Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

To me the major issue with soup is that you can take multiple detachments and get the benefit of all of them (traits, stratagems, etc.) while using CP generated from all of them to power any one of them. So here is my proposed fix, with examples. This is just a rough idea still and I'm no expert on the game to know if I'm overlooking something; nothing springs to mind but I'm not sure.

PRIMARY AND ALLIED DETACHMENTS

When creating a Battleforged army (optional: for Matched Play), a primary detachment must be declared. All other detachments are considered ALLIED DETACHMENTS and have the following rules applied:

1) An allied detachment does NOT unlock access to that faction's stratagems. (e.g. if I have a <DEATH GUARD> primary detachment with an <ALPHA LEGION> allied detachment, I do not unlock generic Heretic Astartes stratagems). Note this doesn't prevent applicable stratagems from being used on allied detachments (e..g I could still use Veterans of the Long War on a unit in the <ALPHA LEGION> detachment), merely does not unlock the second factions stratagems.

2) Allied detachments give half the Command Points (rounding up), to a minimum of 1.

ALLIED SUBFACTIONS

If a Battle-forged army (optional: for Matched Play) contains the same faction but different subfactions, the following restrictions apply:

1) One subfaction must be declared to be the primary; all other detachments are allied detachments. An allied subfaction does not gain its army-wide traits or access to its subfaction-specific relics, stratagems (if applicable) and grant half the normal Command Points (rounding down). Psychic powers are NOT affected. Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh and Tzeentch keywords do not count for this purpose. (NOTE: This part I'm not sure if it's needed, but erring on the side that if I allowed it, there would be some broken combo using daemon stratagems on CSM/Death Guard/TSons units)

YNNARI

Ynnari do not have any specific stratagems, so a Ynnari army that is chosen as the primary detachment in an AELDARI Battleforged army may pick one of their subfactions to count as the primary faction for purposes of relics and stratagems only. All other restrictions as above (half CP, no traits, etc.)

So, example time:

Example 1: I have a <BLACK LEGION> Battalion and an <ALPHA LEGION> Battalion. I must pick one to be the primary detachment; I select Black Legion to be primary. My <ALPHA LEGION> detachment does NOT get the Alpha Legion trait, access to the specific Alpha Legion stratagem(s) and relics, and provides me half the CP (so 3 instead of 5). They can still benefit from any stratagem that affects <HERETIC ASTARTES> as they share this keyword.

Example 2: I have a <DEATH GUARD> Battalion and a <DEATH GUARD> Outrider detachment. I still have to pick one as the primary detachment; I pick the Battalion. Since the subfaction keywords are the same, I get full CP for the Outrider (this would be 1 anyway) and have no additional restrictions. If instead I had a <CHAOS DAEMON> <NURGLE> Battalion alongside my Death Guard battalion, since the Nurgle keyword does not count I would not get access to the Daemon traits, relics or stratagems and the Daemon battalion would give me 3 CP instead of 5.

Example 3: I have a <CADIAN> Battalion, a <BLOOD ANGELS> Supreme Command detachment and a <HOUSE RAVEN> Superheavy Auxiliary Detachment (i.e. Knight Castellan). I pick the Cadian detachment as my primary. I do not get access to any stratagems or relics for the Blood Angels or House Raven detachments, they do not get their faction-specific traits (the Superheavy Aux doesn't get this anyway) and each of them gives me half CP (still 1 as that's the minimum). I only have access to the Guard relics and stratagems. If for some reason, a Guard stratagem specified it could be used on <IMPERIUM> units, then I could still use that stratagem on the Blood Angels or even the Knight.

Example 4: I have a <DEATH GUARD> Battalion and an <THOUSAND SONS> Patrol; I pick the Battalion as my primary. I gain access to the Death Guard stratagems, do NOT get access to the Thousand Sons traits, relics or stratagems. Any stratagem I use that can be used on <HERETIC ASTARTES> (e.g. VOTLW) can be used on units in either detachment which have the relevant keyword.

