Datasheets used to be only a document format... a layout that was designed for quick reference of stats and rules during a busy 40k game. But with the FOC having been replaced with the Rule of 3 (2 for smaller games), datasheets have effectively become the new FOC. The 3 slots once available for Fast Attack units can now be allocated to just one of the 4 variants of Land Speeder, allowing a total of 12 Speeders. Not even counting other hover-vehicles, or other units that used to fall under the Fast Attack category.
In essence, an army's spamming ability depends on whether variants of the same units have been given separate datasheets and keywords, or just extra bullet points under the Wargear Options section.
Will all variants be equally effective, or even worth taking? Of course not. I can also fully accept that GW's cash-cow armies like Space Marines will always get more units, and therefore more list-building freedom. But datasheet-based force org restrictions are just so arbitrary. The Adeptus Custodes' vaunted Caladius grav-tank, which some players never take the field without, gets only one datasheet even though it has access to two very different guns (one anti-vehicle and one anti-heavy infantry) and has a datasheet ability that depends on the gun it's equipped with (Lethal Hits vs. vehicles and monsters with the former gun, and Lethal Hits vs. all other units with the latter). The two weapon options are even sold in separate sets, under different names: the Caladius Grav-Tank and the Caladius Grav-Tank Annihilator. I'm not aware the "Annihilator" distinction appears anywhere outside the Web store... It's just a product name, not a datasheet or keyword.
Look, I'm not asking for two Caladius datasheets so that I can field 6 of them total. I just wish the list-building system were rooted in the unit's battlefield role rather than the layout of the codex.
This has been an issue for a while, and I know I'm far from the first to point it out. But given GW's obsession with tournament balance, always trying to keep all faction win rates within the narrow 45-55% range, it's completely inexplicable that they would nuke the FOC.
But datasheet-based force org restrictions are just so arbitrary.
Everything in 40k is arbitrary. It was arbitrary when you could spend half your army points on Characters on only 25% had to be from the Squads category. It was arbitrary when they created the FOC in third.
But given GW's obsession with tournament balance, always trying to keep all faction win rates within the narrow 45-55% range, it's completely inexplicable that they would nuke the FOC.
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It's not inexplicable. The FOC limited model sales. That's why they started doing vehicle squadrons back in the day. If my wraithlords compete for the same slot as my war walkers and support weapons batteries, I'm disinclined to acquire too many of any of them. But if I can have 3 wraithlords and 3 squadrons of war walkers and 3 support weapon batteries of 3, well then, I can buy those models because I can actually field them all.
The issue with multiple sheets for similar models (let's just use Storm Speeders for an example) partially ties into the lack of points for weapon options. By making hard-coded variants they can both tweak the points of the associated weapons more easily (since you're not trying to make them all 'equal') and give each variant bespoke rules suited to its role.
...and now GW can sell you more versions, too. I have to imagine an army of nothing but Leman Russes can put out a lot of hurt.
The rule of three is a clumsy fudge to get around the fact that with no FOC restrictions people obviously spammed the best units.
Different datasheets which are just weapon variations are a clumsy fudge to get around the fact that most upgrades are obviously not equal to base equipment, and without a points system which can handle fine detail people obviously spammed the best options.
The lack of any FOC was a clumsy fudge to make the core rules more 'accessible' (ie. short).
GW's rules are just clumsy fudge perched on top of clumsy fudge. Because they're bad at designing rules.
Arschbombe wrote: It was arbitrary when they created the FOC in third.
That didn't feel arbitrary. That definitely felt like a mechanism to push "common force proportions" adjusted to each faction.
Rule of three feels far more arbitrary.
I would argue they weren’t really adjusted for each faction.
I'd probably disagree with you, and claim that some factions feeling pressed or sparse in certain areas of the FOC is actually by design.
Tyranids not being able to field venomthropes because they already took some zoanthropes, Iybraesil not being able to field banshees without fielding guardians or dire avengers, death wing not being able to field all terminators without a special rule letting them break the FOC. None of that reads as intentional to me.
Respectfully, I feel like a lot of people have some rose-tinted glasses when it comes to the FOC. It wasn't some perfect army organization tool that cleverly enforced perfectly fluffy and balanced armies. It was just another clunky attempt at keeping you from spamming a million of whatever the most broken unit of the day was. Just like the rule of 3, except its limitations were harsher. Harsher limitations prevented some specific problems, but it didn't actually fix things so much as it shuffled the problems around.
Sure, you couldn't spam 9 leman russes (except in the editions where you could because "vehicle squadrons"), but now you had to worry about whether or not your army had big guns spread around each of its force org slots. So the army with lots of heavy hitters in its Heavy slots *and* Fast Attack/Elite slots was at an advantage over the armies whose big guns were concentrated purely in the Heavy slots. And armies with congested slots frequently ended up having to sacrifice more unique units for whatever their autotake units were. Want to take venomthropes? That's cute, but where's your third unit of zoanthropes for tank busting? You want to play Saim-Hann? You've got 3 slots to put your iconic shining spear and vyper units into, and heaven forbid you wanted to take some other fast unit like swooping hawks in your army.
I suspect that people who want to return to the FOC probably played armies that were comfortable in the FOC. And/or armies that had lots of ways to ignore the FOC. (Squaddable vehicles, rules that move force org roles around, stuff like marine dreadnaughts that were split up across elite and heavy slots, etc.) The FOC didn't really do a lot for balance, and it actively made it harder to field certain fluffy army themes.
(Note: The FOC is definitely a pet peeve of mine, so please feel free to call me out if I'm beingly overly spicy here.)
Now all that said, the rule of 3 definitely isn't perfect. It's a bandaid, and a bandaid that specifically gets wonky with the whole no-points-for-wargear thing. I'm all for some sort of system to limit or otherwise account for things like skew and unit spam. But such a system wouldn't be based on "battlefield roles" because those were always arbitrary and didn't really relate to the actual stats/problems that needed to be accounted for. I don't care if someone is spamming "elites" if those elite units aren't particularly game-breaking. I do care if my opponent is fielding 90% vehicles thus creating a skew list that renders any anti-infantry units in my army basically pointless. I care if they're spamming cheap bodies so they can statcheck me with 200 grots or gaunts or whatever and see if they have more bodies than I have bullets. I care if the heavy hitter unit they're spamming is too few points for the amount of damage it does. I care if unit A and unit B synergize to be notably too efficient for their points.
Neither the FOC nor the rule of 3 are particularly good at addressing any of those concerns.
Wyldhunt wrote:It wasn't some perfect army organization tool that cleverly enforced perfectly fluffy and balanced armies.
I don't think I've ever heard it portrayed as such, but it was inarguably a stronger shaping mechanism insofar as it enforced a more 'balanced' army archetype than the current system does.
A lot of the issues you cite come down to implementation. Three Leman Russes in a single slot was a mistake. Zoanthropes getting moved from Heavy Support to Elites was a mistake. It's a little odd that you mention Saim-Hann as getting screwed by this, but then also 'rules that move force org roles around' as an exploit, because in at least some editions that was how Saim-Hann were supported, able to take appropriate units. Those variant FOCs were fun in that they allowed for some radical variants to army composition, but had built-in disadvantages that could be tweaked for balance; skew was either forbidden entirely or allowed only with severe constraints to offset it.
At the core of it I think the FOC was a much better mechanism for discouraging skew, but GW didn't want to maintain it. And as the game becomes more abstract and less historical-wargaming-influenced, players don't want to hear that they can't bring Guilliman and three tanks and call it an army. So it's not surprising that it went away, but I don't think the result has been an improvement.
I've long felt that a WHFB-esque core/special/rare system might have been more appropriate, but that still has the same issue of player choice vs constraints for balance (see: 'core tax') that a lot of players seem to have strong feelings about.
I think we have an issue of two different rules meant to do different things intersecting in an non-satisfactory way:
The Rule of 3 is intended to keep players from spamming an unbalanced unit so many times that it seriously hampers your opponent's experience. If a unit is 20 points too efficient, three copies puts you 60 points "above" upper opponent. Not to much in a 2000 point game. 10 copies would but you 600 points above your opponent, over 1/4 the army value. Allowing 6 copies of Battleline units isn't an issue because Battleline units are never very good. It doesn't really matter how over efficient they are 6 units of Intercessors are not going to throw the game off much.
Different Datasheets for different weapon layouts allow them to better sculpt a unit's stats, abilities, and points value without making them overcomplicated. You could put the Predator Annihilator and Predator Destructor on the same datasheet because the only differences between the unit is the main weapon and the Ability. But imagine the potiential confusion from having two special rules that both start with "If this unit is armed with X, then ..."? This is avoided by having a completely different datasheet.
Of course, this then leads to the possibility that you can now field 3 Predator Annihilators and Predator Destructors instead of 3 Predators. It also feels unfair to players of other armies that don't get to "double up" on a unit that has a similar main gun difference on the same datasheet, like Adepta Sororitas Exorcist with the option of either Exorcist conflagration rockets (anti Infantry) or Exorcist missile launcher (anti tank).
I don't think I could really support the FOC when it incentivised taking minimal amounts of actual line infantry just so you could get to the "good" stuff - and by "minimal", that meant cheapest.
Yes, I'm talking Space Marine armies that took two Scout Squads, and then whatever else took their fancy. Sorry, but Scouts should never have been Troops.
FOC was just as arbitrary as Rule of Three, and I entirely agree with Wyldhunt's assessment. Is Rule of 3 and GW's current approach perfect? Gods no! But they both had faults, their own arbitrary restrictions, and both prevent (and allow!) otherwise "reasonable" looking armies.
You ask me, I genuinely think that the best army building mechanic GW did was Decurions/Formations. The "here's a free bonus for taking XYZ" part, no way, but the "here's a template detachment, fill it with a bit of X, a bit of Y, and your choice between A and B", and that *felt* like a meaningful army builder.
I think HH3 is experimenting with something which feels like that, but until I see it in action and in context, I can't say for certain what I feel on that. Certainly wish it felt less clunky to read though.
To my mind, the issue with the FOC was more that the game expanded beyond what was foreseen when the FOC was drawn up - e.g. instead of a handful of Elites to choose from, a given faction might have a couple of dozen - so they can only bring a small fraction of them in any given game). To say nothing of the addition of Fliers and Super-Heavies.
I did appreciate some of the attempts to give armies variations of the FOC to better fit their theme (or a sub-faction or such) - either with separate FOCs or by characters moving units around. Alas, as with so many things GW do, it was entirely dependant on your faction having a designer that actually gave a damn about it. Otherwise, you'd end up with either nothing at all or a half-arsed FOC that basically solved nothing.
As for the Rule of 3, I would say that it feels lazy and half-arsed.
Even leaving aside the issue with some factions having a myriad of dataslates and others having barely any (oh look, we're once again back to the issue of favouritism), it feels like someone at GW started designing a balancing mechanic but then never bothered actually finishing it.
Why is it 3 for every unit, save troops? Why not have different numbers for different units? Hell, you could even make this scale with points and/or change with the detachment being used.
Let me give you an example from a different game system - in Warmaster, each unit in the army has two numbers; the first is the minimum per thousand points, the second is the maximum per thousand points. e.g. Orcs must take 2 Orc Warrior units and 2 Goblin units per 1000 points. This comes to a little under 200pts, so (notwithstanding the mandatory Warboss) you've still got ~4/5ths of your budget left to spend.
However, while you can take any number of Orc Warriors and Goblins, Artillery, Giants, Ogres and Black Orcs are each limited to 1 per thousand points. Wolf Chariots and Trolls are 3 per thousand points, and wolf- and boar-riders are unlimited.
This means that each army has a defined core of units and a decent amount of flexibility to build the rest of the army as desired. However, there still remain some boundaries - both for balance and to stop armies going to far from their core themes/units. e.g. Orcs can't just take a ton of artillery units or giants, though they are free to lean heavily towards Orcs or Goblins or even Trolls.
Anyway, I think 40k would benefit greatly from leaning more towards this sort of system, rather than just an arbitrary rule of 3 for every dataslate.
Wyldhunt wrote:It wasn't some perfect army organization tool that cleverly enforced perfectly fluffy and balanced armies.
I don't think I've ever heard it portrayed as such, but it was inarguably a stronger shaping mechanism insofar as it enforced a more 'balanced' army archetype than the current system does.
Fair that no one is calling it perfect. That's me being hyperbolic and letting my cranky anti-FOC opinions out. "More balanced" feels iffy to me. I started playing in 5th, and the FOC introduced a lot of its own balance issues. Said issues were just slightly more complicated. Things like having crowded force org charts or too many ways to bypass the FOC. It was more about haves and have-nots of force org slot distributions rather than an issue of spamming 3 of each leman russ variant or what have you. But like, skew lists were possible when I started playing in 5th too. Maybe the FOC was really solid in 3rd and 4th edition? Although I know there were generally ways of bypassing it in those editions as well.
A lot of the issues you cite come down to implementation.
I'd definitely be open to seeing a better implementation. However, I think the FOC innately runs up against a few major hurtles. Like, if you want a Death Wing army (represented by the inclusion of lots of terminators and the exclusion of "troop" units) to be a playable force on the tabletop, then you have to make exceptions to the FOC and/or move Death Wing termies to troops. And then that begs the question of why some termies are troops and others aren't. And should stealthy infiltrator elites and melee blender elites really be competing for the same slots? And if you get a 5th edition guard/space marine situation where you have vehicles in multiple Force Org slots, then none of these limitations are preventing skew lists even if they're forcing you to some fast attack vehicles to go with your heavy, elite, and HQ vehicles.
Basically, the FOC has never really had any direct benefits. It prevents you from fielding fluffy thematic units regardless of whether taking those units is OP, and it forces you to take the troop/core "tax" even in thematic lists where their presence doesn't make sense. It creates disadvantages right out the gate for armies whose only troops aren't particularly points efficient or simply aren't something you want to field multiples of. It allows skew lists and hyper points-efficient unit spam in armies that have enough variety of datasheets in a variety of slots.
To me, it feels like it was taking a roundabout approach to addressing some problems that it never actually solved. Whereas the 10th edition approach is far from perfect and doesn't fix skew/spam, but at least it doesn't get in the way of me playing a thematic list or penalize me for playing an army with lazily designed troops.
It's a little odd that you mention Saim-Hann as getting screwed by this, but then also 'rules that move force org roles around' as an exploit, because in at least some editions that was how Saim-Hann were supported, able to take appropriate units. Those variant FOCs were fun in that they allowed for some radical variants to army composition, but had built-in disadvantages that could be tweaked for balance; skew was either forbidden entirely or allowed only with severe constraints to offset it.
If we're talking about having lots of variants of the FOC with their own bespoke advantages and disadvantages though, then I feel like we're not really talking about the FOC any more. We're talking about a bespoke army composition chart with theme-specific rules. Which I'm fine with. As much as I like my freedom of list design in the current system, I think any kind of "org chart" list building approach would probably need to do something vaguely like Boarding Actions/what you're describing. Basically giving each detachment its own chart and limitations.
In a straight-up 5th-7th style FOC, Saim-Hann runs into the issue that two of its iconic units (shining spears and vypers) are both competing for the 3 available Fast Attack slots. So if you wanted more than a single unit of both, you were out of luck. You could either take two vypers or two spear units, but not both. And if you wanted three vypers, you simply weren't allowed to take shining spears at all. And this would have been worse if guardian jetbikes hadn't been troops at the time. But guardian bikes being troops felt like it was just a baked-in exception to the force org chart in its own right, right? No other faction got bikers as troops. They were clearly only in that role to avoid screwing over Saim-Hann players even more.
tldr; I think this all drives home just how bad the FOC was at facilitating iconic army themes unless you had ways to bend/break the FOC.
At the core of it I think the FOC was a much better mechanism for discouraging skew, but GW didn't want to maintain it. And as the game becomes more abstract and less historical-wargaming-influenced, players don't want to hear that they can't bring Guilliman and three tanks and call it an army. So it's not surprising that it went away, but I don't think the result has been an improvement.
Idk. I feel like it's kind of a wash. Guard were spamming tanks just fine in 5th with hell hound variants and sentinels in fast attack, russes and artillery in heavy, and dedicated transports all over the place. It's not super unreasonable to stick fast tanks in the fast attack slot, so that's giving you 6 slots for killy vehicles right off the bat. Plus another slot for each cheap infantry unit that unlocks a dedicated transport. Unless you rework the FOC to put all vehicles in the same slot, it's really just not an innately good tool for limiting skew. And on the opposite end, things like gaunt carpets get most of their bodies from spamming troops, which the FOC gives you plenty of slots for.
I've long felt that a WHFB-esque core/special/rare system might have been more appropriate, but that still has the same issue of player choice vs constraints for balance (see: 'core tax') that a lot of players seem to have strong feelings about.
See above for strong feelings about the "core tax". But even setting aside the player choice aspect of it, "core/special/rare" still wouldn't be a very good way of breaking things down, right? So long as players have enough access to "core" vehicles (dedicated transports for instance), tank skew is still going to remain a problem. It maybe improves the problem a bit by making it so that the number of super lethal tanks goes down and they have to be replaced with less killy tanks (fewer russes, more chimeras), but the skew is still there. And if all of a faction's tools for handling the current meta are tied up in special/rare, then you're just restricting some armies' abilities to respond to the meta.
Basically, the FOC only encourages fluffy armies if you happen to be playing an army that fits in the FOC. For any kind of unconventional army organization (regardless of how optimal it is), your end up with your options restricted and/or you're forced to field units that detract from your ability to convey your army's fluff (tac marines in a Death Wing army). The FOC doesn't really prevent skew. It kind of prevents people from spamming their strongest units, but only if those units are all in the same slot; if they're in multiple slots then it's only really as effective at this as the rule of 3.
If we want to actually address issues like skew, hyper-lethal unit spam, and armies generally "feeling like armies" (as it has been phrased in other threads), we should be looking for something new and better; not returning to an old approach that didn't really do what we want it to in the first place.
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Sgt_Smudge wrote:
FOC was just as arbitrary as Rule of Three, and I entirely agree with Wyldhunt's assessment. Is Rule of 3 and GW's current approach perfect? Gods no! But they both had faults, their own arbitrary restrictions, and both prevent (and allow!) otherwise "reasonable" looking armies.
Cheers! And agreed.
You ask me, I genuinely think that the best army building mechanic GW did was Decurions/Formations. The "here's a free bonus for taking XYZ" part, no way, but the "here's a template detachment, fill it with a bit of X, a bit of Y, and your choice between A and B", and that *felt* like a meaningful army builder.
I think HH3 is experimenting with something which feels like that, but until I see it in action and in context, I can't say for certain what I feel on that. Certainly wish it felt less clunky to read though.
For those of us without the books, can you elaborate a bit on what HH3 is doing? While there was something satisfying about the decurion army building style, it also felt pretty arbitrary and prone to haves and have-nots. So I'd worry about the execution of such an approach.
vipoid wrote:
To my mind, the issue with the FOC was more that the game expanded beyond what was foreseen when the FOC was drawn up - e.g. instead of a handful of Elites to choose from, a given faction might have a couple of dozen - so they can only bring a small fraction of them in any given game). To say nothing of the addition of Fliers and Super-Heavies.
Absolutely. The FOC, even a more restrictive version of it, seems well suited to a version of the game with like, 6 units per side only one or two of which are vehicles in a given battle. But it never felt appropriate for my space elves, especially at higher points where I suddenly wasn't allowed to field more anti-tank aspect warriors for some reason even though the number of tanks that needed busting kept going up as the game size increased.
