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First up let me say I am not at all a competitive player, so feel free to ignore this if that matters to you. Anyway, not competitive but I read all the posts about this or that tournament winning list, and they all kinda look the same to me. There’s a ton that are basically one cheap garbage battalion plus three of whatever scary unit is popular. So I was thinking, what if people were more incentivized to take brigades, so that the army they’re using looks more like an actual army, with all the added variety that comes from that? What if brigades gave your more command points, or even what if battalions gave less? Would that do anything to the meta?

Much easier said than done. You need 3 of each slot minimum for each besides the troops, and not every army even wants that. Some of the B armies like GK and Harlies have a single unit for that slot entirely. Want to play an all Tzeentch Demons army? Well, I hope you like the exact same unit and sculpt 9 times.

Like you, I am not remotely interested in competitive play; I'm a narrative guy. My preference is actually bringing up the other detachments or knocking brigades and battalions back to what they were at release.

I realize that competitive types used to abuse lesser detachments, which gave rise to the rule of 3, the arbitrary detachment limit, etc.

I like multiple small detachments because they allow more intra-faction intrigue, and adequately reflect the actual story-based Imperial Soup that is perfect for campaign gaming.

For example, I prefer to keep my Ecclesiarchy units and my Inquisition units in separate detachments than my Sisters. Sure they are the armoured fist of one and the chamber militant of the other, but they maintain their own command structure. In small battles, these forces fight independently, but in times of crisis they unite.

While I don't actively play 40k right now, moved how I run my Blood Angels over to a Brigade. The wealth of CP to run Death Company, and use our other very critical Stratagems seems very worth fitting in a few Attack Bikes.

I was shocked at how little my army had to change from a double Battalion over to a Brigade, and in the end I think it made my army a hair stronger.

I would be all for Brigades granting even more CP, but they would really have to be careful of doing that since certain factions can create dirt cheap Brigades while others would have few points left over for decent units after filling out the slots in a Brigade.

I think right now battalions are over-emphasized, and the 5 CP boost incentivizes minimum-sized battalions to supercharge other units.

If it were 3CP for a battalion and 9CP for a brigade (as current), there'd be real incentive to go for a brigade over two battalions.

 catbarf wrote:
I think right now battalions are over-emphasized, and the 5 CP boost incentivizes minimum-sized battalions to supercharge other units.

If it were 3CP for a battalion and 9CP for a brigade (as current), there'd be real incentive to go for a brigade over two battalions.

That was what it was before and it just led to people not using either.

You also run into the problem that Guard go completely nuts when brigades are as good as or better than other options.

OOH OOH here's an idea, how about they stop making armies that have doggak for options in certain slots?

Crackedgear wrote:
First up let me say I am not at all a competitive player, so feel free to ignore this if that matters to you. Anyway, not competitive but I read all the posts about this or that tournament winning list, and they all kinda look the same to me. There’s a ton that are basically one cheap garbage battalion plus three of whatever scary unit is popular. So I was thinking, what if people were more incentivized to take brigades, so that the army they’re using looks more like an actual army, with all the added variety that comes from that? What if brigades gave your more command points, or even what if battalions gave less? Would that do anything to the meta?

How *I* would do is start with X command points and then each detachment you take *reduces* your CP's with brigade the least and so on.

This way you would be encouraged to fill up those other slots rather than just take new detachment for more CP's and would incentive going for mono faction and even mono regiment/chapter/dynasty/whatever without having to come up with more special rules(which still doesn't encourage to sticking with 1 or 2 detachments).

Crackedgear wrote:
First up let me say I am not at all a competitive player, so feel free to ignore this if that matters to you. Anyway, not competitive but I read all the posts about this or that tournament winning list, and they all kinda look the same to me. There’s a ton that are basically one cheap garbage battalion plus three of whatever scary unit is popular. So I was thinking, what if people were more incentivized to take brigades, so that the army they’re using looks more like an actual army, with all the added variety that comes from that? What if brigades gave your more command points, or even what if battalions gave less? Would that do anything to the meta?

If you "don't care about the competitive meta", why are you trying to make our lists look like what you want our lists to look like?

