should unbound exist?

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**xana666**

So one of the biggest changes in 7thed coming from 5th is the way army's are formed. I like the formations as they are heavily restrictive but I'm really not liking the new unbound. I think it promotes spam and makes the game even more unbalanced. My mate plays eldar and while his list isn't cheese it's certainly not friendly, like the rest of us play. This is is partly because of unbound. In our last game he took 2 wraithlord, 1 wraithknight, 11 d flamers, a fire prism, wave serpent partly, 6 wraithblade, eldrad and spirtseer. Turn 2 I have a hammerhead with 1 hp and 7 pathfindrs on the board.

**krodarklorr**

I mean, no, unbound shouldn't exist. But you're also fighting Eldar, and the bad kind of Eldar. If he wanted, he could get almost all of that in a regular list anyway.

**Experiment 626**

Unbound is fine. Just stop playing against try-hard donkeycaves who use it as an excuse to steamroll with the best cherry picked units from wherever.

There's a tone of awesomely themed forces that can only be done through Unbound. Within just the CSM codex alone, Unbound allows for;
- Termiewing w/Hellbrute, Daemon Engine & Land Raider support
- 'Hounds of Huron' all biker army, supported by Spawn, Helldrakes, Raptors, etc...
- Iron Warriors Siege lists
- Daemon Engine menagerie led by Warpsmiths & Sorcerers
- Armoured company
And many other themes.

The same is true for anyone who hasn't yet received the 7.5ed treatment and lacks the ability to field fluffy formations, such as a Blood Angels 8th 'assault' company.

**Slayer-Fan123**

Plus, with how many bloody options you get with the SM codex and supplements (and adding Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Space Wolves), you can field a "Deathwatch" consisting of just HQ's. It is SUPER fun, but not very good. Plus it allows the most freedom to be able to customize several models just because you like the look of them.

**Eldarain**

It should exist now. The power boost abusing it can unlock probably isn't any worse than the high end uber formations we've been getting. Plus it opens up thematic options normally unavailable.

**Experiment 626**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Plus, with how many bloody options you get with the SM codex and supplements (and adding Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Space Wolves), you can field a "Deathwatch" consisting of just HQ's. It is SUPER fun, but not very good. Plus it allows the most freedom to be able to customize several models just because you like the look of them.

Easily the single best & most amazingly fun scenario in Fantasy was where one of the armies was entirely composed of Characters vs. a 'regular' army.
Unbound allows you to play out this scenario in 40k now, and it's amazingly good fun to watch such a band of heroes take on an entire army in a 'Movie Marines' style game!

Imagine for example, a game where a Daemon army consisting of a single Greater Daemon of each Chaos power faces off against a host of Grey Knights.
Each Greater Daemon's only 'objective' is to out do his rivals and take down more of their hated foes than any of the others can!

Or as Slayer-Fan pointed out, a 'true' Deathwatch Kill Team composed of various Marine specialists seeing how long they can hold out against an onrushing Tyranid swarm...

Or a re-enactment of the (in)famous battle during the 3rd War for Armageddon where an 'army' of Space Marine Dreadnoughts faced off against a tide of Orks & Kans/Dreads...

Unbound is easily great fun!

**HoundsofDemos**

I was against it at first but at this point it's no worse than some of the mega formations or super friends list i've seen using formations.

**CrownAxe**

If GW had actually managed to have some form of external balance (and if formations also didn't work in unbound) unbound wouldn't be a problem because then you trade off command benefits for free form army creation. But the game balance in its current state can't support unbound in a healthy way.

**Azreal13**

The concept is fine. It's ruined by poor internal balance across and within codexes.

If there weren't units objectively better at doing the same job as others then what would it matter? You pay your money and takes your choice.

Should a player make a selection that meant their army was hopelessly outclassed in a certain department (they take all anti infantry units and get mullered by an armour heavy force for instance) then that would be on the player. As it stands one could pitch your anti infantry focused footslogging force against against another anti infantry focused footslogging force but that force could be composed of more efficient choices in terms of damage, durability or even both and subsequently you'll still get creamed.

**Wulfmar**

Unbound is an excuse for pay-to-win people to play hate-lists to curbstomp people. Each time they do, they feed off the sorrow.

Of course there are also some nice people who also go unbound, but mainly it's the other kind

**HoundsofDemos**

I don't think i agree in all cases. It's no worse than what Eldar can do with a CAD or what marines can do with various formations or Necrons in a decurion.

**JamesY**

It's the best thing to ever happen to the game. Power gamers existed before, that hasn't changed because of unbound, and formations tend to be better anyway. It does allow you to collect whatever models you like without worrying about being 'legal'. I love my ork walker army, my night lords raptor cult, and my army of assassins. They don't often win games, but I really enjoyed making them.

**MechaEmperor7000**

In theory Unbound works, because you get free rules, that you would otherwise pay points for, in formations and detachments that you wouldn't get in unbound (to trade for the ability to spam) and the units should all be balanced according to points AND have glaring weaknesses that must be covered by something else.

