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This always bugged me why do they really like detachment restrictions ?

I can think of a few types arguments.

To protect Diversity
Any army would just add an inquisitor with servo skulls or some other great cheap detachment and that would be lame and bad for diversity.
But then again if you really did not like this to happen why wouldn't you just restrict the lv of allies you could take. To for example all desperate allies or worse are forbidden (with perhaps a few fluffy exceptions mentioned later if you are into that )

To keep the monsters out.
There once was a fear that lots of strange non cad detachments might make monster lists. But this was before decurion and aspect hosts formations.
Does it really still keep out some really nasty spammy lists out that would auto win tournaments ? Or does it just restrict armies such as dark eldar, harlequins and inquisiton.

To protect the meta / tradition.
This one is simple, lists are build around these restrictions. People have invested in them and don't want to play any other format since it would require them to update their list.
Would it really be this simple ?

Ps. I don't want no discussions about what is fluffy and whats not. I don't care about what you think is fluffy or not. Nor do I want any "but my army isn't bad" type of discussions there are enough of them already.
I only care for the reason why I can't field the army that I want to field in most tournaments. So just the reason behind this restriction, why does the tournament scene wants this and does it really do what it should do ?

It's more for spam purposes. Did you know you can fit four Canoptek Harvests inside a Decurion at 1500, let alone 1850?

Another argument is because it's not against the GW rulebook. They try to play as close as possible, with FAQ's on unclear rules and flat out changes to broken stuff (eg Invisibility, 2+ reroll saves).

 Frozocrone wrote:
It's more for spam purposes. Did you know you can fit four Canoptek Harvests inside a Decurion at 1500, let alone 1850?

This would be still 1 detachment : \

Another argument is because it's not against the GW rulebook. They try to play as close as possible, with FAQ's on unclear rules and flat out changes to broken stuff (eg Invisibility, 2+ reroll saves).

GW doesn't restrict detachments at all in its rule book at all only tournaments do that

( Is my sarcasm detector broken again ? )

What do you want to play? That might be the fastest way to explain your circumstance.

For example, the reason I'm told that Unbound is typically forbidden is to prevent single wound / model "units" from swarming the board, such as 40 Inquisitors, or 40 single Crisis Suits as an army.

Lets say for the argument that I wanted to field 40 inquisitors would that really have a chance at winning a tournament ?

Imagine 1850 points of warp spiders after the obligatory Farseer, three jet bikes with scatters, and a wraith knight.

If they even bother with that.

Or armies of spyders and canoptek wraiths.

Or anything else that would induce rage when spammed freely.

There is IMHO a genuine reason that ties in with your points, like spamming, "monster" lists, and touches on the fact that even such lists are NOT insta-wins.

It's that formation lists can be 1-trick ponies, lists that are very good against certain army types but ineffective against others, but are not take-all-comers.

The consequence is that such lists can be very disruptive and can kill off good lists with good players just because they happened to be their hard counter, but still don't have what it takes to win the tournament as they're not such against other armies. As a result, they end up wasting both other people's times and theirs as well. They can end up denying a win without the ability to win themselves. They kinda end up trolling others (even if they didn't intend to).

A tournament is not a single battle, it's a series of battles. To play it properly, you should prepare a list ready for all situations. It turns out, due to the way 40k is structured, CADs (and, to be fair, CAD-like things like the Marine Demi-Company), with good use of a Lord of War or other awesome unit (Eldar Wraithknights or Imperial Knight) tend to do really well in the local meta.

It's a good question and one I asked myself, but upon seeing a local tournament, I kinda realised how formation-based armies distract (even their own users) from the take-all-comer armies that are more successful, I came to this current thinking.

 oldzoggy wrote:
Lets say for the argument that I wanted to field 40 inquisitors would that really have a chance at winning a tournament ?

At 1850 you could field 38 inquisitorial detachments totalling 75 inquisitors running around with naught on but their bolt pistols, chain swords, and fancy hats.

