Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Ffyllotek wrote:
The Decurion has bands of power. From 550 to about 900 it's powerful, then from about 1400 to 1750, then again from about 2400+. This is based on the reclaimation legion, and the best two formations which are destroyer cult and canoptek harvest. It's tricky to build a good all round list at 2000 using those three formations.

Outside those bands / formations it's still pretty powerful but more powerful, usable and killy lists can be established with a CAD.

I certainly don't see why 2000pts would be tricky or difficult, I certainly haven't seen any Necron armies struggle to build a good list and be largely undefeated locally in that range. I've yet to see a Decurion lose a game in that points range (well, any yet actually).

The negative side of GW releasing so many unique formations and detachments is it's going to become very difficult to know how everything functions. There's going to be a lot of playing 'gotcha' with game-changing special rules and Decurion is a perfect example.

It smacks a little of a business strategy rather than game design, in where you want the rules to be clear and transparent for both players. Tying a million special rules and bonuses to obscure formations is going to make 40k even more Byzantine and confused than it already is.

However it ensures you don't end up with unpopular units that aren't taken, as they become a mandatory choice for the better ones to function well. This is probably why GW is getting away from the CAD, apparently Decurion-style armies are the trend for the future.

The problem is that there's nothing really unpopular or bad that you have to take in a Decurion. Even sometimes bemoaned Warriors are insanely capable units for 13ppm with 4+ RP and Relentless.

We'll see how future books go. The Necron book was certainly a radical departure from the late 6E/early 7E books that were largely relatively on par in terms of power. The next primary faction book should be interesting.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I certainly don't see why 2000pts would be tricky or difficult, I certainly haven't seen any Necron armies struggle to build a good list and be largely undefeated locally in that range. I've yet to see a Decurion lose a game in that points range (well, any yet actually).

I think because of what fielding the harvest and destroyer cult does to the legion. You can't max out the four things it's good at: lychguard party, immortal shoot up, warrior tide, or epic tomb blading. The legion when paried with the other formation(s) becomes a bit 'meh' as all those taxes add up. TBH a legion at 10000 points is full of comprimise, and doesn't really compliment the auxillary choices well. For instance, when fielding a harvest you want some lychguard hitting power. When fielding the destroyers you want a sea of gauss fire. When fielding both you want to be able to max tomb blades to go after other jetbikes / bikes etc. It's trickey to do both. Have you seen an all bike army take down a decurion yet?

Yoyoyo wrote:
The negative side of GW releasing so many unique formations and detachments is it's going to become very difficult to know how everything functions. There's going to be a lot of playing 'gotcha' with game-changing special rules and Decurion is a perfect example.

It smacks a little of a business strategy rather than game design, in where you want the rules to be clear and transparent for both players. Tying a million special rules and bonuses to obscure formations is going to make 40k even more Byzantine and confused than it already is.

However it ensures you don't end up with unpopular units that aren't taken, as they become a mandatory choice for the better ones to function well. This is probably why GW is getting away from the CAD, apparently Decurion-style armies are the trend for the future.

I've personally seen the side effect of this at a tourney, where an illegal (unbound) list made its way in under the guise of a decurion. It wasn't caught until day 2.

Also explaining the tau fire base formation to a newbie tau player: he was totally weirded out at the concept of a bunch of free abilities that were really good just for taking units that he wanted to take anyway. And that it didn't have any kind of troop or hq requirement.

rhavien wrote:

Davor wrote:
If the Decurion is so powerful how come it hasn't won a tournament yet? From what people are saying it's auto won, it should have won the majors already.

How old is the new dex? How many tourneys it could have win? But it could have possibly gone back in time to win some past tournaments. Wouldnt doubt that.

Exactly. How old is the dex. For something that just came out a lot of doom and gloom. So if all this doom and gloom is correct the necrons should have won the last two tournies that were out.

So using the excuse it just came out and couldn't win the tournies that should mean it's not all doom and gloom a lot of people are claiming.

And most tournaments have a 2 source limit, I'd say that it uses multiple formations, so its illegal.

And it pretty much is unbound light, I doubt everyone will be running to use it.

Davor wrote:

rhavien wrote:

Davor wrote:
If the Decurion is so powerful how come it hasn't won a tournament yet? From what people are saying it's auto won, it should have won the majors already.

How old is the new dex? How many tourneys it could have win? But it could have possibly gone back in time to win some past tournaments. Wouldnt doubt that.

Exactly. How old is the dex. For something that just came out a lot of doom and gloom. So if all this doom and gloom is correct the necrons should have won the last two tournies that were out.

