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I think the Rule of 3 is a good idea in principle for a game system that otherwise has very few constraints on what you can and cannot take outside of the points values. It helps to curb a lot of unit spams and it allows GW to put some much more powerful units into armies without people then just spamming whole armies of them; and without GW having to make them so expensive in points that they become pointless to take.


I think the idea of going for escalating points costs is, interesting but its more difficult to put into practice. It still hinges on the points costs and it also becomes more complex to quickly add up an army. Right now a unit costs X you can easily start to fit an army together - as soon as costs go up it becomes harder because now a unit is 1.4x and 1.5x etc... each time you go up. It's not an easy thing to mentally do for casual or new players.



Now what could be done is GW could look at the rule of 3 and instead of having it as a blanket rule, instead have it as an individual model rule. So it appears on their profile. Then you've the option to make the value any value. rule of 3 might be the general default, but you'd have the option for limiting them to 2 or 1 or going up to 4,5, no limit etc....

It's simple, allows diversity between factions and acts as a second balancing point for models alongside their points cost. Now you can have that powerful unit at a sensible "I can take it" points cost, but now its hard capped to only 1 or 2.


We already have this for named characters (they are all limited to 1).



It's more flexible than the old Force Organisation chart, because its broken down on a per model bases, whilst the old FOC was broken down into groups of units and they all shared the same limit, which was fine in 2nd and 3rd edition, but as armies got bigger and model ranges more diverse the FOC started to become a barrier.













As a note Age of Sigmar used to have decreasing points costs for if you took a full unit. So a full infantry block was still more than a partial, but it cost less than two half unit blocks. This greatly encouraged people to take full infantry blocks and had the backlash that it made medium elite style units rather hard to justify fielding because they'd always come up short against a full, discounted, infantry block. AoS has done away with that now and pushed almost for full minimum unit groups for this edition. Still not a big fan of it, though it has made the middleweight units far more viable now without requiring big points or stats changes.

 Overread wrote:
I think the Rule of 3 is a good idea in principle for a game system that otherwise has very few constraints on what you can and cannot take outside of the points values. It helps to curb a lot of unit spams and it allows GW to put some much more powerful units into armies without people then just spamming whole armies of them; and without GW having to make them so expensive in points that they become pointless to take.

How can it be a good idea when:

1. The number is entirely arbitrary (why rule of 3? Why not rule of 4? Or 2? Or 7?)?
2. It's only necessary because the game's built-in limiting device (FOC) fails so spectacularly at actually limiting anything (ie. a problem of their own creation)?
3. The actual reason for its creation (Supreme Command Detachment = 5 Winged Hive Tyrants) no longer exists?
4. So many units are split into multiple data-sheets (the new Primaris Gladiators and Speeders being two good examples) as to break the system before you even use it.

We used to have unit limits in Codices. I believe they were removed once the bean counters got wind that the rules people were limiting what people could purchase. Squadrons followed soon after.

As I noted its a good idea for a foundation, there are certainly lots of ways to improve it and work with the concept and improve.


Of course its GW, for every balance step they take forward in one area, they take steps back in others. Or any adjustment they make tends to be a very extreme swing approach so you start with the carpet bomb of "rule of 3" followed by the carpet bomb of "anything goes" followed by a "rule of 2" to etc....

Each one fixes and issue the former created by being so extreme.




The whole bean-counters VS balance is also always a bewildering thing to me because from my observations most gamers just keep spending. If you give them no limits insane huge armies they build one insane huge army; if you give them tight limits and strict boundaries they build more armies. The greater limit seems to more be how quickly they can get into games and use their models. a lesson GW took a long time to learn sorta when you consider that Old World, for a long time, wound up with a "2K or nothing" approach (part of that was rules and part was also social and I accept that 1.5K was perhaps a little more normal for starting out)

Yeah, not gonna lie, but GW seems hell bent on forcing people to adopt PL. How would you make this PL compliant?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Yeah, not gonna lie, but GW seems hell bent on forcing people to adopt PL. How would you make this PL compliant?

Did your even read my earlier response?

No, because the power cost goes up based on the total number of models in the unit, not the number of previous units.

So a unit of 5 incubi might be 5 power and the unit power increases by 1 for each extra model.

