Ban Formations (mostly)

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**Rumbleguts**

Our house group have been using formations, but require them to be paid for out of the FoC. If it required more units then normally allowed in that type (skyblight requires 5 FA) then you could use the formation, but couldn't buy anymore of that slot. Its allowed us to use formations, without people trying to do overly spam units. Until the SM codex that just came out, we didn't have any decurion formations, so that wasn't a problem for us. Its allowed us to use formations, without people trying to do overly spam units.

We don't have crazy allying going on either though. Just some IoM occasionally showing up with some friends.

**number9dream**

Xerics wrote:
Formations add some flavor to 40K. Nobody would have ever bought and Eldar Vyper previous to the formations. I think its good for people to expand their collection a little bit.

Good for GWs bottomline more like...

Personally I feel formations are an extremely clumsy solution, and I liked the old FOC changing IC style more (even though that wasn't perfect either). There should be a much less clumsy solution for enabling diversity (for example, making vypers better)...

One I've always been partial to, and seems quite fluffy, is having cheapish upgrades available to your chosen warlord. So for eldar, something like...
Autarch of Saim-Hann, add X fast attack slots or this or that bonus to this or that unit.

Or Blood Axe warboss, kommandos are obsec or become troops, or get +-1 when rolling to see if game ends or not as long as they have X units of Y (kommandos or whatever).

Seems like it would allow for infinitely more customization while still having potential to drive sales with good rules. It seems like such a damned simple solution that there must be some obvious reason why GW hasn't done this.

**Xerics**

number9dream wrote:
Xerics wrote:
Formations add some flavor to 40K. Nobody would have ever bought and Eldar Vyper previous to the formations. I think its good for people to expand their collection a little bit.

Good for GWs bottomline more like...

Personally I feel formations are an extremely clumsy solution, and I liked the old FOC changing IC style more (even though that wasn't perfect either). There should be a much less clumsy solution for enabling diversity (for example, making vypers better)...

One I've always been partial to, and seems quite fluffy, is having cheapish upgrades available to your chosen warlord. So for eldar, something like...
Autarch of Saim-Hann, add X fast attack slots or this or that bonus to this or that unit.

Or Blood Axe warboss, kommandos are obsec or become troops, or get +-1 when rolling to see if game ends or not as long as they have X units of Y (kommandos or whatever).

Seems like it would allow for infinitely more customization while still having potential to drive sales with good rules. It seems like such a damned simple solution that there must be some obvious reason why GW hasn't done this.

Would you prefer random boxes where you pay a flat fee and get a random sprue from a certain faction with some models being more common and others being rare? That's how other games get you to get the "unwanted" stuff.

**Wonderwolf**

1. Ban all forms (or bonuses) of not-unbound, i.e. CAD with obj. secured, Formations, etc.. All elements of your army are considered unbound.
2. All armies and factions are battle-brothers. Everyone army has access to everything.
3. Result: Balance.

Not that hard.

For no-fluff competitive tournament-style gaming, it's easy as pie to achieve perfect balance.

**TheNewBlood**

Wonderwolf wrote:
1. Ban all forms (or bonuses) of not-unbound, i.e. CAD with obj. secured, Formations, etc.. All elements of your army are considered unbound.
2. All armies and factions are battle-brothers. Everyone army has access to everything.
3. Result: Balance.

Not that hard.

For no-fluff competitive tournament-style gaming, it's easy as pie to achieve perfect balance.

We seem to have different ideas of balance. This doesn't stop Scatbikers, Wraithknights, Wraiths, Pentatyrants, and Centstars. Though Tyranid allies might be funny.

Making everyone Battle Brothers is not the way to stop Allies spam; it just makes everything equally spammable and broken.

Not all formations are created equal. You can't honestly compare the new 1st Company Task Force with the Necron Decurion. Better to allow most formations than an idiotic blanket ban on them.

**CT GAMER**

niv-mizzet wrote:
CT GAMER wrote:
The real problem is the people who abuse the game.

Instead of banning formations find better friends.

People know when they are being TFG. Show them the door...

And where exactly do you draw the line between "powerful" and "TFG?" Because where YOU draw the line is probably a little different from where a thousand other people draw their lines.

Also some of us like to play the game competitively. (Yes yes 40k, bad tournament game etc etc heard it all before.)
So that solution doesn't help us.

Playing with your buddies in your LGS is exactly where a bunch of the OP formations SHOULD be used. At least there you can discuss them and then make missions around them like "oh skyhammer seems pretty powerful, let's see if it can beat my army with a handicap, or in this special narrative mission."

No one cares if your local group likes or dislikes formations. It's your group. Play what you want: I'm not sure why they ever even come up in discussions like these. Competitive play is where this is actually an issue.

