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the_scotsman wrote:
Hmmmm. 95%/5%? I'm curious how true that actually is (not saying it's false, just asking the question)

What is the actual, current mix between ridiculous, OP formations, formations in a good spot, and formations that nobody ever uses?

How do you count stuff like "tax formations" people take just to create certain lists (do you look at Rec Legion in a vacuum? Or do you factor in the obviously at least a bit OP buffed up Canoptek Harvest when evaluating it?)

There's detailed analysis for practically every unit in the game. But ATM, formations are all over the place in supplements, WDs, combo-packs, start collecting boxes...etc... it doesn't seem like many people have done a full comprehensive look at them.

I agree, that would be an interesting "study". The 95% I am referring to is Formations that have "tax units" or consist of average units. The Harvest has 2 tax units: Scarabs & Spiders. The Eldar Windrider host has a Vyper & Warlock unit. Skyhammer consists of Assault Marines & Devastators, neither of which have been in any "competitive" list for years. All the Daemon formations require a ton of units or points (or both)

Really the only "broken" formation & can think of is the Eldar Aspect Host, and that is only if you spam multiple Hosts with Spiders, Reapers or Dragons. Maybe the Crimson Death, but that still just AV10 flyers.
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Formations aren't the issue. The issue is that there is no consistent "core" that all armies must field before spending points on the cool stuff. This "core" used to be the Force Org chart (now called the CAD). Unlimited detachments is another issue

Ultimately, theres still the issue of free bonuses for no additonal investment. Without having such a cost attached, formations still are effectively condoned cheating, allowing you to take a more capable force than the points limit of the games reflects.

"Tax" units dont absolve formations of this. These are still units that serve a functional tabletop purpose, and still benefit from the formation bonuses, theyre just not getting *as much* benefit as the stuff you might want to really want to spam more.

And "tax" varies from person to person. If a 55pt T6 3+sv MC is a tax, holy crap my IG and CSM's want in on that gravy train, because quite frankly they're one of the most aggressively costed MC's in the game.

So you're basically saying that a formation is not broken if the models inside it are not?

Even something like the skyhammer, which takes those 2 admittedly not terribly powerful units and blows their power level sky high with a million free special rules, and then allows you to construct a whole army of turn 1 or turn 2 charging from deep strike ignoring overwatch guys with relentless heavy weapon/grav support?

I've seen skyhammer formations destroy 90% of a 2000pt list in a single turn, without the opponent having a chance to do anything but deploy.

How is that a healthy means to balance a game? To me, that seems more egregious than an out-of-line unit like the wraithknight...especially considering that with the previous structure of dual-cad you would be limited to only two. You still have an army consisting of only 3 different armies that makes things no fun for any opponent, but now the rules are even more over the top than they were before.

Old school 6th ed serpent spam would have nothing on modern formation spam armies. Sure, someone is at least fielding some kind of variety in models, but they're not balanced.

Do I advocate removing formations from the game? no. Do I think formations are the easiest way to get things balanced? Oh heck no.

You wanna balance 40k, you NEED inter-codex rules updates. You need points adjustments when things are out of line. Otherwise the game is just going to continue to be the way its always been - an imbalanced mess with 3-5 super OP top tier armies that dominate everything.

The codexes are paper. We have pencil technology. GW just needs to step up and take the minor effort it would take to inject a little bit of investment.

They recently created a table with 12 results for bonuses for tanks. In the time it took to type those 12 results for their competitive play, they could have increased the points cost on the 12 most problematic units in the game today.

 Galef wrote:
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Formations aren't the issue. The issue is that there is no consistent "core" that all armies must field before spending points on the cool stuff. This "core" used to be the Force Org chart (now called the CAD). Unlimited detachments is another issue

