For years the force org chart required a minimum of two troop choices. They got no special buffs, they were just mandatory. IIRC, in one edition only troops could hold objectives. Then formations came in and it was possible to build armies without any troops, but you gained more CP by using detachments with troops in them. Troops also had objective secured. Now you lose fewer CP's by taking detachments with troops. So GW wants us to use troops, and to me it makes sense that an army should contain a big proportion of basic infantry and not be mostly specialists and vehicles. It seems fluffier, in most cases.
Should troops be incentivised further? I've often thought it would be good to see them be deliberately more cost efficient than other units so they're no longer seen as a tax but something good to have in your army. The downside is it might result in a horde meta, slowing down play and clogging up tables. What about, instead, getting cheaper access to stratagems, or more strategems unique to troops that are deliberately overpowered?
It's never sat well with me that troop units are often just chaff on the table but we're penalised for not having them, often resulting in minimum sized units of the cheapest troops available. Would it be good for the game/hobby to encourage more basic line infantry, and if so, how should that be achieved?
creeping-deth87 wrote: Just go back to only troops scoring. Problem solved. It'll never happen though, the genie is out of the bottle.
I would rather see troops becoming more interesting to have them on the field. Even if only they could score, it would not be fun to have them around. Make them usable in their respective field (shooty, CC or both), give them an interesting use / ability / gear.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Just go back to only troops scoring. Problem solved. It'll never happen though, the genie is out of the bottle.
That'd be really terrible at this point, one GW happily recognizes, since they're adding more ways to manipulate Objective Secured or grant it to more units.
Consider that marines are rocking all of the following: T5 3W troops and T4 2W troops that infiltrate and a deep strike transport (which can have assault troops, multi-shot assault weapon troops, etc, etc). 'Only troops score' would be absolutely obscene in the current reality.
You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.
^
This. the armies with GOOD troops are taking them. because they can contribute. it's more the armies whose troops are "pretty much useless" where this is an issue.
I suppose the big question here is what armies aren't taking troops? and why?
Do you want to make troops more popular? Make them actually good. Ork boyz, new necron warriors, intercessors, when troops are good people uses them. Just like that.
I'm a troop guy. I love my troopers and to customize each single one. I love the simplicity of troops, doing their job without extremely complicated or special rules, just by pure stats and bodies. So I always use a ton of them.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Just go back to only troops scoring. Problem solved. It'll never happen though, the genie is out of the bottle.
I would rather see troops becoming more interesting to have them on the field. Even if only they could score, it would not be fun to have them around. Make them usable in their respective field (shooty, CC or both), give them an interesting use / ability / gear.
The whole point of basic troops is that they are basic. They don't need special rules, just competitive pricing.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.
^
This. the armies with GOOD troops are taking them. because they can contribute. it's more the armies whose troops are "pretty much useless" where this is an issue.
I suppose the big question here is what armies aren't taking troops? and why?
Agreed as well. If you want players to take more troops then they need to actually feel like they're contributing to the army. The reason it's called a "troops tax" is because that's how many factions troops feel like. They're something you take because you have to. That's why you see players taking the absolute minimum they have to, or the cheapest option (cultists instead of csm), or both. Troops like those that Slayer mentioned don't feel like a tax because they actually contribute something besides filling FOC slots and dieing.
I feel like the introduction of the Core mechanic could be a good way to achieve this (along with fixing Troops units that are, frankly, a bit rubbish). However, that's only going to be the case if the Core keyword isn't given out willy-nilly like it has been in the Marine Codex.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.
^
This. the armies with GOOD troops are taking them. because they can contribute. it's more the armies whose troops are "pretty much useless" where this is an issue.
I suppose the big question here is what armies aren't taking troops? and why?
Agreed as well. If you want players to take more troops then they need to actually feel like they're contributing to the army. The reason it's called a "troops tax" is because that's how many factions troops feel like. They're something you take because you have to. That's why you see players taking the absolute minimum they have to, or the cheapest option (cultists instead of csm), or both. Troops like those that Slayer mentioned don't feel like a tax because they actually contribute something besides filling FOC slots and dieing.
The troops are either good at contributing or an extreme meat shield basically. In order to be a meat shield though you need to be cheap.
The problem is not all troops are created equal. There is a world of difference between a T5 3W 3+ troop with a 40" gun a T3 1W troop with a 24" gun... One is worth 3/4x better than the other.. so... Watcha gunna do..
I would like to see a shift from "Troop" to "infantry" being able to ob sec/scrore VP. Every faction has some "infantry" that's good. But not every faction has "troops" that are good. (most don't..)
Argive wrote: The problem is not all troops are created equal. There is a world of difference between a T5 3W 3+ troop with a 40" gun a T3 1W troop with a 24" gun... One is worth 3/4x better than the other.. so... Watcha gunna do..
I would like to see a shift from "Troop" to "infantry" being able to ob sec/scrore VP. Every faction has some "infantry" that's good. But not every faction has "troops" that are good. (most don't..)
I kind of like the idea of an objective being held by points value.
Who cares if a single grot is left on an objective when theirs a fething Leman Russ there as well. I'd argue that the objective is NOT secured
The only key to making troops useful without being too good is to carefully leverage their abilities and points. Objective Secured give them a strong ability, as long as they are not useless beyond that. The new points value system gives GW an option to slightly leverage the points value of troops, even if they haven't used it yet. A slight points decrease on upgrades to troops compared to speciality units can increase their abilities without displacing the other options.
For example, if special/heavy weapons on Space Marine troops were just a hair cheaper than on units like Assault Marines or Devastators, it makes those units more compelling beyond the 3x5 no upgrade version of the unit.
I'd like something like the old WHFB system were x% of your force needed to be troops of some kind, a smaller percentage could be specialists and an even smaller percentage could be (lore wise) rare units. But as noted above that would only be fair if we give everyone actual worthwhile troops to field. Or give those with fluffwise lesser troops proportionally better special/rare units but to be honest I don't trust GW to handle that well.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.
^
This. the armies with GOOD troops are taking them. because they can contribute. it's more the armies whose troops are "pretty much useless" where this is an issue.
I suppose the big question here is what armies aren't taking troops? and why?
Agreed as well. If you want players to take more troops then they need to actually feel like they're contributing to the army. The reason it's called a "troops tax" is because that's how many factions troops feel like. They're something you take because you have to. That's why you see players taking the absolute minimum they have to, or the cheapest option (cultists instead of csm), or both. Troops like those that Slayer mentioned don't feel like a tax because they actually contribute something besides filling FOC slots and dieing.
The troops are either good at contributing or an extreme meat shield basically. In order to be a meat shield though you need to be cheap.
I expect the handfull of elite armies with a meatshield troops option will be given ample incentive to not do so. I'd be VERY suprised, if cultists, for example had <core>
Argive wrote:
I would like to see a shift from "Troop" to "infantry.” Every faction has some "infantry" that's good. (most don't..)
Yup
1. Infantry, not troops. Biker troops, wartrakk and armiger troops eg have always had a different popularity than infantry troops.
2. Infantry should true overwatch. Every shooting phase the infantry from both players gets to charge or shoot. They’re still crappy infantry weapons, mostly, they’re not demolisher cannons. Casualties can get removed at the end of the phase.
insaniak wrote:
a_typical_hero wrote: [
I would rather see troops becoming more interesting to have them on the field. Even if only they could score, it would not be fun to have them around. Make them usable in their respective field (shooty, CC or both), give them an interesting use / ability / gear.
The whole point of basic troops is that they are basic. They don't need special rules, just competitive pricing.
Yes, something basic right in the main rules of the game. Troops are there to be bodies, boots on the ground. They block the opponent’s movement. They don’t get rerolls or deep strikes that are different in every army. They have the same thing as elite infantry just fewer rules, the same thing as fast attack just less speed. They come in rifle guy, or pistol guy.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.
^
This. the armies with GOOD troops are taking them. because they can contribute. it's more the armies whose troops are "pretty much useless" where this is an issue.
I suppose the big question here is what armies aren't taking troops? and why?
Agreed as well. If you want players to take more troops then they need to actually feel like they're contributing to the army. The reason it's called a "troops tax" is because that's how many factions troops feel like. They're something you take because you have to. That's why you see players taking the absolute minimum they have to, or the cheapest option (cultists instead of csm), or both. Troops like those that Slayer mentioned don't feel like a tax because they actually contribute something besides filling FOC slots and dieing.
The troops are either good at contributing or an extreme meat shield basically. In order to be a meat shield though you need to be cheap.
I expect the handfull of elite armies with a meatshield troops option will be given ample incentive to not do so. I'd be VERY suprised, if cultists, for example had <core>
I doubt cultists will be <core> as well. But that doesn't really fix the problem. Even with the additional wound csm will still lag behind loyalists and all their special rules. Csm need another troops option to represent the true veterans of the long war. The mono-god legions have their cult troops, give the Undivided Legions Chosen as a troops choice. And yeah, I know I'm a broken record on that.
The whole point of basic troops is that they are basic. They don't need special rules, just competitive pricing.
I think there is room for both. The cheap guardsman or cultist is just there to plop on a point at the beginning of the game. Things like nurglings add a some extra tactical options to the game. Just because they are troops doesn't mean they have to be bland.
No, if your thing is infantry, good for you, but don't force organization based on your preferences and idea what an army should look like.
If I want to play a Ravenwing bike army, I'm already penalized in the CP system, don't need to pile it on more.
Just make sure that troop choices are actually good, simple as.
Troops are incentivized via the force org chart and objective secured. They should just make it so troops are solid for their points rather than try to force more troops beyond what has already been listed above.
bullyboy wrote: No, if your thing is infantry, good for you, but don't force organization based on your preferences and idea what an army should look like.
If I want to play a Ravenwing bike army, I'm already penalized in the CP system, don't need to pile it on more.
Just make sure that troop choices are actually good, simple as.
In an ideal world White Scars/Ravenwing would get rules to let them take said bikers as troops and still be fluffy. GW seems to think CORE is a way to get more fluff-friendly forces on the field, might as well go all the way.
bullyboy wrote: No, if your thing is infantry, good for you, but don't force organization based on your preferences and idea what an army should look like.
If I want to play a Ravenwing bike army, I'm already penalized in the CP system, don't need to pile it on more.
Just make sure that troop choices are actually good, simple as.
In an ideal world White Scars/Ravenwing would get rules to let them take said bikers as troops and still be fluffy. GW seems to think CORE is a way to get more fluff-friendly forces on the field, might as well go all the way.
And Deathwing, and Wild Riders. Theoretically White Scars are fluffy with Rhino Rush and bikers and get their ObSec from infantry in the "Rhinos" whatever those Rhinos are.
Personally I think a few things need to happen.
ObSec should be all infantry. This coivers Elite Infantry who have somehow forgottedn how to secure an objective by becoming an elite version of... the objective securing infantry. Terminators, Elite Intercessors, various Orks, etc.
Some subfactions should get Ob Sec bikes.
Controlling an objective should be Type First, Points Second. i.e. Infantry control an objective over a Monster/tank, over an aircraft (which never should unless it's got and is using a hover mode) etc.and when two of the same type contest, it goes to points value of the unit(s) not model count.
Give infantry units in terrain, especially building and wrecked buildings, a special save vs non blast or assault weapons. It can be hard to pick infantry out of hard cover without weapons that are area effect or very fast firing.
Maybe infantry in buildings get a fnp save vs non blast or rapid fire weapons.
This would not stack with an existing fnp save, and make things like grenades and frag missiles, flamers, etc, far batter at getting infantry out of hard cover that normal fire would be.
I'm thinking of Blaine's line in predator, where he couldn't get that one enemy in cover.
"Sumb---h is dug in like an al uh bam uh tick!"
His little buddy launches a grenade and asked him "Got time to duck?" and blows the "tick" to bits, cover not withstanding.
Or each model has a value for capturing objectives rather than sheer models. An Autarch bravely holding an objective from 4 or so Gaunts should be a lot more valuable than the Gaunts themselves. However FOC says no.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Or each model has a value for capturing objectives rather than sheer models. An Autarch bravely holding an objective from 4 or so Gaunts should be a lot more valuable than the Gaunts themselves. However FOC says no.
If you had said Exarch I might agree with you. To use an extreme example, I'd say a grot should secure over Guilliman/Morty/Magnus. They're too busy running an entire planet to pay attention to one objective and a little ole grot. I realize that contradicts the Infantry/Monster thing I've been saying, but I forgot to say I'd exclude HQ's. The reason tanks shouldn't be as good at securing is the same reason HQ's shouldn't. They're pulled in other directions too often to sit around and stand guard.
Well since i still play 5th editon i still use the old FOC. the best way to improve the desire to bring basic troopers is to make them worth taking.
30K fixed this for marines giving you great basic troop options (without getting into legion specific units)
.bolter squads-cheep and large 20 man anti-infantry bolter squads
.fire support squads-10 man tac squads all equipped with a (same) special weapon
.assault squads-up to 20 jump marines
.drop pod & rhinos-not taken as dedicated transports become stand alone troop choices
I also thing OBSEC was a great rule-everything could score objectives but troops choices could take it away from any non troop units.
A fine example of one of the best troop units i love is cataphron breachers for the mechanicus. they are a bit spendy on points for guard level shooting but they carry a good gun, a good close combat weapon and are pretty resiliant. in fact i have 6 X6 man squads of them in my epic army (would have done 9s but i didn't have large enough bases in my sockpile).
bullyboy wrote: No, if your thing is infantry, good for you, but don't force organization based on your preferences and idea what an army should look like.
If I want to play a Ravenwing bike army, I'm already penalized in the CP system, don't need to pile it on more.
Just make sure that troop choices are actually good, simple as.
In an ideal world White Scars/Ravenwing would get rules to let them take said bikers as troops and still be fluffy. GW seems to think CORE is a way to get more fluff-friendly forces on the field, might as well go all the way.
nah Bikes as troops wth Obsec honestly don't make any sense. I mean.. can you picture a dude on a bike digging in and holding an objective?
bullyboy wrote: No, if your thing is infantry, good for you, but don't force organization based on your preferences and idea what an army should look like.
If I want to play a Ravenwing bike army, I'm already penalized in the CP system, don't need to pile it on more.
Just make sure that troop choices are actually good, simple as.
In an ideal world White Scars/Ravenwing would get rules to let them take said bikers as troops and still be fluffy. GW seems to think CORE is a way to get more fluff-friendly forces on the field, might as well go all the way.
nah Bikes as troops wth Obsec honestly don't make any sense. I mean.. can you picture a dude on a bike digging in and holding an objective?
I think they use the bike. I've seen Robert Duval stab his own horse in the neck to create a barrier between himself and some angry indians. Bikers would do much the same thing. Plus you're describing cover, not Objective Securing.
I can absolutley see a couple guys in white PVC armor standing guard around a strategic point, with their bikes parked nearby until some rebel scum come along, their little buddy, a xenos Teddy Bear, steals one of the bikes and then guy who lost his bike has to call for help while everyone else chases after the foul xenos. Of course I may be mixing a lot of different genres there. But the concept is kind of universal.
Yet another reason, when you only have the hammer, the entire world looks like it needs to get nailed. When all you have are bikes and speeders, bikes have to hold objectives.
bullyboy wrote: No, if your thing is infantry, good for you, but don't force organization based on your preferences and idea what an army should look like.
If I want to play a Ravenwing bike army, I'm already penalized in the CP system, don't need to pile it on more.
Just make sure that troop choices are actually good, simple as.
In an ideal world White Scars/Ravenwing would get rules to let them take said bikers as troops and still be fluffy. GW seems to think CORE is a way to get more fluff-friendly forces on the field, might as well go all the way.
nah Bikes as troops wth Obsec honestly don't make any sense. I mean.. can you picture a dude on a bike digging in and holding an objective?
Yes, they are space marines afterall so i can totally see that. and they already had that lore based rules set in older editions when the game was better.
both white scars and ravenwing armies had bikes as troop options but with slightly different requirements and special skills to make them play different.
-Ravenwing-6 bikes +1 attack bike per troop-skilled rider, fearless, ravenwing jink, only attack bikes and land speeder tornados (heavy/fast) could be take in the army list. could only be led by the master of the ravenwing.
-White scars-10 man bike squads troops, skilled rider, hit&run, true grit, power lances. all HQs had bike options, all non bike units had to be mounted (rhinos, drop pods etc, )jump infantry and scout bikes as fast attack also scout bikes had space wolves style outflank. heavy support limited to attack bikes & predators, no dev squads or land raiders allowed unless the latter was a dedicated transport for terminators.
They were very fun and unique armies in their own way. something you cannot achieve with resource management mechanics like stratagems.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.
^
This. the armies with GOOD troops are taking them. because they can contribute. it's more the armies whose troops are "pretty much useless" where this is an issue.
I suppose the big question here is what armies aren't taking troops? and why?
Probably because there's 2 angles at play here a general and a faction specific angle:
generally, troops are infantry, some are heavy some are chaff, and some are well gretchin.
Generally: Terrain in this, rather non existent form punished alot of the lighter infantry (everything with SV4+ or worse) the old time cover save was often a massive lifesaver and whilest it didn't help marine equivs because the armor would be 90% of cases more effective then the cover save it did indeed make units like guardsmen, gaunts, etc worth a consideration, ork boyz are also a special outlier in that they profited extremely off of decent cover for advancing upwards the board.
The ungodly ammount of lethality atm is also not a helping instance, especially again for the lighter armored troops. In some cases though that bleeds over into the heavier troops options aswell, especially if SM get involved. F.e. CSM do pretty darn well against all the lighter troop units, vice versa they also don't in general do unreasonably against them until you account for bolter discipline. As soon as massed AP -1 get's involved though that somehwat "equal" (it's not ) footing get's turned on it's head.
Faction specific: Internal balance is fethed, no two ways about it f.e.
IG: Why ever would you pick conscripts, over guardsmen. There's not one instance where similar pts would not be better invested into the guardsmen.
CSM: CSM give up pts really really fast, you can lean into them as a quasi PA horde, that can work with a specific setup or make them decently durable with AL to gain an ok performance, as soon as you run into a SM player with primaris troops , well, let's just say there's not much reason to ever take more then 5 man suqqads of CSM... Cultists: well they get picked because they are a lower investment to fill out that troop tax to get the actually usefull stuff and the enabler for that actually usefull stuff of the faction. They themselves (bar a memebuild) are just not to be taken seriously. Especially now at 6 ppm which they even compare terrible against other troop choices... Still better to pick them though if only to save the pts for the units that do actual work. Situation is unsatisfying.
Orks: Gretchin had a use, a cannonfodder use, but they had a use. at 5 ppm though, like a guardsmen? or even compared to a cultist, they don't. Boyz maybee could be a ppm cheaper. Doesn't change the fact that cover doesn't help them and by extension turns them into bit of a glass cannon...
I mean really, they should alter the FOC so, say, for every 2 troops you run, you unlock one slot each of heavy support, fast attack, and elites. Get rid of obsec, it's a dumb band-aid rule. Make sure troops units are all decently points-efficient.
Just make troops, actual troops, the only units in the game that can provide character protection for "look out sir" purposes.
You can hide behind the 5th infantry division pretty easily. Harder to lose yourself in a 5 man spec ops team that is itself so individually elite as to be priority targets that want to hide behind your basic officer. After all, he can only order the sniper -- but the sniper being gone, the officer is of no use.
So yeah. Only troops (no, not core, you marine spankers, TROOPS) (and perhaps actual command squads or their other army equivalents) get look out sir at all, as an effect.
Someone looking across the yard at a lone guy in a light tunic with a huge and impressive hat and a glowing sword, cowering near a baneblade, will say "hey, lasguns, lets kill that commisar!" rather than "well, maybe we can blow up the tank."
Conversely, if the fancy hat is just occasionally seen bobbing in a sea of infantry over there, well, meh, shoot whoever is closest, boys...
It's not rocket surgery, just make them good/cost effective.
In 8th, Kabalites in Venoms were the mainstay of most Drukhari lists because they were an effective combo that was appropriately priced....hey presto, armies looked like 'they should'.
Now in 9th, you will only likely see the minimum needed for a Patrol, and that is only to get access to Ravagers and Agents of Vect. The principal reason for this is that they are considerably overpriced.
Dukeofstuff wrote: Just make troops, actual troops, the only units in the game that can provide character protection for "look out sir" purposes.
You can hide behind the 5th infantry division pretty easily. Harder to lose yourself in a 5 man spec ops team that is itself so individually elite as to be priority targets that want to hide behind your basic officer. After all, he can only order the sniper -- but the sniper being gone, the officer is of no use.
That's a decent start, but you're still missign things like Terminators Captains next to a Terminator Squad, or Veteran Intercessors who have become so veteran they forgot how to be Intercessors. That one will always make me laugh. Yes, you are so elite at being a troop unit, you no longer remember how to do the primary job of that troop unit. In other armies you would have the Hive Tyrant next to Guants. Nobody is going to confuse the Patriarch for a hybrid. Sometimes the HQ just doesn't look like the troops.
So yeah. Only troops (no, not core, you marine spankers, TROOPS) (and perhaps actual command squads or their other army equivalents)
So far the actual command squad units I've seen have better than Look Out Sir! They've changed their wording such that you can't target a character with any shooting while they're within X" inches. Even with sniper rifles etc. That's not bad and makes them have a little appeal/function beyond just using a troop for it.
get look out sir at all, as an effect.
Someone looking across the yard at a lone guy in a light tunic with a huge and impressive hat and a glowing sword, cowering near a baneblade, will say "hey, lasguns, lets kill that commisar!" rather than "well, maybe we can blow up the tank."
Conversely, if the fancy hat is just occasionally seen bobbing in a sea of infantry over there, well, meh, shoot whoever is closest, boys...
As people have said, I think the current incentives are fine, people just won't take troops which are overcosted.
The problem is that in an assault focused game overcosted basic line infantry with negligible assault stats are often a liability. They just serve to let your opponent sling-shot their units across the table by charging, and, if you have enough them, give an easy thin their ranks secondary.
