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So whenever someone in my FLGS runs unbound armies, they get a lot of hate for it. I don't understand what is wrong about unbound...

Someone explain to me the stigma about running Unbound.

If you have a system that allows you to take whatever you want, logic says the best option is to take the best and most powerful options...

The traditional army building setup limited the way those overly powerful options could be fielded, which helped somewhat to give the game at least some semblance of balance.

Unbound removes those restrictions, and so is regarded with distrust by those who don't want to wind up facing a fluffless army of cherry picked power units.

The idea of Unbound isn't inherently bad.... But in a game as unbalanced as 40k, it's best kept for games with friends, IMO.

^ This is the stigma.

But the premise behind this reasoning is flawed.

If you have a system that allows you to take whatever you want, logic says the best option is to take the best and most powerful options...

Players don't take " the best and most powerful options" at all in all but the most competitive games. They try to build fun armies that are around the accepted power lv. Unbound doesn't change that, and you don't need Unbound to go off the scale crazy.

Simply put: If a player isnt playing a super friends army in a battle forged list he isn't going to suddeny play it in an unbound list.


The only thing unbound really does is give you the freedom to really build your dream army for the trade off of not getting all those unbalancing free detachment and formation bonuses. Some players might feel somewhat cheated by this dumping of the army building puzzle game aspect. I personally enjoy an opponent who created his unique dream army very much and don't see the added value of my opponent having to buy units that he doesn't want to just to sort of make it happen. For example If my opponent wanted to build a cool Rogue grader army with some Alien mercenaries. He could show up with an unbound list containing:

- inquisitor, techpriest, Librarian, canoness ( all modeled to be Rogue trader player characters)
- Some Storm troopers
- Inq henchmen.
- 1 kroot carnivore squad.
- 1 Dark eldar court of the archon -> Only taking the alien mercenaries
- 1 Squad of Flash gits
- A few of the imperial flyers he liked the look of it the most

I would love to play against that. Forcing my opponent to play with the following list doesn't make any sense to me at all.

-Inq detachment
1 Inq max 3 hencmen squads.
-Allied detachment.
1 command HQ squad.
1 tech priest
1 troop Vets unit
1 unit of Storm troopers
-Allied detachment SM
1 Librarian
1 unit of scouts
-Allied detachment Sisters of Battle
canoness
Battle sisters
-Allied detachment
1 Tau Commander, 1 kroot carnicore squad.
-Allied detachment
1 Dark eldar court of the argeon, 1 unit dark eldar warriors
-Allied detachment orks
1MEk
1unit of grots
1 unit of Flash gits
-Flywing formation

Or an other example

Ork speed freeks.
Unbound.
Ork warbozz on bike.
5 bike squads
10 Buggies
2 ork fliers

Looks cool right. now lets see how this has to be done in Battle forged
-CAD
Ork warbozz on bike
2 units of gretchin
3 Bikes.
-CAD
Mek
2 units of gretchin
2 Bikes.
1 Buggy
-CAD
Mek
2 units of gretchin
2 Bikes.
1 Buggy
-CAD
Mek
2 units of gretchin
3 Buggies
-CAD
Mek
2 units of gretchin
3 Buggies
-CAD
Mek
2 units of gretchin
3 Buggies
Flywing


This doesn't make the armies feel more like an army, doesn't make it any fluffier isn't what the player wanted to play and on top of that gives me a worse game due to him having all sorts of useless minimized excuse units while reducing the point allocated at the actual fun units, and there might even be the risk of it no longer fitting in max point value of the game.

The issue with unbound lists is that the decent ones could easily be made into bound lists. Its the odd ball or broken lists that cant be made bound and tend to be no fun to play against (like always there are execeptions to that). Playing against a army of just drop pods could be fun/silly once but would get old pretty fast, simply put gimicky lists tend to suck either you stomp or get stomped there is little middle ground. If you are going to spend the next 2 -4 hours you dont want to be wasting it on a boring game.
OP if you have a list in mind that you want to run unbound why dont you share it and we can try and help make it bound with out changing it hopfully.

