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Unfortunately, CP numbers and Stratagem costs are what drives most army builds these days. You build your army around a handful of core stratagems – how you do that is often irrelevant currently.

Essentially, I believe the best, simplest and easiest fix to CP is true standardisation.
Every player gets 6CP.
If you are Battleforged +3CP
Every -pure- detachment +1CP each (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Vanguard)
If you’re army is mono sub-faction +3CP (i.e Ultramarines)

Essentially, with the 3 detachment “limit” on 2k points, an army could get between 9 and 15CP. 9 would be 3 soup detachments, and 15 would be 3 pure, single sub faction detachments. Most armies would gain 11-12CP due to sub faction “souping”. (15 can be increased further via certain special characters. I.e BobbyG)

This then completely removes the CP imbalance between armies, whilst providing an extra benefit to players that want to play things like pure Ultramarines, or pure World Eaters etc.
Will you still see soup armies with this? Yes, of course you will, but now it’d be a conscious army design thing, rather than a requirement for CP generation.

I’ve never quite understood, why a 10 unit army is tactically inferior to an 18 unit army, from an “ability to command” pov. Sure, they are potentially strategically inferior, due to an “in theory” reducing in options/capabilities, but, that is addressed via the stratagems themselves being linked to certain weapons/units in a lot of cases.

I also think, setting a standard for CP, would encourage further diversity in terms of army build. Suddenly, it might not be so much of a tax to bring a couple of Grey Knight units, or to include other over costed units. Sure, you pay the price in points, but you’re no longer drastically reducing your ability to play the game due to missing out on -vital- CP.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 xeen wrote:
Personally I think if you want to kill soup lists (I actually don't mind them) all you need to do is base what stratagems, relics, and "chapter tactics" etc. on your warlord. Since you can only take one warlord you would be limited to his codex basically. You could bring other units from another codex, but would not get stratagems etc. That would really discourage the "soup" lists.

The best way to kill soup lists is simply to make all factions and sub-factions broadly equal in effort spent on them and rules, then a) it would not matter and b) people could still make fluffy armies.

Sadly the Marine obsession makes this unlikely.

Yes, Marine obsession certainly is to blame for Eldar being top dog for three editions straight, and for IG being really good this edition.

Come on.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Yes, Marine obsession certainly is to blame for Eldar being top dog for three editions straight, and for IG being really good this edition.

No, marine obsession is the reason why the minor subfactions keep falling by the wayside - leading to both marine and non-marine armies that don't have the tools to function well outside of a soup either because they weren't a big enough faction to split off in the first place or because their model updates have been pushed back two decades to make room for yet another marine model line.

That's bullgak. Adeptus Mechanicus are bad despite getting a bunch of new models. Eldar are great despite getting no new models. The problem lies in incompetent rules-writing.

SM with 300+ points of free stuff were the 7th edition top tiers along with eldar. Ultramarines have been second tiers for months in this edition, shortly after the release of 8th edition.

BA are competitive now. After the next FAQ they may be the current top tiers.

Marine obsession is a thing and it's ruining the game.

Explain how Eldar being top tier for three editions straight is the fault of "Marine obsession". Please. Go ahead.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Explain how Eldar being top tier for three editions straight is the fault of "Marine obsession". Please. Go ahead.

First of all, eldar have been top tiers in this edition only for 2-3 months and with the expected upcoming nerf they won't probably be top tiers anymore.

I've never said that eldar have been good because of marines, but only that marines obsession exists. Many SM players are professional whiners, despite being competitive in every edition. Even in 8th I think SM have the best results so far in tournaments. And one of their major chapters' codex is yet to be released.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
That's bullgak. Adeptus Mechanicus are bad despite getting a bunch of new models. Eldar are great despite getting no new models. The problem lies in incompetent rules-writing.

It would be 'bullgak' if I had said that eldar were poor. But I didn't.

I said that marine obsession is one of the reasons minor factions keep falling by the wayside - sisters, inquisition, etc getting no updates while GW finds the time to release new core marine sets, aircraft, anti-air, primaris, and dozens of other things including subdividing the core marine factions into smaller factions with their own unique model lines.