So using the excuse it just came out and couldn't win the tournies that should mean it's not all doom and gloom a lot of people are claiming.

It only came out like a week or two before the LVO and most players IIRC still used the old book. The only big event really since then has been Adepticon, where of the top 10 armies at the Championship, 4 were Necrons.

That said, these events also have varying restrictions on army building. Likewise, they use custom missions that often have radically different objectives than the core rulebook does, and that must be kept in mind.

It smacks of copying warmachines/hordes with tier bonuses for free when fielding specific units with specific casters. Maybe GW figures it will push unpopular stock lying around, which I feel is their goal with every edition change. Bringing items who have petered out in sales down in power while boosting unpopular kits.

 Orock wrote:
It smacks of copying warmachines/hordes with tier bonuses for free when fielding specific units with specific casters. Maybe GW figures it will push unpopular stock lying around, which I feel is their goal with every edition change. Bringing items who have petered out in sales down in power while boosting unpopular kits.

And is this a problem? With the Necron codex, I bought more Tomb Blades, Destroyers, and Praetorians. I already had some, but they weren't worth their points. Now they are, so darn, I have to buy some cool looking models and play things I've been wanting to play, and they're good now.

How does the Decurion compare against the Carnival of Pain and... whatever the thing in the Khorne Daemonkin codex is called? I think these are models of things to come, and at least the CoP looks very powerful on paper (I haven't seen the Khorne codex).

Alcibiades wrote:
How does the Decurion compare against the Carnival of Pain and... whatever the thing in the Khorne Daemonkin codex is called? I think these are models of things to come, and at least the CoP looks very powerful on paper (I haven't seen the Khorne codex).

Not quite as good, especially with Harlequins, but they're also much less resilient naturally.

 krodarklorr wrote:

 Orock wrote:
It smacks of copying warmachines/hordes with tier bonuses for free when fielding specific units with specific casters. Maybe GW figures it will push unpopular stock lying around, which I feel is their goal with every edition change. Bringing items who have petered out in sales down in power while boosting unpopular kits.

And is this a problem? With the Necron codex, I bought more Tomb Blades, Destroyers, and Praetorians. I already had some, but they weren't worth their points. Now they are, so darn, I have to buy some cool looking models and play things I've been wanting to play, and they're good now.

Free special rules and abilities for no additional cost is almost always bad game design.

Same thing with CSM's in 3.5E, where they got free Aspiring Champions for squads that were multiples of their marked god's chosen number. Well, that that saved many armies ~60-100pts, and suddenly they had points to give those units veteran skills like Infiltrate, Tank Hunters, or Furious Charge, and that led to issues.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
How does the Decurion compare against the Carnival of Pain and... whatever the thing in the Khorne Daemonkin codex is called? I think these are models of things to come, and at least the CoP looks very powerful on paper (I haven't seen the Khorne codex).

Not quite as good, especially with Harlequins, but they're also much less resilient naturally.

 krodarklorr wrote:

 Orock wrote:
It smacks of copying warmachines/hordes with tier bonuses for free when fielding specific units with specific casters. Maybe GW figures it will push unpopular stock lying around, which I feel is their goal with every edition change. Bringing items who have petered out in sales down in power while boosting unpopular kits.

And is this a problem? With the Necron codex, I bought more Tomb Blades, Destroyers, and Praetorians. I already had some, but they weren't worth their points. Now they are, so darn, I have to buy some cool looking models and play things I've been wanting to play, and they're good now.

Free special rules and abilities for no additional cost is almost always bad game design.

Same thing with CSM's in 3.5E, where they got free Aspiring Champions for squads that were multiples of their marked god's chosen number. Well, that that saved many armies ~60-100pts, and suddenly they had points to give those units veteran skills like Infiltrate, Tank Hunters, or Furious Charge, and that led to issues.

Well, I can see that. My friend isn't too fond of free special rules. But, I do like the argument that they aren't quite free. The formations are rather restriction, list-building wise.

Davor wrote:

rhavien wrote:

Davor wrote:
If the Decurion is so powerful how come it hasn't won a tournament yet? From what people are saying it's auto won, it should have won the majors already.

How old is the new dex? How many tourneys it could have win? But it could have possibly gone back in time to win some past tournaments. Wouldnt doubt that.

Exactly. How old is the dex. For something that just came out a lot of doom and gloom. So if all this doom and gloom is correct the necrons should have won the last two tournies that were out.

