Soup can be fine. I absolutely LOVE fielding a mixed Imperium army - feels very fluffy to have an Astra Militarum battalion advancing through the crossfire, with Space Marines dropping behind enemy lines on wings of fire to take out high value targets. However I also think it's disappointing that most factions work best when you can (in tournaments read: have to) patch their weaknesses by jimmying in other armies.

SO: How about allowing pure single faction lists to use Stratagems from their codex TWICE per phase rather than just once.

By single faction I mean single SUB faction. The lowest possible common faction keyword. So you only get to do this if you are 100% Hive Fleet Leviathan, or 100% Forge World Mars, or 100% Blood Angels.

It would mean a pretty huge power bump to many factions who are powerful but only in parts - e.g. the Blood Angels 3d6 charge can only be used on one unit per turn, so you know there's no point running a pure death company list as only one of them will be able to do it. Doubling that option per turn would, I think, make these pure armies much more focused.

Do you think this would be workable?

I feel like if you have a friend who's frustrated that their monofaction army doesn't stack up against your souperfriends list, this could be worth trying.

Apparently the original play tests had it so you only gained access to the stratagems warlord traits and relics of your most commonly shared keyword across your ARMY instead of detachment.

So if your shared Keyword was Imperium, you basically got nothing.

If it was Astartes, then you had access to the basic SM stuff.

If it's all Ultramarines then you get all the UM stuff as well.


They should go back to that. Don't get all the benefits on the detachment level. Get them on the army level.

I'm more inline with Lance (though I might opt for additional bonuses at this point instead of taking things away). The issue with the stratagem idea is that CP are still a limited resource, so while using them twice a phase can be great it can also mean you blow them all out in a single turn, and would also require a ton of balance work.

For instance I take alpha legion and infiltrate 40 Berserkers, move charge and assault 3 times with both units on turn 1. That does not really sound like much fun. Same with the shoot twice stratagems, it would be super powerful to be able to shoot 2 units twice on turn 1.

Wow imagine 2 squads of MoS oblits shooting twice in a turn. yowzers

I agree that soups should be fine, IMHO variety is a great value. But soups should be worst in terms of competitiveness than taking a single faction, period.

I don't know how to fix this, maybe adding a -5CP penalty if a list has units from two different books, or -7CP if from three, etc...

Alternatively just a flat -3CP but the possiblity of using only strategems from a single book, the one that is mostly represented in the list in terms of points. For example if you have 2/3 SM and 1/3 astra militarum you can't use AM stratagems at all, but only SM ones.

Soups would still be legal, but relegated in fluffy metas.

Allowing strategems twice per turn for pure factions may lead to abused and overpowered combos.

Yeah the Slaanesh or Ynnari stratagem to shoot twice would be super OP

I still don't understand why they didn't just re-use the Age of Sigmar rules where up to 20% of your points can be in an allied style force, otherwise you lose your special allegiance powers. They already wrote the system to control mad soups, why not use it?

Only reason I can think is that it would make Imperial Knights unplayable, as they are >25% of a 2k list on their own.

One suggestion i've seen was to change the way CPs are generated to penalise multi-detachment would necessarily penalising (or rewarding) soups.

In short it awarded a flat CP total based on the points value of the game (1 CP per 250pts for instance) and then the player had to spend those CPs to 'buy' their FoCs.

So a single faction army might only spend a couple to buy a battalion to fill out whereas multi-faction or spam armies would need to burn extra CPs to buy the additional vanguard/outrider/patrol/etc detachments.

The system would favour the varied armies first (good slot for CP return on battalions), the specialist/elite armies second (few slots needed) and the soup armies least (at least one detachment needed per faction).

TBH if you just made it so that you only got the +3 CP from being a battleforged army into only getting them if your all from one book you would get a lot more one book armies.


Penalties are a no go. Like don't even mention them. You just take away bonus's to make it less attractive. If you penalize people you just anger them.

'Soup' is the only way some armies are actually valid, though.

Try fielding an all-Deathwatch force. It can be done, but it's not easy.

Then try laying down nothing but Knights.

Custodes? Good luck.

Grey Knights on their own are still a challenge to play on their own.

Soup sells models. GW will never correct it. It would be up to the player base.

 quickfuze wrote:
Soup sells models. GW will never correct it. It would be up to the player base.

Most games I play in, you are limited to ONE allied detachment alongside your primary detachment.

There are also some 'courtesy' rules that keep people from spamming the board with some pretty absurd combos.

Just get rid of undercosted models. Then soup doesn't matter. 4 ppm guardsmen are just as broken in an IG list as they are souped into a marine list.

 quickfuze wrote:
Soup sells models. GW will never correct it. It would be up to the player base.

I don't know. If multiple armies were viable I think many players are willing to buy a 1500-2500 points force of a single faction rather than adding 500 points to their current army. With the soup you just want to buy a few more models, encouraging to start new armies should make GW sell more models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
'Soup' is the only way some armies are actually valid, though.

Try fielding an all-Deathwatch force. It can be done, but it's not easy.

Then try laying down nothing but Knights.

Custodes? Good luck.

Grey Knights on their own are still a challenge to play on their own.

Some armies, all you mentioned in fact, should never exist as independent factions, but they should be part of the same book.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
'Soup' is the only way some armies are actually valid, though.

Try fielding an all-Deathwatch force. It can be done, but it's not easy.

Then try laying down nothing but Knights.

Custodes? Good luck.

Grey Knights on their own are still a challenge to play on their own.

mono GK are so pointless after custodes arrived that they might just aswell remove the whole force, but mono knights and mono custodes works fine.
and that is i think the MAIN issue with mathhammer, people only see the turny level.

turnys are a very small part of the big 40k picture. casual and narrative drop-inn games from 500-1500p are a mutch bigger part.

i dont mind soup aslong as we wont get all codexes until the end of this year, but when we mark 1st jan 19 i`d rather see that soup is made illegal in matched play, so that the game can be played as it should be played, aka mono codex force vs mono codex force and the proplem will be solved by itself, as gw can go back to some proper codex balance work and not do soup balance work.

 Silentz wrote:
Soup can be fine. I absolutely LOVE fielding a mixed Imperium army - feels very fluffy to have an Astra Militarum battalion advancing through the crossfire, with Space Marines dropping behind enemy lines on wings of fire to take out high value targets. However I also think it's disappointing that most factions work best when you can (in tournaments read: have to) patch their weaknesses by jimmying in other armies.

SO: How about allowing pure single faction lists to use Stratagems from their codex TWICE per phase rather than just once.

By single faction I mean single SUB faction. The lowest possible common faction keyword. So you only get to do this if you are 100% Hive Fleet Leviathan, or 100% Forge World Mars, or 100% Blood Angels.

It would mean a pretty huge power bump to many factions who are powerful but only in parts - e.g. the Blood Angels 3d6 charge can only be used on one unit per turn, so you know there's no point running a pure death company list as only one of them will be able to do it. Doubling that option per turn would, I think, make these pure armies much more focused.

Do you think this would be workable?

I feel like if you have a friend who's frustrated that their monofaction army doesn't stack up against your souperfriends list, this could be worth trying.

I don't hate it, but I'd be worried you might be able to "spike" your stratagem usage in somewhat nasty ways. Imagine kill shotting predators twice a turn instead of once, for instance, or forewarning dark reapers twice in a single turn. Sure, you'll burn through command points fast, but you'll make up for it by removing larger chunks of your opponent's army in the first couple of turns. Plus, there are some mono-faction armies that generate CP pretty well. Guard and tyranids both come to mind. This change would basically be handing those guys an extra advantage without too much of a drawback.

What would everyone think of, for purposes of tournament play specifically, simply restricting armies to a single detachment with the exception that certain "mini-factions" could be included in second detachment composed entirely of minifactions and the primary faction. So you could build...
*A soup list that shared a single detachment and thus didn't get chapter tactics or faction-specific stratagems
*A "pure" list composed of a single sub-faction (like an all salamanders batallion or whatever)
* A pure list with an allied detachment composed of, for instance, all death watch OR deathwatch with salamanders.

I'd probably NOT count ynnari characters as a "mini faction." It feels appropriate to have to build an aeldari detachment if you want to play ynnari. Harlequins would probably count as a mini-faction though.

This would give some pretty severe drawbacks to players who wanted to draw their forces from five different factions, but in the context of tournament play, I'm kind of okay with that. Having weaknesses is interesting. Sometimes it's nice to not be able to fill in every gap in your army.



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Martel732 wrote:
Just get rid of undercosted models. Then soup doesn't matter. 4 ppm guardsmen are just as broken in an IG list as they are souped into a marine list.

Seems a bit fallacious to me. Providing a greater variety of options can make some armies more potent than the sum of their parts. Kabalite warriors are considerably better when they can be used as a screen for potent craftworlder gunlines, for instance, than when taken as part of a purely drukhari list. Harlequins are way more effective when backed up by decent long-ranged multi-damage shooting than when they have to rely on the modest voidweaver.

Yeah whichever det has your warlord in it should be your main faction and any det that isn't the same as that one doesn't give any CP, maybe even for each ally you have to pay 1 CP per detachment.

This way you would have to take extra detachments of your main in order to actually get any CP.

What if your like me and run a pure mono army, but over two or three detachments?

So all of those detachments are all the exact same faction, what then? Do i get penalized or do i get a bonus?

mchammadad wrote:
What if your like me and run a pure mono army, but over two or three detachments?

So all of those detachments are all the exact same faction, what then? Do i get penalized or do i get a bonus?

You are the exact person we're trying to reward.

Unless (in my humble opinion) one detachment is Hive Fleet Gorgon, the second detachment is Jormungandr and the third is Leviathan (or whatever)

That's just the same as soup really. Much worse in fact. What the heck are three hive fleets doing fighting together? Tyranid Jamboree?

But then, what about a Cadian Battalion of infantry with a Catachan tank detachment? Nothing wrong with that, should that be penalised?

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
But then, what about a Cadian Battalion of infantry with a Catachan tank detachment? Nothing wrong with that, should that be penalised?

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups. And some imperium factions should be merged into a single one.

Basically what really is annoying with soups is to ally celestine or AM units to SM lists, or AM to other imperium factions.

Cadians + Catachans shouldn't be penalised, it's like bringing coven stuff plus kabal units or bad moons plus goffs. Those are not examples of soups.

 Blackie wrote:
Basically what really is annoying with soups is to ally celestine or AM units to SM lists, or AM to other imperium factions.

Allying AM and SM to the minor imperial factions has been a thing since forever, because the minor factions lack the tools (the preface for the 2nd ed Sororitas codex even stated outright that you would be screwed if you played at higher points without allies).

Inquisition, Assassins, Ministorum, and so on all need to be run as part of larger faction and so far attempts to expand these minor armies into full books (i.e. GK, Deathwatch, Custodes, Scions) hasn't exactly led to a well balanced force. Though going the other way GWs past efforts to combine factions (sisteres into WH, inquisition into GK, harlies into the eldar dex, BT into the marines, etc) have also gone poorly.


Now mixing guard and marines is a newer thing and gets around the marines lack of cheap bodies, static artillery, navy support ... well, cheap bodies since the marines have a ton of artillery and aircraft these days. Seems like the two types of faction - full and partial if you will - need to be distinctly defined and bound by different rules.

Guard generating CPs for captain smash while celestine is used for a distraction carnifex and a squad of wolf lords leads the charge is not a great situation.
On the other hand an inquisitor leading a sororitas strike force or bodyguard of scion makes perfect sense to be allied to a larger guard force.

 Blackie wrote:

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups.

I'm glad you're not the arbitrary arbiter of purity then.

EDIT: To add something constructive to the conversation; this implies that its okay to mix Ultramarines and Raven Guard, but not okay to mix White Scars and Blood Angels, despite having the exact same variance in keywords and fluff "souping".

 Blackie wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
But then, what about a Cadian Battalion of infantry with a Catachan tank detachment? Nothing wrong with that, should that be penalised?

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups. And some imperium factions should be merged into a single one.

Basically what really is annoying with soups is to ally celestine or AM units to SM lists, or AM to other imperium factions.

Cadians + Catachans shouldn't be penalised, it's like bringing coven stuff plus kabal units or bad moons plus goffs. Those are not examples of soups.

I was responding to the post directly above mine, which was saying that different "sub-factions" should not be allowed in the same army if we're being "pure".

 LunarSol wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups.

I'm glad you're not the arbitrary arbiter of purity then.

EDIT: To add something constructive to the conversation; this implies that its okay to mix Ultramarines and Raven Guard, but not okay to mix White Scars and Blood Angels, despite having the exact same variance in keywords and fluff "souping".

I think they should be ok as well, they're all space marines, in fact IMHO imperium should have three books:

SM of all kind

AM and scions

Everything else.

Maybe AD Mech could be the 4th indepentent faction. I'd also include assassins and imperial knights as auxiliary units for all the three codexes.

You wanna fix the soup issue?

How about you start with fixing internal balance and external balance first? Makin stupid rules like this won't fix the issue if people aren't gonna want to take their own units. I'm almost content just using the CP for rerolls and extra relics now and then.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You wanna fix the soup issue?

