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We all have armies we miss playing. Sometimes, a unit gets removed, a FoC swap invalidates your list, or you find yourself having to play an Unbound List because you want to run a Raptor-heavy Night Lords army. GW has done many different things in the past, in order to allow some degree of flexibility in building your army, whether it was FOC-slot shuffling ('Iron Warriors lose 2 Fast Attack, gain one Heavy Support'), "unlocking" Troops ('Take a Space Marine captain on Bike...'), or adding Formations and unique Detachments.

I propose a simpler idea, called the "3-FOC."

Basically, a CAD has 3 HQ slots, 3 Elite Slots, 3 Troop Slots, 3 FA slots, and 3 Heavy Support slots.

Select *one* of the slot-types. You *must* take 3 units of that type, which do not count against the optional slots.
For example: You can choose to have a Troop focus; your army must take a minimum of 3 Troops, and can take up to 3 additional Troops. Your army can choose to take a minimum of 3 Fast attack, and take up to 3 more Fast Attack. Etc.

Depending on the FoC emphasis you select, your army gets a bonus for *that* FOC-type alone.

-If you select the HQ focus (must take 3 HQs, may take up to 3 additional HQs), your army gains High Command: Your Warlord may *choose* an additional Warlord trait after rolling for the initial trait.
-If you select the Elites focus (must take 3 Elites, may take up to 3 additional Elites), your army gains Special Forces: Elites roll an additional die during leadership checks and may elect to discard one of choice (either lowest or highest).
-Troops: Get Objective Secured.
-If you select the Fast Attack focus, your army gains On Time, On Target: May reroll reserves dice as well as all rolls related to arriving on-table (scatter, mishap, outflank direction).
-If you select the Heavy Support focus, your army gains Big Guns Never Tire: Heavy Support units fire snap-shots at BS 2; they still may not snap-shoot blast/template weaponry.

Within 1850-2000 points, what would *break* 40k as written? Are there army types that would suddenly be playable now ("Da Deffwing", Tau armored interdiction cadres, etc?). What armies would get left behind? ("Alas, poor Chaos, its troops get treated as a tax.")? What are your thoughts in general?

These traits are exceptionally unbalanced between one another. The Heavy Support one would break the game in a lot of ways.

Let me guess, Interceptor Missilesides?

Is there a minimum force you must take? Cause really what you're suggesting sounds a lot like unbound.
My general take on the FOC is that it used to be a way to limit certain high damage/high durability units, especially when combined with 0-1 limits. Certain detachments still do this, but give you bonuses as a trade. However, the game has now gotten to the point that the FOC doesn't matter, because you can either bypass it via formations and multiple detachments or take units in your troops slot that actually outshine your other slots (wave serpents are the best example here). In addition, the raw firepower that can be thrown out makes things that used to be big and scary either inefficient or much less durable. The game now enables you to determine the efficiency of a particular unit and simply take as much as you want, with minimal tax (FMC spam, for example).

What you're suggesting would better be titled "make your own formation". The problem with it is that it fully enables spam with zero tax. I can take up to six dreadknights...and get bonuses for it. One storm raven isn't bad...but I can now fly 6 on with re-rolls to my reserves. A nid player can take 6 flying hive tyrants without even having to resort to allies. As I said before, it's basically unbound.

A Tyranid player can run 5 Flyrants by allying a CAD with Leviathan. Most players running the full 5 didn't get too far in LVO, the winning list having 3. Good units experience diminishing returns too. (A Tau player can run 5 Riptides allying in Farsight/regular Tau already. When has such an army won a tournament as of late?)

Minimum of 3 of the slot-type you select. Incidentally, I realized I missed "The army requires a minimum of one HQ" as a note. (A HQ-focused army would require 3 HQs, not 4. Alternately, one of the HQs can be substituted for a non-superbig LoW character).

Several formations end up with odd setups like "8 elites/6 heavy support", or "14 elites" already.

Cleaning it up some, based on some oversights of the earlier draft:

Instead of it being called "Flexible-FOC" hammer, the army is called "3+3 CAD-hammer." This is because, by, default, you have a maximum of three slots for a given role in the FOC.

From there, you select which role your CAD will focus on. Your CAD may have a HQ Focus, Troop Focus, Elite Focus, Fast Attack Focus, or Heavy Support Focus.

What a "Focus" means, is that you must take 3 units from that FOC-type, which do not count against the 3-slot limit. For example, in a CAD with Elite Focus, you must take a minimum of 3 Elites, and may take up to 3 more Elite slots.

All CADs require a minimum of 1 HQ to be selected. A CAD with a HQ focus requires a minimum of 3 HQs, one of which may be substituted for a non-superheavy Lord of War character; this would not count against the normal LoW allotment. (Of course, whether you take superheavy LoWs is another question altogether, though if you want to be cute and have Gabriel Seth and Dante tag-team...).

Each CAD-type gets its own bonus. Note that if you select a Troop Focus, Fast Attack Focus, or Heavy Support Focus, any Dedicated Transports taken for units of the respective slots will gain the benefits of that Focus (For example, a Razorback taken for a Long Fang squad would benefit from Big Guns Never Tire). Transports taken for Elites don't benefit from Special Forces.