Which is why we seem to have this contradiction of "5 point guardsmen are overpowered, so overpowered. Look at my Boyz, my kabalites, my fire warriors (okay fair) - hang on why are guard something like the 2nd or 3rd worst performing faction in the game".
As people have said, Kabalites were good in 8th at 6 points. They'd probably be okay in 9th at 7. They are quite obviously garbage however at 9. You might say what's 2 points - but if you were to bring 30 of them, that's effectively 60 points "lost". You might not think that's much, but it is.
Tyel wrote: As people have said, I think the current incentives are fine, people just won't take troops which are overcosted.
The problem is that in an assault focused game overcosted basic line infantry with negligible assault stats are often a liability. They just serve to let your opponent sling-shot their units across the table by charging, and, if you have enough them, give an easy thin their ranks secondary.
Which is why we seem to have this contradiction of "5 point guardsmen are overpowered, so overpowered. Look at my Boyz, my kabalites, my fire warriors (okay fair) - hang on why are guard something like the 2nd or 3rd worst performing faction in the game".
As people have said, Kabalites were good in 8th at 6 points. They'd probably be okay in 9th at 7. They are quite obviously garbage however at 9. You might say what's 2 points - but if you were to bring 30 of them, that's effectively 60 points "lost". You might not think that's much, but it is.
Ding ding ding.
why bother with 5 csm when 10 cultists do the same in essence and you save 10 ppm each time you make that decision... do that 3 times and you allready have 30 pts .
Conscripts are even worse because min 20. so 1 troopslot for 100 pts or 2 troopslots for 100 pts. You save just with using guardsmen over conscripts for 3 slots for a battalion 300 pts....
And avoided the strictly worse unit on top of it and minimized blast..
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.
^
This. the armies with GOOD troops are taking them. because they can contribute. it's more the armies whose troops are "pretty much useless" where this is an issue.
I suppose the big question here is what armies aren't taking troops? and why?
Probably because there's 2 angles at play here a general and a faction specific angle:
generally, troops are infantry, some are heavy some are chaff, and some are well gretchin.
Generally:
Terrain in this, rather non existent form punished alot of the lighter infantry (everything with SV4+ or worse) the old time cover save was often a massive lifesaver and whilest it didn't help marine equivs because the armor would be 90% of cases more effective then the cover save it did indeed make units like guardsmen, gaunts, etc worth a consideration, ork boyz are also a special outlier in that they profited extremely off of decent cover for advancing upwards the board.
The ungodly ammount of lethality atm is also not a helping instance, especially again for the lighter armored troops. In some cases though that bleeds over into the heavier troops options aswell, especially if SM get involved. F.e. CSM do pretty darn well against all the lighter troop units, vice versa they also don't in general do unreasonably against them until you account for bolter discipline. As soon as massed AP -1 get's involved though that somehwat "equal" (it's not ) footing get's turned on it's head.
Faction specific:
Internal balance is fethed, no two ways about it f.e.
IG: Why ever would you pick conscripts, over guardsmen. There's not one instance where similar pts would not be better invested into the guardsmen.
CSM: CSM give up pts really really fast, you can lean into them as a quasi PA horde, that can work with a specific setup or make them decently durable with AL to gain an ok performance, as soon as you run into a SM player with primaris troops , well, let's just say there's not much reason to ever take more then 5 man suqqads of CSM...
Cultists: well they get picked because they are a lower investment to fill out that troop tax to get the actually usefull stuff and the enabler for that actually usefull stuff of the faction. They themselves (bar a memebuild) are just not to be taken seriously. Especially now at 6 ppm which they even compare terrible against other troop choices... Still better to pick them though if only to save the pts for the units that do actual work.
Situation is unsatisfying.
Orks: Gretchin had a use, a cannonfodder use, but they had a use. at 5 ppm though, like a guardsmen? or even compared to a cultist, they don't. Boyz maybee could be a ppm cheaper. Doesn't change the fact that cover doesn't help them and by extension turns them into bit of a glass cannon...
regarding CSM specificly, if I was in charge of writing codex CSMs I'd make CSMs have a boltgun AND chainsword, (as well as the second wound) this would make them straight up superior to tac marines, and a close range focus over intercessors ranged focus.
Obviously I'd give them a "tides of thewarp" type doctrine ability.
I've got some very specific ideas on how to do custom traits for chaos warbands too. amusingly the new necron codex seems to be similer to the ideas I had
That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)
I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...
Tyel wrote: As people have said, I think the current incentives are fine, people just won't take troops which are overcosted.
The problem is that in an assault focused game overcosted basic line infantry with negligible assault stats are often a liability. They just serve to let your opponent sling-shot their units across the table by charging, and, if you have enough them, give an easy thin their ranks secondary.
Which is why we seem to have this contradiction of "5 point guardsmen are overpowered, so overpowered. Look at my Boyz, my kabalites, my fire warriors (okay fair) - hang on why are guard something like the 2nd or 3rd worst performing faction in the game".
As people have said, Kabalites were good in 8th at 6 points. They'd probably be okay in 9th at 7. They are quite obviously garbage however at 9. You might say what's 2 points - but if you were to bring 30 of them, that's effectively 60 points "lost". You might not think that's much, but it is.
Exactly this.
The issue for Kabalites is compounded by the fact that they need tranports to be worthwhile, and those were also hiked in points ridiculously.
Hecaton wrote: I mean really, they should alter the FOC so, say, for every 2 troops you run, you unlock one slot each of heavy support, fast attack, and elites. Get rid of obsec, it's a dumb band-aid rule. Make sure troops units are all decently points-efficient.
one HS, one FA, 2 Elites (you get 6Elite and 3 FA/HS per Batallion most likely to allow for the single model elites that aren't quite HQs i.e. Medics, Meks, Banner Bearers, etc )
And it goes beyond Points Efficient. They also need to be role efficient. Guardian Squads, Tac Squads, Guard Infantry, they can tack on a heavy/special weapon or both. In theory - based on how armies are "supposed to look" 6 Tac Squads should be your bread and butter, they should take down that tank, or that giant mob of boys. The specialist Devs/Assault Marines are there to supplement not necessarily replace. At least that's how they're supposed to look. A boys unit is going to be harder pressed. Rokkit's and Tankbusta bombs don't have the ooomph. Of course they roll an entire packing crate of S4 dice in close combat. Gaunts are in even worse shape because they don't even have those. Tau have something not as good, that goes away if they move.
The answer isn't to cookie cutter all the troop units. Its not that they all get a 48" Missile Launcher, 8 guns, and 1 plasma gun per 10 or something. But that they all need some sort of gimmick to cover all three roles - hurt infantry, hurt heavy infantry/light vehicles, hurt heavy vehicles. For some it could be something short ranged like the Tankbusta bombs or GSC Demo charges. For others like Tau, it might be some sort of Shoulder pack or a drone that doesn't get left behind when they move. Maybe 1 per X hormugaunts can rip off the Jurassic World battering ram dinosaur for Y points. There are a number of roads to the same destination but all the troops (or almost all) need to get there somehow, and somehow other than a box of dice.
Not Online!!! wrote: That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)
I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...
You're right, csm shouldn't have doctrines, the Legions don't all fight the same. They don't follow "The Codex Spikey Astartes". And please no rules forcing all the Legions into warp stuff. I know Night Lords are the weird legion for scorning the Chaos Gods, but the fact that they are mostly godless nihilistic psychopaths is one of the reasons I loved them in the first place. I hate it when gw tries to force them to act like Black Legion with lightning bolts on their armour.
insaniak wrote: The whole point of basic troops is that they are basic. They don't need special rules, just competitive pricing.
I disagree. If I had access to correctly priced Grots with my Marines, I would use them in a competitive setting as they are the cheapest objective holders I can get. But I would not have fun with 10 little dudes that essentially do nothing apart from being set up on my home objective at the start of the game.
When I said interesting, I did not necessarily mean complicated.
TBH Grots are maybe the most extreme example because like skavenslaves or zombies of fantasy their only virtue is existing.
And even then with stuff like the Grot herders you could make, given proper point costs and rules, have some kind of place for interesting interactions.
Like in other games were you have zombies being basically useless but if you take X hero they gain poisoned attacks and whatever and you can even specialize in using those basic troops.
I picked Grots as the most extreme example to make a point
But it is similar to many basic troops with s3 or s4 ap0 1d shooting / combat. You roll dice to please the dice god, but apart from the occasional wound that you plink off of something, they don't do much past existing.
They don't have to be more lethal, but give me something interesting to do with them.
Galas wrote: TBH Grots are maybe the most extreme example because like skavenslaves or zombies of fantasy their only virtue is existing.
And even then with stuff like the Grot herders you could make, given proper point costs and rules, have some kind of place for interesting interactions.
Like in other games were you have zombies being basically useless but if you take X hero they gain poisoned attacks and whatever and you can even specialize in using those basic troops.
I'd like to see Grots transitioned (back) into the Ork's shooters. They're sneaky. They don't like being up front and bashed on by Space Marines. Or guardsmen. Or Eldar. Or Tau. They want to sit in the back and take potshots of opportunity. Maybe steal something when nobody's looking. Give them back their Autogun. Make a smaller unit snipers in the Elite Slot. Give them comically big scopes on comically small rifles.
Not Online!!! wrote: That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)
I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...
You're right, csm shouldn't have doctrines, the Legions don't all fight the same. They don't follow "The Codex Spikey Astartes". And please no rules forcing all the Legions into warp stuff. I know Night Lords are the weird legion for scorning the Chaos Gods, but the fact that they are mostly godless nihilistic psychopaths is one of the reasons I loved them in the first place. I hate it when gw tries to force them to act like Black Legion with lightning bolts on their armour.
True, true. They should go back to their origins* and be World Eaters with bats on their armor.
*Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness, p 167
"The World Eaters are not the only chapter** to dedicate themselves to the Blood God, as the Night Lord's red and black devices demonstrate"
Pictured are three shoulder pads in red, with black bats (or the outline of a bat) and the Khorne rune, with a black banner with a red bat, a moon, a khorne rune, all surrounded by yellow lightning.
**in RoC, chapter and legion were used interchangeably
Not Online!!! wrote: That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)
I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...
You're right, csm shouldn't have doctrines, the Legions don't all fight the same. They don't follow "The Codex Spikey Astartes". And please no rules forcing all the Legions into warp stuff. I know Night Lords are the weird legion for scorning the Chaos Gods, but the fact that they are mostly godless nihilistic psychopaths is one of the reasons I loved them in the first place. I hate it when gw tries to force them to act like Black Legion with lightning bolts on their armour.
True, true. They should go back to their origins* and be World Eaters with bats on their armor.
*Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness, p 167
"The World Eaters are not the only chapter** to dedicate themselves to the Blood God, as the Night Lord's red and black devices demonstrate"
Pictured are three shoulder pads in red, with black bats (or the outline of a bat) and the Khorne rune, with a black banner with a red bat, a moon, a khorne rune, all surrounded by yellow lightning.
**in RoC, chapter and legion were used interchangeably
Right, right. Back to the Rogue Trader era are we? So they'd also lack geneseed, only have two lungs, one heart, but still the Black Carapace, right? Just like all the other chapters/legions back then? I'd give you some quotes from the 2nd and 3rd edition chaos codexes that show gw changed that once they started giving all the legions more identities and backstories, but why bother? You already know that. You're point is that they've changed the lore for the Night Lords before, so why not again, and make them just another chaos worshipping legion, because it's easier for the rules writers, just like making all the legions play like renegades like in the 4th and 6th edition codexes. We don't want to tax the rules writers, they could obviously never write anything like the 3.5 codex again. Let's just kill two decades of a legions lore because it's more convenient. Anything else you want to bring back from back then? Half Eldar librarians maybe?
The problem is this "my chaos are different" bleeds all over the place.
You have god worshipers. And non-god worshipers. And people who have been kicking around for 10,000 years, and people who went off the reservation last week.
I think any mechanic is going to upset someone somewhere - but the Chaos Gods are a thing, so it seems a reasonable basis for having a mechanic. But maybe there should be say 6 options, including undivided and "nope". Remove the mark-limitation on stratagems, and instead make marks synergise with this new faction ability.
Not Online!!! wrote: That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)
I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...
You're right, csm shouldn't have doctrines, the Legions don't all fight the same. They don't follow "The Codex Spikey Astartes". And please no rules forcing all the Legions into warp stuff. I know Night Lords are the weird legion for scorning the Chaos Gods, but the fact that they are mostly godless nihilistic psychopaths is one of the reasons I loved them in the first place. I hate it when gw tries to force them to act like Black Legion with lightning bolts on their armour.
True, true. They should go back to their origins* and be World Eaters with bats on their armor.
*Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness, p 167
"The World Eaters are not the only chapter** to dedicate themselves to the Blood God, as the Night Lord's red and black devices demonstrate"
Pictured are three shoulder pads in red, with black bats (or the outline of a bat) and the Khorne rune, with a black banner with a red bat, a moon, a khorne rune, all surrounded by yellow lightning.
**in RoC, chapter and legion were used interchangeably
Right, right. Back to the Rogue Trader era are we? So they'd also lack geneseed, only have two lungs, one heart, but still the Black Carapace, right? Just like all the other chapters/legions back then? I'd give you some quotes from the 2nd and 3rd edition chaos codexes that show gw changed that once they started giving all the legions more identities and backstories, but why bother? You already know that. You're point is that they've changed the lore for the Night Lords before, so why not again, and make them just another chaos worshipping legion, because it's easier for the rules writers, just like making all the legions play like renegades like in the 4th and 6th edition codexes. We don't want to tax the rules writers, they could obviously never write anything like the 3.5 codex again. Let's just kill two decades of a legions lore because it's more convenient. Anything else you want to bring back from back then? Half Eldar librarians maybe?
Nah, I'm just poking fun. No thread is complete until you jump in to mention Night Lords or Forge World.
Just figured you could use a reminder that your take on them isn't the be all and end all of 'What Night Lords truly are.' Even the novels that give the Night Lords 'more identity' had chaos worshipping and daemon prince Night Lords
Maybe it’s just my local meta; but if you’re not running troops this edition, you’re probably losing. I use obsec troops all the time to more reliably hold objectives and to steal them away from any objective not controlled by an opponent’s troops.
I don't think it would work for 40k but one way this could work is as follows:
1) Remove HQs from the battlefield and instead purchase special rules, faction-specific mission objectives, buffs, etc. pregame based on which commander is in charge of your force.
2) Make enforced fog of war style effects where most units can see a shorter distance than they can shoot. Your other units can skip a turn to let another unit you control take a shot at something they can see but the firing unit cannot. Troops, ideally being a cheap unit that doesn't output a ton of damage would be ideal for this.
3) Make specialist units far more limited in what they can target. For example, an anti-tank missile launcher can only fire at tanks with any real probability of success. Some specialist units may not even deploy to the table and instead requiring called shots by troops to interact with the board; snipers, air support, and artillery come to mind.
4) With rare exceptions only small parts of your army start on the table with a flexible mix of other forces able to come in as the game progresses. For example, you may bring 1,500 points of models to a 1,000 point game and choose what comes on based on how the battle progresses. Some forces might get more extra points to work with, some might arrive faster, others might start with an extra unit on the field, etc.
I think all of this would do a lot to ensure the basic troop feels better while giving scope for various faction traits to shine through.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Just go back to only troops scoring. Problem solved. It'll never happen though, the genie is out of the bottle.
This. Specialists should always be more efficient than troops, but troops should be the only scoring unit.
That said, part of the meta right now is basically troops spam for efficient troops on the principle that they're obsec and they present good and dangerous pressure, and that wins game.
Yarium wrote: Maybe it’s just my local meta; but if you’re not running troops this edition, you’re probably losing. I use obsec troops all the time to more reliably hold objectives and to steal them away from any objective not controlled by an opponent’s troops.
Coming from a mostly aeldari standpoint, I've never found obsec to actually be all that useful. If I'm controlling an objective, it's usually because I killed someone off of it. If my opponent wants that objective, he can pretty easily kill me off of it. Obsec never made my T3 troops with 4+ or worse saves last long enough for it to matter. Usually when it does matter, it's because I'm suiciding a squad onto the objective to deny my opponent points for a turn. Which, honestly, is kind of unfluffy for my craftworlders and harlies.
----
I'm mostly in the camp that says you incentivize troops by just making them good at a job and worth their points. I have armies where I feel good about taking troops, and I have armies where I try to avoid taking more troops than I have to (craftworlders are a good example). However, simply lowering the points costs of the underperformers isn't necessarily a one-size-fits-all solution. A unit of dire avengers isn't all that expensive, but they do kind of underperform. Plus, they're not durable enough to stand out in the open but also not killy enough to warrant handing over expensive wave serpent seating to. But I don't want them to become dirt cheap mooks; I want them to feel like the alien samurai they're meant to be.
My proposal? Give troops either baked-in rules or troop-specific stratagems that make you, as a player, want to field them in your army. Maybe let dire avengers do tau style For the Greater Good overwatch or let them spend CP to charge an enemy unit that's trying to charge one of your friendly units so you end up wanting to have an avenger unit backing up your other infantry. Give guardians their own auspex scan style strat or let them deploy energy shields that act as obscuring or dense terrain so that they can protect your gunline or shield your advancing units. Basically, give troops the ability to be flexible and support the rest of your army. They don't need to match your specialists in offense, but they should have a job other than "being cheap." At least, some of them should. Being cheap is a pretty decent role for a guardsman, but it doesn't fit an elite troop like a dire avenger or marine as well.
I actually think the 8th edition 2.0 marine codex took some good steps in this direction. They have troops that can block deepstrikers, troops that can start the game further up the table and on objectives. Some of them could bring their own healers. There were strats that could specifically up the offense of troop units (the various intercessor special bolter strats) if you wanted them to be more killy, but they had to pay CP to get that boost. It obviously still had room for improvement, but they did a few things well.
Also...
* The "unlock elites after taking troops" or "force people to take X% troops" are approaches I dislike. If your book's troops just aren't as efficient as those of another book, then you're just punishing the player with the worse troops. If my dire avengers are worse than your intercessors, then forcing me to take 200 points of avengers against your 200 points of intercessors is obviously a problem for balance. Plus, army construction is a big part of how you tell your faction's story. If I'm playing Death Wing, I shouldn't be forced to have 200 points of green wing along for the ride on every single mission.
* Obsec is a bandaid. One that favors armies with durable (either through stats or numbers) troops that can stand on an objective long enough to take advantage of it.
* Making troops the only thing that can grant Look Out Sir protection to characters means that you're suddenly unable to protect a jump pack captain leading his vanguard vet pals. Terminator captains are sitting ducks despite being behind a wall of their terminator bros. A spirit seer is a sitting duck inside a wall of wraith guard. Drazhar is suddenly compelled to hide behind a bunch of wyches instead of hanging out with incubi. Etc.
* Letting only troops hold objectives was awful in 5th edition. Missions were frequently just a contest to see if you could hide your troops until the end of the game while they spent all game doing no damage. And this obviously favored armies that hard durable troops and/or transports over squishier armies. Do you want to field a drukhari army in an edition where the only way to win the game is to keep your troops alive?
Not Online!!! wrote:That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)
I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...
Allowing for the creation of warbands would be awesome. I would love to be able to play an army where I can use Berzerkers or Plague Marines as troops while not being locked into the World Eaters and Death Guard rules.
Well, one issue is that the whole idea of "troops" is no longer what it once was.
Troops used to mean squads of typical W1 line infantry. Granted, GW's game design paradigm usually just meant these were just less optimized and less well armed versions of more specialized units found in other FoC slots (and in many instances that still hold's true), but that's a different issue
Over time however, FoC swaps, subfaction lists, army differentiation, scope bloat, etc has made this rather nebulous, and we've had armies with Tank troops and Troops on Bikes and T5 W3 2+sv Troops and some armies with no Troops at all (e.g. Knights). The scale of the game just lost focus of what it really wanted to be.
With no clear vision of what "Troops" are, it's hard to say how they should be incentivized.
Vaktathi wrote: Well, one issue is that the whole idea of "troops" is no longer what it once was.
Troops used to mean squads of typical W1 line infantry. Granted, GW's game design paradigm usually just meant these were just less optimized and less well armed versions of more specialized units found in other FoC slots (and in many instances that still hold's true), but that's a different issue
Over time however, FoC swaps, subfaction lists, army differentiation, scope bloat, etc has made this rather nebulous, and we've had armies with Tank troops and Troops on Bikes and T5 W3 2+sv Troops and some armies with no Troops at all (e.g. Knights). The scale of the game just lost focus of what it really wanted to be.
With no clear vision of what "Troops" are, it's hard to say how they should be incentivized.
the game has had fairly tough troops for as long as I've been playing, when did Tyranid warriors become troops? because they've got 3 wounds. just for example
Vaktathi wrote: Well, one issue is that the whole idea of "troops" is no longer what it once was.
Troops used to mean squads of typical W1 line infantry. Granted, GW's game design paradigm usually just meant these were just less optimized and less well armed versions of more specialized units found in other FoC slots (and in many instances that still hold's true), but that's a different issue
Over time however, FoC swaps, subfaction lists, army differentiation, scope bloat, etc has made this rather nebulous, and we've had armies with Tank troops and Troops on Bikes and T5 W3 2+sv Troops and some armies with no Troops at all (e.g. Knights). The scale of the game just lost focus of what it really wanted to be.
With no clear vision of what "Troops" are, it's hard to say how they should be incentivized.
the game has had fairly tough troops for as long as I've been playing, when did Tyranid warriors become troops? because they've got 3 wounds. just for example
Sure, but they were very rare exceptions for the first few editions of the game (and to be fair, Tyranid Warriors often were so bad it didn't matter because nobody was going to take them anyway ) , and as the game has aged this has changed substantially.
Vaktathi wrote: Well, one issue is that the whole idea of "troops" is no longer what it once was.
