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 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

Spoiler:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
I don't hate stratagems because they screw up balance, I hate them because of how silly they are from a narrative standpoint. Only one tank can use its smoke launchers. Only one unit of Loyalist Scum remembers that it's "transhuman". Only one unit of CSM are VotLW (and the next turn another is). Yuck. Give me abilities and equipment that I pay for and stick with the unit. Trophies of Judgment. Bloody Murder. Preysight. I want my guys to be what they should be all the time, not just when I spend some ephemeral resource.

Here's the thing: if you box, you know not every punch is a knock out; if you fence you know not every hit is a point, if you shoot, you know that not every hit is a killshot.

Abilities that are always on are the things that are unfluffy, bs bolter porn. Moments of true heroism being rare? That's fluffy as feth. Not every soldier gets a medal.

And for what it's worth, it's hard to understand complaints about lethality and wombo combo in one breath, and a desire for those abilities to be always on in the next.

And finally, if anything, the cost system for strats is a greater cost, than paying for always-on abilities for points, and it's paid on the batlefield in response to emergent opportunities and obstacles as a part of the narrative rather than at the list building stage.

But I do acknowledge that all of these arguments are based on my own personal preferences, and that your personal preference is just as valid as mine- and again, in the environs of Dakka, certainly more common than mine. I express my preferences and opinions not in the hope of changing anyone's mind- that's impossible. Instead, I do it to point out that other points of view do exist. What is a forum if not a place for the expression of multiple perspectives?

May 10th be as fun for you as 9th was for me brother. The wheel spins.

All of my Night Lords having Night Vision for a standard price is "unfluffy"? Interesting POV, I must say.

And if the ability/equipment is too powerful to be always on? Change or remove it.

And I think that I'll just stick with HH. 10th is looking to be just as much of a burning dumpster fire as 8th and 9th have been.

Have fun with HH.
Since you don't play 40k, I guess I'll be seeing less of your posts in the 40k areas of Dakka then. Considering how much of a dumpster fire you see 8th and 9th to be.

I will and you will, except for these various "what you want to see in 40k" threads.

But that means I won't be having your back when the Aecus Decimus of the world come at you. Have fun with that. And your lack of thanks in those instances is noted.

Ya know what?
I apologize
I've been having a rough day at snapped at you.
Sorry.

Back on topic:

I'm sure we have a bunch of different actions units can take, but they're usually tied to a specific play mode. We'd need to expand actions to a generic list perhaps.

PenitentJake wrote:
Here's the thing: if you box, you know not every punch is a knock out; if you fence you know not every hit is a point, if you shoot, you know that not every hit is a killshot.

That also goes for 40k which is why you roll to hit, then to wound, and then they roll a save. Do enough wounds and you always score a kill.

So if you load the special ammo you should be able to buy with points the ones that hit should always fo their special thing unless that special thing involves needing to wound.

Abilities that are always on are the things that are unfluffy, bs bolter porn. Moments of true heroism being rare? That's fluffy as feth. Not every soldier gets a medal.

40k is over the top enough that every soldier that makes it to the tabletop would probably show up in a history book IRL.

Apologie accepted. And I agree: actions are an entirely underutilized piece of 8th/9th edition 40k. I'd like to see them used more. And I hope your day gets better, Blindmage.

The thing with strategems is there's 40-80 of them per faction. 40 to 80. So the implication is to play my faction at a basic level I have to have a rough idea of all my units, all their abilities, all the strategems, then on top of that all the strategems of the other player. If I don't it's very easy to get into a "gotcha" situation where the opponent plays a card I didn't know they had and deals a decisive blow. It's just not fun. Strategems are, to my mind, the absolute worst thing about 40Ks design.

Someone mentioned Boxing before. I teach Boxing. I teach in total 7 punches. Straight high and low, uppercut, cross, overhand, and two forms of body rip. That combines with movement for a sport that has no skill ceiling. A lot of complexity could be removed from 40k and if anything it would improve the skill factor of games, while allowing for things other than killing/defending.

I only need to know the stratagems for the models I'm using, in the list I'm using. If we're even using stratagems. They're not a mandatory part of the game, they're in the Advanced Rules section.

 Blndmage wrote:
I only need to know the stratagems for the models I'm using, in the list I'm using. If we're even using stratagems. They're not a mandatory part of the game, they're in the Advanced Rules section.