Tripling up on good stuff and having cheap CP battalions are actually working towards separate ends:
The tripled up units are selected because they're good in their own right and aren't dependent upon support options limited by the Rule of One [stratagems and psychic powers]. They don't need the command points to function, for the most part. Iron Hands gunships get along just fine without being dedicated any stratagems because they're relying on the passive army-wide buff from super doctrines and successor tactics and their own inherent abilities as written on their datasheets to be good. Same for something like Tank Commanders, which are self buffing and have a minimum of useful stratagem support.
The command point battalions are feeding their command points usually to a single unit that has a lot of stratagems and other limited buffs stacked up on it to make it a god among men. You don't want to repeat the target unit more than you have to to ensure you have one alive on your turn, because other instances won't be supported and will be average or worse on your turn. Captain Smash and Knight Castellans didn't go to battle with partners in crime, because a second instance wouldn't have Cawls Wrath, Rotate Ion Shields, etc. and another instance might not be worth it's cost without the pile of buffs or just be too choking expensive to have.

In addition, Brigades are kind of hard to incentiveise because it's often hard to find a unit that's good enough to be tripled for each slot, and a lot of times after doing so you're not left with enough points for another Battalion and the things that are going to get fed the CP. In order to make a Brigade worthwhile, it needs to replace a single Battalion. If a Brigade replaces 2 Battalions, in exchange for having to take 9 expensive support units and 1 less HQ mandatory you get a whole 2 CP! And, because a Brigade is expensive the units you took have to be worthwhile in their own right; 32 Guardsmen can take points and get engineers to hide in the back and capture positions, or push up and be cheap expendable screens. 63 Guardsmen can do that too, but the 3x Elites, 3x Fast Attack, and 3x Heavy Support have to legitimately pull their own weight without stratagem support [since it wouldn't be worthwhile to include them in a CP farm if they're the ones eating the CP], more weight than whatever not-Guard units were going to be in those points.

Then, lets say you're playing mono-Guard and can easily fill 2 Battalions and Brigade, and all the units are units that you're happy to have in your army. Guard doesn't really have a good native outlet for all those CP's [especially with IG CP Regen], so you might as well not go in so hard and free up some space in your list building so that you can really customize it and have exactly how you want in it.



Anyway a lot of words later, I'll address your actual concern. Reverting Battalions of 3CP and Brigades to 9CP would probably make 3-of-a-kind good unit lists more common, because you're either going to wind up less reliant on using powerful stratagems to turbocharge single units and therefore more reliant on the units being good without support, or you're going to have to be filling those brigade slots which is going to call for the best [cheapest or least bad or etc] choice taken 3 of a kind in slots that would go empty in the current meta.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


If you "don't care about the competitive meta", why are you trying to make our lists look like what you want our lists to look like?

I didn’t say I don’t care, more that the shape of the meta is the main thing keeping me from being involved. As an example, playing chaos I’m told that I’m never going to win a game unless I have 2 more daemon princes and 2 more disco lords, and also don’t get anything other than cultists because if something isn’t 5 points then it’s overcosted garbage. And then suddenly it’s a big deal that a list that included a squad of 5 rubrics managed to win a few games. That all just doesn’t sound fun.

Also I have no illusions about a random forum post making your list look different. I just want to know why the system is the way it is currently.

what they should probably do when they re-do 40k is give everyone 8cp for nothing and then you can buy more for 50-100pts each

Crackedgear wrote:
First up let me say I am not at all a competitive player, so feel free to ignore this if that matters to you. Anyway, not competitive but I read all the posts about this or that tournament winning list, and they all kinda look the same to me. There’s a ton that are basically one cheap garbage battalion plus three of whatever scary unit is popular. So I was thinking, what if people were more incentivized to take brigades, so that the army they’re using looks more like an actual army, with all the added variety that comes from that? What if brigades gave your more command points, or even what if battalions gave less? Would that do anything to the meta?

The game has been that way from 5th to 6th, it was different in 7th because of Formations, 8th is just going back to how things have always been, except more diverse than 5th because the Battalion is a near-mandatory option instead of a mandatory option. Is too near mandatory? I thought so in the past, but I'm glad that Battalions are popular, moving over to a base CP of 5 for Battleforged and move back down to the old Battalion and Brigade benefits might be a good idea and would still make Battalions a common and strong choice I feel. Brigades are absolutely amazing in how much they force people to build diverse lists. But all Brigades are not made equal when you buff Brigades you are buffing only a few armies that can make Brigades work and you still see people take 3 of the same HS choice, 3 of the same FA choice, 3 of the same Elites choice, 6 of the same Troops choice.