Troops used to mean squads of typical W1 line infantry. Granted, GW's game design paradigm usually just meant these were just less optimized and less well armed versions of more specialized units found in other FoC slots (and in many instances that still hold's true), but that's a different issue
Over time however, FoC swaps, subfaction lists, army differentiation, scope bloat, etc has made this rather nebulous, and we've had armies with Tank troops and Troops on Bikes and T5 W3 2+sv Troops and some armies with no Troops at all (e.g. Knights). The scale of the game just lost focus of what it really wanted to be.
With no clear vision of what "Troops" are, it's hard to say how they should be incentivized.
the game has had fairly tough troops for as long as I've been playing, when did Tyranid warriors become troops? because they've got 3 wounds. just for example
Sure, but they were very rare exceptions for the first few editions of the game (and to be fair, Tyranid Warriors often were so bad it didn't matter because nobody was going to take them anyway ) , and as the game has aged this has changed substantially.
sure, granted in 8th edition each weapon did 1 wound to a model only, so a W3 tyranid warrior, needed to be hit thrice with most weapons, except ones capable of instant death.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Just go back to only troops scoring. Problem solved. It'll never happen though, the genie is out of the bottle.
Yeah I agree. Let them score primaries and some of the secondaries. Maybe downgrade some specialists into troops to have more options: in 3rd edition burnaboyz and tankbustas were troops for example.
Demanding GOOD troops is also wrong, it only incentivizes power creep. Lethality should be toned down, not up and I'd really love less powerful units to be common on the table. In fact I wouldn't upgrade bad troops to be good, I'd tone down the good ones to be bad, encouraging everyone to heavily rely on troops somehow.
1500-1800 points vanished in just 3 turns is bad game design.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Just go back to only troops scoring. Problem solved. It'll never happen though, the genie is out of the bottle.
Yeah I agree. Let them score primaries and some of the secondaries. Maybe downgrade some specialists into troops to have more options: in 3rd edition burnaboyz and tankbustas were troops for example.
Demanding GOOD troops is also wrong, it only incentivizes power creep. Lethality should be toned down, not up and I'd really love less powerful units to be common on the table. In fact I wouldn't upgrade bad troops to be good, I'd tone down the good ones to be bad, encouraging everyone to heavily rely on troops somehow.
1500-1800 points vanished in just 3 turns is bad game design.
Strongly disagree with the bolded part. Why should everybody have troops that suck? You spent your money, time to paint and points on troops for them to be... a liability in the game that does not feel good or fun to play with?
Good troops does not necessarily mean more lethal troops. We have a plethora of options with stratagems, wargear, special rules, mission objectives and opened up profile values to take advantage of. Giving everyone the ability to wipe out a squad of Marines per round is not the only way to go.
Vaktathi wrote: Well, one issue is that the whole idea of "troops" is no longer what it once was.
Troops used to mean squads of typical W1 line infantry. Granted, GW's game design paradigm usually just meant these were just less optimized and less well armed versions of more specialized units found in other FoC slots (and in many instances that still hold's true), but that's a different issue
Over time however, FoC swaps, subfaction lists, army differentiation, scope bloat, etc has made this rather nebulous, and we've had armies with Tank troops and Troops on Bikes and T5 W3 2+sv Troops and some armies with no Troops at all (e.g. Knights). The scale of the game just lost focus of what it really wanted to be.
With no clear vision of what "Troops" are, it's hard to say how they should be incentivized.
Well I don't know about Tank Troops, or the All Knight Long lists, I think that goes a bit extreme, but bike lists, or Mechanized Infantry with Scoring tanks isn't that far out of line for the game and provides some very needed variety. I mean if I said the meaning of Troops are "the iconic units of individual dudes the army is knowns for" then Bikes and such start making sense as troops. The guard tank company should be able to play some games doing Infantry mounted in a chimera, and get some boosts for the fewer infantry/extras they're going to get by pairing each infantry with a Chimera. Same with White Scars and Rhino + Bikes. Of course both of those would be able to use normal FOC's, they just might not be "incentivized" right now to play "fluffy". You start getting into First Company orDW/Ravenwing, and WildRiders and then you need to start playing FOC games with Bikes, Terminators, and such.
I'm planning on painting some bone white Heavy Intercessors, if they can get Inner Circle and Deathwing great, if not I'm still tired of waiting to play that army again in anything close to the way it's supposed to play. But I shouldn't have to.
Custodes Bikes and all Infantry are ObSec. they can easily extend that to DW/RW/WildRiders and so on. They can extend the Sisters of Silence Det Rules to these guys for the Troop Slot in the appropriate Vanguard/Outrider etc.
There's any number of ways to justify anything being "troops", and I'm not really arguing for or against anything in particular being designated as such, more noting how the fundamental concept of "Troops" is rather nebulous, one army's Troops are another army's mega-elites or Heavy Support (or in the case of IG, have Heavy Support tank units that can get Troop ObSec abilites), some armies don't have Troops at all, some armies have Troops of almost literally every unit type and role one could imagine while other armies may literally only have one Troop (or a couple minor variations on fundamentally the same thing).
When "Troops" can be almost literally anything, trying to holistically answer a question about how to incentivize taking Troops units, or even understanding why they may need to be so incentivized, becomes very difficult.
I for one am against providing ObSec to stuff like Deathwing and Ravening (I have both, just to clarify).
They can already have it by Warlord Traits, Characters and Relics. I think it's the best way to include fluffy armies and it enforces more appropriate character and Relics selection.
I also don't feel like troops are so badly managed right now.. 9this really difficult to assess, almost none is playing due to covid and the new missions really enforces board control and ObSec... I feel like it is a specific issue of some armies, more related to internal balance than to general mechanics.
That said, I always support more Kroot. I almost start collecting them, and if they became a usable faction as in the WD index I will definetly pick them up as my next armies.
Troops shouldn't be incentivised. They are the lowest common denominator forces that make up the bulk of an army. They are the tools that a general needs to understand how to use, rather than just being able to take all the shinies for every single engagement. They shouldn't be I incentivised, but each faction should have troops that can be made to be roughly equivalent in terms of effectiveness.
When "Troops" can be almost literally anything, trying to holistically answer a question about how to incentivize taking Troops units, or even understanding why they may need to be so incentivized, becomes very difficult.
I don't know about that. I mean start with the idea that what they look like doesn't matter. Whether you get 5 nickels, or 1 quarter to put down it's still 25 cents. That 25 Cents has to do several things - whether it's make a phone call at a payphone, or combine with another to buy a soda, or just hold your place in line for the next open pool table. The way to incentivize troops is to make them able to do all those things they're supposed to In addition to being points efficient, they need to be job efficient. They need all the job options. And it should probably be in such a way that they get those jobs cheaper, but with less depth for lack of a better word.
If I use a current army with a fictional/hypothetical "Lets pretend" approach can we all agree it's just a "let's pretend" and we don't need to get bogged down in how that's not how things are? Lets say it's Tau. You've got a bunch of Firewarriors, and you've got a drone, or a turret, or a turret drone. All well and good. The Firewarriors can go after the infantry, the turret drone can go after the tanks, and they can upgrader some other firewarrior with a shoulder mounted whositwhatsit that goes after light vehicles and heavy infantry. Now you can get a unit with 3 Whositwhatsits as a specialist elite unit. or you can take three firewarrior troop units. 3 Firewarrior troop units will probably be more expensive than 3x3 whositwhatsits elites. That makes sense But 3x3 Whositwhatsit elites, and 3x3 Turret Drone Heavies might start costing about the same as those three Firewarrior squads. The benefit of the Whositwhatsit elites is they're all three together in one spot, not necessarily that you can spam more of them for cheaper.
I'm sure there are units out there where this specific hypothetical would break down, but we don't have to use the same cookie cutter shape for everything. There are multiple roads to the same destination, they'd just take a different one. And the actual ratio of Firewarrior points to Whositwhatsit Elites has to be massaged and tuned. It could be that the Firewarrior Troop Unit gets Whositwhatsits for free, while the elite unit has to pay for them.
Apply that to Marines, the Tac Squad may get a free Sgt Power Weapon, special and Heavy in a 10 man unit, while the Vanguard Vets and Devastators have to pay for theirs. Going back to Tau, their ShaSergeant could/would also need/want some sort of free upgrade for a similar "job" to hidden fists. Perhaps a wargear item that improves overwatch, replicates the Grav Pulse or Eliminator Sgt Carbine thing to keep them out of melee - either because they proactively run away, or reduce charge distance etc. They did something similar to this with the Demi Companies way back when. You got free transports if you filled the chart.
1) Make sure troop units can do all jobs for a reasonable price. This could mean Troop Type A can do these two jobs, and Troop Unit B can do those two jobs and between the two of the not-mutually exclusive troop units all three jobs can be done. There's a niche for Grots there.
2) Some troop units would/do need a rework to get job options. Its OK to mix and match. Shooty Termaguants might get a melee Anti-tank biomorph/rule.
3) Taking the specialist units for those jobs should be a choice, and should supplement not replace troops.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Cybtroll wrote: I think it's the best way to include fluffy armies
Ravenwing + Deathwing with zero greenwing IS fluffy. Green Wing shows up and does a job, the company command sees something, the Ravenwing investigate. Green wing gets sent to the store for milk and bread while mom and dad go back to... I mean the Ravenwing and Deathwing capture the fallen or otherwise secure the secret. Fluffwise when there's an Inner Circle Agenda item, Greenwing are suddenly required back at HQ for an equipment maintenance cycle.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Just go back to only troops scoring. Problem solved. It'll never happen though, the genie is out of the bottle.
Yeah I agree. Let them score primaries and some of the secondaries. Maybe downgrade some specialists into troops to have more options: in 3rd edition burnaboyz and tankbustas were troops for example.
Demanding GOOD troops is also wrong, it only incentivizes power creep. Lethality should be toned down, not up and I'd really love less powerful units to be common on the table. In fact I wouldn't upgrade bad troops to be good, I'd tone down the good ones to be bad, encouraging everyone to heavily rely on troops somehow.
1500-1800 points vanished in just 3 turns is bad game design.
Strongly disagree with the bolded part. Why should everybody have troops that suck? You spent your money, time to paint and points on troops for them to be... a liability in the game that does not feel good or fun to play with?
Good troops does not necessarily mean more lethal troops. We have a plethora of options with stratagems, wargear, special rules, mission objectives and opened up profile values to take advantage of. Giving everyone the ability to wipe out a squad of Marines per round is not the only way to go.
Suck is a big word, I don't want units that actually suck as well. But troops are supposed to be pretty mediocre compared to specialists, and in some cases they really aren't. I kinda like you bad is an ork boy compared to a meganob in melee or compared to a tankbusta in shooting but I strongly dislike how good is an intercessor/heavy intercessor compared to any other primaris/gravis dude respectively.
When "Troops" can be almost literally anything, trying to holistically answer a question about how to incentivize taking Troops units, or even understanding why they may need to be so incentivized, becomes very difficult.
I don't know about that. I mean start with the idea that what they look like doesn't matter. Whether you get 5 nickels, or 1 quarter to put down it's still 25 cents. That 25 Cents has to do several things - whether it's make a phone call at a payphone, or combine with another to buy a soda, or just hold your place in line for the next open pool table. The way to incentivize troops is to make them able to do all those things they're supposed to In addition to being points efficient, they need to be job efficient. They need all the job options. And it should probably be in such a way that they get those jobs cheaper, but with less depth for lack of a better word.
I think Vaktathi's point is what do troops represent? What is the point of having a "troops" category at this point when it can basically encompass anything from elites to fast attack units to heavy support units (including literal tanks).
When "Troops" can be almost literally anything, trying to holistically answer a question about how to incentivize taking Troops units, or even understanding why they may need to be so incentivized, becomes very difficult.
I don't know about that. I mean start with the idea that what they look like doesn't matter. Whether you get 5 nickels, or 1 quarter to put down it's still 25 cents. That 25 Cents has to do several things - whether it's make a phone call at a payphone, or combine with another to buy a soda, or just hold your place in line for the next open pool table. The way to incentivize troops is to make them able to do all those things they're supposed to In addition to being points efficient, they need to be job efficient. They need all the job options. And it should probably be in such a way that they get those jobs cheaper, but with less depth for lack of a better word.
I think Vaktathi's point is what do troops represent? What is the point of having a "troops" category at this point when it can basically encompass anything from elites to fast attack units to heavy support units (including literal tanks).
No matter what the army flavor is, it's going to have that basic/common/core (not CORE)/iconic unit(s). Those are the troops. I really liked how they did it in 5E (or whichever one it was) Dark Angels for the Ravenwing. They took the 10 Tactical Squad Marines, and they put them on bikes and speeders in such a way that those bikes and speeders got the ObSec but not all bikes and speeders. Because that was their troops unit. At the most basic level it doesn't matter if that's 5 nickels, a quarter, or a nickel riding around on two dimes like they're wheels. At a certain point that's some "6 of this, half a dozen of that" trade offs that get you cosmetic variety. If done right. Which will never happen, but they could get closer than they are now.
The nickel and dimes might get to more places faster, but the 5 nickels gets to stand on more places at the same time.
IMO, troops should be really good at doing the mission (in 9th, scoring primaries by mantaining the objective) and fight other troops equally. If we gift ObSec to efficient Elite infantry... theres no point on having troops.
In my Codex, Wracks are a great example. They are not killy, but they are efficient at taking points and have the tools to mantain them (good survivability, stratagems that help, HQs that can buff them...).
Galas wrote: As a non native speaker, I can't understand what you are saying breton.
Are you trying to say that basically troops should be able to access and do everything? So you basically want troops to don't need anything more?
I mean, I love troops, but I still believe you should use your tools to win, not just spamming troopers that can do everything and cheaper.
I'm saying Troops (as a whole) should be able to do everything. They should be able to kill light infantry, heavy infantry/light vehicles, and heavy vehicles. Not every Troop unit needs to - i.e. Tacticals might do infantry and heavy vehicles while Intercessors do Infantry and light Vehicles, but you should be able to mix and match troops to do it all. The Specialist units should do it better, but they should do it in supplement to, not instead of troops.
bullyboy wrote: No, if your thing is infantry, good for you, but don't force organization based on your preferences and idea what an army should look like.
If I want to play a Ravenwing bike army, I'm already penalized in the CP system, don't need to pile it on more.
Just make sure that troop choices are actually good, simple as.
In an ideal world White Scars/Ravenwing would get rules to let them take said bikers as troops and still be fluffy. GW seems to think CORE is a way to get more fluff-friendly forces on the field, might as well go all the way.
No. Biker/Termie armies are specialist armies already. They should not get a Core, ObSec or any other ability that makes Troops a necessary component of an army. Core should be restricted to Troops and then HQ unit have abilities similar to what Guard get for their infantry.
No. Biker/Termie armies are specialist armies already. They should not get a Core, ObSec or any other ability that makes Troops a necessary component of an army. Core should be restricted to Troops and then HQ unit have abilities similar to what Guard get for their infantry.
Exactly. Do you want a specialist/elite oriented army? Good, it's perfectly legal to play one. But since there are obvious advantages in heavily relying on the better units it also has to come with some disadvantages, especially now that CPs aren't an issue for those kind of armies anymore.
No. Biker/Termie armies are specialist armies already. They should not get a Core, ObSec or any other ability that makes Troops a necessary component of an army. Core should be restricted to Troops and then HQ unit have abilities similar to what Guard get for their infantry.
Exactly. Do you want a specialist/elite oriented army? Good, it's perfectly legal to play one. But since there are obvious advantages in heavily relying on the better units it also has to come with some disadvantages, especially now that CPs aren't an issue for those kind of armies anymore.
They already do that with Custodes. All Custodes Infantry and Bikes are ObSec. Because they have an even smaller model count. These Biker and Terminator etc armies will be in similar shape and should get a similar break. Now they should only get it when they're ALL Bikes, ALL Terminators or ALL Bikes AND Terminators - plus whatever adjustments to Primaris are needed i.e. Gravis Caps etc.
No. Biker/Termie armies are specialist armies already. They should not get a Core, ObSec or any other ability that makes Troops a necessary component of an army. Core should be restricted to Troops and then HQ unit have abilities similar to what Guard get for their infantry.
Exactly. Do you want a specialist/elite oriented army? Good, it's perfectly legal to play one. But since there are obvious advantages in heavily relying on the better units it also has to come with some disadvantages, especially now that CPs aren't an issue for those kind of armies anymore.
They already do that with Custodes. All Custodes Infantry and Bikes are ObSec. Because they have an even smaller model count. These Biker and Terminator etc armies will be in similar shape and should get a similar break. Now they should only get it when they're ALL Bikes, ALL Terminators or ALL Bikes AND Terminators - plus whatever adjustments to Primaris are needed i.e. Gravis Caps etc.
Disagree, whilest custodes can't bypass their limitations and by consequence would be so massively disadvantaged that they might aswell couldn't play objective based modes, SM can and therefore should not ever be egligable for such a rule period.
Breton wrote: I'm saying Troops (as a whole) should be able to do everything. They should be able to kill light infantry, heavy infantry/light vehicles, and heavy vehicles. Not every Troop unit needs to - i.e. Tacticals might do infantry and heavy vehicles while Intercessors do Infantry and light Vehicles, but you should be able to mix and match troops to do it all. The Specialist units should do it better, but they should do it in supplement to, not instead of troops.
I'm still not seeing how troops differ from other units under this definition.
Breton wrote: I'm saying Troops (as a whole) should be able to do everything. They should be able to kill light infantry, heavy infantry/light vehicles, and heavy vehicles. Not every Troop unit needs to - i.e. Tacticals might do infantry and heavy vehicles while Intercessors do Infantry and light Vehicles, but you should be able to mix and match troops to do it all. The Specialist units should do it better, but they should do it in supplement to, not instead of troops.
I'm still not seeing how troops differ from other units under this definition.
In some cases they don't and shouldn't. In some cases they specialize enough they don't. Take Flayed Ones. They ginsu light infantry, but don't do much to tanks, Eradicators melt tanks, but don't do much to light infantry. Likewise Hive Guard. Venomthropes don't ginsu much of anything but they buff a whole lot.
In some cases they should. I will forever point and laugh at GW for flubbing Veteran Intercessors.
Edit to Add: Going the other way, only the Tyranid Warriors have Anti-tank, which means somewhat going Big Bugs. If you're going swarm bugs your troops can't really touch tanks. They need a biomorph/rule to swap that out so a swarm of little bugs have a troop counter to the bigger/tougher models from the troop slot.
No. Biker/Termie armies are specialist armies already. They should not get a Core, ObSec or any other ability that makes Troops a necessary component of an army. Core should be restricted to Troops and then HQ unit have abilities similar to what Guard get for their infantry.
Every dude in my faction gets a suit of termintor armour when they finish mind wiping him and implanting memory. And as HQs goes the only ones that don't have a termintor armour, is Crow and the tech marine.
Breton wrote: I'm saying Troops (as a whole) should be able to do everything. They should be able to kill light infantry, heavy infantry/light vehicles, and heavy vehicles. Not every Troop unit needs to - i.e. Tacticals might do infantry and heavy vehicles while Intercessors do Infantry and light Vehicles, but you should be able to mix and match troops to do it all. The Specialist units should do it better, but they should do it in supplement to, not instead of troops.
I'm still not seeing how troops differ from other units under this definition.
In some cases they don't and shouldn't. In some cases they specialize enough they don't. Take Flayed Ones. They ginsu light infantry, but don't do much to tanks, Eradicators melt tanks, but don't do much to light infantry. Likewise Hive Guard. Venomthropes don't ginsu much of anything but they buff a whole lot.
In some cases they should. I will forever point and laugh at GW for flubbing Veteran Intercessors.
Edit to Add: Going the other way, only the Tyranid Warriors have Anti-tank, which means somewhat going Big Bugs. If you're going swarm bugs your troops can't really touch tanks. They need a biomorph/rule to swap that out so a swarm of little bugs have a troop counter to the bigger/tougher models from the troop slot.
Okay, let me rephrase - does "Troops" still represent any sort of meaningful distinction?
Or is it just a holdover at this point which could really do with being ditched for a term that has more meaning relative to the current state of armies and the FoC?
Well it is something GW makes you buy 3 boxs of or you can't play their games in an efficient matter. Lately I have been thinking that non of rules changes GW makes, have anything to do with wanting to make a better or worse game, and everything with making people buy more models.
If GW ditched the TROOPS in their rules, we would get some other type of mechanic that would make everyone buy at least 3 boxs of some sort of tactical class unit.
Galas wrote: As a non native speaker, I can't understand what you are saying breton.
Are you trying to say that basically troops should be able to access and do everything? So you basically want troops to don't need anything more?
I mean, I love troops, but I still believe you should use your tools to win, not just spamming troopers that can do everything and cheaper.
I'm saying Troops (as a whole) should be able to do everything. They should be able to kill light infantry, heavy infantry/light vehicles, and heavy vehicles. Not every Troop unit needs to - i.e. Tacticals might do infantry and heavy vehicles while Intercessors do Infantry and light Vehicles, but you should be able to mix and match troops to do it all. The Specialist units should do it better, but they should do it in supplement to, not instead of troops.
The problem is certain troops(intercessors) already do that while nobody else does.
Snake Tortoise wrote: For years the force org chart required a minimum of two troop choices. They got no special buffs, they were just mandatory. IIRC, in one edition only troops could hold objectives. Then formations came in and it was possible to build armies without any troops, but you gained more CP by using detachments with troops in them. Troops also had objective secured. Now you lose fewer CP's by taking detachments with troops. So GW wants us to use troops, and to me it makes sense that an army should contain a big proportion of basic infantry and not be mostly specialists and vehicles. It seems fluffier, in most cases.
Should troops be incentivised further? I've often thought it would be good to see them be deliberately more cost efficient than other units so they're no longer seen as a tax but something good to have in your army. The downside is it might result in a horde meta, slowing down play and clogging up tables. What about, instead, getting cheaper access to stratagems, or more strategems unique to troops that are deliberately overpowered?
It's never sat well with me that troop units are often just chaff on the table but we're penalised for not having them, often resulting in minimum sized units of the cheapest troops available. Would it be good for the game/hobby to encourage more basic line infantry, and if so, how should that be achieved?
