Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

tneva82 wrote:

That's one possibility that they are just heavy support etc. BUT there's this "lords of war" choise. Which means old super heavies likely are lords of war unit types and why they are in own detachments is probably so that you can't spam them AND get command points. For example detachment with 1 lords of war only could exists but gives 0 command points so if you bring several LOW's into the table by taking multiples of that detachment you are hamstringing your command points.

Meanwhile if they were in say HS you could bring 3 of them in battallion and get 3 command points(albeit with other units required).

Where do you see Lord of War choice? I don't see any LoW slot on the new detachments.

Basically if you want command points you have to pay a troops tax.

We need to know more about command points, before any of this has meaningful context.

Why would anyone take the 2HQ 3Troop detachment when the patrol detachment exists? Command points. Since that's the reason i'd pay a high troop tax, let's see what i get...

 Marmatag wrote:
Basically if you want command points you have to pay a troops tax.

We need to know more about command points, before any of this has meaningful context.

Why would anyone take the 2HQ 3Troop detachment when the patrol detachment exists? Command points. Since that's the reason i'd pay a high troop tax, let's see what i get...

I quite like this. If command points are useful, there are some meaningful list building decisions here.

 Luciferian wrote:

 Galef wrote:
One thing I noticed (that I sure others have too) is that Flyers have their own Battlefield role, rather than being FA or Heavy.
I find that to be interesting and may lead to more Flyers being taken since they will no longer compete with those other choices.

Or fewer, if there aren't as many flyer slots.

I'd be willing to bet that one of the 14 detachments will have more than a few Flyer slots available.

Just like one of those 14 will undoubtedly not include a minimum HQ so that Skitarri and Harlequins can be taken.
Although it is possible that Battlefield roles could be shifted and a currently Elite Shadowseer could become an HQ. Although that does fit the fluff, you get what I mean.



Question for the group: Did we get confirmation that the 14 detachments are just in the main rules, or does this include the Faction specific ones in the 5 army books that will be released on Day 1 with the main rules?

-

And good riddance to Formations.

Don't get me wrong, I like the concept. Army themed special stuff to reflect how that force fights best. Beautiful, brilliant concept.

But the execution. Oh Lordy that execution was horrible.

Lopsided power scales. Wonky dishing out. Some armies had over a dozen, with various decent ones. Others? Very few, possibly none. And they were all over the shop.

Now that last point barely snuffs a weirdo completist like myself, but even having all the books I couldn't tell you what's in which.

But the first point is why they won't be missed. There seemed absolutely no rhyme or reason to the formation power curve. Some were absolute crap. Others total no-brainers. Some I thought were fine for what they represented (a company of Space Marines is a lot of points, many spent on largely mediocre troops), others you had to wonder what the designer was taking when they wrote it (Riptide Wing) and just seemed powerful for being powerful'a sake.

However....whilst the new approach is very much welcome, I am withholding judgement until not only we've seen all the Detachments and their requirements, and how the various armies interact with them. Whilst I hope not, I suspect some armies will find perhaps two, maybe three truly useful, whilst other armies can make good use of all of them (Ynnari for instance have the free run of three Codecies. Compare to Orks...)

Here it's all down the structure, minimum requirements and benefits procured. But, provided Riptide Wings and Wraithknight Gangbangs are out, with a little luck the differences will be largely academic.

It's a brave new world, but we're yet to land there. It seems lush and habitable, but could be a Deathworld yet.

I think they need to be careful here. A lot of vanilla units were made viable SOLELY because of formation.

Generic assault marines. Does anyone use these guys outside of a skyhammer?

And, if you really want to use assault marines, wouldn't you be better off with a patrol detachment of BA, always?

blaktoof wrote:
Core rules will have 14 detachments, I am willing to bet money the army books will include new detachments that will have keyword restrictions such as "Space Marine only" and the word formation will be dead but they will exist again in some new form in the time to come that is 8th.