With this, it would be 5 power for the first unit (+1 power per additional model), 6 power for the second unit (+1 power per additional model), 7 power for the third unit (+1 power per additional model), etc

As to you trying to suggest that being a T'au player is the reason for this - you might not realise, given my username is *SO* subtle, but I have been a BA player since 2nd ed. I've not been complaining about their parlous state.

If taking multiple of any unit became an issue, then GW would have the ability to curtail the unit, whether it was Hammerheads, Talos, rukkatruks, VolCons, etc. At that point, if an HQ became an issue, GW would be able to adjust that unit's escalating cost to make running a variety of HQ's more appealing, just like any other unit.

You'd definitely take a unit of incubi if they were 75pts base, but would you take a second at 125pts base? A third if it was 175pts base?

sanguine40k wrote:

You'd definitely take a unit of incubi if they were 75pts base, but would you take a second at 125pts base? A third if it was 175pts base?

Maybe?? It'd depend upon A) what other units I wanted to run. B) the pts of those other units.

Wouldn't it be interesting if you had just one force org chart and you couldn't take extras? The whole "Rule of 3" would be pretty redundant if you didn't have any more than three slots for anything outside of Troops.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Wouldn't it be interesting if you had just one force org chart and you couldn't take extras? The whole "Rule of 3" would be pretty redundant if you didn't have any more than three slots for anything outside of Troops.

So no spamming units that have a Thunder Hammer, a better Lascannon, and are 3 T5 wounds, right?

 JNAProductions wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Wouldn't it be interesting if you had just one force org chart and you couldn't take extras? The whole "Rule of 3" would be pretty redundant if you didn't have any more than three slots for anything outside of Troops.

So no spamming units that have a Thunder Hammer, a better Lascannon, and are 3 T5 wounds, right?

I mean, if you wanted this to work you might need to re-examine what gets to be Troops and what doesn't (*cough*Kataphrons*coughcough*), but they're already sitting on a blanket exemption from the Rule of 3, so...

 Overread wrote:


It's more flexible than the old Force Organisation chart, because its broken down on a per model bases, whilst the old FOC was broken down into groups of units and they all shared the same limit, which was fine in 2nd and 3rd edition, but as armies got bigger and model ranges more diverse the FOC started to become a barrier.

My problems with the FOC applied to current 40k are basically that some armies have good units spread across all the army roles and others don't, some armies are fully made of expensive units so they can't break the FOC anyway, even if they try and others have specialists/vehicles that are extremely cheap that would disappear if slots become too precious to waste on cheap units. Also scenarios like these examples:

1) Buying 10 boxes of meganobz doesn't break the FOC. Buying one box of meganobz, one of tankbustas, one of kommandos and a banner nob does.
2) Buying 9 buggies (even the same kind) doesn't break the FOC. Buying one buggy, one box of warbikes, one box of stormboyz and one box of deffkopta does.
3) Buying 9 deff dreads doesn't break the FOC. Buying one dread, one battlewagon, one box of lootas/flash gitz and a mek gun does.
4) Buying 9 leman russes (not counting the HQs) doesn't break the FOC. Buying a leman russ, a wyvern, a basilisk and a heavy weapon team does.

Etc..

But I agree about H.B.M.C about one thing, rule of 3 shouldn't be arbitrary. It makes no sense that units that are not supposed to be spammable are exactly as spammable as any other thing, barring troops and transports. Capping units to 1-3 or ideas like OP's one would be an improvement.


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 Platuan4th wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Most themed armies can be fluffy without spamming the same unit.

This line of thinking is why there are 6 different Terminator unit entries to use for Deathwing.

This is a consequence of GW associating a standalone datasheet or two to every kit they produce, depending on the units' loadout. That's why we had 5 different datasheets for ork buggies or 4 datasheets from the same ork flyer's kit, long before rule of 3.

They never wanted to give the same datasheet to different kits, and at some point even same kits with different loadouts increased datasheets' proliferation. It has nothing to do with rule of 3.

Funnily enough, GW does have additional limitations along with the Rule of 3 (names created by me):

Unique: One per army

Semi-Unique: One per subfaction (Chapter command and similar)

Detachment Limited: One per detachment

Linked: One per unit X in the army

So do we really need a magic number on a datasheet that needs to change depending on the size of the game anyway? After all, the Rule of 3 is actually the Rule of (2/3/4).

