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So I've read, discussed, debated, and chased down with pitch forks and torches a myriad number of rules "fixes" to correct problems people see with 6th edition 40k. So far, most of these fixes have been "silver bullets." A new rule to fix a specific problem. Example: Fixing destroyer weapons by changing the way destroyer works, or removing destroyer weapons from the game. What I've been trying to do is make a single "fix" that can handle as many problems as possible, all at once. The major...problem areas...that I am working on is destroyer weapons and abusive lists. Both of which I've seen cause a lot of problems during play, and has caused people to leave the game entirely, new players and old (I have a friend that's been playing since 3rd edition and he's out until 7th edition, maybe permanently). My so called fix, is actually something I'm pulling form all the way back in 2nd edition, composition percentage minimums and maximums. The way it works is that an army must have 33% of it's total points available be spent on troops choices (this does not include dedicated transports), and no more than 33% of points available can be spent on HQ, Elite, Fast Attack, Heavy Support, Dedicated Transports, Fortifications, or Lords of War. Example: at a 1500 point game, you would have to have 500 points of troops, and no more than 500 points in any other single "slot." This would also be including any allied detachments, so if you bring a allied detachment of Eldar with your Tau army, your TOTAL HQ choices, both for the Eldar and Tau would have to cost less than 33% of points available. What this does is restrict armies that abuse expensive specialist units, while taking a pittance required 2 troops slots and winning the game by tabling the opponent. It also keeps the amount of Destroyer weapons to a manageable amount. At 1500 points the only available D weapons would be on a Tesseract Vault (Hellstorm Template) or a Shadowsword (1 Large Blast) both of which would be right at the 490 to 500 point limit. To field a Warhound Titan, your game would need to be a 2160 or bigger, Revenant Titan...2700 points. Right now, the only lists that I cannot try and look over to see how well this would work out trying to fix is a "Screamerstar" list. I don't have any of the Chaos books myself, and I haven't been able to nail down my Chosen of Chaos friends and get their take, but I would really like to know what you guys think. Having said that, please keep the criticism to the constructive kind. I'd also love to see army lists built with this rules set in place, standard force org still in effect, 1500(500), 1750(580), 1850(620), 2000(670), 2500(830). All of the % numbers have been rounded to the nearest whole 10, it makes things easier.

Doesn't help when lists like Eldar can spam broken units in the troop slot. There is NO substitute for appropriate pricing of models. Every codex should have its points updated every 3 months electronically, which means codices should not be sold hard cover, but rather as electronic data.

What units?

Wave Serpents.

Since the wave serpent isn't a troops choice, it's a troop transport, and doesn't count towards your 500 point minimum troops requirement (at 1500 points) to spam wave serpents as your example would mean that your spending your first 960 points out of 1500 on troops and transports. That only leaves you another 540 points to buy your required HQ choice, possibly upgrade your 4 wave serpents with the left over 40 points you could take in dedicated transports, and get anything you are going to be using to try and do the things your wave serpents/troops cannot. And if you run into an army that can deal with AV12 tanks consistently, your going to be hurting when your wave serpent spam gets trashed. As a point, I know they aren't the most awesome tank out there, but I field a pair of Hydra Flak Tanks, as a unit, and they are going to kill a wave serpent a turn, easily. That's only 150 of my 1500 points. A pair of Riptides, would do them pretty well with a backup of Broadsides.

Possibly. This just means that SW will go back to being on top because they have broken troops.

Possibly, I haven't played my Space Wolves in awhile. Loganwing is pretty strong, and does run most of it's strength through it's troops choices. I'll keep them in mind while we hammer into this farther. Thanks for the direction to look.

Have you looked at how balanced Warhammer Fantasy is? It uses the percentage composition idea (Up to 25% Lords, Up to 25% Heroes, 25%+ Core, up to 50% Special, up to 25% Rare and you are limited to a number of identical choices in Special and Rare).

That could be a good basis to develop your idea from?

Congratulations on being the 1,000,000 poster to come up with this idea and not realise how it doesn't work.

To put it simply, not every codex has all of its FoC options evenly balanced. Orks would laugh at your % troops requirement and slam down a Nob Biker unit while Sisters are made even worse by being forced to take one of the worst units in the codex and less of the units that actually give them a fighting chance.

40k Codices are not Fantasy codicies, they are not designed with the same mechanics in mind so you can't just simply copy & paste Fantasy's % system and think it'll work. Think of it going the other way, imagine if in fantasy you only needed a minimum of 2 core choices with no % limitation on any other slot. It wouldn't work.

@Madcat87 if you are referring to my post then congratulations as coming across as a complete ass hat. My suggestion was not to simply rip off the Fantasy method of army building. As you kindly pointed out they are two different games (who would have thought hey?).

Instead I was putting forward an opinion as to how the OP could get some ideas on how to formulate his proposed solution. For example since Fantasy utilizes a percentage system see how and why and more importantly how successfully.

