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.

Battle Brothers would be much, much, much better if you could not mix and match factions. By which I mean that you should not be able to attach a Marine character to a Guard blob, or stick an Eldar unit into a Raider or through a WWP portal, or Skitarii into a drop pod.

Such things make balance impossible. Skitarii for instance are pretty obviously designed as a short-range very high damage output army. If you get around this by stuffing them into drop pods, you remove their designed weak point.

 Blacksails wrote:
So you're blaming the players for not playing with the rules correctly?

Interesting.

Its not about "correct"-ness... I'm fine with people playing the way they want. I'm not a competitive player and I just see it as something competitive players have used to play competitively. Its just not the way I want to play. I don't fault them for it, because its giving them what's important to them and their hobby. To me, it can give me what's important to my hobby time but only if a person puts in the extra effort to truly tie allies in thematically.

Obvious negative bias of this poll aside, I prefer the system with Allies, Detachments, and Formations. Especially Allies. Without them, starting new armies is incredibly cost-prohibitive.

 aka_mythos wrote:


Its not about "correct"-ness... I'm fine with people playing the way they want. I'm not a competitive player and I just see it as something competitive players have used to play competitively. Its just not the way I want to play. I don't fault them for it, because its giving them what's important to them and their hobby. To me, it can give me what's important to my hobby time but only if a person puts in the extra effort to truly tie allies in thematically.

Your previous post sounded like you were putting the issues with the players rather than the devs is all. You not liking the way a certain player builds an army is fine, but if its legal, than any problems you may have with said army is the devs fault first and foremost for allowing such an army.

Oh, somewhat related, the other issue with GW's allies rules is the inability to create rather fluffy armies, like Lost and the Damned (IG + Chaos), Genestealers (IG + Nids), and Gue'vesa (Tau + IG) as battle brothers. Shame really.

Anyways, I generally agree with you that I find themed armies better, but themed is so loose and broad it'd be hard to pin down. There are some weird allied combinations I could think of that would be super thematic if it was heavily converted/counts-as. But that's another discussion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Without them, starting new armies is incredibly cost-prohibitive.

How do allies make an army cheaper to start?

If anything, wouldn't the cost of additional rulebooks make it more expensive than single source?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Without them, starting new armies is incredibly cost-prohibitive.

How do allies make an army cheaper to start?

If anything, wouldn't the cost of additional rulebooks make it more expensive than single source?

Yes, Jace, that's exactly what I meant. And if we were living under the glorious structure of the magnificent 5th edition, Unbound wouldn't be possible either. I think Allies offer a middleground between the rigid strictures of the classic FOC and the reckless abandon that is Unbound.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Obvious negative bias of this poll aside, I prefer the system with Allies, Detachments, and Formations. Especially Allies. Without them, starting new armies is incredibly cost-prohibitive.

I changed the wording of the poll's answers. Might be a bit more neutral like this

Allies, formations, superheavies, flyers, unbound, Maelstrom, et al are not intrinsically bad ideas. The problem has always been implementation. GW sucks at writing rules and this has never been more apparent than now.

 Chumbalaya wrote:
Allies, formations, superheavies, flyers, unbound, Maelstrom, et al are not intrinsically bad ideas. The problem has always been implementation. GW sucks at writing rules and this has never been more apparent than now.

Quoted for truth.

For instance, I love Allie, but current Battle Beother rules lead to abide and destroy Emerson. Formations are cool, but massive bonuses for nothing, ie Decurion, ruin them. Superheavies are cool... In APoc, regular 40k is not equipped to handle IK armies and the travesty of the Wraithknight. Flyers don't really make sense in a skirmish game, so poorly implemented, hovering makes sense. Unbound is well distasteful, did it need to be written, or could GW just say we had permission to not use FOC. Maelstrom is a cool concept, but poorly implemented with nonfunctional rules.

I do and I don't. I'm not a fan of playing someone with four or five books/data slates a game in a tournament setting. Casual, I don't care too much, I will play AM with DA allies, and an imperial knight.

I don't like come the apocalypse allies. Watching a tournament when it is Nids with white scar allies. Just doesn't make sense.

We all know why GW did this, to sell models.

I think 6th had just the right amount of restriction. Allies are a neat idea, but I feel like seventh lets you go a little too crazy with them.

I foe one enjoy allies in terms of narative and fun purposes they add a lot of depth to what I can do. They however do make competitive balance impossible by opening up 500 new combinations with every book.
Formations on the other hand I hate, I remember when formations were for apoc only games, and that made sense with such big model counts. As 6th hit I enjoyed the idea of the new CADs that codexes had offering an alternative bonus to on sec and more flexible choices based on army flavor. I like love the blood angels Dex getting tons of elite slots to make a badass angelic host.
Sadly GW did away with that in their skitzophrenic codex changes and now my eldar are stuck with stupid formations and poor balance, with the same treatment headed this way for my dark angels next.

In short, I like the more freeing aspects of newer 40k, building a force out of just what I want from multiple places is fun. But the mega formations and ADD esque changes from codex to codex are really wearing thin.