So using the excuse it just came out and couldn't win the tournies that should mean it's not all doom and gloom a lot of people are claiming.

It's new. It takes some time to get practice games in, make tweaks until the list is tourney-ready, get models needed, paint said models.

That being said, I hear they did well at adepticon, and in the last tourney I played in, (a 30 man ITC event) a decurion came in 2nd by one point behind a taudar in first. They both had nearly perfect records except for that they drew against each other. And both of them were miles above the other 28 point totals.

The problem with free bonuses for formations is they're impossible for writers of GW's talent to balance. Some are inherently better, and some armies have a lot more than others.

In ye oldey 40k, the first incarnation of "formations" were in Apoc and they had points costs attached to them. The bigger the buff, the bigger the cost. Made it easy to justify ones which were mostly just for fluff because they were almost free, and if you wanted to buff some combo to high heaven, they had a cost. When Apoc changed to the current format with no formation costs, the whole game basically broke as all the insanely powerful stuff became free. Tetragon of Darkness can go to hell.

This hurts normal 40k, as while in general the formations aren't quite as powerful as the old Apoc ones, they're still fundamentally imbalanced. As someone who plays guard and SM, seeing the Blood Angel formations and the Decurion is like a kick in the pants in terms of power level and customization in-line with the fluff. Some of them are flat discounts, like the BA one where all combi and power weapons are free for Stern/Vanguard in a formation, saving like 300 points, more than the cost of the mandatory Storm Raven.

The system doesn't work as it is, for while things like that exist, other armies get the ability to get +1 cover save when behind bullgryns, PE on a tank squadron and nothing else.

 krodarklorr wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
How does the Decurion compare against the Carnival of Pain and... whatever the thing in the Khorne Daemonkin codex is called? I think these are models of things to come, and at least the CoP looks very powerful on paper (I haven't seen the Khorne codex).

Not quite as good, especially with Harlequins, but they're also much less resilient naturally.

 krodarklorr wrote:

 Orock wrote:
It smacks of copying warmachines/hordes with tier bonuses for free when fielding specific units with specific casters. Maybe GW figures it will push unpopular stock lying around, which I feel is their goal with every edition change. Bringing items who have petered out in sales down in power while boosting unpopular kits.

And is this a problem? With the Necron codex, I bought more Tomb Blades, Destroyers, and Praetorians. I already had some, but they weren't worth their points. Now they are, so darn, I have to buy some cool looking models and play things I've been wanting to play, and they're good now.

Free special rules and abilities for no additional cost is almost always bad game design.

Same thing with CSM's in 3.5E, where they got free Aspiring Champions for squads that were multiples of their marked god's chosen number. Well, that that saved many armies ~60-100pts, and suddenly they had points to give those units veteran skills like Infiltrate, Tank Hunters, or Furious Charge, and that led to issues.

Well, I can see that. My friend isn't too fond of free special rules. But, I do like the argument that they aren't quite free. The formations are rather restriction, list-building wise.

That's a far more limited cost (that often isn't really a drawback) and isn't related to unit value which is vastly increased by the free special rules, especially when a lot of the time Decurion lists don't end up all *that* different from CAD lists.

This isn't limited to Necrons, it's an issue with Formations in general, it's just that Necron formations synergize/build on each other so insanely effectively with the army's basic special rules and unit functionality.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
The problem with free bonuses for formations is they're impossible for writers of GW's talent to balance. Some are inherently better, and some armies have a lot more than others.

In ye oldey 40k, the first incarnation of "formations" were in Apoc and they had points costs attached to them. The bigger the buff, the bigger the cost. Made it easy to justify ones which were mostly just for fluff because they were almost free, and if you wanted to buff some combo to high heaven, they had a cost. When Apoc changed to the current format with no formation costs, the whole game basically broke as all the insanely powerful stuff became free. Tetragon of Darkness can go to hell.

This hurts normal 40k, as while in general the formations aren't quite as powerful as the old Apoc ones, they're still fundamentally imbalanced. As someone who plays guard and SM, seeing the Blood Angel formations and the Decurion is like a kick in the pants in terms of power level and customization in-line with the fluff. Some of them are flat discounts, like the BA one where all combi and power weapons are free for Stern/Vanguard in a formation, saving like 300 points, more than the cost of the mandatory Storm Raven.

The system doesn't work as it is, for while things like that exist, other armies get the ability to get +1 cover save when behind bullgryns, PE on a tank squadron and nothing else.

Fully agreed on this. They seem to have no idea what they're doing with rules and just go all schizo with them.

