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 G00fySmiley wrote:
no more free units in match play, no exceptions why were people even debating this?

personally I am glad for the reserve pool. summoning units and free deploying transports were what broke 7th. for all its bad it was at least playable by most armies. being on the receiving end of gladius or neverending demons on the other hand was basically an autolose

I'm not at all.

I just wish they'd applied the same "Cool rule for narrative" philosophy to, Oh, I don't know. The 200 point untargetable beatstick character who can move 24" and charge and gaks out a free jump pack canoness every turn who gets to reappear anywhere she wants on the board on a 2+ after you finally manage to get through her 7 wounds +4 auto-regenerating ablative wounds with 2+ 4++.

Just make her resurrect ability automatic, and make it so you have to pay points for it in Matched. C'mon, how is this not considered MORE problematic for balance in matched than a blue horror giving you a 2-point brimstone?

the_scotsman wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
no more free units in match play, no exceptions why were people even debating this?

personally I am glad for the reserve pool. summoning units and free deploying transports were what broke 7th. for all its bad it was at least playable by most armies. being on the receiving end of gladius or neverending demons on the other hand was basically an autolose

I'm not at all.

I just wish they'd applied the same "Cool rule for narrative" philosophy to, Oh, I don't know. The 200 point untargetable beatstick character who can move 24" and charge and gaks out a free jump pack canoness every turn who gets to reappear anywhere she wants on the board on a 2+ after you finally manage to get through her 7 wounds +4 auto-regenerating ablative wounds with 2+ 4++.

Just make her resurrect ability automatic, and make it so you have to pay points for it in Matched. C'mon, how is this not considered MORE problematic for balance in matched than a blue horror giving you a 2-point brimstone?

Chaos cannot have nice things, ever since Pete Haines made the 3.5 codex. It's balanced because they're now gimpier Imperials.

I forget Reinforcement points dont have to be built during list building right? you can keep it fluid for options? or do you basicly make a second list?

because the former is fantastic for summoning any answers you need when you need. its the most tacticly flexible option anyone has.

Poxwalkers and Necrons can replenish/reanimate in matched play for free but not daemons or Maggie? Everyone is cool with this right? If this is an allowable mechanic just make all replenish/reanimate effects the same as either poxwalkers or necrons and get rid of the reinforcement points.

 Ineedvc2500 wrote:
Poxwalkers and Necrons can replenish/reanimate in matched play for free but not daemons or Maggie? Everyone is cool with this right? If this is an allowable mechanic just make all replenish/reanimate effects the same as either poxwalkers or necrons and get rid of the reinforcement points.

Reviving models is a little different than making new ones as you are never gaining more than you start.

 Desubot wrote:
I forget Reinforcement points dont have to be built during list building right? you can keep it fluid for options? or do you basicly make a second list?

because the former is fantastic for summoning any answers you need when you need. its the most tacticly flexible option anyone has.

You are correct. You just leave some points open, and you can use them for anything you're able to summon during the game. The power of summoning now is in the flexibility. Not a huge power and something that requires a bit of skill to really pull off, but it is a power none the less.

 Desubot wrote:

 Ineedvc2500 wrote:
Poxwalkers and Necrons can replenish/reanimate in matched play for free but not daemons or Maggie? Everyone is cool with this right? If this is an allowable mechanic just make all replenish/reanimate effects the same as either poxwalkers or necrons and get rid of the reinforcement points.

Reviving models is a little different than making new ones as you are never gaining more than you start.

But not hugely different.

Ok possible solution is to have both replenish exisitng units or add new units in spell text (like Invocation of Nehek) but you have to pay for the new ones.

I'd say poxwalkers pay for their ability, if you compare them to guardsmen.
Necrons on the other hand... they've always been too cheap and probably still are, but at least you can try to prevent protocols from coming into play now.

 Purifier wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
I forget Reinforcement points dont have to be built during list building right? you can keep it fluid for options? or do you basicly make a second list?

because the former is fantastic for summoning any answers you need when you need. its the most tacticly flexible option anyone has.