I did appreciate some of the attempts to give armies variations of the FOC to better fit their theme (or a sub-faction or such) - either with separate FOCs or by characters moving units around. Alas, as with so many things GW do, it was entirely dependent on your faction having a designer that actually gave a damn about it. Otherwise, you'd end up with either nothing at all or a half-arsed FOC that basically solved nothing.
Yeah. Again, I kind of wonder what the game would look like with an expanded version of Boarding Actions' army building rules.
Anyway, I think 40k would benefit greatly from leaning more towards this sort of system, rather than just an arbitrary rule of 3 for every dataslate.
Hmm. Maybe. Minimum troop taxes still rarely sit well with me. But again, tying this to your detachment might help. Requiring X amount of ork boyz in a green tide type detachment seems reasonable. Expecting X amount of intercessors in a Death Wing army less so.
-Guardsman- wrote: Datasheets used to be only a document format... a layout that was designed for quick reference of stats and rules during a busy 40k game. But with the FOC having been replaced with the Rule of 3 (2 for smaller games), datasheets have effectively become the new FOC. The 3 slots once available for Fast Attack units can now be allocated to just one of the 4 variants of Land Speeder, allowing a total of 12 Speeders. Not even counting other hover-vehicles, or other units that used to fall under the Fast Attack category.
In essence, an army's spamming ability depends on whether variants of the same units have been given separate datasheets and keywords, or just extra bullet points under the Wargear Options section.
Will all variants be equally effective, or even worth taking? Of course not. I can also fully accept that GW's cash-cow armies like Space Marines will always get more units, and therefore more list-building freedom. But datasheet-based force org restrictions are just so arbitrary. The Adeptus Custodes' vaunted Caladius grav-tank, which some players never take the field without, gets only one datasheet even though it has access to two very different guns (one anti-vehicle and one anti-heavy infantry) and has a datasheet ability that depends on the gun it's equipped with (Lethal Hits vs. vehicles and monsters with the former gun, and Lethal Hits vs. all other units with the latter). The two weapon options are even sold in separate sets, under different names: the Caladius Grav-Tank and the Caladius Grav-Tank Annihilator. I'm not aware the "Annihilator" distinction appears anywhere outside the Web store... It's just a product name, not a datasheet or keyword.
Look, I'm not asking for two Caladius datasheets so that I can field 6 of them total. I just wish the list-building system were rooted in the unit's battlefield role rather than the layout of the codex.
This has been an issue for a while, and I know I'm far from the first to point it out. But given GW's obsession with tournament balance, always trying to keep all faction win rates within the narrow 45-55% range, it's completely inexplicable that they would nuke the FOC.
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10th barely has any restrictions on list building, Ro3 doesn't do the same thing as FOC, because units that were very different were banned in the same list while units that were very similar were allowed in the same list. What the FOC was supposed to do was force people to build varied armies without too much of a focus on one type of unit or strategy, so you would have some basic dudes, some more elite dudes, some slower and some faster units. What the Ro3 does is prevent spamming an undercosted unit and thereby helping balance the game, because even if a unit is 100 pts undercosted, you're only saving 300 points by taking 3 instead of 600 points by taking 6. Next question is how likely is it that units with similar datasheets or what could be one datasheet share the same level of cost-efficiency? Pretty low historically, usually you see one gun that trumps the other in terms of value for pts, abilities also being different, the danger of 3 Land Speeder variants all being overpowered is low.
That leaves the issue of repetitive armies, but that's a hard issue to solve, because if the Toughness and Saves are the same, then it doesn't really matter to your opponent whether it's a Land Speeder or Razorback, the same weapons will be (in)effective. If you want interesting tactical decisions between targets to focus based on different defensive profiles the FOC is not what you want and it's also pretty clearly not what 40k is trying to be, spammy lists have been encouraged for a long time in the name of theme. If it's an issue of models looking the same then I can see how Land Speeders being one datasheet would solve that and I agree with that.
I think the best argument is for simplicity, without a good argument simplicity is always better and many of these units shouldn't have an ability in the first place, them having 3 different abilities based on the gun they have is insane bloat. Strip most unique abilities from the game, consolidate datasheet where possible. Give units different complementing roles, using abilities when necessary to encourage varied army lists and give every unit a thing it does neatly.
alextroy wrote: You could put the Predator Annihilator and Predator Destructor on the same datasheet because the only differences between the unit is the main weapon and the Ability. But imagine the potiential confusion from having two special rules that both start with "If this unit is armed with X, then ..."? This is avoided by having a completely different datasheet.
Imagine a world where every single unit didn't 'need' a special rule...
alextroy wrote: You could put the Predator Annihilator and Predator Destructor on the same datasheet because the only differences between the unit is the main weapon and the Ability. But imagine the potiential confusion from having two special rules that both start with "If this unit is armed with X, then ..."? This is avoided by having a completely different datasheet.
Imagine a world where every single unit didn't 'need' a special rule...
Been there, seen it, played those editions. Pretty bland.
Wyldhunt wrote:If we're talking about having lots of variants of the FOC with their own bespoke advantages and disadvantages though, then I feel like we're not really talking about the FOC any more. We're talking about a bespoke army composition chart with theme-specific rules. Which I'm fine with. As much as I like my freedom of list design in the current system, I think any kind of "org chart" list building approach would probably need to do something vaguely like Boarding Actions/what you're describing. Basically giving each detachment its own chart and limitations.
I appreciate your reply and understand where you're coming from, so please don't take me singling out this quote as cherry-picking. Your comment reminded me of how another GW game I enjoy talking about has done exactly this. Yeah, I'm waxing poetic about Epic: Armageddon again.
In Epic, each faction has its own force composition system. So for Marines, the core of your army is formations, typically of 4-6 units- 6 stands of Tactical Marines, 4 of Terminators, 4 Land Raiders, et cetera. These formations then have upgrades to add support units, so you could add 2 Dreadnoughts or a Vindicator or whatever. And since they're Space Marines, an inherently mobile force, they get either Rhinos or drop pods for free. That's your core army composition system for Marines.
Then for Guard, your basic formations are Companies, so it might be 12 units of Guardsmen, or 10 Leman Russes, or 3 Baneblades. Right off the bat these are much larger than their Marine equivalents, both in numbers and points. You still have upgrades to directly add units to those formations, like Hydras or Ogryns or Snipers, but then you also can take up to 2 Support Formations per Company, which are independent units of more specialized things like 8 bases of Storm Troopers or 3 Basilisks.
Epic benefits a lot from its scale, but essentially this FOC-adjacent system allows the game to both constrain listbuilding and directly reflect the organizational models of the different factions through its listbuilding. Marines use numerous small, independent formations with organic support. Guard use giant sledgehammer formations and have separate specialists. Tyranids have swarms that can vary wildly in size and composition, Eldar have warhosts supported by troupes of specialists.
This circles back to what I said in my previous post, which is that this requires a lot more design work and attention than just building a roster and saying 'take whatever you like'. But it does allow the designer to further characterize the faction, as well as impose reasonable restrictions on what can be taken in a normal game.
As people have said, the Rule of 3 didn't replace the FOC - we had the detachment system in 8th and the first 2/3rds or so of 9th that sought to guide how armies should be built and therefore what they'd look like. It was only in later 9th and now 10th when we moved to "go with whatever".
I'm afraid a bit like Wyldhunt, I'm a "FOC doubter". It can cause a problem for fluffy armies (as indeed does the rule of 3) - meanwhile GW have been offering ways for competitive/performance focused players to "get around" the FOC more or less since 40k started. An awful lot of armies in the last 3 editions that have been competitive bugbears would have fit nearly into the old FOC without difficulty.
If I was coming up with a new edition, I'd potentially look at some sort of force organisation chart which forces people into taking mainly infantry. I'd probably not agonise over distinguishing here - just make sure every datasheet has rules such that they are worth taking, rather than "this unit is Troops+, so it either always worth taking for the points, or never worth taking for the points. The fact its been designated Elite or Heavy Support is almost inconsequential."
There would presumably have to be some allowances here - but maybe that would factored into the core rules. So you aren't compelling people a game of mainly infantry with low S and AP attacks - and then suddenly you have "woops" - all Knights/Tanks/Monsters etc.
I think Epic potentially does a better job of making armies "look like armies" from the fluff. Equally however I think GW have decided - probably rightly - that its best commercially to let people play what they want to play (and in turn, buy what they want to buy). If Epic had seen 30 odd years of new units and armies etc, it might look quite different today.
Wyldhunt wrote: For those of us without the books, can you elaborate a bit on what HH3 is doing? While there was something satisfying about the decurion army building style, it also felt pretty arbitrary and prone to haves and have-nots. So I'd worry about the execution of such an approach.
This handy dandy article shows how the new edition of Horus Heresy is handling army building.
At the most basic, you start with a Primary Detachment, which consist of a number of Battlefield Role selections you may take. From the example Primary Detachment, you get a High Command (high ranking officer), some Command (officer), some troops, and some transports.
For each Command selection you fill, you are allowed to add 1 or 2 (depending on the unit) Auxiliary detachments to your army.
If you fill the High Command selection you are allowed to take either an Auxiliary or Apex detachment.
Auxiliary detachments give you slots for various themed unit types. Apex detachments are for specialized units, like Legion specific units, more Command, or Retinue units.
So basically, you need to use Command units to unlock other detachments that allow you to go beyond your basic units. There are no compulsory choices, but you must take Command models before you can take additional detachments. So no armies running around without leadership.
There would presumably have to be some allowances here - but maybe that would factored into the core rules. So you aren't compelling people a game of mainly infantry with low S and AP attacks - and then suddenly you have "woops" - all Knights/Tanks/Monsters etc.
There would still be the issue of transports. "Woops" all transports was the meat of vehicle spam in most editions.
The fundamental problem with the FoC is that GW has made and promoted a bunch of armies that canonically exist as complete FoC-breaking skew. Deathwing. Armored Company. White Scars. Green Tide. Custodes. Gaunt Swarm. Speed Freaks. Knight Titans.
So does it ruin the game for an army to be nothing but terminators or doesn't it? If the answer is yes then Deathwing needs to be removed from the game. If the answer is no then there's no reason why the Star Leopards can't take all terminators too.
And special army rules don't change this. The rules for Deathwing didn't make them any more vulnerable to bolters or termagants. In fact those rules frequently made the skew worse by further amplifying whatever was being skewed into (their terminators are tougher, their bikes are faster, they can spawn even more units of gaunts, etc).
And furthermore outside of a few named armies (Blood Angels 2nd Company or whatever) the fluffiness doesn't really hold up. How many terminators do the Star Leopards field? How many battlewagons does Boss Grimmucka have in his waagh? How many gargoyles are used by Hive Fleet Chubacabra? You have no clue, and it's not like the existence of a tank company or recon detachment is unrealistic. If anything it's actually less realistic to have a balanced assortment of static infantry, fast transports, and long-range artillery all bunched up in the same small rectangle.
^Back when the Armored Company rules were released, the designers actually did include a couple special rules to aid in softening the skew with the list.
If anything the custom FOC adjustments for certain armies were aknowledgements that the basic setup wasn't going to cover everything. Nor was it fixed anyways, since (at least in 3rd and 4th ed) there was a whole collection of battle scenarios with different FOCs.
Many of the complaints I read about the FOC seem to come from the idea that FOC was supposed to fix everything, when really it's designed to work alongside points values and codex design to provide more balance. But also some of the criticism seems to come from the notion that armies should be equally equipped in every category. Which they definitely shouldn't. Armies should be balanced differently, and assymetric balance is a part of healthy variety and potential gameplay challenge.
What's definitely clear is that more thought was put into it than "rule of 3".
So, how does the pro-FOC crowd explain that 90%+ of top tier tournament lists actually look like armies that would exist in-universe, while in every FOC edition the vast majority top performing lists was just spamming the best-in-slot unit as often as possible?
Outside of lynchpin units in codices with no other options and obviously busted things (hello, DG!), most units only appear once or twice in army rosters because flexibility is more important than raw power.
TL;DR: Data supports that anything the FOC tried to achieve, has been done much better without its help. If you are not willing to have your views changed by trivial things such as facts, feel free to stop reading now.
On this weekend there were 19 GTs covered by goonhamer, and there were just 4 DG armies and 1 necron army in the top spots which would would definitely not have fit into a FOC, ignoring knights for obvious reasons. Every other list would either have fit with no or minor modifications, often depending on the result of the arbitrary assignment of battlefield roles. All knight armies did run a mix of big and small knights out of their own volition, so they are playing as intended as well, without a FOC. A single DG list doubled up on a model with two datasheets, bringing both 3 flesh mower and 3 blightlauncher drones. The most spammy non-DG lists was a blood angels lists bringing 3 of everything good and a trukk boyz list, which both would have fit the FOC of the past perfectly.
The game itself is encouraging players to bring varied list and battleline/troops, through a combination of vastly improved internal balance, a bigger spread of offensive and defensive profiles, mission design and rule of 3. If you are just talking about the Ro3 vs FOC in isolation, you are missing the point.
Hard agree with jidmah here, they didn’t just ditch FOC, in 10th they’ve encouraged thematic lists with detachments that buff certain builds and characters and unit rules that encourage taking good mixes of things. The current system is way better than FOC.
In the FOC area people moaned endlessly about tax units, taking minimal troops because they had to. Now those battle line units do things and are taken because they work, and all people wanted to do in FOC era was spam things and game the chart to get the most powerful armies, not build thematic and evocative armies.
Take off the rose tinted glasses. Going back isn’t the answer to the problems with the current system. It just needs a few tweaks and the signs show they are working on it.
Isn't the root issue here that the game is so shallow that it cannot support different battlefield roles? If it could, spam, and systems to allow/prevent it, wouldn't be relevant.
lord_blackfang wrote: Isn't the root issue here that the game is so shallow that it cannot support different battlefield roles? If it could, spam, and systems to allow/prevent it, wouldn't be relevant.
I'd argue that there is no root issue. People are trying to find a problem for a solution they remember fondly.
I think different people have different issues.
I mean the OP seems annoyed they can't run more than 3 Caladius Grav-Tanks. I'd have thought 3 was enough to be getting on with - but I guess if you love the unit maybe you'd want 6, or 10 etc. Some people want to spam.
That's a different issue from thinking armies in 40k don't feel like armies from the fluff. The issue in turn, as Orkeosaurus says, is whose fluff? I don't think "all terminators" is especially fluff breaking - but other people might emphasis the rarity of this gear and its breaking their immersion or something. Mass Battlewagons for Orks seems perfectly natural.
I guess to try and highlight the issue, I feel a lot of AoS lists feel very unnatural to me. You have lists which look broadly like this:
[Monster-King of the faction]
[Monster 2]
[Buffbots]
[Tough Brick]
[Fast scoring units]
There's no spam and you'd probably fit them into most normal FOCs - especially if one of those units would have been "troops/common etc" in the past. But there's something off about it I don't like. I think its that [Monster-King of the faction] should almost always have a much bigger/grander retinue than this.
I guess the equivalent in 40k would be something like the Silent King, 3-4 C'Tan of various types, and 2 Doomsday Arks or Doomstalkers etc. There's no spam, you could probably fill in minium requirements to meet any FOC requirement. But it doesn't feel like a "natural formation" that would come to exist in 40k. Going all the way back to 8th, you had the classic 3 juiced up BA captains with min scouts, the loyal 32 (or more) for CP farming, and a Knight Castellan. Could those units end up on a battlefield together? Sure. Would it be a formation some imperial commander would deliberately plan to pull together? No, I don't really think so.
But equally I don't want GW to sit down and write "fluffy lists" for every detachment, with very little choice on what units you can and can't take. Or "If you bring Guilliman, you must bring a predetermined 2k points worth of marines that represent his honour guard" etc. So I think a lot of this is tilting at windmills. As Jidmah says list/faction variety is probably better than ever. So I think unless you can really identify what problem you are trying to solve, you are sort of attacking a ghost.
Jidmah wrote:So, how does the pro-FOC crowd explain that 90%+ of top tier tournament lists actually look like armies that would exist in-universe, while in every FOC edition the vast majority top performing lists was just spamming the best-in-slot unit as often as possible?
Outside of lynchpin units in codices with no other options and obviously busted things (hello, DG!), most units only appear once or twice in army rosters because flexibility is more important than raw power.
At this point, the rule of three exists as a circuit breaker to prevent super efficient datasheets from overwhelming the game. They also use the balance dataslate, points, and mission design to do the same, so as Jidmah pointed out, rarely is a player simply spamming three of the "best unit."
lord_blackfang wrote:Isn't the root issue here that the game is so shallow that it cannot support different battlefield roles? If it could, spam, and systems to allow/prevent it, wouldn't be relevant.
I mean this without snark, but do you actually play modern 40k? The core rules absolutely encourage a wide range of battlefield roles.
catbarf wrote: I appreciate your reply and understand where you're coming from, so please don't take me singling out this quote as cherry-picking. Your comment reminded me of how another GW game I enjoy talking about has done exactly this. Yeah, I'm waxing poetic about Epic: Armageddon again.
In Epic, each faction has its own force composition system. So for Marines, the core of your army is formations, typically of 4-6 units- 6 stands of Tactical Marines, 4 of Terminators, 4 Land Raiders, et cetera. These formations then have upgrades to add support units, so you could add 2 Dreadnoughts or a Vindicator or whatever. And since they're Space Marines, an inherently mobile force, they get either Rhinos or drop pods for free. That's your core army composition system for Marines.
Then for Guard, your basic formations are Companies, so it might be 12 units of Guardsmen, or 10 Leman Russes, or 3 Baneblades. Right off the bat these are much larger than their Marine equivalents, both in numbers and points. You still have upgrades to directly add units to those formations, like Hydras or Ogryns or Snipers, but then you also can take up to 2 Support Formations per Company, which are independent units of more specialized things like 8 bases of Storm Troopers or 3 Basilisks.
Epic benefits a lot from its scale, but essentially this FOC-adjacent system allows the game to both constrain listbuilding and directly reflect the organizational models of the different factions through its listbuilding. Marines use numerous small, independent formations with organic support. Guard use giant sledgehammer formations and have separate specialists. Tyranids have swarms that can vary wildly in size and composition, Eldar have warhosts supported by troupes of specialists.
This circles back to what I said in my previous post, which is that this requires a lot more design work and attention than just building a roster and saying 'take whatever you like'. But it does allow the designer to further characterize the faction, as well as impose reasonable restrictions on what can be taken in a normal game.
What you're describing sounds quite similar to the Corsair Coterie system in 7th, where your army was made using a series of mini-FOCs, which each had core units that could be supplemented with additional units.
Would that be a fair comparison, or am I misunderstanding how the Epic Armageddon system works?
Jidmah wrote: So, how does the pro-FOC crowd explain that 90%+ of top tier tournament lists actually look like armies that would exist in-universe, while in every FOC edition the vast majority top performing lists was just spamming the best-in-slot unit as often as possible?
That's easy, and why I wrote: "Many of the complaints I read about the FOC seem to come from the idea that FOC was supposed to fix everything, when really it's designed to work alongside points values and codex design to provide more balance."
Reminder that there were no rules/points adjustments in the older era of FOC, and that it's very common now that a codex comes out, and people complain while also saying "wait for the inevitable nerf/points adjustments."
lord_blackfang wrote: Isn't the root issue here that the game is so shallow that it cannot support different battlefield roles? If it could, spam, and systems to allow/prevent it, wouldn't be relevant.
I'd argue that there is no root issue. People are trying to find a problem for a solution they remember fondly.
