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BrianDavion wrote:

 Castozor wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:
No, if your thing is infantry, good for you, but don't force organization based on your preferences and idea what an army should look like.
If I want to play a Ravenwing bike army, I'm already penalized in the CP system, don't need to pile it on more.

Just make sure that troop choices are actually good, simple as.

In an ideal world White Scars/Ravenwing would get rules to let them take said bikers as troops and still be fluffy. GW seems to think CORE is a way to get more fluff-friendly forces on the field, might as well go all the way.

nah Bikes as troops wth Obsec honestly don't make any sense. I mean.. can you picture a dude on a bike digging in and holding an objective?

I think they use the bike. I've seen Robert Duval stab his own horse in the neck to create a barrier between himself and some angry indians. Bikers would do much the same thing. Plus you're describing cover, not Objective Securing.


I can absolutley see a couple guys in white PVC armor standing guard around a strategic point, with their bikes parked nearby until some rebel scum come along, their little buddy, a xenos Teddy Bear, steals one of the bikes and then guy who lost his bike has to call for help while everyone else chases after the foul xenos. Of course I may be mixing a lot of different genres there. But the concept is kind of universal.

Yet another reason, when you only have the hammer, the entire world looks like it needs to get nailed. When all you have are bikes and speeders, bikes have to hold objectives.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Castozor wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:
No, if your thing is infantry, good for you, but don't force organization based on your preferences and idea what an army should look like.
If I want to play a Ravenwing bike army, I'm already penalized in the CP system, don't need to pile it on more.

Just make sure that troop choices are actually good, simple as.

In an ideal world White Scars/Ravenwing would get rules to let them take said bikers as troops and still be fluffy. GW seems to think CORE is a way to get more fluff-friendly forces on the field, might as well go all the way.

nah Bikes as troops wth Obsec honestly don't make any sense. I mean.. can you picture a dude on a bike digging in and holding an objective?

Yes, they are space marines afterall so i can totally see that. and they already had that lore based rules set in older editions when the game was better.

both white scars and ravenwing armies had bikes as troop options but with slightly different requirements and special skills to make them play different.

-Ravenwing-6 bikes +1 attack bike per troop-skilled rider, fearless, ravenwing jink, only attack bikes and land speeder tornados (heavy/fast) could be take in the army list. could only be led by the master of the ravenwing.

-White scars-10 man bike squads troops, skilled rider, hit&run, true grit, power lances. all HQs had bike options, all non bike units had to be mounted (rhinos, drop pods etc, )jump infantry and scout bikes as fast attack also scout bikes had space wolves style outflank. heavy support limited to attack bikes & predators, no dev squads or land raiders allowed unless the latter was a dedicated transport for terminators.

They were very fun and unique armies in their own way. something you cannot achieve with resource management mechanics like stratagems.

BrianDavion wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.

^

This. the armies with GOOD troops are taking them. because they can contribute. it's more the armies whose troops are "pretty much useless" where this is an issue.

I suppose the big question here is what armies aren't taking troops? and why?

Probably because there's 2 angles at play here a general and a faction specific angle:

generally, troops are infantry, some are heavy some are chaff, and some are well gretchin.

Generally:
Terrain in this, rather non existent form punished alot of the lighter infantry (everything with SV4+ or worse) the old time cover save was often a massive lifesaver and whilest it didn't help marine equivs because the armor would be 90% of cases more effective then the cover save it did indeed make units like guardsmen, gaunts, etc worth a consideration, ork boyz are also a special outlier in that they profited extremely off of decent cover for advancing upwards the board.

The ungodly ammount of lethality atm is also not a helping instance, especially again for the lighter armored troops. In some cases though that bleeds over into the heavier troops options aswell, especially if SM get involved. F.e. CSM do pretty darn well against all the lighter troop units, vice versa they also don't in general do unreasonably against them until you account for bolter discipline. As soon as massed AP -1 get's involved though that somehwat "equal" (it's not ) footing get's turned on it's head.