You are correct. You just leave some points open, and you can use them for anything you're able to summon during the game. The power of summoning now is in the flexibility. Not a huge power and something that requires a bit of skill to really pull off, but it is a power none the less.

Summoning is also not subject to the 'Tactical Reserves' rule where units not on the battlefield by the end of the third battle round count as being destroyed, so its entirely possible to summon a unit in the fourth battle round or later.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd say poxwalkers pay for their ability, if you compare them to guardsmen.
Necrons on the other hand... they've always been too cheap and probably still are, but at least you can try to prevent protocols from coming into play now.

honestly I keep hearing this about Necrons, in theory they are powerful but on the table I have found them strong but not really overpowered. necrons are one of the few armies I do not own (beyond a few painting projects) so I have no horse in that race so to speak, but I have faced them with Orks and vanilla marines neither had that difficult of a time with them. I concentrated on one squad at a time and while I had some issues with living metal plasma ate that well enough current orks v necrons are at 2 wins 1 loss and space marines (vanilla units) are 1 win 1 loss so maybe I just have not faced thier most powerful builds or something but I thought on paper their lists would do better than they did

 G00fySmiley wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd say poxwalkers pay for their ability, if you compare them to guardsmen.
Necrons on the other hand... they've always been too cheap and probably still are, but at least you can try to prevent protocols from coming into play now.

honestly I keep hearing this about Necrons, in theory they are powerful but on the table I have found them strong but not really overpowered. necrons are one of the few armies I do not own (beyond a few painting projects) so I have no horse in that race so to speak, but I have faced them with Orks and vanilla marines neither had that difficult of a time with them. I concentrated on one squad at a time and while I had some issues with living metal plasma ate that well enough current orks v necrons are at 2 wins 1 loss and space marines (vanilla units) are 1 win 1 loss so maybe I just have not faced thier most powerful builds or something but I thought on paper their lists would do better than they did

They are a bit cheaper because they also have basically no options

less options = discounts this edition it seems.

I'm surprised they did this. It's also a rule in AoS but I always thought it was "tacked-on" in many respects to make the game work under matched play. I always thought with building a new game from the ground up they would be able to find a way to differentiate between "reinforcements" and extra boons you get like turning a model into a Chaos Spawn (or for example in AoS, Neferata turning enemy models into vampires).

I think it feels disappointing for players because Games Workshop games are most importantly to bring the setting and lore to life and thus verisimilitude is the most important aspect of the rules.

You can get behind armies needing to spend resources on traditional reinforcements, and even on powerful summoning spells (as they need to collect all the blood, skulls, eyes of newt and other ingredients), but things like stuff turning into Chaos Spawns, or Pink Horrors splitting into Blue, just... happens. They are both laws of the setting and not something an army in the setting needs to spend resources on.

 Bottle wrote:
I'm surprised they did this. It's also a rule in AoS but I always thought it was "tacked-on" in many respects to make the game work under matched play. I always thought with building a new game from the ground up they would be able to find a way to differentiate between "reinforcements" and extra boons you get like turning a model into a Chaos Spawn (or for example in AoS, Neferata turning enemy models into vampires).

I think it feels disappointing for players because Games Workshop games are most importantly to bring the setting and lore to life and thus verisimilitude is the most important aspect of the rules.

You can get behind armies needing to spend resources on traditional reinforcements, and even on powerful summoning spells (as they need to collect all the blood, skulls, eyes of newt and other ingredients), but things like stuff turning into Chaos Spawns, or Pink Horrors splitting into Blue, just... happens. They are both laws of the setting and not something an army in the setting needs to spend resources on.

actually I think GW is just maturing to the nature of wargaming as a game. they separated narrative play from matched play for a reason. it is all right good and fluffy for a chaos sorcerer to summon demons from the warp into existence of to turn a weak willed individual into a spawn, but how do you balance that in a competitive setting and keep it fair?

if pink horrors could become blue horrosrs and then brimstone horrors in match play how expensive would they have to be? each model is now 3 models. additionally how musch does a sorcerer who can bring in an extra even 65 points turn need to cost to balance it? even assuming it is a 50% chance to summon then do you want to pay 120 extra points for the base sorcerer to have the cost included in addition to paying for their gear? caus ethat is really the only other way to make it fair from a gameplay aspect.

