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I can't speak for their effectiveness in 9th, but back in 8th I ran numerous lists of infantry-based IG - which were based very heavily around troop choices.

I liked infantry squads because they could be cheap and plentiful, as well as flexible. 10 men with a special weapon for 50-60pts meant I could have 3-4 pseudo-platoons on the table, with a decent amount of points left over for HWSs and (another troop choice) Scions. Plus they had good HQ support in the form of Orders.

I've always loved fielding infantry-based armies, so part of this might be personal preference, but I can only think of one game when I really felt outgunned on the table. At all other times, my men would die by the handful but I'd still have plenty left to retaliate in kind. Scions, meanwhile, functioned as scalpel units to take out enemy vehicles or elite units that might otherwise prove difficult to deal with just with lasguns and BS4+ lascannons or autocannons.

It was the sort of army where, if troops were made 25% minimum, I'd just grin. 'Them's rookie numbers.'

 Galas wrote:
Troops work in factions where they add something nothing else does.

For me Tyranids are the best example.

Troops are the swarms, even more elite Warriors are pretty cheap.

Everything else are monsters, specialized units or ultra elite units, so you end up with many Tyranids using troops because they offer something you cannot find in other parts of the codex, but if you want to play nidzilla or thematic lists, you can.

Marines, on the other half... are just marines. Troops are just more boring marines. They do the same stuff than elite units but worse.

In Tau you have something similar to Tyranids. Nearly all your infantry are your troops. If you want bodies you need troops. Of course in practice the codex is always badly designed and people spam elite suits.

But theres also the "cool" factor. I'm the kind of guy that plays with 60 fire warriors and 50 kroots because I love me some troops. But most people likes the special stuff. Thats what draws them towards something. And as designers is very easy to catter to that crow. People that wants to use a ton of troops are the very, very small minority.

I think this is an excellent point. Troops that don't fulfil any sort of niche but are instead just worse versions of elite/FA/HS units is unlikely to encourage people to take them.

Apple fox wrote:
I feel you could do a lot to make troops more desirable with a update to the terrain rules.

If occupying a terrain structure was valuable, and the best removal was other infantry.
You could use object secured for troops focused on defence, and other infantry without more focus on other things as well as removing troops. But unable to hold objectives why doing that task, even if more efficient for it.

1000% agree.

If people want to see Troops on the table I am not sure what is stopping them? Be the change you want to see? Maybe we should worry about our own lists and not project our preferences on others? We play 40K with models that we collect and paint according to our personal preferences. "Troops" is a somewhat arbitrary distinction anyway.

I found the 2nd Ed % restriction on Characters, Battleline (the term changed by army) and Support to be workable without being too restrictive. I was not a fan of the 3rd Ed FOC.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Look at a game like SW: Legion. Yes, it has a minimum 3 trooper units for the standard battle size that you have to take, but it's not at all unusual to see lists taking 4-6 instead, despite not having to, because the game system makes it worth doing so. But that's because Legion is a deep and narrow ruleset, not a wide and shallow one like 40k. Wide and shallow rulesets tend to struggle to make basic troopers worth taking because there is so little there there for a basic trooper. All the interesting bits of 40k are in the special rules, so why take the stuff that has the least special rules?

Until you fix the base game rules to make basic units more interesting and rewarding to play, anything you do to force people to take troops is often just forcing people to take lame stuff for the sake of forcing them to take lame stuff.

This is pretty much where I'm at. I think there's a conversation to be had about using requirements and limits as a shaping mechanism to prevent game-breaking edge cases for competitive play, but the problem with Troops is that the rules don't give them anything to do.

Some of the suggestions I've seen- like how Infiltrators can, well, infiltrate, and then potentially provide secondary support abilities- is exactly the kind of stuff that would constitute an Elites choice in yesteryear. Troops are supposed to be the no-frills basic infantry, but what's basic infantry supposed to do in 9th?

