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I understand that a lack of variance in units could seriously hinder an ability to adapt to certain situations, but does that make them bad?
Take the Order Serpentis only has a selection of 4 units...

Varies. Some don't have enough to field a proper force (though the combined books are helping) Others like FEC with like three kits dominate the field when they get a book.

If they have units to properly fill battlefield roles as needed by the allegiance in question the army can do well even with a very small selection. Generally speaking I find armies that have 6+ options are OK but less than that struggle.

On a related note, Order Serpentis is about to be part of a larger faction with the Cities of Sigmar battletome and that will shake everything up.

well faction with smaller unit count can be just as broken as big one as you only use the broken units for broken lists so generally big variance most units are ignored anyway.

Big amount of units does give you better bulletproof for changes though. Rules or standard scenarios or point costs changes and army with few units could end up crippled. Bigger unit selection could have previous broken good units go useless but others become broken good in return so faction itself still stays same.

Then there's external issues like tournaments that tries to put extra restrictions to balance which tends to hurt smaller variety armies more. Not sure how common those are in AOS side but in 40k stuff like "only 1 same heavy support can be taken" stuff has been used and invariably it just helps the broken good factions while hurting less competive ones. Generally because broken good factions have large amount of units so they tend to have more viable units while the less competive ones are restricted to the few units that give them at least some even foot so limit them and...

(that's why I hate blanket restrictions as way to balance. I have yet to see one that actually does more good than harm)

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
I understand that a lack of variance in units could seriously hinder an ability to adapt to certain situations, but does that make them bad?
Take the Order Serpentis only has a selection of 4 units...

It really depends. I think the first thing you need to look at is, does this army have a 2.0 tome? If the army doesn't then it has a host of issues associated with it, and is inherently weaker. GW is currently working to do away with tiny mini-factions, like order serpentis, by either rolling them into a battletome or in rare cases squatting them. Cities of Sigmar is going to hopefully alleviate the issue of large majority of these mini-factions.

For 2.0 tomes it also depends, but so far we've seen two of the smallest factions FEC and Fyreslayers, come out of the gate swinging pretty hard. There are really no weak units in either of these tomes and FEC was at the top of tables for a very long streak.

What determins if a unit is very good, more then it stats, or how it functions within the game, or almost anything else, is it'a point cost.

In order to have a good army you need units that are cheap. Having more entries in a book theoretically gives you more chance of finding an undercosted unit. But in most cases the number of units in a book is not important.

Having more units to choose from can be fun though.

Points cost is important yes, but more specifically a high damage / per point combined with durability / per point ratio.

If your book only has 4 units but all 4 of those units have crazy high damage/durability per point ratios, that is very strong (and indicates that the units are undercost, which is what you look for when you are minmaxing and trying to be "competitive")

Obviously the more units in your arsenal, the greater the odds of having a higher number of undercost "optimal" units.

If you want to have a go with finding those and have any experience in data science you can create a linear regression model to find the expected power output and durability ratio and then plot the averages for every unit on that graph to see what comes above that line and focus on fielding those units. (that is very basic, there are a number of other independent variables you'll also want to include like movement, units with battalion buffs vs units without etc)

Though if I had to pick up two factions with about equal brokeness and was just looking at competive side I would still pick up the larger. Just to future proof myself so that entire faction doesn't get invalidated(in competive sense) in future changes.

Age of Sigmar hasn't got as many unit type divisions as 40K has. As a result the game operates with far fewer specialists and specialist counters.

As a result small armies can work well because they only have to deal with a limited number of potential questions that he opposing army will ask of it. Even if the opposing army has a lot more model and unit diversity; the core differences in what you can hurt are fairly simplistic.


As a result smaller armies can hold their weight quite well and it more depends on the rules for them. Right now, as noted, the factions that are doing poorly are those mostly without a 2.0 battletome; whilst those with one are generally doing ok to very good.


As noted above Order Serpentis is about to get melded into the Cities of Sigmar faction in a new Battletome being released for pre-order this weekend. They might also no longer be called that and get merged up with other forces. Basically the aelves, dwarves and humans for Order are getting a massive revamp and update in terms of how they operate and the rules they use. So it will hopefully be good times for them fleshing out the armies and getting more effective use on the tabletop.

When 8th edition 40K launched dark eldars where very good. Dark eldars had a 3 point model that had stats far above what you would expect for 3 points. Poor point setting and bad rules meant spamming this was very eficient. When points increased it was very bad.

Any unit that would be reduced to one point per model will become the best model. Points is the most important factor. Any other thing, while important, is secondary.

Nope, look at DoK, IDK, FeC, and new Fyreslayers, all are doing well in tournaments.

What it does do however is makes those armies less fun to play with and against.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Nope, look at DoK, IDK, FeC, and new Fyreslayers, all are doing well in tournaments.

