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Hi everyone,

I'm relatively new to Dakka, but have spent most of my time reading threads in You Make Da Call and here in Proposed Rules and I have noticed some very common complaints. The first is that anti-infantry weapons are considered next to useless by some people. The second is that 2+ and 3+ armor saves are looked down at by some because of a proliferation of AP1/2 weapons. While I might disagree with these opinions, it did get me thinking.

Both of these complaints, IMHO, are caused by a mix of 7th ed and the desire to build TAC lists. When I build a TAC list, I try to increase the number of good match-ups my list will have while decreasing the number of bad match-ups I will have. That means that I will have to think of a way to counter hordes, heavy armor, high mobility, high toughness, flyers, etc. I don't think I am alone in this thought process. Before everything became scoring units, this process was limited by the need to also have enough scoring units that you could win without having to table your opponent. Now that restriction has been lifted, and that we can access as many CADs or faction specific Detachments as we want, has allowed people to take this min/maxing approach to TAC lists to a new extreme. You can now build a list that handles most opponents well, while only being vulnerable to massed, long-ranged, high-strength shooting (like a full Knight list), or forcing your opponent to have enough AP1/2 units to try and reliably take out a turn 1 Alpha Strike (as a high number Dreadknight list might do). This low restriction environment leads to TAC lists that generally can't be countered by a TAC list in return, instead requiring a specialized response to have a good chance winning. I am not saying these units are unfair or unbeatable or even "cheese". I am just trying to point out where the TAC logic leads to without restrictions.

My proposed rule is this:

Your list may not include more than 2 of any given unit.

Short and simple.

Why do I think this address the problems above? Well, lets take an example with everyone's favorite unit, the Wave Serpent. The value of a Wave Serpent doesn't need to be argued, but I want to look at what it does to the game. You can get 4 min squads of DA with Wave Serpent for 720 points. That gets you 4 Fast Skimmers with decent armor and Jink, for great survivability that are also Objective Secured (potentially). Unless your opponent has a good amount for anti-tank firepower to dig the DAs out, any anti-infantry weapons are useless until the Eldar Player decides to disembark. If there were only 2 Wave Serpents, the opposing player would not need nearly as much firepower to possibly threaten the Serpents during the course of a game, allowing for a list that was more rounded in its construction to have a fighting chance. It also means that the anti-infantry power of most basic units can be utilized during the game.

Another example would be everybody's favorite MCs, the Wraightknight, Riptide, and Dreadknight. To effectively wound these units, you need decently high strength weapons (str 6+) and hopefully a way to ignore armor to get the wound to stick. If you are facing 4 or 5 of these models in a game, it will be hard to deal with unless you have a list tailored to killing them (as long as the person using them knows what they are doing). If there are only 1-2 of these models against you they become much easier to deal with over the course of a game for a well rounded list, and makes the result more about positioning then brute force.

The whole aim of this exercise is to bring the usefulness of basic units back into the game, while still letting people uses their very efficient models. My main opponent and I have been doing this for the most part and it has allowed a lot of our games to be very close and fun.

I am not trying to put a restriction on all 40k games. You can play with as many or as few restrictions as you want. This is just an idea for people or tournaments want to play with very powerful units, but also don't want to deal with TFG, or a way to tone down some of the higher power codexs without removing their toys.

This idea is nowhere near fully fleshed out, but I wanted to share it. I welcome comments, suggestions, and criticism if you think that it goes to far or not far enough. As always, try to keep it classy.

No more than two units of Orks, no more than two units of Chaos Cultists, no more than two units of Dark Eldar Kabalite Warriors...meanwhile, Marines can run large squads and combat squad them...

...congrats, you gimp bad armies even worse.

Won't work for a number of armies. For example, orks generally want >2 squads of boyz in any game above 750 pts. And sob just have 1 troop choice - they have nothing else to choose from. It's also hardly possible to call ig leman russ spam or tyranid ground MC spam cheezy.

If you want to implement limitations - limit specific units and not foc slots on the whole. Limit the ammount of flyrants, wave serpents, riptides, etc.

That is fair. I don't get to play against a lot of armies consistently, so don't know them off by heart. I was more hoping to get people to use more parts of the FOC then we are seeing now.

Back to the drawing board.

I am not a eldar player and I dont think Wave serpents should be limited. Just remove the shield upgrade that allows it to shoot 60" and ignore cover.

If anything, you should have a required minimum, thereby forcing points out. If you run tau, you are required to run 3 riptides minimum at 1000pts or more. maybe 2 at 500pts. Same thing with Imperial knights, wave serpents, night scythes, ab, etc... Anything to force an empty transport.

"Why do you have a wave serpent with no da or guardians?"
"Because of the unit minimum requires me to have 6 wave serpents at 1000pts"

I think the basic FOC for CAD and related should be changed to something like troops choice opens up an HQ slot and two Elite or Fast or Heavy.

 Slaanesh-Devotee wrote:
I think the basic FOC for CAD and related should be changed to something like troops choice opens up an HQ slot and two Elite or Fast or Heavy.

I actually like the base thinking here. The meta moved away from basic units for a lot of armies because of the removal of scoring restrictions. It would be nice to get back to a place where an army only plays 2-3 of their units.

How about:
For every two troops, you may have 1 HQ.
For every Troop unit, you may have two FA, Elite, or Heavy Support options.
You must have more Troop options than any other slot.

