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tag8833 wrote:
What are you talking about? "give Players more freedom to play the game how they want" should be "Give players bonuses so long as they play the game exactly the way GW wants them to, and even let's GW write the bulk of their lists for them."

No.

Formations allow for players to use units and create lists in ways that the traditional force organization chart (1-2 HQ, 2-6 troops, 0-3 elite, 0-3 fast attack, 0-3 heavy support) did not, while still being more than the disorganized mess that Unbound is.

Your bitterness is irrelevant to my argument and I have no respect for it. I never said formations were perfect. In fact, I already mentioned they were poorly executed. But as they are, they add a lot of flexibility to players' lists over previous editions. It's like the only formation you know of is gladius or something. Except that's not actually how it works for most formations and that's NOT the only formation out there and honestly that's one of the ones that comes to mind when I mentioned "poor execution". Compare that to say, the emperor's talon recon company-- most people wouldn't bother to take sentinels, there's far better things to take in the fast attack slot. But taken in this formation, without taking up fast attack slots, and now they benefit from orders, and can nominate an enemy unit as preferred enemy for assassination? Suddenly, they're a lot more attractive-- still not top tier, but that's more because top tier is broke as feth than anything else. And they're attractive without having to screw around with adding another combined arms detachment / FoC

 Melissia wrote:
Formations allow for players to use units and create lists in ways that the traditional force organization chart (1-2 HQ, 2-6 troops, 0-3 elite, 0-3 fast attack, 0-3 heavy support) did not, while still being more than the disorganized mess that Unbound is.

If that was the objective it wouldn't be formations you were extolling the virtues of, it would be alternative detachments like Real Space Raiders, or the Tyranid Hive Fleet Detachment. Those types of detachments allow for variations in the traditional force org without the restrictions on unit choice, or the limitations on army diversity. I really like Alternative detachments, and think we should get more of them.

 Melissia wrote:
Compare that to say, the emperor's talon recon company-- most people wouldn't bother to take sentinels, there's far better things to take in the fast attack slot. But taken in this formation, without taking up fast attack slots, and now they benefit from orders, and can nominate an enemy unit as preferred enemy for assassination? Suddenly, they're a lot more attractive-- still not top tier, but that's more because top tier is broke as feth than anything else. And they're attractive without having to screw around with adding another combined arms detachment / FoC

For what it is worth, I've actually played with the Sentinel formation, and against it a fair number of times.

But to your point that formations could theoretically make bad units good, and attractive to take, I would offer than a completely different approach might help more. What if they fixed the rules on the Sentinel, and pointed it appropriate to its abilities? Wouldn't that be an even better improvement than adding a formation?

What positive thing do formations bring to the game, that wouldn't be better accomplished by alternative detachments or fixing bad rules / points costs?

tag8833 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Formations allow for players to use units and create lists in ways that the traditional force organization chart (1-2 HQ, 2-6 troops, 0-3 elite, 0-3 fast attack, 0-3 heavy support) did not, while still being more than the disorganized mess that Unbound is.

If that was the objective it wouldn't be formations you were extolling the virtues of

Yes, it is.

You can take formations alongside this. Or instead of it. Therefor, there are more options, no matter how angrily salty you are about gladius.

I'd love to see more "alternate deatchments." Possibly combined with something along the lines of chapter tactics for each army. Any mechanic that lets you theme your army around a certain playstyle, basically.

I'm okay with formations conceptually, but I'm not sure there's really much argument for using formations (which limit your choice of units and give bonuses to those units) instead of "alternate detachments."

If we define a formation as, "A detachment that lets you choose from a very limited list of units and gives you bonuses for using those units," then you'll generally end up with one of the following situations:

A. The units in the formation were already good to begin with, and now you've made them better thus making other options less appealing by comparison. See: Riptide Wing.
B. The units in the formation were well-balanced to begin with, and now you've boosted them up into the "too good" category.
C. The units in the formation were underpowered to begin with. Which, y'know, would ideally not be the case. I don't see much argument for using formations as a bandaid rather than just making units usable in their own right.

I think where alternate detachments/formations should shine is when they're used to make army concepts that normally aren't possible/viable possible/viable. For instance, I'd love to take a detachment that lets me field assault marines instead of scouts/tacticals to represent a chapter that favors jump packers to the exclusion of footslogging bolter marines. It wouldn't be especially powerful as an army, but it would be a nice, flavorful horizontal option.