How about you start with fixing internal balance and external balance first? Makin stupid rules like this won't fix the issue if people aren't gonna want to take their own units. I'm almost content just using the CP for rerolls and extra relics now and then.

Addendum: You could follow up by taking the "Codexes" that fall under the Imperial Soup umbrella wherein standalone use is either pointless (Assassins, Inquisition, Sisters of Silence) or crippling (Grey Knights, Deathwatch) and give them some way to stand on their own rather than punishing them for existing because you might catch out some abusive Guilliman-stacking shenanigans with the same tweaks.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You wanna fix the soup issue?

How about you start with fixing internal balance and external balance first? Makin stupid rules like this won't fix the issue if people aren't gonna want to take their own units. I'm almost content just using the CP for rerolls and extra relics now and then.

Internal and external balance are also important, but that doesn't mean there aren't certain problems with soup armies. Reasonably balanced melee army is much better when it's backed up by also reasonably balanced shooty army. Gunline army is more powerful when it has access to cheap spam units from another faction. That sort of thing. It's not that people don't want to take their own units; it's that some factions have units that are just objectively better at a given role (like bubble wrapping) than the units in another faction. I often field kabalites as my bubble wrapping troop tax instead of avengers, guardians, or rangers because their lower cost basically makes them better at the job I need them to do. It's not that rangers or avengers are bad. It's just that I have a more efficient option.

So to some extent, this topic boils down to whether or not you like the idea of a faction being able to cherry pick a wider variety of units to fill in gaps and weaknesses. Personally, when we're talking about tournament play, part of me prefers the thought of armies having pronounced advantages and disadvantages. Want to field marines? Awesome, but you'll give up your stratagems if you want to take a cheap guardsman CP battery detachment. Want to play Ynnari? Cool. Then you'll be playing Ynnari instead of Alaitoc with a double-tapping squad of reapers on the side. But that is, admittedly, mostly a personal preference.

When we're talking about balance in 40k, one of the biggest issues is the sheer number of options and combinations available. Disallowing or adding a drawback to soup mitigates this somewhat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You wanna fix the soup issue?

How about you start with fixing internal balance and external balance first? Makin stupid rules like this won't fix the issue if people aren't gonna want to take their own units. I'm almost content just using the CP for rerolls and extra relics now and then.

Addendum: You could follow up by taking the "Codexes" that fall under the Imperial Soup umbrella wherein standalone use is either pointless (Assassins, Inquisition, Sisters of Silence) or crippling (Grey Knights, Deathwatch) and give them some way to stand on their own rather than punishing them for existing because you might catch out some abusive Guilliman-stacking shenanigans with the same tweaks.

I am personally of the opinion that some factions really just don't make sense as a standalone force. At least not in typical 40k game sizes. Assassins are an extreme example of this. I don't think we need to make assassins a viable standalone faction. Just make sprinkling them into a list viable while also acknowledging the impact that soup has on the game. Thus my above proposal for a system where you're limited to one "main" detachment but can potentially take a second detachment containing "mini factions."


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 Blackie wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
But then, what about a Cadian Battalion of infantry with a Catachan tank detachment? Nothing wrong with that, should that be penalised?

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups. And some imperium factions should be merged into a single one.

Basically what really is annoying with soups is to ally celestine or AM units to SM lists, or AM to other imperium factions.

Cadians + Catachans shouldn't be penalised, it's like bringing coven stuff plus kabal units or bad moons plus goffs. Those are not examples of soups.

I'm not... strongly opposed to mixing sub-factions, and it's fluffier for guard than for some other factions. That said, in the context of tournament play, would it really be that bad to only get one sub-faction's worth of traits? I mean, sure, marine chapters team up often enough, but I feel it's easy to end up in a situation where every melee marine unit you see is a blood angel, every long-ranged unit you see is RG or UM, and Imperial Fists never field bikes because some other chapter tactic does it better. Similarly, my dark reapers are almost never any craftworld other than Alaitoc because they simply don't benefit much from the other craftworld traits. Again, this is personal taste. I find it more interesting to look at an army and go, "They're playing to this theme and thus have these strengths and weaknesses," than to say, "Ah. Yep. He took the best possible special rules for each of his units by breaking the army up into three detachments. Again."

Really what needs to be done is additional bonuses for the more " pure your army is. For example

Mixed detachment gets no traits, stratagems, obsec

Pure detachment gets trait A, basic stratagems, obsec

Pure army gets Trait A+, advanced stratagems, obsec

For example if we used imperial fists.

A detachment would get their current Trait, and stratagems
a full army would get current trait + bolter drill as a trait (exploding 6s for bolter weapons), as well as some additional imperial fist only stratagems.

Breng77 wrote:
Really what needs to be done is additional bonuses for the more " pure your army is. For example

Mixed detachment gets no traits, stratagems, obsec

Pure detachment gets trait A, basic stratagems, obsec

Pure army gets Trait A+, advanced stratagems, obsec

For example if we used imperial fists.

A detachment would get their current Trait, and stratagems
a full army would get current trait + bolter drill as a trait (exploding 6s for bolter weapons), as well as some additional imperial fist only stratagems.

That would certainly make it less of a given that you have to choose the sub faction for each detachment based upon its job

IT essentially makes it a trade off of advantages if done right.

You can soup within detachments for optimum min maxing and flexibility.

You can soup a collection of "pure" detachments to maximize benefits for each role and have flexibility of army choice.

You can stay totally pure to maximize advantage of traits and stratagems.

The idea is to make all army building types equally valid. Right now the only reason to stay pure is to allow your buffs to work across the most units, but often that is not really necessary as buffs only cover a small area of the table.

I would say a CP tax would work just fine. So each detachment is a -1 CP.

UltraMarines and Space Wolves...-1 cp
Ulthwe and Beil Tan .... -1 cp
Imperial Guard and Sisters and Marines and Inquisition....-1 or more CPs depending on how the detachments are arranged.

Ynarri would suffer the most unless the entire detachment was purely 1 faction.

This curbs some of the Ynarri abuses so many have listed.

 admironheart wrote:
I would say a CP tax would work just fine. So each detachment is a -1 CP.

UltraMarines and Space Wolves...-1 cp
Ulthwe and Beil Tan .... -1 cp
Imperial Guard and Sisters and Marines and Inquisition....-1 or more CPs depending on how the detachments are arranged.

The thing I don't like about CP taxes is that it's essentially a rule to make cool things happen less often. Additionally, it doesn't really address the issue that has come up numerous times in this thread that some factions are obviously not meant to be run by themselves. So having an assassin in your army without giving up regiment rules would now come at a CP cost. I could see an argument for that being acceptable, but I suspect assassins, DW, etc. would begin to look like bad options if they suddenly cost you a CP or your stratagems/relics/tactics to field.

Ynarri would suffer the most unless the entire detachment was purely 1 faction.

This curbs some of the Ynarri abuses so many have listed.

How so? Ynnari rules don't really tie into CP. You'd still be soul bursting with Dark Reapers and shining spears just as often. You'd just have one fewer CP for whatever craftworld stratagems you're using. So unless the problem with Ynnari is that they have exactly 1CP to many, I'm not sure this really addresses their issues in a meaningful way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Breng77 wrote:
Really what needs to be done is additional bonuses for the more " pure your army is. For example

Mixed detachment gets no traits, stratagems, obsec

Pure detachment gets trait A, basic stratagems, obsec

Pure army gets Trait A+, advanced stratagems, obsec

For example if we used imperial fists.

A detachment would get their current Trait, and stratagems
a full army would get current trait + bolter drill as a trait (exploding 6s for bolter weapons), as well as some additional imperial fist only stratagems.

That would be really cool. Obviously, you'd have to be careful not to make these "advanced stratagems" and A+ traits OP while also making them roughly as good as a series of specialized sub-factions or a cherry picking soup list, but the concept is neat.

I think you'd generally need to have the A+ traits be new bonuses or stratagems-turned-traits. You could split Biel-Tan's rules into A = +1Ld for aspects and A+ = rerolling with shuriken weapons, for instance, but the +1 Ld thing is so minor that I'll never take a detachment just for that. I think the bolter drill as a trait approach is along the right track.

 admironheart wrote:
UltraMarines and Space Wolves...-1 cp
Ulthwe and Beil Tan .... -1 cp
Imperial Guard and Sisters and Marines and Inquisition....-1 or more CPs depending on how the detachments are arranged.

The obvious flaw here is that the factions that need/are designed to take allies are being more heavily penalised that those who in this example (the eldar) are taking them for pure mechanical advantage.

A.T. wrote:

 admironheart wrote:
UltraMarines and Space Wolves...-1 cp
Ulthwe and Beil Tan .... -1 cp
Imperial Guard and Sisters and Marines and Inquisition....-1 or more CPs depending on how the detachments are arranged.

The obvious flaw here is that the factions that need/are designed to take allies are being more heavily penalised that those who in this example (the eldar) are taking them for pure mechanical advantage.

I see what your getting at, but on the other hand should GW realy be designing factions that cannot function without an additional army.
I don't want to see some of them removed from the game but equally it would be a minor adjustment in comparison to just add a key word of "Allies" units with this keyword are excluded from counting the lowest common faction keyword. Which would allow things like assassins, etc to be included without the rest of your army taking the pain, but it would have to be used responsibly not handed out like candy to every unit.

Wyldhunt wrote:

So to some extent, this topic boils down to whether or not you like the idea of a faction being able to cherry pick a wider variety of units to fill in gaps and weaknesses. Personally, when we're talking about tournament play, part of me prefers the thought of armies having pronounced advantages and disadvantages.

The problem with this is that it makes for games that are often decided by matchup rather than play. You have a pronounced disadvantage against shooting? You have to play Tau? Bummer, man, should have played something else. If your disadvantage starts dominating the meta? Shelve that army and pick up something else. Armies with filled in weaknesses trade skew for a more balanced mix of traits. It makes for tournaments where players are more likely to be fielding lists that take all comers and are less about matchup and more about the game itself. It's just overall better if each faction is able to adjust and adapt to the meta rather than being defined by what they lose against. I still don't really see soup as a problem that needs fixing. At the very least, when I look at competitive lists these days they look more like the universe presented outside of the game far more than previous editions with more "purity".

 LunarSol wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

So to some extent, this topic boils down to whether or not you like the idea of a faction being able to cherry pick a wider variety of units to fill in gaps and weaknesses. Personally, when we're talking about tournament play, part of me prefers the thought of armies having pronounced advantages and disadvantages.

The problem with this is that it makes for games that are often decided by matchup rather than play. You have a pronounced disadvantage against shooting? You have to play Tau? Bummer, man, should have played something else. If your disadvantage starts dominating the meta? Shelve that army and pick up something else. Armies with filled in weaknesses trade skew for a more balanced mix of traits. It makes for tournaments where players are more likely to be fielding lists that take all comers and are less about matchup and more about the game itself. It's just overall better if each faction is able to adjust and adapt to the meta rather than being defined by what they lose against. I still don't really see soup as a problem that needs fixing. At the very least, when I look at competitive lists these days they look more like the universe presented outside of the game far more than previous editions with more "purity".

The issue is that being able to cherry pick from across several armies leads to less list building creativity because there are more "auto-include" choices. I'm not against it, I just think presenting viable ways to create mono-faction builds would lead to more types of lists being played.

 LunarSol wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

So to some extent, this topic boils down to whether or not you like the idea of a faction being able to cherry pick a wider variety of units to fill in gaps and weaknesses. Personally, when we're talking about tournament play, part of me prefers the thought of armies having pronounced advantages and disadvantages.

The problem with this is that it makes for games that are often decided by matchup rather than play. You have a pronounced disadvantage against shooting? You have to play Tau? Bummer, man, should have played something else. If your disadvantage starts dominating the meta? Shelve that army and pick up something else. Armies with filled in weaknesses trade skew for a more balanced mix of traits. It makes for tournaments where players are more likely to be fielding lists that take all comers and are less about matchup and more about the game itself. It's just overall better if each faction is able to adjust and adapt to the meta rather than being defined by what they lose against. I still don't really see soup as a problem that needs fixing. At the very least, when I look at competitive lists these days they look more like the universe presented outside of the game far more than previous editions with more "purity".

As opposed to "bummer, you play a (sub)faction that offers nothing to a soup"?

Wyldhunt wrote:

Ynarri would suffer the most unless the entire detachment was purely 1 faction.

This curbs some of the Ynarri abuses so many have listed.

How so? Ynnari rules don't really tie into CP. You'd still be soul bursting with Dark Reapers and shining spears just as often. You'd just have one fewer CP for whatever craftworld stratagems you're using. So unless the problem with Ynnari is that they have exactly 1CP to many, I'm not sure this really addresses their issues in a meaningful way.

I have yet to play vs a Ynarri list this edition. From these boards a lot of complaints come from the LVO guys having different craftworld units in the main detachment (ala saim han shining spears)+ others. Then a full detachment of Alaitoc....etc.

So the first detachment with units from several craftworlds/elder types would get a -1 and then since there would be -1 or more 'pure' detachments that are different factions to unlock some traits/strategems.