I think that's a pretty safe bet. If they are going to keep releasing codices or at least "grand alliance" books, which it seems like they are, then surely those books will include faction-specific FOC selections. I would expect a majority of legal formations in 7th to be around in some fashion, albeit without all of the bonuses. So really, if I'm seeing this correctly, the big change here is that they're substituting the free bonuses and formation buffs of 7th edition formations for Command Points, which they can more easily dole out and standardize in a fashion that promotes balance.

 rollawaythestone wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

That's one possibility that they are just heavy support etc. BUT there's this "lords of war" choise. Which means old super heavies likely are lords of war unit types and why they are in own detachments is probably so that you can't spam them AND get command points. For example detachment with 1 lords of war only could exists but gives 0 command points so if you bring several LOW's into the table by taking multiples of that detachment you are hamstringing your command points.

Meanwhile if they were in say HS you could bring 3 of them in battallion and get 3 command points(albeit with other units required).

Where do you see Lord of War choice? I don't see any LoW slot on the new detachments.

Ah. I see it now. It's on the Battlefield Role image.

 Alpharius wrote:
Next person to break RULE #1 in here is going to...not be happy.

That's why I think you closed the wrong thread, this one's title was basically a victory lap for people who hated formations, which of course doesn't go well with the people who liked formations, and amounted to an invitation to fight about it. The others title was neutral and focused on the article released today, which actually has next to nothing to do with formations. You could always change the title to reflect what the conversation is supposed to be about.

 rollawaythestone wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

That's one possibility that they are just heavy support etc. BUT there's this "lords of war" choise. Which means old super heavies likely are lords of war unit types and why they are in own detachments is probably so that you can't spam them AND get command points. For example detachment with 1 lords of war only could exists but gives 0 command points so if you bring several LOW's into the table by taking multiples of that detachment you are hamstringing your command points.

Meanwhile if they were in say HS you could bring 3 of them in battallion and get 3 command points(albeit with other units required).

Where do you see Lord of War choice? I don't see any LoW slot on the new detachments.

Above where they show all battlefield roles.

Therefore there must be slots for LOW SOMEWHERE. Just not in the first 3(out of 14) detachments we have seen. Which I suspect is to try to make it that you sacrifice something to get those. Especially many.

edit: Didn't see you had already seen it(damn this forum got busy quickly! wonder why

Formations were never the root of the problem. Miscosted units were. This does nothing but hand Eldar victory if that problem is not addressed. Space marine gladius is basically an admission that traditional marine forces needed to be spotted 400 pts vs the 7th ed hotness.

tneva82 wrote:


Above where they show all battlefield roles.

Therefore there must be slots for LOW SOMEWHERE. Just not in the first 3(out of 14) detachments we have seen. Which I suspect is to try to make it that you sacrifice something to get those. Especially many.

I will bet you real money there are two LoW FoCs, one for a single LoW meant for adding a LoW to another FoC, and one for a LoW only style FoC ala imperial knight houses. The single LoW will not give command points, and the multi-LoW will give minimal Command points. They may have restrictions on the minimum number of points, such as 2k+ for the single LoW FoC.

 Marmatag wrote:
I think they need to be careful here. A lot of vanilla units were made viable SOLELY because of formation.

Generic assault marines. Does anyone use these guys outside of a skyhammer?

And, if you really want to use assault marines, wouldn't you be better off with a patrol detachment of BA, always?

Well I suppose the hope is that the game will be balanced enough to allow most unit types to be viable in some way, although I'm not exactly going to hold my breath on that. I do agree that the whole point of formations was to make different army types actually viable, though. The whole reason some SM formations got free transports was to bring them into parity, so basically what they were saying is that not all units of an equal points value are actually comparable and certain types of formations will need x amount of extra points in order to compete. That was a pretty clumsy way of doing things and it obviously didn't work out. I think the general mechanics behind this new system are much better since it allows for a lot more granularity and control in their game design as opposed to just making up wacky free powers for each individual formation. But a lot is riding on the balance of each factions' units point for point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Formations were never the root of the problem. Miscosted units were. This does nothing but hand Eldar victory if that problem is not addressed. Space marine gladius is basically an admission that traditional marine forces needed to be spotted 400 pts vs the 7th ed hotness.