 G00fySmiley wrote:
if pink horrors could become blue horrosrs and then brimstone horrors in match play how expensive would they have to be?

While I agree with the rest you say, I feel like this tumble-down is entirely predictable and easy to put a price on. You know how many blue horrors are gonna come out of each pink, and how many brimstone are gonna pop out of each blue. It's a very easy thing to balance. It's when you start getting summoning that doesn't have an end that the problems start. What price makes a sword that potentially creates big impactful demons fair and keeps it viable, if it can in many games do nothing at all for those points and can potentially bring out two big impactful models? What's a reasonable price for a daemon factory psyker that can pump out massive free units, and while one might be viable to shut down, how impactful is it for the game if you've got 4 in different parts of the map. Can that be shut down?

In Malifaux you have summoners, and while they are very well balanced, when you're new to the game they're really hard to deal with. They're the "noob-choices" that in a newbie tournament will let you win without effort, but will get shut down in more experienced competition. But that's a small scale skirmish game and it's balanced for very specific points. If you play a smaller than intended game (say the equivalent of a 1000p game in 40k, if the standard is 1750-2000) summoning basically can't lose. It just doesn't hold up at different levels. 40k is going to be harder to balance from the start, and then 40k tries to be playable at all points levels too. Unchecked summoning simply isn't possible to balance right now. Getting rid of it was the best choice the balance team made.

I still think Horrors should be able to split when dying

To clarify my point I am 100% for summoning spells and such costing reinforcement points. I am against the little boons and boosts like splitting horrors and creating Chaos Spawns costing points. These abilities are tied to specific models/units and are definitely not uncapped. Balancing them would be as simple as tweaking the units cost.

Both AoS and 40k already have free models (when units can bolster themselves or others with additional models), and the line is drawn for setting up "new" units instead. With AoS the game mechanics were already built in their entirety so it seemed a necessary division for Matched Play. For 40k I would have thought a new game gave them the chance to tackle this in a unqiue way. I just find it a little curious and would prefer it if these little extras were free rather than having to be planned for by the player.

Necrons re-animating, Pink horrors splitting, Spawn, Without number. It's all the same, so the same rules should apply. It's because GW can't write decent rules.

The points value of your army can never exceed the original starting value. Sorted.

 loki old fart wrote:
Necrons re-animating, Pink horrors splitting, Spawn, Without number. It's all the same, so the same rules should apply. It's because GW can't write decent rules.

The points value of your army can never exceed the original starting value. Sorted.

That would be like Reanimation Protocols, except the only counter, focusing a unit down, wouldn't work either. I wouldn't call it sorted, but I see your point.
Basically, I think your suggestion was bad, but it was clearly just made off the cuff. Your full time job isn't making rules for 40k, so your rules don't really have to be good either to make a point. It's their job to come up with the fixes, we're doing the paying.

That said, I'm ready to give GW a chance here. They're really trying and while it's far from great, it's much better than it used to be, and they're not saying "it's now perfect!" Quite the opposite, they're dabbling in making rather large balance changes already.
I'm cautiously optimistic, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the actual codexes bring.

Just a thought, if I spend the points for a Spawn cooling his heels in the warp: to be dramatic I can have him replace a model as the rule says OR when I get impatient I bring him in like any reinforcement?
If it is the ONLY way I can bring him in, I would never spend the points.
Makes sense to me.
In a "balanced" game there is no "free lunch".

H.B.M.C. wrote:Really it doesn't make any sense.

Why go through the whole rigmarole of bringing a Spawn, paying points for it, then trying to turn something else into said Spawn when you could just deploy the Spawn as part of your army and toss the whole summoning/transformation method?

