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The biggest thing that gets on my nerves about 8th edition is the seeming ability to rationalize literally any army into a valid set of detachments. I don't think it's possible to make an invalid army given the existence of the auxillary support detachment, and you can rationalize almost any other army as long as you have enough HQ slots.

Can anyone prove me wrong? Make me an invalid list!

I assume you mean an invalid detachment? Technically nothing is invalid if you just use open play or just aren't battle forged.
How about... A Space Marine army that includes a Spartan but no other Lord of War (of which you would need 2 more to make the list a valid detachment).

 DeffDred wrote:
I assume you mean an invalid detachment? Technically nothing is invalid if you just use open play or just aren't battle forged.
How about... A Space Marine army that includes a Spartan but no other Lord of War (of which you would need 2 more to make the list a valid detachment).

Well, I guess what I'm precisely looking for is a collection of units taken that don't fit into any combination of detachments.

Wouldn't the Spartan fit into the Super-Heavy Auxillary Detachment just fine?

Given that an Auxiliary detachment can have one unit of any type in it, no, you can't make an illegal list. Unless not sharing a faction counts.

Yeah, you put an eldar and a space marine on the field together.

The Designer's Commentary or the FAQ (I forget which, and it doesn't really matter enough to research it again) clearly states that you can't have an army that is less than 0 CP.

Thus, an army consisting of enough Auxiliary Detachments will be illegal, because it will have sufficient negative CP to overcome whatever positive CP you bring.

Any army consisting entirely of auxiliary detachments without an HQ in the army (so that no other detachment is possible) is thus illegal and invalid under battleforged rules.

But I honestly don't think of this as a weakness to the Detachment system - almost any army composition SHOULD be possible, with CP providing the balancing mechanism by which the more esoteric compositions (all flyers, all LoW, etc.) pay for the common defensive benefit of fielding an unbalanced army composition.

 daedalus wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:
I assume you mean an invalid detachment? Technically nothing is invalid if you just use open play or just aren't battle forged.
How about... A Space Marine army that includes a Spartan but no other Lord of War (of which you would need 2 more to make the list a valid detachment).

Well, I guess what I'm precisely looking for is a collection of units taken that don't fit into any combination of detachments.

Wouldn't the Spartan fit into the Super-Heavy Auxillary Detachment just fine?

The Spartan is a Relic. In order to use a relic you must have a second unit of the same role (Lord of War in this case) in the same detachment. So you need to take an additional LoW to take the Spartan. Since the only detachment that allows more than one LoW requires a minimum of 3 you'd have to take 2 additional LoW to use a Spartan legally.

 Unusual Suspect wrote:
The Designer's Commentary or the FAQ (I forget which, and it doesn't really matter enough to research it again) clearly states that you can't have an army that is less than 0 CP.

Thus, an army consisting of enough Auxiliary Detachments will be illegal, because it will have sufficient negative CP to overcome whatever positive CP you bring.

Any army consisting entirely of auxiliary detachments without an HQ in the army (so that no other detachment is possible) is thus illegal and invalid under battleforged rules.

But I honestly don't think of this as a weakness to the Detachment system - almost any army composition SHOULD be possible, with CP providing the balancing mechanism by which the more esoteric compositions (all flyers, all LoW, etc.) pay for the common defensive benefit of fielding an unbalanced army composition.

While their answer was clear; you certainly didn't understand it.

You will never have a negative number of CPs. But you can take what would amount to -30cps no problem.

The question was in the designer's comentary:
Q: Can a battle-forged army ever have fewer than 0 command points?
A: No

Explanation: Regardless of how many Auxiliary Support detachments you take, you can never start a battle with fewer than 0 command points.

There are no rules telling us what to do with a negative number of cps; so they just said if it is less than 0 it is 0.

There's also the suggest detachment restrictions on matched play for each point brackets. Should prevent people from spamming -30 CP armies.

Also, there is a suggested limit on detachments in Matched play, I believe you can only have 3 detachments at 2000pts
Although this is a "suggested" limit, it's in a rule book that tells you the entire rule set is "suggested"
To me, this is the limit intended to Matched play

Given that, it is easy to make an illegal list. Another thingk to note is that most detachments actually require quite a few HQs and minimum units. So if you make a collection of enough units without enough HQs, it is illegal in a battle forged list

-

 daedalus wrote:
The biggest thing that gets on my nerves about 8th edition is the seeming ability to rationalize literally any army into a valid set of detachments. I don't think it's possible to make an invalid army given the existence of the auxillary support detachment, and you can rationalize almost any other army as long as you have enough HQ slots.