I'm all for variety in armies (in my opinion, spam armies aren't as fun to play against, nor as fun to play as, but that's just me).

I like the idea of limiting the quantities of each unit on an individual basis - whilst the OP seems effective, it can get too much t othink about without an army builder. Instead opening the book and seeing "Landraider Defender - Max 1, max 3 for black templars" would be better than just "the rule of 3".

Ork Lootas might be limited to 2. Ork Nobs might be limited to "1, 3 if there is a warboss in your army". Deff Dreads might be "2, or 3 if there is a big mek in your army". That sort of thing.

This would also have to coincide with them denerfing some units to make them more viable.

An alternative, more complex option (which I just thought of) is to use the points/power level system and state that no datasheet can use up more than 1/5 of your points. So a 2k game gives you 400 points maximum on each datasheet, thus preventing you spamming the big, powerful units and allowing you to take more of the cheap ones. We managed with this sort of thing just fine in Fantasy, when it had 50% troops and no more than 25% for each other unit!

It should be a progressive system.
Up to 999, Rule of 2
1000-1999, Rule of 3
2000-2999, Rule of 4
3000-3999, Rule of 5

Problem solved.

Just bring back the FOC.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Just bring back the FOC.

No thanks. Heavily limits some armies, barely affects others, needs a million and one exceptions to make work for many fluffy armies.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Just bring back the FOC.

No thanks. Heavily limits some armies, barely affects others, needs a million and one exceptions to make work for many fluffy armies.

What about bringing back the old FOC and implementing Rites of war like rules?

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Just bring back the FOC.

No thanks. Heavily limits some armies, barely affects others, needs a million and one exceptions to make work for many fluffy armies.

What about bringing back the old FOC and implementing Rites of war like rules?

That is one of those “Could be done well, but I don’t trust GW to do it well”

Same with a Basic Force Org, honestly.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Just bring back the FOC.

No thanks. Heavily limits some armies, barely affects others, needs a million and one exceptions to make work for many fluffy armies.

What about bringing back the old FOC and implementing Rites of war like rules?

That is one of those “Could be done well, but I don’t trust GW to do it well”

Same with a Basic Force Org, honestly.

Well operating under the assumption it did. 4

The issue is, GW isn’t good at balance OR good customization fun.
But they’re better at the latter-so might as well focus on that

 JNAProductions wrote:
The issue is, GW isn’t good at balance OR good customization fun.
But they’re better at the latter-so might as well focus on that

That'd be a great idea if they weren't also dead set on killing customization to protect their market share from the far-off scourge of 3d printing, by making their stuff more irritating to try and 3d print and writing their rules based on the assumption that you buy a box in a vacuum and build only that to make sure that their players will be able to recognize and ostracize nonstandard parts.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
The issue is, GW isn’t good at balance OR good customization fun.
But they’re better at the latter-so might as well focus on that

That'd be a great idea if they weren't also dead set on killing customization to protect their market share from the far-off scourge of 3d printing, by making their stuff more irritating to try and 3d print and writing their rules based on the assumption that you buy a box in a vacuum and build only that to make sure that their players will be able to recognize and ostracize nonstandard parts.

Yeah. I actually wanted to make a thread about that...

So I did.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
It should be a progressive system.
Up to 999, Rule of 2
1000-1999, Rule of 3
2000-2999, Rule of 4
3000-3999, Rule of 5

Problem solved.

0-1000, Rule of 1
1001-2000, Rule of 2
2001-3000, Rule of 3
3001+, Rule of 4

Models (monsters/vehicles) that cost more than 70 points can't squadron, but can be taken only as 1 model units.

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
It should be a progressive system.
Up to 999, Rule of 2
1000-1999, Rule of 3
2000-2999, Rule of 4
3000-3999, Rule of 5

Problem solved.

0-1000, Rule of 1
1001-2000, Rule of 2
2001-3000, Rule of 3
3001+, Rule of 4

Models (monsters/vehicles) that cost more than 70 points can't squadron, but can be taken only as 1 model units.

Legit worse than my idea. Nobody cares if you bring three squads of Terminators at 2000 points, let alone four if allowed.