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Soup armies are all the rage. Frankly, I hate it. Armies are supposed to have strengths and weaknesses. So, what if there was a bonus for taking your entire army from one codex? Something like +1 Command Point?

-2 CP penalty to the "soup army" when fighting against a mono codex army... this is just reasonable that multi-faction armies should be not that well-coordinated and harder to command and work seamlessly

 elk@work wrote:
-2 CP penalty to the "soup army" when fighting against a mono codex army... this is just reasonable that multi-faction armies should be not that well-coordinated and harder to command and work seamlessly

By that logic, anytime you have multiple <Insert Fancy Name for a Different Whatever> in the same 'army'--it's soup and should be a -2 CP penalty.

After all, "it's just reasonable that multi-faction armies should not be that well-coordinated and harder to command and work seamlessly."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Soup armies are all the rage. Frankly, I hate it. Armies are supposed to have strengths and weaknesses. So, what if there was a bonus for taking your entire army from one codex? Something like +1 Command Point?

+1 Command Point is basically nothing. I can run a 'soup' of Guard, Custodes, and Marines in a 2k army to cover all of my bases--and end up with more CP than I'd ever get as a benefit for just taking pure Custodes or Marines.

 Kanluwen wrote:

By that logic, anytime you have multiple <Insert Fancy Name for a Different Whatever> in the same 'army'--it's soup and should be a -2 CP penalty.

After all, "it's just reasonable that multi-faction armies should not be that well-coordinated and harder to command and work seamlessly."

well, this is already dealt with quite adequately - chapter tactics/legion traits or whatever benefits you get from <Insert...> don't spill over to different <...> units...

 elk@work wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

By that logic, anytime you have multiple <Insert Fancy Name for a Different Whatever> in the same 'army'--it's soup and should be a -2 CP penalty.

After all, "it's just reasonable that multi-faction armies should not be that well-coordinated and harder to command and work seamlessly."

well, this is already dealt with quite adequately - chapter tactics/legion traits or whatever benefits you get from <Insert...> don't spill over to different <...> units...

That's not what you're suggesting though. You're suggesting there be a -2 CP penalty for "soup".

Soup is any combination of different factions. A Guard list of Catachans, Cadians, and Vostroyans would be a soup list. So they should be -2 CP, right?

 Kanluwen wrote:
That's not what you're suggesting though. You're suggesting there be a -2 CP penalty for "soup".

Soup is any combination of different factions. A Guard list of Catachans, Cadians, and Vostroyans would be a soup list. So they should be -2 CP, right?

what I'm suggesting is in my post... mono codex vs. "soup"... please take Catachans and Cadians (or Black legion and Alpha legion) and don't be penalized as they're in the same codex )))

 elk@work wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
That's not what you're suggesting though. You're suggesting there be a -2 CP penalty for "soup".

Soup is any combination of different factions. A Guard list of Catachans, Cadians, and Vostroyans would be a soup list. So they should be -2 CP, right?

what I'm suggesting is in my post... mono codex vs. "soup"... please take Catachans and Cadians (or Black legion and Alpha legion) and don't be penalized as they're in the same codex )))

You said "Mono-Codex versus Soup". Just because that stuff is in the same book doesn't mean it's the same faction.

Rather bluntly, this is the point I'm trying to get across: You can't just arbitrarily declare one thing to be "soup" while pretending the other isn't. The idea of soup is that it's multiple factions being taken to cover your weaknesses/issues.

 Kanluwen wrote:
You said "Mono-Codex versus Soup". Just because that stuff is in the same book doesn't mean it's the same faction.
Rather bluntly, this is the point I'm trying to get across: You can't just arbitrarily declare one thing to be "soup" while pretending the other isn't. The idea of soup is that it's multiple factions being taken to cover your weaknesses/issues.

well, it wasn't me, but the topic starter ))) and I take it we're just arguing the general approach, not specific implementation... whatever, this won't happen as "soups" (in particular, cross-codex soups) help GW make sales...personally, I find mono codex armies balanced enough, even when they're a mix of <...> units/detachments

I'm sure plenty of people will get butt-hurt over this, but for matched play I'd like to see the following:

Primarchs (and other super named characters): Restricted to armies which all share their main keyword. For instance Guilliman only available if your entire army has the <ULTRAMARINES> keyword.

Lesser named characters: Restricted to detachments which share their primary keyword. So somebody like Marneu Calgar would only be available if a detachment shared his <ULTRAMARINES> keyword.