So next time you decide to launch into a criticism of someone else's suggestion as poorly thought out and unable to work perhaps you could instead take the time to put forward your ideas? I mean if you have read one million posters who have already suggested it surely that level of experience has given you some awesome insight into how the games mechanics work?

@ Archer: The reason for the 33% was to keep everything simple. I've found that a lot of the 40k codex have a tendancy to have one slot be better for a group than another. Example: Tyranids favor elite units, where Imperial Guard love their heavies. But thanks for the incite.

@ Madcat: If you could link me a few of those threads, I'd love to see how they progressed. Seeing other people work could help me better my own, and maybe I can find out where their work failed and can possibly find the fix that they missed.

Paragraphs!

 Madcat87 wrote:
Think of it going the other way, imagine if in fantasy you only needed a minimum of 2 core choices with no % limitation on any other slot. It wouldn't work.

This was called "Seventh Edition", if I recall correctly back then you built your army based on what was most effective and the FOC was more of a guideline than anything else. Core choices had the advantage of being cheap and with no squad size caps you'd use them to tarpit enemy units to set up a flank charge with something bigger.

Comp-rules-wise you would need to set up something such that Troops are more worth taking; this'd be best set up by means of scenario rules dealing with holding objectives.

The problem with objective based missions is that if I table my opponent, I still win. Why build a list with lots of units that you can use to score objectives when you can take units that are better at just killing enemies and can contest objectives.

Make killy units cost more. It ALL boils down to proper points costing, no matter what system you try. Scoring units presumably are weaker because part of their cost is scoring.

Kai wrote:
The problem with objective based missions is that if I table my opponent, I still win. Why build a list with lots of units that you can use to score objectives when you can take units that are better at just killing enemies and can contest objectives.

You give more advantages to holding objectives than just "VP at the end of the game". Put a neutral gun somewhere that can be fired by the side that's got a Scoring unit controlling the linked Objective. That sort of thing.

Kai wrote:
The problem with objective based missions is that if I table my opponent, I still win. Why build a list with lots of units that you can use to score objectives when you can take units that are better at just killing enemies and can contest objectives.

Because if the only way you can win is by tabling your opponent then you have very little margin for error. If your opponent has a single troops model on an objective at the end of the game the fact that you killed everything else in their army is irrelevant, you lose the game if you don't have any objectives of your own. A list with minimum troops that relies on tabling to win will struggle in this situation since your opponent can focus on killing your troops so that even a single uncontested objective wins the game. A list with lots of scoring units, on the other hand, is much less vulnerable to that. A single opposing scoring model on an objective isn't going to accomplish anything when you've claimed three objectives of your own.

Now, tabling to win is sometimes a viable strategy and should be a viable strategy, but it's not a magic auto-win that makes objective missions and scoring units irrelevant.

The problem is that some armies can table you without suffering any problems with scoring. Eldar, tau... They just got cheezy units that are rather cheap and spammable. I don't see how a general decision to limit everything can work without bringing imballance.
The idea of limiting stuff is good on itself and imo just needs a surgical approach. Not limit all heavies/mc's/flyers for all the lists simultaniously but limit some most problematic spammable units.
For example:
Helldrake/Nightscythe - can take one per 750 pts
Vendetta - can take one squadron per 750 pts
Riptide/wraithknight - can take one per 1000 pts
Wave serpent/Battlewagon - can take one per 500 pts

Something like this. Points threshhold can be discussed or figured out with experience. It's not a strict template decision, not hard to apply and won't face any problems with armies that have no other option but to spam stuff that's the only more or less effective option. Like Sob with their limited forces. And can be easilly redone when the power ballance shifts. And it ensures that you don't meet 3 riptides/wraithknights, 4-5 wave serpents or battlewagonz in a 1k game. U will meet 1 or 2 - they're still effective but manageble to deal with. Imagine how interesting tourneys will become when you don't meet a copy-paste triptide/NS spam lists.

Basically - you pick a cheezy unit and limit the max number of taking those. That's how you fix a cheeze-spam problem.

And a cheezy deathstar can be fixed only with either point-limitation or better codex-ballancing.

I'm working on tweaking the rules for my games - how does the following sound?

Required: 1 HQ + 2 troops slot

For every 2 troops slots that are filled (at least 1 troop slot must contain 75% or more of the maximum number of troops*), including the initial 2 troop slots, the following slots are opened up:

1 elite slot
1 fast attack slot
1 heavy support slot
1/2 HQ slot (i.e., you can take an extra HQ w/ 4 troops, 6 troops or 8 troops)

* note: if at least one of your two initial troop slots does not contain at least 75% of the maximum number of troops, you gain NONE of the above slots. This could be important for Allies.

If you take the same type of unit in a non-troop slot that you have already included in your army (such as a 2nd heldrake), you pay +25 points for the 2nd copy, +50 points for the 3rd copy, +75 points for the 4th copy, and so on. Note that if a single slot allows you take multiple models (such as 3 Leman Russ as a single Heavy Support slot), it counts as only one copy.