So lets go back to LVO and take -2 or -3 to the ynarri lists that whole threads complained about. Those lists maximized soup. The way to counter that is not to nerf units to dust but to nerf soup....maybe not completely but enough that it is a tradeoff.

So would those 3 ynarri lists still have made it into the top 8 if they each had 2 or 3 less CPs? I'm thinking all their games would have played out different.

If you want that assassin in the marine army or that marine assault squad in that imperial guard...well you have to weigh the trade offs. It is only 1 CP in this instance, but you start min and maxing more factions for your advantage....there is a penalty that may counter your power gaming.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You wanna fix the soup issue?

How about you start with fixing internal balance and external balance first? Makin stupid rules like this won't fix the issue if people aren't gonna want to take their own units. I'm almost content just using the CP for rerolls and extra relics now and then.

Internal and external balance are also important, but that doesn't mean there aren't certain problems with soup armies. Reasonably balanced melee army is much better when it's backed up by also reasonably balanced shooty army. Gunline army is more powerful when it has access to cheap spam units from another faction. That sort of thing. It's not that people don't want to take their own units; it's that some factions have units that are just objectively better at a given role (like bubble wrapping) than the units in another faction. I often field kabalites as my bubble wrapping troop tax instead of avengers, guardians, or rangers because their lower cost basically makes them better at the job I need them to do. It's not that rangers or avengers are bad. It's just that I have a more efficient option.

So to some extent, this topic boils down to whether or not you like the idea of a faction being able to cherry pick a wider variety of units to fill in gaps and weaknesses. Personally, when we're talking about tournament play, part of me prefers the thought of armies having pronounced advantages and disadvantages. Want to field marines? Awesome, but you'll give up your stratagems if you want to take a cheap guardsman CP battery detachment. Want to play Ynnari? Cool. Then you'll be playing Ynnari instead of Alaitoc with a double-tapping squad of reapers on the side. But that is, admittedly, mostly a personal preference.

When we're talking about balance in 40k, one of the biggest issues is the sheer number of options and combinations available. Disallowing or adding a drawback to soup mitigates this somewhat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You wanna fix the soup issue?

How about you start with fixing internal balance and external balance first? Makin stupid rules like this won't fix the issue if people aren't gonna want to take their own units. I'm almost content just using the CP for rerolls and extra relics now and then.

Addendum: You could follow up by taking the "Codexes" that fall under the Imperial Soup umbrella wherein standalone use is either pointless (Assassins, Inquisition, Sisters of Silence) or crippling (Grey Knights, Deathwatch) and give them some way to stand on their own rather than punishing them for existing because you might catch out some abusive Guilliman-stacking shenanigans with the same tweaks.

I am personally of the opinion that some factions really just don't make sense as a standalone force. At least not in typical 40k game sizes. Assassins are an extreme example of this. I don't think we need to make assassins a viable standalone faction. Just make sprinkling them into a list viable while also acknowledging the impact that soup has on the game. Thus my above proposal for a system where you're limited to one "main" detachment but can potentially take a second detachment containing "mini factions."


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 Blackie wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
But then, what about a Cadian Battalion of infantry with a Catachan tank detachment? Nothing wrong with that, should that be penalised?

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups. And some imperium factions should be merged into a single one.

Basically what really is annoying with soups is to ally celestine or AM units to SM lists, or AM to other imperium factions.

Cadians + Catachans shouldn't be penalised, it's like bringing coven stuff plus kabal units or bad moons plus goffs. Those are not examples of soups.

I'm not... strongly opposed to mixing sub-factions, and it's fluffier for guard than for some other factions. That said, in the context of tournament play, would it really be that bad to only get one sub-faction's worth of traits? I mean, sure, marine chapters team up often enough, but I feel it's easy to end up in a situation where every melee marine unit you see is a blood angel, every long-ranged unit you see is RG or UM, and Imperial Fists never field bikes because some other chapter tactic does it better. Similarly, my dark reapers are almost never any craftworld other than Alaitoc because they simply don't benefit much from the other craftworld traits. Again, this is personal taste. I find it more interesting to look at an army and go, "They're playing to this theme and thus have these strengths and weaknesses," than to say, "Ah. Yep. He took the best possible special rules for each of his units by breaking the army up into three detachments. Again."

There isn't an issue with soup armies. They've existed for years now except that Codices have split up a bit (like how the Daemon Hunters is two Codices now and Chaos ended up splitting Daemons and CSM, yet we would be essentially punishing those armies because of this thread being short sighted). In fact, Eldar as a codex proves you wrong as they've never needed allies to do anything in tournaments.

What the real issue is that you only have incentive to pick pure if your internal and external balance isn't such hot garbage. Eldar players had the option to bring in Dark Eldar and Harlequins in 6th and 7th, but didn't that remain a compliment to the force rather than being a crutch and therefore didn't happen often, if at all? Isn't the actual issue right now that Dark Reapers are getting Soul Burst is stupid powerful in the first place and GW didn't think out Soul Burst?

Not every army is Eldar and you forget that. We have armies that are bad like AdMech simply because bad internal balance also led to bad external balance.

 Silentz wrote:
Soup can be fine. I absolutely LOVE fielding a mixed Imperium army - feels very fluffy to have an Astra Militarum battalion advancing through the crossfire, with Space Marines dropping behind enemy lines on wings of fire to take out high value targets. However I also think it's disappointing that most factions work best when you can (in tournaments read: have to) patch their weaknesses by jimmying in other armies.

SO: How about allowing pure single faction lists to use Stratagems from their codex TWICE per phase rather than just once.

By single faction I mean single SUB faction. The lowest possible common faction keyword. So you only get to do this if you are 100% Hive Fleet Leviathan, or 100% Forge World Mars, or 100% Blood Angels.

It would mean a pretty huge power bump to many factions who are powerful but only in parts - e.g. the Blood Angels 3d6 charge can only be used on one unit per turn, so you know there's no point running a pure death company list as only one of them will be able to do it. Doubling that option per turn would, I think, make these pure armies much more focused.

Do you think this would be workable?

I feel like if you have a friend who's frustrated that their monofaction army doesn't stack up against your souperfriends list, this could be worth trying.

Problem is having two uses for some strats will be massivly OP, something like 3 additional CP for bringing one sub faction might work.

Or only certain units can be brought as troops if your whole faction is the approciate faction.

The other option is change the way CP generation works entirely, make it based on points per unit type rather then slots filled. This wont solve the problem entirly but will help a little.

Breng77 wrote:

The issue is that being able to cherry pick from across several armies leads to less list building creativity because there are more "auto-include" choices. I'm not against it, I just think presenting viable ways to create mono-faction builds would lead to more types of lists being played.

I guess it depends on what you're expecting out of "more types of lists". I don't think forcing everything to stick to their codex really changes anything. You just end up with the same small set of lists with less variety in them. Forcing factions apart isn't going to give you 2 kinds of lists; its just going to make the stronger half more dominant with the other gone completely.

The main reason I'm a huge fan of soup is that by forcing lists into 3 varied subsections, you make the lists themselves more varied and interesting. The biggest problem I see with the system currently is that the slots focus of detachments makes things like Outrider and Spearhead impractical for a lot of factions; making it hard to fit in some of the heavy support and fast attack options for an army efficiently. If they were a little more practical I think you'd see more "pure" armies made up of 3 varied detachments from the same codex keyword. As is, those ones don't translate well from points spent into CP earned.

Except soup by it self can never produce varied army lists when there is no incentive at all to go mono-faction. No one is suggesting (or at least I'm not) banning soup and forcing mono-faction. I'm suggesting you provide some benefit to mono-faction that is commensurate to the benefit you gain from souping your army. I want both ways to be equally viable, right now if you want to compete at the top you essentially need to play some sort of soup. You are looking at it as forcing everyone to stay in codex, I'm looking at it as, if you stay in codex you get bonus x for doing so that may convince you depending on your list to stay in one codex/faction.

I'm also not even sure what you mean by 3 varied subsections. There are more than 3 factions, there are only 3/4 "major" factions that can soup, but you have several that cannot do so, and so encouraging soup, unless you make those other armies much stronger stand alone factions makes those armies suck.

Breng77 wrote:

I'm also not even sure what you mean by 3 varied subsections. There are more than 3 factions, there are only 3/4 "major" factions that can soup, but you have several that cannot do so, and so encouraging soup, unless you make those other armies much stronger stand alone factions makes those armies suck.

What I mean is 3 detachments from the same codex. Currently a lot of factions can really only efficiently create Battalions and Vanguards to generate CP. One of the big drawbacks to things like Land Raiders is just that you're probably not building a Spearhead or whatever because the base cost of a slot is way too much to take 3 of. A lot of factions have models that just don't contribute to detachments they support very well. Essentially what I'm saying is that if it were more rewarding to take things other than Batalions, you'd see people taking a better depth of their faction rather than jumping elsewhere. I don't think soup is such a massive advantage if, for example, Orks were "souping" a batalion of Green Tide with an outrider of the Cult of Speed and a spearhead of Meks. The issue is really right now is just that batalions are efficient CP generators, and still have enough other slots to take the stuff that you wouldn't really want to be taking 3 of to try and squeak out a single CP.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

There isn't an issue with soup armies. They've existed for years now except that Codices have split up a bit (like how the Daemon Hunters is two Codices now and Chaos ended up splitting Daemons and CSM, yet we would be essentially punishing those armies because of this thread being short sighted). In fact, Eldar as a codex proves you wrong as they've never needed allies to do anything in tournaments.

They've existed for years, and I'm mostly fine with them, but ultimately soup from a competitive standpoint boils down to two main things:
1.) Gaining advantages that a "pure" version of your force lacks, or covering weaknesses it would normally have. Have an elite, expensive force? Take some guardsmen for cheap CP and bubble wrap. Don't like your melee units? Your pals next door might have one more to your liking.
2.) Occassionally, and this is a solveable thing that isn't especially common at the moment, you'll find probably-unintended synergies between units that make certain options far better than normal. See Guilliman + conscripts or deepstriking primarchs.

Reasonable people can feel that the first point isn't a problem, and I don't necessarily disagree, BUT I do feel that we lose a bit of an army's personality when we can patch over disadvantages with other units. I also feel that this risks favoring imperial armies (and to a lesser extent eldar and chaos) as they have a huge range of options with which to min max while certain armies (necrons spring to mind) are stuck looking at a single book for ways to deal with their weaknesses. I suspect 'crons would quite like to be able to ally in some guardsmen for CP or efficient ranged dakka. And then that sort of raises the question of what level a given faction's overall efficiency should be at compared to other armies. Do you design 'crons to be as potent as a pure marine force, or do you design it to be as potent as a marine force with guardsmen (or whatever) patching holes in their normal weaknesses?

What the real issue is that you only have incentive to pick pure if your internal and external balance isn't such hot garbage. Eldar players had the option to bring in Dark Eldar and Harlequins in 6th and 7th, but didn't that remain a compliment to the force rather than being a crutch and therefore didn't happen often, if at all? Isn't the actual issue right now that Dark Reapers are getting Soul Burst is stupid powerful in the first place and GW didn't think out Soul Burst?

Well, fortuned shadow fields and webway portal wraith guard and fire dragons in raiders and taudar all had their moments in the spotlight, so... I think you could make the argument that eldar could have worked pretty well (and did work pretty well) without those "soup" elements, but the soup was definitely effective in its own right. That eldar were still potent without soup mostly speaks to the poor design of scatbikes and wraith knights in 7th. Without those, I'm pretty confident most eldar lists would have been webway portal soup.

You're not wrong about ynnari reapers being a separate issue though.

Not every army is Eldar and you forget that. We have armies that are bad like AdMech simply because bad internal balance also led to bad external balance.

Fair point. Some follow-up questions then:
1.) If you were to balance AdMech as an effective standalone force, would being able to soup in complimentary elements not make the souped AdMech more potent than just AdMech alone? This assumes, of course, that there exists a unit in the imperial arsenal that fills a certain niche better than what AdMech has at its disposal.
2.) If the answer to 1. is affirmative, how do you propose balancing the souped and unsouped version of the army?
3.) Given their relatively small selection of models, would AdMech be candidates for the "mini faction" status I described in my previous posts?


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 admironheart wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

Ynarri would suffer the most unless the entire detachment was purely 1 faction.

This curbs some of the Ynarri abuses so many have listed.

How so? Ynnari rules don't really tie into CP. You'd still be soul bursting with Dark Reapers and shining spears just as often. You'd just have one fewer CP for whatever craftworld stratagems you're using. So unless the problem with Ynnari is that they have exactly 1CP to many, I'm not sure this really addresses their issues in a meaningful way.

I have yet to play vs a Ynarri list this edition. From these boards a lot of complaints come from the LVO guys having different craftworld units in the main detachment (ala saim han shining spears)+ others. Then a full detachment of Alaitoc....etc.

So the first detachment with units from several craftworlds/elder types would get a -1 and then since there would be -1 or more 'pure' detachments that are different factions to unlock some traits/strategems.

