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An interesting trend I've noticed on both twitter and the facebook discussions is the push for GHB 2019 to make battalions free since summoning is now once again free.

Is the community turning back once again to a desire to have everything be freely given again with no cost?

I wouldn't be surprised. It seems like the tournament people are taking over the game again and trying to pervert it into something it's not so they can play "the meta" and be leet.

The argument I see blasted over and over is that no one will take battalions while you have to pay points for them so they should be free, just like summoning no one used until it was free.

And as they give free command points and artifacts, that would also let you max out on battalions to get more free CPs and artifacts.

I think they'd need to be more restrictive to be free, but I get the desire. The main problem with them costing points like they do is that they don't scale with game size at all.

Recosted maybe, but not free. You are paying for those bonuses and the extra CP.

Now, some battalions might be redone as some are perhaps useless. That is an entirely different discussion though.

So basically summoning armies would get summoning AND battalions for free? Who thought this was a good idea?

Something would certainly need to be done about armies that have very powerful Battalions that are already used in normal games, such as the Gnarlroot Wargrove for Sylvaneth, if Battalions go free.

In my games I've played, I've never felt the lack of another 200-220 points of models I pay on the Batallions to get; +1 Spellcast and Unbind Attempt per wizard, the extra spell to bring dead models back to a unit, 2 extra Relics, 2 starting CP and the ability to drop my army in one go, all but guaranteeing that I have choice of first turn or not.

That much in bonuses, playable at 1500+ points (Too much cost in lower value games) going free would be quite excessive. I've been fine with Batallions, but I won't claim to know indepth how the game should be balanced...

No, AoS is not big enough to tank the kind of backlash free formations had on 40k 7th edition.

As it stands many battalions have obvious stand-out rules from the others and the correct way to offset that is assigning an appropriate points cost - if you don't need to give up anything in order take those battalions you lose that depth entirely.

Besides, modern battletomes have free subgroup stuff already.

Balance around battalions should focus on their points costs, Gnarlroot is a great buff and is a 230 point investment, the DoK list I'm building uses slaughter troupe and temple nest which is a 260 point investment for what is probably not as good a total return as if I just ran a whole army based around one of those two things for a mere 130 point investment.

This is the second topic you've started based on something "from twitter" that I've not seen mentioned once in any AoS discussion group.

Ok. Congrats. I'm told it was also mentioned in the TGA forum which is where the original discussion originated from. As I'm banned from that site I cannot link it for you sorry. Carry on.

I have also never heard of this. So I searched TGA. The only thing I see is a proposal from February 2018 (so before we knew 2E was a thing), for battalions to run on a separate points system.

Other than that, all I see are people saying battalions need a points increase/decrease, need to be rewritten, need to be removed from the game entirely, and should not give bonus CP/artifacts/turn advantage.

There is a thread I'm told called GHB hopes and wishes or something like that that was created in January of this year where that discussion rooted from, and where it went into twitter and into a facebook discussion group.

I just think the battalions need better balancing on point costs.

auticus wrote:
There is a thread I'm told called GHB hopes and wishes or something like that that was created in January of this year where that discussion rooted from, and where it went into twitter and into a facebook discussion group.

I found that thread last night when I scoured TGA for this discussion and saw no mention of free battalions on the first few and last few pages. Maybe there is a post or two buried somewhere in there but clearly not enough to get any traction even in the parent thread and not enough to spawn even one thread of its own there.

Ok. Anyhow. Battalions. Should they be free? Or should they continue to cost points?

Just checked that specific thread. One guy made the suggestion about half way through the thread. Everyone disagreed with them and said the battalions should instead be rebalanced in the ways I mentioned above. The exception being 2 people that stated battalions could be made free if they were all rebalanced to be on par with each other, if every army had access to them, and if they did not give you extra artifacts/cp/deployment advantage.

auticus wrote:
Ok. Anyhow. Battalions. Should they be free? Or should they continue to cost points?

The biggest complaint about most 40K Formations and WMH Themes is getting something for nothing. Oddly enough, when 40K Formations started coming out, they had points associated with them, and people complained. Then they took points away, and people complained on the other side, largely because if you didn't go that way (for whatever reason, with 40K being that not everyone had them), you were at a significant disadvantage.

oh most definitely, if you weren't taking advantage of free formations in 40k in 7th you might as well not play.

auticus wrote:
The argument I see blasted over and over is that no one will take battalions while you have to pay points for them so they should be free, just like summoning no one used until it was free.

And as they give free command points and artifacts, that would also let you max out on battalions to get more free CPs and artifacts.

The first point is utter BS. Even in the most cut-throat competitive events,a huge variation of lists have those battalions in there, so they are definitely being used. They provide plenty of advantages that warrants the cost. Summoning becoming free is in no way comparable, as it was also taken into account as another balancing tool. (to what degree of success is another discussion).

Re-balanced points: sure, I could see that. No points: not a smart idea.

Also, checking the general trend of this thread, I don't think a lot of people are hoping battalions become free... It was the worst thing about 7th 40k imo (just like small soup detachments for CP is the worst thing about 8th now if you ask me).

