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A lot of people have attempted to balance the game using the 'highlander' format when selecting armies, however this hasn't really worked fantastically due to people taking deathstars, and large units that lots of armies can't reliably deal with. So an extra addition could be to add a points limit to individual units. For example a 260 points limit per unit.

This stops certain armies from pouring all their points into one really good unit while playing with the highlander format. Obviously this is far from a perfect fix, but it might help. This also prevents people from using units such as wraithknights and imperial knights, which I'm not a huge fan of, so changing points values per social circle may be a wise choice.

An extended version of this could be to have unit point value limits in certain force organisation slots, such as Fast attack being 150 points limit, and troops being 200 point limit, and Lords of war only taking up to 25% of your total points value. Personally this gets a bit complex for me, but some others may enjoy it.

Could you explain what a "Highlander" Game is for those of us who have never been involved in one.

A highlander game is where you can only take one type of unit in your army, you can't duplicate it. For example, you can only have one squad of terminators, not two, and only one hive tyrant per army, or only one squad of horrors per army. There are exceptions, if you use every type of unit in one type of force org slot, then you can repeat, eg necrons with warriors and immortals. But even then you can only take one ghost ark and one night scythe per army.

The general idea is to introduce some variety into armies, and to attempt to balance armies that generally spam, eg eldar jetbike spam

This looks like how most of my group builds list by default.

I am sure there is a way to exploit highlander rules.

 Filch wrote:
I am sure there is a way to exploit highlander rules.

There will always be a way.

And it still doesn't address the biggest problem with Highlander, it exacerbates codex imbalances. Eldar and Necron for example have phenomenal choices in most slots, whereas armies like DA have lots of terrible choices.

It also requires a CAD, limits a lot of the new options and does little to balance the game.

Highlander only works when codices are balanced, and certain codices are vastly superior in most slots.

I really dont know at the moment.

The best I can think of is spam Space Marine equivalent Codex: Space Wolves, Blood Angles, Dark Angles, Black Templars, Grey Knights etc...To get more of what ever but the CAD taxes are just not worth it.


Is there restriction to formations?

While highlander isn't a fix to all problems, it's not a bad way to help mitigate bad matchups. With codices that are relatively well balanced against one another, it helps make sure no one spams their best unit(s), and this generally has the added consequence of keeping one player from having a "lopsided" list. dark eldar, for instance, have trouble spamming transports thus forcing them to use a mix of mounted and unmounted units. I usually like this as it leads to a better mix of units and less rock-paper-scissors games.

This can even be helpful against books (such as eldar) with many good options. Sure, the eldar guy isn't going to be taking any bad units, but he's only going to betaking one squad of scatterbikes and one wraith knight max.

Adding in a restriction such as the OP's is an interesting idea to mitigate those problems further. The eldar player would, for instance, be unable to field a wraith knight or take an especially large scatter bike squad. It would cap the size of a mounted squad of warlocks and their farseer buddy pretty severely too. Assuming the cap is 270ish points, that's what? maybe 2 or 3 bike 'locks?

How would you handle units that have a base cost higher than whatever your points cut off is? Lots of gargantuans and knights would be unfieldable, though that's not necessarily a problem depending on what kind of game you want to enforce.

Until the introduction of the 7th Edition "CAD system our group used:
HQ: 1-2
Troops: 2-6 [Min 1 per 500 points]
Elite: 1-3
FA: 1-3
Heavy: 1-3
That worked restively well. It kept thing mostly balanced.
Now we are not sure how to work this system out.

 Anpu42 wrote:
This looks like how most of my group builds list by default.

That sounds like a really boring way to play the game. Do you really refuse to build themed lists with multiple copies of important units?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:
This looks like how most of my group builds list by default.

That sounds like a really boring way to play the game. Do you really refuse to build themed lists with multiple copies of important units?

Well I was the only one with a lot of models so most of the Armies were variations on a theme. For example when we played 2,000 point games I knew what 1,200-1,300 points of my army was usually the same [Wolf Scouts, Grey Hunters x3, Blood Claws, Land Speeder Squadron and Long Fangs] Then the rest was different HQs, Vehicles, Elate Units and such. Most everyone else was the same way. We also had 4+ armies each to play with the each game was different.

We did find a big advantage to this way of List Building/Playing, I don't have spend time looking up rules for half my army now because I know what each one can do both rules wise and on the table top.

 Anpu42 wrote:
Well I was the only one with a lot of models so most of the Armies were variations on a theme. For example when we played 2,000 point games I knew what 1,200-1,300 points of my army was usually the same [Wolf Scouts, Grey Hunters x3, Blood Claws, Land Speeder Squadron and Long Fangs] Then the rest was different HQs, Vehicles, Elate Units and such. Most everyone else was the same way. We also had 4+ armies each to play with the each game was different.

But what I mean is that, for example, you can't do a fluffy mechanized IG army under highlander rules. You need to be able to take multiple Chimeras and LRBTs. Same thing with a fluffy Farsight army that uses lots of crisis suits, a fluffy Deathwing army that uses lots of terminators, etc. Did your group really not mind losing lists like those?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:
Well I was the only one with a lot of models so most of the Armies were variations on a theme. For example when we played 2,000 point games I knew what 1,200-1,300 points of my army was usually the same [Wolf Scouts, Grey Hunters x3, Blood Claws, Land Speeder Squadron and Long Fangs] Then the rest was different HQs, Vehicles, Elate Units and such. Most everyone else was the same way. We also had 4+ armies each to play with the each game was different.

But what I mean is that, for example, you can't do a fluffy mechanized IG army under highlander rules. You need to be able to take multiple Chimeras and LRBTs. Same thing with a fluffy Farsight army that uses lots of crisis suits, a fluffy Deathwing army that uses lots of terminators, etc. Did your group really not mind losing lists like those?

This is one of my few criticisms of the highlander way of doing things. That said, highlander is mostly seen (around here at least) as a way of reigning in certain forms of very powerful armies. In friendly games, you can generally negotiate things with your opponents in advance and thus come up with lists that are well matched for each other without resorting to something like the highlander system. I like highlander as a way of avoiding spammy lists and encouraging relatively well-rounded lists.

You just run into things like tyranids that don't have a ton of great options outside of multiple flyrants.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:
Well I was the only one with a lot of models so most of the Armies were variations on a theme. For example when we played 2,000 point games I knew what 1,200-1,300 points of my army was usually the same [Wolf Scouts, Grey Hunters x3, Blood Claws, Land Speeder Squadron and Long Fangs] Then the rest was different HQs, Vehicles, Elate Units and such. Most everyone else was the same way. We also had 4+ armies each to play with the each game was different.

But what I mean is that, for example, you can't do a fluffy mechanized IG army under highlander rules. You need to be able to take multiple Chimeras and LRBTs. Same thing with a fluffy Farsight army that uses lots of crisis suits, a fluffy Deathwing army that uses lots of terminators, etc. Did your group really not mind losing lists like those?

That is just our Default Setting so to speak. We have games where it is just "Bring and Battle" that we through that type of list out the window. We just plan that in advance.
We also had no one have an issue with it.

7th changed all of that though. My default now is the Champions of Fenris list that I am still working out involving Arjac's Shield Brothers and Power Armored Wolf Guard in a Stormwolf with Ragnar.

We are still working out List Building in 7th and what will be our new Default Builds.

As far as the Highlander Builds, we may look at it and see if we want to give it a try.