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Hi people !

So I wanted your opinion on the question of weither or not allies and / or formations were kinda now necessary for competitve play and for which armies do you think it's true or not.

Thanks for your opinions and thoughts on the subject.

Yes

Technically any Detachment is still a formation of sorts =D

While Combined Arms Detachment is still a great option for the Objective Secured, depending on the Army it can be good to use a Formation or Two (more if you doing the newer style Codex Detachments)

Plus the vast majority of events are Bound Only, to stop some very potential silliness

Yes. If the event you are going to allows formations, only the strongest armies should consider going without, assuming they have access to decent ones to begin with.

IMO, formations were the worst thing to ever happen to the game, and I'm glad our local group plays without them. There's still imbalance, but the gulf from bad to good isn't as huge as it is with them in.

I like formations myself.. As he idea is that you get a bonus for making a themed army..

That being said there are some overpowered ones out there that were purely designed to sell more minis... (skyhammer)

The vast majority of Formations out there don't get used.. because they are considered to be too weak, just the few very strong ones (most armies have one) that have people in tears

Depends what you mean by competitive. Do you want to go to a 3 game tournament at your local game store? Most of the time, you can do just fine (and even win) with just a normal CAD. This becomes substantially harder to do so at larger events (especially 2 day, 6 game GTs). But some people go to these giant competitions and bring armies that are beautifully painted but hardly top tier competitive....and still do well if they are a good general. I would say you probably cap out at 4-2 in a GT with most armies if you don't use any formations.

That being said, any of the following armies could probably do just fine with a single source CAD, no allies and no formations, even at the GT level:

Daemons (invulnerable saves are still a thing)
CSM (Magnus is still a thing, and chaos knights are great too)
Tau (Stormsurges are still a thing)
Necrons (RP is still a thing)
Eldar (Forge world units are still a thing)
Renegades (artillery is still a thing)

That being said, ANY army could be improved with usage of formations.

Daemons you can pick your favorite god to focus on (I like omniscient oracles personally)
CSM do love that Rehati War Sect
Tau love their Riptide Wings, Drone Nets and Piranha Firestream
Necrons LOVE getting better RP (or just canoptek harvest)
Eldar are a new animal with the Reborn Warhost
I don't know what Renegades do....but whoever they ally with uses formations. Usually, they're not an entire army, as their offense is very niche.
Space Marines have battle company and little else to be competitive (maybe cent star, but you need multiple sources to do that properly)
Thunderwolves....I mean Space Wolves love their murderpack
Dark Eldar and Harlequins no longer exist outside of a Reborn Warhost
Orks....poor Orks
Tyranids use the crap out of Leviathan for more Hive Tyrants
Sisters have Castellans of the Imperium
Grey Knights have their Nemesis Strike Force
Imperial Guard....have guns that can be used as Renegade artillery
GSC have their Cult Insurrection detachment
Dark Angels have Lion's Blade strike force...and another popular one that eludes me at the moment
Blood Angels....have models that can be used as vanilla marines
Admech and Skitarii have War Convocation
Khorne Daemonkin have....that formation that gives them extra blood tithe points...pretty important if you are a true servant of the blood god
Militarum Tempestus and Deathwatch....tbh I can't say I've ever seen them fielded as an army on their own.

CAD Spacemarines can do well if you build the army right to the chapter tactics (you just get free transports doing the Battle company)

GodDamUser wrote:
CAD Spacemarines can do well if you build the army right to the chapter tactics (you just get free transports doing the Battle company)

And Obsec.

Space Wolves do just fine without formations!...you know, after you cut them back to nothing but Thunderwolves and ally them with boring and bland - I mean codex compliant mehrines. I'm all for Space Wolves formations.

Tyranids...codex Flyrant. Personally I'd be delighted by something that gave me incentive to use Gaunts/Gants - I'd be happiest if a decent statline was the deciding factor but I'll settle for a Fluff 4 Buff formation.

Deathwatch...hell, I'm still not sure why I got Deathwatch in the first place but got 'em I did. I doubt they'll ever be more than something to ally with the Space Wolves for the hell of it.

 luke1705 wrote:
Tau love their Riptide Wings, Drone Nets and Piranha Firestream

Don't forget the Optimized Stealth Cadre!

