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Me and my friends at my gaming club got into an agrument the other day about the force organization chart. Now my club is really relaxed about rules, so things like proxys being completly wrong (like orks pretending to be eldar), and bending some of the in-game rules to speed things up happens all the time. It's also may be important to know we play mostly annihilation. The argument arose when this same policy was applied to the force organization chart. I think that the force organization chart is an important balancing factor in the game, preventing someone from brining loads of elites and heavy supports (which btw is what ends up happening all the time). Every else doesn't agree with me, saying that as long as the points are fair, the game is fair.

Now, I'm fine with proxys and the occasionally curved rule, but I'm not fine with breaking what I think is a fundemental balancing wheel in the game.

So here's my official question:

Can the Force Organization Charts be ignored without upsetting the balance of the game

My opinion?
Not normally, no.

They are there for a reason.

What's the average age of your opponents? 14?

Balance? 40k has hardly any balance at all as it stands, and the FoC doesn't do a lot to help that anyway.

Drastically altering the intent of design and nature of the game? 100% yes.

You're supposed to stick to the Force Organization Chart. In Apocalypse, I believe you can take multiple detachments, allowing you to bend this a bit...

The fact is that you need both players' consent to change the rules of the game. If you disagree with changing a rule, then your opponent has no basis for an argument.

IMHO it's fine to be relaxed with the force org chart when showing a new player how to play the game (eg allowing them to play with just one Troops choice) or if it's a themed game (and an altered force org chart helps the theme), but it gets a little iffy if they just want to add more elites etc so they can be more efficient in Annihilation games.

If they keep insisting on twisting the FOC chart, just offer to play an objectives game instead, where their minimal Troops would prove to be more of a disadvantage

No, they should go by the fundamentals of the rules. I say let this thread linger for a while, get a couple pages of responses, then direct your club to this thread and see how stupid they feel then. Honestly, is it THAT hard to follow the FOC? I've never even considered leaving the FOC bubble before--just doesn't make sense.

You could consider 'bending' the FoC equally, like allowing both armies to take 4 HQs, or min 1 troop, or 5 Heavies. Or didja already have that in mind?


I wouldn't have a problem if the FoC change was equal *AND* we both had models to fill in the slots extended ....

If I owned 4 LRCrusaders and a Dev unit, and my opponent only had two Heavy units, like say 2 Chaos Vindicators, that wouldn't be fair. So the standard FoC is basically a good way to go ... unless both of you can benefit from the alteration.

So you're telling me I can have 4 demon princes and 15 obliterators in a normal game of 40k? Where do I sign up?

chromedog wrote:My opinion?
Not normally, no.

They are there for a reason.

What's the average age of your opponents? 14?

We're all around 17ish. Why? Does that change anything?


Anyway, to clarify my situation, this is how games generally go:

Me: Here's my perfectly legal 2 troop choice, hq, dread list. (I'm sm)

Other guy: Heres my 3 lone wolves, rune priest, blood claws and long fangs. Or. Here's my 6 warriors, hive mind, and a huge ball of genestealers (literally a ball)

I get owned nine times out of ten.


Now I may just be bad, but this seems unfair to me.

Just tell people to bring legal armies. Neither of the ones you listed were far off being legal. I mean 6 Warriors, 1 Alpha Warrior and 6 Broods of Genestealers is a legal army.

Aramoro

...

You do realize both of those lists you just gave are perfectly legal?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Aramoro wrote:Just tell people to bring legal armies. Neither of the ones you listed were far off being legal. I mean 6 Warriors, 1 Alpha Warrior and 6 Broods of Genestealers is a legal army.

Aramoro

Naw, he'd need 5 Broods of Stealers. Warriors are Troops now!

Oh yeah so they are, forgot about that, still you can take loads.

Aramoro

My friends told me genestealers were elites and warriors were hqs, so oh well.

But I'm certain that one blood claws squad doesn't make two troop choices.
Unless long fangs are also troops? I was under the impression that they were heavy support.

There is some line the rulebook that the says charts aren't set in stone or something to that effect. That's what they keep telling me While it is in there, I feel it's for special themed games only, not standard games like what we play.

I was under the impression that by "Blood Claws" you meant more than one squad.

Look, all you have to tell them is that for Standard games, you use the FoC chart. If they don't want to, don't play them.

well much like the D&D books, the rules are a general guideline, IMHO, but you have to have an agreement from all parties involved have to agree to rule changes. if you don't agree then no altering the FoC, and tough nuggets for your friends. Other option if they are so insistant... find another gaming group lol.

if you are worried about their armies being un-balanced well... its easy enough to do without altering the FoC. So if you are worried about losing so much, you might need to alter your play style to adjust to your friends being un-balanced.

Gwar! wrote:I was under the impression that by "Blood Claws" you meant more than one

Yeah sorry should have made that more clear.

Sounds like your friends cheat just a litle bit. (Genestealers as elites? Warriors as HQs?)

If you're just playing for fun, you can have any house rules you want, but you'll probably unbalance the game.

As a space wolf player, one the of advantages of the army is to take double the HQ choices. That balances out other aspects of the SW force.

But, if you're in a group that generally play how they like, you'll probably have to go with the majority. You must be able to have some fun with this group decision? Why not go for heavies and elites yourself?

(Genestealers as elites? Warriors as HQs?)

They were in the last codex depends how long ago he played that list...

As for doing away with eth FoC that just ruins the game for me as does not playing the objective games. Otherwise armies not only are imbalanced but you can create really dumb armies.

You're SM right? Just pick an army of Hammernators and waltz through him (lead by a pair of Lysanders of course).

