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Naturally, of course, tactical marines would have to lose grav weapons.


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General Annoyance wrote:That's... not how balance works.

They're two completely different units with two completely different battlefield roles. 300 points of Marines shouldn't be able to kill 300 points of Wraithknight just as easily as the Wraithknight will kill them.

Because the Knight has stuff designed for killing Marines - that's it's speciality. If everything could counter everything, the game would be incredibly bland.

That's just it. There's too much variety and too many battlefield roles.

Which is fine.

I think that an IK should be able to tear through waves of infantry with ease.

But the mechanics of the game should make that a waste of your time. You should be using an IK to target specialist units and clear enemy troops from midfield objectives.

 Traditio wrote:
If you don't think that it's OP without the respawn rule, why do you think it's OP with the respawn rule? And even with the respawn special rule, good luck taking out a wraithknight or a riptide.

Ah, there it is, the good ol', tried and true, classic "But does it kill Wraith Knights/Riptides real good?" argument, see also "But are they as good as scatterbikes?". If someone hasn't named this phenomenon, then it ought to happen, as it is ubiquitous in 40k discussions as Godwin's Law elsewhere on the interwebs. WK and Riptides are both mentioned in the first post as well as the quoted post, and the proposed rule is deliberately worded in response to scatbikes existing somewhere in the middle of the thread. Used as a justification for many proposed buffs, nerfs, and rebalances. Regardless of whether the proposed changes are decent or not, that should never, ever be used to try to bring more units up to their level. When you do this, it does not help rebalance the game or make it more fun. You are not fighting the power creep. You ARE the power creep.

If the pattern of "make everything as strong as the strongest thing(s) in the game" continues, we'll end up with "super cool awesome uber units that kill everything". If you want to wipe your opponent using super cool awesome uber units in one or two turns, and they want to do the same, then eventually it'll boil down to who goes first wins. If you want your games to be based on 50/50 odds and to completely invalidate the actual models on the table, you might as well sell your minis and go play a rock paper scissors tournament. And you are actively pushing 40k in that direction, intentional or not, with your relentless "BUFF BUFF BUFF ZOMG" attitude.

Stop. Just stop. That is the very thing that GW is selectively guilty of, and that mindset continually poisons the game. Please, no more.

 Traditio wrote:
That's just it. There's too much variety and too many battlefield roles.

Which is fine.

It can't be if you're saying it's too much

I think that an IK should be able to tear through waves of infantry with ease.

But the mechanics of the game should make that a waste of your time. You should be using an IK to target specialist units and clear enemy troops from midfield objectives.

And how would you make it a waste of time to use the Knight efficiently?


No, the mechanics should be revolving around combined arms - dabbling in various units from across your codex so that you can deal with a wide variety of situations, while also creating a coherency across the force. If we had unit balance, that'd be what we'd get. You can specialise too, but you run the risk of being tipped off balance if you don't know what list your opponent is bringing.

General Annoyance wrote:
No, the mechanics should be revolving around combined arms - dabbling in various units from across your codex so that you can deal with a wide variety of situations, while also creating a coherency across the force.

I completely agree with you, and I think that what I am proposing would accomplish that.

General Annoyance wrote:And how would you make it a waste of time to use the Knight efficiently?

Right. So imagine that you are playing with my proposed rules. You have an IK as well as an HQ and some troops in transports from another codex. Your opponent has a ton of troops in his DZ, but a unit of elites in a transport on a midfield objective.

You have two options:

You could shoot/assault the troops in his DZ.

I think that your IK should slaughter them. Just annihilate them.

But so much good that did.

On your opponent's turn, he puts them right back where they were.

You've accomplished, if not nothing, then very little.

That's option one.

Option two is you target the enemy squad sitting on the midfield objective, move your own troops there and score a VP.

You see what I'm saying?

 Traditio wrote:
Right. So imagine that you are playing with my proposed rules. You have an IK as well as an HQ and some troops in transports from another codex. Your opponent has a ton of troops in his DZ, but a unit of elites in a transport on a midfield objective.

You have two options:

You could shoot/assault the troops in his DZ.
I think that your IK should slaughter them. Just annihilate them.
But so much good that did.
On your opponent's turn, he puts them right back where they were.
You've accomplished, if not nothing, then very little.
That's option one.

Option two is you target the enemy squad sitting on the midfield objective, move your own troops there and score a VP.

You see what I'm saying?

Why do you think that this is a good idea? You've replaced an interesting strategic choice in how to use the knight (take the midfield objectives vs. take the objectives in your opponent's deployment zone) with a single choice. Why do you think that 40k needs to be a game with even less depth?


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Also, you seemed to have missed my earlier comments (I know you wouldn't dishonestly ignore criticism, would you?), so I'll repost them for your convenience:

 Peregrine wrote:
This is a really, really bad idea.