Well, no. The thread title is specifically about the rule of three. FOC in isolation was a more thorough method of dealing with unit spam because RO3 has the obvious flaw where some units have different dataslates that suddenly allow 6/9/whatever of the same unit to be taken. Loyalists being able to field 9 Land Raiders, while Chaos only 3, simply because the weapons are different, is goofy AF.
But as we both aknowledge, both systems are still at the mercy of unit balance through other means.
I mean this without snark, but do you actually play modern 40k? The core rules absolutely encourage a wide range of battlefield roles.
This wasn't aimed at me, but. . .Admittedly, I've only played one game of 10th (played a crapload prior though). And it sure seems to me that one of the reasons more unit types show up is less "core rules" and more those mandated terrain layouts and mission types. In the grand scheme of things there are so, so many variables for adjusting balance.
I'd also argue that in order to balance the game they've chipped away at areas of flavor too. The fact that all weapon options for a squad have to be worth an equal number of points has it effect on how weapons get represented. Or other things like, last I checked, in order for Intercessors to work they had to shoot 4 times in a turn or something. I guess they're supposed to be that much better at shooting over other units? Balance is a fine objective. The methods I sometimes disagree with.
I vastly, vastly prefer Rule of 3 to FOC. Hated that thing and while I in some ways enjoyed Detatchments as its replacement, I think the Rule of 3 has overall just vastly opened up the game and made armies more varied and interesting.
I do get the issues with it. Right now there's a lot of datasheets that are mostly weapon swaps that primarily have different datasheets for special rule purposes. I could definitely see a grouping system where "Dreadnaught" is a Rule of 3 keyword to avoid taking 9+ of them or something like that. It's not been too common of an issue this edition, but I wouldn't be sad to see them add something like that to clean up some of the gaps.
Jidmah wrote: So, how does the pro-FOC crowd explain that 90%+ of top tier tournament lists actually look like armies that would exist in-universe, while in every FOC edition the vast majority top performing lists was just spamming the best-in-slot unit as often as possible?
Outside of lynchpin units in codices with no other options and obviously busted things (hello, DG!), most units only appear once or twice in army rosters because flexibility is more important than raw power.
TL;DR: Data supports that anything the FOC tried to achieve, has been done much better without its help. If you are not willing to have your views changed by trivial things such as facts, feel free to stop reading now.
Looking at the top three lists from the Glasshammer Major in Nottingham last weekend, we have:
-A Death Guard list with three each of Bloat-Drones, PBCs, and Blight Haulers, and not a single Plague Marine
-A Marine list led by Guilliman, Ventris, and Calgar, with three Storm Speeder Hammerstrikes, two Ballistus Dreads, and a single Scout squad for regular infantry
-Thousand Sons led by Magnus, an Exalted Sorceror, two Infernal Masters, and three Tzaangor Shamans (half the army's points in characters alone), but at least this one has Rubrics, a Rhino, and some Tzaangors in addition to big beasts
That's zero out of three looking to me like armies that would exist in-universe, all three are hitting the RO3 limit somewhere, and all three would be violating the oldschool FOC.
Happy to hear a more cogent argument and I'll readily agree that the FOC was not some cure-all for army composition, and maybe plucking the most recent tournament is not looking at 'top tier', but this condescending attitude is really not a good look for you.
Jidmah wrote: So, how does the pro-FOC crowd explain that 90%+ of top tier tournament lists actually look like armies that would exist in-universe, while in every FOC edition the vast majority top performing lists was just spamming the best-in-slot unit as often as possible?
Outside of lynchpin units in codices with no other options and obviously busted things (hello, DG!), most units only appear once or twice in army rosters because flexibility is more important than raw power.
Looking at the top three lists from the Glasshammer Major in Nottingham last weekend, we have:
-A Death Guard list with three each of Bloat-Drones, PBCs, and Blight Haulers, and not a single Plague Marine
-A Marine list led by Guilliman, Ventris, and Calgar, with three Storm Speeder Hammerstrikes, two Ballistus Dreads, and a single Scout squad for regular infantry
-Thousand Sons led by Magnus, an Exalted Sorceror, two Infernal Masters, and three Tzaangor Shamans (half the army's points in characters alone), but at least this one has Rubrics, a Rhino, and some Tzaangors in addition to big beasts
That's zero out of three looking to me like armies that would exist in-universe, all three are hitting the RO3 limit somewhere, and all three would be violating the oldschool FOC.
Lol, goddamn.
I will say my one game of 10th I played "opps all Lascannons" with two Land Raiders and three Devastator Squads. I had a bunch of Troops because I love Tac Marines and they could also take Lascannons, but I had at least 5 Heavy Support choices. My opponent quit after turn 1 because I blew up all his vehicles and it was probably just going to be a turkey shoot after that.
vipoid wrote: What you're describing sounds quite similar to the Corsair Coterie system in 7th, where your army was made using a series of mini-FOCs, which each had core units that could be supplemented with additional units.
Would that be a fair comparison, or am I misunderstanding how the Epic Armageddon system works?
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that system, but that sounds right. The key though for E:A is that there is no single universal mini-FOC structure. Each faction has their own approach to army composition, which then also translates to their command-and-control structures on the field.
A 40K comparison that I am familiar with would be the Platoon system for Guard back in the day. The different platoon types had different core requirements, and then different units you could add on. It was used primarily as a means of letting Guard shove more infantry into the standard FOC, but you could definitely take the same concept and use it as an army-building system.
A slightly different take on similar ideas is the 8th Ed Apocalypse standalone. It uses the same detachment system as 8th, but the detachments matter past the listbuilding stage, because every turn each detachment receives an order that applies to all its members. So you could exploit the permissiveness of the FOC to meet your requirements and then just stuff a bunch of artillery pieces and melee units in the same detachment- but it's probably not going to work out well on the table.
Lots of different ways to handle it, but using force organization both as a balancing tool and a shaping function for faction identity is a pretty standard part of this scale of game. The take-whatever-but-not-too-many-duplicates approach is more how skirmish games tend to do it.
Wyldhunt wrote: I suspect that people who want to return to the FOC probably played armies that were comfortable in the FOC. And/or armies that had lots of ways to ignore the FOC. (Squaddable vehicles, rules that move force org roles around, stuff like marine dreadnaughts that were split up across elite and heavy slots, etc.) The FOC didn't really do a lot for balance, and it actively made it harder to field certain fluffy army themes.
I could easily see faction-specific FOC's that reflect the faction's specialization, organizational structure or expected unit count. Or even a FOC for each detachment type, such as the Imperial Guard's artillery detachment having more slots available for heavy support units.
There was also a recent edition (was it 8th or 9th?) where starting CP's depended on your choice of FOC, with a balanced FOC providing more CP's than a specialized FOC. This acted as an "adaptability multiplier" for balanced armies, and forced spammy players to trust that they could win without clever tricks.
vict0988 wrote: I think the best argument is for simplicity, without a good argument simplicity is always better and many of these units shouldn't have an ability in the first place, them having 3 different abilities based on the gun they have is insane bloat. Strip most unique abilities from the game, consolidate datasheet where possible. Give units different complementing roles, using abilities when necessary to encourage varied army lists and give every unit a thing it does neatly.
Every ranged weapon already has its own USR's such as Blast, Indirect Fire, Sustained Hits or Anti-X, which are usually good enough for whatever the gun is intended for. Datasheet-specific weapon rules like "triggers Deadly Demise on a 5+" are the sort of thing you end up forgetting. Instead, vehicles with a wide choice of weapons could simply have a versatile datasheet ability that all variants can take advantage of.
Look at the Leman Russ Battle Tank, for example. Its datasheet ability makes it re-roll hits against units on an enemy-controlled objective marker. Is this not also something that the Demolisher and the Punisher could use?
LunarSol wrote: I do get the issues with it. Right now there's a lot of datasheets that are mostly weapon swaps that primarily have different datasheets for special rule purposes. I could definitely see a grouping system where "Dreadnaught" is a Rule of 3 keyword to avoid taking 9+ of them or something like that. It's not been too common of an issue this edition, but I wouldn't be sad to see them add something like that to clean up some of the gaps.
Keyword-based RO3 would def make more sense than datasheet-based.
Has anyone seen the actual new list builder for HH3 and what it entails?
HH2 was a cost prohibitive system that punished Knight players for trying to play with their Knight models.
During the Heresy and beyond, Knights are formed into 4 Questoris Knights called a Lance.
In HH2 to field a single Lance, you needed 8 Armigers minimum.
I have never been a supporter of the model tax idea, but I think their should be "Detachments of Reknown." If you build an army around a theme or Named Character and take certain forces, you get a bonus to do so. This would be the only break in a standard FOC that everyone has access to normally.
Unfortunately for some, this would require named heroes to unlock, and a lot of players don't like playing with Primarchs, or
Named Captains.
I know that not everyone will be appeased, but there needs to be some foundation for army building.
I mean this without snark, but do you actually play modern 40k? The core rules absolutely encourage a wide range of battlefield roles.
This wasn't aimed at me, but. . .Admittedly, I've only played one game of 10th (played a crapload prior though). And it sure seems to me that one of the reasons more unit types show up is less "core rules" and more those mandated terrain layouts and mission types. In the grand scheme of things there are so, so many variables for adjusting balance.
I shouldn't have used the term core rules, but my point is that the nature of the game in itself rewards brining a range of units. The terrain rules can feel "gamey," but they really do encourage infantry. Secondaries aren't part of the core rules, but they encourage light, mobile units. The need to seize middle objecitives starting turn two discourages gunlines.
You could build a list that is 9 Broadsides, 3 Hammerheads, 3 Sky rays, shadowsun, and a squad of fireknives. this army would haven been bananas in 4th edition, and now is...a weird skew list that might win half it's games through sheer firepower?
I'd also argue that in order to balance the game they've chipped away at areas of flavor too. The fact that all weapon options for a squad have to be worth an equal number of points has it effect on how weapons get represented. Or other things like, last I checked, in order for Intercessors to work they had to shoot 4 times in a turn or something. I guess they're supposed to be that much better at shooting over other units? Balance is a fine objective. The methods I sometimes disagree with.
40k pre 8th edition was very firmly a traditional wargame, where the stated goal was to line up armies that made sense to fight a battle and see who wins. In 8th and beyond, GW is actively balancing the game as a competitive exercise. I'll agree that things seem to b elosing flavor, but weirdly I think that outside of top play more units in more armies are playable in a useful way than at any other time.
FWIW, I miss the old days. I don't like that a game of 40k looks more like a futuristic paintball match than a battle with some story. But people are voting with their wallet.
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Insectum7 wrote:I will say my one game of 10th I played "opps all Lascannons" with two Land Raiders and three Devastator Squads. I had a bunch of Troops because I love Tac Marines and they could also take Lascannons, but I had at least 5 Heavy Support choices. My opponent quit after turn 1 because I blew up all his vehicles and it was probably just going to be a turkey shoot after that.
At the risk of being that guy... that's 100% a case of not enough terrain. Or if he went first, an amazingly good turn for your lascannons.
-Guardsman- wrote:I could easily see faction-specific FOC's that reflect the faction's specialization, organizational structure or expected unit count. Or even a FOC for each detachment type, such as the Imperial Guard's artillery detachment having more slots available for heavy support units.
Okay, 7th edition basically had this, only they were "formations" and were bespoke for each army and everybody hated them.
If you want to bring back FOCs, my idea would be to tag a handful of units in each codex as "core" or something similar, and included a similar number of core slots to the FA, HS, and Elites. So for example, Space Marines might have core dreadnoughts, infiltrators, company heroes, and scouts. IG might have core LRBT, Kasrkin, and field artillery. This will allow an army to bring iconic units win addition to the normal FOC allotment.
There was also a recent edition (was it 8th or 9th?) where starting CP's depended on your choice of FOC, with a balanced FOC providing more CP's than a specialized FOC. This acted as an "adaptability multiplier" for balanced armies, and forced spammy players to trust that they could win without clever tricks.
vict0988 wrote: Look at the Leman Russ Battle Tank, for example. Its datasheet ability makes it re-roll hits against units on an enemy-controlled objective marker. Is this not also something that the Demolisher and the Punisher could use?
Weirdly, I think Leman Russes are one the better arguments for separate datasheets with different rules. Sure, something like reroll ones to hit is a solid all around buff for any shooting unit. But the demolisher being able to shoot it's main gun in combat is a super flavorful rule that has in game benefits. The punisher is trash regardless, so sure, I guess reroll ones is better than dev wounds against small things. But the Exterminator has a great support tech rule, and the Vanquiser's rule makes it a little bit more reliable. They play like very different units with only one weapon and a rule change. Also, the russ variants were different rulesets going back to 2nd edition.
Keyword-based RO3 would def make more sense than datasheet-based..
At the expense of themed lists. Guard can build a legit tank company now. It's not unbalanced or broken, it works but has weaknesses. What would be gained by limited all Russes to three per list?
Polonius wrote: There was also a recent edition (was it 8th or 9th?) where starting CP's depended on your choice of FOC, with a balanced FOC providing more CP's than a specialized FOC. This acted as an "adaptability multiplier" for balanced armies, and forced spammy players to trust that they could win without clever tricks.
This was 8th and while I kind of adored it, it was hilariously abusive and not something I'd like to see return. It was probably the height of punishing armies with expensive Troop choices and was the leading cause of 8th's reliance on spending huge amounts of CP for alpha strikes.
I mean this without snark, but do you actually play modern 40k? The core rules absolutely encourage a wide range of battlefield roles.
This wasn't aimed at me, but. . .Admittedly, I've only played one game of 10th (played a crapload prior though). And it sure seems to me that one of the reasons more unit types show up is less "core rules" and more those mandated terrain layouts and mission types. In the grand scheme of things there are so, so many variables for adjusting balance.
I shouldn't have used the term core rules, but my point is that the nature of the game in itself rewards brining a range of units. The terrain rules can feel "gamey," but they really do encourage infantry. Secondaries aren't part of the core rules, but they encourage light, mobile units. The need to seize middle objecitives starting turn two discourages gunlines.
You could build a list that is 9 Broadsides, 3 Hammerheads, 3 Sky rays, shadowsun, and a squad of fireknives. this army would haven been bananas in 4th edition, and now is...a weird skew list that might win half it's games through sheer firepower?
I'd also argue that in order to balance the game they've chipped away at areas of flavor too. The fact that all weapon options for a squad have to be worth an equal number of points has it effect on how weapons get represented. Or other things like, last I checked, in order for Intercessors to work they had to shoot 4 times in a turn or something. I guess they're supposed to be that much better at shooting over other units? Balance is a fine objective. The methods I sometimes disagree with.
40k pre 8th edition was very firmly a traditional wargame, where the stated goal was to line up armies that made sense to fight a battle and see who wins. In 8th and beyond, GW is actively balancing the game as a competitive exercise. I'll agree that things seem to b elosing flavor, but weirdly I think that outside of top play more units in more armies are playable in a useful way than at any other time.
FWIW, I miss the old days. I don't like that a game of 40k looks more like a futuristic paintball match than a battle with some story. But people are voting with their wallet.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Insectum7 wrote:I will say my one game of 10th I played "opps all Lascannons" with two Land Raiders and three Devastator Squads. I had a bunch of Troops because I love Tac Marines and they could also take Lascannons, but I had at least 5 Heavy Support choices. My opponent quit after turn 1 because I blew up all his vehicles and it was probably just going to be a turkey shoot after that.
At the risk of being that guy... that's 100% a case of not enough terrain. Or if he went first, an amazingly good turn for your lascannons.
You're not "that guy" for bringing up terrain, but in response to the entire post I want to point out that throughout the history of 40k the issue of terrain would play a huge part in those other examples you gave as well. Three Baneblades in 4th might have been nuts on some tables, but absolutely terrible on others. In the same vein, Infantry or CC troops will fare much better on some tables over others. In which case the difference has little to do with modern day GW force management efforts.
And even with following the terrain rules by letter,l (and I think we did) can still result in a turkey shoot anyways. I don't even think I was optimizing my buffs from the Gladius detatchment rules.
The way I see it, the most beloved codexes in the old FOC system were the ones that could modify it, occasionally to the point of borderline ignoring it.
No one truly likes being limited by the FOC. People like the idea of their opponent being limited by the FOC, while assuming they will get a codex with FOC shenanigans.
Tyran wrote: No one truly likes being limited by the FOC. People like the idea of their opponent being limited by the FOC, while assuming they will get a codex with FOC shenanigans.
Can’t just look at army selection in a vacuum. You’ve got to consider the game itself.
Consider Objectives, and How To Score Them.
Whilst Rule of Three does indeed mean I can field nothing but say, lots and lots and lots of Leman Russ, Basilisk, Hellhounds and that? The game itself may well dictate that whilst such a list will have its fun, against an opposing list better suited to scoring Objectives, I may be hamstrung from the get-go.
I’m not saying it’s perfect. I’m not even saying it’s good. But it does give the player the most choice.
The FoC was kind of welcome after the relative freedoms of 2nd Ed, and in theory it should’ve helped ensure more thematic armies, such as Tactical Squads being the backbone unit of nearly every Marine army.
But, the implementation at least was flawed. Some armies had one or two Troops choices, and an Elites section jampacked. But when you could only field three Elites? Some units simply lost out to others.
My best expression of this would be the 3.5 Iron Warriors list.
There, you had certain restrictions and benefits. Whilst I couldn’t field any Daemon units, I had the option to trade in two Fast Attack slots, for one additional Heavy Support slot. Which does sound like an intriguing option.
Except….with Daemons out of the running? There were only two Fast Attack units left to me. Raptors (originally excellent shock troops thanks to unit wide Daemonic Visage helping to break enemy units super quickly) and Chaos Bikes. Which were, in my opinion, a bit naff. Oh, and Raptors (outside of Nightlords) were a strict 0-1 option.
So….the trade in was hardly a downside. Give up the potential to field two units of Chaos Bikes for another Defiler, or Predator, or a Vindicator, or a Basilisk. All of which were pretty fine.
But other Codexes had their own similar problems. Sometimes it was 0-1 limits. Sometimes it was say, Heavy Support having a single outstanding option (Hi, Wraithlords!) or a section being so oversubscribed most of the units just weren’t played.
Rule of Three at least does away with that. Whether your Codex has outright duff units I couldn’t venture a guess. But, in theory, it is the more flexible system.
Tyran wrote: Is there anyone that truly likes the FOC?
The way I see it, the most beloved codexes in the old FOC system were the ones that could modify it, occasionally to the point of borderline ignoring it.
No one truly likes being limited by the FOC. People like the idea of their opponent being limited by the FOC, while assuming they will get a codex with FOC shenanigans.
I liked it just fine. It felt really limiting in particular with my Crons, but I appreciated that that was just part of balance, and I appreciate that it gave me some hard choices to make during army design.
Rule of 3 bothers me far more. I can take 9 Land Raiders or 6 Predators, but only 3 Devastator Squads because . . . Weapons? But I can *gasp* change weapons on my Devastators too! All this talk about people wanting to field all Terminators with the 1st, and me over here wanting to field the 9th.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Back when the Armored Company rules were released, the designers actually did include a couple special rules to aid in softening the skew with the list.
I had to go look that up and you're right, I missed that. It's a strange case where the core rules for the game change when you play that army, only rather than changing to favor an otherwise terrible army (like Catachans needing the Jungle Fight rules to be viable) they change to handicap the AC. But they actually applied to every tank in the game, including your opponent's Land Raiders. They changed the mission rules too. Sort of like a "scenario army".