Faction specific:
Internal balance is fethed, no two ways about it f.e.

IG: Why ever would you pick conscripts, over guardsmen. There's not one instance where similar pts would not be better invested into the guardsmen.

CSM: CSM give up pts really really fast, you can lean into them as a quasi PA horde, that can work with a specific setup or make them decently durable with AL to gain an ok performance, as soon as you run into a SM player with primaris troops , well, let's just say there's not much reason to ever take more then 5 man suqqads of CSM...
Cultists: well they get picked because they are a lower investment to fill out that troop tax to get the actually usefull stuff and the enabler for that actually usefull stuff of the faction. They themselves (bar a memebuild) are just not to be taken seriously. Especially now at 6 ppm which they even compare terrible against other troop choices... Still better to pick them though if only to save the pts for the units that do actual work.
Situation is unsatisfying.

Orks: Gretchin had a use, a cannonfodder use, but they had a use. at 5 ppm though, like a guardsmen? or even compared to a cultist, they don't. Boyz maybee could be a ppm cheaper. Doesn't change the fact that cover doesn't help them and by extension turns them into bit of a glass cannon...

I mean really, they should alter the FOC so, say, for every 2 troops you run, you unlock one slot each of heavy support, fast attack, and elites. Get rid of obsec, it's a dumb band-aid rule. Make sure troops units are all decently points-efficient.

Just make troops, actual troops, the only units in the game that can provide character protection for "look out sir" purposes.

You can hide behind the 5th infantry division pretty easily. Harder to lose yourself in a 5 man spec ops team that is itself so individually elite as to be priority targets that want to hide behind your basic officer. After all, he can only order the sniper -- but the sniper being gone, the officer is of no use.

So yeah. Only troops (no, not core, you marine spankers, TROOPS) (and perhaps actual command squads or their other army equivalents) get look out sir at all, as an effect.
Someone looking across the yard at a lone guy in a light tunic with a huge and impressive hat and a glowing sword, cowering near a baneblade, will say "hey, lasguns, lets kill that commisar!" rather than "well, maybe we can blow up the tank."

Conversely, if the fancy hat is just occasionally seen bobbing in a sea of infantry over there, well, meh, shoot whoever is closest, boys...

It's not rocket surgery, just make them good/cost effective.

In 8th, Kabalites in Venoms were the mainstay of most Drukhari lists because they were an effective combo that was appropriately priced....hey presto, armies looked like 'they should'.

Now in 9th, you will only likely see the minimum needed for a Patrol, and that is only to get access to Ravagers and Agents of Vect. The principal reason for this is that they are considerably overpriced.

Dukeofstuff wrote:
Just make troops, actual troops, the only units in the game that can provide character protection for "look out sir" purposes.

You can hide behind the 5th infantry division pretty easily. Harder to lose yourself in a 5 man spec ops team that is itself so individually elite as to be priority targets that want to hide behind your basic officer. After all, he can only order the sniper -- but the sniper being gone, the officer is of no use.

That's a decent start, but you're still missign things like Terminators Captains next to a Terminator Squad, or Veteran Intercessors who have become so veteran they forgot how to be Intercessors. That one will always make me laugh. Yes, you are so elite at being a troop unit, you no longer remember how to do the primary job of that troop unit. In other armies you would have the Hive Tyrant next to Guants. Nobody is going to confuse the Patriarch for a hybrid. Sometimes the HQ just doesn't look like the troops.

So yeah. Only troops (no, not core, you marine spankers, TROOPS) (and perhaps actual command squads or their other army equivalents)

So far the actual command squad units I've seen have better than Look Out Sir! They've changed their wording such that you can't target a character with any shooting while they're within X" inches. Even with sniper rifles etc. That's not bad and makes them have a little appeal/function beyond just using a troop for it.

get look out sir at all, as an effect.
Someone looking across the yard at a lone guy in a light tunic with a huge and impressive hat and a glowing sword, cowering near a baneblade, will say "hey, lasguns, lets kill that commisar!" rather than "well, maybe we can blow up the tank."

