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Hi guys, o probably sound like a complete idiot but what does sir mean when peopeless say that your army is unbound. I'm new to this hobby if you hadn't guessed

It means they're using an army composed entirely of the most broken units in the codex.

When you say broken does that just mean crap

There are two kinds of armies:

Battle-forged armies are armies are composed of detachments. This can be from the codexes, or the core rulebook.

Unbound armies are armies that are not all composed of detachments.

Finegas wrote:
When you say broken does that just mean crap

In 40k everything is either crap or too powerful. So yes Broken can mean crap or over powered.

In all seriousness though unbound is just an army with no composition. So it does not need to use formations or 1 HQ 2 Troops to stay bound. So unbound could be an army of 36 Space Marine captains for example.

An unbound army is one that at least one model does not fit into a detachment (think the kind like 1 hq/2 troop) or a formation (a grouping of specific units), meaning that you basically get to bring whatever you want without restrictions besides unique items.

Hope that clears it up.

Unbound armies are not *always* unreasonable armies to play, though. If you're building a scenario and you want to enact a particular situation, ignoring the Force Org charts and formations might just make for a better game.

The real question is, *why* the army isn't compliant with detachments.

Unbound Armies are simply those that do not use Detachments, allowing the Player to simply take whatever Units they desire up to the agreed point limit.

There is a lot of unjustified backlash against Unbound Detachments, which is why the first response here was 'they are broken' without actually explaining why. This is due to a concept that many title the 'troop tax,' a requirement to take Units to fill specific Battlefield Roles dictated by the Force Organization Chart found within each Detachment. When 7th was first released there was only two Detachments listed and both have really minor Command Benefits, which led many Players to conclude that all Unbound Armies where simply trying to get around this 'Troop Tax.' Personally, I feel this mentality was justified at the time as a few hundred points spent on 'good Units' that would otherwise be spent on Troops was a far better then any Command Benefit.

Now that we have Detachments with some very over-powered Command Benefits, Unbound Armies are forfeiting something useful in order to get around that 'Troop Tax.'

I'm actually fine with someone playing unbound just to waive troop tax. I think the loss of obsec and/or formation bonuses is significant. I'm okay, too, with unbound to fulfill some kind of weirdly modeled army, like Orks cannibalizing a baneblade or Imperial Knight. I mean, it can be cool and fun.

On the other hand, I'm not ok with a grand mix-and-match that just cherry picks the best of each faction: need a flyer? flyrants! Need a titan? Wraithknight! Mobility? Scatterbike! Deathstar? DraigoCents! Kill squad? Assassins!

Not only is it horribly unbalanced, but it's terribly unfluffy. Plus, you can really screw the game by taking a CAD for ObSec with scatterbikes, and then **everything else** unbound 'for the win'.

It's as bad as taking an Eldar CAD and then a Necron Decurion and playing CTA.

Sorry, /rant off

JinxDragon wrote:
Unbound Armies are simply those that do not use Detachments, allowing the Player to simply take whatever Units they desire up to the agreed point limit.

There is a lot of unjustified backlash against Unbound Detachments, which is why the first response here was 'they are broken' without actually explaining why. This is due to a concept that many title the 'troop tax,' a requirement to take Units to fill specific Battlefield Roles dictated by the Force Organization Chart found within each Detachment. When 7th was first released there was only two Detachments listed and both have really minor Command Benefits, which led many Players to conclude that all Unbound Armies where simply trying to get around this 'Troop Tax.' Personally, I feel this mentality was justified at the time as a few hundred points spent on 'good Units' that would otherwise be spent on Troops was a far better then any Command Benefit.

Now that we have Detachments with some very over-powered Command Benefits, Unbound Armies are forfeiting something useful in order to get around that 'Troop Tax.'

One of the biggest problems with unbound is HQ and MSU spam. Spamming tons of single model units (like single model crisis suit spam) would make it incredibly frustrating to play where you have to target each model individually. Having structure limits that kind of behavior and keeps it from being problematic. There is nothing wrong with taking a bunch of single crisis suit units because you quickly run out of FOC slots but with unbound you can just spam them.

Take 30 jokearos with the lascannon rings.

Given that the following is from the Rulebook, Opponents saturating their Army with a multiples of a single powerful Model or Unit was never a problem to begin with:

Before any game, players must agree how they are going to select their armies, and if any restrictions apply to the number and type of models they can use.
- Choosing your Army

You can take 5 Wraithknights in a battle-forged army right?

Players simply don't like Unbound because it makes it harder to rationalize away their WAAC tendencies as if GW intended it.

Unbound is fine, there's not a single thing wrong or unfair about an Unbound army you can't directly attribute to the player who created it.

Yoyoyo wrote:
You can take 5 Wraithknights in a battle-forged army right?

Using the formation structure in the Codex:CWE, yes.
In a Combined Arms Detachment (1HQ & 2Troop and up) can only take 1, being a LoW.
Or, do both. CAD + Eldar formations.

Unbound means you lose Objective Secured and a reroll for the warlord trait? You get both of these with the CAD, which can be handy.