Rule 1 essentially removes tabling your opponent as a win condition. Unless you play an army with literally zero troops units you will always have at least one unit on the table or one unit of troops in ongoing reserves. While we can argue the merits of losing the game because your on-table forces were destroyed, even though you have units about to arrive from reserve, tabling exists as a win condition for a reason and needs to stay.

The "infantry only" and "no 'counts as troops'" rules are a problem. Yes, it's a way of preventing scatter laser jetbikes from being even more broken than they already are, but the solution to that is to nerf that specific unit. There are fluffy and balanced armies that depend on using non-standard troops, and those armies shouldn't be nerfed into uselessness relative to the armies with standard (and therefore infinite) troops.

Magically teleporting anywhere in your deployment zone is a huge problem. Melee troops immediately enter combat no matter where the enemy unit is or how defensively you might want to play, and the only real counter is "never get within 12" of your opponent's deployment zone". Any objectives in your opponent's deployment zone become virtually impossible to hold, because no matter what you do an obsec scoring unit is going to teleport there next turn. And you have the complete absurdity of things like units teleporting directly to the top level of a ruin, much faster than they could get there by walking normally.

Fluff-wise it's complete nonsense. It makes sense for something like IG conscripts to respawn or a horde of cultists over and over again (and, in fact, those units have had respawn rules), but an endless horde of grey knight terminators? No thank you.

Finally, it still fails the "make troops interesting" test. A bad and boring unit that can be taken in vast quantities isn't really any more interesting, it's just better at winning games. A rough approximation of this rule is "reduce the point cost of troops units by 50%", while the problem with troops has nothing to do with their point efficiency. A tactical squad that costs half as much is still a boring version of a sternguard squad, and has none of the OMG COOL I WANT IT factor. So you'd succeed in making more of the game about who can exploit the respawn mechanic most effectively and generate more points worth of "free" units (hey, this sounds an awful lot like the complaint about formations!), and reinforce the idea that troops are the boring units you take because you want to win games and resent because they remove your ability to use the fun stuff.

Peregrine wrote:Why do you think that this is a good idea? You've replaced an interesting strategic choice in how to use the knight (take the midfield objectives vs. take the objectives in your opponent's deployment zone) with a single choice. Why do you think that 40k needs to be a game with even less depth?

Except, I haven't.

It's all based on the objectives you need.

If you need an objective that's in your opponent's DZ, then you could use the IK to clear the objective and then move your troops onto that objective.

Yes, the troops would just come back on the next turn, but you've still scored the VP.

And note, this is why it would still be important to take non-troops. It would be much harder to do that without the IK.


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Rule 1 essentially removes tabling your opponent as a win condition. Unless you play an army with literally zero troops units you will always have at least one unit on the table or one unit of troops in ongoing reserves. While we can argue the merits of losing the game because your on-table forces were destroyed, even though you have units about to arrive from reserve, tabling exists as a win condition for a reason and needs to stay.

I mean, it technically would still be possible to table your opponent. I can think of two ways:

1. Some armies don't use troops. You could, in principle, table a space marine bike army or an Eldar scatbike army if you were to use these rules.

2. You could essentially table your opponent if you managed to remove all of his models AND make it impossible for him to deploy any models within 12 inches of his side of the board. The game wouldn't technically end there, but practically speaking, the game would end there.

However, tabling your opponent still wouldn't be a win-condition in the second case. You'd still have to have more VPs than your opponent.

But really, this is a problem with the game in general. GW seems to be selling us a ruleset that says "PLAY TO THE OBJECTIVES," but they keep selling us codices that essentially say "IGNORE THE OBJECTIVES; TABLE YOUR OPPONENT."

I say: if the game's supposed to be an objectives game, then it should be an objectives game. My proposed rules would force players to play to the objectives.

The "infantry only" and "no 'counts as troops'" rules are a problem. Yes, it's a way of preventing scatter laser jetbikes from being even more broken than they already are, but the solution to that is to nerf that specific unit. There are fluffy and balanced armies that depend on using non-standard troops, and those armies shouldn't be nerfed into uselessness relative to the armies with standard (and therefore infinite) troops.

It actually serves a threefold purpose:

1. It's not just scatter bikes. It also prevents things like respawnable wraithguard/wave serpents and respawnable space marine bikes.

2. It actually makes troops vs. "counts as troops" a real tactical decision. Would you prefer to take the space marine bikes that can't respawn or the tactical marines that can?

3. It would allow for greater unit specialization. If tactical marines can respawn, but space marine bikes can't, then there's no reason why each and every space marine bike shouldn't be able to upgrade to a grav gun.

I'm serious, man. Make. Everything. OP.