Even for Tyranids, I don't think the case that they represent 'troops done right' is all that strong. You have Warriors who provide a genuine support ability via Synapse, but only started being taken when they were cheap enough (and sufficiently stratagem-supported) to be efficient at killing and taking damage. Rippers appear via Deep Strike and can hold objectives and screen enemy Deep Strike, and... that's it. Termagants either occupy space or are kitted out to kill the enemy, Hormagaunts engage the enemy ASAP to tie up or kill them (and aren't great at it, so don't see a ton of play), and Genestealers just move quickly and kill. Every Tyranids Troop choice is taken either to simply occupy space on the table, or to kill the enemy. Not a whole lot of dynamism there; they just happen to have some decently combat-effective Troops choices, and the other slots don't provide good space-occupying choices.

The most interesting potential is with Warriors having Synapse (bolstered by Octarius) or for Hormagaunts to leverage their increased pile-in/consolidate to tie up the enemy in melee, but those abilities aren't enough to carry the units without also favorable cost/damage ratios.

I love this conversations. Force organization is such a fundamental part of the game, but rarely gets the focused attention I think it deserves.

Here's my view and thoughts:

I think Troops should generally be a core default part of each army, but that more focused or skewed lists should be possible (albeit with some penalties). Some lists, where thematically appropriate, should have ways of having other certain units count as troops. I also think that the game is better when players are fielding more well-rounded lists.

For this basic paradigm to work, troops in general need to be valuable and worth taking to some extent on their own. But what's "worth it" is always relative to the other options. Without making troops specifically better, what if other specialists come with more of a cost at the strategic level.

Here's what I've been tinkering around with:

Instead of a force org chart or %'s be category or other gamey things, I'd rather have a more organic and adaptive system. For instance, take command points. What if you start with a certain amount of CP's (say a mere 6, or scaled to the size of the game, etc.) and for each unit of specialists that you take or HQ unit beyond your warlord you take costs you a CP. Maybe Lords of War costs 2 CP. Maybe taking more than 3 of a given specialist category further raises the cost to 2 CPs.

Then, have it so that each troop unit you take gives you another CP (or two if it's full size?) to spend either during play or during list construction. Troop units definitely need to have some system-wide rules like ObSec as a further incentive too.

Armies with special fluffy variations could gain some added flexibility - i.e. White Scars can take Bikers without paying the usual CP cost for them. Then again, you don't get more CP's for taking them, as they don't officially count as troops.

However many command points you have left after list building is your starting pool of CP's to use in the game. Want to make a heavy skew list? Go for it, but you might start the game with zero CP's and some reduced capability in that regard.

I think that system would work if you balanced it per army. I hate when things are balanced via core rules because orks work fundamentally differently from say necrons.

 Mezmorki wrote:
I love this conversations. Force organization is such a fundamental part of the game, but rarely gets the focused attention I think it deserves.

Here's my view and thoughts:

I think Troops should generally be a core default part of each army, but that more focused or skewed lists should be possible (albeit with some penalties). Some lists, where thematically appropriate, should have ways of having other certain units count as troops. I also think that the game is better when players are fielding more well-rounded lists.

For this basic paradigm to work, troops in general need to be valuable and worth taking to some extent on their own. But what's "worth it" is always relative to the other options. Without making troops specifically better, what if other specialists come with more of a cost at the strategic level.

Here's what I've been tinkering around with:

Instead of a force org chart or %'s be category or other gamey things, I'd rather have a more organic and adaptive system. For instance, take command points. What if you start with a certain amount of CP's (say a mere 6, or scaled to the size of the game, etc.) and for each unit of specialists that you take or HQ unit beyond your warlord you take costs you a CP. Maybe Lords of War costs 2 CP. Maybe taking more than 3 of a given specialist category further raises the cost to 2 CPs.

Then, have it so that each troop unit you take gives you another CP (or two if it's full size?) to spend either during play or during list construction. Troop units definitely need to have some system-wide rules like ObSec as a further incentive too.

Armies with special fluffy variations could gain some added flexibility - i.e. White Scars can take Bikers without paying the usual CP cost for them. Then again, you don't get more CP's for taking them, as they don't officially count as troops.

However many command points you have left after list building is your starting pool of CP's to use in the game. Want to make a heavy skew list? Go for it, but you might start the game with zero CP's and some reduced capability in that regard.

