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PenitentJake wrote:I think that people should be able to reflect their subfaction that way if they choose to, for sure. But a lot of people refer to that kind of approach as flanderization. OP doesn't want to have to represent Saim Hann by taking a disproportionate amount of bikes in every battle, even though that's how most of us would use army composition to demonstrate Saim Hann-ness.

Saim-Hann has a greater preference for jetbikes. That doesn't mean it's the only thing they do. They're (in-setting) still perfectly capable of fighting without them, but if they are (hypothetically) given a specific subfaction ability which grants a substantial bonus to their dudes on bikes/vypers, then that becomes the only way anybody plays them, unless they feel like handicapping themselves. It turns them into a 1-dimensional gimmick, i.e. Flanderized.

This is a problem with games design in general, not just 40k, where a keyworded specialization becomes a single-minded approach. The optimal approach in a wargame should almost always be a combined-arms approach, where different aspects of an armed force compliment one-another so as to create an army that is more than the sum of its parts, even if different armies might be better at, or give greater weight to these different aspects.

Wyldhunt wrote:I feel like we should have army theme rules that are divorced from subfaction and which focus more on creating an alternate playstyle than providing a raw power boost. So instead of having a shoot better rule and a stab better rule and a die slower rule, we should have roughly a page worth of rules that do things like substitute one army-wide mechanic for another or add wargear/squad options.

So instead of playing "Ulthwe," maybe I play a "Seer Support" army with benefits like:
* Lose Battle Focus, but gain Strands of Fate. (I'm picturing Strands of Fate and other doctrine-slot rules not being a thing in this hypothetical scenario.)
* Guardian defenders, storm guardians, and windrider squads may pay points to add a warlock to the unit. (Maybe a toned down warlock with fewer wounds and always-on powers like back in the day.)
* Farseers in the army may cast powers as though they were standing where an allied warlock or spirit seer is standing.
* Maybe convert the Eldritch Storm stratagem into an action they can do for free? Idk. Doesn't seem too unreasonable given how meh the various Orbital Bombardment type strats are.

^Compare those benefits to what Ulthwe gets now which are basically a combination killing things better, casting better, and dying slower. Lots of "do things more better" type rules that make Ulthwe more powerful but don't really change how the army plays or create interesting choices. Whereas the "seer support" rules suddenly adds pocket witchblades to units, gives you more opportunities to field psykers, and changes the way your psykers work by expanding the reach and angles of their powers. Plus, you're swapping out the Move-Shoot-Move evasiveness of Battle Focus for Strands of Fate.

And by not slapping the name of a craftworld on these "Seer Support" rules, players of any craftworld can feel more free to utilize them when they want to change up their playstyle for the day.

I could be on-board with this, though I'd amend it to only include modifications that take place during army creation, and not actual gameplay. (so the first two bullet points, but not the 3rd and 4th).

PaddyMick wrote:There's a tension between wanting to be true to the lore in your modeling and being competative. Hope you work it out. I know I'm still struggling.
Best advice I can give is if don't feel right then don't do it and to hell with the rules. Eg. don't paint your orks purple so you can choose which clan to be in any given game - if you don't really want to. Paint them as Bad Moons and if the Deathskulls rules will be the best thing for your army - but you can't bring yourself to pretend they are blue - it doesn't matter, either way.
This is also worth re-stating: you can make up your own rules if you want, and encourage others to do the same.

Thanks, this is the approach I try to work with. About making up rules: for sure, the rulebooks are just guidelines, but convincing others to go along with your made-up rules isn't always an easy sell. Especially if you're trying to convince people to accept something that makes them less powerful in-game (even though everyone else would also be doing the same).

Hellebore wrote:

Lord Damocles wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
On the other hand; having a system where you can just pick whichever extra rules give your specific army the most buffs isn't great either.

Subfractions rules shouldn't exist. Theme should come from painting/modelling, army composition, and playstyle, not a bunch of often arbitrary extra rules.

Yeah but space wolves and blood angels are sub factions and it becomes blatant favouritism when they get to stay as their own factions but everyone else loses their equivalents.

...? Space Wolves and Blood Angels (and Thousand Sons and Death Guard and World Eaters...) shouldn't get to stay as factions with arbitrarily different rules.

I mean I agree, but it's clear that there are many people who consider marines to get special exceptionalist treatment so never get included in this discussion. My point is to highlight that to those people who think no one else should get factions but it's ok for BA and SW to stay separate.

If each different color of Spess Mehrens weren't given their own special treatment, it could go a good ways towards not having them be more commonplace than dirt on the tabletop. Something which I can't imagine anyone really enjoys, including (especially?) Space Marine players.

 0beron wrote:

If each different color of Spess Mehrens weren't given their own special treatment, it could go a good ways towards not having them be more commonplace than dirt on the tabletop. Something which I can't imagine anyone really enjoys, including (especially?) Space Marine players.

it's cute that you think that Space Marines are more popular because there are more space marine factions.

I suspect it's more like the oppisite.

and that there are more marine factions because they have the popularity to support it.

I suspect it's both: they had strong initial popularity, were then given increased attention, which made them more appealing.

 0beron wrote:
I suspect it's both: they had strong initial popularity, were then given increased attention, which made them more appealing.

very likely the truth.

The best way to handle sub-factions / army customisation is the trait system used in 4th edition Imperial Guard imho.

Paint scheme doesn't matter, everybody can have everything. Make it your dudes. Take the trait "Monstrous Battle Brothers" and you unlock a generic unit with the Wulfen statline for your army. Now you can roleplay Wulfen, whatever the feth Corax locked up in his tower, whatever the feth the BA lock up in _their_ tower, and all the other Chapters who YOU think should have access to this unit.

This, just expanded to other factions would have been neat, and is something I incorporated heavily into my own stuff.

