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"Independent characters may only join units from their own detachment. In the case of Detachments consisting of multiple formations, the character may only join units from its own formation."

The only Deathstar I can think of that would still be able to operate is the Screamerstar, which would perhaps have to be called out separately.

Can anyone think of any potential problems this solution might cause?

Wolfstar still a thing.

Also, problems: Boring games.

A unit of Thunderwolves and characters really only becomes a "star" with allied psychic support, and they kind of need to ally DA or WS for hit and run, or risk getting tarpitted by Invisible and other durable units.

I'm curious as to why you think games would be boring, is there something particular about units lead by allied characters that you think enhances the game?

Eldar seerstar

Yeah i had considered that - however the Seer Council is a formation in the new book, so adding additional Farseers to it wouldn't be allowed. It's still incredibly strong as it stands but short of banning it outright i'm not sure how you could fix that.

And it would be boring because you remove the ability to play the game. You deny people the ability to combine abilities completely; heck, you even make it impossible for multiple characters to be used in the EldarDecurion:

All the Phoenix lords
Yriel
Eldred
Illic

It's just ridiculous. If you want to try and limit it a little bit you could try targeting some of the abilities that turn good units into death star units:

Hit and run
Stealth/Shrouded (the fact it passes from a single model)
Invisibility
Look out Sir
Re-rollable invuls

I know in our community we touch on just two of these and deathstars are less of a thing but are still good, just not the only good thing around:

Invisible makes you shoot at BS1 (Templates and blast work now) and strike at WS1 (this is mostly to avoid a blob of 50 fearless invisible guard from going basically untouched by a dedicated assault unit)
Re-Rolla be 2+ invulnerable become 2++ followed by 4++

If you can't bring those in as rules consider shifting your play to deal with them. There are tons of strategies to deal with deathstars, from culexus to shut down psychic to sacrificial lambs to shove units out of position (most deathstars do rely on the assault)

There certainly are ways to beat Deathstars - but in my opinion (and i know a fair few others that feel the same way) they aren't fun games, and really that's my point.

I see your point about characters within a multi-formation detachment, the solo bolt-on character formations weren't something i had considered.

I think maybe ridiculous is a bit strong - after all you could still take any character you like, they just couldn't be used to grant abilities to allied units that might throw the balance of the game out. In my experience most of the very powerful units are the result of an allied character. Using your own examples, abilities like Hit and run, Stealth and Shroud, LoS, are typically just fine (with the usual one or two outliers) on units, the problem appears when characters are used to give these abilities to already very powerful units to make them better. That's my view of course and it's pretty obvious that you don't share it.

You mentioned that your community has agreed some house rules to fix this stuff which is cool - i'm lucky enough that the guys locally have no interest in deathstar type lists so we haven't had to house-rule it. This thread was more to gauge the reaction if i decided to run an event with a change like this.

There's also a fine line between "bolt-on character that makes a death star" and "bolt-on character that turns a mass of hot garbage into something worth using". How does one nerf the former but not the latter?

NickAtkins wrote:
I'm curious as to why you think games would be boring, is there something particular about units lead by allied characters that you think enhances the game?

My 3rd-edition Inquisition army that's on life support because I need five Codexes to run it today goes from difficult and janky to field to illegal, among other things.

The Necron Royal Court would become basically useless. "Here is a way to gain a bunch of HQ IC. Wait, they cannot join anyone but themselves. Enjoy."

Unfortunately the problem is built into the formations and the characters, not the core rules. So you cannot fix the problem by making a core rule. There is no simple answer to this.

Thanks for the responses guys - lots of food for thought. I'm interested to hear if anyone else has idea's for solutions?

I'm not expecting a change that has no negative impact and fixes all problems in one fell swoop, just a good general starting point to help with a lot of the problems, so i can limit how much i have to point at and specifically nerf.

In my eyes 40k today is like early Nascar. We've got our Codexes (standard cars) and our formations (mods, upgrades). In the beginning we all get together and compete and its cool, contests are close, people are having fun. But then some drivers get a hold of much more powerful cars and upgrades. All of a sudden the field is split into people with good cars and people without, the sport loses drivers and spectators as people become bored until a committee steps up to restrict the cars that can be used.

If we want close competition, where the skill of the player really is the defining factor, then we need to put more restrictions on the game, i think.

NickAtkins wrote:
Thanks for the responses guys - lots of food for thought. I'm interested to hear if anyone else has idea's for solutions?