I think you hit in on the head here. The honest problem with CADs currently is that they are too free. with everything in an army scoring, it's very easy to get the prerequisite 1HQ\2Troops needed to run one, and then you can just input whatever else you want to fit. there is no longer a reason to even take a troops choice unless their stupidly powerful (See scatbikes) because you can just park a Heavy Support tank or a LoW on an objective and hold it past anything. that's why helping balance the, as we have just realized, small amount of super strong, easily spammable options in the Decurions could go a long way to helping the balance of the game. Seriously, the only ones i can't think of a fix for off the top of my head are Aspect Host (other than maybe limiting you to only one repeat aux formation, or maybe have that be an Aspect Host only thing?) and the Necrons (Don't know them well enough to know what tweaks need to be\could be made.) Marines are probably the easiest fix (Take razorbacks out of the list of free transports and it's instantly balanced, especially if we make a change to make vehicles non-scoring [which is the only sweeping change that I would for sure want to see with the formation list-building style]. Also, nerf Grav because without the CAD MC\GMC spam becomes a lot harder to achieve.) And Eldar aren't hard to fix either (No Wraithknights outside of the really expensive Wraithhost, fix Aspect shrines, nerf scatbikes minorly [Simply because being taken in the formation and not a CAD actually nerfs the bikes pretty heavily if they take scatter lasers as they get no benefit without shuriken weapons]) Daemons seem fine, tbh. Big, expensive cores that even now can make it hard to fit a good list into 1850. ect.

Then, give those armies without a Decurion (CSM, Nids, DE, BA, GK, SoB, Harlies, and some of the smaller Imperium codexes like Inquisition and Admech I think are all we have left at this point) and you'll have yourself a basis that is atleast playable at a competitive level. That way, GW (or some third party if they let a third party write the rules) can take the time to balance all of the individual units, and once that has been done may be able to bring back the CAD. but, while the balance is in the mess that it is, going Formation-Only could be a good way to keep things somewhat stable while playtesting of the more specific changes takes place.

Apparently taking a tac company and getting free drop pods on everything is balanced.

Sorry, there may be issues with infantry in 40k, but adding those sorts of capabilities, not to mention that much board presence and scoring ability, at zero cost, isnt balanced, and even if it is, its a band aid on a deeper problem of scale and individual unit issues, not a solid balance mechanism.

Likewise, just because Scatbikes arent getting shuriken bonuses, doesnt suddenly make them fine and balanced in the formation, thats still a single unit putting out as much firepower as some IG gunlines, except in the formations its supporting elements just become more capable.

Actually, yeah, I'm not worried about the Drop Pods. Now, again, I suggested making vehicles non-scoring again because of this, as really that is one of the biggest issues with drop pods anyway. also, yes, it IS a band-aid, as it's meant to help stop the wound from growing bigger while actual steps are taken to fix it. Again, I suggest this not as the final measure, but as a hold-over while a host of balance changes are figured out and play-tested. It would certainly be better than the mess we have now, at the very least.

Honestly, the scatbikes stop being as scary without OBsec. Yeah, they still have crazy shooting, but their ability to actual score is greatly reduced. That, and with only 3 units, MSUing them is a lot harder and makes playing them a good bit trickier . Scatbikes currently tend to run in mass MSU squads. Making them group up means that their fire has to be focused onto a max of three targets, meaning that target saturation becomes an actual tactic against them. That, and you can just out score them.

This is all dancing around the greater core issue of the fundamental rules being bad and scale being out of focus. Making vehicles non scoring just so spammed drop pods arent an issue is an exercise in circular logic. There's no reason vehicles should be non scoring really aside from that, which means the issue is with the spammed drop pods. We're gonna make Land Raiders and Devilfish nonscoring just because of drop pods? Likewise, if youre not worried about an army with a dozen drop pods, I must ask if youve ever played Dark Eldar, IG, Orks, or CSM's, etc, lots of armies have no reasonable way to deal with that sort of thing.

As for Scatterbikes, all we are really talking about is what squad sizes we'd see. The fundamental problem is that they simply have far too much firepower on tap. Making them nonscoring, loading them with "tax" units, etc is all dancing around this central point, and all these fixes are as much or more effort than just liniting that firepower tap. Nobody thought Jetbikes were undergunned or underutilized in their previous incarnation, revert them to that and you fix all the other issues associated with them without needing formations or mucking with what units can score and whatnot.

Formations arent making anything better bere, and again, tournament resultes clearly bear this out.

I think another point we are trying to get across is that the idea of Formation is great and can easily be used as a balancing tool. And yes, free bonuses NEED to be part of formations.

The problem is the execution. GW is adding rules to these formations that are too good, or requiring too few units to get those bonuses. The Windrider Host, the WraithHost, the Demi-Company (not Gladius) and all the Daemon Core Formations are excellent examples of what Formations should be. Lots of units required from a variety of units, minimal bonuses.
But as soon as you put those into their "Super stackable Formations" they get too many crazy bonuses, like free transports or 6" runs or re-roll Instability & Daemonic Corruption.

