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.

Hi all,
I have a variation of the Highlander format and would like to ask you all to give it a once over and tell me if it would give YOUR army major problems beyond the lack of spamming. I am aware that Drukari armies will be forced into running 3 patrols in order to keep cult/kabal/coven working. Is there anything else?

Highlander format

Armies will consist of 1500 points or less, and may be constructed using the following rules:
Players may use no more than 3 Detachments.
All units in the army are unique (0-1).
Troops unit’s availability increases by 1 each time the army includes all types of Troops units available to it.
E.g. if a Tau army contained a unit of Breachers, a unit of Kroot and a Fire Warrior Strike Team then the availability of these units would go up to 2. Furthermore if a Tau army contained 2 units each of Breachers, Kroot and Strike Teams then the availability of these units would go up to 3.
Dedicated transport unit’s availability increases by 1 each time the army includes all types of Troops units available to it.
E.g. if a Tau army contained a unit of Breachers, a unit of Kroot and a Strike Team then the availability of the Devilfish troop transport would go up to 2.
Units with the same name but from different Factions will be considered the same unit. Likewise, extremely similar units (from the same or different Factions) will be considered the same unit.
E.g. A Space Marines Landraider and a Space Wolves Landraider would be considered the same unit. A Landraider and a Landraider Crusader would be considered the same unit.
Special/Unique Characters are considered the same unit as indicated by their background and/or title.`
E.g. Chief Librarian Tigerius and a Space Marines Librarian would be considered the same unit.

My problem would be with Troops - I play Space Marines and run Scouts & Intercessors, so I'd be forced to take Tacticals, Infiltrators & Incursors.

@beast_gts That's kinda the point.

Does it break any armies - make them unfield-able? Stop you using traits or similar?

 KRakarth wrote:
@beast_gts That's kinda the point.

Does it break any armies - make them unfield-able? Stop you using traits or similar?

CSM got 2 troop options. So naturally low troop option armies would suffer heavily, especially if they need the CP overall ddue to beeing CP hungry by GW's design.

@Not Online!!! You can repeat those troop options. A CSM army can have 3 units of cultists and 3 units of Chaos space Marines in a Battalion.

My Marine armies could not play this - my Tyranids? I own the model range and I've been running highlander lists for awhile. Big blobs of the basic troops and a sprinkling of TMCs and having a blast. It's a fun format to play in 40k

 KRakarth wrote:
@Not Online!!! You can repeat those troop options. A CSM army can have 3 units of cultists and 3 units of Chaos space Marines in a Battalion.

Yeah but chosing between cholera and meh isn't great.

beast_gts wrote:
My problem would be with Troops - I play Space Marines and run Scouts & Intercessors, so I'd be forced to take Tacticals, Infiltrators & Incursors.

To run a battalion, you'd be forced to take one of the three, not all. Otherwise, you could then look at different detachments to fill up slots.
Plus, at 1500pts, points would run out fast.

I'd be all for it.

Personally, I like a modified 0-2 limit at 2000pts and with Troops being exempt.
It allows for redundancy, but still limits spam. It makes for more varied lists, but allows you to take up to 2 of a certain unit that you like

It's also how I've played my lists for years with few exceptions

-

With orks I'd have to adjust my competitive list since it's 3x battallions with just 3 different HQs 6x gretchins and 3x boyz.

Instead of bringing Warboss, 2 Weirdboyz, 1 SAG big Mek, 2 KFF Big Mek, Grotsnik, 6x10 Gretchins, 3x30 Boyz, 15 Tankbustas, 2x5 Smasha Gunz I'd take Warboss, Warboss on Bike, Weirdboy, Big Mek with KFF, Big Mek with SAG, Captin Badrukk, Grotsnik, 5x10 Gretchins, 1x10 Boyz, 3x30 Boyz, 15 Tankbustas, 1x6 Smasha Gunz and as many Traktor Kannons I can get with the spared points.

This at 2000 points, lower formats like 1500 points would be even easier to keep a competitive list without changing much from the current format. It would be 2x battallions with Warboss, Weirdboy, SAG Big Mek, a 4th HQ (KFF Big Mek or Badrukk), 3x10 grots, 3x30 boyz, 15 bustas and just a full unit of Smasha Gunz.