Can anyone prove me wrong? Make me an invalid list!

Pretty certain that is intentional... but if you take more troops you get +3CP, or if you go 6 troops etc etc you get +9CP... so, basically you can field whatever your heart desires, but you're rewarded for more classic builds.

It's not like Troops are still a tax. Troops are the best units available for many armies. Elites seem to be more of a tax these days, being overpriced but necessary if you want the largest possible amount of command points. Looking at boyz, scions and conscripts I'm actually wishing I could build armies out of nothing but these and still get the 9 cp from a brigade. At least AM have cheap commissars, basilisks and sentinels to fill out the other mandatory slots. Orks have to pay a tax in useless or overpriced elites and heavy support.

Of course the lack of cp won't stop you from bringing an army of nothing but techpriests, dunecrawlers and knights. But I kind of like the carrot approach more than the straightjacket approach, at least until the dreaded moment when GW brings back formations.

The only "tax" you pay is HQ choices, or giving up command points. It's not nearly as harsh as some previous editions, but it's not nothing.

I am personally expecting the Codex books will have unique detachments similar to formations, and all the sudden people will feel restricted again.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS. I think HQ choices as a tax makes a lot more sense than troops as a tax, just from a fluff standpoint.

@Real News and Deathypoo -- I agree with you both!

 Kommissar Kel wrote:

 Unusual Suspect wrote:
The Designer's Commentary or the FAQ (I forget which, and it doesn't really matter enough to research it again) clearly states that you can't have an army that is less than 0 CP.

Thus, an army consisting of enough Auxiliary Detachments will be illegal, because it will have sufficient negative CP to overcome whatever positive CP you bring.

Any army consisting entirely of auxiliary detachments without an HQ in the army (so that no other detachment is possible) is thus illegal and invalid under battleforged rules.

But I honestly don't think of this as a weakness to the Detachment system - almost any army composition SHOULD be possible, with CP providing the balancing mechanism by which the more esoteric compositions (all flyers, all LoW, etc.) pay for the common defensive benefit of fielding an unbalanced army composition.

While their answer was clear; you certainly didn't understand it.

You will never have a negative number of CPs. But you can take what would amount to -30cps no problem.

The question was in the designer's comentary:
Q: Can a battle-forged army ever have fewer than 0 command points?
A: No

Explanation: Regardless of how many Auxiliary Support detachments you take, you can never start a battle with fewer than 0 command points.

There are no rules telling us what to do with a negative number of cps; so they just said if it is less than 0 it is 0.

The question in determining whether an army is battleforged (valid, in the parlance of this thread) is not how many command points you start with. Rather, the question is how many you can have.

The rules telling us what we can do to take a battleforged army; they tell us we can't have fewer than 0 command points. An army consisting of nothing but auxiliary without HQ will have fewer than 0 command points, and so will not allow the army to qualify as battleforged.

I could be wrong on my interpretation, but I think you're going to need to explain to me how a battleforged army (which can't have fewer than 0 command points) is valid when it has fewer than 0 command points.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:

 Unusual Suspect wrote:
The Designer's Commentary or the FAQ (I forget which, and it doesn't really matter enough to research it again) clearly states that you can't have an army that is less than 0 CP.

Thus, an army consisting of enough Auxiliary Detachments will be illegal, because it will have sufficient negative CP to overcome whatever positive CP you bring.

Any army consisting entirely of auxiliary detachments without an HQ in the army (so that no other detachment is possible) is thus illegal and invalid under battleforged rules.

But I honestly don't think of this as a weakness to the Detachment system - almost any army composition SHOULD be possible, with CP providing the balancing mechanism by which the more esoteric compositions (all flyers, all LoW, etc.) pay for the common defensive benefit of fielding an unbalanced army composition.

While their answer was clear; you certainly didn't understand it.

You will never have a negative number of CPs. But you can take what would amount to -30cps no problem.

The question was in the designer's comentary:
Q: Can a battle-forged army ever have fewer than 0 command points?
A: No

Explanation: Regardless of how many Auxiliary Support detachments you take, you can never start a battle with fewer than 0 command points.

There are no rules telling us what to do with a negative number of cps; so they just said if it is less than 0 it is 0.

That seems like a willfully abusive interpretation of that answer and the rules. Why would that be the interpretation rather than "if something requires more CP than I have I am not allowed to do it." What you're saying is the same thing as "both our armies are worth 2k points" so I can plop down however many points of miniatures I want, but we'll only count them as 2k because all values above 2k are reset to 2k. That's not how any of this works.