I vote battalions definitely need to have a points cost. Many seem overcosted for what they do but the units get buffs, army gets another CP, army gets another relic which can be game changing, AND better chance of choosing to go first or second. That's all good stuff and should be paid for lest we have 40k 7th edition all over in the Mortal Realms.

There aren't multiple threads here on this topic. In fact there were zero threads on this topic here. And this is the only discussion forum that I post on. Please focus on the topics instead of the incessant off-topic personal attacks that have nothing to do with the topic I brought up.

Or we can continue to have the dead forum where a new topic every 10 days about which competitive army to start here which is what this forum generally is.

Yeah but strawmanning "the community" with some silly opinions you've "seen on twitter" ain't really the way to go.

I would rather the forum be dead than see it filled with threads meant to be yes-manning one user against topics no one is arguing.

You do realize that strawmanning is creating an argument against something that no mentioned and then attacking it correct?

I see we have the forum police here dictating what topics should be allowed to be posted.

Bless your hearts.

EnTyme wrote:

auticus wrote:
Ok. Anyhow. Battalions. Should they be free? Or should they continue to cost points?

No one can find any real discussion where people are saying battalions should be free. Is there really a need to create multiple threads about it? You're better than this, auticus. Be better than this.

That’s not what we do on Reddit, that’s not how any of this works. If you’re gonna resort to an off-site insult you ought to be better than this yourself. The man wants a discussion, why can we not entertain the idea of free battalions without resorting to a fight? Regardless of where he originally saw topics on the manner.

EnTyme wrote:I would rather the forum be dead than see it filled with threads meant to be yes-manning one user against topics no one is arguing.

Id rather the forum have proper discussion than be dead, and I thought that’s what I was looking at here.

lord_blackfang wrote:Yeah but strawmanning "the community" with some silly opinions you've "seen on twitter" ain't really the way to go.

Again, the man just wants a discussion, regardless of where the info came from, he’s seen people entertain the idea of free battalions somewhere and now he’s asking for your thoughts. Quit harshing the mellow.

I'd entertain the idea of free batallions provided they got a rework here and there.
Some batallions cost a ton of points because they have a dramatic impact.
Others however, do very little.

Nothing against free minor buffs here and there, but large buffs that can really impact a game for free? I'll pass on that.
The competitive scene for AoS can be bad enough at times, without receiving a boost.

auticus wrote:
You do realize that strawmanning is creating an argument against something that no mentioned and then attacking it correct?

You assigned a made-up opinion to "the community" and then chastised "the community" for holding it, so... yea?

Honestly I think part of Auticus just wants confirmation that not all of the community is... Let's go with 'lacking foresight' to their opinions on certain matters, and that not all metas are as toxic as the one he's stuck with.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

auticus wrote:
You do realize that strawmanning is creating an argument against something that no mentioned and then attacking it correct?

You assigned a made-up opinion to "the community" and then chastised "the community" for holding it, so... yea?

Now that is a pretty good dictionary definition of strawman. See there you invented a new meaning to what my post was, and then claimed I did something that I never did. Actually thats also what they call "putting words into my mouth".

Lets begin shall we?

Lets examine the original post:

An interesting trend I've noticed on both twitter and the facebook discussions is the push for GHB 2019 to make battalions free since summoning is now once again free.

Is the community turning back once again to a desire to have everything be freely given again with no cost?

Now we're going to break these two statements down. We're going to look for where I assigned an opinion to everyone in the community. Then we're going to look for where that is being chastised.

The first sentence discusses a trend I found on both twitter and facebook discussions. Now those came from not one but two people I follow that posted in response to a balance thread on some tournament thing about "would making batallions free solve the issue of them not being taken". Additionally there was a facebook chat where someone mentioned a TGA discussion where a poster talked about free battalions. I saw both of these in less than 24 hours, so for me that was a trend.

Now lets look at the second sentence.

Is the community turning back once again to a desire to have everything be freely given again with no cost?

I am asking overall is the community interested in going back to this model that was once a thing that GW gave. Because I am interested in the posters' thoughts on that particular topic here.

Neither are made up opinions slapped onto the "community", nor ... unless your english is just very very poor and you are misunderstanding what I wrote, is there wording in that to indicate chastisement to the community for that. Unless perhaps you feel that if I express something that I may not like that that is the equivalent in your mind of chastisement. As that is not sane nor rational, I will dismiss that possibility as chastise means to personally attack or rebuke strongly, and that chastising the community would involve personally attacking or rebuking strongly an individual for liking something that I don't, which I have never done in a post here.

See part of a discussion forum is posting topics to discuss, which is what I did. I was interested to know what the people that populate the dakka forums AOS section thought about free battalions.

What you and EnTyme appear to have done instead is apply some other connotation and context to what I was saying based on past posts or conversations that have nothing to do with this topic, and turn it into an invite to personally attack, likely on the grounds that you don't like what I have to say. However instead of doing what is expected in terms of agreement on forums and just simply ignore or not respond to posters you don't agree with, you guys felt the need to step up and personally attack and, I believe the term you used was chastise.

This will be my last response to either of you from this point forward.

There is a topic here and its not discussing other posters. Remember the rules and please stick to them.

Thanks,
ingtaer.