Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Theres a few ways to incentivize troops:

1. Any troops unit that has more than 10 models can preform an action that takes the whole turn in one phase.

2. If, at the end of the game, you still possess enough troops units to hold more than half of the objectives, you score an additional 5 points on primary (not exceeding the cap of 45).

3. Adding in a new secondary that gives points anytime a troops unit kills an elite/FA/Heavy support unit.

I know this is going to sound crazy, but bear with me for a second here, guys.

What if you gave troops a special ability - let's call it Target Occupied - that would mean that when you have a troops unit within range of an objective, it automatically controls it unless the opponent also has a troops unit within range, no matter how many models are involved.

Then all you'd have to do is make sure you resisted the temptation to start creating ways to put this ability on other, non-troops units and...

....oh. Oh no.

How about we make troops better?

Look at tactical marines, BT use to be able to take 15 point crusaders and they were hardly game breaking. They were put up to 18 now with the new codex, and that killed them. Tactical marines as a whole could probably go down to 16 points.

Look are ork boys. Sure they got T5 and AP-1 choppas but they lost a ton of other buffs. They could probably go down to 8 points per model, and say something like Kommandos went up to 14 points we'd see more boys.

Even battle sisters aren't great for their cost. If they were 10 points maybe they'd see more use.

Jarms48 wrote:
... and say something like Kommandos went up to 14 points we'd see more boys.

Careful now. You started your post by saying that we should make Troops better, but one of your suggestions is to artificially inflate the cost of another unit.

Don't punish other units because Troops are bad.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Jarms48 wrote:
... and say something like Kommandos went up to 14 points we'd see more boys.

Careful now. You started your post by saying that we should make Troops better, but one of your suggestions is to artificially inflate the cost of another unit.

Don't punish other units because Troops are bad.

If you think a Kommando is balanced at 10 points you're past saving. Even if you're not abusing their forward deploy they're still far superior to boys, even with an increased 2 point difference. I'd take 45 of them before even taking a single boy.

Voss wrote:


Weirdly WFB was always a little better about this, and since the % requirements and restrictions were a comfortable part of WFB (for the most part), it makes some sense to look at it for 40k. But it has never worked out.

In fantasy 30-50% of the codex units' were troops though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jarms48 wrote:


Look are ork boys. Sure they got T5 and AP-1 choppas but they lost a ton of other buffs. They could probably go down to 8 points per model, and say something like Kommandos went up to 14 points we'd see more boys.

But at that point you'd make Kommandos useless.

Balancing boyz is actually pretty hard since the ork codex have tons of boyz alike units: we have two versions of the standard dudes (boyz with shoota or slugga/choppa), the armored ones that can infiltrate (kommandos), the flying faster boyz (stormboyz), short ranged armed boyz (burnaboyz), mid ranged armed boyz (tankbustas) and long ranged armed boyz (lootas). It's certainly not easy to make all of them good and useful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Boyz in 8th were pretty alright, mainly because they had buffs designed from all the way back in 4th that fit them. More boyz gets you a better psyker, which makes your boyz better. More boyz makes your painboy able to pay back his points, and boyz are the optimal unit to screen with a kff.
This all changed with the 9th dex, which is a bit sad.

Boyz in 8th were terrible outside a single archetype, the green tide, though. And even then, only a single klan, Goffs, made them good by adding a few additional bonuses and synergies to the unit.

Boyz in 8th weren't really played more than now outside the Goffs greentide. Except in the index era of course, when everything except boyz, gretchins and a handful of characters were priced insanely high.

Voss wrote:

 Galas wrote:
But Fantasy did not had troops. Units were separated literally by how common they were in the army, not by the "role" they had.

Part of the 'troops slot' is how common they are. You're making a distinction where there isn't one. Of course, making elites 6 instead of 3 and just letting people go with FA and HS force orgs undermines this completely, but that's the GW design 'genius' at work.

It's also weird that only battalions get those extra elite slots, and no other detachments. IMO this is just a symptom of 40k lacking the sub-commander role to hold all those extra characters 40k suddenly got when 8th curbed the idea of characters being members of units.

You could always say and VPs gained by a TROOP unit add an additional 1-3VP (unsure of a good amount here, not quite my specialty). That would totally encourage TROOP units in armies.

Jarms48 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Jarms48 wrote:
... and say something like Kommandos went up to 14 points we'd see more boys.

