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On this site, I see a lot of "hate" for formations. I decided to give a defense for formations. I wish to note the following about 40K:

Within any given codex, there is a disparity in the utility of any given unit or set of units. You know what I mean when I say this. When you open up a codex, assuming that you either have the models already or enough money to buy them, the competitive player's eyes are going to be led to one set of units and away from another set of units. Thus the 40k tendency for WAAC competitive TFGs to cheese/spam OP, broken units.

Granted, of course, this could be mitigated somewhat by actually rewriting the rules for some of these models. If wraithknights were 400 points, if grav were somewhat nerfed, if scatter lasers were nerfed, etc., then these things wouldn't be auto-takes. They might approach being roughly equal to other options.

The fact is, though, that even re-balancing the rules and points costs won't fix everything. The more variety/diversity you introduce, the greater the inherent risk of imbalance, even if the rules and points costs are perfectly fair. Some combination of things will simply be more useful than some other combinations of things. Here, Dark Souls comes to mind. I would recommend Havels armor with a sword and tower shield, if you are playing a character with high endurance and strength. I would not recommend Havel's armor with a spell catalyst and a shortbow if you are playing a character with high endurance and strength, but low magic stats and dexterity.

Heavy bolters just are not worth taking in most cases as an upgrade in a space marines army, and even with reasonable points and rules adjustments, they just cannot and shouldn't be. They are a heavy machine gun in an army which is already full of pretty decent assault rifles.

Why should I take the heavy machine gun over the anti-tank weapon when my basic infantry already have assault rifles that rapid fire rocket propelled grenades? There is practically nothing a heavy bolter can do that a plasma cannon cannot or should not do better.

I read a video game article a while back, and basically what it said is this: paradoxically, the more variety you introduce, the less variety actually becomes viable. Think about vintage Magic the Gathering.

Formations force variety.

If I am playing a Gladius Strike Force with two battle companies, I can use two, and no more than two, sets of grav centurions. I MUST take two, and no more or less than two, squads of assault marines, bikes, assault centurions or landspeeders. I MUST take 6 squads of tactical marines. I may have no more than 2 venerable dreadnoughts. I MUST have a chaplain and a captain. I MAY NOT spam bikes.

Formations force variety. They prohibit spamming/cheesing the single most broken unit in the codex.

In and of itself, formations forces the player to do what he should be doing anyway: bringing a variety of units with different roles to create a complete, balanced army.

The problems, of course, are the following:

1. Formations are optional. Contra the person in the other thread who thinks that formations should cost extra, I think that formations should be mandatory. Having a complete, balanced army which fits with the "fluff" of the army that you are playing should not be an upgrade. It should be a rules requirement. What's bad for the game is not formations. If every model in a given army MUST belong to a formation, you would see much greater game balance in warhammer 40k.

Fact is, it's because formations are optional that you stand a chance at seeing multiple wraithknights on the table.

Unbound and the CAD (as well as alternative force organization charts) should be eliminated. Formations should be a mandatory rules imposition.

Here, I wish to note that even in a 500 points game, it's perfectly possible to run a Space Marine demi-company.

2. Not all codices have formations. I think that this is where a lot of complaining is coming into play, to be honest.

3. Not all formations are made equal. Getting free rhinos and drop pods for minimum 5 man tactical squads in a Gladius Strike Force is fine and probably roughly equivalent to the +1 Reanimation Protocols that Necrons get (if you disagree about drop pods and talk about how dangerous they are, I'll tell you that you have a problem with current drop pods rules, not with the free drop pod as such; as it stands, drop pods and rhinos cost the same in terms of points).

Getting free razorbacks for minimum 5 man tactical squads is not.

4. Current formations are not restrictive enough. The riptide wing should not be a thing. It should never have been a thing. It should never be a thing. Again, windrider host, I'm looking at you. Ravenwing formation, I'm looking at you.

Yes, even if formations were mandatory, there would still be massive imbalance in 40k. but it wouldn't be because of the formations as such. Because of the formations, the massive imbalance in 40k would actually be less massive than it would be otherwise.