*The armies that can currently make Brigades easily are basically just Astra Militarum IMO, maybe also GSC.
*Deathwatch are best as an allied faction so you'd see more AM Brigades in DW lists, which means less pts for actual diversification between lists if they can't just take an AM Battalion for CP.
*SM can make Brigades work but I don't think it's because the build is actually much stronger than other SM builds, but SM are just strong in enough in general to make a lot of builds pretty viable.
*Tau need 3 Detachments to get 3 Commanders, fitting 2 other Detachments in with a Brigade might be hard, given a big enough incentive I think Tau could do it and it probably wouldn't cost them as much as it might cost other factions.
*Necrons, Orks and Nids have incentives for making bigger units which is hard when you need to fill out a Brigade.
*Craftworlds, Death Guard, Thousand Sons, Grey Knights, BA, DA and SW don't have choices that are as effective as SM in every force org slot, they rely on very few choices to scrape by.
*Drukhari are going to lose out on obsessions to build brigades making it next to impossible to make a good Drukhari brigade AFAIK.

tneva82 wrote:

Crackedgear wrote:
First up let me say I am not at all a competitive player, so feel free to ignore this if that matters to you. Anyway, not competitive but I read all the posts about this or that tournament winning list, and they all kinda look the same to me. There’s a ton that are basically one cheap garbage battalion plus three of whatever scary unit is popular. So I was thinking, what if people were more incentivized to take brigades, so that the army they’re using looks more like an actual army, with all the added variety that comes from that? What if brigades gave your more command points, or even what if battalions gave less? Would that do anything to the meta?

How *I* would do is start with X command points and then each detachment you take *reduces* your CP's with brigade the least and so on.

This way you would be encouraged to fill up those other slots rather than just take new detachment for more CP's and would incentive going for mono faction and even mono regiment/chapter/dynasty/whatever without having to come up with more special rules(which still doesn't encourage to sticking with 1 or 2 detachments).

Yep, a lot of the problems with the system could be fixed by making you pay for detachments. The biggest the detachment the cheaper it is, incentivising you to fill it up before moving to the next.
CP farms die right away, adding allies in minimal battalions for select bonuses that break the game now comes with a hefty penalty in CP instead of actually giving you more CP.

 Ordana wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Crackedgear wrote:
First up let me say I am not at all a competitive player, so feel free to ignore this if that matters to you. Anyway, not competitive but I read all the posts about this or that tournament winning list, and they all kinda look the same to me. There’s a ton that are basically one cheap garbage battalion plus three of whatever scary unit is popular. So I was thinking, what if people were more incentivized to take brigades, so that the army they’re using looks more like an actual army, with all the added variety that comes from that? What if brigades gave your more command points, or even what if battalions gave less? Would that do anything to the meta?

How *I* would do is start with X command points and then each detachment you take *reduces* your CP's with brigade the least and so on.

This way you would be encouraged to fill up those other slots rather than just take new detachment for more CP's and would incentive going for mono faction and even mono regiment/chapter/dynasty/whatever without having to come up with more special rules(which still doesn't encourage to sticking with 1 or 2 detachments).

Yep, a lot of the problems with the system could be fixed by making you pay for detachments. The biggest the detachment the cheaper it is, incentivising you to fill it up before moving to the next.
CP farms die right away, adding allies in minimal battalions for select bonuses that break the game now comes with a hefty penalty in CP instead of actually giving you more CP.

Too many CP Hungry armies (GSC and Orks literally need 18+ CPs to work) to do so. Also GSC has an awkard 1 character per detachment restriction that makes no sense at all

KurtAngle2 wrote:
Too many CP Hungry armies (GSC and Orks literally need 18+ CPs to work) to do so. Also GSC has an awkard 1 character per detachment restriction that makes no sense at all

So have the starting CP be high. And also armies can be changed anyway to help things out(like with the 2.0 codexes that are by now required for anybody to compete seriously with marines anyway. And until those come up...well errata can be made to help). As for the detachment restriction thing...There's this thing called "errata". GW has like 20 year history of putting up errata's to get old codexes to work with new edition so that can be done if needed.