The trait system just ended up with every Chapter taking Cleanse And Purify and We Stand alone, and White Scars getting screwed by having to take their transports as fast attack choices.

Or all Guard Regiments having Iron Discipline and still never taking Enginseers...

So the traits back then weren't balanced against each other. Which is an argument against the rules writer, not the system itself.

Even if the traits were balanced against each other, people would still just play the one trait which benefits the most powerful army build the most.

It's clearly a concept that cannot be done by GW for 40k and therefore should be abandoned.

 Jidmah wrote:
Even if the traits were balanced against each other, people would still just play the one trait which benefits the most powerful army build the most.

It's clearly a concept that cannot be done by GW for 40k and therefore should be abandoned.

You're probably right. The Codex itself is what should determine playstyle, not the sub-faction traits. In an ideal world a Codex should facilitate the 2-3 typical styles of warfare that an army tends towards. So Nids should be able to make effective armies that are full of hordes of little critters, or armies with more focus on bog monsters. But that should all be done strictly through the baseline units rather than giving arbitrary bonuses for certain builds.

There's always going to be a tendency for competitive people to play the strongest combos - but if you got things close enough, this wouldn't be so much of a problem for more casual players picking on aesthetics.

The real issue I think is making build archetypes - and for certain factions I think this borders on the impossible because there are a very thin set of units. (It also produces some complaints of being canned strategy, but that's normal enough in most games.)

So with Orks and Eldar I think you've got a decent breakdown of different build types due that large roster.

Its possible to have say a greentide, a speedwaaagh, a dreadwaaagh, a foot-dakkawaaagh and so on. (And seers+guardians, all aspects, lots of wraiths, lots of bikes+vypers etc). And it should be possible to have rules to make all those viable. Which likely isn't possible with a single set of rules that is meant to fit everything - but will inevitably end up fitting one selection better than the rest.

By contrast... looking at say DE. Including customs there must be almost a dozen ways to build say a Kabal or Cult etc. But this trait applies to about 4 units plus transports. Its very hard to see how if you run "this list" you would want that trait... but if you wanted "this list", you'd take the other one. So you tend to just gravitate to the best one as the only option the end.

Its a bit like how when Tyranids were comically broken, you did see people running quite divergent lists, with different hive fleets (even if Leviathan was favoured). This was however probably because the whole codex was so good they could essentially run anything and be head and shoulders above 90% of things in the game - but was reasonably internally balanced.

Its a fair argument that GW have historically failed to generate the balance that would produce such though, and its not obvious they want to. (Formations after all were released with the same logic, and just became an excuse to sell kits and break the game.)

 Jidmah wrote:
It's clearly a concept that cannot be done by GW for 40k and therefore should be abandoned.

This is your attitude towards everything. You cannot find a solution yourself, therefore no one can, so it cannot be done, therefore get rid of it.

Grow some imagination. Some creative spark.

"Then you come up with something then!" is your obvious response.

No. You give it a shot. Do something other than just giving up and attempting to always throw the baby away with the bathwater.

 Jidmah wrote:
Even if the traits were balanced against each other, people would still just play the one trait which benefits the most powerful army build the most.

It's clearly a concept that cannot be done by GW for 40k and therefore should be abandoned.

The same is true for unit balance.

Everybody can see that GW isn't able or willing to internally or externally balance armies, so should we get rid of the game now?

It doesn't even have to be "perfectly" balanced, as long as your "non-optimal" choice is in the same weight class as the best choice. Right now some units/armies are not even playing the same sport, to exaggerate a bit.

You simply can't balance something like Iron Discipline with Restricted Troops: Rough Riders. They're never going to be vaguely equal.

So you can either add an additional layer of points/rules on top of your subfaction rules (Bloat for the Bloat God!), or you can get rid of the subfaction layer.

H.B.M.C got it right when he said "be creative".

Everything you can pick with trait points needs to be desirable in the first place. If a restricted unit is bad, then change the unit. If a special rule is an auto include, increase the points or better yet, create equally attractive alternatives.

Speaking on a meta level, if an infantry focused archetype with strong moral is viable and one cavalry focused melee archetype is viable, Iron discipline and restricted unit: Rough riders are a choice for you with equal value.

Pick the trait for the models you have or want to play.

a_typical_hero wrote:
Pick the trait for the models you have or want to play.

That just makes it so that it becomes impossible to balance units against one another.

If you can pick a trait which buffs Seraphim, then Seraphim either have to cost more as base to factor that in - making them overcosted without the trait - or will be undercosted with the trait.

If people want to take Seraphim, they can just take Seraphim, without needing an extra layer of rules stacked on top to perversely reward them for doing the thing which they wanted to do anyway.

I'll tell you how I do it:

There is a basic army list of let's say Space Marines. Some units are restricted to 1 per army, some units are not available at all (like sub-faction specific stuff), some have limited weapon options (like HH weapons on a Dreadnought being unavailable).

You have a rather extensive list of 33 traits and can pick 6 out of it. You don't have to, mind you. But if you do, then you have to unlock a lot of things first.

As an example, the standard army list without traits got a set list of units that can BUY a veteran ability like Furious Charge. Assault Intercessors can't have it. If you opt in for the traits, you have to spent one trait point to unlock this specific ability first, but now you can hand it out to everything that is not a vehicle including Assault Intercessors.

The ability isn't free and you pay points for it based on the wounds characteristic of the model in question. So an Assault Intercessor pays less for it than your Captain.

Is it perfectly balanced, points wise? I don't know. I let people play with it and tell me how it went. If something comes up, I'll change the points or the rules.

My Aeldari are all in Saim-hann colors. I, however, never use the Saim-hann rules.

When it comes to painting your army the rule of cool for you personally is the main thing. The rules can adapt it.