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I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical when I saw the announcement of the rules of unbound army lists, but the more I think about it, the less I see the problem with it really.

The general response is that everyone and their mom will now field entire armies with nothing but Helldrakes, Riptides, etc. But those kinds of armies would be terrible to play with, the helldrake can't deny any obectives and if you're facing Land Raiders/TEQ's then you're out of luck. The Riptide itself is quite underwhelming when you look at it by itself, what makes it scary isn't only its profile/wargear, but it's the buffs that markerlights provide combined with acces to Divination(allies) and/or Buffmanders, making an entire army of Riptides only will be a really lackluster army, and one would be forced to buy markerlight options and the buffmanders, and what about some broadsides? XV:8's? The only thing that would look different would be the removal of "troop tax". So if your army kindda' looks like the one you where running before, but with the removal of troops, then the inabilty to score + the bonuses your oponnent gets for a battleforged army does look like a balancing factor, in my eyes at least.

But what about Wave Serpents? Allready spammable by a ton.
SM Bikes? Spammable.
The infamous deathstars of doom, with 2++ rerolls? Restricted by unique items/characters.
Crossaint Airforce? Because fielding more than 9 fliers, legally, isn't enough?

Personally, I believe that unbound can fix a lot issues some codices have, specially with individual units. Take the Stalker/Hunter from the SM codex, they aren't a terrible unit and their price cost i on the fair side, however, what makes it terrible and next to unfielded is the fact that it sits in the heavy slot, it competes with Centurions, Thunderfire Cannons, Stormraven Gunships, Devastators (depending on chapter) and even the Vindicator (which is usually fielded in pairs, so that alone is 2/3 slots occupied).
Tyranids is also a stellar example of how much better they would play with unbound rules. Rather than taking 1 or 2 groups of Venomthropes of 2, why not take 2 or 4 individual Venomthropes, so your opponent is forced to focus on 4 different targets, and now you will never, ever, need to have anything but mulltiple single Zoanthrope groups. Honestly, would you rather pay 15£ for DLC that allows you to ignore FOC, with a specific group of units, or would you rather legally field the army you want to, without saying "I'm using a dataslate, is that okay with you?".
Using the Tyranid example with taking 3x1 Zoanthropes and 3x1 Venomthropes or even the example of talking a Stalker/Hunter on top of the other choices that sits in the heavy slot, definitely gives a good advantage but it is nowhere near gamebreaking and both examples costs the bonuses of being battleforged, which seems like a fair deal to me.

But what about our precious balance of our beloved advanced tactical chess game?
What balance? Since I started as a scrub back in 3rd, I've never EVER seen the slightest shred of balance in this game, I have problems figuring out why there are so many individuals in the dakkadakka forums who talks about a lost and forgotten time where some sacred and beloved edition had the perfect balance. If my friend (and some various forum posters) is to be believed, it was entierely possible to table your opponent on your first turns in 2nd edition, due to insane game mechanics (virus bomb/orbital bombardment, I think?). In 3rd edition, I saw Blood Angels units with lightning claws perform turn 1 charges with impunity, due to insanely fast vehicles and then proceded to just charge every other unit, due to sweeping advance. In 4th, I had to witness my Land Raider die in first turn, several times, only to use several futile attempts on trying to kill an immortal freaking skimmer, supposedly made of paper. In 5th, I had to witness Matt Ward Knights, leafblower IG lists, and BA razorback spam, the amount of spam in 5th edition was absurd.

So yeah, I honestly believe that the unbound/forged armies will affect the game in a more positive way rather than making the skies fall.

Yeah, I agree with you, I can finally start that mechanicum army I have always wanted to do, finally I can have that Warhound Scout Maniple armed with turbolasers I have always wanted, who needs to capture/deny objectives, when I can just delete 4 units per turn?

I'll let you know after I get the new rulebook.

 Krellnus wrote:
Yeah, I agree with you, I can finally start that mechanicum army I have always wanted to do, finally I can have that Warhound Scout Maniple armed with turbolasers I have always wanted, who needs to capture/deny objectives, when I can just delete 4 units per turn?