Conversely, if the fancy hat is just occasionally seen bobbing in a sea of infantry over there, well, meh, shoot whoever is closest, boys...

As people have said, I think the current incentives are fine, people just won't take troops which are overcosted.

The problem is that in an assault focused game overcosted basic line infantry with negligible assault stats are often a liability. They just serve to let your opponent sling-shot their units across the table by charging, and, if you have enough them, give an easy thin their ranks secondary.

Which is why we seem to have this contradiction of "5 point guardsmen are overpowered, so overpowered. Look at my Boyz, my kabalites, my fire warriors (okay fair) - hang on why are guard something like the 2nd or 3rd worst performing faction in the game".

As people have said, Kabalites were good in 8th at 6 points. They'd probably be okay in 9th at 7. They are quite obviously garbage however at 9. You might say what's 2 points - but if you were to bring 30 of them, that's effectively 60 points "lost". You might not think that's much, but it is.

Tyel wrote:
As people have said, I think the current incentives are fine, people just won't take troops which are overcosted.

The problem is that in an assault focused game overcosted basic line infantry with negligible assault stats are often a liability. They just serve to let your opponent sling-shot their units across the table by charging, and, if you have enough them, give an easy thin their ranks secondary.

Which is why we seem to have this contradiction of "5 point guardsmen are overpowered, so overpowered. Look at my Boyz, my kabalites, my fire warriors (okay fair) - hang on why are guard something like the 2nd or 3rd worst performing faction in the game".

As people have said, Kabalites were good in 8th at 6 points. They'd probably be okay in 9th at 7. They are quite obviously garbage however at 9. You might say what's 2 points - but if you were to bring 30 of them, that's effectively 60 points "lost". You might not think that's much, but it is.

Ding ding ding.

why bother with 5 csm when 10 cultists do the same in essence and you save 10 ppm each time you make that decision... do that 3 times and you allready have 30 pts .

Conscripts are even worse because min 20. so 1 troopslot for 100 pts or 2 troopslots for 100 pts. You save just with using guardsmen over conscripts for 3 slots for a battalion 300 pts....
And avoided the strictly worse unit on top of it and minimized blast..

Not Online!!! wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You have to make them actually flexible and offensively worth taking. Look at Scions, Battle Sisters, Intecessors, and (at least to me with Raiders) Kabalites. None of the entries are perfect, obviously. However they're in the end Troops that hold objectives and contribute killing power to the rest of the army.

^

This. the armies with GOOD troops are taking them. because they can contribute. it's more the armies whose troops are "pretty much useless" where this is an issue.

I suppose the big question here is what armies aren't taking troops? and why?

Probably because there's 2 angles at play here a general and a faction specific angle:

generally, troops are infantry, some are heavy some are chaff, and some are well gretchin.

Generally:
Terrain in this, rather non existent form punished alot of the lighter infantry (everything with SV4+ or worse) the old time cover save was often a massive lifesaver and whilest it didn't help marine equivs because the armor would be 90% of cases more effective then the cover save it did indeed make units like guardsmen, gaunts, etc worth a consideration, ork boyz are also a special outlier in that they profited extremely off of decent cover for advancing upwards the board.

The ungodly ammount of lethality atm is also not a helping instance, especially again for the lighter armored troops. In some cases though that bleeds over into the heavier troops options aswell, especially if SM get involved. F.e. CSM do pretty darn well against all the lighter troop units, vice versa they also don't in general do unreasonably against them until you account for bolter discipline. As soon as massed AP -1 get's involved though that somehwat "equal" (it's not ) footing get's turned on it's head.


Faction specific:
Internal balance is fethed, no two ways about it f.e.