Magically teleporting anywhere in your deployment zone is a huge problem. Melee troops immediately enter combat no matter where the enemy unit is or how defensively you might want to play, and the only real counter is "never get within 12" of your opponent's deployment zone". Any objectives in your opponent's deployment zone become virtually impossible to hold, because no matter what you do an obsec scoring unit is going to teleport there next turn. And you have the complete absurdity of things like units teleporting directly to the top level of a ruin, much faster than they could get there by walking normally.

I don't view this as problematic. All of this is essentially what I intended. As I said, it would shift the focus of the game to hunting down specialist units early and camping on mid-field objectives.

Fluff-wise it's complete nonsense. It makes sense for something like IG conscripts to respawn or a horde of cultists over and over again (and, in fact, those units have had respawn rules), but an endless horde of grey knight terminators? No thank you.

As I said to Sgt_Smudge:

I have two points about this:

1. Given proposed rule 3, even respawning terminators wouldn't be game-breaking.

2. Terminators as troops is a problem with the rules as is, not my rules proposal.

Finally, it still fails the "make troops interesting" test. A bad and boring unit that can be taken in vast quantities isn't really any more interesting, it's just better at winning games. A rough approximation of this rule is "reduce the point cost of troops units by 50%", while the problem with troops has nothing to do with their point efficiency. A tactical squad that costs half as much is still a boring version of a sternguard squad, and has none of the OMG COOL I WANT IT factor. So you'd succeed in making more of the game about who can exploit the respawn mechanic most effectively and generate more points worth of "free" units (hey, this sounds an awful lot like the complaint about formations!), and reinforce the idea that troops are the boring units you take because you want to win games and resent because they remove your ability to use the fun stuff.

So you don't think that zombie cultists or DKOK are interesting?

 General Annoyance wrote:
If everything could counter everything, the game would be incredibly bland.

Like in AoS? Zing!

Anyway, more on topic, you yourself (Tradito, that is) have said that you don't like OP nonsense. So why the sudden change of heart?

Again, as has been said before, this is the PROPOSED RULES forum. We are not bound by GW's mistakes.

JNAProductions wrote:Anyway, more on topic, you yourself (Tradito, that is) have said that you don't like OP nonsense. So why the sudden change of heart?

That's precisely why I propose this.

I think that my proposal would make the OP stuff less OP because it would force objectives-based gameplay.

Do you realize how useless flyrant spam would be with this rule?



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Also, can you imagine how much this would boost tyrranid troops?

In addition, I think that the little zergling things should basically get my proposed reanimation protocols to represent the never-ending swarm.

Tarpits for days!

 Traditio wrote:
I'm serious, man. Make. Everything. OP.

You said it. Not me.

In addition, how do you deal with the fluff issues? Because Guardsmen swarming like flies, or Gaunts, or stuff like that, yeah, okay. Space Marines of ANY kind? No.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
I'm serious, man. Make. Everything. OP.

You said it. Not me.

In addition, how do you deal with the fluff issues? Because Guardsmen swarming like flies, or Gaunts, or stuff like that, yeah, okay. Space Marines of ANY kind? No.

What I'm proposing isn't much worse than what the rules give us already, fluffwise. The fluff tells me that a tactical marine should be bat man, superman and captain America all rolled into one. I should need 1, 2, at most 5 tactical marines, to slaughter just about anything that might be on the table.

Or, at the very least, a single tactical marine should be 10 times better than a single guardsmen.

That's not what the current rules give me.

And besides. Just how often in the fluff do you think wraithknights or imperial knights get deployed? Meanwhile, on the actual table-top...

Feth the fluff. Purely in terms of game mechanics, I think that my idea make sense.




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One further thought:

And even if tactical marines did cost 50 ppm and were 10 times as good as guardsmen, I don't see why there's anything intrinsically unfluffy about the idea that a space marine force could call for reinforcements. There are roughly 1000 space marines in a chapter. How many do you think you would go through in an 1850 game, even with respawns?

Alright, that's a legitimate fluff stance.

Now you just need to make the rule actually decent and fun. Because as it stands, as has been addressed by several people more intelligent than I... It's not.

Edit: You start with, say, 50. That's 700 points. You lose 25, respawn three squads. You're up to 80. That's damn near a tenth of a chapter in one battle.

 Traditio wrote:
Yes, the troops would just come back on the next turn, but you've still scored the VP.

Assuming you're playing a maelstrom game, which you shouldn't be. If you're playing a normal mission then you've accomplished nothing.

And note, this is why it would still be important to take non-troops. It would be much harder to do that without the IK.

I don't think you understand the sheer power of mass obsec units. You might have a harder time killing something, but you can throw wave after wave of obsec units at the objectives and win even if you don't kill much.

I mean, it technically would still be possible to table your opponent. I can think of two ways:

1. Some armies don't use troops. You could, in principle, table a space marine bike army or an Eldar scatbike army if you were to use these rules.

