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So, I've already read the section in the rulebook about Battle Forged armies and whatever other information I could come across.

Battle Forged vs Unbound is still a little vague to me when it comes to the details about the pros and cons of either method. Anyone care to explain the finer points?

Also, as far as Battle Forged goes, the best advice I've gotten was to look at this picture here. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jcf1KvimmAg/VHpJsePniiI/AAAAAAAAAgU/XlLHk77iXTQ/s1600/Battle%2BForged%2BArmy.jpg

Apart from the Primary Detachment, it's all still going a bit over my head.

Basically:

Unbound

Pros: You can play with whatever you want.
Cons: You don't get any "Command Benefits".
You may not find too manhy people to play with you, as Unbound is fairly unpopular

Battel-Forged

Pros: You get a special rule of some sort (Combined Arms Detachment = Objective Secured). You won't have much added trouble finding oppponents with this method.
Cons: There are army contents requirements and restrictions.

Unbound is unpopular. What if you have a decent Unbound list that is not just straight cheese?

Obviously, that would still be Unbound tourny-wise.

In a more casual setting, unbound sets off massive red flags. I've seen it done - and done it - in fun ways, but mostly we play Bound.

Much of the reason for peoples' distaste for unbound is the stupid gak you can do with it. Unfortunately, this leads to most responses to Unbound being unreasonably negative.

If you're just starting, I highly suggest you stick to one 'CAD' detachment for now. After knowing the game, and the meta, then start experimenting. The CAD will force you to learn about more parts of the game, and offers your opponent a better chance of a reasonable list. At least in the beginning.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(What idea has you wanting to go unbound?)

 the_kraken wrote:
Unbound is unpopular. What if you have a decent Unbound list that is not just straight cheese?

.

Its sort of unpopular for pickup games, because of the potential for people to use nothing but the best units from all the codices, over and over again. Imagine playing a game of chess where your opponent has 1 King and all the other pieces he is playing are Queens, and you'll get the general idea.

However, if you had a cool "non-cheese" army list and for some reason you couldn't put it together using Battle-Forged, I'm sure you'd find someone to oblige you...all depends on your opponents, I suppose.

Bharring wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(What idea has you wanting to go unbound?)

Not necessarily any idea, I just like the idea of mix and match. Though I do plan on having a primary CAD to use for anything requiring BF. The variety involved with Unbound just seems like a lot of fun (all the ridiculous lists excluded).

So, it's not so much "I have to win so I'll take all these cheap units" as it is "I wonder what would happen if I did this."

 the_kraken wrote:

Bharring wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(What idea has you wanting to go unbound?)

Not necessarily any idea, I just like the idea of mix and match. Though I do plan on having a primary CAD to use for anything requiring BF. The variety involved with Unbound just seems like a lot of fun (all the ridiculous lists excluded).

So, it's not so much "I have to win so I'll take all these cheap units" as it is "I wonder what would happen if I did this."

I didn't mean to scare you off of Unbound or anything. It's probably worthwhile to get a feel of how people view Unbound vs. Battle-Forged amongst your potential opponents (at your flgs, or wherever they may be). If everybody in your meta is a-ok with playing against Unbound, and that's what you want to do, its your money, and its your hobby, so go for it!

But its worth it to see how the people you'll be most likely to be playing against feel about it. If you spend all this time and money putting together your perfect Unbound army only to find out that noone in your area wants to play against it, that would be bad.

 jasper76 wrote:


I didn't mean to scare you off of Unbound or anything. It's probably worthwhile to get a feel of how people view Unbound vs. Battle-Forged amongst your potential opponents (at your flgs, or wherever they may be). If everybody in your meta is a-ok with playing against Unbound, and that's what you want to do, its your money, and its your hobby, so go for it!

But its worth it to see how the people you'll be most likely to be playing against feel about it. If you spend all this time and money putting together your perfect Unbound army only to find out that noone in your area wants to play against it, that would be bad.

You didn't scare me off of Unbound, no worries. I just like the freedom of army building it offers. (Similar to the original Star Craft. Dark Archon from Protoss can have you building Zerg and Terran too). It just sucks that it's not as popular because of cheesemongers. But, I was planning on just sticking to Tau to begin with anyway until I get a better handle on everything.

I'd play unbound in a themed campaign style game. That would be where it would make the most sense.

 kronk wrote:
I'd play unbound in a themed campaign style game. That would be where it would make the most sense.

