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Balance is hard and harder when you try to build a static system. Static system being something like the old GW release. X book is released with X units. Eventually a new Unit is released but people didn’t realize its interaction with a former release or rule.

Now we have a much more dynamic system, and I’m not just speaking of GW with its Release and FAQ, and then twice yearly full updates.

If you look outside of GW some companies have used tech to address this in a new way. Perhaps like the PP war room app, or the new FFG Xwing app. Being able to do point updates at will, could really fix some of the problem spots, and save the FAQ’s for dealing with true rules blunders.

 Marmatag wrote:
Necrons, Tau, and Tyranids don't have allies. But that's fine.

Soup isn't a problem, it's poorly balanced units. The last change to restricting detachments was a big change that really helped.

Tyranids totally have allies.... or at least, ARE allies, which is kind of splitting hairs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Reemule wrote:
Balance is hard and harder when you try to build a static system. Static system being something like the old GW release. X book is released with X units. Eventually a new Unit is released but people didn’t realize its interaction with a former release or rule.

Now we have a much more dynamic system, and I’m not just speaking of GW with its Release and FAQ, and then twice yearly full updates.

If you look outside of GW some companies have used tech to address this in a new way. Perhaps like the PP war room app, or the new FFG Xwing app. Being able to do point updates at will, could really fix some of the problem spots, and save the FAQ’s for dealing with true rules blunders.

Pretty much every game benefits from a digital rules solution. 40k probably would more than any other.

Reemule wrote:
I think another issue with “soup” is that the game was somewhat designed around them. Take Grey knights.. Started out as a Anti-Demon squad you could add to a Space Marine force for some extra power.

Well now they have their own Dex… And does that mean they shouldn’t be the imperium’s anti demon hit man squad?

And then GK became "The Ordo Malleus", and then had Inquisition and Assassins on the side, then lost them entirely. The 5th edition GK codex is now 3 separate armies (Grey Knights, Inquisition, Assassins). We're still feeling the effects of the last-minute money-grabs of 7th ed.

There is nothing wrong with consolidating some factions; I know that no GK player would be upset over being rolled back into a Codex: Daemonhunters. There are arguments to be made that all SM chapters could probably use a single book. And here's the thing with GK: in 5th you could run pure Inquisition out of that codex, and you had more options to do so than you do now (and even more fluffy ones in 3rd), it just had a different label. Fully-fleshed out factions give you more options, are easier to balance, and maintain a unique feel (or at least stereotype) for each army. And if you want some alliances to be possible, limiting them to a few select cases keeps the wilder possibilities under control.

Reemule wrote:
And the three faction idea is fine.

I think its more a game balance issue. Some random dude shows up with Imperium soup, and other random dude shows with Necrons and gets shown the door.

The bigger your selection of options the better chances you have of being able to compound small balance issues, and rules mismatchs to make a army that is stronger than its points should be.

I can see some of it where you pointed to the 3 faction idea. But the reality is that Xenos get screwwed.

The other issue is that allowing players to build armies this way leads to them taking units from other factions to minimize or eliminate their primary faction's weakness, creating an army that does everything well. This is not good for exciting, interesting, tactical gameplay. Armies without distinct weaknesses as well as strengths are boring to play- with and against. It's important for any given army to have something it doesn't do well, or a situation where it is at a disadvantage to create more thoughtful play: where a given player needs to keep in mind what they don't do well and try to prevent their opponent from taking advantage of their weakness and vice versa.

Blastaar wrote:

Reemule wrote:
And the three faction idea is fine.

I think its more a game balance issue. Some random dude shows up with Imperium soup, and other random dude shows with Necrons and gets shown the door.

The bigger your selection of options the better chances you have of being able to compound small balance issues, and rules mismatchs to make a army that is stronger than its points should be.

I can see some of it where you pointed to the 3 faction idea. But the reality is that Xenos get screwwed.

The other issue is that allowing players to build armies this way leads to them taking units from other factions to minimize or eliminate their primary faction's weakness, creating an army that does everything well. This is not good for exciting, interesting, tactical gameplay. Armies without distinct weaknesses as well as strengths are boring to play- with and against. It's important for any given army to have something it doesn't do well, or a situation where it is at a disadvantage to create more thoughtful play: where a given player needs to keep in mind what they don't do well and try to prevent their opponent from taking advantage of their weakness and vice versa.