The wraith host isnt even that bad. You eat up a lot of points having to take a wraithlord and a spiritseer with all those wraithguard and a single wraithknight. Its the Wraith Construct that is the bad one. It allows you to take a single wraithlord, wraithknight, or wraithfighter. That's the one that lets you have 5 wraithknights in an 1850 list.

 Xerics wrote:
The wraith host isnt even that bad. You eat up a lot of points having to take a wraithlord and a spiritseer with all those wraithguard and a single wraithknight.

You have to take a wraithlord and a spiritseer?

Actually, I take back my comment.

I don't think that the wraithhost, as such, is that bad.

It would be better if the actual models in the formation were better balanced. If wraithknights were 400 points, wraithlords a bit more expensive and if wraithguard were nerfed a bit, everything would be fine.

Its the Wraith Construct that is the bad one. It allows you to take a single wraithlord, wraithknight, or wraithfighter. That's the one that lets you have 5 wraithknights in an 1850 list.

Yeah. That shouldn't exist.

Do you agree with my general argument, though?

I.e., that, in principle, formations are good because they (at least ideally) force variety?

You hit it pretty much on the nail.
The only flaws in formations is that not everyone has them (and some who do have them for the wrong scale, aka cadian and ghaz) , and a select few are broken (mostly the ones revolving multiple copies of a single unit)

I do agree for the most part. I think the Wraith Construct wouldnt be so bad if they took the wraithknight out of it and made it 1 per core detachment like the Avatar is. The wraithlord is overpriced for what it does when you can just take 2 warwalkers for about the same price that get battle focus and a slew of other vehicle upgrades. My wife is starting Khorne Daemonkin and I like how varied the formations are. There are still some very strong formations (Gorepack) but it doesnt let you spam a GMC. They limited their Bloodthirsters but their superheavys are able to be spammed in the same way with their "War Machine" Formation. In the codex it says Lord of Skulls but a Kytan Daemon Engine of Khorne can be taken in place of a Lord of skulls so its just as bad as the wraith construct in terms of being able to spam SHV. Then of course they made the imperial knight codex which is an army of just superheavys... Some codexes can't compete but its not just Eldar and Tau that have these ridiculous crap.

 Xerics wrote:
I do agree for the most part. I think the Wraith Construct wouldnt be so bad if they took the wraithknight out of it and made it 1 per core detachment like the Avatar is. The wraithlord is overpriced for what it does when you can just take 2 warwalkers for about the same price that get battle focus and a slew of other vehicle upgrades. My wife is starting Khorne Daemonkin and I like how varied the formations are. There are still some very strong formations (Gorepack) but it doesnt let you spam a GMC. They limited their Bloodthirsters but their superheavys are able to be spammed in the same way with their "War Machine" Formation. In the codex it says Lord of Skulls but a Kytan Daemon Engine of Khorne can be taken in place of a Lord of skulls so its just as bad as the wraith construct in terms of being able to spam SHV. Then of course they made the imperial knight codex which is an army of just superheavys... Some codexes can't compete but its not just Eldar and Tau that have these ridiculous crap.

I don't wish to quibble over the details about the individual models for basically the reason I cited in the OP: at that point, we've stopped talking about the formation as such, and more about the rules balance of the individual models in that formation. It would be like arguing against the GSF because of free drop pods...

...but drop pods are equal in points value to rhinos.

Should they cost more than rhinos? Maybe. But that's not a problem with the formation.

At any rate, I think we are basically in agreement:

Formations as a means of forcing variety is good.
Formations that allow spam/cheese is bad.

There used to be a way that 40K balanced powerful units...it was called "0-1". There was another way that the generally powerful stuff was limited...it was called the force organization chart. Unfortunately when stuff started getting undercosted there became more ways to spam the "powerful" units. Between allies and yes, formations the tax units went away.

