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 Peregrine wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Oh? To me it seems that it is the same couple of soup haters insisting for pages that there is an inherit problem, yet being unable to really articulate what the problem actually is.

I've articulated the problem over and over again: soup is bad because it damages the concept of faction identity, each faction being balanced with strengths and weaknesses. If you play Tau you don't get good melee units. If you play space marines you don't get hordes of cannon fodder troops. Etc. Soup allows you to bypass the intended strengths and weaknesses of the various factions with a single super-faction that gets to take the best unit for every role.

This mostly, but not only this.

It's not only a matter of faction identiy, but also of balance. I mean I'm in total favor of allowing minor factions to soup since IMHO they shouldn't even be independent factions but SM and AM? They've got tons of options available, they don't need allies. For the same reason GK, cutodes, Ad mech, SoB together have tons of options availble and don't need allies from the other two major imperium factions.

With the soup any SM player can add a few allied units and be more competitive. At that point the majority of SM players starts to do that. That's a balance problem, if the soup is always better than the mono faction the monofaction is going to disappear. That's why I'd argue for the existence of soups but less competitive than mono faction lists.

Some people argue that a full AM list is better than a soup with SM and a few AM units, true, but switching from a SM army to a complete AM one is a big step, and lots of players are not willing to do it, don't forget than painting 2k+ points of stuff requires tons of time other than money. Adding a few needed units to an already existing army is easier. And it's not even a matter of selling more models because that player could buy other units from the same army he already owns, not necessarily the overpowered allied units he needs, and GW will make the same amount of money.

 Peregrine wrote:

I've articulated the problem over and over again: soup is bad because it damages the concept of faction identity, each faction being balanced with strengths and weaknesses. If you play Tau you don't get good melee units. If you play space marines you don't get hordes of cannon fodder troops. Etc. Soup allows you to bypass the intended strengths and weaknesses of the various factions with a single super-faction that gets to take the best unit for every role.

I already said that this sort of 'faction identity' is mostly imagination. For example, Space marines with hordes of cannon fodder troops exist, and have existed for several editions. They're called Chaos Space marines and cultists. Furthermore, Kroot were kinda supposed to be close combat capable Tau option (they really aren't, but that was the intent, and there is nothing wrong with CC oriented Tau subject race.)


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 Blackie wrote:

With the soup any SM player can add a few allied units and be more competitive. At that point the majority of SM players starts to do that. That's a balance problem, if the soup is always better than the mono faction the monofaction is going to disappear.

If. But that's not the case.

That's why I'd argue for the existence of soups but less competitive than mono faction lists.

Why less, competitive? Certainly being equally competitive should be the goal?

Some people argue that a full AM list is better than a soup with SM and a few AM units, true, but switching from a SM army to a complete AM one is a big step, and lots of players are not willing to do it, don't forget than painting 2k+ points of stuff requires tons of time other than money. Adding a few needed units to an already existing army is easier. And it's not even a matter of selling more models because that player could buy other units from the same army he already owns, not necessarily the overpowered allied units he needs, and GW will make the same amount of money.

Yeah, and this is where it goes off the rails completely. Your solution just leads to everyone having to play guard.

And it's not even a matter of selling more models because that player could buy other units from the same army he already owns, not necessarily the overpowered allied units he needs, and GW will make the same amount of money.

No, because I want to buy and paint different models, not the same models over and over again!

 Crimson wrote:
For example, Space marines with hordes of cannon fodder troops exist, and have existed for several editions. They're called Chaos Space marines and cultists.

Sure. And CSM lose stuff that loyalist marines have, as the price of getting that horde of cannon fodder.

Furthermore, Kroot were kinda supposed to be close combat capable Tau option (they really aren't, but that was the intent, and there is nothing wrong with CC oriented Tau subject race.)

They really weren't. Kroot are a cheap screening unit, they might be better than the utterly pathetic Tau in melee but you sure as hell weren't ever going to take them with the intent to declare charges against anything but the weakest targets. They aren't melee gods like assault terminators, where you want to charge ASAP and once you get there you're going to wreck anything in your path. Tau have never had that kind of unit, and should never have it.