Formation bonuses should be like Chapter Tactics that require you to field 5+ specific units.

--

Wait, IG can't deal with a bunch of open-topped, immobile, av12 vehicles? I feel like they have the firepower, but k. I do understand the sentiment though, it could be hard to deal with, though those you listed all have options to deal with it as far as i know (DE has mass Haywire, IG has mass shooting, Orks melee the pods and whatever comes out of them, CSMs probably have the hardest time, though I still think with enough plasma and melta they should be fine.) Like, the Gladius can't give drop-pods to any unit that can actually use them to alpha strike effectively (Assault squads get shot, Devs have to snap-fire, Tac marines can't take the firepower to be useful.) And honestly, I don't understand why vehicles are scoring, ESPECIALLY drop pods. does the driver get out and grab the thing? IDK, just never got why that part exists to be honest.

On the Scatbike thing, I still think forcing them to not MSU goes a long way to stopping them from doing their job. Currently, they can a ton of firepower that is easy to split up and dole out as necessary. When all that fire power has to go on one target, the ability to use it effectively goes down a lot. Especially with 0 access to split-fire.

Yes, formations are not making anything better currently. But honestly? That's more because of how easily they can be taken alongside a spammy CAD of good stuff, and the few formations that are amazing being super broken when spammed. which is, again, why i suggest nerfing the biggest offenders.

EDIT: Yeah, Galef, I kinda Agree. Though I think those large bonuses are easy to fix, a majority of the time it is not the formations within those set-ups that require the balancing (again, Aspect Host aside,) but those of the larger formation. again though, it is much easier to fix a Handful of formation rules than 5+ units per codex, at least to begin with.

Free bonuses for taking X or Y units is never going to balance properly. Its just not.

Even if you tone down the bonuses, we are still talking free stuff, and stuff that will often stack with things like chapter tactics and whatnot resulting in powerful synergies that the game is just not equipped to handle. Even the Chapter Tactics stuff and the gobs of rerolls they can get only looks balanced because of how car off the deeep end we've gone and would have been loudly decried in earlier editions.

More to the point, with unlimited detachments, they still allow armies to spam more effectively than they could under the old FOC, and allow for lopsided armies that can far too easily overmatch a more balanced armies' ability to engage them.

Customized versions of the old FOC were one thing, but even with no bonuses at all, formations can still be highly abusable simply through the unit combos they allow, much like Unbound

Again, why we would be making it limited to only decurions, so only stuff within the larger detachments would be allowed. Would also nerf SuperFriends pretty well, now that i think about it. Maybe let a single allied detachment (or equivelent for armies like harlies, inquisition and skitarii) be taken still, but nothing else?

The best way to start balancing 40k (notice I said "start") is to go back to the way 6th ed bought detahcments..kinda. Require allall Battle Forged lists to stat with a CAD or codex equivalent. This is where your WL has to be from and your primary Faction. now you may buy 1 Allied detachment. No double CAD, no double Allied Detahcment. Now you may buy 1 Formation (or 2 if no Allied detachment was taken). This formation MUST be the same faction as you Primary or Allied detachment.

So max 3 Detahcments, max 2 Factions. The only Factions that should have an exception to this is Assassins and the Inquisition, maybe, MAYBE Harlequins since they always show up to aid Eldar & Dark Eldar.

 Galef wrote:
The best way to start balancing 40k (notice I said "start") is to go back to the way 6th ed bought detahcments..kinda. Require allall Battle Forged lists to stat with a CAD or codex equivalent. This is where your WL has to be from and your primary Faction. now you may buy 1 Allied detachment. No double CAD, no double Allied Detahcment. Now you may buy 1 Formation (or 2 if no Allied detachment was taken). This formation MUST be the same faction as you Primary or Allied detachment.

So max 3 Detahcments, max 2 Factions. The only Factions that should have an exception to this is Assassins and the Inquisition, maybe, MAYBE Harlequins since they always show up to aid Eldar & Dark Eldar.

that would certainly be another way to do it, yeah. Though, this still means that those armies that spam a bunch of a single thing (looking at you Eldar) would be entirely too powerful. I do like the idea combined with my (if you take a decurion that's all you get) idea. either you take CAD+Ally+formation, or a single large Detachment. would mean your trading versatility for more powerful rules, which means there is some actual consideration to make during list building. also, maybe limit the number of duplicate formations in a detachment army? will also help turn down the spam somewhat.