Careful now. You started your post by saying that we should make Troops better, but one of your suggestions is to artificially inflate the cost of another unit.

Don't punish other units because Troops are bad.

If you think a Kommando is balanced at 10 points you're past saving. Even if you're not abusing their forward deploy they're still far superior to boys, even with an increased 2 point difference. I'd take 45 of them before even taking a single boy.

I think a 10pt Kommando is competitive, but its not broken. Case and point, the competitive lists winning/placing at GT's/Majors aren't taking them.

Lets start from the beginning. What is a Kommando? A Kommando is a Boy. A Boy is heavily over priced at 9ppm to the point where almost nobody is taking them in competitive games, and the handful that are, are taking them as MSU Troops tax and that is it. So we start from the premise that a 9ppm boy is useless and over priced. So what does the Kommando have that the boy doesnt?

+2 to armor in cover and +1 to wound while in cover and finally they can infiltrate. So they get 2 situational buffs and 1 Deployment buff. They have access to a 5pt PK (cheapest in the codex) and a bomb squig and a distraction grot. I think every other upgrade is crap. The Breacha ram is possible as an upgrade, but even that I tend to ignore since I don't need it.

So why do I take Kommandos instead of Boyz? Because they start the game basically in charge range, which means I don't have to spend 2 full turns walking across a board with 6+ armor. And 2, their situational buffs are great if you play into them. I start every game in cover no matter how out of position that puts me because getting a 3+ armor save or a 4+ with -1 to hit is just too great to ignore. My opponent can either A: spend a turn shooting at 10ppm kommandos or B: GTFO of the way and move to where I can't assault turn 1. So far, not a single person has chosen option B and have instead opted to waste a turn shooting at ridiculously durable 10ppm Boyz. To kill a Kommando in Cover takes 13.5 Bolter shots, to kill a Marine in cover takes 36 bolter shots. So even in cover they are still less durable than a Marine. 90pts of Marines is 5 Marines, 90pts of Kommandos is 9 Kommandos. To kill 5 Marines takes 180 bolter shots, to kill 9 Kommandos in cover takes 121.5 So they are still less durable point for point than those Marines. Biggest difference is, bringing in D2 weapons doesn't impact the Kommandos in anyway, but is a massive hit to those Marines.

So yeah, don't nerf a good unit in the ork codex just because you don't like them, and then try to hide it by saying "it would make boyz better" no it wouldn't it would make Kommandos worse. If i nerfed Dreadz into the dirt it wouldn't make killakanz better.

 Blndmage wrote:
You could always say and VPs gained by a TROOP unit add an additional 1-3VP (unsure of a good amount here, not quite my specialty). That would totally encourage TROOP units in armies.

Just introduce a secondary which targets non-troops and you are served.

One problem with troops is just that like, elites are just better troops now. They can get everything troops can but better, for often a more economical price to output ratio.
Might be because gw charges so much for them. 5 stormboyz is just as much as 11 boyz for honestly no reason.

It used to be that you could field six units of boyz and three units of stormboyz in an average list.

 Blackie wrote:

Voss wrote:


Weirdly WFB was always a little better about this, and since the % requirements and restrictions were a comfortable part of WFB (for the most part), it makes some sense to look at it for 40k. But it has never worked out.

In fantasy 30-50% of the codex units' were troops though.

Eh. In the sense that 'guy with spear' is a different unit from 'guy with sword and shield' or 'guy with bow', yeah, I guess. I don't think that's incredibly convincing, though.

But in third edition, percentages caps were for monsters and allies, and the common units were required to have 1+ or 2+ units and the elite stuff was capped at 0-1 or 0-2, and army lists weren't amazingly different.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
One problem with troops is just that like, elites are just better troops now. They can get everything troops can but better, for often a more economical price to output ratio.

I guess that might depend upon what faction you're looking at? Because my Necron's Elite options aren't really anything like my Warrior/Immortal troop options.

ccs wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
One problem with troops is just that like, elites are just better troops now. They can get everything troops can but better, for often a more economical price to output ratio.

I guess that might depend upon what faction you're looking at? Because my Necron's Elite options aren't really anything like my Warrior/Immortal troop options.

Necrons are also just sort of a funky army. Look at orks, SM, guard, and some more standard factions though. Their elites just bring to the table what the grunts can but more efficiently.

Voss wrote:
Eh. In the sense that 'guy with spear' is a different unit from 'guy with sword and shield' or 'guy with bow', yeah, I guess. I don't think that's incredibly convincing, though.

