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Boy if you guys think this is bad, wait till you realize that a tennis racket makes a gak baseball bat. Seriously.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
"Eventhough slews of formations were completely busted in the past, because this one new formation we've seen previews so far is fine, the concept is fine."

Mmmmmmmm. Paranoia married to agenda.

What we’ve seen is nowt special. And even includes units I understand to be generally unloved. These formations absolutely do not equate to what came before,

Maybe, in time, they will. Who knows? But stop pretending this is the herald Of All Bad Things, when it clearly isn’t.

The new formations are immediately not the same as the old one since they cost resources, and some of the main benefits of it cost even more of that resource. I'm sure GW will muck it up and make an overpowered one eventually, but "change one of your existing detachments by paying command points so that some specific units within that detachment get additional special rules" is absolutely not the same as "use this exact detachment that we just so happen to have an undiscounted bundle for on the webstore to get special rules".

 Trickstick wrote:
I think you are underestimating the lead time for producing printed materials. There is no way that formations are a reaction to an October share price.

Although I agree, you'd be surprised. Talking to a buddy who works on this kinda styff and he suggests GW could have a rule book written, edited, printed and shipped to the UK in less than 2 weeks, a week if they really pushed it.

However, i think you all miss the point of this post. He isn't necessarily saying formations right now are good or bad or are going in the right direction or not. He is warning us about what happened last time and the slippery slope of how fast this can all go wrong. Give GW an inch and they will take a mile. It's oir jobs to keep GW in check with this stuff because we've all seen what they can do. When you have the co founder of GW himself saying how the marketing team basically took over and kicked everyone out of GW back when he left then you know that GW might just be testing the warters before going for the full dive. Posts likes these are important as they ground us with facts. There is little evidence that GW can balance the game but there is a lot of evidence GW can mess the game up for sales reasons to the point they have to outright cause the End Times and reset the whole thing.

I'd say the new formations are what people wanted from the old formations: a fluffy army composition that gets additional rules, but you have to pay for it.
And if it should happen that one is "busted" - we are in 8th edition now, it won't survive 3-6 months up until the next FAQ/ CA.

I'm looking forward to see a plague colony detachment in the next Vigilus book, imrpoving my plague Marines even more...

 lolman1c wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
I think you are underestimating the lead time for producing printed materials. There is no way that formations are a reaction to an October share price.

Although I agree, you'd be surprised. Talking to a buddy who works on this kinda styff and he suggests GW could have a rule book written, edited, printed and shipped to the UK in less than 2 weeks, a week if they really pushed it.

However, i think you all miss the point of this post. He isn't necessarily saying formations right now are good or bad or are going in the right direction or not. He is warning us about what happened last time and the slippery slope of how fast this can all go wrong. Give GW an inch and they will take a mile. It's oir jobs to keep GW in check with this stuff because we've all seen what they can do. When you have the co founder of GW himself saying how the marketing team basically took over and kicked everyone out of GW back when he left then you know that GW might just be testing the warters before going for the full dive. Posts likes these are important as they ground us with facts. There is little evidence that GW can balance the game but there is a lot of evidence GW can mess the game up for sales reasons to the point they have to outright cause the End Times and reset the whole thing.

You might get 1000 copies in English made and shipped in two weeks. What you couldn't do is get 250,000 copies made and shipped distrubuted to loads of different countries let alone across the US for a simultaneous worldwide release and localised into 5+ languages. I used work for a video game publisher and doing this for games manuals was a at best minimum 12 week process. Admittedly this could be faster for just print media but anything lower than 8 weeks would be incredible. These are printed in China the delivery time alone for shipping (actual boats) would be 2 weeks.

I agree with everything else you said, its very well put. Most decisions are going to be done with a sales focus but in GW's defense I think the design/rules team have more autonomy now then they used to. No marketing/sales team would ever have agreed to the rule of three.

 lolman1c wrote:
There is little evidence that GW can balance the game but there is a lot of evidence GW can mess the game up for sales reasons

Yup, and that's why primaris, the big, shiny new range have OP rules.

Oh wait, they don't.

Then maybe these scary salesmen told the writers to make the 7 new ork vehicles broken to drive up sales?

Oh wait, that didn't happen either.

Then maybe SM/GK/CSM/other SM, the poster guys of 40K, got good rules to encourage sales instead of tanking them?

