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So I was looking at the old Fantasy rulebook for 7th or 8th edition fantasy, and it occurred to me that the points limits imposed on army lists could, with a bit of working done to it, be useful in making games of 40K less big smashy unit oriented and more focused on the little guys.
You might say it's trying to make the battles more representative of the average conflict in 40k, where it's mostly just basic dudes. Some people may say, 'Feth that, I want 5 riptides fighting 5 IKs because that's epic as hell!" In which case get painting, cause grey models aren't epic.
But for those, like me, who like there to be a few big things, but mostly have firefights between infantry, here's proposed set of restrictions.
(I would like to say that I have nothing against power gamers, it's just that I personally don't play that way, and this helps align both armies to be less powergameryTM Creed 2017 to make the game more interesting if one army is a tourney list and one isn't.)
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CREEEEEEEEED's Average Battle Limitations:

Both armies must have a primary detachment made up of a CAD. One more formation may be included, and one additional CAD. (So at least one, with a 2nd optional, CAD, and one optional other formation/detachment/allied detachment/faction specific detachment.)

Points limitations by unit classification

HQ a maximum of 25%
TROOPS at least 30%
ELITES a maximum of 25%
FAST ATTACK a maximum of 25%
HEAVY SUPPORT a maximum of 25%
FORTIFICATION a maximum 15%
LORDS OF WAR a maximum of 15%

Unit limitations by unit type:

Monstrous creatures, gigantic monstrous creatures, artillery, chariots, and all types of vehicles may total a maximum of 50% of your force across all classifications and detachments.

Dedicated transports do not count towards the points limits for unit classification, but do count towards the maximum 50% for vehicles monstrous creatures, etc.

Duplicate limitations:
All non-troop units are limited to 2 duplicates per formation/detachment taken. So if you take two CADs you could take 4 duplicates.

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So one problem I could see with this is someone saying 'Well armoured companies are common throughout the Imperium, and it's unlikely that you could run an effective list at only 50% of the points being used for your LRs. And no one likes being tabled by turn 3 because they have an ineffective list.'
To which I say... err... suggestions anyone?

This is a bad fix because the problem lies in bad internal Balance. Why are Necrons and Eldar going to care about that troop tax?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You need to give reasons to take the units you want people to take, and this is not a good answer.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
This is a bad fix because the problem lies in bad internal Balance...

This is the central problem. The issue isn't that people aren't taking enough Troops/spamming other FOC slots too much, the issue is that some choices are vastly better than others regardless of FOC slot.

There isn't going to be a convenient one-paragraph fix here.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
To which I say... err... suggestions anyone?

Balance individual units/armies, don't impose arbitrary point caps on different roles or unit types. Your system is fundamentally broken because it applies the same restriction to weak units and overpowered units, so you still have major balance issues. And of course if you have an army that has overpowered troops or overpowered units in multiple FOC slots you don't suffer any penalties at all.

CAD#1
115 - Farseer, jetbike
115 - Farseer, jetbike
162 - 6x Windriders, 6x Scatterlasers
81 - 3x Windriders, 3x Scatterlasers
81 - 3x Windriders, 3x Scatterlasers

CAD#2
115 - Farseer, jetbike
115 - Farseer, jetbike
81 - 3x Windriders, 3x Scatterlasers
81 - 3x Windriders, 3x Scatterlasers
81 - 3x Windriders, 3x Scatterlasers

Aspect Host
230 - 5x Fire Dragons, Exarch, Wave Serpent
105 - 5x Warp Spiders, Exarch
114 - 3x Dark Reapers, Exarch, Starshot Missiles

1476

Feel free to add another 375 points of whatever the hell you want or just bulk out the units that are there.

I can't even imagine what a DE army would look like with 555 points out of an 1850 army devoted to wyches and kabalite warriors (whose transports don't count towards this tax). For reference, that's 70! kabalites as the required MINIMUM. You can't even take them as min squads as then you're out of troops slots, even with a double CAD.

How does this fix anything? Broken dexes are broken, force org changes aren't going to fix 'dexes with bad troops just by having more of them., nor is it going to magically nerf 'dexes who are already taking a boatload of troops because they're horrendously overpowered.

For this to work GW needs to rewrite the codices to actually fit this formula. And not make Scatvikes troop choices.

I think 30ks limitations work great.

Single foc with a low/allies/fortification supplemental. LoW cannot be more that 25% of total army value. Named HQs and a single generic can only be taken 1 for every 1000 points in the army and open up rites of war.

Simple. Effective. Most ridiculous models have limitations that prevent stupid combinations or massive low that cost half your army and cannot be stopped.

 Lance845 wrote:
I think 30ks limitations work great.

And now imagine 30k limitations with some of the lords of war being classified as troops for only a limited number of armies. Or some of the armires could spam javellins on every troop choice they take while others couldn't.

Yeah...no.

This only works if there is any form of balance in the first place, at which point the requirement for those restrictions goes away.

Just comparing Eldar with Dark Eldar makes for a good laugh with these restrictions. Eldar get to take their broken troops without problem while DE end up needing around 50 Warriors because the only good thing about their troop units (Venom spam) isn't allowed.

The problems in 40k are often to do with unbalanced units (either too god or too bad for their points). In order to fix that you need to fix the actual units themselves, not try to work around it.

Most of the war games I play that are developed for balanced random pick up games, tend to have all three of the following.

1) Core rules that generate proportional results to reward tactical play.

2) Comparative unit/model values that have a provable level of (im)balance.

3) A force composition system that limits synergistic bonuses.

40k has none of the above.
So simply adding one element in isolation is not going to be effective.

Others have hit my points pretty well already. The main ones being...

A. Some armies have better units in force org slot X than others. Scatbikes are problematically good, and they're a troop. Meanwhile in tyranid town...

B. Some armies are not well-represented by the sort of force organization rules proposed above. A Deathwing or Iyanden army, for instance, would more fluffily be represented by taking lots of elite units and HQs.

As a side note, similar restrictions in Fantasy are one of the main things that prevented me from ever actually getting into Fantasy. A few armies had a bunch of neat non-core units, but I had trouble getting behind the core units of most factions.

I rather like the idea of a balance-aware Rites of War style of army construction. Example: The aforementioned Iyanden or Deathwing armies might allow me to field certain elites (wraithguard and terminators) as troops or "core" units, but each such unit slain during the battle gives up additional points to the enemy due to the significant loss such deaths represent.

Wyldhunt wrote:
...I rather like the idea of a balance-aware Rites of War style of army construction. Example: The aforementioned Iyanden or Deathwing armies might allow me to field certain elites (wraithguard and terminators) as troops or "core" units, but each such unit slain during the battle gives up additional points to the enemy due to the significant loss such deaths represent.

And/or running Wraithguard in Troops from the Iyanden Rite is going to make all your living units 0-1 or cap you at no more living units than nonliving units, because Iyanden's running low on living people. That sort of thing.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
...I rather like the idea of a balance-aware Rites of War style of army construction. Example: The aforementioned Iyanden or Deathwing armies might allow me to field certain elites (wraithguard and terminators) as troops or "core" units, but each such unit slain during the battle gives up additional points to the enemy due to the significant loss such deaths represent.

And/or running Wraithguard in Troops from the Iyanden Rite is going to make all your living units 0-1 or cap you at no more living units than nonliving units, because Iyanden's running low on living people. That sort of thing.

Exactly! Though you do have to watch out for creating false downsides the way the 4th edition chapter building rules did. "I can't take an extra FA slot? Oh well. I wasn't using it anyway."