Polonius wrote: At this point, the rule of three exists as a circuit breaker to prevent super efficient datasheets from overwhelming the game. They also use the balance dataslate, points, and mission design to do the same, so as Jidmah pointed out, rarely is a player simply spamming three of the "best unit."
I think this is important. Ro3 isn't saying that an army comp will be okay so long as it doesn't have 4+ of one datasheet, but it is saying that an army will not be okay if it does have 4+ of one datasheet, and I think that's a lot easier to defend. I can't think of many examples where taking 4+ of one (non-Battleline) datasheet wouldn't be obnoxious.
But the real limiting factor is supposed to be the mission rules. You need enough "Troops" to claim objectives in order to win. You need "Fast Attack" to rush ahead and score secondaries, but having too many of those is superfluous. You need "Elites" and "Heavy Support" to kill things but you can lose on points even if you table the other army. You need "HQ" to get access to special abilities that buff the other elements.
Now I don't know how well that's actually working out, Catbarf's tournament lists suggest you can still circumvent a lot of that with sheer killing power. But overall I prefer the idea of different battlefield roles being required by the structure of the game to just mandating them by FOC. It makes you feel like you're taking troops because they are good for something, and not just because command couldn't spare enough Russes.
I liked the FOC, but as a primary Ultramarine player, it really was designed to let me field my army. I always made a point to take something from every slot in all my lists, as that’s the TAC flexible Ultra way.
I get that the FOC, like the rule of 3, was very codex/datasheet dependent. Some armies had to make hard calls for what they were able to take, while it was a non-issue for others.
The worst was "Heavy Support", which typically included both your heavy tanks and your infantry equipped with anti-tank guns. Completely opposite battlefield roles and if you needed to divide your 3 HS slots between them it could be very bad for you. Whereas if you had strong anti-tank "Elites" (toss-up) you were much better off.
Orkeosaurus wrote: The worst was "Heavy Support", which typically included both your heavy tanks and your infantry equipped with anti-tank guns. Completely opposite battlefield roles and if you needed to divide your 3 HS slots between them it could be very bad for you. Whereas if you had strong anti-tank "Elites" (toss-up) you were much better off.
If you don't think of HS as "Heavy Tanks" and more just "Heavy Firepower" then there's no "role" conflict. "Stuff that shoots more than most other things".
Battle tanks are a mobile spearhead that break through lines of infantry, anti-tank guns are a static defense of that infantry from those battle tanks. I guess exempting "tank hunter" tanks like an Annihilator, which are closer to the second role.
The problem is that "heavy (fire)power" is too broad of a niche, and HS became a sort of grab-bag of anything special that wasn't either light recon or elite infantry. So eldar had dark reapers, wraithlords, and falcons sharing a single "role" despite totally different usage.
Wyldhunt wrote:If we're talking about having lots of variants of the FOC with their own bespoke advantages and disadvantages though, then I feel like we're not really talking about the FOC any more. We're talking about a bespoke army composition chart with theme-specific rules. Which I'm fine with. As much as I like my freedom of list design in the current system, I think any kind of "org chart" list building approach would probably need to do something vaguely like Boarding Actions/what you're describing. Basically giving each detachment its own chart and limitations.
I appreciate your reply and understand where you're coming from, so please don't take me singling out this quote as cherry-picking. Your comment reminded me of how another GW game I enjoy talking about has done exactly this. Yeah, I'm waxing poetic about Epic: Armageddon again.
In Epic, each faction has its own force composition system
...
Epic benefits a lot from its scale, but essentially this FOC-adjacent system allows the game to both constrain listbuilding and directly reflect the organizational models of the different factions through its listbuilding. Marines use numerous small, independent formations with organic support. Guard use giant sledgehammer formations and have separate specialists. Tyranids have swarms that can vary wildly in size and composition, Eldar have warhosts supported by troupes of specialists.
This circles back to what I said in my previous post, which is that this requires a lot more design work and attention than just building a roster and saying 'take whatever you like'. But it does allow the designer to further characterize the faction, as well as impose reasonable restrictions on what can be taken in a normal game.
I can get behind that. Essentially giving each detachment (and it would probably have to be each detachment rather than each faction) its own chart would probably work pretty well. That's just definitely not the same thing as a generic one-size-fits-all FOC at that point.
alextroy wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote: For those of us without the books, can you elaborate a bit on what HH3 is doing? While there was something satisfying about the decurion army building style, it also felt pretty arbitrary and prone to haves and have-nots. So I'd worry about the execution of such an approach.
This handy dandy article shows how the new edition of Horus Heresy is handling army building.
At the most basic, you start with a Primary Detachment, which consist of a number of Battlefield Role selections you may take. From the example Primary Detachment, you get a High Command (high ranking officer), some Command (officer), some troops, and some transports.
For each Command selection you fill, you are allowed to add 1 or 2 (depending on the unit) Auxiliary detachments to your army.
If you fill the High Command selection you are allowed to take either an Auxiliary or Apex detachment.
Auxiliary detachments give you slots for various themed unit types. Apex detachments are for specialized units, like Legion specific units, more Command, or Retinue units.
So basically, you need to use Command units to unlock other detachments that allow you to go beyond your basic units. There are no compulsory choices, but you must take Command models before you can take additional detachments. So no armies running around without leadership.
Hm. I only sort of understand after skimming the article, but it sorta sounds like a mix between 8th/9th's detachmetns (take a leader and a bunch of units fitting a general theme) mixed with the old decurion style army building (take a core detachment and then slap on extra detachments to taste.) I could see that working in large games. I'm not sure how well it would scale down to smaller games though.
Orkeosaurus wrote: Battle tanks are a mobile spearhead that break through lines of infantry,
Eh?
Outside of 40K most tanks I think of are armed with a big anti-tank gun. they often also have other guns, sure. . . but AT firepower is a primary feature. but more broadly, firepower is a feature.
Orkeosaurus wrote: anti-tank guns are a static defense of that infantry from those battle tanks. I guess exempting "tank hunter" tanks like an Annihilator, which are closer to the second role.
The problem is that "heavy (fire)power" is too broad of a niche, and HS became a sort of grab-bag of anything special that wasn't either light recon or elite infantry. So eldar had dark reapers, wraithlords, and falcons sharing a single "role" despite totally different usage.
For most armies the goal is just keeping a cap on firepower-focused units so you don't wind up with too much skew on the receiving end. If you broke up tanks and infantry with big guns into two different categories, then your opponent gets to experience getting blasted in an unfun kind of way (queue the lingering bitterness of many left from 3.5 Iron Warriors, right?)
But beyond that, it's not just about pressures formulating list building. Where do Wraithlords go? Obviously not Troops or Fast Attack. Maybe Elite? Ok maybe, but then it steps on slots for Aspect Warriors while also enabling both Wraithlords and Fire Prisms to be taken in relative abundance, which the designers decided is not the way a typical army should show up.
I played Necrons a lot in 3rd/4th, and their Heavy Support was Monolith (a giant moving building), Heavy Destroyers (Jetbikes with Lascannons), and Tomb Spiders (a slow, support Monstrous Creature with paltry shooting and CC). It's hard to imagine units more different han one another. But there they were, forcing hard decisions about list makeup and intended synergies. . . and I liked it. There was definitely a balancing act there.
vipoid wrote: What you're describing sounds quite similar to the Corsair Coterie system in 7th, where your army was made using a series of mini-FOCs, which each had core units that could be supplemented with additional units.
Would that be a fair comparison, or am I misunderstanding how the Epic Armageddon system works?
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that system, but that sounds right. The key though for E:A is that there is no single universal mini-FOC structure. Each faction has their own approach to army composition, which then also translates to their command-and-control structures on the field.
A 40K comparison that I am familiar with would be the Platoon system for Guard back in the day. The different platoon types had different core requirements, and then different units you could add on. It was used primarily as a means of letting Guard shove more infantry into the standard FOC, but you could definitely take the same concept and use it as an army-building system.
A slightly different take on similar ideas is the 8th Ed Apocalypse standalone. It uses the same detachment system as 8th, but the detachments matter past the listbuilding stage, because every turn each detachment receives an order that applies to all its members. So you could exploit the permissiveness of the FOC to meet your requirements and then just stuff a bunch of artillery pieces and melee units in the same detachment- but it's probably not going to work out well on the table.
Lots of different ways to handle it, but using force organization both as a balancing tool and a shaping function for faction identity is a pretty standard part of this scale of game. The take-whatever-but-not-too-many-duplicates approach is more how skirmish games tend to do it.
Okay, thanks for elaborating.
From how you're describing it, it definitely sounds like a system I could get behind.
Polonius wrote: Okay, 7th edition basically had this, only they were "formations" and were bespoke for each army and everybody hated them.
I don't think that's quite fair.
From what I recall, many people quite liked the concept of Formations.
What they didn't like was the absurd buffs that some Formations provided, nor the massive discrepancy in power between the early Formations and the late Formations. With the former providing buffs such as '+1 to the PFP turn counter if your extremely-fragile HQ is alive and it's a Tuesday and it's not raining. And then the late-7th Formations included effects such as 'all your upgrades are free' and 'here, have an extra 1000pts of vehicles in your 2000pt game'.
If the effects had been more minor (or at least roughly on the same level between codices) then I think most people would have been fine with them.
But, as with virtually everything else, GW just binned the entire system rather than trying to refine it.
Tyran wrote: Is there anyone that truly likes the FOC?
The way I see it, the most beloved codexes in the old FOC system were the ones that could modify it, occasionally to the point of borderline ignoring it.
No one truly likes being limited by the FOC. People like the idea of their opponent being limited by the FOC, while assuming they will get a codex with FOC shenanigans.
I'll put up my hand as liking the old FOC.
And I say this as someone whose armies had few, if any, shenanigans with the FOC.
I rather liked the old FOC plus Formations. The Chaos book that came out towards the end of 7th (Traitor Legions?) seemed to do a really good job of giving the different CSM legions a really different look and feel. Shame it was so short-lived. What was it, 6 months? I never even got a copy of it before 8th hit and invalidated it.
Formations as a concept were fine. Have a minor buff to some units you might not otherwise use when you put your army together in a fluffy way. You could still use the basic FOC and spam the best units it you wanted, but were rewarded when using the bespoke ones for your army together bring a fluffy force.
The execution, of course, in a typical GW fashion, was botched. More as a sales tool from the marketing department to push sales, and less as a game balance tool.
And the power creep and imbalance were all over the place and out of control.
The rule of 3 is "good" if your army had their weapon option split to be different units. Floating predators, regular predators,primaris dreads being their own unit for each load out. Ork buggies when buggies were good etc
Where rule of 3 is really bad is for faction with few unit options, and even fewer good ones. It often ends the way it did for GK, where for a span of time the army was 3 GM NDKs and 3 regular NDKs. Custodes are in an even worse position, because the design studio half pretends the army isn't 50% resin with units which are super expensive and often hard to impossible not to take. On top of that because they are FW the speed at which GW fixes a faction with bad FW units after the "lets make all FW bad" is the speed species evolution. Custodes do have terminators and jetbikes that are the same but different, GW just left them with horrible rules and gigantic point costs. Would it have been nice (takes like what 2 min maybe to add it to a FAQ/Errata) if custodes got better transports, working light vehicles or the tanks split in to two separate units, like for other factions? sure. but it would only be good for the players. GW, and this isn't a bad thing, has a focus on a different group when it comes to making people as happy as possible.
I don't see how you thread the needle on formations. The initial options were incredibly limited. The Dark Eldar Kabalite Raiding Party for instance was something like 1500~ points worth of stuff.
Maybe it was the most fluffy DE force GW could imagine. But this felt stupid.
Then at the other end as people say it just became "this unit is good? How about you take 3 and make it even better."
I think working with the current detachment system is likely to be much better at encouraging list diversity.
yeah, but is there ever list diversity. A codex has to be either over powered with rules or, and often and, over costed to support even two builds. And in some cases it is stuff like, well you could play a non ultramarine codex space marine army, but why would you do that when the space marine with ultramarine special characters is just tiers better.
Every quarter we get a new pre build best way to play a detachment and one has to pray to GW that they don't decide that the way people have to/like to play the army, isn't going against some internal feeling the design studio has how a faction should be played vide Black Templars swarm.
The only way to avoid the take 3 of the best, is if there were so many best that people could actualy build different armies. Problem with that is that such a book would be exeptional and EVERYONE not playing it, would be up in arms about it (rightfuly so).
The 3 year turn over. the reaction to meta stuff that is not longer a thing. The insanity of year 3 of every edition, where GW mostly thinks about the next edition. On top of a quarterly seson system for events. It is virtualy impossible to write rules that would be good for the players. Because they would have to write and test, and only later adjust them, at the same time. And they are not going to do that, because rules are secondary to models. Faction X is Y focused? bummer because Y is suppose to come out in 2-3 editions, X faction players will somehow have to survive for the next 6 to 9 years lol.
Orkeosaurus wrote: Battle tanks are a mobile spearhead that break through lines of infantry,
Eh?
Outside of 40K most tanks I think of are armed with a big anti-tank gun. they often also have other guns, sure. . . but AT firepower is a primary feature. but more broadly, firepower is a feature.
If AT was the primary feature, they would have ATGMs. The primary feature of tank guns is being a flexible artillery piece that can go from AT to long range anti-infantry and even demolition roles in urban combat.
Moreover unlike 40k, tanks in real life are fast. Tanks exist because they combine mobility with armour and firepower and staying power. If the only thing you wanted is AT firepower then you bring ATGM teams and aircraft/drones, which vastly outperform tanks at AT.
Back to 40k, what role should be a vendetta? It is aircraft but also has 6 lascannons. What role should Tyranid Hive Guard and Zoanthropes be? Historically they were Elites with AT firepower. On the other hand, I don't recall Wraithlords being particularly notable for their firepower, as they were primarily melee monsters.
If AT was the primary feature, they would have ATGMs. The primary feature of tank guns is being a flexible artillery piece that can go from AT to long range anti-infantry and even demolition roles in urban combat.
Moreover unlike 40k, tanks in real life are fast. Tanks exist because they combine mobility with armour and firepower and staying power. If the only thing you wanted is AT firepower then you bring ATGM teams and aircraft/drones, which vastly outperform tanks at AT.
I was going to post something similar, but I couldn't find actual data on the basic load for an M1. IIRC the basic load for a T-72 autoloader was something like 7 sabot and 15 HE which is the opposite of what any self respecting tank simulator fan would want.
Anyway, it got me to thinking about how many weapons in 40k actual allow for different ammo types. Back in the day missile launchers were popular for having krak and frag ammo. Railguns had submunitions. 5th introduced Sternguard and fancy bolter rounds. What else?
On the other hand, I don't recall Wraithlords being particularly notable for their firepower, as they were primarily melee monsters.
That probably has to do with when you started. In 3rd, Wraithlords could only take 1 big gun. In 4th they could get 2 big guns, but they had to be different. Taking two of one gun just made it twin linked. In 6th they could take 2 of the same big gun, but they were overshadowed by the appearance of the Wraithknight.
Tyran wrote: Back to 40k, what role should be a vendetta? It is aircraft but also has 6 lascannons. What role should Tyranid Hive Guard and Zoanthropes be? Historically they were Elites with AT firepower. On the other hand, I don't recall Wraithlords being particularly notable for their firepower, as they were primarily melee monsters.
I don't have my 4th edition Tyranid codex to hand, but didn't Zoanthropes used to be Heavy Support choices?
Regardless, I think this goes back to the point I raised earlier about armies expanding beyond the practical limitations/intentions of the FOC.
Back when the Tyranid army was relatively small, Zoanthropes were competing with Carnifexes and Biovores and... not a lot else.
But now they'd be competing not only with those but also Mawlocs, Trygons, Tyrannofexes etc., and the Elite slot is no less crowded once you add Venomthropes, Toxicrenes, and the myriad of other units that were introduced in this edition alone.
I might also suggest that this is, at least in part, an issue with many armies having a lot of units that all compete for the same role. Sticking with Tyranids, how many variations of 'big monster with big gun' does the army actually need? At the very least, it would seem more logical to have just a couple of units with more flexible weapon options, rather than 10 different monsters with 10 slightly different weapons. This way, the FOC may feel less constraining because you're not having to leave out piles of units - you just have to choose carefully with regard to the loadouts for those units.
(And I'm not even going to get into Marines and their thirty bazillion variants on 'infantry with bolters'.)
Now, granted, I don't think we can realistically put the lid back on that particular can of worms. But I do think it is a flaw with the design of many factions/codices, rather than with the FOC.
To my mind, Wraithlords and Dreadnoughts should work as flank anchors, or force multipliers along with other infantry.
For instance, the Ballistus Dreadnought, being entirely firepower based and mobile may be well suited to supporting infantry squads. It gives them muscle at range, and they protect it from being overwhelmed. Something like the Furioso Dread, being dedicated to punching stuff really hard, should be there to punch stuff really hard before the stuff being punched really hard punches your infantry really hard. A big brother type thing.
Wraithlords are kind of the best of all worlds there. Swift enough to keep up with foot infantry, can tote some decent ranged firepower, and is handy enough in a punch up to worry a good chunk of your opponent’s army.
By no means a strict Hard Counter, but each bringing enough to the deal to make a handy, flexible cohort of mutually supporting units.
Orkeosaurus wrote: Battle tanks are a mobile spearhead that break through lines of infantry,
Eh?
Outside of 40K most tanks I think of are armed with a big anti-tank gun. they often also have other guns, sure. . . but AT firepower is a primary feature. but more broadly, firepower is a feature.
If AT was the primary feature, they would have ATGMs. The primary feature of tank guns is being a flexible artillery piece that can go from AT to long range anti-infantry and even demolition roles in urban combat.
Moreover unlike 40k, tanks in real life are fast. Tanks exist because they combine mobility with armour and firepower and staying power. If the only thing you wanted is AT firepower then you bring ATGM teams and aircraft/drones, which vastly outperform tanks at AT.
As for ATGMs and speed, that probably depends a lot on the era of tanks we're talking about. I'd also guess (but don't know) that one of the main features of the big gun is that ammunition is both cheaper and more plentiful to store, allowing for sustained direct fire support operation.
Either way we're still talking about "heavy firepower".
Tyran wrote: Back to 40k, what role should be a vendetta? It is aircraft but also has 6 lascannons. What role should Tyranid Hive Guard and Zoanthropes be? Historically they were Elites with AT firepower. On the other hand, I don't recall Wraithlords being particularly notable for their firepower, as they were primarily melee monsters.
Vendettas are obviously big on firepower. The others might feel strange, but as the rest of my post was trying to address, sometimes it's not about the specific role and more about directing the resulting army composition.
I might also suggest that this is, at least in part, an issue with many armies having a lot of units that all compete for the same role. Sticking with Tyranids, how many variations of 'big monster with big gun' does the army actually need? At the very least, it would seem more logical to have just a couple of units with more flexible weapon options, rather than 10 different monsters with 10 slightly different weapons. This way, the FOC may feel less constraining because you're not having to leave out piles of units - you just have to choose carefully with regard to the loadouts for those units.
(And I'm not even going to get into Marines and their thirty bazillion variants on 'infantry with bolters'.)
Now, granted, I don't think we can realistically put the lid back on that particular can of worms. But I do think it is a flaw with the design of many factions/codices, rather than with the FOC.
They could always do what they do in Epic, which is sometimes you have an army listing that allows the option of multiple units. For example, Imperial Guard can get an "Artillery Company", which is made up of Basilisks, or Manticores, or a mixture of both. So for Nids you might have "Floater detatchment", choose any three models of either Venomtropes or Zoanthropes. A few of those types of listings would relieve FOC tension if a codex requires it.
