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Saw the below in the poll about Fairness of Command Points, and thought it might merit its own discussion:

tneva82 wrote:

 gbghg wrote:

Having had a look, not one of the 4 lists containing guard spent 50% or more of their points on guard, in both "pure" guard lists you're looking at a detachment of around 700-800 points of guard with the rest being spent on blood angels and custodes, of the other 2 lists the winning list had around 400 points of guard while the tyrannid list containing them took around 800 points worth (the bulk of which is on a shadowsword).

Yeah. The designation is based on warlord. Is army that has 300 pts of guards and 1700 on others REALLY guard army?

Don't look just title of army. Look at the ARMY LIST. Token guard for CP does not guard army make.

Better idea would be to have name designated by what is WIDEST faction that covers all the force. so army that has just cadians is cadian. Army has cadians and catachan is IG. Army that has IG and space marines is Imperium. And even THAT isn't completely truthful. Only way real way ¨would be to actually look at the army list and see composition.

Is the way tournaments are classifying factions obscuring information? In the above example, a poster had referred to 4 of the lists in the top 16 of Adepticon being either IG lists or featuring IG components. As the quote shows, none of them featured 50% or more of points invested in IG, so should any of them really be classed as IG lists? My guess is that three of them should've been described as "Imperium", though I'm not sure what the acceptable term for a Nid/GSC/IG mix would be.

That's how I'd like it to be classified. It's really annoying seeing lists posted as IG or Blood Angels only to see they're souped along with custodes and celestine

Putting it bluntly?

Yes, it absolutely is. The fact that it seems like most tournaments go for "Your faction is whoever you have as your warlord" means that if someone fields a Cadian Detachment with Creed as any part of their army, they'll naturally be a Guard army (Creed being Warlord means 2 more Command Points free and he can issue 3 Orders at 12")...because the whole point someone throws a Guard Detachment in right now is to farm CPs.

It does seem a silly way of doing it, doesn't it, Kan?

I wonder why tournaments do it that way at present? I mean, if you wanted to be really clear you could always specify as Imperium (Blood Angels, Imperial Guard) to give people an idea of what sort of soup is performing and what sort isn't, I guess.

What I would like to see is for Battleforged Traits to only apply to the one where your warlord is from.

 Dysartes wrote:
It does seem a silly way of doing it, doesn't it, Kan?

I wonder why tournaments do it that way at present? I mean, if you wanted to be really clear you could always specify as Imperium (Blood Angels, Imperial Guard) to give people an idea of what sort of soup is performing and what sort isn't, I guess.

I was thinking of just use widest faction keyword shared but yours is even better. Certainly would make tournament list faction lists more truthful. Still not 100% accurate view of how good armies are at tournaments but lot better than now where "Imperial guard" is more of IG for CP generation+mortars+some chaff and then most of points on something else. Or "Blood Angels" that are actually few tough characters and rest of the army from something else entirely.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
That's how I'd like it to be classified. It's really annoying seeing lists posted as IG or Blood Angels only to see they're souped along with custodes and celestine

Tournament wise I find those lists follow the same pattern - IG for the CP battery, Blood Angels for the smash captains, and one fast moving filler faction - custodes bikers, seraphim, blood angels, wolves on wolves, etc.
(for instance the only ranking 'sisters' army so far was mortars, captain smash, and seraphim).


I think 'imperium' is the only accurate description to give to these lists. They aren't any one faction regardless of which model picks up the warlord trait.

In the Uk tournaments I've played, there are lots of IMPERIUM and CHAOS armies because you take the shared keyword across your entire force.

The only time I've felt that was unfair was a pure AdMech army, with a QUESTOR MECHANICUS knight. Had to be listed as Imperium, which seemed pretty bad when it's not really soup.

 Silentz wrote:
In the Uk tournaments I've played, there are lots of IMPERIUM and CHAOS armies because you take the shared keyword across your entire force.

The only time I've felt that was unfair was a pure AdMech army, with a QUESTOR MECHANICUS knight. Had to be listed as Imperium, which seemed pretty bad when it's not really soup.