Um, how to put it... Nope.

Then maybe these scary new formations boost good units to make people buy more of them?

*Looks at IF one* Centurions, Vindicators... Nah, they are still very bad even with the boost, sorry. No sales here.

Then [etc, etc, you get the picture]

Wait, where is that "a lot of evidence" again?

 Irbis wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:
There is little evidence that GW can balance the game but there is a lot of evidence GW can mess the game up for sales reasons

Yup, and that's why primaris, the big, shiny new range have OP rules.

Oh wait, they don't.

Then maybe these scary salesmen told the writers to make the 7 new ork vehicles broken to drive up sales?

Oh wait, that didn't happen either.

Then maybe SM/GK/CSM/other SM, the poster guys of 40K, got good rules to encourage sales instead of tanking them?

Um, how to put it... Nope.

Then maybe these scary new formations boost good units to make people buy more of them?

*Looks at IF one* Centurions, Vindicators... Nah, they are still very bad even with the boost, sorry. No sales here.

Then [etc, etc, you get the picture]

Wait, where is that "a lot of evidence" again?

Presenting lots of non competitive options as an argument that the game is balanced is not a valid argument. The real test is what happens at the top of the power scale. Chapter Approved will be the big test to see how Ynarri double spear lists and loyal 32/Smash captain/Castellan lists will be balance.

Have a look at the CA leaks threads all over dakka and see how the awesome GW design teams have fixed these issues...Oh wait that didn't happen either

Whether or not this “formation” is good or not and costs CP is frankly irrelevant, the most relevant thing is that it exists at all and the precedent it sets, now I’m not gonna do the usual and go all grumpy about this, I’m just going to wait and see, everyone should have know they would be back in some form or another given how much they sold and pushed sales in the previous edition and thinking logically it was a progression GW would make given that all the codexs are nearly done, on top of that certain armies and play styles simply do not exist anymore due to the change over to 8th, no white scars (troops bikes), no ravenwing (same thing), no Deathwing, so again from their point of view they can sell these “formations” to those players if or when they do them.

I don’t like it, but it was obvious it was going to happen.

I mean you can play all of those things, they're explicitly allowed in the rules, you just don't make bank in the CP department.

 Formosa wrote:
Whether or not this “formation” is good or not and costs CP is frankly irrelevant, the most relevant thing is that it exists at all and the precedent it sets, now I’m not gonna do the usual and go all grumpy about this, I’m just going to wait and see, everyone should have know they would be back in some form or another given how much they sold and pushed sales in the previous edition and thinking logically it was a progression GW would make given that all the codexs are nearly done, on top of that certain armies and play styles simply do not exist anymore due to the change over to 8th, no white scars (troops bikes), no ravenwing (same thing), no Deathwing, so again from their point of view they can sell these “formations” to those players if or when they do them.

Gee, good thing these are nothing like the 7th edition ones then, eh?

The formations as they are might actually bring back fluffy 5th edition lists, like bike company or sanguinary wing, seeing they have zero mandatory units and just mildly buff fluffy combos for whatever force they are for. Take for example one all-Primaris formation, if GW wanted to boost sales, they would give it to everyone. Instead, it's for Crimson Fists, a very niche sub-faction of not that popular chapter. How on Holy Terra is that boosting sales in any measurable way?

 Nithaniel wrote:
Presenting lots of non competitive options as an argument that the game is balanced is not a valid argument.

When the "argument" was that GW messes up balance for sales, and all the new shiny ranges fail to demonstrate that, then gee, not only is that valid argument, but also the only possible argument and no amount of goalpost shifting will change that.

 Nithaniel wrote:
The real test is what happens at the top of the power scale. Chapter Approved will be the big test to see how Ynarri double spear lists

A ) And what exactly, pray tell, is the Ynarri rules supposed to sell? That all of one Ynarri HQ anyone fields?

Didin't it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, Eldar being broken is the fault of Eldar fanboy, Phil Kelly, and arguments it has anything to do with sales are complete nonsense?

B ) For all we know, they are unfixable as they are (as you can't exactly price their special rule without potentially messing up balance of three other books) and instead of making even bigger mess of CA, GW team intends to fix them by dropping their book first thing in 2019.

Logic, what's that?