We've all seen that the main soup issue seems to stem from powerful characters being spammed, and often buffing each other, etc. This kind of restriction would make it far easier to encourage people to play mono-builds, and would provide a small additional balancing effect for soup armies.

For narrative games, etc. I'd be fine ignoring this, but I'd hope in a narrative setting people were playing for a purpose other than cheesy-list building/all conquering gameplay, etc.

I dislike the idea of punishing players for a certain type of fluffiness, but at least this is a bonus rather than a punishment. I'd leave it outside the codex though. That would be pretty unbalanced given how many subfactions are in the Eldar codex versus the various IOM ones. Especially DA and BA, which kind of rely on the SM Codex to a certain extent. It also punishes players with legacy Index units like roughriders.

Better would be to add something to the chapter tactics(and its various incarnations) like '+2 cp if all detachments in the army share this keyword' So you'd get the bonus is everything was keyword faction: Craftworld<Bel-Tein> but no if you had an Craftworld<Altoric> detachment

The way I would solve soup is the way I do now:

Not worry about it.

I play mono codex, and play against mono codex, and I love it and enjoy it and it's fun.

I play mono codex, and play against soup, and I love it and enjoy it and its fun.

I play soup against mono codex, it's fun.

I play soup against soup, it's fun.

All the boxes are ticked for me the way army construction works now, and that's fine.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The way I would solve soup is the way I do now:

Not worry about it.

I play mono codex, and play against mono codex, and I love it and enjoy it and it's fun.

I play mono codex, and play against soup, and I love it and enjoy it and its fun.

I play soup against mono codex, it's fun.

I play soup against soup, it's fun.

All the boxes are ticked for me the way army construction works now, and that's fine.

You are aware that not everyone else is you or feels the same, though right?
I don't care so it's not a problem isn't a health attitude or constructive to debate. People have geninue issues, and there is a very real question of balence.
You can't possibly tell me when orks finally get their mono faction Codex that it's going to be well balenced against the 'Imperium' who will have something like 20-40 choices for every single Force Organisation slot? Flexibility brings advantage. The larger the soup, the more flexibility, if that flexibility comes at zero cost, things are less balenced.

For example, as an Imperium player, now the Custodes Codex has come out, I have more options. Thus, my army is now in some ways better if even _one_ of those options is better than an option I had before.
Everyone elses armies are not better, because they do not have access to those options.
Equally, if/when SoB, and Imperial Agents come out, and Space Wolves, that's more options for me. And less balence for you.

I do see that people disagree with me, but I can also see that they are wrong.

1) Where is your question of balance panned out in tournaments? 5 of the top 8 lists at LVO are Dark Reaper spam. Yes, there are some soups in them, but do you really think the lists would suddenly plummet to the bottom if denied their soup? Or even dislodged from their top spot? Mono eldar can bring 30 dark reapers just fine. 1 of the top 8 was mono-Blood Angels, with nothing else. That leaves 2 of the top 8 to be soup. Definitely OP, that 25% of the top 8 that didn't even win the tournament.

As for your "flexibility" argument - that's hogwash. Sure, the Imperial Guard get to pick the best heavy support from the Imperial armies, but if the best heavy support from across all the Imperium armies is merely 'adequate', then there is balance. It's entirely possible for the best of 3 options to be equal to the best of 15 options. More is not always better. As for "flexibility" - no, that's not really true, because there's no flexibility in 40k. There's flexibility in list building, but that's it, and once you've got what you've got, you're stuck with it. That means that, provided those choices are balanced based on their individual points costs with the game as a whole, then there's no 'unbalanced' or broken unit that can be bought; merely different units with different purposes. If there was one clearly best choice that beat out all the others (e.g. Dark Reapers), then I'd argue that that unit needs to be toned down, rather than soup being nerfed.

It's entirely possible for the best Imperium-faction unit to match toe-to-toe and balance-to-balance with the best Ork unit, even if the Imperium has 16 options and the orks have 3.

EDIT: To directly address your Custodes example:

If the Custodes unit in question is priced appropriately for its capabilities in points, then presumably you'd have to cut more than just the unit it is replacing from your army to fit it in. This means the so-called "flat out better" unit has an opportunity cost, and therefore is balanced. If, on the other hand, it isn't appropriately priced, then the problem is not with soup but rather it is with the pricing of a single unit.

And how does this actually work with fluffy Chaos armies like Khorne Daemonkin? Why am I suddenly penalized for using World Eaters and Khorne Daemons?

