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Wait so your problem with Lords of Wars isn't that they didn't exist, but that they are competitive?

Or...

can you iterate why you don't like LOWs again?

If you really want to make a balanced rule-set. Here is what I would do.

Limit armies to 1 detachment
(this is basically all you have to do)

It forces you to bring all kinds of units you probably didn't want to.

You'll never get a consensus.

Ever.

Don't ever try.

Don't ever try to please everyone.

Check out the site in my signature and go to the Grand Crusade ruleset (2nd edition). I wrote it for my campaign group. Its a territory campaign that put some more crunch into the game.

We also just added smite restriction to once a turn.

Write for your audience, not for everyone.

No matter what, there will be someone upset about any format. Do what you think is fair, in regards to the force org. If people don't like it, then you can adapt, but it really is impossible to satisfy everyone.

I have to agree with the single detachment option - probably the best route to go. Cuts out bizarre armies while remaining playable for most.

Here's the main thing - if it's your event - do what you want. However, be ready for whatever feedback you get, be it negative or not. You think you have a brilliant idea? Shoot for the stars. But if you end up with three players and they storm out after the first round of games...then you know you didn't do a stellar job. You don't have to defend your position against people here on the internet, but just be ready for actual feedback when you run your event.

If it's your own event you can organize it however you want but some of your ideas are going to turn off people who have been playing for the last few editions, as you can no doubt see from the responses. I've been playing since RT and was a big Epic player too and the game has changed a lot since then, particularly since Apocalypse became a thing. Flyers, super heavies, and lords of war are just part of the game now. Remember when Special Characters were something a lot of us looked down upon? That doesn't even really come up anymore outside of Roboute and Magnus and the like.

This though:
all nonsense of chaos thrown together

For most of both 40K and Fantasy "Chaos" was an army. Not "Chaos Marines", "Chaos Daemons", "Chaos Beatmen" etc. - just "Chaos. If anything, the "nonsense" has been splitting them up into different armies. As it turns out this current approach does let them focus on each type of army in more detail but let's not act like combined chaos is some new heresy.

For FW rules, it's too easy to use the rules downloading them and then do a quick cheap conversion to use the last broken combo (malefic lords for example). So, in my opinion, at least if you want to take advantage of those rules, buy the miniatures.

I can't believe an old-school player would take this approach. Conversions were a huge part of the fun! If you don't like forge world then just ban forge world! As someone else mentioned, if you think they are overpowered then your proposed solution does encourage "pay to win". My own philosophy is that money should never be used as a way of balancing a game. You have formations, you have points, and you have power. Between those you should be able to figure out something that works.

I'd change in mated play : "All units in a mathced play armies have to share 2 faction keywords". Prevents a lot of Imperial soup shenanigans.
Obiously some factions would need a special rule ezxempting them or some extra basic units ( deathwatch/GK could gain the inquisition keyword for instance).

Alternatively a 2 scourcebooks maximum-rule but that's harder with so many indices still out.

1. No unique/special/named characters. (Sorry Ynarri, but it's a fluffy army anyway)
2. Must use Patrol, Battalion, or Brigade as one of the detachments. (Forces Troops of some kind in their army)
3. Use Power level. (If everyone has all their options, then no one is special.)
4. Limit Smite just like every other power in matched play. (There are other powers that do mortal wounds if they wish to use them, make them use them.)
5. Follow the rulebook setup rules not ITC, ITC totally negates the advantages/disadvantages of taking large armies, taking transports, deployment selection, etc. I'm really confused why ITC does the setup that way. (It does not take more time.)
6. Have some missions that force players to stagger deployment. IE: Split their forces up into thirds or something that arrive every turn. This keeps the alpha strike nonsense limited in at least one mission. (Large blobs cannot just setup and fire away at the other player every round.) AoS has this and it looks like GW is bringing it in with chapter approved.
7. Modify Age of Sigmar missions to 40k, they are better in many many ways. ITC missions can get really tedious and predictable if done every single round.

IIRC in 2nd ed you could take up to 25% of your army points in allies (at least in the eldar book).

Run the ITC champ missions and watch TAC lists flourish. There's no need to slam the brakes down on the army lists when the mission should be the deciding factor.

 Xenomancers wrote:
If you really want to make a balanced rule-set. Here is what I would do.