They're factually a standard part of the game. That's just reality.

Sure, you could agree to play without them, but I'd consider them a basic, stock standard part of the game. You could just know a small number, but that puts you at an inherent disadvantage. 9th ed 40K is designed with strategems in mind.

Beast_of_Guanyin wrote:
The thing with strategems is there's 40-80 of them per faction. 40 to 80.

Certainly true, but I've never gone into a game with more than 15 strat cards chosen before the first turn, and while playing, the other 25-65 haven't bothered me in the slightest, because I didn't have to think about or look at any of them. But the trick is that the 15 (or fewer) that I do choose change from game to game based on the story, so I'm happy that the options are there on the occasions when the story is going to demand them.

Beast_of_Guanyin wrote:

So the implication is to play my faction at a basic level I have to have a rough idea of all my units, all their abilities, all the strategems, then on top of that all the strategems of the other player. If I don't it's very easy to get into a "gotcha" situation where the opponent plays a card I didn't know they had and deals a decisive blow.

Yes, but you do understand that your opponent is under the exact same obligation, and just as likely to get gotcha'd by you, right? And that either way, the moment would certainly contribute to the narrative of the battle. Also, in a Crusade game winning is far from everything- I'd prefer to lose a battle, but achieve two agendas and fufill my Penitent Vow, or pass a Saintly trial, or seize a territory than win and have none of that other stuff happen.

Beast_of_Guanyin wrote:

It's just not fun. Strategems are, to my mind, the absolute worst thing about 40Ks design.

At least you acknowledge it as an opinion, rather than claiming it's an objective fact- and a perfectly valid opinion it is BTW. Like I said, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind.

Beast_of_Guanyin wrote:

Someone mentioned Boxing before. I teach Boxing. I teach in total 7 punches. Straight high and low, uppercut, cross, overhand, and two forms of body rip. That combines with movement for a sport that has no skill ceiling.

Yeah- Kendo is similar. Three primary targets that are always valid, two others that are situational and one that is too dangerous to attempt if you're below a certain skill threshold.

But the thing is, we combine those strikes into techniques don't we?

Like I might jab to someone's head to raise their guard so I can pound the wind out of them with body shot and if I knock them back I can shuffle in to get more power in the follow through.

From my perspective, combinations in boxing, or waza in kendo are like stacking a strat with Miracle die or an aura and a bespoke subfaction trait. For some challenges you might need to stack 4 or 5 complimentary abilities to achieve the desired results- sometimes 2 will do it, just like you might need a four punch combination to get through somebody's guard and sometimes a quick one-two will do it.

But then, that's my opinion, and no more or less valid than your own.

Beast_of_Guanyin wrote:

A lot of complexity could be removed from 40k and if anything it would improve the skill factor of games, while allowing for things other than killing/defending.

A lot of complexity could be removed, but that wouldn't necessarily improve the skill factor, it would more likely just work a different set of skills.

And again, I can't emphasize this enough: my opinion is partially a product of the fact that winning a battle is seldom my highest priority when I play- I almost always care more about achieving Agendas or achieving other effects that advance longer term story goals, and I'm usually trying to achieve more than one of those things in a game, which means I'm making choices with both list building and tactics that are optimized to do a variety of different things that more competitive players are uninterested in exploring.

On a side note, I didn't actually start this thread from the narrative vs competitive point of view. I play my wargames in different kinds of environments - both tournaments and weird campaigns or megabattles at home. I think an interesting rules system benefits all kinds of players.

But I play mostly for these moments of intellectual satisfaction (or admiration for my opponent's). In other words, moments like "I thought I was done for, but after thinking hard I came up with a solution. Damn I'm smart!" or "That was an awesome move! I would have never come up with something so clever!"

A deep, varied toolbox offering several dimensions of valid interactions (like WM&H) provides such moments aplenty. I love thinking there's nothing I could do but then coming up with a veritable Rube Goldberg Machine of a plan which works! It gives me these moments of intellectual achievement, the feeling of being a clever and creative problem solver.

What made me disillusioned with Wh40k was realising that the only real plan I will ever form will be "I need more dice to throw at this thing to kill it". And that's just disapppointing, shallow gameplay experience.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Apologie accepted. And I agree: actions are an entirely underutilized piece of 8th/9th edition 40k. I'd like to see them used more. And I hope your day gets better, Blindmage.

gw 40k is basically missed opportunities since 8th galore.