I'd even be open to the idea of having detachments with clear drawbacks. Of course, you'd have to watch out for the trap that the 4th edition marine book's "custom chapter" rulers fell into where the drawbacks were easily avoidable. "I can take an extra heavy support if I don't take more than two fast attack? Awesome! I wasn't going to take three fast attacks anyway."

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'd love to see more "alternate deatchments."...

So...Rites of War? (The way 30k does detachments is basically what you're describing here.)

 Melissia wrote:

tag8833 wrote:
What are you talking about? "give Players more freedom to play the game how they want" should be "Give players bonuses so long as they play the game exactly the way GW wants them to, and even let's GW write the bulk of their lists for them."

No.

Formations allow for players to use units and create lists in ways that the traditional force organization chart (1-2 HQ, 2-6 troops, 0-3 elite, 0-3 fast attack, 0-3 heavy support) did not, while still being more than the disorganized mess that Unbound is.

While some of the possibilities formations offer can be cool, most are just used for power purposes. That "need" could have been addressed by simply creating different FoC's with different allowances or FoC swaps. This was done before with several armies and worked quite well in many older editions. That's how we got armies like Deathwing and Armored Companies. Formations were not needed for that.

The only thing formations do is add unnecessary bonuses into the mix and allow for far more spam opportunities than the old FoC system did.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'd love to see more "alternate deatchments."...

So...Rites of War? (The way 30k does detachments is basically what you're describing here.)

Pretty much!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

tag8833 wrote:
What are you talking about? "give Players more freedom to play the game how they want" should be "Give players bonuses so long as they play the game exactly the way GW wants them to, and even let's GW write the bulk of their lists for them."

No.

Formations allow for players to use units and create lists in ways that the traditional force organization chart (1-2 HQ, 2-6 troops, 0-3 elite, 0-3 fast attack, 0-3 heavy support) did not, while still being more than the disorganized mess that Unbound is.

While some of the possibilities formations offer can be cool, most are just used for power purposes. That "need" could have been addressed by simply creating different FoC's with different allowances or FoC swaps. This was done before with several armies and worked quite well in many older editions. That's how we got armies like Deathwing and Armored Companies. Formations were not needed for that.

The only thing formations do is add unnecessary bonuses into the mix and allow for far more spam opportunities than the old FoC system did.

To be fair, I've heard stories of things like Alaitocii ranger disruption being annoying, but I agree with you.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
To be fair, I've heard stories of things like Alaitocii ranger disruption being annoying, but I agree with you.

Such a bad table that was.. had a mate win against Necrons in deployment because of it.

CADs and other force org charts are basically formations anyway; there are some restrictions (no more than 3 fast attacks per compulsory taking of 2 troops and a HQ) and some bonus for conforming to those restrictions (obsec on troops and re-roll on a warlord trait table). There isn't a spit of difference really.

Even with formations being options people still take CADs over them in competitive lists. Scat bikes are troops and in a CAD they have obsec.... Force Orgs allows a way to get forgeworld stuff into a list. Cutting out formations will do nothing for balance, just make army composition boring and samey samey again.

You didn't give the option for "Play 3rd Edition with my friends and brother" so I had to put "Other". And yes, it is pretty easy to manage to get games going in 3rd Ed. nowadays.

http://classichammer.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=623&pid=1622#post_1622

 Just Tony wrote:
You didn't give the option for "Play 3rd Edition with my friends and brother" so I had to put "Other". And yes, it is pretty easy to manage to get games going in 3rd Ed. nowadays.

http://classichammer.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=623&pid=1622#post_1622

You should of ticked option 2 then.

2. Continue playing 7th (or other older ed)

3rd is an older edition, no?

Voting "other" is the same as not voting at all.

Whoops, that's what I get for voting too fast and not reading slowly. Then again I was already 10 minutes OVER on my 15 minute break...

I welcome 8th

Formations are fluff based barrels of fun, so long as you dont spam the really out there formations

In my opinion 5th edition was asinine in terms of flexibility, since most people i know just went bare min troops and spammed everything else.

That system is old and shows a mentality of nover giving up 'ye olde days'

While that all dandy and all i would rather have an active, changing format. With new ways to play the same things, rather than just 'generic list 1,2,3 ect.'

Expanding on the formations and adding more formation-detachments would be the great way to go.