Any idea where I can find some of that?

Battle Forge does allow Allies, or even full Detachments, from other Codexes. I don't find the CAD very restricting at all. If yij want to hash some ideas out about things you want to field, come back here and we'll help you hash them out? Perhaps it needn't even be unbound?

Take what's said in your FLGS more seriously than what you read here. Lots of different opinions and metas out there.

Don't allies carry certain negatives aside from Battle Brothers?

Unbound doesn't remove those negatives.

They aren't terrible. They won't directly help each other, with most powers and wargear that only affect friendly/enemy models affecting them as enemy. Unless they really hat each other. At which point they just need to keep their distance.

We do multiplayer games frequently, and the downsides feel... About right...

Bharring wrote:
Unbound doesn't remove those negatives.

They aren't terrible. They won't directly help each other, with most powers and wargear that only affect friendly/enemy models affecting them as enemy. Unless they really hat each other. At which point they just need to keep their distance.

We do multiplayer games frequently, and the downsides feel... About right...

I had no idea that Unbound kept the negatives in play. That really makes Unbound seem less worth it.

With the game at its current state, there is nothing Unbound can really bring that's going to be objectively more unbalanced than what's possible with "Battle Forged" armies.

Whatever additional spam or overpowered horrors Unbound can bring, "Battle Forged' armies can very often spam them *almost* as well, and get hugely powerful special rules and abilities for doing so that far outclass whatever you might get out of an Unbound army.

 Vaktathi wrote:
With the game at its current state, there is nothing Unbound can really bring that's going to be objectively more unbalanced than what's possible with "Battle Forged" armies.

Whatever additional spam or overpowered horrors Unbound can bring, "Battle Forged' armies can very often spam them *almost* as well, and get hugely powerful special rules and abilities for doing so that far outclass whatever you might get out of an Unbound army.

I was thinking Unbound would allow for unpenalized experimentation, but I guess the rules for Allies still apply is all.

 the_kraken wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
With the game at its current state, there is nothing Unbound can really bring that's going to be objectively more unbalanced than what's possible with "Battle Forged" armies.

Whatever additional spam or overpowered horrors Unbound can bring, "Battle Forged' armies can very often spam them *almost* as well, and get hugely powerful special rules and abilities for doing so that far outclass whatever you might get out of an Unbound army.

I was thinking Unbound would allow for unpenalized experimentation, but I guess the rules for Allies still apply is all.

You still have to follow the restrictions for each individual unit too, meaning Tactical Marines for example still have to have at least 5 models in the unit with a maximum of 10, 1 special weapon at 5men and 1 heavy at 10 men etc.

What unbound was most likely developed for was a) allow people brand new to the hobby to use their likely limited selection of models to still field a legal army and b) allow people to play 'fluffy' lists that couldn't be created with Force Organisation Charts (now called Combined Arms and Allied Detachments) from 6th Edition. An example might be someone wanting to field a codex compliant First Company of Space Marines, which previously you couldn't legally do since you can't take Terminators/Veterans as Troop Choices. Now you can just play unbound, and have a legal list of a Captain, Terminators, Veterans and Dreadnoughts

 GoonBandito wrote:

 the_kraken wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
With the game at its current state, there is nothing Unbound can really bring that's going to be objectively more unbalanced than what's possible with "Battle Forged" armies.

Whatever additional spam or overpowered horrors Unbound can bring, "Battle Forged' armies can very often spam them *almost* as well, and get hugely powerful special rules and abilities for doing so that far outclass whatever you might get out of an Unbound army.

I was thinking Unbound would allow for unpenalized experimentation, but I guess the rules for Allies still apply is all.

You still have to follow the restrictions for each individual unit too, meaning Tactical Marines for example still have to have at least 5 models in the unit with a maximum of 10, 1 special weapon at 5men and 1 heavy at 10 men etc.

What unbound was most likely developed for was a) allow people brand new to the hobby to use their likely limited selection of models to still field a legal army and b) allow people to play 'fluffy' lists that couldn't be created with Force Organisation Charts (now called Combined Arms and Allied Detachments) from 6th Edition. An example might be someone wanting to field a codex compliant First Company of Space Marines, which previously you couldn't legally do since you can't take Terminators/Veterans as Troop Choices. Now you can just play unbound, and have a legal list of a Captain, Terminators, Veterans and Dreadnoughts

Unbound is a lot less interesting than I first thought it was. Thanks for the additional information.