Reworking the CP bonuses would be enough imho.
Right now 2 Battalions give almost as much CPs as a Brigade (10 vs 12) with less required units (1 more HQ vs 3 more Elites, Fast Attack and Heavy Support, total of 8 more units needed in a Brigade).
Change the Battalion CP bonus to 4 and/or bump the Brigade CP bonus to 15 and you incentivize taking a Brigade detachment.
And then prepare for the outcry from players of elite armies.

They should make every army/sub faction be like knights and have a special detachment rule.

Like BA gets bonus for having 1-3JP units in a detachment or a unique detachment with 1HQ with fly and 3 infantry with fly keywords for 3-5cp.

Some factions get 600pts brigades and some cant even legaly fit a brigade in 1500-1750pts or even 2000pts. So having the same detachment for everyone doesnt really make sense. Its one of the greatest missed opportunities for 8th and surprised me when I first heard of the system and found out my BA dont get a bonus at all for assault marines despite them even being troops in earlier editions.

I personally think Patrols, Battalions and Brigades need to be condensed into just 2:

For example, get rid of the Patrol entirely and do this for the other 2:

Battalion - 3CPs
1-2 HQ, 2-6 Troops,
Must take 1 of the following: 0-2 Elite, 0-2 Fast, 0-2 Heavy
0-2 Flyer

Brigade - 9CPs
2-4 HQ, 3-9 Troops,
2-4 Elite, 2-4 Fast, 2-4 Heavy, 0-3 Flyer

Or something similar. Basically the Battalion requires 1 less HQ & Troop but requires at less 1 "Special" and only gives 3CPs
A Brigade in this suggestion is basically a current Battalion that requires 2 Elite, 2 Fast, & 2 Heavy and gives even more CP

-

 vict0988 wrote:

Crackedgear wrote:
First up let me say I am not at all a competitive player, so feel free to ignore this if that matters to you. Anyway, not competitive but I read all the posts about this or that tournament winning list, and they all kinda look the same to me. There’s a ton that are basically one cheap garbage battalion plus three of whatever scary unit is popular. So I was thinking, what if people were more incentivized to take brigades, so that the army they’re using looks more like an actual army, with all the added variety that comes from that? What if brigades gave your more command points, or even what if battalions gave less? Would that do anything to the meta?

The game has been that way from 5th to 6th, it was different in 7th because of Formations, 8th is just going back to how things have always been, except more diverse than 5th because the Battalion is a near-mandatory option instead of a mandatory option. Is too near mandatory? I thought so in the past, but I'm glad that Battalions are popular, moving over to a base CP of 5 for Battleforged and move back down to the old Battalion and Brigade benefits might be a good idea and would still make Battalions a common and strong choice I feel. Brigades are absolutely amazing in how much they force people to build diverse lists. But all Brigades are not made equal when you buff Brigades you are buffing only a few armies that can make Brigades work and you still see people take 3 of the same HS choice, 3 of the same FA choice, 3 of the same Elites choice, 6 of the same Troops choice.

*The armies that can currently make Brigades easily are basically just Astra Militarum IMO, maybe also GSC.
*Deathwatch are best as an allied faction so you'd see more AM Brigades in DW lists, which means less pts for actual diversification between lists if they can't just take an AM Battalion for CP.
*SM can make Brigades work but I don't think it's because the build is actually much stronger than other SM builds, but SM are just strong in enough in general to make a lot of builds pretty viable.
*Tau need 3 Detachments to get 3 Commanders, fitting 2 other Detachments in with a Brigade might be hard, given a big enough incentive I think Tau could do it and it probably wouldn't cost them as much as it might cost other factions.
*Necrons, Orks and Nids have incentives for making bigger units which is hard when you need to fill out a Brigade.
*Craftworlds, Death Guard, Thousand Sons, Grey Knights, BA, DA and SW don't have choices that are as effective as SM in every force org slot, they rely on very few choices to scrape by.
*Drukhari are going to lose out on obsessions to build brigades making it next to impossible to make a good Drukhari brigade AFAIK.