 Swampmist wrote:
Wait, IG can't deal with a bunch of open-topped, immobile, av12 vehicles? I feel like they have the firepower, but k. I do understand the sentiment though, it could be hard to deal with, though those you listed all have options to deal with it as far as i know (DE has mass Haywire, IG has mass shooting, Orks melee the pods and whatever comes out of them, CSMs probably have the hardest time, though I still think with enough plasma and melta they should be fine.)

its not a matter of killing the pods, its dealing with the alpha strike and the dozens of infantry getting the first shooter advantage without having to risk anything and already being at optimal engagement range.
With something like an IG or DE army, you can very easily call the game after a turn 1 alpha strike like that, same with the Skyhammer formation

Like, the Gladius can't give drop-pods to any unit that can actually use them to alpha strike effectively (Assault squads get shot, Devs have to snap-fire, Tac marines can't take the firepower to be useful.)

Not everything needa to be a Grav Cent to get utility out of drop pods. Coming in amongst an enemies lines, often behind cover and in side/rear vehicle arcs works magically against many armies. Getting that ability for free on gobs of units is not a small thing...at all. You get very stilted games as a result.

And honestly, I don't understand why vehicles are scoring, ESPECIALLY drop pods. does the driver get out and grab the thing? IDK, just never got why that part exists to be honest.

Why are MC's scoring? Why are mindless automatons scoring? Within the structure of the rules there is no good reason for vehicles as a whole category to be nonscoring.

That said, Pods really should be somewhat changed. They're not really vehicles so much, theyre an empty shell with a storm bolter, they should just be a big terrain piece more than anything else.

On the Scatbike thing, I still think forcing them to not MSU goes a long way to stopping them from doing their job. Currently, they can a ton of firepower that is easy to split up and dole out as necessary. When all that fire power has to go on one target, the ability to use it effectively goes down a lot. Especially with 0 access to split-fire.

that depends on what youre brining them for. In squads of 10 they work very well indeed to simply burn high priority targets down, stuff like full tac squads in cover or AV12 tanks and flyers or T6 MC's, they are marvelous as a heavy fire support unit.

I...guess? Like, the skyhammer works because it lets all the Devs have relentless the turn they get out (meaning they can actually fire at stuff) and it lets the Assault squads fight out of DS. The gladius does not give those bonuses, meaning that the alpha strike is a lot weaker than it could be. Bolters don't tend to do many wounds without serious weight of fire, which tends to mean putting more squads into a single target than you need. even then, it doesn't always work out. Either way, isn't thge current GSF almost always played with pure Razorback spam? If the drop pod strat is that good, why is it never used?

Just because one thing is better doesnt mean something else cant also be abused, particularly against non-top 4 armies. And again, for many armies, you dont necessarily need Relentless devs and the like to get the job done, especially if you can get behind cover and into side/rear arcs, and position onesself for assaults on the next turn.

Theres a reason pods have a points cost in the first place and arent just free in general, they provide a good deal of deployment utility and board control. Issues with pods and the problems with tacs and devs are issues to be taken up with the individual unit entries or the core rules, formations are an extremely poor band aid. If marines for some reason need an extra 400pts to play with because they didnt just spam grav cents and librarians, that fix should be elsewhere (more probably toning down the other units) rather than in free stuff that their opponent may not also be getting.

Because Razorbacks are better. They have better shooting and can actually move whereas Drop Pods are stuck where they land so if they don't land on an objective they don't do much whereas Razorbacks can move if they need to.

Formations ruin army creation. You are forced to take so much many things in the new formation there are very few points left for other things. Also, why should taking a certain set of models give bonus rules? Its silly. They should be toned down, if not gotten rid of entirely.

I don't mind most of the mini formations, although I much preferred the earlier 7th edition codex's alternate CADs. What Is problematic is the decurion style for the most part because the bonuses are to good and are often giver you things for free for taking units you were going to take any way.

I think formations have the power to be really good for the game... if GW put any effort in to designing them. But then again if GW put effort in to the rest of the rules there wouldn't be the need for formations to fix stuff.

