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Been playing Nids a bit lately and got to thinking even if they had no stratagems they'd still be a good army with some nice options and tactics.
How would your army due sans stratas?

Hell if they disappeared altogether would it level the playing field?

Well, Marines suck with strategems...

The Newman wrote:
Well, Marines suck with strategems...

damn, beat me to it.

I think my Mechanicus would definitely be worse. Any knights unable to use rotate ions would prob suck.

Dark elves would still be quite good.

More often than not I still have CP left at the end of the game and still win most of the time with DG, so I'd say it's not that important for them.
Daemons also have few useful stratagems in the first place, but Warpsurge and deep strike go a long way.

No.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

Daemons also have few useful stratagems in the first place, but Warpsurge and deep strike go a long way.

Deep Strike literally carries the Daemon Codex
(Banner of Blood for Bloodletters), Warp Surge

I enjoy Demonic Possession, if they perils, most psykers don't have 5+ Wounds, so you're in decent shape of killing a psyker from perils.

Yes. My mono Knights lose bigtime without Stratagems.

As an aside I think this shows that the key part, perhaps too critical, to 40k in its current incarnation is stratagems. I personally think that they made a huge mistake by making stratagems so varied and so crucial to army and list design.

Eldar & Dark Eldar would still be good, but definitely suffer for it.

Fire & Fade
Forewarned
Agents of Vect
Lightning Fast Reactions
Ability to deep strike nearly anything

These are all pivotal. Losing the ability to deep strike would mean that most of their stuff is completely vulnerable turn 1.

But if everyone else ALSO lost their stratagems, it wouldn't be as bad.

For some time the recommendation is you can only run Stratagems from your Warlord's faction. It fixes the issue for soup (somewhat) and makes it so that Mono factions aren't needlessly screwwed over.

I don't think either my Iron Warriors or Guard armies would be impacted too much, honestly the biggest loss would be losing Daemonforge for the IW's and command rerolls for the IG (have lots of CP but relatively tame stratagems). My Eldar would miss fire and fade I think the most but wouldnt be crippled.

Heed is the thing that makes GM NDKs best GK unit. So yeah if it was removed GK would get worse, as hard as it may be to imagine.

without stratagems orkz would be bottom tier without a doubt.

Loota's would go from being somewhat scary to being unplayable again, Ork Boyz would only be usable as a Evil Sunz faction, and only do use "Da Jump" as often as possible to get that 8' charge off, also Evil Sunz boyz actually would have a chance of reaching combat with their +1 to move and +1 to advance.

I literally think every Kulture in the Ork Codex would become unplayable except for Evil Sunz and I truly believe most of the units would become borderline unplayable. Basically it would be a rewind back to the index where only 2-3 units were worth fielding and everything else was garbage.

I think a lot of armies would go more mech.

My Mechdar only uses the 10 CPs for rerolls on damage mostly. I normally have 1 to 4 CPs left over

When I used to play FootDar I would run out of CPs even if I had 12 or more.

My Deathwatch and Custodes really need the Teleportarium/Golden Light to get stuff up the table and avoid alpha-strikes, but other than that the stratagems are mostly situational perks.

Guard dont need stratagems, we have orders to get by. That said Cadians would lag behind Catachan regiment by a bigger margin. Overlapping (+1 to hit something that is wounded) keeps Cadian mildly competitive.

I usually play Mono-Guard, and the only thing I’d really miss is the combined squads stratagem.

I often run 3 Batallions at 1500 points, so I’ve got 18 CP to work with but I use them mostly for shooting rerolls.

For the fun and flavour of it, I use the commissar tank strat.

Everything else would just be “oh, hey! I could use a CP in this unusual situation, and I actually remembered to do that!”

I'd see virtually no change to my Dark Eldar. I don't play Black Heart so I don't use Vect anyway, that basically just leaves me with LFR, Alliance of Agony and the Covens re-roll failed wounds strat, and I don't always make much use of them. As a result I barely have mroe than 6CP in a list and wouldn't even take a Battalion if I didn't need 3 Elites and 3 Heavy Support, but do resent the Archon tax.

My mates Tau would struggle though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Reemule wrote:
For some time the recommendation is you can only run Stratagems from your Warlord's faction. It fixes the issue for soup (somewhat) and makes it so that Mono factions aren't needlessly screwwed over.

This has always been a bad idea, elite armies would become increasingly punished for having the audacity to be an elite army. The problem has always been the way CP are generated and not who can use them, having them attached to the detachments you can take was always a bad idea.

Deleted

Death Guard do fine with no stratagems, as we have very few, and most of the ones we have suck. I’d miss blowing up my own vehicles out of spite, but that’s about it...

The new GSC codex seems to be heavily dependant on stratagems.

Orks live and die by their strategems so yes. Without them they would have to just try to get to other side, have no survivability and no damage output. Codex tellyporta

Yes, oh wait, we didn0t get any,

ANNNNDDD we are probably some of the worst off faction.


Makes you think that Stratagems as a whole are a bad idea and Special rules should make a comeback

My Dark Reapers benefit from Fire & Fade.
The remaining pts are usually spent for rerolls of all kinds.

My Blood Angels rely on their stratagems to make their style of play actually work. On Wings of Fire and Descent of Angels aren't so much stratagems as special rules you pay CPs for as they're so intrinsic to the character and style of the army. Things like Death Visions and Red Rampage are also vital for actually allowing the usually sub-par SM characters to achieve anything. By contrast, outside of the deep strike stratagem my Deathwatch are pretty indifferent. Yes, getting +1 to wound is great and very useful but I don't think it's as vital as some of the BA stratagems.

I think the whole concept of stratagems needs revisiting and rebalancing, as does the issue of CP generation. Unfortunately CPs/stratagems right now are just another area for GW to fail to balance properly.

They all suck with them.

I think it's interesting how many people basically only use their cp for rerolls. It makes me wonder if maybe that stratagem isn't too powerful. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing command reroll nerfed (maybe once per game) or removed entirely since in my opinion it throws off the narrative of the game and frequently just serves to slow down the game while people hem and haw about if they want to reroll something.

As to the op question my armies would basically be fine. The only stratagem I consistantly play is the thousand sons one to let me swap powers mid game and that's usually just to get someone on a table they wouldn't normally be able to access. Webway would be a loss I guess but honestly if I couldn't just deep strike rubrics it would make scarab occult much more worthwhile.

I feel like armies without access to psykers or equivalents would suffer the most.
I play admech and without stratagems my army wouldnt be doing much.

The Newman wrote:
Well, Marines suck with strategems...

There are a couple of fun ones.

I've had a couple of hilarious instances of people reserving in / deep striking in range of my Aggressors using an Auspex scan. Those aggressors can shoot up to 24 shots per model. With an auspex scan, 28-48 bolter shots per model. Add in -1 AP and rerolls with buffs, it's obscene.

Getting a smashcaptain into something important, and getting to fight a second time is fun too.