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So, I've thought this for a long time but 7th made me give up on wanting that edition of the game to be balanced anyways. I'm thinking of things that would see a lot of play if they were moved to troops. I am torn because the new FOC options seem to imply that GW doesn't want to move things around a La 5th ed. But, since this edition is going to be a total rewrite, it is certainly possible that some units would be moved to the troop slot full stop.

A lot of units might be better on account of how they need to change to be compatible with 8th ed. IG sentinels are gonna be interesting to watch, but if they become troops, that would make them a mainstay in a lot of lists. But this has me thinking, a lot of things in a lot of armies (I'm picking IG here because they have a lot of examples) are not bad. Most of these things are really only passed up because they compete with marginally better things. A looser interpretation of what can and ca't be thought of as troops also would increase variety. IG currently have 2 troop choices and they all come down to 32 flavors of infantry. Rough Riders, Sentinels, Ratlings, and maybe scions could reasonably be thought of as troops and would make list building a lot more interesting IMO. I'm interested if others have had similar thoughts regarding some neat shakeups that would happen in 8th ed.

Yeah troops are gonna be the bees knees in this edition it seems.

Troops are my favourite type of unit in all of the game. I know some people love vehicles, other giant monsters, other flyers or bikes. To me, the rank and file are that gives each faction their appeal.

I just want to field dozens and dozens of fire warriors and feel like I'm in Normandy!

For me this is the order suits, flyers, troops, tanks, and whatever else I really like troops though. Just because I put it third doesn't mean I don't like seeing a cool mechanized army.

I also think the basic troops are generally the most interesting parts of most of the armies. I like the idea of dozens of small models clashing with just a few vehicles or larger units there for support rather than two or three giant models doing everything while you have a few troop squads at minimum size to just get capture points.

It depends alot on how well battle... thingy can be mitigated.

If it's difficult to mitigate and your infantry are getting slaughtered left and right then there will be a strong impetus to bring more hardened targets to serve as your army's anchor.

My immediate assumption is that MSU style armies with lots of transports will be the way to go for many armies.

I would like troops to matter again. As cool as cool elites are, I think basic troops should be more important than "I have to have them cause reasons."

They need to remove non basic infantry as troops.

The basic guardian for eldar is troop. Guardian biker is fast attack. Wraithguard is elite.

Dark angels and white scar marine bikers is fast attack not troops.

Chaos marine plague, noise, rubric, chosen marines is elite not troops.

Get rid of all these elite, fast attack, heavy etc... As troops.

Troops are supposed to be the general infantry not the spec ops.

Reward players who takes troops instead of those counts as troops.

 CadianGateTroll wrote:

Chaos marine plague, noise, rubric, chosen marines is elite not troops.

Get rid of all these elite, fast attack, heavy etc... As troops.

But what about Faction: Death Guard that is more than likely coming? Do you agree that Plague Marines should be their only powered armoured troop? Because all DG are Plague Marines now.

Edit: I say only power armoured, because the only troops should be (in my opinion): Plague Marines, Cultists of Nurgle, Plague Zombies.

Your basic premise seems to be not so much making the humble troop choices better, but moving other things into the troop category. I think if it were done properly (big if there), a lot of things could be moved into troops. For example space marines, i always thought tactical, assault and devastator squads should all be troops. But again, if it was done properly. It would require balancing, meaningful differences, appropriate point costings, etc.

What's actually going to happen is anyone's guess, though.

My troops, fast attack, heavy support and elites all use exactly the same set of models so it's totally irrelevant to me.

Change the army however you want, I still only have about 5 scultps to work with.

I like old FOC shenanigans, like making Sternguard troops, or Rubrics, or Plague marines. It lets you build specialist or fluffy armies.

The issue with it is that a lot of specialists are blatantly better than basic troops which I don't think is how it should be. Having 200 points in Chaos Marines should balance out with 200 points of Plague Marines, at least in a loose sense. I love the look of Firewarriors. They're just cool to me, but the current Tau army seems to emphasis the benefits of fielding hordes of battle suits who outperform the firewarriors point for point. Having tools in the army is great, and some will be better at some stuff than others, but there's a problem across armies from what I've seen where troops end up being a redundancy you don't need especially with so much ObSec around.

I'm so excited for 8th because it sounds like basic infantry is being powered up against the big monsters and vehicles. Split fire and move-and-shoot heavy weapons means a tac squad (or equivalent) can take a heavy weapon and not just be all about that weapon. The rend system worried me at first but it sounds like the way to go.

Now I can see a 10 man CSM squad being decent because they can hurt anything

 Rippy wrote:

 CadianGateTroll wrote:

Chaos marine plague, noise, rubric, chosen marines is elite not troops.

Get rid of all these elite, fast attack, heavy etc... As troops.

But what about Faction: Death Guard that is more than likely coming? Do you agree that Plague Marines should be their only powered armoured troop? Because all DG are Plague Marines now.

Edit: I say only power armoured, because the only troops should be (in my opinion): Plague Marines, Cultists of Nurgle, Plague Zombies.

This is how AoS works. You can have a more inflexible-subfaction where troops that in other armies are "elites", they are used here as troops (Or battleline as AoS)

For example, Ironjawz, the sub-faction of Elite Orcs. They can have Black Orcs as basic troops (Called Ard Boyz there), but if you are using a generic Greenskin or Destruction army, those Black Orcs aren't basic troops, they are elite. Thats goes well with the fluff, because in that specific subfaction, the orcs that are "elite" in more generic armies, they are the most "weak"/common unit there.

So, Plague Marines should (And I'm gonna say, they are gonna be, just like AoS) be basic troops in a Death Guard army, but "Elite" in a generic Chaos army.

 Galas wrote:
Troops are my favourite type of unit in all of the game. I know some people love vehicles, other giant monsters, other flyers or bikes. To me, the rank and file are that gives each faction their appeal.

I just want to field dozens and dozens of fire warriors and feel like I'm in Normandy!

Completely agree. Doesn't feel like an army if there are more weapon platforms than there are soldiers.

I once fielded an 1850pt tau army with a total of 12 footsoldiers (two squads of 6 fire warriors). It was not an experience I plan on repeating, my poor soldiers never felt so impotent
I want my grunts to feel bad dammit!