Dark Angels have Lion's Blade strike force...and another popular one that eludes me at the moment

You mean the Ravenwing Strike Force? Because that can make a pretty powerful list by itself without needing allies.

Khorne Daemonkin have....that formation that gives them extra blood tithe points...pretty important if you are a true servant of the blood god

The Blood Host is pretty good, but requires taking some tax units (Possessed). The Gorepack formation is the best thing in the KDK codex. Basically no tax and great formation bonuses and units.

Formations are pretty cool IMO, in that you get a bonus for taking a thematic set of units. It's the problem ones that give formations in general a bad reputation, especially the spammy ones like the Eldar Aspect Host, Tau Riptide Wing, and others I'm probably just not thinking of. Indeed, these aren't too bad except when they are abused, like Eldar players taking 2 or more Aspect Hosts to see how many Warp Spiders they can cram into an 1850 point list.

Taking away formations does not change the most powerful army list available to unmodified play. By definition, formations close the gap between the powerful armies and less powerful armies.

Without formations: Ordnance Tyrant, Eldar Scatpack, Chaos Flying Circus, and Corsairs absolutely dominate the CAD game. Notice: These four are STILL among the top tier in any game with formations allowed.

With formations/unique detachments: Tau, Space Marines, Admech/knights, Chaos Marines, Genestealer Cult, KDK, Harlequins, Space Wolf Superfriends, Necrons, minmaxed Tyranids to some extent, all get added to the pool of armies that can make a tournament quality army and compete.

The armies still left out in the cold are either armies who lack formations to work with for the most part (Sisters, Deldar, Inq/other minor imperial factions, Orks) or whose base codex was hit so hard with the early 7th puritanhammer nerfbat so hard their knees are still broken (Nids, Guard, GK, Bangles)

People complain about formations primarily when their army falls in the latter category, and they see that the armies with good formations now outclass them like the rest of the top tier. But the more you trim, the more you narrow the number of armies people will use, not expand.

people have short memories, apparently. In every edition previous to the advent of allies and formations, the number of viable tournament armies never cracked 3-4. and 3-4 is exactly what you'd have now if you blanket banned them. Eldar would be just as strong, orks would be just as weak.

So is there a configuration of GK that can play "alone or allied" that has some competitive ability? Or short of new codex changes it would be pure luck to do so? My current list runs a nemesis strike force and allied skitarii for more troops and onagers for neutron lasers and icarus array.

the_scotsman wrote:
Taking away formations does not change the most powerful army list available to unmodified play. By definition, formations close the gap between the powerful armies and less powerful armies.

Without formations: Ordnance Tyrant, Eldar Scatpack, Chaos Flying Circus, and Corsairs absolutely dominate the CAD game. Notice: These four are STILL among the top tier in any game with formations allowed.

With formations/unique detachments: Tau, Space Marines, Admech/knights, Chaos Marines, Genestealer Cult, KDK, Harlequins, Space Wolf Superfriends, Necrons, minmaxed Tyranids to some extent, all get added to the pool of armies that can make a tournament quality army and compete.

The armies still left out in the cold are either armies who lack formations to work with for the most part (Sisters, Deldar, Inq/other minor imperial factions, Orks) or whose base codex was hit so hard with the early 7th puritanhammer nerfbat so hard their knees are still broken (Nids, Guard, GK, Bangles)

People complain about formations primarily when their army falls in the latter category, and they see that the armies with good formations now outclass them like the rest of the top tier. But the more you trim, the more you narrow the number of armies people will use, not expand.

people have short memories, apparently. In every edition previous to the advent of allies and formations, the number of viable tournament armies never cracked 3-4. and 3-4 is exactly what you'd have now if you blanket banned them. Eldar would be just as strong, orks would be just as weak.