Example 5: I have a <YNNARI> Battalion, a <DRUKHARI> <KABAL OF THE BLACK HEART> Air Wing and a <ASURYANI> <ALAITOC> Air Wing. I pick the Ynnari detachment to be the primary. Because Ynnari don't have stratagems of their own, I can pick Kabal of the Black Heart or Alaitoc to count as my primary detachment for purposes of relics and stratagems only. I pick Kabal of the Black Heart. I do not get the Alaitoc traits or any Craftworld stratagems. The Kabal of the Black Heart detachment does NOT get access to the Kabal of the Black Heart traits but does get access to relics and stratagems.

I think that the introduction of the Assassin rules and the mini dex put a complete stop to the idea that GW is going to Nerf down Stratagems to some kind of usability or take them away from a force.

I think at best you might see some kind of limitation on the type amount of CP available to a force.

The problem with taking away chapter tactic equivalents and stratagems is that some factions rely on those to survive or to, well, be interesting.

Consider Harlequins. Expensive Troop units mean that they're much more likely to be taken as an allied detachment than as a primary. Without stratagems, you lose out on bonuses to invul saves, to-hit penalties, and mobility-related options that allow the clowns to get close enough to the enemy to attack. Without those, it's much easier for your opponent to blast the expensive clowns away before they kill a single model.

And consider Grey Knights. They're already considered relatively weak compared to most factions, but splashing a few of them in alongside a primarily Imperial Guard army is a reasonably fluffy army. Under the rules you're proposing, the subpar Grey Knights just became worse because they can't access all of their goodies.

Dark Eldar are also a thing. I feel like I tend to ramble about them a lot on here, so I'll try to avoid doing so now. Basically, you're expected to run several different sub-factions of them in a standard army because our codex is functionally broken up into 3 parts. So your rules would be especially harsh on pure Drukhari armies.

On a side note, I get the impression from your Ynnari rules that you might possibly not know how Ynnari work at the moment. Which is understandable. They change every FAQ and get increasingly complicated each time. Currently, Ynnari do not get free relics. The only way to get relics in an army that includes a Ynnari detachment is to use the "buy 1 or 2 relics" stratagems. As your rules would only allow a player access to one such relic-buying stratagem, your references to relics seem to be redundant. Or maybe you're well aware of that and I'm just misintepreting you.

Simpler solution: Only detachments that have all the same faction keywords as your warlord generate CP or unlock Detachments.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Simpler solution: Only detachments that have all the same faction keywords as your warlord generate CP or unlock Detachments.

I mean, that would also suffer from all the problems in my above post.

Get rid of detachments.

Allow all units to soup every which way. Tyranids with Dark Angels with Chaos Daemons with Necrons with Harlies.

An army generates 1 CP per turn per 500 points or part thereof. IE a 1750 point army generates 4 CP per turn, plus that many CP for pregame stratagems. Unused pre-game CP are lost.

Rework all stratagems to an absolute cost, and restrict usage to their own faction. Much like points costs, stratagems effecting Knights should have a higher CP cost than those that effect smaller units. ( in general )

The simple solution is flat cp by army size

12cp at 2k points.

Or 3cp for every 500 points in the army.

Done.

In my opinion, the problem with soup is not that soup itself is inherently broken, it's that certain units, comboes, and strategems are too powerful for their cost and can be splashed into any army.

Soup, by itself, offers one real advantage: You can shore up a faction's weaknesses by including units that have the correct strengths. This is important for many small factions, but larger factions like Space Marines and Imperial Guard can generally cover all their weaknesses in-house if they have to. (Space Marines suck because all of their units suck, not because they have any glaring weaknesses.)

Soup is broken because the Loyal 32 is incredibly powerful and has no downsides, Castellans are incredibly powerful and have few downsides, and these two choices can be plugged into any 1200pt list. Other common combinations have similar problems.

If you want to fix soup, get rid of the Loyal 32 and increase the cost of a Castellan and you'll be like 60% of the way there.

(There aren't many Aeldari players at my LGS and I never seem to get matched against them in tournaments, so I can't speak to their abilities.)

Waaaghpower wrote:
In my opinion, the problem with soup is not that soup itself is inherently broken, it's that certain units, comboes, and strategems are too powerful for their cost and can be splashed into any army.

