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In 4th (and 3rd for that matter), army lists were, on the whole, very light on troops.

They were generally viewed as an inconvenience, particularly by non-horde armies, and were usually minimum sized in order to free up maximum points for 'good stuff' like tanks, elite CC units and fast objective-grabbers.

Now, before anyone gets on their I'm not asking for a list of every army in 4th ed that was troop heavy. I know there were a wide variety of competitive, troop heavy builds. My point is that these were the exception rather than the rule.

With 5th ed now just around the corner, I was wondering how people's armies were changing to reflect the more central role troops now play.

Are people thinking of maxing out on troops? Or are you going to go the other way and concentrate on good troop-killers from other areas of the list to deny your opponent? What would you say is the 'guideline' figure for troops now (I used to try and spend no more than 30% on troops, for example)? And what troop types are 'coming in from the cold' to retake their place in your lists?

Your thoughts welcome as always...

Well,
My experience was quite different in 4th edition. I believe every list I made at 1500 and above had 6 troop slots in it. Played Chaos, SM, and Eldar, so not exactly horde armies there.
I found that troops were usually some of the best general units in a list. If you were going for an "unbalanced" list, then people stayed away from troops. (by unbalanced I mean a list aimed purely at dominating one of the phases - assault, shooting, or movement - not that it is an unfair army).
I believe in 4th, the utilization of some of the troop units will be different. In the past, a lot of troops units had the main task of shooting rather than holding objectives. Now, I think that most armies will have to be more flexible.
Also, with the annihilation scenario, taking multiple units helps with taking/contesting objectives, but works against you in the other scenario. That also will lead to a lot of hard thinking as to how to construct an army.
In conclusion, I don't think there will be a guideline for troops %. Some armies will excell at contesting objectives with their elites and FA while others will go troop heavy to take objectives... Interesting environment coming up.

Just my rambling thoughts.

I think that people are going to have to take, at absolute minimum, two full squads of Marines with transports. I may indeed take four, although it depends on what all's in the new 'dex-- spending half your points on Troops may soon be a good idea. In fact, if I don't fill my slots, I may buy 50 point Inqusitorial Stormtrooper squads just to hold terrain. The old days of "ten scouts and then buy Termies" are definitely gone.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:In 4th (and 3rd for that matter), army lists were, on the whole, very light on troops.

You were doing fine until you typed that.

Seriously though, the problem is that statement isn't true across every army. Different armies get their strength from different parts of the org chart. Moreover, different troops choices work differently. That's why the troops thing in 5th -- even if well-intentioned -- doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If the codices were designed to make troops choices equally valuable across armies, it'd have a chance to work. But they're not, and so their "solution" is to "fix" army comp by an overarching rule that can't possibly be equitable instead of fixing the org chart and the armies as designed in their codices.

Having said all that, I think having any unit able to contest objectives goes down a lot easier. But will the rule really do what it was meant to do if it's that watered down? I dunno.

I can't say there's going to be an absolute rule. It'll vary significantly from army to army.

Orks and Marines should be able to do pretty damn well with Troops selections.

IG will continue to rely on Elite and Heavy slots to meet specific requirements.

Fearless Guardian squads are a viable build as demonstrated by atleast one of our fellow Dakkites.

I'm currently building Tau and can't come up with a build relying on Troops. Not that it doesn't exist, I just haven't found it yet.

A very good original question... I have to agree with Gorgon that it depends on the troops available for your army.

Tau (yadda yadda, blah blah) have relatively weak troop selections and rely on the suits and vehicles for all the heavy firepower.

I think we will continue to see competitive Tau builds that are troop light, and use heavy weapons to wipe enemy troop squads off objectives.

I know every list I made in 4th had at least 4 units of troops (and NOT at minimum size). So, some people didn't see the need to min-max. Mind you, I also usually take heavy weapons that don't deny the enemy a save. All things being equal, some guns are better - but all things are NOT equal and cover makes up for a lot.

I haven't even used harlies since 2nd ed (not the unofficial codex from CJ, not the weakened minimalist, token Harlie entries from C:E).

So the move from 4th to 5th won't horibly inconvenience me (since I have a full line battle company of marines - with drop pods and attendant support units).

My 4th edition ork army had the full six troops choices.
My chaos army consisted of two 300 points plus plague marine units and some daemons, with Typhus and one unit of obliterators. So most of the points was in troops, albiet very powerful ones.


In 5th I'm probably not going to change much (although true line of sight is going to ruin my day with Speed Freak orks).

Lists I think that might change would be Mech Eldar and Nidzilla. Mech eldar because min sized gaurdian jetbike squads won't cut it, and nidzilla because all those points into things that can't capture objectives is silly.

@ Chromedog: What was your army of choice with the 4 troops minimum? Based on your post, I assume it was either Eldar or Marines, both of which have pretty good troops choices. My SM troops were generally 3 selections, though I did grab 2 cheap ranger units so I could max my Aspects.

The problem is that all troops selections are not equal, thereby hurting some armies a little, gutting others, or doing nothing (just as effective) to the rest (SM).