Doesn't fix Serpents, but I really think that needs a targeted change to its rules, not the game.

Bharring wrote:
How about:
For every two troops, you may have 1 HQ.
For every Troop unit, you may have two FA, Elite, or Heavy Support options.
You must have more Troop options than any other slot.

Doesn't fix Serpents, but I really think that needs a targeted change to its rules, not the game.

I think this could work very well. It almost creates an army specific Detachment, allowing you to take advantage of the best play style for your army, while still requiring a list that would somewhat look like an actual army.

Wave Serpent will definitely still have to be fixed. It is the only OP unit that is actively not restricted by most FOCs, since Troop slots are usually the most abundant slots in most cases. I might actually give this a try with one of my opponents and see how it works.

What if Dedicated Transports were also limited to less-than-troop-count?
And each selection counts as a single pick, but as each type it is?

This way, a Pod list could only have as many droppods as troops, minus one. So can't do pure Pods. And buying empty pods to push more to t1 would require even more troops.

Wouldn't do much to most Davu/WK builds though. They'd start to include at least 1 windrider unit, then they would be OK.

Perhaps each should only count towards the slot they are taken in, but any given non-troop entry can only be taken as many times as troops-1? That way, full mech would be possible, but it would require both multi ple different transports, and multiple different slots.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Amended suggestion:
-For every two Troops in a detachment, one HQ may be included.
-For every Troop unit in a detachment, up to two of the following may be taken: FA, Elite, HS, DT.
-The Detachment must have more Troops than any one other slot.
-The Detachment must have more Troops than any one other unit selection.

Meta this, nerf that, scrub this, whine that.

Many units become more powerful when taken for redundancy, but taking too many robs support from the rest of your list.

Capping transports would also nerf those armies that need it more than others. Eldar and Marines can run more Bikes instead, while Tau were never big on mech-ing up to begin with. Dark Eldar without their paper hovercraft might as well be fish in a barrel.

Basically, unit hardcaps beyond a standard "two detachment max" are a terrible idea.

Bharring wrote:
How about:
For every two troops, you may have 1 HQ.
For every Troop unit, you may have two FA, Elite, or Heavy Support options.
You must have more Troop options than any other slot.

Doesn't fix Serpents, but I really think that needs a targeted change to its rules, not the game.

i dont agree with line 2.

i think it should be, for every 2 troops it unlocks 1FA +1HS+1Elite so that you are forced to take 6 troops to have 3FA and 3Heavy and 3 elite. This will eliminate the 1hq+2troops min to get 3fa or 3hs.

and that damn wave serpent needs the shield errata to be only 6 inches not 60 inches.

We have toyed with this kind of thing but we were using "buy 1 troop and it opens up 1 of each of the others"

The Skaven army from fantasy used to have a rule called "mainstay unit" basically you couldn't have more of any one unit than you had of the mainstay unit.

This obviously wouldn't limit wave serpents as they can be chosen for multiple kinds of units, these just need to be fixed if they are being abused. We don't play 6th/7th and don't have the latest eldar codex, we use a modified 5th with a few things borrowed from 6th/7th .

As has been said, the biggest issue with the Wave Serpent is it's rules, not that you can run a lot of them. A change in the GAME's CORE MECHANICS is the wrong way to fix what is the problem with a SINGLE unit, which is to high rate of S6 or better fire, extremely durable, extremely cheap tank that's secondary function is to ferry troops around.

The only way to fix Warhammer 40k's abundant terrible game design is to scrap the entire damn thing and start from scratch. I don't see that happening any time soon. Unfortunately we suckers pay out the nose for horribly manufactured hardback books, and it makes GW tons and tons and tons of money, so there's no incentive on their part to give a damn about the actual gameplay side.

I agree that the Serpent needs a targeted fix. Most do. Its threaded all the time, and goes the same way every time.

I am not convinced we need this change. However, felt it could be interesting to look into. In that vein, I posted something I thought would be a refinement of the original idea.

To further discuss it:
-First, for the Serpent, with the limit of repeating selections, total Serpent choices would be limited under that proposal. Regardless of the unit purchasing it, its still a Serpent. So if you want 4, even if one is for Fire Dragons, you'd need 5+ troops.
-Second, it doesn't nerf mech like Dark Eldar as much as you might think. With 5 troops, thats only 4 Venoms, but you could take a Raider (or 4) from Fast Attack.

Perhaps limiting the DT slot might be a bit much. I'd rather see a SM list with 5 Rhinos and a Razorback than 6 Rhinos, but that's not really a problem.

Sorry, but you just ruined Orks and Cultists.

Yeah, Ork biker gangs, for example, would be even more hosed. Not sure how to work it.

Or, it could be, wait for it, no more than 2 of each unit besides troops. *mind blown*

 krodarklorr wrote:
Or, it could be, wait for it, no more than 2 of each unit besides troops. *mind blown*

I don't think powerful units are an issue if costed appropriately. The idea is that there's always some kind of opportunity cost. For example, take WKs, you now have a harder time against MSU.

The issue is when units are drastically undercosted, you can reinvest those points somewhere else in your list to cover your weaknessess. Something like the wings upgrade on Flyrants is a good example -- how many points would you need to invest to get the same mobility, survivability, and AA capability?

If we increase the wings upgrade to something like +60 points (arguably justified), that means a 5-Flyrant list drops to 4. Not a huge restriction but you get the idea.