I understand the OP's point, but how do you believe that balancing a bunch of formations is going to be any easier than balancing a bunch of units? Quite frankly it would be harder, and you would have taken away the creativity in list building that a lot of people value while STILL having to solve the issue of overpowered/underpowered units. While I agree with the premise that it should be all or nothing (cause unequal access to formations with free benefits is really bad), I think a better fix is to balance the units themselves and take away the extreme synergy/buffing that is currently possible so that you can arrive at a fair point cost for them. Once that happens, players can build the lists THEY think are fluffy/competitive and be at least somewhat equally matched against another player.

greyknight12 wrote:I understand the OP's point, but how do you believe that balancing a bunch of formations is going to be any easier than balancing a bunch of units?

Simply speaking? Because whereas formations force model variety, they reduce army variety. Less variety is easier to balance than more variety.

At any rate, I simply disagree with the majority of your posting.

As I said, even if points costs/rules were perfectly fair, and even if there were restrictions on how many of certain units you could take, it still be much more difficult to balance because of the sheer variety of models/units.

Formations reduce that variety.

 greyknight12 wrote:
There used to be a way that 40K balanced powerful units...it was called "0-1". There was another way that the generally powerful stuff was limited...it was called the force organization chart. Unfortunately when stuff started getting undercosted there became more ways to spam the "powerful" units. Between allies and yes, formations the tax units went away.

I understand the OP's point, but how do you believe that balancing a bunch of formations is going to be any easier than balancing a bunch of units? Quite frankly it would be harder, and you would have taken away the creativity in list building that a lot of people value while STILL having to solve the issue of overpowered/underpowered units. While I agree with the premise that it should be all or nothing (cause unequal access to formations with free benefits is really bad), I think a better fix is to balance the units themselves and take away the extreme synergy/buffing that is currently possible so that you can arrive at a fair point cost for them. Once that happens, players can build the lists THEY think are fluffy/competitive and be at least somewhat equally matched against another player.

Because the most unbalanced list are, and always were, to find one overpowered unit and spam it as much as possible and nothing else. Formations, when properly written, make that option at least nonexistent.

Look at the faulty formations that exist right now, each and every one of them is a formation that allows single unit spam. Every proper mixed formation, even if very powerful, is manageable at create good game experience. Even the bloody Gladius and decurion - at the very least you got a veriaty of enemy units across the table so you got options at the very least.

 greyknight12 wrote:
I understand the OP's point, but how do you believe that balancing a bunch of formations is going to be any easier than balancing a bunch of units? Quite frankly it would be harder, and you would have taken away the creativity in list building that a lot of people value while STILL having to solve the issue of overpowered/underpowered units. While I agree with the premise that it should be all or nothing (cause unequal access to formations with free benefits is really bad), I think a better fix is to balance the units themselves and take away the extreme synergy/buffing that is currently possible so that you can arrive at a fair point cost for them. Once that happens, players can build the lists THEY think are fluffy/competitive and be at least somewhat equally matched against another player.

I'm inclined to agree. No matter how you look at it, the core issue with 40k right now is that a plethora of units/rules from all codex's need massive revision. Until that is resolved, no amount of formation shenanigans is going to provide a solution. Perfect example:

Ogryn/Bullgryn

Point cost 30-45pts base with no upgrades. That is almost 33% more expensive than Wolfen, with no awesome special rules.

What is their role? To provide counter assault utility for the guard. Do they fulfill this niche? Hardly. Ripper guns offer nothing in close combat, despite doing so in previous editions and being specifically designed as a close combat melee weapon in the lore. Bullgryn with slab shields must take grenade launchers, which once again negate their close combat utility. If you take Bullgryn with power maul, the concussive bonus does nothing for you when their #1 weakness is S10 power weapons that are already hitting at initiative 1 & can one shot Ogryn/Bullgryn despite their 3 wounds. That is not even taking into account their high armor save, low leadership requiring a babysitter to make them usable bloating their cost even more.