You're correct in that this could be true - formations could be used to balance 40k by giving more powerful ones to weaker armies. But this is not the case. Take the reborn warhost for example, or the ulthwe strike force. Did Eldar NEED even easier cherry picking of all the best units from other codices, PLUS a great formation or two with zero tax units? No, they were already one of the best armies in the game. Now they are even better than they were previously. Formations are (in recent times) being used to sell models by giving them free and better rules when you buy a grouping of models. Great business model and helps keep the game fresh. But GW has lately been giving great stuff to all the armies (and not balancing by giving lower-tier armies BETTER stuff than the upper-tier armies). Good business model, but it doesn't necessarily decrease the gap between the haves and the have nots. It allows the have nots to have SOMETHING, but that doesn't mean that they're any closer to the top of the heap.

In practice, I do think that the gap will be somewhat closed once GW applies this treatment to all of the armies (looking at you, Orks, IG, BA, Tyranids...basically any army that hasn't been updated since Necrons except Daemons. But they've had mini updates all over the place).

Also, totally pure speculation, but maybe GW learned some things from AOS and will install balancing levers in 8th edition. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

Oh and what do you mean GK are in a bad spot? MAYBE pure GK, but Dreadknights are spectacular and they can ally out the wazoo.

 luke1705 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Taking away formations does not change the most powerful army list available to unmodified play. By definition, formations close the gap between the powerful armies and less powerful armies.

Without formations: Ordnance Tyrant, Eldar Scatpack, Chaos Flying Circus, and Corsairs absolutely dominate the CAD game. Notice: These four are STILL among the top tier in any game with formations allowed.

With formations/unique detachments: Tau, Space Marines, Admech/knights, Chaos Marines, Genestealer Cult, KDK, Harlequins, Space Wolf Superfriends, Necrons, minmaxed Tyranids to some extent, all get added to the pool of armies that can make a tournament quality army and compete.

The armies still left out in the cold are either armies who lack formations to work with for the most part (Sisters, Deldar, Inq/other minor imperial factions, Orks) or whose base codex was hit so hard with the early 7th puritanhammer nerfbat so hard their knees are still broken (Nids, Guard, GK, Bangles)

People complain about formations primarily when their army falls in the latter category, and they see that the armies with good formations now outclass them like the rest of the top tier. But the more you trim, the more you narrow the number of armies people will use, not expand.

people have short memories, apparently. In every edition previous to the advent of allies and formations, the number of viable tournament armies never cracked 3-4. and 3-4 is exactly what you'd have now if you blanket banned them. Eldar would be just as strong, orks would be just as weak.

You're correct in that this could be true - formations could be used to balance 40k by giving more powerful ones to weaker armies. But this is not the case. Take the reborn warhost for example, or the ulthwe strike force. Did Eldar NEED even easier cherry picking of all the best units from other codices, PLUS a great formation or two with zero tax units? No, they were already one of the best armies in the game. Now they are even better than they were previously. Formations are (in recent times) being used to sell models by giving them free and better rules when you buy a grouping of models. Great business model and helps keep the game fresh. But GW has lately been giving great stuff to all the armies (and not balancing by giving lower-tier armies BETTER stuff than the upper-tier armies). Good business model, but it doesn't necessarily decrease the gap between the haves and the have nots. It allows the have nots to have SOMETHING, but that doesn't mean that they're any closer to the top of the heap.

In practice, I do think that the gap will be somewhat closed once GW applies this treatment to all of the armies (looking at you, Orks, IG, BA, Tyranids...basically any army that hasn't been updated since Necrons except Daemons. But they've had mini updates all over the place).

Also, totally pure speculation, but maybe GW learned some things from AOS and will install balancing levers in 8th edition. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

Oh and what do you mean GK are in a bad spot? MAYBE pure GK, but Dreadknights are spectacular and they can ally out the wazoo.