Actually Tau can do a brigade with ease I have a workable list that has 29 drones 3 Rip tides 2 commanders a died load of marker lights and 9 sniper drones. Now to be fair all armies have one section where they are not cheap at least and usually one where they stink. It's finding synergy that makes it all work. Now for Tau I sacrifice firepower for a brigade. With DA stuffs just expensive so I wouldn't use it but I feel like marines in general shouldn't use brigades . At least it's my feeling.

I actually like the idea of Brigades.

Unfortunately, when it comes to my own Dark Eldar, some piece of cartilage on the GW team decided to split the book into 3 subfactions with barely any units each.

Want to make a Kabal Brigade? I hope you like Archons, Kabalites, Scourges and Ravagers because those are basically your only options* in their respective slots.

Want to field a Wych Cult Brigade? Tough luck. They don't have a single Heavy Support choice and as such aren't even eligible.


*Outside of Drazhar and the Ynnari trio, who can technically stand in for Archons, though they are still your only generic HQ option.

Easy fix --> you don't earn CP from duplicate detachments.

 vipoid wrote:
I actually like the idea of Brigades.

Unfortunately, when it comes to my own Dark Eldar, some piece of cartilage on the GW team decided to split the book into 3 subfactions with barely any units each.

Want to make a Kabal Brigade? I hope you like Archons, Kabalites, Scourges and Ravagers because those are basically your only options* in their respective slots.

Want to field a Wych Cult Brigade? Tough luck. They don't have a single Heavy Support choice and as such aren't even eligible.


*Outside of Drazhar and the Ynnari trio, who can technically stand in for Archons, though they are still your only generic HQ option.

I also play dark eldar and I actually like their weird 3 patrols setup. Maybe it would do some good to have a massive rules bloat in giving each faction their own special detachments.

Crackedgear wrote:

I also play dark eldar and I actually like their weird 3 patrols setup. Maybe it would do some good to have a massive rules bloat in giving each faction their own special detachments.

The thing is though, their 3-patrol setup didn't necessitate splitting their army into 3 anaemic mini-factions. Corsairs had a very similar detachment system back in 7th, and it worked fine without the army needing to be broken up.

Klickor wrote:
They should make every army/sub faction be like knights and have a special detachment rule.

Like BA gets bonus for having 1-3JP units in a detachment or a unique detachment with 1HQ with fly and 3 infantry with fly keywords for 3-5cp.

Some factions get 600pts brigades and some cant even legaly fit a brigade in 1500-1750pts or even 2000pts. So having the same detachment for everyone doesnt really make sense. Its one of the greatest missed opportunities for 8th and surprised me when I first heard of the system and found out my BA dont get a bonus at all for assault marines despite them even being troops in earlier editions.

No, this is just going back to formations, and GW telling you what's in your list to get massive bonuses for free for making your list conform with a narrow definition of "fluffy".

I already don't like the Space Marine Supplements, and am even more concerned about the fact that rather than recognizing that this is bad for the game they're going to double down and continue down the train of giving out piles of arbitrary and obviously unequal special rule packages for free to everybody else. The Space Marine Supplements hearken back to the worst days of 7th, but at least the bonus are just for picking to play Space Marines as opposed to for having specific units in specific combinations in your list.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Easy fix --> you don't earn CP from duplicate detachments.

That just means you'll see battallion+ 2 of vanguard/spearhead/outrider.

You'll also be heavily buffing guard and daemons while seriously nerfing armies like custodes/grey knights/sisters/admech/chaos/ some Eldar because they either can't build a brigade or have a dead slot.

Congrats, your solution randomly nuked a handful of armies and randomly amped up a handful of others.

ERJAK wrote:
You'll also be heavily buffing guard and daemons while seriously nerfing armies like custodes/grey knights/sisters/admech/chaos/ some Eldar because they either can't build a brigade or have a dead slot.

Armies that already do brigades, or battalion and 1-2 detachments would not be affected. And that's a lot of the top lists in tournaments already.

The solution is not to use CP as a crutch because your army has no diversity, it's to work on internal balance to make every slot relevant. I'm sure you see the benefit there for Sisters, Admech, Chaos, etc. Specialist armies will have a rougher time generating CP but that's something you can balance through their Relics and Stratagem costs.