I believe that banning formations from organized play is analogous to turning a catastrophic multiple train wreck into just a few traffic incidents, as far as balance is concerned. Again, it DOES NOT fix everything. There are still books that are born with silver spoons in their mouths, and some that are charity cases, but the spread isn't as terrifyingly bad as it is WITH formations. That makes it a huge leap in the right direction.

The line is when you know others are not enjoying playing you or the foolishness you're abusing but you feel entitled to do so anyways...

If you are playing people that also enjoy a 100% power gaming no-holds barred approach, then by all means have at it. The problem is when someone can't seem to read the room and thinks using the rules as a weapon is more important then ensuring his opponent's expectations for the game are similar and that he/she has a good time.

**Wonderwolf**

TheNewBlood wrote:

We seem to have different ideas of balance. This doesn't stop Scatbikers, Wraithknights, Wraiths, Pentatyrants, and Centstars. Though Tyranid allies might be funny.

If every army has equal access to all of them, it's balanced by default.

TheNewBlood wrote:

Making everyone Battle Brothers is not the way to stop Allies spam; it just makes everything equally spammable and broken.

If "everything equally X" is by definition balanced concerning X.

TheNewBlood wrote:

Not all formations are created equal. You can't honestly compare the new 1st Company Task Force with the Necron Decurion. Better to allow most formations than an idiotic blanket ban on them.

If balance is your overriding concern, it's the easiest shortcut to get there if used with the unbound "every army can take every unit from every codex" suggested above.

**TheNewBlood**

Wonderwolf wrote:
TheNewBlood wrote:

We seem to have different ideas of balance. This doesn't stop Scatbikers, Wraithknights, Wraiths, Pentatyrants, and Centstars. Though Tyranid allies might be funny.

If every army has equal access to all of them, it's balanced by default.

TheNewBlood wrote:

Making everyone Battle Brothers is not the way to stop Allies spam; it just makes everything equally spammable and broken.

If "everything equally X" is by definition balanced concerning X.

TheNewBlood wrote:

Not all formations are created equal. You can't honestly compare the new 1st Company Task Force with the Necron Decurion. Better to allow most formations than an idiotic blanket ban on them.

If balance is your overriding concern, it's the easiest shortcut to get there if used with the unbound "every army can take every unit from every codex" suggested above.

If every army has equal access to a broken unit, it simply makes that unit broken in every army. The problem is the broken unit, not the army. Furthermore, not all armies can make equal use of every broken unit. The OP Eldar units are OP because they can be taken in an Eldar army. Give them to Space Marines, and I assure you that the unit synergy will simply fall apart and not be there. All armies might be broken, but some armies are more broken than others.

If you give the same broken units to every army, every army will simply spam those same exact broken units. That doesn't sound fun to me at all, and takes away the variety and "Rock, Paper, Scissors" approach tournament armies have. Variety is the spice of both life and Warhammer, and if everyone uses the exact same units, then the only competition is in how broken you can make your list.

**CrashGordon94**

I think that's the thing, what he's suggesting would balance the ARMIES but not the UNITS. And what's more, while balance is an issue here, this solution would be bad too ("the cure is worse than the disease"), that doesn't somehow disprove the original point of the bad imbalance (but I think he's trying for a "this is why balance is stupid" thing, though I could be mistaken), just that it needs a DIFFERENT solution than just homogenizing everything.

**TheNewBlood**

CrashGordon94 wrote:
I think that's the thing, what he's suggesting would balance the ARMIES but not the UNITS. And what's more, while balance is an issue here, this solution would be bad too ("the cure is worse than the disease"), that doesn't somehow disprove the original point of the bad imbalance (but I think he's trying for a "this is why balance is stupid" thing, though I could be mistaken), just that it needs a DIFFERENT solution than just homogenizing everything.

Exactly. Warhammer 40k is a fundamentally imbalanced game. The best players can do is give an even playing field to all armies to compete with their own powerful units. Banning formations and homogenizing all units takes away from this fundamental imbalance and gets rid of the uniqueness of the different armies. The best way to go about things would be to bring all armies to relatively the same power level by toning down the most powerful armies and formations and providing the lower-tier armies with fixes and formations of their own.

**number9dream**

Xerics wrote:
number9dream wrote:
Xerics wrote:
Formations add some flavor to 40K. Nobody would have ever bought and Eldar Vyper previous to the formations. I think its good for people to expand their collection a little bit.

Good for GWs bottomline more like...

Personally I feel formations are an extremely clumsy solution, and I liked the old FOC changing IC style more (even though that wasn't perfect either). There should be a much less clumsy solution for enabling diversity (for example, making vypers better)...