Limit armies to 1 detachment
(this is basically all you have to do)

It forces you to bring all kinds of units you probably didn't want to.

I would say two detachments is better if only because it completely cut our armies with reasonable LoW units mixed in, but one might be an interesting dynamic, too.

Warpspy, I think it's important to differentiate between what your personal likes and dislikes in 8th and organizing an event in such a way that you are forbidding all the people from using things they might like.

Most people play 8th because they like 8th, and while 5th seems to be the second mist popular edition (I just recently did a poll about that), it is still less popular than our current rules.

By the way, the ork bommers and the dakka jet, the storm raven, the necron and dark eldar flyers were all released in 5th, they simply counted as fast skimmers back then. They were found in the BA, GK, Necron and DE codices of that edition. Ork planes were free downloads on the GW page.

Also note some models in 5th were only produced by forgeworld and not available from GW. Basilisks and Manticores, for example. A lot of people used those.

As for the OP, I think some very minor changes will improve your meta:
- One rumored change that wasn't in CA was that all units in a detachment had to be drawn from one book. This would still allow most fluffy combinations (Death Guard and Nurgle Daemons, IG and Space Marines, Tyranid+GC+Guard) since you could field up to three codices at 2000, but would put a huge damper on most soup shenanigans. Keep in mind that any system can be gamed, and someone will find the new most powerful thing and win the tourney with it.
- As someone said before, if you have problems with specific combinations, ban those. For example, disallow Mortarion and Magnus in one list because they hate each other's guts. Don't let fun and fluffy lists get caught in the crossfire. I remember being at a tourney unable to field my battlewagon bash because the TOs put a limit on how many tanks you were allowed due to IG leaf blower and ba razorback spam being the meta back then.

 Warpspy wrote:
Wow, a lot of anger in your post. Don't know why are you so angry with my message.

I wouldn't say I was angry. More irritated by the fact that your idea of balance is "whatever I like is fair game, and whatever I don't like can't be taken by anyone". That's not balance.

- The "soup" has not "been around" like in this edition. In this edition you can basically combine Eldar + Dark eldar + Harlequins in one list, or "All the bests imperium", or all nonsense of chaos thrown together. That were completely unthinkable things. You cannot compare having one option of another unit for your imperial army or the specific codex to the current state... In the past editions you have "Codex Daemonhunters" "Codex witchhunters" and some units. That's it. In the codex daemon hunters, you have the choice of including Imperial guard OR space marines as allies, and then, if you use Grey knights you cannot use space marines. Or you could use the daemon hunters as allies of imperial armies. 0-1 HQ, 0-1 Elite, 0-2 troops and 0-1 fast attack. Explain to me how this can be the same as including one primarch, imperial guard, space marines, assasins and knights in the same army without any restriction as is in this edition?

You could combine Eldar/Dark Eldar/Harlequins in 7th. You could add Harlequin units (Death Jesters) into both Dark Eldar and Eldar lists in 5th, IIRC.

Again, you say that you can have the best of the Imperium in one list - but most people take mono-build lists. Some of the most competitive lists (if not THE most competitive) are mono-faction lists. Conscript spam, Guilliman and Razorbacks - these are mono-faction lists that don't use the keyword system.

Just because you CAN do it doesn't mean it's good. Again, most of these soup lists are used with the factions that DON'T have full codexes - Inquisition, Knights, Custodes, Assassins, etc etc. Guardsmen and Space Marine lists are more or less mono-faction competitively.

Therefore, this can't be a balance issue.

- There was no "knights". That was from Epic. There were not "knights" rules or models for 40k... In general, in the 3rd edition rulebook there were no rules for superheavies. Again, the FW rules were not a "common" thing and their models were not used. "You could field Baneblades in 3rd quite easily." Maybe, but i never see a baneblade in real thing until GW released the plastic one years later... I went to official GW tournaments back then and the FW rules were not allowed. In all the time i spent back then in Internet and forums i didn't see people actively using or owning FW models. I think it may be a countries thing. Here in Spain, it was like i'm saying.

Knights existed in 5th.
Also, your argument is that "I never fought against them therefore they didn't exist"? Does that mean Tyranids never existed in 6th and 7th? I never fought them. I guess Malcador Tanks don't exist either, never fought one of them...

Just because you never saw them doesn't mean they didn't exist.

