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 helgrenze wrote:
Consider that many armies can have 40+ possible strats available in any given game, even if some of them are highly situational.

It can be somewhat disconcerting watching your opponent rifling through a deck of cards (or list) looking for that ONE that fits the exact situation he finds himself in just to get the "I have a special rule for that" strat.

It's hard enough keeping track of your own strats, never mind trying to stay current on the hundreds of others available to your opponents.

Yeah, this pretty much sums up my issue with Stratagems overall. Unless you're playing so regularly, or doing so much homework, that you know them all inside out, it's a huge amount of very situational information to try and retain (as opposed to, say, standard unit profiles which you basically need to have an awareness throughout the game) as the game is happening. Not saying it's "bad" per se – there are clearly people out there who have a more-or-less infinite capacity for learning and keeping track of rules – but I personally find it more of a chore and a bookkeeping/admin exercise than something that I find adds to the immersive nature of the game.

 Nazrak wrote:
...I personally find it more of a chore and a bookkeeping/admin exercise than something that I find adds to the immersive nature of the game.

I don't think Stratagems are meant to add to the immersive nature of the game, I think you'll have problems with Stratagems being in the game no matter what form they take if you are judging them on this criteria because I don't think Stratagems as a concept work for making the game more immersive. The only things that really make sense is list-building stuff and long-ranged support in the form of firepower, information or information disruption.

When you pull out an auspex scan just as your opponent deep strikes a unit near one of your units shooty units, but then it's mysteriously absent every time the enemy deep strikes near a less shooty unit, that is not immersive. It can add another layer of strategy which some find fun, but I don't think many find it immersive. Just like with picking secondaries, I don't find that immersive either, but I do enjoy using them.

Waaaghpower wrote:

How many strats are we giving out, exactly? Because I'm really not seeing a great way to balance this without restructuring and rewriting the balance of strats in general, especially given the huge variance in how many 'good' strats a given codex has.

I was picturing like, 6ish. Something like 1 top tier, 2 mid tier, 3 bot tier, with one strat of each tier being chosen after you've seen your opponent's list. And I imagine that some reworking of strats would probably be necessary as part of this. I'd probably have relics, unit upgrades, and warlord traits become wargear and thus not purchased with CP. Core stratagems (and the ability to use strategic reserves) would probably remain as-is, and I'd be tempted to add conditions or drawbacks to any strat that just makes you attack more/better. So if you're already doing an overhaul like that, tweaking the remaining strats to make sense in the context of three tiers seems pretty doable.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:

How many strats are we giving out, exactly? Because I'm really not seeing a great way to balance this without restructuring and rewriting the balance of strats in general, especially given the huge variance in how many 'good' strats a given codex has.

I was picturing like, 6ish. Something like 1 top tier, 2 mid tier, 3 bot tier, with one strat of each tier being chosen after you've seen your opponent's list. And I imagine that some reworking of strats would probably be necessary as part of this. I'd probably have relics, unit upgrades, and warlord traits become wargear and thus not purchased with CP. Core stratagems (and the ability to use strategic reserves) would probably remain as-is, and I'd be tempted to add conditions or drawbacks to any strat that just makes you attack more/better. So if you're already doing an overhaul like that, tweaking the remaining strats to make sense in the context of three tiers seems pretty doable.

Okay, a couple problems there:
First, we have to assume that whoever writes the rules is able to perfectly balance what counts as a 'top tier' strat. What if they make a mistake in balancing and something as powerful as Transhuman Physiology makes it in as a Mid Tier strat, allowing some armies to bring effectively two really powerful strats? (An 'actual' top Tier Strat and the effectively-top Mid Tier strat.) What if something is weak but ubiquitous, so it ends up on every list, so it ends up being bumped up to mid tier simply because the designers can't tell the difference between a common strat and an overpowered one?

Second, this would require more than just reworking how strats, relics, and warlord traits work. Many armies rely on their stratagems for all kinds of abilities - Sisters of Battle need their strats if they want a way to reliably deny Psychic Powers. In any game against an opponent with lots of Psykers, a SoB player would be required to take Purity of Faith. Does this mean Purity of Faith is a top tier strat? Is it fair to tell Sisters players that they don't get to use their version of Transhuman Physiology or (insert OP strat here) anytime they face psychic-heavy armies, while other armies get both? This doesn't just apply to Sisters of Battle - there are plenty of instances where armies need strats for basic utility that other armies can get with their wargear or units.

At the end of the day, I still think this'd end up with all players taking three ubiquitous, obvious choices, and then three unit-specific strats based on their army. It might stop 'Gotchas', but you'd end up with really boring, flat stratagems, and at that point why even have stratagems at all? Just make them abilities and stop caring about Command Points.

Waaaghpower wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:

How many strats are we giving out, exactly? Because I'm really not seeing a great way to balance this without restructuring and rewriting the balance of strats in general, especially given the huge variance in how many 'good' strats a given codex has.