Formations (potentially) allow GW to do a few great things:
- step in and buff underperforming units without re-writing a whole codex
- step in an bump sales of underperforming kits
- allow 'fluffy' versions of armies to be fielded competitively.
- limit selection of otherwise powerful units.

We can see places where GW has done this very well.
-IMO the space marine battle companies are great examples (although perhaps a little too far in terms of free points). It lets players put the 'traditional' army of tactical marines in rhinos on the table and go toe-to-toe with more traditionally powerful forces. It singlehandedly ticks all four of the above boxes, and gets the space marine army away from Hero-/Monster-/Deathstar-hammer in to what it really should be about; infantry boots on the ground.
- The Daemonkin Slaughtercult is cool. It gives a few nice abilities, but at the tax of taking a unit of Possessed. Every time I run a KDK force I need to think 'is it worth taking the Possessed? I get bonuses, but its essentially impossible to take heldrakes...'
- The various Tau formations make it quite difficult to access Skyrays.

But we can see places where GW does this incredibly badly:
Eg. Riptide wing. Take a powerful unit that many players were already fielding 3 of, and give them bonus abilities, for absolutely no cost.
Eg. Aspect host. Again, allowing players to spam the best units for essentially no cost.
Eg. Realspace raiders. (I think thats the one). Restrictive formation that gives out a paltry benefit that is literally useless in half or more of the games you play.

If there were any pattern to GW's rules writing abilities I might be inclined to think that all formations all the time was good. But the rules I see from GW may as well be written can costed using a dart board.



The practice of giving 'free' bonuses to units when run in certain configurations is used in other games too.
Take Warmachine, for example, which is regarded as having pretty good balance in top-tier play (every faction won at least one major tournament last year). When a unit is identified as under-performing, PP adds in a way to buff that unit.
It might be a unit attachment - adding a champion/standard to an existing unit for a small cost that gives the unit benefits worth far in excess of the cost. Small tax, big special rules.
It might be a new caster - adding in a new option that takes advantage of rules of existing models. (eg, Bearka with Winter Trolls)
It might be another new unit that synergises well - eg Dozer & Smigg added to Trolls to buff Gunnbjorn and Bomber/Blitzer Dire Trolls.


Or in X-Wing. There its even a little insidious as the cards required to buff your Tie Advanced are hidden in Imperial Raider boxes. But FF still identifies underperforming ships and adds in cards to upgrade them - the TIE/x1 upgrade card essentially reads 'Your TIE advance gets a 4pt upgrade for free!'.

Imagine if GW came in with changes like that. Ogryns are underperforming? Add in a dataslate +formation for Nork Deddog and 1+ units of Ogryns that gives them all Eternal Warrior or something. The tools are there, they just need to be used correctly.

The strongest possibility for army balance would be a set of living rules available for free online. Rules can be tweaked and units changed or added on an individual basis as is necessary.

Trasvi wrote:

Or in X-Wing. There its even a little insidious as the cards required to buff your Tie Advanced are hidden in Imperial Raider boxes. But FF still identifies underperforming ships and adds in cards to upgrade them - the TIE/x1 upgrade card essentially reads 'Your TIE advance gets a 4pt upgrade for free!'.

Imagine if GW came in with changes like that. Ogryns are underperforming? Add in a dataslate +formation for Nork Deddog and 1+ units of Ogryns that gives them all Eternal Warrior or something. The tools are there, they just need to be used correctly.

Very well said. Granted, I dislike the idea of "pay to win", which is sort of the way they went with the TIE Advanced (You had to buy a $100 model that you rarely use since it's Epic scale, just to get the awesome goodies within). But the idea is still good. The Advanced did not have a niche that it filled. It was among the first ships created, so didn't have a defined identity within the game. Now it's pretty devastating.

There is another downside, though. Fantasy Flight is at least consistent with their releases. Schedule, amount released, balanced rules that add a bit more flavor to the game as a whole. GW releases stuff for the same armies when other armies get left out. For example, I play Necrons. Necrons have yet to get a true supplement or updated campaign. Yet, Tau get here with not only an unneeded codex update, but more models and then an update to their campaign supplement, plus the Kauyon (spelling?) and the Mont'ka books. Those releases only benefit the armies within them, and with an inconsistent schedule as far as which armies get updated.

