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My thoughts are that the proportion of troops in the metagame will essentially be unchanged with those armies with awesome Troops (Marines, IG) still taking plenty and thos of us with excessively poor troops (Tau) won't take many.

I also think that Kilkrazy is right. The way scoring units now works basically means we're going to see a heckuva lot of draws in 40K5

Kilkrazy wrote:The fundamental flaw with GW's cunning plan is that making Troops only scoring does not change their combat value, so armies with crappier troops (Tau) do not have a strong incentive to take a lot more troops.

A much better way of persuading players to take more troops would be to make sure thet are actually worth the points they cost, then make them scoring.

A single, minor army having crap Troops is not a "fundamental flaw" with the overall plan. It's simply a flaw with that army. Just as the Inquisition sat out most of 4th Edition, the Tau can sit out 5th Edition. Probably, those Tau players should follow GW's marketing and buy brand new shiney Marines armies. Hurr!!!

GW making Troops the only Scoring units goes a long way in making sure they're worth their points. To really drive the point home, it would have been nice if GW had made it more difficult for non-Troops to contest, though. But moving Troops to a metric that doesn't depend on killiness is a good thing.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:My thoughts are that the proportion of troops in the metagame will essentially be unchanged with those armies with awesome Troops (Marines, IG) still taking plenty and thos of us with excessively poor troops (Tau) won't take many.

I also think that Kilkrazy is right. The way scoring units now works basically means we're going to see a heckuva lot of draws in 40K5

I don't think IG Troops are "awesome", but the ability to take lots of Scoring units merely makes them a bit less overpriced.

I agree we're going to see more draws, and I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.

The really cool thing about Tau is that we can pretty much make our armies counts-as for uber hurr marine awesomeness.

Vespids are assault marines, pathfinders are scouts, devilfish chasses are rhinos, firewarriors are marienz, ethereals are those crazy monk leaders, stealth suits can be those heavy weapons dudes, and crisis suits are...Obliterators if you wanna play spiky marines. The only difference is really the degree of homoeroticism (though Tau pack pretty big guns) and skullz. Tau still have the option of having a shouting bald dude in every unit.

Don't forget, KK: Every army aside from marines is expendable. You've played 40k much longer than I have so you should know this. These armies are really only around so marine players don't get bored playing each other all day.

The other nice thing about Tau is I can take everything and use it with a different set of rules.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The fundamental flaw with GW's cunning plan is that making Troops only scoring does not change their combat value, so armies with crappier troops (Tau) do not have a strong incentive to take a lot more troops.

A much better way of persuading players to take more troops would be to make sure thet are actually worth the points they cost, then make them scoring.

A single, minor army having crap Troops is not a "fundamental flaw" with the overall plan. It's simply a flaw with that army. Just as the Inquisition sat out most of 4th Edition, the Tau can sit out 5th Edition. Probably, those Tau players should follow GW's marketing and buy brand new shiney Marines armies. Hurr!!!

GW making Troops the only Scoring units goes a long way in making sure they're worth their points. To really drive the point home, it would have been nice if GW had made it more difficult for non-Troops to contest, though. But moving Troops to a metric that doesn't depend on killiness is a good thing.

You are being deliberately provocative. Tau count for about 10% of armies, which is hardly minor.

If GW's plan is to get all armies using more troops, a rules change which does not bring this about is pretty fundamentally flawed in my opinion. I think we'll see Tau fighting as they do now, using suits to kill the enemy and small numbers of troops for objective grabbing. However there may be a massive increase in the amount of Kroot used, as they are cheap and can be combined with plenty of suits.

It will all come out in the wash.

I don't believe I'm any more provocative than you are with your hugely exaggerated claim of a "fundamental flaw".

10% is not a big number, especially compared to Space Marines.

If Tau take more Kroot, then GW is successful at encouraging more Troops. Thus, their change is not flawed at all, rather it is a success when even Troops-weak Tau shift.

"Fundamentally flawed" would mean that making Troops the only Scoring units resulted in players actually taking *less* Troops, and nobody is arguing that to be the likely result.

Having only troops scoring is a fundamental flaw in the game for the amount of fun the game is.

Well, Necrons will still have just the 2 mandatories...

I guess we can just use our Destroyers/Immortals to blast away the enemy troops and pull a dr-oh wait, PHASE OUT!

Bah.

I think that one of the reasons for asking GW is pushing for more troops is to increased "balanced" armies. Tau can't build a troop heavy balanced army that works really well, and neither can Daemonhunters without tons of allies, or Necrons (outside of the phalanx build). The thing is, many armies played plenty of troops (IG, Chaos, DE, Marines, etc.) The problem wasn't necessarily that people didn't like troops, the problem was that Nidzilla and tri-falcon eldar were awesome, as were small las/plas squads. Rather than simply fix those two things, GW made a rule that impacts all armies, but very unequally.

Armies that used lots of troops before will keep doing it. Eldar will figure out how to win while using small jetbike squads to grab objectives (4 squads are around ~450pts). Nids will switch to stealer shock or a gaunt horde, admittedly being the winner of "biggest increase in average troops count" prize. As for Necrons and tau? We'll see a spike in Phalanxes, until everybody realizes that they're short range and die like dogs in combat. Mech Tau will basically just hide the FCWs longer, and still rely on 3 Hammerheads and suits for killing.

I don't know if it's a fundamental flaw, but it's a major one. It's a change that's not really going to change much: only the armies that get hurt the most weren't the toughest to begin with.

The drop pod based SM army got even more worthwhile as you take 6 units of tactical marines and just drop ont the objectives, blowing away the enemy troops there so your opponent cannot capture the objective, even if he comes back and wipes you out.

I like troops being the only scoring units now.

I've always had troop-heavy armies. Now it looks like its going to pay off in spades.