I also think the alternative FOC's (Decurion, Flesh Tearers strike force, The Purge) have been excellent due to them opening more building options for a force. I've been especially thankful for The Purge alone for the FOC itself, and not even the special rules (though I have a single Flamer Plague Marine unit to make use of it haha).

Despite the terrible poll language, I voted "Yes".

I feel that the game has improved with the addition of allies, formations, and detachments. The release of 7th foreshadowed the way GW would be going with how armies are constructed. 7th fixed a lot of the insanity of 6th edition allies (remember when Tau and Eldar were battle brothers? *shivers*) with the change to Factions and the new formations, alternate FOCs, and alternate detachments have added a lot of flavor and variety to the game.

People will always find a way to abuse any system. GW's system is particularly broken, but that doesn't mean that formations, allies, and detachments are bad for the system as a whole.

In my opinion they have ruined the game. They have added to the bloat, brokeness, and pretty much everything that I find unfun in the game.

All of this is GW fault. With the idea that everything is balanced if everything is available to anyone, the game has lost all sense of identity and that which made it fun on the table top.

The GW fluff is as bad yet entertaining as it has ever been.

I love allies and formations as a concept, but in practice I'm so frustrated by them.

Formations give such big buffs, for no points cost, that you feel like you're crippling yourself if you don't take them. Combine that with strict composition requirements and you have another brutal money-grab by GW. I had two units of Wraithguard, but now if I want to field them "correctly" I *have* to buy a third.

If it was about making the game better, instead of just making money, than:

1) you'd either have to pay points for the advantages, or the advantages of formations wouldn't be so overwhelmingly good.

2) The unit counts wouldn't be set in stone. For Eldar it seems I need 3 units of anything - how hard would it be to make the restriction 2-4?

I don't own more than 2 units of anything (and only 1 of most things) because I don't like the repeating myself on the modeling side of the hobby.

Also, this plethora of supplemental half-armies is ridiculous and stupid. Harlequins are incapable of fielding a CAD. How is that a Codex? If I was new to the hobby, there is no way to know from what I see online or in a store that Harlequins aren't a real army and are really only intended to be allied in.

Finally you know that all of the less successful half-codexes are going to get dropped in future editions, leaving people floundering. I just bought some Harlequins, despite all my ranting. I should be confident that I can use them for years to come, but instead I only wonder, "will they simply be obsolete in a few years, or will they move half the models to the DE codex and force me to buy that to play with them?" And I will buy that codex because I'm a sucker for it all.

lustigjh wrote:

Nvs wrote:
Can't stand them. Each new edition that comes out things get worse and worse. Since 4th edition I've been saying to myself 'well maybe the next edition will be the one that GW decides they're a game company and not just a plastic miniatures company'. But each new set of rules comes out makes me wonder why I even bother anymore.

Allies and unbound make no sense whatsoever from a gaming standpoint. The only way detachments and formations would work is if they did away with the eleventybillion imperial books and just used formations/detachments to let players play as Dark Angels, Space Wolves, etc.

One of these years this will be a Hasbro product and maybe then the game will be interesting again.

Hasbro would release a game called "Space Marine Tycoon" where the whole object is to build interesting fortresses for budding Space Marine successors while battling the Imperial Bureaucracy for loan money. If your fortress isn't liked by enough Space Marines it gets branded as heretical and purged from space

And I'd play that game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
My favourite army is Dark Angels, because working purely from the Codex they can be played in a multiplicity of ways (none of which are particularly good), and a close second is Space Wolves (the army I started in second edition with). I don't need allies this and formation that to get the army I want to play, and I'd be happy to stick to playing one army only.

I would like an Imperial Knight though.

IMHO i like the 'allied detachment' thing from 6th - some really good mechanicum/legion marine mash-ups but not too crazy; no added rules for doing it!

I strongly oppose formations in 40k/30k no extra points for amazing rules? hell no. i saw the khorne daemonkin kharibdis drop pod/khorne berserkers 'formation' (read as 'full drop pod of khorne berserkers') rules someone posted; it gets to hit stuff it lands on with strength D in trade for becoming 'immobilized' and the berserkers are then allowed to assault after deepstriking. i mean WTF?!?

In principle, yes I do like the concept of Allies, detachments, and formations. I think that they provide a lot of interesting options for players. However, I think that the implementation has been somewhat clumsy.

On one hand I feel that certain established fluff has been cast aside without forethought. And we should keep in mind that 'fluff' isn't just over the top stories about a particular faction. It also helped establish certain characteristics about how and army behaved on the table top. The example I will use is Space Marine Drop Pods. According to the fluff only the super human space marines are able to withstand the powerful g-forces and abrupt arrival on the battlefield, and jump out combat effective; anyone else would probably be killed by such a delivery system. This gave a deployment option to Marines that was unique not only in fluff, but also in gameplay. Now with the use of allies, anyone can hop into the drop pod. This just seems 'wrong'.

This is just one example of many across all factions (some of which have already been pointed out), so simply put Battle Brothers needs a rethink.