Is this not a bit of a canard? With the exception of Eldar Guardians I'm seeing more troops than ever in army lists.
Denegaar wrote: IMO, troops should be really good at doing the mission (in 9th, scoring primaries by mantaining the objective) and fight other troops equally. If we gift ObSec to efficient Elite infantry... theres no point on having troops.
I actually disagree. When a mission that requires some sort of expertise is required, you bring in specialists to do them. "Troops" should be the best at fighting (point for point, with points being a rough approximation of the effort that the faction in-universe has to put into them to field them, relative to other soldiers).
Galas wrote: As a non native speaker, I can't understand what you are saying breton.
Are you trying to say that basically troops should be able to access and do everything? So you basically want troops to don't need anything more?
I mean, I love troops, but I still believe you should use your tools to win, not just spamming troopers that can do everything and cheaper.
I'm saying Troops (as a whole) should be able to do everything. They should be able to kill light infantry, heavy infantry/light vehicles, and heavy vehicles. Not every Troop unit needs to - i.e. Tacticals might do infantry and heavy vehicles while Intercessors do Infantry and light Vehicles, but you should be able to mix and match troops to do it all. The Specialist units should do it better, but they should do it in supplement to, not instead of troops.
The problem is certain troops(intercessors) already do that while nobody else does.
Tacticals do it, Intercessors, not really. And I've been pointing to several troops units that needed an extra thing to be able to do it yeah?
Dysartes wrote: The first question that should be posed is "Should troops be incentivised?", before you move on to "How should troops be incentivised?"
Let's not rush into Ian Malcolm's observation on Jurassic Park too quickly, folks.
They should, because right now people are forced to take them, and for some factions it's just a tax, and for others it's useful. So that's not good.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.
I love how you said BSS and Kabals when they are only taken in the minimals b.c they have to be, not b.c they are good.
I don't think Kabalites are a good example of proper functioning Troops. With the price hike for them and the Venoms, they are not efficient anymore.
- Don't live enough to hold objectives.
- Not able to kill anything.
- No synergy whatsoever in the Codex for using them (no stratagems, buffs, combos...)
In 8th you could spam them in Venoms because the loadout was cheap and durable enough... but Venom spam was pretty much a cheesy list and right now is way more expensive, so people is abusing other stuff.
Denegaar wrote: I don't think Kabalites are a good example of proper functioning Troops. With the price hike for them and the Venoms, they are not efficient anymore.
- Don't live enough to hold objectives.
- Not able to kill anything.
- No synergy whatsoever in the Codex for using them (no stratagems, buffs, combos...)
In 8th you could spam them in Venoms because the loadout was cheap and durable enough... but Venom spam was pretty much a cheesy list and right now is way more expensive, so people is abusing other stuff.
Yeah, Kabalites were tolerable in 8th just by virtue of being relatively cheap (though even then, I didn't see a whole lot of lists taking significantly more than the bare minimum). Now they and their transports got a whole lot more expensive, but (unlike Marines) they didn't get any more durable and their guns are the same pieces of overpriced arse they were before.
Denegaar wrote: I don't think Kabalites are a good example of proper functioning Troops. With the price hike for them and the Venoms, they are not efficient anymore.
- Don't live enough to hold objectives.
- Not able to kill anything.
- No synergy whatsoever in the Codex for using them (no stratagems, buffs, combos...)
In 8th you could spam them in Venoms because the loadout was cheap and durable enough... but Venom spam was pretty much a cheesy list and right now is way more expensive, so people is abusing other stuff.
While I agree overall, I take great issue with accusations of cheesy/spamming. Firstly we have relatively few units to pick from, and not all are in any way useful. Secondly, we are conceptually based around troops in transports, of which we have a choice of two. Of those, Venoms due to only having a capacity of 5, have to be taken in largeish numbers because we need some way to transport our useless HQs.......rant over
Denegaar wrote: I don't think Kabalites are a good example of proper functioning Troops. With the price hike for them and the Venoms, they are not efficient anymore.
- Don't live enough to hold objectives.
- Not able to kill anything.
- No synergy whatsoever in the Codex for using them (no stratagems, buffs, combos...)
In 8th you could spam them in Venoms because the loadout was cheap and durable enough... but Venom spam was pretty much a cheesy list and right now is way more expensive, so people is abusing other stuff.
While I agree overall, I take great issue with accusations of cheesy/spamming. Firstly we have relatively few units to pick from, and not all are in any way useful. Secondly, we are conceptually based around troops in transports, of which we have a choice of two. Of those, Venoms due to only having a capacity of 5, have to be taken in largeish numbers because we need some way to transport our useless HQs.......rant over
This is also a good point.
I'm reminded of back in 8th edition when I saw a great many people say that Archons must be good because near enough every Dark Eldar army included at least one. Most such people were apparently unaware that the Archon was the only generic HQ choice available to Kabal (and until late-8th, the special characters were even more of a tax than he was).
Okay, let me rephrase - does "Troops" still represent any sort of meaningful distinction?
Or is it just a holdover at this point which could really do with being ditched for a term that has more meaning relative to the current state of armies and the FoC?
Vipoid is asking the right questions here. To my mind, distinguishing between "troops" and the other battlefield roles (elites, fast attack, etc.) is basically pointless these days. We used to be forced to take certain units in an army, and now we're not.
There are plenty of armies (ravenwing, deathwing, Iyanden, Siam-Hann, white scars, etc.) where the main body of a small force is made up of units that don't have the battlefield role. It's arguably more fluffy to not field "troops" in those armies. So if you take the lore considerations out of the picture, what is a "troop," and how and why should it be treated differently from a non-troop?
Is a troop just a unit that's relatively crappy for it's points compared to another unit? That doesn't sound like something I want to field in most armies. The troop will just be a "tax" that I avoid taking as much as possible, and armies with cheaper or less crappy tax units will be at an advantage over other armies. Or worse, maybe I'm an Ulthwe player and I actually like the idea of fielding a bunch of basic guardian troops, but I'm shooting myself in the foot by doing so because it means the fluffy way to field my army is to take a bunch of suboptimal units. Intentionally designing troops to be crappier than other units is a bad idea.
Troops should be just as valuable as other units. Not necessarily as lethal, but as valuable. Any value the term "troop" has, I think, is as a shorthand for saying, "units that a conventional army wants to field a lot of because of the non-lethality-based merits they bring to the table." So maybe "troops" end up having access to abilities and wargear that make them especially good at screening out deepstrikers or holding objectives. Maybe troops buff non-troops or facilitate the use of other wargear (I'm thinking of markerlight firewarriors and seeker missiles at the moment). Maybe troops can intercept charges for their more valuable allies, or make it easier for characters to pass along buffs at a distance (vox carriers?). Or maybe they just have bad stats and a low points cost making them good at asserting board presence and diving onto objectives.
TLDR; "Troop" is a useless term, but I do believe we should start thinking of most "troops" as "support units" rather than just "crummy units." Or alternatively, if your troops are your army's best frontline fighters, then the rest of your codex should be the support to them.
Wyldhunt wrote: Any value the term "troop" has, I think, is as a shorthand for saying, "units that a conventional army wants to field a lot of because of the non-lethality-based merits they bring to the table."
Why would an army field a lot of units that are not particularly lethal? Their bread and butter should be killers.
A detachment has a maximum of 4 troop choices (it's a smaller scale game).
The number of fast attack, elites, and heavy support units is limited to 3 each. Also, this may never exceed the number of troops units in a detachment.
The typical structure is:
1-2 HQ
1-4 Troops
0-3 Fast Attack
0-3 Elites
0-3 Heavy Support
Adjust for the scale of 40k and presto! Troops are everywhere!
More restrictive list building leads to a healthier, more interesting game.
Wyldhunt wrote: Any value the term "troop" has, I think, is as a shorthand for saying, "units that a conventional army wants to field a lot of because of the non-lethality-based merits they bring to the table."
Why would an army field a lot of units that are not particularly lethal? Their bread and butter should be killers.
That's just not how armies work. For one thing, soldiers spend most of their time doing everything except for fighting; they patrol, train, stand watch, maintain their equipment, and enjoy their free time with actually shouldering arms and shooting taking only the barest fraction of their time. Even then, your average soldier is armed with the cheapest thing that works and can be adapted for more than one battlefield with a squad of soldiers perhaps having an LMG or Grenadier in the mix for suppression. The job of your average soldier is to hold ground, not to kill.
When they need something dead they call in support units like planes, tanks, artillery, etc. to do the job. This is why things like power armour probably won't be as much of a thing as people would like it to be because if your soldier becomes too heavy they start to have a nasty problem the moment they need to search a home and find the floor unable to support them. It's also why deaths on the battlefield tend to be from artillery, disease, malnutrition and not rounds from riflemen. War simply doesn't come down to mashing equal forces into one another and seeing who's deadliest.
Wyldhunt wrote: Any value the term "troop" has, I think, is as a shorthand for saying, "units that a conventional army wants to field a lot of because of the non-lethality-based merits they bring to the table."
Why would an army field a lot of units that are not particularly lethal? Their bread and butter should be killers.
In terms of fluff? It varies. Craftworlders simply don't have a ton of super lethal aspect warriors, so they fall back on their guardian millitia and ranger pals. Space marines seem to have a limited number of special weapons, so they give first dibs on the combi-bolters to the veterans and hand out normal bolters to everyone else. With tyranids, it's presumably just more efficient to have a bunch of gaunts and rippers rather than fielding all exocrines all the time. Etc. etc.
In terms of game design, "troops" should be units that make your army as a whole better at achieving victory without necessarily being as killy as your non-troops. So something like a dire avenger squad should have access to strats and special rules that let them protect or otherwise support my heavy hitters. Dire avenger shooting should not be as lethal as dark reaper shooting, but my army should be accustomed to performing maneuvers involving dire avengers because they're the most common and flexible aspect warriors around.
Synergy. The army should be greater than the sum of its parts. "Troops" should be the glue that holds the army together but not necessarily the guys who do the most damage. If there isn't a reason for me to want to field a bunch of them, then why should the rules force me to do so?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Blastaar wrote: I think the way MEDGe handles troops is best.
A detachment has a maximum of 4 troop choices (it's a smaller scale game).
The number of fast attack, elites, and heavy support units is limited to 3 each. Also, this may never exceed the number of troops units in a detachment.
The typical structure is:
1-2 HQ
1-4 Troops
0-3 Fast Attack
0-3 Elites
0-3 Heavy Support
Adjust for the scale of 40k and presto! Troops are everywhere!
More restrictive list building leads to a healthier, more interesting game.
Okay. Now show me a Deathwing-themed army that doesn't have non-Deathwing in it.
Blastaar wrote: I think the way MEDGe handles troops is best.
A detachment has a maximum of 4 troop choices (it's a smaller scale game).
The number of fast attack, elites, and heavy support units is limited to 3 each. Also, this may never exceed the number of troops units in a detachment.
The typical structure is:
1-2 HQ
1-4 Troops
0-3 Fast Attack
0-3 Elites
0-3 Heavy Support
Adjust for the scale of 40k and presto! Troops are everywhere!
More restrictive list building leads to a healthier, more interesting game.
Okay. Now show me a Deathwing-themed army that doesn't have non-Deathwing in it.
I said "typical." Want to know how we make sure we can field our DW and/or RW without the greenies? HQs- like it was pre-8th. Tie the detachment structure to its commander.
Increase/decrease the allowed number of units from one of the four categories, only allow units with a certain keyword, or disallow them, give certain units rules that make them troops if X....
I did make an error in the detachment structure, however:
1 HQ
1-4 Troops
0-2 Fast Attack
0-2 Elites
0-2 Heavy Support
But again, this is for a game where each side has around 20-30 models.
Wyldhunt wrote: Any value the term "troop" has, I think, is as a shorthand for saying, "units that a conventional army wants to field a lot of because of the non-lethality-based merits they bring to the table."
Why would an army field a lot of units that are not particularly lethal? Their bread and butter should be killers.
Because creating killers requires tons of time and money to invest in training and equipment. Armies during war times maybe can't afford that luxury.
Their bread and butter should be cannon fodder, it's more realistic. Unless they are designed to be specialists/elites only.
Wyldhunt wrote: Any value the term "troop" has, I think, is as a shorthand for saying, "units that a conventional army wants to field a lot of because of the non-lethality-based merits they bring to the table."
Why would an army field a lot of units that are not particularly lethal? Their bread and butter should be killers.
Because creating killers requires tons of time and money to invest in training and equipment. Armies during war times maybe can't afford that luxury.
Their bread and butter should be cannon fodder, it's more realistic. Unless they are designed to be specialists/elites only.
*smacks Blackie with the codex astartes*
some armies are, even at the troop level, intended to be elites. tactical marines are, outside veterns, supposed to be the BEST most experianced Marines in the chapter. I mean yeah some armies absolutely SHOULD have troops that are cheap and disposable whose soul purpose is to take a bullet instead of the important stuff. but well... not everyone wants to play the guard
Denegaar wrote: I don't think Kabalites are a good example of proper functioning Troops. With the price hike for them and the Venoms, they are not efficient anymore.
- Don't live enough to hold objectives.
- Not able to kill anything.
- No synergy whatsoever in the Codex for using them (no stratagems, buffs, combos...)
In 8th you could spam them in Venoms because the loadout was cheap and durable enough... but Venom spam was pretty much a cheesy list and right now is way more expensive, so people is abusing other stuff.
While I agree overall, I take great issue with accusations of cheesy/spamming. Firstly we have relatively few units to pick from, and not all are in any way useful. Secondly, we are conceptually based around troops in transports, of which we have a choice of two. Of those, Venoms due to only having a capacity of 5, have to be taken in largeish numbers because we need some way to transport our useless HQs.......rant over
I'm in love with our fluff and I like being able to transport our troops to battle, that's why I always bring 3-4 Venoms and a couple Raiders to all my 1000+ games, but Venoms were spammed for a while without fluff in mind... I remember a little more than a year ago, while I was starting to get into 40k from KT, that were lists with a core of:
2 Archons
5x5 Kabalites with Blaster
3 Ravagers
10 Venoms
Those Venoms were not there to transport Troops or being fluffy, I guess they were there just an hyper efficient way to bring Poison to screening chaff so the Blasters and Dissies did the job, while being super fast and durable for their cost.
I'm all in with our Troops synergising with our transports, but we need Kabalites to be better, so their 9pt cost is justified. Same with Wyches.
Just make troops good. It's the most simplest and most straight-forward answer. If troops are good units then they are used. There is no need to make troops some sub-standard unit that is there as a hindrance. Give troops some punch and make them good enough to use and you'll see troops en masse on the battlefield.
some armies are, even at the troop level, intended to be elites. tactical marines are, outside veterns, supposed to be the BEST most experianced Marines in the chapter. I mean yeah some armies absolutely SHOULD have troops that are cheap and disposable whose soul purpose is to take a bullet instead of the important stuff. but well... not everyone wants to play the guard
Those elite oriented armies are not supposed to have "bread and butter" units though. I mean I'd consider appropriate 1-2 troops at most for those kind of armies, especially for those ones like SM which have tons of datasheets available. So maybe 5-6 infantry units in a 2000 points with 1-2 troops, that's what I'd expect from "The Best of the Best" in the imperium.
Harlequins are also elite oriented but having just 8 datasheets in total I can understand using Troupe guys like bread and butter.
Maybe it would be appropriate to completely remove troops from elite oriented armies. They'd play with superbuffed dudes at the loss of Obj sec and (maybe) some CPs. Honestly I struggle to accept units like Intercessors (and all the other primaris troops), Custodian Guard or Troupe as troops.
Because creating killers requires tons of time and money to invest in training and equipment. Armies during war times maybe can't afford that luxury.
Their bread and butter should be cannon fodder, it's more realistic. Unless they are designed to be specialists/elites only.
What about armies that do not train or have cannon fodder? Like a court of young kings led army of just aspect warriors or custodes army. there is no such thing as cheapest equiped GK, all of them are psykers which is rare, each one has a suit of termintor armour, which again is very rare and each one has a psycho active weapon attuned to him which puts them at worse at the lowest level of aspirants of other chapters librariums.
What about an army that does nothing but breed perfect killing machines? Equipment grown into their flesh. Their every cell built to perform their singular function?
Lance845 wrote: What about an army that does nothing but breed perfect killing machines? Equipment grown into their flesh. Their every cell built to perform their singular function?
That's not how genetic engineering works. You still need to build off of what is biologically possible, what you consider optimal, the materials you have to work with, etc. Thus every unit you make won't be perfect even if that was the intent.
Denegaar wrote: I don't think Kabalites are a good example of proper functioning Troops. With the price hike for them and the Venoms, they are not efficient anymore.
- Don't live enough to hold objectives.
- Not able to kill anything.
- No synergy whatsoever in the Codex for using them (no stratagems, buffs, combos...)
In 8th you could spam them in Venoms because the loadout was cheap and durable enough... but Venom spam was pretty much a cheesy list and right now is way more expensive, so people is abusing other stuff.
Yeah, Kabalites were tolerable in 8th just by virtue of being relatively cheap (though even then, I didn't see a whole lot of lists taking significantly more than the bare minimum). Now they and their transports got a whole lot more expensive, but (unlike Marines) they didn't get any more durable and their guns are the same pieces of overpriced arse they were before.
I was taking Typically like...6 - 5 mans with a blaster in Venoms? They were the stars of the list.
Right now though - best to ignore them. They got hikes for no reason and wont have a proper codex for a while.
Lance845 wrote: What about an army that does nothing but breed perfect killing machines? Equipment grown into their flesh. Their every cell built to perform their singular function?
That's not how genetic engineering works. You still need to build off of what is biologically possible, what you consider optimal, the materials you have to work with, etc. Thus every unit you make won't be perfect even if that was the intent.
Perfect combination of possible and optimal with the materials available.
I don't understand the question. I am assuming it is some sort of idiom I don't know or it is a joke, which generaly don't get.
Custodes are the divine perfection of the human form, taken above what a human could ever be, perfected and then taken a level above. And with humans being the most perfect life forms, their perfection is impossible to question.
The problem with Troops, I agree, is that they have no meaning anymore.
The problem comes down to 40k not having any real way to interact with the game besides [point on battlefield to stand on] and [enemy models to kill].
Looking at total war (the types of wars fought in 40k) the primary benefits of line troopers were: 1) Cheap and cheerful power projection. If ground was unoccupied by resistance, they could go take it.
2) Durable for their cost, allowing them to be used to pin enemy attention and restrict enemy mobility with their fire while more lethal assets engage-to-destroy.
3) Capable of engaging all target types with different degrees of effectiveness, and as cheaply as possible.
Points 1 and 3 really only apply at a different echelon than 40k is played at; 40k operates at the company level (ish). Therefore: 1) moving out into empty territory in a Race to the Sea-style march isn't helpful. At the tactical scale, that sort of maneuverability is always going to belong to specialists/mechanization.
3) The ability to cheaply engage and deter enemy assets from success until heavier elements can be brought in only matters when those assets aren't immediately available. Given that you get to pick your own assets in 40k, rather than being assigned assets, you can simply pick the more lethal, more capable asset.
Troops exist "in real life" because armies are required to hold territory, and expending a heavier, more lethal asset to do so is a waste of resources. Games of 40k are absolutely not like that though; you can have as many of the lethal asset as points allow.
The clear solution might be to make troops cheaper pointswise, but the problem is simply that they still don't have a role. They will either continue to be useless, or they will drop so far in price that they become the lethal asset, which isn't correct either.
I was going to make a big post but Unit1126PL hit the nail on the head. The value of basic troops in real life is in doing things other than killing, but 40K doesn't incentivize or provide particularly complex mechanics for that role.
IRL you have the troops holding the line while the specialists act as force multipliers to exploit the weak point... but the scale of 40K means that your entire battle is the 'weak point', and what you're fielding on the table is just those specialists. Play something like Epic or Warmaster and suddenly those basic troops that stop you from getting surrounded are really important. Heck, Warhammer Fantasy did that well- most armies had viable Core units because maneuver was so important that just stopping the enemy from flanking your expensive elites was valuable in itself.
ObSec and objective-focused games is a sort of nod in the right direction but it's very one-dimensional. Zoning out deep strike and screening against chargers is viable, but anything can do it, not just basic troops.
And at a fundamental level, paying hundreds of dollars and spending dozens of hours of time on units whose primary value is just existing is not super rewarding.
Very broadly, you could design Troops to be the jacks of all trades, while the other slots contain units which are highly specialized and outright need support in order to function. But that means changing most of the game, not just the Troops.
Edit: Thinking about Fantasy more, what worked there is that there were critical functions that any unit could perform, so a jack-of-all-trades that wasn't especially great at anything was still valuable. You wanted to get a rank bonus by having big units, you wanted to flank the enemy to deny their rank bonus, and you wanted to keep gaps filled so the enemy couldn't do the same to you. The game had some balance issues, but generally most armies performed best with a mixture of good troops (or monsters, or characters) to do the heavy lifting and cheap troops to do those vital functions. 40K has... screening out chargers and preventing deep strike, I guess? The problem being that your expensive main combatants can do it on their own, so you don't suffer for not having chaff. There is ObSec and holding objectives, but unlike the Fantasy mechanics I mentioned those don't actually contribute to winning the fight.
To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.
catbarf wrote: I was going to make a big post but Unit1126PL hit the nail on the head. The value of basic troops in real life is in doing things other than killing, but 40K doesn't incentivize or provide particularly complex mechanics for that role.
IRL you have the troops holding the line while the specialists act as force multipliers to exploit the weak point... but the scale of 40K means that your entire battle is the 'weak point', and what you're fielding on the table is just those specialists. Play something like Epic or Warmaster and suddenly those basic troops that stop you from getting surrounded are really important. Heck, Warhammer Fantasy did that well- most armies had viable Core units because maneuver was so important that just stopping the enemy from flanking your expensive elites was valuable in itself.
ObSec and objective-focused games is a sort of nod in the right direction but it's very one-dimensional. Zoning out deep strike and screening against chargers is viable, but anything can do it, not just basic troops.