Soup, by itself, offers one real advantage: You can shore up a faction's weaknesses by including units that have the correct strengths. This is important for many small factions, but larger factions like Space Marines and Imperial Guard can generally cover all their weaknesses in-house if they have to. (Space Marines suck because all of their units suck, not because they have any glaring weaknesses.)

Soup is broken because the Loyal 32 is incredibly powerful and has no downsides, Castellans are incredibly powerful and have few downsides, and these two choices can be plugged into any 1200pt list. Other common combinations have similar problems.

If you want to fix soup, get rid of the Loyal 32 and increase the cost of a Castellan and you'll be like 60% of the way there.

(There aren't many Aeldari players at my LGS and I never seem to get matched against them in tournaments, so I can't speak to their abilities.)

The real issue is that a model in a list with 9 CP will be able to use a 3CP strategum once per game reliably.

A model in a list with 14 CP and be able to use a 3 CP strategum twice maybe three times per game.

A model in a list with 20 CP can use a 3CP strategum 4 or 5 times per game.

At no point is there a point or CP cost that is balanced for all 3 lists.

That is the true issue with soup.

It’s almost like the key issue with soup is unequal CP generation. The solution to which would be to equalize everyone’s access to CP by linking CP to the size of the game somehow, instead of which models are brought to a game in which configuration.

 greatbigtree wrote:
It’s almost like the key issue with soup is unequal CP generation. The solution to which would be to equalize everyone’s access to CP by linking CP to the size of the game somehow, instead of which models are brought to a game in which configuration.

I agree but then why would anyone ever want to take non broken troop choices ever again. Then people complain that armies don't look like armies.

Or GW coukd have actually balanced the troop choices against each other and given them a distinguishing feature from other slots.
Instead of make some :cough: guardsmen :cough: just straight up better than everything else.

It's like players don't want to play the same game.

As far as I’m concerned, troops shouldn’t be mandatory.

The function of “Troops” should be cheap placeholders that can secure objectives / provide space so that the other FOC slots can do their jobs. The express purpose of troops in previous editions.

Which, for the record, is why Tactical MEQ need to be cheaper, not better. If Tacs were cheaper MEQ armies wouldn’t need hordes for board presence / control.

Every edition of 40k has some way to unlock non-troops as troops. I think it’s time to get away from the FOC. That way “Troops” become useful as cheap bodies, and if they aren’t you aren’t forced to take them.

I used to be opposed to the idea of “unbound” armies, but honestly, you can currently build just about any kind of army you want within the various FOC options, there’s just an artificial HQ tax on everything.

The competitive meta always solidifies after a couple years, unless a counter-meta codex gets released, at which point the meta shifts and resolidifies. Just let competitive peeps free. Tell them to mix and match from every codex Willy nilly. That way, no faction has a souping advantage over another. A single, all powerful list will emerge on the competitive scene and anyone playing anything else will be a scrub.

I’m really just interested in a game with my buds. We play mostly mono or duo faction lists, and most of our games are pretty good. I find that super-heavies tend to imbablance the game more than anything else, but I genuinely am not interested enough in the game to try and learn to deal with them efficiently. If I see one, I just accept the game will be less fun for me, but my friends like using them, so compromise. I don’t mind flavourful souping, and that’s what I see in my garagehammer so I don’t mind it.

Ice_can wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
It’s almost like the key issue with soup is unequal CP generation. The solution to which would be to equalize everyone’s access to CP by linking CP to the size of the game somehow, instead of which models are brought to a game in which configuration.

I agree but then why would anyone ever want to take non broken troop choices ever again. Then people complain that armies don't look like armies.

Or GW coukd have actually balanced the troop choices against each other and given them a distinguishing feature from other slots.
Instead of make some :cough: guardsmen :cough: just straight up better than everything else.

It's like players don't want to play the same game.

Troops can be worth taking and can be subsequently taken for it's own worth, but no army should be "forced" to take troops so the rest of the army can have a fighting chance. It's a poor game design.

In chess, even a humble pawn can become a queen and win the game.

Majority of troop choices in the game are point sinks for the sake of generating CP's. In my experiences, you need at least 8 CP's to trigger key stratagems, whether it's a 7-8 CP wombocombo or 3-4CP per round for two rounds, to make the game worth while. The only way guarantee +8 CP, without relying on relics & chances, is to take a battalion. This needs to be addressed.

 skchsan wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
It’s almost like the key issue with soup is unequal CP generation. The solution to which would be to equalize everyone’s access to CP by linking CP to the size of the game somehow, instead of which models are brought to a game in which configuration.