CPs are obviously, explicitly, textually designed as a restriction mechanism. You can spend them before the game to restructure your forces or during the game to tilt the course of action. But they are a limited use thing- just like army construction points.

silentone2k wrote:
Why would that be the interpretation rather than "if something requires more CP than I have I am not allowed to do it."

Because the FAQ is pretty clearly handling the problem where having negative CP is a "divide by zero" kind of error that the rules can't handle. What does it mean to have -1 re-roll? If you start negative can you spend an unlimited number of CP during the game because you never hit zero? Etc. That's why the FAQ is talking about an army having fewer than 0 CP, not an army having a combination of detachments that does not provide at least +0 CP. And that's why it says "regardless of how many auxiliary support detachments you take" rather than "you can not take so many auxiliary support detachments that you have less than zero CP". The clear intent here is that you can take as many as you want ("regardless"), you just start the game with zero CP if you don't have enough positive-CP detachments to offset the penalty.

CPs are obviously, explicitly, textually designed as a restriction mechanism. You can spend them before the game to restructure your forces or during the game to tilt the course of action. But they are a limited use thing- just like army construction points.

They aren't a restriction mechanism at all. They give you certain bonuses, but there's never a rule of "each army has X CP to spend on buying units" or similar. They're much more comparable to things like AoE character buffs in how they function, by taking particular units or combinations of units you get buffs for them.

 Unusual Suspect wrote:

The question in determining whether an army is battleforged (valid, in the parlance of this thread) is not how many command points you start with. Rather, the question is how many you can have.

The rules telling us what we can do to take a battleforged army; they tell us we can't have fewer than 0 command points. An army consisting of nothing but auxiliary without HQ will have fewer than 0 command points, and so will not allow the army to qualify as battleforged.

I could be wrong on my interpretation, but I think you're going to need to explain to me how a battleforged army (which can't have fewer than 0 command points) is valid when it has fewer than 0 command points.

You have to willfully ignore the explanation they give in the designer's notes FAQ to come to the conclusion you're saying there.

When you mash the explanation onto the end of the question/answer it is undeniable what they are trying to say:

Q: Can a battle-forged army ever have fewer than 0 command points?
A: No. Regardless of how many Auxiliary Support detachments you take, you can never start a battle with fewer than 0 command points.

It says 'regardless' of how many Aux Support detachments you take, not that you are limited to taking only as many Aux Support detachments until you reach 0 CPs.

 yakface wrote:
It says 'regardless' of how many Aux Support detachments you take, not that you are limited to taking only as many Aux Support detachments until you reach 0 CPs.

But one could also argue that "you can never start a battle with fewer than 0 command points" means if you have negative CP you can't ever start the battle, "regardless" of whether you bring one or one hundred aux detachments.

But if you can only have 3 detachments total then your 3 auxiliaries will bring you down to 0 command points.

Arachnofiend wrote:
But if you can only have 3 detachments total then your 3 auxiliaries will bring you down to 0 command points.

Those are only guidelines though.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 yakface wrote:
It says 'regardless' of how many Aux Support detachments you take, not that you are limited to taking only as many Aux Support detachments until you reach 0 CPs.

But one could also argue that "you can never start a battle with fewer than 0 command points" means if you have negative CP you can't ever start the battle, "regardless" of whether you bring one or one hundred aux detachments.

Not really. The context of what you are quoting does not support your argument at all. It seems like you are obfuscating the FAQ entry and the argument for some sort of agenda.

 heckler wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 yakface wrote:
It says 'regardless' of how many Aux Support detachments you take, not that you are limited to taking only as many Aux Support detachments until you reach 0 CPs.

But one could also argue that "you can never start a battle with fewer than 0 command points" means if you have negative CP you can't ever start the battle, "regardless" of whether you bring one or one hundred aux detachments.

Not really. The context of what you are quoting does not support your argument at all. It seems like you are obfuscating the FAQ entry and the argument for some sort of agenda.

Can I start a game with no command points? "you can never start a battle with fewer than 0 command points."

Seems clear to me. If you have minus command points, you can't ever begin the game.

As to the OP's original post:

No, the unbound armies of yester-edition resemble the legally fielded armies of the current edition; I've been saying this since release.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yep, you'll have zero. it is pretty clear.

 yakface wrote:

 Unusual Suspect wrote:

The question in determining whether an army is battleforged (valid, in the parlance of this thread) is not how many command points you start with. Rather, the question is how many you can have.

The rules telling us what we can do to take a battleforged army; they tell us we can't have fewer than 0 command points. An army consisting of nothing but auxiliary without HQ will have fewer than 0 command points, and so will not allow the army to qualify as battleforged.