So % based pts requirements = gamey.
But fiddling with Command Points = not gamey.
??
BTW, you're last paragraph? That's exactly how the current system works.

If you want troops to be special they need some unique rules to make them so on the table. Obsec was an example - but this has tended to be degraded so in 9th its rarely seen as worth it.

In practice its just a function of efficiency. We saw plenty of 8th edition codexes where elite units were overcosted compared to troops - so people were happy to bring hundreds of points of troops and no elites. In 9th that's tended to go the other way, so in many armies troops are just not taken.

You can just mandate every faction has to take 3 units from their troops pool - but its kind of lame. And saying "oh no we'll let this or that army off cos fluff" is still lame.

Like a lot of things - I think it comes down to rules that enable a more highlander style list. I.E. these 3 units of troops are *good*, you should *want to take them* - but they are not somehow good by just being further up the power curve than everything else in the book, to the point where you should throw 800+ points into them. Its the same spirit of trying to have characters/monsters/tanks which feel powerful on the tabletop - i.e. by being up the curve - but not so much you just instantly take 3. But then I fear they'd start doing something awful with stratagems/CP and I don't want that either.

 catbarf wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Except you left out that every army had (well almost every army) 2-5 options to make another non-troop unit a troop. So while some marines had Tacs as troops others had Bikes, some had Terminators, etc.... Heck there were 6 Ork bike armies, and 3 Tanks as troops in IG.

Which in the end you could make lists that looks like an Outrider, Spearhead, or Vanguard detachment that we have now, the percent/limitations really didn't matter.

The difference being that those usually came with their own caveats that limited force composition; or just the FOC itself.

If you were Guard you only got tanks as Troops if you were Armored Company, and that came with a whole laundry list of restrictions and special rules intended to benefit your opponent. If you played Deathwing and took Terminators as Troops, you had to have Belial in your army, and you weren't backing them up with 3 Vindicators and 3 Whirlwinds. If you took Speed Freeks you couldn't support them with a battery of Mek Gunz. It's when GW didn't impose these sorts of caveats- or did so in a half-assed way, like Iron Warriors getting a bonus HS slot at the cost of FA slots they wouldn't use- then there was potential for abuse.

More importantly, these were specific exceptions curated by GW. I couldn't decide Carnifexes would be Troops and build an army of nothing but them just because I wanted to. Even in the editions where Carnifex-spam was officially sanctioned, I was limited to six, of which three had to come in under a low points total to count as Elites. And then I still needed Troops. Now? I can take a Spearhead of nothing but Carnifexes. 19 of them to be specific.

The argument that it's currently no less restrictive than it used to be only works if you ignore all the restrictions that used to exist, so, not really.

But it wasn't "ONLY'' it was "This unit becomes Troop if X is your HQ" You could still take IG troops with Tank troops, just no one did bc there was no reason too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
If you want troops to be special they need some unique rules to make them so on the table. Obsec was an example - but this has tended to be degraded so in 9th its rarely seen as worth it.

In practice its just a function of efficiency. We saw plenty of 8th edition codexes where elite units were overcosted compared to troops - so people were happy to bring hundreds of points of troops and no elites. In 9th that's tended to go the other way, so in many armies troops are just not taken.

You can just mandate every faction has to take 3 units from their troops pool - but its kind of lame. And saying "oh no we'll let this or that army off cos fluff" is still lame.

Like a lot of things - I think it comes down to rules that enable a more highlander style list. I.E. these 3 units of troops are *good*, you should *want to take them* - but they are not somehow good by just being further up the power curve than everything else in the book, to the point where you should throw 800+ points into them. Its the same spirit of trying to have characters/monsters/tanks which feel powerful on the tabletop - i.e. by being up the curve - but not so much you just instantly take 3. But then I fear they'd start doing something awful with stratagems/CP and I don't want that either.

This, DE takes troops, more than most players, Admech was up until last week taking 120 troops lol. Its not that people want special, they want units that work best.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
But it wasn't "ONLY'' it was "This unit becomes Troop if X is your HQ" You could still take IG troops with Tank troops, just no one did bc there was no reason too.