I agree but then why would anyone ever want to take non broken troop choices ever again. Then people complain that armies don't look like armies.

Or GW coukd have actually balanced the troop choices against each other and given them a distinguishing feature from other slots.
Instead of make some :cough: guardsmen :cough: just straight up better than everything else.

It's like players don't want to play the same game.

Troops can be worth taking and can be subsequently taken for it's own worth, but no army should be "forced" to take troops so the rest of the army can have a fighting chance. It's a poor game design.

In chess, even a humble pawn can become a queen and win the game.

Majority of troop choices in the game are point sinks for the sake of generating CP's. In my experiences, you need at least 8 CP's to trigger key stratagems, whether it's a 7-8 CP wombocombo or 3-4CP per round for two rounds, to make the game worth while. The only way guarantee +8 CP, without relying on relics & chances, is to take a battalion. This needs to be addressed.

I don't disagree with you persay, it was more a comment on the fact that the player's all seam to have very different ideas of the "correct" way to play 40k.

I'd also be interested in a system that tied Command Points to the number of Points (Or, I guess Power Level since GW loves Power Level) spent on Troops. The Detachments would still exist, but only as a framework people have to follow in order to get command benefits and prevent pure soup.

Say, something like this:
Every army starts with just one Command Point.
For every 5 PL spent on Troops, (Rounding down) you get 1 additional Command Point.
For every 15 PL spent on non-troop units, (Rounding down) you get 1 additional Command Point.
If a player brings a full Brigade, they gain one additional Command Point. (This would be the only detachment that gives Command Point benefits.)
Units taken in Auxiliary and Super-heavy Auxiliary detachments have an effective Power Level of 0 when determining Command Points. Reinforcement points do not count when determining Command Points.

This would still be *somewhat* cheesable, by finding Troops squads with inordinately high Power Level to their cost, but relative to our current system it would prevent players from bringing 400pts of Imperial Guard and getting 10 command points. You'd still get rewarded extra for bringing a full Brigade, and there would be a mild but noteworthy punishment for souping in a single Castellan or summoning an assassin.
Most armies would have a maximum of about 20 Command Points, which is close to the ceiling anyways.

This could use some tweaking - Some kind of buff for Chaos, so that their summoning isn't punished as heavily, possibly a bit of numbers tweaking, but I think it would work.

Waaaghpower wrote:
I'd also be interested in a system that tied Command Points to the number of Points (Or, I guess Power Level since GW loves Power Level) spent on Troops. The Detachments would still exist, but only as a framework people have to follow in order to get command benefits and prevent pure soup.

Say, something like this:
Every army starts with just one Command Point.
For every 5 PL spent on Troops, (Rounding down) you get 1 additional Command Point.
For every 15 PL spent on non-troop units, (Rounding down) you get 1 additional Command Point.
If a player brings a full Brigade, they gain one additional Command Point. (This would be the only detachment that gives Command Point benefits.)
Units taken in Auxiliary and Super-heavy Auxiliary detachments have an effective Power Level of 0 when determining Command Points. Reinforcement points do not count when determining Command Points.

This would still be *somewhat* cheesable, by finding Troops squads with inordinately high Power Level to their cost, but relative to our current system it would prevent players from bringing 400pts of Imperial Guard and getting 10 command points. You'd still get rewarded extra for bringing a full Brigade, and there would be a mild but noteworthy punishment for souping in a single Castellan or summoning an assassin.
Most armies would have a maximum of about 20 Command Points, which is close to the ceiling anyways.

This could use some tweaking - Some kind of buff for Chaos, so that their summoning isn't punished as heavily, possibly a bit of numbers tweaking, but I think it would work.

Why the need to force people so heavily into troops only though, that's insanely unbalanced for army's without troops or with just uncompetitive troops.

Ice_can wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:
I'd also be interested in a system that tied Command Points to the number of Points (Or, I guess Power Level since GW loves Power Level) spent on Troops. The Detachments would still exist, but only as a framework people have to follow in order to get command benefits and prevent pure soup.

