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I was kind of wondering the Tourney players thoughts on this since tournaments seem pretty strict on the whole " 1 CAD, 1 Formation" rule it seems. How many think that Tournaments will just outright not allow the Detachment?

Most tournaments these days are leaning toward a limited # of detachments. NOVA will be going with a total of 2. The Decurion Detachment is a Detachment (even if comprised of Formations), so will probably be legal. That said, if anything seems really out of whack, we can always revisit it.

It continues to be the whicky wild wild west out there ... in the sense that it is ever more a "DIY" collection of rules and models, and ever less a game in any common sense of the word (genre-inclusive or not). Unfortunately, this puts more and more pressure on pick-up gamers and tournament organizers to understand, articulate, and constantly update their established standards for what represents a fairly "common" game in terms of structure.

Wee.

Well any tournament that allows a lance formation should have no problem with it, lol.

My big necron question is how will the tourneys rule on FDRs opposed to the new Doomscythe DRs. Will IA trump?

 Nyghoma wrote:
Well any tournament that allows a lance formation should have no problem with it, lol.

My big necron question is how will the tourneys rule on FDRs opposed to the new Doomscythe DRs. Will IA trump?

Interestingly, we're also considering banning adlance

I think it'll take some time and dust settling to get a feel on the death ray decision. That said, FW has been known to more proactively FAQ / Errata changes to align with new dex releases.

Just axe formations all together... they're just the worst.

 Crablezworth wrote:
Just axe formations all together... they're just the worst.

An observation from running small tournament campaign events here is that this would maybe hurt Tyranids in particular. Maybe not critically, but our couple regular 'Nid players have all been using formations each time (and doing well).

Yeah, and while that was attractive to me as a tyranids player, eventually I started feeling that making overpowered formations to make up for underpowered books was kind of a poor way to go about things...

I can't see formations going away, but the "choose your own adventure" version of 40k that things have now become has really killed my interest in playing.

Crablezworth wrote:Just axe formations all together... they're just the worst.

RiTides wrote:Yeah, and while that was attractive to me as a tyranids player, eventually I started feeling that making overpowered formations to make up for underpowered books was kind of a poor way to go about things...

I can't see formations going away, but the "choose your own adventure" version of 40k that things have now become has really killed my interest in playing.

Given my experiences with my last few tournaments since 7E began, my feelings are very much in line with this. Between increasingly unrecognizable armies mixing and matching the best capabilities from different codex books and formations that give incredible bonuses and capabilities for zero cost premium, along with being spread out over who knows how many sources, it's killed my interest in going to future events for the foreseeable future.

It does often feel like GW's taken what used to be a game with a bunch of variables (your army) that all fit into a constant (your force organization), and made all things variable and up to the player.

The problem, of course, is it kills interest among many players as things continue to become more and more convoluted.

At the same time, events that put on a good variety of formats are still able to provide a lot of enjoyment for folks ... sometimes more than can be had in trying to go to the LGS and find a game. Double edged sword.

Fortunately, the biguns like NOVA, LVO, AdeptiCon, yada yada offer the full spectrum of not only 40K formats (Highlander, 2-detachment, Unbound, Battle-Forged, etc.), but game systems ... so it's possible to still make the trips for the reasons they should be made - social - and enjoy the games you're playing while you're at it.

I think at the end of this road, the Darwinian response will be for tournaments to evolve into 2 unlike detachments and no formations. Some of those things just aren't too well thought out.

One of the large problems with formations is the allies matrix.

From what most players think, codex points and rules are internally balanced. When you allow players to circumvent that internal balance by adding a different faction from a different codex that has its own [often different] internal balance you allow for situations that have extreme min maxing. Wherein players can select options for a codex that are 'balanced' to be less expensive than options from another codex that perform the same role because within the first codex they are superfluous in relation to other units.

This leads to a situation where for the allies system to work codexes have to have external balance. This may exist with some of the newer 7th codexes, but many of the older (and often the current 'top' codexes) adhere to the older internal balance for certain.

Even two detachments is not necessarily balanced, as some detachments are significantly better than others. Ie the new necron detachment is essentialy 1 detachment that lets you get 1+10 optional formations. Perhaps this was intential on GW part as they are well aware of most tournaments restricting the game to either CAD+1 other, or 2 source lists.

