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So 7th edition seems to have become the formation era of 40k ,with decurion style detachments made up of several formations seeming to replace the traditional force org chart (yes I realise you can still take a CAD, but the benefits of these detachments make doing so less appealing).I was just wondering what the community at large think this means for the state of the game?

I personally have mixed feelings on the issue. On the one hand I like that the system encourages taking a good mixture of units making for a more varied game than just spamming multiples of whatever point for point was best for a particular slot in the codex.
I also like that it encourages a more accurate fluff representation of how armies should be organised which is great from a narrative perspective.

What I don't like is there seems to be a bit of a power disparity between some of these detachments. For instance the slaughter cult provides a nice little boost for playing the army how it is intended to be played, but considering the restrictions imposed in list composition if you use it I think it is reasonable. Then you have detachments like the decurion and the gladius. Which offer such massive buffs for no points increase its hard to justify not taking it. I know that codex imbalance is nothing new but a lot of these detachments have made the already strong codex' even stronger.

Finally the cynic in me thinks although it's nice to see a range of units on the table, this new system whiffs of a deliberate ploy by GW to sell models I wouldn't have otherwise bought due to poor individual rules. Forcing me to take them to unlock the formation rather than putting out decent rules for the unit itself seems a rather lazy option to me.

So what do you guys think? What's been your experience of formations and detachments? Do you think it's overall a positive direction for the game to be going?

I like that many of the formations/super formations are fluffy representations of a more stereotypical or large example of a certain chapter/dynasty/craft world.

That said, by nature of being an army book, just about any single codex combination of units will be, by definition of being pulled from the army book, fluffy. There are specific examples, like taking dreads with White Scars who despise the notion of being interred like that, but generally speaking, most combinations pulled from a codex can be justified as being perfectly fluffy.

So my biggest beef is two fold with formations.

The first is that it muddles the notion of point costs. Units have point values based on their performance (or we hope, but we GW is not good at that). If you take a certain combination to get a certain benefit, that benefit should come with an appropriate cost. This gets even more lopsided when those benefits are free wargear choices or units. The Gladius strike force battle company is a prime example. Drop pods have a cost of 35pts because they're efficient, one shot transports that can still claim objectives and put a unit precisely where it needs to be on turn 1 or 2. Making it free defeats the purpose of having point costs in the first place.

The second is the balance. Some formations are very clearly more powerful than others. Getting 350-550pts free in transports is obviously more powerful than many other benefits. Conversely, the Suppression Force or Anti-air Defense Force are nothing to write home about. Plus, then you have to compare the external power between the super formations and the small formations, which gets difficult considering allies are a thing.

Really, its just another example of GW having a good idea and totally fething it up on execution. Hell, the new DA book has alternate CADs/whatever they're called that auto-lose or can't make use of their slots. GW just doesn't know how to write good and balanced rules that function as intended. If formations were either incredibly tame in their bonuses, or cost points in addition to the unit costs (you know, like old Apoc), it'd be much more sensible.

Oh, and then we have those delightful 'exclusive' formations hidden behind a several hundred dollar purchase (or, you know, not, if you have a parrot).

The idea has merits, the execution does not.

It's 100% a ploy to sell models. I think it doesn't help at all with external balance, especially since every new codex seems to get more outlandish and elaborate formations than the last (just look at the Blood Angels codex, it came out 6 months ago but it may as well be from a different edition).

Further, I think the increased focus on using formations to do the hard work of making fluffy units and unit combinations worth taking and has the potential to severely hurt internal balance. Example: why go through the effort to fix the marine tac/assault/dev squads on their own when you can slap together a formation that hands out free special rules if you take enough of them? Even better, take twice as many and get free transports too!

The demi-company, on the surface, is one of the less egregious examples out there because the units are super-fluffy and the special rules are not earth-shattering. However, the implication is still there and still easy to see - giving these units free bonuses does not break them, because they're underpowered to begin with if taken separately. If you want your units to be worth taking, you need to buy more of them, and field them in the combination we tell you to. God forbid you only wanted to run two tactical squads instead of three, or you wanted to run the units in a demi company plus a few other units that don't fit into the auxiliary formations - now you're running a CAD and your units are weaker than the next guy's, all because formations are being used as a bandaid for internal balance.

The need for constant growth is the cancer at the heart of 40k, and formations are one of the clearest symptoms.

There's no poll!