And at a fundamental level, paying hundreds of dollars and spending dozens of hours of time on units whose primary value is just existing is not super rewarding.
Very broadly, you could design Troops to be the jacks of all trades, while the other slots contain units which are highly specialized and outright need support in order to function. But that means changing most of the game, not just the Troops.
Edit: Thinking about Fantasy more, what worked there is that there were critical functions that any unit could perform, so a jack-of-all-trades that wasn't especially great at anything was still valuable. You wanted to get a rank bonus by having big units, you wanted to flank the enemy to deny their rank bonus, and you wanted to keep gaps filled so the enemy couldn't do the same to you. The game had some balance issues, but generally most armies performed best with a mixture of good troops (or monsters, or characters) to do the heavy lifting and cheap troops to do those vital functions. 40K has... screening out chargers and preventing deep strike, I guess? The problem being that your expensive main combatants can do it on their own, so you don't suffer for not having chaff. There is ObSec and holding objectives, but unlike the Fantasy mechanics I mentioned those don't actually contribute to winning the fight.
To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.
Yep. More restrictive army-building won't do it alone. For every "how do we fix X in 40k?" question, the answer is always "rewrite the game." The shallow core rules are the, you guessed it, core problem.
Which is why the fantasy 40k in my head uses front and rear arcs, suppression, and objectives and missions similar to Malifaux, MEDGe, and Infinity.
catbarf wrote: To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.
Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.
It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.
catbarf wrote: To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.
Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.
It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.
Legitimate question, what if dead troops were still obsec? So you can't just kill all the troops on an objective, you need to bring your own up there as well.
catbarf wrote: To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.
Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.
It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.
catbarf wrote: To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.
Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.
It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.
Because dead troops are no longer obsec.
Contextless statement is non sequitur.
I was agreeing with you in general. Obsec wasn't enough.
catbarf wrote: To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.
Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.
It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.
Like I said in my post, obsec misses the mark because it doesn't contribute to winning fights- only to winning scenario objectives. Since obsec is baked into the unit cost, it means taking troops is sacrificing the greater combat ability of specialists in favor of greater objective performance, which creates an incentive to skew into either no troops (maximize your killing because the enemy can't score if they're dead) or skewing into tons of troops (take more bodies than the enemy can kill, win on objectives). The purposes of your Troops and non-Troops aren't synergistic; they're diametrically opposed. That means they're extremely hard to balance because there's so little room between too expensive for what they give you, cheap enough to spam in unkillable obsec hordes, and killy enough to take the place of specialists while still having obsec.
The problem is trying to give Troops something they can do instead of killing the enemy. What they need to do is contribute to killing the enemy, but in a manner different from the rest of your army.
Going back to WHFB, even the worst infantry could contribute flanking, outnumbering, and rank bonuses, and thus swing a fight more than having a few extra bodies in your uber-elite-killy unit. Defensively, getting in the way of enemy troops was incredibly important to prevent them from flanking you, so those speed-bumps had real utility. The underlying theme is that there was more to winning a fight than raw killing power; you had to set up the right situations to act as force-multipliers and prevent the enemy from doing the same to you, so sacrificing some elites in favor of a few more blocks of mundane troops (to maximize the effectiveness of your elites) was often the better way to play.
40K's in a bit of a rut because those kinds of force-multipliers don't exist. If we had a crossfire mechanic where having two units flanking a target gave some sort of bonus, then cheap troops would be useful both to set up crossfire shots for your heavy-hitters and to stop the enemy from doing the same. If we had units being slowed by enemy fire or forced to keep their heads down- even if said fire was ineffective- then basic dudes with rifles could pin the enemy in place for your specialists to bring down the hammer blow. If infantry in hard cover were extremely hard to dislodge, you might take some cheap squads to hold areas important to maneuver. If you needed spotters for long-ranged or indirect fire, you might take some infantry to do the job. These sorts of mechanics reflect what 'troops' do in the real world; they contribute to the fight by acting as force multipliers to more directly lethal assets.
Having holding objectives provide those sorts of bonuses is thinking along the right lines, but like you noted I'd be concerned that it's too situational and potentially exploitable to be a really robust mechanic- aggressive armies that can box the enemy into their deployment zone, for example, get a huge benefit and deny the enemy any utility to their troops.
I think it needs to be something more universal, more baked into the core mechanics. Find a way to make board presence useful for helping to kill the enemy, not just score points, and that'll give them a role.
Or is it just a holdover at this point which could really do with being ditched for a term that has more meaning relative to the current state of armies and the FoC?
Vipoid is asking the right questions here. To my mind, distinguishing between "troops" and the other battlefield roles (elites, fast attack, etc.) is basically pointless these days. We used to be forced to take certain units in an army, and now we're not.
What used to happen is instead of troops etc there were “squads,” which could be any infantry squad including jump infantry, a maximum percentage of characters, and a max of support, which meant vehicles. There’s a lot to be said for that and it’s better than making every game be 2x troops v 2x troop
It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.
Well yeah this is really interesting, and there’s a post on the second page that asks for fog of war and if like that too. It’s too bad GW and most of the game store crowd don’t want that kind of game
Well it's not like Troops can't kill things, or can't contribute to the field. They're just not as shiny as some other units.
I'm kinda thinking the discount route could be the way to go. But rather than being a per-model discount or per unit discount, (because that could wind up being unfair for certain codexes), I'd instead look at some number of points refunded for every 100 points you spend on troops. Like 5-10 points for every 100 spent on troops. If I spend 1000 points on Tac Marines, I get 100 more points.
Insectum7 wrote: Well it's not like Troops can't kill things, or can't contribute to the field. They're just not as shiny as some other units.
I'm kinda thinking the discount route could be the way to go. But rather than being a per-model discount or per unit discount, (because that could wind up being unfair for certain codexes), I'd instead look at some number of points refunded for every 100 points you spend on troops. Like 5-10 points for every 100 spent on troops. If I spend 1000 points on Tac Marines, I get 100 more points.
you mean like if your army consists of an optimal 6 troops, to 2 fast attack and 2 heavy support you can take free dedicated transports?
Insectum7 wrote: Well it's not like Troops can't kill things, or can't contribute to the field. They're just not as shiny as some other units.
I'm kinda thinking the discount route could be the way to go. But rather than being a per-model discount or per unit discount, (because that could wind up being unfair for certain codexes), I'd instead look at some number of points refunded for every 100 points you spend on troops. Like 5-10 points for every 100 spent on troops. If I spend 1000 points on Tac Marines, I get 100 more points.
you mean like if your army consists of an optimal 6 troops, to 2 fast attack and 2 heavy support you can take free dedicated transports?
Similar in the basic idea, except implemented in a far fairer fashion, and 100% focused on the value of the troops. Double-demi only required "units", meaning minimum squads showed up. Using the points value actually incentivizes bringing more rather than only spending "whatever" to hit the quota.
Double Demi-Co required some tax units, but since you could go cheap it didn't bite so hard. Plus you could get 800 points of Transports (Razorbacks). . . for about 450ish "tax" (six units of Marines). What I'm proposing . . . I think you'd struggle to get 150 points out of it if the ratio was 10:1
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Karol wrote: Would be interesting, although am not sure many could afford buying 10 land raiders.
"Dedicated Transports" was the rule in C:SM 7th ed. So for Marines it was Razorbacks, Rhinos and Pods.
catbarf wrote: To make Troops useful in 40K, you need to find a way for basic dudes to contribute to a fight just by being there, rather than as a function of raw firepower and durability.
Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.
It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.
Like I said in my post, obsec misses the mark because it doesn't contribute to winning fights- only to winning scenario objectives. Since obsec is baked into the unit cost, it means taking troops is sacrificing the greater combat ability of specialists in favor of greater objective performance, which creates an incentive to skew into either no troops (maximize your killing because the enemy can't score if they're dead) or skewing into tons of troops (take more bodies than the enemy can kill, win on objectives). The purposes of your Troops and non-Troops aren't synergistic; they're diametrically opposed. That means they're extremely hard to balance because there's so little room between too expensive for what they give you, cheap enough to spam in unkillable obsec hordes, and killy enough to take the place of specialists while still having obsec.
The problem is trying to give Troops something they can do instead of killing the enemy. What they need to do is contribute to killing the enemy, but in a manner different from the rest of your army.
Going back to WHFB, even the worst infantry could contribute flanking, outnumbering, and rank bonuses, and thus swing a fight more than having a few extra bodies in your uber-elite-killy unit. Defensively, getting in the way of enemy troops was incredibly important to prevent them from flanking you, so those speed-bumps had real utility. The underlying theme is that there was more to winning a fight than raw killing power; you had to set up the right situations to act as force-multipliers and prevent the enemy from doing the same to you, so sacrificing some elites in favor of a few more blocks of mundane troops (to maximize the effectiveness of your elites) was often the better way to play.
40K's in a bit of a rut because those kinds of force-multipliers don't exist. If we had a crossfire mechanic where having two units flanking a target gave some sort of bonus, then cheap troops would be useful both to set up crossfire shots for your heavy-hitters and to stop the enemy from doing the same. If we had units being slowed by enemy fire or forced to keep their heads down- even if said fire was ineffective- then basic dudes with rifles could pin the enemy in place for your specialists to bring down the hammer blow. If infantry in hard cover were extremely hard to dislodge, you might take some cheap squads to hold areas important to maneuver. If you needed spotters for long-ranged or indirect fire, you might take some infantry to do the job. These sorts of mechanics reflect what 'troops' do in the real world; they contribute to the fight by acting as force multipliers to more directly lethal assets.
Having holding objectives provide those sorts of bonuses is thinking along the right lines, but like you noted I'd be concerned that it's too situational and potentially exploitable to be a really robust mechanic- aggressive armies that can box the enemy into their deployment zone, for example, get a huge benefit and deny the enemy any utility to their troops.
I think it needs to be something more universal, more baked into the core mechanics. Find a way to make board presence useful for helping to kill the enemy, not just score points, and that'll give them a role.
I really wish I could exalt your posts more than once.
I've seen you make a lot of suggestions that I think would really help make 40k into a much deeper and more tactical game than it currently is.
Yeah, outnumbering for combat isn't even a thing anymore, unfortunately. It used to be awesome because Dreadnoughts counted for 10 models, so you could force hard checks just by slamming them into a combat, even if they didn't kill too much.
Insectum7 wrote: Yeah, outnumbering for combat isn't even a thing anymore, unfortunately. It used to be awesome because Dreadnoughts counted for 10 models, so you could force hard checks just by slamming them into a combat, even if they didn't kill too much.
I think it's also a shame that Morale has been turned into nothing more than some extra casualties to large units at the end of the turn.
The removal of stuff like 'pinned' and 'falling back' seem like a significant blow to the game.
I get that not being able to use units isn't fun, but couldn't they have kept them even in reduced forms? e.g. make pinned half speed, can't advance/charge and -1 to hit, or -2M, can't advance/charge and can't fired overwatch. Just *something* that can be inflicted on a unit and will at least hamper its ability to fight in the subsequent round..
As it stands most armies are forced into taking bad troops, which means people only take the minimum amount as a tax.
CSM, Cultists, Guardians, Kabalites and many more are all objectively bad troops at the moment.
I'm not talking about making all of them on the same level as intercessors but giving people a reason to want to play them somehow.
Dire avengers, Skitarii, Daemonnettes and cult marines are all troops that don't feel as bad to take as the ones mentioned before.
I guess giving small rules would help people play them. Or make them dirt cheap so they can serve as simple bodies to stand on objectives and get mulched
Canadian 5th wrote: That's just not how armies work. For one thing, soldiers spend most of their time doing everything except for fighting; they patrol, train, stand watch, maintain their equipment, and enjoy their free time with actually shouldering arms and shooting taking only the barest fraction of their time. Even then, your average soldier is armed with the cheapest thing that works and can be adapted for more than one battlefield with a squad of soldiers perhaps having an LMG or Grenadier in the mix for suppression. The job of your average soldier is to hold ground, not to kill.
When they need something dead they call in support units like planes, tanks, artillery, etc. to do the job. This is why things like power armour probably won't be as much of a thing as people would like it to be because if your soldier becomes too heavy they start to have a nasty problem the moment they need to search a home and find the floor unable to support them. It's also why deaths on the battlefield tend to be from artillery, disease, malnutrition and not rounds from riflemen. War simply doesn't come down to mashing equal forces into one another and seeing who's deadliest.
Yes, that's fine, but what about 40k, where people actually do go and kill each other with footsoldiers. Troops are there because they are lethal for the amount of effort their faction puts into them. It doesn't mean they aren't a horde of poorly-trained and equipped mooks, but they're there to kill things. They don't have the training for anything else.
Charistoph wrote:Well, one attempt was to make them the mission-focused units by handling most of the Objective work via Objective Secured. That wasn't enough. Honestly, asides from just points, one should WANT to have Troops on those Objectives. It may be because they gain a certain bonus or two when they are on an Objective, or they improve the army's performance by their presence, or something similar, but that won't help a player in situations where Objectives simply do not exist.
It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.
Like I said in my post, obsec misses the mark because it doesn't contribute to winning fights- only to winning scenario objectives. Since obsec is baked into the unit cost, it means taking troops is sacrificing the greater combat ability of specialists in favor of greater objective performance, which creates an incentive to skew into either no troops (maximize your killing because the enemy can't score if they're dead) or skewing into tons of troops (take more bodies than the enemy can kill, win on objectives). The purposes of your Troops and non-Troops aren't synergistic; they're diametrically opposed. That means they're extremely hard to balance because there's so little room between too expensive for what they give you, cheap enough to spam in unkillable obsec hordes, and killy enough to take the place of specialists while still having obsec.
Which is why I moved on from there after the second sentence.
catbarf wrote:The problem is trying to give Troops something they can do instead of killing the enemy. What they need to do is contribute to killing the enemy, but in a manner different from the rest of your army.
Going back to WHFB, even the worst infantry could contribute flanking, outnumbering, and rank bonuses, and thus swing a fight more than having a few extra bodies in your uber-elite-killy unit. Defensively, getting in the way of enemy troops was incredibly important to prevent them from flanking you, so those speed-bumps had real utility. The underlying theme is that there was more to winning a fight than raw killing power; you had to set up the right situations to act as force-multipliers and prevent the enemy from doing the same to you, so sacrificing some elites in favor of a few more blocks of mundane troops (to maximize the effectiveness of your elites) was often the better way to play.
40K's in a bit of a rut because those kinds of force-multipliers don't exist. If we had a crossfire mechanic where having two units flanking a target gave some sort of bonus, then cheap troops would be useful both to set up crossfire shots for your heavy-hitters and to stop the enemy from doing the same. If we had units being slowed by enemy fire or forced to keep their heads down- even if said fire was ineffective- then basic dudes with rifles could pin the enemy in place for your specialists to bring down the hammer blow. If infantry in hard cover were extremely hard to dislodge, you might take some cheap squads to hold areas important to maneuver. If you needed spotters for long-ranged or indirect fire, you might take some infantry to do the job. These sorts of mechanics reflect what 'troops' do in the real world; they contribute to the fight by acting as force multipliers to more directly lethal assets.
They actually kind of exist in 40K, but they are somewhat rare. Tau Markerlights fit this pattern of using your fire to improve another unit's abilities, and they have whole units dedicated to doing this.
The PC Game Battletech has a mechanic where if a unit moves far enough they gain evasion, reducing people's ability to hit them. If a unit fires on them, this evasion is reduced, even if they miss. I was thinking of this as a possible mechanic, but then was reminded of Markerlights, and I'm sure that Tau players would not appreciate having a core mechanic spread to every Troop in the game.
catbarf wrote:Having holding objectives provide those sorts of bonuses is thinking along the right lines, but like you noted I'd be concerned that it's too situational and potentially exploitable to be a really robust mechanic- aggressive armies that can box the enemy into their deployment zone, for example, get a huge benefit and deny the enemy any utility to their troops.
I think it needs to be something more universal, more baked into the core mechanics. Find a way to make board presence useful for helping to kill the enemy, not just score points, and that'll give them a role.
That's why I suggested a "camping" mechanic, something that can be used when Objectives are available or not. However, how to make those determinations and what they should do, if the bonuses should be universal, faction, or unit specific is something that would have to be pounded out.
pelicaniforce wrote:
Charistoph wrote: It would be helpful if they could "camp" an area and make them key points for one's specialists to go out from, or make it murder for opposing specialists to dislodge. Increasing range of weapons, accuracy, or even rates of fire could be a couple other methods as well.
Well yeah this is really interesting, and there’s a post on the second page that asks for fog of war and if like that too. It’s too bad GW and most of the game store crowd don’t want that kind of game
While Fog of War would have an affect, I don't think it would have any affect on the idea I presented...
VladimirHerzog wrote:How about just making them decent?
If that was considered likely, this discussion wouldn't really be one that comes up a lot.
As it stands most armies are forced into taking bad troops, which means people only take the minimum amount as a tax. CSM, Cultists, Guardians, Kabalites and many more are all objectively bad troops at the moment.
I'm not talking about making all of them on the same level as intercessors but giving people a reason to want to play them somehow.
Dire avengers, Skitarii, Daemonnettes and cult marines are all troops that don't feel as bad to take as the ones mentioned before. I guess giving small rules would help people play them. Or make them dirt cheap so they can serve as simple bodies to stand on objectives and get mulched
I would argue they are not bad in opposition of each other. They are all terrible when they have to share the world of a 20ppm 2 Wound intercessor marine with doctrines and traits which makes them just terrible..
Ideally, troops should just be the most efficient choice points-wise. You should want to take them because they're just all-around good. Non-troops can then be something you take because you need the specific thing they can do, but that are less efficient overall and therefore not something you take unless you really want that specific thing.
Unfortunately, GW doesn't like that approach for some reason, I guess because they'd rather sell you more expensive specialist models. So instead they are stuck taxing you into taking them in one way or another, whether through the mission or through a detachment system.
And how do you propose making troops efficient points-wise without either turning them into specialists or simply making them the most lethal option?
Old GW had this problem - units with special and heavy weapons were "flexible" but essentially became specialists (6 man tac squads with plasma + lascannon in 4th edition, bikes in 5th edition, windrider jetbikes in 7th edition...). Units without special weapons were either waaaaaay too efficient (Khorne Zerkers got like, 1 powerfist but it was always better to bring more Khorne Zerkers in a WE army than literally any other CC option) or not good.
Unit1126PLL wrote: And how do you propose making troops efficient points-wise without either turning them into specialists or simply making them the most lethal option?
Old GW had this problem - units with special and heavy weapons were "flexible" but essentially became specialists (6 man tac squads with plasma + lascannon in 4th edition, bikes in 5th edition, windrider jetbikes in 7th edition...). Units without special weapons were either waaaaaay too efficient (Khorne Zerkers got like, 1 powerfist but it was always better to bring more Khorne Zerkers in a WE army than literally any other CC option) or not good.
To be fair, part of that was due to their own rule structure, like forcing the unit to be only able to have one target a turn. Of course, the other part of it is simple expediency in that it is easier to move one unit with melta weapons against a tank than to maneuver a unit between infantry and vehicles. Still with the Armor Value system, even 7-8 Boltguns would be rendered useless in a Melta strike. It's a little better since they did away with that, but not by much.
Just to throw my two cents in. I believe a decent way to incentivize troops (i.e. mainly light infantry) would be to make them hard to shift while in cover. In other words they are super durable per point while hunkered down or just while weaving through terrain. This could allow them to better contest objectives or hold flanks without getting instantly nuked. It also doesn’t require a lot of killyness.
I also imagine that certain terrain set ups should incentivize different types of units. Cities require troops, preferably with jump packs, while deserts require tanks or other vehicles. Basically the terrain would determine what you bring.
The problem with this idea is that many people don’t like the idea of changing a list right before a game. Anyway, just something to consider I guess.
As it stands most armies are forced into taking bad troops, which means people only take the minimum amount as a tax.
CSM, Cultists, Guardians, Kabalites and many more are all objectively bad troops at the moment.
I'm not talking about making all of them on the same level as intercessors but giving people a reason to want to play them somehow.
Dire avengers, Skitarii, Daemonnettes and cult marines are all troops that don't feel as bad to take as the ones mentioned before.
I guess giving small rules would help people play them. Or make them dirt cheap so they can serve as simple bodies to stand on objectives and get mulched
I would argue they are not bad in opposition of each other.
They are all terrible when they have to share the world of a 20ppm 2 Wound intercessor marine with doctrines and traits which makes them just terrible..
For the most part, yes these are selfcontained quite ok... except the cultists.... because god forbid a csm player wanted to field a Cultist army. or bypass the gakky state csm were in..
Dandelion wrote: Just to throw my two cents in. I believe a decent way to incentivize troops (i.e. mainly light infantry) would be to make them hard to shift while in cover. In other words they are super durable per point while hunkered down or just while weaving through terrain. This could allow them to better contest objectives or hold flanks without getting instantly nuked. It also doesn’t require a lot of killyness.
I also imagine that certain terrain set ups should incentivize different types of units. Cities require troops, preferably with jump packs, while deserts require tanks or other vehicles. Basically the terrain would determine what you bring.
The problem with this idea is that many people don’t like the idea of changing a list right before a game. Anyway, just something to consider I guess.
I agree completely, in an earlier post I said that basic infantry in cover might get an extra save against weapons that don't have blast or possibly rapid fire. Maybe not rapid fire tho.
maybe light infantry (Save 5+ pr worse) gets a 6 FNP save in cover against anything that isn't a blast weapon. So normal guns suffer against them in cover but blast weapons don't.
Maybe troops should get dedicated troop abilities. Go to ground, for example. Stratagem type abilities that can be used for free on troop units.
The easier option is still making troops slightly cheaper. This would be easier to get right, and could be fixed on the fly in Chapter Approved. Were 5ppm IG infantry squads really that oppressive?