With my SW I couldn't play properly using these rules since I refuse to buy Primaris, which I can't stand, and so I could only field 2 troops (Grey Hunters and Blood Claws) with that limitation. Enough to get 6 CPs with a Vanguard and Supreme Detachments (and 1CP granted by Bjorn), maybe it could work as SW aren't CPs hungry.

For some people you would run in to issues with people simply not owning enough of the available options in the codex to be able to participate. It's not even about "spamming" or lack thereof - its that the vast majority of armies in the game start with 3 of your basic troops choice and many people don't bother with more than that.
* I'm going to say that "severely hamstrung by not being able to use a Battalion detachment" is equivalent to "not able to participate".


Lots of people just don't own all the options possible, and can't make up to 1500 points if they can't duplicate units.
Eg. I have 2000 points of Tau, but my only troops are Strike Teams, and once I remove all the duplicated units its bearly breaking 1200 points.

Many units share factions across books. How do you determine what are all the available Elite units for armies in this case?
Eg. Does a Word Bearers player have to consider that Tzaangors are technically available to them as a troops unit if they change their detachment keyword to Heretic Astartes?

Due to the way their subfactions are split, this also has a big impact on Drukhari and Daemons armies:
Eg. A daemons player who usually plays mono-slaanesh can't run a battalion because they don't own any non-slaanesh models, but they can't choose another troops because technically they can change their allegience.
Eg. A drukhari player who usually plays Kabal can't run a battalion unless they also have 3 units of wyches and wracks. You acknowledge that this is an issue, but I think you'll find that many drukhari players will just not show rather than attempt to conform to the restrictions.

How do vehicle squadrons work?
Eg. Imperial Guard can take 3 Leman Russ tanks in a single heavy support choice, but Tau can only take a single Hammerhead tank. Is that fair?

How do you count 'very similar units'?
Eg. Space marines have a huge variety of units, and many are kind of duplicated between the old-school and primaris versions. If a librarian is 'very similar' to a primaris librarian, is a tactical marines 'very similar' to an intercessor?
Eg. Tyranids can take Carnifex chassis units in 3 different battlefield roles. Are they very similar?
Eg. Is an imperial knight errant very similar to a warden?




I would at the very least:
- Allow people do determine what is available for their army AFTER choosing their factions, so that Drukhari and Daemons aren't hamstrung.
- Relax the restrictions on troops significantly.
- OR just give everyone some amount of CP and don't worry about battalions.

I would exempt troops from this - I play an army based in 32k, so I wouldn't be able to include any Primaris to keep the theme.

As an Admech player, I would only have 2 HQ available (3 if I were to change from Stygies VIII to Mars and bought Cawl).

This seems to me like it would only work well with armies that have huge model ranges like Space Marines and/or soup.

I had an idea that I posted in another threat about playing so that you can only have one unit on the board for each Battlefield role per detachment. Part of the notion is making people think about what units they take, as some assymetrical portion of the army is going to be deployed and another is going in reserve.

One benefit, it seems, is that it's okay if your army only has one HQ choice because you can fill out your army points with multiples of the same guy and recycle it back onto the board when killed (if you have enough left in reserve).

Well for necrons any armour would become nightmare to deal with(and even IG could easily have 4 leman russ..Squadron of 3 and tank commander. Plus basilisk and manticore). DDA, unit of destroyers(rather soft) and...umm that's about it for AT that necrons have. Then it's trying to tickle them with S5 AP0 D1 or S4 -1 D1 weapons 1 DDA is rather unreliable(d6 shots, d6 damage) and destroyers are rather soft so they get often just 1 shot and then die.

I would agree with the above posters who suggest exempting Troops from the highlander rule. Can anyone think of Troop units that are problematic when spammed?

I would allow the option of looping for any unit types except Flyer and LOW to be honest. AdMech would be unplayable otherwise as they have so few HQ options. Saying an opponent cannot take anymore HQs once they have 1 of each could make some armies impossible to field without soup.

 Karhedron wrote:
I would agree with the above posters who suggest exempting Troops from the highlander rule. Can anyone think of Troop units that are problematic when spammed?