But in third edition, percentages caps were for monsters and allies, and the common units were required to have 1+ or 2+ units and the elite stuff was capped at 0-1 or 0-2, and army lists weren't amazingly different.

I think they were more getting at the fact that it was divided into 'Core', 'Special', and 'Rare'. With just those three categories, each army had a lot more in Core.

Looking at my 8th Ed Empire book, you could take Halberdiers, Spearmen, Swordsmen, Handgunners, Crossbowmen, Archers, Free Company, or Knightly Orders. So that's three flavors of core melee block infantry, two flavors of ranged block infantry, a skirmish ranged option, a cheap unarmored multiattack melee unit, and then Knights. That's a decent bit of variety for Core choices in the most vanilla faction in the game and you can build out a bunch of different themes from that selection before you even start looking at Special, Rare, and characters.

The closest counterpart in 40K is Astra Militarum, and there for Troops we have Infantry, Conscripts (who are functionally just an Infantry variant), and Scions. If you have to fill mandatory Troops choices, your options aren't too exciting.

Maybe 40K would be better off taking the WHFB approach. It's not clear to me what purpose the different FOC slots are supposed to serve now that they're no longer individually limited. Easier to balance if you can roughly define how many of a thing an army can take, and make certain options mutually exclusive.

 catbarf wrote:

Voss wrote:
Eh. In the sense that 'guy with spear' is a different unit from 'guy with sword and shield' or 'guy with bow', yeah, I guess. I don't think that's incredibly convincing, though.

But in third edition, percentages caps were for monsters and allies, and the common units were required to have 1+ or 2+ units and the elite stuff was capped at 0-1 or 0-2, and army lists weren't amazingly different.

I think they were more getting at the fact that it was divided into 'Core', 'Special', and 'Rare'. With just those three categories, each army had a lot more in Core.

Looking at my 8th Ed Empire book, you could take Halberdiers, Spearmen, Swordsmen, Handgunners, Crossbowmen, Archers, Free Company, or Knightly Orders. So that's three flavors of core melee block infantry, two flavors of ranged block infantry, a skirmish ranged option, a cheap unarmored multiattack melee unit, and then Knights. That's a decent bit of variety for Core choices in the most vanilla faction in the game and you can build out a bunch of different themes from that selection before you even start looking at Special, Rare, and characters.

I knew what they were getting at. Its just that 'different units' being '30-50% of core' is a stretch for what's basically just weapon swaps. You could do those as individual unit entries, or you could do them on a single unit entry with weapon options. GW has done both. Sometimes in the same army list.

For example, in the 3rd edition warhammer armies book, Helblitzen were 20-60 (models, meaning a minimum of 20 in an army and a max of 60, with a unit size of 10-50). They had halberd, hand weapon and light armor, no options and the standard human statline.
You could also take Ersatzsolders (0-100, unit size of 30-60), that only had hand weapons, but could take halberds, spears or pikes and/or shield and/or light armor. So you could make units entirely identical to Helblitzen, but didn't count for their min or their max.
Similarly, arquebus and crossbow units were identical statwise (but distinct unit sizes, and crossbows also had light armor), but anyone with a bow was a forester or scout (which had their own distinct special rules).

It was a much more straightforward system, but ALL empire armies brought at least 20 halberdiers and 10 crossbowmen to the table. It was required by the minimum unit sizes. Rank and File had to be a minimum of 1/3 of the army, and a max of everything but the cost of a single hero (who by default would be the army general). Characters had a cap of 1/2 the point value, allies 1/3, mercenaries 1/2 and monstrous host 1/4, though obviously you couldn't do all that at once.
The only special rules in the army were scout, forester and flagellants had frenzy and hatred of Chaos. That's it. There was some variation in profiles, thanks to levies and shock elites (Empire didn't have any missile elite)

Incredibly hard to balance, because if we encourage more troops with carrots or sticks, there are some armies that are very happy to have more troops compared to the ones with dogshit troop options.

I personally wish more armies were 'troop' oriented though, with the elite units feeling more, well, elite and less plentiful.

Most 2k point armies you see have a 'minimum' troop count, and if we weren't forced most armies probably wouldn't bring any.

With 9th Edition being so 'killy' though more troops would just be more cannon fodder. Everything does so much damage right now a higher % of troops would just be more stuff getting blapped off the table straight away

SemperMortis wrote:

I think a 10pt Kommando is competitive, but its not broken. Case and point, the competitive lists winning/placing at GT's/Majors aren't taking them.

