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Since Spam is a constant complaint and generally makes a few of the kits utterly useless without buying bitz, what do you think if there was a Highlander rule instigated? :

- You may not have more than 1 copy of any unit. Compulsory choices do not count towards this limitation.
- You may not have two models take exactly the same options (but if they have no options, or are forced to all take the same option or no options, they are free to be identical).

Do you think this will cut down on some of the "Cheese" floating around the net? Probably won't do jack for stuff like Scatbikes though.

EDIT: I've changed it to:

- No two units within the same army may be identically equipped, although duplicates of the base units are allowed.

Awful rule. For every 'cheese' build it cuts, it cuts another perfectly fluffy list. Stop viewing spam as a bad thing and accept that many people enjoy the symmetry of a list with multiples of a few units.

If you want to fix broken units and/or combos, fix those things specifically. Don't stifle other players desire to build lists a certain way they like.

While this stops Scatbikes, this destroys Orks and KDK

I did a highlander event once and it was a lot of fun. The only thing you could take more than one of was troops after you took all the options. For orks I took boys and some gretchin. I was allowed the green tide because I had some gretchin in a CAD and it did really well. Since orks have great troops it actually worked really well.

As a Chaos player, I hate Highlander style games with a passion, as the main reason I picked up Chaos all those years ago was because I loved the idea of mono-God armies.

My Tzeentch Daemons would become completely unplayable in any kind of Highlander style game, as I'd be too limited in my HQ's (only 1 Tzherald? Really, I thought it was Malefic that was the problem with Clown Car?!)

While I typically only use a single unit of Screamers, I have 18 Flamers! (note: I had & used 9-18 Flamers right from the early days of the original Codex: Daemons, so, well before the WD stupidity, at which point, I was forced to nearly retire my entire army due to all the hate & cries of TFG/WaaC's!)
Under Highlander, my favourite unit - the one that helped turn me from a simple-minded Khornate brute into a true Tzeentchian, is beaten senseless by the nerf bat for literally no reason.

Highlander may be 'fun' for some armies, but for Chaos, it's a travesty as it simply removes almost all what little really 'fluffy' lists we have left to us.

Very bad idea mate. I want to have more than 1 guardsmen squad with flamers....

What if the first point was removed, but the second point stays (and thus no two models can be equipped the same in the entire army unless they're forced to do so)?

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
What if the first point was removed, but the second point stays (and thus no two models can be equipped the same in the entire army unless they're forced to do so)?

Nope, still a bad idea.

First of all, what are you trying to accomplish? If you're trying to stop spam, then stop. Spam is not inherently bad nor should be limited. Plenty of fluffy armies are required to 'spam' certain units. If you're trying to balance the game in any way, then this is one of the worst possible ways you can go about doing it. The armies that are already weak will suffer significantly more than the armies that are already good. Eldar, Tau, Daemons, Necrons and Marines all have a lot of good units to choose from in a highlander format. Orks, BA, Guard, CSM and Nids all rely on a small handful of decent units in a codex otherwise swamped with gak. Highlander will only make this worse.

Finally, if you're trying to make people bring 'fluffy' armies, limiting them like this is quite possibly the least fluffy thing you can do.

As a special event game every so often, Highlander can be fun to mix things up. But as any sort of rule for local play, repeat tourneys, and leagues, I think its awful. It doesn't improve balance, it doesn't make the game fluffier, and it stops people from playing what they'd want to play.

This is to cut down on min/maxing and to actually make some of the weaker units more viable. A lot of the reason why a unit isn't viewed as "good" is because "Why would I take it when I can take the broken unit instead?". Or "Why should I try this wargear when I can buy 10 copies of the other one that's clearly better?". Instigating Highlander means another layer of complexity is now in the game, where people have to actually select sub-par equipment because they have no alternatives.

Finally, you are viewing the changes with exactly 1 step in mind. Note that this restriction applies to both sides. A lot of the meta is not only based on your own unit selections, but also based on enemy selections. Many of your complains are aimed because your own army composition will be tossed to gak due to this, but so will the enemy's army composition. This changes up the dynamic and the core ideas of army building; now that a lot of units can no longer be spammed, buying many copies of a single weapon that reliably deals with a single type of unit effectively is no longer a viable strategy.

With that said, might I offer a third revision?

- No two units within the same army may be identically equipped, although duplicates of the base units are allowed.