Combined with no model/no rules this has left a whole bunch of armies looking to soup to fill out their lists. It's not a question of having strong rules or weak rules, it's a question of not having the rules in the first place.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Explain how Eldar being top tier for three editions straight is the fault of "Marine obsession". Please. Go ahead.

Which has nothing to do with the Imperial "soup" issue.

It used to be that even Marines could not do everything effectively but as they ran out of basic models for the basic and snowflake chapters we had to suffer either massive retcons for new units (Centurions, Flyers etc) or truly awful flanderisation (Anything related to the Space Wolves where the aim is to get as many instance of the word Wulf into a page - in fact I bet there was a drunken bet at GW to see).

If all the Imperial and Xenos factions were developed completely then soup would not even matter.

Then on top - NEW Marines which of course the Snowflake Chapters have to have their own versions of and be boxed up -cos reasons.

Everything else Imperial gets ignored until Custodians.

It would not be so bad if GW and FW talked to each other and FW units were in the Codexes although of course 30k means the vast majority of FW is Marines but at least major factions like Ad Mech would have plenty of options that they actually should have.

Yet IG and Eldar have more miscosted models than marines.

Martel732 wrote:
Yet IG and Eldar have more miscosted models than marines.

I don't think that's true, I think they've got more undercosted models than Marines. Marines have plenty of miscosted models, they're just miscosted the other way.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Yet IG and Eldar have more miscosted models than marines.

I don't think that's true, I think they've got more undercosted models than Marines. Marines have plenty of miscosted models, they're just miscosted the other way.

Right, undercosted.

Kdash wrote:
Unfortunately, CP numbers and Stratagem costs are what drives most army builds these days. You build your army around a handful of core stratagems – how you do that is often irrelevant currently.

Essentially, I believe the best, simplest and easiest fix to CP is true standardisation.
Every player gets 6CP.
If you are Battleforged +3CP
Every -pure- detachment +1CP each (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Vanguard)
If you’re army is mono sub-faction +3CP (i.e Ultramarines)

Essentially, with the 3 detachment “limit” on 2k points, an army could get between 9 and 15CP. 9 would be 3 soup detachments, and 15 would be 3 pure, single sub faction detachments. Most armies would gain 11-12CP due to sub faction “souping”. (15 can be increased further via certain special characters. I.e BobbyG)

This then completely removes the CP imbalance between armies, whilst providing an extra benefit to players that want to play things like pure Ultramarines, or pure World Eaters etc.
Will you still see soup armies with this? Yes, of course you will, but now it’d be a conscious army design thing, rather than a requirement for CP generation.

I’ve never quite understood, why a 10 unit army is tactically inferior to an 18 unit army, from an “ability to command” pov. Sure, they are potentially strategically inferior, due to an “in theory” reducing in options/capabilities, but, that is addressed via the stratagems themselves being linked to certain weapons/units in a lot of cases.

I also think, setting a standard for CP, would encourage further diversity in terms of army build. Suddenly, it might not be so much of a tax to bring a couple of Grey Knight units, or to include other over costed units. Sure, you pay the price in points, but you’re no longer drastically reducing your ability to play the game due to missing out on -vital- CP.

This is a nice idea. Only one small problem. This would make the "battalion" and "brigade" detachments completely useless as the other detachments do a much better job as getting the things most people want without the "tax" of those troops/obligatory unit numbers. Why go for a brigade when i can just go for the specialized other detachments and still get the same CP amount.

Instead of the 6 flat + whatever for other things. Why not just make it so that battle forge gives you +3 CP and a pure detachment (That is every unit in your army must share at least 3 faction keywords with each other) gets an additional 6+ CP.

Now the reason why i say 3 faction keywords, is that mono armies usually have 3 Faction keywords among each other. E.g Imperial Guard has "IMPERIUM,ASTRA MILITARUM and REGIMENT". Space marines have "IMPERIUM,ADEPTUS ASTARTES and CHAPTER" and so on and so forth. Getting 3 faction keywords in a mono list is easy, getting it in soup is impossible.