Anything that doesn't use template weapons would be limited to 1 model killed per shooting attack.

Then you just play the objective...

That actually sounds hilarious to me.

 oldzoggy wrote:

 Frozocrone wrote:
It's more for spam purposes. Did you know you can fit four Canoptek Harvests inside a Decurion at 1500, let alone 1850?

This would be still 1 detachment : \

Another argument is because it's not against the GW rulebook. They try to play as close as possible, with FAQ's on unclear rules and flat out changes to broken stuff (eg Invisibility, 2+ reroll saves).

GW doesn't restrict detachments at all in its rule book at all only tournaments do that

( Is my sarcasm detector broken again ? )

I'd argue that most tournaments don't go far enough. I wish the ITC was three formations period, even if your using a decurion style.

In regards to the Inquisitors, being IC they can freely join each other. You can take a handful of Rhinos for mobility, load, say, 5 Inquisitors in each, and then Flat Out / Smoke Launch yourself all over objectives. Borrow a handful of Pods from your friendly neighborhood Blood Angels and drop 6 separate units on every objective, turn one / two.

I've heard a few ways to game the system. Similar can be done with Crisis suits, except they can each have a Melta and Burst Cannon... that sort of thing.

Or Deep Striking Inquisitors in Terminator armour, each with a Psycannon.

Having no limits sucks. You are left with too many options to counter too many potential options.

List restrictions lets you build a list based on what you can expect to see, which in turn opens up creativity within the meta created by the limitations.

The people that win tournaments consistantly understand this and embrace it.

SJ

Having restrictions makes lists more varied in a weird and backwards way. Unlimited freedom means more people will get stupid with it just for the sake of breaking the meta, but restrictions means you are facing armies, not sociological experiments. Realistically, you're not excluding spam or broken units or big beasties without even more restrictions, but you are making players field an actual army which is what the vast majority of players want in a tabletop war game.

I personally like restrictions. Makes me be creative with what I'm doing. There's a certain kind of fun in working within the confines.

Lots of detachments allows for lots more abuse of unintended synergies, usuly a whole lot less adherence to the background material, and a lot more spamming of very powerful things in many cases.

If we could go back to the old 3-5E FOC, I'd do so in a heartbeat. In my experience, the more detachments, the less fluffy and more gimmicky and powergamey an army is going to be.

You dont see fun and diverse armies with 5 detachments and the like, they're almost exclusively power/spam builds.

Also, leta be frank, fluff matters. Nobody, not a soul, would olay this game without the background. The rules are awful, and nearly universally acknowledged as such, with GW openly taking the position that the rules really arent aomething they care about. Thus, when that background gets mucked with and you get Nidsz and Sisters allies or SW/DA deathstar pals, it hurts the game as a whole.

Lots of detachments allows for lots more abuse of unintended synergies, usuly a whole lot less adherence to the background material, and a lot more spamming of very powerful things in many cases.

We don't have many major tournaments around my area, but you hit the nail on the head for the few smaller ones. The tournament organizers (mind you I'm talking about my local TO's - not trying to make a blanket statement) restrict detachments because it's just a little less they need to keep up with and it prevents fewer rules arguments and unforeseen consequences/rules interactions. I've never run a tournament before but I can only imagine how daunting a task that has to be for the rats nest that 40k rules have become. Anything that helps cut down on nonsense has to be helpful for a TO is probably welcome.

Pretty sure it is because seeing only Eldar armies would get boring at some point.

 Crazyterran wrote:
Imagine 1850 points of warp spiders after the obligatory Farseer, three jet bikes with scatters, and a wraith knight.

If they even bother with that.

Or armies of spyders and canoptek wraiths.

Or anything else that would induce rage when spammed freely.

You just described the winning list at the LVO

HoundsofDemos wrote:

 oldzoggy wrote:

 Frozocrone wrote:
It's more for spam purposes. Did you know you can fit four Canoptek Harvests inside a Decurion at 1500, let alone 1850?