 ChargerIIC wrote:
Better would be to add something to the chapter tactics(and its various incarnations) like '+2 cp if all detachments in the army share this keyword' So you'd get the bonus is everything was keyword faction: Craftworld<Bel-Tein> but no if you had an Craftworld<Altoric> detachment

I'll take a bonus for going all Khorne, and I'm sure the other mono Chaos God players would agree.

Ultimately there won't be a change, there will just be more balance patches. I imagine come the big balance patch in March we will see overall changes that nerf / buff certain things and get ever closer to overarching GOOD balance, soup or not.

What if mono-list builds get a +1 modifier to their seize the initiative roll?

Ah, and we're already back to "Unit is right, everyone else is wrong". Now all is right with the world.

 elk@work wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
That's not what you're suggesting though. You're suggesting there be a -2 CP penalty for "soup".

Soup is any combination of different factions. A Guard list of Catachans, Cadians, and Vostroyans would be a soup list. So they should be -2 CP, right?

what I'm suggesting is in my post... mono codex vs. "soup"... please take Catachans and Cadians (or Black legion and Alpha legion) and don't be penalized as they're in the same codex )))

And then screw those Daemon CSM lists right?

instead of penalizing soup, reward mono-codex.

something like +3 Command Points if all the detachments in an army share all the same faction keywords (or just say if they all come from the same codex) or a +1 to your initiative roll as mentioned above. This helps more elite armies not need to bring the obligatory battalion of misc. forces, while giving other codexes incentive to bring forces outside of battalions/brigades.

 Elbows wrote:
Ah, and we're already back to "Unit is right, everyone else is wrong". Now all is right with the world.

Are you on a Debate Team or something? Your counter arguments are so quick witted and completely free of fallacies like ad hominem attacks.

I'd be okay with rewarding mono-faction players with bonus CP. I like rewarding people for narrowing their options more than punishing people for taking options as the former lets you do cool things (stratagems) more often rather than reducing the number of times a player gets to do cool things.

I'm less of a fan of using a bonus to initiative rolls as a reward because a given +1 bonus will only have a 1 in 6 chance of mattering. It will only be the thing that wins you the roll off 1/6th of the time.

Now that said, I think in the context of competitive/tournament play, you might get better results by simply limiting players to a single "subfaction" keyword. As in....

"The following keywords are subfaction keywords: chapter, craftworld, kabal... etc."

And then....

"In tournament play, a player's army may only contain one subfaction keyword."

And then to help out all those mini-factions like custodes or the inquisition that aren't necessarily meant to work as their own faction, you simply don't include any of their keywords as subfaction keywords. So you could totally include Raven Guard and custodes in your army while benefitting from Raven Guard chapter tactics, but playing Raven Guard and Ultramarines (to do Guilliman gunline with infiltrating Raven Guard forces or whatever) would be a no-go.

Although I guess you'd need to clean that up a little to prevent, for instance, craftworlders from fielding mandrakes or whatever.

The intention here is to...
A.) Reduce the number of cross-faction combos that can result in problematic levels of synergy and...
B.) Prevent players from taking the gunline traits to boost their gunline while also taking the stand on objectives traits to boost the models they have standing on objectives, etc. So no -1 to hit Alaitoc gunlines backed up by Biel-Tan shining spears or guardian blobs or whatever. The idea here is to prevent uneven trait combos between factions. That is to say, if my Alaitoc + Saim-Hann combo is better than your Raven Guard + Salamanders combo (or whatever), this forces me to choose a single benefit for my entire army rather than giving every unit in my army its own ideal set of benefits.

I'd also want soups to be penalized hard.

But what's a soup? IMHO it's a list made of units from different codexes, not different sub-factions of the same codex. Mixing khorne and nurgle daemons or cadians and catachans is not a soup.

It'll never happen because it potentially reduces GWs sales if Imperial and Chaos players can't mix and match.

I agree that there should be a penalty or missed benefit for taking soup though. Without question soup lists are more competitive than mono lists so in a competitive environment those players who have factions that can soup have an inherent advantage over those who can't.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
It'll never happen because it potentially reduces GWs sales if Imperial and Chaos players can't mix and match.

I wouldn't be so sure. Maybe instead of buying 1000 points of faction A and 1000 points of faction B in order to field a soup those players could buy 2000 points of faction A and 2000 points of faction B. Or maybe just 3000 points of faction A or B.