The main objection to unbound is tradition. There was a strong objection back at the beginning of 7th when the FOC mattered, but all the stupidity with allies/formations/etc has made unbound irrelevant. You don't need to play unbound to spam nothing but the most powerful options, you can just take several copies of the appropriate formation(s) and get free bonuses for doing it. Unbound is pretty much irrelevant except for the occasional weird gimmick idea that finds some obscure rule interaction to exploit (spamming dozens of copies of a buff HQ and stacking buffs, for example) and, honestly, most of those are pretty bad anyway.

Personal view: Unbound is fine in theory and can be fine in practise. The exception to this is when people mix-and-match forces from different armies specifically for bonuses with disregard to any fluff or theme - where a single unit of an enemy faction is fulfilling a role that the main army could fill.

 Wulfmar wrote:
Personal view: Unbound is fine in theory and can be fine in practise. The exception to this is when people mix-and-match forces from different armies specifically for bonuses with disregard to any fluff or theme - where a single unit of an enemy faction is fulfilling a role that the main army could fill.

Cough you realise that you can just replace "unbound" with "40k" in that sentence right.
If a player isn't cheesing out a super friends list he isn't suddenly going to do make one when he goes unbound.

When you can take a CAD of Wraithguard, Wind Riders, Wraithlord, Wraithknight etc, unbound really doesn't seem like that big a deal.

Fair comments I suppose. I innately stick to one army plus allied detachment and go thematically when playing a bound force - which has coloured my perception a bit

A Thats cool and all but what if you want to play thematic a single faction army that doesnt have formations made for it. Such as a speed freak army, and do you really want to limit your opponent from playing his dream army just because you like to play a single faction ?

 oldzoggy wrote:
^ This is the stigma.

But the premise behind this reasoning is flawed.

If you have a system that allows you to take whatever you want, logic says the best option is to take the best and most powerful options...

Players don't take " the best and most powerful options" at all in all but the most competitive games. They try to build fun armies that are around the accepted power lv. Unbound doesn't change that, and you don't need Unbound to go off the scale crazy.

Simply put: If a player isnt playing a super friends army in a battle forged list he isn't going to suddeny play it in a unbound list.


The only thing unbound really does is give you the freedom to really build your dream army for the trade off of not getting all those unbalancing free detachment and formation bonuses. Some players might feel somewhat cheated by this dumping of the army building puzzle game aspect. I personally enjoy an opponent who created his unique dream army very much and don't see the added value of my opponent having to buy units that he doesn't want to just to sort of make it happen. For example If my opponent wanted to build a cool Rogue grader army with some Alien mercenaries. He could show up with an unbound list containing:

- inquisitor, techpriest, Librarian, canoness ( all modeled to be Rogue trader player characters)
- Some Storm troopers
- Inq henchmen.
- 1 kroot carnivore squad.
- 1 Dark eldar court of the archon -> Only taking the alien mercenaries
- 1 Squad of Flash gits
- A few of the imperial flyers he liked the look of it the most

I would love to play against that. Forcing my opponent to play with the following list doesn't make any sense to me at all.

-Inq detachment
1 Inq max 3 hencmen squads.
-Allied detachment.
1 command HQ squad.
1 tech priest
1 troop Vets unit
1 unit of Storm troopers
-Allied detachment SM
1 Librarian
1 unit of scouts
-Allied detachment Sisters of Battle
canoness
Battle sisters
-Allied detachment
1 Tau Commander, 1 kroot carnicore squad.
-Allied detachment
1 Dark eldar court of the argeon, 1 unit dark eldar warriors
-Allied detachment orks
1MEk
1unit of grots
1 unit of Flash gits
-Flywing formation

This doesn't make the army feel more like an army, doesn't make it any fluffier isn't what the player wanted to play and on top of that gives me a worse game due to him having all sorts of useless minimized excuse units while reducing the point allocated at the actual fun units, and there might even be the risk of it no longer fitting in max point value of the game.

Lol that was rather a large edit to what I responded too :/. You did bring up a good list for unbound and I think most people would be fine to play against. OP was asking why people dont like playing against unbound and the big issue is to many people have been burned by gimicky/broken lists and find it more fun to play against bound lists. Also one other thing I think people miss is for some they feel its crossing over into the point of playing toy soldier and its no longer a table top game (not my own opinion but can still see why some one might think that).