Gee, good thing these are nothing like the 7th edition ones then, eh?

The formations as they are might actually bring back fluffy 5th edition lists, like bike company or sanguinary wing, seeing they have zero mandatory units and just mildly buff fluffy combos for whatever force they are for. Take for example one all-Primaris formation, if GW wanted to boost sales, they would give it to everyone. Instead, it's for Crimson Fists, a very niche sub-faction of not that popular chapter. How on Holy Terra is that boosting sales in any measurable way?

Imperial fists, a very popular faction within a very popular faction... hmmm how could GW make money

So lets say they release a Dark Angels Deathwing "formation", well I would buy it, straight away, likely most dark angels players would too, throw it in a campaign book for £20 and suddenly you have made a good profit from some fairly simple work, and thats just 1 "formation", now throw in one for each first founding chapter or ork klan, hive fleet etc. etc.

Hmmmm im sure they did something similar before and it made a killing... what did we call those... of thats right... Formations....

They do well in Age of Sigmar now compared to the past.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
They do well in Age of Sigmar now compared to the past.

That’s actually quite a fair point to make, the AOS ones are pretty nifty, took a while for me to get used to mixed faction ones but I quite like my sylvaneth/stormcast one.

I like to imagine GW over-powered and under-powered stuff to be like a big Venn Diagram. Most of the stuff falls into some sort of "playable" space, and the closer you get to the middle of the Diagram, the stronger the unit is. Many things are, on their own, very similar in sheer strength compared to their points cost.

However, in this Venn Diagram isn't just units. There's also auras, psychic powers, stratagems, allies, movement speeds, deployment shenanigans, and now, formations. They all get placed on the same Venn Diagram. When things overlap, they overlap closer to the middle of the diagram, because both items are made stronger by being able to combo off each other. For example; Reroll 1's to hit aura is good, and having Plasma get stronger when overheating is good with the risk fo rolling a 1 doing something bad. When they overlap, you make the Reroll 1's aura to hit better AND make the overheating Plasma better.

The more things overlap, the better and better it gets, the more these things warp to the middle. On their own, again, they aren't amazing, but they keep warping more and more to get closer and closer.

If you then look at the game as a whole, you see very little stuff in the "unusable" space, but you get these sharp peaks of "very strong" and "almost the same stuff, minus two ingredients, and suddenly much weaker" valleys. The average strength of the stuff as a whole has moved closer to the middle though.

So GW wants to release something new and cool. They look at the game as a whole and see some strong stuff. They want their new releases to be seen, so they put some new stuff in. They are aware that it shouldn't all be too strong, because they know people don't like that, but they also know that if it isn't strong at all, it won't be seen. They allow just a little overlap onto the peaks of strong stuff. Unfortunately, due to the way this diagram works, that little overlap really does make the whole overlap stronger, and it all moves more to the middle.

Things that weren't very strong receive more, but the difference between the peak and the valley intensifies, since now there's actually even more incentive to choose the items at the peaks.

These formations, right now, haven't had the overlap (though the Astra Militarum one already scares me; it's not like they needed more things firing more times, and yet, somehow, that's happening). This doesn't make the strongest things in the game any weaker, and in fact, may very well make them stronger by letting them combo with even yet stronger stuff.

I don't know - maybe they're afraid to make things weaker because people complain more that they have to sell off their armies when they do so, but I see this, and I see more layers added to this Venn Diagram, and I think that the disparity is going to become more, not less. The Indexes were great, and tweaking of the indexes would've balanced things, but each codex released added a new layer, and that made things less, not more, balanced.

This is rambling, and I'm starting to sound like I'd never like to see anything released ever, which isn't true. It's just that I have very dark memories of 7th edition formations, and with Knights just trouncing everything and everyone in my local meta (we went from 60% Knights in 7th, to 0% Knights, and we're back to 60%), I'm seeing 8th starting to just retread the same waters in terms of game balance.

At least GW is actually communicating more.

 Yarium wrote:
These formations, right now, haven't had the overlap (though the Astra Militarum one already scares me; it's not like they needed more things firing more times, and yet, somehow, that's happening). This doesn't make the strongest things in the game any weaker, and in fact, may very well make them stronger by letting them combo with even yet stronger stuff.