I would allow the option of looping for any unit types except Flyer and LOW to be honest. AdMech would be unplayable otherwise as they have so few HQ options. Saying an opponent cannot take anymore HQs once they have 1 of each could make some armies impossible to field without soup.

Depends on what you deem problematic.
You'd probably never see CSM for exemple, because even at their massively nerfed state, the regular cultists are just better option to save points on the heavy hitters which is needed in the codex.
there's also the real fear of someone beeing a prick and deciding to field 2 50 man blobs of morale immune models and relying upon the vastly diversified firepower to just roll over the enemy with cheap bodies.
Then there's the fact that stratagem interaction can be a issue, (again big squad of cultists with votwl and Cacophony aswell as cultist leader and you get the idea)

I think, a highlander format going after detachments would probably be better, but still bad due to the CP and stratagem and detachment connection.

My local club tried an event with a similar format and unfortunately had quite a few issues as the new way of army construction and datasheets doesn't really mesh well with the old style highlander format.

A few issues I remember:

Both Drukarii and Daemons have big issues with detachment bonus not allowing them to field battalions of their subfactions.

Marine troops - many people play either exclusively Primaris or exclusively old style marines meaning they would not be able to/want to bring all the troop options.

Which datasheets count as the same? This creates many issues and feel bad situations.
You have listed a couple of examples:
The first being a named character counts as the same type as he obviously is (named libby = libby) but the space marine codex contains 4 different datasheets for librarian, do they all count as the same? A terminator libby is quite different than a phobos libby. The same issue arises with chaplains, captains, etc...

Your second example is saying that a landraider counts as the same as a landraider crusader - I assume you are doing this as you consider them both to be a landraider but in fact they are quite different having completely different weapons loadouts and transport capacity but sharing the same stat profile. The same is true for an eldar fire prism and nightspinnner they just have a different turret on top, do they count as the same?

Marines give rise to many of these kinds of issues as they use alot of different datasheets with similar names but the only way to do this fairly is to operate on a no duplicate datasheet policy, if you go into "no similar named datasheet" area you create lots of issues and make it unfair and unbalanced to different armies with different naming schemes.

Lots of issues I'm afraid, no easy solution - good luck :-)

Maybe a solution could be playing smaller formats, like 1000-1250 points with no CPs. Pretty much everyone should be able to bring their army as they'd just need to respect the restrictions of one of the detachments to be legal.

Even drukhari with their subfactions limitations could play without problems.

Playing with no CPs also helps a lot in terms of balance in smaller games as some armies can field battallions for dirt cheap, and CPs aren't even that needed if you don't have the points to field the most CPs hungry combos.

 Blackie wrote:
Maybe a solution could be playing smaller formats, like 1000-1250 points with no CPs. Pretty much everyone should be able to bring their army as they'd just need to respect the restrictions of one of the detachments to be legal.

Even drukhari with their subfactions limitations could play without problems.

Playing with no CPs also helps a lot in terms of balance in smaller games as some armies can field battallions for dirt cheap, and CPs aren't even that needed if you don't have the points to field the most CPs hungry combos.

No CP, means also no stratagems, means also some armies are just not going to work often.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Karhedron wrote:
I would agree with the above posters who suggest exempting Troops from the highlander rule. Can anyone think of Troop units that are problematic when spammed?

I would allow the option of looping for any unit types except Flyer and LOW to be honest. AdMech would be unplayable otherwise as they have so few HQ options. Saying an opponent cannot take anymore HQs once they have 1 of each could make some armies impossible to field without soup.

Depends on what you deem problematic.
You'd probably never see CSM for exemple, because even at their massively nerfed state, the regular cultists are just better option to save points on the heavy hitters which is needed in the codex.
there's also the real fear of someone beeing a prick and deciding to field 2 50 man blobs of morale immune models and relying upon the vastly diversified firepower to just roll over the enemy with cheap bodies.
Then there's the fact that stratagem interaction can be a issue, (again big squad of cultists with votwl and Cacophony aswell as cultist leader and you get the idea)

I think, a highlander format going after detachments would probably be better, but still bad due to the CP and stratagem and detachment connection.

