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Formations with free units/upgrades are fine, but the trick is to balance their power against other armies/units. But what you're asking isn't likely.

Warmachine and PP have the same problem, despite all their updates.

I've said it for a long time, but Combined Arms Detachment is OP!!!!

I can just ignore units my enemy paid points for cos of my OP special rule I got for free? Rediculous!

I even get a free trait because I took a character in my army as warlord, and if I don't like the trait I can reroll it to tailor it for the match... OP!!!!!!!!

Anyone who is serious about balance should play unbound, without formations, and without characters.

Nobody should be getting free special rules or units!

 Blacksails wrote:
I don't think its reasonable to say that formations are trying to help fix anything. The wild differences in power level between formations and codices is immediately obvious and most formations make already powerful units even more powerful, while weak units remain weak because they have weak formations. Let's look at a low tier codex for this; the Guard. The best units in the book are generally considered to be their arty, namely the Wyvern. Conveniently, the already powerful wyvern got a strong formation that made it and its buddies even better. Other units, like say Rough Riders, either got nothing or mediocre formations that everyone ignores. No one is putting down 12 sentinels on the table because all of a sudden you can issue some orders to them.

This isn't an isolated example either.

Formations, as currently implemented, are just bad. They aren't fixing things, they're only making the balance worse than it was before formations. You want to fix bad/too good unit, then just fix them. If the problem is the power creep in the game, then you simply have more fixing to do. Adding formations and running the power creep even harder isn't fixing anything.

I don't think the formations were there to fix anything ever. They are there to support new releases. One of the first guard ones was the Ogryn rampart. It gave a few buffs that improved Ogryns slightly when the models were new, but forced you to take like 4 boxes mini of Ogryns to actually run the formation. The formation was around 400-500 points base.

They did the same thing with the necron release notice how the formation always include spamming a lot of specialist models. They reboxed a bunch of units and gave buffs to ones they wanted to sell lots of. They pitched it as this was the fluffy way to play. The Space Marine one was great in they basically just said here take all their free points models for as many as your own.

Its just pay to win BS that GW is using to try to sell those no discount bundles they always post on their site.

 Blacksails wrote:
I don't think its reasonable to say that formations are trying to help fix anything. The wild differences in power level between formations and codices is immediately obvious and most formations make already powerful units even more powerful, while weak units remain weak because they have weak formations. Let's look at a low tier codex for this; the Guard. The best units in the book are generally considered to be their arty, namely the Wyvern. Conveniently, the already powerful wyvern got a strong formation that made it and its buddies even better. Other units, like say Rough Riders, either got nothing or mediocre formations that everyone ignores. No one is putting down 12 sentinels on the table because all of a sudden you can issue some orders to them.

This isn't an isolated example either.

Formations, as currently implemented, are just bad. They aren't fixing things, they're only making the balance worse than it was before formations. You want to fix bad/too good unit, then just fix them. If the problem is the power creep in the game, then you simply have more fixing to do. Adding formations and running the power creep even harder isn't fixing anything.

IDK about that - there is a top tier competition army for almost all armies now - Even dark eldar can be played competitive now with the reborn warhost. Some armies are still better than others but IMO the feild is much closer than it was before these 7.5 dex and formations came out so long as you aren't playing orks. 90% of everything is still Gak - but most armies can dip into that top 10% can get something worth playing out of it.

Don't get me wrong - the game needs a complete rework top to bottom IMO - but with what we got now with formations - I think the game is better than it was at the start of 7th by a pretty big margin.

Let's say formations are improving external balance when using the best build a codex can put out (they aren't); this still leaves the horrible internal balance with units and/or entire formations that go completely ignored because they're still gak.

Plus, people aren't exactly thrilled by the idea of having to take some sort of 'tax' unit. Its poor game design. "Oh, you want to take a bunch of cool, awesome units? That's great, you also have to take a few turd sandwiches."

The gap between high tier codices and bottom tier codices would be reduced if all formations went away. There might be some exceptions, but making Eldar, Tau, Necrons, and Space Marines no longer benefit from crazy formations and detachment benefits would reduce their power dramatically, while the likes of Orks would be almost unchanged.

Either way, I'm sure most people agree the whole game needs a reboot anyways. The power creep has gotten out of control, and no amount of formations or point cost tweaking will fix some fundamental flaws when Guardsmen with S3 guns are in the same game as D-weapon toting gargantuan creatures/walkers. The scale just doesn't work and something breaks.

If 40k were to reboot, it'd be best served by not re-introducing formations. Keep it simple.