Keywords? underused and lacking.
Stratagems? simultaniously badly implemented, former equipment choices or autopicks ontop of wierd ressource management system.
Equipment limitations? completly arbitrary at this stage.
Streamlining? yes but not in a way that makes sense and is undermined by special rules only and bloated stratagem choices.

A big problem with stratagems is that if you don't know that the opponent have transhuman effects or can suddenly give the unit an invulnerable save or turn off your rerolls or make your unit fight last or only some of the models in the unit get to fight at all etc at any point with a stratagem you can just spend half your turn buffing up your unit with various characters and your own stratagems and then you charge after having spent half your army's turn doing so and then they pay like 1-2cp and completely negate it and win the game.

Or suddenly that buffed up Sanguinary Guard squad that might not be very sturdy but hits like a truck now heroic intervened twice as far as what any of your characters can even do and wiped out important stuff in your turn.

Or "oh so you can get guaranteed rolls and have stratagems that modify your miracle dice so even though you don't have 3 sixes right now you can still be 100% sure to charge something 23" away with your M6 unit and wipe out my expensive unit and support characters I thought safe behind 3 ruins half the table away?" Edit: (I remember this wrongly. This isn't a stratagem but a model ability. Strats only works on hit, wound and save rolls and not on charge or advance)

Or haven't played against Blood Angels before and they charge at you T1 after having moved 26" with fly and then charge you a further 2d6+1" with a full DC company squad that is buffed up with up to 25 TH(could be more than 5 thunderhammers in a unit) attacks that hit on 2+ or 3+ with full rerolls to hit(potentially even extra hits on 6s) and +1 to wound with bonus ap from doctrine bonus and an additional 6-30 chain sword hits that wound T7 on 4+ and have ap2. That could wipe out multiple vehicles/monsters and a small unit or two at the same time 35" away on average rolls (this after both Forlorn Fury and Death Company was heavily nerfed in 9th compared to 8th).

If strats only made it so you got +-1 to rolls or stats it wouldn't matter too much if you knew your opponents strats or not but some strats can in some situations create point swings worth hundreds of points of models on the table that leads to a snowball effect that in fact decides the entire game just because one player wasn't aware of one strat that in the right moment can decide it all.

We talked about the ploys in kill team and it was a group.consensus to just ignore them. Folks eyes glazed over when thru considered the book keeping.

I'm all for 'stripped back' games.

KT ploys are easily implemented as they are just a couple of options. They also don't seem to have too much impact, so remembering them is a nice bonus, but forgetting about them is hardly gamebreaking.

I am in the middle on this. I loved stragems in Cities of Death, or Planetstrike, or Apocalypse, where it felt like you were using the stratagem to pay for something tangible that you could work into your strategy. High command had allocated you an ammunition stockpile or a heavy weapons emplacement or an orbital bombardment, or your troops had specifically trained to take advantage of plunging fire or combat engineering or something. These are absolutely narrative, and help reinforce the story of a game. There were others that made sense midgame too. I think current stratagems that do pre-game stuff fall into this category, and I am broadly fine with these as a concept. Deployment shenanigans are also great as an idea. These all represent resources being allocated by high command to your force.

However, strategems that are pieces of standard equipment make no sense and harm the narrative for me. Why does every sergeant carry a meltabomb, but they can only use it if the army commander has enough favours to call in from high command? A squad just has to leave the meltabomb hanging from their belt and get annihilated by the dreadnought because the commander used their favours on something else earlier in the battle. Likewise for smoke launchers- not enough favours left so your tank is going to stay in the open and die, no you are not allowed to press the smoke button! These should all return to being standard equipment.

I also find the multitude of strategems that just make stuff more killy or more durable etc to be a bit much. Many of them are individually lore friendly and can be worked into a narrative, but it is weird that they are both so limited in scope across the army if they are so effective, yet too many buffs can be layered onto the same unit to make it ridiculously powerful.

So from my perspective I put current strategems in the same category as actions- good concept, poorly realised.

Cyel wrote:
KT ploys are easily implemented as they are just a couple of options. They also don't seem to have too much impact, so remembering them is a nice bonus, but forgetting about them is hardly gamebreaking.