Unbound lists more often than not, completely contradict the lore in really ridiculous ways. I big part of 40k for my inner circle is creating battles that are actually occurring in the 40k universe. After all, why is someone playing 40k if they have no interest in the setting? There are dozens of other wargames out there that have a much more balanced/competitive ruleset with arguably just as aesthetically pleasing models if not more so at a fraction of the cost. The only plausible explanation outside of being TFG for an unbound list, is if said player only has (x) amount of points between 2 armies that share his/her interest. Outside of that its pure power gaming TFG behavior.

For me its basically on principle for pick up games. If I don't know you or maybe have played a game or two with you over the course of a few months then I don't know you very well. I don't really want to have to comb over a list every time I hear unbound to figure out what kind of game they are playing. Unbound tends to be one of the four types of lists
1. Pure cheese
2. Odd ball list (all Killa Kanz, only rattlings, 10 units of mek guns, etc)
3. Somebody being lazy and can't be bothered to figure out how to properly list build.
4. New player who has no idea what they are doing so their "army list" is probably unbound by default.

1-3 are not really something I want to play with against a random person in a pick up game. I've encountered the lazy type once and both their attitude and the point value of their army was highly questionable which made the game rather unfun. I do love an oddball game at times but generally with friends who I know as it makes it easier to just be relaxed and enjoy the absurdity of the type of game we are playing.

New players are their own type of thing and I don't mind playing against an unbound list of theirs (usually because they lack the models to make a proper list) but encourage them to learn list building as it is an important aspect of the game.

Let me tell you a story;

I once tried to make an Unbound army for my (severely underpowered) IG. I didn't want to have to take troops with my tanks, so I made a list of just Russ tanks.
I showed the list to my opponent, who began raging about how it is impossible to deal with pure tank armies, and how I needed to have troops in my list.
I had to make my army much less thematic by adding some troopers.
I played with that army, and lost heavily because most of my tanks got taken out before they could do anything.

I pointed this out to my opponent, who simply reiterated his point that I *had* to have troops or else it would not be fair.
Later on, he constructed a tanks-only unbound list and wouldn't stop harassing me about how that was fair.

This is why I don't like people.

zalak wrote:
OP was asking why people dont like playing against unbound and the big issue is to many people have been burned by gimicky/broken lists and find it more fun to play against bound lists. .

Yes we all have faced nightmarish list. But have all of us really been burned by an unfun unbound list?
I have never been burned by a Unbound list, I have been burned by players (who happened to play bound lists). Sure we all have faced that slow kid who just can't seem to get the rules and has an "unbound army" that is just a collection of random models, the tournament player with a social disorder and really enjoys beating the crap out of causal lists of 12 year olds or that one dude who is always trying to sneak in his titan. But that doesn't really matter does it. No sane person would expect a pick up game vs any of those guys to be any fun and playing battle forged or unbound isn't really going to change anything about it.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vankraken wrote:
Unbound tends to be one of the four types of lists
1. Pure cheese
2. Odd ball list (all Killa Kanz, only rattlings, 10 units of mek guns, etc)
3. Somebody being lazy and can't be bothered to figure out how to properly list build.

Same here, would you enjoy any battle forged game against one of these players ?
The cheese player would play cheese any way he doesn't need unbound for that.
While making a oddball list is simpler in an unbound army it doesn't really matter that much for any maniac actually owning this stuff and wanting to play it will most likely also be able to find a way to play it in battle forged.
All killa kanz is playable in battle forged, so is 10 mek guns, or the MSU nightmare of all lone Space wulf servitors + 2 HQ's. Granted all ratlings isn't possible in battle forged but do you really mind playing against that above the other oddball list he would otherwise have constructed.
And the lazy guy will just be too lazy to build a legal list any way. If he is off in points on unbound he will be off on points in battle forged. The only difference is that he will probably also violate some detachment restrictions without telling you so.

Basically as insaniak said, it's the CONCEPT that you can build whatever you want, with no rules. You COULD take three Wraithknights and 3 Imperial Knights. You COULD take 8 heavy support choices.