IG: Why ever would you pick conscripts, over guardsmen. There's not one instance where similar pts would not be better invested into the guardsmen.

CSM: CSM give up pts really really fast, you can lean into them as a quasi PA horde, that can work with a specific setup or make them decently durable with AL to gain an ok performance, as soon as you run into a SM player with primaris troops , well, let's just say there's not much reason to ever take more then 5 man suqqads of CSM...
Cultists: well they get picked because they are a lower investment to fill out that troop tax to get the actually usefull stuff and the enabler for that actually usefull stuff of the faction. They themselves (bar a memebuild) are just not to be taken seriously. Especially now at 6 ppm which they even compare terrible against other troop choices... Still better to pick them though if only to save the pts for the units that do actual work.
Situation is unsatisfying.

Orks: Gretchin had a use, a cannonfodder use, but they had a use. at 5 ppm though, like a guardsmen? or even compared to a cultist, they don't. Boyz maybee could be a ppm cheaper. Doesn't change the fact that cover doesn't help them and by extension turns them into bit of a glass cannon...

regarding CSM specificly, if I was in charge of writing codex CSMs I'd make CSMs have a boltgun AND chainsword, (as well as the second wound) this would make them straight up superior to tac marines, and a close range focus over intercessors ranged focus.

Obviously I'd give them a "tides of thewarp" type doctrine ability.

I've got some very specific ideas on how to do custom traits for chaos warbands too. amusingly the new necron codex seems to be similer to the ideas I had

That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)

I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...

Tyel wrote:
As people have said, I think the current incentives are fine, people just won't take troops which are overcosted.

The problem is that in an assault focused game overcosted basic line infantry with negligible assault stats are often a liability. They just serve to let your opponent sling-shot their units across the table by charging, and, if you have enough them, give an easy thin their ranks secondary.

Which is why we seem to have this contradiction of "5 point guardsmen are overpowered, so overpowered. Look at my Boyz, my kabalites, my fire warriors (okay fair) - hang on why are guard something like the 2nd or 3rd worst performing faction in the game".

As people have said, Kabalites were good in 8th at 6 points. They'd probably be okay in 9th at 7. They are quite obviously garbage however at 9. You might say what's 2 points - but if you were to bring 30 of them, that's effectively 60 points "lost". You might not think that's much, but it is.

Exactly this.

The issue for Kabalites is compounded by the fact that they need tranports to be worthwhile, and those were also hiked in points ridiculously.

Hecaton wrote:
I mean really, they should alter the FOC so, say, for every 2 troops you run, you unlock one slot each of heavy support, fast attack, and elites. Get rid of obsec, it's a dumb band-aid rule. Make sure troops units are all decently points-efficient.

one HS, one FA, 2 Elites (you get 6Elite and 3 FA/HS per Batallion most likely to allow for the single model elites that aren't quite HQs i.e. Medics, Meks, Banner Bearers, etc )

And it goes beyond Points Efficient. They also need to be role efficient. Guardian Squads, Tac Squads, Guard Infantry, they can tack on a heavy/special weapon or both. In theory - based on how armies are "supposed to look" 6 Tac Squads should be your bread and butter, they should take down that tank, or that giant mob of boys. The specialist Devs/Assault Marines are there to supplement not necessarily replace. At least that's how they're supposed to look. A boys unit is going to be harder pressed. Rokkit's and Tankbusta bombs don't have the ooomph. Of course they roll an entire packing crate of S4 dice in close combat. Gaunts are in even worse shape because they don't even have those. Tau have something not as good, that goes away if they move.

The answer isn't to cookie cutter all the troop units. Its not that they all get a 48" Missile Launcher, 8 guns, and 1 plasma gun per 10 or something. But that they all need some sort of gimmick to cover all three roles - hurt infantry, hurt heavy infantry/light vehicles, hurt heavy vehicles. For some it could be something short ranged like the Tankbusta bombs or GSC Demo charges. For others like Tau, it might be some sort of Shoulder pack or a drone that doesn't get left behind when they move. Maybe 1 per X hormugaunts can rip off the Jurassic World battering ram dinosaur for Y points. There are a number of roads to the same destination but all the troops (or almost all) need to get there somehow, and somehow other than a box of dice.