No, CWE didn't necessarily need more stuff. But you know what? I'll tell you a secret: Competitive eldar lists are probably not likely to use GS2 anyway, because obsec on your scatterbikes is *still* better. A list that primarily nukes stuff from 36" away doesn't benefit offensively from soulburst, and using it defensively requires keeping scatter squads 7" away from each other, which doesn't improve the matchup of the scatpack vs the lists that have been sidelining them anyway, because you're just begging for that GSC army to multicharge you if you've got 2 units within 7. And Spiderspam armies, even though they might look like they'd do great with Reborn Warhost, do use Battlefocus pretty extensively. Again, it's probably a situation where you'll just make favorable matchups even stompier and bad matchups worse, which is the opposite of what a competitive player wants to do. The Eldar units that do benefit from GS2 the most weren't in the competitive meta anyway. I guess if your stance is "if a unit has the Eldar faction, making it stronger is bad!!!" then it's a bad thing that previously crap units like Guardians and War Walkers got a little boost, but I'm of the opinion that the more different builds and units you see, the better, regardless of what faction they belong to. The strongest option is still going to be the CAD/Mymaera warhost, people are not going to want to give up obsec, forgeworld, and Battlefocus.

Now, Harlequins and Dark Eldar on the other hand? They both benefit from GS2, they both get lifted up a little bit, and we're going to be seeing a little bit more of them hopefully. It might not make them quite tournament ready factions, but I know that my own Harlequin army has really appreciated the buffs, since they were hanging out near the bottom tiers previously. Taking GS2 away from the three eldar factions would not change the game pretty much at all for the basic Eldar competitive lists, but it would significantly reduce the strength of Dark Eldar and Harlequins.

"Good business model, but it doesn't necessarily decrease the gap between the haves and the have nots. It allows the have nots to have SOMETHING, but that doesn't mean that they're any closer to the top of the heap."

So you're contesting that Tau, Necrons, Space Marines, Admech, KDK, Chaos Marines, GSC, Space Wolves and Dark Angels only exist in competitive play because of formations and special detachment rules? This is the level of short sightedness that frustrates me: as soon as an army is strong for whatever reason, people think of it as a "have" faction. The reality is, 40k's natural state since competitive play started was to have 2-3 factions in an uncontested "god tier" at any given time, and that is because of the one size fits all CAD structure. Formations have absolutely accomplished the goal of expanding the number of armies that can compete.

Take them away, and the "God tier" system just instantly reasserts itself. Eldar, Daemons, Renegades, and a few Corsair units are all you're ever going to see. Add them back in, all the factions listed above can compete. How people can continuously point to that as a problem rather than a good thing will always baffle me.

Well they definitely help, but don't it ore obsec. I play eldar, daemons, and kdk. And I only use formations with kdk for the bloodhost. I find the obsec on my Troops is worth giving up formations a lot of the time. Maybe supplement a cad with an aspect host or heralds anarchic, but I mostly focus in obsec cads.

The new Chaos Warband formations for the Traitor Legions are great. Everything has Ob Sec and it's mostly everything you want anyways.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
Yes. If the event you are going to allows formations, only the strongest armies should consider going without, assuming they have access to decent ones to begin with.

IMO, formations were the worst thing to ever happen to the game, and I'm glad our local group plays without them. There's still imbalance, but the gulf from bad to good isn't as huge as it is with them in.

I still think miscosted units are FAR FAR worse.

the_scotsman wrote:
(Several well-spoken pro-formation points.)

I'm sorry but I just can't agree. It sounds good on paper but our local group plays with no formations, and our meta, even come competitive time, is very diverse, and includes many of the "have not" armies such as BA and DE. Games take less time because every other unit doesn't have several extra rules attached for free (or alternatively, free models in general,) and our group unanimously agreed via vote that losing formations made the game more balanced and fun. Note that I said "more" balanced, not "actually balanced." There's still things that we wish they could fix like criminally undercosted wraithknights and riptides, but not having to stare riptide wing in the face every other game is an extremely nice change.

And I do travel to events out of our area, and play with formations at them, (in fact enough so that I have a trophy from FLG declaring me the best BA player in the world during 2015 ) so I'm not just speaking from one side of the fence while blind to the other.

People always like to tout eldar as unbeatable once you drop formations, but I extremely rarely lose to them after you toss out aspect shrines and allied corpsethief claws.

So 100% of my play experience disagrees with what you're saying.

 niv-mizzet wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
(Several well-spoken pro-formation points.)