No-one was taking them because buggy spam was meta. They're amazing for their cost. Forward deployment screws up the enemies movement phase, you can effectively block them out from primary objective points until their command phase turn 3, that's if they're lucky and you haven't capitalised on that.

If anything, stormboys should be 10. Forward deployment is far superior than deep strike. Deep strike can be zoned out, or be intercepted and shot-off with stratagems.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:

The closest counterpart in 40K is Astra Militarum, and there for Troops we have Infantry, Conscripts (who are functionally just an Infantry variant), and Scions. If you have to fill mandatory Troops choices, your options aren't too exciting

If they brought back infantry platoons it might be more exciting for Guard. If they made Veterans troops again that'd be nice too.

Voss wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

Voss wrote:


Weirdly WFB was always a little better about this, and since the % requirements and restrictions were a comfortable part of WFB (for the most part), it makes some sense to look at it for 40k. But it has never worked out.

In fantasy 30-50% of the codex units' were troops though.

Eh. In the sense that 'guy with spear' is a different unit from 'guy with sword and shield' or 'guy with bow', yeah, I guess. I don't think that's incredibly convincing, though.

But in third edition, percentages caps were for monsters and allies, and the common units were required to have 1+ or 2+ units and the elite stuff was capped at 0-1 or 0-2, and army lists weren't amazingly different.

Look, I have a few WHFB codexes.

Orcs and goblins: other than characters there were 7 troops and 12 special/rares. Troops included boyz, boyz with bows, savage boyz, two kinds of goblins, a swarm and a light cavalry, so lots of different stuff actually.

Empire: other than characters there were 9 troops and 6 specials/rares. All troops were guys with X weapon, although some of them (militia and swordsmen) had different stats, except two units of knights, but also specials were just guys with X weapon and some artillery. In practise pretty much everything but artillery was troops.

Dark elves: other than characters there were 3 troops and 10 special/rares. Among troops guys with spears, swords or crossbows were merged into the same datasheet though and the section included an elite infantry squad and light cavalry.

Now we can consider some 40k codexes. By your logic why aren't units like lootas, tankbustas, stormboyz, kommandos, burnaboyz just guys with X weapons and listed among the troop section? Light cavalry was troop in pretty much every codex in fantasy so jetbikes and warbikers could be troops as well.

Same for SM, how many infantry units that aren't troops are just regular guys with X weapon/wargear? Did I convince you now?

If we really want to enforce percentages like fantasy had we definitely need 10-30 (or more) troop options from codexes that include 50-150 datasheets.

If burnaboyz were troops…
Morkdamn.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
If burnaboyz were troops…
Morkdamn.

They were, four codexes (3rd edition) ago

Ultimately the idea is to get people to take what should be the most common and flexible units in their armies that provide the greatest average value.

Unfortunately, these units often are simply just rankly inferior versions of other units, both in absolute and cost-basis performance. Fundamentally, what does a Tactical Squad do that a Devastator squad cannot? The Dev squad gets to take more guns and has a Signum, and is otherwise identical. GW has historically balanced this with Troops scoring requirements or list percentage minimums, but those never really worked particularly well.

This sort of thing really requires a fundamental rethinking of some stuff GW just hasn't wanted to do. You could do something like Heavy Gear, where essentially different FoC slots open different objective choices (e.g. your "elites" may unlock an objective to kill an enemy commander or break into the backfield, your "FA" may unlock an objective that requires you to get close to an enemy unit and scan it, your "troops" may unlock objectives to hold table positions, etc) where if you don't have certain elements you can't score those objectives and your force composition will essentially determine the objectives you pursue, which can be different than your opponent's. GW's concepts of what units do and how that is expressed has always been really badly implemented, choosing instead to represent unit abilities through stats and special rules and points than through other means to shape the battle around. Dropzone Commander requires Infantry (if not specifically Troops) to secure objectives from structures, your tanks aren't going to go searching for documents or transmitter beacons room by room for example, so bringing all the super killy death walkers and strategic bombers won't help you much, you take one or two to support getting your infantry to the objectives, as opposed to 40k where your infantry may just literally be a speedbump meatwall for your tanks.

Vaktathi and yukishiro seem to have it.