People who ware still clinging to the old editions have to remember that you can only improve if you leave the past behind, learn from it but never live in it

...Except that most of the best 5th edition lists relied heavily on troops, since they were the only units in the game that could take objectives...

 Fafnir wrote:
...Except that most of the best 5th edition lists relied heavily on troops, since they were the only units in the game that could take objectives...

which always struck me as odd considering that in any battlefield scenario you would count everything, not just a specially made band of soldiers on the battlefield

 SolarCross wrote:
Cutting out formations will do nothing for balance, just make army composition boring and samey samey again.

Dumping formations would do quite alot for balance. They add a whole other variable which is essentially a multiplier of imbalance. They also do alot to encourage spam and min/maxing, aka styles of lists that exploit problems with balance.

Take a few notably unbalanced units. Riptides and Warp Spiders. They have points costs that aren't representative of their abilities. But if you add in Riptide Wing or Aspect Host, you've got a much more serious balance problem than you did before. Because the tax on spam is reduced, and the unbalanced units are made better. Take away those formations, and the units are more manageable, because they have fewer abilities, and are slightly harder to spam.

Formations aren't the root cause of balance problems, but they do exacerbate the problems somewhat.

tag8833 wrote:

 SolarCross wrote:
Cutting out formations will do nothing for balance, just make army composition boring and samey samey again.

Dumping formations would do quite alot for balance. They add a whole other variable which is essentially a multiplier of imbalance. They also do alot to encourage spam and min/maxing, aka styles of lists that exploit problems with balance.

Take a few notably unbalanced units. Riptides and Warp Spiders. They have points costs that aren't representative of their abilities. But if you add in Riptide Wing or Aspect Host, you've got a much more serious balance problem than you did before. Because the tax on spam is reduced, and the unbalanced units are made better. Take away those formations, and the units are more manageable, because they have fewer abilities, and are slightly harder to spam.

Formations aren't the root cause of balance problems, but they do exacerbate the problems somewhat.

But at the same time the weaker armies are made weaker for the same reasons

Formations in themselves are not bad, but they are being used to resolve balance issues that they simply cannot. Many of the formations take the form of combat multiplier. They have you take (x) unit in bulk and you gain a benefit. The issue with this is, if the unit that is required to be taken is terrible that formation isn't going to help you.

Multiply anything by 0 and you still get 0.

Until GW addresses the primary issue - (codex balance), formations are just like throwing a bandaid on a mortal wound. If a unit isn't worth its point cost, no amount of formation shenanigans is going to fix that. It has to be done at the codex level.

I am expecting 40k 8E to be AoS with GHB, but using 40k minis - that would be great.

However, if it's still like 6E / 7E, then I will continue to ignore 40k.

Yeah , general's handbook AoS probably good

 Fafnir wrote:
...Except that most of the best 5th edition lists relied heavily on troops, since they were the only units in the game that could take objectives...

And many of the troops had decent enough Mech Firepower options. Saw a ton of min troops in Las/Plas razors.

They need a core 1500pts skirmish game back. They need codex's/factions to be front and center within that core skirmish game. And all the silly crap pushed up into higher point levels. They need to address the massive disparity between mc's and evryone else, especially vehicles. They need walkers to either be immune from immobilized or simply half their move on the first immobilized. Super heavies and gmc's need to be banished to the land of wind and ghosts and or just upper point levels. Also, murder formations in cold blood and bury them in the sea.



Thought experiment: Imagine the latest battlefleet gothic video game, where currently you like have to pick a faction and play that faction. Now imagine an add on that takes that away and allows you to make fleets combining all factions ships. How could you possibly make faction play an incentive once that change has happened?



I just want faction play back, I want combines armed combat to be a thing. If the only way to get that is low points and an foc then sign me up for 5th.

90% of formations are fine.

Miscosted units are a way worse problem than formations for the most part. The only exception being formations that give free stuff.

I'll buy it and keep on playing, just like I did 5th, 6th, and 7th. Hopefully, it's more like 5th.

 Crablezworth wrote:
Thought experiment: Imagine the latest battlefleet gothic video game, where currently you like have to pick a faction and play that faction. Now imagine an add on that takes that away and allows you to make fleets combining all factions ships. How could you possibly make faction play an incentive once that change has happened?

Not sure about the Battlefleet Gothic videogame, but they seem to have a decent way of doing it in AoS with their keywords and battalions.