This gives an incentive for people to go mono, while at the same time gives a much needed boost to +1CP detachments, hence brigade goes from a "must have" in higher points to a good option

mchammadad wrote:
...Now the reason why i say 3 faction keywords, is that mono armies usually have 3 Faction keywords among each other. E.g Imperial Guard has "IMPERIUM,ASTRA MILITARUM and REGIMENT". Space marines have "IMPERIUM,ADEPTUS ASTARTES and CHAPTER" and so on and so forth. Getting 3 faction keywords in a mono list is easy, getting it in soup is impossible...

The problem with "number of Faction keywords" is that there are armies that don't have three (Tyranids, Tau, Orks, Custodes...), and making the bar two allows freely mixing sub-factions/sub-Codexes, which I don't think is part of the goal.

If instead you worded it as "all units in the army must share the leftmost faction keyword" (so all Space Marine units in your army would have to be of the same Chapter to get the bonus, but you could also get the bonus on a pure Custodes army even though they only have two faction keywords and no sub-faction keyword) I think that should cover everything reasonably well.

Question is. How would you say that in a rule format without it being debated over by everyone in the community (Looking at this forum)

Leftmost faction keyword doesn't sound great from a design key point. Instead it could be "If all the units of an army follow the conditions of a codex Detachment, and have the same Special faction keyword, that is a keyword in brackets or a keyword that fulfills this bracket requirement (as defined in the codex) then the army is considered a single force army, they generate an additional 6 command points, in addition to battle forged"

There already is a reward, you get stratagems. You pay an HQ tax for all those detachments.

However, a matched play rule limiting you to only one faction's stratagems might be a good way to start, but tbh that's not really a major drawback.

mchammadad wrote:
Question is. How would you say that in a rule format without it being debated over by everyone in the community (Looking at this forum)

Leftmost faction keyword doesn't sound great from a design key point. Instead it could be "If all the units of an army follow the conditions of a codex Detachment, and have the same Special faction keyword, that is a keyword in brackets or a keyword that fulfills this bracket requirement (as defined in the codex) then the army is considered a single force army, they generate an additional 6 command points, in addition to battle forged"

Define beforehand one "faction keyword" as the "most specific faction keyword" (does need a better name, I grant) so you can write down "if everyone shares the {most specific keyword} you get...". Maybe underline it or some such on the datasheet to make it more obvious.

BaconCatBug wrote:There already is a reward, you get stratagems. You pay an HQ tax for all those detachments.

However, a matched play rule limiting you to only one faction's stratagems might be a good way to start, but tbh that's not really a major drawback.

This is true, the reward you get is indeed stratagems, however with the fact that running multiple detachments of different factions is still soup, this "reward" is rather redundant

Limiting to one factions stratagems won't really help, because then people will be encouraged to go even more soup to get Command points, knowing they will only be restricted to one faction stratagem, in that way they will only get the stratagems for their "main" army and then soup the other detachments to get the most efficient unit/slot to fill out the other detachments

as an example, lets say i "main" chaos daemons. I make one detachment that is going to be my daemons detachment, and then the other detachments i try to get the cheapest units from all the chaos books to make say another "soup" detachment, this time trying to get that brigade detachment with the least amount of points i can spend. Since im cherry picking my units from everywhere, i am deliberately trying to make the cheapest detachment i can make just to generate CP.

-----------------------------------------

THIS IS NOT WHAT WE WANT HAPPENING

AnomanderRake wrote:

mchammadad wrote:
Question is. How would you say that in a rule format without it being debated over by everyone in the community (Looking at this forum)

Leftmost faction keyword doesn't sound great from a design key point. Instead it could be "If all the units of an army follow the conditions of a codex Detachment, and have the same Special faction keyword, that is a keyword in brackets or a keyword that fulfills this bracket requirement (as defined in the codex) then the army is considered a single force army, they generate an additional 6 command points, in addition to battle forged"

Define beforehand one "faction keyword" as the "most specific faction keyword" (does need a better name, I grant) so you can write down "if everyone shares the {most specific keyword} you get...". Maybe underline it or some such on the datasheet to make it more obvious.