Certainly come the apoc as usable was a terrible idea. In most armies it is easy to take a low model count and circumvent the chance anything bad would happen. They should have just now allowed CtA or made it so they rolled regardless of range.

How can tournament organizers say a legal detachement like the decurion would be banned but company of the great wolf or the Baal strikeforce is not? It gets silly going down that logic. He'll the decurion is still one detachment for the standard 2 source tournie so let's hope organizers are not so short sighted.

MVBrandt wrote:
At the same time, events that put on a good variety of formats are still able to provide a lot of enjoyment for folks ... sometimes more than can be had in trying to go to the LGS and find a game. Double edged sword.

Fortunately, the biguns like NOVA, LVO, AdeptiCon, yada yada offer the full spectrum of not only 40K formats (Highlander, 2-detachment, Unbound, Battle-Forged, etc.), but game systems ... so it's possible to still make the trips for the reasons they should be made - social - and enjoy the games you're playing while you're at it.

Oh yes, I'm still attending AdeptiCon in a few months, for instance - but what gaming I do will be other systems (Dropzone Commander and Infinity).

Yeah but it makes rules like Adepticons kind of weird, since the formation allows multiples of formations.

It's just turning into a bad joke now.

Imagine if back in 5th all the TO's just decided to do apoc tournaments instead of 40k ones, can you imagine the work that would entail? Now that we're essentially being forced to play apoc the game is objectively worse, more divisive and stressful.

I agree with others though, banning some formations doesn't make sense to me, ban them all or don't ban any. If I run an event there's never any super heavies allowed, and that's not for fear of someone wasting hundreds of points on a terrible tau flyer that poops drones, I simply refuse to say yes to that while saying no to other things, nickle and dime comp is just too much politics for something that is already rife people jockeying and petitioning to's for everything under the sun.

Its kind of funny because most tournaments allow a single formation yet this legal detachment is a Detachment made up of Multiple Formations.

Which is why I say what are people going to do?

Its why I don't like it when people restrict the FOC.

I love when people restrict the foc, it brings back some sanity.

Well the TOs could simply restrict the extra formations to: "up to one of each". Make them unique for starters.

No matter what way you slice it, some of those extra formations in the Deca are hella abusive and prone to spam. The base compulsory is upward of 300+pts. But I can see the gimmick lists now. "Say hello to my 6 Star god formations, or 5 Canoptek swarms, or 3 Doomscythe wings, etc..."

You get the point.

Sometimes if feels like GW really just wants to force people to play a particular way, and makes moves to basically screw any other way of playing. They brought out superheavies and originally many people never/rarely used them. SO they brought out Escalation, still many people said..."No I don't want to play against escalation." So GW put out knights and put super heavies into codices.

No GW basically put out unrestricted FOC, and many people said...no to double FOC. So they put out detachments in their codices, and tons of formations. People said, well just 2 then. So GW put out a detachement of formations.....

Groan...kind of makes me happy that I have not really played the game much recently.

I've decided to be positive and look at it as "this is our (GW's) way of reflecting how each faction organizes for war in a unique way." It really does allow players to buy models they think look cool and still legally field them. It also allows for immense variety of lists, even within a faction.

That said, if I was still in the business of running RTTs I think I'd just adjust by dropping my points limits from an 1850 standard to a 1500-1650 standard. Let's people bring most of their toys but limits some of the initial concerns.

 Nyghoma wrote:
Well the TOs could simply restrict the extra formations to: "up to one of each". Make them unique for starters.

No matter what way you slice it, some of those extra formations in the Deca are hella abusive and prone to spam. The base compulsory is upward of 300+pts. But I can see the gimmick lists now. "Say hello to my 6 Star god formations, or 5 Canoptek swarms, or 3 Doomscythe wings, etc..."

You get the point.

Did you get a chance to read any of the codex yet? If you use a standard FOC you can get 5 C'tan with less compulsory units.

I hate formations, because its bad enough you have to spend literally 20 minutes pre-game on psychic powers, warlord traits, objective deployment, and then another almost 5-10 minutes per turn trying to figure out scoring objective cards, and then on top of that trying to read through every formation rule and every minutiae about what it can and cant do and all I want to do is roll dice and blow gak up.