OneBoxForOptimism wrote:
With 9th Edition being so 'killy' though more troops would just be more cannon fodder. Everything does so much damage right now a higher % of troops would just be more stuff getting blapped off the table straight away

If there were more troops on the table, the overall killyness would go down, no?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Jarms48 wrote:
... and say something like Kommandos went up to 14 points we'd see more boys.

Careful now. You started your post by saying that we should make Troops better, but one of your suggestions is to artificially inflate the cost of another unit.

Don't punish other units because Troops are bad.

I like how you don't realize both approaches are the exact same thing. Except raising points of other units is better because gives you more granularity in point scale, decreases entry barrier for new players and makes armies less deadly. Which you, funnily enough, complain about in other threads but simplest solution to it, roll back killyness, is somehow bad too. Go figure

People here repeat that troops should just be made better. How? Either you can massively buff them, at which point everything is elite (and elite units completely lose point and purpose in game) or you can nerf too good offenders to make troops worth considered as alternative. I am not convinced it would work though due to multiple armies drowning in WAAAC players - case in point, CSM making fLuFFy armies consisting of zero actual CSM because cultists were 1% more efficient (even thought CSM were fine to everyone who wasn't netlisting) and terminators more rigid and uniformed in weapon choices than any loyalist to WAAAC dump of the most broken weapon, making utter mockery of army fluff. Or tau spamming 6 commanders to WAAAC just as hard making mockery of their own fluff stating there was supposed to be 1 of these per sector, not dozen per small battlefield, gotta munchkin, eh? GW tried to fix that with points for 3 long years and none of it worked, only shifting problematic unit of the week if that.

In the end, the only thing that was shown to consistently work was limits and restrictions - I didn't like capping SM to 1 captain and 2 lieutenants, but I'll say it made the army much more fluffy, killed 3x SM captain commanding 20 guardsmen nonsense, and made other HQ viable - I never saw chaplains through most of 8th edition, but now a lot of lists feature them because option that outshined them too much was nerfed. I also kind of like approach with BT sword champions - you can uniformly outfit them with chainswords or power swords if you like, but spam of alternate weapons is severely restricted to stop cheese - and it's good. Do the same with CSM terminators, and they will finally start to resemble things they are in fluff (ancient veterans, each master of different, favourite weapon) instead of lame WAAAC clones more uniform than AM servitors...

Okay, late to the discussion. I don't have as much direct play experience as most people posting here, and certainly not matched play experience; Crusade is VeRY different since our versions of secondaries don't give us VP.

But as I see it, here's what troops have, and what I assume they are good at as is:

1/ Good for holding objectives via obsec. It's my understanding that most if not all troops HAVE obsec. Non-troops units need something special to get obsec- like a strat or an aura; this provides a mechanism for turning off Obsec for non-troops. Abilities that grant Obsec to non-troops typically DOUBLE it for troops, keeping them on top for securing objectives.

2/ Only detachments that require troops refund CP. While you CAN take a detachment without troops, the CP cost required to do so usually makes it a poor choice. The only time I'd ever consider taking a non-patrol/ battalion/ brigade is when I have no choice- Inquisition, Rogue Trader, Null Maiden Vanguard- or when it is going to be a second detachment anyway.

3/ Troops are good for screening, because if they sacrifice themselves, you aren't losing specialists.

4/ Troops are good for completing battlefield actions that prevent shooting. These might be secondaries for VP or Agendas for XP.

5/ Troops generally have larger unit caps, which can help maximize the impact of certain strats.

6/ This is minor, but if I'm not mistaken, most troop units are pretty much guaranteed to be core while other unit types are somewhat less likely.

Now, to someone without a whole lot of Matched play experience, this seems like a lot of incentives?

Which leaves me with a few questions:

1/ Did I get it right? Are there non-troop units that just get Obsec without the use of a strat or aura?

2/ Do people just load up on kill secondaries exclusively in order to minimize the value of Obsec?

3/ Does anyone ever take action based secondaries?

4/ If additional incentives are needed, would a more restrictive application of Core be viable, or would that whack the game?

As usual, there’s nothing stopping two players who want to run more Troops than Others from doing that. It’s your game, and ‘meta optimal’ doesn’t always equal ‘optimal fun’. Play the game you want to.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
As usual, there’s nothing stopping two players who want to run more Troops than Others from doing that. It’s your game, and ‘meta optimal’ doesn’t always equal ‘optimal fun’. Play the game you want to.

That's not really the topic of the thread.

But thanks for stopping by!