Cultists are only 30 man units now, not 50


Plaguebearers can be oppressive when spammed. (I know because I ran 120 of them regularly before nu-marines.) Bloodletters to a lesser extent.
Intercessor spam is now pretty viable with the right doctrines.
4x20 genestealers or 10x30 Termagants.
Firewarrior spam was a thing at some stages, could be very powerful in highlander.

The Mechanicum would be borked. Needing to buy one unit of Skitarii Rangers, one unit of Skitarii Vanguard, one unit of Kataphron Breachers, and one unit of Kataphron Destroyers before you could buy a second unit of either Skitarii would effectively force you into Kataphron-heavy builds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KRakarth wrote:
...Units with the same name but from different Factions will be considered the same unit. Likewise, extremely similar units (from the same or different Factions) will be considered the same unit.
E.g. A Space Marines Landraider and a Space Wolves Landraider would be considered the same unit. A Landraider and a Landraider Crusader would be considered the same unit...

It'd probably be easier to do this based on keyword rather than based on name; restrict "Keyword: Land Raider" to 0-1 rather than restricting "datasheets that have the words Land Raider in their name" to 0-1. This also produces the same weird restrictions as the Rule of Three already does by allowing (say) a Craftworld army to have one Fire Prism but allowing a Guard army to have three Leman Russes.

Trasvi wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Karhedron wrote:
I would agree with the above posters who suggest exempting Troops from the highlander rule. Can anyone think of Troop units that are problematic when spammed?

I would allow the option of looping for any unit types except Flyer and LOW to be honest. AdMech would be unplayable otherwise as they have so few HQ options. Saying an opponent cannot take anymore HQs once they have 1 of each could make some armies impossible to field without soup.

Depends on what you deem problematic.
You'd probably never see CSM for exemple, because even at their massively nerfed state, the regular cultists are just better option to save points on the heavy hitters which is needed in the codex.
there's also the real fear of someone beeing a prick and deciding to field 2 50 man blobs of morale immune models and relying upon the vastly diversified firepower to just roll over the enemy with cheap bodies.
Then there's the fact that stratagem interaction can be a issue, (again big squad of cultists with votwl and Cacophony aswell as cultist leader and you get the idea)

I think, a highlander format going after detachments would probably be better, but still bad due to the CP and stratagem and detachment connection.

Cultists are only 30 man units now, not 50


Plaguebearers can be oppressive when spammed. (I know because I ran 120 of them regularly before nu-marines.) Bloodletters to a lesser extent.
Intercessor spam is now pretty viable with the right doctrines.
4x20 genestealers or 10x30 Termagants.
Firewarrior spam was a thing at some stages, could be very powerful in highlander.

I was not talking about cultists though in the exemple there alone, i meant more 2x50 mutants and enforcer.

Core troops just need to be a core part of the game and they are not right now.

I love how Chaos Astartes are anything but Astartes because Chaos Marines blow mega chunks.

In 3rd and in 5th I used to run strong cores of Vanilla Chaos Marines and it was workable.

Right then, firstly a thanks to everyone for their feedback. I really appreciate it.

My aim is to give a (relatively) simple comp set which gives people some choice but kills spam without hampering people unfairly (like dictating which detachments should be taken)
Troops:
There have been varying suggestions about how to deal with this. I DO want the lesser used options to be present but I don't want to make things too difficult. The best suggestion I have had so far is:

In a detachment: Troops taken to fulfill the compulsory requirement may be duplicated, any troops taken thereafter MUST BE of a different unit type until all types of troops units available have been selected.
e.g. You may take 3 Tau Strike teams to fulfill the troops requirements in a battalion but then must take a Breacher team and a Kroot Squad before you can take any more Strike teams.

In a Battalion or Brigade detachment HQ choices taken to fulfill the compulsory requirement may be duplicated, any HQs taken thereafter MUST BE of a different unit type until all types of HQ units available have been selected.
e.g. You may take 2 lieutenants in a space marine battalion to fulfill the compulsory requirements but MUST choose another HQ unit for the remaining choice/s.

Problematic Armies Drukhari, Chaos and Space Marines all have significant problems with this format so I am suggesting that Players may additionally restrict their armies to change the composition

Marines
Marine players may choose to restrict their army to either Classic marines or Primaris Marines.

