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To the best of my understanding, dataslates have been banned largely because of the Tau formation. I haven't seen anyone complaining about the Astartes Stormwing or the three new Tyranid formations. I have no particular gripe with the Tau formation myself, but I see the shennanigans involved with messing with the traditional force org chart, and I feel this is reasonably addressed by letting folks take only a single allied detachment, which a formation would count towards.

My question to TO's is why is everything that comes out in digital format being banned simply because people don't like one of them? Adepticon, Broadside Bash and many other large tourneys have followed LVO's lead in banning every dataslate across the board. Are Be'lakor and Cypher so egregiously overpowered that they merit banning? Are they so much worse than toolbox Commanders letting blobs of Riptides ignore all the rules of the game, or Jetseer Councils flying around indestructibly?

Currently, Eldar are the top of the meta, having taken half the spots in the LVO finals, and owning the very highest win percentage on TOF. Banning Be'lakor and Cypher deprive Chaos Space Marines (considered a very poor army by most) of two very useful and interesting tools to help them compete with the big boys and shake up the meta.

Thus, I humbly request all TO's consider not lumping all dataslates together, and go about reigning in force org shennanigans a bit differently. Thank you.

I have to agree, I say no banning of any Slates that add a new units.

I'd prefer that GW compile the dataslates into a book or something. I want a physical book for me to play with.

 kronk wrote:
I'd prefer that GW compile the dataslates into a book or something. I want a physical book for me to play with.

I have to agree here somewhat. My issue with the dataslates:

1. The idiotic Tau Dataslate.
2. The breaking of the Force Org and Allies Matrix with them.
3. The fact I have to buy a bunch of small files which don't load very quickly causing me to constantly shift back and forth between files in game slowing down an already slowed down game.

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I'd prefer that GW compile the dataslates into a book or something. I want a physical book for me to play with.

I have to agree here somewhat. My issue with the dataslates:

1. The idiotic Tau Dataslate.
2. The breaking of the Force Org and Allies Matrix with them.
3. The fact I have to buy a bunch of small files which don't load very quickly causing me to constantly shift back and forth between files in game slowing down an already slowed down game.

Agreed with all of the above...

So I dont mind Dataslates. What I dont like, as a TO is people spamming them. I am all for having an "elite" unit of broadsides with a riptide formation that has tank hunter. Thats fine. But not 3 of them. The 2 talons and a raven dataslate formation is fine...but not if you have 2, or maybe even 3 if you can fit it in. Right now, in the tournaments I run, I am generally limiting Dataslates to 1 per army. So if you play Tau with ally Space marines (or vice versa), well sorry, you only get 1 dataslate to work with.

3. The fact I have to buy a bunch of small files which don't load very quickly causing me to constantly shift back and forth between files in game slowing down an already slowed down game.

But do you really? I don't think you need to purchase all the DSlates in order to play against them, and you only really have to buy them if you want to use them. It's not like you have to purchase the 13 other codices to play against. And even still, most dataslate formation rules are 1 to 2 extra special rules that can easily fit in the "notes" section of any army builder. That really doesn't take that long to sort through.

I am organizing a 60 man event for the spring and I think we are going to allow dataslate units or formations but limit it to 1 and only one formation or unit. We'd consider the Inquisition Detachment as a formation for this purpose. Basically creating a 'Special Allowance' slot that is sort of like a fortification slot.

That way an army is only going to have one element that is outside the main rulebook FOC.

citadel wrote:

3. The fact I have to buy a bunch of small files which don't load very quickly causing me to constantly shift back and forth between files in game slowing down an already slowed down game.

But do you really? I don't think you need to purchase all the DSlates in order to play against them, and you only really have to buy them if you want to use them. It's not like you have to purchase the 13 other codices to play against. And even still, most dataslate formation rules are 1 to 2 extra special rules that can easily fit in the "notes" section of any army builder. That really doesn't take that long to sort through.

Yes you do really. This is the Tournament section, people who are playing 40k competitively are generally trying to win tournaments. To do so requires a working knowledge, or access to it, on a level above that required to dick around in pick up games. Army Builder has an output mode which removes the Special Rules from it when printing. I believe it is called "tournament output/format" or something like that. If my opponent is going to output in tournament format, or whatever it is called and 3 of my opponents at the LVO last weekend used this mode, then I doubt they are going to write in other special rules. The theory behind that is tournament players will either be familiar with the special rules or should have access to all of them themselves, if they don't then they will need to ask you to see a copy of your codex, or dataslate, or allied codex etc to see the necessary rules. Which they will then have to flip through and find and present to you. Also eating up time. No matter the way you look at it the fact data slates are all individual files is a pain.

you could always make a tourney rule that data slate units take up a FOC slot

 Ifurita wrote:
you could always make a tourney rule that data slate units take up a FOC slot

Which is then messing around with the core rules which most TOs are quite leery of doing for good reason.

The theory behind that is tournament players will either be familiar with the special rules or should have access to all of them themselves, if they don't then they will need to ask you to see a copy of your codex, or dataslate, or allied codex etc to see the necessary rules. Which they will then have to flip through and find and present to you. Also eating up time. No matter the way you look at it the fact data slates are all individual files is a pain.

If going through an allied dex and dataslates are pretty much the same thing time or research wise, is this really a justifiable reason to ban one and not the other? I mean, I know what you're saying - 40k already takes a long time to play and we shouldn't be looking for ways to make it longer, but you are talking about a matter of a few seconds, not hours. And yes, all those matters of seconds add up, but I think you're overemphasizing the laboriousness of looking through a rulebook, slate, or dex. That or the TO can put out rules saying if they are using formations or dSlates, that information has to be included in their list submission. Pretty easy solution.