I'm sorry but I just can't agree. It sounds good on paper but our local group plays with no formations, and our meta, even come competitive time, is very diverse, and includes many of the "have not" armies such as BA and DE. Games take less time because every other unit doesn't have several extra rules attached for free (or alternatively, free models in general,) and our group unanimously agreed via vote that losing formations made the game more balanced and fun. Note that I said "more" balanced, not "actually balanced." There's still things that we wish they could fix like criminally undercosted wraithknights and riptides, but not having to stare riptide wing in the face every other game is an extremely nice change.

And I do travel to events out of our area, and play with formations at them, (in fact enough so that I have a trophy from FLG declaring me the best BA player in the world during 2015 ) so I'm not just speaking from one side of the fence while blind to the other.

People always like to tout eldar as unbeatable once you drop formations, but I extremely rarely lose to them after you toss out aspect shrines and allied corpsethief claws.

So 100% of my play experience disagrees with what you're saying.

Your own account has as much validity as me saying 100% of my experiences disagree with yours.

Formations are fine. Getting certain benefits is bad, but ultimately, I use them for fluffy list creation, and I think it makes sense for an army to receive benefits for fluffy composition.

The biggest issue with is not with formations, but balance. All formations being equally valid, no units being too powerful or undercoated, thereby eliminating the need for "tax units", and focusing on the fluff compositions. There shouldn't be armies better than another.

Personally i find the addition of formations and detachments was a good thing.

I mean sure it started as a cash grab and a serious case of fluff power creep, but the model is constantly improving upon itself and making it that more stuff is becoming viable each time a new one comes out

Can i say that these formations/detachments are balanced? Hell no

But then again when you have a lore that is as diverse as 40k and the most you could of done before in last editions was field a generic troop with HQ with either mass spam heavy/elite/fast attack this is a massive improvement

Remember this, it's not a bad army when the army plays like it is meant to be, instead of being boiled down to a generic list that shows nothing of the uniqueness and specialties of that army

You might as well be playing chess if you want something like that, not 40k

40k is unbalanced by it's very nature, trying to impose balance on something like that doesn't work. Period

The other amries need them to compete against Eldar.

There shouldn't be armies better than another.

That's called balance.
Sometimes we wonder if GW is even trying to get it - to be fair chess is about as varied as two armies get and even maintain a semblance of balance.

Dark Eldar can do pretty good without allies or formations, but thats only reaverspam. Amusingly, its by far their strongest type of army.
Other than that, the previously said CWE, and necrons can do well with just CAD's

It all depends on faction. I play Loyalist Marines, Chaos, and Orks.

For Loyalists i stick to a CAD (Bker army) but I use a Raptor Wing formation because i love Storm Talons.

For Chaos, I use the new Traitor Legions book, so formations, unique detachments, the works, but its all very new and still fits my general army build.

For Orks, a double CAD, no formations, since none are worthwhile for me.

So certain factions (Imperial and pretty boy xenos) benefit from the all new Formation buffs, whie others arent missing much (like even worse mob rule).

The thing about the CAD is that it's supposed to restrict you to a somewhat sensible/lore-friendly army with a mix of units, but it always seems to end up getting used to take bare minimum cheap Troops to unlock more of the flashy stuff. Personally I like formations, and especially meta-formations, for trying to encourage people to take a variety of units in a configuration that looks like a halfway-realistic TOE by making the underused units more useful, rather than some sort of needlessly complicated "you must take thing X before thing Y" setup or giving up and resigning itself to seeing armies consisting entirely of heavy artillery.

It doesn't always work out this way in practice (the Craftworld Warhost of a minimum jetbike Core formation and four Wraithknights is the most visible example), but I appreciate what formations are trying to do and I like seeing armies that try to use them to make fluff concepts that would be non-viable in a CAD work rather than just gaming the formations for maximum advantage.

(Addendum)

As to whether they're actually necessary for competitive play some armies need them more than others; Eldar, Tau, and Daemons wouldn't really feel the loss if you took them away, but I've never seen a KDK army on the field without formations, CSM would be punted right back into the bottom tier that they're trying to claw back out of with Traitor Legions, and the Deathwatch would become a hilariously impractical choice for doing almost anything.