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I think it's a generally good thing to have many repeated units.

It's not often that a single tank is assigned as support for a single rifle squad.

I think some kinds of spam are okay (like the aforementioned IG and Tyranids examples), but spamming the most powerful units is just a problem, especially if said units are ones that fluffwise would be rare or exotic. 8 Nurgle Daemon Princes? Puh-lease. For one thing, there'd be 7 since that is Nurgle's number, but even that many would rarely take to the field at once. Maybe they need to add a comp limit system kind of like Warmachine/Hordes, where you can only take a certain number of some units. That would curtail the spammy lists nicely and allow for some units to still be taken in numbers.

Or maybe instead we can just do the rational thing and balance those overpowered units.

Spam of multirole units is a very reasonable approach. Spam of all conscripts is a great definition of a NPE.

Like I said, "it's not spam if it's a unit I like".

Though seeing as we'll never get everyone to agree on which units they like, I don't think that's a particularly good metric to actually build the game around.

I think everyone is expecting some composition rules eventually.

Do you think there will be a time where an index only list will be more dominate than a codex list because of the composition rules?

Umm, what are composition rules?

And if it's what I think you mean, the answer is no because we have the Keyword system.

EDIT: And GW likes money too much to allow that.

Honestly, I'm expecting the codexes to invalidate the indexes when they are released.

 Selym wrote:
Umm, what are composition rules?

And if it's what I think you mean, the answer is no because we have the Keyword system.

EDIT: And GW likes money too much to allow that.

I mean in the form of new detachment structures that would limit things like spam.

And yes spam is great for business!

Here we have a game with 100 models.

Now you will only ever see 10 of those models used.

Is that good for the game?

Subjective.

I think what many people mean by "I hate spam" is "I hate when my opponents min/max".

Spamming troops would be expected. In fact, if I'm playing against marines I'd love it if I was facing three or four full tactical squads because that's what the narrative has us believe would be commonly fielded.

Thats not what we see though. What we typically see, barring broken undercost troop choices, is the special forces section spammed.

 auticus wrote:
In fact, if I'm playing against marines I'd love it if I was facing three or four full tactical squads because that's what the narrative has us believe would be commonly fielded.

Nah you wouldn't, you'd never hear the end of SM players whinging about how its unfluffy for marines to have K/D ratios less than 10,000,000.

 Melissia wrote:
Conscripts aren't overpowered. They're mildly durable, and that's about it. Aside from durability they have literally nothing else g oing for them, and it's not hard to find units taht can just delete them from the map in a turn or two.

This is not true.

Conscripts are very difficult to remove. Only a few things can remove them in a "turn or two." The unit that comes closest would be a squad of 10x Khorne Berzerkers throwing out 80 dice per turn in melee, having taken 0 casualties on the way there.

Of course, they fight twice, so a smart AM player would just delete conscripts so the berserkers wouldn't get a second fight phase. Then, they could easily erase the Berzerkers.

Any way, can you please list the units that can delete 50 conscripts from the board in a turn or 2?

Regardless of the effectiveness of spam, I find that lists with more variety are both more fun to play and more fun to play against.

 Crimson wrote:
Regardless of the effectiveness of spam, I find that lists with more variety are both more fun to play and more fun to play against.

I agree 100%

A good system would encourage "balanced lists" with rules. As it stands now, players are rewarded greatest for spam.

This edition will be the spam edition. GW has removed any pretense otherwise. The detachment system guarantees it.

If you don't like spam. Find another better balanced game.


Spam wont be a problem, if GW actually, balances, but I doubt that's happening.

 GreaterGood? wrote:
This edition will be the spam edition. GW has removed any pretense otherwise. The detachment system guarantees it.

If you don't like spam. Find another better balanced game.


Spam wont be a problem, if GW actually, balances, but I doubt that's happening.

Eh? its about as free as 7th was.

if anything it appears that most units are close enough this edition that spam lists wont have nearly that much of an advantage over them.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Conscripts aren't overpowered. They're mildly durable, and that's about it. Aside from durability they have literally nothing else g oing for them, and it's not hard to find units taht can just delete them from the map in a turn or two.

This is not true.

Conscripts are very difficult to remove. Only a few things can remove them in a "turn or two." The unit that comes closest would be a squad of 10x Khorne Berzerkers throwing out 80 dice per turn in melee, having taken 0 casualties on the way there.

Of course, they fight twice, so a smart AM player would just delete conscripts so the berserkers wouldn't get a second fight phase. Then, they could easily erase the Berzerkers.

Any way, can you please list the units that can delete 50 conscripts from the board in a turn or 2?

how exactly are IG deleting our own conscripts? You know we don't have Chenkov anymore and we can't willingly fail armor saves right?