I don't have my 4th edition Tyranid codex to hand, but didn't Zoanthropes used to be Heavy Support choices?
Yes. 0-1 option for up to 3 Zoanthropes in the slot who operated independently during the game but had to deployed at the same time (not in the same place) because that was a thing in 4th. Lictors did the same in Elites.
Regardless, I think this goes back to the point I raised earlier about armies expanding beyond the practical limitations/intentions of the FOC.
Back when the Tyranid army was relatively small, Zoanthropes were competing with Carnifexes and Biovores and... not a lot else.
But now they'd be competing not only with those but also Mawlocs, Trygons, Tyrannofexes etc., and the Elite slot is no less crowded once you add Venomthropes, Toxicrenes, and the myriad of other units that were introduced in this edition alone.
.
It was already crowded in 5th when they added Hive Guard to the Elite slot and IIRC the Doom of Malantai. Carnifexes got nerfed so the HS choices were just Trygons, Mawlocs, and Tyrannofex even though that Tervigon/Tyrannofex kit didn't come out for 2 more years.
Making different options compete for slots is part of why the FOC exists; that's what sets it apart from RO3. Not being able to take Tyrannofexes and Carnifexes and Trygons and Mawlocs in the same take-all-comers list would be a feature, not a bug.
The implicit argument here seems to be that if GW makes ten different flavors of tank for one faction, you should be allowed to take all ten tanks in the same army. I disagree; preventing that sort of skew is the point of the FOC (if the game design is such that ten tanks will lead to a bad game). It should just mean that you have more types of tank you can choose from, even if that ends up being three at most in a normal army. If it's supposed to be the tank faction and should be fielding lots of tanks, then the FOC can still accommodate that by either putting some of those tanks in other slots (see: Hellhound) or permitting an altered FOC with appropriate disadvantages as necessary.
But regardless, some armies are just going to have more choices for a given slot than others. In older editions poor internal balance meant some units never saw play because others were superior in the same slot, but nowadays that isn't nearly as big a problem. The important thing is just that you have interesting options for every slot, and each option is sufficiently useful on its own merits that nothing feels like a tax.
Rule of Three has the benefit that it doesn't outright tell you that you can't take your new toys. It also is dead simple to memorise and keep in mind when making choices. If you can only ever have 3 of a thing then you can only plan for and buy 3 of a thing and expect to use it in a standard game (no house rules or mega points level etc...).
In that context Rule of Three works great for those who want to buy cool toys and put them on the table with limited restrictions. It gets a bit tick in the box from those who have spent a lot; who have bought a diverse collection and who want to field it in as many games as possible.
One Downside of a combination of FOC and individual unit limits is that its not as easy to memorise. It's also variable and new balance adjustments can shake it up. One edition you can take 6 carnifex; the next only 3 then it jumps back to 6.
This creates a situation where better balance can be achieved but where causal purchases and collecting can have a negative connection. If those 6 carnifex are suddenly cut down to 3 per army, what do you do with hte 3 spares? Now you can't field them.
Of course the backdrop to all this is that in general GW rules are unstable and chaotic. They can go through huge swings. AoS 2.0 was all about big infantry blocks; 3.0 andbeyond has been about smaller infantry blocks. Those are big purchase choices that are now redundant for some players
The casual in me likes Rule of Three even though I fully accept that its a very blunt and crude tool. I also like it because its something GW aren't messing with - so it remains a bit of a constant stable element. FOC, unit limits, etc... are all things GW can and would (and have)messed with a lot edition to edition. It also doesn't help that different editions can focus on different aspects on a whim. One edition its all about leaders; then its all about troops; then monsters; then minimum formations etc... These are granular shifts toward a better game, but just shifts in general geared more toward just being "different and fresh"
One edition, a unit is troops. Next, it’s Elites. If it moves to Elites, than can bugger up an entire army, even if you only had a unit or two of them.
And then if your stats or points were rejigged between Codexes, synergies can be broken, or a new unit in a given slot can rise to prominence etc.
One edition, a unit is troops. Next, it’s Elites. If it moves to Elites, than can bugger up an entire army, even if you only had a unit or two of them.
And then if your stats or points were rejigged between Codexes, synergies can be broken, or a new unit in a given slot can rise to prominence etc.
Indeed; plus the FOC as GW used it was quite inflexible for a long time. Tyranid players, for example, gained a load of cool elite models. But with only 3 elite slots you couldn't take even half of them at the same time. Even though tactically having variety would have been a good thing.
This became even more apparent as the game expanded and grew in the number of models on the table at once. The old FOC was very much built on the old 2nd-3rd edition era of gaming when armies were tiny compared to what they are now. It worked but then it stopped and GW shopped around for a new idea.
But the thing is a LOT of the issues are linked back to that 3 year cycle of constant change. It creates an air of chaos where "rule of 3" is one of the bastions of simple purchase driven choice. Even then there are issues but FAR less than if GW were constantly changing a FOC and unit limits. Note I said change not refinement. A lot of GW editoin changes are not driven by refining and polishing what is; but rather shaking up and changing what was to something new. And that creates a jumpy situation that's a pain to predict and work with. In some ways with the way GW works Rule of 3 honestly works great - sure its not balanced; its not deep; its not all that customised to each faction but it is dead simple; it is stable and it is easy to plan and buy around.
Rule of Three, when hitched to a Codex with decent internal balance also challenges the meta.
And meta isn’t something I particularly like, it’s a bit too number crunchy for me.
Under the old FoC though, it was a very real thing you had to take heed of, because you’re choices were so restricted.
Rule of Three? Much less so. I can really lean into themed forces with no particularly penalty unless it’s a really extreme theme, which might leave you struggling to score objectives easily. But that’s not a bad thing. It makes what your opponent might field less predictable, because there are far more possible army lists.
Now, you’ll note my caveat there. When Hitched To A Codex With Decent Internal Balance. If you don’t have that, and instead you’ve maybe 10 units which are outstanding and the rest are guff? The boredom of meta returns once again.
Jidmah wrote: So, how does the pro-FOC crowd explain that 90%+ of top tier tournament lists actually look like armies that would exist in-universe, while in every FOC edition the vast majority top performing lists was just spamming the best-in-slot unit as often as possible?
Outside of lynchpin units in codices with no other options and obviously busted things (hello, DG!), most units only appear once or twice in army rosters because flexibility is more important than raw power.
TL;DR: Data supports that anything the FOC tried to achieve, has been done much better without its help. If you are not willing to have your views changed by trivial things such as facts, feel free to stop reading now.
Looking at the top three lists from the Glasshammer Major in Nottingham last weekend, we have: -A Death Guard list with three each of Bloat-Drones, PBCs, and Blight Haulers, and not a single Plague Marine
This list falls in the obviously busted category and poxwalkers used to be troops, the only thing a FOC would have prevented is running both drones and MBH. There is literally a page in the codex describing armored columns of demon engines, and there is literally has been a detachment in the codex that encourages you to run such lists for as long as those models exists. So you are actually wrong on all accounts.
-A Marine list led by Guilliman, Ventris, and Calgar, with three Storm Speeder Hammerstrikes, two Ballistus Dreads, and a single Scout squad for regular infantry
Also a unit which used to be called honor guard, stern guard and a unit of eradicators, supported by a storm raven. Seems like a fitting retinue for mission where the primarch lends Calgar a hand in quick strike mission. Gulliman has literally done things like that in novels, with himself admitting that it was not a tactically sound decision, but he just needed to kill things for a change. Considering all the "if you run character X, unity Y becomes troops" nonsense that made the FOC functional to begin with, swapping out eradicators for a unit of intercessors would probably be enough to make this army adhere to the FOC. Last time the FOC tried to
-Thousand Sons led by Magnus, an Exalted Sorceror, two Infernal Masters, and three Tzaangor Shamans (half the army's points in characters alone), but at least this one has Rubrics, a Rhino, and some Tzaangors in addition to big beasts
So now you are claiming that the psyker army playing psykers is no flavorful? You are really grasping at straws here, aren't you? When battle roles were still a thing, this army with the exact same models would have been 4 HQ 5 Troops 2 Elite, 2 Heavy Support, 1 Dedicated transport and 1 Super Heavy. Either way there is literally nothing wrong about Magnus leading 5 squads of Rubric marines, accompanied by psykers and tsangors. This army could literally be printed on the back of the codex. The only reason to complain about it is the urge to be right despite all facts pointing elsewhere. How ironic that you cut off my post where you did.
That's zero out of three looking to me like armies that would exist in-universe, all three are hitting the RO3 limit somewhere, and all three would be violating the oldschool FOC.
According to my count one army which I've addressed to be a problem for non-FOC related reasons. You probably picked it despite that because otherwise, you wouldn't have an argument. One flavorful army which could fit with minor changes, and one time where you are 100% wrong, with no wiggle room whatsoever. And on top of that, every single one of those armies is literally supported by the fluff.
Happy to hear a more cogent argument and I'll readily agree that the FOC was not some cure-all for army composition, and maybe plucking the most recent tournament is not looking at 'top tier', but this condescending attitude is really not a good look for you.
At some point you need to accept that the FOC did feth all. You are literally holding a bottle of snake oil and try to defend your worthless medicine by yelling "it's not a cure for everything!" at the overwhelming evidence of it being a complete failure in every regard.
But I'm starting to see a pattern here. "New rule bad!" - "New rule is needed to do X" "Old rule did X" - "Old rule was bad for reasons A, B and C" "Old rule could have worked if done right!" - "New rule already does this right" "New rule bad!" And than then the cycle starts again. Literally half the active threads in this forum follow this pattern now, springled in with examples from people you clearly have no experience or skill with 10th edition making up problems which do not exists in reality.
At some point you need to accept that the FOC did feth all. You are literally holding a bottle of snake oil and try to defend your worthless medicine by yelling "it's not a cure for everything!" at the overwhelming evidence of it being a complete failure in every regard.
Quality . . .
It prescribed an army structure for one. It was also used as a balancing mechanism, and as a tool it was effective at constraining certain potential skews. Some people didn't like it. Others did.
"A complete failure in every regard" . . . because some codexes gained a crowded Elites slot in later editions? That's certainly a stretch. Nor would it be a failure because some lists made exceptions or modifications to it. Many design mechanics work like that.
Was just thinking of the outgoing edition of Horus Heresy.
That uses the FOC. But has a much better balance between slots.
There are benefits to filling up on say, Tactical Squads. But your Troops also allow Support Squads and lots of other relatively basic infantry. That frees up your Elite slots for actual Elite stuff. And many bigger things can be taken as squadrons. So three Predators is a single HS slot.
You’ve then got Rites of War which switch up what you can take as Troops. Not all equal of course, this is still GW.
But it did work a bit better, because your Troops weren’t necessarily Basic Spods.
And this is the issue with a lot of mechanics GW uses - many either aren't properly used/adjusted or are only used short term and never get time to be balanced out.
Basically there ARE many approaches toward balance that can work. Each one has its own gains and losses; however with GW a big constant loss is their attitude, skill and approach to rules. That latter part is the main issue and why discussions can go in circles.
FOC can work
Unit limits can work
points can work - heck even power levels can work.
There are loads of methods - however if you take those methods and put them into the GW system of creating rules then they will all fall down in some way.
As I said before in my longer ramble - as someone who ends up more collecting than playing in a huge way - Rule of 3 is great as its simple, stable and GW doesn't really mess with it all that much.
I can buy 3 exocrines and have a decent expectation that I can use them in current and future editions if I so wish. With editions lasting only 3 years that is a big consideration.
Sure you can argue about if they are the right choice tactically; but functionally you can use them in a standard game.
Tyran wrote: Whoops all Dreadnoughts was a perfectly legal HH list. Which probably shows that the HHFOC was kinda a joke and why GW is ditching it for HH 3.0
This is a cherry picking "I win" kind of comment.
One exception that breaks a system doesn't invalidate an entire system.
It was simply an exception.
But I'm starting to see a pattern here.
"New rule bad!"
- "New rule is needed to do X"
"Old rule did X"
- "Old rule was bad for reasons A, B and C"
"Old rule could have worked if done right!"
- "New rule already does this right"
"New rule bad!"
And than then the cycle starts again. Literally half the active threads in this forum follow this pattern now, springled in with examples from people you clearly have no experience or skill with 10th edition making up problems which do not exists in reality.
A LOT of "the internet" is composed of people whose primary form of entertainment is Twitter drama. People complaining about movies and shows they don't watch, people they don't know, places they've never been and games they never play. It's all increasingly not worth engaging in, but at the very least recognizing what's going on is a good way to know when to disengage.
Not to mention a lot of algorithums (esp google/fb) push negative content/articles very heavily. It's beyond "no news sells like bad news" and well into "the only news we sell is bad news" kind of an approach.
Coupled to instant mass appeal - which is why trigger/bait titles are so popular. Places like youtube only show your video if you get X clicks in Y amount of time to more people. So even followers won't see your latest video if it doesn't immediately get lots of hits.
Of course all this then feeds right into how people interact online as well.
But a single OP Rite of War doesn’t make the whole thing flawed.
I only need the OP RoW in order to spend 100% of my pts on dreadnaughts & make some of them line.
Otherwise I can spend around 90% of my pts on talons of Contemptors/Deredos/Leviathans, still kill you all, and still win the game.
There were also mission specific tweaks for the FOC. Some where the attacker got an extra FA slot and the defender a HS. Or certain slots started in reserves. It was another lever they could pull to mix things up
Tyran wrote: I feel even the most optimistic implementation of the FOC system would still require faction specific FOCs instead of a general one.
Tyranids definitely shouldn't have the same FOC as Space Marines.
Arguably it would need several different FOCs per faction.
I agree and honestly that's not a problem. Having Tyranids with at least three FOCs - one built around swarming; one generic and one around monstrous creatures would certainly be a very valid approach toward providing variety whilst also customising to suit a specific factions playstyle.
Structure with limits is basically what army building rules are all about; letting people have freedom to choose, but within limits which help balance the game; balance the factions and also create a visual appeal/style of gameplay that's engaging and intended.
Layer that with things like specific unit limits and you've got the foundations of a system that can give players variety and structure and avoid abuse. It still won't be perfect ,but if you then spend 10-20 years refinding it you've achieve something that's good enough
Tyran wrote: The FOC wasn't a balancing tool. In theory it could have been one had GW been willing to modify it depending play testing and tournament data.
But GW never fixed issues with the FOC even when it was blatant it wasn't working.
It was obviously a balancing tool, because as soon as it was taken away people were building armies of all Storm Ravens or all Devastators or whatever. I'll also bring up 3.5 Iron Warriors, and how many thought they were imbalanced because they adjusted the FOC. It was clearly doing something.
Obviously you can still have imbalance within the FOC, but that's not necessarily the FOCs fault. Bad points can create imbalance. Wierd special rules can create imbalance, etc.
Overread wrote: As I said before in my longer ramble - as someone who ends up more collecting than playing in a huge way - Rule of 3 is great as its simple, stable and GW doesn't really mess with it all that much.
I can buy 3 exocrines and have a decent expectation that I can use them in current and future editions if I so wish. With editions lasting only 3 years that is a big consideration.
Sure you can argue about if they are the right choice tactically; but functionally you can use them in a standard game.
No time for a longer reply atm, but you could have written the exact same thing about FOC. The only difference is that if you took 3 Exocrines, that would preclude taking other Heavy Support choices.
As for consistency, the basic FOC stayed the same for almost 20 years. Inconsistency came from codex changes. RO3 hasn't changed since 8th... but only 3 Predators were allowed in 8th, and now 6 in 10th . . . Also because of codex changes. Will the Rule of Three last 20 years?
Overread wrote: I agree and honestly that's not a problem. Having Tyranids with at least three FOCs - one built around swarming; one generic and one around monstrous creatures would certainly be a very valid approach toward providing variety whilst also customising to suit a specific factions playstyle.
If Tyranids are permitted to rearrange their FOC to take 10 big monsters or 200 gaunts then why are we inventing new rules that force specific units into limited slots? What's the point of any of this?
The FOC is a restriction, so its advocates should be able to give examples of the armies that they would prohibit with their system. Not armies they would allow. Those armies are allowed today.
So under this new FOC are players prohibited from bringing all terminators? All bikers? Seven spellcasting characters in their TS list? Guard with only tanks? Guard with only infantry? A primarch at 1000 points? A whole army of titans?
Because for the last three pages I've only seen the defenders of FOC talk about all of the exemptions they would hand out, and how they would dynamically rearrange the slots around whatever army you wanted to play so that it never stopped you from taking a "reasonable" list. But I haven't seen any examples of what they are trying to stop people from playing, except I guess the three tournament lists that catbarf objected to. And it gives me an impression similar to Tyran's: everyone wants the FOC to be imposed on the other guy but they expect an exemption for all the armies they like, even when those armies skew as hard as possible into one FOC slot. And the proposed restrictions need to be kept vague because telling people upfront that you want to ban them from playing their army is unpopular.
Tyran wrote: The FOC wasn't a balancing tool. In theory it could have been one had GW been willing to modify it depending play testing and tournament data.
But GW never fixed issues with the FOC even when it was blatant it wasn't working.
It was obviously a balancing tool, because as soon as it was taken away people were building armies of all Storm Ravens or all Devastators or whatever. I'll also bring up 3.5 Iron Warriors, and how many thought they were imbalanced because they adjusted the FOC. It was clearly doing something.
Obviously you can still have imbalance within the FOC, but that's not necessarily the FOCs fault. Bad points can create imbalance. Wierd special rules can create imbalance, etc.
Overread wrote: As I said before in my longer ramble - as someone who ends up more collecting than playing in a huge way - Rule of 3 is great as its simple, stable and GW doesn't really mess with it all that much.
I can buy 3 exocrines and have a decent expectation that I can use them in current and future editions if I so wish. With editions lasting only 3 years that is a big consideration.
Sure you can argue about if they are the right choice tactically; but functionally you can use them in a standard game.
No time for a longer reply atm, but you could have written the exact same thing about FOC. The only difference is that if you took 3 Exocrines, that would preclude taking other Heavy Support choices.
As for consistency, the basic FOC stayed the same for almost 20 years. Inconsistency came from codex changes. RO3 hasn't changed since 8th... but only 3 Predators were allowed in 8th, and now 6 in 10th . . . Also because of codex changes. Will the Rule of Three last 20 years?
Zoanthropes were HS. Competing with Monsters.
Then they were Elites, competing with other medium bugs.
Exocrines and Tyrranofexes are cool-but (somewhat) recent additions to the Nids roster.
But if you had max Carnifexes in HS, you can’t add them without removing another HS.
Putting that idea into 10th, FOC's could be a part of detachment rules. After all, some existing detachments DO modify army selection already.
Adding in FOC to detachment rules would make sense, and while it might require a bit of redesign, it would probably still fit into a to page spread.
This isn't saying that every detachment needs a unique FOC- a book with six detachments may only include three FOCs, but all six detachments would still have one of those three FOCs somewhere in their two pages of rules.
Personally, I preferred 9th's system, where detachments WERE FOCs only, because enhancements and strats weren't organized by detachment. It also allowed for multi-detachment armies, which had real character. Very MY DUDES.
Tyran wrote: The FOC wasn't a balancing tool. In theory it could have been one had GW been willing to modify it depending play testing and tournament data.
But GW never fixed issues with the FOC even when it was blatant it wasn't working.
It was obviously a balancing tool, because as soon as it was taken away people were building armies of all Storm Ravens or all Devastators or whatever. I'll also bring up 3.5 Iron Warriors, and how many thought they were imbalanced because they adjusted the FOC. It was clearly doing something.
