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There seems to be a lot of people saying that the option to take 'unforged' army lists will make 40k terribly unbalanced. I'm not convinced. In fact, I think it might things a little more balanced between armies.

How many armies will actually be able to abuse the system?

Tau and Eldar gain almost no benefit; they can already take enough skimmer tanks and jump monstrous creatures to fill a standard list with almost no padding and their troops and HQs are not a 'tax', but actually so good most players will take them even if they don't have to.

Imperial knights get nothing from being able to take an entire army of the same unit; they already do that. With allies and the inquisition already available to them, they don't really need any more options.

So the 'top three' armies don't get much from unbound lists.

Necrons seem to rely on troops for most of their best builds, so they don't gain much.

Astra Militarum pretty much need their troops options, if only as a place to hide their psykers. They already have the ability to fill the rest of their list with tanks and/or fliers. They could take ratlings or bullgryns instead of troops, but I don't think that would be a huge advantage.

Space Marines now have more competitive builds than white scar biker spam. I'm not seeing anything that stands out as significantly more powerful than bikers though. All you really offer is a chance to avoid the 'troop tax'.

Orks can now have proper battlewagon-spam, so long as battlewagons aren't nerfed too hard. This might bring them up to the level of high-tier armies, but I doubt that it will make them as good as a current taudar build. You can make an army with more than two effective biker nob mobs now, but the price is so high that you will be pushing 1,500 points with just two units anyway.

Tyranids can spam their best units, but even their best is only at a similar power level to the bread-and-butter of most armies.

Chaos Daemons can't have more than one screamerstar anyway, because the build relies on an unique artifact and an unique character. All unbound rules gives them is the opportunity to avoid troop tax and spam some more monstrous creatures. That's pretty nasty, but I wouldn't call it a game-breaker.

Dark Angels can field their special units more easily. That helps them, but it's still not going to make them as good as the best armies in the game, is it?

Chaos Space Marines get a huge boost. They can ignore their underwhelming troops and max out on the most effective choices. Still, their only really stand-out abuseable unit is the heldrake and I'm not convinced that there are that many situations where three heldrakes just aren't enough, but six heldrakes will get the job done.

Allies make things more complicated, but most of the really nasty battle-brothers combos seem to already be possible in 6th edition. Few armies want more than one allied force or have enough points to field all their best choices and multiples of their allies best choices. The only one which really stands out to me is chaos-marines and daemons, who can now take a screamerstar and multiple heldrakes without worrying about their sub-par troops.

Tau and Eldar gain almost no benefit; they can already take enough skimmer tanks and jump monstrous creatures to fill a standard list with almost no padding and their troops and HQs are not a 'tax', but actually so good most players will take them even if they don't have to.

Multiple buffmanders . Not being forced to spend points on a ally troops to get the ++2 baron you need for your seer star. Playing with 2 tides and 2 hammerheads without being forced to take Farsight as ally. It saves a lot of points in general for combo armies .

 Perfect Organism wrote:
Necrons seem to rely on troops for most of their best builds, so they don't gain much.

Necrons would gain ability to take more than 6 units of Wraiths, Annihilation Barges, and Spyders and the poop they bring to the table. Also, depending on how "anythijng goes" it would be, the ability to field Crypteks without an Overlord. This might not seem like much, but it would remove a pretty frequent stumbling block list-building-wise.

I don't think it's as much "you don't have to take Troops" as "you can take more than 3 of the Best Units in the Codex".

The lists may be abusable, will all come down to what the victory conditions are though to if they actually work or you have to be a bit more careful to avoid a D-laser to the knee (self inflicted)

Necron rely on their flyers or Wraiths to win games, core is just seen as a "flyer tax" aka min 5 Warriors.

And yes, unbound would mean absolutely, 100% throwing any balance out of the wind.

"Who is the better player?" becomes "Who got more Riptides?"

No, there are good, solid Necron army builds based on Troops choices.

I'd be more concerned about Sisters. Battle Sister squads bring precisely one thing to the table: numbers. But when you can take 2 squads of Retributors for the same price as a squad of 20 Sisters, and their AoF is worthwhile and they can get the BSS reroll from a different method, you're unbalancing the game.

In a way, I've got to admire the purity of it.