Most of the BA ones are bleh, I find them to be just too damn big points wise, so I don't get to personal-touch anything: the BA battle company, Dante's avenging host, and the defenders of the cathedrum are good examples there. Some are just bad like the terminator one. Run and shoot after deep striking yaaay...except that means I'm running 15 terminators boooo. Then you have the turn 1 assault from deep strike combo and the free wargear group on the other end of the pool.

The ONLY formation from shield of Baal/wd47 that I like is the one where vanguard and asm squads deep strike in and do a little impact hit around their landing site. It's the only one that doesn't build half my list for me, and also isn't a ridiculous bonus for free.

The rules writers are definitely not the ones behind the switch to pushing Formations, it is transparently executive-level manipulation meant to move web bundles. If you don't make the bonuses appealing enough, they're not going to sell.

If you wonder why things seems skitzo in large entities like business and bureaucracies, it's usually a clash of ideas between different people. If a GW employee has to choose between putting food on the table or attempting to curtail runaway exec ideas, it's pretty obvious what will win out.

Yoyoyo wrote:
The rules writers are definitely not the ones behind the switch to pushing Formations, it is transparently executive-level manipulation meant to move web bundles. If you don't make the bonuses appealing enough, they're not going to sell.

Somehow I doubt it. The idea behind formations is pretty cool and fluffy (and at the basic level I think it's a welcome departure frim CAD) it's just that the execution at the usual level of clueless rules-writing ine can expect from GW.

Davor wrote:

rhavien wrote:

Davor wrote:
If the Decurion is so powerful how come it hasn't won a tournament yet? From what people are saying it's auto won, it should have won the majors already.

How old is the new dex? How many tourneys it could have win? But it could have possibly gone back in time to win some past tournaments. Wouldnt doubt that.

Exactly. How old is the dex. For something that just came out a lot of doom and gloom. So if all this doom and gloom is correct the necrons should have won the last two tournies that were out.

So using the excuse it just came out and couldn't win the tournies that should mean it's not all doom and gloom a lot of people are claiming.

First off, this makes no sense as there simply hasn't been many (if any) tournaments that a decurion army could have attended since the codex release.

Secondly, you must consider that because many units in the Necron Codex have see point and rule alterations, altering their internal power level, the tourney lists of old will now be out of date.

Many Necron tournament goers in the past will have 3 annihilation barges, 2 CCB, and a load of night scythes. With the new rules they might not want, or be able, to take these, so will have to spend time building and painting new forces for a decurion.

I'm sure not many players will have 20 flayed ones sitting around ready to capitalise on their new rules.

I'd wait a few months to see how necrons begin to effect tournament results before making a decision.

A question from me regarding tournaments with a 2 source limit: Does the decurion as a whole count as a single, or multiple sources?

A question from me regarding tournaments with a 2 source limit: Does the decurion as a whole count as a single, or multiple sources?

It's a detachment. So however many detachments you're allowed, this counts as one (1).

LordBlades wrote:
Somehow I doubt it. The idea behind formations is pretty cool and fluffy (and at the basic level I think it's a welcome departure frim CAD) it's just that the execution at the usual level of clueless rules-writing ine can expect from GW.

Check out GW's web store and recent releases. There are some very clear trends: look at the new Khorne, there are 5x bundles all of which are advertised "allows you to field X formation". Reclamation Legion and Judicator are sold as bundles. The exception is the mini-armies like Skitarii and Harlequins that are coming out.

You don't have to take my word for it though.

http://natfka.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-future-will-revolve-around-decurion.html

Yoyoyo wrote:
The rules writers are definitely not the ones behind the switch to pushing Formations, it is transparently executive-level manipulation meant to move web bundles. If you don't make the bonuses appealing enough, they're not going to sell.

If you wonder why things seems skitzo in large entities like business and bureaucracies, it's usually a clash of ideas between different people. If a GW employee has to choose between putting food on the table or attempting to curtail runaway exec ideas, it's pretty obvious what will win out.

I still don't see why people don't like GW making more units good, or giving you a reason to field them. Yeah, you might have to buy some new models. If you're playing this hobby, that's to be expected. I'm just glad everything in the Necron book is good, and I was happy to buy new models.

Because streamlined design is usually good. I think springing a bunch of surprise rules and wonky bonuses on unsuspecting players is really tasteless design.

You want rules and tactics to be relatively transparent for all players. The mantra is 'easy to learn, hard to master'. If you say "the Necron army is defined by a 4+ RP", we say "ok". It's simple to understand.