Also I'd tone back the attitude in your posts Blacksails. They're starting (just starting, not actually becoming them yet) to verge on personal attacks against me and while I know you feel strongly about it, there's no need to get insulting. A suggestion is a suggestion, you don't need to tell me to "live with it" repeatedly.

I fail to see how my posts are verging anywhere near personal attacks. Criticizing your idea is very different than insulting you, and I also never told you to 'live with it'. If you require any clarification about what I said, feel free to ask.

That said, the issue remains that the already powerful codices remains even more powerful because they have more solid choices than the garbage tier codices that rely on one or two good units.

This doesn't fix any balance issues. If you want to fix balance issues, address the issues themselves. Just apply this to a bad codex like Nids that depend on one or two units, then apply this a good codex like Eldar that have several good units in all force org charts and better formations to boot.

It's just not a good idea if you're aiming to fix any issues. It's a fun novelty event, sure, but it doesn't fix anything in the game.

My problem with this is that it makes Tyranids virtually impossible to play.

HQ - Only competitive choice is the Dakka Flyrant. Can only have 1.
Troops - Warriors need to be decked for CC or ranged, however, I can no longer do this (as each model must be equipped differently). Hormgaunts, Genestealers and Rippers are already pretty much useless. This does nothing to fix them. Termagants have 5 different weapon options so I can only field 5? out of a minimum 10. Due to the same rule that affects Warriors.

I mean I guess I could play Unbound and just go straight up Nidzilla...

Since this is a Challenge, I'd now make an actual Challenge to all of you:

Build two lists; One based on your existing army and one based on the most cheese list you'd likely face, adhering to the restriction (I've updated it). Then either play them together or do the mathhammer and see how that turns out.

Fair enough. 2 questions though.

1. How many points?
2. Regarding restriction number 2, how does it work if every model can take an upgrade, but there is only a limited number of choices? For example, can I take 10 Termgants with a mixture of weapons, or can I not field Termagants at all, since multiple models will be decked out the same?

I've revised it to one restriction, namely that no two UNITS can be equipped identically. Two Models can now be made identical and multiples of the same units can be taken so long as they don't share the exact same equipment.

Think of the Nob Bikerz list principle on an army-wide scale.

I'm also pouring over the codexes to see about reinstating the 0-1 limit on a few units instead. So far I got:

Riptides
Ghostkeel
Wraithknight
Chapter Master
Dreadknight
Death Company (unless Astorath is in the army. Also Martel will probably harp me on this one )


The following would get 0-2 limit instead (it feels like they should have more than one unit but not that many):

Wraithguard
Stormsurge (this is here because of the formation actually, since you are required to take two)
Scatbikes (specifically Scatter-laser equipped bikes, not eldar jetbikes in general)
Flyrant (this won't actually affect them in a CAD, but it's for people who find ways to spam them beyond said CAD)
Farseer (same as the flyrant)
Grey Knight Librarian

I wanna put the DP on this but it would also invalidate one of the formations they just put out. I also have no idea how to sort out the whole Markerlight issue with this, since Markerlights doesn't work with either systems.

Some units should have always been 0-1, if not mainly for fluff considerations. Chapter Masters are a great example, for obvious reasons.

The issue I foresee with re-instating limited 0-1 selections is the reasoning behind it. If we go with a fluff angle, a lot of it either starts collapsing, or we run into the same issue where bottom tier codices are hurt more than top tier codices, thus aggravating the balance issues. If we go with a balance angle, then we run into a few issues. One would be an issue where players feel targeted for playing a certain army that is perfectly fluffy and one they've had for decades potentially. This animosity isn't ideal, and while it wouldn't be universal, I'd wager there'd a few disgruntled players in every group. The other issue would be that its a bit of a half measure. Instead of fixing the unit itself by adjusting a combination of point costs, slot occupation, and abilities to be fair, it easier to tell players to leave their models at home.

Now, some units should be 0-1, like Chapter Masters. I can see a few also getting the same treatment when the fluff is very particular about the unit in question either being an incredibly rare, hardly ever seen much less deployed in battle, style unit, but it'd be hard to justify.

We also get into the issue of just fixing 40k's actual scale and decide if we want it to be straight Apoc or an actual skirmish to small company sized game. If the latter, then sure, restrict the feth out of all giant gribblies. Basically put a hard limit on anything larger than a 60mm base. If its the former, well, then limiting things is a bit of the question.