In this way people who just want to win will be able to migrate towards THE list, while people who want 40k to be a strategy game just might get it as once there is the THE list established, and everyone starts playing it, then you'll finally have a balanced game as, like chess, everyone will be playing the game with the same pieces.

The best part, too, is that it will allow that kind of insanity to spiral off into its own black hole and finally leave the rest of us alone.

Sorry, I might be behind but, what are these "Unforged" lists that you are talking about?

You recognize that people were able to find strong/abusive builds with the limits of the FOC.

Do you honestly think people won't find MORE strong/abusive builds without that limitation?

Best case scenario, people won't find anything exceptional to abuse and the standard strong builds get an extra bonus TBD.

Worst case scenario, basically all the worst parts of the Bible.

 Ailaros wrote:
In a way, I've got to admire the purity of it.

In this way people who just want to win will be able to migrate towards THE list, while people who want 40k to be a strategy game just might get it as once there is the THE list established, and everyone starts playing it, then you'll finally have a balanced game as, like chess, everyone will be playing the game with the same pieces.

The best part, too, is that it will allow that kind of insanity to spiral off into its own black hole and finally leave the rest of us alone.

If every model on the board is a Queen, you're way closer to playing checkers than you are to playing chess.

Makumba wrote:

Tau and Eldar gain almost no benefit; they can already take enough skimmer tanks and jump monstrous creatures to fill a standard list with almost no padding and their troops and HQs are not a 'tax', but actually so good most players will take them even if they don't have to.

Multiple buffmanders . Not being forced to spend points on a ally troops to get the ++2 baron you need for your seer star. Playing with 2 tides and 2 hammerheads without being forced to take Farsight as ally. It saves a lot of points in general for combo armies .

Multiple buffmanders are not possible because we are limited to only one instance of the buff wargwar

 jasper76 wrote:
If every model on the board is a Queen, you're way closer to playing checkers than you are to playing chess.

Hahah love it. I'd sig it if I did such things.

For me it all comes down to the ‘in-game bonuses’ that Battle-Forged lists get and Unbound don’t. I think we are ignoring this trade-off. I look forward to seeing what 7th brings. If it’s gak, I’ll keep playing 6th.

P.S. Never underestimate the power of massed Necron warriors

jasper76 wrote:If every model on the board is a Queen, you're way closer to playing checkers than you are to playing chess.

I didn't say it would make the game deeper or richer, but people who were just wanting to win or wanting 40k to be a serious strategy game were already making the game shallow to begin with. It's just giving them the power to take things to their logical conclusions, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. It's what people do when given power that's the problem, not the idea of power itself.

So that group of people gets to have a balanced game as they show up with mirror matches of all queens, and everybody else gets to see at an instant who those kinds of people are, and so can avoid them.

I mean, I'm sure they'll call people who refuse to play unforged a bunch of fluff-nazis that aren't following the rules by fraudulently disallowing their perfectly legal lists, but hopefully one look at what they would try to play will circumvent that "conversation" entirely.

DirtyDeeds wrote:

Makumba wrote:

Tau and Eldar gain almost no benefit; they can already take enough skimmer tanks and jump monstrous creatures to fill a standard list with almost no padding and their troops and HQs are not a 'tax', but actually so good most players will take them even if they don't have to.

Multiple buffmanders . Not being forced to spend points on a ally troops to get the ++2 baron you need for your seer star. Playing with 2 tides and 2 hammerheads without being forced to take Farsight as ally. It saves a lot of points in general for combo armies .

Multiple buffmanders are not possible because we are limited to only one instance of the buff wargwar

Maybe, maybe not. We'll need to see how the "Unforged" rules are written..................

And yes, it can easily be abused far more than any current build.

If you unbalance me do I not bleed?

Seriously, if you have an unbalanced situation and you unbalance it further doesn't it regain...balance?

jamesk1973 wrote:
If you unbalance me do I not bleed?

Seriously, if you have an unbalanced situation and you unbalance it further doesn't it regain...balance?

I think it just falls over...

 Ailaros wrote:

jasper76 wrote:If every model on the board is a Queen, you're way closer to playing checkers than you are to playing chess.

So that group of people gets to have a balanced game as they show up with mirror matches of all queens, and everybody else gets to see at an instant who those kinds of people are, and so can avoid them.

Your perspective of the argument is very warped. It's been repeatedly shown that symetrical gameplay is not required for balance, and no side is asking for it.