But in 8th this happens. You don't magically have transports for Adeptus because you souped, that was 7th. Factions do not interact with each other now (mostly), so the sum of parts totals to just the sum. In 7th 1+1=5. If you play against BA + IG with equally split points, it's like playing against 2 players with 1000 points each. If you spend 500 points to cover a weakness by taking a second detachment, you are not spending 500 points in your main strenghts, so you are just rounding the edges of your army, which is perfectly fine!

Where is the problem? When those 2 detachments start interacting, like it happens with the CP sharing.

On it's own the idea of souping is fine for fluff and good for gameplay variety.

Blastaar wrote:

The other issue is that allowing players to build armies this way leads to them taking units from other factions to minimize or eliminate their primary faction's weakness, creating an army that does everything well. This is not good for exciting, interesting, tactical gameplay. Armies without distinct weaknesses as well as strengths are boring to play- with and against. It's important for any given army to have something it doesn't do well, or a situation where it is at a disadvantage to create more thoughtful play: where a given player needs to keep in mind what they don't do well and try to prevent their opponent from taking advantage of their weakness and vice versa.

Factions really don't have the kind of massive playstyle weaknesses players believe they have. At least, not if they want to get anywhere in competitive play. For the decade I've followed the game, its more or less been dominated by a couple factions that do it all, with the rest being shackled by demands that they be bad at something for no real good reason.

Another reality is if GW acts on it, be it as blunt as a No more allies (I agree unlikely) to Detachment’s don’t interact unless the identical faction keywords (maybe more likely).. It’s going to irk people. The only thing worse than a ban hammer coming to your force is to maybe see its till allowed, but so hampered by rules it’s not worth playing?

Maybe they could be self-aware enough to introduce something else. Like a composite.. Allies work as normal from Jan 1 through July 1. No allies allowed July 2 through Dec 31. The happy medium that would irritate everyone!

Maby other soup lists need the "Brood brother" treatment. The GSC allows you to take Astra militarum allies as long as you have at least as many GSC Detachments as AM and in addition you cannot take any special characters or get the benefit of any Regimental bonuses. This tones down the AM to just a side board and allows the GSC units to really shine (even though they are still just index).

If you couldn't (outside of your main faction) use any special characters or any Regimental/Chapter tactics/Craft world/ect.... This would down grade most soup considerably. If you added you cannot take "any" relics from any faction that your warlord does not belong to this would curbstomp CP farms.

Timeshadow wrote:
Maby other soup lists need the "Brood brother" treatment. The GSC allows you to take Astra militarum allies as long as you have at least as many GSC Detachments as AM and in addition you cannot take any special characters or get the benefit of any Regimental bonuses. This tones down the AM to just a side board and allows the GSC units to really shine (even though they are still just index).

If you couldn't (outside of your main faction) use any special characters or any Regimental/Chapter tactics/Craft world/ect.... This would down grade most soup considerably. If you added you cannot take "any" relics from any faction that your warlord does not belong to this would curbstomp CP farms.

Too many factions are really only functional with Relics (Knights being the obvious one) for this to do anything but remove most of them completely as options. It's really just the Aquilla. It's a huge outlier that needs a good stomping.

 LunarSol wrote:

Timeshadow wrote:
Maby other soup lists need the "Brood brother" treatment. The GSC allows you to take Astra militarum allies as long as you have at least as many GSC Detachments as AM and in addition you cannot take any special characters or get the benefit of any Regimental bonuses. This tones down the AM to just a side board and allows the GSC units to really shine (even though they are still just index).

If you couldn't (outside of your main faction) use any special characters or any Regimental/Chapter tactics/Craft world/ect.... This would down grade most soup considerably. If you added you cannot take "any" relics from any faction that your warlord does not belong to this would curbstomp CP farms.

Too many factions are really only functional with Relics (Knights being the obvious one) for this to do anything but remove most of them completely as options. It's really just the Aquilla. It's a huge outlier that needs a good stomping.

The Aquila isn't even that good of a relic. If your opponent has 9CP and uses them on 3 3CP stratagems, you get 1 CP back. Woo. Now if your opponent uses them on 9 1CP stratagems, you get 3 back, if your warlord is alive at the time.

It's pretty good, but I'm still not that impressed compared to things like Traitor's Pyre, which essentially makes the auto-hit Str 7 3d6 flamer auto-wound, or the Custodes relics...

Does the Aquilla work on CP spent before the game starts? I'm tempted to burn all CP before the game starts just to invalidate CP returners.

Reemule wrote:
Does the Aquilla work on CP spent before the game starts? I'm tempted to burn all CP before the game starts just to invalidate CP returners.