The Wrath stratagem? I don't think it is too bad at the moment. 2cp for a basilisk shot is very expensive, it is only really worth it if you desperately need to kill something or if you have some single turn buffs going. It meshes will with aerial spotter, for instance.

I guess it really depends on the creep that happens. I'm liking the formations generally as they don't seem to be auto-takes (for Guard). Most of them work best when taking stuff that was generally left behind. Mech, valk scions, melee Guard, movement-focused russes. I think if formations keep at the level of these ones in future it'll be ok. Of course, you get a slippery slope and things go wrong, but isn't that the way with anything?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Mmmmmmmm. Paranoia married to agenda.

You cannot look back at 7th and just dismiss it as paranoia, sorry.

Generally these micro-detachments or sub-detachments are conceptually good. It does become problematic though with the general rules bloat. Already to play one needs to have:
1. BRB
2. BRB errata
3. Codex
4. Codex errata
5. Chapter Approved (2017+2018 both???)
6. Chapter Approved errata

Also one might need several Codices and associated erratas. Then on top of all these the Campaign book(s) and associated errata(s). I'm not fan of it. Also the amount you pay for rules is really starting to pile up, like always.

They will overdo some sub-detachment eventually in classic power creep manner. It certainly is much healthier to 'hope for the best and prepare for the worst', instead of going around saying 'These will be fine, GW will restrain itself.'
There are funny similarities with GW's power creep and how to deal with addicts, mainly the difference between enabling and helping the addict. Although sometimes I'm not certain who is enabling who exactly

The current structure of adjustments also kind of enables, almost justifies, the power creep, as it 'won't be a problem' because it will be nerfed after some time.
There are some additional problems with this sub-detachments that I can think of. Creating a powerful one that boosts unit X might cause them to scale the point cost of unit X based on this specific sub-detachment use and thus might make the unit X unplayable without the 'specialist detachment'.

Still in the grand scheme of things it would be much better business to keep everything as fairly balanced as possible, but this demands more work, and companies in general operate in a way that generates as much income with as little work as possible.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Mmmmmmmm. Paranoia married to agenda.

What we’ve seen is nowt special. And even includes units I understand to be generally unloved. These formations absolutely do not equate to what came before,

Maybe, in time, they will. Who knows? But stop pretending this is the herald Of All Bad Things, when it clearly isn’t.

I wasn't playing in the prior editions, so I have a question. In 7th when GW made formations OP, did they start with the OP righ up front or did they first made weak formations under the guise of fluff , or something like that?

They will overdo some sub-detachment eventually in classic power creep manner. It certainly is much healthier to 'hope for the best and prepare for the worst', instead of going around saying 'These will be fine, GW will restrain itself.'

Can you imagine s spears being not excludes from the wind rider formation in vigilus? Would be down right scary.

Also do note that specifically they promised there would be less rules bloat for 8th edition, and look where we are now. They are doing exactly same as earlier.

Now they are releasing these 'Formations' again and some of us expect them to do better this time. I don't believe or trust them on this matter, but time will show.

I think that something like you will need less rules and fewer models to play our games, falls under the same cathegory of true as a pre election promise of lower taxs, free schooling and medicare.

Karol wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Mmmmmmmm. Paranoia married to agenda.

What we’ve seen is nowt special. And even includes units I understand to be generally unloved. These formations absolutely do not equate to what came before,

Maybe, in time, they will. Who knows? But stop pretending this is the herald Of All Bad Things, when it clearly isn’t.

I wasn't playing in the prior editions, so I have a question. In 7th when GW made formations OP, did they start with the OP righ up front or did they first made weak formations under the guise of fluff , or something like that?

They will overdo some sub-detachment eventually in classic power creep manner. It certainly is much healthier to 'hope for the best and prepare for the worst', instead of going around saying 'These will be fine, GW will restrain itself.'

Can you imagine s spears being not excludes from the wind rider formation in vigilus? Would be down right scary.

It's more they weren't distributed evenly.

For instance, Space Marines had one where you got all your Rhinos or Drop Pods for free. Zero points. Gratis.

Ad Mech had a combined arms (Knight, Cult Mechanicus, Skitarii) where all your upgrades were free, and Plasma didn't overheat. When the Plasma Caliver was Assault 3 and 30 points a pop, that quickly added up.