2. You could essentially table your opponent if you managed to remove all of his models AND make it impossible for him to deploy any models within 12 inches of his side of the board. The game wouldn't technically end there, but practically speaking, the game would end there.

It might be technically possible, but in real games it would never happen. If infinite respawning troops units exist then every army will take at least one unit to abuse the mechanic. And making it impossible to deploy within 12" of the entire table edge is virtually impossible when models can teleport directly to any point in that entire 6'x1' area. If you have enough surviving models to cover the whole area and you've literally removed your opponent's entire army from the table then why did you play such a one-sided game in the first place? That's only going to happen in a seal-clubbing game where one player is completely outclassed and has zero hope of winning.

But really, this is a problem with the game in general. GW seems to be selling us a ruleset that says "PLAY TO THE OBJECTIVES," but they keep selling us codices that essentially say "IGNORE THE OBJECTIVES; TABLE YOUR OPPONENT."

You're a C:SM player, you should know better. Remember how your best formation is MSU obsec spam that wins by sheer objective claiming ability instead of killing power? Remember how 7th edition made all units scoring so that your entire army can participate in the objective game, instead of just your troops tax? Remember how many of the balance problems involve death star armies that are virtually impossible to table? There are certainly balance issues, but winning is still very much about claiming objectives.

1. It's not just scatter bikes. It also prevents things like respawnable wraithguard/wave serpents and respawnable space marine bikes.

If those specific units are a problem then fix them. If bikes/wraithguard/whatever weren't overpowered in the first place then letting them have the same respawning ability as tactical marines wouldn't be a problem.

2. It actually makes troops vs. "counts as troops" a real tactical decision. Would you prefer to take the space marine bikes that can't respawn or the tactical marines that can?

It makes no such tactical decision because "counts as troops" no longer makes units troops, and that rule ceases to matter. At that point there's very little difference between taking "troops" bikes and fast attack bikes.

3. It would allow for greater unit specialization. If tactical marines can respawn, but space marine bikes can't, then there's no reason why each and every space marine bike shouldn't be able to upgrade to a grav gun.

I'm serious, man. Make. Everything. OP.

This is terrible game design. What 40k needs is a return to reasonable power levels, not an even greater arms race between which gimmick is most overpowered at the moment. Your proposed game is no longer an interesting strategy game, it's those obnoxious kids yelling "MY POKEMON IS LEVEL 999999 NO MINE IS BETTER MINE IS YOURS +1 SO THERE I WIN NO I WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". Contrast this with 30k, which removes much of 40k's "make everything OP" design and is a much better game as a result.

I don't view this as problematic. All of this is essentially what I intended. As I said, it would shift the focus of the game to hunting down specialist units early and camping on mid-field objectives.

Of course it's probelmatic. Why even have deployment zones if the only thing that matters is the 6'x2' section in the middle of the table? Your proposal effectively cuts the size of the table in half, in a game that already suffers badly from the constraints of playing on a 6'x4' table.

1. Given proposed rule 3, even respawning terminators wouldn't be game-breaking.

2. Terminators as troops is a problem with the rules as is, not my rules proposal.

You completely ignored the point of what I said there. I was talking about FLUFF, not balance. Even if respawning terminators is balanced it's completely ing stupid from a fluff point of view. Terminators are the elite of the elite, equipped with priceless relics of a forgotten age, not a horde of expendable conscripts to mindlessly throw at an objective. "Send in the next wave" is not a thing that should ever be applied to them. And it shouldn't be applied to even lower-tier troops like tactical marines, terminators are just the most extreme example of breaking the fluff.

And no, they aren't a problem with the rules. Terminators as troops works just fine in certain armies. They have existed for multiple editions without any problems and are well established as part of the fluff. If your proposal can't handle those armies then the problem is on your end, and you can't just handwave it away.

So you don't think that zombie cultists or DKOK are interesting?

They're interesting in their own ways, mostly because they make sense fluff-wise. But that's missing the point. The issue is not that horde infantry and basic troops are never interesting, it's that many players find them less appealing because they're so boring. Consider a tactical squad vs. a sternguard squad. The sternguard squad is just a better tactical squad in every way. Same bolter marines, same weapon upgrade options, except with a better stat line and that awesome special-issue ammunition. Which one has the "WOW COOL UNIT" factor? Clearly the sternguard. So yeah, taking MSU tactical marines in a gladius army might be good at winning games, but a lot of players are going to spend the whole time wishing they could have more sternguard instead of those boring marines. And making the tactical squad cheaper (and therefore better at winning games) doesn't do anything to fix this problem.

