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Yes, this screws some armies that really dont have alot of choices in their army, but as is there is NO benefit to running a list that consists of one type of army. Heck with everyone getting pseudo chapter tactics, some people are even taking 2 or 3 different forgeworld detatchments in their admech lists, and brewing imperial guard armies min maxing with 3 different worlds. I am not saying this shouldnt be allowed, but there should be some compensation for running a fluffy, single chapter type of army list, with no allies. Its getting dumb to see every list with a mix of 3 different armies/chapters to min/max every game.

My Inquisitor requisitions forces from several different factions throughout his wide web of influence and extortion. What's not fluffy about that?

 Orock wrote:
Yes, this screws some armies that really dont have alot of choices in their army, but as is there is NO benefit to running a list that consists of one type of army. Heck with everyone getting pseudo chapter tactics, some people are even taking 2 or 3 different forgeworld detatchments in their admech lists, and brewing imperial guard armies min maxing with 3 different worlds. I am not saying this shouldnt be allowed, but there should be some compensation for running a fluffy, single chapter type of army list, with no allies. Its getting dumb to see every list with a mix of 3 different armies/chapters to min/max every game.

Astra Militarum, fluff-wise, frequently mixes Regiments. Tanks from one, Artillery from the other and Infantry from a third regiment.

The compensation for running a unified army is that all of your buffs work on everything in your army. A Salamanders Captain doesn't help a Cadian Infantry Squad, nor does it help a Space Wolf or a Black Templar.

So we should punish guard for taking an engineseer, SoB for including an inquisitor and Ynnarri for existing despite all being perfectly fluffy?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nekooni wrote:
Astra Militarum, fluff-wise, frequently mixes Regiments. Tanks from one, Artillery from the other and Infantry from a third regiment.

Yep. A non-boring/spammy Guard regiment should be two or three regiments.

Trying to justify an objection to this under the guise of it being unfluffy is nonsense.

 Scott-S6 wrote:
So we should punish guard for taking an engineseer, SoB for including an inquisitor and Ynnarri for existing?

I'd be fine with the last one. Dirty xenos scum.

Ynnari don't mix factions, in fact they use some of the dark eldar, harlequins and craftworlds stuff but they lose their previous factions' special rules, gaining the ynnari ones. It's a different concept than the typical hated imperial soup, which exploits the advantages of specific different factions into one list.

I think there should be strict limitations about allies. For example I'd cut the possibility of mixing eldar and dark eldar outside the ynnari faction, SM of all types should be run as pure SM, only one chapter with no allies. Inquisitors with AM and no other allies or a soup with SoB and or grey knights.

Limiitations about allies are needed, imperial soups are dominating the competitive meta and they should be nerfed.

 Blackie wrote:

Limiitations about allies are needed, imperial soups are dominating the competitive meta and they should be nerfed.

That I agree with but we need to be clear that it is purely about game balance (none of this nonsense about perfectly fluffy things being unfluffy and trying to use that as justifications for rule changes) and limit the specific combinations that are a problem.

 Blackie wrote:
Ynnari don't mix factions, in fact they use some of the dark eldar, harlequins and craftworlds stuff but they lose their previous factions' special rules, gaining the ynnari ones. It's a different concept than the typical hated imperial soup, which exploits the advantages of specific different factions into one list.

I think there should be strict limitations about allies. For example I'd cut the possibility of mixing eldar and dark eldar outside the ynnari faction, SM of all types should be run as pure SM, only one chapter with no allies. Inquisitors with AM and no other allies or a soup with SoB and or grey knights.

Limiitations about allies are needed, imperial soups are dominating the competitive meta and they should be nerfed.

But none of that makes sense fluffwise, does it? Imperials will be Imperials, they're fighting (mostly) for the same side. I've not had a negative reaction to this day when I mixed the different factions of the Imperium, usually I get something along the line of "hey, thats a cool fluffy list, I don't see that often". The only thing that's a bit iffy is mixing Chapters just to get specific special rules while all the models look the same paint-wise - that's something I tried, got negative feedback on and never did again.