Glad my disruption pods got better. Maybe Farsight Enclave will make Suits as troops in the next Dex.

My marines were usually 4-5 troops units. Bear in mind we usually play 2000pts at my club and our annual tourney is also 2000pts.

3x10 man tac squads (1 special, no heavy. Special is a flamer OR 1 Heavy, no special. Heavy Bolter).
2x10 man scout squads.
a) 9 sniper rifles+Heavy bolter or missile launcher.
b) 10 bolters.

My eldar generally used 3 x 20 man guardian defender squads and either a 10 man squad of rangers OR a jetbike squad (10+warlock).

I've also never been one to use more than one falcon or fire-prism (never needed to, and never had a second of either to start with).

Having read through the replies, it seems to be the case that some armies are are much more capable of being troop-heavy:

SM, CSM, Eldar, Orks, Necrons, Sisters

while others rely too much on non-troop stuff to be able to get by being troop-heavy:

Tau, IG

What does anyone think of Dark Eldar, Daemons, Daemonhunters and Nids?
And given the changes to to the mission rules, will those armies who can't rely on lots of troops be at a disadvantage?

actually IG infantry platoons mean that IG will have more scoring untis than nearly any other army in the game. your average guard army fields 2-4 platoons on command+2-4 squads. at minimun thats 6 scoring units, more likely 8-12.

demons have some excellent troop choices. horros and plaguebearers are pretty good for holding objectives, while bloodletter are very good at taking them.

nids have good troop choices too. gaunts you can run in huge numbers to overwhelm enemy possition and genestealers with scouts are tear stuff to peices.

lots of people run DE warrior squads with dark lances in raiders and DE is such a fast army that deploying to objectives isnt really a problem.

DH were one of those armies that were low on troops, because inquisitional storm troopers suck and grey kights in powerarmour were too expensive.

most armies have decent enough troop choices that it wont effect them too much.

the two armies i can see having trouble with TROOPS are tau and DH. its not so much of an issue with tau because the rest of the stuff in their army and the boosts they get in 5th make up for it. DH will get even worse though.

I agree with Regwon that Tau are more likely to struggle than most other armies.

OTOH I also agree there is stuff that helps them -- the new LoS/Range rules should be a boon given the long reach of pulse rifles.

Kroot will benefit from more and better cover available, though they lose their special hiding in woods skill.

Meanwhile there are various plusses and minusses in the changes regarding the rest of the army, which overall probably balance out. Also some changes in close combat will help. (No more slingshotting.)

My overall perception is not that Tau got worse under 5th, but that a lot of other armies got a bit better simply because of the blanket Troops Capture rule.

Troops will initialy be a hot item, but I think that GW messed up when they wrote the new rules. While only troops can hold objectives, anything can contest them. So in the end, it doesn’t matter if you have troops or not when there is an enemy unit near the objective. That combined with the fact that non-troop units are almost always more powerful (aka killy) than troop units and I think you’ll find that winning strategy will still be taking a lot of non-troop units and doing something like this:

Spend early turns laying waste to the enemy (1-2)
Spend mid game turns moving into position (3-4) so that your 1 or 2 troop units can get on/near objectives
Late game turns are spent destroying anything that comes near your 1 or 2 designated troop control points while the rest of your army moves around to contest the other objectives.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how many troops you bring if your opponent contests all the objectives. However it does benefit you to bring along units that are powerful enough to do the most damage possible to the enemy. If you wipe out their units, they can’t hold or contest your objectives and you only have to have 1 to win when they don’t have any.

The last benefit to this method of thinking is that you clean up in kill point missions.

Right. Troops will be used for a couple weeks before people realize they might as well play with their old lists. Essentially the game is still the same, except you have the additional objective of killing off troops early. It's not the number of troops that's important - it's their ability to survive. Whether you have 2 or 4 troops doesn't matter much when the enemy contests the objective with anything else.

As for my Tau, I think the only changes will come to the crisis suit loadouts. Instead of plas/missile, I'm thinking missile/burst will become the predominant loadout. This is due to more cover (including intervening) overall, the fact that terrain and JSJ no longer guarantees suits to be out of LOS, greater numbers of APCs, and the importance of objectives which mean firefights will happen at shorter ranges. I will, however, use more Kroot just cuz I love my Kriegoot, my Kradian men-at-arms, and my two large camels that will rampage out of the backside of a Pathfinder's devilfish.

This is what I got from a couple games of 5th ed.

I've always done troopy armies, ironicly up until imperial guard where I focused more on tanks.. yet they're better off with more guys. For my nids, I would usually have 4 units of gaunts and 2 units of genestealers.

For my guard though, I've been planning to add a 3rd platoon anyway.. but I'm just holding off until the new codex now before I buy anything else.. tons of other stuff to paint at the moment anyway

Troops are an anchor on a Necron's neck, we have to go min troop choices, especially with the murderous changes to combat resolution in 5th.

This means my army (Decepticrons) won't change, but I doubt the "only troops are scoring" thing will come up all that often. It's still necessary to shoot down 20 MEQ's to get all my scoring guys, and WBB is in the mix. Most folks will probably just gun for the Destroyers/Deceiver to diminish my firepower, same as now.