Exactly.

 Marmatag wrote:
I think they need to be careful here. A lot of vanilla units were made viable SOLELY because of formation.

Generic assault marines. Does anyone use these guys outside of a skyhammer?

And, if you really want to use assault marines, wouldn't you be better off with a patrol detachment of BA, always?

Balance and play testing fix those issues to a large extent, and you're thinking of these units in their current contexts with their current rules. I don't think that's a useful exercise.

They are re-doing all the units from the ground up. All signs indicate that formations aren't needed to make units viable anymore.

 rollawaythestone wrote:
They are re-doing all the units from the ground up. All signs indicate that formations aren't needed to make units viable anymore.

So one would hope, anyway.

 rollawaythestone wrote:
They are re-doing all the units from the ground up. All signs indicate that formations aren't needed to make units viable anymore.

This is a company that let scatbikes go to press. I'm not trusting them to add 2+2 correctly.

Martel732 wrote:

 rollawaythestone wrote:
They are re-doing all the units from the ground up. All signs indicate that formations aren't needed to make units viable anymore.

This is a company that let scatbikes go to press. I'm not trusting them to add 2+2 correctly.

I'd argue it's a very different company to the one that allowed that particular thing.

But only argue. I'm not saying your fears are completely unjustified

 Galef wrote:



Question for the group: Did we get confirmation that the 14 detachments are just in the main rules, or does this include the Faction specific ones in the 5 army books that will be released on Day 1 with the main rules?

-

I'm fairly confident the initial 14 are just the standard ones from the BRB.

Martel732 wrote:
Formations were never the root of the problem. Miscosted units were. This does nothing but hand Eldar victory if that problem is not addressed. Space marine gladius is basically an admission that traditional marine forces needed to be spotted 400 pts vs the 7th ed hotness.

there were ways to address it outside of 400 points of free models, and they only gave it to marines.

my orks could have used a few hundred extra points to match the next weakest codex or like 50% more points to match elder. 2k elder vs 3k orks would actually probably be a fairly even match currently. probably only need 2.5k to match a non gladius marine 2k.

on the formations front though here is hoping the promised balance occurs and that things like gladius are no longer needed /raiseglass

Martel732 wrote:

 rollawaythestone wrote:
They are re-doing all the units from the ground up. All signs indicate that formations aren't needed to make units viable anymore.

This is a company that let scatbikes go to press. I'm not trusting them to add 2+2 correctly.

I agree to an extent, but it seems like there's been a marked paradigm shift at GW regarding how they treat the game. (Hopefully) gone are the days of "We make models, not games" where whoever decided to write a codex got to throw in whatever schlock sounded neat at the time and send it off to become 40k canon. As I recall, GW's PR team has actually mocked themselves on several recent occasions for not play testing rules in the past. I think they've FINALLY realized that a solid game is the best way to drive sales and promote loyalty (thus generating future sales and consequent product longevity), rather than flip-flopping rules all over the place and creating wildly imbalanced units that'll fly off the shelves briefly but ruin the tabletop experience. I'm optimistic this edition is an extension of the community involvement and good will they've shown over the past year+ with FAQs and whatnot.

We'll see.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 G00fySmiley wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Formations were never the root of the problem. Miscosted units were. This does nothing but hand Eldar victory if that problem is not addressed. Space marine gladius is basically an admission that traditional marine forces needed to be spotted 400 pts vs the 7th ed hotness.

there were ways to address it outside of 400 points of free models, and they only gave it to marines.

my orks could have used a few hundred extra points to match the next weakest codex or like 50% more points to match elder. 2k elder vs 3k orks would actually probably be a fairly even match currently. probably only need 2.5k to match a non gladius marine 2k.

on the formations front though here is hoping the promised balance occurs and that things like gladius are no longer needed /raiseglass

Not really. It's just that other factions didn't get their free 400 pts to take on Tau and Eldar and Demons.

Martel732 wrote:

 rollawaythestone wrote:
They are re-doing all the units from the ground up. All signs indicate that formations aren't needed to make units viable anymore.