So lets go back to LVO and take -2 or -3 to the ynarri lists that whole threads complained about. Those lists maximized soup. The way to counter that is not to nerf units to dust but to nerf soup....maybe not completely but enough that it is a tradeoff.

So would those 3 ynarri lists still have made it into the top 8 if they each had 2 or 3 less CPs? I'm thinking all their games would have played out different.

If you want that assassin in the marine army or that marine assault squad in that imperial guard...well you have to weigh the trade offs. It is only 1 CP in this instance, but you start min and maxing more factions for your advantage....there is a penalty that may counter your power gaming.

Hmm. Fair points. I'm still more fond of rewarding people for taking "pure" lists than punishing people for taking soup (or for just limiting people to one detachment plus maybe a single allied detachment of approved "mini factions"), but I see your point here. Would this disproportionately impact some factions over others? Losing out on a single command point per detachment is less of a big deal for factions with cheap troops to fill out batallions than factions that lack such options.

 LunarSol wrote:

I don't think soup is such a massive advantage if, for example, Orks were "souping" a batalion of Green Tide with an outrider of the Cult of Speed and a spearhead of Meks. The issue is really right now is just that batalions are efficient CP generators, and still have enough other slots to take the stuff that you wouldn't really want to be taking 3 of to try and squeak out a single CP.

Orks can have competitive lists using battallion + spearhead + outrider detachments, an example:

Battallion:

Warboss, bike, klaw
Weirdboy
3x30 boyz, nob, klaw

Outrider

Weirdboy
(Zagstruk)
30 Stormboyz, nob, big choppa
2x5 Strormboyz, nob, big choppa

Spearhead

Big mek, kff, (bike)
3xKMKs

That's just 1350ish points, and all of the units listed are among the most effective ones for orks. In fact these are all the most popular units at the moment. You can toy with a list like this adding a naut, a couple of buggies and a trukk with something embarked, or if you want a competitive lists just keep spamming the units listed. "Soups" with green tide, cult of speed and artillery already exist and they're also quite common. Maybe in the future going with 2x battallions and eventually another detachment could be more rewarding but at the moment CPs are not that important for orks since we don't have stratagems to use for and not even D6 damage weapons. Having 7-8 is more than enough usually.

Just require a battalion for a army to qualify for the benifits of being battle forged. that'll curb some of the worst excesses.

Not really almost every competitive list runs at least 1 battalion. In fact some of the worst abuses are people taking things like guard battalions for cheap CP.

 Silentz wrote:
Yeah the Slaanesh or Ynnari stratagem to shoot twice would be super OP

I still don't understand why they didn't just re-use the Age of Sigmar rules where up to 20% of your points can be in an allied style force, otherwise you lose your special allegiance powers. They already wrote the system to control mad soups, why not use it?

Only reason I can think is that it would make Imperial Knights unplayable, as they are >25% of a 2k list on their own.

This. You can even adjust the value to allow up to 25-50% (requires playtests) and limit the number of allied detachments.

Also the biggest issue is the price and value of the stratagems - they define the game right now. And, for example, mono-custodes army gets like 6CP at most with d3 refundable if you pay crazy premium for Trojan Valoris.
It is not enough, it is nothing. You can spend half of that even before the game starts and the rest on turn 1.

Such stratagem-dependable armies (death guard and custodes are best examples) HAVE to spam cheap battalions to pile up CPs and while some of them have their own means (poxwalkers, cultists, infantry squads, scouts) others lack them completely (grey knights, custodes).

What I would TOTALY do first - is to give a player N-amount of CP to spend EACH TURN in addition to the pool of CP he has from the detachments and characters.
You can wrap it up differently:
a) Dawn of War style: for each controled objective you get 1CP or you get 1-d3-d6 depending on whether you control 1-3-6 markers. - this works fine for Maelstrom but in EW it is harder to implement
b) You get flat 1-3 CP each turn to spend
c) You return d3 CP spend each turn.
d) Variations or combinations of the a-c.

This would eradicate this horrible necessity of Battalions spam AND reduce the value of CP-recycling relics (it is very sorry to see Kurov's aquila and Veritas Vitae is almost every list as if other relics are non-existant).
And you will see some strategems used end-game.
I haven't yet played a single game in 8ed where I had CP on turn 5-7 to spend, and my armies usually have formidable 9-12CP.

Secondly I would increase the amount of CP you get from detachments or allow scaling.
For example if you have minimal units in battalions - you get 3CP, if you have 9 units in battalion - you get 6CP and so on.
This will promote BIGGER detachments instead of several smaller ones, without necessity to go into the Brigade territory.
This could allow spearhead,outrider and other specialized detachments to grow into something useful CP-wise.
Brigade should be something extraordinary and severely rewarded, 9CP is a huge bonus, but very few armies can capitalize on TAC lists right now.

I'll say it again simply put the CP system works backwards you should start with a given number and loose CP's per detachment taken for marched play.

Ice_can wrote:
I'll say it again simply put the CP system works backwards you should start with a given number and loose CP's per detachment taken for marched play.

Could also work. There are many routes, but your approach is hard to implement in chapter approved (i doubt they will print another rulebook in a forseable future).
While CP generation can be easily included in the matched play section of the chapter approved.
I'd say:

1CP per turn for each 1k points of the game.
(1cp for games up to 1000, 2cp for games up to 2000 and so on).
PLUS in chapter approved you can just ADD UP maelstrom and eternal war missions which GIVE you extra CP for controlling objective.

We already have weird missions like tactical gambit, where you interact with objectives, adding CP bonuses to Maelstrom should go flawlessly.

 Blackie wrote:

That's just 1350ish points, and all of the units listed are among the most effective ones for orks. In fact these are all the most popular units at the moment. You can toy with a list like this adding a naut, a couple of buggies and a trukk with something embarked, or if you want a competitive lists just keep spamming the units listed. "Soups" with green tide, cult of speed and artillery already exist and they're also quite common. Maybe in the future going with 2x battallions and eventually another detachment could be more rewarding but at the moment CPs are not that important for orks since we don't have stratagems to use for and not even D6 damage weapons. Having 7-8 is more than enough usually.

Yeah, I knew Orks would be a bad example because their stuff is cheap enough to efficiently fill detachment slots. It's just the only faction whose sub themes I know well enough to rattle off without putting much thought into...

My point though is that armies that don't have out of codex allies still have a pretty diverse selection of models to work with. For the most part, I see soup as a necessary contraction after years of unnecessary expansion. Genestealers are way more of a Tyranid expansion than something with any real model diversity of its own. A lot of it is like if Boyz, Meks, Bikes, and Gretchin were all seperate Codexes. There's overally a pretty decent variety in Xenos codexes; its just never been pointlessly spun out into separate armies the way the Imperium has. Chaos has largely worked the same way. As soon as GW put any effort into it, CSM went from "pure" to 3 different codexes in the blink of an eye.

Part of the reason they split the lesser factions out is to avoid horrible rules disjointedness.

Having Harlequins in Dark Eldar and in Eldar back in early 5th edition was hilarious, because the DE ones were 3rd edition relics that operated completely differently from the Eldar ones.

Can you imagine having an Assassins entry in every single Imperial codex? If GW wanted to change a rule and point cost for every Culexus entry, it'd literally have to update every single other codex's FAQ.

The way it is now, they can do it once, in whatever the one book the Assassin is in, and call it a day.

To be fair that's why there needs to be a generic Inquisition codex with all their militant arms (Sisters, Deathwatch, Grey Knights) they stereotypically use and then their own tools (like their retinue and Assassins and a Storm Trooper entry, etc).

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
To be fair that's why there needs to be a generic Inquisition codex with all their militant arms (Sisters, Deathwatch, Grey Knights) they stereotypically use and then their own tools (like their retinue and Assassins and a Storm Trooper entry, etc).

So... you couldn't take Assassins with IG?
Or would souping be still allowed?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
To be fair that's why there needs to be a generic Inquisition codex with all their militant arms (Sisters, Deathwatch, Grey Knights) they stereotypically use and then their own tools (like their retinue and Assassins and a Storm Trooper entry, etc).

So... you couldn't take Assassins with IG?
Or would souping be still allowed?

"Allies" in 3e-5e (pre-GK book) was a set of special rules in the Ordo Hereticus/Ordo Malleus books that permitted mixing Inquisitorial units with Guard/Marines in specific/proscribed fashions, you could go back to that.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
To be fair that's why there needs to be a generic Inquisition codex with all their militant arms (Sisters, Deathwatch, Grey Knights) they stereotypically use and then their own tools (like their retinue and Assassins and a Storm Trooper entry, etc).

So... you couldn't take Assassins with IG?
Or would souping be still allowed?

"Allies" in 3e-5e (pre-GK book) was a set of special rules in the Ordo Hereticus/Ordo Malleus books that permitted mixing Inquisitorial units with Guard/Marines in specific/proscribed fashions, you could go back to that.

Yes, you could.

I did enjoy a system where you could bring 0-1 Guard HQ and 1 troop. Or was it two troops? And did you have to bring a platoon before bringing an Armoured Fist squad, or could you just bring two (or one?) armoured fist squad. And could you do them at the same time? With 1 Guard HQ and one Marine troop? Do they get dedicated transports or would those be bought from the Inquisition codex, depriving the Marines/Guard from being able to ride in them? Would they benefit from regimental doctrines/chapter tactics? Or maybe just if they're only mixed a certain way?

Yeah, certainly, not overly complicated at all. If only they had some sort of system, where you could just cross reference one word on a sheet to see if it matches another word on another sheet. You could call them "Keywords"... maybe I'm on to something...

Ice_can wrote:
I'll say it again simply put the CP system works backwards you should start with a given number and loose CP's per detachment taken for marched play.

Why? You realize its perfectly possible and beneficial to take multiple detachments from the same Codex, right?

Quick elaboration on what I said above about steering lists towards 3 varied detachments:

I think a big reason you're seeing soup over purity currently is just that a lot of lists really want to be running at least 8, closer to 10 CP. The only reasonably practical way to make that happen is with double battalion, but that only makes sense if you're a faction with a spammable Troop type that makes the Brigade possible. Everyone else is probably running their minimum troops and then needing to find a cheap ally to fill in the rest. If it was more efficient to get CP from places other than Battalion, I think you'd see more pure lists that take something like a single battalion, then a vanguard and outrider or something like that. Change the base CP from 3-5 and reduce a Battalion to +2 and I think you'd see a pretty significant improvement in pure lists dividing their forces into multiple detachments.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
To be fair that's why there needs to be a generic Inquisition codex with all their militant arms (Sisters, Deathwatch, Grey Knights) they stereotypically use and then their own tools (like their retinue and Assassins and a Storm Trooper entry, etc).

So... you couldn't take Assassins with IG?
Or would souping be still allowed?

Souping could still be allowed in minimal amounts, but I'm still more concerned on cutting down Codex numbers and internal balance.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
To be fair that's why there needs to be a generic Inquisition codex with all their militant arms (Sisters, Deathwatch, Grey Knights) they stereotypically use and then their own tools (like their retinue and Assassins and a Storm Trooper entry, etc).

So... you couldn't take Assassins with IG?
Or would souping be still allowed?

Souping could still be allowed in minimal amounts, but I'm still more concerned on cutting down Codex numbers and internal balance.

I would vastly prefer cutting codexes, but my codex list looks some like Imperium/Chaos/Eldar/Orks/Tau/Necrons/Tyranids anyway, so to me soup just feels like an inelegant way of getting to where I think things should be.

 LunarSol wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
I'll say it again simply put the CP system works backwards you should start with a given number and loose CP's per detachment taken for marched play.

Why? You realize its perfectly possible and beneficial to take multiple detachments from the same Codex, right?

Quick elaboration on what I said above about steering lists towards 3 varied detachments:

I think a big reason you're seeing soup over purity currently is just that a lot of lists really want to be running at least 8, closer to 10 CP. The only reasonably practical way to make that happen is with double battalion, but that only makes sense if you're a faction with a spammable Troop type that makes the Brigade possible. Everyone else is probably running their minimum troops and then needing to find a cheap ally to fill in the rest. If it was more efficient to get CP from places other than Battalion, I think you'd see more pure lists that take something like a single battalion, then a vanguard and outrider or something like that. Change the base CP from 3-5 and reduce a Battalion to +2 and I think you'd see a pretty significant improvement in pure lists dividing their forces into multiple detachments.

But whats stopping a pure army taking 1 vanguard detachment and fitting its entire army into it or a brigade or battalion etc? Nothing that I can see. By keeping the cp system rewarding multiple detachments I can be mono codex and have say alitoc shooters and saim han outriders giving the bonuses I want for the different parts of the army and I gain CP as a bonus for min maxing. Untill that has a penalty you will always get soup. Battalions aren't the issue its being rewarded with CP's for min maxing thats really broken.