Obviously you can still have imbalance within the FOC, but that's not necessarily the FOCs fault. Bad points can create imbalance. Wierd special rules can create imbalance, etc.
Overread wrote: As I said before in my longer ramble - as someone who ends up more collecting than playing in a huge way - Rule of 3 is great as its simple, stable and GW doesn't really mess with it all that much.
I can buy 3 exocrines and have a decent expectation that I can use them in current and future editions if I so wish. With editions lasting only 3 years that is a big consideration.
Sure you can argue about if they are the right choice tactically; but functionally you can use them in a standard game.
No time for a longer reply atm, but you could have written the exact same thing about FOC. The only difference is that if you took 3 Exocrines, that would preclude taking other Heavy Support choices.
As for consistency, the basic FOC stayed the same for almost 20 years. Inconsistency came from codex changes. RO3 hasn't changed since 8th... but only 3 Predators were allowed in 8th, and now 6 in 10th . . . Also because of codex changes. Will the Rule of Three last 20 years?
Zoanthropes were HS. Competing with Monsters.
Then they were Elites, competing with other medium bugs.
Exocrines and Tyrranofexes are cool-but (somewhat) recent additions to the Nids roster.
But if you had max Carnifexes in HS, you can’t add them without removing another HS.
I confess I'm not sure why this response unless you're just confirming that inconsistensies come from codex changes.
The FOC is a restriction, so its advocates should be able to give examples of the armies that they would prohibit with their system. Not armies they would allow. Those armies are allowed today.
So under this new FOC are players prohibited from bringing all terminators? All bikers? Seven spellcasting characters in their TS list? Guard with only tanks? Guard with only infantry? A primarch at 1000 points? A whole army of titans?
The FOC existed to prohibit types of spam that might easily might make for an imbalanced or unfun game. I could, under the current system, just take all Heavy Support choices and simply aim to sit back and blow away my opponent. (Which is more or less what I did in my one game of 10th.)
Now you could say that tactic might not work on every opponent, or maybe even win me the game if I didn't sally forth and start claiming objectives. But from my opponents perspective, even if he might eke out a win, is that the experience might have been an un-fun/unrewarding experience.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
JNAProductions wrote: Rule of three says “Three broods of Zoanthropes max.”
FOC says “Three HS max.”
What counts as a Zoanthrope is pretty consistent.
HS, less so.
Riiiight.... but as I said, Predators went from 3 max to 6 max under RO3. Inconsistencies still be happenin.
Or 3 Land Raiders for Chaos, but 9 for loyalists.
Automatically Appended Next Post: FOC also says, if a codex has lots of good HS choices, the most they can take is three.
RO3 says, if one codex has one good HS choice, it can take 3. But if another codex offers 5 good HS choices, they can take 15.
JNAProductions wrote: And a fluffy demonic horde can’t be run, because it has too many Troops and HQs.
Does it though? Depends on squad sizes, costs etc. Last I checked you could run 6 squads of 20 Daemons for 120 total. I think in 4th ed you could run like 192 Termagants. Codex issue.
Not to mention, an all tanks/HS list is unlikely to even win most of its games. Objectives matter.
Like I said earlier, maybe. But such skew could still make for a lousy experience for the opponent.
JNAProductions wrote: And a fluffy demonic horde can’t be run, because it has too many Troops and HQs.
Not to mention, an all tanks/HS list is unlikely to even win most of its games. Objectives matter.
Not to bit pick what is defined as a fluffy daemonic horde here? I would expect representation of all sizes of daemon and realistically the only fair comparison is to allow the troops back up to units of 20 if we're talking FOC.
Even if you cap them at 10, isn't 60 of a unit enough to constitute a horde when supported by all it's friends and family?
Orkeosaurus wrote: If Tyranids are permitted to rearrange their FOC to take 10 big monsters or 200 gaunts then why are we inventing new rules that force specific units into limited slots? What's the point of any of this?
Agree with you on this.
I don't think the FOC is good. But I guess I can sort of understand - while disagreeing - with "FOC Purists" (and yes this may be a strawman) - that want a 2k points army to be formed of 3 HQs, 6 Troops, 3 Elites, 3 FA, 3 HS - the end. You have 8 Heavy Support options in your codex? Well that's good for you - but you are never bringing in more than 3.
I think it would be quite boring, because most people would go "okay, the best HS option is X, I'll take 3 of them. The best FA unit is Y, I'll take 3 of them" etc. Which was what I remember an awful lot of lists looked like back in 3rd/4th. But it would place clear restrictions on what an army looked like. If all your tanks/monsters are in HS, then you can't bring more than 3, then you would have to fill out the rest with infantry. This was an age when you were leaning some way in the fluff if you took "2 units of X and a unit of Y", rather than dedicating 75% of your points towards a theme.
If for example every 2k list in modern 40k had to have 2 HQs and 3 Troops units - with reasonably limited definitions on what would qualify, every army of a given faction would have this "core" 400-500ish points. I'm unclear however if this makes the game more fun, or balanced, or interesting in any particular way.
As you say though, there doesn't seem much point going with "I like the limitations of the FOC, but it should be flexible to the point where 90% of armies are acceptable. Its only really these very specific army builds that I don't consider fluffy that shouldn't be allowed". Its just inevitably subjective. If Guard can bring all Tanks, why not Space Marines or Eldar etc? If Tyranids can go Nidzilla, what's wrong with Necrons going "woops, all C'Tan"?
Orkeosaurus wrote: If Tyranids are permitted to rearrange their FOC to take 10 big monsters or 200 gaunts then why are we inventing new rules that force specific units into limited slots? What's the point of any of this?
Agree with you on this.
I don't think the FOC is good. But I guess I can sort of understand - while disagreeing - with "FOC Purists" (and yes this may be a strawman) - that want a 2k points army to be formed of 3 HQs, 6 Troops, 3 Elites, 3 FA, 3 HS - the end. You have 8 Heavy Support options in your codex? Well that's good for you - but you are never bringing in more than 3.
I think it would be quite boring, because most people would go "okay, the best HS option is X, I'll take 3 of them. The best FA unit is Y, I'll take 3 of them" etc. Which was what I remember an awful lot of lists looked like back in 3rd/4th. But it would place clear restrictions on what an army looked like. If all your tanks/monsters are in HS, then you can't bring more than 3, then you would have to fill out the rest with infantry. This was an age when you were leaning some way in the fluff if you took "2 units of X and a unit of Y", rather than dedicating 75% of your points towards a theme.
If for example every 2k list in modern 40k had to have 2 HQs and 3 Troops units - with reasonably limited definitions on what would qualify, every army of a given faction would have this "core" 400-500ish points. I'm unclear however if this makes the game more fun, or balanced, or interesting in any particular way.
As you say though, there doesn't seem much point going with "I like the limitations of the FOC, but it should be flexible to the point where 90% of armies are acceptable. Its only really these very specific army builds that I don't consider fluffy that shouldn't be allowed". Its just inevitably subjective. If Guard can bring all Tanks, why not Space Marines or Eldar etc? If Tyranids can go Nidzilla, what's wrong with Necrons going "woops, all C'Tan"?
And this is exactly what happened with FOC. People spammed only the “best”units, it created biting armies of two or three unit types and then other armies could break the FOC. It was stupid and dull. Look at old army lists from this era, they were boring as feck.
Then you had stupid stuff like the loyalty 32 or what ever. Power gamers just abused the FOC and everyone else was just hampered by it.
The armies in 10th are much fluffier and more interesting. Even super competitive lists have more variety in them than they used to. This seems like a case of rose tinted glasses to me. Sure the current system is a bit crap if you have a small army selection like votaan or emperors children, but that’s a problem with that army not the core rules. More choice will help that army out.
If a player wants to spam unit X because it's the strongest option in the army, the issue lies with the unit’s balance, not with the army construction limits like the 3 slots or the "3 of a kind" cap. These restrictions don't solve the problem, as players will simply turn to the next best unit and spam that instead.
Encouraging a diverse mix of units should come primarily from "soft" mechanisms, such as mission design, diminishing returns on duplicate units, and solid internal codex balance.
I’m a fan of the FOC. It adds structure to the game and helps give armies a distinct identity. When used in conjunction with other rules, it can enhance immersion by making forces look and feel fluffy. For example, the old requirement to include two Troop choices often led players to pick the cheapest, most stripped-down units just to unlock better options. A better approach might be to require that a minimum percentage of points be spent on Troops, which would encourage a more uniform army appearance and make players more inclined to invest in upgrades for these core units.
Another thing would be that switching the FOC should come with downsides as well. Example: If you want your Fast Attack units to become Troops, then everything else needs to have a minimum of x" movement or start in a transport.
Agreed yeah, ideally every unit would be equally desirable in a TAC list and the challenge of list-building would be which awesome units you have to leave behind. Not sure GW are ever going to get there, but I do especially question how on occasion one unit is just outright better than the other to the point that there's no reason for ever taking the latter. Thinking of DE Reaver jetbikes vs Hellions for instance. Did GW just not want to see Hellions or something?
Crispy78 wrote: Agreed yeah, ideally every unit would be equally desirable in a TAC list and the challenge of list-building would be which awesome units you have to leave behind. Not sure GW are ever going to get there, but I do especially question how on occasion one unit is just outright better than the other to the point that there's no reason for ever taking the latter. Thinking of DE Reaver jetbikes vs Hellions for instance. Did GW just not want to see Hellions or something?
I think the issue - as Jidmah's sort of being arguing for a couple of editions now - is that GW has only vaguely got close to this as they've abandoned the limitations.
I think because when you can take everything, you start to view the roster in a different way. Its more about ensuing every codex has certain game-wide tools - and as a result most units are useful for something.
By contrast in the past there seemed far more acceptance that the codex should have some good units and some trash units, and that was fine, competitive players just didn't run the trash units. And if little Timmy bought into some traps? Ah well, bad luck?
Maybe its was fluffy that certain units just sucked - but this seemed to be fluff as a concept, rather than enjoying it on the table. "Its very fluffy Banshees are wounding Marines on 5s, and as a result will regularly bounce". Is it? Fluffy for who? Tyranids are meant to have no good anti-armour options... because idk, they just don't. Deal with it.
Maybe its lacking in character when every army gets scout, infiltrators, uppy-downy, some fast stuff for scoring, some heavy stuff for grinding up the midboard, some high quality shooting with full rerolls to delete stuff that sticks its head out etc etc. But it kind of works - and gives you that range of high performing units and armies in a way that wasn't really the case before.
Armies are just much bigger. That Tyranids didn't have good anti-armor made sense when they only had a dozen units and their biggest gun was the venom cannon. The lore was used to justify a limitation of GW's production capabilities.
It no longer makes sense when Tyranids have Exocrines and Hive Guard and Tyrannofexes and Norn Assimilators in their unit roster and vehicle options have similarly greatly expanded all over the game (plus you know, Knights being an army now).
The FOC runs into a similar issue of armies just being much larger both in size but also in unit rosters, it is a relic of a considerably smaller game. And that's in addition to issues that the FOC works well with Firstborn Marine lore as it fits the old Devastator/Assault/Tactical cycle and much less so with other armies that should have their own organisation paradigms and their units did not neatly fit in the old role slots (it has been more than a decade and I'm still not sure why the Tyranid Haruspex was an elite).
But I'm starting to see a pattern here. "New rule bad!" - "New rule is needed to do X" "Old rule did X" - "Old rule was bad for reasons A, B and C" "Old rule could have worked if done right!" - "New rule already does this right" "New rule bad!" And than then the cycle starts again. Literally half the active threads in this forum follow this pattern now, springled in with examples from people you clearly have no experience or skill with 10th edition making up problems which do not exists in reality.
A LOT of "the internet" is composed of people whose primary form of entertainment is Twitter drama. People complaining about movies and shows they don't watch, people they don't know, places they've never been and games they never play. It's all increasingly not worth engaging in, but at the very least recognizing what's going on is a good way to know when to disengage.
That's true, but in this case everyone else is having a respectful discussion about an old mechanic- one that I don't actually want to see return in its old form, nor do I hate 'new thing'. I'm disengaging, but for different reasons.
Tyel wrote: I think it would be quite boring, because most people would go "okay, the best HS option is X, I'll take 3 of them. The best FA unit is Y, I'll take 3 of them" etc. Which was what I remember an awful lot of lists looked like back in 3rd/4th. But it would place clear restrictions on what an army looked like. If all your tanks/monsters are in HS, then you can't bring more than 3, then you would have to fill out the rest with infantry. This was an age when you were leaning some way in the fluff if you took "2 units of X and a unit of Y", rather than dedicating 75% of your points towards a theme.
If for example every 2k list in modern 40k had to have 2 HQs and 3 Troops units - with reasonably limited definitions on what would qualify, every army of a given faction would have this "core" 400-500ish points. I'm unclear however if this makes the game more fun, or balanced, or interesting in any particular way.
As you say though, there doesn't seem much point going with "I like the limitations of the FOC, but it should be flexible to the point where 90% of armies are acceptable. Its only really these very specific army builds that I don't consider fluffy that shouldn't be allowed". Its just inevitably subjective. If Guard can bring all Tanks, why not Space Marines or Eldar etc? If Tyranids can go Nidzilla, what's wrong with Necrons going "woops, all C'Tan"?
RE: just picking the best in each slot, that was definitely a thing, but as I mentioned before a big part of it was due to poor internal balance. That's something GW has gotten a lot better at in recent editions, as evidenced by the fact that RO3 hasn't resulted in a game where everyone just takes three each of the top 5 units in their codex with no variety in listbuilding. Diversity of armies in 10th is less a result of the FOC going away, and more a result of having a variety of choices that are all worth considering. In a FOC-constrained codex where Heavy Weapons Squads and Leman Russes are both competing for HS slots but neither is obviously better than the other, that decision can't boil down to 'just take the best'.
To the more general point, the purpose of the FOC is specifically to prevent skew when skew is inherently unbalanced; enforcing 'fluff-accuracy' is secondary and only relevant to the degree that losing to an exceptionally unfluffy skew list is more unsatisfying than losing to a fluff-approved but still game-breaking skew list. If the game works fine and is balanced regardless of what units you take, there's no need for a more restrictive army-building system for the core game. But we've seen skew of various flavors come and go, and without more cohesive structure the solutions are often sledgehammer fixes with side effects elsewhere. Listbuilding constraints are a tool that the designers can use for balancing, creating opportunity costs in addition to points costs.
I don't think it's productive to argue about mechanics in isolation. What matters is whether they solve articulable problems and lead to a better play experience. What OP kicked off with this thread was the negative experience of feeling limited by RO3, while other factions get to effectively ignore it as a quirk of how their datasheets are structured. That's a legitimate complaint- and while I don't think the old FOC is the right solution, it is worthwhile to compare and see how these sorts of problems used to be addressed.
Or, to put it another way: If the game is so balanced right now that no listbuilding structure is needed, why do we have RO3? What problem is it solving?
JNAProductions wrote: And a fluffy demonic horde can’t be run, because it has too many Troops and HQs.
Not to mention, an all tanks/HS list is unlikely to even win most of its games. Objectives matter.
Not to bit pick what is defined as a fluffy daemonic horde here? I would expect representation of all sizes of daemon and realistically the only fair comparison is to allow the troops back up to units of 20 if we're talking FOC.
Even if you cap them at 10, isn't 60 of a unit enough to constitute a horde when supported by all it's friends and family?
This. A "fluffy daemonic horde" using the 6th edition book and the FOC could be a Bloodthirster, a herald of khorne, 6 units of 20 bloodletters, 3 units of 20 furies and/or flesh hounds, 3 units of 9 bloodcrushers, and 3 khorne daemon princes (heavy support picks if army contains a bloodthirster).
That is a bloodthirster, herald, 3 daemon princes, 120 bloodletters, 27 bloodcrushers, and 60 furies/flesh hounds. Sounds like quite the horde to me.
catbarf wrote: Or, to put it another way: If the game is so balanced right now that no listbuilding structure is needed, why do we have RO3? What problem is it solving?
I'd say it solves two problems which became evident in 8th and are why it was brought in.
1. GW will get the points wrong on certain units. If someone spams that unit they exacerbate that error. GW will always get the points wrong - although updates every few months pick it up faster than updates every few years. But the RO3 serves to keep things in check.
2. I think spam also facilitated weird armies that GW fundamentally didn't like (which you could fairly argue the FOC resolved). I think GW reacted very quickly to "all Stormravens" for instance - because mass planes was just not what 40k is meant to be and it would harm the perception of the game. I think there was a similar kick off about characters - such as "mass Culexus" lists that iirc had weird interactions for how shooting worked - and to a lesser degree that massively undercosted chaos forgeworld pysker (maleific lords?) that could smite spam (this would also lead to changes to smite.) Mass Tau Commanders that exploited 8th's initially broken deepstrike rules etc.
Which perhaps also gets to the rub. Even if the points of a Ravager are fine, the whole game starts to warp if I can bring say 15 of them and just them. You can say the FOC would fix this. But I think 15 Ravagers as "15 Ravagers", would be different from say 3 Ravagers, 4 Talos, 2 Cronos, a bunch of Raiders with Lance-equipped Kabalites and a Voidraven Bomber etc. The first is spam - the second is a somewhat varied army, even if a lot of those units were in the HS slot in 7th. The units play slightly differently rather than all being clones of each other.
I think the issue - as Jidmah's sort of being arguing for a couple of editions now - is that GW has only vaguely got close to this as they've abandoned the limitations.
I think because when you can take everything, you start to view the roster in a different way. Its more about ensuing every codex has certain game-wide tools - and as a result most units are useful for something.
As catbarf says, and as mentioned before in the thread, it would sure seem that constant updates to points and rule tweaks are the primary source of unit balance here, not the lack of a Force Org.
Tyel wrote: I'd say it solves two problems which became evident in 8th and are why it was brought in.
1. GW will get the points wrong on certain units. If someone spams that unit they exacerbate that error. GW will always get the points wrong - although updates every few months pick it up faster than updates every few years. But the RO3 serves to keep things in check.
2. I think spam also facilitated weird armies that GW fundamentally didn't like (which you could fairly argue the FOC resolved). I think GW reacted very quickly to "all Stormravens" for instance - because mass planes was just not what 40k is meant to be and it would harm the perception of the game. I think there was a similar kick off about characters - such as "mass Culexus" lists that iirc had weird interactions for how shooting worked - and to a lesser degree that massively undercosted chaos forgeworld pysker (maleific lords?) that could smite spam (this would also lead to changes to smite.) Mass Tau Commanders that exploited 8th's initially broken deepstrike rules etc.
Which perhaps also gets to the rub. Even if the points of a Ravager are fine, the whole game starts to warp if I can bring say 15 of them and just them. You can say the FOC would fix this. But I think 15 Ravagers as "15 Ravagers", would be different from say 3 Ravagers, 4 Talos, 2 Cronos, a bunch of Raiders with Lance-equipped Kabalites and a Voidraven Bomber etc. The first is spam - the second is a somewhat varied army, even if a lot of those units were in the HS slot in 7th. The units play slightly differently rather than all being clones of each other.
Right, so I think that example highlights the two problems that OP is getting at as a result of the way datasheets are split up.
The first is that dividing up datasheets by seemingly arbitrary criteria means that in many cases, spamming a particular unit is not actually limited. Some units are actually limited to 3 per army, but some are essentially limited to 3 per weapon option. So if the premise is that non-battleline units should be limited to 3 per army for the sake of balance, but I can take 21 Leman Russes, then this is de facto not working. If the points are off on one Russ variant, chances are they're off on all of them.