How am I meant to click an option saying "I don't like these OP formations." And not post!

I like the idea behind formations. But making crazy powerful formations that give a lot of bonuses for no reason? Yeeeaaah.

I'll probably just decide not to play with formations like that.

I personally like the new formation system. It rewards taking a variety of units, and leads to incentives to build more lore-friendly armies.

Implementation is another matter. Some of the mandatory units are clear cash grabs on GW's part. As the OP states, some armies' formations are clearly more powerful than others. Then there is the whole controversy over the "free" units and buffs.

But it's not like the problems aren't solveable. The top tier armies can be toned down. Free units can be subject to more restrictions. The complaints about the nature of free units and bonuses are baseless; while every unit and ability has a point value, not all are created equal, and it's necessary to examine what's potentially being sacrificed to take those units or formations. It isn't like points costs have followed a formula and been balanced across all armies up until now.

7th edition is clearly shaping up to be "formation edition" and permanently change how players build their armies. I really like these changes, and feel they bring more good to the game than harm. I do, however, know that my opinion is in the minority at least on this forum.

I hate it. Granted I haven't played 40k in years but formations made me even more stern about not getting back in.

Now if I want to play I need to know not only generic rules, but amry special rules & that this formation does this & with that formation doing that & these marines are in this formation so they get this benefit but this squad is in the other one & they have these benefits... no. Just stop it's too cluster fethy.

On top of allies formations add another layer of rules where combinations of things can combine for unexpected & imbalanced consequences (not that GW cares about balance, as they have stated).

I long for a simpler time when 40k was a game, where it didn't take 1.5 hours to set up, then 3+ hours to play because the constant flipping through multiple books & supplements & formations so you remember all the special rules you have, then arguing about how they interact because they aren't well written.

I think 5th edition was the best edition I've played. It had it's issues (Vehicles a bit too strong, CC a bit weak) but nothing that minor tweaks couldn't fix.

Formations feel like instead of just cleaning the stain, GW is throwing more things on the carpet in an attempt to make "modern art" that is really just a bigger, messier stain.

I'm learning to accept it as the new norm. I can deal and roll with the punches.

I still don't like Super Heavies, GMCs, and D weapons in normal games, or the music kids listen to these days.

It's great. It gives GW a tool apart from just updating the codex or main rules to evolve their game. Formations can come in dataslates, White Dwarfs, or other supplements. New ways to play your army? Yes please and thank you.

Now if we could just get them to get back to writing FAQs on a normal basis...

 TheNewBlood wrote:
while every unit and ability has a point value, not all are created equal, and it's necessary to examine what's potentially being sacrificed to take those units or formations.

This is at the heart of my issue with formations. The insane greed of handing out buffs, freebies, and other incentives to entice players to build bigger collections and use unpopular units doesn't really work unless you intentionally fail to balance the units you're buffing for free. If assault and devastator squads were already good choices, we wouldn't need insane things like the Skyhammer formation to get people to use them.

Opportunity cost is the phrase you're looking for. You make the sacrifice of picking otherwise crappy units instead of good ones, and you're rewarded with buffs that in theory don't make them overpowered. Why not just improve assault squads to get people to use them more often? Because then they could just buy one, and it's much better if they have to buy two, plus other units.

Note that I don't think GW is intentionally nerfing units just to make formations more viable - I legitimately question whether they're capable of intentionally targeting any level of power or balance. But it does seem like with the 7th edition codexes they're less likely to make changes to the base rules for units, and more likely to try to influence army composition through formations by making unpopular units stronger when purchased in numbers.

I can get behind the concept, but (as is so often the case with GW) the execution kills them for me. Here's why:

1) As has already been said, not all Formations are created equal. Compare, for example, the Covenite Fleshcorps formation in the Covens book to the Destroyer Cult or Canoptek Harvest in the Necron book. Hell, even the benefits of the "good" formations like Grotesquerie seem utterly pitiful in comparison to many of the new ones.

2) They seem of offer bonuses with no drawbacks, which is always a bad idea in any game. In theory you're being handicapped by taking 'bad' units or having to take multiples of the same unit. In practice, however, if a formation contains a bad unit you can just opt to take formations that don't. Likewise, with many lists already opting to spam units (either due to them being OP or simply for redundancy), having to take multiples of a unit is rarely a handicap.

