think its all a cash grab

While I can agree with you, especially now that everyone is getting them, that the formations aren't the sky falling (and I used to think it pretty much was) it's naive in the extreme to think they are not cash grabs.

Look at what the past few formations are trying to make you buy to get to use it. "Guys, you can get like... 10 of these little vehicle-things for free in a normal sized army." but no one has 10 of those models, let alone the enormous amount of foot soldiers I need for the formation! "... yeah. I know."

It's like someone looked at Necron's Decurion and said "yeah, that's good, but it's not paying the bills, is it?... but it could be."

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lets look at an analogy.

Two guys have a fist fight. A small, agile guy with some fighting experience versus a a big strong powerful guy. Sure, it's an asymetrical fight, but it's not horrifically imbalanced, speed and experience can match strength and size.

I respectfully disagree with your analogy - to make fights fair they are classed by weight. You would not see a small experienced welterweight boxer fighting a newer heavyweight. It would not be a fair fight for the lighter guy. A case could be made that S-D weapons are like brass knuckles though haha.

The only way to make 40k a truly balanced strategy game is to have the same army. Nobody wants that.

I also like the point about 8 razorbacks - VERY few gamers have that many to throw around anyway. I like that they decided to buff the fluff. Brings disparate types of gamers together.

 zgort wrote:


I respectfully disagree with your analogy - to make fights fair they are classed by weight. You would not see a small experienced welterweight boxer fighting a newer heavyweight. It would not be a fair fight for the lighter guy. A case could be made that S-D weapons are like brass knuckles though haha.

Professional boxing is rather different than a simple fistfight, there are constraints that exist outside of a streetfight, and in a competitive sense like that, it's likely that even the less experienced guy has a good amount of training and experience before ever stepping into a professional fight. That' a little bit different of a scenario.

That said, brass knuckles would still make a pretty huge difference, all he'd need is one semi-competent blow to potentially inflict a major injury, dramatically offsetting the strength difference with the greater concentration of force allowed by the brass knuckles.

The only way to make 40k a truly balanced strategy game is to have the same army. Nobody wants that.

We're not talking perfect balance, but a reasonable center where it's up to the players to make best use of their advantages and minimize their disadvantages to achieve victory. However formations giving away huge special rules and abilities or sometimes units, for zero cost, isn't even trying, it's actively working against that, it's just getting to play with what is effectively a larger points sized army.

I also like the point about 8 razorbacks - VERY few gamers have that many to throw around anyway. I like that they decided to buff the fluff. Brings disparate types of gamers together.

I know plenty of gamers with that many Razorbacks, and there's plenty more willing to buy them. Hell, if they made such a formation for IG, I've got 16 Chimeras, I could rock it day 1.

Good point. _o|

 Kiggler wrote:
Is it wrong of me to refuse games against formations when I just want to play a casual cad? At first I liked the idea of formations adding a little twist to a army such as the hellbrute formations. Now ever since the necron codex every formation GW makes just seems way over the top for casual play. The new formations literally give free points and I think we can all admit that the drawbacks are very minor.

I would just like to know of what other people thoughts are? (original post)

So after reviewing peoples replies I have to agree about its not fair to decline games against all formations so lets slightly change the question. Is it wrong to decline a game against the new codex's decurion style formations?
These formations are usually the ones that are causing people jaws to drop and in my experience are one sided when it comes to a casual game.

In my situation I have two friends who want to use and think its fair game to use the necron decurion in a casual setting. I am the one who has spent the time and money into a table and terrain as well drive two hours just to play a game with my friends. I have spent the time and money to enjoy the game and for everyone as well to enjoy. Am I being unreasonable to only play my necron friends is if they agree to use a CAD only? I am only trying to achieve a more enjoyable experience not only for me but also my other friends that don't have formations on that power level yet.

I wish I went more in depth with my original post before since some people got the wrong idea so for that I apologize.

Really theres a fine line between decurion and cheese..its the decurions that are engineered into being cheese

I think it's worth asking how many SM players reasonably intend to run battle companies.

Most will, assuming they don't stick with a CAD, likely stick to a single demi company, backed by support elements.

a bare minimum battle company is worth ~900 points by itself. which doesn't give that many points when you consider the formations you have to take. unless you wanna build a seoperate CAD for it, if you want some tanks you need to take a tech marine and 3 tanks minimum, just for example.

May I pose a question?

It's pretty clear that, unless GW does another design shift, that everyone will get the Decurion-style setup. So the real question is whether they are unbalanced against each other, not against codexes that have yet to get the treatment.

Have people played Decurion vs, Warhost vs. Slaughtercult vs. vs. Mechanicus thingie vs. whatever the SM and DA ones are called? How do they stack up next to each other?