I could be wrong on my interpretation, but I think you're going to need to explain to me how a battleforged army (which can't have fewer than 0 command points) is valid when it has fewer than 0 command points.

You have to willfully ignore the explanation they give in the designer's notes FAQ to come to the conclusion you're saying there.

When you mash the explanation onto the end of the question/answer it is undeniable what they are trying to say:

Q: Can a battle-forged army ever have fewer than 0 command points?
A: No. Regardless of how many Auxiliary Support detachments you take, you can never start a battle with fewer than 0 command points.

It says 'regardless' of how many Aux Support detachments you take, not that you are limited to taking only as many Aux Support detachments until you reach 0 CPs.

You create an army of nothing but Auxiliary Support detachments. Lets say you have -10 Command Points.

You attempt to start a battle.

Can you?

Per the FAQ you quoted, no. You can NEVER start a battle with fewer than 0 Command Points.

Nothing in the answer you provided, or the other answer I quoted, gives you permission to start the battle with fewer than 0 Command Points.

Everything in the answer makes it clear that you CAN'T start battles when under 0 Command Points.

I really don't think I've been willfully ignoring any explanations. I'm weighing each explanation, determining if there are any contradictions, considering what permissions are actually granted, and what restrictions are actually in place.

Interpreting something different from you doesn't have to involve "willfully ignoring" other evidence.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 heckler wrote:
As to the OP's original post:

No, the unbound armies of yester-edition resemble the legally fielded armies of the current edition; I've been saying this since release.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yep, you'll have zero. it is pretty clear.

What gives you permission to ignore your actual number of CP and pretend you have a number that complies with the FAQ's requirements?

"It doesn't say I can't" is not going to be terribly convincing, for the record. "It implies it" when such an implication requires direct contradictions of the FAQ statements probably isn't going to be terribly convincing either.

My thought on the matter is that Detachments sound the end of the non-codex chapters.

It used to be that if you wanted to field an all terminator army then you could. But it had to be
Deathwing. Same for all Bikes, had to be White Scars. Or all Jump Packs, that was a Blood Angels thing (depending on edition).

But now thanks to Detachments I can take any Space Marine army and field it any way I want. The ONLY reason to field a "name" chapter is to get access to special characters.

phydaux wrote:
My thought on the matter is that Detachments sound the end of the non-codex chapters.

It used to be that if you wanted to field an all terminator army then you could. But it had to be
Deathwing. Same for all Bikes, had to be White Scars. Or all Jump Packs, that was a Blood Angels thing (depending on edition).

But now thanks to Detachments I can take any Space Marine army and field it any way I want. The ONLY reason to field a "name" chapter is to get access to special characters.

If you're thinking just about winning sure you can hamfist any mess of models onto the table however you want. Some folks will still only play "their" army though.

And now the announced Codex claim to also have new detachments, relics, named characters, psychic powers, special wargear and special rules... so it should be a little more than that.

The Detachment Limitation is the only thing will make lists invalid.

but going beyond Detachment Limitation is the exact same as going beyond a Point Limit.

So...
Going beyond the agreed upon Point Limit will also make your list invalid...

and before anyone that tries to argue that Detachment Limits are just a Guide Line and should never be followed... Replace 'Detachment' with 'Points', and tell me you still agree.

 Talamare wrote:
The Detachment Limitation is the only thing will make lists invalid.

but going beyond Detachment Limitation is the exact same as going beyond a Point Limit.

So...
Going beyond the agreed upon Point Limit will also make your list invalid...

and before anyone that tries to argue that Detachment Limits are just a Guide Line and should never be followed... Replace 'Detachment' with 'Points', and tell me you still agree.

The annoying part is that GW persists with the habit of calling things optional in the rules, a very ugly habit. We KNOW that we can break the rules if we want after having discussed it with our opponent. They're just muddying the rules when they don't make them totalitarian. We want a rigid ruleset, not a bunch of suggestions.

phydaux wrote:
My thought on the matter is that Detachments sound the end of the non-codex chapters.

It used to be that if you wanted to field an all terminator army then you could. But it had to be
Deathwing. Same for all Bikes, had to be White Scars. Or all Jump Packs, that was a Blood Angels thing (depending on edition).

But now thanks to Detachments I can take any Space Marine army and field it any way I want. The ONLY reason to field a "name" chapter is to get access to special characters.

you've been able to take an Ultramarines Bike army though since at least 5th edition. personally I've always thought it a big silly, if the only thing dark angels have going for them is the ability to deploy their first company terminators as an army, something every space marine chapter should do, it's a tad silly and suggests a weak identity.