The other clue is how many lists have all but abandoned the CAD now that they have a Decurion or Decurion-style detachment. Clearly the choice isn't even.

3) For a game already struggling with balance, it seems Formations make things even worse. Before, units were balanced somewhat in terms of how many you could take and from which FOC slot. Now, when you can spam units with formations, how do you balance that?

4) As it stands, the game just feels like a mess. We have the CAD, we have the ally detachment, we have unbound, we have special army-specific detachments, we have formations, we have supplements with their own detachments and formations, we have mini-codices with detachments and formations, we have mega-formations, we have different army-specific detachments that are basically collections of formations but with even more benefits, and then we have minor formations unique to those detachments. It feels like every other book is adding some weird new detachment or formation system, because we didn't have quite enough variations already.

It's just a bloated mess with no structure.

I like the concept, but the execution is spotty. Small buffs for sub-par units or fluffy choices is great. But when you get the big boosts a/o free upgrades, it makes a mockery of the point system. Why is it that I pay the same points for 3 squads of fire dragons in a CAD, but with a little creative bookkeeping and a formation, suddenly I get them at +1BS and some leadership bonuses? Moving troops out of a CAD at least costs them ObSec, which is a significant factor for something like the 10th company scout formation.

Some of them are also very spammy and restrictive. The 3xCrimson Hunter one is nice, but do I really want to field 3 flyers? I only own one, so if I want to use it, I need to field a CAD. Same with a number of things in my marine army.

At the end of the day, it’s the way GW is going, so I’ll play along. I’ll use the formations I can (and am willing to use) and keep with the old CAD for the rest. There has not been a single edition of 40k that I didn’t have problems with, but I still like the game overall.

What it means to me is that I will not be using the OP formations with opponents of my gaming group unless they have one available. Example, if I play against the Necrons.

When they are available, we will discuss before the game between the participants in order to determine if we uses the free buffs formations.

I can't stand the new formations for one glaring reason... you're trading $$$ for free points in game. If they simply charged an appropriate amount for the benefits in points, I'd be fine with using them. If adding a +1 to BS is worth a point or two on one model, it damn well shouldn't be free when you add it to 15. Why the hell in the eldar aspect formation is taking any 3 aspect warriors bump up a combat stat of every warrior for free but if you just plain bumped them up individual it would cost points previously? Buying in bulk for discounts should stay at the grocery store and out of wargaming rules. The crap about costing "flexibility" is about as truthful in most cases as the old create a chapter/regiment gave you "disadvantages". If you only owned one dreadnought, you took the disadvantage that restricted you to one dreadnought in your army; problem solved! With the current formations, folks who took drop pod and/or rhino rush armies anyways get FREE rhinos and pods simply for playing what they did anyways. The "flexibility" myth is a sham if the points costs are anything close to accurate. If your defense of formations is that the points costs are inaccurate and you "need" formations to rectify this in the glorious era of 2 year codex cycles where every single army has been updated, that isn't a defense of GW but rather you trying to make a right from two wrongs. The original apoc incorporated formations in a relatively fair and balanced manner (some were better than others) but GW cranked the greed up to 11 with 6th edition and broke the knob with 7th.

 kronk wrote:
I'm learning to accept it as the new norm. I can deal and roll with the punches.

I still don't like Super Heavies, GMCs, and D weapons in normal games, or the music kids listen to these days.

Same here. Formations are a breath of fresh air in the old-style CAD list building

Making formations fit points limits is difficult.

If a formation requires:
1 Farseer on a jetbike,
1+ Warlock on a jetbike, in their own squad.
3 Windrider squads,
1 Vyper squad (Who uses these?)

and another includes:
3 Crimson Hunters (1 must be an Exarch)

There is very little room to adjust the points in use.
The Warlock, Vyper and GJB squads can add more bodies, but that's about it. There's little to expand the list to meet the points cost. Only the CH Exarch can take options, so that formation is roughly the same set cost.
To add more units, they have to be from specific formations or models, or add a full CAD or AAD (?).

Also, as said, who would run 3 fliers? 1 is usually ignored, 2 is frowned upon, and 3 is cheese. Add the bonus to that, and it''s OTT in small-mid games. The non-CAD formation doesn't allow for just 1 or 2 CHs.

To repeat others, it's a cash-grab.
I like the idea, but there are big downsides.
It is fluffier, and more in keeping with the army's theme, but overbalancing or useless.