Not Online!!! wrote:
That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)

I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...

You're right, csm shouldn't have doctrines, the Legions don't all fight the same. They don't follow "The Codex Spikey Astartes". And please no rules forcing all the Legions into warp stuff. I know Night Lords are the weird legion for scorning the Chaos Gods, but the fact that they are mostly godless nihilistic psychopaths is one of the reasons I loved them in the first place. I hate it when gw tries to force them to act like Black Legion with lightning bolts on their armour.

 insaniak wrote:
The whole point of basic troops is that they are basic. They don't need special rules, just competitive pricing.

I disagree. If I had access to correctly priced Grots with my Marines, I would use them in a competitive setting as they are the cheapest objective holders I can get. But I would not have fun with 10 little dudes that essentially do nothing apart from being set up on my home objective at the start of the game.

When I said interesting, I did not necessarily mean complicated.

TBH Grots are maybe the most extreme example because like skavenslaves or zombies of fantasy their only virtue is existing.

And even then with stuff like the Grot herders you could make, given proper point costs and rules, have some kind of place for interesting interactions.

Like in other games were you have zombies being basically useless but if you take X hero they gain poisoned attacks and whatever and you can even specialize in using those basic troops.

I picked Grots as the most extreme example to make a point

But it is similar to many basic troops with s3 or s4 ap0 1d shooting / combat. You roll dice to please the dice god, but apart from the occasional wound that you plink off of something, they don't do much past existing.

They don't have to be more lethal, but give me something interesting to do with them.

 Galas wrote:
TBH Grots are maybe the most extreme example because like skavenslaves or zombies of fantasy their only virtue is existing.

And even then with stuff like the Grot herders you could make, given proper point costs and rules, have some kind of place for interesting interactions.

Like in other games were you have zombies being basically useless but if you take X hero they gain poisoned attacks and whatever and you can even specialize in using those basic troops.

I'd like to see Grots transitioned (back) into the Ork's shooters. They're sneaky. They don't like being up front and bashed on by Space Marines. Or guardsmen. Or Eldar. Or Tau. They want to sit in the back and take potshots of opportunity. Maybe steal something when nobody's looking. Give them back their Autogun. Make a smaller unit snipers in the Elite Slot. Give them comically big scopes on comically small rifles.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)

I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...

You're right, csm shouldn't have doctrines, the Legions don't all fight the same. They don't follow "The Codex Spikey Astartes". And please no rules forcing all the Legions into warp stuff. I know Night Lords are the weird legion for scorning the Chaos Gods, but the fact that they are mostly godless nihilistic psychopaths is one of the reasons I loved them in the first place. I hate it when gw tries to force them to act like Black Legion with lightning bolts on their armour.

True, true. They should go back to their origins* and be World Eaters with bats on their armor.

*Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness, p 167
"The World Eaters are not the only chapter** to dedicate themselves to the Blood God, as the Night Lord's red and black devices demonstrate"
Pictured are three shoulder pads in red, with black bats (or the outline of a bat) and the Khorne rune, with a black banner with a red bat, a moon, a khorne rune, all surrounded by yellow lightning.

**in RoC, chapter and legion were used interchangeably

here's one shoulder pad and the banner (no idea why the poster cut them off)
http://warpstoneflux.blogspot.com/2014/05/night-lords-realms-of-chaos-style.html

Voss wrote:

Spoiler:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)

I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...