Why less, competitive? Certainly being equally competitive should be the goal?

Unless you believe that soup is bad design, and should be limited to grudgingly allowing fluff players to use whatever weird combination of stuff they come up with. If they're less competitive then you don't want to take them in a tournament, or if you don't have such an awesome fluff idea that you feel compelled to use it even if it doesn't win games as effectively.

 Blackie wrote:
That's why I'd argue for the existence of soups but less competitive than mono faction lists.

And here it is again - the 'guys I promise I don't want to ban soup - I just want to render it unusable!'

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
That's why I'd argue for the existence of soups but less competitive than mono faction lists.

And here it is again - the 'guys I promise I don't want to ban soup - I just want to render it unusable!'

Yeah, that would be terrible. Because no one enjoyed playing 40K 3rd -5th editions, when mono-faction was the only option.

There's actually a pretty popular school of thought that 5th edition was the best edition of 40K to date. Not sure I agree with it entirely, but it did have some things going for it. Not just the absence of mixed lists either - with only Troops able to score, players actually took solid amounts of them. These days, ehh. People mostly take them to unlock battalions and brigades. But that's another discussion.

I for one would love to see soup just go away and never come back. That said, I recognize the impracticality of it at this point. Classic Pandora's Box scenario - now that it's out of the box, putting it back in would be worlds of trouble. I'm willing to be mollified by mono-source being buffed so it can be competitive against soup.

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
That's why I'd argue for the existence of soups but less competitive than mono faction lists.

And here it is again - the 'guys I promise I don't want to ban soup - I just want to render it unusable!'

Yeah, that would be terrible. Because no one enjoyed playing 40K 3rd -5th editions, when mono-faction was the only option.

There's actually a pretty popular school of thought that 5th edition was the best edition of 40K to date. Not sure I agree with it entirely, but it did have some things going for it. Not just the absence of mixed lists either - with only Troops able to score, players actually took solid amounts of them. These days, ehh. People mostly take them to unlock battalions and brigades. But that's another discussion.

I for one would love to see soup just go away and never come back. That said, I recognize the impracticality of it at this point. Classic Pandora's Box scenario - now that it's out of the box, putting it back in would be worlds of trouble. I'm willing to be mollified by mono-source being buffed so it can be competitive against soup.

Yeah because playing Biker Nobz wound allocation and Paladin wound allocation was a blast! So was Space Wolves scoring from inside their Razorbacks! I'm not going to get further into the 'yeah well people liked this better' because there is no data on either side that can actually support that pre or post mixed lists is more popular. Anecdotally - its opened up the ability for me to run my chaos collection in a way that is more pleasing to me with demon and legions in the same composition as well as running Harlequins with various splashes of other Eldar.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sure. And CSM lose stuff that loyalist marines have, as the price of getting that horde of cannon fodder.

But the stuff they lose has very little ro do with this faction strength and weaknesses stuff. They're both marine armies with some slightly different units.

Oh and if I choose to bring IG along with my marines, I am already limiting my ability to bring marine units. There is this mechanic called points, you know...

Unless you believe that soup is bad design, and should be limited to grudgingly allowing fluff players to use whatever weird combination of stuff they come up with. If they're less competitive then you don't want to take them in a tournament, or if you don't have such an awesome fluff idea that you feel compelled to use it even if it doesn't win games as effectively.

So you want to punish fluff players. Got it!

Time and time again I have seen you argue that good game balance is good for everyone, competive and fluffy players alike.That a balanced game means that a fluffy player can bring their background inspired army and not be instantly crushed because they did not choose the most brokenly OP units. And I've always agreed with you on this. But now you're just basically saying that feth players that want to play armies you don't personally like. I guess you want to ban Tyranids next...

Both sides seem too extreme in this discussion.

The answer (for balance) is simply to buff mono-faction armies to make them a competitive choice along with soup. Essentially give you some benefit for forgoing the benefit of the options soup provides.

This balance issue cannot be determined by points costing very effectively because there is no cost at which something is better given fewer options, and it is unrealistic given the granularity involved that all units could be equally balanced against one another in such a way that soup would not always be the best option when available.