Dandelion wrote: Just to throw my two cents in. I believe a decent way to incentivize troops (i.e. mainly light infantry) would be to make them hard to shift while in cover. In other words they are super durable per point while hunkered down or just while weaving through terrain. This could allow them to better contest objectives or hold flanks without getting instantly nuked. It also doesn’t require a lot of killyness.
I also imagine that certain terrain set ups should incentivize different types of units. Cities require troops, preferably with jump packs, while deserts require tanks or other vehicles. Basically the terrain would determine what you bring.
The problem with this idea is that many people don’t like the idea of changing a list right before a game. Anyway, just something to consider I guess.
I agree completely, in an earlier post I said that basic infantry in cover might get an extra save against weapons that don't have blast or possibly rapid fire. Maybe not rapid fire tho.
maybe light infantry (Save 5+ pr worse) gets a 6 FNP save in cover against anything that isn't a blast weapon. So normal guns suffer against them in cover but blast weapons don't.
Someone suggested Troop units setting up barriers, and that is part of what inspired the "camp" concept for Troops.
If troops can dig in why not other infantry units such as Devastators? It makes as much sense that a heavy weapons unit would dig in as it does for troops to dig in at an objective.
If troops can dig in why not other infantry units such as Devastators? It makes as much sense that a heavy weapons unit would dig in as it does for troops to dig in at an objective.
Because it defeats the objective. Of course, it makes sense from a fluff perspective. But it probably puts us back in a place where people take three MSU cultist units so they can spend their points on havocs. I'd much rather see army compositions with lots of CSM units
If troops can dig in why not other infantry units such as Devastators? It makes as much sense that a heavy weapons unit would dig in as it does for troops to dig in at an objective.
difference between shock troops like marines that also happen to have the armor to pull their duty off and the puny little guardsmen/ cultist/ guardian praying to whatever entity to survive...
should also probably be terrain dependant... digging in the midst of a highway isn't going to happen in a timely enough manner.
If troops can dig in why not other infantry units such as Devastators? It makes as much sense that a heavy weapons unit would dig in as it does for troops to dig in at an objective.
Because it defeats the objective. Of course, it makes sense from a fluff perspective. But it probably puts us back in a place where people take three MSU cultist units so they can spend their points on havocs. I'd much rather see army compositions with lots of CSM units
as if you'd see cultists in their state ATM...
and secondly what's wrong with that, neither GW nor players should dictate how you run your army via a ruleset and internal balance, else you end up preciscly with 1-3 valid playstyles for a faction and you better start hoping that it is your style that works with that.
If troops can dig in why not other infantry units such as Devastators? It makes as much sense that a heavy weapons unit would dig in as it does for troops to dig in at an objective.
Because it defeats the objective. Of course, it makes sense from a fluff perspective. But it probably puts us back in a place where people take three MSU cultist units so they can spend their points on havocs. I'd much rather see army compositions with lots of CSM units
The game needs a level of verisimilitude otherwise it may as well go to a fully abstract set of rules with no connection to reality. Hence if one infantry unit can dig in, another similar unit must be able to do the same.
The real solution is to give all units something they could do but that they probably don't want to take an action to do. An example might be taking a 'useless' action to allow another unit to do something that turn. You could do it with any unit but it would be best to do it with a unit that gives up little to do it in the first place.
Take <actions> and be able to act normally comes to my mind.
Doubles down on troops being better at scoring (read: succeeding at the mission), while other units are better at killing.
You can do all kinds of things with this. Say troops count in light cover while around a mission objective, to show that they are fortifying the position.
Digging in: Unit can not move / shoot for a turn, add +1 to their SV so long it remains stationary. / alternatively gain light / heavy cover?
Probably best to reimplement a cover save? light / heavy cover 5/ 4+
Also, in order to make it for heavy infantry enticing to also use cover it could ignore 1 pip of AP?
Blast and flame weapons aswell as grenades could ignore cover saves aswell.
I remember suggesting exactly such a "dig in" mechanic as an option for infantry...going all the way back to at least 5E? Maybe in 4E? GW never seems to want to offer alternative unit actions other than move/shoot/charge however
Vaktathi wrote: I remember suggesting exactly such a "dig in" mechanic as an option for infantry...going all the way back to at least 5E? Maybe in 4E? GW never seems to want to offer alternative unit actions other than move/shoot/charge however
Honestly, alot of such mechanics would be amazing.
Assuming further GW would've implemented a general usefull cover system and the weapons to counter that we would've had alot less issues with lethality..
yukishiro1 wrote: Ideally, troops should just be the most efficient choice points-wise. You should want to take them because they're just all-around good. Non-troops can then be something you take because you need the specific thing they can do, but that are less efficient overall and therefore not something you take unless you really want that specific thing.
Unfortunately, GW doesn't like that approach for some reason, I guess because they'd rather sell you more expensive specialist models. So instead they are stuck taxing you into taking them in one way or another, whether through the mission or through a detachment system.
I love my troops, as I said earlier, but really I can't understand this hard on many people has about troops, or maybe is that you just dislike specialists and more interesting and "rare" stuff? 40k fluff allows for all kind of armies in the scale we see on the table. Having 50 terminators on a single battle is perfectly justificable, just like having a full armored imperial guard company, etc...
Right now, the army building structure is very good. Troop heavy armies have more CP, specialized ones have less without the extremes in 8th with ravenwing and deathwing armies with 4CP and troop heavy ones with 20CP. And before 9th price hikes, most troops in the game were quite capable on their own terms with some exceptions. Right now, less so. But this talk about making units being basically everything about the game and the specialist being basically ignorable is like going to a Icecream shop and asking for 50% flavours to be replaced by vanilla because it was the foundation and is tradition that it should be the more popular and sold. And, again, I say this as a guy with 70 firewarriors and 50 kroots.
We are playing Scifi and Fantasy guys. People wants to see, to buy, AND to use the special stuff, the knights riding lizards, the giant robots, the laser shooting tanks and mechas, the ogres and the trolls and the mutated birdmen. And theres also a place for the normal joes but if you really really don't like the special stuff or believe their place in the game should be marginal probably scifi and fantasy is not the genre you would be more comfortable with. And this doesnt mean I don't believe theres more place to add tactical depth and uses for troops in 40k. I believe it is really it, and better morale , supression rules, combat rules for supporting etc... I would very much like them.
If I take 6 10 man intercessor squads and you take a 3 5 woman SOB squads, we're both (presumably) building battalions and have the same number of CPs, despite my having twice as many squads as you, and likely a much greater percentage of points. I mean not a big deal, but I don't consider "3 bare bones squads" partiuclarly troop heavy
I'm telling you guys, the way to fix this problem (like most of the problems in 40k) is to rewite the game from the ground up and actually give it some depth.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I'm telling you guys, the way to fix this problem (like most of the problems in 40k) is to rewite the game from the ground up and actually give it some depth.
aye, maybee even bring in USR's this time propperly.And combat modifiers (surperssion, morale, shock, etc.)
Unit1126PLL wrote: I'm telling you guys, the way to fix this problem (like most of the problems in 40k) is to rewite the game from the ground up and actually give it some depth.
aye, maybee even bring in USR's this time propperly.And combat modifiers (surperssion, morale, shock, etc.)
Indeed. The combat modifiers thing would absolutely help the utility of troops - having cheap bodies capable of suppression is immensely useful. Especially if there's a rule saying you have to be able to hurt the target to suppress it - then, taking troops choices with a mix of capabilities (e.g. tactical squad with lascannon & flamer) could contribute to suppressing multiple unit types (e.g. a unit in cover with the flamer, a regular unit with bolters, and a tank with the lascannon). This effect would allow for the specialists to maneuver against the target, or for said tactical marines to advance against the target, or even just to enhance survivability by degrading the enemy assets...
and that's literally just considering suppression.
40k desperately needs more mechanics for shooting than just "kill stuff".
Most of the bullets fired in combat are to suppress the enemy and allow for either a support element (artillery, airstrike) to take them out or to create a situation which allows for a flanking manoeuvre (the 4 Fs: Find, Fix, Flank, Finish).
Adding a suppression mechanic also allows for more room in designing rules for weapons as you can make certain weapons better at suppression. Perfect example is the Heavy Bolter/Assault Cannon/Autocannon issue, where your design space in pure killing power is so limited that one of these three will almost always infringe on the intended use of at least one of the others. Like the buff for heavy bolters make them a superior choice to the Autocannon for a such a huge number of targets that you've effectively invalidated that option as a real choice.
If instead of them making the Heavy Bolter deadlier they made it more efficient at suppression, then it would have a niche separate from raw killing power.
Make troops jack of all trades, masters of none? Make specialized units only able to fill the role they specialize for?
To take an example that everyone is familiar with :
Make tac marines a shooty+melee unit with 2 basic attack in cc (and remove angels of death pls)
Make Agressors a purely shooty unit with 1 basic attack in cc Make Assault marins a purely melee unit with 3 attacks in melee.
So troops would be allowed to be "alright" at multiple roles but specialized units would excel in these roles.
Dandelion wrote: Just to throw my two cents in. I believe a decent way to incentivize troops (i.e. mainly light infantry) would be to make them hard to shift while in cover. In other words they are super durable per point while hunkered down or just while weaving through terrain. This could allow them to better contest objectives or hold flanks without getting instantly nuked. It also doesn’t require a lot of killyness.
The frustrating thing for me is that the old cover system did exactly this: it made light infantry in cover significantly more difficult to kill, while heavy infantry only needed it to protect against heavy weapons.
Now it's reversed. Heavy infantry get more benefit from cover than light infantry; in some matchups (eg Cultists vs Intercessors) there's no point in taking cover since you never get a save either way.
Dandelion wrote: Just to throw my two cents in. I believe a decent way to incentivize troops (i.e. mainly light infantry) would be to make them hard to shift while in cover. In other words they are super durable per point while hunkered down or just while weaving through terrain. This could allow them to better contest objectives or hold flanks without getting instantly nuked. It also doesn’t require a lot of killyness.
The frustrating thing for me is that the old cover system did exactly this: it made light infantry in cover significantly more difficult to kill, while heavy infantry only needed it to protect against heavy weapons.
Now it's reversed. Heavy infantry get more benefit from cover than light infantry; in some matchups (eg Cultists vs Intercessors) there's no point in taking cover since you never get a save either way.
Which amuses me to no end, the mighty shock trooper hugging their corners instead of the rabble and common footsoliders.
Then again it was allways said the true balls of adamantium you find on the guard
Dandelion wrote: Just to throw my two cents in. I believe a decent way to incentivize troops (i.e. mainly light infantry) would be to make them hard to shift while in cover. In other words they are super durable per point while hunkered down or just while weaving through terrain. This could allow them to better contest objectives or hold flanks without getting instantly nuked. It also doesn’t require a lot of killyness.
The frustrating thing for me is that the old cover system did exactly this: it made light infantry in cover significantly more difficult to kill, while heavy infantry only needed it to protect against heavy weapons.
Now it's reversed. Heavy infantry get more benefit from cover than light infantry; in some matchups (eg Cultists vs Intercessors) there's no point in taking cover since you never get a save either way.
Exactly, this is why the new cover rules are terrible.
The worst part is that not only do the current cover rules screw over most troops (Space Marines the exceptions because of course they are) and other light-infantry, they also make most basic guns utter crap against units in cover. So the basic troops of most non-SM armies get hit twice in that the cover rules give them less protection in general, whilst also giving other units more protection from their basic weapons.
BrianDavion wrote:except troop heavy armies DON'T have more CPs.
True. A discount on CPs based on the number of Troops you took could be useful, say, for every 2-3 Troop units you take, the CP cost is reduced by 1 instead of making them required.
catbarf wrote:The frustrating thing for me is that the old cover system did exactly this: it made light infantry in cover significantly more difficult to kill, while heavy infantry only needed it to protect against heavy weapons.
Now it's reversed. Heavy infantry get more benefit from cover than light infantry; in some matchups (eg Cultists vs Intercessors) there's no point in taking cover since you never get a save either way.
Indeed. Now if it had a cap, say, couldn't improve past a 3+ Armor Save, that could still work. Tau would only need light cover while units like Guardians and Guardsmen would seek heavy cover, and Marines not in Scout armor would go free willy.
From there:
Not Online!!! wrote:Digging in: Unit can not move / shoot for a turn, add +1 to their SV so long it remains stationary. / alternatively gain light / heavy cover?
Or one of two options: If the unit has not moved for this turn, it improves its cover by one stage (none to light to heavy); OR it improves its rate of fire or Attacks by 1 (kind of like old-school Counter-Attack). Only provided to Troop units.
Of course this would only be a Stratagem in a starved economy.
Troops are bad because the system is bad. Even if troops could be fixed in the current edition, something else would get broken by that fix.40k needs a full rewrite to stop going in circles.
Giving troops bonuses won't work. Why can't my DR dig-in, too? Why does a guardsman get extra benefit from cover, but not the the heavy weapon team behind the wall? This is the 9th edition of GW's "glue a special rule onto it" problem-solving.
More restrictive army building. Whether by requiring troops for every X non-troop units, or the percentages from fantasy. A game can't be balanced, or tactical, if players can bring most, or all of there toys in one list.
A suppression system that even marines are subject to. Something like increasing the chance to fail an activation check, and penalties.
Firing arcs. I know a lot of people like to call this "fiddly" or "too complicated," but requiring targets to be within the firer's front arc, and imposing an evasion penalty, stripping cover etc., when attacked from behind adds tactical depth and allows troops to contribute more without just making their weapons better or tacking on a special rule. Troops should be the primary fighters, with the specialists supporting them, not the other way around. Also makes maneuver a thing.
Alternating activations. Create different actions unit can take on their turn, like suppressive fire. Give stuff like vipers, stormboyz, etc. a Hit-and-run USR that lets them double move right over a unit while making attacks. There are so many possibilities outside of GW's narrow "move, shoot, charge" turn concept.
The core detachment refunding CP + obsec + battle actions being best performed by troops who give up less to perform them is already more than enough incentive to take troops.
I really don't think this is a problem.
Caveat: I don't play tournaments, or care about meta, nor do I play regularly with anyone who does. That's probably why I see far fewer problems with the game than the average Dakkanaught.
PenitentJake wrote: Caveat: I don't play tournaments, or care about meta, nor do I play regularly with anyone who does. That's probably why I see far fewer problems with the game than the average Dakkanaught.
It also means you have a fundamentally less complete assessment of the game than those who do.
PenitentJake wrote: Caveat: I don't play tournaments, or care about meta, nor do I play regularly with anyone who does. That's probably why I see far fewer problems with the game than the average Dakkanaught.
It also means you have a fundamentally less complete assessment of the game than those who do.
I suppose that's fair. Playing tournaments and random strangers in stores would broaden my perspective.
But conversely, I would not agree that someone who ONLY plays tournaments and random strangers in stores has any broader a perspective than someone who is a hardcore garage hammer Crusade player. Not implying that you don't play Crusade regularly with close friends and family- you might do both. Knowing any one way to play well is not better than knowing any other one way to play well.
The one with the most complete understanding of the game is obviously the one who has experienced the greatest number of ways of playing. The uber gamer is the one who can say they regularly play Open, Narrative, and Matched against both friends at home and strangers in stores or tournaments, who can also say they've done so against every army with every army in all six variants. To go further, which admittedly isn't relevant to the current game, the ultimate expert would also play Kill Team and Apocalypse, as well as BSF, Titanicus, and Aeronautica and Necromunda; they would also have to be able to say they've played every edition of the game and read every Black Library book.
And I wouldn't be surprised to find there was at least one GW Yoda who could say they'd done all that. It certainly isn't me; I'll be the first to admit it. But there likely aren't many. And seeing how much there is to know, and how few of any of us actually know even a fraction of it might give us all cause to think about how righteous and certain we can feel about our own opinions in the heat of the moment.
Okay. Now show me a Deathwing-themed army that doesn't have non-Deathwing in it.
I said "typical." Want to know how we make sure we can field our DW and/or RW without the greenies? HQs- like it was pre-8th. Tie the detachment structure to its commander.
Increase/decrease the allowed number of units from one of the four categories, only allow units with a certain keyword, or disallow them, give certain units rules that make them troops if X....
Sure, but then you're in a "lottery" scenario where you're hoping GW decided to include an option like that for your specific faction. They'd probably remember to give a rule like that to Deathwing, but would they do the same for Iybraesil? (A canon craftworld that rarely gets a mention and is known for fielding lots of howling banshees.) And what about little Timmy who liked the idea of fielding a hive fleet with a big emphasis on, let's say, pyrovores. Are pyrovores troops broken? Probably not. Is there a canon hive fleet known for fielding a bunch of them? Not that I'm aware of. I don't see the need to deny Timmy his pyrovores when I have my banshees and DW. But how do you make every single unit a valid troop choice? I guess you could have some sort of generic army building option that allows you to make any unit in the game a troop, but then why are we bothering to distinguish between troops and non-troops at that point?
Giving troops bonuses won't work. Why can't my DR dig-in, too? Why does a guardsman get extra benefit from cover, but not the the heavy weapon team behind the wall? This is the 9th edition of GW's "glue a special rule onto it" problem-solving.
I wouldn't give all troops bonuses like that as a blanket improvement, but I do think there's some potential there. If we can accept that only assault intercessors can swing their swords twice as many times with a strat and only guardians can use a celestial shield, then I don't think it's that unreasonable to have other strats available that happen to benefit troops. Training specifically to dig in on a key objective sounds like something a squad of tactical marines or guardsmen might spend a lot of time drilling for while their dedicated heavy weapon/devastator teams might have training that emphasizes not standing directly on the contested ground. Maybe my eldar rangers get a baked in rule that lets them get a -1 to hit if they don't move while camped on an objective. Maybe my dire avengers gain a stratagem that lets them charge an enemy unit at the start of my opponent's charge phase to keep them off my vulnerable fire dragons. I could see potential there.
More restrictive army building. Whether by requiring troops for every X non-troop units, or the percentages from fantasy. A game can't be balanced, or tactical, if players can bring most, or all of there toys in one list.
I mean, you should reasonably be able to field X points worth of your toys though, right? If ditching a troop tax made your list autowin, people wouldn't be bothering with batallions these days. If a troop is equally as points efficient as a non-troop, then why does it matter that you're fielding some "troops" alongside your "heavy support" and "elite" options?
A suppression system that even marines are subject to. Something like increasing the chance to fail an activation check, and penalties.
Agreed. This would be nice.
Firing arcs. I know a lot of people like to call this "fiddly" or "too complicated," but requiring targets to be within the firer's front arc, and imposing an evasion penalty, stripping cover etc., when attacked from behind adds tactical depth and allows troops to contribute more without just making their weapons better or tacking on a special rule. Troops should be the primary fighters, with the specialists supporting them, not the other way around. Also makes maneuver a thing.
While I see the appeal of having firing arcs, I'm definitely in the camp that says they tend to be "fiddly" in a game where your squad can be spread out and facing every direction at once. Maybe if you put a rectangular marker flush against the base of a designated squad leader or something? And then draw a line along the rectangle's closest side and say that everything on one side of the line is in "front" of the squad and everything on the other side of the line is "flanking"?
Alternating activations. Create different actions unit can take on their turn, like suppressive fire. Give stuff like vipers, stormboyz, etc. a Hit-and-run USR that lets them double move right over a unit while making attacks. There are so many possibilities outside of GW's narrow "move, shoot, charge" turn concept.
Agreed here. A lot of those actions are already sort of kind of represented by stratagems. Personaly, I like the idea of replacing many stratagems with "orders" that can get handed out by characters . So your autarch on a bike has a list of orders available, and one of them is to move-shoot-move with that squad of vypers.
Blastaar wrote:Troops are bad because the system is bad. Even if troops could be fixed in the current edition, something else would get broken by that fix.40k needs a full rewrite to stop going in circles.
Partially true. The system is bad, but just because Troops get better does not always mean everyone else gets worse. If something in a balance is in negative and then you add to it, it doesn't make what you are balancing against gets reduced at the same time. The scale is just not lifting it as low.
Blastaar wrote:Giving troops bonuses won't work. Why can't my DR dig-in, too? Why does a guardsman get extra benefit from cover, but not the the heavy weapon team behind the wall? This is the 9th edition of GW's "glue a special rule onto it" problem-solving.
I assume by "DR", you mean Dark Reapers? Troops are meant to hold the objectives, while Heavy units deploy heavy firepower. In regards to the Aeldari, Guardians aren't really on a war Path and so using their other skills to compensate.
I'm not sure anyone suggested that a Heavy Weapon Team wouldn't benefit from cover like an Infantry Squad, it is more that the Infantry is putting themselves in harm's way to secure the objective points build up their cover to support themselves while the longer-ranged Heavy Weapons Teams are setting themselves up outside of those target zones.
And as Wyldhunt said, this could be easily a Stratagem or something specific to certain Troop units.
Blastaar wrote:A suppression system that even marines are subject to. Something like increasing the chance to fail an activation check, and penalties.
Sure, but I guarantee the Troops will be most affected by something like this. They have been in Editions past.
Blastaar wrote:Firing arcs. I know a lot of people like to call this "fiddly" or "too complicated," but requiring targets to be within the firer's front arc, and imposing an evasion penalty, stripping cover etc., when attacked from behind adds tactical depth and allows troops to contribute more without just making their weapons better or tacking on a special rule. Troops should be the primary fighters, with the specialists supporting them, not the other way around. Also makes maneuver a thing.
Complexity is a relative thing. I like Battletech, but how it works out how well you can do something is complex. I don't think it is too complex, but someone who has cut their teeth on 40K 8th Edition may find it be so. And yes, Battletech has firing arcs based on the hexagon bases they use.
And there is a point to firing arcs, especially for Heavy Weapons. However, those same firing arcs have caused arguments on the table for many years on Vehicles alone. Adding them back in for Infantry to a point where arc markers are needed/desired like in Warmachine may be a breaking point for many players who are glad to be done with those fights.
Blastaar wrote:Alternating activations. Create different actions unit can take on their turn, like suppressive fire. Give stuff like vipers, stormboyz, etc. a Hit-and-run USR that lets them double move right over a unit while making attacks. There are so many possibilities outside of GW's narrow "move, shoot, charge" turn concept.