All the codex's have what is defined as a special faction keyword, all of these are in brackets <> hence my wording about the bracket part, it also tells you what the brackets represent, and what keywords it can become (E.g Chaos daemons tells you that <ALLEGIANCE> which is it's special faction keyword, gets replaced with one of the chaos gods, the only exception in the codex is bellakor

When i say in my wording (As defined in the codex) im basically saying look at how your keyword is made, then compare your faction keyword that was just made with that specific keyword and compare it to all your units, are they the same? if so then you have a single force army

mchammadad wrote:

Kdash wrote:
Unfortunately, CP numbers and Stratagem costs are what drives most army builds these days. You build your army around a handful of core stratagems – how you do that is often irrelevant currently.

Essentially, I believe the best, simplest and easiest fix to CP is true standardisation.
Every player gets 6CP.
If you are Battleforged +3CP
Every -pure- detachment +1CP each (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Vanguard)
If you’re army is mono sub-faction +3CP (i.e Ultramarines)

Essentially, with the 3 detachment “limit” on 2k points, an army could get between 9 and 15CP. 9 would be 3 soup detachments, and 15 would be 3 pure, single sub faction detachments. Most armies would gain 11-12CP due to sub faction “souping”. (15 can be increased further via certain special characters. I.e BobbyG)

This then completely removes the CP imbalance between armies, whilst providing an extra benefit to players that want to play things like pure Ultramarines, or pure World Eaters etc.
Will you still see soup armies with this? Yes, of course you will, but now it’d be a conscious army design thing, rather than a requirement for CP generation.

I’ve never quite understood, why a 10 unit army is tactically inferior to an 18 unit army, from an “ability to command” pov. Sure, they are potentially strategically inferior, due to an “in theory” reducing in options/capabilities, but, that is addressed via the stratagems themselves being linked to certain weapons/units in a lot of cases.

I also think, setting a standard for CP, would encourage further diversity in terms of army build. Suddenly, it might not be so much of a tax to bring a couple of Grey Knight units, or to include other over costed units. Sure, you pay the price in points, but you’re no longer drastically reducing your ability to play the game due to missing out on -vital- CP.

This is a nice idea. Only one small problem. This would make the "battalion" and "brigade" detachments completely useless as the other detachments do a much better job as getting the things most people want without the "tax" of those troops/obligatory unit numbers. Why go for a brigade when i can just go for the specialized other detachments and still get the same CP amount.

Instead of the 6 flat + whatever for other things. Why not just make it so that battle forge gives you +3 CP and a pure detachment (That is every unit in your army must share at least 3 faction keywords with each other) gets an additional 6+ CP.

Now the reason why i say 3 faction keywords, is that mono armies usually have 3 Faction keywords among each other. E.g Imperial Guard has "IMPERIUM,ASTRA MILITARUM and REGIMENT". Space marines have "IMPERIUM,ADEPTUS ASTARTES and CHAPTER" and so on and so forth. Getting 3 faction keywords in a mono list is easy, getting it in soup is impossible.

This gives an incentive for people to go mono, while at the same time gives a much needed boost to +1CP detachments, hence brigade goes from a "must have" in higher points to a good option

except I can find a flaw with this VERY easily.

I cannot build a "3 keyword" list out of pure custodes. HOWEVER I CAN build a Chaos soup list of Alpha Legion oblitorators and Death Guard terminators under these rules. Not ALL factions have a "Special faction keyword" Most do, due to their being broken down into seperate formations with "chapter tactics" but some armies lack this, Custodes have ONLY adeptus custodes and IoM keywords. (I suppose GW could if they adopted this give them and sisters of silence a "talons of the emperor keyword")


Thing is at the end of the day GW WANTS us to be able to do soup. a mixed army is pretty fluffy.

mchammadad wrote:

Kdash wrote:
Unfortunately, CP numbers and Stratagem costs are what drives most army builds these days. You build your army around a handful of core stratagems – how you do that is often irrelevant currently.