Plus, GW could release new rules for a unit, and it could still be complete poop, or nerf something that didn't really need the nerf. GW will most likely never get this right, and therefor 40k will suffer for it.

Rosebuddy wrote:
The strongest possibility for army balance would be a set of living rules available for free online. Rules can be tweaked and units changed or added on an individual basis as is necessary.

While this would be cool at first, it would also mean that you would have to re-study the rules before EVERY game just to make sure they didn't change on you. I spend a lot of time making lists to play and I'd be super pissed if I finally made a list I liked, just to find out the points costs or rules changed for the units I put in the list.

It is hard enough to keep up with all the new Codices, supplements, etc to also have to keep checking your own army and the army you are going up against. No thank you.

 Galef wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
The strongest possibility for army balance would be a set of living rules available for free online. Rules can be tweaked and units changed or added on an individual basis as is necessary.

While this would be cool at first, it would also mean that you would have to re-study the rules before EVERY game just to make sure they didn't change on you. I spend a lot of time making lists to play and I'd be super pissed if I finally made a list I liked, just to find out the points costs or rules changed for the units I put in the list.

It is hard enough to keep up with all the new Codices, supplements, etc to also have to keep checking your own army and the army you are going up against. No thank you.

This could be mitigated if GW used an app like Battlescribe that would auto-update with the most recent version of the rules. Hell, they could just subsidize Battlescribe and/or other similar apps and half the work is done for them!

 Galef wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
The strongest possibility for army balance would be a set of living rules available for free online. Rules can be tweaked and units changed or added on an individual basis as is necessary.

While this would be cool at first, it would also mean that you would have to re-study the rules before EVERY game just to make sure they didn't change on you. I spend a lot of time making lists to play and I'd be super pissed if I finally made a list I liked, just to find out the points costs or rules changed for the units I put in the list.

It is hard enough to keep up with all the new Codices, supplements, etc to also have to keep checking your own army and the army you are going up against. No thank you.

Most places that do this don't just stealth update, they do them on a set schedule or make a big notice about an update, and they're not every week or the like but like 1-3 times a year.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Galef wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
The strongest possibility for army balance would be a set of living rules available for free online. Rules can be tweaked and units changed or added on an individual basis as is necessary.

While this would be cool at first, it would also mean that you would have to re-study the rules before EVERY game just to make sure they didn't change on you. I spend a lot of time making lists to play and I'd be super pissed if I finally made a list I liked, just to find out the points costs or rules changed for the units I put in the list.

It is hard enough to keep up with all the new Codices, supplements, etc to also have to keep checking your own army and the army you are going up against. No thank you.

Most places that do this don't just stealth update, they do them on a set schedule or make a big notice about an update, and they're not every week or the like but like 1-3 times a year.

Exactly. At first you'd need shorter intervals between updates because there'd be so much more feedback but soon enough you'd only need to do major work after codex releases. Once those were done with you could have a year of simple maintenance before you start thinking of adding supplements or new units.


No more need to print codexes, no more need to lug around heavy books, FAQs and errata. If shooting ends up too good you can slowly fix that. If a few armies are vastly better than others you can slowly fix that. You can deal with problems piecemeal and actually solve them instead of hope that you don't mess something up in five years when you print the next edition.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Free bonuses for taking X or Y units is never going to balance properly. Its just not.

No, it isn't. But it gives an incentive (or alternative) for a codex to make it on its own instead of going with whatever flavour of the month allies are patching up any weakness your army might have.

I think you hit the issue pretty squarely in the face when you said

its a band aid on a deeper problem of scale and individual unit issues, not a solid balance mechanism.

But the problem is an artificially introduced one. The problem started when everyone could ally with everyone, and suddenly there was (obviously) going to be an end-all alliance that simply works better than anything.
Then we start introducing things like Decurion, and it allows an army to be just as (if not more) OP on its own. In theory, that would allow two paths. Ally up and get the OP from there, or go with your formation, and get the OP from there. Either way, you've gotten the OP and you're now able to compete.

Except, like you said, all codex are not created equal.