Drukhari
Drukhari players may choose to restrict their army by not allowing one or more of the following Keywords in their army: <Wych Cult> <Kabal> <Haemonculus Coven>
eg a player could choose an entirely Kabal army and not have to take or be permitted any Wych or Haemonculus units.

Chaos
Chaos Players may choose to restrict their army by not allowing one or more of the following Keywords in their army: Khorne Tzeench Slaanesh Nurgle
Eg a player could choose a mono god army and not have to include or be permitted to take units from any other god (should Abaddon be exempted as he carries all 4 marks?)

Similar Units
There are many similar units (looking at you space marines) and their similarity could be up for some debate, so far I have come up with the following lists of units which could be considered the same. This is the hardest part and to be honest I think Id rather be permissive than prescriptive particularly when you consider that a predator, a rhino and a whirlwind all share the same chassis. Heres the list for the two Codexes I own.

Tau empire
Any Battlesuit Commander
Any Etherial
XV8 Crisis Teams and XV8 Bodyguards
Longstrike and any TX7 Hammerhead
Tau drones bought as a unit upgrade do not count towards the 0-1 limit.

Space Marines
Any Captain
Any Lieutenant
Any Librarian
Any Chaplain
Any Apothecary
Any Ancient
Any Veterans

So what are peoples thoughts on the similar units? Do they need to be changed? What would you classify as similar?

Chaos Players may choose to restrict their army by not allowing one or more of the following Keywords in their army: Khorne Tzeench Slaanesh Nurgle
Eg a player could choose a mono god army and not have to include or be permitted to take units from any other god (should Abaddon be exempted as he carries all 4 marks?)

that is not how CSM atm work.
Infact that is probably the worst you could do, simply put, the marked Cult marines only get troopslots if they are from WE, EC, DG or TS status.
If you want to just outright ban cult marines be my guest. But fact is they remain underused allready and that isn't your goal right?
Secondly: You just made all CSM armies in the format ATM choose slaanesh.
Strictly slaanes, even more boring, you made the versatile and differing HQ options also outright clear....

Also yes, abbadon has ALL 4 marks, as can have any BL unit.

I am going to add the keyword "landraider" to the space marine list


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Any titanic keyword

Astra Militarum
Leman Russ keyword - yes they still get a squadron
GW made this particular unfairness.

My experience of playing highlander is that it usually doesn’t restrict troops and dedicated transports at all, but only allows one of every other unit. This approach of forcing people to take every troop type if they want to take more than one does odd stuff.

What you’re essentially doing is forcing people to take units that they otherwise wouldn’t, like in my case tactical marines and scouts, just because they happen to exist in the codex. That is a very different proposition to what highlander usually does, which is to prevent people from spamming good stuff. By all means prevent me from taking three repulsor executioners, but please don’t force me to buy and paint up a tactical squad.

As a marine player I’d probably take a battalion with unit of intercessors, incursors and infiltrators, and then no more troops. But a sisters of battle player could just take however many battle sister squads they wanted.

Usually the problem with highlander is that it penalises armies with small codexes while hardly affecting bigger books like marines – who happen to be the alpha dogs right now. Your proposed format punishes both quite a bit. The net effect is just to create a slightly different meta, but generally speaking I don’t think it fixes any fundamental issues. You get a slightly a different meta, but not necessarily a fairer one.

Sororitas have 2 HQs: Missionary and Preacher.

This means they could only run 1 Battalion detachment, or two littler detachments - unless they run Celestine.

They couldn't run the elites-choice Gemini because their background describes them as Canonesses (unless they don't run canonesses).

You get infinite Battle Sisters Squads though, as every BSS you take increases their availability by 1, so that's cool. They're their only Troops choice.

My Brigade would be a crippled hodgepodge of units, because there are so few to choose from of any given type. For example, my Heavy Support would be like, an exorcist (a heavy tank), a retributor squad (heavy weapon infantry), and some penitent engines (light walkers).

Synergy would be atrocious (the only synergies which exist are "how many canonesses can you take") at least until the new book...

There is a kind of Highlander Format in Germany:

https://www.blog.ars-bellica.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Ars-Bellica-Regelwerk-2019-ENG-PDF.pdf

Rules in German and in English!