Essentially, I believe the best, simplest and easiest fix to CP is true standardisation.
Every player gets 6CP.
If you are Battleforged +3CP
Every -pure- detachment +1CP each (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Vanguard)
If you’re army is mono sub-faction +3CP (i.e Ultramarines)

Essentially, with the 3 detachment “limit” on 2k points, an army could get between 9 and 15CP. 9 would be 3 soup detachments, and 15 would be 3 pure, single sub faction detachments. Most armies would gain 11-12CP due to sub faction “souping”. (15 can be increased further via certain special characters. I.e BobbyG)

This then completely removes the CP imbalance between armies, whilst providing an extra benefit to players that want to play things like pure Ultramarines, or pure World Eaters etc.
Will you still see soup armies with this? Yes, of course you will, but now it’d be a conscious army design thing, rather than a requirement for CP generation.

I’ve never quite understood, why a 10 unit army is tactically inferior to an 18 unit army, from an “ability to command” pov. Sure, they are potentially strategically inferior, due to an “in theory” reducing in options/capabilities, but, that is addressed via the stratagems themselves being linked to certain weapons/units in a lot of cases.

I also think, setting a standard for CP, would encourage further diversity in terms of army build. Suddenly, it might not be so much of a tax to bring a couple of Grey Knight units, or to include other over costed units. Sure, you pay the price in points, but you’re no longer drastically reducing your ability to play the game due to missing out on -vital- CP.

This is a nice idea. Only one small problem. This would make the "battalion" and "brigade" detachments completely useless as the other detachments do a much better job as getting the things most people want without the "tax" of those troops/obligatory unit numbers. Why go for a brigade when i can just go for the specialized other detachments and still get the same CP amount.

Instead of the 6 flat + whatever for other things. Why not just make it so that battle forge gives you +3 CP and a pure detachment (That is every unit in your army must share at least 3 faction keywords with each other) gets an additional 6+ CP.

Now the reason why i say 3 faction keywords, is that mono armies usually have 3 Faction keywords among each other. E.g Imperial Guard has "IMPERIUM,ASTRA MILITARUM and REGIMENT". Space marines have "IMPERIUM,ADEPTUS ASTARTES and CHAPTER" and so on and so forth. Getting 3 faction keywords in a mono list is easy, getting it in soup is impossible.

This gives an incentive for people to go mono, while at the same time gives a much needed boost to +1CP detachments, hence brigade goes from a "must have" in higher points to a good option

Personally, I think Brigades shouldn’t exist, as, let’s face it, you can fit a Brigade into a Battalion anyway. The advantages gained for certain armies far out-weigh the “envisioned” disadvantages, plus, don’t tend to always make the most logical sense from a strategic pov. /rant

However, if we wanted to go down the route of making them “mean” something, we can do that by changing my bonuses slightly.

Instead of

Every -pure- detachment +1CP each (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Vanguard)

We change it to

Every -pure- Battalion detachment +1CP each, Every -pure- Brigade detachment +3CP (i.e pure Cadia Battalion, pure Raven Guard Brigade)

The only problem I have with this, however, is that (I think) you can run 2 Guard Brigades and 1 Battalion at 2k points. If everything went Cadia (for example), you’d end up with 19CP. We could change the Brigade to +2CP, but, you can still reach absurd levels of CP with certain armies. The whole point of this, would be to try to balance CP out across the factions, rather than just compound the issue by increasing the bottom and top lines.
A restriction of “only 1 of each type of detachment may be taken in matched play” would probably be required. (This would be increased by +1 for every 1000 points over 2000 points.) This would result in a max of 16CP at 2k points for a “pure” single sub-faction army. This would give us a range of 9-16CP across all armies, suitably benefitting “pure” lists, whilst not making “soup” lists at a massive disadvantage.
If the restriction of “1 of each type” is implemented, Battalion would go to +2, Brigade +3, Super Heavy +2, everything else +1CP. This would result in a variance of 9-19CP (but 19 is -currently- impossible @2k points.) Realistically we are looking at a maximum of 18CP for a pure Guard army – but I think we can all agree that such an army would suck massively, as it’d be pure infantry and never likely to get past turn 2 in timed tournaments meaning it’ll never realistically win events. Most armies would be looking at 9-16CP, with soup lists looking at 9-13CP.