All those balance issues don't come from allies, they come from individual things being too strong. If you throw all the units that're too strong and throw them into an Imperial Soup, that's going to be cheesy. But it's not the Allies system that needs fixing/removing, because that would remove a ton of fluffy lists from being viable. The units , like conscripts, need to be fixed.


The Guard literally "minmaxes" in the fluff - take Tanks from Tank regiments, take Infantry from Infantry regiments and throw them all on the same battlefield. Why would you hand out Leman Russes to the Tanith First and Only when they're a light infantry regiment?

After all GW has done to make allies a fundamental part of the game, which is purely to push models, they're hardly going to punish it.

The proposed penalty is already silly in the extreme in my opinion, but it seems especially short sighted to want to start nerfing like this before most of the armies in the game even have their codex. Imperials do have an advantage right now in that a lot of their factions now have proper books, but let's maybe wait and see what Tau and Eldar look like in codex form before we go flying so hard off the handle ...

I'd actually be fine with allied armies having to be in their own detachment. So that if you cherry pick a single unit, you suffer a -1 CP (that "one unit" detachment thing). CP's aren't incredibly powerful, so this wouldn't be a huge hindrance, just a minor counter to cherry picking single units, etc.

Tycho wrote:
The proposed penalty is already silly in the extreme in my opinion, but it seems especially short sighted to want to start nerfing like this before most of the armies in the game even have their codex. Imperials do have an advantage right now in that a lot of their factions now have proper books, but let's maybe wait and see what Tau and Eldar look like in codex form before we go flying so hard off the handle ...

But those codexes don't exist at the moment. Right now, the game is in quite an imbalanced state between armies, and it's clear that some sort of change is needed to remedy it.

@Darsath -
And what are you going to do when those books are out in a few months and insanely powerful. Now you have to go back and un-nerf the imperials because the new books are too strong against them hem. OR the new books don't fix the imbalance so now you have to re-nerf the Imperials. Doing something drastic now pretty much garauntees we will need yet more rules changes later. So we could fly off the handle and start slamming things with the nerf bat only to have to re- evaluate in a few months and make more changes, OR we could all just realise that this game has never been properly balanced, that we've dealt with much greater balance issues in the past, and just wait until everyone has a proper codex before we start making a 60 page FAQ for a 12 page rule set.

If TO's want to put certain limits on things (a local tournament recently had some simple but effectove allies restrictions that weren't terrible) that's one thing, but I'd rather wait untill everyone is on "even" footing before we start screaming about unfairness.

EDIT:
The other issue I have with this is the OP's very first sentence. He is correct. This nerf absolutely screws certain armies. I think the real issue is that OP has an army that needs help and feels this solution would benefit HIS army. The fact that it totally bones other armies seems fine to him. That is sloppy/lazy game design at its finest. I am never ok with a rule that helps one army while totally boning another. This solves nothing. I will say, that if someone finds a simple, elegant and logical "fix" like what they did with flyers not being able to score objectives, then I might support that. The OPs suggestion though, just reads like salt and sour grapes.

I honestly think that they should have required all faction-specific traits to be army wide. It would at least make a better choice between dedicated lists and "soup" armies if taking the soup army meant you didn't get any bonuses. Right now there's like zero drawback to doing it just because you can, so you see a ton of nonsense that mixes and matches stuff or takes mostly X faction with some of Y faction thrown in for that one ability.

Maybe I am in a minority but I don't think 3 command points would see off your tournament winning Imperial or Chaos soups.

In any case GW clearly don't care. They had that thing of "oh we know super friends was annoying people, and we don't want that" at the outset but they still clearly want you to buy as much stuff as possible across all their ranges.

The faction keyword genie isn't getting put back in the bottle this edition.