I was picturing like, 6ish. Something like 1 top tier, 2 mid tier, 3 bot tier, with one strat of each tier being chosen after you've seen your opponent's list. And I imagine that some reworking of strats would probably be necessary as part of this. I'd probably have relics, unit upgrades, and warlord traits become wargear and thus not purchased with CP. Core stratagems (and the ability to use strategic reserves) would probably remain as-is, and I'd be tempted to add conditions or drawbacks to any strat that just makes you attack more/better. So if you're already doing an overhaul like that, tweaking the remaining strats to make sense in the context of three tiers seems pretty doable.

Okay, a couple problems there:
First, we have to assume that whoever writes the rules is able to perfectly balance what counts as a 'top tier' strat. What if they make a mistake in balancing and something as powerful as Transhuman Physiology makes it in as a Mid Tier strat, allowing some armies to bring effectively two really powerful strats? (An 'actual' top Tier Strat and the effectively-top Mid Tier strat.) What if something is weak but ubiquitous, so it ends up on every list, so it ends up being bumped up to mid tier simply because the designers can't tell the difference between a common strat and an overpowered one?

Bad design choices taken to enough of an extreme can ruin anything. Rather than requiring designers to perfectly balance all strats, arranging strats into tiers would give them another lever to pull when trying to make all strats useful. Your hypothetical mid-tier strat that ought to be top tier could be errata'd into a top tier strat in the next chapter approved, for instance. I'd also argue that there isn't a huge difference between what you're describing and what we have now where players put aside a CP budget for a few of the best strats in the game and never spend CP on their least useful strats. Under my proposal, they wouldn't have to balance all strats against each other perfectly; they'd just have to balance strats within a given tier against that faction's other strats of same tier. So maybe one game you'd take stratagem X and another game you'd take stratagem Y depending on your own list and that of your opponent.

Second, this would require more than just reworking how strats, relics, and warlord traits work. Many armies rely on their stratagems for all kinds of abilities - Sisters of Battle need their strats if they want a way to reliably deny Psychic Powers. In any game against an opponent with lots of Psykers, a SoB player would be required to take Purity of Faith. Does this mean Purity of Faith is a top tier strat? Is it fair to tell Sisters players that they don't get to use their version of Transhuman Physiology or (insert OP strat here) anytime they face psychic-heavy armies, while other armies get both? This doesn't just apply to Sisters of Battle - there are plenty of instances where armies need strats for basic utility that other armies can get with their wargear or units.

There's a tangent I'm trying to avoid going into here about how reliably shutting down psychic powers is maybe not something most armies should be able to do and about how all sisters having a 1/6th chance of denying a power without using strats is pretty great against armies like THousand Sons that will give them lots of chances to shut down said powers... But I'll try to reign myself in. Short version is that Purity of Faith sounds like it falls into the category of situational but situationally powerful. It's probably a mid-tier strat that you have the option to take in matchups where it's especially powerful. Similarly, their version of transhuman is pretty good if you're facing eldar and see that their army is brimming with S6 guns. And again, I'd argue that the problem you're describing isn't all that dissimilar from what we have now. If you're playing sisters and you're facing Thousand Sons, you're probably going to set aside some CP for Purity of Faith to the exclusion of using certain other strats. If you're facing lots of S6 but not a lot of psychic powers, you're probably more likely to take the transhuman equivalent.

At the end of the day, I still think this'd end up with all players taking three ubiquitous, obvious choices, and then three unit-specific strats based on their army. It might stop 'Gotchas', but you'd end up with really boring, flat stratagems, and at that point why even have stratagems at all? Just make them abilities and stop caring about Command Points.

That's fair, and to clarify I'm not actually all that attached to my own suggestion here. I'm mostly just exploring the benefits of a variation on the OP's initial suggestion for the sake of conversation. That said, I'm not sure that doing away with stratagems and simply making them abilities would necessarily be that bad an idea. It would cut down on the bookkeeping/stratagem memorizing quite a bit. Plus, part of me feels that some of the options in 9th edition books have sort of lead to factions feeling a bit samey. Like, each faction has some -1 to hit effects floating around, some deepstrike effects, some mortal wounds to a target within X" on a d6 roll of Y+, etc. I like having customization options, but the amount of overlap kind of makes my armies feel slightly samey.

This is probably veering off-topic, but I think I'd be alright with scrapping stratagems and chapter tactics and doctrines and replacing them with a less-customizable but more fluffy set of faction-specific rules. Like, what if Raven Guard armies had something along the lines of GSC cult ambush blips while Saim-Hann got a Jink mechanic that let them trade reactionary defense for worse offense on their own following turn? Really change a faction's playstyle rather than turning their strats and chapter traits into an optimization puzzle.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Bad design choices taken to enough of an extreme can ruin anything. Rather than requiring designers to perfectly balance all strats, arranging strats into tiers would give them another lever to pull when trying to make all strats useful. Your hypothetical mid-tier strat that ought to be top tier could be errata'd into a top tier strat in the next chapter approved, for instance. I'd also argue that there isn't a huge difference between what you're describing and what we have now where players put aside a CP budget for a few of the best strats in the game and never spend CP on their least useful strats. Under my proposal, they wouldn't have to balance all strats against each other perfectly; they'd just have to balance strats within a given tier against that faction's other strats of same tier. So maybe one game you'd take stratagem X and another game you'd take stratagem Y depending on your own list and that of your opponent.