If the gap is still considered too close (a soup list of 1 battalion of 2 others would still be sitting on ~10-12CP) you could then introduce a penalty based on the chosen Warlord.
This, could be –
1) If the majority of your -detachments- are of your Warlords sub-faction, no penalty. (i.e Single detachment army, or army has 3 detachments but 2 are -pure- <sub-faction> and match Warlord)
2) If 50% of your -detachments- are of your Warlords sub-faction, -1CP. (i.e 1 Guard Battalion & 1 Ultramarines Vanguard)
3) If the minority of your -detachments- are not your Warlords sub-faction, -2CP (i.e Warlord is Guard, 1 Guard Battalion and 2 Ultramarines detachments)
4) If your Warlord is not in a -pure- sub-faction detachment, -3CP, but no other additional negatives from the above are awarded.
Sure, it might get a bit “messy” to start with as people get use to it, but, it starts to incentivise the reduction of mass soup, incentivises pure sub-faction armies and makes the Warlord choice mean more than “which faction has the best way to regain CP”.

There might be other, better, ways of doing this, but I firmly believe that adjustments to CP management is the best way to solve this quandary.

I agree with the adjustments to CP management. That is a given.

one thing about your previous post I'm a bit on the side with is the "only 1 of each type of detachment" per 1000pts approach. Sure, it would mean that armies that can make brigades easy (Guard and nids) would be hampered in terms of CP making. But small, elite based armies (Custodes,Grey Knights,Certain Aeldari list, Knights) will be completely crippled as they would be forced to go one of each detachment, when some armies need those extra other slots for their units.

Some armies would have to be forced into soup because this proposition forced them into it. (GK would have to run soup, so would Custodes, Knights would always need soup cause they can't take more than 1 Super heavy detachment)

At least that's how i would see this

mchammadad wrote:
I agree with the adjustments to CP management. That is a given.

one thing about your previous post I'm a bit on the side with is the "only 1 of each type of detachment" per 1000pts approach. Sure, it would mean that armies that can make brigades easy (Guard and nids) would be hampered in terms of CP making. But small, elite based armies (Custodes,Grey Knights,Certain Aeldari list, Knights) will be completely crippled as they would be forced to go one of each detachment, when some armies need those extra other slots for their units.

Some armies would have to be forced into soup because this proposition forced them into it. (GK would have to run soup, so would Custodes, Knights would always need soup cause they can't take more than 1 Super heavy detachment)

At least that's how i would see this

I kinda disagree that elite armies – especially GKs and Custodes would be forced into soup in order to get multiple detachments. This is simply because of their costs. Sure- they might not be able to reach 3 different detachments, but, that is more of a factor of their unit costs as opposed to anything else.

That said – a pure min Custodes could see you running 1 battalion, 1 supreme command and 1 vanguard for 1506 points. It’s not likely you’ll ever want to run that, but, you could.

As for Grey Knights, I feel that they have more options available to them, than Custodes do, as it is easier for them to fill each of the detachments/have more options.

Now, to be competitive, I agree, these armies would still –probably- be forced to soup… However, they are –currently- forced to soup anyway, so this doesn’t really change anything other than provide those wanting to run pure lists, less of a disadvantage for doing so.

Knights, have always been different. You could argue that they’ve always meant to have been run as a “soup” style add in, but, options exist for them to run solo. 4 Knights is usually around 2k points with upgrades. The only benefit of running 3 Knights for the detachment would be to then soup in 500 points of something else. However, with the advent of “mini Knights” and them being LoWs and vastly cheaper, we could potentially allow the Super Heavy (3-5) detachment to be the only detachment that can be duplicated. This would only really affect Knights armies.