What it does do however is makes those armies less fun to play with and against.

Let's not do like 40k's done and equate "builds that do well" with "factions that do well".

Idoneth are doing well with the Eel builds. Most of the other stuff? Not doing so great.
DoK are similar.
Fyreslayers had a gimmick build.
Flesh Eaters rely on a gimmick as well.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Nope, look at DoK, IDK, FeC, and new Fyreslayers, all are doing well in tournaments.

What it does do however is makes those armies less fun to play with and against.

Let's not do like 40k's done and equate "builds that do well" with "factions that do well".

Idoneth are doing well with the Eel builds. Most of the other stuff? Not doing so great.
DoK are similar.
Fyreslayers had a gimmick build.
Flesh Eaters rely on a gimmick as well.

I can agree with the first two, but Fyreslayers and Flesh eaters are doing pretty well even without their gimmick builds.

I feel like a lot of Fyreslayer performing at tourneys keys off the strength of one unit (Hearthguard Berzerkers) but because everything else is reasonably balanced the exact exploitation of that strength differs.

FEC have certain units being exploited but the core mechanics of the army are also the 'gimmicks'--feeding frenzy and free summons.

What exactly is meant by "Gimmick Build"?

Why should we not equite factions that do well with builds that do well. The topic of this discussion is if armies with less units are inherently weaker. And the awnser is no. How good the units are do not depend on the number of units possible for the army.

Heck, if you do not equite factions that do well with builds that do well you will enf up with the opposett of what is asked in this thread. The more units that are in your army book, the worse your chaces of piking bad units and be inherently weaker. Anf when you do not do that you get social flak for playing only 'the best units'.

Give me a one unit army book, where the unit is undercosted and I can hide behind the fact that I play my faction.

NinthMusketeer wrote:I feel like a lot of Fyreslayer performing at tourneys keys off the strength of one unit (Hearthguard Berzerkers) but because everything else is reasonably balanced the exact exploitation of that strength differs.

FEC have certain units being exploited but the core mechanics of the army are also the 'gimmicks'--feeding frenzy and free summons.

I guess our definition of Gimmick is different. I don't really consider the core alligence ability and built in summoning that the army provides.

When I think of FEC gimmick build, I think Gristlecore and massed AGkoTG.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:What exactly is meant by "Gimmick Build"?

I am not exactly sure, as that can be pretty subjective area. I went with what *I* considered a gimmick, which is what I mentioned above.

The problem with using terms like Gimmick build with small armies is often the gimmick is just how the army works with a block of its core models.

Gimmick normally tends to come to the fore more so when its a single strategic and army building choice made within a much larger army, like Stormcast, whereby it lets you have significantly more power/potential to win over multiple other builds.

It's basically the "this one strategy works best of them all" approaches.

Gimmick might also involve "spamming" certain models a lot or focusing on one specific tactical approach.

To make extra units useful, they end up splitting roles into finer and finer slices.

So to make an army with few units balanced, they all need to be a lot more useful than an army with lots of units...

 Sasori wrote:

NinthMusketeer wrote:I feel like a lot of Fyreslayer performing at tourneys keys off the strength of one unit (Hearthguard Berzerkers) but because everything else is reasonably balanced the exact exploitation of that strength differs.

FEC have certain units being exploited but the core mechanics of the army are also the 'gimmicks'--feeding frenzy and free summons.

I guess our definition of Gimmick is different. I don't really consider the core alligence ability and built in summoning that the army provides.

When I think of FEC gimmick build, I think Gristlecore and massed AGkoTG.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:What exactly is meant by "Gimmick Build"?

I am not exactly sure, as that can be pretty subjective area. I went with what *I* considered a gimmick, which is what I mentioned above.

I was unclear; I meant to suggest it is not a gimmick army, because the so-called 'gimmicks' are integral components rather than some niche exploit.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

NinthMusketeer wrote:I feel like a lot of Fyreslayer performing at tourneys keys off the strength of one unit (Hearthguard Berzerkers) but because everything else is reasonably balanced the exact exploitation of that strength differs.

FEC have certain units being exploited but the core mechanics of the army are also the 'gimmicks'--feeding frenzy and free summons.

I guess our definition of Gimmick is different. I don't really consider the core alligence ability and built in summoning that the army provides.

When I think of FEC gimmick build, I think Gristlecore and massed AGkoTG.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:What exactly is meant by "Gimmick Build"?

I am not exactly sure, as that can be pretty subjective area. I went with what *I* considered a gimmick, which is what I mentioned above.

I was unclear; I meant to suggest it is not a gimmick army, because the so-called 'gimmicks' are integral components rather than some niche exploit.

Ahh, Ok. This makes sense, and I agree 100%.