-CADs with a HQ Focus gain High Command: If the CAD is your primary detachment, then your Warlord may choose an additional Warlord trait after rolling for them.
-CADs with a Troops Focus gain Objective Secured for their Troops.
-CADs with an Elites Focus gain Special Forces: Each Elites unit in your army selects two USRs from the list below. No two Elite units in the same CAD may select the same USRs:

Deep Strike, Furious Charge, Hit & Run, Infiltrate, Monster Hunters, Move Through Cover, Precision Strikes/Shots, Preferred Enemy (Everyone!), Rampage, Relentless, Scouts, Stubborn, Stealth, Split Fire, Tank Hunters.

-CADs with a Fast Attack Focus gain On Time, On Target: Fast Attack units may reroll Reserves rolls, to determine table edge, and Deep Strike Scatter.
-CADs with a Heavy Support Focus gain Big Guns Never Tire: All snapshots done by Heavy Support units are resolved at BS 2. Note that any weapons which normally cannot fire as Snap Shots (blasts/templates, among others) are still unavailable despite this rule.

Main changes are that The Elites bonus, rather than being a fairly 'eh' "Modified Leadership Roll", is now akin to the Ogre Maneater "Been There, Done That." It's meant to allow your army to take on more of a character of its own, and allow for "Your Dudes" army customization, like in the olden days when you could give your Terminators special rules and such. The "On Time, On Target", is meant to be solely for Fast Attack units to benefit from the reserves bonuses; the original "everything rerolls" was an editing mistake.

I think the best way to put flexibility in to the F.O.C is to class units by how rare they are in the force, not by 'function'.
I have outlined this in another post.(So I will not repeat it here.)
But I can expand on the idea if you like?

Wouldn't that penalize players that want to run a "rare" army (like a Deathwing/Kult of Speed/etc)? This is very much a "design-by-function" approach.

-Troop-focused armies are meant to attrition and game for objectives.
-Fast-attack is meant to gain the alphastrike/land at the right place/right time.
-Heavy support just wants to blast you away.
-Elites are about using specialist skills to get the job done.
-HQ armies focus around their leader/heroes being all-stars.

There are a fair few edge cases I'm trying to work on of course.

Not really as the rarity of units is set by the HQ you take.(Not the current functional classification.)

For example if you take A HQ of Warboss and retinue on war bikes.(From a Evil Sunz or Kult of Speed list.)
War bikers mobs ,and Trukk boys , could be Common units.

All the units in the current codex are still available.
But depending on what HQ you pick changes the classification and availability of units so you can theme your list .

I was thinking along the lines of having a generic list .(EG vanilla list based on current codex.)And each theme variation having its own list,
Eg For Orks.
Generic 'mixed klan' force.AND
Bad Moon, Blood Axe, Deff Skullz,Evil Sunz, Goffs, Kult Of Speed,and Snake Bite lists.

Done like this we could add back in some of the units that were dropped from the codex books over the years.(As they would only appear in some lists not others.)

I may need to explain that better?

It wouldn't penalise fluffy builds, as they would still be able to use the standard CAD (I assume).

Anyway, some of these proposals could make quite good builds that could break the game in ways you don't imagine as of yet. To counteract this, you should penalise these lists in some way. An example could be, at the end of the battle, if your enemy has wiped out all of your 'focus' units, such as nuked all your HQ units from your HQ focus, your opponent gains double victory points they would usually get for each of those units destroyed.

Want to take 3 large units of centurions at 1500 points? Cool... better make sure they survive though bro, as you are pretty much guaranteed to lose if they don't.

I had some external discussions about edgecases, and the one that got thrown out was:

>Orks auto-infiltrate a Green Tide.

Which is admittedly hilarious, but auto-master of ambush would be worthy of a nerfing/readjustment (Combined units don't count as "one" for deployment bonuses).

The Fast Attack bonus is likewise too...reserve-based. Alternate to On Time/On Target would be:

-Mobile Warfare: Fast Attack units may move D6 in the assault phase instead of charging. Eldar Jetbikes/Jetpack units instead roll an extra D6, dropping the lowest. Zooming Flyers and Swooping Flying Monstrous Creatures must maintain their original facings.

It's an interesting idea that I'd be very willing to try out! I'm sure it's full of potential for abuse, but spamming units isn't terribly difficult as is anyway.

Yeah, all of those benefits seem really unbalanced.

I'm a fan of adding %s like Fantasy. That would reduce spam.

"but my deathwing, kult of speed, etc, etc, etc..."

Percentages were removed from 2nd to 3rd for a reason. No go.

The alternate thought for HQs is "Add +-1 to rolls for HQ pre-game powers, besides warlord traits" (Ex, daemonic gifts, psy powers, Szeras' Biomechanical Augmentation, etc).

The thing is you can off set bonuses by limiting the availablilty of other units, in the more themed lists.

EG a Kult of Speed Ork list has to have A HQ comprised of a Warboss or Big Mek on a warbike, or in a Trukk.
The Core units are Warbike mobs and trukk boy mobs.
Specialized units could be ,Nobs on Warbikes,(0-2) Burna Boys in a Trukk,(0-2) Deff kopters and War buggies .
With Battle wagons as a Rare choice,(These can transport a boys mob.)

Massed mobs of foot slogging infantry , and artillery are not the theme of a K.O.S . so these units are removed from the K.O.S list.(Just an example to illustrate how this could be done.)

However, more accurate costing of units in 40k would help quite a bit .