Unbound also let's you *ahem* forge the narrative. If you say wanted to run a game with a squad of Pathfinders trying to escape enemy Ork territory, or stealth teams scouting an objective etc. Unbound lets you do just those kind of games.

Raven Cowl wrote:
Unbound also let's you *ahem* forge the narrative. If you say wanted to run a game with a squad of Pathfinders trying to escape enemy Ork territory, or stealth teams scouting an objective etc. Unbound lets you do just those kind of games.

I can see how that would be fun, but competitively, it seems rather moot.

Best example of an Unbound army: an Eldar army with a Harlequin Solitaire. The new Harlequins are so restrictive about what you can take, forcing you to take over 750pts of crap if you want a Solitaire. Unbound let's you say 'feth that', call it an Unbound army and just take that one model you actually want. I'm also desperately trying to shoehorn three HQs into my new Astral Claw army but it's friggin difficult taking two CADs without using up so many points...

But apart from cases like that, it's not difficult to stay Battleforged. but, read up on zilka's posts and you'll see (if you can read his gibberish) how people take advantage of Unbound to just spam stupid things. Three Riptides, two Dreadknights, two Wraithknights and a Hive Tyrant, army done. But, people that do that usually aren't the people you want to play with anyway and it's an extreme example. Things are much calmer now and most players that see it calming down will atleast ask what unbound list you want to try before yelling 'heresy' at you and trying to burn you at the stake. Not as big of a stigma anymore.

 SharkoutofWata wrote:
Best example of an Unbound army: an Eldar army with a Harlequin Solitaire. The new Harlequins are so restrictive about what you can take, forcing you to take over 750pts of crap if you want a Solitaire. Unbound let's you say 'feth that', call it an Unbound army and just take that one model you actually want. I'm also desperately trying to shoehorn three HQs into my new Astral Claw army but it's friggin difficult taking two CADs without using up so many points...

But apart from cases like that, it's not difficult to stay Battleforged. but, read up on zilka's posts and you'll see (if you can read his gibberish) how people take advantage of Unbound to just spam stupid things. Three Riptides, two Dreadknights, two Wraithknights and a Hive Tyrant, army done. But, people that do that usually aren't the people you want to play with anyway and it's an extreme example. Things are much calmer now and most players that see it calming down will atleast ask what unbound list you want to try before yelling 'heresy' at you and trying to burn you at the stake. Not as big of a stigma anymore.

I didn't really have a problem with Battle Forged, I just thought with Unbound certain negative aspects of Allies rules and the like wouldn't be an issue, but that is apparently not the case. I had already started building toward Battle Forged. I just didn't quite understand Unbound.

40K is now bring what ever you like. having set way to build armies like in 5ed have gone away which i mis the most. Only bring the best new toys. and spam them to the max .
i have 3200Pts of sm shelved for now because it not a biker army . it a mix of rhinos and drop pods but that type of army is junk al that money and effort to wast

zilka86 wrote:
40K is now bring what ever you like. having set way to build armies like in 5ed have gone away which i mis the most. Only bring the best new toys. and spam them to the max .

That sounds like it's more up the competitive meta's alley.

There's no structure to 40K that what bugs me if you wanted you can legal run army of anything you want 12Riptides anyone i just don't see so called fluffy unbound armys my sm army is a battle commpany with what is permanently attached to them on the campaign and it sucks so bad at 3500Pt its just crap army because its not a bike army ihave no way to deal with 6kingths 12ripteds list goes on its bs


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also i don't do comptive meta trouny as none of my armies are spam the best to win

The main reason people dislike unbound is that they're afraid of the unknown.

In fact, Unbound is currently a lot more fair than bound, as it lets everyone build their army of choice, whereas bound only allows Tyranids to have 3 HQs, or Grey Knights to take only 1 troop, or the SuperBestFriends to mix and match 8 codexes.

The main fears that people have with unbound have nothing to do with unbound itself, as bound lists pretty much allow one to spam anything already, from Wave Serpents to Flyrants and Imperial Knights, and oftentimes the tiny bit of additional spam you can get from unbound doesn't improve the list.

Because in the end, what you bring to the table needs to be able to deal with lots of different opponents and missions, and the archetype spam lists can't do that.



