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Over the past year, there have been a lot of complaints about allies, spamming, abusing the FOC, and on and on. Most people don't think that 40k is balanced anymore. And honestly, I would agree with them. But instead of complain, I would like to propose an alternative.

For those who don't know, WHF organizes its armies very differently.
At least 25% of the points limit must be spent on troops.
Up to 25% can be spent on Lords.
Up to 25% can be spent on Heros.
Up to 50% can be spent on Specials.
Up to 25% can be spent on Rares.
There are also restrictions in that you can only take a specific rare twice at under a certain point limit. Every army must have at least 1 character and at least 2 troops.

Now I think that this system would lend itself better to balancing out 40k. It gives the freedom for people to specialize their armies. You can go for massed troops or lots of characters or stock up on heavies. But it prevents spamming and most importantly prevents the armies where the bare minimum of troops are on the board (example: 2 squads of 10 termagants). Troops are troops because there are supposed to be a lot of them. I imagine this idea could be applied to 40k somewhat like this:

At least 25% must be spent on troops
Up to 25% can be spent on HQs
Up to 25% can be spent on Elites
Up to 25% can be spent on Fast Attack
Up to 25% can be spent on Heavies

Players can still create specialized armies, but i believe it would balance out armies more by focusing on the points spent, not the number of units.

What do you think? Would you prefer a WHF type of army selection? Do you prefer the current 40k system? Or would a completely different system work better? Let the debate begin!

I've seen similar ideas posted before, but I'm all for it! Although I wonder how to get everyone to use it.

I think it would be a worthwhile system, but there would need to be at least one round of codexes written with this change in mind before they actually went to it. Many codexes are front-loaded into one or two FOC slots right now. For Space Marines, most of your workhorse units are Elites, whereas the Guard have very few Elites worth the bother. Just my impression of it, of course.

Space marine workhorses are not elite any more, they are heavy, fast and troops. I saw a suggestion for a percentage system which was adapted better to 40k. It had 10% slack you could add to elite, fast,or heavy. May have been some other changes too. It looked very usable

For what it's worth, 40K always used to use the points percentage method before 40K as a game was totally scrapped and they wrote all new rules for 3rd Ed.

I've been thinking lately of reintroducing it as a house rule.

It used to be
>25% Squads
<50% Characters
<50% Vehicles
<50% Allies

now obviously in the current system 50% of your army spent on characters would be ridiculous, and TBH it always was, but the other categories I think you could leave max 50% so then you could have a themed army.... like a fast assault force.
You'd still have to spend at least 25% on normal troops, but then you could theme your army a bit on other stuff if you liked

 karlosovic wrote:

It used to be
>25% Squads
<50% Characters
<50% Vehicles
<50% Allies

Now that's an interesting idea. I would be worried about this breakdown if only because of the vastness of the categories. 50% of points spent on vehicles like fliers allows for a huge amount of spamming. And squads is vary vague; you could only take elites or heavies like devastators and could completely ignore troops. I like the idea of having this much freedom to really customize your army, but I would be worried if it became the official rules because of those people who would run things like just broadsides (as the squads tax) and riptides as a legal list.

That's the old system so there wasn't a troops section. Back then basically everything on foot was either character or a squad. Ofcourse there was plenty of opportunity to abuse that, as many people did but to be honest it's rather simple putting in today's terms, Just replace squads with troops and put the other categories to the % youo want them to be. Though, I guess there's no need for the high character percentage anymore

 karlosovic wrote:
For what it's worth, 40K always used to use the points percentage method before 40K as a game was totally scrapped and they wrote all new rules for 3rd Ed.

I've been thinking lately of reintroducing it as a house rule.

It used to be
>25% Squads
<50% Characters
<50% Vehicles
<50% Allies

now obviously in the current system 50% of your army spent on characters would be ridiculous, and TBH it always was, but the other categories I think you could leave max 50% so then you could have a themed army.... like a fast assault force.
You'd still have to spend at least 25% on normal troops, but then you could theme your army a bit on other stuff if you liked

What about Armored Battlegroup, where if you only ever can spend 50% of the points on vehicles, then you can only ever reach ~65% of the agreed upon points limits - there are very few infantry options, and those that exist come with a mandatory dedicated transport which is more expensive than the squad in many cases.