Personally, I'm not really in favor of adding 'more levers to pull' if we're talking about stacking extra stuff on top of an old ruleset to try and balance existing mechanics.

Sure, adding in tiers to strats would give them a way to balance things better, but it also complicates balance by adding an additional vector, multiplying the difficulty. Right now, a stratagem has one vector of balance - Is the command point cost too low, roughly fair, or too high? (There's also a minor question of 'how accessible is it', since an otherwise-overpowered strat might never get taken if only one unit can use that strat and the unit itself is too expensive or weak to be played.)

Adding in tiers means that you get exponentially more chances for failure. A stratagem now not only needs to have a fair command point cost, it also needs to have a fair tier setting.

As a sidenote, out of curiosity: Without making major changes, what would you say the current Space Marine 'best tier' strats are? You're welcome to make minor tweaks to fit your system better, but without getting radical, what sort of choice would I be making when deciding my strats? Because right now the only reason I can think of not to take Transhuman Physiology would be if I didn't have primaris marines.

Short version is that Purity of Faith sounds like it falls into the category of situational but situationally powerful. It's probably a mid-tier strat that you have the option to take in matchups where it's especially powerful. Similarly, their version of transhuman is pretty good if you're facing eldar and see that their army is brimming with S6 guns.

Tangent - Which strat are you referring to as 'Their version of Transhuman Physiology'?

And again, I'd argue that the problem you're describing isn't all that dissimilar from what we have now. If you're playing sisters and you're facing Thousand Sons, you're probably going to set aside some CP for Purity of Faith to the exclusion of using certain other strats. If you're facing lots of S6 but not a lot of psychic powers, you're probably more likely to take the transhuman equivalent.

I'd argue that those are very different problems. Currently, the way it works is that you only have so many opportunities to access a broad set of tactical options. You still might use your remaining 6-7 command points for a whole lot of niche choices that you don't know if you're going to need, (Do I need to blow my immolator up? Enhance my flamer shooting? Sing the praise of the holy trinity? Let a character fight before she goes caput, or possibly revive a character so she can continue battling?), but if we were limited to just six total choices, you no longer have to make decisions over the board because your decisions have already been made for you.

That's an issue: Changing to a limited number of strats means shifting the game's balance even more towards listbuilding and away from gameplay. Once I have my six restricted choices, I'm going to probably use my Tier 1 every turn and my Tier 2 and 3 strats whenever they're applicable. I no longer have to weigh their respective value over the board.

That's fair, and to clarify I'm not actually all that attached to my own suggestion here. I'm mostly just exploring the benefits of a variation on the OP's initial suggestion for the sake of conversation. That said, I'm not sure that doing away with stratagems and simply making them abilities would necessarily be that bad an idea. It would cut down on the bookkeeping/stratagem memorizing quite a bit. Plus, part of me feels that some of the options in 9th edition books have sort of lead to factions feeling a bit samey. Like, each faction has some -1 to hit effects floating around, some deepstrike effects, some mortal wounds to a target within X" on a d6 roll of Y+, etc. I like having customization options, but the amount of overlap kind of makes my armies feel slightly samey.

It's an interesting thought experiment, it's just not one I think holds water in the long run. The saminess is definitely an issue, though - it reminds me of how Games Workshop removed USRs and then reintroduced USRs with dozens of bespoke names that nobody can keep straight. Feel No Pain is still Feel No Pain even if it's listed under a thousand names, and should just be made into a universal rule.

 helgrenze wrote:
Consider that many armies can have 40+ possible strats available in any given game, even if some of them are highly situational.

It can be somewhat disconcerting watching your opponent rifling through a deck of cards (or list) looking for that ONE that fits the exact situation he finds himself in just to get the "I have a special rule for that" strat.

It's hard enough keeping track of your own strats, never mind trying to stay current on the hundreds of others available to your opponents.

But that's a false issue. First you don't need to keep track of all your stratagems since when you have a list most of them would be illegal or useless. Same for the opponent. In real life people always use a very selected array of stratagems, and most of them are just tools to enhance stuff rather that something that completely changes what is what, nothing really game breaking even if you don't expect those buffs.

You don't need to keep track of tons of stratagems, just the very same 5-6 most used stratagems per faction. Anything else is so irrelevant gamewise that doesn't need extra attention. That's why I say that choosing strats pre-game wouldn't really change anything, it's what the vast majority of players already do!