Hardly a constuctive post, and I'm pretty sure you are talking about fielding a titan wich is, technically speaking, 100% legal in current edition with the lord of war rules. Unbound doesn't change that, so perhaps you are misunderstanding the concept of unbound/battleforged lists?

Unbound should be ok but battle brothers should be much better. That should be the theory behind it.

Zewrath wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:
Yeah, I agree with you, I can finally start that mechanicum army I have always wanted to do, finally I can have that Warhound Scout Maniple armed with turbolasers I have always wanted, who needs to capture/deny objectives, when I can just delete 4 units per turn?

Hardly a constuctive post, and I'm pretty sure you are talking about fielding a titan wich is, technically speaking, 100% legal in current edition with the lord of war rules. Unbound doesn't change that, so perhaps you are misunderstanding the concept of unbound/battleforged lists?

I'm not talking about fielding a titan, I am talking about fielding multiple titans (maniple is the term for a group of human titans) armed with destroyer weapons, whilst simultaneuously mocking all this talk of unbound lists being good for 'fluffy' lists by showing that one of the most OP lists of them all will also be one of the fluffiest (since warhounds scout ahead of the main advance in pairs.

 Krellnus wrote:

Zewrath wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:
Yeah, I agree with you, I can finally start that mechanicum army I have always wanted to do, finally I can have that Warhound Scout Maniple armed with turbolasers I have always wanted, who needs to capture/deny objectives, when I can just delete 4 units per turn?

Hardly a constuctive post, and I'm pretty sure you are talking about fielding a titan wich is, technically speaking, 100% legal in current edition with the lord of war rules. Unbound doesn't change that, so perhaps you are misunderstanding the concept of unbound/battleforged lists?

I'm not talking about fielding a titan, I am talking about fielding multiple titans (maniple is the term for a group of human titans) armed with destroyer weapons, whilst simultaneuously mocking all this talk of unbound lists being good for 'fluffy' lists by showing that one of the most OP lists of them all will also be one of the fluffiest (since warhounds scout ahead of the main advance in pairs.

and if your playing 2k atm you can take 2 of them aswell.

its nothing special or new since escalation, and i can tell you now come 7th your 2 warhounds wont be that much of a threat... esp in a 1500 game

1. I take it you have seen the rules then?

2. If nothing else changes, the problem won't be 10 Heldrakes and a squad of cultists to round off the points. The problem will be 5 Heldrakes, or 10 Annihilation Barges, or whatever, plus something that makes the army good, not just the king of one-trick ponies.

i reckon if we see a player drop 5+ heldrakes you will see it happen once, they will lose and get a better list. im almost tempted to try out 1850 JUST in termies.... cos that can withstand the drakes waaaay better.... and odds on kill the drakes once they fly over..

7th is rumoured to take StrD down some. as it should be if its allowed in every list, then its just bigger deathstars, and it will be the same people who run them now running them then, i dont see too many people racing out to buy the greatest deathstar type army just because. itll be those FOTM/TFG people who do it already....

 Krellnus wrote:
Yeah, I agree with you, I can finally start that mechanicum army I have always wanted to do, finally I can have that Warhound Scout Maniple armed with turbolasers I have always wanted, who needs to capture/deny objectives, when I can just delete 4 units per turn?

more or less the response i was formulating.

titanhammer awaaaaaaay

 ausYenLoWang wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:

Zewrath wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:
Yeah, I agree with you, I can finally start that mechanicum army I have always wanted to do, finally I can have that Warhound Scout Maniple armed with turbolasers I have always wanted, who needs to capture/deny objectives, when I can just delete 4 units per turn?

Hardly a constuctive post, and I'm pretty sure you are talking about fielding a titan wich is, technically speaking, 100% legal in current edition with the lord of war rules. Unbound doesn't change that, so perhaps you are misunderstanding the concept of unbound/battleforged lists?

I'm not talking about fielding a titan, I am talking about fielding multiple titans (maniple is the term for a group of human titans) armed with destroyer weapons, whilst simultaneuously mocking all this talk of unbound lists being good for 'fluffy' lists by showing that one of the most OP lists of them all will also be one of the fluffiest (since warhounds scout ahead of the main advance in pairs.

and if your playing 2k atm you can take 2 of them aswell.

its nothing special or new since escalation, and i can tell you now come 7th your 2 warhounds wont be that much of a threat... esp in a 1500 game

Yeah but 2 at 1500 is quite a different beast.

