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After looking at AoS I have some newfound respect for the concept of Unbound. I won't deny it can easily be abused, but it's there as a viable option for casual/narrative style play just like in AoS. I maintain that having some level of talk is all that is needed to fix the issues with Unbound and, perhaps, the entire game.

 oldzoggy wrote:

Stuff

Everyone of these complaints is based on what I call "Special Snowflake" whine.

Deathwing players especially suffer from this. Just because YOU do not want to adapt and require a super special unique snowflake codex to make your idea work perfectly in your brain, does not mean you are EVER going to get one from GW. Additionally, when pressed about "your" special snowflake army list the response is usually the same, "well i don't want to use X unit"; or "X army gets it why can't I?"

Usually this is followed by a discussion of how Space Marines get unique codex stuff, yadda yadda yadda....

The point is, I read a TON of 40k Fluff, some might call it an unhealthy amount. Those things (called books) black library publishes, GW then releases in codex form to (usually) sell a product and advance some narrative that will generate sales. An example, the BEAST series that has been on going, no one had any clue months ago that was going to turn into a Deathwatch origin stories novel, they used it to drum up an idea/support so people will go buy deathwatch TODAY.

So to your specific armies:
Inquisition: you would like an army codex, that ALREADY has many many many options, to have MORE options. In addition, you'd like a faction, that is KNOWN for it's use of other factions by brute force, black mail, and the like, to have the ability to field an ENTIRE ARMY? I'm sorry but that is not going to happen, ally in what you need, that is what the inquistion does. That market is hugely saturated with Imperial stuff, I doubt they create an entire army for them, especially since they have quite a bit already. (They COULD use some formations however.) Best case the codices get recombined, but that's up to GW and the sales it could generate.

Kroot: There is little to no fluff regarding Kroot, they are a subservient alien race to the Tau. Despite this, Tau players have the ability to field nearly 100% kroot army. IF you read the fluff, you would realize the rarity of an "all kroot" army in the universe of 40k, nearly every instance of Kroot I can think of occurs as Kroot serving some TAU HQ unit/leader. So again, if you don't like it fine but don't expect GW to make an entire Kroot army.

Speedfreaks: Ok this one, so this is EXACTLY the same whine as Deathwing. A bunch of players made bike lists in 4th and 5th edition that in no way match the fluff. (Ork speed freaks ALWAYS have vehicles in their armies, it's what they do, read some fluff man....) Here comes the new book, which is not the greatest admittedly, but GW has zero reason to make an entire codex of bikes when A. That isn't a thing in the fluff. and B. Per the fluff you CAN field speed freaks with the Codex provided.

So I will reiterate, unbound is unpopular because as far as editions go, 7th ed is VERY easy to field a themed list with a bound army. (Super easy, e

Wait so wanting a thematic army is "special snowflake"? No. Unbound helps that, just it has the stigma of being the bread and butter of the WAAC powergaming cheesemongering TFG (as though Battleforged is better). Same as how AoS can work fine if you talk, but people don't want that so it's now Matched Play or GTFO.

Lets be fair, having to negotiate every game is both a hassle and has the potential for social awkwardness when people have different visions of how they want to play. Model collections also play into that, as people can only run with what they brought.

Being able to show up with an army built to a predetermined and widely accepted standard, thats capable of engaging any other force built to the same standard, solves a lot of issues and avoids having to renegotiate the game with every new opponent.

There is nothing wrong with the Unbound army rules or playing a thematic Unbound army.

The problem is and always has been the players. Put simply... We don't trust one another.


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 Vaktathi wrote:
Being able to show up with an army built to a predetermined and widely accepted standard, thats capable of engaging any other force built to the same standard, solves a lot of issues and avoids having to renegotiate the game with every new opponent.

Spoken like a true blue tournament player.

Let me toss some truth in your general direction. Warhammer 40,000 was never played like how you suggest until the advent of tournaments.

Army lists are meant to be created on the fly taking into account the faction you'll be battling. The designers / rules writes mean it to be this way - it's just simply not feasible for (gasp) tournament play.

There are several types of armies that the internet has decreed "overpowered" whatever that means.

All of those armies are fielded as Battle Forged, some of which MUST be Battle Forged (eg, Gladius doesn't exist in Unbound).

Unbound simply cannot allow for things more powerful than people already accept in Battle Forged.

There is no reason to stigmatize it.

I think you guys miss are still missing the large issue with unbound. Unbound is not exactly more OP then bound/formations (in fact its normally weaker) its the gimmicky lists that are frustrating for the other player to play against. Hell you could win the game and still not have fun. I personally have played a few unbound games and found them fun but that was due to me and my friend hashing out what style of armies we wanted to use. Its playing with new people that this can be a bit of a issue and really it adds nothing to the game but headaches. For most players to play unbound we require a bit of trust with the other player and at that rate you could setup a "unbound" game with out the rules to do so. I have to ask did no one play a unbound game in 6th ed with your friends just because it was not in the rules?? Also it can be a pain remembering the rules for just one/two armies by allowing all of them in a single game is just frustrating and slows down the game (yeah some people could pull it off but still need to think about your opponent in this situation).

On that tangent, I was under the impression that points as a whole exist to have something vaguely resembling a balance in army composition, not necessarily power level or even numbers. It's just a rough guide to say approximately this size game, so it's not completely up in the air what you will face.

I think part of the big issue is that 40k tends to espouse the "narrative" style of play, but does nothing to actually enable and empower that gameplay (in fact it actively works against it by such a gross power imbalance). Compare to say historical gaming where you are refighting a battle where the defenders were outnumbered, does the person playing that army complain that they are outgunned and outnumbered? Not likely because they come up with something for the narrative, to win the defender just has to hold out for X turns, things like that. That seems to be the overall style 40k (and AoS) encourage; coming up with a storyline/theme for the battle beyond "Bob is at the game shop and wants a 1500 point game"

I just wish they did more things to promote that style. Some set of guidelines or similar that were easy for groups to pick up on and expand.

Back on topic of Unbound, again the problem is that you are right. players don't trust each other, because of points and the idea that the game is just a straight throw-down with no context. It's just an exhibition that is meaningless.

I see reasons for using Unbound, and for not using Unbound. There are decent reasons on either side. It seems that most of the players are against it, but a few of you think that because it is in the rules, you can do it. Of course, there are other reasons.

This is interesting if I'm honest. I never thought so many people would be against it.

 d00mspire wrote:
I see reasons for using Unbound, and for not using Unbound. There are decent reasons on either side. It seems that most of the players are against it, but a few of you think that because it is in the rules, you can do it. Of course, there are other reasons.

This is interesting if I'm honest. I never thought so many people would be against it.

I think too many people feel points are what keeps things fair, when they don't (see: AoS and how many people trashed it until points were added, then hooray balance!). I've seen people say flat out they refuse to play without points, as though not having points is going to mean everyone fields nothing but the best units (not like that doesn't happen WITH points too). I honestly do not get the mentality. I could see it in a game where points actually are used to try and balance (Warmachine for example, likely Infinity or Malifaux too), but in 40k points don't do much to balance anyways, so there's really no point.

People seem to be arguing for the FoC, not necessarily in favor of points anyways (but the two seem to go hand in hand). The argument against Unbound seems to be that you aren't being forced to take things in HQ/Elite/Troops/Fast/Heavy slots, as though that adds balance where there was none.

 oni wrote:


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 Vaktathi wrote:
Being able to show up with an army built to a predetermined and widely accepted standard, thats capable of engaging any other force built to the same standard, solves a lot of issues and avoids having to renegotiate the game with every new opponent.

Spoken like a true blue tournament player.

Or...rather, it could just be the way every other tabletop wargame works....

This sort of play has been the norm everywhere I've ever gamed over multiple editions. Nevermind the fact that I havent played in a tournament in quite a while and have increasingly less interest in that sort of thing.

Let me toss some truth in your general direction. Warhammer 40,000 was never played like how you suggest until the advent of tournaments.

So...you mean the last 2 decades plus? Basically time after the first couple years of Rogue Trader?

Army lists are meant to be created on the fly taking into account the faction you'll be battling.

That seems to be contradictory to the way most people play Warhammer 40,000 or pretty much any other tabletop wargame like Infinity, X-Wing, Dropzone Commander, Heavy Gear, Flames of War, Warmahordes, Battletech, Firestorm Armada, etc.

The designers / rules writes mean it to be this way - it's just simply not feasible for (gasp) tournament play.

or pickup gaming or league play or really how most people generally play tabletop wargames unless they're playing in tight knit regular gaming groups.

WayneTheGame wrote:


I think part of the big issue is that 40k tends to espouse the "narrative" style of play, but does nothing to actually enable and empower that gameplay (in fact it actively works against it by such a gross power imbalance). Compare to say historical gaming where you are refighting a battle where the defenders were outnumbered, does the person playing that army complain that they are outgunned and outnumbered? Not likely because they come up with something for the narrative, to win the defender just has to hold out for X turns, things like that. That seems to be the overall style 40k (and AoS) encourage; coming up with a storyline/theme for the battle beyond "Bob is at the game shop and wants a 1500 point game"

This is a big part of the issue. GW really does nothing for narrative play despite ostensibly pushing that as their focus. Mostly this boils down to just adding randomness and extraneous chart rolling. Historical games and other games that really push narrative battles with set out the forces in whole or in part, they will set up terrain, in whole or in part, they will provide crafted victory conditions that take the imbalances into account.

They're usually something along the lines of "Faction A shows up with elements X, Y and Z of the 9th Division, while Faction B defends from points 1, 2, and 3 with units A and B from the 42nd Regiment, the Bridge over Point C will be the primary objective, if secured by turn 5 then Faction A wins".

40k does really none of this, or when they do, it's done exceedingly poorly, most of the time its a couple random tables or some huge bonus given to one side tacked onto what otherwise is a normal pickup game.

pm713 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Reason Unbound lists are not fun.

Warhound titan 720
-Double barrel Laser Destroyer
-Double Barrel Laser Destroyer

Warhound Titan: 720
-Vulken Mega bolter
-Blasma Blast Canon

1440 pts list, and it total a legal unbound list.

sit in a corner and blast everything. Only thing thats gonna hurt it is if you get into melee with Str8+ weapons, which even then, they can stop and on a 6, anything under a blast template is just dead, on a 3-5, they take a S6 wound so.

Your not gonna have a good time.

Craftworld Warhost Detachment

Windrider Host:
115 Farseer jetbike
50 Warlock Conclave 1 model jetbike
81 3 scatterbikes
81 3 scatterbikes
81 3 scatterbikes
40 Vyper no upgrades

295 Wraithknight
295 Wraithknight
295 Wraithknight

1,335pts. Bound is better how, exactly?

Bam.
That Bound list is easily better.

And I can make an even better unbound version by removing the warlock and vyper for more scatbikes.

Warhost formation tax. At that point you can get up to eight Wraithknights without anything else at all.


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 d00mspire wrote:
I see reasons for using Unbound, and for not using Unbound. There are decent reasons on either side. It seems that most of the players are against it, but a few of you think that because it is in the rules, you can do it. Of course, there are other reasons.

This is interesting if I'm honest. I never thought so many people would be against it.

Honestly, any game of 40k has enough negotiation and 'be reasonable' involved that whether you're playing Unbound or not doesn't really matter. People finally stopped whining about Forge World units when they realized GW breaks the game harder every two weeks than Forge World has ever, people will stop whining about Unbound when they realize you can take pretty much anything you feel like anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 oni wrote:
There is nothing wrong with the Unbound army rules or playing a thematic Unbound army.

The problem is and always has been the players. Put simply... We don't trust one another.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Being able to show up with an army built to a predetermined and widely accepted standard, thats capable of engaging any other force built to the same standard, solves a lot of issues and avoids having to renegotiate the game with every new opponent.

Spoken like a true blue tournament player.

Let me toss some truth in your general direction. Warhammer 40,000 was never played like how you suggest until the advent of tournaments.

Army lists are meant to be created on the fly taking into account the faction you'll be battling. The designers / rules writes mean it to be this way - it's just simply not feasible for (gasp) tournament play.

More to the point the ideal of any game is to be able to bring whatever you want and have a decent game against a complete stranger. Everyone else seems to manage, GW just really, really sucks at it.

My personal opinion is that unbound feels unnecessary. Before this existed, my friends and I would often make adjustments from the rules for a thematic game. GW telling us the freedom's in our hands to play the game how we want has always been the case.

Maybe the biggest problem with unbound is how it latches onto the bigger problem of OP units and OP codices?

 Norn Queen Yurei wrote:
My personal opinion is that unbound feels unnecessary. Before this existed, my friends and I would often make adjustments from the rules for a thematic game. GW telling us the freedom's in our hands to play the game how we want has always been the case.

Maybe the biggest problem with unbound is how it latches onto the bigger problem of OP units and OP codices?

The funny thing with this is that Unbound seems to be a response to the people who never adjusted the rules at all. So it's sort of ironic that GW tried to introduce a rule breaking the rules, because people never wanted to adjust the rules for thematic games, only for people to still not use said rule because they don't want to adjust the rules.

I'm a new gamer, have only played a few games, but honestly I would respond to someone using unbound the same way I would any list, I would look at it and decide if I wanted to play it. I can accept on a case to case basis, just like I can in any situation for anything. I don't have to eat pizza every night, and I don't have to never eat pizza again. If someone wants to play to win at any cost, then I probably wouldn't have fun with their army, bound or unbound, because I don't care about winning, just the game itself. Unless they wanted to win but were considerate and fun during the game, even if they kick my butt with some crazy bound eldar formation, or some unbound one.

Just for the fact of it, I think this negative reaction to unbound is unique to Dakkadakka, because I put a similar post up on another forum and only one person had an issue with it, as long as they had a rational conversation. If you don't want to take two minutes to go, "what is your list?"
"oh, I am glad you asked, it is 1500 points of unbound built from Militarum Tempestus, Inquisition, and Blood Angels"(IDK couldn't think of anything so I listed random armies)
"Why are you running it unbound, can I see the list?"
"Sure, I am running it unbound because these dudes represent a mercenary force, and the Inquisition is a Rogue Trader, and the Blood Angels are just savage techno barbarians in armor, and I felt it worked best with just this HQ and the BA only having Jump Packs with Chainswords."

Option A: "Oh, cool, that looks like a lot of fun to play, I really like your paint job on the BA"
Option B:" No thanks, that looks too unbalanced, it is a lot of melta and elites, but Jack wouldn't mind, I will introduce you guys."
Option C: "No, I don't like unbound, come back with a bound list and I might play you"

And you know what, any of those are cool, because if we aren't inclusive of people in our hobby who want to play unbound because they only like death company, but are okay with WAAC and TFGs because it is in the rules, we aren't going to keep growing our hobby.

 HCMistborn wrote:
I'm a new gamer, have only played a few games, but honestly I would respond to someone using unbound the same way I would any list, I would look at it and decide if I wanted to play it. I can accept on a case to case basis,

The fun thing is you might not be alone even if players don't accept it ; )
Just look at these awnsers on why they would refuse to play against a battle forged list.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/700274.page

WayneTheGame wrote:
I think too many people feel points are what keeps things fair, when they don't (see: AoS and how many people trashed it until points were added, then hooray balance!). I've seen people say flat out they refuse to play without points, as though not having points is going to mean everyone fields nothing but the best units (not like that doesn't happen WITH points too). I honestly do not get the mentality. I could see it in a game where points actually are used to try and balance (Warmachine for example, likely Infinity or Malifaux too), but in 40k points don't do much to balance anyways, so there's really no point.

Why are you assuming this weird black and white world where either points are balanced and accurate or completely useless? If you have points, even inaccurate points, you have at least rough parity between the two sides. If you build a 1500 point army with the most powerful units you might get up to 2000 points worth of power, maybe even 2500-3000. If you play a game without points at all the only limit to how powerful your army can be is how much money you're willing to spend. Want to show up with a dozen titans and enough chapter masters (or similar death star type characters) to literally fill every single square inch of your deployment zone, while I bring my HQ and 3-4 "normal" squads? You can do it.

(And no, people don't field nothing but the best units in no-points games because there's no reason to ever leave models at home. You bring the best units, and you also bring everything else you own until you've literally filled the table or run out of money.)

WayneTheGame wrote:

 Norn Queen Yurei wrote:
My personal opinion is that unbound feels unnecessary. Before this existed, my friends and I would often make adjustments from the rules for a thematic game. GW telling us the freedom's in our hands to play the game how we want has always been the case.

Maybe the biggest problem with unbound is how it latches onto the bigger problem of OP units and OP codices?

The funny thing with this is that Unbound seems to be a response to the people who never adjusted the rules at all. So it's sort of ironic that GW tried to introduce a rule breaking the rules, because people never wanted to adjust the rules for thematic games, only for people to still not use said rule because they don't want to adjust the rules.

The Unbound thing happened during the Kirby era, who detested the competitive scene. I'm guessing he saw it as a win-win situation; completely destroy any semblance of balance for the competitive scene while simultaneously milk them for money now that they can buy the most powerful units, which coincidentally were also the more expensive, newer kits. When Tournaments banned this "option" they started making formations and decurions that were, arguably, far more powerful than anything you could build with unbound. I am really hoping that if an 8th edition drops, they shove all of this "FoC shenanigans" and "Formations" crap back to Apocalypse where it belongs. 40k has always been a skirmish game and a lot of those formations and detachments are just not feasible at the lower points limit (this holds more true for those who have formations and stuff that have huge requirements, like Imperial Guard, Orks, and any Daemonic Incursion that actually wants to run a Tetrad within an incursion).

This actually leads me into another point; a lot of people believe that, in an idealized system, points are all you need for balance. This is actually untrue; prior to GW ditching the classic FoC as the only way to build armies and introducing allies, a unit's faction, role and points all played an important part in it's balance; A Kroot Carnivore squad is a comically inept "close combat specialist" choice when compared to that of other armies, but it was never suppose to be compared to another army; it's meant for an army that had far more powerful shooting. The Tau had a hard counter in the form of an entire phase. In exchange they were heinously powerful in the shooting phase. If you want to even this out, of course you're gonna pay out the nose for a sub-par "evening out", otherwise your army would have no weaknesses. This also extends to Troop Choices VS other ones; of course if you had the choice, you'd never buy a Tactical squad; the Devastator squad is superior in every way. Troops are there as a point sink, pure and simple. It's why they're troops; they're the most numerous fighters the army has. If every army could be fielding Commandos for their rank and file they would, but there simply isn't that many commandos to toss out like that. All of these combined, an army can be balanced not with just points, but also it's unit's role in the battlefield, it's army-wide weaknesses and so forth.

But stuff like Unbound or even Allies completely ruin this dynamic; Why bother allying in Kroot for that tau army when you can simply buy a ton of Death Company Space Marines? Who cares if they are not bros with your tau, they're gonna be in the enemy's face half the time while you hang back and shoot. Suddenly, there's no gaps in that army's composition. This also leads into another problem; units that are getting increasingly good at dealing with "everything". Specialist units are not very spammable because it's a hard balance to strike between "just enough to do the job" and "too many". But a unit that is decent at everything is far more valuable; they might not be better than the specialist, but if you can spam 4 times as much, their combined might is good enough to match, while not being totally useless once their intended target (if there is even one) is gone. The longterm effects of this is that the armies will slowly start becoming the same in terms of gameplay, with only minor variations between them that don't realistically affect much.

I don't understand why people are commenting on unbound being not as bad as formations when unbound armies can take formations.

I love unbound. I have a few unbound armies, a night lords raptor cult, an ork walker army, an assassin army. They win less frequently than battle forged lists, but I probably have more fun using them.

Commissar Benny wrote:
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.

Thing is you can break the lore with ease in bound list as well.

Space marine, eldar, tyranid. Sounds like a likely combo? Don't need unbound to do that. Will even get more powerful list for boot!


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Reavas wrote:
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.

Sooooo you are angry about people shooting themselves to foot and LIMITING their power?

You DO realize these days bound lists create more broken armies than unbound right? Nobody is stupid enough to take unbound to break the game. Well okay some noob power gamer might but anybody with half a knowledge of 40k will simply take bound list that's even more broken.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
The Unbound thing happened during the Kirby era, who detested the competitive scene. I'm guessing he saw it as a win-win situation; completely destroy any semblance of balance for the competitive scene while simultaneously milk them for money now that they can buy the most powerful units, which coincidentally were also the more expensive, newer kits.

I don't think this is it at all. Even GW isn't stupid enough to deliberately drive people away from their products. What unbound was really about was selling the latest toys to kids (and their parents). The last thing GW wants to have is their employees saying "well, little Timmy can't use that shiny new space marine kit, he plays Tyranids". Unbound makes everything legal, so you have no reason not to buy the latest shiny thing you're looking at. Who cares if you play Tyranids, buy a Land Raider! Buy a knight! Buy some orks! JUST MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE BUYING AT ALL TIMES!

The idea behind it was definitely to sell more of the models that people could only spam a few of due to the FoC, but the way it was handled made it feel like Ol' Kirbs probably saw the consequences as a good thing. It didn't help that, if I remember, one of the examples given at the time was an army of Riptides; that's like telling a MTG player that he can now play 10 copies of Black Lotus.

 sfshilo wrote:

 oldzoggy wrote:

Stuff

Everyone of these complaints is based on what I call "Special Snowflake" whine.

Deathwing players especially suffer from this. Just because YOU do not want to adapt and require a super special unique snowflake codex to make your idea work perfectly in your brain, does not mean you are EVER going to get one from GW. Additionally, when pressed about "your" special snowflake army list the response is usually the same, "well i don't want to use X unit"; or "X army gets it why can't I?"

Usually this is followed by a discussion of how Space Marines get unique codex stuff, yadda yadda yadda....

The point is, I read a TON of 40k Fluff, some might call it an unhealthy amount. Those things (called books) black library publishes, GW then releases in codex form to (usually) sell a product and advance some narrative that will generate sales. An example, the BEAST series that has been on going, no one had any clue months ago that was going to turn into a Deathwatch origin stories novel, they used it to drum up an idea/support so people will go buy deathwatch TODAY.

So to your specific armies:
Inquisition: you would like an army codex, that ALREADY has many many many options, to have MORE options. In addition, you'd like a faction, that is KNOWN for it's use of other factions by brute force, black mail, and the like, to have the ability to field an ENTIRE ARMY? I'm sorry but that is not going to happen, ally in what you need, that is what the inquistion does. That market is hugely saturated with Imperial stuff, I doubt they create an entire army for them, especially since they have quite a bit already. (They COULD use some formations however.) Best case the codices get recombined, but that's up to GW and the sales it could generate.

Kroot: There is little to no fluff regarding Kroot, they are a subservient alien race to the Tau. Despite this, Tau players have the ability to field nearly 100% kroot army. IF you read the fluff, you would realize the rarity of an "all kroot" army in the universe of 40k, nearly every instance of Kroot I can think of occurs as Kroot serving some TAU HQ unit/leader. So again, if you don't like it fine but don't expect GW to make an entire Kroot army.

Speedfreaks: Ok this one, so this is EXACTLY the same whine as Deathwing. A bunch of players made bike lists in 4th and 5th edition that in no way match the fluff. (Ork speed freaks ALWAYS have vehicles in their armies, it's what they do, read some fluff man....) Here comes the new book, which is not the greatest admittedly, but GW has zero reason to make an entire codex of bikes when A. That isn't a thing in the fluff. and B. Per the fluff you CAN field speed freaks with the Codex provided.

So I will reiterate, unbound is unpopular because as far as editions go, 7th ed is VERY easy to field a themed list with a bound army. (Super easy, e

Your entire counter argument is what I like to call "special snowflake opinion". You assume that people who have a different opinion of the game than you are wrong.

I don't think Deathwing players expect a new improved codex. They'd like one but they don't expect it. I'd like a codex for Vespid. Doesn't mean I'm going to moan about it and make a million posts demanding GW listen to my solitary cries. (I don't see how various space marine abilities and wargear have to do with unbound armies)

A vast majority of Black Library publications are based off codexes and existing models and background over a 30 year history. You are by no means the only person who reads BL books. As an example, no books were written to advertise/lead up to a new product prior to 2010. By your claim, plastic chaos terminators (2005) were released because there were publications that included them in the story. There is no evidence (or logic) for that line of reasoning. If BL novels were meant to be a foreshadowing of models and rules to come... where's my Khorne/Tzeentch/DA rose army of roses from the rose planet of the rose nebula? I need my time traveling DA, Khorne worshiping rose marines!

Inquisition: He wanted a specific collection to use in games, not a new rulebook with more options. Just access to a list that includes Xenos Mercenaries. For someone who reads 'too much' BL you have a limited view of the Inquisition. They do in fact have entire armies and fleets of ships at their command. GW could always add more btw. I've been playing long enough to remember the wishes to have Grey Knights as a playable faction instead of a single 500pt squad. Which Hunters! Daemons as their own faction! AD MECH!!!! Those were all considered pipe dreams once upon a time.

Kroot: They are not subservient to the Tau. They're mercenaries that work for anyone who will pay. They have their own worlds and tech. They just happen to be in the same area of the galaxy as the Tau. And Kroot actually did get a formal army a while ago.

Speedfeeks: People had biker armies back in 3rd. You know, when the Speedfreek army was released in a codex without any prior BL publications pushing the Speedfreek agenda. Biker tribes are indeed a part of the fluff. Considering ork Waaaghs can have billions of greenskins there is a very high probability that several thousand bikers could gather together and form a mini waaagh on the battlefield. Motorcycles are vehicles.

I think you have confused fluff for rules and codexes for BL novels.

I would like to chime in that a lot of people forget that Kroot are often called Mercenaries, and don't deal exclusively with Tau (although they do deal largely with Tau). In fact the Tau has to work out something akin to the Agreement between the Imperium and the AdMechs because they just can't reconcile the Kroot's cannibalism into part of the greater good without some head-scratching.


The Vespids, on the other hand, are implied to be completely subservient, since no other race can communicate with them and it's implied that the headgear their leaders wear have a mild form of mind control (or at least subliminal messaging). Plus they don't want much out of life.

The Tau and the Kroot are allied because the Tau showed up to a fight between the Kroot and some other race (I can't remember, may have been Orks). Because the Tau helped fend off the Orks, the Kroot that they helped joined them. The Tau wouldn't incorporate them for reasons above ^ - cannibalism.

There are, however, other Kroot in the galaxy - they are mercenaries to be paid and used by whoever wants to pay them and use them.

That's probably why they won't have an entire army made for them. If they did, I imagine it would be a small codex or supplement that could be used for all the races, as the Kroot are mercenaries which can be used by all.

If the Bound list you brought turns out to be invalid, and the only way to play is break it, go Unbound.
You get a game, but you get penalised for it, by not getting the benefits of being Bound.
Still, it's a game, and it's a legal army again.

For me, unbound brings the 'threat' of uncertainty - at least with Battle-Forged, you know what you can expect (especially if you like to watch battle reports, follow tournaments results, read army lists, visit forums, etc). Unbound, with almost no limits, everything could be done. Of course, it is limited by a player's collection, but in pick-up games you never know what the other guy/gal's collection is made of.

Still, Bound armies are so strong that only a person with an unchecked collection-driving would be able to really have a good match-up using Unbound. Also, you can simply say 'no' to a player using a bizarre list (that's why I'm a serious advocate of sharing army lists before playing).

tneva82 wrote:

Reavas wrote:
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.

Sooooo you are angry about people shooting themselves to foot and LIMITING their power?

You DO realize these days bound lists create more broken armies than unbound right? Nobody is stupid enough to take unbound to break the game. Well okay some noob power gamer might but anybody with half a knowledge of 40k will simply take bound list that's even more broken.

He was being sarcastic! And did it very well

axisofentropy wrote:Let's have a more useful exercise: Create the best Unbound army that otherwise adheres to ITC or another big tournament army construction format.
Is this best Unbound army really better than Battle-Forged armies that win big tournaments?

Vankraken wrote:Example: Take a Crisis Suit with 2x weapons. Repeat as many times as needed until you have your desired army. Use an Ethereal or Commander to be your Warlord if the rules require an HQ warlord. Its an MSU nightmare that can handle any threat via shooting and deathstars hate this kind of army as big units can't easily take out multiple units in a time efficient manner.

Good this is a good start! BUT would that army really be better than MSU Crisis Suits in Combined Arms Detachments that get Objective Secured? I'm not sure and it probably depends upon the matchup.

Anyone else want to try this?

 Peregrine wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
I think too many people feel points are what keeps things fair, when they don't (see: AoS and how many people trashed it until points were added, then hooray balance!). I've seen people say flat out they refuse to play without points, as though not having points is going to mean everyone fields nothing but the best units (not like that doesn't happen WITH points too). I honestly do not get the mentality. I could see it in a game where points actually are used to try and balance (Warmachine for example, likely Infinity or Malifaux too), but in 40k points don't do much to balance anyways, so there's really no point.

Why are you assuming this weird black and white world where either points are balanced and accurate or completely useless? If you have points, even inaccurate points, you have at least rough parity between the two sides. If you build a 1500 point army with the most powerful units you might get up to 2000 points worth of power, maybe even 2500-3000. If you play a game without points at all the only limit to how powerful your army can be is how much money you're willing to spend. Want to show up with a dozen titans and enough chapter masters (or similar death star type characters) to literally fill every single square inch of your deployment zone, while I bring my HQ and 3-4 "normal" squads? You can do it.

(And no, people don't field nothing but the best units in no-points games because there's no reason to ever leave models at home. You bring the best units, and you also bring everything else you own until you've literally filled the table or run out of money.)

I don't believe this. Maybe a competitive type of player, but there are/were plenty of games that don't necessarily use points where people don't just bring everything they have, because they have an idea for a force/battle/narrative and bring what feels appropriate. If you're playing a historical game you don't bring every regiment you own just because, you bring the regiments that would be at the battle (if refighting) or what would logically be sent (if not). I do not get where you get the idea that playing with no points means A) Bring only the most powerful stuff, because there's no reason not to and/or B) Bring everything you have. That's why games that don't have points usually have real narrative gaming, so you eyeball the things and come up with something approximately equal.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:

 Norn Queen Yurei wrote:
My personal opinion is that unbound feels unnecessary. Before this existed, my friends and I would often make adjustments from the rules for a thematic game. GW telling us the freedom's in our hands to play the game how we want has always been the case.

Maybe the biggest problem with unbound is how it latches onto the bigger problem of OP units and OP codices?

The funny thing with this is that Unbound seems to be a response to the people who never adjusted the rules at all. So it's sort of ironic that GW tried to introduce a rule breaking the rules, because people never wanted to adjust the rules for thematic games, only for people to still not use said rule because they don't want to adjust the rules.

The Unbound thing happened during the Kirby era, who detested the competitive scene. I'm guessing he saw it as a win-win situation; completely destroy any semblance of balance for the competitive scene while simultaneously milk them for money now that they can buy the most powerful units, which coincidentally were also the more expensive, newer kits. When Tournaments banned this "option" they started making formations and decurions that were, arguably, far more powerful than anything you could build with unbound. I am really hoping that if an 8th edition drops, they shove all of this "FoC shenanigans" and "Formations" crap back to Apocalypse where it belongs. 40k has always been a skirmish game and a lot of those formations and detachments are just not feasible at the lower points limit (this holds more true for those who have formations and stuff that have huge requirements, like Imperial Guard, Orks, and any Daemonic Incursion that actually wants to run a Tetrad within an incursion).

This actually leads me into another point; a lot of people believe that, in an idealized system, points are all you need for balance. This is actually untrue; prior to GW ditching the classic FoC as the only way to build armies and introducing allies, a unit's faction, role and points all played an important part in it's balance; A Kroot Carnivore squad is a comically inept "close combat specialist" choice when compared to that of other armies, but it was never suppose to be compared to another army; it's meant for an army that had far more powerful shooting. The Tau had a hard counter in the form of an entire phase. In exchange they were heinously powerful in the shooting phase. If you want to even this out, of course you're gonna pay out the nose for a sub-par "evening out", otherwise your army would have no weaknesses. This also extends to Troop Choices VS other ones; of course if you had the choice, you'd never buy a Tactical squad; the Devastator squad is superior in every way. Troops are there as a point sink, pure and simple. It's why they're troops; they're the most numerous fighters the army has. If every army could be fielding Commandos for their rank and file they would, but there simply isn't that many commandos to toss out like that. All of these combined, an army can be balanced not with just points, but also it's unit's role in the battlefield, it's army-wide weaknesses and so forth.

But stuff like Unbound or even Allies completely ruin this dynamic; Why bother allying in Kroot for that tau army when you can simply buy a ton of Death Company Space Marines? Who cares if they are not bros with your tau, they're gonna be in the enemy's face half the time while you hang back and shoot. Suddenly, there's no gaps in that army's composition. This also leads into another problem; units that are getting increasingly good at dealing with "everything". Specialist units are not very spammable because it's a hard balance to strike between "just enough to do the job" and "too many". But a unit that is decent at everything is far more valuable; they might not be better than the specialist, but if you can spam 4 times as much, their combined might is good enough to match, while not being totally useless once their intended target (if there is even one) is gone. The longterm effects of this is that the armies will slowly start becoming the same in terms of gameplay, with only minor variations between them that don't realistically affect much.

This was my initial complaint with the allies matrix. An army is meant to have strengths and weaknesses. Aside from it giving a massive boost to armies like Grey Knights (already OP at the time), it meant the Imperial Family's options spiralled out of control whilst Tyranids or Orks were greatly stifled. Of course that makes sense from a narrative perspective, which is fine, but narrative only gets you so far. Then came the plan to sell more Daemons with Daemonology. Now the Eldar are big fans of it for some reason... Couple this with Unbound, something fun but woefully open to abuse, and formations (aka Plz buy these possessed edition), and I can't even fathom what 40Ks trying to do anymore.

I play a lot of Flames of War which is a 15mm World War 2 game, but I almost see this like them declaring "yep, the French Maginot Line can take M1 Abrams tanks from Team Yankee. Just forge a narrative about a time machine experiment gone wrong."

Of course this makes me a hypocrite. I also love unbound because I trust myself with it. Like having an assassin and inquisitor in my Sisters of Battle, or a Hydra in my Genestealer Cult army as something stolen, so I'm probably best ignoring.