It works as long as the model bearing the Aquila is on the table.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

Timeshadow wrote:
Maby other soup lists need the "Brood brother" treatment. The GSC allows you to take Astra militarum allies as long as you have at least as many GSC Detachments as AM and in addition you cannot take any special characters or get the benefit of any Regimental bonuses. This tones down the AM to just a side board and allows the GSC units to really shine (even though they are still just index).

If you couldn't (outside of your main faction) use any special characters or any Regimental/Chapter tactics/Craft world/ect.... This would down grade most soup considerably. If you added you cannot take "any" relics from any faction that your warlord does not belong to this would curbstomp CP farms.

Too many factions are really only functional with Relics (Knights being the obvious one) for this to do anything but remove most of them completely as options. It's really just the Aquilla. It's a huge outlier that needs a good stomping.

The Aquila isn't even that good of a relic. If your opponent has 9CP and uses them on 3 3CP stratagems, you get 1 CP back. Woo. Now if your opponent uses them on 9 1CP stratagems, you get 3 back, if your warlord is alive at the time.

It's pretty good, but I'm still not that impressed compared to things like Traitor's Pyre, which essentially makes the auto-hit Str 7 3d6 flamer auto-wound, or the Custodes relics...

The aquila doesn't sound busted on its own untill you realise that its 1CP spent for and avarage return of 3 or 4 CP so a net of +2, combine that with Grand Strategists and that 200 point farm nets an additional avarage of 10 additional CP's thats 20 points per CP no other army can come close to that level of CP per point return.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

Timeshadow wrote:
Maby other soup lists need the "Brood brother" treatment. The GSC allows you to take Astra militarum allies as long as you have at least as many GSC Detachments as AM and in addition you cannot take any special characters or get the benefit of any Regimental bonuses. This tones down the AM to just a side board and allows the GSC units to really shine (even though they are still just index).

If you couldn't (outside of your main faction) use any special characters or any Regimental/Chapter tactics/Craft world/ect.... This would down grade most soup considerably. If you added you cannot take "any" relics from any faction that your warlord does not belong to this would curbstomp CP farms.

Too many factions are really only functional with Relics (Knights being the obvious one) for this to do anything but remove most of them completely as options. It's really just the Aquilla. It's a huge outlier that needs a good stomping.

The Aquila isn't even that good of a relic. If your opponent has 9CP and uses them on 3 3CP stratagems, you get 1 CP back. Woo. Now if your opponent uses them on 9 1CP stratagems, you get 3 back, if your warlord is alive at the time.

It's pretty good, but I'm still not that impressed compared to things like Traitor's Pyre, which essentially makes the auto-hit Str 7 3d6 flamer auto-wound, or the Custodes relics...

1 CP to get back 1 CP in a worse case scenario isn't shabby at all. Given your opponent will likely have more than 9 CP and probably isn't spending it exclusively on 3 CP Strats, I think its just fine. The issue is most of the Imperium has a refund Warlord trait that is pretty solid (with the Guard one being even better for no good reason). It's the combination of stealing CP that can then be refunded that's the real issue with the aquilla. In a vacuum I agree its fine, but I don't think factions should being stealing and refunding in a cycle like that. I'm not convinced its actually a problem, but since the rest of the world seems to be all wound up over CP farms, its the thing that really pushes the Guard battery over the top.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

Timeshadow wrote:
Maby other soup lists need the "Brood brother" treatment. The GSC allows you to take Astra militarum allies as long as you have at least as many GSC Detachments as AM and in addition you cannot take any special characters or get the benefit of any Regimental bonuses. This tones down the AM to just a side board and allows the GSC units to really shine (even though they are still just index).

If you couldn't (outside of your main faction) use any special characters or any Regimental/Chapter tactics/Craft world/ect.... This would down grade most soup considerably. If you added you cannot take "any" relics from any faction that your warlord does not belong to this would curbstomp CP farms.

Too many factions are really only functional with Relics (Knights being the obvious one) for this to do anything but remove most of them completely as options. It's really just the Aquilla. It's a huge outlier that needs a good stomping.

The Aquila isn't even that good of a relic. If your opponent has 9CP and uses them on 3 3CP stratagems, you get 1 CP back. Woo. Now if your opponent uses them on 9 1CP stratagems, you get 3 back, if your warlord is alive at the time.

It's pretty good, but I'm still not that impressed compared to things like Traitor's Pyre, which essentially makes the auto-hit Str 7 3d6 flamer auto-wound, or the Custodes relics...

The Aquila is a fantastic relic considering you pay 1 CP to get it, and it earns itself back without trying. Competitive lists feature it for a very clear and obvious reason.