And the second is that it's just inconsistent. You can't take 2 Hammerheads with railguns and 2 with ion cannons- that's 4 of the same datasheet- but you can take 21 Leman Russes as long as they have no more than 3 of the same primary weapon. And if taking 21 Leman Russes should be allowed, because it's fluffy and doesn't break the game, why is the Tau equivalent off-limits?
I think we're all in agreement that it is reasonable to have limits on how many of a single unit you can take, and that the game is better when you can't plop down twenty of the same model and call it an army. The point of contention is whether that limit should be by datasheet- essentially, making army composition limits a function of how GW chooses to present rules for quick reference- or whether it should be something broader than that.
The FOC was a system that set the limit by battlefield role, asserting that taking too many of the same general class of thing is likely to result in a bad time. I don't think that premise ever held up all that well, but it maintained a lot of traction because it did have that secondary function of forcing the sort of 'well-rounded' army that I think the designers wanted to see.
Someone upthread mentioned a keyword system being used for limits and I think you could do a lot with that. At the simplest level, you could use a unit name keyword rather than the datasheet to determine limits. Or go a step further and use a keyword like 'Restricted - Stormraven' to only limit duplicate instances of specific units, and units without any such restriction can be taken in any number.
Again, it comes down to figuring out what you are trying to solve. The current implementation works well enough despite its flaws, insofar as it's a bare-minimum implementation for a game that has been generally reworked to be less broken by skew than older editions, but I think OP's gripes are still legitimate even though I disagree with the conclusion.
catbarf wrote: Right, so I think that example highlights the two problems that OP is getting at as a result of the way datasheets are split up.
I don't really disagree.
I'm not - for want of a better word - a RO3 purist. Its been a complaint since it started that some armies benefit from squadrons of vehicles (or monsters) - while others did not. Why can I only take 3 of such and such a vehicle - while they can take 9? I think there's some justification here in terms of points - because taking say 9 of a light 75 point vehicle, isn't much more points than taking 3 of a 200 point vehicle etc. But its still an issue. As you say now you have armies which can effectively doubleup on weapon-variants (and usually rule variants) - and those who can't. Its not really clear that list building has played any part in the fact Marines could previously run 3 Predators and could now run 6. (Although - one has to ask, does anyone want to, and if they did does it matter?) Its just that this is how datasheets work now, and they wanted to give the different weapon variant models different rules.
I also think far more units, which may have previously been "elites" or whatever in the old editions, should probably be battleline now - or the detachment system should much more often make units battleline if they fit the theme (they have done this with some obviously).
If for example someone wants to run more than 3 units of Howling Banshees because they are playing Iybraesil, its hard to see how its going to break the game competitively. But maybe you need GW to make the "Iybraesil" detachment first. The RO3 is very simple - versus the rule of "sometimes you can only take 2, sometimes you can take 4, or 6, or whatever". Simplicity is a good thing.
One of the issues for the FOC is are you allowing multiples? Can I have 4 HQs, 6 Troops (or whatever) and then unlock 6 HS slots? Some armies have historically had very cheap HQs and troops so its barely a limitation - others not so much. Then you'd have other armies where the average unit cost is only about 100 points - and they'd struggle hit 2k with 6 troops, 3 elites, 3 FA and 3 HS.
You could have a system of keywords for limitations. As you say though, it depends on what issue you are trying to solve. The OP's complaint is that he can't run more than 3 Custodes tanks. You can already spend a third of a 2k force on those tanks if you want. As per the above I can see why you might want to go further, especially if your fluff was "I'm playing Custodes tanks the end". But I don't really see it as essential to the game. As Orkeosaurus said - it comes down to what armies you don't think should exist. I'm not inspired to think that Custodes need to be able to run 6 of these things.
I mean I've said I don't like AoS-style armies. If you wanted to run 5-6 C'Tan and 2 Doomsday Arks (or whatever fits in the points) I think you should be extremely disadvantaged versus someone just running mainly infantry. Because they should be able to blob up all the objectives and accordingly win the game. But it hasn't always worked that way - and you might not want it to. Theres plenty of people who dislike how 40k has (somewhat) turned into "die slowly on objectives but win games". Knights exist etc and aren't going to disappear.
Stepping back from this, I think there are two separate concepts that are represented by these two methods.
Freedom of selection and simulationist structure.
The FoC creates a level of inuniverse simulation of the army. The current rule of 3 is a purely abstract mechanic to allow a player to make an army however they like. The current system is emblematic of the abstraction of the current 40k rules, where the unit is only loosely represented by its rules and the mechanics are more important than what they represent. IMO, there are inherent simulationist restrictions that you really shouldn't be able to step around if you want to play inside the 40k setting. Ultramarines can't deploy Grey Hunters, and they don't deploy armies based on a Ro3 concept. The roleplay simulation of 40k has been leeched from the game until it's become more and more checkers with fancy pieces.
Whether a 3rd ed FoC is suitable or not, some form of army structure should exist in the game or you're not really playing 40k. I saw someone mention E:A and I would endorse that too - each army has its own FoC structure that is balanced against what that army can deploy, while also showing how that army actually fights.
No military leader in 40k has the freedom to deploy an army in the way a 40k player can, nor the strategic inclination to do so. Any truly unusual force comp would be a highly specific scenario from a very particular set of circumstances - which would be built into the scenario you play.
Balance and simulation aren't mutually exclusive and the less the game relies on the setting to dictate what rules units and armies should use, the less inclined I am to actually play the game. I play it to play 40k, no to play a set of game mechanics with expensive pieces.
Hellebore wrote: Stepping back from this, I think there are two separate concepts that are represented by these two methods.
Freedom of selection and simulationist structure.
I see what you're driving at, and I don't specifically agree or disagree with this... But my view is different. I feel like both "Freedom of Selection" and "Simulationist" are both terms that are in the eye of the beholder; they are relative as well as subjective, and as such, they are best both placed on a spectrum.
The FoC creates a level of inuniverse simulation of the army.
It does, for sure. But so did the formations of 7th, the organizational detachments of 8th and 9th and so does the current detachment system of 10th. You can argue that these editions fall at different places on the Freedom vs. simulation continuum, but what you cannot do is say they don't provide an in-universe simulation of how the army works, because they all objectively do- it may not just be the simulation you prefer.
The current rule of 3 is a purely abstract mechanic to allow a player to make an army however they like.
This is true, but ALL wargame rules are a degree of abstraction. Again, abstract to realistic is spectrum, and where things sit on that spectrum is influenced by contextual factors.
The current system is emblematic of the abstraction of the current 40k rules, where the unit is only loosely represented by its rules and the mechanics are more important than what they represent.
From other discussions on this board, I can piece together what you mean by this: in the past, the rules used to express a unit's capabilities were more closely linked to traits which were visible on the model, or at the army-wide scale by unit selection (particularly as impacted by specialized version of an FOC). And I can absolutely agree with that point.
But I DON'T agree that all unit rules and strats are necessarily more "Abstract" because they can't easily be seen on a model. If anything, I think restricting a unit's capabilities to only that which can be modelled or represented by unit selection is the abstraction. And of course, that's just as subjective and relativistic as any assertions that may be made about the "realism" of an FOC.
IMO, there are inherent simulationist restrictions that you really shouldn't be able to step around if you want to play inside the 40k setting.
The problem is that not everyone agrees on what those simulationist restrictions should be, and I think the idea behind people's preference for Ro3 is that they are more likely to be able create THEIR OWN simulationist restrictions, rather than struggle to conform their head-cannon armies into an arbitrary shape that GW says MUST BE USED ALWAYS.
and they don't deploy armies based on a Ro3 concept.
In point of fact, most likely they do, since most of the armies created using the FOC are perfectly legal using Ro3. Not all Ro3 armies are FOC legal, but most FOC armies are Ro3 legal. It sounds like you're implying that Ro3 PREVENTS you from playing the idealized Ultramarines army that lives in your head; it doesn't. Instead, it enables you to fight a custom mission in a narrative campaign were six squads of bikes have to cross through hostile Ork territory to bring a message to an isolated outpost that they need to evacuate before the arrival of a full scale onslaught, or fight round two in an attrition campaign when all of the obligatory troops units were wiped out in round one.
Those are both totally feasible conditions that can occur, and demonstrate that the principle that always, UM, SW, any flavour of marine or any other faction ALWAYS deploy according to a) the units available to them based on theatre of war context and b) the units among what is available that are most likely to achieve a given mission in a given theatre of war, and not an arbitrary "we must never have more than 3 elites and 3 fast attack."
Ro3 allows you to build the army based on availability, objective and battlefield conditions. FOC does not. So what's more realistic now?
The roleplay simulation of 40k has been leeched from the game until it's become more and more checkers with fancy pieces.
The roleplay in 40k got kicked into high gear in 9th. It's slipped a notch since then, but the FOC era editions had nowhere near the roleplay potential of 9th or 10th, as I just described above.
Did all your troops die in a game, and you got no supply lines to get more? I guess you just have to give up and surrender, because Ultramarines will only ever deploy if they can bring two units of troops. Seriously dude. That's the system you're saying has more roleplay potential.
Whether a 3rd ed FoC is suitable or not, some form of army structure should exist in the game or you're not really playing 40k. I saw someone mention E:A and I would endorse that too - each army has its own FoC structure that is balanced against what that army can deploy, while also showing how that army actually fights.
How that army actually fights based on what? White Scars love their bikes, but if I Kill them all in one battle, what DO they do in the next?
No military leader in 40k has the freedom to deploy an army in the way a 40k player can, nor the strategic inclination to do so.
I beg your pardon, an Inquisitor has the freedom to do whatever they hell they want unless another Inquisitor says they can't, and if you disagree, it's only a matter of time until you disappear.
Any truly unusual force comp would be a highly specific scenario from a very particular set of circumstances - which would be built into the scenario you play.
Now who's dealing in abstractions? If an army is flexible enough to adjust its composition to accommodate for battlefield scenarios, why isn't that flexibility represented in the organizational capacity of the army and instead connected to the battle and not the army at all?
Balance and simulation aren't mutually exclusive and the less the game relies on the setting to dictate what rules units and armies should use, the less inclined I am to actually play the game. I play it to play 40k, no to play a set of game mechanics with expensive pieces.
Again there's very little you can do with an FoC and a hundred books of specific missions that allow you to break the "standard" FoC that you couldn't also do with the Ro3 and as a bonus, you won't even need the 100 books of specific missions that break the "standard" FOC, because the army's flexibility would be represented the rules for the army's organizational structure, not rules that exist only in a specific mission.
What you're concerned about is the POTENTIAL for abuse. And that's fair: Ro3 is probably easier to abuse, especially given the datasheet issue that OP is concerned with; restoring points for equipment in order to reduce datasheet duplication COULD work, but it would take some finesse to make sure that the datacard rule synergized with all possible builds for the unit.
Hellebore wrote: Stepping back from this, I think there are two separate concepts that are represented by these two methods.
Freedom of selection and simulationist structure.
I see what you're driving at, and I don't specifically agree or disagree with this... But my view is different. I feel like both "Freedom of Selection" and "Simulationist" are both terms that are in the eye of the beholder; they are relative as well as subjective, and as such, they are best both placed on a spectrum.
While they are somewhat subjective and only GW 'owns' the answer, they aren't completely bereft of structure or no one could tell you what 40k was. That spectrum isn't limitless, it's constrained within the end posts of what constitutes 40k. It's not micky mouse to hannibal, or Smurfs to MLP. It's an example of a constrained infinity - it contains all possible expressions of 40k but it doesn't contain X. Because X is not an expression possible in 40k.
The FoC creates a level of inuniverse simulation of the army.
It does, for sure. But so did the formations of 7th, the organizational detachments of 8th and 9th and so does the current detachment system of 10th. You can argue that these editions fall at different places on the Freedom vs. simulation continuum, but what you cannot do is say they don't provide an in-universe simulation of how the army works, because they all objectively do- it may not just be the simulation you prefer.
I don't believe you can just add simulationist to anything and gain its value. The current limit of 3 has no inuniverse mechanism it's attached to. No strategy that orks nids and tau all have in common that explains why orks can only have 3 deff dreads, nids 3 carnifexes and tau 3 riptides rather than 4, 5 and 6 respectively or any other number. There is nothing about it that makes it a 40k concept. And thus it cannot be simulationist of 40k, because it doesn't represent anything except the out of universe abstract rules.
The 3rd FoC was also abstract, but it had tangible concepts underpinning it - like you need HQ and troops as the basis of your army, that there are fewer elites available than troops and so on. How that was represented with the specific numbers was the abstract part, but the concept that these are all interconnected and there are relative limitations, was a simulation of the realities of the setting.
The current rule of 3 is a purely abstract mechanic to allow a player to make an army however they like.
This is true, but ALL wargame rules are a degree of abstraction. Again, abstract to realistic is spectrum, and where things sit on that spectrum is influenced by contextual factors.
That's a truism that doesn't really add to the conversation though. That abstraction exists is a given, as it's already abstract because it's a game. Where the abstraction gains simulationist value is when it's tangibly connected to a concept within the setting. That there is a logical progression from 'power swords are able to cut through armour and damage enemies easily' to 'power swords grant +1S and have -2AP and the reader can see that representation.
The rule of 3 has no such connection and the OP's point about the arbitrariness of datasheets determining how many of a concept you can have illustrates that further. You can take 15 marine captains using the Ro3, but only 6 terminator squads, while every chapter of marines has a maximum of 10 Captains and 100 terminators. If you changed the Ro3 to use keywords to reduce captains to 3, you'd also halve the number of terminators you could take. There are other ways you can play with it, but the fact is that the Ro3 has no inuniverse connection.
A force structure framework of some kind that references the logistics of armies, the relative availability of one part of the army to others (elites vs troops etc) and that you have SOME but not LOTS of HQs that form the command structure, has a connection to the setting.
The current system is emblematic of the abstraction of the current 40k rules, where the unit is only loosely represented by its rules and the mechanics are more important than what they represent.
From other discussions on this board, I can piece together what you mean by this: in the past, the rules used to express a unit's capabilities were more closely linked to traits which were visible on the model, or at the army-wide scale by unit selection (particularly as impacted by specialized version of an FOC). And I can absolutely agree with that point.
But I DON'T agree that all unit rules and strats are necessarily more "Abstract" because they can't easily be seen on a model. If anything, I think restricting a unit's capabilities to only that which can be modelled or represented by unit selection is the abstraction. And of course, that's just as subjective and relativistic as any assertions that may be made about the "realism" of an FOC.
It's not specifically about the appearance, but their background. A marine captain now has a rule called finest hour where it gets extra attacks that are DW. That's not at all related to the character or its abilities, it's a mechanic added to differentiate it from other captains. A lieutenant has tactical precision that makes his unit have LH. Again that's not represented by in-universe anything, it's just a differentiation rule. And a lieutenant with a combi weapon can 'evade and survive' because he has a combi weapon. These are not connected to the weapon or the rank, they're just mechanics for the sake of them. Each chaplain has their own unique rule as well, which doesn't represent anything to do with their or training, and everything to do with differentiating them from the same rank model with different armour or equipment. Terminator armour doesn't give you 4+ FnP against MW, or everyone wearing it would get that. But a Chaplain does. For 30 years it didn't and now it does. You'd think such a powerful ability would be noted in the annals of marine chapter legends, or as part of their training - put fred in that squad and put them in front of the big guns, he seems to be able to bounce cannon shells off his bonce... and there are 3 guys who can do that and we can only ever deploy just 3. We have enough terminator armour for all our chaplains but the other 9 all have to be equipped differently. They also forget how to bounce shells off their heads when not in terminator armour. It would be handy if fred could lead a jump pack squad with that ability, but darn it he can only manifest bonce bounce in terminator armour for some reason.
IMO, there are inherent simulationist restrictions that you really shouldn't be able to step around if you want to play inside the 40k setting.
The problem is that not everyone agrees on what those simulationist restrictions should be, and I think the idea behind people's preference for Ro3 is that they are more likely to be able create THEIR OWN simulationist restrictions, rather than struggle to conform their head-cannon armies into an arbitrary shape that GW says MUST BE USED ALWAYS.
My simulationist restriction is that I get to deploy 6 bladeguard squads, 4 aggressor squads and 5 infernus squads. But i can't do that - GW will let me have 15 captains though. If it's truly about the player's choice, they wouldn't put any restrictions at all in. If they are going to put them, then they should be at least notionally tied the army and its means of fighting, or it's clearly a bandaid visible from orbit, rather than one painted in camo that is easy to miss.
False equivalency- that's a subfaction/ chapter issue and has absolutley zero to do with either Ro3 or FOC.
If I was comparing those aspects then yes, But i was specifically using it as an example of an immutable thing that 40k prevents you doing by its nature. That's all I was discussing. 40k has objective truths that it constrains you with, such as that example. It also has objective truths about how armies deploy, but they are a wider spectrum than the binary yes or no of some units. It's still an actual restriction though and 3 of a unit except 15 captains is not one of those inuniverse restrictions.
and they don't deploy armies based on a Ro3 concept.
In point of fact, most likely they do, since most of the armies created using the FOC are perfectly legal using Ro3. Not all Ro3 armies are FOC legal, but most FOC armies are Ro3 legal. It sounds like you're implying that Ro3 PREVENTS you from playing the idealized Ultramarines army that lives in your head; it doesn't. Instead, it enables you to fight a custom mission in a narrative campaign were six squads of bikes have to cross through hostile Ork territory to bring a message to an isolated outpost that they need to evacuate before the arrival of a full scale onslaught, or fight round two in an attrition campaign when all of the obligatory troops units were wiped out in round one.
Those are both totally feasible conditions that can occur, and demonstrate that the principle that always, UM, SW, any flavour of marine or any other faction ALWAYS deploy according to a) the units available to them based on theatre of war context and b) the units among what is available that are most likely to achieve a given mission in a given theatre of war, and not an arbitrary "we must never have more than 3 elites and 3 fast attack."
Ro3 allows you to build the army based on availability, objective and battlefield conditions. FOC does not. So what's more realistic now?
as I said previously, I'm not advocating for a return to 3rd ed FoCs, only that the concept of a force structure that you must adhere to are inherently more connected to the setting than the abstraction of 3s. Your examples are specific scenarios and I said would appear in those scenarios. but it's not believable at all that your army of 15 captains and 6 rhinos are fighting more than one battle in that unusual scenario, let alone an entire campaign just because you can put them together that way.
The roleplay simulation of 40k has been leeched from the game until it's become more and more checkers with fancy pieces.
The roleplay in 40k got kicked into high gear in 9th. It's slipped a notch since then, but the FOC era editions had nowhere near the roleplay potential of 9th or 10th, as I just described above.
Did all your troops die in a game, and you got no supply lines to get more? I guess you just have to give up and surrender, because Ultramarines will only ever deploy if they can bring two units of troops. Seriously dude. That's the system you're saying has more roleplay potential.
The campaign rules existed all throughout the 3-7 era. The current crusade model isn't new. Crusade is also not the simulation i was referring to. It's great you can tell a story with your army, but if you army itself is composed of rules that are now only loosely associated with the army in the setting, you're just telling a story with checker pieces. It might be a great story, but its still not with the setting you're supposed to be playing in.
Whether a 3rd ed FoC is suitable or not, some form of army structure should exist in the game or you're not really playing 40k. I saw someone mention E:A and I would endorse that too - each army has its own FoC structure that is balanced against what that army can deploy, while also showing how that army actually fights.
How that army actually fights based on what? White Scars love their bikes, but if I Kill them all in one battle, what DO they do in the next?