Or just go DP dreads (proxy the lot), I mean literally just take those and see how much "fun" your opponent has.

Or switch to the BA codex and proxy a DC Dread and Libby Dread army.

Both the missions and the FoC are essential balancing acts for the game and it becomes pretty unplayable fast if you remove those restrictions.

FlingitNow wrote:

(Genestealers as elites? Warriors as HQs?)

They were in the last codex depends how long ago he played that list...

Actually, genestealers were troops last 'dex.

As has been said before, not playing the standard missions kind of breaks the game. Never have to take troop choices? Awesome! Oh, and I can have 4 or so elite or heavy support? Even better.

It's not *that* big of a deal if you know it's coming, as you can do the same thing. But if you're trying to play standard FoC and they're not... you're going to be at a disadvantage every time.

The general advice seems to be either get them to play objective games or proxy a bunch of stuff to even things out. And show them this thread.

I KNEW I wasn't crazy!

FlingitNow wrote:

(Genestealers as elites? Warriors as HQs?)

They were in the last codex depends how long ago he played that list

Errr no they weren't, they were still Troops. Warriors however, could be taken as either Elites and/or HQ's, and if they had wings, as Fast Attack. A possible 72 Warriors in an army! Although you can now get 83 i believe? That is assuming you count Shrikes and Primes as Warriors by RAW
Back on-topic.... IMHO, the FOC is one of the things that you don't with in 40k, it kinda underpins the system to me, and it encourages balanced, well thought-out army lists.
My $0.02

Spearhead, Planetstrike and Battle Missions all adjust the FOC in fun ways. How balanced are they? I don't know, but they could be used as basic guidlines to adjsut the FOC for certain types of games.

I think you're within your rights to call "Your army's not legal; add more troops." Or you could just make a non-FOC army yourself and have a blast fielding an antire force of dreadnoughts.

One question: do you play games with objectives? Because only troops can take objectives. That alone should see you winning most game against armies without the legal troop requirements, unless you're getting tabled.

Spearhead, Planetstrike and Battle Missions all adjust the FOC in fun ways. How balanced are they? I don't know, but they could be used as basic guidlines to adjsut the FOC for certain types of games.

They're not balanced but Battle missions and Planet strike atleast attempt to offer tactical challenges and alter the FoC to fit with those challenges. Where as Spearhead is Apocalypse's slowed brother that only likes to play with tanks...

If you remove the FoC and only play annihilation then you essentially remove all the tactical challenge of 40k and it just becomes "my special rule beats your special rule" which is just lame and boring.

In my FLGS we'll often play fast and lose with some of the rules and try to play as close to RaI as possible. However we stick to the FoC and the missions (although we'll often agree not to play Annihilation in favour of one of the other 2 more tactical missions), with those the game really suffers.

FlingitNow wrote:They're not balanced but Battle missions and Planet strike atleast attempt to offer tactical challenges and alter the FoC to fit with those challenges.

That was sortof my point. That GW has adjusted the FOC in a tactically challenging way in the expansions, and that these or something in the same vane would be better than doing annihilation with no FOC. Though 2000 pts of characters would be interesting for at least a few turns.

Edit: there was a doublepost and then there wasn't...I'm so confused.

To agree with most of the august personalities who have already weighed in, the Force Organization Chart is there for a reason. Have I looked at the list and lamented the fact that I can't have six or seven Elites choices? Of course. But you alter it at your peril. I think several suggestions have already been made. (To whit: Tell them to bugger off and play a legal army, play an objective mission, or build your own non-FoC legal army to crush them.)

I think that any reasonable player shouldn't have a hard time playing by the rules, especially the FoC rules.

As to your question about why someone suggested you were a young player, here's the answer: Young people have a tendency to want to bend the rules (Any rule will work, its all part of becoming an adult and challenging the established ideas that you abided by as a child without question.) and gamers are particularly prone to it in regards to the games that they play. People want to play hill giant bards in their D&D games, or come up with house rules for a katana that cuts through six inch steel plates in their Twilight 2013 campaigns. As most gamers mature, they find that these ideas don't tend to work out as well as they initially thought, and tend to lean more towards following the rules as they were written, only bending them to accomodate things that aren't covered in the base rules. (Such as adding zombies into the above mentioned Twilight 2013 game.)

The older gamers also tend to regard the new generations of rules-challenging youngsters with derision and scorn. This stems from two factors: the first is that they themselves have been burned by bad experiences in that arena, and don't want to go through that experience again. The second is that their bad experiences have led them to adopt a philosophy of 'the rules are perfect' as a defense against the pain of the terrible games that they played with their own experimentation with mind-expanding house rules.

You will often (not always, but often) find that the gamers most hateful of young gamers are the ones who were the most prone to ridiculous house rules in their youths. As a child, I made this mistake often enough myself (Batman has no place in a D&D game. Take note.) and even after realizing the things I discussed here, I find myself prone to avoid the 14 year old at the gaming table. I find it hard to keep a sneer off my face when they suggest that we play with some silly house rule they came up with.

So, just try to remember that people who give you crap for being a teenage gamer were probably far more obnoxious than you when they were your age. And when you are our age, try to keep an open mind. (As it turns out, zombie-Twilight 2013 rocks socks!)

Freelancer48 wrote:There is some line the rulebook that the says charts aren't set in stone or something to that effect.

This addresses the fact that certain missions may alter the FOC or base requirements thereof. When the FOC was first introduced there were some missions that required a different starting base or altered the entire makeup of the FOC or even changed the FOC depending whether you were the attacker or the defender. It's the "out" to allow people, or GW, to change the FOC without having someone say, "That's not legal under the rules. They say that this is the only FOC allowed."