You're right, csm shouldn't have doctrines, the Legions don't all fight the same. They don't follow "The Codex Spikey Astartes". And please no rules forcing all the Legions into warp stuff. I know Night Lords are the weird legion for scorning the Chaos Gods, but the fact that they are mostly godless nihilistic psychopaths is one of the reasons I loved them in the first place. I hate it when gw tries to force them to act like Black Legion with lightning bolts on their armour.

True, true. They should go back to their origins* and be World Eaters with bats on their armor.

*Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness, p 167
"The World Eaters are not the only chapter** to dedicate themselves to the Blood God, as the Night Lord's red and black devices demonstrate"
Pictured are three shoulder pads in red, with black bats (or the outline of a bat) and the Khorne rune, with a black banner with a red bat, a moon, a khorne rune, all surrounded by yellow lightning.

**in RoC, chapter and legion were used interchangeably

here's one shoulder pad and the banner (no idea why the poster cut them off)
http://warpstoneflux.blogspot.com/2014/05/night-lords-realms-of-chaos-style.html

Right, right. Back to the Rogue Trader era are we? So they'd also lack geneseed, only have two lungs, one heart, but still the Black Carapace, right? Just like all the other chapters/legions back then? I'd give you some quotes from the 2nd and 3rd edition chaos codexes that show gw changed that once they started giving all the legions more identities and backstories, but why bother? You already know that. You're point is that they've changed the lore for the Night Lords before, so why not again, and make them just another chaos worshipping legion, because it's easier for the rules writers, just like making all the legions play like renegades like in the 4th and 6th edition codexes. We don't want to tax the rules writers, they could obviously never write anything like the 3.5 codex again. Let's just kill two decades of a legions lore because it's more convenient. Anything else you want to bring back from back then? Half Eldar librarians maybe?

The problem is this "my chaos are different" bleeds all over the place.
You have god worshipers. And non-god worshipers. And people who have been kicking around for 10,000 years, and people who went off the reservation last week.

I think any mechanic is going to upset someone somewhere - but the Chaos Gods are a thing, so it seems a reasonable basis for having a mechanic. But maybe there should be say 6 options, including undivided and "nope". Remove the mark-limitation on stratagems, and instead make marks synergise with this new faction ability.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Voss wrote:

Spoiler:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)

I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...

You're right, csm shouldn't have doctrines, the Legions don't all fight the same. They don't follow "The Codex Spikey Astartes". And please no rules forcing all the Legions into warp stuff. I know Night Lords are the weird legion for scorning the Chaos Gods, but the fact that they are mostly godless nihilistic psychopaths is one of the reasons I loved them in the first place. I hate it when gw tries to force them to act like Black Legion with lightning bolts on their armour.

True, true. They should go back to their origins* and be World Eaters with bats on their armor.

*Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness, p 167
"The World Eaters are not the only chapter** to dedicate themselves to the Blood God, as the Night Lord's red and black devices demonstrate"
Pictured are three shoulder pads in red, with black bats (or the outline of a bat) and the Khorne rune, with a black banner with a red bat, a moon, a khorne rune, all surrounded by yellow lightning.

**in RoC, chapter and legion were used interchangeably

here's one shoulder pad and the banner (no idea why the poster cut them off)
http://warpstoneflux.blogspot.com/2014/05/night-lords-realms-of-chaos-style.html

Right, right. Back to the Rogue Trader era are we? So they'd also lack geneseed, only have two lungs, one heart, but still the Black Carapace, right? Just like all the other chapters/legions back then? I'd give you some quotes from the 2nd and 3rd edition chaos codexes that show gw changed that once they started giving all the legions more identities and backstories, but why bother? You already know that. You're point is that they've changed the lore for the Night Lords before, so why not again, and make them just another chaos worshipping legion, because it's easier for the rules writers, just like making all the legions play like renegades like in the 4th and 6th edition codexes. We don't want to tax the rules writers, they could obviously never write anything like the 3.5 codex again. Let's just kill two decades of a legions lore because it's more convenient. Anything else you want to bring back from back then? Half Eldar librarians maybe?