Say, something like this:
Every army starts with just one Command Point.
For every 5 PL spent on Troops, (Rounding down) you get 1 additional Command Point.
For every 15 PL spent on non-troop units, (Rounding down) you get 1 additional Command Point.
If a player brings a full Brigade, they gain one additional Command Point. (This would be the only detachment that gives Command Point benefits.)
Units taken in Auxiliary and Super-heavy Auxiliary detachments have an effective Power Level of 0 when determining Command Points. Reinforcement points do not count when determining Command Points.

This would still be *somewhat* cheesable, by finding Troops squads with inordinately high Power Level to their cost, but relative to our current system it would prevent players from bringing 400pts of Imperial Guard and getting 10 command points. You'd still get rewarded extra for bringing a full Brigade, and there would be a mild but noteworthy punishment for souping in a single Castellan or summoning an assassin.
Most armies would have a maximum of about 20 Command Points, which is close to the ceiling anyways.

This could use some tweaking - Some kind of buff for Chaos, so that their summoning isn't punished as heavily, possibly a bit of numbers tweaking, but I think it would work.

Why the need to force people so heavily into troops only though, that's insanely unbalanced for army's without troops or with just uncompetitive troops.

Well sure, but any detachment option is going to be imbalanced for some armies. What I'm trying to do here is compare the intent of a system versus the outcome.

So, in short, here's a quick summary of my opinions of what I think the design is going for:
Games Workshop wants troops to form the backbone of a player's army, barring certain edge cases. This is telegraphed in two main ways: Limited Objective Secured to only Troops units, and giving massive CP rewards for Troops-heavy detachments.

I agree with you that some armies' troops are just bad and this system would be overly punishing, but disagree in regards to armies that don't have troops at all being overly punished.
For the former, I think the solution is to fix those troops so they don't suck. We're in the proposed rules forum after all. Also, for armies whose troops suck, they're already outsourcing their Troops choices to other armies to compensate and get Command Points, at least if they have allies. (If they don't have allies and have sucky troops, they generally can't work competitively because they have to pay an unfair model tax to get Command Points. This would also be a problem under my system, but no worse than the already existing problem.)

For the latter, armies who don't have Troops choices are generally already not able to generate Command Points, and are (at least theoretically) designed with that in mind. The only exception I can think of are Imperial Knights, who have an exemption allowing them to get a couple bonus points if they invest at least 1056 points into them, and that's only if you're taking the bare minimum necessary. (More realistically, you're going to be spending 1400+ points if you want the extra three Command Points from taking knights.) I'd happily discuss giving Knights a similar exemption here - Something like, "If you take at least three big knights in a Super Heavy detachment, you get one Command Point for every 10PL instead of every 15PL in this detachment." This would approximate the current effect, rewarding players who invest heavily in Knights instead of just dipping in a single knight.

This has a very simple solution on 2 fronts to tone down soup combos and CP farming.

)1 As mentioned before, you get 3CP for every 500 points in the army. A 2k game gives each army 12 CP. Done. It's not based on troops or detachments or anything. It's just even and fair.

2) You get access to the Strategems, Warlord Traits, and Relics of your warlords Detachment. Thats it.

If you take Ultramarine Detachment and use Guillimen as your warlord then you get Ultramarine Stratagems. Do you take a second detachment of Guard and bring some troops? Great! Pick which type they are. They get their regiment trait. But you do not gain access to ANY of their stratagem, relics, or warlord traits. Now if you want to soup you need to want to do it based on the merits of the unit alone. Not some bull gak combo of stratagems.

 Lance845 wrote:
This has a very simple solution on 2 fronts to tone down soup combos and CP farming.

)1 As mentioned before, you get 3CP for every 500 points in the army. A 2k game gives each army 12 CP. Done. It's not based on troops or detachments or anything. It's just even and fair.

2) You get access to the Strategems, Warlord Traits, and Relics of your warlords Detachment. Thats it.

If you take Ultramarine Detachment and use Guillimen as your warlord then you get Ultramarine Stratagems. Do you take a second detachment of Guard and bring some troops? Great! Pick which type they are. They get their regiment trait. But you do not gain access to ANY of their stratagem, relics, or warlord traits. Now if you want to soup you need to want to do it based on the merits of the unit alone. Not some bull gak combo of stratagems.