Hate formations with a passion. They are a way to buy tons of unnecessary models. I like the good old fashioned FOC, which really made folks put a lot of thought into what they were going to field. It was also more 'fair' as no one took armies of just super heavies, tanks, fliers, etc, and no skyhammer bs.

I have been building my forces this way in 7th, but it is hard to compete against some of the formation bonuses.

I miss 6th...

I think it makes things more fluffy and representative of how actual armies would be on the field. But I think it's too open to being exploited and that the whole thing is a guise to get people to buy more things. Free transports?! I only have 2, off to the store!

 vipoid wrote:
I can get behind the concept, but (as is so often the case with GW) the execution kills them for me. Here's why:

1) As has already been said, not all Formations are created equal. Compare, for example, the Covenite Fleshcorps formation in the Covens book to the Destroyer Cult or Canoptek Harvest in the Necron book. Hell, even the benefits of the "good" formations like Grotesquerie seem utterly pitiful in comparison to many of the new ones.

2) They seem of offer bonuses with no drawbacks, which is always a bad idea in any game. In theory you're being handicapped by taking 'bad' units or having to take multiples of the same unit. In practice, however, if a formation contains a bad unit you can just opt to take formations that don't. Likewise, with many lists already opting to spam units (either due to them being OP or simply for redundancy), having to take multiples of a unit is rarely a handicap.

The other clue is how many lists have all but abandoned the CAD now that they have a Decurion or Decurion-style detachment. Clearly the choice isn't even.

3) For a game already struggling with balance, it seems Formations make things even worse. Before, units were balanced somewhat in terms of how many you could take and from which FOC slot. Now, when you can spam units with formations, how do you balance that?

4) As it stands, the game just feels like a mess. We have the CAD, we have the ally detachment, we have unbound, we have special army-specific detachments, we have formations, we have supplements with their own detachments and formations, we have mini-codices with detachments and formations, we have mega-formations, we have different army-specific detachments that are basically collections of formations but with even more benefits, and then we have minor formations unique to those detachments. It feels like every other book is adding some weird new detachment or formation system, because we didn't have quite enough variations already.

It's just a bloated mess with no structure.

This is my opinion on it as well. The only thing I like to add is how it is just a ploy to just sell more product with no thought on how it would effect the game. The new skyhammer formation is a perfect example of this. It is getting harder to support a company when there only concern is how to get you to open your wallet.

I like it. Encouraging new ways to build your army outside of old school cad but more restricted and accepted then unbound. Like many things (6th ed fly hammer and 5th ed parking lot hammer) it seems worse than it is. On paper it looks like in a vacuum it could be super cheese op game breaking Omfg !!!1! Then people on the forms tend to crank the over reaction up to 11. Then in practice it comes up much less, perform less godly, and is at best meta shifting.

Watched and played a few games against skyhammer. Was even less spectacular then I was expecting, and nowhere near as bad as the doom sayers around here claim. With minimal deployment effort, the alpha strike tends to be decent, nothing much higher than other alpha strike capable lists, (even when RNGsus is with them) then they die like any other marine. People seem to imagine all games are played on flat empty 8×4 pieces of plywood and that the army defending again the skyhammer must deploy in a clumped undefendable mass.

TL;DR it's fine. Maybe play some games against some of these formations while doing a bit of tactics adjustments and you will see its not all doom and gloom.

Also, yes formations are a cash grab. GW is a business, everything about 40k is done to make money. I would like if they grabbed at my wallet a little less agressively, but that is its own topic.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
It's 100% a ploy to sell models.

Considering the models cost the same number of points if they're taken in a Decurion or a Combined Arms Detachment you're not really buying a large number of more models.

 Ghaz wrote:

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
It's 100% a ploy to sell models.

Considering the models cost the same number of points if they're taken in a Decurion or a Combined Arms Detachment you're not really buying a large number of more models.

So the battle company formation granting free transports costs the same number of points and wouldn't motivate people who don't have 10+ rhinos/drop pods/razors to buy more of those models?

 Blacksails wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
It's 100% a ploy to sell models.

Considering the models cost the same number of points if they're taken in a Decurion or a Combined Arms Detachment you're not really buying a large number of more models.

So the battle company formation granting free transports costs the same number of points and wouldn't motivate people who don't have 10+ rhinos/drop pods/razors to buy more of those models?