And no, this isn't an easy problem to fix. GW have really backed themselves into a corner with their constant "it's like your existing unit, but so much cooler!" marketing of new units. Sternguard are tactical marines +1. Vanguard are assault marines +1. Centurions are devastators +1. Etc. The basic units are mostly reduced to being the standard for comparison that makes the shiny new toys look good, not units you actually want to have in your army. That's a core design philosophy problem, not something that can be fixed with a buff to troops.


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 Traditio wrote:
I don't see why there's anything intrinsically unfluffy about the idea that a space marine force could call for reinforcements.

We have that already, it's represented by putting units in reserve. What your respawn idea represents is a "send in the next wave" approach where you're encouraged to send unit after unit into a war of attrition, knowing that it's ok that they get slaughtered because there's plenty more where the first wave came from. In fact, your rules allow you to literally suicide a squad of space marines so you can respawn another one. That's the exact opposite of the kind of carefully targeted precision assaults that space marines are supposed to make.


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 Traditio wrote:
The fluff tells me that a tactical marine should be bat man, superman and captain America all rolled into one. I should need 1, 2, at most 5 tactical marines, to slaughter just about anything that might be on the table.

No, that would be space marine masturbatory fanfiction, not reasonable fluff. 1-2 space marines slaughtering a whole army is not reasonable at all, especially in a setting where every other faction has their own badass units that are equally effective.

As a person who uses mass troops that re spawn on 4+'s (daemons just to be even more dickish)

The comments on this forums are just funny to watch, also making it that troops can be infinite would have not only some gameplay problems but also actual real world limitations

First, when i think mass spam troops, i suddenly remember apoc games were the whole table is flooded with models.

DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW LONG IT TAKES TO MOVE THAT MANY MODELS???

It's a clusterfeth, especially when adding dice rolls to EVERY SINGLE UNIT!

the second point is....... who the hell is going to have a massive stash of the same exact unit loadouts in their collection of 40k stuff.

Sure you might have 3-4 units that are the same, but when you have potentially infinite units coming on to the field do you have the brass to cover the madness that is spamming?

For a ruleset, I've played scenarios where troops are infinte and i can tell you, it doesnt work

not because the troops are OP, but because it's the middle of turn 2 and my oponent has only moved a quarter of his guys and it's been 3 hours already

Scaling in 40k is a serious problem, especially with the rulesets and stuff

When i have a formation that dumps 84 models on the field (barebones) and it takes me at least 20 mins to set them up on the turn they arrive with my oponents help, this tells you that 40k is not gracious in terms of big armies.

My advice? price everything adequately in their own unique way, this way you are not comparing apples but rather everything is a different fruit/vegetable, that way people can NEVER compare one unit to another cause they do completely different roles and different utilities

The problem is that this is so biased towards gunline and shooty armies. In choppy armies, half the battle is just getting across the table. Gunline armies don't have to do that. They want to be in their deployment zone. I'm all for certain armies having respawn rules, but only horde armies like guard, orks, and nids. Giving this rule to admech, tau, or even some SM variants is just going to make the shooting phase even more out of balance.

For example, if I my boyz finally make across the table to chew through a group of firewarriors, which is where the markerlights, ethereals, and other support will be, guess what, those firewarriors will be back next turn at full strength in their own deployment zone ready to take out my already weakened boyz. Sure, they don't get their HQ back, but they get all their markerlights and all their shooting. Those boyz are dead. What happens when my boyz respawn? They're at the other end of the table back in their trukk. Now he's got all his units back, I have mine back, but I have lost all my progress towards winning while he's back at full strength.

This is true with any shooty army. Some chaos marines somehow make it across the table to take out a squad of grav cents? Congratulations, the grav cents get to respawn on their next turn and liquidate the chaos marines, who go back to their end of the table. This rule further imbalances the game in favor of shooting, which is already fantastic in this edition.

 Vitali Advenil wrote:
The problem is that this is so biased towards gunline and shooty armies. In choppy armies, half the battle is just getting across the table. Gunline armies don't have to do that. They want to be in their deployment zone. I'm all for certain armies having respawn rules, but only horde armies like guard, orks, and nids. Giving this rule to admech, tau, or even some SM variants is just going to make the shooting phase even more out of balance.

For example, if I my boyz finally make across the table to chew through a group of firewarriors, which is where the markerlights, ethereals, and other support will be, guess what, those firewarriors will be back next turn at full strength in their own deployment zone ready to take out my already weakened boyz. Sure, they don't get their HQ back, but they get all their markerlights and all their shooting. Those boyz are dead. What happens when my boyz respawn? They're at the other end of the table back in their trukk. Now he's got all his units back, I have mine back, but I have lost all my progress towards winning while he's back at full strength.

This is true with any shooty army. Some chaos marines somehow make it across the table to take out a squad of grav cents? Congratulations, the grav cents get to respawn on their next turn and liquidate the chaos marines, who go back to their end of the table. This rule further imbalances the game in favor of shooting, which is already fantastic in this edition.