That's not true, and it's a perfect example of how those curated rules weren't functionally 'anything goes'. Under the Armored Company list, none of your vehicles could move within 12" of enemy infantry unless you had friendly infantry within 6" to provide close support. That created an organic incentive to take Armored Fist squads, even if they weren't as optimal combatants as just taking more tanks. It was a deliberate balancing mechanism built into the Armored Company list to offset its skew nature.

Even with the characters that did outright make an alternative unit Troops with no other changes, you a) had to take that specific HQ, and b) still were limited to three slots of each category. Just because you could take Terminators as Troops in a Deathwing army didn't mean you could also back them up with six tanks- or take Terminators as Troops in an Ultramarines list.

These are relevant restrictions that constrained army-building even in the presence of FOC-altering mechanics. Nowadays you just take 12 Leman Russes in a single Spearhead if you want and pick whichever subfaction to maximize their combat ability.

 catbarf wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
But it wasn't "ONLY'' it was "This unit becomes Troop if X is your HQ" You could still take IG troops with Tank troops, just no one did bc there was no reason too.

That's not true, and it's a perfect example of how those curated rules weren't functionally 'anything goes'. Under the Armored Company list, none of your vehicles could move within 12" of enemy infantry unless you had friendly infantry within 6" to provide close support. That created an organic incentive to take Armored Fist squads, even if they weren't as optimal combatants as just taking more tanks. It was a deliberate balancing mechanism built into the Armored Company list to offset its skew nature.

Even with the characters that did outright make an alternative unit Troops with no other changes, you a) had to take that specific HQ, and b) still were limited to three slots of each category. Just because you could take Terminators as Troops in a Deathwing army didn't mean you could also back them up with six tanks- or take Terminators as Troops in an Ultramarines list.

These are relevant restrictions that constrained army-building even in the presence of FOC-altering mechanics. Nowadays you just take 12 Leman Russes in a single Spearhead if you want and pick whichever subfaction to maximize their combat ability.

Yes you needed an HQ as I literally said and yes you could replace all troops if you wanted too and or had other troops too.

For example one edition I had 6 troops for DE all were Hellions, why? Bc it let me and I could, it was cool looking army, i loved it.

 Mezmorki wrote:

Here's what I've been tinkering around with:

Instead of a force org chart or %'s be category or other gamey things, I'd rather have a more organic and adaptive system. For instance, take command points. What if you start with a certain amount of CP's (say a mere 6, or scaled to the size of the game, etc.) and for each unit of specialists that you take or HQ unit beyond your warlord you take costs you a CP. Maybe Lords of War costs 2 CP. Maybe taking more than 3 of a given specialist category further raises the cost to 2 CPs.

That's essentially how things work now via detachment costs. If you want to avoid taking troops or if you want to take more than 3 Fast Attacks, you have to spend CP on detachments. Also, this approach still has a lot of the same problems as the current system:

A.) Fluffy lists that happen to not use troops are penalized for being thematic. (A Saim-Hann player with 9 fast attack units might start the game with fewer CP than a harlequin player who is happy to field troupes.)
B.) Tying it to number of units of a given battlefield role doesn't factor in what those units actually are or how many points they cost. So armies with cheap units will run out of slots faster than more expensive armies.
C.) What is and isn't a troop in 40k is really arbitrary, so creating penalties for not fielding troops feels like it's just creating problems for themed armies or armies that happen to have weaker troops than others. Ex: Why is it okay for GK to take a bunch of terminators without paying a CP penalty, but it's not okay for Salamanders to do the same?

Then, have it so that each troop unit you take gives you another CP (or two if it's full size?) to spend either during play or during list construction.

Strongly favors armies with cheap and/or cost-effective troops. This basically puts armies with expensive or less-good troops at a disadvantage. Consider how many troop units guard players could spam for X points compared to, say, necrons. And harlequins are probably a lot happier about fielding some troops than my craftworlders are.

Troop units definitely need to have some system-wide rules like ObSec as a further incentive too.

See, this sounds like we're just acknowledging that troops are often undesirable. Rather than trying to fix that with a one-size-fits-all approach like ObSec, why not just tweak the rules of the undesirable troops to make them desirable again? Maybe that takes the form of certain troops granting CP or having ObSec, but it shouldn't have to. You're basically describing making troops more "worth it." Why limit ourselves to bonus CP and ObSec to do that?