It's a fear, nothing else. I think the people who would get the most out of Unbound wouldn't do things like that anyways; unbound lets you, for example, play a very specifically themed army, without being "forced" to take filler choices. It's not always cheese, there are still a few concepts that can't easily be made at all with Battleforged, and a few that can but are better suited to Unbound so you don't have to have a "troop tax" to play what you want.

Even for a pick-up game, the issue with unbound is that it has potential to be abused, not that it's inherently bad. Even a couple minute chat while asking for a game could reveal if the person using Unbound has a fun, fluffy army or is a cheesemonger. I find the main issue is that it requires talking beyond "Hey want a game? Sure! How many points?".

The gist here is that Warhammer (all flavors) players in particular seem to want to game with a minimum of fuss, which I can totally understand as I argued for a long time how other games allowed that, but the key concept in 40k is that you should be having a quick chat to at least pretend that you're playing a fun narrative game and not just sitting down and setting up like in say Magic with barely a word spoken to your opponent outside of announcing game actions.

Lol, screw your unbound lists, this is all just an excuse so you can field whatever you want reguardless of fluff or fairness. People like you are the reason 40k is in the state that it is. There are reasons why there are restrictions in this game and if you want to be "that guy" and go field your 10 ork buggies or some other gak than your welcome to go elsewhere. Now, if you will excuse me, I will be taking my battleforged list of 5 wraithknights and going home. Good. Day.

The reason I ask this question is because my next project is a mechanised Imperial Army, made up of tanks.

Something like this:
Astra Militarum Tank Company/Artillery Company
Imperial Knight
Space Marines Tank Company (Predators, Whirlwinds, Vindicators)

This, without fielding any foot soldiers. The only models on foot would be the Techpriests and the Servitors.

zalak wrote:
The issue with unbound lists is that the decent ones could easily be made into bound lists.

Mostly. There are lore concepts (Daemonhunters-book-style integrated Inquisitorial detachments, Space Marine Chapter Serf armies, the Alpha Legion...) that can be frustrating to try and make work in small games without Unbound or homemade rules.

 Peregrine wrote:
The main objection to unbound is tradition. There was a strong objection back at the beginning of 7th when the FOC mattered, but all the stupidity with allies/formations/etc has made unbound irrelevant. You don't need to play unbound to spam nothing but the most powerful options, you can just take several copies of the appropriate formation(s) and get free bonuses for doing it. Unbound is pretty much irrelevant except for the occasional weird gimmick idea that finds some obscure rule interaction to exploit (spamming dozens of copies of a buff HQ and stacking buffs, for example) and, honestly, most of those are pretty bad anyway.

Exalted


And sadly true that formations are worse than unbound in many ways, if you're playing unbound you actually have to pay points for stuff.




Unbound shouldn't exist, in so much that, the rulebook tends to state early on paraphrasing: "break whatever rules you want" with the inference of being on the same page as one's opponent. Unbound shouldn't need to be written in the rules, apoc existed for a reason, it didn't need to suffocate 40k and really that's a microcosm of 7th ed's problem. One size fits all arms race to the bottom. 5th ed pre game talk seems like a chat with a neighbour in passing compared to 7th ed, which even amongst friends can at times resemble emergency talks at the united nations. Unbound has always been a thing since apoc, and formations like unbound should have remained in apoc, where they belong. If two like minded opponents want to get freaky with army comp, more power to them. My preference will remain playing with an foc, it's barely a factor in terms of balance anyway but it brings some semblance of sanity. Can't blame the foc for bad codex balance and terrible army construction rules.

It's funny because 90% of cheese lists aren't even unbound, because why would you take it unbound when you can take it in any of all those formations everyone has?

 d00mspire wrote:
The reason I ask this question is because my next project is a mechanised Imperial Army, made up of tanks.

Something like this:
Astra Militarum Tank Company/Artillery Company
Imperial Knight
Space Marines Tank Company (Predators, Whirlwinds, Vindicators)

This, without fielding any foot soldiers. The only models on foot would be the Techpriests and the Servitors.