All of those have been present at one point or another in 40K. Keep in mind that the "Move, Shoot, Charge" turn concept just covers the basics of actions and those things like suppressive fire and hit-and-run would be incorporated in to Moving, Shooting, or Charging on one level or another just like they have been in the past.
Blackie wrote: Problem isn't complexity, is avoiding a controversy which was the main issue with blasts/templates and AV facings.
yeah the problem with AV facings was the vehicles weren't nesscarily designed with them in mind. You had some awkward hull shapes and gun placements.
you also had vehicles that clearly were vehicles and didn't count...
GW could've also added in ala additional lore the propper facings of vehicles aswell as technical schematics?.. that would've also lowered some issues.
Troops are a necessary evil in the game.
This doesn't reflect the circumstance that troops should be a overwhelming part of an army.
Playing mostly with troops seems boring and so the larger emphasis on elites, FA and heavies is an outcome of this.
Blackie wrote: Problem isn't complexity, is avoiding a controversy which was the main issue with blasts/templates and AV facings.
It was only a controversy for people that were already out looking to argue about something. I personally haven't witnessed a discussion about blast template scatter/whom it hits or AV last beyond a few sentences and have been playing since 3rd. I think the real problem is it looked complicated, so the whole "display the game for new players in stores" wasn't chugging along.
Perhaps turning the thread a bit - but how many troops do people think people should be bringing?
Because to my mind if you brought 30 kabalites - that's surely enough kabalites. Okay it was only 180 points in old money before blasters etc - but still. Ditto with 30 fire warriors. Should every faction be going "I start with 90 boyz and work up"?
If someone brought 40 intercessors, don't you think "that's a lot of intercessors" - not "eh, standard."
To my mind min-troops would be literally taking none, or a couple of patrols to get away with just 10 of the cheapest models you can slot in. Most factions don't do this - and the ones that do are doing it because, as said, their troops are explicitly overcosted and bad.
In "real life" (i.e. the universe where they live), my Slaanesh Daemons have 30 'nettes as handmaidens for each Keeper. But I don't own enough Daemonettes for that (I have half as many as I would need), nor would I ever be able to play that many the way I like to play my army.
Conversely, my superheavy tank regiment for my Imperial Guard have no troops (since infantry regiments are kept very distinct from armored and superheavy regiments, etc).
My Inquisition would love it if inquisitorial acolytes counted as troops - I'd bring 3-10 for each Inquisitor. But sadly, they're elites, so I guess they don't count?
My Sororitas order brings 7 or 8 squads of 10 girls each in troops, with a squad of Celestians, 3 Retributor squads, and some characters / Seraphim / Dominions. No tanks.
My Eldar would prefer to have lots of troops (mechdar themed around modern mechanized forces, where the troops inside the Wave Serpent are like infantrymen and the wave serpent itself is a fire support and mobility platform) but Eldar troops are so trash it's hard to visualize, so right now I have 1x5 Dire Avengers in each transport, and plan to fill out the transports with other units (e.g. Howling Banshees x5) in an effort to make the infantry component of the army work. No wraiths.
Tyel wrote: Perhaps turning the thread a bit - but how many troops do people think people should be bringing?
Because to my mind if you brought 30 kabalites - that's surely enough kabalites. Okay it was only 180 points in old money before blasters etc - but still. Ditto with 30 fire warriors. Should every faction be going "I start with 90 boyz and work up"?
If someone brought 40 intercessors, don't you think "that's a lot of intercessors" - not "eh, standard."
To my mind min-troops would be literally taking none, or a couple of patrols to get away with just 10 of the cheapest models you can slot in. Most factions don't do this - and the ones that do are doing it because, as said, their troops are explicitly overcosted and bad.
Part of why I would like Troops to be useful rather than simply cheap is because I really don't like the idea of having to buy and paint up 50+ models that are essentially worthless cannon fodder, where you need 100+ for them to constitute any sort of actual force on their own.
If you were running pure Kabal at 2K with a generic well-rounded list, I'd expect around 40 Kabalites, split between footslogging and transported. That comes to about 20% of your army's points spent on Troops, which feels about right as a baseline. Yes, Kabalites currently underperform for their cost- but I'd like to see their capabilities improve, rather than the cost just dropped.
~20% of the points total means 60-80 Guardsmen (depending on loadout), 40-50 Boyz, Kabalites, or Fire Warriors, and 20 Tacticals/Intercessors. I think that seems about right, but you tell me what you think.
wuestenfux wrote: Troops are a necessary evil in the game.
This doesn't reflect in circumstance that troops should be a overwhelming part of an army.
Playing mostly with troops seems boring and so the larger emphasis on elites, FA and heavies is an outcome of this.
Troops can be plenty of fun, especially when they are customizable to your army . Even better when they are the quintesential vessle for "Your Dudes" kinda style lists...
Blackie wrote: Problem isn't complexity, is avoiding a controversy which was the main issue with blasts/templates and AV facings.
I'm going to agree with Unit on this one. Not once have I ever had an argument about templates or armor facings. The argument that a mechanic causes arguments is itself problematic- vague rules can lead to arguments, not mechanics, and the rules were perfectly clear on how these things worked.
It was not difficult to tell where a Falcon's front, rear, and sides were- the rulebook explicitly told us to draw an imaginary X centered over the vehicle- the vehicle's shape was irrelevant.
People who argue over templates or armor facings are people who are trying to eke out any small advantage they can- changing rules doesn't stop this kind of behavior.
Do vehicles need 4 facings? Probably not. Front and rear would have sufficed. But boy do I want to seed fined firing arcs for vehicle weapons and some widgets for it.
Templates were much cleaner, and far more visually appealing, than D6 hits, with an extra X hits from the new blast rule or whatever.
Tyel wrote: Perhaps turning the thread a bit - but how many troops do people think people should be bringing?
Because to my mind if you brought 30 kabalites - that's surely enough kabalites. Okay it was only 180 points in old money before blasters etc - but still. Ditto with 30 fire warriors. Should every faction be going "I start with 90 boyz and work up"?
If someone brought 40 intercessors, don't you think "that's a lot of intercessors" - not "eh, standard."
To my mind min-troops would be literally taking none, or a couple of patrols to get away with just 10 of the cheapest models you can slot in. Most factions don't do this - and the ones that do are doing it because, as said, their troops are explicitly overcosted and bad.
Part of why I would like Troops to be useful rather than simply cheap is because I really don't like the idea of having to buy and paint up 50+ models that are essentially worthless cannon fodder, where you need 100+ for them to constitute any sort of actual force on their own.
If you were running pure Kabal at 2K with a generic well-rounded list, I'd expect around 40 Kabalites, split between footslogging and transported. That comes to about 20% of your army's points spent on Troops, which feels about right as a baseline. Yes, Kabalites currently underperform for their cost- but I'd like to see their capabilities improve, rather than the cost just dropped.
~20% of the points total means 60-80 Guardsmen (depending on loadout), 40-50 Boyz, Kabalites, or Fire Warriors, and 20 Tacticals/Intercessors. I think that seems about right, but you tell me what you think.
The only thing I'd disagree with is splitting Kabalites between footslogging and transported. That seems far less fluffy than starting all of them in transports.
Tyel wrote: Perhaps turning the thread a bit - but how many troops do people think people should be bringing?
Because to my mind if you brought 30 kabalites - that's surely enough kabalites. Okay it was only 180 points in old money before blasters etc - but still. Ditto with 30 fire warriors. Should every faction be going "I start with 90 boyz and work up"?
If someone brought 40 intercessors, don't you think "that's a lot of intercessors" - not "eh, standard."
To my mind min-troops would be literally taking none, or a couple of patrols to get away with just 10 of the cheapest models you can slot in. Most factions don't do this - and the ones that do are doing it because, as said, their troops are explicitly overcosted and bad.
In a "standard" size game, I should think at least 3 units of troops in an army.
Blackie wrote: Problem isn't complexity, is avoiding a controversy which was the main issue with blasts/templates and AV facings.
I'm going to agree with Unit on this one. Not once have I ever had an argument about templates or armor facings. The argument that a mechanic causes arguments is itself problematic- vague rules can lead to arguments, not mechanics, and the rules were perfectly clear on how these things worked.
It was not difficult to tell where a Falcon's front, rear, and sides were- the rulebook explicitly told us to draw an imaginary X centered over the vehicle- the vehicle's shape was irrelevant.
People who argue over templates or armor facings are people who are trying to eke out any small advantage they can- changing rules doesn't stop this kind of behavior.
Do vehicles need 4 facings? Probably not. Front and rear would have sufficed. But boy do I want to seed fined firing arcs for vehicle weapons and some widgets for it.
Templates were much cleaner, and far more visually appealing, than D6 hits, with an extra X hits from the new blast rule or whatever.
And hell, GW could have easily made diagrams for each vehicle in their range showing what facing was what and included them in the codex unit entry and on a piece of paper in the model box. Top down picture of model (which can also be used for marketing purposes), then add the arcs on it.
Tyel wrote: Perhaps turning the thread a bit - but how many troops do people think people should be bringing?
Because to my mind if you brought 30 kabalites - that's surely enough kabalites. Okay it was only 180 points in old money before blasters etc - but still. Ditto with 30 fire warriors. Should every faction be going "I start with 90 boyz and work up"?
If someone brought 40 intercessors, don't you think "that's a lot of intercessors" - not "eh, standard."
To my mind min-troops would be literally taking none, or a couple of patrols to get away with just 10 of the cheapest models you can slot in. Most factions don't do this - and the ones that do are doing it because, as said, their troops are explicitly overcosted and bad.
Part of why I would like Troops to be useful rather than simply cheap is because I really don't like the idea of having to buy and paint up 50+ models that are essentially worthless cannon fodder, where you need 100+ for them to constitute any sort of actual force on their own.
If you were running pure Kabal at 2K with a generic well-rounded list, I'd expect around 40 Kabalites, split between footslogging and transported. That comes to about 20% of your army's points spent on Troops, which feels about right as a baseline. Yes, Kabalites currently underperform for their cost- but I'd like to see their capabilities improve, rather than the cost just dropped.
~20% of the points total means 60-80 Guardsmen (depending on loadout), 40-50 Boyz, Kabalites, or Fire Warriors, and 20 Tacticals/Intercessors. I think that seems about right, but you tell me what you think.
Emphasis mine. I agree completely. Troops need to be something we want to take, and enjoy using in games.
Blackie wrote: Problem isn't complexity, is avoiding a controversy which was the main issue with blasts/templates and AV facings.
I'm going to agree with Unit on this one. Not once have I ever had an argument about templates or armor facings. The argument that a mechanic causes arguments is itself problematic- vague rules can lead to arguments, not mechanics, and the rules were perfectly clear on how these things worked.
It was not difficult to tell where a Falcon's front, rear, and sides were- the rulebook explicitly told us to draw an imaginary X centered over the vehicle- the vehicle's shape was irrelevant.
People who argue over templates or armor facings are people who are trying to eke out any small advantage they can- changing rules doesn't stop this kind of behavior.
Do vehicles need 4 facings? Probably not. Front and rear would have sufficed. But boy do I want to seed fined firing arcs for vehicle weapons and some widgets for it.
Templates were much cleaner, and far more visually appealing, than D6 hits, with an extra X hits from the new blast rule or whatever.
And hell, GW could have easily made diagrams for each vehicle in their range showing what facing was what and included them in the codex unit entry and on a piece of paper in the model box. Top down picture of model (which can also be used for marketing purposes), then add the arcs.
I know, right? it's almost like there are good ways to implement these things. It's amazing that GW still hasn't adopted stat cards for their primary games. Where's the side on a Croissant? Flip the card over!
I'm afraid 20% of your points feels too high to me. If you were going to have a hard minimum I think it should be half that.
3 squads feels like a good number. I'm not sure if this is 8th getting to me - but it feels about right. Wasn't it just two squads in older editions?
For armies with loads of troop choices it might not be so bad - but saying "right, the first thing you need is 4-5 boxes of this same unit" feels really bad for the hobby. Going Highlander isn't a good way to build a competitive list - but I think its still the way a huge number of players initially put their collections together.
wuestenfux wrote: Troops are a necessary evil in the game.
This doesn't reflect the circumstance that troops should be a overwhelming part of an army.
Well, except of course for all the situations where they shouldn't be. Craftworld Iyanden's whole thing is that they're short on warm bodies and are forced to rely heavily on wraith units (elites). So if you're showing up with 60 guardians every battle, it's like, "Oh hey. I guess every living citizen of your craftworld showed up today." And of course there are the Death Wing and the Raven Wing and Iybraesil and the White Scars and IG tank companies and plenty of others.
If we're using fluff to justify saying that people should be taking a ton of troops, then we should acknowledge the fluff that disagrees. Mechanically, there's not really anything sacred and special about troops unless they're understood to be designed to be intentionally bad for their points. (Which seems to only be true sometimes.)
Regarding templates, I didn't see a ton of full on arguments over them, but I did see a lot of polite hand waiving or acceptance of a result because it wasn't worth arguing. There were definitely plenty of times where the the template ended up scattering in a direction that didn't really match the die's arrow from my perspective, but I just didn't fuss over it unless it was really egregious. I do recall a team tournament game where my opponent was getting really passive aggressive about my team mate's scatter rolls, and I eventually just said, "Hey. On my turn, there are going to be some deepstrikers and some blast markers. I'm just going to let you tell me where they land because you seem to have much stronger opinions on these rolls than I do." He got flustered and backed down and obviously felt awkward. He wasn't trying to be a jerk, but he was on the receiving end of the blast template feel bads.
Vehicle facing is a lot more doable if you only have "Rear" and "Not Rear" values. It's pretty easy to agree where the "rearmost" part of a vehicle is and just draw a horizontal line across that. Involving the sides is where things get tricky. Someone mentioned a falcon. Do you draw your "X" from wing tip to the far side of the opposite wing (the leftmost/rightmost parts of the hull), or do you measure from wing tip to the opposite corner of the rear loading ramp section (the rearmost parts of the hull)? Both seem like reasonable answers to me, but one answer creates a significantly larger rear arc.
Vehicle facing and weapon arcs both also run into problems where conversions are involved. Is my opponent's looted land raider that he uses as a battle wagon modeling for advantage? What if he models one of his vehicles as having a turret because he thought it looked cool instead of leaving it fixed facing forward? Ready for the return of sponsons that can't shoot the same target because of line of sight issues? How about the return of harlequin void weaver butt guns that can only shoot in a 90* arc backwards while the other guns can only shoot in a 90* arc forward?
wuestenfux wrote: Troops are a necessary evil in the game.
This doesn't reflect the circumstance that troops should be a overwhelming part of an army.
Well, except of course for all the situations where they shouldn't be. Craftworld Iyanden's whole thing is that they're short on warm bodies and are forced to rely heavily on wraith units (elites). So if you're showing up with 60 guardians every battle, it's like, "Oh hey. I guess every living citizen of your craftworld showed up today." And of course there are the Death Wing and the Raven Wing and Iybraesil and the White Scars and IG tank companies and plenty of others.
If we're using fluff to justify saying that people should be taking a ton of troops, then we should acknowledge the fluff that disagrees. Mechanically, there's not really anything sacred and special about troops unless they're understood to be designed to be intentionally bad for their points. (Which seems to only be true sometimes.)
Well, yeah. There are always exceptions to basic rules.
Regarding templates, I didn't see a ton of full on arguments over them, but I did see a lot of polite hand waiving or acceptance of a result because it wasn't worth arguing. There were definitely plenty of times where the the template ended up scattering in a direction that didn't really match the die's arrow from my perspective, but I just didn't fuss over it unless it was really egregious. I do recall a team tournament game where my opponent was getting really passive aggressive about my team mate's scatter rolls, and I eventually just said, "Hey. On my turn, there are going to be some deepstrikers and some blast markers. I'm just going to let you tell me where they land because you seem to have much stronger opinions on these rolls than I do." He got flustered and backed down and obviously felt awkward. He wasn't trying to be a jerk, but he was on the receiving end of the blast template feel bads.
Scatter isn't necessary for blasts and DS.
Vehicle facing is a lot more doable if you only have "Rear" and "Not Rear" values. It's pretty easy to agree where the "rearmost" part of a vehicle is and just draw a horizontal line across that. Involving the sides is where things get tricky. Someone mentioned a falcon. Do you draw your "X" from wing tip to the far side of the opposite wing (the leftmost/rightmost parts of the hull), or do you measure from wing tip to the opposite corner of the rear loading ramp section (the rearmost parts of the hull)? Both seem like reasonable answers to me, but one answer creates a significantly larger rear arc.
That's overthinking it. It really is simple to differentiate the sides from the rear of the curved vehicles in the game.
Vehicle facing and weapon arcs both also run into problems where conversions are involved. Is my opponent's looted land raider that he uses as a battle wagon modeling for advantage? What if he models one of his vehicles as having a turret because he thought it looked cool instead of leaving it fixed facing forward? Ready for the return of sponsons that can't shoot the same target because of line of sight issues? How about the return of harlequin void weaver butt guns that can only shoot in a 90* arc backwards while the other guns can only shoot in a 90* arc forward?
Would the difference in front facing between a LR and BW really be significant?
it would be better to give the weapon mounts on vehicles arcs on the data sheets instead of relying on the physical model, and vehicles should be allowed to fire at multiple targets. I don't expect a predator to shoot through itself. Yes, GW is dumb when designing models. Another item on the long list of needed changes.
Part of why I would like Troops to be useful rather than simply cheap is because I really don't like the idea of having to buy and paint up 50+ models that are essentially worthless cannon fodder, where you need 100+ for them to constitute any sort of actual force on their own.
Completely agree with this.
I like building armies to be somewhat lore friendly, and for me that usually involves a good chunk of basic line troopers. In game though they tend not to hit very hard, and there are usually more resilient units to hold ground in other sections of the codex. 'Go to ground' used to work best on troops, it was wasteful to have heavy support infantry going to ground, or CC elites, or fast units, so it worked well for basic troopers
One rule that I love is the ork mob rule that lets big ork units share their leadership with smaller units nearby. It incentivises big units of boyz because it buffs the elite units nearby, and on top of that ork boyz have tended to be a strong unit anyway through the editions. Orks have had a really solid troop section for a long time and it results in fluffy lists, where boyz don't just get taken as MSU to hit the minimum requirement. Grots shielding more expensive units is another one. I miss the rule where units provided cover for each other, I can see why GW got rid of it to make things simpler, but it took away something done best by line infantry.
I guess the least GW could do is just under price troops slightly. In a game where knights and flyers exist I think making the little guys on the ground with lasguns, shootas, fleshborers and bolters a bit more efficient wouldn't hurt. The troops section of most codexes usually has few options, if one or two elite units are bad you don't need to take them, when chaos marines, guardians and gretchin are bad your options are much more limited.
Orks have had a really solid troop section for a long time and it results in fluffy lists, where boyz don't just get taken as MSU to hit the minimum requirement.
For a long time means actually since the current codex. Boyz and gretchins were garbage in 7th edition, to the point that no one was bringing gretchins and boyz were mostly played in a few min squads of trukk boyz, typically the minimum allowed for a CAD.
Best troops in older editions were bikes in 7th, nobz and bikes again in the previous codex.
Tyel wrote: I'm afraid 20% of your points feels too high to me. If you were going to have a hard minimum I think it should be half that.
3 squads feels like a good number. I'm not sure if this is 8th getting to me - but it feels about right. Wasn't it just two squads in older editions?
For armies with loads of troop choices it might not be so bad - but saying "right, the first thing you need is 4-5 boxes of this same unit" feels really bad for the hobby. Going Highlander isn't a good way to build a competitive list - but I think its still the way a huge number of players initially put their collections together.
Keep in mind I'm basing this off the assumption that you're only using Kabalites. A 'Highlander' style Drukhari collector is going to have Kabalites, Wyches, and Wracks, and a single unit of 10 of each gets you to around 20% with upgrades (and obviously a lot more if you include transport). A box of 10 Kabalites, a box of 10 Wyches, and a box of 5 Wracks is over a quarter of your points in a 1K list even with conservative upgrades, so new players don't even need to double up on anything.
Also, when I said 20%, I didn't mean as a hard requirement; I was just answering your question about what sort of troops representation I would like to see in a balanced army. I would like for players to have the option to take less, but for neglecting Troops to be a real trade-off. Right now it really isn't, and from a raw competitive standpoint the Troops that see use beyond minimum requirements are the ones that either provide direct combat utility worth their cost or can be taken in sufficient numbers to swamp anti-MEQ lists.
FWIW Fantasy used a 25% Core requirement. Someone correct me if I'm grossly misremembering, but I seem to recall that 2nd Ed 40K also specified that 25% of your army had to be Troops; although the battles were much smaller so 2-3 squads could generally meet that requirement.
Orks have had a really solid troop section for a long time and it results in fluffy lists, where boyz don't just get taken as MSU to hit the minimum requirement.
For a long time means actually since the current codex. Boyz and gretchins were garbage in 7th edition, to the point that no one was bringing gretchins and boyz were mostly played in a few min squads of trukk boyz, typically the minimum allowed for a CAD.
Best troops in older editions were bikes in 7th, nobz and bikes again in the previous codex.
exactly, and that goes all the way back to the 4th edition. So prior to that you are talking 3rd edition orkz.
Well, yeah. There are always exceptions to basic rules.
Okay, but where do you draw the line? If Death Wing terminators, White Scar bikes, Saim-Hann bikes, Iyanden wraiths, Iybraesil banshees, CSM cult marines, maybe CSM chosen, and IG tank regiment tanks can all be troops, then what shouldn't be allowed to be troops? And if the list of things that can't be troops ends up being longer htan the list of things that can, it makes me think that we shouldn't be treating "troops" differently from any other unit.
Scatter isn't necessary for blasts and DS.
That's fair. Now how would you bring back blast templates without punishing hordes for not spreading out exactly 2" to mitigate template effectiveness? Because I don't want to wait for my opponents to measure exactly 2" between all their dudes, and I also don't want to feel like I'm punishing them for not wasting my time by doing so.