1. You know that grav cents aren't listed as troops in the SM codex, right?

Are the units that can produce marker lights in the troops section of the Tau codex?

2. 40k is supposed to be an objectives based game. You know that, technically, you don't have to kill a single model to win the game, right? Even if you kill no Tau models and he kills a ton of your boyz, if he doesn't move from his deployment zone, he's not going to be scoring mid-field objectives.

If you play orks, then my proposed rule would directly benefit you. Especially against Tau. Tau gunlines don't move much.

Rules mechanics are really just the expression of design philosophy. And right now, 7th is a dysfunctional patchwork of interesting but discordant ideas. I don't feel a lot of current armies were considered when 7th was designed. So at a certain point, a ground up redesign is best (but you can always take the current mechanics for reference and inspiration).

More practically: I think you are working backwards, Traditio. Balance the game around the Tactical Marine first. It's a lot more work but ultimately you'll have a game with a more intuitive feel.

 Traditio wrote:
Are the units that can produce marker lights in the troops section of the Tau codex?

Yes. Not all of them, or the most efficient ones, but those troops will respawn markerlights.

2. 40k is supposed to be an objectives based game. You know that, technically, you don't have to kill a single model to win the game, right? Even if you kill no Tau models and he kills a ton of your boyz, if he doesn't move from his deployment zone, he's not going to be scoring mid-field objectives.

This is Tau we're talking about. They have their deployment zone locked down completely, and can threaten the midfield objectives with long-ranged weapons sitting in their own deployment zone. The orks, on the other hand, can not threaten anything until they get into melee. So yeah, the orks move into midfield, but then they get shot off the objective and respawn back in their deployment zone. And thanks to the Tau player having all their "home" objectives locked down they can afford to send units into midfield to claim objectives. After all, if those units get killed in melee they just respawn back in the gunline and resume shooting like nothing happened.

 Traditio wrote:

 Vitali Advenil wrote:
The problem is that this is so biased towards gunline and shooty armies. In choppy armies, half the battle is just getting across the table. Gunline armies don't have to do that. They want to be in their deployment zone. I'm all for certain armies having respawn rules, but only horde armies like guard, orks, and nids. Giving this rule to admech, tau, or even some SM variants is just going to make the shooting phase even more out of balance.

For example, if I my boyz finally make across the table to chew through a group of firewarriors, which is where the markerlights, ethereals, and other support will be, guess what, those firewarriors will be back next turn at full strength in their own deployment zone ready to take out my already weakened boyz. Sure, they don't get their HQ back, but they get all their markerlights and all their shooting. Those boyz are dead. What happens when my boyz respawn? They're at the other end of the table back in their trukk. Now he's got all his units back, I have mine back, but I have lost all my progress towards winning while he's back at full strength.

This is true with any shooty army. Some chaos marines somehow make it across the table to take out a squad of grav cents? Congratulations, the grav cents get to respawn on their next turn and liquidate the chaos marines, who go back to their end of the table. This rule further imbalances the game in favor of shooting, which is already fantastic in this edition.

1. You know that grav cents aren't listed as troops in the SM codex, right?

Are the units that can produce marker lights in the troops section of the Tau codex?

2. 40k is supposed to be an objectives based game. You know that, technically, you don't have to kill a single model to win the game, right? Even if you kill no Tau models and he kills a ton of your boyz, if he doesn't move from his deployment zone, he's not going to be scoring mid-field objectives.

If you play orks, then my proposed rule would directly benefit you. Especially against Tau. Tau gunlines don't move much.

Sorry I mean grav servitors. I typo the two kind of often.

Also, I'm fairly certain firewarriors are the ones who have markerlights.

And that rule would absolutely not benefit me. I hate the argument of "you don't have to kill them you know." Sure. Go ahead and play a game vs Tau where you never attack them. Tell me how well that goes. My boyz aren't going to be able to hold that objective if they keep getting killed by the infinitely respawning firewarriors. And what if they're standing on an objective in their deployment zone I need? That whole "play the objective" crap doesn't work with Tau because they do have mobility, they have tons of firepower, and they can hold an objective with tough models. I'm not going to make any progress with my orks getting killed halfway up the board, respawning, and dying again over and over to the immortal gunline. The whole way I manage to cripple Tau is to take out their support, and I cannot do that if their support just respawns every time I kill them.

And this is the same for every gunline army. Every good gunline army has some mobility. Tau have jump suits, admech have fast walkers and infiltrators, marines have vehicles. It's just that both Tau and Admech have fantastic ranged options that are also troops. I would love for my grav servitors and haywire breachers to respawn on death, much more than I'd love my ork boyz to do so.