For example they might give every Imperial unit the IoM keyword, and if every unit in your army has the IoM keyword you get a certain bonus and some choices go from "special" (Heavy Support, Fast Attack, Elites) to Troops. Furthermore, your primary detachment might require everyone to have a specific keyword, like Space Marines, and that would give a certain benefit and make an additional set of units Troops. They could go even further, and have certain detachments require a more specific keyword like White Scars. The more requirements the detachment has in terms of minimum size the bigger the rewards, so it would encourage players to run armies with matching keywords. Formations could also have keyword requirements that mean the entire army has to have a certain keyword.

So if you run straight White Scars you get a lot of keyword synergy bonuses and special formations. You could ally in Iron Hands and still get the Space Marines synergy bonuses and formations but lose the White Scars bonuses/formations. You could further throw in Saint Celestine and still have all of the IoM bonuses/formations but lose all the Space Marine bonuses/formations. You can ally in a Tau detachment but then you lose all keyword synergy and can't take any special snowflake stuff at all.

 Crablezworth wrote:
They need a core 1500pts skirmish game back. They need codex's/factions to be front and center within that core skirmish game. And all the silly crap pushed up into higher point levels. They need to address the massive disparity between mc's and evryone else, especially vehicles. They need walkers to either be immune from immobilized or simply half their move on the first immobilized. Super heavies and gmc's need to be banished to the land of wind and ghosts and or just upper point levels. Also, murder formations in cold blood and bury them in the sea.



Thought experiment: Imagine the latest battlefleet gothic video game, where currently you like have to pick a faction and play that faction. Now imagine an add on that takes that away and allows you to make fleets combining all factions ships. How could you possibly make faction play an incentive once that change has happened?

Battlefleet gothic unfortunately Isnt popular anymore because of the single factions everyone fall into; kinda like the same points range and restriction that 5th edition was. 5th edition was samey samey and there was no fluff based 'oooh' gameplay that 7th edition brought in, especially since formations bring the fluff onto the table

do i think their balanced? no not one bit

are they fun? hell yea

please dont go back to 5th edition, those rules be outdated, remnants of a time that should be forgotten. Instead improve upon the current system.

Never assume that nostalga is good enough to bring a gaming system to a massive rollback, because even the past has problems

I will continue to play. If 5th, 6th, 7th, or the newest edition becomes most popular in my area I will play that. I am not petty enough to quit playing over it.

 conker249 wrote:
I will continue to play. If 5th, 6th, 7th, or the newest edition becomes most popular in my area I will play that. I am not petty enough to quit playing over it.

Agency, independent thought and preference are the problem, clearly.


Preference is just a nice way of saying bigotry after-all.

mchammadad wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:
They need a core 1500pts skirmish game back. They need codex's/factions to be front and center within that core skirmish game. And all the silly crap pushed up into higher point levels. They need to address the massive disparity between mc's and evryone else, especially vehicles. They need walkers to either be immune from immobilized or simply half their move on the first immobilized. Super heavies and gmc's need to be banished to the land of wind and ghosts and or just upper point levels. Also, murder formations in cold blood and bury them in the sea.



Thought experiment: Imagine the latest battlefleet gothic video game, where currently you like have to pick a faction and play that faction. Now imagine an add on that takes that away and allows you to make fleets combining all factions ships. How could you possibly make faction play an incentive once that change has happened?

Battlefleet gothic unfortunately Isnt popular anymore because of the single factions everyone fall into; kinda like the same points range and restriction that 5th edition was. 5th edition was samey samey and there was no fluff based 'oooh' gameplay that 7th edition brought in, especially since formations bring the fluff onto the table

do i think their balanced? no not one bit

are they fun? hell yea

please dont go back to 5th edition, those rules be outdated, remnants of a time that should be forgotten. Instead improve upon the current system.

Never assume that nostalga is good enough to bring a gaming system to a massive rollback, because even the past has problems

Chess, Risk, Stratego, and several other games would like to have a word with you. The problem isn't nostalgia vs. newest bells and whistles, the problem is overshooting when "fixing" a problem in the rules which then causes the next book to amp up to the point that the powercreep requires a new edition to handle all the bs, when going back and redoing the overpowered book would solve the issue. Playing 3rd has showed me that with a couple of codices being the exception, the game is solid. It was all the 4th Ed. cleaning up and further rules bloat and codex creep that really shuffed it.

So about half of you are going to continue to pay for abuse. Good to know...I guess.