You could just go to ground on objectives right? :^)
Those guardsmen will hold on for those 5-7 turns somehow. So moneyhammer is perfectly balanced with unbound!

D-weapons ignore all ways of preventing death.

Except pure tenacity, which is what gives a guardsman their armour save in the first place!

Deep striking meltapods will laugh at warhounds, specially if you are running multiple of them and don't buy anything that can be used to bubblewrap your titans.

Besides, now we are talking about fielding titans in non apoc games and the balance issues of D-weapons. I'm quite willing to bet that more people would accept unbound lists, rather than lists with undercosted titans because a lot of people don't want to play with apoc units in "normal" games.

And then you come across:
15 anni barges
3 nightscythes with 5 warriors and 2 stormteks in each (don't need the overlord tax for 2 royal courts if 'unbound' right?)
None of which require buffing and can take out anything the opponent has with an average of 88 st7 hits and 24 haywire shots. Not including the barges underslung guns and the warriors weapons.
Solves the scoring issue with the nightscythes rules too.
1995pts.

The problem Unbound creates is that players who want to win will gravitate towards the lists that optimizes their chances of winning. We have to assume Unbound armies of any kind are allowed to win somehow.

The other assumption is that Forged lists will have enough benefits to make their lists competitive against Unbound lists in some way. Your average Unbound list and Forged lists should cancel each other out.

Unfortunately, GW will not take into account what a maximized Unbound list is capable of. This is the thing I fear. 2 or 3 archetypes for Unbound lists will be out of the purview of what GW foresaw and make it really difficult for other armies to beat unless you use those same armies, assuming skill and luck are not too terribly different between opponents.

Poly Ranger wrote:
And then you come across:
15 anni barges
3 nightscythes with 5 warriors and 2 stormteks in each (don't need the overlord tax for 2 royal courts if 'unbound' right?)
None of which require buffing and can take out anything the opponent has with an average of 88 st7 hits and 24 haywire shots. Not including the barges underslung guns and the warriors weapons.
Solves the scoring issue with the nightscythes rules too.
1995pts.

Have people of this community even read the leaked rules? You still have to respect certain restrictions, I can't make an army of 10 SM command squads if I have 0 captains/librarians/chaplains. Overlords are still needed to unlock royal courts.

I can legally field broadsides that pumps out 120 S7/S5 TL shots every turn, and still have points for Riptides, buffmanders and scoring troops, Wave Serpents can get a potential of 48-56 TL S7 ignore cover with impunity.
Dark Eldar can also legally blow up over 200+ poison shots, while still having all their 3/3 heavy slots filled with dark lance spam.

I am fairly certain that while the FOC will be ignorable, The detachment rules will remain(modified of course).

That means we are likely to still have 1 primary Detachment as your core army, then 1 Allied detachment; so no cherry picking through 3 or more codices(other than Inquisition). This would make Formations still a viable option, and considering next week will see the release of 3 more formations...

LoW will probably be a Hard 1/Detachment, same with Fortifications. This way they do not invalidate Escalation and Stronghold assault, whom are supposed to still be valid books

I'm ready for the armies of Lone Wolves for Days!!

"Sir, there's only 40-something marines out there but we can't shoot more than one at a time!"

 Accolade wrote:
I'm ready for the armies of Lone Wolves for Days!!

"Sir, there's only 40-something marines out there but we can't shoot more than one at a time!"

Hahaha! That would actually be hillarious! Not only will the opponent have to shoot 1 at a time, but you will gain 1 VP for every unit lost! Would be fun to suicide 39/40 of them and have the last one out of LOS, and have 39 VP's at the end of the game.

Zewrath wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
And then you come across:
15 anni barges
3 nightscythes with 5 warriors and 2 stormteks in each (don't need the overlord tax for 2 royal courts if 'unbound' right?)
None of which require buffing and can take out anything the opponent has with an average of 88 st7 hits and 24 haywire shots. Not including the barges underslung guns and the warriors weapons.
Solves the scoring issue with the nightscythes rules too.
1995pts.