Other armies had no such freebies in formations. So whilst there will always be some used more often than others due to meta or player preference, others were just plain better. It created a lopsided game where some armies got boons other armies simply didn't.

I am perfectly fine with this incarnation of formations. You are scared of it because of what it looks like (not even what it's called, because GW are not calling them formation, lol)

The distinction between these formations and the old incarnation is that there is nothing in the new formations where you are not giving up something to gain something.The more you buy in to the formations, the more you don't have the stratagems, warlord traits and relics from your base book, and there are no rigid "you must buy X" requirements for using the formation - you can beef up as little or as much as you like. If I decide I like the formation stratagem on just a single unit, and I'm willing to spend a CP to unlock it - I can do that. If I have a themed army with a whole bunch of leman russ tanks for example, I can use it but, BUT, because stratagems are one-use only, I do not get a super-broken version of the formation for doing so.The only thing that adding more units that benefit gives you is more flexibility.

And this is different from the current situation in what way? Until a short while ago, if you wanted to win a serious tournament as Imperium, you took the Loyal32/Smashcaptain/Castellan list, end of story. Soon after CA drops there'll be a new hotness and that will be spammed until it inevitably gets nerfed. And this is how it'll always be in competitive, formations or not.

They missed an opportunity to claw back soup abuse by making these mono-faction only.

I thought it was at first and I was just thinking about how brilliant an idea that would be, until I reread it and remembered what battle-forged meant. :(

 Commissar Benny wrote:


Formations dictate what your army/list will consist of. Instead of unlimited possibility & a wealth of creativity you will be confined to play list (x), (y), (z), especially in the competitive scene.

That's what bugs me.

In Vigilus:

Aeldari Formations? Any Craftworld
Guard Formations? Any Regiment.
Ork Formations? Any Clan
Admech Formations? Any Forgeworld

Space Marines?
1 for any Chapter
1 for ULTRAMARINES only
1 for WHITE SCARS only
1 for BLACK TEMPLARS only
1 for CRIMSON FISTS only
Etc.

Why is Space Marines' formations being locked behind SUBFACTIONS when NO OTHER FACTION is.

Imagine if Kult of Speed was EVIL SUNZ only or if Windrunner was Saim-Hann only.

Formations aren't going to be bad because you have to pay CP to use them, and because they don't have any real rules associated with them they are actually less effective. If you have to pay 1cp to even begin to use it and then additional CP for specific units.

If CP generation wasn't an issue for certain units I would say sure that might be a problem! But it is. CP generation takes a lot of points for certain factions to achieve effectively.

For example the wraithguard formation is not worth taking because wraithguard are generally terrible because they lack staying power and just die or are too expensive to be used effectively.

People are pointing to a cp cost as an indicator of balance but I just want to point out that cp is a completely inballanced resource as it is. These detachments are basically free for astra militarum who have more cp than they can sometimes spend in a normal game but prohibitively expensive for (as an example) a pure ravenwing player.

Also, the reviews are all over the place online now and we know this imperial fists one is one of the worst in the book. Some of these are probably going to be meta shifting (possibly meta defining) if they are allowed in tournaments. 3++ invulnerable wraith knights with the giant price cut they are supposedly getting comes to mind. Also AM tanks that can literally overwatch better than they can shoot in the shooting phase.

All that being said I am really excited for these detachments. My complaint of 8th thus far has been everything feeling really bland. I agree with the post that it would have been nice to fix that in the core rules but I'll take what I can get. I don't think any of these is gladius levels of abusive and even if it is it will get faqed in line in 4 months.

fithos wrote:
that cp is a completely inballanced resource as it is.

Agreed. I played my Guard friend in a 2000pt game. He had 20CP. I had 10.

He used the Emperor's Wrath and spent 3 turns using Pounding Barrage (artillery fires twice) and Aerial Spotters (reroll all misses) for 4CP.

Very painful. As basically by playing Guard he got two free bombardments (9CP) before we even got onto an "even" CP field.

fithos wrote:
Also AM tanks that can literally overwatch better than they can shoot in the shooting phase.

No they can't. It makes overwatch strong, but not THAT strong. You can't double-fire your turret, and even with defensive gunners you're still hitting on a 5+. Yes, you re-roll misses, but it's not equal to hitting on a 3+ like a tank commander normally would anyway.