True dat, but its like half a dozen ploys per team, and multiple teams - and all written with the usual flowery gw verbiage. I lost interest in wmh and infinity because of the amount of book keeping involved and 'activated' abilities. I'd really rather not engage in that again.

Thdt said, we can find commin groynd. Wouldnt mind 3 or 4 'generic/universal' ploys (shoot/fight more than once, last stand, cover bonus) that everyone uses - rather than everyone having bespoke content. But iid really rather they were rare and limited.

PenitentJake wrote:
Here's the thing: if you box, you know not every punch is a knock out; if you fence you know not every hit is a point, if you shoot, you know that not every hit is a killshot.

Abilities that are always on are the things that are unfluffy, bs bolter porn. Moments of true heroism being rare? That's fluffy as feth. Not every soldier gets a medal.

The 'knockout' and 'killshot' are when you pass your checks and roll your 6s, not when you suddenly in a moment of divine inspiration declare 'I'm going to be effective now!' and throw a punch with three times the weight behind it. I know not every hit is a killshot, but why would I be the one deciding when it is or isn't by activating a special power?

I remember the time a last surviving Guardsman miraculously passed three armor saves and then took the last two wounds off a Greater Daemon. That's a 'moment of true heroism' and he earned his medal.

I don't remember all the times I activated Canned Stratagem #347 and got a bonus to my offensive power. Nobody gets a medal for loading the special ammo because Command told them to use it for the next five minutes. Heroism on demand isn't interesting.

PenitentJake wrote:
And for what it's worth, it's hard to understand complaints about lethality and wombo combo in one breath, and a desire for those abilities to be always on in the next.

And finally, if anything, the cost system for strats is a greater cost, than paying for always-on abilities for points, and it's paid on the batlefield in response to emergent opportunities and obstacles as a part of the narrative rather than at the list building stage.

1. It is possible to simultaneously rework abilities to be always-on and also tune the game to reduce lethality. There's zero contradiction there, those are separate things.

2. The 'wombo combo' complaint comes specifically from those abilities being powerful but temporary, which encourages you to stack them on the same unit to devastating effect. If you have a stratagem that lets you re-roll misses and another that gives you MW on 6s and another that gives exploding hits, activating all of those on the same unit is a wombo combo. That unit just natively getting to re-roll 1s wouldn't be nearly as impactful and, more importantly, wouldn't be something that allows a single squad to suddenly triple their firepower without warning.

3. Abilities paid for by points are thus accounted in the points total, meaning an ability-heavy unit costs more. This is part of that 'reduce lethality' thing. Abilities coming out of your points total means you aren't getting 2000pts of troops and then a bunch of freebie force-multipliers on top of that.

4. The current structure of the stratagem system tacitly encourages you to blow all your CP up front on optimal recipients, which can often be determined at the listbuilding stage. AOS's implementation is significantly better in terms of using abilities in response to emergent opportunities and obstacles. Having stratagems geared more towards command abilities and less towards 'do more damage' would considerably help as well.

I wish stratagems would do the "cool activities" thing better. They seem to be the perfect concept for this: have a variety of cool stuff to enable heroic moments, with a reasonably easy system to manage them. Sadly that is not how it turned out.

Maybe this will get reworked in 10th, who knows. Something I would like is a set of generic stratagems for all armies to use, with more specific ones being worked into the unit datasheets. That way it might be more balanced, and each unit could get something specific to them to shine once or twice a game. I am sure GW would mess it up, but I like the idea anyway.

A lot of the problems with "cool things" is that the mechanical levers these "cool things" should interact with have been removed from the core game engine.

While I haven't gone through every book, common equipment Stratagems shouldn't be stratagems - Smoke Launchers should just be 1/game/unit, while Meltabombs should give the option to replace that model's attacks against VEHICLE/MONSTER/BUILDING, say.

 Dysartes wrote:
A lot of the problems with "cool things" is that the mechanical levers these "cool things" should interact with have been removed from the core game engine.

While I haven't gone through every book, common equipment Stratagems shouldn't be stratagems - Smoke Launchers should just be 1/game/unit, while Meltabombs should give the option to replace that model's attacks against VEHICLE/MONSTER/BUILDING, say.

Smoke I agree. Much prefer them as 1/game/tank. When you have a line of rhinos rushing across no mans land to deliver their cargo, makes no sense that only one of them would pop smoke.