Starting with in 3rd Edition, I regularly fielded at least 4 (min-max) Troops, because min-max showed that having extra units was generally better-fitted towards the MSU style of play encouraged by 3E and 4E rules and scenarios. For example, my Space Marines were min-max 6-man Las/Plas teams without exception. The other points went into "good stuff" like min-max triple-Heavy Devastators and double-Heavy Command Squads. I think I'd have scored zero Comp and Fluff by 5th Edition standards.

I think that good Troops are going to figure more prominently, but I don't see people taking max Troops after the initial learning period. I think you'll ultimately see slightly more Troops, and more mobile Troops.

I generally agree with Phoenix that GW didn't go far enough with non-Troops. It probably should have been that only non-Vehicle Troops over 50% strength can contest objectives, but that may have been too radical a change at the outset of 5th.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:In 4th (and 3rd for that matter), army lists were, on the whole, very light on troops.

They were generally viewed as an inconvenience, particularly by non-horde armies, and were usually minimum sized in order to free up maximum points for 'good stuff' like tanks, elite CC units and fast objective-grabbers.

Now, before anyone gets on their I'm not asking for a list of every army in 4th ed that was troop heavy. I know there were a wide variety of competitive, troop heavy builds. My point is that these were the exception rather than the rule.

With 5th ed now just around the corner, I was wondering how people's armies were changing to reflect the more central role troops now play.

Are people thinking of maxing out on troops? Or are you going to go the other way and concentrate on good troop-killers from other areas of the list to deny your opponent? What would you say is the 'guideline' figure for troops now (I used to try and spend no more than 30% on troops, for example)? And what troop types are 'coming in from the cold' to retake their place in your lists?

Your thoughts welcome as always...

shoot a majority of the 40k players in my local area are quitting 40k and starting up fantasy armies. (they tend to powergame and just aren't up for modding their army once again to tweek it..

all the necron players are ditching their armies for tomb kings.

Quitting 40k to buy brand new WFB armies?

GW's secret strategy is working!!!

I've always liked troop-heavy armies, and my mainstays (traits marines, SOB, Eldar and KOS) were all troop heavy.

I like troop heavy better when there's the possibility of some variation. For example, my 4th ed. new codex Eldar had pathfinders, guardian and jetbikes, and even my early 4th/late 3rd Alaitoc had both guardian defenders adn assault troops. Even my marines had las/plas squads and CCW/BP squads in rhinos. Too many of the same thing, cookie cutter style, is just boring to model and boring to play, imho.

I think 5th will forcfully fix this. Armies should allways be mostly troops. That is just where the fluff is. At last these all elite min troop armies will be gone.

I find the elite type armies to be the fun ones to play/play against. So no, armies should not always be mostly troops. There is no need to fix what is not broken.

smart_alex wrote:I think 5th will forcfully fix this. Armies should allways be mostly troops. That is just where the fluff is. At last these all elite min troop armies will be gone.

What the rule will do is, for a while people will be all over the place, and with a mixture of experience and mathshammer they will gradually figure out the ideal proportion of troops for their army.

Depending on the army, the proportion of troops may not change a lot from 4th edition.

i think have troops will be slightly better, but overall i think the rules realy punish having unbalanced armys. the news rules will require lots of troops but if you overdue it your realy not going to have much punching power. so for certain armys(hordes) nothing will change much but for meq armies they will atleast have to have three troops slots to be effective.

Gotta have lots of troops. At least 50% of PV or I feel cheesy.

I am still amused that having one live hormagaunt can win me a game, but living Hive Tyrants simply stop me from losing. Fodder is now meant to survive so the leaders can die!

I play a pretty balanced Tyranid list and that won't change very much at all. I will _use_ the list differently. Hordes die in droves without proper cc planning now especially Tyranids. The change in combat resolution away from outnumbering into outwounding hurts large, cheap units more than most else. And it is almost better to have my guants OUT of synapse during melee now no bonus saves they will fail.


shrug

I have just had a read of the new rules and may have to adjust my army list somewhat (Black Templars)- At the moment I have 1 x 10 man close combat unit and 2 x 5 man fire support units. Now, I may consider adding another 10 man squad and giving them a transport and trimming points elsewhere

My army at present is also what I would consider vehicle heavy- in 1500pts I have a Predator Destructor, Land Raider Crusader and 2 Dreadnoughts

I think another change is that people are going to start playing "unblanaced" lists (2 troops) and just keep their troops back and safe till the end of the game. Then, once a good chunk of the enemy is dead, walk out and grab one objective while the rest of the army contests the rest of them. Sounds really boaring, but I assure you its going to happen.

The other thing that's going to happen is that there's going to be a lot (like really a lot) of draws rather than wins or losses.

The fundamental flaw with GW's cunning plan is that making Troops only scoring does not change their combat value, so armies with crappier troops (Tau) do not have a strong incentive to take a lot more troops.

A much better way of persuading players to take more troops would be to make sure thet are actually worth the points they cost, then make them scoring.