I think something like a halfway solution would work, where whatever faction 2/3 or maybe 3/4 of your army shares is your faction for rankings. Right now ITC uses largest plurality of your force (so 800 AM, 700 BA and 500 custodes=AM) and I think it obscures a lot of the soup lists...especially if you want to reward “best faction player”. Allowing some allies is ok IMO, but it shouldn’t amount to more than 500-700 pts of a 2k list. So a 900/600/500 DA/BA/AM list would be “Adeptus Astartes”, a 1600/400 GK/SM list would be “Grey Knights” and a 1000/900/100 AM/Custodes/Assassins list would be “Imperium”

Thing is, if you're wanting to reward the best player of a faction - let's stick with Blood Angels, for the sake of argument - shouldn't the army either be mono-book, or have an agreed maximum % of allies (say 15%) to count?

I'd argue all three of your examples should read Imperium (as should any Imp soup - or Chaos for Chaos Soup, or Aeldari for Eldar Soup), but I'd prefer to then see a suffix of included factions for greater granularity.

 Dysartes wrote:
Thing is, if you're wanting to reward the best player of a faction - let's stick with Blood Angels, for the sake of argument - shouldn't the army either be mono-book, or have an agreed maximum % of allies (say 15%) to count?

I'd argue all three of your examples should read Imperium (as should any Imp soup - or Chaos for Chaos Soup, or Aeldari for Eldar Soup), but I'd prefer to then see a suffix of included factions for greater granularity.

My example used 25% vs your 15%, but I think we agree on the core concept. In my example I went with the most restrictive faction that 75% of the force encompasses, note that "Blood Angels" aren't just "Blood Angels", "Imperium", but "Blood Angels", "Adeptus Astartes", "Imperium". So a force of Space Wolves and Blood Angels would get knocked down to "Adeptus Astartes", a BA/IK list would be "Imperium".

 greyknight12 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Thing is, if you're wanting to reward the best player of a faction - let's stick with Blood Angels, for the sake of argument - shouldn't the army either be mono-book, or have an agreed maximum % of allies (say 15%) to count?

I'd argue all three of your examples should read Imperium (as should any Imp soup - or Chaos for Chaos Soup, or Aeldari for Eldar Soup), but I'd prefer to then see a suffix of included factions for greater granularity.

My example used 25% vs your 15%, but I think we agree on the core concept. In my example I went with the most restrictive faction that 75% of the force encompasses, note that "Blood Angels" aren't just "Blood Angels", "Imperium", but "Blood Angels", "Adeptus Astartes", "Imperium". So a force of Space Wolves and Blood Angels would get knocked down to "Adeptus Astartes", a BA/IK list would be "Imperium".

Except the implication of classifying an army as "Adeptus Astartes" is that they would be using Codex: Adeptus Astartes (stupid name for the book...) - and, in theory, a BA/SW army won't be using that.

Essentially, if the army is a mix of more than one book (or more than one sub-faction within a book, with the possible exception of Dark Eldar), you need to go with the soup moniker, but then indicate which books or sub-factions are in play. A Space Marine army using Raven Guard and Ultramarines, for example, would be better off being clearly described as Imperium (Raven Guard, Ultramarines) than just Adeptus Astartes.

Ideally, you'd even order the faction descriptors based on % of the army, with largest % first - to use your three faction example from earlier, that would give Imperium (Dark Angels, Blood Angels, AdMech) (assuming AM as AdMech rather than Imperial Guard).

It's Codex: Adeptus Astartes Space Marines, not Codex: Adeptus Astartes. So an Ultramarine/Raven Guard army is a Space Marines Army, not to be confused with the more general Adeptus Astartes Keyword. No reason it shouldn't be considered a Space Marine Army. A Blood Angels/Space Wolf Army would be an Imperium Army if you don't want to group all Adeptus Astartes armies into a macro category.

Personally, I'd require a minimum percentage of points to be classified as an X army along with at least one "pure" detachment of that type.

So if 75% of your army is Ultramarines and you have an Ultramarines Space Marine Detachment, you are Ultramarines.
If 75% of your army is from Codex: Adeptus Astartes Space Marines and yo have one detachment entirely from the codex, you are Space Marines
Otherwise, you are Imperium.

Do the same for Chaos, Aeldari, and Tyranids/Genestealer Cult.