Regarding detachments and formations... well I can't help but feel that the true underlying motive is so that GW can sell certain models, or a certain quantity of models. As well, due to the nature of the release schedule there are many armies which don't have the option of a special formation or detachment. Not to mention that there has been a significant disparity in the "bonuses" an army receives compared to another. So again, a really good idea, but poorly thought out.

edit- I didn't vote in the poll as none of the options really fit my feelings on the matter.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
Despite the terrible poll language, I voted "Yes".

Fixed.

So, from what I see, the main pain for those who are not in favor of the current state are Battle brothers for allies, and some huge bonuses for formations.
I think you guys actually pointed flash lights on what I don't like with the current situation.

I thing I could put up with formations but I agree that the Battle brothers part is possibly the most exploitable of the features of the current edition with the amount of codex and mini dexes arround.

 SirDonlad wrote:
IMHO i like the 'allied detachment' thing from 6th - some really good mechanicum/legion marine mash-ups but not too crazy; no added rules for doing it!

I strongly oppose formations in 40k/30k no extra points for amazing rules? hell no. i saw the khorne daemonkin kharibdis drop pod/khorne berserkers 'formation' (read as 'full drop pod of khorne berserkers') rules someone posted; it gets to hit stuff it lands on with strength D in trade for becoming 'immobilized' and the berserkers are then allowed to assault after deepstriking. i mean WTF?!?

Exactly, I don't disagree with formations because they're not fluffy - they totally are! I disagree with them because you're getting sizable bonuses just for having a "unique" grouping of units. Some forces have SO MANY formations that anyone that own even a half-decent army of that faction will be able to create multiple formations, or at least one plus their existing force - effectively giving them a strict upgrade for no cost. Sure in a 3000 point game you might need those units to become more effective, because they're facing super heavies and other formations and D-weapons, and the game's effectively over by the end of turn 2 (the other side being mostly wiped out) - but in a 1500 point game?

Okay, let me re-context this.

Let's say we're playing a 500 point game with your Tyranids, and we're both going to use CAD forces. Wouldn't it feel really sleazy for me to bring a Wraithknight? A 500 point Tyranid force, unless it's tailor-made to fight a Wraithknight, won't have a chance. It's not that the Wraithknight is especially overpowered (though it is - but this is for example), since it can be fought off more easily in a 1500 point game (still not easily), but at 500 points it's just not going to be a fun match.

The same thing applies to formations. In smaller games, formations are the "super-heavies" of infantry & vehicle groups. They are buffed up so that they can fight in the same territory as super-heavies. Again though, how many super-heavies should their be in a 1500 point game? This was previously only the realm of Apocalypse. Around my parts it's considered common curtsey to inform an opponent if you're playing a super-heavy, and I feel the same should apply to formations.

I like allies and unbound but find detachments, formations, decurions and the like flat out confusing.
Being deadly serious if it wasnt for battlescribe Id just be running unbound or very basic CADs all the time :(

I really like the idea of allies, but in practice it's terrible.
I'd keep it if they acted like two separate armies. I'd love the idea of SOB allying with guard or SM to fight a Chaos invasion, but now with codecies being so expensive it's not practical for a lot of people.

Formations are a terrible idea and a gimmick to make you buy stuff. "Buy this under selling model and spam these new models and you get a bunch of bonuses for free!" It's sacrificing gameplay to make a buck.

IMO the only people who need point values and F.O.C are those who want to play random pick up games and tournaments.
And so these features should only be included for this type of game play.

Players have ALWAYS had the ability to make up cool campaigns and scenarios with special units and rules and 'forge a narrative', anytime they agree to.

They did not need GW to try to shoe horn every unit from Epic into 40k, and pretend the game still works fine for everyone at every level.

I agree that LIMITED ally rules that had been properly play tested would be great.

Lanrak wrote:
IMO the only people who need point values and F.O.C are those who want to play random pick up games and tournaments.
And so these features should only be included for this type of game play.

Players have ALWAYS had the ability to make up cool campaigns and scenarios with special units and rules and 'forge a narrative', anytime they agree to.

They did not need GW to try to shoe horn every unit from Epic into 40k, and pretend the game still works fine for everyone at every level.

I agree that LIMITED ally rules that had been properly play tested would be great.

Yeah, this is what I don't understand. You were ALWAYS able to put together narrative campaigns, make custom armies with your buddies, etc.. The structured composition of 5th didn't impact that.

Pick-up games, on the other hand, need that level of structure to make them a manageable experience.

Rules are LAW!

Clearly you guys don't remember that bad old days of 5th and the GW secret police.

I lost a good friend during a GW raid when we were playing a clandestine narrative game. We weren't using the FoC and the points were lopsided using a custom scenario. We set up the game in secret - or so we thought - but one of our friends who we didn't invite informed the GW secret police. Our minis were melted in front of us, and one of our friends was taken away for an 'adjustment'.

It was rough man.

Thankfully publishing Unbound as an official, sanctioned rule has made those days a faint memory.

I giggled to be fair.