This would be still 1 detachment : \

Another argument is because it's not against the GW rulebook. They try to play as close as possible, with FAQ's on unclear rules and flat out changes to broken stuff (eg Invisibility, 2+ reroll saves).

GW doesn't restrict detachments at all in its rule book at all only tournaments do that

( Is my sarcasm detector broken again ? )

I'd argue that most tournaments don't go far enough. I wish the ITC was three formations period, even if your using a decurion style.

That's going too far, some formations are as small as 250 points, while others can be over 2k by themselves.


For our upcoming local tournament we are trying a "no duplicate formations unless they got spesific rules for duplicates (aka demi companies), that in theory should bring spam down a notch.

no duplicate detachments = rip Inquisition

I think players feel safe with formation restrictions; they feel they know what they are likely to face, and can plan accordingly (with no nasty surprises).

Cause they wana win and it's harder to plan on something unexpected without limitations.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Pretty sure it is because seeing only Eldar armies would get boring at some point.

Would this really be the case ? What would an eldar player want to field that they can not as a result of this restriction.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Also, leta be frank, fluff matters. Nobody, not a soul, would olay this game without the background. .

I do agree fluff matters, but does it really for the average tournament player. Some obviously care but I have seen numerous lists of GK + Wolves, DA+INQ+Wolves, Red scorpions + Guards, Tau + Tyranids etc. It seems that if these restrictions are there to protect the fluff that they are really bad at it.

I like these responses a lot

 SharkoutofWata wrote:
Having restrictions makes lists more varied in a weird and backwards way. Unlimited freedom means more people will get stupid with it just for the sake of breaking the meta, but restrictions means you are facing armies, not sociological experiments. Realistically, you're not excluding spam or broken units or big beasties without even more restrictions, but you are making players field an actual army which is what the vast majority of players want in a tabletop war game.

nareik wrote:
I think players feel safe with formation restrictions; they feel they know what they are likely to face, and can plan accordingly (with no nasty surprises).

 koooaei wrote:
Cause they wana win and it's harder to plan on something unexpected without limitations.

Since they all say the same thing, correct me if I am wrong but this is what I am reading: This rule is a form of protectionism vs clever meta disruptive lists. And this is bad if you ask me, cutting edge tournament players who are in it for the sport of it should be able to deal with these lists and not be afraid of them.

Taking a gak-ton of Wraith Knights is NOT a clever tactic. It's abusing the gak out of a model that's immune to most weapons, Shrugs off most of what can hurt it, fears ONLY ranged D weapons, really.

And is notably undercosted.

So that's what Eldar players would do. They would take a gak-ton of Wraith Knights, and you'd ether have Ranged-D Wraithknights to deal with them, or you'd lose. So everyone at the top-end competitive level would simply show up with Points / 300 Points / 330 worth of Wraith Knights.

Really, what'chu gonna due? It's not clever. It just stupefies the idea of bringing anything else.

 oldzoggy wrote:


Since they all say the same thing, correct me if I am wrong but this is what I am reading: This rule is a form of protectionism vs clever meta disruptive lists. And this is bad if you ask me, cutting edge tournament players who are in it for the sport of it should be able to deal with these lists and not be afraid of them.

The idea of "meta disruption" in a game like this is silly. Some games are designed to have them and have them disrupted and changed. 40k is not one of those games. 40k isnt a game that works competitively at all, its hamfisted into that role, but GW will be the first to tell all of us that it doesnt work in that role. Its a sandbox game (a poor one, but thats another topic).

If you look at 40k stuff and try to apply "clever" meta disruption the way one might in say, Magic or League of Legends (where is rarely works as well as some like to think) you just end up with an even worse mess that allows ever more abuse and games that are decided before a single dice roll is ever made.

If anything, you just reinforce the competitive meta even more and force out anything that doesnt adhere to that meta because it cant compete at all.