I'm not expecting a change that has no negative impact and fixes all problems in one fell swoop, just a good general starting point to help with a lot of the problems, so i can limit how much i have to point at and specifically nerf.

In my eyes 40k today is like early Nascar. We've got our Codexes (standard cars) and our formations (mods, upgrades). In the beginning we all get together and compete and its cool, contests are close, people are having fun. But then some drivers get a hold of much more powerful cars and upgrades. All of a sudden the field is split into people with good cars and people without, the sport loses drivers and spectators as people become bored until a committee steps up to restrict the cars that can be used.

If we want close competition, where the skill of the player really is the defining factor, then we need to put more restrictions on the game, i think.

My answer is to not play with dicks. I expect my opponents to understand that they need to bring something to deal with everything. A little something to shoot a flyer, a little something to pen armor etc etc... But I also expect everyone to be reasonable. I bring one Flying HT for every 1k points. I figure that's pretty fair. If my friends start stocking up on flyers of their own maybe I will make it 2 at 1500 since I have no native skyfire. Again... it's being reasonable.

I play with my friends and we build lists to have fun games with each other. If someone makes a list that crushes and ruins the game he needs to adjust his list until the others catch up.

Yeah I'm all for the need to put some restrictions on the game, to make it fun again. As it is, it's getting kinda dull. So I'm all for breaking up deathstars as much as possible, outlawing buildings (in competitive play), putting the old point cap and required player permission to use named characters from the good ole' days back in. And get rid of allies and CADs.

It would certainly improve the game.

Lance845 wrote:

NickAtkins wrote:
Thanks for the responses guys - lots of food for thought. I'm interested to hear if anyone else has idea's for solutions?

I'm not expecting a change that has no negative impact and fixes all problems in one fell swoop, just a good general starting point to help with a lot of the problems, so i can limit how much i have to point at and specifically nerf.

In my eyes 40k today is like early Nascar. We've got our Codexes (standard cars) and our formations (mods, upgrades). In the beginning we all get together and compete and its cool, contests are close, people are having fun. But then some drivers get a hold of much more powerful cars and upgrades. All of a sudden the field is split into people with good cars and people without, the sport loses drivers and spectators as people become bored until a committee steps up to restrict the cars that can be used.

If we want close competition, where the skill of the player really is the defining factor, then we need to put more restrictions on the game, i think.

My answer is to not play with dicks. I expect my opponents to understand that they need to bring something to deal with everything. A little something to shoot a flyer, a little something to pen armor etc etc... But I also expect everyone to be reasonable. I bring one Flying HT for every 1k points. I figure that's pretty fair. If my friends start stocking up on flyers of their own maybe I will make it 2 at 1500 since I have no native skyfire. Again... it's being reasonable.

I play with my friends and we build lists to have fun games with each other. If someone makes a list that crushes and ruins the game he needs to adjust his list until the others catch up.

As I said in a previous post I'm lucky enough to have a great gaming group where nerfs aren't necessary - but i really enjoy competition and a good tournament has an awesome atmosphere. I'd like to put one on with true fair competition in mind, and that's really the driving force behind this idea.

NickAtkins wrote:

Lance845 wrote:

NickAtkins wrote:
Thanks for the responses guys - lots of food for thought. I'm interested to hear if anyone else has idea's for solutions?

I'm not expecting a change that has no negative impact and fixes all problems in one fell swoop, just a good general starting point to help with a lot of the problems, so i can limit how much i have to point at and specifically nerf.

In my eyes 40k today is like early Nascar. We've got our Codexes (standard cars) and our formations (mods, upgrades). In the beginning we all get together and compete and its cool, contests are close, people are having fun. But then some drivers get a hold of much more powerful cars and upgrades. All of a sudden the field is split into people with good cars and people without, the sport loses drivers and spectators as people become bored until a committee steps up to restrict the cars that can be used.

If we want close competition, where the skill of the player really is the defining factor, then we need to put more restrictions on the game, i think.

My answer is to not play with dicks. I expect my opponents to understand that they need to bring something to deal with everything. A little something to shoot a flyer, a little something to pen armor etc etc... But I also expect everyone to be reasonable. I bring one Flying HT for every 1k points. I figure that's pretty fair. If my friends start stocking up on flyers of their own maybe I will make it 2 at 1500 since I have no native skyfire. Again... it's being reasonable.