As for the whole unkillable conscripts thing they are useless for damage. I hardly even bother shooting with them any more. Even with FRFSRF it usually just does a few wounds at best, since I'm not insane and fielding incredibly unwieldy 50 man units. In addition, if you can snipe the commissar almost anything in the game can wipe conscripts in a turn or two with battleshock. Not just snipers, but deepstriking units, jump units, outflankers, and fliers all have ways to take out the commissar and make the conscripts fold. People need to play the game more and they'd realize that. You should be complaining about 7pt plasma guns in our army, THAT is a legitimate complaint. You also have to realize that if there were units that could reliably wipe conscripts in a single turn, you've invalidated literally every infantry IG list out there. Anything that could reliably wipe a unit of conscripts in 2 turns with no outside support would table any infantry horde army in the game by turn 3-4 if taken in any decent numbers. And considering the conscript shenanigan list is pretty much just a chicken little scenario that many players will never even see, in reality this mythical Uber unit would be wiping out much more reasonable armies like an infantry squad IG army, gaunt swarms, or a green tide. We've just gotten horde armies back to some semblence of usefulness without being mooks following around space marine captains, I understand people are upset that they can't table an infantry horde by turn 3 like they used to but this literally how the horde armies are supposed to work in the background. My god, an infantry IG army winning by numbers so long as you've got officers to keep them in line, how horrible. All of the hordes rely on some mechanic to keep them around and ignore battleshock. All can be countered. Its not easy (because it shouldn't be) but it absolutely can be done.

To the person who suggested a limit of 2 units per type, what the heck does IG do in that case? We have 2 troop choices (IG technically have stormtroopers but that will likely change in the codex) We would be limited to two conscript blobs and 2 infantry squads for our ENTIRE ARMY. That's barely enough Infantry squads to fill one platoon in the old dex, and the conscripts are garbage for damage output. Yes, they take a lot of work to kill, they're a massive wave of infantry, that's literally their purpose in the army. Trying to kill things with conscripts is an exercise in futility. They exist solely to eat charges, screen your more important units, and hold objectives. You would essentially make it so IG would have to spam their elite units just to do damage, ironically defeating the whole point of the limit in the first place. If you up the limit to prevent this (say 5) then armies like space marines don't care because odds are they couldn't afford more than 5 of their super unit anyways. The ideal solution would be to bring back the old force org and force it to be the standard, but so many armies would be invalidated by that it can never happen.

Spamming units in general is not an issue, min max spam is the problem. For example a player taking something like an army of vultures so he can do 240 punisher shots a turn. That's an example of bad spam.

 Marmatag wrote:
Any way, can you please list the units that can delete 50 conscripts from the board in a turn or 2?

Berserkers, especially with psyker support. Stormraven kitted out for anti-infantry shooting won't take long either, with how many shots it can dole out. Death Company (with power axes and a sangpriest, they wound on a 2+, amusingly, though most people use power swords over axes, for the AP). Squadron of basilisks with HB/HS, or one of wyverns. A 10+ sized unit of Flayed Ones could potentially do it, given four attacks each hitting fairly often and rerolling 1s on to-wound. 30 boyz teleported in to a charge on the conscript squad could turn it in to bloody paste. 30 hormagaunts getting a charge, or potentially 30 termagants with devourers. A swooping hawk squad that pulled off its grenade drop on the conscripts before opening fire with close range rapid fire (especially including an exarch with sunrifle to make the return fire hit on a pathetic 6+). I hvaen't even bothered to look at some armies that have potential options, as I feel this is more than enough to prove my point-- that there's a number of units that could utterly wipe out a conscript squad well before the game ends.

Yes, I'm aware that most of these cost more than the conscript squad in question, and some are tricky to use. But that's as it should be. The only real use of a conscript squad is its durability, so if you want to be able to erase it, you damn well better have to put some effort in to erasing it. Completely nullifying a unit's core and frankly only strength shouldn't come easy, just ask Orks.

People oversell how powerful conscripts are. They're good to be sure. Probably even need to d6 wounds from a commissar instead of 1 or some other minor nerf. But people are going around acting like they're the end of the world, and that you don't need any units other than conscripts, commissars, and commanders to win every game ez-pz.

And yet I've seen no evidence anyone has managed to pull that off in a tournament setting yet.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Conscripts aren't overpowered. They're mildly durable, and that's about it. Aside from durability they have literally nothing else g oing for them, and it's not hard to find units taht can just delete them from the map in a turn or two.

This is not true.

Conscripts are very difficult to remove. Only a few things can remove them in a "turn or two." The unit that comes closest would be a squad of 10x Khorne Berzerkers throwing out 80 dice per turn in melee, having taken 0 casualties on the way there.

Of course, they fight twice, so a smart AM player would just delete conscripts so the berserkers wouldn't get a second fight phase. Then, they could easily erase the Berzerkers.

Any way, can you please list the units that can delete 50 conscripts from the board in a turn or 2?

how exactly are IG deleting our own conscripts? You know we don't have Chenkov anymore and we can't willingly fail armor saves right?