A lot of people will point to things like the free drop pods, or Skitarii formation that gives every upgrade for free (although people have stopped mentioning that one, so I guess it wasn't as end-all broken as everyone claimed) but will defend others because they only give you new special rules or buffs your current ones. I don't think Vaktathi is one of those, but I would just like to mention that these things are exactly the same. Those upgrades are worth more points no matter what they are, even if they don't have a point value in your book. Getting a 3+ regeneration protocol on everything is worth a hell of a lot of points. it's a ~16.5% jump in survivability, ignoring armour, for most of your army. {edit: sorry, it's a ~33.3% jump in survivability. It goes from 50% to a ~66.5%, and I just didn't think before I posted so I just subtracted.} You could just as well have gotten that many more models dropped down on the table, and the value outcome would change very little.

When I play eldar I take formations to make my army weaker. The only really strong formation is the aspect host and really only if you spam spiders.

 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.

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.

In other words, gamers gonna game

I'm sure when GW came up with the idea of formations, it was to encourage (ie, force) a more robust unit selection (and increase sales). But then they heard the early complaints of no flexibility, every army looked the same, prohibitive unit taxes, etc., so they tried the Eldar approach, which, unfortunately, opened it up to being severely abused. While I'm not certain about the newer formations (Tau and Wulfen), it seems like they went back to the more prohibitive set up with Codex: SM, as their auxiliary formations are often far too expensive to field, which is why you only ever see Gladius Battle Companies.

More consistent design rules for these formations would be a significant improvement. For example, EVERY army should get a single unit formation option for at least some of their non-SH tanks, MC, and flyers. No army should be able to take more than a single SH (with the exception of Knights) per detachment. When making these formations, there should be a minimum points cap taken into consideration, ie, the min points for a single auxiliary formation (non-SH) should never exceed 200 points.

Blacksails wrote:Well here's your problem. Nobody reasonable anywhere expects or demands perfect balance. What people want are games that aren't a lopsided mess where player skill is the prime determinant. In other words, they just want balance to be good enough. Where that line is varies from person to person, but with specific regards to 40k, that line almost universally is somewhere better than where it currently is.

Very fair points. Nonetheless...

When we start working the idea of better balance rather than perfect balance, you can have as much variety as you want.

...I think that this is just wrong. Regardless of your standard for how much balance is right, more variety = more imbalance. It's an intrinsic risk of variety, if that variety is anything more than cosmetic (presupposing that cosmetic differences are tactically irrelevant). Yes, I fully agree with you that 40k could maintain the same variety and still have more balance. The game could be more balanced than it is now even without formations.

That doesn't change, however, the basic fact that greater variety nonetheless yields greater imbalance simply in virtue of that variety.

To the extent that "rigid" formations like the Decurion and the Gladius Strike Force limit variety, it thereby reduces the risk of imbalance.

All of your examples are perfect examples of this. Of course they're not perfect, but they're a hell of a lot better than 40k and generally considered to be quite excellent examples of game design and balance done right, especially given the insane amount of content and variety.

Is it better than 40k? Maybe. That said, the only reason that people don't complain as much about Pathfinder, D&D and and MTG is because of two basic reasons:

1. Pathfinder and D&D are cooperative games.
2. MTG doesn't require as great a commitment of time and effort as 40k does. You don't have to assemble and hand-paint your own magic cards, and games generally don't last 2-3 hours.

But again, consider these simple facts:

1. Even though MTG is practically constantly updating,revising, etc., coming out with new editions, "standard" and "modern" blocks, etc., net-listing remains a thing. Experienced players regularly figure out certain combinations which are simply superior to other combinations, and a "mono-build" tendency inevitably arises.

2. There actually are two different, opposite kinds of players in D&D and Pathfinder. There is a conflict between min-maxers (i.e., power gamers) and the more story-oriented players. Take min-maxers from 40k and put them all together in a pathfinder game, and you can bet your bottom that they are going to break that game. Two words for you: 1. Guns. 2. Magic.

And even apart from gunslingers and high level magic users, when's the last time you've seen a fighter without cleave and power attack?

Even D&D and Pathfinder have an intrinsic tendency to promote "mono-builds" among min-maxers.

All of the problems that 40k players regularly complain about are present in the games that I've mentioned, to some degree or other. We just don't notice them as much because of the difference in format.

If Pathfinder were solely a PvP game, people would probably complain as much as 40k players.
If MTG took 3 hours to play, people would probably complain as much as 40k players.

More variety brings more imbalance.

You even see this in fighting video games where there's relatively little variety.