When you say, "taking X combination of units defined by this FOC, which also requires an auxiliary and grants Y bonuses", players mostly ask "um, why?" They feel like something is wrong because they're not being offered a clear ruleset. It also skews, what is the baseline -- Decurion or CAD?

Imagine 1 year from now, when we have 6-7 codex updates which all have their own sneaky special bonuses nobody can keep track of. It's not a power thing. It's a clarity thing.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Because streamlined design is usually good. I think springing a bunch of surprise rules and wonky bonuses on unsuspecting players is really tasteless design.

You want rules and tactics to be relatively transparent for all players. The mantra is 'easy to learn, hard to master'. If you say "the Necron army is defined by a 4+ RP", we say "ok". It's simple to understand.

When you say, "taking X combination of units defined by this FOC, which also requires an auxiliary and grants Y bonuses", players mostly ask "um, why?" They feel like something is wrong because they're not being offered a clear ruleset. It also skews, what is the baseline -- Decurion or CAD?

Imagine 1 year from now, when we have 6-7 codex updates which all have their own sneaky special bonuses nobody can keep track of. It's not a power thing. It's a clarity thing.

I suppose. I've never had an issue remembering what everything does, and if I don't know what a formation is I just simply ask my opponent (who's usually a friend of mine anyway). I can agree it can become weird to have detachment bonuses on top of extra rules and things form formations, but I don't see it being too big of a deal in the future.

My bad, I didn't see the word "yet?" I felt bad when playing against another Necron player with a similar list. The game went to 7 turns with a mosh-pit of wraiths backed up with scarabs, my immortals smacking his immortals, one destroyed monolith and another that he got to place due to a deep strike mishap. It was like watching paint dry, then age n peel off the wall and then going to a hardware store to get new paint because they don't make the original color you had anymore!

 mondo80 wrote:
My bad, I didn't see the word "yet?" I felt bad when playing against another Necron player with a similar list. The game went to 7 turns with a mosh-pit of wraiths backed up with scarabs, my immortals smacking his immortals, one destroyed monolith and another that he got to place due to a deep strike mishap. It was like watching paint dry, then age n peel off the wall and then going to a hardware store to get new paint because they don't make the original color you had anymore!

Luckily I'm like, the only frequent Necron player up at my store, and I don't use Wraiths often. =P

 krodarklorr wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
The rules writers are definitely not the ones behind the switch to pushing Formations, it is transparently executive-level manipulation meant to move web bundles. If you don't make the bonuses appealing enough, they're not going to sell.

If you wonder why things seems skitzo in large entities like business and bureaucracies, it's usually a clash of ideas between different people. If a GW employee has to choose between putting food on the table or attempting to curtail runaway exec ideas, it's pretty obvious what will win out.

I still don't see why people don't like GW making more units good, or giving you a reason to field them. Yeah, you might have to buy some new models. If you're playing this hobby, that's to be expected. I'm just glad everything in the Necron book is good, and I was happy to buy new models.

There's a difference between making units good and giving you a reason to field them, and what GW is doing. They can make units good by adjusting their points values and individual abilities and stats. What they don't need is "well, this unit performs OK when fielded this way with X, Y and Z in a traditional manner, but when fielded with 3X instead in this nontraditional freebie, it gets A, B, and C special rules for free".

As usual, it's GW's inability to execute anything properly. Largely GW made every unit in the Necron codex perfectly acceptable to use effectively within the confines of a traditional CAD, some would say that certain things were already too good there. The formation & decurion bonuses on top of that simply amped it way up beyond reasonable levels, with no corresponding points investment on the part of the Necron player.

 Vaktathi wrote:
but when fielded with 3X instead in this nontraditional freebie, it gets A, B, and C special rules for free".

I dunno, I feel all of the Necron formations make sense fluff wise, and the benefits give you a reason to bring more than just Wraiths or a Triarch Stalker. Now, if the formations literally didn't make any sense, I'd have a problem with it, yes.

 krodarklorr wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
but when fielded with 3X instead in this nontraditional freebie, it gets A, B, and C special rules for free".

I dunno, I feel all of the Necron formations make sense fluff wise, and the benefits give you a reason to bring more than just Wraiths or a Triarch Stalker. Now, if the formations literally didn't make any sense, I'd have a problem with it, yes.

Fluff sense is fine, it's just that there's no accounting for the increase in power.

Formations in old Apocalypse had a points cost associated with them. GW has since decided that's not necessary, and vastly increased the power and value of the abilities and special rules they're granting, and problems are clearly showing.