Nah, I'm just poking fun. No thread is complete until you jump in to mention Night Lords or Forge World.
Just figured you could use a reminder that your take on them isn't the be all and end all of 'What Night Lords truly are.' Even the novels that give the Night Lords 'more identity' had chaos worshipping and daemon prince Night Lords

Maybe it’s just my local meta; but if you’re not running troops this edition, you’re probably losing. I use obsec troops all the time to more reliably hold objectives and to steal them away from any objective not controlled by an opponent’s troops.

Balance the game. Crazy idea I know

I don't think it would work for 40k but one way this could work is as follows:

1) Remove HQs from the battlefield and instead purchase special rules, faction-specific mission objectives, buffs, etc. pregame based on which commander is in charge of your force.

2) Make enforced fog of war style effects where most units can see a shorter distance than they can shoot. Your other units can skip a turn to let another unit you control take a shot at something they can see but the firing unit cannot. Troops, ideally being a cheap unit that doesn't output a ton of damage would be ideal for this.

3) Make specialist units far more limited in what they can target. For example, an anti-tank missile launcher can only fire at tanks with any real probability of success. Some specialist units may not even deploy to the table and instead requiring called shots by troops to interact with the board; snipers, air support, and artillery come to mind.

4) With rare exceptions only small parts of your army start on the table with a flexible mix of other forces able to come in as the game progresses. For example, you may bring 1,500 points of models to a 1,000 point game and choose what comes on based on how the battle progresses. Some forces might get more extra points to work with, some might arrive faster, others might start with an extra unit on the field, etc.

I think all of this would do a lot to ensure the basic troop feels better while giving scope for various faction traits to shine through.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Just go back to only troops scoring. Problem solved. It'll never happen though, the genie is out of the bottle.

This. Specialists should always be more efficient than troops, but troops should be the only scoring unit.


That said, part of the meta right now is basically troops spam for efficient troops on the principle that they're obsec and they present good and dangerous pressure, and that wins game.

 Yarium wrote:
Maybe it’s just my local meta; but if you’re not running troops this edition, you’re probably losing. I use obsec troops all the time to more reliably hold objectives and to steal them away from any objective not controlled by an opponent’s troops.

Coming from a mostly aeldari standpoint, I've never found obsec to actually be all that useful. If I'm controlling an objective, it's usually because I killed someone off of it. If my opponent wants that objective, he can pretty easily kill me off of it. Obsec never made my T3 troops with 4+ or worse saves last long enough for it to matter. Usually when it does matter, it's because I'm suiciding a squad onto the objective to deny my opponent points for a turn. Which, honestly, is kind of unfluffy for my craftworlders and harlies.

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I'm mostly in the camp that says you incentivize troops by just making them good at a job and worth their points. I have armies where I feel good about taking troops, and I have armies where I try to avoid taking more troops than I have to (craftworlders are a good example). However, simply lowering the points costs of the underperformers isn't necessarily a one-size-fits-all solution. A unit of dire avengers isn't all that expensive, but they do kind of underperform. Plus, they're not durable enough to stand out in the open but also not killy enough to warrant handing over expensive wave serpent seating to. But I don't want them to become dirt cheap mooks; I want them to feel like the alien samurai they're meant to be.

My proposal? Give troops either baked-in rules or troop-specific stratagems that make you, as a player, want to field them in your army. Maybe let dire avengers do tau style For the Greater Good overwatch or let them spend CP to charge an enemy unit that's trying to charge one of your friendly units so you end up wanting to have an avenger unit backing up your other infantry. Give guardians their own auspex scan style strat or let them deploy energy shields that act as obscuring or dense terrain so that they can protect your gunline or shield your advancing units. Basically, give troops the ability to be flexible and support the rest of your army. They don't need to match your specialists in offense, but they should have a job other than "being cheap." At least, some of them should. Being cheap is a pretty decent role for a guardsman, but it doesn't fit an elite troop like a dire avenger or marine as well.