You may add Allies to your army, starting with 1 HQ + 2 troops slot, as above. Allies cannot constitute more than 33% of your army. The following premium is added to the cost of allies for every 2 troop slots:
Battle Brothers +50 pts
Allies of Convenience +25 pts
Desperate Allies - No extra cost

@ Peregrine: I'd love to debate that stance at length, but I feel like it should be it's own thread, or in PM. My quick answer would be that if I'm playing an army that is designed to win without scoring units, such as my Blood Angles Black Rage army, I know that I need to deal with all of their scoring units to assure victory. I also know that I'm going to need to get the First Blood, Slay the Warlord, and Linebreaker points. With this knowledge I can formulate a strategy against my opponent each game that will allow for those needs. Strangely enough, my Black Rage army does really well vs most of the obnoxious spam list armies, saving Wave Serpent spam. I'm still a little light on my anti skimmer tank busters.

@koooael: As in my original post, I was trying for a really simple single rule to try and fix as much as possible, while staying away from silver bullet style fixes. To restrict specific models by points value, like you are suggesting, would be a silver bullet in my opinion.

@ stormonu: It looks pretty good, actually. A little more complex than I was looking for, but it looks like it would solve a lot of the same problems...saving death star HQ lists. I would have to test it out a little bit to really get a feel for it, but I'll see how it stacks up, building a few lists myself.

Tried out the % composition fix at a small local tourney. 6 players: Tau, Eldar, Imperial Guard, Necron, Tyranid, Chaos Deamon/Space Marine. Took a poll at the end and only had complaints from 2 players. The Tau, who wanted another Riptide and to fill out his Farsight bomb, and the Chaos Deamon/Space Marine, who wanted 2 more flying monstrous creatures. The Eldar was kinda spammy, had 3 Wave Serpents and a small Jetseer star, did well. Necrons for the win, Lots of supported Warrior blocks. Everything went pretty much like I wanted it to. The army that won was the one that had added specialist troops to either support the troops chosen, or to fill a roll that the troops could not. A lot more tactial thinking to win the day, rather than a cut and paste kill spam list.

I keep hearing "Death Star" and "Screamerstar" lists and wondering exactly what they are. I have an idea Screamerstar may involve carnifexes, but can someone enlighten me?

Screamerstars are Chaos Demon units made up of Screamers of Tzeentch and a herald and involves Fateweaver. They get some magic book and the next thing you know they have a 2++ rerollable invuln save.

A deathstar is a single extremely powerful unit that dominates your strategy and often the game. A Screamer-Star is a deathstar that utilizes a large unit of Screamers of Tzeentch and four heralds of Tzeentch. Through psychic power shenanigans and Tzeentch's "re-roll failed saves of 1" rule, the unit ends up with a 2+ invulnerable save that re-rolls if failed.

Though it costs something like 1000 points, I threw 2000 points of Nob Bikers at it and killed one Screamer.

Games involving units like this pretty much become "kill/tarpit the deathstar and win, or don't and lose" which is a type of game some people find unenjoyable.

As for this comp gak, I reckon the main issue is scoring at the end of the game as well as deployment zone objectives. This allows for very troops-light armies to simply hide say, minimal jetbike squads out of sight, and then dash up to the objectives in the last turn. If your wanting more troops in armies, then moving objectives to the middle of the board and forcing players to hold them continually would be a great way to go about it. I ran a small event last month involving "take and hold objectives" scenarios that received positive feedback - you can find the players pack here with the rules and stuff if your interested

If you get VP's at the end of each turn then you stop last turn scoring shenanigans. If you create a new Dedicated transport section in FOC you and move to % based system with unit spam limit ala fantasy you stop spam. You have to re write Codices for this however. But the best (and least likely) fix would be a GW actually play testing and correcting things, preferably before release but equally afterwards if they missed it first time round. If a night Scythe was 200 points no one would use 1 never mind 3, equally though when was the last time you saw someone actually use Flayed Ones?

There's this thing about a huge block of text that makes one say TLDR. Please use paragraphing in future. It makes things much less daunting/hard to read.

TLDR, Fixing the game via comp is a bad idea and always will be.

Martel732 wrote:
... It ALL boils down to proper points costing, no matter what system you try. ...

Martel has it, points costs are the crux of most problems in the game. Unfortunately it takes more effort to sort out rather than just slapping in more rules/restrictions.

I looked at trying thins maybe 3 or 4 months ago, and while it is ok, you need to be more complex than you are to have it work at all.
33% troops, sucks for armies that have poor troops, and is great for armies that can FOC swap(Say I play Farsight so I need to spend 33% of crisis suits, or Draigowing, my paladins make up my 33%. but if I play Daemons I need to Bring 50+ troop models that don't bring a lot of power to the table.), I went with 25%

It also does not scale well as far as keeping out broken stuff, screamer star does not really work at 1500 (at least not with Fateweaver), but seer council still can, and Beaststar definitely still works. BUt if you go up to 1750 or 2k a lot more abuse is possible.