This entire discussion is pretty much why I've left the game for now. Maybe someday 40k will be worth playing again. However, there is something to be said about games that don't have to have a giant FN discussion of "how do we want to play this" before hand...where you can just belly up to a table with a list in hand and get on with it. You used to be able reliably do that in 40k. Not anymore. And as a massive former fanboy of the game it kills me to say it. For me, Robotech is the new hotness and my small group of players have fully embraced it. Quick, fast game and the rules are simple to learn.


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 djdarknoise wrote:
I hate formations, because its bad enough you have to spend literally 20 minutes pre-game on psychic powers, warlord traits, objective deployment, and then another almost 5-10 minutes per turn trying to figure out scoring objective cards, and then on top of that trying to read through every formation rule and every minutiae about what it can and cant do and all I want to do is roll dice and blow gak up.

Agreed. Which is why I've stopped playing. My time is limited...and spending 30 minutes just to set up a game is really a turn off.

I like how a thread about how tournaments are going to handle this detachment option has degraded to a "I quit playing because of formations" or "formations are stupid." This adds nothing about what could be done, just a bunch of clutter in what could be a useful thread.

Anyways, my two cents on it is that, just like the other codex unique detachments, it will just replace the CAD. Most of the formations in the decurion detachment are quite pricey, or get the bonus from a certain model being alive. The ones that aren't are for spam type lists, that are usually rock-paper-scissors anyways.

Bringing 8 Doom Scythes? Cool, better hope you don't run into triple riptide or an interceptor heavy army/wave serpents... Running a unit of wraiths with reanimation protocols, kill the tomb spyder that HAS to be within 12" to give it to them.

 Dude_I_Suck wrote:
I" This adds nothing about what could be done, just a bunch of clutter in what could be a useful thread.

I recall suggesting the banning of formations, just because you don't like that as an option doesn't mean omitting it while wagging the finger is somehow a better path.

So, as tournament folk, my thought would be "don't allow formations at your event" problem solved.

The real solution is only to play 30k in tournaments; it's massively internally balanced, there's no external balance to worry about, there's no detachments/formations to worry about, Lord of War are better handled, and it actually gets relevant faqs.

To any opposition of "but my army isn't there"; because the tournament scene isn't just eldar/knights/tau lol

Let's keep screwing over the new 7th edition books since some people don't want to play the new edition. All this does is give 6th edition codices a big advantage they don't deserve. Many of the things I see suggested seem purely arbitrary based upon personal dislikes.

 CaptKaruthors wrote:


Agreed. Which is why I've stopped playing. My time is limited...and spending 30 minutes just to set up a game is really a turn off.

Count me in. 40k just became a giant hassle to deal with, and it's worse when you are a TO / hosted events, having to deal with even more problems...now that we're back to 4th, it just is a giant relief. Far, far more streamlined and downright more fun to play.

Breng77 wrote:
Sometimes if feels like GW really just wants to force people to play a particular way, and makes moves to basically screw any other way of playing. They brought out superheavies and originally many people never/rarely used them. SO they brought out Escalation, still many people said..."No I don't want to play against escalation." So GW put out knights and put super heavies into codices.

No GW basically put out unrestricted FOC, and many people said...no to double FOC. So they put out detachments in their codices, and tons of formations. People said, well just 2 then. So GW put out a detachement of formations.....

Groan...kind of makes me happy that I have not really played the game much recently.

I don't think GW does it to screw over types of play but to increase sales of models. It's a strange relationship that GW has with it's customers. The customers almost overwhelmingly want a game with a tight rule set and balanced power levels while GW wants to write a rule set that is geared towards selling the models they produce.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Let's keep screwing over the new 7th edition books since some people don't want to play the new edition. All this does is give 6th edition codices a big advantage they don't deserve. Many of the things I see suggested seem purely arbitrary based upon personal dislikes.

Well the question is "how do we handle the new cron detachment system" since it's completely different from every other 7th ed book. If your argument is limitations on detachments/formations make 7th ed codexes under powered compared to 6th ed books that's a bit silly as the best ones are the ad lance and tau fire base, both of which benefit 6th ed books the most.

As crabz has said, no one really has an issue playing the dark eldar or blood angels detachments, but it's easier to ban them all than deal with the silly tau and knight ones