Maybe have it so that you only get command points from a 2nd (or subsequent) detachment if the previous one(s) are filled completely?
It'd reign it in a bit, but not completely disallow "soup" lists

Tyel wrote:
Maybe I am in a minority but I don't think 3 command points would see off your tournament winning Imperial or Chaos soups.

In any case GW clearly don't care. They had that thing of "oh we know super friends was annoying people, and we don't want that" at the outset but they still clearly want you to buy as much stuff as possible across all their ranges.

The faction keyword genie isn't getting put back in the bottle this edition.

What exactly changed from the last edition there? You're making it out as if the current system was worse than what we had in 7th, and as a Imperium player with multiple armies I can tell you that's bs. The keyword system locks a ton of buffs to their army list (e.g. psychic stuff) that previously was available to the entire Imperium. The only thing that really changed in the Indices is that you can put e.g. AM and SM in one detachment. Noone trying to optimize their list will do that again since the SM Codex has come out.
GW apparently does care because the situation is improving and has improved already simply by introducing 8th edition. The Imperium has more stuff to pick from, and sadly ended up with Conscript and Flyer spams. They have fixed or are fixing that already. Neither issue had anything to do with mixing army lists.

What about taking additional Detachments start costing Command Points? Like taking a second detachment costs you 1 command point ( so if you take a Vanguard or Outrider, you get no bonus Command Point and it's basically just there to give you extra slots from a different army) and a third costs 2, and so forth (for games that allow more than 3 detachments).

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
What about taking additional Detachments start costing Command Points? Like taking a second detachment costs you 1 command point ( so if you take a Vanguard or Outrider, you get no bonus Command Point and it's basically just there to give you extra slots from a different army) and a third costs 2, and so forth (for games that allow more than 3 detachments).

That's a terrible idea that entirely defeats the purpose of taking small detachments, which - If you'll recall - are supposed to give command points.

Jbz` wrote:
Maybe have it so that you only get command points from a 2nd (or subsequent) detachment if the previous one(s) are filled completely?
It'd reign it in a bit, but not completely disallow "soup" lists

This would be absolutely brutal to elite armies. You can't reasonably expect me to fill out every slot in my battalion as Thousand Sons, that's just too expensive.

Once all the codexes come out it might be feasible to give all armies 1 CP base and a bonus two if every detachment shares two faction keywords, but until then it's in no way feasible.

Waaaghpower wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
What about taking additional Detachments start costing Command Points? Like taking a second detachment costs you 1 command point ( so if you take a Vanguard or Outrider, you get no bonus Command Point and it's basically just there to give you extra slots from a different army) and a third costs 2, and so forth (for games that allow more than 3 detachments).

That's a terrible idea that entirely defeats the purpose of taking small detachments, which - If you'll recall - are supposed to give command points.

My idea would change up the dynamic of detachments, in that if you choose one of the small detachments for your core army, you get a small amount of command points to play with, while subsequent small detachments either don't give you any points or penalize you for it (and auxillary detachments just simply eat away at them at a faster rate). Only Brigades and Battalions grant you additional command points beyond the first. It also gives incentives for people to start out with a Battalion first.

For armies that already stick to a single detachment, this is no change. This only negatively affect Soup armies that try to keep their tactics rules (which means they can't just take cheap troop choices from their allies) and ones that want to spam command points willy nilly. Basically if you want command points, you stick to one faction. If you want variety, start paying for it. (which makes sense; units from different factions are less likely to receive commands well than units from a single faction).

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

My idea would change up the dynamic of detachments, in that if you choose one of the small detachments for your core army, you get a small amount of command points to play with, while subsequent small detachments either don't give you any points or penalize you for it (and auxillary detachments just simply eat away at them at a faster rate). Only Brigades and Battalions grant you additional command points beyond the first. It also gives incentives for people to start out with a Battalion first.