Breng77 wrote:
Both sides seem too extreme in this discussion.

The answer (for balance) is simply to buff mono-faction armies to make them a competitive choice along with soup. Essentially give you some benefit for forgoing the benefit of the options soup provides.

This balance issue cannot be determined by points costing very effectively because there is no cost at which something is better given fewer options, and it is unrealistic given the granularity involved that all units could be equally balanced against one another in such a way that soup would not always be the best option when available.

Which to be clear nearly everyone who's been pro-soup if you will has advocated for. I've stated several times I'm fine with intelligent limits to soups and buffs to mono factions, what I (and others) take issue with is both the disingenuous soup 'limits' that are effectively bans (by way of making soup entirely non-viable)on the concept.

Breng77 wrote:

The answer (for balance) is simply to buff mono-faction armies to make them a competitive choice along with soup. Essentially give you some benefit for forgoing the benefit of the options soup provides.

If we're talking about something like a few extra CPs for mono armies, then that is fine providing that faction balance is addressed otherwise too. At its current state IG doesn't really need any buffs!

I would look at it more as Chapter Tactics and stratagems than straight CP (though that could also be a thing). Things that would encourage different playstyles, maybe buff otherwise underused units etc. The ideal would be to make as many different types of armies viable as possible. Some of that would be re-balancing points, and some would be other buffs to units if taken in a particular faction.

SO if IG are too strong with their best build maybe some mono-faction options would buff lesser used units, or maybe would just allow for different styles of play. That said I cannot think of too many events getting dominated by pure IG lists right now, so I'm not sure that compared to Imperial soup that they could not use a buff, it might just be not as large as other factions. Which is part of the balance and why CP alone is not a great fix.

Saying "if you play mono-faction you get 4 extra CP." means all armies get buffed the exact same way regardless of their strengths.

Instead if playing mono-imperial fists got you say the ability for your vehicles with random number of shots to roll 2x the number of shots (so normal D6 shots becomes 2D6) or something similar it could lead to a different style of army where you are taking Whirlwinds and Vindicators as a viable option.

 Crimson wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

The answer (for balance) is simply to buff mono-faction armies to make them a competitive choice along with soup. Essentially give you some benefit for forgoing the benefit of the options soup provides.

If we're talking about something like a few extra CPs for mono armies, then that is fine providing that faction balance is addressed otherwise too. At its current state IG doesn't really need any buffs!

I don't disagree with you, but that's an entirely separate set of mechanics to monkey with, though doing so would tone down Imperial Soup a bit - souping in IG wouldn't be quite the CP-battery it is now, but it would still have all the other inherent advantages.

Given the way 8th plays with turn 1 and 2 being alpha strike fests I would prefer soup was toned down to mono codex levels not mono codex armies boosted to soup levels as its just another round of powercreep IMHO but I get that its probably a much easier sell. Hopefully its also simple and blanket, given the insistance of playing a 2k points as it's "the standard" placing more models or extending the pre game time even further doesn't improve the game it just takes more time away from playing.
Heck some armies take so long on T1 and T2, T3 is usually cut short T4 is rare and T5+ a hope and prayer for most games, not all of us get 4-5 hours+ for a game even outside of tournament.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
That's why I'd argue for the existence of soups but less competitive than mono faction lists.

And here it is again - the 'guys I promise I don't want to ban soup - I just want to render it unusable!'

Not unusable, just inferior to mono-factions lists.

I usually play with lots of vehicles with my orks, not with the green tides which are their best built. My lists are not the possible best ones but certainly not 100% unusable, and we're talking about orks, one of the current bottom tiers.

In a perfect world soups and mono-faction armies would be equal, but in the real life and especially 40k this is simply impossible, so arguing for having soups not as competitive as single faction armies seems the best compromise. Soups wouldn't go away, but they wouldn't be auto takes. At the current moment there's no pure SM list that is better than a SM one pluse some IG allied and this is insane.


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 Crimson wrote:

Yeah, and this is where it goes off the rails completely. Your solution just leads to everyone having to play guard.