Unfortunately, a lot of units are either massively undercosted (Wraithknight), massively overcosted (Pyrovore), or is simply just good at too many things that there's no exploitable weakness unless your entire list is tailored specifically to take out this one model (Again, Wraithknight, but also the Riptide in earlier editions).

If GW does properly balance the game again and work hard at FAQs, then Unbound can work. But with the current state of the game it is in (especially when you look at the Raven Wing Strikeforce WITHOUT the Faq), it ain't gonna work in the slightest, especially when one guy shows up with 2000 points of nothing but wraithknights.

**JamesY**

If a guy turned up with 2k of wraithknights, just don't play them.

**vipoid**

Experiment 626 wrote:

Easily the single best & most amazingly fun scenario in Fantasy was where one of the armies was entirely composed of Characters vs. a 'regular' army.
Unbound allows you to play out this scenario in 40k now, and it's amazingly good fun to watch such a band of heroes take on an entire army in a 'Movie Marines' style game!

Maybe I'm missing something here, but couldn't you do this anyway?

"Hey, fantasy has this great scenario where one army is comprised entirely of characters. Want to give that a go with 40k?"

I find it baffling how many people think they need GW's permission to play custom scenarios.

**Galef**

I like the idea of Unbound, but I wish the gap was larger between it and "structured" play. I also wish the Come the Apoc Allies were only allowed in Unbound lists.

Unbound should be used for small games in which players are trying out new units, or whacky combos. Unbound should never be used for any sort of "competitive" play.

The problem I have with Unbound isn't Unbound at all, it is that "unlimited" detachments pretty much plays like Unbound anyway. I'd prefer that Bound armies had to field 1 CAD (or codex CAD equivalent), then it could take 1 additional CAD -OR- Allied detachment, than any Formations you want. Formations are the only detachment that should be "unlimited".

Basically, I like the structure of 6th, with the Formations of 7th.

**MorkorpossiblyGork**

Should unbound exist? yes its fun. I think thats a fairly obvious point. If your talking about in the tournament sense then yes it should still exist, however most Tournaments I have seen have a rule about unbound or require you to take 2 detachments or something similar.

**oldzoggy**

Yes it should. It is perfect for casual play. It makes you play the army you would really want to play. You don't need unbound for crazy spamming op units. If your group doesn't spam them in bound they will not spam them in unbound. I have no idea if it is suited for tournament play at all since tournament play kinda is the strange twilight zone of ruling OP meta that banns other OP meta.

I strongly feel that your player group isn't healthy if it can't handle unbound play

**AnomanderRake**

Unbound isn't the problem. If you're complaining that Unbound is allowing your opponent to take nothing but D weapons your problem is that you're playing with donkey-caves.

(Also to the OP: Replace the Wraithblades and the Fire Prism in your mate's Eldar list with a half dozen Scatterbikes and suddenly his list is not only a single CAD but it's probably stronger for it.)

**TheNewBlood**

I feel Unbound is more useful for narrative campaigns or for teaching and accommodating new players. You have either explicit or implicit restrictions on what units each person is bringing, so there is some limitation on how abusive the unrestricted nature of Unbound can be. But for competitive play, Unbound is an awful idea, as people are expected to abuse the unrestricted freedom the format allows them.

**MechaEmperor7000**

If you have to agree to limitations beforehand though, then that's no different than just setting up a campaign beforehand with your friends (like, the FoC was around since forever, but we always violated it for campaigns) so it's not like that freedom wasn't already there.

The only real perk to unbound is letting pickup games happen without being restricted to the FoC. Tournaments will always have their own internal balance rules and ban lists, so they won't give two gaks about Unbound (other than forcing them to do a bit more work). However, the balance issue comes in where either a kid can show up with a horde of wraithknights or a bunch of pyrovores, and he could do this completely by accident, without knowing they're either overpowered or underpowered.

I am always willing to talk it over and face anything, and I fully support discussing it over like gentlemen before playing, but sometimes you just want to show up with an army and play, nary a word said, and that's where unbound both shines and completely craps out. Again, if GW rebalanced their game correctly, unbound in it's theoretical form can work. But as it is right now unbound, for the purpose it was built for, is completely unusable.

**Cheex**

Yes, it should exist.

40k 6th and 7th have both been heavily geared toward the narrative and Unbound is a tool to achieve that.

An example for me is an army I'm preparing to use in my next game: an Arch-heretic psyker from IA13, plus a ton of cultists and spawn from Khorne Daemonkin for 500 points. The theme is a rogue psyker is attempting to summon a daemon horde, and he has dozens of lackeys who he will sacrifice to achieve his ends. The mission will be the Megalith mission from Path of Chaos, where the enemy's goal is to cast down the Chaos altar before the summoning ritual is complete.

Yes, this could have all been achieved using homebrew rules, but the best homebrew rules are those that change as little as possible. The above idea breaks no rules at all.

If you don't like it, you're more than welcome to simply not play against opponents who use unbound.

