Lord Damocles wrote:Imperial/Chaos Knights shouldn't be factions in standard 40K (at least without a fundamental re-design on how suerheavies and vehicles generally work mechanically).
a_typical_hero wrote:Knight and tank only armies don't belong into the (standard) game. No exceptions or themed lists for them. There, I said it.
Orkeosaurus wrote:I do respect that position, to be honest I wouldn't allow Knight Titans to exist as their own codex, I think that's absurd. There simply isn't enough to interact with to make the game fun, whether they're powerful or not. I would probably combine them with AdMech or something.
I've seen this sentiment in other threads too. What makes knights such a problem? I can hazard a guess, but I'm not aware of them dominating the tournament scene or anything.
My two favorite archetypes are knights and dwarves, so, when I learned about actually chivalrous warriors doing battle in giant robots, I was all for that idea. The only reason I haven't painted any yet is that I haven't developed my abilities enough yet to not mess them up. Yet it sounds like they are very Not Fun to play against, which would put a real dampener on things.
Orkeosaurus wrote:Ursula Creed can't get 10 Leman Russ tanks to a single battle? Or 30 scout sentinels? Ghazghkull can't surround himself with nothing but nobs? How many monoliths does the Silent King own? Those are all valid warlord options in 40k, people who command millions if not billions of soldiers with equivalent tank and artillery support.
Games of 40k represent relatively elite forces clashing over vital objectives. That's why they're battles of annihilation, that's why space marines and eldar are there at all, that's why important named characters can take to the battlefield. It isn't Necromunda or Gorkamorka or something centered around regular grunts. And it never can be because space marines are the most popular army. They would either need to be completely changed in the fluff to a common trooper or be relegated to a limited "elite slot" choice in a mostly-IG "Imperial" army. Both are a non-starter for GW, obviously.
Ultimately the Space Marine army is itself a sort of "skew" list, into "elites", that was just so ubiquitous that it went without saying. A "troop" tactical marine was always more elite than a stormtrooper or a flashgit or even a dire avenger. And Nazdreg could much more freely send 100 flashgits into a fight than any Imperial commander could send a company of Ultramarines.
I think your description of games of
40k is on point, which helps put some of the other questions into perspective.
Orkeosaurus wrote:No my argument is that a company of only Leman Russes is in no way difficult or unrealistic for Ursula Creed to deploy.
And on an aesthetic level I also think it's perfectly fine. It looks cool on the table, it's a classic tank company like WW2. The problem is neither fluff nor aesthetics, it's the gameplay issue of having an entire army that most of the opponent's models can barely interact with.
But if you tell me there is no gameplay issue when the all-Russ army is painted green, then don't prohibit me from playing an all-Russ army painted tan. Or tell me that I can only play an all-Russ army if Sergeant Tankius from the Cadian 123rd Armored Company is leading it. That's what the 4e and 5e FoC amounted to in reality.
This is closely linked to the previous quote, which is why I included both, and I think it's a fair point: In a clash of elite forces, Ursula Creed, Roboute Guilliman, the Lord Solar, the Silent King, Belisarius Cawl, or whoever else can probably field whatever they want. If any of those people are bothering to personally take to the field, they are bringing their choice of units. At least canonically. There's that whole game-balance thing.
It seems to me that
GW is flirting with the idea of
FOCs again what with detachments having Force Dispositions that map onto the previous core missions, Battleline units, the already existing Rule of Three, the spam tax, and even the modest return of wargear points.
FOCs may not be their preferred or intended solution, but they've recognized some sort of problem and are looking to fix it. From what I've read in this discussion so far, there are lots of issues with previous implementations (When is there not a lot of issues with something?) including the proliferation of special
FOCs that broke the system, the Rule of Three not doing anything for faction that have multiple units that fit the same role, and some of the restrictions feeling arbitrary.
What if there was one
FOC per force disposition (easy and consistent across factions yet gives each force disposition its own flavor) or one per detachment (more nuanced, more fluffy, individual detachments could be balanced)?
Now... What if you could take more than your allotted number of X group - not Rule of Three unit but group - by paying a percentage tax on all the units of that group?
And this applied across the board so that everyone could choose to break the
FOC for their fluffy bike squadron or tank company or whatever but they would have to pay for it?
The idea being that, if the
FOCs represent balanced forces designed to play against each other, the
FOCs establish the baseline for that force disposition / detachment, so they are "at cost." However, if you
really want to color outside the lines, you can, but, since skew lists become increasingly difficult for other armies to handle, the lists are smaller the more that they are skewed to make them easier to handle.
If you want a thematic justification for it, sure, Ursula Creed can bring 10 Leman Russes into battle. She can pull three from this local depot and three from that local depot pretty easily. The next three have to come from that depot waaay over there, and, even though she is Ursula Creed and everyone does what she says, she can't overcome the logistics of moving those tanks that distance. And they actually had to reroute an orbital drop to get the tenth one, which was a real nightmare and got some bureaucrat at the Munitorum shot.
So it was expensive, and you didn't get as many tanks as you would have infantry for the same amount of logistics. But, if you really, really want to deploy nothing but tanks, you can.