No because only a few crazy people in the world are willing to buy 2000-3000 points of an army they don't want to collect and play. Adding a few needed units is completely different.

No, it is not.

Adding units from another should never be necessary.

And IMHO, it will be in some form be necessary whilst soup is allowed unchecked in tournament enviroments.

 Earth127 wrote:
No, it is not.

Adding units from another should never be necessary.

And IMHO, it will be in some form be necessary whilst soup is allowed unchecked in tournament enviroments.

I agree with that, I was saying something else. That adding a few units is something viable, and people may be willing to do. Switching their army for a pure AM one is completely different, it's a huge step.

My, no it is not, was meant at your suggestion that adding a few needed units is completely different.

Whilst imperium as a key word exist one of the best answers too "how should I protect my valuable big hiiting stuff?" will always be GUARD and pure IG players wil pay the price of their cheap infantry being used to protect stuff it is not meant to protect. balance wise 50/50 soup lists aren't the problem. It's 75/25 or less. See the list of Incontrol I linked earlier in the thread.

 Blackie wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
That's why I'd argue for the existence of soups but less competitive than mono faction lists.

And here it is again - the 'guys I promise I don't want to ban soup - I just want to render it unusable!'

Not unusable, just inferior to mono-factions lists.

Right - unusable.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
That's why I'd argue for the existence of soups but less competitive than mono faction lists.

And here it is again - the 'guys I promise I don't want to ban soup - I just want to render it unusable!'

Not unusable, just inferior to mono-factions lists.

Right - unusable.

If it's that mixed though you should have issues.

Allies should be a compliment, not a crutch like GW made them because of mostly incompetent design. They get some things right this edition (moreso than last edition) but obviously some of us are unhappy with how some factions turned out competitively (Grey Knights and AdMech being the worst offenders in this regard), and internal balance wise (Chaos Space Marines and Space Marines once again being the worst offenders I feel in this category. Some might disagree but overall at least Grey Knights and AdMech have SLIGHTLY better internal balance).

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

If it's that mixed though you should have issues.

Allies should be a compliment, not a crutch like GW made them because of mostly incompetent design. They get some things right this edition (moreso than last edition) but obviously some of us are unhappy with how some factions turned out competitively (Grey Knights and AdMech being the worst offenders in this regard), and internal balance wise (Chaos Space Marines and Space Marines once again being the worst offenders I feel in this category. Some might disagree but overall at least Grey Knights and AdMech have SLIGHTLY better internal balance).

Right I should have issues with playing my 50/50 Tzeentch Demons/TSons army - who cares about the money I've invested in it or that it makes sense fluff wise? Or maybe you could look at it from the other side that soup is an option in the game and has been for three editions now and understand why the general concept of 'make it worse than mono books (i.e. soft ban it)' doesn't garner great responses.

You get the advantage of having 2 codex's worth of units, strategums etc to pick from there is your advantage.
Mono codex armies can't patch GW's designed in weakness by just picking up the new hotness out of the latest faction codex.

You loosing 2 or 3 CP's for all the choice is balancing the advantage. The problem is some soups are way more broken as combos than others. So balancing out the OP combos punishes the fluffy soup. Don't balance it enough and its still the only competitive option.

Different people have different experience's of just how OP soup is.

Ice_can wrote:
You loosing 2 or 3 CP's for all the choice is balancing the advantage. .

No one is advocating for losing 2 or 3 CP though. They are either advocating for outright bans or such crippling changes that its untenable (no access to stratagems outside a 'main faction', no chapter tactics, etc).

Ice_can wrote:
You get the advantage of having 2 codex's worth of units, strategums etc to pick from there is your advantage.
Mono codex armies can't patch GW's designed in weakness by just picking up the new hotness out of the latest faction codex.

You loosing 2 or 3 CP's for all the choice is balancing the advantage. The problem is some soups are way more broken as combos than others. So balancing out the OP combos punishes the fluffy soup. Don't balance it enough and its still the only competitive option.

Different people have different experience's of just how OP soup is.

Can you tell me how many units is "A codex worth"?