Have people of this community even read the leaked rules? You still have to respect certain restrictions, I can't make an army of 10 SM command squads if I have 0 captains/librarians/chaplains. Overlords are still needed to unlock royal courts.

I can legally field broadsides that pumps out 120 S7/S5 TL shots every turn, and still have points for Riptides, buffmanders and scoring troops, Wave Serpents can get a potential of 48-56 TL S7 ignore cover with impunity.
Dark Eldar can also legally blow up over 200+ poison shots, while still having all their 3/3 heavy slots filled with dark lance spam.

No I haven't. Just read the posts. And applied the literal definition of 'unbound'. Maybe you can't have royal courts without overlords, but my point still stands that you can spam ridiculously undercosted units that don't need buffs whilst still being able to score.

Poly Ranger wrote:

Zewrath wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
And then you come across:
15 anni barges
3 nightscythes with 5 warriors and 2 stormteks in each (don't need the overlord tax for 2 royal courts if 'unbound' right?)
None of which require buffing and can take out anything the opponent has with an average of 88 st7 hits and 24 haywire shots. Not including the barges underslung guns and the warriors weapons.
Solves the scoring issue with the nightscythes rules too.
1995pts.

Have people of this community even read the leaked rules? You still have to respect certain restrictions, I can't make an army of 10 SM command squads if I have 0 captains/librarians/chaplains. Overlords are still needed to unlock royal courts.

I can legally field broadsides that pumps out 120 S7/S5 TL shots every turn, and still have points for Riptides, buffmanders and scoring troops, Wave Serpents can get a potential of 48-56 TL S7 ignore cover with impunity.
Dark Eldar can also legally blow up over 200+ poison shots, while still having all their 3/3 heavy slots filled with dark lance spam.

No I haven't. Just read the posts. And applied the literal definition of 'unbound'. Maybe you can't have royal courts without overlords, but my point still stands that you can spam ridiculously undercosted units that don't need buffs whilst still being able to score.

May I ask how that is anything different from the spams we already see, legally? (Like the ones I've mention in my examples above).
Besides, your mentioned list still has very big difficulties in putting a scratch in the dominant deathstar builds that you can still 100% still legally field.

This whole thread hinges on speculation of the Unbound rules so I don't think there is much of a need to worry about what lists exactly will be playable and which ones won't.

EDIT: Wait wait, I think I've misinterpreted what is going on in the News&Rumors for 7th Edition. Carry on, nothing to see here.

The way I see it and this is just my opinion, unbound can either make fluffy games more fluffy and competitive ones more competitive.
Without an FOC, you can say, "I'd like to take an entire army of Dreadnoughts just cause, why not."
On the other hand, if tournaments allow unbound lists, this may make it slightly more balanced in some cases (out Wave-Serpent someone) or it can make it even worse (TWO Screamerstars)

A match doesn't become more competitive because you brought more of the same. A truly competitive match is competitive when it's your personal skill that decides the match, not your wallet. Unbound is the exact opposite of a competitive match.

 Sigvatr wrote:
A match doesn't become more competitive because you brought more of the same. A truly competitive match is competitive when it's your personal skill that decides the match, not your wallet. Unbound is the exact opposite of a competitive match.

Unbound or not, 40K is already in the situation where player skill is largely irrelevant when certain army lists are involved.

Besides, Unbound doesn't bother me. The kind of person who would field the aforementioned examples of 10 anni barges, heldrakes, riptides, etc., is the kind of person I wouldn't be playing against anyway, Unbound or not. What Unbound means for me is that now I can play my all Genestealer army without paying the HQ tax (although, honestly, I probably will still use Deathleaper as my HQ). .

There are things I'd love to see in a game. Like an army of all dreds. I would like to see rules for it rather than just "If it's in your collection it's good to go."

Now that I got it in my head I think I'd love to play an all dred list. A bunch of ancient warriors clinging to life with technology as the only means of keeping them relevant and doing the only thing they're good at, fighting. I'll call it 'The Expendables.'

Unbound......simply will highlight the type of gaming group you have. If that consists of a high level of d-baggery already, it will remain so. Otherwise, I don't think it will make much difference to the game in general, it's not really well balanced currently anyway.

I will now be building all Skyblight swarm lists.

I will call it rats with wings.