Certain Armies are just built to be Soup AM, SoB, and GSC come to mind. You'd have to rebalance armies that have been designed as Soup armies and you'd need to release models for armies

Resipsa131 wrote:
Certain Armies are just built to be Soup AM, SoB, and GSC come to mind. You'd have to rebalance armies that have been designed as Soup armies and you'd need to release models for armies

Admech have a full codex of units and models - if only forgeworld wasn't holding on to half of them (and GW missing a few opportunities such as the admech landraider)

Resipsa131 wrote:
Certain Armies are just built to be Soup AM, SoB, and GSC come to mind. You'd have to rebalance armies that have been designed as Soup armies and you'd need to release models for armies

Why do you say Astra Militarum are designed as a soup army?
SoB have been a stand alone army from 2nd edition all be it an unloved and neglected one.
GSC codex will include leman Russes etc anyway as there are models for that so I can't see why they can't function as a stand-alone army.

The only current army that you could say this woukd affect would be assasins (not designed to be an army), Sisters of Silence (not a complete army yet) and Inquisition (never trust an inquisitor) so thats 2-3 relativly minor factions that may need a special rule. Grey knights are just supper busted and need a new codex to function as soup let alone as an army.

Ynarri and demons are the only tricky armies and ynarri need some serious work to make them.effective without being game breaking op as an army. And demons can get some god alignment rule.

A.T. wrote:

Resipsa131 wrote:
Certain Armies are just built to be Soup AM, SoB, and GSC come to mind. You'd have to rebalance armies that have been designed as Soup armies and you'd need to release models for armies

Admech have a full codex of units and models - if only forgeworld wasn't holding on to half of them (and GW missing a few opportunities such as the admech landraider)

AND gave Skitarii a form of transportation and rebalanced FW traits...

Any bonus to mono-faction makes Guard and Eldar stronger than they already are. Before the reaper ascension Guard were the kings of 8th with essentially monofaction lists.

Souping should come with drawbacks. You gain access to the stratagems and relics of your most specific including faction, is a good example. Another better example would be you designate your army as a specific faction, and you only get CPs for pure detachments of this faction, and you can only have access to the designated stratagems of that faction. So you could still soup, but you just wouldn't get all the benefits of taking the best stuff out of a codex, stapling it on, and getting all of the tricks.

And they really need to clean up this keyword mess, or stop people from designating multiple faction keywords for the same unit (Ynnari Alaitoc, for instance).

Ice_can wrote:

But whats stopping a pure army taking 1 vanguard detachment and fitting its entire army into it or a brigade or battalion etc? Nothing that I can see. By keeping the cp system rewarding multiple detachments I can be mono codex and have say alitoc shooters and saim han outriders giving the bonuses I want for the different parts of the army and I gain CP as a bonus for min maxing. Untill that has a penalty you will always get soup. Battalions aren't the issue its being rewarded with CP's for min maxing thats really broken.

What's stopping me from running a Kill Team of 5 MEQs with double thunder hammers for 245 points? Nothing that I can see except that its horrendously inefficient and is fairly easy to kill with a quarter of the points. There's a difference between balance and protecting players from their own bad decisions. Particularly in this case where they're just willfully aligning stuff in the most inefficient way possible. That's like getting mad a Tetris because its hard to make lines when you don't rotate the blocks.

Also, fwiw, this same thread says Cadians and Catchacans combined aren't soup cause.... well, turns out the definition is pretty arbitrary and everyone has their own line. I draw it at a combined Ork/Space Marine army for what its worth. Your definition is more strict. I think part of the problem is certainly that space marines have taught us that color scheme = rules despite largley being the same models. Other factions seem a little more okay with the age old idea of custom color schemes and assigning rules based on battlefield roles. I personally think that makes the game better, but YMMV.


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 Marmatag wrote:

And they really need to clean up this keyword mess, or stop people from designating multiple faction keywords for the same unit (Ynnari Alaitoc, for instance).

This is the one big abuse I see in the system. It also seems to be the only example that works this way from what I've seen. I'd be happy to see it fixed.

Ice_can wrote:
SoB have been a stand alone army from 2nd edition all be it an unloved and neglected one.

SoB in 2nd edition got extra points to take allies. The foreword from the designer (in the codex) actually stated outright that in larger games an un-allied sororitas force would get wrecked due to a lack of heavy armour/artillery and psychic ability.
3e chapter approved sisters were the closest the came to stand alone. They lost a lot of stuff when they were crammed into the explicitly allies Witch Hunters book and they are still running the same units today, albeit without all the old wargear.

Though they would fold back in with the inquisition easily enough. Unlike the GK and Deathwatch they haven't been inflated out.

 LunarSol wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

But whats stopping a pure army taking 1 vanguard detachment and fitting its entire army into it or a brigade or battalion etc? Nothing that I can see. By keeping the cp system rewarding multiple detachments I can be mono codex and have say alitoc shooters and saim han outriders giving the bonuses I want for the different parts of the army and I gain CP as a bonus for min maxing. Untill that has a penalty you will always get soup. Battalions aren't the issue its being rewarded with CP's for min maxing thats really broken.

What's stopping me from running a Kill Team of 5 MEQs with double thunder hammers for 245 points? Nothing that I can see except that its horrendously inefficient and is fairly easy to kill with a quarter of the points. There's a difference between balance and protecting players from their own bad decisions. Particularly in this case where they're just willfully aligning stuff in the most inefficient way possible. That's like getting mad a Tetris because its hard to make lines when you don't rotate the blocks.

Also, fwiw, this same thread says Cadians and Catchacans combined aren't soup cause.... well, turns out the definition is pretty arbitrary and everyone has their own line. I draw it at a combined Ork/Space Marine army for what its worth. Your definition is more strict. I think part of the problem is certainly that space marines have taught us that color scheme = rules despite largley being the same models. Other factions seem a little more okay with the age old idea of custom color schemes and assigning rules based on battlefield roles. I personally think that makes the game better, but YMMV.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:

And they really need to clean up this keyword mess, or stop people from designating multiple faction keywords for the same unit (Ynnari Alaitoc, for instance).

This is the one big abuse I see in the system. It also seems to be the only example that works this way from what I've seen. I'd be happy to see it fixed.

I don't have a problem with soup per say I have a real problem with rewarding people for min/maxing to get the best chapter tactic, regiment bonus and getting extra CP's aswell. Thats shocking short sighted game design.

By the same logic everyones cool if my mass marines suddendly becomes a darkangles spearhead with 3 hellblaster squads and azzrial, all my jump pack units become blood angles and my scouts just become iron hands ive now got a battlian and vangard and spearhead and the best rules for each set of units and as a nice bonus got 2 extra CP's over just running 1 chapter for everything.

Same goes for the mass cadian infantry only catachan tanks. Who cares they are clearly painted cadian and heck even have cadian painted on them. And you got bonus cps for that aswell.

GW stated the idea of CP's was to give players a bonus for not going full cheese monkey and yet they have built a system that actually rewards going full cheese monkey.

Personally, I don't really care. I think its more interesting that a space marine army is able to mix its options and give them the rules that support them enough to actually function than maintain some horribly dated dividing line. It would sure be nice if those sweet jump packs worked for anyone but blood angels after all. Again though, this is primarily the fault of the way Space Marines have been chopped up and sold as pieces of the same idea, largely defined by which small set of options they predominately spam. I will admit, mixing space marine rules.... irritates me more than other soup. I relish mixing marines and guard, for example, because it makes the marines seem properly super. Different marine types seems like an odd mix, though that's largely because chapters have been given so much more personality than hive fleets or craftworlds.

I really hope soup isn’t removed as I like the idea of buying and painting a variety of models that I can then theoretically use. I would happy take being less effective in game for the ability to do that however.

Perhaps

If all of your detachments match on 3 faction keywords (IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTARES, ULTRAMARINES, for example), each detachment provides 3 CP

If all of your detachments match on 2 faction keywords (IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTERES, for example), each detachment provides 2 CP

If all of your detachments only match on 1 faction keyword (IMPERIAL, for example), each detachment provides 1 CP.

unlocking certain detachments (Supreme Command, for example) cost CPs (2, in this case), or may give bonus or multiply CPs (Brigade giving a x3 multiplier, for example). You should end up with similar CPs to what we have now, but soup lists will have slightly fewer CPs, but will probably make up for the loss with the army's flexibility).

(Although personally, I think the Battalion and Brigade should just be done away with)

 Stormonu wrote:
Perhaps

If all of your detachments match on 3 faction keywords (IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTARES, ULTRAMARINES, for example), each detachment provides 3 CP

If all of your detachments match on 2 faction keywords (IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTERES, for example), each detachment provides 2 CP

If all of your detachments only match on 1 faction keyword (IMPERIAL, for example), each detachment provides 1 CP.

unlocking certain detachments (Supreme Command, for example) cost CPs (2, in this case), or may give bonus or multiply CPs (Brigade giving a x3 multiplier, for example). You should end up with similar CPs to what we have now, but soup lists will have slightly fewer CPs, but will probably make up for the loss with the army's flexibility).

(Although personally, I think the Battalion and Brigade should just be done away with)

I'd be ok with that I would keep the smallest one thats troops focused otherwise yiur punishing troop heavy armies though

 Marmatag wrote:
Any bonus to mono-faction makes Guard and Eldar stronger than they already are. Before the reaper ascension Guard were the kings of 8th with essentially monofaction lists.

Souping should come with drawbacks. You gain access to the stratagems and relics of your most specific including faction, is a good example. Another better example would be you designate your army as a specific faction, and you only get CPs for pure detachments of this faction, and you can only have access to the designated stratagems of that faction. So you could still soup, but you just wouldn't get all the benefits of taking the best stuff out of a codex, stapling it on, and getting all of the tricks.

And they really need to clean up this keyword mess, or stop people from designating multiple faction keywords for the same unit (Ynnari Alaitoc, for instance).

Not necessarily true, it depends on how you draw the line on those bonuses. A lot of power in some eldar lists is based on taking multiple factions from their book in different detachments. Guard can often do the same. Further many of those older guard lists were running Celestine which would break their ability to get the bonus. IT is not to say certain things wouldn't need balancing, but the argument cannot be well guard and eldar will dominate, because other armies cannot run guard and eldar as well as guard and eldar can.


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 Stormonu wrote:
Perhaps

If all of your detachments match on 3 faction keywords (IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTARES, ULTRAMARINES, for example), each detachment provides 3 CP

If all of your detachments match on 2 faction keywords (IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTERES, for example), each detachment provides 2 CP

If all of your detachments only match on 1 faction keyword (IMPERIAL, for example), each detachment provides 1 CP.

unlocking certain detachments (Supreme Command, for example) cost CPs (2, in this case), or may give bonus or multiply CPs (Brigade giving a x3 multiplier, for example). You should end up with similar CPs to what we have now, but soup lists will have slightly fewer CPs, but will probably make up for the loss with the army's flexibility).

(Although personally, I think the Battalion and Brigade should just be done away with)

Doesn't work as not all factions have 3 faction keywords. Essentially this is a buff for armies that can soup, but run mono vs say Orks or Tau who only have 2 faction keywords.

 Stormonu wrote:
Perhaps

If all of your detachments match on 3 faction keywords (IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTARES, ULTRAMARINES, for example), each detachment provides 3 CP

If all of your detachments match on 2 faction keywords (IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTERES, for example), each detachment provides 2 CP

If all of your detachments only match on 1 faction keyword (IMPERIAL, for example), each detachment provides 1 CP.

unlocking certain detachments (Supreme Command, for example) cost CPs (2, in this case), or may give bonus or multiply CPs (Brigade giving a x3 multiplier, for example). You should end up with similar CPs to what we have now, but soup lists will have slightly fewer CPs, but will probably make up for the loss with the army's flexibility).

(Although personally, I think the Battalion and Brigade should just be done away with)

-6 CP for double soup is ridiculously punishing. It also basically demands 3 detachments, which for a number of factions is nearly impossible without soup.

Until the retcons that brought in all the nonsense like (IMO crappy looking) marine flyers the Astartes were supposed to get support from other branches of the Imperial War Machine- cos that's what it is a war machine made up of different elements that are specifically designed not to be able to do everything on their own. Although the Valkryie s a beautiful model again it caused the same issue as the Guard are not supposed to have Air and Void Support - that's the Navies job except for ultra rare Regiments.

The issue is that marines constantly swamped with codexes, new and often ever so slightly different models for their sub factions so other races and factions are neglected and hence are not able to cover all the bases that often they as stand alone armies should be able to do.

Arguably the ONLY Imperial army that should be able to do everything is the Ad Mech as they are quasi independent and carry out operations on their own as well as part of the Machine. They should have all the toys - but of course they don't because half of its doen by FW and the rest was half assed - can't be bothered with transports, on ground HQs or in fact all the stuff that appears in the novels Well it was that or make some more marines

Other stand alone Factions should be (with proper rules and model support):

Craftworlds Eldar
Dark Eldar
Necrons
Orks

Tau are a special case and again they use client races to cover their inherent gaps - but since they went all giant super robot rather than client races that's all been fethed up.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Until the retcons that brought in all the nonsense like (IMO crappy looking) marine flyers the Astartes were supposed to get support from other branches of the Imperial War Machine- cos that's what it is a war machine made up of different elements that are specifically designed not to be able to do everything on their own. Although the Valkryie s a beautiful model again it caused the same issue as the Guard are not supposed to have Air and Void Support - that's the Navies job except for ultra rare Regiments.