For armies that already stick to a single detachment, this is no change. This only negatively affect Soup armies that try to keep their tactics rules (which means they can't just take cheap troop choices from their allies) and ones that want to spam command points willy nilly. Basically if you want command points, you stick to one faction. If you want variety, start paying for it. (which makes sense; units from different factions are less likely to receive commands well than units from a single faction).

Well, you say "If you want Command Points, you stick to one faction" but what you're really saying is "If you want Command Points, you'd better hope that your army has good Troops choices and HQs, because unless you take at least SIX troops choices, you're never getting more than three." Because any detachment that gives less than two Command Points is now a liability rather than a benefit, and - As it happens - The only Detachments that give more than one Command Point require a ton of Troops choices.

Right now, if I want an army with an assortment of Elites, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support, I can take three of each (plus three HQ choices) and get +3 Command Points, for a total of 3. Or, I can take three Troops Choices and two HQ and get +3 Command Points, and still have easily enough points to take a second Battalion for +6, or throw in an extra smaller Elites or Fast Attack detachment for a +4 or maybe +5.

Under your system, though? If I want lots of Elite, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support, I either get no Command Points (Because the penalty for taking three Detachments is a total of -3, which is the same as the bonus I'm getting,) or else I have to buy three Troops Choices, and I get... +3 Command Points.

(Oh, and incidentally, this doesn't punish Soup armies any more than it punishes anyone else. Most players are maxing out detachments regardless of how many factions they're taking, just to get more Command Points.)


In short, you aren't punishing soup, you are punishing armies that have crummy Troops Choices. As someone who plays Orks, I'd be fine with that change (I'm already spamming Ork Boyz like there's no tomorrow,) but as someone who plays Space Marines and Sisters of Battle, you're screwing over my army to try and fix a problem, and not even fixing the problem in the process.

How do you define allies?
I'm honestly curious, because we still mostly use 7th edition faction names, but they don't represent 8th ed. faction keyword structure.

Waaaghpower wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

My idea would change up the dynamic of detachments, in that if you choose one of the small detachments for your core army, you get a small amount of command points to play with, while subsequent small detachments either don't give you any points or penalize you for it (and auxillary detachments just simply eat away at them at a faster rate). Only Brigades and Battalions grant you additional command points beyond the first. It also gives incentives for people to start out with a Battalion first.

For armies that already stick to a single detachment, this is no change. This only negatively affect Soup armies that try to keep their tactics rules (which means they can't just take cheap troop choices from their allies) and ones that want to spam command points willy nilly. Basically if you want command points, you stick to one faction. If you want variety, start paying for it. (which makes sense; units from different factions are less likely to receive commands well than units from a single faction).

Well, you say "If you want Command Points, you stick to one faction" but what you're really saying is "If you want Command Points, you'd better hope that your army has good Troops choices and HQs, because unless you take at least SIX troops choices, you're never getting more than three." Because any detachment that gives less than two Command Points is now a liability rather than a benefit, and - As it happens - The only Detachments that give more than one Command Point require a ton of Troops choices.

Right now, if I want an army with an assortment of Elites, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support, I can take three of each (plus three HQ choices) and get +3 Command Points, for a total of 3. Or, I can take three Troops Choices and two HQ and get +3 Command Points, and still have easily enough points to take a second Battalion for +6, or throw in an extra smaller Elites or Fast Attack detachment for a +4 or maybe +5.

Under your system, though? If I want lots of Elite, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support, I either get no Command Points (Because the penalty for taking three Detachments is a total of -3, which is the same as the bonus I'm getting,) or else I have to buy three Troops Choices, and I get... +3 Command Points.

(Oh, and incidentally, this doesn't punish Soup armies any more than it punishes anyone else. Most players are maxing out detachments regardless of how many factions they're taking, just to get more Command Points.)