This is just one example. There are numerous things like this in every single codex that need revision. Which is exactly why half the units in every codex never make it to the tabletop.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BoomWolf wrote:
Because the most unbalanced list are, and always were, to find one overpowered unit and spam it as much as possible and nothing else. Formations, when properly written, make that option at least nonexistent.

Look at the faulty formations that exist right now, each and every one of them is a formation that allows single unit spam. Every proper mixed formation, even if very powerful, is manageable at create good game experience. Even the bloody Gladius and decurion - at the very least you got a veriaty of enemy units across the table so you got options at the very least.

I'm not opposed to formations but lets pretend for a moment that tomorrow GW does go this route. No changes are made to any codex. Instead everything is formation based. What will happen is optimal formation lists will be made overnight & you would see something similar to what you see now. A top tier formation that is spammed by numerous players.

Right now the reason you see units like Riptide spam is because of how poorly unit/codex rules are written. If GW took the time to go through each individual codex & balance units point cost & rules to make everything competitive all the sudden now you have hundreds of models that have utility which would create a much more interesting/diverse gaming experience.

Commissar Benny wrote:I'm not opposed to formations but lets pretend for a moment that tomorrow GW does go this route. No changes are made to any codex. Instead everything is formation based. What will happen is optimal formation lists will be made overnight & you would see something similar to what you see now. A top tier formation that is spammed by numerous players.

Right now the reason you see units like Riptide spam is because of how poorly unit/codex rules are written. If GW took the time to go through each individual codex & balance units point cost & rules to make everything competitive all the sudden now you have hundreds of models that have utility which would create a much more interesting/diverse gaming experience.

I don't disagree with any of this. I do, however, wish to pause for a moment on the bolded:

An optimal formation list is only optimal relatively speaking, i.e., relatively to a list built according to a given formation or set of formations.

An optimal wraith host formation, no matter how optimized, only includes 1 wraithknight.

I did not claim in the OP that enforced formations would automatically balance everything. I said explicitly that they would not.

I only said that it would be more balanced than what we have now.

Let's assume, as you said, that GW enforces formations with real variety in them for all armies and makes no other changes. Yes, optimized formation lists will crop up overnight. But they will be more balanced than what we have now. Why? Because of the fact that variety was forced/imposed on the players.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To be perfectly clear, I am not making the claim that imposed formations alone would balance the game.

GW needs to do at least two things:

1. Provide fair/balanced rules for individual models, upgrades, etc.

2. Impose formations which force real variety and balanced army compositions.

To my mind, the great example of 2 is the Gladius Strike Force Battle Company.

To show 1 and 2 in their mutual interrelations: again, a wraith host would be more or less fine, if the individual models in that formation had fair/balanced rules/points costs.

All formations due is force you to buy more models for the next 'power list'

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
All formations due is force you to buy more models for the next 'power list'

The SM battle company forced currently existing players to buy new tactical marines, assault marines and devastator marines en masse?

The Necron decurion forced current Necron players to buy new Necron warriors en masse?

I'm inclined to think the opposite:

Appropriately varied formations actually force you to buy fewer models for the next power list.

Tradito you argument is soley based from you biased view of SMs only. Of course you'd think that formations are fully of variety because you playing the army who has formations full of variety. A lot of armies have plenty of formations that serve to just spam the same unit over and over (such as daemons, tau, orks, KDK, CSM, and Eldar).

In fact I think your army is the only army that can't spam units through formations.

 CrownAxe wrote:
Tradito you argument is soley based from you biased view of SMs only. Of course you'd think that formations are fully of variety because you playing the army who has formations full of variety. A lot of armies have plenty of formations that serve to just spam the same unit over and over (such as daemons, tau, orks, KDK, CSM, and Eldar).

In fact I think your army is the only army that can't spam units through formations.

This isn't entirely fair. The Necron decurion forces variety; the Aspect host formation, I think, forces variety. The wraith host formation, I think, forces variety.

I do agree with your gist, though. In point of fact, not all formations are like the SM GSF. Some formations actually assist in spam.

Ultimately, what I am saying is that GW needs to force players to use formations like the GSF or the Decurion.

