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 catbarf wrote:

If you have blue Marines with Roman motifs and Ultramarines iconography you are expected to play those as Ultramarines. If you have green Marines with dragon scale and Salamanders banners you are expected to field them as Salamanders. If you have both you now have to decide which of those is 'actually' your army and explain to your opponent that you're proxying half your force as the other subfaction. Or not play.

I do just want to check something here, where does it say in the rules that your army must be the one it is painted as? I know its a rule for WHW events and I would assume most others but is there an explicit rule in the 40k Rulebook or a Codex that says your subfaction must match the paintjob of the models you are using?

I don't think it's 'messy'; it's not hard to remember the whole army is Ultramarines. I find it frustrating that in a game where GW has firmly established for two editions now that different aesthetics of the same models get different rules- and that models with a recognizable aesthetic are expected to be played under their bespoke rules- they've made a mid-edition listbuilding change that forces players to either proxy with rules that don't fit part of their collection, or leave that part at home.

I mean it's a balance thing, clearly. Same thing happened when detachments had to share more than one Keyword in common and it couldn't be <Imperium>, <Chaos>, or <Aeldar> (with caveats on certain things like Inquisitors and Ynarri) because things like Malefic Lord spam were happening. You can be annoyed that it happened but if I'm in a competitive setting, I would expect it to be fair and not just favour people who play FOTM armies.

It veers into stupidity when you can mix Guard, Marines, Knights, Sisters, and AdMech in a single army and that's just fine, but god forbid you have two different chapters on the field at once. It's so clearly a tournament rule to curb min-maxing, but I haven't seen any indication so far that it's a tournament-only change.

Agree to disagree TBH.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
What's funny is canonically guard have to deploy multiple regiments when off world, aside from krieg.

So technically speaking GW is screwing up their own lore

The Krieg regiments are still deployed alongside others in major warzones, y'know like Octarius, the thing they were just in. Regardless a 40k battle doesn't automatically represent a full theatre of war plus Rules =/= Background.

Of course, I'm saying that it's actually really fluffy to be running multiple regiments on the board.

It can be but for as many examples of Regiments working together, there are as many of them working alone or only with other Regiments of their world (i.e. Cadian 8th, 42nd, and 5th Armoured).
Look I'm very much a background person, I could not care less about competitive play or even winning a game. But if a problem in the competitive circuit is that certain subfactions are proving to be very good and bottling out lists that are mono-faction, then I really don't see the problem.

Breton wrote:
Not to beat a dead horse, but the simplest solution is probably to make a soup Chapter Tactic/etc One that specifically allows subfaction soup but replaces all the sub faction conflicts with a new one specifically designed for sub faction soup. Basically, creating a sub faction soup sub faction.

For example - in the next Codex:Space Marines another section like the Chapter Specific Supplements that borrows heavily from - but is fully fleshed out - the Indomitus Crusaders Specialist Detachment from Vigilus - Call it Crusader Army - with a page of relics, a page of warlord traits, a couple pages of stratagems (hitting all of the generic chapter specifics like extra warlord trait(s) and such) This would cross a lot of t's and dot a lot of i's - giving the main Codex a "sample" supplement, allowing controlled subfaction soup for people who want to soup more than they want to min-max, and so on.

This is an excellent suggestion, really.

Have an exalt!

I'm on the other side of that fence. I think it anything GW should loosen the factions and soup ability. If you look at how AoS does it, it's great, like you can make super fluffy, fun, and competitive lists. Like with tzeentzch, you get to tap into daemons, slaves to darkness, deciples of tzeentzch, you can do the same thing with other chaos gods and you end up with a lot of fun and good lists.

I feel like if GW put that effort forward in 40k they could get an euqally solid mix of units.

At least when it comes to normal soups, subfaction soups I understand the need but at the same time, eh.

But I get it, like I get it, silly but get it

With AoS there are restrictions and limitations though. Only 1 in every 4 units in any God marked army can be StD and I'm fairly certain the Mortal and Daemon subfactions still buff certain their respective units although I am basing this off my experience with Ogors i.e. Winterbite only effects Beastclaw and Meatfist only effects Gutbusters.

It's been a while since I played AoS but I do know they still open up for soup like that

Gert wrote:I do just want to check something here, where does it say in the rules that your army must be the one it is painted as? I know its a rule for WHW events and I would assume most others but is there an explicit rule in the 40k Rulebook or a Codex that says your subfaction must match the paintjob of the models you are using?

There are a whole host of social conventions that go into this game that aren't explicitly in the rules. Playing your army as the subfaction it's painted as (if it's explicit) is pretty common in my experience, and there's a stigma of meta-chasing to having what is clearly an Ultramarines army but playing it as Iron Hands.

Either way, it's not particularly fun to have an Ultramarines force you painted as Ultramarines and enjoy playing as Ultramarines but have to run them as a different subfaction if they're part of a larger army. The whole point of the 8th/9th Ed FOC is to permit flexibility like that.

Gert wrote:I mean it's a balance thing, clearly.

Of course it is. But there are a bunch of ways they could have disadvantaged soup while still leaving it as an option for casual play (like they have with every faction with a mono-faction bonus), and instead they've chosen the sledgehammer solution of banning it outright.

I would love to see a tight, restrictive, condensed, pared-down Matched Play ruleset that strips out the options and combos that represent balance issues while leaving Narrative/Open free for casual players with all the freedom they could want. But the general community seems to have decided that all play must be Matched Play and it looks like GW is following suit.

I think someone in this thread posted the actual rules, and it does VERY clearly state in the text itself that the rule applies in Matched Play Nachmund games.