The issue is that marines constantly swamped with codexes, new and often ever so slightly different models for their sub factions so other races and factions are neglected and hence are not able to cover all the bases that often they as stand alone armies should be able to do.

Arguably the ONLY Imperial army that should be able to do everything is the Ad Mech as they are quasi independent and carry out operations on their own as well as part of the Machine. They should have all the toys - but of course they don't because half of its doen by FW and the rest was half assed - can't be bothered with transports, on ground HQs or in fact all the stuff that appears in the novels Well it was that or make some more marines

Other stand alone Factions should be (with proper rules and model support):

Craftworlds Eldar
Dark Eldar
Necrons
Orks

Tau are a special case and again they use client races to cover their inherent gaps - but since they went all giant super robot rather than client races that's all been fethed up.

To be fair, the Valkyries (and all flyers indeed) do have "Aeronautica Imperialis" instead of "Regiment", so it's pretty clear even mechanically that they do not fit into the Imperial Guard's regimental structure. They do have the Astra Militarum keyword though, so either the Aeronautica Imperialis is beneath the Astra Militarum's command structure, or they just decided they wanted the flyers to count as an Astra Militarum detachment and an Aeronautica Imperialis detachment, rather than making Aeronautica Imperialis its own faction with its own rules. That said, I think it'd be fun to have a "AI" faction; it would probably look like this: Imperium, Aeronautica Imperialis, <Battlefleet>.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Perhaps

If all of your detachments match on 3 faction keywords (IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTARES, ULTRAMARINES, for example), each detachment provides 3 CP

If all of your detachments match on 2 faction keywords (IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTERES, for example), each detachment provides 2 CP

If all of your detachments only match on 1 faction keyword (IMPERIAL, for example), each detachment provides 1 CP.

unlocking certain detachments (Supreme Command, for example) cost CPs (2, in this case), or may give bonus or multiply CPs (Brigade giving a x3 multiplier, for example). You should end up with similar CPs to what we have now, but soup lists will have slightly fewer CPs, but will probably make up for the loss with the army's flexibility).

(Although personally, I think the Battalion and Brigade should just be done away with)

-6 CP for double soup is ridiculously punishing. It also basically demands 3 detachments, which for a number of factions is nearly impossible without soup.

Yeah, I suppose its punishing - but that’s the idea. And are CP’s THAT game-changing anyway?

Also, It certainly does not demand 3 detachments. If you have a single patrol detachment that is IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTARES, ULTRAMARINES, you get 3 CP because “all” (one) of your detachments has 3 “matching” keywords. If you somehow ran a Brigade, you’d get 9 CP for the above faction keywords.

I’d also suggest the non-human races getting a faction keyword XENOS, or somesuch to ensure you CAN have a 3-keyword pure faction. Tau will hopefully be getting <SEPT>, so they would have something like XENOS, T’AU, T’AU SEPT or maybe T’AU,FARSIGHT ENCLAVES, <SEPT> (Don’t know the Farsight enclaves offhand). Orks will hopefully be getting Clans and Necrons getting Dynasties, and so forth and so on.

Some forces like SoB or Custodes might need a faction grouping added, some way to mitigate a penalty (like, say, new unit models) or pehaps their strategms might be 1 CP cheaper (if they run pure?)

 Stormonu wrote:

Yeah, I suppose its punishing - but that’s the idea. And are CP’s THAT game-changing anyway?

Also, It certainly does not demand 3 detachments. If you have a single patrol detachment that is IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTARES, ULTRAMARINES, you get 3 CP because “all” (one) of your detachments has 3 “matching” keywords. If you somehow ran a Brigade, you’d get 9 CP for the above faction keywords.

I’d also suggest the non-human races getting a faction keyword XENOS, or somesuch to ensure you CAN have a 3-keyword pure faction. Tau will hopefully be getting <SEPT>, so they would have something like XENOS, T’AU, T’AU SEPT or maybe T’AU,FARSIGHT ENCLAVES, <SEPT> (Don’t know the Farsight enclaves offhand). Orks will hopefully be getting Clans and Necrons getting Dynasties, and so forth and so on.

Some forces like SoB or Custodes might need a faction grouping added, some way to mitigate a penalty (like, say, new unit models) or pehaps their strategms might be 1 CP cheaper (if they run pure?)

CPs are pretty crucial when Strategems are added to the mix. -6 is halving your available choices. Under this system, adding Guard to 2 detachments of Ultramarines, you get 6 CP. If you add Blood Angels to those 2 detachments, you get 9. Why exactly? What are we rewarding and punishing here?

 LunarSol wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

Yeah, I suppose its punishing - but that’s the idea. And are CP’s THAT game-changing anyway?

Also, It certainly does not demand 3 detachments. If you have a single patrol detachment that is IMPERIAL, ADEPTES ASTARES, ULTRAMARINES, you get 3 CP because “all” (one) of your detachments has 3 “matching” keywords. If you somehow ran a Brigade, you’d get 9 CP for the above faction keywords.

I’d also suggest the non-human races getting a faction keyword XENOS, or somesuch to ensure you CAN have a 3-keyword pure faction. Tau will hopefully be getting <SEPT>, so they would have something like XENOS, T’AU, T’AU SEPT or maybe T’AU,FARSIGHT ENCLAVES, <SEPT> (Don’t know the Farsight enclaves offhand). Orks will hopefully be getting Clans and Necrons getting Dynasties, and so forth and so on.

Some forces like SoB or Custodes might need a faction grouping added, some way to mitigate a penalty (like, say, new unit models) or pehaps their strategms might be 1 CP cheaper (if they run pure?)

CPs are pretty crucial when Strategems are added to the mix. -6 is halving your available choices. Under this system, adding Guard to 2 detachments of Ultramarines, you get 6 CP. If you add Blood Angels to those 2 detachments, you get 9. Why exactly? What are we rewarding and punishing here?

I think you have it reversed...

A quick set of examples, using patrol detachments

Scenario 1

3x patrol of pure Ultramarines; 9 CP; matching factions: IMPERIUM, ADEPTES ASTARES, ULTRAMARINES

Scenario 2

2x patrol of Ultramarines, 1x patrol of Blood Angels: 6 CP; matching factionsL IMPERIUM, ADEPTES ASTARES

Scenario 3

1x patrol Ultramarines, 1x patrol of Blood Angels, 1x patrol of IG (Cadia): 3 CP; matching factions: IMPERIUM

And just for the sake of it:

3x brigade IG (Cadia); 27 CP; matching factions: IMPERIUM, ASTRA MILITARIUM, CADIA

Vs.

2x brigade IG (Cadia), 1x patrol Ultramarines; 7 CP; matching factions: IMPERIUM

 Marmatag wrote:
Any bonus to mono-faction makes Guard and Eldar stronger than they already are. Before the reaper ascension Guard were the kings of 8th with essentially monofaction lists.

Souping should come with drawbacks. You gain access to the stratagems and relics of your most specific including faction, is a good example. Another better example would be you designate your army as a specific faction, and you only get CPs for pure detachments of this faction, and you can only have access to the designated stratagems of that faction. So you could still soup, but you just wouldn't get all the benefits of taking the best stuff out of a codex, stapling it on, and getting all of the tricks.

And they really need to clean up this keyword mess, or stop people from designating multiple faction keywords for the same unit (Ynnari Alaitoc, for instance).

That is why I suggested a CP penalty rather than a bonus to 'pure' factions. Most games are decided by turn 2 maybe 3. Those CP expenditures are usually built into a soup list. Giving a stratagem or 2 more to the other side will rarely change the flow of a game. But if the soup lists have to squander or spare their few resources then the matter becomes more equal.

And not all units like Inquisitors or Assassins have to have a CP tax....some units could get an 'exemption' but spamming those units maybe would not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I used to play heroclix after I left 40K. At first it was fine.....I won most of my tournaments.
I rarely played a list that was NOT a comic book accurate theme team.
Then rules creep came and even if someone played a faction....so many models were under those factions or keywords that never showed in any comics.

I had no problem with players playing anything they wanted. I did have a problem with the rules giving the min maxing of anything goes a huge advantage over a team that should have been honed to an excellent fighting caliber as true super hero teammates...not a bunch of guys just slapped together.

I was known as that guy who could still win most of his games with old figures and such. Eventually it got stale as power creep exploded.

Same with soup lists. Can a well honed battle brother Marine Faction really be equaled by 3 different guard factions plus inquisitors from several Ordo + assassins, + SoB + Grey Knights + whatever.

It is nigh unthinkable that the latter could run as efficiently as the former....even if they DID have all the tools for the job.

That is why soup in any game needs to pay a tax.

I know no one really cares (other than those who actually want to play ynnari as a faction), but any proposed limitation or penalty to soup would overly screw ynnari unless you specified that having ynnari as your primary faction is exempt from any penalties.

If they actually release a ynnari codex with relics, warlord traits, and stratagems (which there really hasn't been any indication of) then I retract the above statement/objection.

 novaspike wrote:
I know no one really cares (other than those who actually want to play ynnari as a faction), but any proposed limitation or penalty to soup would overly screw ynnari unless you specified that having ynnari as your primary faction is exempt from any penalties.

If they actually release a ynnari codex with relics, warlord traits, and stratagems (which there really hasn't been any indication of) then I retract the above statement/objection.

Why would it screw ynnari, non of their abilities are CP driven and not sure how having you think having an all ynnari army would see you screwed you would be xeno, eldar,ynnarri so no worse off for CP's anyway. If you want to bring some craftworld for supper friends strategies you get punished like everyone else. As you are only xeno, eldar. No adding keywords nonsense, just one yanrri detachment, no supper friends and your not getting punished.

True, CP penalties wouldn't be a huge issue, but most of the above fixes restrict stratagems too. Ynnari have none beyond the basic BRB 3 and they only get access to anything else with a detachment. Hell, you can't even use a deepstrike stratagem without taking a craftworld or drukhai detachment.

In the same vein though, ynnari need CP to buy relics, so penalties hurt there a bit (though right now you can only buy for craftworld, but I think it's safe to assume you will be and to get drukhai and harli ones).

Ice_can wrote:

Resipsa131 wrote:
Certain Armies are just built to be Soup AM, SoB, and GSC come to mind. You'd have to rebalance armies that have been designed as Soup armies and you'd need to release models for armies

Why do you say Astra Militarum are designed as a soup army?
SoB have been a stand alone army from 2nd edition all be it an unloved and neglected one.
GSC codex will include leman Russes etc anyway as there are models for that so I can't see why they can't function as a stand-alone army.

The only current army that you could say this woukd affect would be assasins (not designed to be an army), Sisters of Silence (not a complete army yet) and Inquisition (never trust an inquisitor) so thats 2-3 relativly minor factions that may need a special rule. Grey knights are just supper busted and need a new codex to function as soup let alone as an army.

Ynarri and demons are the only tricky armies and ynarri need some serious work to make them.effective without being game breaking op as an army. And demons can get some god alignment rule.

Most Imperium amries use AM infantry to fill their list, GW has responded by nerfing AM infantry and potentially nerfing the ppm for infantry while leaving the the other components of Imperium soup unmodified.

SOB are most efficient with taken in small numbers to capitalize on the limited number of Acts of Faith.

GSC only has Sentinels as fast attack, has no Flyers, Neopthytes are inferior to Infantry in filling the role of screens and objective secured, Cult LRBT will remain inferior to AM LRBT as long as they are unable to take Orders.

 Stormonu wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
[

CPs are pretty crucial when Strategems are added to the mix. -6 is halving your available choices. Under this system, adding Guard to 2 detachments of Ultramarines, you get 6 CP. If you add Blood Angels to those 2 detachments, you get 9. Why exactly? What are we rewarding and punishing here?

I think you have it reversed...

A quick set of examples, using patrol detachments

Scenario 1

3x patrol of pure Ultramarines; 9 CP; matching factions: IMPERIUM, ADEPTES ASTARES, ULTRAMARINES

Scenario 2

2x patrol of Ultramarines, 1x patrol of Blood Angels: 6 CP; matching factionsL IMPERIUM, ADEPTES ASTARES

Scenario 3

1x patrol Ultramarines, 1x patrol of Blood Angels, 1x patrol of IG (Cadia): 3 CP; matching factions: IMPERIUM

And just for the sake of it:

3x brigade IG (Cadia); 27 CP; matching factions: IMPERIUM, ASTRA MILITARIUM, CADIA

Vs.

2x brigade IG (Cadia), 1x patrol Ultramarines; 7 CP; matching factions: IMPERIUM

Sorry, let me be clear;

Ultra/Ultra/Blood = +6 CP
Ultra/Ultra/Guard = +3 CP

To me, the latter is more in keeping with the fluff, but your rules punish it pretty severely. I'm not entirely sure why.

Drawing stricter faction lines doesn't make for more viable factions. Grey Knights don't get better by being faction pure in their maybe 2 detachments while Guard are able to pull further ahead by taking full advantage of the bonus. I don't see what you're really looking to accomplish here other than overly punish soup because you don't like it.