Point 1 means that there's no reason not to spam specific overpowered units and ignore the basic idea of force organization charts at all. There's just no reason for them to exist at all, every army is basically going to be running unbound from 7th edition with no penalties. I'd rather see CP farming fixed, not eliminated entirely, because 8th edition listbuilding is already super dumbed down from previous editions and I don't want to see the game diluted down to playing Risk.

Point 2, regardless of whether it's connected to Point 1 or not, is ludicrously punishing and makes soup completely useless. (And sure, maybe you WANT to make soup completely useless, but if that's the case you should just say you want to ban soup in competitive play.) There's not a single faction I can think of that's worth taking in competitive play if they don't have access to stratagems, because when 8th edition came out, Games Workshop stripped out huge amounts of unit interactions and special abilities and tied them to stratagems instead.

If you want to eliminate soup entirely, go for it, but if you want to *balance* soup your suggestions aren't going to do it.

Waaaghpower wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
This has a very simple solution on 2 fronts to tone down soup combos and CP farming.

)1 As mentioned before, you get 3CP for every 500 points in the army. A 2k game gives each army 12 CP. Done. It's not based on troops or detachments or anything. It's just even and fair.

2) You get access to the Strategems, Warlord Traits, and Relics of your warlords Detachment. Thats it.

If you take Ultramarine Detachment and use Guillimen as your warlord then you get Ultramarine Stratagems. Do you take a second detachment of Guard and bring some troops? Great! Pick which type they are. They get their regiment trait. But you do not gain access to ANY of their stratagem, relics, or warlord traits. Now if you want to soup you need to want to do it based on the merits of the unit alone. Not some bull gak combo of stratagems.

Point 1 means that there's no reason not to spam specific overpowered units and ignore the basic idea of force organization charts at all. There's just no reason for them to exist at all, every army is basically going to be running unbound from 7th edition with no penalties. I'd rather see CP farming fixed, not eliminated entirely, because 8th edition listbuilding is already super dumbed down from previous editions and I don't want to see the game diluted down to playing Risk.

bs. The core book already has rules that recommend there is a limit on how many detachments you should get at a certain point level in matched play. I believe that is 3-4 detachments at 2k points. With that limitation you have very restrictive FoC charts that demand you fill specific slots. It wouldn't cause any more spam of units then there is right now. If you took 3 detachments made to spam specific types of units then you just won't have much in the way of slots all together.

Even then, take it a step further if your worried. 2 detachments at 2k points. Enjoy your spamming.

Point 2, regardless of whether it's connected to Point 1 or not, is ludicrously punishing and makes soup completely useless. (And sure, maybe you WANT to make soup completely useless, but if that's the case you should just say you want to ban soup in competitive play.) There's not a single faction I can think of that's worth taking in competitive play if they don't have access to stratagems, because when 8th edition came out, Games Workshop stripped out huge amounts of unit interactions and special abilities and tied them to stratagems instead.

If you want to eliminate soup entirely, go for it, but if you want to *balance* soup your suggestions aren't going to do it.

Competitive play only functions on some measure of balance and the stratagems are not balanced against anything but the codex they come out of. And factions like the Imperium have too many armies under a single banner to ever balance all the potential combinations of stratagems. If the only reason you Soup is to find the broken combinations of stratagems then you are pointing a giant finger at the single giant problem with soup in competitive play. All the more reason to not allow that reason at all. It will never be balanced otherwise.

If you want to mix factions it should be because that faction over there has a unit that does something your units can't and you have found a strategy around filling in your factions failings with those units. You don't need stratagems to do that.

 Lance845 wrote:

bs. The core book already has rules that recommend there is a limit on how many detachments you should get at a certain point level in matched play. I believe that is 3-4 detachments at 2k points. With that limitation you have very restrictive FoC charts that demand you fill specific slots. It wouldn't cause any more spam of units then there is right now. If you took 3 detachments made to spam specific types of units then you just won't have much in the way of slots all together.