I think you'll see a comment in the rumored "7th edition" that will remove any about if these are intended for standard games. I think they'll become more common in tournaments after that.

citadel wrote:

The theory behind that is tournament players will either be familiar with the special rules or should have access to all of them themselves, if they don't then they will need to ask you to see a copy of your codex, or dataslate, or allied codex etc to see the necessary rules. Which they will then have to flip through and find and present to you. Also eating up time. No matter the way you look at it the fact data slates are all individual files is a pain.

If going through an allied dex and dataslates are pretty much the same thing time or research wise, is this really a justifiable reason to ban one and not the other? I mean, I know what you're saying - 40k already takes a long time to play and we shouldn't be looking for ways to make it longer, but you are talking about a matter of a few seconds, not hours. And yes, all those matters of seconds add up, but I think you're overemphasizing the laboriousness of looking through a rulebook, slate, or dex. That or the TO can put out rules saying if they are using formations or dSlates, that information has to be included in their list submission. Pretty easy solution.

This was not my only problem with data slates.

This was not my only problem with data slates.

Yeah. I was going to add in that your first two positions are much stronger.

Ban nothing, use it all:Core, Escal, Strong, FW, Data.
Show up with D bad weapons, I guess Stern drop pod will come back. Run ton of fortifications, out flankers will come back. I know it is a tough job for the TOs to know all the rules and loops (power combos), But I'd love to the see the WAACAH get stomped because a Paper showed up against his/her mega rock. But that is just me.

I would like to distance my respectful request to not ban all dataslates as a category from any requests to do anything else including legalizing Revenant Titans, escalation, forge world or whatever else is presently banned at your event.

slaede wrote:
I would like to distance my respectful request to not ban all dataslates as a category from any requests to do anything else including legalizing Revenant Titans, escalation, forge world or whatever else is presently banned at your event.

All IN or none baby.

While I definitely understand the concerns over banning units covered by dataslates, the formations are silly, as it's basically "buy GW box X, get Y free abilities when fielded together, pay 0 points for free special rules", same issue I have with the Apoc ones, only moreso.

If I were to run an event again, I'd allow the unit dataslates, but not the formations.

 Vaktathi wrote:

If I were to run an event again, I'd allow the unit dataslates, but not the formations.

This sums up my thoughts on the matter pretty well. With a possible exception for Tyranid formations.

The Tau formation is obviously bananas, if you allow someone to run it x4. But I agree with Slaede, we're currently throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Be'lakor is extremely powerful, but he has serious and exploitable weaknesses. T5 with no armor save can be killed. Cypher isn't even close to broken, his best use is hiding him in a corner and trying to get extra VPs. Not allowing them in tournaments makes no sense. It also has some second and third order effects. I've played Be'lakor in my Daemons lists since he came out, I enjoy playing him, he removes some of the scary-random to the list. Now I'm going to a major tourney that isn't allowing him, which frustrates me. Thus, I'm going to bring Eldar/DE. I think most people would rather play my Daemons list than yet another Eldar variant.

Ban Be'lakor, I say! In fact, ban all those damn Daemons! Ban them all! And all the cheeseheads who play them!

Really, do Daemons need an overpowered character to add to their Herohammer lists?

I think it should be noted that Reece polled the players that were actually attending the LVO and the majority of the players did not want data slates being included.

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
I think it should be noted that Reece polled the players that were actually attending the LVO and the majority of the players did not want data slates being included.

Truth. I believe it was a significant majority too if memory serves.

Coldsteel wrote:
Ban Be'lakor, I say! In fact, ban all those damn Daemons! Ban them all! And all the cheeseheads who play them!

Really, do Daemons need an overpowered character to add to their Herohammer lists?

In my (biased) opinion, yes. Give Daemons all the tools they have access too, because that will increase the number of Daemons players…which will decrease the number of Eldar and Tau players. I want as much variety as possible. Is Daemon Hero Hammer an annoying build? Maybe, but it's no worse than 9 Serpents or a Tau Commander buffing unit X to high heaven.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
I think it should be noted that Reece polled the players that were actually attending the LVO and the majority of the players did not want data slates being included.

In the context of the LVO that makes a lot of sense, because it came right after all the changes. Protecting people's investments and all that. But now the dust has settled, and only the Tau formation is insane. We don't have to follow Reece's decision, because it was made in a context (right after the changes, money on the line) that other tournies aren't sharing.

Can someone explain to me how the dataslate formations work?

If I take the Adaptus Astartes Storm Wing, the storm talons take up two fast attack slots and the gunship takes a heavy support slot. Only the formation as a whole gets a couple of special rules for them only?

If it was up to me making a tourney I'd ban purchased buildings like the ADL, ban allies, and maybe ban flyers (on the fence about the last one as I wuv my Stormravens.), and ban all digital only books. If it's not in the base codex, can't use it either, and ban special characters.

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
I think it should be noted that Reece polled the players that were actually attending the LVO and the majority of the players did not want data slates being included.

Truth. I believe it was a significant majority too if memory serves.

Major majority simply because it was too new.

Now?

*meh* let 'em in.

Welcome to the FW "debate" all over again. The unfortunate fact is some people are so afraid of allowing the game to change that they'll fight to the death to defend blanket bans on entire categories of rules that they declare to be "not real 40k".

 Loch wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

If I were to run an event again, I'd allow the unit dataslates, but not the formations.

This sums up my thoughts on the matter pretty well. With a possible exception for Tyranid formations.

Agreed about unit data slates. Seems a reasonable exception to me without the silly "same unit but free extra rules!" the formations come with.