I’m sorta torn on metlabombs though. For me, they were always handed out at the end of list building. So one, or maybe two squads would get one. If I was lucky, and the right squad was in the right place, I might get to use it. When it happened, it was glorious, where the marine with the 5 point upgrade stood on the smoking ruins of a significantly more expensive tank. But from an army feature POV, almost never came up. As a strat, it’s more representative that marines carry demo charges for just these situations. So that aspect of the army sees play.

Of course, I think GW dropped the ball on meltabombs in 8/9th in general. And krack grenades to a lesser extent. Should be able to use them in melee. Or at least “shoot” them like a pistol.

Deadnight wrote:

Cyel wrote:
KT ploys are easily implemented as they are just a couple of options. They also don't seem to have too much impact, so remembering them is a nice bonus, but forgetting about them is hardly gamebreaking.

I lost interest in wmh and infinity because of the amount of book keeping involved and 'activated' abilities.

i agree with the message but bookkeeping in infinity? Theres barely any of it, unless you mean keeping track of what camo is what unit and the status effects (which are all just tokens so not really mentally draining)

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

Cyel wrote:
KT ploys are easily implemented as they are just a couple of options. They also don't seem to have too much impact, so remembering them is a nice bonus, but forgetting about them is hardly gamebreaking.

I lost interest in wmh and infinity because of the amount of book keeping involved and 'activated' abilities.

i agree with the message but bookkeeping in infinity? Theres barely any of it, unless you mean keeping track of what camo is what unit and the status effects (which are all just tokens so not really mentally draining)

Infinity was more the tracking of weapon profiles and constant math kind of book keeping. Found myself with my head in the book for 90% of the time and I wasn't actually 'enjoying' the games. Neither was my group.

Once you get the long and short orders figured out it is pretty simple, however i think they have really ruined the game starting in N3.

They copied the modern approach and added bloat in the hacking department with variant hacking devices with each one having a list of programs instead of a single generic hacking device that everybody had access to that did the same 7 things.

This i could see as a problem of having your nose in the book.
'
I was fortunate enough to have all my army lists printed out on the fan army builder that used to be around called "infinity pool" that listed all the stats on the army list so you didn't even need the book.

Then they added the command token/point system among other things.

Having gone back and played an N2 game last weekend i can say it what much more entertaining, easy to follow and exciting compared to where N4 is today.

johnpjones1775 wrote:
i'm not 100% sure i fully understand the question here, but in regards to chaos here's my 2 cents

i think they do chaos wrong. completely

chaos demons and chaos marine codexes are stupid imho

i think there should be codex khorne, nurgle, tzeench, slanesh, and unaligned.
khorne would include khorne deamons, WEs, and khorne cultists/traitor guard for example.

"Chaos is done wrong, they should be rigidly forced to fight only with like-minded and similar individuals" lol, the take just keeps getting dumber.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

johnpjones1775 wrote:
i'm not 100% sure i fully understand the question here, but in regards to chaos here's my 2 cents

i think they do chaos wrong. completely

chaos demons and chaos marine codexes are stupid imho

i think there should be codex khorne, nurgle, tzeench, slanesh, and unaligned.
khorne would include khorne deamons, WEs, and khorne cultists/traitor guard for example.

"Chaos is done wrong, they should be rigidly forced to fight only with like-minded and similar individuals" lol, the take just keeps getting dumber.

GW' mindset that is failing at chaos since early 2000's has started to infect the players, sadly.

The problem is the way chaos should be handled, as a singular customizable book covering marked and unmarked forces /legions and warbands etc daemons and cults, is not the way GW makes the most reccuring money. That gw makes by incrimentally cutting out books from the main book and putting them up as standalones barely worth their price 2/3rds of the time.

I don't think splitting Chaos into 5 books (4 cults + undivided) would be a problem, if they could be allied / mixed with less restriction.

a_typical_hero wrote:
I don't think splitting Chaos into 5 books (4 cults + undivided) would be a problem, if they could be allied / mixed with less restriction.

It is a problem though, because to split them out they get flanderised because GW insited on splitting out the CULT legions and doing so in the worst possible and most stupid way. Also on the allied part, remember that nowadays you require a whole other book to field a plague marine. It's just bad from a custommer perspective.