This is a company that let scatbikes go to press. I'm not trusting them to add 2+2 correctly.

Well if they had been doing units from scratch AND formations from scratch(formations as they were is dead idea from the get go) that's even more things where things could go wrong.

Glad that they are gone, my armies were always weak and my opponents always seemed to get better saving throws or free light tanks.

CB

Concerns about formations being "necessary" to run core units or to allow X army to compete against Y army have to realize that every army is getting new rules and some major core mechanics are being changed, and the current power paradigm will not hold going forward. We may see Grey Knights and Orks as the new power armies, or Guard and Dark Eldar. We could have reasonable balance across the board (*snort*). Either way, we probably wont have the same power paradigm we have now.


Likewise, such concerns rest on the assumption that such formations ever had any balance intent, which is unlikely to be the case.

I think they're going to really struggle balancing EVERY unit in the game for an entirely new gaming system. I reckon they could have done it fairly easily if they kept the core rules the same as seventh, as it was fairly apparent which units were too strong/too weak from long experience playing with them, With a whole new system, the most undercosted units/combos will only come out once the community has had a few months to digest the new rules.

I do expect unit pricing to be better than it was in seventh, but I'm not expecting a balanced-game miracle here

 Marmatag wrote:
I think they need to be careful here. A lot of vanilla units were made viable SOLELY because of formation.

Generic assault marines. Does anyone use these guys outside of a skyhammer?

And, if you really want to use assault marines, wouldn't you be better off with a patrol detachment of BA, always?

Well, we have yet to see the rules for chainswords yet and have no idea what their movement rules will be. But they hit on 3+ now (presumably, can't see why they wouldn't given that tacticals do) and the pistol rules have a lot of interesting implications for them.

The reason assault marines have sucked for a good long while (beyond assault being bad the last few editions) had a lot to do with them not having a lot of punch due to the small size of the unit and the all-or-nothing nature of AP meaning their close combat weapons (one of the most iconic weapons in the game) has sort of been at actually killing things.

But if the chainsword gets some rules allowing it to punch harder (I wouldn't say no to AP -1 on that) and depending on what plasma pistols look like, assault marines may actually be worth taking on their own without needed a layer of additional rules and additions.

 Ronin_eX wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I think they need to be careful here. A lot of vanilla units were made viable SOLELY because of formation.

Generic assault marines. Does anyone use these guys outside of a skyhammer?

And, if you really want to use assault marines, wouldn't you be better off with a patrol detachment of BA, always?

Well, we have yet to see the rules for chainswords yet and have no idea what their movement rules will be. But they hit on 3+ now (presumably, can't see why they wouldn't given that tacticals do) and the pistol rules have a lot of interesting implications for them.

The reason assault marines have sucked for a good long while (beyond assault being bad the last few editions) had a lot to do with them not having a lot of punch due to the small size of the unit and the all-or-nothing nature of AP meaning their close combat weapons (one of the most iconic weapons in the game) has sort of been at actually killing things.

But if the chainsword gets some rules allowing it to punch harder (I wouldn't say no to AP -1 on that) and depending on what plasma pistols look like, assault marines may actually be worth taking on their own without needed a layer of additional rules and additions.

My main issue with Assault Squads is that they count as fast attack even without jump packs or transports. If I could take them as troop choices over TAC marines I would do so in a heartbeat, even if they were merely foot slogging across the board or in a lowly Rhino. Otherwise, there are just too many choices for fast attack which are a better points expenditure. But we'll see if that changes.

Do you think that space marines are going to be able to take rhinos as fast attacks?

...

...

Never mind. Stupid question. Of course not. Dedicated Transports are now their own FOC slot.

 Talamare wrote:
The 3 example Detachments... SUUUUUUUCK

It's basically... Everyone will be in Battalion unless you manage to squeeze enough in for Brigade.

I don't even see the point of them even existing.
Especially the Patrol Detachment, It's so bad it shouldn't exist.

my concern is will these detachments give a massive advantage to horde armies. it's a lot easier to plunk down 6 squads of IG vets then it is to plunk down 6 GKT squads