Armies with special fluffy variations could gain some added flexibility - i.e. White Scars can take Bikers without paying the usual CP cost for them. Then again, you don't get more CP's for taking them, as they don't officially count as troops.

Eh. See, if it's reasonable for White Scars to take bikers as troops, then why not just make them troops or revise the army building rules to not limit access to bikers in the first place? Why are biker troops fine when they're painted white, but only when they're painted white?

However many command points you have left after list building is your starting pool of CP's to use in the game. Want to make a heavy skew list? Go for it, but you might start the game with zero CP's and some reduced capability in that regard.

See, except you haven't necessarily limited skew so much as you've just made certain types of skew harder to pull off for certain factions. If Iyanden can take wraithguard/blades as troops (similar to White Scars having bike troops), I can easily have an entire army of Toughness 6 or higher. My Ultramarines opponent running 2 or 3 troop units might have a couple more CP than me, but only a couple, and I'm skewing pretty hard while he's running a non-skew list.

So two big things here:
1.) Some people seem to think troops should be straight up less cost-effective/less useful for their points than non-troops. I find this to be a less than ideal approach to unit design. If your tactical marines are just worse devastators, then they should be redesigned to be desirable in their own way.
2.) Skew lists and optimized lists aren't necessarily the same thing. If I spam as many gretchin as possible, that's a skew list, but I'm not necessarily going to win a lot of games with it. If your goal in making troops mandatory or semi-mandatory is to restrict the overall power of your opponent's list, then your objective isn't to encourage troops; it's to limit the number of "good" units your opponent takes. In which case, you ought to be looking for a system that identifies "good" units by their merits rather than their semi-arbitrary Battlefield Roles.

I prefer discrete units to percentage based systems.

3 Heavy Support means I can bring 3 Heavy Support choices, or not use them at all, or only use some of them. 25% of a 2000 point list means if I bring 1 HS choice that's 501 points my army is illegal.

No thanks.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I prefer discrete units to percentage based systems.

3 Heavy Support means I can bring 3 Heavy Support choices, or not use them at all, or only use some of them. 25% of a 2000 point list means if I bring 1 HS choice that's 501 points my army is illegal.

No thanks.

Well, it's way more fair though. Some armies have HS that cost 45 points. Others may have effective HS for 150+ points. In the first case the player would be forced to bring undesired units because the desired ones are too cheap, that's why current detachment system is good. Same for FA. An optimized stormboyz squad is a min squad of 5 dudes that costs 55 points, an optimized thunderwolf cavalry squad is also a 5 man one but costs 270ish points. Besides, one 501 points HS choice? That's a Lord of War.

Elite armies can ignore the FOC limitations, they won't get 3+ of each slot anyway. For armies like orks having only 3 HS or FA available is extremely limiting. Unless several of the units (pretty much all the infantry) currently listed under Elites, HS, FA become troops, like in 3rd edition codex and under specific circumstances (aka bringing specific HQs) also in 4th one.

The idea could work only without a single flat FOC for everyone, each army gets its own one instead. Cheaper armies would dispose of more slots of course.

I'm wondering what the actual problem is that people are trying to solve here?

This thread is full of solutions without a problem to solve.

 Jidmah wrote:
I'm wondering what the actual problem is that people are trying to solve here?

This thread is full of solutions without a problem to solve.

The problem is how can we design troops to give them a role sufficiently invaluable as to motivate players to ensure that they represent a proper bulk of the army. Not with %pts, not with force org charts, but with game design. Such that when it comes to list design you would think 'Well, of course I'll start with 500-700pts of troops', as quick as a LoL player would say 'Well, of course we need a Jungler'. Not because the troops just do what units in other slots do, but better, but because they are Troops. If the shift to Objectives + Ob Sec (rather than Killing + Detachments) didn't do it, then what would it take?

The answer will likely be a combination of two questions:
1) What do we need to give troops to motivate the role to constitute the bulk of any army?
2) How do we need to change the game designn to motivate this role?

And address this issue such that the answer is not just to look to 1), and say 'You have to take Xpts or fill X force org slots. That's lazy, and boring.