The main problem with this rule is that it makes every troop choice expendable, when some troops are not supposed to be that way. With boyz, absolutely, I could care less if I lose 15 of them in a single round of shooting, I have 30 more coming. But with admech, losing even one battle-servitor hurts hard because they're about 50-60 points a model. That's why I have to hold them back in safe positions. But if I could just get them back for free? I'd just march those things wherever I wanted because when they die, who cares, I have 60 inches of range! Again, maybe this rule could work for horde armies who only have cheap troop choices, but this gives every army expendable troops, and that is unbalanced.

One blanket rule is not going to fix troops being mediocre at best. This would only make new problems, not solve them.

i can already see KDK just smiling at this.

BFTBG combined with infinitely spawning troops?? and i can just cultist spam and summon infinite BT's ?!?!?!

ARE YOU INSANE!

by the end of turn 1 i could summon a bloodthirster, repeat for 6-7 turns

thx for the 1500 - 1750 extra pts of FMC

 KommissarKiln wrote:
then eventually it'll boil down to who goes first wins

Isn't it allready like this? At least i got this impression when played with a trukkspam list vs scatbike spam list. If elfs go first, they win, if orks go first, they have a chance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

A bad and boring unit that can be taken in vast quantities isn't really any more interesting...A tactical squad that costs half as much is still a boring version of a sternguard squad, and has none of the OMG COOL I WANT IT factor.

Now i can't agree with this. People have different understanding of what's interesting. For example, for me it's more interesting to have regular dudes with a couple special weapons than dudes with all the special weapons. It's much more realistic - special weapons are special for a reason. They're way more costly to produce, maintain, transport. May be more unwieldy to use and don't fit as wide a variety of roles as standard weapons do.

Furthermore, it fits the 'against all odds feeling' much better. I'd prefer special stuff to be really special - means more rare and expensive.

I'm actually drifting more and more in favour of this idea.
Re-spawning footslogging troops would bring Orks and Guard right up the rankings, Dark Eldar and Tyranids-sadly-would see no real benefit, at first glance Necrons would profit big but their natural toughness would actually work against them - rather than getting slaughtered wholesale and re-spawning the next turn like Guard they'd be shambling about in beaten squads that are too small to do real damage but not completely eliminated so not re-spawning.

If the Dedicated Transport is a destroyable re-spawn point then tabling is still a very real possibility.

If they come back with the unit then I'd hope they have to be destroyed as well before the unit can re-spawn - that would mean Drop Pods have to be rediculously well placed or they'd just get left behind as a unit that can't move and can't reach.

Still brings up questions for how Dark Eldar and Nids could possibly get any boost from all this.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
I'm actually drifting more and more in favour of this idea.
Re-spawning footslogging troops would bring Orks and Guard right up the rankings, Dark Eldar and Tyranids-sadly-would see no real benefit, at first glance Necrons would profit big but their natural toughness would actually work against them - rather than getting slaughtered wholesale and re-spawning the next turn like Guard they'd be shambling about in beaten squads that are too small to do real damage but not completely eliminated so not re-spawning.

If the Dedicated Transport is a destroyable re-spawn point then tabling is still a very real possibility.

If they come back with the unit then I'd hope they have to be destroyed as well before the unit can re-spawn - that would mean Drop Pods have to be rediculously well placed or they'd just get left behind as a unit that can't move and can't reach.

Still brings up questions for how Dark Eldar and Nids could possibly get any boost from all this.

What about endless crysis suits and firewarriors? Skiitari shooty dudes? Pink horrors endlessly getting warpcharges on board, killing themselves with sacrafices, generating blue horrors (that are also troops), than come back on board. Imagine this scenario: you have 1 pinkhorror squad. Get allied grey knights, for example 2 purifier squads (or how are those cleansing flame guyz called. Use cleansing flame a couple times, for example, you kill 5 horrors - they split and generate 10 blue horrors. You place blue horrors the way they're >6' away from the furthest model in a pink horror squad. Next purifier squad uses cleansing flame and kills 5 more horrors and 5 blue horrors, for example. But they kill pink horrors out of the blue horror range, so they have to generate another squad. In the end you get 5 blue horrors, another squad of 10 blue horrors and 5 brimstone horrors. Than pink horrors return on board. And than all the blue and brimstones will. That's just from one 90 pt squad - imagine there are 3 around those purifiers - easilly feasible. That's just in case you need 10-20 free extra warpcharges per turn. Or you could just place them and the enemy will NEVER be able to deal with them outside of extreme mellee. But than you just kill a couple yourself and they're invulnerable. There'd be literally no place to fit in your deployment zone.

 Traditio wrote:
I completely agree with you, and I think that what I am proposing would accomplish that.

What you are proposing is a focus on Troop choices that will likely result in nothing but Troop choice lists. Having respawning units is a massive advantage; my Leman Russ battalion could mash your Tactical Squads into the dirt, but with your rules that makes no difference to you - you still get to replace them next turn, and you can't lose the game for being wiped off the board. Chances are I'll lose that game despite having a list that will most likely counter everything you have to offer.