Hence why desptie being a khornate at heart the WE codex just is a tragedy. Predictably they fethed it up severly. No view of khorne as a god of war in general that values discipline just as much as a form of strength. No full unit roster, indeed if we would play a mechanically deeper edition in 40k this book would be plenty DOA on the rules side aswell thanks to a "roster" that is basically CSM - everything not melee.

Key units are missing, Red Butchers f.e., Khornes teeth havocs, etc. Yet we get possessed but +1 and more possessed. (also where are the non-zerker WE? you know those that exist since not all got the nails?)
Not even interesting possessed but just melee possessed.

Bloodpact / blooded traitorguard instead of cultist rabble nr 3? Nope, feth that, despite khorne cults being some of the most militant and organised cults there are. Here take a bunch of junkies instead.

And the same can be stated about TS, even moreso.. And DG.

So not even if they insist on the god-csm-design ethos for all 4 + the rest they just failed once again. After failing the first time with TS and barely making DG interesting.


And funnily enough they not just cut options out of the CSM dex to flanderise the cult legions, nope, they also managed to print on the front page a chaos lord that you can't even legally field due to cutting out even more options from the lord entry.

I understand all your points, but they are not related to Chaos being split up. I mean... not directly.

You could have one big book of Chaos where everything that annoys you is still there and you could have separate books where every entry is exactly how you want it.

It is more a problem with how the codex authors and/or model designers handle the faction.

Read over the 3.5th Chaos 'dex at the weekend. What a masterpiece. I can see why a lot of players are disappointed with modern GW list writing.

To be honest, most of the 3rd ed codices are very flavourful, would have been great if they stuck to that pattern. Started slipping as quickly as 4th edition...

a_typical_hero wrote:
I understand all your points, but they are not related to Chaos being split up. I mean... not directly.

You could have one big book of Chaos where everything that annoys you is still there and you could have separate books where every entry is exactly how you want it.

It is more a problem with how the codex authors and/or model designers handle the faction.

The splitting out is why these dexes require such "distinction marks " that activly sabotage the factions and make them flanderised messes in the first place. How you can state that this is not directly an issue is personally beyond me.
But you have a point, simply pulling everything back into one book will not fix what has been broken by the flanderised structure and you are right aswell on the differing writers / designers being more problematic.

 Haighus wrote:
Read over the 3.5th Chaos 'dex at the weekend. What a masterpiece. I can see why a lot of players are disappointed with modern GW list writing.

To be honest, most of the 3rd ed codices are very flavourful, would have been great if they stuck to that pattern. Started slipping as quickly as 4th edition...

Yep that is why all our chaos players just use the 3.5 codex as the codex of choice in our retro games. 4th still had quite a few great dexes, nids, orks, black templar and tau come to mind.

Beast_of_Guanyin 809069 11499916 wrote:

Someone mentioned Boxing before. I teach Boxing. I teach in total 7 punches. Straight high and low, uppercut, cross, overhand, and two forms of body rip. That combines with movement for a sport that has no skill ceiling. A lot of complexity could be removed from 40k and if anything it would improve the skill factor of games, while allowing for things other than killing/defending.

You don't teach them how to place oneself in such a way that a judge doesn't see a headbutt or how it is done to make as if the other dude is making the headbutt and not you? how to feign injury, spit out the protector after soft punch, a large chunk of the training in combat sports is knowing how bending the rules or outright cheating is done, because when someone semi proficient at it does it in a match and you did not train for it, you will get destroyed or even badly injured. Even in technicaly non contact sports it is done, as long as there is a second person on the field, the trainers always go over how you can get got. Sports are incomperable to table top games, because losing a game of w40k will never mean you are never going to be able to play w40k properly again. Save maybe if someone manages to stab you in an eye ball with one of those blue pointy tapes measures from starter sets.

The idea of skill being the determinant in table top games is all nice and well. But it breaks apart as soon as we enter the zone of GW writing and designing their rules. Often, what GW thinks is cool non kill/defend rule, ends up never used or worse a detriment to the armies strenght. And it only get broken up, by times when GW does cool stuff for specific armies and it ends up being like Votan grudge points pre nerf or the cool and characterful rules Inari had in 8th with double dipping on stratagems etc.
I don't think it even works in HH, because the armies, while most marines, are still different enough to create tiers of armies, units and builds. And cool rules, in the form of lets say giving player the option to go full mechanized soon end up very bad for the balance of the game.