One I've always been partial to, and seems quite fluffy, is having cheapish upgrades available to your chosen warlord. So for eldar, something like...
Autarch of Saim-Hann, add X fast attack slots or this or that bonus to this or that unit.

Or Blood Axe warboss, kommandos are obsec or become troops, or get +-1 when rolling to see if game ends or not as long as they have X units of Y (kommandos or whatever).

Seems like it would allow for infinitely more customization while still having potential to drive sales with good rules. It seems like such a damned simple solution that there must be some obvious reason why GW hasn't done this.

Would you prefer random boxes where you pay a flat fee and get a random sprue from a certain faction with some models being more common and others being rare? That's how other games get you to get the "unwanted" stuff.

Fair point, definitively. Just think they are missing out on an opportunity to do both that, and provide more custom rules for craftworlds, clans, chapters etc.

Tho maybe they are reluctant to do it just so they dont shut the door on making individual supplements for those options.

**J3f**

Formations belong in Apocalypse and should cost points like they originally did.

You shouldn't just get free buffs for units you were going to take any way.

**TheNewBlood**

J3f wrote:
Formations belong in Apocalypse and should cost points like they originally did.

You shouldn't just get free buffs for units you were going to take any way.

The buffs might be free, but the units themselves and the restrictions the formation puts on them are not.

It is true that every unit in the game has value, even if taken as a unit tax in a formation. However, the unit itself can still be considered sub-optimal within the codex rules even in the context of the formation. Just look at the Guardian Battlehost for Eldar. You can't tell me that mandatory Vaul's Wrath and Vypers are optimal in that army build outside of the formation. Even the new Space Marine formations make you take Tac Squads, and we all know how much they suck.

**Cytharai**

One of the things that we talked about the other day was just saying ALL formations can now be taken, regardless of if they are in an apocalypse book or not. I took a look through the Warzone Valedor book, and the apoc formations in there for the nids absolutely look tame compared to decurion formations.

**AndrewGPaul**

TheNewBlood wrote:
Exalted for truth. I'd be willing to bet that there are plenty of players who don't post here that really like the new formation system. I know I sure do.

Indeed; Apart from anythng else, the Combined Arms Detachment is good at representing a Space Marine Battle company, and not great at representing ... anything else. For example, Imperial Guard. With a new "Astra Militarum infantry platoon" detachment or similar, you can avoid the kludge of having fifteen units all being one "troops choice".

I won't disagree that some Formations are more powerful than others. In which case, a reasonable solution is to address those formations, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

**Bharring**

Yeah, this thread was an overreaction to Skyhammer atop Warhost atop Decurion. GW had been doing so well up till then.

It feels like the rules for said formation are written by a whole different team, practiced primarily in marketing, not playing. Even more so than the writers of the 6E CWE book.

(I disagree that CWE is less broken in formation than CADs. But that's a whole other discussion.)

**Filch**

i think tht if GW is smart, they could sell old models by writing good tax formations, since you are forced to take a sub optimimal unit but bebefit from the formation rules bonus.

**Colehkxix**

My codex doesn't have any formations. I'm very likely going to request that, whomever I play against, does not use formations.

If this is about tournaments. I believe the game is already too broken, and I don't plan on playing in any until the game is fixed (probably never).

**CT GAMER**

J3f wrote:
Formations belong in Apocalypse and should cost points like they originally did.

You shouldn't just get free buffs for units you were going to take any way.

Many things "belong" in apocalypse: flyers, fortifications, LOW, silly alliance shenanigans, most of the elder codex...

However, that horse has long since left the barn. Whatever sells lots of books and plastic is here to stay.

40k IS the new Apocalypse...

**CrashGordon94**

Honestly I was fine with the idea of Formations before, but it seems to be encouraging GW to screw over other stuff.
If it wasn't for that, I'd be fine with them.

**gummyofallbears**

I love me some HC, and the formations in that book aren't OP at all, just fun and add some flavor not only to the underdeveloped DE, but also the 40k universe in general IMHO.

certain formations are ridiculous, but not all are, and by saying it ruins the game is a little bit of an overstatement.

I mostly play pick up games, against eldar or necrons, the formations get ridiculous, but against armies like orcs (flash gitz formation) harlequinns (heroes path, or any other formation for them) or the tyranids (skytyrant, ect.).

The issue does not lie in removing the ability for different armies to take custom detachments or formations, just make them balanced. Give the player a conundrum as to the detachment they want.

**CrashGordon94**

Many people are saying Formations ruin things because it's not just balanced ones or different choices, some are horribly broken or forced on people (example: in the newest Dark Angels codex they killed the FOC moving for no good reason presumably because of new Formations and that wouldn't have happened if Formations didn't exist at all).