Also things like “I’ve got one stormraven and one talon, if I buy another talon, I could field the formation for free bonuses” I know I (and I suspect most other SM players) looked through the new book and checked what I had on the shelf, and adjusted my things to buy list. For me there was a lot of “not going to happen” but it did put a few new things into the shopping cart that I was on the fence on before.

My fantastic formation for admech forces me to use a Knight. A model that I don't have and have never felt the slightest pull to get... but now it's a possibility, somewhat depending on what my friends get in their updates.

If I can manage without it, I will. And I might go with a different company either way for the model, because I don't want to support GW anymore. (I want them to fail, someone else to take up the IP and write proper rules for it.)

I don't like formations at all.
In reality, they aren't really adding new ways to build your army but rather it's just the opposite. All it's doing is building your FOC for you.
The difference is instead of picking 10 squads you like from various categories following the FOC rules, you are picking 1 or 2 pre-built detachments with some squads you want and some you don't.

It's taking all the customization out of building your army and forcing anyone who doesn't have a butt-load of models and the willingness to find the pdfs online to pay truck-loads of cash for more models and rules to have their army built for them.

Nevelon wrote:Also things like “I’ve got one stormraven and one talon, if I buy another talon, I could field the formation for free bonuses” I know I (and I suspect most other SM players) looked through the new book and checked what I had on the shelf, and adjusted my things to buy list. For me there was a lot of “not going to happen” but it did put a few new things into the shopping cart that I was on the fence on before.

And to find the points for that extra Stormtalon there's a unit you're not buying. So the formation isn't making you buy more models, just different models.

Blacksails wrote:So the battle company formation granting free transports costs the same number of points and wouldn't motivate people who don't have 10+ rhinos/drop pods/razors to buy more of those models?

That's the exception to the rule. If every army got free transports, you might have a point.

 Ghaz wrote:

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
It's 100% a ploy to sell models.

Considering the models cost the same number of points if they're taken in a Decurion or a Combined Arms Detachment you're not really buying a large number of more models.

But they're not the same models in game. One gets a bunch of benefits for zero pts (you only pay $$ for special rules) and using some or all in the other gets you nothing. That of course doesn't take into account the formations that simply give you free stuff in game (but you still have to pay $$ for the free models). Buying two tactical squad boxes should get you twice as much utility as buying one box; you shouldn't get 2.5 boxes worth of points because you bought the second one. BOGO army building is not something that belongs in a tabletop wargame that pretends to be balanced.

There are good ones and bad ones.
So i dont really feel for it ether way.

But i am loving these squadron bonuses lately (the SM Heavy vehicles)

And again, that doesn't sell extra models. If you didn't have players choosing their units based on supposedly overpowered formation rules they'd be choosing their units based on supposedly overpowered unit rules.

The player still has to have the points to put the models in his army, and out of all the formations in the game there is only one that gives you 'free' models. Otherwise they cost you the exact same number of points in a formation as they do in a Combined Arms Detachment. The most a formation does is change what models you're likely to buy and not necessarily to buy more models.

They are certainbly trying to entice existing customers who may already have a big army to by more, by making the formation benefits too good to ignore. With the Necron codex, they ended up selling me a couple boxes of Triarch Praetorians, because those were the only things I had missing to complete all the formations in the book. And if there was more stuff I was missing, I admit that I probably would have bought more. Also, the Decurion core-Reclamation Legion requirement is just an obvious ploy to get rid of Tomb Blade boxes, which I never saw anyone play ever in the last codex.

That said, I like formations, I just wish as other have mentioned that they were more level with eachother.

 Ghaz wrote:
And again, that doesn't sell extra models. If you didn't have players choosing their units based on supposedly overpowered formation rules they'd be choosing their units based on supposedly overpowered unit rules.

So you don't think better rules sell crappy models? Have you looked at battle report army lists and then looked at the centurion models... ever? If you have two of a model (like a whirlwind or vindicator or whatever), you don't think some folks who see that they can make those models better for no individual points costs by buying a third will? And your excuse is that they'd just choose overpowered individual models instead? Lol, there is no requirement that you must choose to either get kicked in the crotch or punched in the crotch like you're claiming; giving players "the choice" doesn't make the end effect any better. There will always be overpowered unit rules but making overpowered (and completely free in points but not $$) formation rules doesn't fix that problem; it exacerbates it. Two wrongs don't make a right on the tabletop any more than they do in real life.