Right. So imagine that you are playing with my proposed rules. You have an IK as well as an HQ and some troops in transports from another codex. Your opponent has a ton of troops in his DZ, but a unit of elites in a transport on a midfield objective.

You have two options:

You could shoot/assault the troops in his DZ.

I think that your IK should slaughter them. Just annihilate them.

But so much good that did.

On your opponent's turn, he puts them right back where they were.

You've accomplished, if not nothing, then very little.

That's option one.

Option two is you target the enemy squad sitting on the midfield objective, move your own troops there and score a VP.

You see what I'm saying?

But then your opponent can do the same back to you, most likely. Either way, the Knight, and any other similar Heavy Support choice, have become nothing more than leaf blowers to push things away from objectives temporarily for you to claim them. Chances are games with this ruleset will become an absolute grind as almost nothing dies except for your support units. And once those are dead, the game's going to grind even worse.

 koooaei wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
I'm actually drifting more and more in favour of this idea.
Re-spawning footslogging troops would bring Orks and Guard right up the rankings, Dark Eldar and Tyranids-sadly-would see no real benefit, at first glance Necrons would profit big but their natural toughness would actually work against them - rather than getting slaughtered wholesale and re-spawning the next turn like Guard they'd be shambling about in beaten squads that are too small to do real damage but not completely eliminated so not re-spawning.

If the Dedicated Transport is a destroyable re-spawn point then tabling is still a very real possibility.

If they come back with the unit then I'd hope they have to be destroyed as well before the unit can re-spawn - that would mean Drop Pods have to be rediculously well placed or they'd just get left behind as a unit that can't move and can't reach.

Still brings up questions for how Dark Eldar and Nids could possibly get any boost from all this.

What about endless crysis suits and firewarriors? Skiitari shooty dudes? Pink horrors endlessly getting warpcharges on board, killing themselves with sacrafices, generating blue horrors (that are also troops), than come back on board. Imagine this scenario: you have 1 pinkhorror squad. Get allied grey knights, for example 2 purifier squads (or how are those cleansing flame guyz called. Use cleansing flame a couple times, for example, you kill 5 horrors - they split and generate 10 blue horrors. You place blue horrors the way they're >6' away from the furthest model in a pink horror squad. Next purifier squad uses cleansing flame and kills 5 more horrors and 5 blue horrors, for example. But they kill pink horrors out of the blue horror range, so they have to generate another squad. In the end you get 5 blue horrors, another squad of 10 blue horrors and 5 brimstone horrors. Than pink horrors return on board. And than all the blue and brimstones will. That's just from one 90 pt squad - imagine there are 3 around those purifiers - easilly feasible. That's just in case you need 10-20 free extra warpcharges per turn. Or you could just place them and the enemy will NEVER be able to deal with them outside of extreme mellee. But than you just kill a couple yourself and they're invulnerable. There'd be literally no place to fit in your deployment zone.

I don't give a damn about Fire Warriors, last I checked Crisis Suits aren't Troops or Foot Sloggers and I've already pulled the Horror trick with Space Mutts Psychic phase.

Crysis suits are troops in farsight enclave.

 koooaei wrote:
Crysis suits are troops in farsight enclave.

Still not footsloggers.
Read the first page - I missed the part where he specified footsloggers as well. I was wondering if he'd lost his marbles letting Eldar have re-spawning Scattbikes.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Crysis suits are troops in farsight enclave.

Still not footsloggers.
Read the first page - I missed the part where he specified footsloggers as well. I was wondering if he'd lost his marbles letting Eldar have re-spawning Scattbikes.

They're jetpack infantry.

 koooaei wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Crysis suits are troops in farsight enclave.

Still not footsloggers.
Read the first page - I missed the part where he specified footsloggers as well. I was wondering if he'd lost his marbles letting Eldar have re-spawning Scattbikes.

They're jetpack infantry.

Which makes them not footsloggers.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Crysis suits are troops in farsight enclave.

Still not footsloggers.
Read the first page - I missed the part where he specified footsloggers as well. I was wondering if he'd lost his marbles letting Eldar have re-spawning Scattbikes.

They're jetpack infantry.

Which makes them not footsloggers.

What about mixed squads of firewarriors and drones? FW are infantry - drones are jetpack infantry. They're all in one squad.

Man am I happy Traditio is still around. Really poorly thought out proposed rules are the best.

This idea is really terrible. Many people have gone over all the various reasons why. Besides not actually addressing any issue it just sort of creates new ones.

There are many MANY imbalances that this creates between the various armies in the game. Not to mention you are giving a better version of a nid formation bonus to every army as a default mechanic. Great.