And I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. The actual text of the rule leaves no doubt that it only applies to the missions in the book.

Now it's true that many players in stores are going to insist on using it because it is THE competitive Mission Pack for this season. But if you ever play a game that ISN'T one of those GT 2022 S1 missions, you could literally show people the line in the rules that says limitations on subfaction soup should not be applied to the battle.

They made it a lot clearer than I expected them to. So Crusaders? Open Players? People sticking to last year's GT Mission Pack? Don't sweat it. It doesn't affect you. If someone says it does, they're wrong.

PenitentJake wrote:
I think someone in this thread posted the actual rules, and it does VERY clearly state in the text itself that the rule applies in Matched Play Nachmund games.

And I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. The actual text of the rule leaves no doubt that it only applies to the missions in the book.

Just like Rule of 3, which was once a tournament only rule.

So yes, they did make it clear, as you said, but as others have said, that won't matter. The tournament scene is like the creep in Starcraft. It spreads and spreads and infests everything.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
I think someone in this thread posted the actual rules, and it does VERY clearly state in the text itself that the rule applies in Matched Play Nachmund games.

And I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. The actual text of the rule leaves no doubt that it only applies to the missions in the book.

Just like Rule of 3, which was once a tournament only rule.

So yes, they did make it clear, as you said, but as others have said, that won't matter. The tournament scene is like the creep in Starcraft. It spreads and spreads and infests everything.

Well, I generally don't play in public spaces, so I don't know how easy it is or isn't to negotiate with unreasonable people. But simply: if the mission you are playing is from the new book, you're stuck playing it. If it isn't, they are obligated to show you the rule in a book that you are using in order to enforce the rule. And yeah, if I did play in stores, and somebody pushed me on this, yes I would walk away.

I think Ro3 is a bit different because it's in the Matched Play Section of the BRB which means it would apply to all Matched Play Mission Packs.

PenitentJake wrote:
Well, I generally don't play in public spaces, so I don't know how easy it is or isn't to negotiate with unreasonable people.

If they're unreasonable, I'd presume it wouldn't be easy.

But in all seriousness, the issue isn't so much someone being reasonable or unreasonable. It's more about the 'standing rules' for pick-up games. If every pick-up game starts with an arduous "Do we use this, or do we use that? What about this, or this?" conversation (doesn't even have to be an argument) then you'll end up wasting a lot of (presumably limited) time in the store. This is what I mean about the spread of tournament 'stuff'. This is a new tournament rule, so a store might just apply it as a blanket rule (or people may just assume it is) because it's the newest 'done thing' and it saves time from turning the first phase of any pick-up game of 40k into a settlement agreement.

PenitentJake wrote:
I think Ro3 is a bit different because it's in the Matched Play Section of the BRB which means it would apply to all Matched Play Mission Packs.

You're right, it is, but my point was that it didn't start that way*. It started as an optional tournament rule, but it seeped into the common consciousness and so many people treated it as just a normal rule, even though it was (like this new rule) very clearly defined as to when and where it applied. The amount of times I would see people in tactics or army lists threads going "Umm, you're army is, like, illegal n'stuff. Like, Ro3 dude!" (not sure why they spoke like a 90's kid, but whatever) was crazy.

I can happen with stuff like this. Hell, 40k's whole current mission structure is taken straight from tournaments. They infest everything.


*It actually started as GW's sledgehammer attempt to fix a specific problem relating to Flyrant spam, but rather than fix the issue (Supreme Command Detachments) they just decided to do it to everything. Like their recent aircraft ban. So frustrating, given we know they know how to make specific changes that address problems (like the Ork buggy one) rather than simply going "HULK SMASH!" and changing the general rules whenever a situation arises.

Why would you impose that rule on crusade though?

Unlike in matched play and its variants, mixing sub-faction in one crusade force is already a conscious decision to massively shoot yourself in the foot rules-wise. Many games are played with just a single detachment and even if they are not, you would still be quite limited in how you can build your army without losing your sub-faction bonus.

Lot of Crusade pick-up games happening at stores these days?

So, it's not a slippery slope?

This "cancer" will creep into all game modes, right?

 Backspacehacker wrote:
What's funny is canonically guard have to deploy multiple regiments when off world, aside from krieg.

So technically speaking GW is screwing up their own lore

Not really, they've also said that this is just a small section of a much larger battlefield. So, this section might have a Cadian Regiment, or a Salamander's company while next door is a Valhallans Regiment or a Blood Angels Company.

This rule isn't meant to respect fluff.
This rule is meant to simplify list building and most importantly list explanation and presentation.

When you face an army with 3 different subfactions, it becomes very hard to follow what is what. They first tried to tackle this by forcing a different paint job on the detachments, which honestly wasn't a good solution and was very hard to enforce.

Now they are outright banning it.

It has nothing to do with fluff, it is only for this specific set of missions.
Sure, it may creep into other games, but that's a problem between yourself and your community.

 Jidmah wrote:
So, it's not a slippery slope?

No, apparently it's a straw man, 'cause...

 Jidmah wrote:
This "cancer" will creep into all game modes, right?

... I never said all game 'modes'. I said pick-up games.

That means a matched play game, not a narrative game or an open game as those, by definition, either require planning or the agreement of all players beforehand. Pick-up games, by their very nature, are just that: Pick-up and go. That's why matched play fits that bill, because it's a set of rules that is there and standing and ready to go. And it gets influenced by the tournament crowd, which is why everyone thought Rule of 3 was actually a rule in 8th, when it wasn't...

*exhales*

Y'know what? I already explained this. If you didn't understand it then, you're not going to understand it now. I'm not going to write another wall'o'text.