The decurion hasn't forced variety, I haven't seen a necron player use more then Reclamation Legion+Canoptyk Harvest spam ever since their codex dropped. And except for tomb blades, these were already the units people were running before. Everyone is using the same army for a year straight.

Aspect Host the worst culprit of a spam formation. It lets you take 3 units of one of the best units in the game, Warp Spiders, and let you take ONLY WARP SPIDERS and then give them BS5 for free. The apsect Host is the reason the winner of LVO was 45 Warp Spiders (9 units of them). It did the exact opposite of variety.

If you think Aspect Host forces variety you cleary don't understand how formations work.

 CrownAxe wrote:
The decurion hasn't forced variety, I haven't seen a necron player use more then Reclamation Legion+Canoptyk Harvest spam ever since their codex dropped. And except for tomb blades, these were already the units people were running before. Everyone is using the same army for a year straight.

In spite of your protests to the contrary, simply count the number of different kinds of units in what you've just described. I'm counting at least 7.

Again, this is not to argue that there's no room for improvement.

Aspect Host the worst culprit of a spam formation. It lets you take 3 units of one of the best units in the game, Warp Spiders, and let you take ONLY WARP SPIDERS and then give them BS5 for free. The apsect Host is the reason the winner of LVO was 45 Warp Spiders (9 units of them). It did the exact opposite of variety.

If you think Aspect Host forces variety you cleary don't understand how formations work.

I may simply be ill-informed when it comes to Eldar formations. Ignore my comments on the aspect host.

At any rate, I still stand by my basic point:

All armies should have, essentially, a version of the SM GSF (insofar as a formation imposing forced variety). The use of that version of the GSF should be MANDATORY.

Do you agree or disagree with this?

Traditio wrote:
To be perfectly clear, I am not making the claim that imposed formations alone would balance the game.

GW needs to do at least two things:

1. Provide fair/balanced rules for individual models, upgrades, etc.

2. Impose formations which force real variety and balanced army compositions.

To my mind, the great example of 2 is the Gladius Strike Force Battle Company.

To show 1 and 2 in their mutual interrelations: again, a wraith host would be more or less fine, if the individual models in that formation had fair/balanced rules/points costs.

After reading the responses in the thread so far, I think we all want the same outcome - variety/balance. While our approaches differ (formations vs. no formations) we both want the same result.

We both agree that priority #1 is a revision of all the codex's/balanced ruleset. This alone is a monumental task, one that I personally feel GW should hire an outside gaming company to do. If done correctly, point costs/rules game wide would/should reflect the power/utility of each model. By creating this baseline, everything has balance & becomes viable. Meaning we would actually see vespids/kroot/rough riders/ork warbuggies/ogryn etc etc etc actually fielded on the table as a competitive choice again for the first time in years. Riptides/wraithknights point cost/rules would actually reflect their power, meaning you would no longer see them spammed because everything in the Tau/Eldar armies would be viable and just as a competitive choice. Monstrous creatures would be adjusted to not be so game breaking. Vehicles would be adjusted to not be horrible etc.

Now as I mentioned above, I am not necessarily opposed to formations. I think if done correctly, they could very well be a good thing. I however, am also for choice & variety. I like unlimited freedom & creating my own lists. I think that is half the fun of the hobby. I truly believe that if GW was to reign in the power creep that we are seeing today & was able to create a ruleset that balanced each of the codices you would see much less spam, more variety, and a community that would explode with interest.

Forcing formations removes a lot of creativity in list building. There's codices that don't even have formations still. Sure maybe in a tournament this could be a thing, but for casual games you're really limiting how people can set up armies. Even then..again..there are codices without formations that likely wouldn't be updated with such a silly rule change.

Modern formations are the worst thing for balance that has ever happened.They give free bonuses making the models in the formation too cheap or the same models outside the formation too expensive. This is really bad.

Formations should cost points for the bonuses they give, and they NEVER should give you free units or upgrades.

Necrons have 29 different units (not counting their special characters). Everyone only using 7 of them isn't variety. Thats 3/4 of the book never seeing play.