I play with my friends and we build lists to have fun games with each other. If someone makes a list that crushes and ruins the game he needs to adjust his list until the others catch up.

As I said in a previous post I'm lucky enough to have a great gaming group where nerfs aren't necessary - but i really enjoy competition and a good tournament has an awesome atmosphere. I'd like to put one on with true fair competition in mind, and that's really the driving force behind this idea.

In that case the best thing you can do is run the tourny with rules that make deathstars prohibitive natively.

1. low point limits. 1000-1250. At that point level you can bring a pretty powerful unit but it costs you a lot and a more balanced list can probably hit your weaknesses pretty easily.

2. # of flyer restrictions.

So on and so forth. If you want to make the game competitive make sure people need to scrape their list together. While I enjoy a 2k point full blown brawl I have found I enjoy the 1k-1500 so much more because of the restrictions it places on how you can build your list.

I think low points values actually exacerbates the issue. If i use the Draigo Centstar as an example - in a larger game (say 1850) having 2 units killed (or heavily damaged) per turn by the Star hurts, but you usually have a lot of units, so the Star needs to be backed up by things (usually DreadKnights) to do enough damage to win. In 1000 points, sure the Deathstar player may only have the star and little else, but you will likely only have 5-6 units on the table total, which the star will have absolutely no problem killing.

I really like the idea of making stars less attractive rather than swinging the nerf bat around, but in my experience as a frequent tournament attendee people will bring them anyway, so i'm pretty certain that i'll have to ban them (or prevent them indirectly) to ensure no-one tries to bring one.

I'm not sure what the local Meta is out where you are but previously this year i attended a 5 game event and played 2 Wolfstars, a Draigostar and a Seer Council. I won 2 of those games but it was the most depressing 2 days of 40k i've ever had and I don't want anyone attending an event of mine to have that feeling. Obviously thats an extreme case and i was unlucky to get those draws but the point stands.

Lance845 wrote:

2. # of flyer restrictions.

So on and so forth. If you want to make the game competitive make sure people need to scrape their list together. While I enjoy a 2k point full blown brawl I have found I enjoy the 1k-1500 so much more because of the restrictions it places on how you can build your list.

Just remove all the rules for flyers and treat them as skimmers. Problem solved as it should of been long ago.

Flyers hadn't been on my radar for a nerf if i'm honest, i didn't think people considered them a problem. (apart from a couple of powerful outliers) Maybe they are more prevalent elsewhere but typically i see at most 1 on the table, and they aren't big-impact models. Which flyers in particular do you guys think are too much?

NickAtkins wrote:
Flyers hadn't been on my radar for a nerf if i'm honest, i didn't think people considered them a problem. (apart from a couple of powerful outliers) Maybe they are more prevalent elsewhere but typically i see at most 1 on the table, and they aren't big-impact models. Which flyers in particular do you guys think are too much?

It's less fliers and more flying circuses. The amount of fliers that some armies can bring at lower point levels becomes entirely unmanageable. It's the worst with nids and deamons I think. But the Flying Hive tyrant brings a gak ton of punch for it's points.

6 toughness 4w MC with 12 twinlinked s6 shots at BS 4 can drown most units in dakka. Top it off with a haywire flamer template for an additional 10 points to deal with armor 13/14 models. Anything else can just be glanced to death.

Mucaloid spores are dirt cheap troop tax for filling up HQ slots with Flyrants. I think with current tourny rules it's something like 7 HT at 1500 or 2k points. Ridiculous.

The fix is fairly easy though. Reduce the cost of the tyrant itself by...10-20 points. Make it so wings occupy a weapon slot (they do not currently). Then a flyrant will cost just slightly less but have 1dev (6 shots) and a insect swarm template to fire each turn. The swarms are good but not tldwblw good. The reduced base cost would make full dakka walkrants more viable but also more susceptible to regular shooting/assault.

It becomes a more reasonable choice. The durability and speed of being in the air vs the shear killing power of 2 pairs of devs.

Thats a fair solution. I've been on the end of 6 Flyrants a couple of times and they're definitely a problem. I've never actually played against a daemon flying circus, but have seen enough to know it could use tweaking.

Definitely something to consider.

Remove from victory condition killing all the enemy units, but VP can be achived only through obj.

Only infantry troops are scoring units.

The wider the gap between your vp and those of your opponent, the higher is your game score.

These few changes should lead to complete different listing and to more balanced games.