Resipsa131 wrote:

Most Imperium amries use AM infantry to fill their list, GW has responded by nerfing AM infantry and potentially nerfing the ppm for infantry while leaving the the other components of Imperium soup unmodified.

SOB are most efficient with taken in small numbers to capitalize on the limited number of Acts of Faith.

GSC only has Sentinels as fast attack, has no Flyers, Neopthytes are inferior to Infantry in filling the role of screens and objective secured, Cult LRBT will remain inferior to AM LRBT as long as they are unable to take Orders.

Which was why I say the mechanic that rewards souping in cheap things for CP's needs changed. So if you do go and play a full sisters army your not automatically getting punished for not min maxing like a WAAC dbag. Which was GW's stated aim for CP's. They just as well all know apparently suck at designing rules that work as intended.

A GC LRBT being worse than an AM one isn't a problem aslong as its pointed for its performance.

Ice_can wrote:
A GC LRBT being worse than an AM one isn't a problem aslong as its pointed for its performance.

So... the same, because Orders are not a facet of the AM LRBT but rather the AM tank commander, which has no direct counterpart to the Cult LRBT but is 45 points more expensive than either the AM LRBT or the GSC LRBT.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
A GC LRBT being worse than an AM one isn't a problem aslong as its pointed for its performance.

So... the same, because Orders are not a facet of the AM LRBT but rather the AM tank commander, which has no direct counterpart to the Cult LRBT but is 45 points more expensive than either the AM LRBT or the GSC LRBT.

In that case yeah probably though that probably says that the AM tank Commander is maybe a little light on points but this is wandering away from the point which was.

CP's are to reward player's for taking non WAAC lists which the current system just realy doesn't. It specifically rewards optimised list building for doctirins and strats and CP farming.

40K was supposed to be a tactical minitures game not an mathmatics exercise.

Personally I think if you want to kill soup lists (I actually don't mind them) all you need to do is base what stratagems, relics, and "chapter tactics" etc. on your warlord. Since you can only take one warlord you would be limited to his codex basically. You could bring other units from another codex, but would not get stratagems etc. That would really discourage the "soup" lists.

 xeen wrote:
Personally I think if you want to kill soup lists (I actually don't mind them) all you need to do is base what stratagems, relics, and "chapter tactics" etc. on your warlord. Since you can only take one warlord you would be limited to his codex basically. You could bring other units from another codex, but would not get stratagems etc. That would really discourage the "soup" lists.

The best way to kill soup lists is simply to make all factions and sub-factions broadly equal in effort spent on them and rules, then a) it would not matter and b) people could still make fluffy armies.

Sadly the Marine obsession makes this unlikely.

Unfortunately, CP numbers and Stratagem costs are what drives most army builds these days. You build your army around a handful of core stratagems – how you do that is often irrelevant currently.

Essentially, I believe the best, simplest and easiest fix to CP is true standardisation.
Every player gets 6CP.
If you are Battleforged +3CP
Every -pure- detachment +1CP each (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Vanguard)
If you’re army is mono sub-faction +3CP (i.e Ultramarines)

Essentially, with the 3 detachment “limit” on 2k points, an army could get between 9 and 15CP. 9 would be 3 soup detachments, and 15 would be 3 pure, single sub faction detachments. Most armies would gain 11-12CP due to sub faction “souping”. (15 can be increased further via certain special characters. I.e BobbyG)

This then completely removes the CP imbalance between armies, whilst providing an extra benefit to players that want to play things like pure Ultramarines, or pure World Eaters etc.
Will you still see soup armies with this? Yes, of course you will, but now it’d be a conscious army design thing, rather than a requirement for CP generation.

I’ve never quite understood, why a 10 unit army is tactically inferior to an 18 unit army, from an “ability to command” pov. Sure, they are potentially strategically inferior, due to an “in theory” reducing in options/capabilities, but, that is addressed via the stratagems themselves being linked to certain weapons/units in a lot of cases.

I also think, setting a standard for CP, would encourage further diversity in terms of army build. Suddenly, it might not be so much of a tax to bring a couple of Grey Knight units, or to include other over costed units. Sure, you pay the price in points, but you’re no longer drastically reducing your ability to play the game due to missing out on -vital- CP.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 xeen wrote:
Personally I think if you want to kill soup lists (I actually don't mind them) all you need to do is base what stratagems, relics, and "chapter tactics" etc. on your warlord. Since you can only take one warlord you would be limited to his codex basically. You could bring other units from another codex, but would not get stratagems etc. That would really discourage the "soup" lists.

The best way to kill soup lists is simply to make all factions and sub-factions broadly equal in effort spent on them and rules, then a) it would not matter and b) people could still make fluffy armies.

Sadly the Marine obsession makes this unlikely.

Yes, Marine obsession certainly is to blame for Eldar being top dog for three editions straight, and for IG being really good this edition.

Come on.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Yes, Marine obsession certainly is to blame for Eldar being top dog for three editions straight, and for IG being really good this edition.

No, marine obsession is the reason why the minor subfactions keep falling by the wayside - leading to both marine and non-marine armies that don't have the tools to function well outside of a soup either because they weren't a big enough faction to split off in the first place or because their model updates have been pushed back two decades to make room for yet another marine model line.

That's bullgak. Adeptus Mechanicus are bad despite getting a bunch of new models. Eldar are great despite getting no new models. The problem lies in incompetent rules-writing.

SM with 300+ points of free stuff were the 7th edition top tiers along with eldar. Ultramarines have been second tiers for months in this edition, shortly after the release of 8th edition.

BA are competitive now. After the next FAQ they may be the current top tiers.

Marine obsession is a thing and it's ruining the game.

Explain how Eldar being top tier for three editions straight is the fault of "Marine obsession". Please. Go ahead.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Explain how Eldar being top tier for three editions straight is the fault of "Marine obsession". Please. Go ahead.

First of all, eldar have been top tiers in this edition only for 2-3 months and with the expected upcoming nerf they won't probably be top tiers anymore.

I've never said that eldar have been good because of marines, but only that marines obsession exists. Many SM players are professional whiners, despite being competitive in every edition. Even in 8th I think SM have the best results so far in tournaments. And one of their major chapters' codex is yet to be released.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
That's bullgak. Adeptus Mechanicus are bad despite getting a bunch of new models. Eldar are great despite getting no new models. The problem lies in incompetent rules-writing.

It would be 'bullgak' if I had said that eldar were poor. But I didn't.

I said that marine obsession is one of the reasons minor factions keep falling by the wayside - sisters, inquisition, etc getting no updates while GW finds the time to release new core marine sets, aircraft, anti-air, primaris, and dozens of other things including subdividing the core marine factions into smaller factions with their own unique model lines.

Combined with no model/no rules this has left a whole bunch of armies looking to soup to fill out their lists. It's not a question of having strong rules or weak rules, it's a question of not having the rules in the first place.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Explain how Eldar being top tier for three editions straight is the fault of "Marine obsession". Please. Go ahead.

Which has nothing to do with the Imperial "soup" issue.

It used to be that even Marines could not do everything effectively but as they ran out of basic models for the basic and snowflake chapters we had to suffer either massive retcons for new units (Centurions, Flyers etc) or truly awful flanderisation (Anything related to the Space Wolves where the aim is to get as many instance of the word Wulf into a page - in fact I bet there was a drunken bet at GW to see).

If all the Imperial and Xenos factions were developed completely then soup would not even matter.

Then on top - NEW Marines which of course the Snowflake Chapters have to have their own versions of and be boxed up -cos reasons.

Everything else Imperial gets ignored until Custodians.

It would not be so bad if GW and FW talked to each other and FW units were in the Codexes although of course 30k means the vast majority of FW is Marines but at least major factions like Ad Mech would have plenty of options that they actually should have.

Yet IG and Eldar have more miscosted models than marines.

Martel732 wrote:
Yet IG and Eldar have more miscosted models than marines.

I don't think that's true, I think they've got more undercosted models than Marines. Marines have plenty of miscosted models, they're just miscosted the other way.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Yet IG and Eldar have more miscosted models than marines.

I don't think that's true, I think they've got more undercosted models than Marines. Marines have plenty of miscosted models, they're just miscosted the other way.

Right, undercosted.

Kdash wrote:
Unfortunately, CP numbers and Stratagem costs are what drives most army builds these days. You build your army around a handful of core stratagems – how you do that is often irrelevant currently.

Essentially, I believe the best, simplest and easiest fix to CP is true standardisation.
Every player gets 6CP.
If you are Battleforged +3CP
Every -pure- detachment +1CP each (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Vanguard)
If you’re army is mono sub-faction +3CP (i.e Ultramarines)

Essentially, with the 3 detachment “limit” on 2k points, an army could get between 9 and 15CP. 9 would be 3 soup detachments, and 15 would be 3 pure, single sub faction detachments. Most armies would gain 11-12CP due to sub faction “souping”. (15 can be increased further via certain special characters. I.e BobbyG)

This then completely removes the CP imbalance between armies, whilst providing an extra benefit to players that want to play things like pure Ultramarines, or pure World Eaters etc.
Will you still see soup armies with this? Yes, of course you will, but now it’d be a conscious army design thing, rather than a requirement for CP generation.

I’ve never quite understood, why a 10 unit army is tactically inferior to an 18 unit army, from an “ability to command” pov. Sure, they are potentially strategically inferior, due to an “in theory” reducing in options/capabilities, but, that is addressed via the stratagems themselves being linked to certain weapons/units in a lot of cases.

I also think, setting a standard for CP, would encourage further diversity in terms of army build. Suddenly, it might not be so much of a tax to bring a couple of Grey Knight units, or to include other over costed units. Sure, you pay the price in points, but you’re no longer drastically reducing your ability to play the game due to missing out on -vital- CP.

This is a nice idea. Only one small problem. This would make the "battalion" and "brigade" detachments completely useless as the other detachments do a much better job as getting the things most people want without the "tax" of those troops/obligatory unit numbers. Why go for a brigade when i can just go for the specialized other detachments and still get the same CP amount.

Instead of the 6 flat + whatever for other things. Why not just make it so that battle forge gives you +3 CP and a pure detachment (That is every unit in your army must share at least 3 faction keywords with each other) gets an additional 6+ CP.

Now the reason why i say 3 faction keywords, is that mono armies usually have 3 Faction keywords among each other. E.g Imperial Guard has "IMPERIUM,ASTRA MILITARUM and REGIMENT". Space marines have "IMPERIUM,ADEPTUS ASTARTES and CHAPTER" and so on and so forth. Getting 3 faction keywords in a mono list is easy, getting it in soup is impossible.

This gives an incentive for people to go mono, while at the same time gives a much needed boost to +1CP detachments, hence brigade goes from a "must have" in higher points to a good option

mchammadad wrote:
...Now the reason why i say 3 faction keywords, is that mono armies usually have 3 Faction keywords among each other. E.g Imperial Guard has "IMPERIUM,ASTRA MILITARUM and REGIMENT". Space marines have "IMPERIUM,ADEPTUS ASTARTES and CHAPTER" and so on and so forth. Getting 3 faction keywords in a mono list is easy, getting it in soup is impossible...

The problem with "number of Faction keywords" is that there are armies that don't have three (Tyranids, Tau, Orks, Custodes...), and making the bar two allows freely mixing sub-factions/sub-Codexes, which I don't think is part of the goal.

If instead you worded it as "all units in the army must share the leftmost faction keyword" (so all Space Marine units in your army would have to be of the same Chapter to get the bonus, but you could also get the bonus on a pure Custodes army even though they only have two faction keywords and no sub-faction keyword) I think that should cover everything reasonably well.

Question is. How would you say that in a rule format without it being debated over by everyone in the community (Looking at this forum)

Leftmost faction keyword doesn't sound great from a design key point. Instead it could be "If all the units of an army follow the conditions of a codex Detachment, and have the same Special faction keyword, that is a keyword in brackets or a keyword that fulfills this bracket requirement (as defined in the codex) then the army is considered a single force army, they generate an additional 6 command points, in addition to battle forged"

There already is a reward, you get stratagems. You pay an HQ tax for all those detachments.

However, a matched play rule limiting you to only one faction's stratagems might be a good way to start, but tbh that's not really a major drawback.

mchammadad wrote:
Question is. How would you say that in a rule format without it being debated over by everyone in the community (Looking at this forum)

Leftmost faction keyword doesn't sound great from a design key point. Instead it could be "If all the units of an army follow the conditions of a codex Detachment, and have the same Special faction keyword, that is a keyword in brackets or a keyword that fulfills this bracket requirement (as defined in the codex) then the army is considered a single force army, they generate an additional 6 command points, in addition to battle forged"

Define beforehand one "faction keyword" as the "most specific faction keyword" (does need a better name, I grant) so you can write down "if everyone shares the {most specific keyword} you get...". Maybe underline it or some such on the datasheet to make it more obvious.

BaconCatBug wrote:There already is a reward, you get stratagems. You pay an HQ tax for all those detachments.

However, a matched play rule limiting you to only one faction's stratagems might be a good way to start, but tbh that's not really a major drawback.