Like I said, SMs are the special snowflake that don't get to spam with their formation detachment GSF. Everyone else's does let them spam hard (KDK can take 8 Soul Grinders, Eldar cna fit 5 Wriathknights in a signle list, Daemons lets them only take 2 differe units if that want too, etc.). Why would I think that should be mandatory.

If you don't want spamming, don't bead around the bush and go for the roots and just directly ban spamming.

You are overthinking man. Formations are just a way to sell more models not balance the game or what ever.

GW always releases a new model and unde costs it or gives it an over powered rule. If the model is not new then it becomes a tax to unlock a bunch of formation bonuses.

Formations can be a key to fine balancing. But they are definitely not right now.

And yep, they are just for selling packs of stuff. There are formations that give "free" transports. Spend a buck and get a 0pt wonder! There are formations that don't give anything worthwhile and also formations that give free nerfs (ghazcurion). Spend a ton on extra boyz and get a need to buy Ghaz + retinue or they won't function at all. It's hardly a good balancing attempt.

The game would be far more balanced if everyone was restricted to a single Combined Arms Detachment. At least then some armies don't get ridiculously good Formation Bonuses for taking units they were going to take anyway.

 GoonBandito wrote:
The game would be far more balanced if everyone was restricted to a single Combined Arms Detachment. At least then some armies don't get ridiculously good Formation Bonuses for taking units they were going to take anyway.

If that was the case for competitive play then Eldar, Tau, and maybe Daemons would be the only armies being played. Formations might give crazy bonuses but at least it tends to help a lot of armies with lackluster codexes bring something viable to the table and allows for more diversity in army builds than the predictable net lists of 6th edition.

Formations can be extremely unbalanced. I made an Eldar list at 2000 points with 91 models. 1 Bike Autarch, 3 squads of 5 Warp Spiders and 15 Sqauds of 5 BS5 warp spiders. Completely Legal list too... I wonder how this army would actually do?

Have you missed the fact that we all Saud the NON SINGLE UNIT FORMATIONS

Aspect shrine is exactly that! And it's part of the reason it's plague.
Had it been three different aspects, or at least if you play by our local "no duplicate formations" it suddenly isn't an issue.

Well if we were to do no duplicate formations then it would only be 6 squads of 10 warp spiders and id have to fill the rest of it with something else. 3 From aspect Shrine Formation and 3 squads in the pale court core formation.

And yet... Counter example here....

1) Formations reduce list variety. Reclamation legion, canoptek harvest, destroyer cult. How many necron games with this list have you played since January 2015? How many times have you seen the bad units, conveniently stuck into one optional formation nobody takes?

2) formations encourage spam above and beyond what was possible before. I want to spam the best units in the Eldar codex, right? I wanna spam wraithknights. Before, I could take 2 Scatbike squads, 1 far seer, then a single wraithknight, and repeat. Now with formations if i add one more Scatbike squad and a vyper, then I can take 12. Heaven forbid I decide warp spiders are the strongest unit in the codex - formations let me take an unlimited number of JUST THEM.

the_scotsman wrote:
And yet... Counter example here....

1) Formations reduce list variety. Reclamation legion, canoptek harvest, destroyer cult. How many necron games with this list have you played since January 2015? How many times have you seen the bad units, conveniently stuck into one optional formation nobody takes?

2) formations encourage spam above and beyond what was possible before. I want to spam the best units in the Eldar codex, right? I wanna spam wraithknights. Before, I could take 2 Scatbike squads, 1 far seer, then a single wraithknight, and repeat. Now with formations if i add one more Scatbike squad and a vyper, then I can take 12. Heaven forbid I decide warp spiders are the strongest unit in the codex - formations let me take an unlimited number of JUST THEM.

Wraithknights used to be heavy support so it was 1 Farseer, 2 squads of 5 dire avengers and 3 wraithknights. Also Scatbikes weren't a thing back then. It was shuriken cannon and only 1 per 3 bikes.