I actually think the 8th edition 2.0 marine codex took some good steps in this direction. They have troops that can block deepstrikers, troops that can start the game further up the table and on objectives. Some of them could bring their own healers. There were strats that could specifically up the offense of troop units (the various intercessor special bolter strats) if you wanted them to be more killy, but they had to pay CP to get that boost. It obviously still had room for improvement, but they did a few things well.


Also...
* The "unlock elites after taking troops" or "force people to take X% troops" are approaches I dislike. If your book's troops just aren't as efficient as those of another book, then you're just punishing the player with the worse troops. If my dire avengers are worse than your intercessors, then forcing me to take 200 points of avengers against your 200 points of intercessors is obviously a problem for balance. Plus, army construction is a big part of how you tell your faction's story. If I'm playing Death Wing, I shouldn't be forced to have 200 points of green wing along for the ride on every single mission.

* Obsec is a bandaid. One that favors armies with durable (either through stats or numbers) troops that can stand on an objective long enough to take advantage of it.

* Making troops the only thing that can grant Look Out Sir protection to characters means that you're suddenly unable to protect a jump pack captain leading his vanguard vet pals. Terminator captains are sitting ducks despite being behind a wall of their terminator bros. A spirit seer is a sitting duck inside a wall of wraith guard. Drazhar is suddenly compelled to hide behind a bunch of wyches instead of hanging out with incubi. Etc.

* Letting only troops hold objectives was awful in 5th edition. Missions were frequently just a contest to see if you could hide your troops until the end of the game while they spent all game doing no damage. And this obviously favored armies that hard durable troops and/or transports over squishier armies. Do you want to field a drukhari army in an edition where the only way to win the game is to keep your troops alive?

Not Online!!! wrote:That is another thing about CSM, one would think withe the whole spanking GW has going for Warbands they'd atleast would've let chaos players make Warbands of their own. (could've even gone with a tiered system like former legionaires, renegades, mono or non mono gods etc...)

I'd hope they don't do doctrines. firstly because as a concept it is bad, and secondly it is extremely fast either bonkers or worthless depending on turntime and unit selection.. i'd rather have GW fix the internal issues of alot of factions...

Allowing for the creation of warbands would be awesome. I would love to be able to play an army where I can use Berzerkers or Plague Marines as troops while not being locked into the World Eaters and Death Guard rules.

Well, one issue is that the whole idea of "troops" is no longer what it once was.

Troops used to mean squads of typical W1 line infantry. Granted, GW's game design paradigm usually just meant these were just less optimized and less well armed versions of more specialized units found in other FoC slots (and in many instances that still hold's true), but that's a different issue

Over time however, FoC swaps, subfaction lists, army differentiation, scope bloat, etc has made this rather nebulous, and we've had armies with Tank troops and Troops on Bikes and T5 W3 2+sv Troops and some armies with no Troops at all (e.g. Knights). The scale of the game just lost focus of what it really wanted to be.

With no clear vision of what "Troops" are, it's hard to say how they should be incentivized.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Well, one issue is that the whole idea of "troops" is no longer what it once was.

Troops used to mean squads of typical W1 line infantry. Granted, GW's game design paradigm usually just meant these were just less optimized and less well armed versions of more specialized units found in other FoC slots (and in many instances that still hold's true), but that's a different issue

Over time however, FoC swaps, subfaction lists, army differentiation, scope bloat, etc has made this rather nebulous, and we've had armies with Tank troops and Troops on Bikes and T5 W3 2+sv Troops and some armies with no Troops at all (e.g. Knights). The scale of the game just lost focus of what it really wanted to be.

With no clear vision of what "Troops" are, it's hard to say how they should be incentivized.

the game has had fairly tough troops for as long as I've been playing, when did Tyranid warriors become troops? because they've got 3 wounds. just for example