I say this to Unit1126PLL as well. There were rules, there were models, but they were marginal and minoritary at best. Here in Spain and to my limited knowledge, those were not used at all... Its not the same to have the rules in a super expensive and rare book (and written in a foreign language) as to have the rules in the main rulebook in you own language. And definetely it's not the same to have to buy a ultra-expensive and difficult resin kit from a UK company and to buy a plastic kit from the corner store.

But the unit still existed. Just because YOU never saw it doesn't mean other people didn't.
Banning them isn't balancing the game at all. It's just letting you force other people into your nostalgia.

- Again, the same can be said for flyers. There were rules (expensive, rare and marginal rules) to use the FW planes and fighters. There were not rules for flyers in 40k. The first one was the Valkyrie and when it was launched i unfortunately had to stop playing and lost track of all this.

FW rules ARE 40K rules. I mean, were they not for 40k games?
Again, my comments above - just because YOU didn't experience it doesn't mean it didn't happen, or that it's somehow broken because you never dealt with it.

- I have in front of me the "Codex: daemonhunters" and it says that you can only take 1 assasin regardless of its type. As i said before, a workaround of this restriction is that you can say that "any army with the IMPERIUM keyword can take one assasin, only one regardless of its type" or something along those lines...

5th edition Grey Knights codex begs to differ, to my knowledge. You could take as many Assassins as you had slots.

And if you're adding that loophole in, isn't that basically just proving my point about soup not being bad? Again, people competitively DON'T mix large armies. The best SM and AM lists are monobuild.

- For FW rules, it's too easy to use the rules downloading them and then do a quick cheap conversion to use the last broken combo (malefic lords for example). So, in my opinion, at least if you want to take advantage of those rules, buy the miniatures. Is not the same with GW miniatures because FW rules are even less playtested or balanced. In the beginning the FW rules were a nice add-on to their background and art books, the reason to buy their books were not the rules, but all the other things. The same can be said with the actual FW models, the main reason to buy them back then was because of their quality and nice look and not for their rules. And back then the rules for their models were pretty bad so only people who really liked the miniatures as a modelling and collecting project would buy them. Nowadays it seems that the most broken rules are the FW ones and suddenly all the most nasty lists make extensive use of FW models.

And I can't just download the GW rules or find them online and do EXACTLY the same?
If GW's taught me anything, the idea that they are more balanced than FW is rubbish. Currently, most FW units are underpowered in the extreme.

Let's look at some of the most common stuff in the meta, and see how much is FW:
Guilliman
Conscripts
Basilisks
Manticores
Razorbacks
Stormravens

Pretty much none of the top-tier stuff is FW.
I suggest looking into the top-tier lists and seeing what they actually consist of, because I'm really not sure you do.

In your last line you say that all those things "existed":

"LOW existed then" -> I explained this before. Is not the same. They were in expensive, rare and marginal FW books with poor rules, not in the main rulebook and as primary competitive options. Nobody used them back then, because all these difficulties and because it was not allowed (or known) everywhere.

And? I disproved the rules point as nothing more than people having a xenophobic reaction to "new stuff", and the argument of "oh, but I didn't see it where I am" doesn't change the fact that it STILL EXISTED.

"Soup existed then" -> Codex Demonhunters and Codex witchhunters =/= Current status of "Roboute and some imperial friends", "all eldar Flavours" and "chaos for chaos sake"

And which soup is the OP kind? Imperial especially - because it seems to me that, aside from using soup to make the "small" armies actually playable, soup isn't used in competitive lists.

"Assassins existed then" -> Of course, i never said that they did not existed. . They were 0-1 as explained. Problem with assasins in this edition is that they never were more than 1 per army except today.

I never said they didn't exist. I said I disagreed that they were 0-1 - in the 5th ed GK codex, you could have multiple.

Maybe you can say they "existed", but they were not the equivalent or the same as the current situation for a large margin. Is like saying that in Ancient Greece democracy "existed", it did exist but only wealthy male with citizen status could vote, so the bulk of the population didn't vote at all... That is not democracy as we understand it today. This is the same, you can claim that all those existed, but they were not a problem and they were not in the same shape as we find them today.

What? So just because you didn't see a unit, it's suddenly OP because you didn't see it? So, because I haven't fought Harlequins in my life, they simply shouldn't exist?

Do I need to explain why that's a terrible idea for balance?