In short, you aren't punishing soup, you are punishing armies that have crummy Troops Choices. As someone who plays Orks, I'd be fine with that change (I'm already spamming Ork Boyz like there's no tomorrow,) but as someone who plays Space Marines and Sisters of Battle, you're screwing over my army to try and fix a problem, and not even fixing the problem in the process.

I mentioned this punishes Soup AND Command Point spammage. And like I said, if you want variety, pay for it. The problem with Soup is that people are cherry picking the best units from different factions and then throwing them together. They get access to a ton of command points and near free reign to the cream of the crop of all of the codexes (i.e: the Elites, Heavy and Fast). Plus my method, by your own example, is actually better than the current system; Someone taking a Vanguard, Outrider and Spearhead detachment under the current system would have +3 Command Points. Someone under the same system taking 2 battalions gets +6 Command Points. This is a difference of +3 command points between the two. Under my system someone taking an Outrider, Vanguard and Spearhead detachment gets +0 command points, while someone taking two Battalions gets +5 command points, a difference of +5. This buffs all troop choices, and it's not like people are not already complaining about their faction having crummy troop choices already (just have a look at the Eldar threads).

In short, the current system doesn't help factions with crummy troop choices, it just encourages them to go to other armies for solutions (i.e: soup). As someone who plays Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines, it feels like the detachment restriction for legion and chapter tactics are a joke when someone shows up with the best units from all of the Imperium factions, get their chapter tactic and dogmas, and still get more command points than me.

Personally I run 2 different space marine chapters together quite regularly with 0 negative feedback. I have salamanders and space wolves allied together, but they are also painted completely different so it's obvious which is which. Green/gold/black for salamanders, Grey / sky blue/ silver for wolves.

If you do it and actually have different factions I don't see an issue. If you just mix / match and they all look the same that's not as cool / OK.

Also I would say that it depends on the faction. Again as an example we have a player in the group that has a mixed imperial army but he always takes his inquisitor as his warlord. Like fafnir said earlier it's fluffy because it makes sense an inquisition force would have a small group of Grey knights, some sisters of battle, and some imp guard in their force.

Why not encourage the desired behavior instead of punishing the undesired behavior?

Personally I still favor the idea that you only get chapter(or equivalent) bonuses (tactics/stratagems) if your entire army has that faction keyword. So if you want to have "allies" you benefit from having a ton of options but don't get your faction specific buffs. I think using CP is not enough of a penalty when plenty of these ally choices can fill out a brigade, or second battalion, or have characters that give you CP.

I disagree
Yes your trying to nerf op aies but your also gonna ruin perfectly fluffy ones.
Whats so game breakingly powerful about a word bearer host with some allied daemons?
Sisters with guard?
Inquisition pulling different branches of the imperium together?

Breng77 wrote:
Personally I still favor the idea that you only get chapter(or equivalent) bonuses (tactics/stratagems) if your entire army has that faction keyword. So if you want to have "allies" you benefit from having a ton of options but don't get your faction specific buffs. I think using CP is not enough of a penalty when plenty of these ally choices can fill out a brigade, or second battalion, or have characters that give you CP.

I see the appeal here, but you end up punishing some very fluffy armies for being fluffy. Any of the armies mentioned by Champion of Slaanesh are great examples. Why should Word Bearers be worse at summoning daemons because their army includes daemons?

From a mechanical perspective, we aren't really seeing armies that become "OP" by virtue of mixing units from different factions AND having access to their faction-specific rules. Guilliman + conscript spam aren't a potent combo because of the Ultrasmurf chapter tactics, for instance; they're powerful because both of those options are extremely effective on their own and become even better in tandem.

For the most part, the faction-specific bonuses are fluffy and powerful but not game-breakingly powerful. So taking away faction-specific bonuses for mixed armies punishes a ton of fluffy armies without fixing the primary problems that make OP units OP in the first place.

TLDR; if you fix individually OP units, then cherry picking isn't as big of a deal, and you don't have to punish fluffy, casual mixed-faction armies.