I disagree. Currently, only three detachments get taken, sure, but at least one of those is always dedicated to CP farming if the other detachments aren't getting enough CPs themselves. So, while the same "You only get three detachments" rule might be in place, you're currently only getting 2 because at least one is dedicated to being a battery. Even if some armies don't run pure batteries, some care at least has to be taken to make the army semi-cohesive.

Competitive play only functions on some measure of balance and the stratagems are not balanced against anything but the codex they come out of. And factions like the Imperium have too many armies under a single banner to ever balance all the potential combinations of stratagems. If the only reason you Soup is to find the broken combinations of stratagems then you are pointing a giant finger at he single giant problem with soup in competitive play. All the more reason to not allow it at all. It will never be balanced otherwise.

It's not a combination of stratagems that's too powerful. Most stratagems don't actually stack with one another, especially across codices. It's a few specifically overpowered strategems and units. (For example: There's a reason why Imperial Soup always takes a Castellan and never a Valiant. It's because it's not the soup-with-knights that's the powerful thing, it's the Castellan specifically.)

Which brings me back to my original point. Fix the Loyal 32, fix Castellans, maybe get rid of Supreme Command Detachments entirely so people can't take Smash Captain batteries from various different armies. That'll get you 90% of the way to fixing soup.

Waaaghpower wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
This has a very simple solution on 2 fronts to tone down soup combos and CP farming.

)1 As mentioned before, you get 3CP for every 500 points in the army. A 2k game gives each army 12 CP. Done. It's not based on troops or detachments or anything. It's just even and fair.

2) You get access to the Strategems, Warlord Traits, and Relics of your warlords Detachment. Thats it.

If you take Ultramarine Detachment and use Guillimen as your warlord then you get Ultramarine Stratagems. Do you take a second detachment of Guard and bring some troops? Great! Pick which type they are. They get their regiment trait. But you do not gain access to ANY of their stratagem, relics, or warlord traits. Now if you want to soup you need to want to do it based on the merits of the unit alone. Not some bull gak combo of stratagems.

Point 1 means that there's no reason not to spam specific overpowered units and ignore the basic idea of force organization charts at all. There's just no reason for them to exist at all, every army is basically going to be running unbound from 7th edition with no penalties. I'd rather see CP farming fixed, not eliminated entirely, because 8th edition listbuilding is already super dumbed down from previous editions and I don't want to see the game diluted down to playing Risk.

Point 2, regardless of whether it's connected to Point 1 or not, is ludicrously punishing and makes soup completely useless. (And sure, maybe you WANT to make soup completely useless, but if that's the case you should just say you want to ban soup in competitive play.) There's not a single faction I can think of that's worth taking in competitive play if they don't have access to stratagems, because when 8th edition came out, Games Workshop stripped out huge amounts of unit interactions and special abilities and tied them to stratagems instead.

If you want to eliminate soup entirely, go for it, but if you want to *balance* soup your suggestions aren't going to do it.

People spend all of 2018 taking Astra Militarum quite happily with them having esentially no strategums worth playing.
Hech even now people are only using the vigilous detachment and strategum as they are borderline on wandering into OP only balanced against the top end of competitive lists.

Yup. Waaagh is crying wolf about things that are not problems with a recorded history of not being problems.

Had this posted on another thread regarding how to go about making monodexs more powerful.

In matched play, if your army is comprised of units from multiple factions (i.e. not a monodex), all stratagems cost +1 CP to activate. This does not aply to universal stratagems.

Soup should be about filling other codex's shortcomings on the merits of the souped armies themselves, and not as a way to circumvent lack of CPs.

The benefits of soup should be additive, not exponentially multiplicative (i.e. loyal 32 is a force multiplier to knights through provision of CPs).

Ice_can wrote:

People spend all of 2018 taking Astra Militarum quite happily with them having esentially no strategums worth playing.
Hech even now people are only using the vigilous detachment and strategum as they are borderline on wandering into OP only balanced against the top end of competitive lists.

When you say "People are taking Astra Militarum" are you talking about actual Astra Militarum lists, or Loyal 32/Command Point farming lists? Because if it's the latter, well... Fair enough, I didn't clarify well in my original post. You can still take Command Point batteries without worrying about the available stratagems. That being said, seeing as nobody's *trying* to use stratagems just for their command point batteries, I don't think this would really fix anything. The proposed rule here would punish actual allies working together soup, but not battery units. (Or, if combined with the rule that ties command points purely to army size, the proposed rule would just punish soup in general because nobody would take battery units anymore.)