That being said, I believe that wisdom will take another five years to sink in, until then you can be sure that the conservatives will insist on one locked Battle Forged format after another, until it's really no different from unbound.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

zilka86 wrote:
There's no structure to 40K that what bugs me if you wanted you can legal run army of anything you want 12Riptides anyone i just don't see so called fluffy unbound armys my sm army is a battle commpany with what is permanently attached to them on the campaign and it sucks so bad at 3500Pt its just crap army because its not a bike army ihave no way to deal with 6kingths 12ripteds list goes on its bs


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also i don't do comptive meta trouny as none of my armies are spam the best to win

What's your actual tournament experience ?

At 3500 points you can bring 9 Imperial Knights, or 17 Riptides, both of which are relatively bad armies in the grand scheme of things.

I think your problem is that the army you've created, that "battle company" happens to be very sub optimal, and it seems to pain you.

morgoth wrote:
The main reason people dislike unbound is that they're afraid of the unknown.

No, people don't like it because it's basically GW saying "well, we don't know how to structure and balance our game, so we'll just throw out anything that looked like we were even trying in favour of removing any barrier to buying more plastic crack!"

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

morgoth wrote:
The main reason people dislike unbound is that they're afraid of the unknown.

No, people don't like it because it's basically GW saying "well, we don't know how to structure and balance our game, so we'll just throw out anything that looked like we were even trying in favour of removing any barrier to buying more plastic crack!"

And you would know because you asked GW personally and they told you with those exact words that it was their intent ?

What troubles me with your point of view, and others that agree with you, is that you seem to be fine with Adamantine Lance, Imperial Knights and Hive Fleet Detachments, 15 points troops, other alternative detachments and formations that make some unbound combos possible as bound lists, yet you insist that the armies that don't have that shouldn't have an alternative.

I would personally like to field 3 Lynx's if my opponent is going to field 3 Imperial Knights, that's fair, just, and unbound is the only way to do it.

I would also like to field 6 Fast Attack choices if my opponent is allowed to. That would be fair, right ?

Or maybe you think that the game is better with Adamantine Lance (3 LoW) vs an old style FoC army ?



That's why Unbound is the solution to all the army creation problems, it gives a default response in all the cases where your set of formations and detachments isn't as good as others'.

Think about Necrons for example, now they have an incentive to play bound, and it may be that their best army will remain a bound army, that's how it should be: freedom and bonuses if you want to drop some of that freedom.

 jasper76 wrote:

 the_kraken wrote:
Unbound is unpopular. What if you have a decent Unbound list that is not just straight cheese?

.

Its sort of unpopular for pickup games, because of the potential for people to use nothing but the best units from all the codices, over and over again. Imagine playing a game of chess where your opponent has 1 King and all the other pieces he is playing are Queens, and you'll get the general idea.

However, if you had a cool "non-cheese" army list and for some reason you couldn't put it together using Battle-Forged, I'm sure you'd find someone to oblige you...all depends on your opponents, I suppose.

Yes and no - people look at Unbound and react badly to it, but at the same time, most of the ridiculous broken spam is still perfectly possible in a battleforged army.
For example - I have five winged hive tyrants. I have brought half a dozen mucolid spores and therefore you can't argue it's not a 'proper' army.....


The points are still a thing - taking the chess example (and the normal 'relative value' rules) then unbound is like playing chess with a king and just queens - but you only get 4 queens whilst I still get a full chess set. It's not as easy as it looks!

Most of the problems are in spamming units that are overpowered, but the thing is that people do that anyway, and spamming unit x without supporting elements rarely works; there are few one-unit armies which are genuinely effective (I'm ignoring stuff like crisis suits with so many options that they might as well be different units if configured differently). Especially since - taking the throne of skulls pack - GW is pushing maelstrom games a lot, which requires you to cope with six objectives scattered across the board, which means you still need numbers.

Broadly, I agree with you. There are plenty of non-broken unbound armies that you might want to try 'because it's cool'. I find myself considering a superheavy tank company as an army - it's mobile, and massively well armed, but has serious problems in specific areas - no assault protection, little if any anti-air cover..... But I wouldn't be doing itto be effective, rather to have fun.

locarno24 wrote:
Broadly, I agree with you. There are plenty of non-broken unbound armies that you might want to try 'because it's cool'.

This was originally the attraction to Unbound for me.