Vehicle facing is a lot more doable if you only have "Rear" and "Not Rear" values. It's pretty easy to agree where the "rearmost" part of a vehicle is and just draw a horizontal line across that. Involving the sides is where things get tricky. Someone mentioned a falcon. Do you draw your "X" from wing tip to the far side of the opposite wing (the leftmost/rightmost parts of the hull), or do you measure from wing tip to the opposite corner of the rear loading ramp section (the rearmost parts of the hull)? Both seem like reasonable answers to me, but one answer creates a significantly larger rear arc.
That's overthinking it. It really is simple to differentiate the sides from the rear of the curved vehicles in the game.
I politely disagree. Again, on the falcon, I see a couple reasonable ways to draw the "X". Some of them will result in a significantly larger rear arc than others. Now, we're talking about toy soldiers, and the way I'd end up playing out such ambiguities is to just let my opponent decide whether they're in the rear arc or not. But that's still not great rules writing, and some people are inclined to get saltier about such things that I do. Also, what about asymmetrical conversions? I'm picturing a battle wagon with a "side car" or some crazy, extra chaotic defiler conversion.
Would the difference in front facing between a LR and BW really be significant?
Probably not. Bad example. But something like a looted wave serpent or devilfish would have a much wider front arc (the most durable arc) than the default wagon model.
it would be better to give the weapon mounts on vehicles arcs on the data sheets instead of relying on the physical model, and vehicles should be allowed to fire at multiple targets. I don't expect a predator to shoot through itself. Yes, GW is dumb when designing models. Another item on the long list of needed changes.
Not opposed to illustrated diagrams showing weapon arcs and armor facings, but it does seem like a lot of work for kind of limited returns. Plus, you're still going to occassionally end up in awkward scenarios where you or your opponent ends up agonizing over trying to pivot a vehicle to just the right angle to shoot at two preferred targets. I never felt like a land raider's side sponson being unable to draw a bead on its preferred target was a boon to the game. Weapon arcs and armor facings both seem like mechanics that might make more sense in a dedicated vehicle combat variant. Sort of a Gangs of Commorragh or Speed Freaks but for tanks.
catbarf wrote: Keep in mind I'm basing this off the assumption that you're only using Kabalites. A 'Highlander' style Drukhari collector is going to have Kabalites, Wyches, and Wracks, and a single unit of 10 of each gets you to around 20% with upgrades (and obviously a lot more if you include transport). A box of 10 Kabalites, a box of 10 Wyches, and a box of 5 Wracks is over a quarter of your points in a 1K list even with conservative upgrades, so new players don't even need to double up on anything.
Also, when I said 20%, I didn't mean as a hard requirement; I was just answering your question about what sort of troops representation I would like to see in a balanced army. I would like for players to have the option to take less, but for neglecting Troops to be a real trade-off. Right now it really isn't, and from a raw competitive standpoint the Troops that see use beyond minimum requirements are the ones that either provide direct combat utility worth their cost or can be taken in sufficient numbers to swamp anti-MEQ lists.
FWIW Fantasy used a 25% Core requirement. Someone correct me if I'm grossly misremembering, but I seem to recall that 2nd Ed 40K also specified that 25% of your army had to be Troops; although the battles were much smaller so 2-3 squads could generally meet that requirement.
I guess the question is whether everyone's including transports in this troop %? I feel it makes mech a bit mandatory - but then yes, its a lot easier to hit 20, 30, maybe even push towards 40%.
Fantasy did have 25% Core Requirement - although Core in WHFB was *usually* a broader range of units than troops were for most factions in 40k right now. Even then I don't think it was considered a good feature - because as said, it resulted in "oh, playing Empire? Better go buy and assemble a 40 man block of Halberdiers to meet your core requirement". (Admittedly if 8th edition WHFB had been balanced like modern 40k, I think a lot of the internal and external imbalances in the army books could have been resolved - or at least got better - but I feel this seeming requirement was certainly a bar on new players.)
Realistically I wouldn't mind a significant Troops requirement, if a significantly greater number of units for most factions were in "troops". Having to make say a quarter of your list from just 1-4 units feels kind of bad.
Being forced to pay 800+pts in troops, when there exists a much better and more point efficient elite version of them isn't good either.
If I want to play termintors, I would rather take paladins then regular ones, because GW decided to give the troop termintors bad rules and make them too expensive. they cost as if they had access to gear they don't have access to, like storm shields for example.
That's fair. Now how would you bring back blast templates without punishing hordes for not spreading out exactly 2" to mitigate template effectiveness? Because I don't want to wait for my opponents to measure exactly 2" between all their dudes, and I also don't want to feel like I'm punishing them for not wasting my time by doing so.
Just make doing that a drawback. I often ally blasts in with my Daemons to make the enemy spread out, which gives their units huge frontages that can easily be assaulted by 4 or 5 Daemon units that are now safe from shooting unless they fail a morale check or wipe them out to a man.
Please, please spread your troops out to give my assaulting units more frontage...
(That sort of thing is called tactics and makes positioning important, unlike the current iteration of blast.)
Something I mulled over a little bit while trying to drift off last night was making blasts function thus:
Each weapon has a Blast (X) special rule, where the X is the maximum number of hits it can cause. Furthermore, a blast cannot cause more hits against a unit than the target unit has models, so a Blast 10 weapon shooting at a unit of 6 models cannot get more than 6 hits.
The number of hits is further affected by a single to hit roll made by the model firing. If it makes its hit roll, then it causes the maximum allowed number of hits. If it fails then the maximum allowed number of hits is reduced by the difference between the number rolled and the to hit roll required (e.g. an Ork with a BS of 5+ firing a Blast 10 weapon and rolling a 3 would end up with a maximum number of hits of 8, as they rolled 2 under the required value).
So as an example, we have an Ork firing their Blast 10 weapon at a unit of 30 enemies. If they roll a 5+ to hit, then they will get their maximum 10 hits, if they roll a 4 they'll get 9, 3 they'll get 8 and so on.
No longer need to roll for number of shots, only need to make 1 hit roll, no arguments about templates, scatter direction etc., models accuracy still plays a role, don't need to faff about with model spacing eating up game time, weapons are easily scalable.
Well, question that should be answered first: Why should troops be incentivised?
40k operates on a scale I’d roughly call the heart of the conflict. You have some commanders facing off with the forces immediately around them. If you zoomed out, it’s likely the battle has millions, even billions more combatants than are shown on the table.
So does it particularly matter that this set of 40 marines doesn’t have any tactical squads? The tacs are probably half a mile away keeping a line of guardsmen from breaking or something.
This is true, but then removing the possibility of a blast causing damage to other targets would seem to remove one of the only possible reasons to bring back templates in the first place.
The more pressing matter, though, is that 40k seems like a game that should be doing more abstraction at the infantry level - not less.
If the game is going to include Imperial Knights and Baneblades, then it absolutely shouldn't be concerned with the minutia of individual guardsman placement.
Honestly, I think we're at the stage where units in general should be done in a more abstract way. e.g. pick a model in the unit (usually sergeant or equivalent, and basically measure all ranges and LoS to and from that one model). The other models will track the squad's strength and such in a visual manner, but they will not be used on an individual basis.
This is true, but then removing the possibility of a blast causing damage to other targets would seem to remove one of the only possible reasons to bring back templates in the first place.
The more pressing matter, though, is that 40k seems like a game that should be doing more abstraction at the infantry level - not less.
If the game is going to include Imperial Knights and Baneblades, then it absolutely shouldn't be concerned with the minutia of individual guardsman placement.
Honestly, I think we're at the stage where units in general should be done in a more abstract way. e.g. pick a model in the unit (usually sergeant or equivalent, and basically measure all ranges and LoS to and from that one model). The other models will track the squad's strength and such in a visual manner, but they will not be used on an individual basis.
That's a pretty radical notion. I'm not sure I can get on board with the idea of removing the importance of squad "expansion and contraction". Despite the benefits of using d3-d6s for blasts, I very much miss the extra importance given to unit formation that came with using actual templates.
That's a pretty radical notion. I'm not sure I can get on board with the idea of removing the importance of squad "expansion and contraction". Despite the benefits of using d3-d6s for blasts, I very much miss the extra importance given to unit formation that came with using actual templates.
My reasoning is that this sort of thing really doesn't work for a game the size of 40k. It was fine (more or less ) back when 40k was just a skirmish game with maybe a couple of dozen models on either side. But when you've got whole companies of IG, it just makes no sense to still require the position of every single man to be of vital importance. Even less so when you've also got Imperial Knights and such deleting whole units with a glance.
Now, I don't mind blasts being brought back and model positioning mattering (though TLoS can still go die in a fire), but for that to happen the game first needs to scale back in both size and scope.
Put simply, 40k needs to decide whether it wants to be a skirmish game (in which case, blasts are fine but the number of models should really be scaled back, and fliers, super-heavies, primarchs etc. all need to bugger off back into Apocalypse) or else if it wants to just be Apocalypse (in which case units should be much more abstracted and the exact position of most of their models should be utterly irrelevant).
vipoid wrote: Put simply, 40k needs to decide whether it wants to be a skirmish game (in which case, blasts are fine but the number of models should really be scaled back, and fliers, super-heavies, primarchs etc. all need to bugger off back into Apocalypse) or else if it wants to just be Apocalypse (in which case units should be much more abstracted and the exact position of most of their models should be utterly irrelevant).
At the model scale they're at they really can't keep inflating onboard model counts any higher, especially if they're going to start caring about how much space it takes to play a standard game of 40k. Given that 40k is a model first system you probably don't want to drop it to 10mm scale to keep increasing the scope. Thus it has to stay a skirmish game where positioning matters.
Insectum7 wrote: It's all Tyranid Warriors, then 2 Primes and 2 Neurothropes, in it's purest form.
I take it this is an army for smaller games?
(Still sounds like a blast, though.)
No sir, about 1700 points of Tyranid Warriors in a 2k army. And all of them the original 20 year old plastics. I can field more than that, too, the problem is I have to spend some points on HQs. Hehe.
That's a pretty radical notion. I'm not sure I can get on board with the idea of removing the importance of squad "expansion and contraction". Despite the benefits of using d3-d6s for blasts, I very much miss the extra importance given to unit formation that came with using actual templates.
My reasoning is that this sort of thing really doesn't work for a game the size of 40k. It was fine (more or less ) back when 40k was just a skirmish game with maybe a couple of dozen models on either side. But when you've got whole companies of IG, it just makes no sense to still require the position of every single man to be of vital importance. Even less so when you've also got Imperial Knights and such deleting whole units with a glance.
Now, I don't mind blasts being brought back and model positioning mattering (though TLoS can still go die in a fire), but for that to happen the game first needs to scale back in both size and scope.
Put simply, 40k needs to decide whether it wants to be a skirmish game (in which case, blasts are fine but the number of models should really be scaled back, and fliers, super-heavies, primarchs etc. all need to bugger off back into Apocalypse) or else if it wants to just be Apocalypse (in which case units should be much more abstracted and the exact position of most of their models should be utterly irrelevant).
I think "large skirmish" is about where 40k should be aiming at, and I think it's close. I don't have a problem with Knights and Superheavies being a part of it, I just think the rules for them should be more detailed, and the potential interactions with infantry should be more fleshed out. Things like being able to attack specific parts of the vehicle, and the use of multiple grenades in combat.
Put simply, 40k needs to decide whether it wants to be a skirmish game (in which case, blasts are fine but the number of models should really be scaled back, and fliers, super-heavies, primarchs etc. all need to bugger off back into Apocalypse) or else if it wants to just be Apocalypse (in which case units should be much more abstracted and the exact position of most of their models should be utterly irrelevant).
I pretty much agree with that. I've been playing a lot of Incursion sized games lately. They play reasonably fast, footslogging slightly squishy units isn't a death sentence, and I could see layering on just a bit more complexity at that scale without it becoming a slog. Common AA proposals also tend to be less problematic at that game size as the difference in unit count tends to be less dramatic and there tend to be fewer super killy shooty units floating around. So embracing smaller game sizes could do a lot of good.
And conversely, fliers, knights, and primarchs have never really felt balanced at any point to me. They're generally either so good that they become auto takes and the meta contorts around them, or else they're so easy to counter that you never see them. Flyers are maybe finally balanced enough at the moment, but they achieved that by making them curiously susceptible to small arms fire and encouraging players to fly them in doughnuts around the table. So yeah, I'd be alright with just barring those units from smaller/"normal" games to avoid the headache of trying to balance them there.
That's fair. Now how would you bring back blast templates without punishing hordes for not spreading out exactly 2" to mitigate template effectiveness? Because I don't want to wait for my opponents to measure exactly 2" between all their dudes, and I also don't want to feel like I'm punishing them for not wasting my time by doing so.
Just make doing that a drawback. I often ally blasts in with my Daemons to make the enemy spread out, which gives their units huge frontages that can easily be assaulted by 4 or 5 Daemon units that are now safe from shooting unless they fail a morale check or wipe them out to a man.
Please, please spread your troops out to give my assaulting units more frontage...
(That sort of thing is called tactics and makes positioning important, unlike the current iteration of blast.)
I feel like that's more of a lose/lose than a desirable feature though. If your opponent wants you to spread out, you're punished for fielding a horde regardless of whether or not you spread out. If the enemy army doesn't get you, the blasts will. If your opponent doesn't care whether or not you spread out, then you're punished for not taking the time to agonize over 2" spacing.
Also, consider that playing a melee horde generally involves trying to squeeze a bunch of models into engagement range. So you've crossed the table, made the charge, finally brought your melee unit to bear. On your opponent's following turn, you'll be all clumped up and ready to blast. Maybe (but not certainly) you're able to use your consolidation move to spread out again before your opponent's turn. In which case, it's time to slow the game down and work out the ideal 2" spacing again. Because every time you don't, you're basically killing off a few of your own models by being lazy with your spacing.
Wyldhunt wrote: And conversely, fliers, knights, and primarchs have never really felt balanced at any point to me. They're generally either so good that they become auto takes and the meta contorts around them, or else they're so easy to counter that you never see them. Flyers are maybe finally balanced enough at the moment, but they achieved that by making them curiously susceptible to small arms fire and encouraging players to fly them in doughnuts around the table. So yeah, I'd be alright with just barring those units from smaller/"normal" games to avoid the headache of trying to balance them there.
I don't know. There's something to be said for Linebreaker/holdout scenarios. It's fine-tuning them so they can work in either level that's the big issue. The new FOC system helps with that a little bit, but I'm not sure it is enough.
Make them actually good at whatever it is they're supposed to do. That's it.
Look at all the good troops in the game. Intercessors. Nurglings. Daemonettes. Battle Sisters. Troupes. All are at least pointed efficiently for whatever function they are meant to serve, while also not standing out as being very specialized or skewing to any particular role by the standards of the army.
Void__Dragon wrote: Make them actually good at whatever it is they're supposed to do. That's it.
Look at all the good troops in the game. Intercessors. Nurglings. Daemonettes. Battle Sisters. Troupes. All are at least pointed efficiently for whatever function they are meant to serve, while also not standing out as being very specialized or skewing to any particular role by the standards of the army.
No, it would appear that you have no clue because you think that each role is "supposed to do" what thing by definition.
The role of a nurgling is very different from the role of an intercessor which is very different from the role of a troupe. All are at minimum good troops, all have different roles, none of them stepping on the toes of anything in their respective army's more specialized roles for the most part.
Void__Dragon wrote: No, it would appear that you have no clue because you think that each role is "supposed to do" what thing by definition.
The role of a nurgling is very different from the role of an intercessor which is very different from the role of a troupe. All are at minimum good troops, all have different roles, none of them stepping on the toes of anything in their respective army's more specialized roles for the most part.
If we take away objective secured and stop trying to shoehorn in a role for ma legacy FOC slot, what do intercessors do that other marine units don't?
No, it would appear that you have no clue because you think that each role is "supposed to do" what thing by definition.
The role of a nurgling is very different from the role of an intercessor which is very different from the role of a troupe. All are at minimum good troops, all have different roles, none of them stepping on the toes of anything in their respective army's more specialized roles for the most part.
Lose the snotty attitude, and read your own post again:
Void__Dragon wrote:Make them actually good at whatever it is they're supposed to do. That's it.
Look at all the good troops in the game. Intercessors. Nurglings. Daemonettes. Battle Sisters. Troupes. All are at least pointed efficiently for whatever function they are meant to serve, while also not standing out as being very specialized or skewing to any particular role by the standards of the army.
What do you think troops are supposed to do? Having given such a simple answer, you must have some idea.
What is GW's vision for troops? (Hint: they don't have one) Troops can't "do what they're supposed to do" if no-one knows or can agree on what that is.
Wyldhunt wrote: And conversely, fliers, knights, and primarchs have never really felt balanced at any point to me. They're generally either so good that they become auto takes and the meta contorts around them, or else they're so easy to counter that you never see them. Flyers are maybe finally balanced enough at the moment, but they achieved that by making them curiously susceptible to small arms fire and encouraging players to fly them in doughnuts around the table. So yeah, I'd be alright with just barring those units from smaller/"normal" games to avoid the headache of trying to balance them there.
I don't know. There's something to be said for Linebreaker/holdout scenarios. It's fine-tuning them so they can work in either level that's the big issue. The new FOC system helps with that a little bit, but I'm not sure it is enough.
Such scenarios sound like fun, but perhaps it would be best to treat them as special narrative missions rather than a feature of playing certain armies in conventional games. I don't particularly want to feel like I'm forced to "hold out" by virtue of facing a random opponent who happens to be running a knight house. I'd love to go into a "hold out" mission with my eyes open, an appropriate list, and perhaps some mission-specific rules to make it engaging rather than risking it being a really one-sided fight.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Canadian 5th wrote:
If we take away objective secured and stop trying to shoehorn in a role for ma legacy FOC slot, what do intercessors do that other marine units don't?
This. Troops should be designed as though they aren't troops. Otherwise, they risk ending up as just being boring or inefficient because, "Well, players will have to take some of them anyway, so it's okay if troops are bad."
Void__Dragon wrote:Make them actually good at whatever it is they're supposed to do. That's it.
Look at all the good troops in the game. Intercessors. Nurglings. Daemonettes. Battle Sisters. Troupes. All are at least pointed efficiently for whatever function they are meant to serve, while also not standing out as being very specialized or skewing to any particular role by the standards of the army.
I feel like there are currently plenty of troops that are pretty "specialized." Hormagaunts run forward and stab things in melee. They have no guns, and they don't have loadouts to make them effective against heavy targets. They have a very narrow group of targets they want to engage with. Ork boyz similarly have a pretty well-defined job. Cultists could probably go in this slot. Daemonettes too. You mention nurglings, and I'd argue that they are very specialized as "units that infiltrate onto objectives and are annoying to remove." There are plenty of other examples, I'm sure.
I agree that troops should be designed to be good at at least one job, but I don't feel that all troops should be assumed to be generalists just because tactical marines are. I harp on this point because, if an army has a troop whose job is X and an elite whose job is X, it's very tempting to just make the elite a more points efficient version of the troops, and that's not cool.
Wyldhunt wrote: And conversely, fliers, knights, and primarchs have never really felt balanced at any point to me. They're generally either so good that they become auto takes and the meta contorts around them, or else they're so easy to counter that you never see them. Flyers are maybe finally balanced enough at the moment, but they achieved that by making them curiously susceptible to small arms fire and encouraging players to fly them in doughnuts around the table. So yeah, I'd be alright with just barring those units from smaller/"normal" games to avoid the headache of trying to balance them there.
I don't know. There's something to be said for Linebreaker/holdout scenarios. It's fine-tuning them so they can work in either level that's the big issue. The new FOC system helps with that a little bit, but I'm not sure it is enough.
Such scenarios sound like fun, but perhaps it would be best to treat them as special narrative missions rather than a feature of playing certain armies in conventional games. I don't particularly want to feel like I'm forced to "hold out" by virtue of facing a random opponent who happens to be running a knight house. I'd love to go into a "hold out" mission with my eyes open, an appropriate list, and perhaps some mission-specific rules to make it engaging rather than risking it being a really one-sided fight
It depends on what you mean by "conventional". For a random mission against a random person at your LGS? Yeah. I could see them left out of that list. As it is, the "conventional" scenarios that came with the last couple editions didn't always see as much use outside the random meetup with all the tournament groups creating their own.
But as a "Narrative Mission" available for pre-arranged games or just someone with that small collection for a quick game, I think that is something provided for in the main list of scenarios, making it "conventional" from another perspective. After all, GW had a whole book of missions like that back in 5th, including the aforementioned Linebreaker.
Wyldhunt wrote:I agree that troops should be designed to be good at at least one job, but I don't feel that all troops should be assumed to be generalists just because tactical marines are. I harp on this point because, if an army has a troop whose job is X and an elite whose job is X, it's very tempting to just make the elite a more points efficient version of the troops, and that's not cool.
Agreed. Which is why I proposed that such units be objective oriented and/or "lane" oriented. That may require some FOC restructuring, or at least, Special Rule restructuring to see this outcome. That's kind of a sad thing since this concept should have been in the cards from the beginning, especially when Objective Secured for Troops was a thing.
Matt Swain wrote: If you feel that troops should be incentivised you should probably be playing 9e necrons.
The warriors are heavily incentivised. They get so many perks you almost have to hate them.
First they get a built in buff to their RP rolls in that they reroll 1's.
They are the only unit that the necron troop carrier can transport.
Most RP buffs affect them much more than they affect other units. (Like getting 1d3 back instead of 1.)
They just got a very powerful, tho short ranged, standard weapon.
After watching the latest TTT SM V necron bat rep the warriors do come out as really mean troop choice!
Feels like the rules for them really reflect the metal zombie tide.
Maybe if the rest of codexes get similar boosts to their troops the problem will solve itself.
As things stand taking troops is a huge tax for a lot of if not most armies
I said "typical." Want to know how we make sure we can field our 
Having given such a simple answer, you must have some idea.