Nobody SHOULD take battery units.

Lets use a comparison. Was it better in 7th edition where all psykers were just batteries to give more dice for a single psyker to use their powers or is it better now where each psyker has an actual purpose on the list and in the army?

If the only reason you are taking those units is to fill space for command points then something is wrong. A list should be built with strategic purpose and the units should be used tactically.

Being there simply to get a resource is a crap way to list build.

What about tying CP generated by a detachment to the detachment?

IE yes, take the loyal 32, but only they can use the CP they generate.

If you don't let them all share, soup can still be a thing, but not as batteries to overcharge a central core. people will have to think of tactics again.

and if you don't like the little bit of extra bookkeeping? soup isn't for you.

Essentially play each detachment as it's own army, as if it were a different player. like it would be in real life.

this way you can synergise lists, plug holes in your army's weak points, and make cool themed armies. But, you don't get to take a whole load of guardsmen standing around shouting stratagems over the radio to an imperial knight.

Waaaghpower wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

People spend all of 2018 taking Astra Militarum quite happily with them having esentially no strategums worth playing.
Hech even now people are only using the vigilous detachment and strategum as they are borderline on wandering into OP only balanced against the top end of competitive lists.

When you say "People are taking Astra Militarum" are you talking about actual Astra Militarum lists, or Loyal 32/Command Point farming lists? Because if it's the latter, well... Fair enough, I didn't clarify well in my original post. You can still take Command Point batteries without worrying about the available stratagems. That being said, seeing as nobody's *trying* to use stratagems just for their command point batteries, I don't think this would really fix anything. The proposed rule here would punish actual allies working together soup, but not battery units. (Or, if combined with the rule that ties command points purely to army size, the proposed rule would just punish soup in general because nobody would take battery units anymore.)

Right, because nobody takes loyal 32 to gain access to IG strats but to simply provide CP's for the knight.

The issue isn't the access to multiple armies' stratagems since most of them overlap anyways and also only affect units with certain keywords (for the most part). It's how cheap CP's are used to fuel other armies' top tier stratagems.

The way I see it, the act of plugging an army's weakness by allying in other armies in itself should curb the need to rely on stratagems, whereas monodex's 'oomph' comes from a form of stratagem.

 skchsan wrote:
Right, because nobody takes loyal 32 to gain access to IG strats but to simply provide CP's for the knight.

The issue isn't the access to multiple armies' stratagems since most of them overlap anyways and also only affect units with certain keywords (for the most part). It's how cheap CP's are used to fuel other armies' top tier stratagems.

I agree with the first half of this. That's my point. Battery detachments to fuel other faction's Strategems are the problem. Because Strategems are the source of most armies' ability to function at all, and supercharging access to those strategems is what makes certain units too powerful.

Rules which take away strategems when using allies don't actually punish battery units, they punish allies as a whole. I can't think of a single Soup combination that would be better than monodex given either your rules proposal or Lance's, because units by themselves just aren't strong enough to be worth the incredibly harsh punishments you're proposing. I'd like to be proven wrong here: Show me an example of a list that, using your proposed rules, would serve notably better than a comparable army that used a single faction. (In other words, show me two factions who can both fight at a tournament level with their strategem access kneecapped.)

First, go look at the first 2 rounds of tournements after 8th dropped. How much of the lists were marines supported by guard before guards codex came out?

There is your proof.

Second, the worst offenders is bringing a single knight and having all the CP to support that knight.

If your primary detachment has to be a imperial Knight detachment it means you need Armigers and gak to support the knight so that it can be your warlord so you have access to those stratagems. At which point you can soup whatever else to come with. Your still bringing a knight army to the fight with knight warlord traits and knight relics. And it means that if you want to supplement that knight with whatever the feth else you don't get any of their other gak to support it (like a relic that lets you regain command points from another army for example).

Otherwise your Space marines or whatever and if you bring a single knight that single knight stands alone without it's strats or relics. It's just a tough mobile gun platform.