The chance that a custodes or GK codex is going to come out anytime soon is close to zero though. So those armies that are weaker, would have an even harder time playing. while armies which already had options to play the detachment game will get more.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Klickor wrote:
They should make every army/sub faction be like knights and have a special detachment rule.

Like BA gets bonus for having 1-3JP units in a detachment or a unique detachment with 1HQ with fly and 3 infantry with fly keywords for 3-5cp.

Some factions get 600pts brigades and some cant even legaly fit a brigade in 1500-1750pts or even 2000pts. So having the same detachment for everyone doesnt really make sense. Its one of the greatest missed opportunities for 8th and surprised me when I first heard of the system and found out my BA dont get a bonus at all for assault marines despite them even being troops in earlier editions.

No, this is just going back to formations, and GW telling you what's in your list to get massive bonuses for free for making your list conform with a narrow definition of "fluffy".

I already don't like the Space Marine Supplements, and am even more concerned about the fact that rather than recognizing that this is bad for the game they're going to double down and continue down the train of giving out piles of arbitrary and obviously unequal special rule packages for free to everybody else. The Space Marine Supplements hearken back to the worst days of 7th, but at least the bonus are just for picking to play Space Marines as opposed to for having specific units in specific combinations in your list.

It doesnt have to be large bonuses and you could make them mono faction only to limit soup abuse. And you dont have to give every faction a specalist detachment.

Lets say you limit cp from battalion to 3 and then give BA a special battalion that gives ut +1cp for each JP unit in it if its stays mono BA. Or just make any detachment give +1 cp for each jump infantry unit(non character ofc) in it. BA needs tons of CP but their cp farming/batteries suck. Could limit it to a single bonus detachment so you cant take 3 special detachments.

Then do the same for DA and their terminators and bikes.

Chapters like ultramarine should just have the normal detachments but perhaps get a cp bonus for having a well rounded brigade.

A few free cp, with restrictions, isnt gonna break the game more than it already is. Best way to build BA is to use either 3 or 18 models and soup the rest since you need CP for strats but you cant get enough with how current detachment works. Getting half way there for a more "fluffy" build would be awesome and still probably worse than just souping guardm

Karol wrote:
The chance that a custodes or GK codex is going to come out anytime soon is close to zero though.

Fluff-wise it makes sense. These are small specialist armies, they should not be fielding brigade-strength elements. You'd expect something more like a core Battalion and then a specialist detachment, like an HQ and 3x Terminator squads.

For me the solution is to largely do away with standard formations. Let each army take formations that are thematic and play to that army’s intended strengths.

E.g. Dark Eldar are supposed to be fast. Give them a detachment with 5 fast attack units and make it 5 CP. And if you want your Dark Eldar to have a detachment with 3 heavy supports, you can, but since that isn’t their strength you get one or no CP.

E.g. Space Marines are supposed to be elite. Blah blah elite detachment, many CP. etc

Providing uniform options gives some armies intrinsic advantages. Providing an option per army allows for per-army balance.

Sorcererbob wrote:
For me the solution is to largely do away with standard formations. Let each army take formations that are thematic and play to that army’s intended strengths.

E.g. Dark Eldar are supposed to be fast. Give them a detachment with 5 fast attack units and make it 5 CP. And if you want your Dark Eldar to have a detachment with 3 heavy supports, you can, but since that isn’t their strength you get one or no CP.

E.g. Space Marines are supposed to be elite. Blah blah elite detachment, many CP. etc

Providing uniform options gives some armies intrinsic advantages. Providing an option per army allows for per-army balance.

If Dark Eldar are fast in the lore they should have speed in their datasheets, if I want to run a Pain Engine list (which is perfectly fluffy) I should not be punished. It's super shallow to boil down armies to one aspect, total Flanderization. You either relegate units to obscurity or you have to buff their pts cost anyways. Dark Eldar are not supposed to be fast, Raiders and Venoms are. If I bring Venoms and Raiders I can be fast. If I bring Pain Engines I'm slower, both are equally fluffy. Space Marines Scouts are fluffy, SM Assault Marines and Devastator Marines are fluffy, if it's in the codex then it's fluffy.