Are we talking about an Eldar or Marine codex, with dozens of unit choices, or maybe something like a Harlequin codex, with what, 7?

On the unfairness scale, how does an allied Harlequin/Dark Eldar army with fewer unit choices than a mono-marine army stack up? Is it still unfair because the guy with the Harlequin/DE army gets to have 2 books and the poor marine player only gets 1?

the_scotsman wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
You get the advantage of having 2 codex's worth of units, strategums etc to pick from there is your advantage.
Mono codex armies can't patch GW's designed in weakness by just picking up the new hotness out of the latest faction codex.

You loosing 2 or 3 CP's for all the choice is balancing the advantage. The problem is some soups are way more broken as combos than others. So balancing out the OP combos punishes the fluffy soup. Don't balance it enough and its still the only competitive option.

Different people have different experience's of just how OP soup is.

Can you tell me how many units is "A codex worth"?

Are we talking about an Eldar or Marine codex, with dozens of unit choices, or maybe something like a Harlequin codex, with what, 7?

On the unfairness scale, how does an allied Harlequin/Dark Eldar army with fewer unit choices than a mono-marine army stack up? Is it still unfair because the guy with the Harlequin/DE army gets to have 2 books and the poor marine player only gets 1?

This. The Marines have 86(?) choices for units, while Admech + Imperial Guard combined I think have 50? If we're optimistic?

The problem is that 2-3 cp wouldn't balance out the top soup lists. GW needs to find a way to balance soup.
Also the no strategums outside of your warlords, was supposedly how 8th edition was playtested, why GW changed this for the real release I have no idea, I suspect marketing overruled rules department. Leading to the broken hordspam soupfest that 8th has become.

Ice_can wrote:
The problem is that 2-3 cp wouldn't balance out the top soup lists. GW needs to find a way to balance soup.
Also the no strategums outside of your warlords, was supposedly how 8th edition was playtested, why GW changed this for the real release I have no idea, I suspect marketing overruled rules department. Leading to the broken hordspam soupfest that 8th has become.

So, we're not addressing the "how much is a codex worth of units" question then, huh?

Ice_can wrote:
The problem is that 2-3 cp wouldn't balance out the top soup lists.

So what are these top lists and what exactly is the problem?

Ice_can wrote:
Also the no strategums outside of your warlords, was supposedly how 8th edition was playtested

Proof?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
You get the advantage of having 2 codex's worth of units, strategums etc to pick from there is your advantage.
Mono codex armies can't patch GW's designed in weakness by just picking up the new hotness out of the latest faction codex.

You loosing 2 or 3 CP's for all the choice is balancing the advantage. The problem is some soups are way more broken as combos than others. So balancing out the OP combos punishes the fluffy soup. Don't balance it enough and its still the only competitive option.

Different people have different experience's of just how OP soup is.

Can you tell me how many units is "A codex worth"?

Are we talking about an Eldar or Marine codex, with dozens of unit choices, or maybe something like a Harlequin codex, with what, 7?

On the unfairness scale, how does an allied Harlequin/Dark Eldar army with fewer unit choices than a mono-marine army stack up? Is it still unfair because the guy with the Harlequin/DE army gets to have 2 books and the poor marine player only gets 1?

This. The Marines have 86(?) choices for units, while Admech + Imperial Guard combined I think have 50? If we're optimistic?

I'm pretty sure the idea of 1 codex=1 army is no longer how GW envisions this edition. The Imperium is one faction and you get to use all of its armies however you like. Same with Chaos and Eldar.
I'm just disappointed that they didn't merge more codexes into one book. (marines + blood angels +dark angels or grey knights + deathwatch +inquisition). The indexes were great for peeking at another armies cool units which got me to buy a couple models. But buying a codex is the least fun part of this hobby imo.

So orks crons and tau should just take the beating from these new faction armies, so your possition is screw balance I want my soup.

Having 20 good units out of 50 is better than having 80 of which maybe 10 are good. So are you counting good units or just entry lists?

So your saying that the strategums, warlord traits etc don't matter only the units?

I'm not suggesting that GW bans soup just that it does need balancing and I'm not hearing anything as a reasoned counter.