I think GW should go into the direction of promoting players to start complete armies over and over again, not just a few adds to existing armies. Buff and promote orks for 3-4 months, then necrons, then tau, etc... This way GW will get their sales and we'll get more variety and balance.

I don't know a single player that is fond of mixing factions, but I know lots of players that would start collecting other armies if those ones get some love.

Strange thought, but what if your army only counted as battleforged if at least 2/3 of your army came from the same codex, and your warlord had to be from that 2/3? It would still allow Soup, but not to an extreme extent.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Strange thought, but what if your army only counted as battleforged if at least 2/3 of your army came from the same codex, and your warlord had to be from that 2/3? It would still allow Soup, but not to an extreme extent.

Real talk here:

Why is everyone so opposed to soup? Is it just because at this juncture everyone just assumes that soup=multiple books thrown into the same army while ignoring you can in fact have soup from the same book?

Yeah, I still haven't seen a good reason why soup is so unbalanced. Like an actual reason, not shrieking about how 16 options is better than 3, even if the top of the 16 options is the same or worse than the top of the 3 options.

Originally when 8th was in development, from what I heard from a play tester, faction keywords dictated which assets you had access and it was more strict.

For example, if you took Space marines with a guard support, you only had access to imperial stratagems because that was the last keyword both factions shared. Now if it was a All space marine army with two different chapters, you had access to imperial and space marine stratagems, but no chapter specific. If you were straight mono-codex mono-subfaction. Space marines Chapter Salamanders, you had access to Imperial, Space marine, and Salamander chapter specific stratagems.

 Glitcha wrote:
Originally when 8th was in development, from what I heard from a play tester, faction keywords dictated which assets you had access and it was more strict.

For example, if you took Space marines with a guard support, you only had access to imperial stratagems because that was the last keyword both factions shared. Now if it was a All space marine army with two different chapters, you had access to imperial and space marine stratagems, but no chapter specific. If you were straight mono-codex mono-subfaction. Space marines Chapter Salamanders, you had access to Imperial, Space marine, and Salamander chapter specific stratagems.

That'd be okay with me, because it's intuitive (moreso than +1 -2 whatever CP), and still allows for fluffy armies.

Do you know why they changed it?


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ADDENDUM:
I just had a thought - how much of this was for team games, I wonder? My club plays team games that're 2v1 and 2v2 or whatever, and armies could be crippled by losing access to every thing (Death Guard with Adeptus Mechanicus, share 0 keywords, get 0 things).

I dunno. I feel like the real dissonance is between narrative and competitive play like usual.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Glitcha wrote:
Originally when 8th was in development, from what I heard from a play tester, faction keywords dictated which assets you had access and it was more strict.

For example, if you took Space marines with a guard support, you only had access to imperial stratagems because that was the last keyword both factions shared. Now if it was a All space marine army with two different chapters, you had access to imperial and space marine stratagems, but no chapter specific. If you were straight mono-codex mono-subfaction. Space marines Chapter Salamanders, you had access to Imperial, Space marine, and Salamander chapter specific stratagems.

That'd be okay with me, because it's intuitive (moreso than +1 -2 whatever CP), and still allows for fluffy armies.

Do you know why they changed it?

Unknown why they changed it. My guess was they wanted to make it simpler game mechanic.

 Glitcha wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Glitcha wrote:
Originally when 8th was in development, from what I heard from a play tester, faction keywords dictated which assets you had access and it was more strict.

For example, if you took Space marines with a guard support, you only had access to imperial stratagems because that was the last keyword both factions shared. Now if it was a All space marine army with two different chapters, you had access to imperial and space marine stratagems, but no chapter specific. If you were straight mono-codex mono-subfaction. Space marines Chapter Salamanders, you had access to Imperial, Space marine, and Salamander chapter specific stratagems.

That'd be okay with me, because it's intuitive (moreso than +1 -2 whatever CP), and still allows for fluffy armies.

Do you know why they changed it?

Unknown why they changed it. My guess was they wanted to make it simpler game mechanic.

The way it is now is more complicated now, what with Death Guard stratagems affecting Thousand Sons units, and Chaos Daemons stratagems affecting Renegades and Heretics units (or whatever). Heck, I can use an Adeptus Mechanicus stratagem on an Astra Militarum character to repair an Astra Militarum vehicle to full wounds to score an Adeptus Mechanicus tactical card. It's bonkers, lol. Fun and interesting and fluffy, to be sure, but not simple.