This is what happens when you have an edition where a mistake they made with the rules (the Daemonic summoning psychic powers) creates a situation so bad where GW pushes the pendulum so hard that it ends up stuck the other direction.

One day they're going to realise that the middle ground is so much better than opposite extremes.

Welcome to the argument AoS has seen since the GHB dropped last summer. Before that, the AoS meta was "how can I add more summoning to this army?". Now, you hardly seen any summoning. It's just pointless (no pun intended) to pay for something that may not ever see the table.

Fentlegen wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Really it doesn't make any sense.

Why go through the whole rigmarole of bringing a Spawn, paying points for it, then trying to turn something else into said Spawn when you could just deploy the Spawn as part of your army and toss the whole summoning/transformation method?

Because if you just want to bring a Spawn and set it up during deployment then you are limited to just a spawn. With Reinforcement Points you have a pool of points from which you can summon/transform anything that can be paid for with those points. If you want to have a Reinforcement Point pool that is exactly the cost of 1 Spawn then go ahead, but the intention behind Reinforcement Points is that you can set aside a couple of hundred points and then summon whatever you can afford that best suits the current situation. Need some Bloodletters? Summon some Bloodletters. Are Plaguebearers maybe better to combat the problem? Summon those instead. Got the points left over to turn someone into a Spawn? Go for it. Reinforcement Points are designed to give an army flexibility, not simply summon a specific unit.

And here is the standard argument. Not to say the "Schrodinger's Points" aren't helpful in a tournament environment, especially when making a TAC list, but it's too easy to snipe out the summoners in AoS, thus meaning those points never get used. 40k's Character rules make it more difficult, but you're still starting turn 1 with a handicap.

Bottom line? Free summoning was bad design. Full-price summoning is also bad design.

the_scotsman wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
no more free units in match play, no exceptions why were people even debating this?

personally I am glad for the reserve pool. summoning units and free deploying transports were what broke 7th. for all its bad it was at least playable by most armies. being on the receiving end of gladius or neverending demons on the other hand was basically an autolose

I'm not at all.

I just wish they'd applied the same "Cool rule for narrative" philosophy to, Oh, I don't know. The 200 point untargetable beatstick character who can move 24" and charge and gaks out a free jump pack canoness every turn who gets to reappear anywhere she wants on the board on a 2+ after you finally manage to get through her 7 wounds +4 auto-regenerating ablative wounds with 2+ 4++.

Just make her resurrect ability automatic, and make it so you have to pay points for it in Matched. C'mon, how is this not considered MORE problematic for balance in matched than a blue horror giving you a 2-point brimstone?

Just to point out, she's 250 points with her minions, and only comes back once.

Since she will come back, but only once, she effectively has 14 wounds.

Which, considering her base cost without her minions is 150, isn't actually that unreasonable. Compare to a 150 point tank, she's very short on toughness and roughly similar, running slightly higher thanks to AP, on damage.


A blue horror giving a brimstone isn't a problem, assuming the cost of the brimstone was worked into the blue horror and the cost of the two blues was worked into the pink horror.

Celestine's 7 bonus wounds is worked into her cost, so we've already paid for her to come back. She also can't spawn Geminae we didn't buy, which is interesting because the first one is worth much more than the second, but they're both priced at 50 points. As I understand it, a Pink Horror hasn't paid the cost of splitting in it's 10-points base cost, but it's not hard to work out what each horror's cost should be.


Setting aside the reserve points for spawn make sense, since it's a brand new unit and there's not really a good way to determine how much the ability is worth.

We know how much it's worth for Celestine to come back, or for a horror to split, because it happens a fixed number of times and such, but not really now much it's worth for "gain a spawn for every character kill", so the solution is to make players chose how many times they want it to be allowed to happen, basically.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
no more free units in match play, no exceptions why were people even debating this?

personally I am glad for the reserve pool. summoning units and free deploying transports were what broke 7th. for all its bad it was at least playable by most armies. being on the receiving end of gladius or neverending demons on the other hand was basically an autolose

I'm not at all.