Well as you've pointed out, they don't always die between battles. And the setting has rarely had any army get so badly destroyed they can't deploy that aspect. The white scars have avoided losing all their bikes in 10,000 years, or they have a big factory churning out replacements faster than they need them.
No military leader in 40k has the freedom to deploy an army in the way a 40k player can, nor the strategic inclination to do so.
I beg your pardon, an Inquisitor has the freedom to do whatever they hell they want unless another Inquisitor says they can't, and if you disagree, it's only a matter of time until you disappear.
Freedom is more than just personal power. If the closest grey hunters, allarus dreadnought, culexus, ratlings and knights are more than a month away, no amount of ultimate power is going to get you your unique snowflake bespoke army.
To reference the white scars - their bikes are being replaced/repaired. The 15 captain kill team all got wiped and you can't call on any captains for a while. The reality of logistics, tactics and traditions mean that the army is far more constrained in its deployment than it is to the player. Assembling an army isn't a collection of datasheets you throw down and the force teleports in ready to go.
Any truly unusual force comp would be a highly specific scenario from a very particular set of circumstances - which would be built into the scenario you play.
Now who's dealing in abstractions? If an army is flexible enough to adjust its composition to accommodate for battlefield scenarios, why isn't that flexibility represented in the organizational capacity of the army and instead connected to the battle and not the army at all?
I was referring to highly unusual scenarios like a depot raid where its just techmarines, hammerfall bunkers and rhinos and servitors. A specific scenario with specific force. It's not an actively recruited and deployed force, but a snapshot of specific units in a single place at one time that happen to get into a battle in a way they wouldn't normally deploy to do so.
As for the other comment, because that's not how armies work. And in 40k (and the imperium especially) reason and 21st century wargamer logic don't control how and why armies are formed or what they do when they are. Tradition, dogma, circumstance, logistics and training are what dictate it. Applying our sensibilities to the army is exactly the abstraction that's the problem. You should take on the persona of the army, limitations and all.
JNAProductions wrote: Also, for IG at least, they have mono-unit companies.
For example, a tank company isn’t mixed with infantry.
Multiple companies are USUALLY deployed together… but not always.
In Epic the typical IG formation looks like a company mixed with integrated support units as well as a support detatchment or two. So it can be a Company of Infantry, mechanized or not, with a Squadron of Russes, maybe a Hellhound or few, or Hydra, or Ogryns . . . and some of those (like the Tanks) my just be Squadrons from a different company. The whole thing can look suspiciously like a FoC40K army. Tank Companies can mix with infantry, and vice versa. The official organization of all those assets might be mono-company, but they way they get used often breaks them all up into combined arms formations.
Hellebore wrote: Stepping back from this, I think there are two separate concepts that are represented by these two methods.
Freedom of selection and simulationist structure.
The FoC creates a level of inuniverse simulation of the army. The current rule of 3 is a purely abstract mechanic to allow a player to make an army however they like. The current system is emblematic of the abstraction of the current 40k rules, where the unit is only loosely represented by its rules and the mechanics are more important than what they represent. IMO, there are inherent simulationist restrictions that you really shouldn't be able to step around if you want to play inside the 40k setting. Ultramarines can't deploy Grey Hunters, and they don't deploy armies based on a Ro3 concept. The roleplay simulation of 40k has been leeched from the game until it's become more and more checkers with fancy pieces.
I understand what you are saying, but the FOC never really achieved that. In the end it was just as abstract of a mechanic as the Ro3 is, but was just cosplaying as in-game military structure - much like stratagems pretend to be an in-universe thing when they really are not. Even for highly structured armies like the guard, there never was a lore reason for a commander not be able to deploy a hydra to defend his position from aircraft just because there were exactly three times two guys with mortars in the same regiment. For less organized armies like chaos and xenos, it often directly contradicted the fluff and forced you into playing unfluffy armies.
The best shot at the simulationist approach was the dreaded decurions, which tried to give each army their own command structure to follow and wanted to rewarded you for doing that. If failed spectacularly in 7th, but from what I've read, a very similar approach seems to work just fine in AoS and 30k. Unlike with the FoC, I do not believe that this approach cannot work. However, looking at the current state of the game, I also don't think it would actually add anything? As shown earlier in this thread, even the most competitive people are already following army structures which look a lot like armies taken straight out of novels and codex fluff. This is due to implicit restrictions given to your army through mission design, unit abilities, defensive profiles and the rule of 3. I don't think writing explicit limitations would make the game better or worse - just more complex.
There is no Fast Attack anymore, but you see fast or infiltrating/deep striking units in almost every army, because you need fast vanguards and flanking units to capture and defend objectives. There is no Heavy Support anymore, but you need to bring some powerful guns that can punch through your opponent's durable units, be it vehicles, monsters or elite infantry. There is no elite anymore, good riddance But seriously, elite has - implicitly - split into heavy, medium and light infantry and the game has become better for it. Gravis and TEQ really have different feel to them than nobz, genestealers or marines, which also feel distinct from aspect warriors, boyz or yaegirs. The concept of troops has separate into the OC, battleline and simply cheap bodies(gretchin. pox walkers, scouts). Any unit can be good at holding objectives now, without automatically allowing you to have infinite amounts of them. And you need those objective holding units, because otherwise one of those pesky not-fast attack units will steal your home objectives despite a transport or an artillery unit being parked on it.
So the idea of battle roles hasn't been lost to the game you play, but is just no longer explicitly written down anymore. It also doesn't artificially restrict a unit to single role when it's both fast and heavy support or an elite unit that is supposed to grab objectives.
All the horror scenarios of people spamming unfun lists in this thread which require restriction through the FoC are completely made up scenarios which simply do not happen in real games. Even if yo do run into someone running a 12 LR list, it's an automatic win for you because they have literally no chance of winning the game. The most realistic scenario here is someone bringing 6 predators, which blood angels were able for as long as I can think. I also fail to see how 6 predators are somehow a problem while a combination 3 balistus dreads, 3 hamemrstrike speeders and 3 gladiator valliants is not, despite being more or less the same type of unit.
Whether a 3rd ed FoC is suitable or not, some form of army structure should exist in the game or you're not really playing 40k. I saw someone mention E:A and I would endorse that too - each army has its own FoC structure that is balanced against what that army can deploy, while also showing how that army actually fights.
I do not disagree with you opinion, but want to point out that not every battle is fought by deploying a fresh organizational structure directly from orbit.
No military leader in 40k has the freedom to deploy an army in the way a 40k player can, nor the strategic inclination to do so. Any truly unusual force comp would be a highly specific scenario from a very particular set of circumstances - which would be built into the scenario you play.
Can you give an example of such an army that's build to win a battle and not as a joke?
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PenitentJake wrote: The problem is that not everyone agrees on what those simulationist restrictions should be, and I think the idea behind people's preference for Ro3 is that they are more likely to be able create THEIR OWN simulationist restrictions, rather than struggle to conform their head-cannon armies into an arbitrary shape that GW says MUST BE USED ALWAYS.
YES. This, so many times. It's MY dudes. Not GW's dudes. I want to bring a morkanaut and a gorkanaut and two dreads and three units of killa kanz. And I want them to be lead by big meks and there should be lootas and gretchin all over the places. And if I feel like it, I should also be able to bring a stompa. You know, exactly like the 40+ pages of fluff in the GW published book that coined the name "dreadmob" described such an army to look like. The FOC is a tool made to literally prevent such armies.
Whilst not 40K, the third take on Realms of Chaos (5th or 6th Ed WHFB) leaned into the Warband feel. You picked a character, and tooled them up. You then need to buy units at least equal to the character’s cost as their personal warband. Points left over? Rinse and repeat.
2nd Ed Imperial Guard? Buying an infantry squad allowed a support unit (Russ, Ogryns etc) to be added.
Both worked quite differently from their contemporaries.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Have got the relevant books at home, but currently in the salon getting me roots done. Will give a more in-depth and accurate description once I’m home.
Honestly, I believe the death of the FoC can be laid at the feet of those who complained that they couldn't play with all the cool toys talked about in the Warhammer fluff or codecies.
And I understand that outlook.
You had to create so many FoC breaking rules in the previous editions to make it work.
Who wouldn't want to replicate Shrike and his all jump pack forces, Imperial Guard Artillery Companies, or the Deathwing / Ravenwing Combos?
It was fun and different than the standard block of tactical meh-rines that we were all used to seeing in every frigging game.
But that constant break from the FoC, probably is what made the Company say, "Every codex has at least one way of ignoring this thing, why are we still using it?"
Plus, you had the last gasp of the FoC in 9th, when it was various FoCs that just overcomplicated army building, especially for new players.
I remember trying to explain army building and CPs to starting players, while trying to wedge in the models they had bought. Eventually we would just ignore the FoC and play with what we had.
Our house rules essentially became 10th edition. The rule of 3/6 while arbitrary, does for the most part work.
The original FOC suited Marines quite nicely, as it allowed you field a full Battle Company (6 Tactical, 2 Assault, 2 Devastator), and still have space left for some support elements. Also one Captain, and a support staff like a Chaplain.
Outside of that? Less so.
Had they offered a separate “fluffy” FOC for each army it could’ve worked I guess. Hard to say, as a nice idea doesn’t mean nice execution.
Traditionally a big part of the problem also had to do with the Troop Tax. The game had this weird divide where "Elite" armies spent way more on Troops and ended up having less "Elite" stuff than armies that could cheaply pay their taxes and get straight to the good stuff.
I also think, as big as 40k armies are, they're not really big enough to capture the scale people think of when they imagine a FOC compliant army. I think what exists in most people's minds are something closer to Epic/Armaggedon and in 10th terms, would be accomplished by 3 separate detachments in the 1-2k point range each.
LunarSol wrote: Traditionally a big part of the problem also had to do with the Troop Tax.
I think this is part of the issue. The debate sometimes gets framed as "fluff" vs "competitive".
But really its "I like these models" vs "fluff".
Its entirely possible for example to look at the Space Marine range, and think "I like Terminators and Dreadnoughts, I want an army of Terminators and Dreadnoughts". Whether Deathwing or otherwise.
If you get told "at a minimum you need to take 2 naked Scout squads to be FOC compliant" you might think... why? That's lame. I just like Terminators and Dreadnoughts, why would I want these skinny children Marines running around?
By contrast a competitive player likely just shrugs. Certainly in 10th Scouts would add some functionality to the list and aren't therefore necessarily a bad idea.
Who wouldn't want to replicate Shrike and his all jump pack forces, Imperial Guard Artillery Companies, or the Deathwing / Ravenwing Combos?
It was fun and different than the standard block of tactical meh-rines that we were all used to seeing in every frigging game.
But that constant break from the FoC, probably is what made the Company say, "Every codex has at least one way of ignoring this thing, why are we still using it?"
Soooo. . . . about that. If you wanted to make a Marine Bike focused army these days, how would you do it? Because I remember the days when an an entire army of bikes could be fielded, and it's a list that showed up in tournaments from time to time. Afaik, at the moment you can take three Bike squads for 18 models total, plus a chaplain on a bike? Something like that.
Another example of the new not-so-freedom we have these days is (again, last I checked) the fact that you can only take six Imperial Guard Infantry Squads, and to take more than 60 you have to glom them up in larger-than-ten squads, even though the actual organization of the IG has always been in blocks of ten.
Any my personal gripe effecting an army I actually play, is that I can only take three squads of Tyranid Warriors with ranged weapons, and those are now limited to six models per squad, 18 models. (They used to come in squads of up to 9), were sometimes troops, and were sometimes Elites AND HQ.
Another one is maxxing on (lascannon) Land Raiders at three, when before you could take them as Transports for Terminators and thus didn't count against your Heavy Support choices.
I totally get the desire of "bring whatever you want!", but to me there are some instances of limitations just moving around.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Honestly, I believe the death of the FoC can be laid at the feet of those who complained that they couldn't play with all the cool toys talked about in the Warhammer fluff or codecies
Nah. It was another victim of GW making the rules 'accessible' ie. short. Same reason they cut out vehicle armour, morale etc.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Honestly, I believe the death of the FoC can be laid at the feet of those who complained that they couldn't play with all the cool toys talked about in the Warhammer fluff or codecies
Nah. It was another victim of GW making the rules 'accessible' ie. short. Same reason they cut out vehicle armour, morale etc.
I'm mostly in this camp.
It sorta falls under the "adding numbers for wargear is just too complicated, uuughhh" realm.
What most of us want is a rules system that has some sense of stability. 3 year cycles that shake everything up are a pain in the neck. Esp when GW is clearly well into a system of change for the sake of change alone or constantly shifting the goal posts of who their target audience is.
So can we recognize that that's the same thing as the old paradigm including ways to modify the FOC?
(also, that's still just 36 ranged Warriors) I was taking like, 60 in 8th, and could take 45 in 4th.
If you argument here is that the rule of 3 is flawed, I agree and personally I don't believe we need it anymore.
That's certainly part of my argument, yeah. Most of the gist is that many of the criticisms against FOC can be levelled at Ro3.
I think army building limitations are reasonable, implementation is always the issue.
That said it would sure be interesting to see what would happen if they were abandoned.
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Overread wrote: What most of us want is a rules system that has some sense of stability. 3 year cycles that shake everything up are a pain in the neck. Esp when GW is clearly well into a system of change for the sake of change alone or constantly shifting the goal posts of who their target audience is.
I can certainly agree with a desire for stability.
I think their goal posts haven't changed. They consistently want new players because they spend more, faster.
There is probably no perfect answer, all will have downsides in concept and/or implementation.
Considering the current state of the game, RO3 is probably decent enough to get the job done and I have little apetite for redesigning the whole thing.
Ultimately I agree with Overread, I vastly prefer stability even if it means accepting some poorly implemented rules. Which is why I hope 11th is mostly a continuation of 10th rather than another overhaul.
Should we just accept the 8th Edition's Open Play, where you select a point total and bring everything you want that fits in that point total?
So you can field your 7 Samurai style- Farsight and the Nine list you've always wanted to play?
I'll give two answers:
Ideal solution 1: No limitatioms on what you can bring, but the "soft mechanics" naturally incentivise healthy mixes of units. I just don't know how realistic that is.
Ideal Solution 2: Flexible faction specific force orgs. Imo this is actually more flavorful because they should be reinforcing faction "ideals".
Again, my favourite implementation was 9th. Detachments WERE FOC's, but there was a variety of them you could choose from, AND you could use multiple detachments in a single army AND that could also be a way to add allies.
I prefer 9th to 8th, because in 8th you were awarded command points for detachments, so people chose organizational structure based on a desire for command points rather than how well that structure reflected the character of the army they wanted to field.
Even then, it wasn't perfect: you could only deduct the detachment's CP cost for including the Warlord if the detachment in question was a patrol, a Battalion or a Brigade, and GW created purity rules to discourage allying when fixing 8th's CP for Detachments on its own was enough to solve the problem.
But it was still my personal favourite way to organize armies, and it provided my with a lot of narrative hooks that current mono detachment armies don't.
The loss of allies (outside of a few specific cases like Agents of the Imperium/Chaos and Knights) was to avoid the workload necessary to avoid unintended synergies that made taking allies better than playing your army.
The Design Studio just doesn't have the time to make sure that taking your own armies tanks isn't overtaken by the value of taking an allied tank. This is doubly true since they tend to target Inter-Codex balance before they target Intra-Codex Balance.
And this is all fine and good in a Competative Environment. In a Narrative Environment, you and your opponent are free to allow Allies and make rules to cover them. No reason you can't both play a 1500 Point Army Allied to a 500 Point Army with homebrew rules to cover Detachments, Command Points, and Warlords.
Jidmah wrote: I understand what you are saying, but the FOC never really achieved that. In the end it was just as abstract of a mechanic as the Ro3 is, but was just cosplaying as in-game military structure - much like stratagems pretend to be an in-universe thing when they really are not. Even for highly structured armies like the guard, there never was a lore reason for a commander not be able to deploy a hydra to defend his position from aircraft just because there were exactly three times two guys with mortars in the same regiment. For less organized armies like chaos and xenos, it often directly contradicted the fluff and forced you into playing unfluffy armies.
Yeah I don't play the Ultramarines 4th Company or the Cadian 59th Infantry Regiment or whatever. My small-time warboss from a backwater system probably has millions of orks following him. Excluding special characters he could easily field literally any legal 3000 point Ork army, and might decide to do so on a whim. Not that I actually have 10 battlewagon models myself, but my warboss would definitely have hundreds. And that's some petty no-name Waagh, 40k allows players to field Ghaz and Creed and Magnus the Red who command forces bigger by orders of magnitude.
Now granted the Ro3 doesn't let me field 10 battlewagons either, but I understand that it's purely a list-building restriction same as the point limit. It doesn't bother me to be told that I'm not allowed to have a force twice as strong as my opponent's, even though there's no fluff reason why it couldn't be. But I do get annoyed when the list-building restriction gets coated in some BS about how it's not "realistic" for my ork army to break Roboutte Guilliman's Codex Astartes organization chart. (A chart that is apparently so constrained that even the other space marines refuse to abide by it, as proven by all the special exemptions their chapters are given.) When it is completely feasible and in-character for orks to field entire 40k armies of walkers or tanks or bikes, according to every other source in the game besides the FOC.
If you really want to preserve fluffiness, make FOCs only apply to armies lead by special characters who cannonically lead armies that obey FOC. If you take Marneus Calgar then you cannot make your army all terminators, because that's not how he would do things. But why can't the Hypermarines take all terminators? Their fluff says they do, because it's my made-up chapter. It has already been decided that it isn't unbalanced mechanically, because Deathwing are allowed to be an army. Terminator armor is rare but hardly to the point where fielding 50 suits of it is impossible for a chapter that's existed for thousands of years, and again Deathwing proves that it's strategically viable. Special characters shouldn't unlock options, they should lock them, because if you're not using a special character then your commander's resources and strategies can be whatever you want them to be.
alextroy wrote: In a Narrative Environment, you and your opponent are free to allow Allies and make rules to cover them. No reason you can't both play a 1500 Point Army Allied to a 500 Point Army with homebrew rules to cover Detachments, Command Points, and Warlords.
True. But it's also true that for whatever reason, in 9th, you didn't have to make up rules to do it, because the core system facilitated it.
Not that it would be hard to house rule allies using 10th ed rules. In 9th, we all had 40 or so strats and 10 or more enhancements available to us- some folks complained that was too much, but it never felt that way to me.
So if I played a 2k Imperial Army that was 1000 points of Sisters and 1000 points of guard, that gives me 12 strats and 8 enhancements. That's less than half of what was available to even a monofaction army in 9th- certainly not a brain breaker. In fact, if I wanted to, I could even build a 2100 point army with 700 Sisters, 700 Guard and 700 Marines, that's still only 18 strats and 12 enhancements... And again, not rocket science.
I think there were ally rules in one of the WD mission packs, but I can't find it right now.
Essentially, you have to pick a main faction and the other factions just don't get detachment rules or stratagems. In addition, they are treated as enemy units that you can't attack or charge, so don't stand too close to those allied death guard.
But even setting aside the player choice aspect of it, "core/special/rare" still wouldn't be a very good way of breaking things down, right? So long as players have enough access to "core" vehicles (dedicated transports for instance), tank skew is still going to remain a problem. It maybe improves the problem a bit by making it so that the number of super lethal tanks goes down and they have to be replaced with less killy tanks (fewer russes, more chimeras), but the skew is still there. And if all of a faction's tools for handling the current meta are tied up in special/rare, then you're just restricting some armies' abilities to respond to the meta.