That said, it's not a perfect system. Ideally, every unit would have a points value that accurately reflects its abilities, which would make unbound perfectly balanced, however this is unfortunately not the case in 40k. But that is symptomatic of GW's point system far more than unbound armies. With or without unbound, you're going to face unbalanced enemy armies, no matter what!

**MechaEmperor7000**

The problem still comes back to the player, especially the new.

One of the things with the old FoC was that units was not only balanced by points and by army interactions, but also by which slot it was in. Anything in the FA slot is not going to be anywhere near as hard hitting as the Heavy Support, but it's gonna hit a hell of a lot harder. And Troops were inherently worse than other units because you required them to fill out your manditories.

While obviously this means that in competitive play some units would be totally ignored (Tactical Marines are the most famous), this also means that the new kid who just likes the models are going to pick it up and try a game and probably get totally stomped, simply because he chose a weak unit and no one told him otherwise. Likewise, if he brought 6 Wraithknights because they're cool evangelion robots and not because they're so undercosted, he suddenly find that not only people refuse to play with him, but people start calling him a cheesemonger. That's definitely a turn off.

Like i said, campaigns and tournaments didn't need this since those things by their very nature required you to talk it out beforehand. But for a pickup game, this was a great idea in theory, but horribly in execution. I'd say they probably should have held off Unbound for another edition, where their numerous formation got people more accustomed to using non-traditional forces, then dropped it. I bet if people were already used to Canoptek Harvest-spamming lists, no one would really care about Unbound. Of course, game balance would help a lot more.

**jreilly89**

oldzoggy wrote:
Yes it should. It is perfect for casual play. It makes you play the army you would really want to play. You don't need unbound for crazy spamming op units. If your group doesn't spam them in bound they will not spam them in unbound. I have no idea if it is suited for tournament play at all since tournament play kinda is the strange twilight zone of ruling OP meta that banns other OP meta.

I strongly feel that your player group isn't healthy if it can't handle unbound play

Exalted.

**casvalremdeikun**

It isn't like Unbound is any less balanced than the current game is in the first place. If anything, Unbound armies have way fewer advantages compared to the broken gak CADs and super formations.

**HoundsofDemos**

Like any game system that isn't a mirror match it comes down to the players. If someone only caress about winning, then that is going to color every decision they make going forward.

**Jackal**

I love unbound, but that's only because it allows me to run a fun list for casual games.

Infact, I think I nearly have enough nurglings now to play a 1,500 point game with them alone.
While its a useless army, its highly amusing and good fun against a green tide army.

Also means I can run my Deffwing Orks.
Thraka leading a ton of meganobz.
Again, looks amazing on the table, although this one is actually playable.

Wouldn't like to see an unbound tournament though.
That would just be a case of who can spam the most destructive units possible, without restriction.

**SagesStone**

I feel unbound is pretty useful when a codex gets updated and suddenly you can't play your army without buying new models you didn't buy before cause you didn't like them.

**Slayer-Fan123**

Wulfmar wrote:
Unbound is an excuse for pay-to-win people to play hate-lists to curbstomp people. Each time they do, they feed off the sorrow.

Of course there are also some nice people who also go unbound, but mainly it's the other kind

Can you prove this statement using tournament results?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

vipoid wrote:
Experiment 626 wrote:

Easily the single best & most amazingly fun scenario in Fantasy was where one of the armies was entirely composed of Characters vs. a 'regular' army.
Unbound allows you to play out this scenario in 40k now, and it's amazingly good fun to watch such a band of heroes take on an entire army in a 'Movie Marines' style game!

Maybe I'm missing something here, but couldn't you do this anyway?

"Hey, fantasy has this great scenario where one army is comprised entirely of characters. Want to give that a go with 40k?"

I find it baffling how many people think they need GW's permission to play custom scenarios.

Discussion for pickup games isn't supposed to exist outside point values and rolling for missions. Now I can just bring my Deathwatch list if I feel like it.

**Peregrine**

Experiment 626 wrote:
Unbound is fine. Just stop playing against try-hard donkeycaves who use it as an excuse to steamroll with the best cherry picked units from wherever.

IOW, "unbound is fine, just as long as you use TFG-level social pressure to shun anyone who dares to use it in a way that you don't like". If you need to kick people out of the group over how you think they're "exploiting" the rules then no, unbound is not fine. It's a broken mess that needs major changes to even have a chance of working.

Cheexsta wrote:
40k 6th and 7th have both been heavily geared toward the narrative and Unbound is a tool to achieve that.

Screaming "FORGE THE NARRATIVE" over and over again doesn't make the game about narrative play, nor does making the game terrible for competitive play. GW has removed all the stuff on "how to create your own scenarios" from the core rulebook, replaced player choices about their characters with random tables, and created a formations system where you either play the story that GW created or have no chance of winning against people who do. What 7th edition is really about is buying more stuff. GW doesn't care what you do with your toys, as long as you spend lots of money on them.