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Please bear with me if this has been covered somewhere:

There are quite a few units with this added to their points allocation, one or two per book, usually the cheapest most expendable available: zombies, warhounds etc. I can see how, in 7th edition where the core requirements were met by number of units rather than percentage of army, this was a useful rule. It's was to ensure that cheesers didn't bring 2 minimum units of the cheapest core type and then load up on all the flashy stuff, for lack of a better term. I feel that the GW change in army composition, specifically the 25% minimum core percentage has effectively engineered a solution to the problem that this rule was created to remedy. However, unlike normal outdated concepts that are overlapped by their usurping format, this rule actually further hinders the use of these units by forcing any army they are used in to include a higher minimum percentage of core. Not a big drawback, but a slightly uneven field.

What are peoples thoughts on this? Something i am overlooking? Alternate takes on the purpose or execution?

In my gaming group we just ignore them - they're are not minimum core options anymore, so they don't matter.

edit: spelling

To be honest, I've always had a problem with the idea of making people take core troops. Units should be taken because players think they're worth the points they cost. I've seen arguments from people here on Dakka saying a unit is only core, so they should be a poorer choice than a special or rare choice, and to me that's incredibly wrong headed game design.

Different kinds of troops should be seen as different roles, and the encouragement to takes units from each should come from needing units that perform each role. So you might want high quality, rare troops for their ability to dish out a load of damage and defeat an enemy unit in quick time, but you would also need large units of moderate quality troops to hold up elite enemy units, or smaller units of modest troops to guard the flanks of your elite troops and let them do their jobs.

a) GW has to sell models. Core is probably easiest to do that.
b) A "real" army is going to be composed mostly of regular folks. Whatever regular is in the [army race] world. I haven't looked at all the do not count, but I just can't see people following swarms into battle or whatever. I did a quick look and in 3+ books, they are swarms.
c) I think most Core beat the snot on a points ratio. Definitely on a points:Wounds ratio.
d) They have category limits for a reason. Supposedly. They are somewhere between Core and Specials but aren't limited.

I think a is probably the big issue. Maybe armies of magic buffed-up swarm Core would be too ugly to deal with.

I don't know, It's a good idea, buuuut...
I think it's there to prevent people from going "Hurr, corpse carts lol!", but it's outdated, so... well.
Perhaps they should make something (albeit complex) like "Up to 10% of your minimum core requirements may be spent on these units (you may choose more, but these do not count towards your minimum core requirement)", followed by a list of these units.
That way we would be able to get around the rule, yet still "forced" to have some true standard troops.

EDIT: Whoops, nvm.

Don't you think that with the current rules favoring large blocks of infantry, which are usually core troops, that if you didn't bring them in favor for these garbage units you would be at an overwhelming disadvantage?
I feel that these units universally got the rule because they are garbage units within the armies, something so crummy that it would be below core if that were possible. The current wonky rules would put them roughly in the special range... Since that is the other category that is rarely met.
It seems strange to consider garbage throwaway units as elites.
The discussion is good though, you are bringing up topics I hadn't considered

Yeah, I guess they're so expensive and bad I'm not sure why you'd want to mass them. Maybe that's a note to players: hey, don't take a lot of these.

Even so, I don't think warhammer should have units you're not SUPPOSED to take.
Sure, units that are bad and you don't want to take them, that's fine... But you shouldn't be forced into not taking them. That pushes everyone into the same corner if the "okay" core units are few, meaning they'll build similar armies.
I still think these worse-than-core should be able to take up a part of the core minimum. You'd still not be able to field an army of them, but at least you'd feel okay taking them.
It makes for more diversity in the game and individuality in each army.

The Cornerfag~ wrote:Even so, I don't think warhammer should have units you're not SUPPOSED to take.
Sure, units that are bad and you don't want to take them, that's fine... But you shouldn't be forced into not taking them. That pushes everyone into the same corner if the "okay" core units are few, meaning they'll build similar armies.
I still think these worse-than-core should be able to take up a part of the core minimum. You'd still not be able to field an army of them, but at least you'd feel okay taking them.
It makes for more diversity in the game and individuality in each army.

And on the same token, if you cut out those requirements, everyone will end up having the same army anyway, since they will usually take the most minimal core. Sorry, I don't buy it.

Oh, that's a good point. As those swarms are awful expensive. You could meet your Core requirements in much fewer models. GW hates that.

But the same swarms are usually blister (or perhaps fincast now) for only a few of them - which makes them expensive.
Though I don't feel like moneyhammering atm.

I really don't think the rule is in place for the purposes of model sales. I think Kiwidru is right- it's a hold-over from 7th that they didn't port to 8th with enough foresight.

DukeRustfield wrote:b) A "real" army is going to be composed mostly of regular folks. Whatever regular is in the [army race] world. I haven't looked at all the do not count, but I just can't see people following swarms into battle or whatever. I did a quick look and in 3+ books, they are swarms.

The issue is that we aren't putting armies on the field, we're putting company sized forces out there at best. These kinds of armies are likely to focused, and might not contain any regular troops. Think of an elite vanguard, or a cavalry scouting company.

And then we have to look at why a real army might be composed mostly of regular folks? Because they're useful, they fill a role better than any alternative, and having troops in that role increases the chance of you winning the battle. With the improvements in 8th ed, GW has managed to do this for core troops, people now take them and take them in numbers far greater than the minimum 25%, because they perform a really useful role.

To my mind, this makes the 25%+ core, no more than 50% special etc kind of redundant.

I'm not sure what an "army" actually is. On one hand you kind of think of it as placeholders for much more folks. Like 30 infantry is quite a bit in WHFB, but in a "real" combat, that's nothing. That would be like a Dark Ages skirmish, if that. Occupy Altdorf Street protests get a thousand times that.

So in my mind I kind of view infantry blocks as being representative of way more units. And Rares and Heroes being 1:1, with Specials being somewhere in between.

But as for the proposed rule, I don't know if it has a MASSIVE impact. At least off the top of my head I can't think of any pwnerificness.

DukeRustfield wrote:I'm not sure what an "army" actually is. On one hand you kind of think of it as placeholders for much more folks. Like 30 infantry is quite a bit in WHFB, but in a "real" combat, that's nothing. That would be like a Dark Ages skirmish, if that. Occupy Altdorf Street protests get a thousand times that.

So in my mind I kind of view infantry blocks as being representative of way more units. And Rares and Heroes being 1:1, with Specials being somewhere in between.

Yeah, that's a pretty common way of looking at things, and it helps get around the issue of battles as shown having trivially small numbers of troops on the field. I don't much like it personally, because the appeal for me in a miniatures game is in re-creating the fantasy battle, so any level of 'this represents 10 or 100 or whatever times as many men' kind of misses the point for me. But that's just personal preference.

Hence my dream of 20,000 point battles.

Except the winds of magic need to be altered to something like 4D6 at that level.

Grey Templar wrote:Hence my dream of 20,000 point battles.

Except the winds of magic need to be altered to something like 4D6 at that level.

Yeah, definitely. I've played in a couple of 10,000 point games, and in amongst all the chaos and time delays there's a basic awesomeness of seeing so many models on the field.

That was way back in the mid-90s though, and while I remember the debate we had over changing the magic rules, I don't really remember what we ended up doing, or how it worked. Certainly becomes important to change the rules up to bring in more wizards, though.