I just wish they'd applied the same "Cool rule for narrative" philosophy to, Oh, I don't know. The 200 point untargetable beatstick character who can move 24" and charge and gaks out a free jump pack canoness every turn who gets to reappear anywhere she wants on the board on a 2+ after you finally manage to get through her 7 wounds +4 auto-regenerating ablative wounds with 2+ 4++.

Just make her resurrect ability automatic, and make it so you have to pay points for it in Matched. C'mon, how is this not considered MORE problematic for balance in matched than a blue horror giving you a 2-point brimstone?

Just to point out, she's 250 points with her minions, and only comes back once.

Since she will come back, she effectively has 14 wounds.

Which, considering her base cost without her minions is 150, isn't actually that unreasonable. Compare to a 150 points tank, she's very short on toughness and roughly similar, running slightly higher thanks to AP, on damage.


A blue horror giving a brimstone isn't a problem, assuming the cost of the brimstone was worked into the blue horror and the cost of the two blues was worked into the pink horror.

Celestine's 7 bonus wounds is worked into her cost, so we've already paid for her to come back.

this is reasonable. It's the same as a multi wound model. Who in their right mind, is going to start a game, with 2/3 the points their opponent has, in the hope of been able to bring them on later.
With reserves your opponent couldn't roll some dice to deny re-enforcements. So it's not the same as before.

 Talizvar wrote:
Just a thought, if I spend the points for a Spawn cooling his heels in the warp: to be dramatic I can have him replace a model as the rule says OR when I get impatient I bring him in like any reinforcement?
If it is the ONLY way I can bring him in, I would never spend the points.
Makes sense to me.
In a "balanced" game there is no "free lunch".

Your reinforcement points are technically unspent in list building, so no chaos spawn without the trigger (unless you choose to summon him).

Only units that have a deep strike rule of some kind can begin the game in your list but off the table.

 Ineedvc2500 wrote:
Poxwalkers and Necrons can replenish/reanimate in matched play for free but not daemons or Maggie? Everyone is cool with this right? If this is an allowable mechanic just make all replenish/reanimate effects the same as either poxwalkers or necrons and get rid of the reinforcement points.

Actually Demons can with Daemonic Icons. They regain for free d6 models with a 1 in battleshock test.

So please stop this "OMG GW HATES CHAOS SO BAAAD!"

Hardly

 Insectum7 wrote:
You are wrong, spawn are awesome. D6 attacks with a -2 and 2 damage, plus mutations, is baller.

This.

They're cheaper than they were before.

How the hell are people believing they're 'meh'? They're reasonably fast, have a boatload of attacks, decent AP and damage, a Leadership debuff and even their random results are amazing now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EnTyme wrote:

Bottom line? Free summoning was bad design. Full-price summoning is also bad design.

Free summoning was terrible, yes.

But...this isn't really Full Price Summoning, is it?

Daemons no longer have a deep strike equivalent - so they have to be summoned.

This is basically you buying the Daemon unit as normal and having to roll to deep strike the thing. You're not being penalised. You're not starting at any more disadvantage than Timmy and his deep striking Terminators. Most Daemon units are incredibly easy to pull out on an average roll. Characters aren't that easy to snipe. Only the bigger and nastier daemon units are harder to summon and to be fair...there's a reason.

A bloodthirster dropping within 9 inches of an enemy army and getting to attempt a charge is a damn ridiculous thing to say the least. Hence why it has a high power level (and therefore a high summoning roll). Just fly that sucker. He's fast enough

I don't see the whine here. You get customized reinforcements that you can use past the third turn.

Chaos lost its stupidly OP crutch. And instead got a great and flexible mechanic. Boo frak'n frell'n Hoo.

In an edition that did away with reserve rolls it does seem like a lot of hoops to jump through.

I think that matched play is supposed to be 100% about balance... and free stuff is the opposite of balance. So I'm fine with this.