 Ailaros wrote:

jasper76 wrote:If every model on the board is a Queen, you're way closer to playing checkers than you are to playing chess.

I didn't say it would make the game deeper or richer, but people who were just wanting to win or wanting 40k to be a serious strategy game were already making the game shallow to begin with. It's just giving them the power to take things to their logical conclusions, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. It's what people do when given power that's the problem, not the idea of power itself.

So that group of people gets to have a balanced game as they show up with mirror matches of all queens, and everybody else gets to see at an instant who those kinds of people are, and so can avoid them.

I mean, I'm sure they'll call people who refuse to play unforged a bunch of fluff-nazis that aren't following the rules by fraudulently disallowing their perfectly legal lists, but hopefully one look at what they would try to play will circumvent that "conversation" entirely.

Roger that. We (we being my local gaming group) have been moving more towards custom built FOCs anyway (like "Lets play a game with 1 Unnamed HQ, 2 Troops, and 2 Fast Attacks"), so I don't see this "unbound" business having any real impact on the way we game, except maybe these Psyker Phase rumors.

 jasper76 wrote:

jamesk1973 wrote:
If you unbalance me do I not bleed?

Seriously, if you have an unbalanced situation and you unbalance it further doesn't it regain...balance?

I think it just falls over...

So basically the good hard shove that destroys entire rotting tower of corruption.

 goblinking201 wrote:
Sorry, I might be behind but, what are these "Unforged" lists that you are talking about?

I think that it lets you replace troops with other slots? I was trying to figure that out myself.

The newest WD says that there are two ways to make an army now.
Battle forged: Following a standard FOC and gives you a bonus for doing so (unknown at the time)
Unbound: No FOC, bring what ever you want following the allies matrix for units.

This will let you take an entire squad composed of IC battle brothers from any number of codex available or an army of nothing but fortifications.

 Dylanj94 wrote:

 goblinking201 wrote:
Sorry, I might be behind but, what are these "Unforged" lists that you are talking about?

I think that it lets you replace troops with other slots? I was trying to figure that out myself.

Go to the News and Rumor board, and look for the big 80 page thread. The first post has the rumors for Unobound arimes and a new Psyker Phase...all unconfirmed as far as I know.

no because 99% of peopel will play battle forged...

the people who will play unbound will bethe people who WANT to...


and everyone will still hate and hate and hate, because they have nothing better to do.

I'm imagining armies composed of things like single Obliterators/Crisis Suits/Zoanthropes with a couple scoring units just for good measure.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I'm imagining armies composed of things like single Obliterators/Crisis Suits/Zoanthropes with a couple scoring units just for good measure.

I definitely see this as being common if there are no other limitations. There is just no reason to group those models up, and every reason to keep them separate.

I'm intersted to see what GW thinks will be balancing bonuses for a Battle Forged army to combat Unbound ones though.

I have 6 wraithlords but never really get the chance to use them all. This might let me test out a better elfzilla list that may become a viable option of alot of T8 wounds. 2 wraithknights and 6 wraithlords come out to be 1440 points so it could be interesting. 30 T8 wounds with lots of heavy weapons and with no wraithsight rules I need no warlocks or farseers.

Along side this we have variable turn by turn win conditions which should stand to benefit tac lists over spam, the only thing unbound helps waac players with is asap tabling and most of the time I don't see it happening. As of now we don't have enough info on mission win params and what effect using the WOC actually has.
I think it sounds interesting so im looking forward to it.

An army of all Wave Serpents and Wraithknights.
An army of Heldrakes.
An army of Riptides, led by the SC Riptide.
An army of Screamerstars.
An army of Necron Wraiths.
An army of Flyrants, Tervigons, whatever else.
An army of Nob Bikers.
An army of Grav-Centurions.
An army of Henchman, with no 6 squad limit.
An army of Purifiers, no Crowe tax.
An army of Dreadknights.
An army of Special Characters (awesome though).
An army of Leman Russ Squadrons, Vendettas, and Platoons.
An army of Boyz, with no FOC limit.
Crisis Suits. Crisis Suits everywhere.
Cron Croissant Spam just got bigger. How many Doom Scythes for 1500pts?


The only Codex not effected is Imperial Knights.


Multiple Lords of war? Spamming Superheavies in a regular game? How about 3+ Transcendent C'tan at 1500?