This is true, the reward you get is indeed stratagems, however with the fact that running multiple detachments of different factions is still soup, this "reward" is rather redundant

Limiting to one factions stratagems won't really help, because then people will be encouraged to go even more soup to get Command points, knowing they will only be restricted to one faction stratagem, in that way they will only get the stratagems for their "main" army and then soup the other detachments to get the most efficient unit/slot to fill out the other detachments

as an example, lets say i "main" chaos daemons. I make one detachment that is going to be my daemons detachment, and then the other detachments i try to get the cheapest units from all the chaos books to make say another "soup" detachment, this time trying to get that brigade detachment with the least amount of points i can spend. Since im cherry picking my units from everywhere, i am deliberately trying to make the cheapest detachment i can make just to generate CP.

-----------------------------------------

THIS IS NOT WHAT WE WANT HAPPENING

AnomanderRake wrote:

mchammadad wrote:
Question is. How would you say that in a rule format without it being debated over by everyone in the community (Looking at this forum)

Leftmost faction keyword doesn't sound great from a design key point. Instead it could be "If all the units of an army follow the conditions of a codex Detachment, and have the same Special faction keyword, that is a keyword in brackets or a keyword that fulfills this bracket requirement (as defined in the codex) then the army is considered a single force army, they generate an additional 6 command points, in addition to battle forged"

Define beforehand one "faction keyword" as the "most specific faction keyword" (does need a better name, I grant) so you can write down "if everyone shares the {most specific keyword} you get...". Maybe underline it or some such on the datasheet to make it more obvious.

All the codex's have what is defined as a special faction keyword, all of these are in brackets <> hence my wording about the bracket part, it also tells you what the brackets represent, and what keywords it can become (E.g Chaos daemons tells you that <ALLEGIANCE> which is it's special faction keyword, gets replaced with one of the chaos gods, the only exception in the codex is bellakor

When i say in my wording (As defined in the codex) im basically saying look at how your keyword is made, then compare your faction keyword that was just made with that specific keyword and compare it to all your units, are they the same? if so then you have a single force army

mchammadad wrote:

Kdash wrote:
Unfortunately, CP numbers and Stratagem costs are what drives most army builds these days. You build your army around a handful of core stratagems – how you do that is often irrelevant currently.

Essentially, I believe the best, simplest and easiest fix to CP is true standardisation.
Every player gets 6CP.
If you are Battleforged +3CP
Every -pure- detachment +1CP each (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Vanguard)
If you’re army is mono sub-faction +3CP (i.e Ultramarines)

Essentially, with the 3 detachment “limit” on 2k points, an army could get between 9 and 15CP. 9 would be 3 soup detachments, and 15 would be 3 pure, single sub faction detachments. Most armies would gain 11-12CP due to sub faction “souping”. (15 can be increased further via certain special characters. I.e BobbyG)

This then completely removes the CP imbalance between armies, whilst providing an extra benefit to players that want to play things like pure Ultramarines, or pure World Eaters etc.
Will you still see soup armies with this? Yes, of course you will, but now it’d be a conscious army design thing, rather than a requirement for CP generation.

I’ve never quite understood, why a 10 unit army is tactically inferior to an 18 unit army, from an “ability to command” pov. Sure, they are potentially strategically inferior, due to an “in theory” reducing in options/capabilities, but, that is addressed via the stratagems themselves being linked to certain weapons/units in a lot of cases.

I also think, setting a standard for CP, would encourage further diversity in terms of army build. Suddenly, it might not be so much of a tax to bring a couple of Grey Knight units, or to include other over costed units. Sure, you pay the price in points, but you’re no longer drastically reducing your ability to play the game due to missing out on -vital- CP.

This is a nice idea. Only one small problem. This would make the "battalion" and "brigade" detachments completely useless as the other detachments do a much better job as getting the things most people want without the "tax" of those troops/obligatory unit numbers. Why go for a brigade when i can just go for the specialized other detachments and still get the same CP amount.

Instead of the 6 flat + whatever for other things. Why not just make it so that battle forge gives you +3 CP and a pure detachment (That is every unit in your army must share at least 3 faction keywords with each other) gets an additional 6+ CP.

Now the reason why i say 3 faction keywords, is that mono armies usually have 3 Faction keywords among each other. E.g Imperial Guard has "IMPERIUM,ASTRA MILITARUM and REGIMENT". Space marines have "IMPERIUM,ADEPTUS ASTARTES and CHAPTER" and so on and so forth. Getting 3 faction keywords in a mono list is easy, getting it in soup is impossible.

This gives an incentive for people to go mono, while at the same time gives a much needed boost to +1CP detachments, hence brigade goes from a "must have" in higher points to a good option

except I can find a flaw with this VERY easily.

I cannot build a "3 keyword" list out of pure custodes. HOWEVER I CAN build a Chaos soup list of Alpha Legion oblitorators and Death Guard terminators under these rules. Not ALL factions have a "Special faction keyword" Most do, due to their being broken down into seperate formations with "chapter tactics" but some armies lack this, Custodes have ONLY adeptus custodes and IoM keywords. (I suppose GW could if they adopted this give them and sisters of silence a "talons of the emperor keyword")


Thing is at the end of the day GW WANTS us to be able to do soup. a mixed army is pretty fluffy.

mchammadad wrote:

Kdash wrote:
Unfortunately, CP numbers and Stratagem costs are what drives most army builds these days. You build your army around a handful of core stratagems – how you do that is often irrelevant currently.

Essentially, I believe the best, simplest and easiest fix to CP is true standardisation.
Every player gets 6CP.
If you are Battleforged +3CP
Every -pure- detachment +1CP each (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Vanguard)
If you’re army is mono sub-faction +3CP (i.e Ultramarines)

Essentially, with the 3 detachment “limit” on 2k points, an army could get between 9 and 15CP. 9 would be 3 soup detachments, and 15 would be 3 pure, single sub faction detachments. Most armies would gain 11-12CP due to sub faction “souping”. (15 can be increased further via certain special characters. I.e BobbyG)

This then completely removes the CP imbalance between armies, whilst providing an extra benefit to players that want to play things like pure Ultramarines, or pure World Eaters etc.
Will you still see soup armies with this? Yes, of course you will, but now it’d be a conscious army design thing, rather than a requirement for CP generation.

I’ve never quite understood, why a 10 unit army is tactically inferior to an 18 unit army, from an “ability to command” pov. Sure, they are potentially strategically inferior, due to an “in theory” reducing in options/capabilities, but, that is addressed via the stratagems themselves being linked to certain weapons/units in a lot of cases.

I also think, setting a standard for CP, would encourage further diversity in terms of army build. Suddenly, it might not be so much of a tax to bring a couple of Grey Knight units, or to include other over costed units. Sure, you pay the price in points, but you’re no longer drastically reducing your ability to play the game due to missing out on -vital- CP.

This is a nice idea. Only one small problem. This would make the "battalion" and "brigade" detachments completely useless as the other detachments do a much better job as getting the things most people want without the "tax" of those troops/obligatory unit numbers. Why go for a brigade when i can just go for the specialized other detachments and still get the same CP amount.

Instead of the 6 flat + whatever for other things. Why not just make it so that battle forge gives you +3 CP and a pure detachment (That is every unit in your army must share at least 3 faction keywords with each other) gets an additional 6+ CP.

Now the reason why i say 3 faction keywords, is that mono armies usually have 3 Faction keywords among each other. E.g Imperial Guard has "IMPERIUM,ASTRA MILITARUM and REGIMENT". Space marines have "IMPERIUM,ADEPTUS ASTARTES and CHAPTER" and so on and so forth. Getting 3 faction keywords in a mono list is easy, getting it in soup is impossible.

This gives an incentive for people to go mono, while at the same time gives a much needed boost to +1CP detachments, hence brigade goes from a "must have" in higher points to a good option

Personally, I think Brigades shouldn’t exist, as, let’s face it, you can fit a Brigade into a Battalion anyway. The advantages gained for certain armies far out-weigh the “envisioned” disadvantages, plus, don’t tend to always make the most logical sense from a strategic pov. /rant

However, if we wanted to go down the route of making them “mean” something, we can do that by changing my bonuses slightly.

Instead of

Every -pure- detachment +1CP each (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Vanguard)

We change it to

Every -pure- Battalion detachment +1CP each, Every -pure- Brigade detachment +3CP (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Brigade)

The only problem I have with this, however, is that (I think) you can run 2 Guard Brigades and 1 Battalion at 2k points. If everything went Cadia (for example), you’d end up with 19CP. We could change the Brigade to +2CP, but, you can still reach absurd levels of CP with certain armies. The whole point of this, would be to try to balance CP out across the factions, rather than just compound the issue by increasing the bottom and top lines.
A restriction of “only 1 of each type of detachment may be taken in matched play” would probably be required. (This would be increased by +1 for every 1000 points over 2000 points.) This would result in a max of 16CP at 2k points for a “pure” single sub-faction army. This would give us a range of 9-16CP across all armies, suitably benefitting “pure” lists, whilst not making “soup” lists at a massive disadvantage.
If the restriction of “1 of each type” is implemented, Battalion would go to +2, Brigade +3, Super Heavy +2, everything else +1CP. This would result in a variance of 9-19CP (but 19 is -currently- impossible @2k points.) Realistically we are looking at a maximum of 18CP for a pure Guard army – but I think we can all agree that such an army would suck massively, as it’d be pure infantry and never likely to get past turn 2 in timed tournaments meaning it’ll never realistically win events. Most armies would be looking at 9-16CP, with soup lists looking at 9-13CP.

If the gap is still considered too close (a soup list of 1 battalion of 2 others would still be sitting on ~10-12CP) you could then introduce a penalty based on the chosen Warlord.
This, could be –
1) If the majority of your -detachments- are of your Warlords sub-faction, no penalty. (i.e Single detachment army, or army has 3 detachments but 2 are -pure- <sub-faction> and match Warlord)
2) If 50% of your -detachments- are of your Warlords sub-faction, -1CP. (i.e 1 Guard Battalion & 1 Ultramarines Vanguard)
3) If the minority of your -detachments- are not your Warlords sub-faction, -2CP (i.e Warlord is Guard, 1 Guard Battalion and 2 Ultramarines detachments)
4) If your Warlord is not in a -pure- sub-faction detachment, -3CP, but no other additional negatives from the above are awarded.
Sure, it might get a bit “messy” to start with as people get use to it, but, it starts to incentivise the reduction of mass soup, incentivises pure sub-faction armies and makes the Warlord choice mean more than “which faction has the best way to regain CP”.

There might be other, better, ways of doing this, but I firmly believe that adjustments to CP management is the best way to solve this quandary.

I agree with the adjustments to CP management. That is a given.

one thing about your previous post I'm a bit on the side with is the "only 1 of each type of detachment" per 1000pts approach. Sure, it would mean that armies that can make brigades easy (Guard and nids) would be hampered in terms of CP making. But small, elite based armies (Custodes,Grey Knights,Certain Aeldari list, Knights) will be completely crippled as they would be forced to go one of each detachment, when some armies need those extra other slots for their units.

Some armies would have to be forced into soup because this proposition forced them into it. (GK would have to run soup, so would Custodes, Knights would always need soup cause they can't take more than 1 Super heavy detachment)

At least that's how i would see this

mchammadad wrote:
I agree with the adjustments to CP management. That is a given.

one thing about your previous post I'm a bit on the side with is the "only 1 of each type of detachment" per 1000pts approach. Sure, it would mean that armies that can make brigades easy (Guard and nids) would be hampered in terms of CP making. But small, elite based armies (Custodes,Grey Knights,Certain Aeldari list, Knights) will be completely crippled as they would be forced to go one of each detachment, when some armies need those extra other slots for their units.

Some armies would have to be forced into soup because this proposition forced them into it. (GK would have to run soup, so would Custodes, Knights would always need soup cause they can't take more than 1 Super heavy detachment)

At least that's how i would see this

I kinda disagree that elite armies – especially GKs and Custodes would be forced into soup in order to get multiple detachments. This is simply because of their costs. Sure- they might not be able to reach 3 different detachments, but, that is more of a factor of their unit costs as opposed to anything else.

That said – a pure min Custodes could see you running 1 battalion, 1 supreme command and 1 vanguard for 1506 points. It’s not likely you’ll ever want to run that, but, you could.

As for Grey Knights, I feel that they have more options available to them, than Custodes do, as it is easier for them to fill each of the detachments/have more options.

Now, to be competitive, I agree, these armies would still –probably- be forced to soup… However, they are –currently- forced to soup anyway, so this doesn’t really change anything other than provide those wanting to run pure lists, less of a disadvantage for doing so.

Knights, have always been different. You could argue that they’ve always meant to have been run as a “soup” style add in, but, options exist for them to run solo. 4 Knights is usually around 2k points with upgrades. The only benefit of running 3 Knights for the detachment would be to then soup in 500 points of something else. However, with the advent of “mini Knights” and them being LoWs and vastly cheaper, we could potentially allow the Super Heavy (3-5) detachment to be the only detachment that can be duplicated. This would only really affect Knights armies.