*Edit* I can seplell

 Blacksails wrote:
Some units should have always been 0-1, if not mainly for fluff considerations. Chapter Masters are a great example, for obvious reasons.

The issue I foresee with re-instating limited 0-1 selections is the reasoning behind it. If we go with a fluff angle, a lot of it either starts collapsing, or we run into the same issue where bottom tier codices are hurt more than top tier codices, thus aggravating the balance issues. If we go with a balance angle, then we run into a few issues. One would be an issue where players feel targeted for playing a certain army that is perfectly fluffy and one they've had for decades potentially. This animosity isn't ideal, and while it wouldn't be universal, I'd wager there'd a few disgruntled players in every group. The other issue would be that its a bit of a half measure. Instead of fixing the unit itself by adjusting a combination of point costs, slot occupation, and abilities to be fair, it easier to tell players to leave their models at home.

Now, some units should be 0-1, like Chapter Masters. I can see a few also getting the same treatment when the fluff is very particular about the unit in question either being an incredibly rare, hardly ever seen much less deployed in battle, style unit, but it'd be hard to justify.

We also get into the issue of just fixing 40k's actual scale and decide if we want it to be straight Apoc or an actual skirmish to small company sized game. If the latter, then sure, restrict the feth out of all giant gribblies. Basically put a hard limit on anything larger than a 60mm base. If its the former, well, then limiting things is a bit of the question.

This is more my own feeling as well...

Hughlander is really just another kind of wildly unbalanced game that still favours a handful of armies over a majority of others. Space Marines & Eldar for example love Highlander formats, as they're both completely spoiled for choice AND have an already wide range of different specialists across all sections of their army list.
On the other hand, armies like Tyranids, Orks, Guard, etc... get royally hosed as their strength comes through being cheap & redundancy of units. You can't take 10 Guardsmen, give 'em a couple upgrades and call it a day. You really need to take 30-40+ of those identically equipped Guardsmen as the entire premise of the army is purely 'quantity over quality'.
Other armies such as Grey Knights, Clowns, Sisters and Ad Mech simply don't have enough basic units to be viable under a Highlander format. So those guys literally get told, "sorry, you can't play with the cool kids today, better luck next time!"

Likewise, the vast majority of highly fluffy armies suddenly find themselves outright banned, (Deathwing, mono-God Chaos, etc...), despite only a small handful of 'fluffy' armies being among the more obnoxious filth in the game.

So rather than a blanket system that still favours a select few, imho, it's better to simply look for the offending combos themselves, and neuter those specific combos/lists.

For example, Scatbikes are stupidly undercosted and far too good against almost any target you can throw against them. Solution? Bring back the unit's old restriction of only 1 weapon upgrade per 3 bikes. Done.
Saim Han players aren't unfairly punished just because of their theme/liking the models, and the most abusive form of jetbike spam is no more.

Likewise Daemons on our obnoxiously OP re-rolled 2++ save. Either disallow Daemon players from including bothFateweaver and the Grimoire, OR, limit the re-rolled save to at best a 4++.
Summoning and Clown Car sucking the fun out of life? Again, swing the nerf bat at the core issue instead of limiting Malefic in it's entirety... Perhaps a rule that only 1 successful Conjuration casting per turn.

Gladius min/maxing? Require Tactical Squads to take the full 10 men to access their 'free' transport, as Tacs are typically the one unit within a Battle Company that are most likely to be kept at and/or near full strength.
Doing this, you suddenly cut the number of ludicrously cheap 'free' Obsec transports by more than 50%, or else the Marine player cannot 'cheap out' on their 'tax', and thus can't bring along those 'cheesy' allies in the form of say Severin Loth + Tigurius.


It's ALOT! more work obviously going this route, but I honestly prefer it over a 'one size fits all' blanket that only creates a much larger problem than what it tried to address.

I appreciate what your trying to do but this punishes so many armies that are not the problem right now.

I like highlander style events. I played in Railhead in 2015 where they had a partial highlander thing going and I brought highlander BA to the mix and ended up doing really well. When I played against other highlander armies I could really tell that it was skill played a larger factor in the game versus 'spam the best units'. When I played against other tournament geared lists, I got shredded. Ended up 3-2 with my losses being to Tau with the old firebase (who I did almost get a win against because I mind-gamed him hard), and a De/Eld list that spammed venoms and ravagers with a side of autarch and wraithknight.

Edit: Here's how they ran their Highlander event: