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Would the meta change much if we went back to the days in which only Troops choices scored?
The idea would be to encourage players to take less Elites/Fast/Heavy choices in favor of more "Rank-n-File" units.

I think it would help certain builds. Tau may get a bit toned down since you would need to take more Fire Warriors/Kroot and maybe even Devil Fish and thus wouls take less Suits. Or you will see more Farsight Crisis suit lists.
Likewise, Orks & DE may get a boost since they can spam Troops and transports.
Unfortunatley, I don't see this changing top Eldar and Space Marine list since they already field lots of Troops, either on jetbikes or with free transports.

So does the boost that lower tier armies may receive outweigh the minimal boost that top tier armies may receive? Would this change even matter in the current meta?

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It really limits games, to much honestly.

But Opp troops should have ObjSec regardless of Formation/Cad and all other units counted as scoring.


The Idea making armies not use Elites/Fast/heavy isn't right, many armies fluff is based around those styles.

Oh ps: DE wouldnt be better, Just b.c they can get 8-9 "Troop" transports doesnt mean its better, they are Weaker and more costly than other "troop" transports, being Av10 and Open top really hurts them.

You play DE with 12 Troop Transports VS dbl Demi-Company with there 12 Troop Transports and see how that goes.

It would force DE in to an incredibly boring mono build and completely remove the option of a Coven army, so hell no. I also find the idea that armies should be mostly rank and file to be incredibly boring, it's not the Kabalites that excite me about DE, it's the Incubi, Hellions, Scourges, Reavers, Mandrakes, Grotesques, Wracks and Court.

I would, however, be in favour of only units with the Infantry, Jump Infantry and Jet Pack Infantry unit types being able to score.

 Imateria wrote:
It would force DE in to an incredibly boring mono build and completely remove the option of a Coven army, so hell no. I also find the idea that armies should be mostly rank and file to be incredibly boring, it's not the Kabalites that excite me about DE, it's the Incubi, Hellions, Scourges, Reavers, Mandrakes, Grotesques, Wracks and Court.

I would, however, be in favour of only units with the Infantry, Jump Infantry and Jet Pack Infantry unit types being able to score.

I say let them all score... B.c isnt the point of an Objective is for your army to "get it" I would think if you are letting your army die over this objective that any unit you have able to grab it should.

BUT! Giving Infantry/Jump/Jet ObjSec would be fine, they would have the ability/speed/agility to take it over MC, Vehicles, Etc...

 Imateria wrote:

I would, however, be in favour of only units with the Infantry, Jump Infantry and Jet Pack Infantry unit types being able to score.

I like this idea better too.
Limiting the # of Elite/Fast/Heavy choices would not be the goal of this change, but preventing armies that are JUST Elite/Fast/Heavy is the goal.
Battles at the scale of 40K would and SHOULD have a healthy number of infantry models participating.
Vehicles, bikes, artillery, cav & beasts are fine, but are usually SUPPORT units tasked with certain goals that include doing more than just "get to point X and stay there"

So by making only Infantry scoring (along with Jump- & Jetpack-) you allow more units that just "Troops" to score.
This would also really stick it to Eldar Jetbike lists, although it would encourage Spider-spam sadly.

What about saying that only Elites, Troops & Fast score, with Infantry (just Infantry) units get Obsec no matter the detachment?

 Galef wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

I would, however, be in favour of only units with the Infantry, Jump Infantry and Jet Pack Infantry unit types being able to score.

I like this idea better too.
Limiting the # of Elite/Fast/Heavy choices would not be the goal of this change, but preventing armies that are JUST Elite/Fast/Heavy is the goal.
Battles at the scale of 40K would and SHOULD have a healthy number of infantry models participating.
Vehicles, bikes, artillery, cav & beasts are fine, but are usually SUPPORT units tasked with certain goals that include doing more than just "get to point X and stay there"

So by making only Infantry scoring (along with Jump- & Jetpack-) you allow more units that just "Troops" to score.
This would also really stick it to Eldar Jetbike lists, although it would encourage Spider-spam sadly.

What about saying that only Elites, Troops & Fast score, with Infantry (just Infantry) units get Obsec no matter the detachment?

Why SHOULD or WOULD battle have these Infantry in large numbers?

Remember Air Raids? I would say a Flier formation of all Bombers out of the DftS and some IG Tanks with very minimum Troops and a Extremely fluffy and fun army list.

Thats another why I favor all units being scoring, but giving Infantry units a slight edge is also nice and fluffy.

Ok, but ObSec isn't enough to discourage min-maxing of Troops and only the armies that can abuse ObSec (Marines & Eldar) really get any play out of it. Most armies just min-max there Troops to play their more competitive or "fun" units. And many of those lists are special detachments that do not come with ObSec.

We need a "relevant" bonus for fielding more Infantry. Something that also makes Infantry-heavy lists less boring.
Maybe Infantry score double points per objective?

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Why SHOULD or WOULD battle have these Infantry in large numbers?
.

Because at the scale that 40K exists, war has begun and the generals of said war have committed to the fight. Traditionally this involves sending in your bulk troopers first, then sending in Support units where needed. This does not mean "large numbers of infantry" but their should be some infantry present.
Otherwise the BRB definition of "Troops" is meaningless. Ya know, the one that describes them as the most common soldiers that an army has available. if they are the most common, why aren't they on the table-top more?

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What's the justification for Bikers not being able to score though outside of trying to create Balance?

I don't see any. If they're still troops there's no reason they shouldn't be able to.

The current set up is fine. Some units just need recosted. If you made this a rule, we'd have to recost anyway.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
What's the justification for Bikers not being able to score though outside of trying to create Balance?

I don't see any. If they're still troops there's no reason they shouldn't be able to.

You are 100% correct, Troop Bikes will have it, I was saying Troops and Infantry I was unclear about that I am Sorry.

 Galef wrote:
Ok, but ObSec isn't enough to discourage min-maxing of Troops and only the armies that can abuse ObSec (Marines & Eldar) really get any play out of it. Most armies just min-max there Troops to play their more competitive or "fun" units. And many of those lists are special detachments that do not come with ObSec.

We need a "relevant" bonus for fielding more Infantry. Something that also makes Infantry-heavy lists less boring.
Maybe Infantry score double points per objective?

We dont need Discourage, we dont need a bonus to play Troop heavy lists. Your bonus is you have more Models, a Flier heavy army will have a hard time getting objectives that is the down side of that.

You know what is more boring and sucks? Feeling like I need 500pts+ in Core Troop picks, I like my DE with Grots, Talos, Reavers etc... Why would I be punished to play they style of the army the way it is supposed to be played?

Nids have multi stages of attacking, Why punish Nids for playing Vanguard?

BA, same thing they are FA and Elite heavy FOR A REASON its the complete point of BA.

Well I guess that answers that then.
These weren't the droids I was looking for.
Move along.

Yeah, limiting is probably the wrong way to go; making troops more important and/or interesting would - to me - be the better way to go.

For my rules rewrite, I have been considering making it so that troops score 2 VPs/objective. Also, killing a Elite/Heavy/Fast unit is worth 2 VP; killing a HQ is worth 3 VP (basically rolling "Kill the Warlord" into the scoring). I would hope that could really tip the game towards making troops really valuable.

I agree that I don't think the answer should be making the cool "thing" about infantry is that the score better. Gamers enjoy things that are cool. And making infantry the only thing able to score, or troops the only thing able to score, does severely hamper the "cool" factor.

However, I do wish that infantry were better than other unit types in some things, rather than being automatically the "worst" unit type in everything. Specifically, they have to move in a way that's unique. Considering their slow movement, maybe Infantry shouldn't be slowed by difficult terrain, and they can get cover saves for simply being on a piece of terrain rather than needing true LOS. This makes them the only unit type that can benefit from Ruins, with everyone else getting a 5+ cover save from ruins at best.

At the same time, in that situation, I'd like to see other unit types slowed down more by difficult terrain. Like, they're faster in the open (Jump, Bikes, Jet, etc.), but only move 6 inches when starting or moving through difficult terrain. So they never move really fast, but also aren't very restricted. I hate how much stuff moves really fast AND is unrestricted!

Give troops synergistic bonuses based on being close to other troops. Boom. A reason to take troops.

Some of the troops just need some tweaking. After all, some troops are awesome and you like them. You got BOTH Skitarii troops (though Vanguard are superior), Grey Hunters, Space Marine Bikers and Scouts, Horrors, Grey Knight Terminators (to an extent), nobody has any complaints about their Deathwatch or Genestealer Cult troops yet.

So what is the issue with other troops? They're either in need of an entire codex fixing anyway (Dark Eldar, Orks, CSM), or just the tweaking itself to make them work (Tactical Marines, maybe Fire Warriors?, Gaunts).

I would love that system back IF and only IF! They make it so if you take a type of HQ you can make other units become troop.

Sorta like how 30k does it. Like if you take an HQ option that makes bikes troops, you loose access to other units like heavy support. But if you take troop ld and troops you have access to everything.

I think 40k could learn a lot from 30k

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I would love that system back IF and only IF! They make it so if you take a type of HQ you can make other units become troop.

Sorta like how 30k does it. Like if you take an HQ option that makes bikes troops, you loose access to other units like heavy support. But if you take troop ld and troops you have access to everything.

I think 40k could learn a lot from 30k

Many codex's have that. The arguement is forcing more troops, terminators, Bikes are fun but ALot of the cool units would NEVER be a troops, Carnifex, Talos, Land Raiders etc...

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I would love that system back IF and only IF! They make it so if you take a type of HQ you can make other units become troop.

Sorta like how 30k does it. Like if you take an HQ option that makes bikes troops, you loose access to other units like heavy support. But if you take troop ld and troops you have access to everything.

I think 40k could learn a lot from 30k

Many codex's have that. The arguement is forcing more troops, terminators, Bikes are fun but ALot of the cool units would NEVER be a troops, Carnifex, Talos, Land Raiders etc...

This is a half truth, you can run formations that make it so you don't need to take troops, for example, ravenwing strike force you can only take fast attacks things with the ravenwing special rule, but it does not make them troops.

In 5th and 6th they legitamitely were troop. Like i could make a Deathwing army of all terminators and land raiders and they would be scoring troops and take up the troop force org slot, not anymore.

The Deathwing formations they are still elites and are not scoring like a troop would be.

By scoring I'm referring more to objective secured. I know in7th they can score.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I would love that system back IF and only IF! They make it so if you take a type of HQ you can make other units become troop.

Sorta like how 30k does it. Like if you take an HQ option that makes bikes troops, you loose access to other units like heavy support. But if you take troop ld and troops you have access to everything.

I think 40k could learn a lot from 30k

Many codex's have that. The arguement is forcing more troops, terminators, Bikes are fun but ALot of the cool units would NEVER be a troops, Carnifex, Talos, Land Raiders etc...

This is a half truth, you can run formations that make it so you don't need to take troops, for example, ravenwing strike force you can only take fast attacks things with the ravenwing special rule, but it does not make them troops.

In 5th and 6th they legitamitely were troop. Like i could make a Deathwing army of all terminators and land raiders and they would be scoring troops and take up the troop force org slot, not anymore.

The Deathwing formations they are still elites and are not scoring like a troop would be.

By scoring I'm referring more to objective secured. I know in 7th they can score.

I said Many codex's do move units into troops I gave bikes and termies as examples, then I said many units that players like that are fun and cool in fast/heavy slots would never be a troop example: Talos from DE.

Were did I say you have to have a troop? or that these formations does make them troops? Sadly they are phases out "this unit becomes troops if you take X" but 40k always had some armies able to do it so far.

And in 30k cool units like that still have a place, either by supporting scoring units by handing out buffs or by being more dangerous for their points cost.

It should also be noted that unless stated otherwise all units in 30k are denial units, and certain units in other slots have the 'Implacable Advance' special rule (or something similar) that makes them scoring. For example, Terminators, Tactical Veterans and Seekers are scoring even though they are Elite or Fast Attack choices.


That said though, 30k also has different missions designed around the limited number of scoring units. Unlike 40k where some missions are purely about killing as much of your opponent's army as possible or holding more objectives, 30k's missions are all a mixture of both. Because of 40k's missions, 30k's system of scoring units would be too limiting on its own if added. You'd have to rework the missions (or copy-pastes 30k's) for it to work effectively.

 Yarium wrote:
I agree that I don't think the answer should be making the cool "thing" about infantry is that the score better. Gamers enjoy things that are cool. And making infantry the only thing able to score, or troops the only thing able to score, does severely hamper the "cool" factor.

However, I do wish that infantry were better than other unit types in some things, rather than being automatically the "worst" unit type in everything. Specifically, they have to move in a way that's unique. Considering their slow movement, maybe Infantry shouldn't be slowed by difficult terrain, and they can get cover saves for simply being on a piece of terrain rather than needing true LOS. This makes them the only unit type that can benefit from Ruins, with everyone else getting a 5+ cover save from ruins at best.

I agree with a lot of that. The biggest problem with the troops in many armies is that they're simply the least useful or simply among the most boring. The humble tactical marine is actually one of my favorite units in the marine book from a fluff standpoint, but it's also one of the crummiest mechanically (unless you're just using them to unlock free transports), so I always feel like I'm being punished for taking them.

When the topic of "troops stink" comes up, be it in the form of troops themselves being bad or non-troops simply being better and (thanks to formations) easy to spam, I always find myself thinking of the Space Marine video game that came out a couple years ago. In the multiplayer, the troop choice equivalents (tac marines and chaos marines) served as spawn points for their teammates. So even if they didn't shoot as big a gun or hit as hard in melee, they still felt like they were contributing in a support role. You could see these guys being the supportive backbone of an army... in an abstract game-mechanicy kind of way. My point is that I could see these guys being deployed to the battlefield for a reason rather than simply being slightly more numerous and more expendable than the average marine. So I think the real solution here is to make troops fun and useful rather than simply being worse-but-mandatory counterparts to other units. If these units are the numerous core to a faction's armies, why are they the central part of those armies?

If you're a troop because you're numerous (guardsmen, gaunts, etc.), then you should be numerous. Weight of numbers is theoretically part of the appeal of your unit, and you should have mechanics that make your numbers fun.

If you're a troop because you're flexible and able to tackle a wide variety of missions (tac marines), you should be able to do those jobs well. Rather than being punished for not specializing, you should feel like you're competent in a number of fields but not quite so competent as the other guys. Or maybe you're the guys in charge of setting up the beacons so your pals can come in on target, or maybe you have some sort of bonus while within your deployment zone because you're a dedicated garrison force.

Each unit should have a cool shtick. You don't necessarily need a unique special rule to do that, but you definitely shouldn't be "that unit my player is forced to take but doesn't really want to."

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
And in 30k cool units like that still have a place, either by supporting scoring units by handing out buffs or by being more dangerous for their points cost.

It should also be noted that unless stated otherwise all units in 30k are denial units, and certain units in other slots have the 'Implacable Advance' special rule (or something similar) that makes them scoring. For example, Terminators, Tactical Veterans and Seekers are scoring even though they are Elite or Fast Attack choices.


That said though, 30k also has different missions designed around the limited number of scoring units. Unlike 40k where some missions are purely about killing as much of your opponent's army as possible or holding more objectives, 30k's missions are all a mixture of both. Because of 40k's missions, 30k's system of scoring units would be too limiting on its own if added. You'd have to rework the missions (or copy-pastes 30k's) for it to work effectively.

K, well another question, why do we need things better at score? why not just have "scoring units" and it everything other than Swarms, Spore, Drones etc...

I quite like some of the ideas suggested here. Double VP's for troops is a cool idea. Infantry, jump infantry, jetpack infantry being the only scoring is interesting. I think troops being the only scoring units was a good idea in principle but maybe not... refined enough. As if they were onto something but didn't quite execute it well enough in the rules

I've suggested a few times that basic troop units should be cheap to the point of imbalance to encourage people to take more. I don't know if that's a good idea in practice but I really want to see something that makes it a good idea to have about a third of an army be your most standard infantry.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
And in 30k cool units like that still have a place, either by supporting scoring units by handing out buffs or by being more dangerous for their points cost.

It should also be noted that unless stated otherwise all units in 30k are denial units, and certain units in other slots have the 'Implacable Advance' special rule (or something similar) that makes them scoring. For example, Terminators, Tactical Veterans and Seekers are scoring even though they are Elite or Fast Attack choices.


That said though, 30k also has different missions designed around the limited number of scoring units. Unlike 40k where some missions are purely about killing as much of your opponent's army as possible or holding more objectives, 30k's missions are all a mixture of both. Because of 40k's missions, 30k's system of scoring units would be too limiting on its own if added. You'd have to rework the missions (or copy-pastes 30k's) for it to work effectively.

K, well another question, why do we need things better at score? why not just have "scoring units" and it everything other than Swarms, Spore, Drones etc...

Tactics. If only certain units can score then you've got to think more carefully where you moving your units. It's also a bit weird having an empty Rhino or Venom score objectives, they're just empty vehicles. The point of having Infantry, Jump Infantry and Jet Pack Infantry (might include Beast as well, quite a few units in the Nid dex should be changed to Beasts and it's not really fair to gimp them for it) is so that it's not as stiffling as the old "only Troops can score".

I should also clarify that I meant scoring objective markers, any unit should be able to score something like Overwhelming Firepower or Blood and Guts.

Im saying fluff wise and tactically to let ANY member of your army to grab it and protect it.

I feel this kind of thinking (Sug by OP) honestly is the wrong way to "fix" spam.

You wouldnt see a change, many armies don't even get ObjSec atm unless you take the full Formation CAD. and even so many armies will still be the same, like DE you will still see 6 Venoms of warriors with Spam Bikes/CTC, lists. Eldar will still be the same, so will Tau and Necrons.

They will still be the same b.c Missions and Objects mean nothing when you can kill 80% the other players by turn 3, or you have Unkillable units that will annihilate 1 unit a turn while still able to move 12"+ each turn.

These suggestions wont boost lower tier, they are lower tier b.c they didn't get power creep. Or just cant survive long enough to do anything.

Nids will never take more troops, DE already take a lot, with this change Nids still wont b.c they die extremely easy, very slow and cant kill anything. DE troops wont get a boost, b.c AV10 Open top and T3 5+ save units cant survive at all.

Edit: Spelling.

True, it's one of those things that can't really be considered in a vacuum.

That doesn't mean the idea doesn't have merrits (and note that I'm not just talking about Troops).

Hence why I was talking about 30ks missions as they are the main reason why it works.

In 40k the missions either put almost all the emphasis on scoring markers or all the emphasis on beating the absolute out of your opponent's army, with the former being more prominent. If the missions were a fairly even mix of the two (as in each mission had victory conditions based on scoring & killing), 30k's system would work in 40k.

Even then, about half of 30k's missions are have 'units in X part of the table' where denial units give you 1 point and scoring gets you 2.


And yeah, this is less a "try to fix all the problems of the lower tier codexes" kind of change and definitely more of a "wouldn't it be great to return to the old way, before 7th changed it and made Troops even more obsolete than they were considered before?"

hah, hah - you could go back the ol' Necron codex and make it so if you don't have Troops left (or less than 25%), you automatically lose.

That'd make people invest in troops!

Seriously, though. Generally speaking, people don't tend to like troops because their both generic and all-rounders, where most of the other units - Fast, Elite, Heavy - are specialists who focus at doing one thing well, or at least get notable rules that make them stand out.

If we want to encourage folks to take troops, they need some sort of shtick that lets them stand out - which is hard, because as I said, they tend to be all-rounders and unless they get "generic" abilities I think folks want to move them off to one of the specialist unit types.

Giving them some sort of scoring bonus is one way to differentiate them from others, but I don't think we should completely take away scoring for all units - fast attack loses a lot, for example - they're unlikely to be able to drive an enemy off an objective, but they can usually get to it first. And it's hard to imagine a tank squatting on an objective can't "take" it.

What might be nice is if troops, when they take objectives, give some sort of buff to the entire army - maybe free rerolls, letting another unit take an extra action or possibly even bringing extra points/units on the board from reserves; possibly even allowing the capturing unit to refresh itself by restoring lost models (representing patching up members, new recruits waiting or catching up to the force, tyranids belching out new life forms or however we want to explain it for the army).

You could assign different options based on the troop type, allow the player to decide or even have the bonus randomly drawn as per the maelstrom cards - maybe even a mix of card-based bonuses and player pick or unit assigned bonuses.

So, change Mysterious Objectives so that they only activate when Troops are holding them? Obviously they would be adjusted so you WANT to have the affects of the Objective instead of just facing a booby trap half the time, but we're already looking at a rules change, anyway.

It could be interesting to see that happen.

Looking over this thread, a few things stand out to me:

Keeping all units scoring as now is a good thing.
Troops scoring additional points, rather than restricting Elite/FA/HS also seems to be a favorable approach.

So how about this: Let's add a Secondary objective to all Missions (like Slay the WL, Linebreaker, etc) so that 1 VP is gained anytime a Troop unit removes the last Wound or HP from any enemy unit from Elite, Fast or Heavy?
That way if you take more Troops, you can get more points, yet if you bring less/no Troops, you can still win on objectives and/or tabling?