I don't have the Guard tank company rules but there's a formation in the Space Marine book composed of Techmarines and tanks, and a meta-detachment in Angels of Death that uses it as a core formation (the formation gives Techmarines +1 to repair vehicles in it, the meta-detachment ignores Crew Shaken/Crew Stunned and lets you make a tank your Warlord with a unique Warlord Trait that lets another tank in the formation shoot twice)

 Peregrine wrote:
The main objection to unbound is tradition. There was a strong objection back at the beginning of 7th when the FOC mattered, but all the stupidity with allies/formations/etc has made unbound irrelevant. You don't need to play unbound to spam nothing but the most powerful options, you can just take several copies of the appropriate formation(s) and get free bonuses for doing it. Unbound is pretty much irrelevant except for the occasional weird gimmick idea that finds some obscure rule interaction to exploit (spamming dozens of copies of a buff HQ and stacking buffs, for example) and, honestly, most of those are pretty bad anyway.

What Peregrine said.

Unbound is a shaky concept for a tactical wargame, one that really should be there to portray specific forces for specific battles that may be out of the norm but very rate, but it's an option that's always been an there with willing opponents. It wasn't something that really needed to be codified in the rules. The bigger issue now is that for all the potential issues with Unbound, the game has taken the power levels of formations and detachments to such a point that they've got far more power than Unbound can possibly muster, and allow a very similar level of freedom in what one can bring. There's no reason to dislike it any more than anything else anymore, but that's just because everything else has reached and exceeded the abuse level possible with Unbound.

Pretty much already said, the stigma with Unbound is the potential for stupidity and abuse it allows, even more than what can currently be done by going battle forged.

But, not everybody is the kind of person who would go crazy with Unbound. For some, it is a chance to run themed armies without paying some of the usual taxes. For instance, there really isn't much of a difference between my all Genestealer horde with Deathleaper as my HQ tax, and without him as unbound, but with Unbound I can stick a little closer to theme.

Found the Guard version, it's in Damocles Mont'ka. You don't really get the meta-detachment benefits but you get a bound detachment consisting entirely of Enginseers and Venerable BS4 Russes. Enjoy.

Where I am it's a mix of the fact that it's bad game design, in theory it allows you to make stupidly strong lists without limit and in my area it only really gets used by TFG's.

We dont even play unbound in apoc games. Before this, my unit selection was among others: Ork Stompa, some Dreadknights and Imperial Knights, Baneblade, and some Ork and SM flyers. Can be pretty hard to deal with for a conventional army.

If the unbound list is limited to 1-2 armies, and has followed some kind of fluff for it, then I am down.

But really, with the amount of force options anymore is unbound really needed?

Most people that I chat with do not realize all the stuff available. Really the only armies that maybe need unbound are:
Inquisition, Sisters, Legion of the damned......I cannot think of alot of armies that lack formations along with varied FoC options.

Even the Harlequins, who lack an HQ, have multiple formations and FoC options to pick from now.

Again, I think Unbound can work if you have a fluffy idea that's not just blatantly abusing things. Similar to how AoS should-be default of "Open Play" works, it can be abused but all it requires is a little talk beforehand so your opponent knows that A) You're using Unbound and B) The general composition of your army so they can see it's not just min-maxing. I would imagine most opponent's wont have a problem with that if it's clear you want Unbound to do a fluffy/thematic army and not just cheese things out.

For example, Unbound would let me do an (IMHO) fluffy and thematic Iron Warriors siege army, a few daemon engines, a few helbrutes, some tanks, etc. which is fluffy and not overpowering. That's a far cry from taking Wraithguard backed up with Crisis Suits and an Imperial Knight and a Bloodthirster or three. Sometimes there are formations that let you do things that otherwise would need Unbound (e.g. all Terminator, all Wraith, all Jetbike) but sometimes it doesn't work.

 sfshilo wrote:
But really, with the amount of force options anymore is unbound really needed?

I challenge you to make one of the following armies while remaining Battle forged
-Speedcult army without spamming up on grots, boyz or using oop Forge world rules.
-A decent mek / scrap themed ork army that uses looted wagons as transports.
-Mono Inquisitor army with just 1 HQ instead of spamming inquisitors all over the place
-Kroot army.