Well, troops being the bulk of an any army seems illogical when there are factions with 150+ datasheets with just a couple of those being troops. Unless merging several infantry units into the troop section I don't see why this should be appealing. Why do people want troop to be more common? Just by principle? To avoid/limit skew?

By game design I though about letting troops score more points through objectives, but then armies with better troops could gain too much advantages. And ironically the current top tier armies are those which rely the most on troops. Jidmah made an interesting proposition: let troops do actions, with some significant impact to the game, that only they can do. They won't fire, they won't fight as long as they perform the action, as usual. Very elite oriented and expensive ones could make an exception though, it'd be too punishing for armies like custodes or harlequins, which can't field cheap expendable troops, otherwise and fluffwise it would be also be justified.

 TonyH122 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'm wondering what the actual problem is that people are trying to solve here?

This thread is full of solutions without a problem to solve.

The problem is how can we design troops to give them a role sufficiently invaluable as to motivate players to ensure that they represent a proper bulk of the army. Not with %pts, not with force org charts, but with game design. Such that when it comes to list design you would think 'Well, of course I'll start with 500-700pts of troops', as quick as a LoL player would say 'Well, of course we need a Jungler'. Not because the troops just do what units in other slots do, but better, but because they are Troops. If the shift to Objectives + Ob Sec (rather than Killing + Detachments) didn't do it, then what would it take?

The answer will likely be a combination of two questions:
1) What do we need to give troops to motivate the role to constitute the bulk of any army?
2) How do we need to change the game designn to motivate this role?

And address this issue such that the answer is not just to look to 1), and say 'You have to take Xpts or fill X force org slots. That's lazy, and boring.

Hah, I 100% agree with this post, especially the "we need a jungler" part really nails it. In essence troops need to be able to do something special so that you feel like you are missing out when you don't bring troops.

Yet, this entire thread seems to be revolving around forcing people into taking stuff that they normally wouldn't want to take.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blackie wrote:
By game design I though about letting troops score more points through objectives, but then armies with better troops could gain too much advantages. And ironically the current top tier armies are those which rely the most on troops. Jidmah made an interesting proposition: let troops do actions, which some significant impact to the game, that only they can do. They won't fire, they won't fight as long as they perform the action, as usual. Very elite oriented and expensive ones could make an exception though, it'd be too punishing for armies like custodes or harlequins, which can't field cheap expendable troops, otherwise and fluffwise it would be also be justified.

Some brainstorming on this: I like the idea of troops being a backbone/logistical unit. Actions to highlight that could be:
- Fortify position: Improve the protection of a piece of terrain significantly
- Spotter: VEHICLE or MONSTER units can shoot units that are seen by the troops unit, even if they can't see them.
- Request new orders: Gain CP, needs to be near a character, double if near warlord.
- Call backup/summon: Reserves can be deployed close to this unit without the usual limitations of strategic reserves.
- Suppressing fire: Place a marker within shooting range of the unit. Whenever an enemy unit come to close to that marker, you can open fire (possibly at reduced efficiency)
- Smoke launchers: For shooting, this unit counts as obscuring obstacle as long as it is performing this action.

Note that these are intentionally vague to not spark discussions about balancing. The one important thing is that these should not increase damage, but provide utility or defense only. Otherwise the action will just be in direct competition with other damage-dealing units and crank up the lethality issue even more.

 TonyH122 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'm wondering what the actual problem is that people are trying to solve here?

This thread is full of solutions without a problem to solve.

The problem is how can we design troops to give them a role sufficiently invaluable as to motivate players to ensure that they represent a proper bulk of the army. Not with %pts, not with force org charts, but with game design. Such that when it comes to list design you would think 'Well, of course I'll start with 500-700pts of troops', as quick as a LoL player would say 'Well, of course we need a Jungler'. Not because the troops just do what units in other slots do, but better, but because they are Troops. If the shift to Objectives + Ob Sec (rather than Killing + Detachments) didn't do it, then what would it take?

The answer will likely be a combination of two questions:
1) What do we need to give troops to motivate the role to constitute the bulk of any army?
2) How do we need to change the game designn to motivate this role?