When a unit suffers a casualty, you choose which model is removed.

Two melee units charge into 50 conscripts.

Melee unit 1 is nominated and kills 20 conscripts.

You pick the 20 conscripts near Melee Unit 2. There is nothing within range so it cannot fight when it is melee unit 2's turn.

For example.

Spam itself has no bearing on the game. If I spam bad units, less people will complain compared to if I spam really good units. Some combinations will be annoying to play against (10 Leman Russes will be quite boring to fight if you don't have enough AT, same for Knights), but on the other hand, all of these combinations can be fluffy and many of them will be terrible.

Pancakey wrote:

Perfect synopsis of what is happening with as of right now. Complete and utter lack of internal balance. BUT HEY! All units are viable right?

They mostly are - a single flyer list is not conclusive proof that nothing else is viable. Nor is it impossible for some small modifications to shift the easy choice away from said list.

Daedalus81 wrote:

Pancakey wrote:

Perfect synopsis of what is happening with as of right now. Complete and utter lack of internal balance. BUT HEY! All units are viable right?

They mostly are - a single flyer list is not conclusive proof that nothing else is viable. Nor is it impossible for some small modifications to shift the easy choice away from said list.

Pretty much. Brain dead net listers are exacerbating the spam problem by perpetuating the list rather than trying to use their thinky brains to shift some crap around for anti air.

Or just PTFO-- play the fething objective. That air list isn't very good at holding objectives. So take some durable units and hold objectives, instead of taking entirely glass cannons.

Sorry, but your army of "one of everything" looks stupid and silly, and doesn't have any cohesion when on the board or in photographs.

It depends on the situation.

I think spam is more than fine in a tournament setting, as everyone is going in doing whatever they can to win.

In a more casual or friendly game I find it incredibly dull.

Is it healthy? Probably not, but as long as people are allowed to do it and as long as some units are more powerful than others then it's never going away.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Sorry, but your army of "one of everything" looks stupid and silly, and doesn't have any cohesion when on the board or in photographs.

This. Spam is fluffy.

 GreaterGood? wrote:
This edition will be the spam edition. GW has removed any pretense otherwise. The detachment system guarantees it.

Ever since 5th edition, armies consisted entirely of 3 unique units taken in as many spots as you could take them. Ya know, the edition the hipsters claim was "balanced".

7th edition formations were actually the only blip on that paradigm because they forced people to take tax units. The hand wringing that went along with formations only told GW that the fans just wanted to go back to spamming units instead.

We should also take into account what spam actually means.

I brought 1 unit of 6 TWC w/ shields and a wolf lord, with 2 Wulfen units. My opponent told me I spammed Thunderwolves.

Too much salt is unhealthy gentlemen, please monitor it but also keep in mind what 'spam' actually means.

Spamming isn't bad, as long as it's reasonable. I don't mind a couple units of bikers, or termies. If you bring all knights and Magnus then I'm gonna die inside just for the fact that you are a heartless person.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 GreaterGood? wrote:
This edition will be the spam edition. GW has removed any pretense otherwise. The detachment system guarantees it.

Ever since 5th edition, armies consisted entirely of 3 unique units taken in as many spots as you could take them. Ya know, the edition the hipsters claim was "balanced".

7th edition formations were actually the only blip on that paradigm because they forced people to take tax units. The hand wringing that went along with formations only told GW that the fans just wanted to go back to spamming units instead.

Sure, I agree. 40k players don't actually want a balanced game. But you could take anything you felt like in as many numbers as possible, if the units were balanced between each other, however, that means a space marine is a space marine, is a space marine. Gw isn't interested in making a balanced game, they want a well selling game.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 GreaterGood? wrote:
This edition will be the spam edition. GW has removed any pretense otherwise. The detachment system guarantees it.

Ever since 5th edition, armies consisted entirely of 3 unique units taken in as many spots as you could take them. Ya know, the edition the hipsters claim was "balanced".

7th edition formations were actually the only blip on that paradigm because they forced people to take tax units. The hand wringing that went along with formations only told GW that the fans just wanted to go back to spamming units instead.

Eh, some 5e armies did do what was called "2+1". Kopach's Nova list had 4 Rhino GH units, 2 Razorback ones IIRC.

Last year's LVO, although he ran a Gladius, Steve Sisk ran different special/heavy loadouts on most his units, and different turret options on each of his Razorbacks, because he wanted to ensure his list was truly all-comers and didn't reply on using the exact same weapons. Both his units of Devestators each had only *one* Grav Cannon and an Armorium Cherub, and those were his only Grav Cannons in the entire army.

It does fly sort of in the face of a lot of armies in a weird way.

There were a surprising amount of unconventional builds you could do in 7th, that lost a lot of their validity in 8th. Getting rid of Deathstars was good of course but a *lot* of other "semi-competitive/interesting at least" options also lost their purpose. Was there any point in randomizing Obliterators, removing teleportation from a Monolith, etc?