And address this issue such that the answer is not just to look to 1), and say 'You have to take Xpts or fill X force org slots. That's lazy, and boring.

Look, I don't mind if my troops become more useful. Even if that'd likely make them more expensive. But I assure you that there's only 3 instances where I would ever start my list building with "Well of course I'll start with (X) troops....".

1) I'm required to for some reason. Typically rules related.
Ex: The Patrol lv in our Crusade games. The group is pretty well in favor of always starting with the Patrol Detachment. Wich means except for Knights, that no matter what I'm playing I have to start by including 1 Troop.

2) The troops fit the theme of what I'm doing. What I'm aiming to build. The vision in MY head of what I want MY army to look like. What you think an army should look like? Is not important to me. If the troops fit? If not? I'm happy to spend the CP on an alternate detachment.
Ex.1; My DA 3rd Co. It's core has always been 3, sometimes 4, Tac squads. Always will be. No matter how good/bad/etc they are. Because that's what I envision being the essential part of a Marine battle company.
Ex.2; My 100% Destroyer cult Necrons. 1st, there are no troops with the Destroyer KW/ability. If there were I'd use them - unless the models were pure gak sculpt wise. There aren't & I'm not breaking my theme no matter how awesome you'd make my warriors/Immortals.

3) The actual models. If I just simply really like the models that's reason enough.
Ex; Guard infantry. Particularly the Praetorians, the Steel Legion, & Krieg.

While it sound nice, the truth is that if you allow troops to perform special actions, you give again an advantage to those that can deploy the smallest troop units.

Troops to be played need to be good. To be good without stepping on the toes of the elite units, they need to work with high synergies with the army theme.

SM troops having all doctrines always active
Ork Boyz getting more buffs from WAAAGH
Tau troops gaining more bonuses from Montka and Kayuon
Plague Marines being the prime vectors for spreading the contagion
Sister troops should have better chances to create miracle dices.

Those are the things that are needed.

Look at the troops that work:

Necron troops work because they are the models that work best with reanimation.
Tyranids troops work because they interact well with synapse.
Rubrics work because they interact well with rituals.
Skiitari work because they interact well with the techpriests.
DE troops work very well within the transport theme of the army.

 Jidmah wrote:
I'm wondering what the actual problem is that people are trying to solve here?

This thread is full of solutions without a problem to solve.

Did you read the title? Imagine troop requirements.

A lot of us lived through troop requirements and knows it doesn't fix balance issues, so its more of a talk about what it would change in the game... aka imagine.

 Blackie wrote:
Well, troops being the bulk of an any army seems illogical when there are factions with 150+ datasheets with just a couple of those being troops. Unless merging several infantry units into the troop section I don't see why this should be appealing. Why do people want troop to be more common? Just by principle? To avoid/limit skew?

Troops are supposed to be the bulk of the army. Unfortunately, GW game design is bad enough that troops are consistently a tax or a punishment (with some few exceptions).
Since, according to GW, the game is supposed to evoke the fluff and the setting, this is pretty much a major failure of design on their part.

Weirdly WFB was always a little better about this, and since the % requirements and restrictions were a comfortable part of WFB (for the most part), it makes some sense to look at it for 40k. But it has never worked out.

But Fantasy did not had troops. Units were separated literally by how common they were in the army, not by the "role" they had.

But Blackie has a good point: When you have an army that has 1 troop option and 30 non troop options, forcing the players to use that one option that is much more boring than all the other cool stuff , from a design standpoint, is just bad design.

 Jidmah wrote:
I'm wondering what the actual problem is that people are trying to solve here?

This thread is full of solutions without a problem to solve.

One issue is that there's a specific list constantly being referenced as an example without the context of which version of that list it is.

There's been at least 2 iterations of the "Armoured Battlegroup" list that I can think of from FW. Both of those fit more along with what Catbarf is describing, and those weren't really encountered too much outside of friendly play.

There was also a Chapter Approved version in (I think?) 2003. It was weird.

RE: "Troops are the bulk of the army" points people seem to be making...

Part of my initial involvement in this thread was to illustrate that this is a somewhat misguided point (and clearly I failed, though what else is new).

At the scale 40k is played (essentially Company scale at 2000 points, Platoon scale at 500 points) there is no such thing as "the bulk of the army". You're playing a very tiny piece of a larger army, rather than playing an entire Combined Arms Brigade or the like (which is at least two echelons higher). At this scale, it doesn't really make sense to say that "you should take unit X because unit X is the bulk of your chosen faction." Take, for example, a Company Scale World War II game (e.g. Flames of War) or a Platoon Scale one (e.g. Chain of Command). In these games, companies are often divided into types and these types define what the bulk of the force was. This is what I was getting at with my earlier attempt to do the same thing for 40k. There are "Tank Companies" with the bulk of the force being the common tanks available to the faction. There are "Heavy Tank Companies" with rare and powerful machines, but fewer of them. There are "Infantry Companies", "Assault Engineer Companies"... At the Platoon Scale, there are partizan 'platoons', cavalry platoons, tank platoons, self-propelled artillery platoons, anti-aircraft platoons...

the "bulk" of a German air defense platoon might be a gun section of 88mm cannons, while the "bulk" of a British tank company might be Shermans or Cromwell medium tanks. The "bulk" of an American armored rifle unit would be halftracks with infantry, whilst the bulk of a Soviet assault engineer list would be sappers with body armor and very short-ranged guns.

Similarly, at the platoon/company scale 40k (kinda) fits at, the "type" of army the player wishes to play should inform the "bulk" of what their faction is.

The "bulk" of Iyanden armies should be wraith units. The "bulk" of Imperial Guard armored companies are leman russ squadrons. The "bulk" of a Necron Tombworld Defense Force are cryptek units. The "bulk" of a Tyranid Synapse Nexus might be Zoanthropes.

That's why I think troop requirements are bad - but also why I think troops themselves should be good.

An Infantry Company should be as good as an Armored Company. Ulthwe Black Guardians should compete evenly with Iyanden wraithspam. A Tyranid Hive Nexus should be on par with an onrushing wave of Termagants and their Tervigon mommies. A Farsight Strike Force should be as viable as Kroot Mercenaries, etc.

Boyz in 8th were pretty alright, mainly because they had buffs designed from all the way back in 4th that fit them. More boyz gets you a better psyker, which makes your boyz better. More boyz makes your painboy able to pay back his points, and boyz are the optimal unit to screen with a kff.
This all changed with the 9th dex, which is a bit sad.

Do Ulthwe's Black Guardians even have rules these days?

 Kanluwen wrote:
Do Ulthwe's Black Guardians even have rules these days?

They have a stratagem (y'know, like everything else).

But the point is that armies with variable "troops" should be balanced, even if its balanced between gigantic bipedal murderbots as the "bulk" of the force (Imperial Knights) and like, random unarmored angry folks (R&H) as the "bulk" of the force.

Was a genuine question. I've not read the Aeldari book in a loooong time.

I'd argue that there's a huge difference in balancing out these forces of, say, four gigantic murderbots that can't ever really claim terrain bonuses and a carpet of angry tradesmen with guns harping on about the voices.


I don't know what the right answer is overall. I really don't. What I do know is that as long as people want to continue to pretend that listbuilding shouldn't be a cooperative venture or a reasonable discussion to have before friendly games?

There will always be a problem.

 Galas wrote:
But Fantasy did not had troops. Units were separated literally by how common they were in the army, not by the "role" they had.

Part of the 'troops slot' is how common they are. You're making a distinction where there isn't one. Of course, making elites 6 instead of 3 and just letting people go with FA and HS force orgs undermines this completely, but that's the GW design 'genius' at work.

But Blackie has a good point: When you have an army that has 1 troop option and 30 non troop options, forcing the players to use that one option that is much more boring than all the other cool stuff , from a design standpoint, is just bad design.

The thing is, they don't have to boring. The bad design part comes from marketing, where they don't want limits on the non-troops stuff for sales reasons.
And then they go and punish players for wanting to use cheap stuff, like cultists or grots, or exile scouts to elites, because... they don't actually want to see the numerous stuff in numbers.
Its just a mess. But in the Great Plan, marketing>rules>fluff.