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You probably could have pulled off a mono-inquisition army with the 5th codex. Actually, I'm pretty sure people did.

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because some people still field mono-codex lists.

Yes, they do, but why is that relevant? It's an aberration, like someone fielding an all-tank list (me) with only one unit type, or someone fielding an all-infantry list (this one is more common). It's certainly a thing, but not sure why it is talked about by people who are talking purely about winrates.

I mean, if we're complaining about mono-dex armies, surely mono-Inquisition is worse than Blood Angels?

I wouldn't bet on that atm.

Really? I can't even think of what ranged anti-tank the Inquisition have. Plasma gun, spam, I guess? But they can only field six man squads, so a mono-Inquisition army that buys all plasma guns will a load of 21-point plasma-gun armed T3 5+ save models with no real upfield movement options. I think they'd get creamed by tanks before they could even get in rapid-fire range.

Mono...
Inquisition...

You realize that never, at any point, in game or rules, were inqusition a real stand-alone army?

An inquisitor, and maybe a few of his henchmen with a vehicle, airplane or whatnot to carry them around is "joining" an existing force, or more often "conscripts" and existing force to help his mission.

Inquisition was monobuild in 3rd and 4th, though they had the option for allies (though I definitely saw armies that never used them).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because some people still field mono-codex lists.

Yes, they do, but why is that relevant? It's an aberration, like someone fielding an all-tank list (me) with only one unit type, or someone fielding an all-infantry list (this one is more common). It's certainly a thing, but not sure why it is talked about by people who are talking purely about winrates.

I mean, if we're complaining about mono-dex armies, surely mono-Inquisition is worse than Blood Angels?

I wouldn't bet on that atm.

Really? I can't even think of what ranged anti-tank the Inquisition have. Plasma gun, spam, I guess? But they can only field six man squads, so a mono-Inquisition army that buys all plasma guns will a load of 21-point plasma-gun armed T3 5+ save models with no real upfield movement options. I think they'd get creamed by tanks before they could even get in rapid-fire range.

Mono...
Inquisition...

You realize that never, at any point, in game or rules, were inqusition a real stand-alone army?

An inquisitor, and maybe a few of his henchmen with a vehicle, airplane or whatnot to carry them around is "joining" an existing force, or more often "conscripts" and existing force to help his mission.

Inquisition was monobuild in 3rd and 4th, though they had the option for allies (though I definitely saw armies that never used them).

In fact there were two inquisition codices.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Actually AdMech are pretty bad off in terms of needing to compete. You've clearly not seen the army if you really believe that.

Also spamming one unit for Grey Knights isn't having choices to compete in the same way Tyranids did well the last two editions because of Flyrants.

By choices I mean the ability to ally other Imperial armies, just in case that is unclear.

And FWIW my superheavy tank company at NOVA got tabled by an AdMech brigade and it was before their codex (or mine). So that's just an anecdote from the past but there you go!

Martel732 wrote:"Quite so. Most hardcore tournament players I know are perfectly happy to army-hop to try out their new ideas, and are quite good painters (I have no idea how they manage to get such armies done so quickly when I can barely finish my casual ones!). In fact, I know some that have been playing for so long they essentially have 1 of everything already (since the top armies tend to rotate between a few, e.g. IG, SM, Chaos, Eldar, Tau, if you look back to the beginning of 3rd, and not in any specific order).

As soon as you (like me!) start putting restrictions on your choices for the sake of something other than winning (e.g. I like my fluff-themed lists) then of course you increase your chances of losing: you're making it considerably easier for an opponent to leverage his mathhammer against you."

Fair enough. I don't expect to be top tier with mono-BA. Middle tier would be nice, though.

Yeah.

To bring up another topic that's been bugging me: why are we still talking about mono armies being in tiers? I'm not sure how to define a "mono-" army. I play an army with 1 mono-Inquisition detachment, 1 soup detachment, and another soup detachment. Is that an "Inquisition" army? Should an "Inquisition" army be able to be put on the tier list? It's certainly possible to build a mono-inquisition army, so at least they're better than mono-Assassins.

Having seen your list I'm actually still shocked that happened even without screening units. The army is basically Cawl + 3-6 Robots + some Dune Crawlers and then some screening.

However, to tell people to ally in better units is rubbish because not every army can ally. I'm a Necron player. What do you want ME to do?
Also I do think a mono-Inquisition army should at least be functional. To really say Assassins are their own codex though really buys into the blatant cash grab they did last edition.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Actually AdMech are pretty bad off in terms of needing to compete. You've clearly not seen the army if you really believe that.

Also spamming one unit for Grey Knights isn't having choices to compete in the same way Tyranids did well the last two editions because of Flyrants.

By choices I mean the ability to ally other Imperial armies, just in case that is unclear.

And FWIW my superheavy tank company at NOVA got tabled by an AdMech brigade and it was before their codex (or mine). So that's just an anecdote from the past but there you go!

Martel732 wrote:"Quite so. Most hardcore tournament players I know are perfectly happy to army-hop to try out their new ideas, and are quite good painters (I have no idea how they manage to get such armies done so quickly when I can barely finish my casual ones!). In fact, I know some that have been playing for so long they essentially have 1 of everything already (since the top armies tend to rotate between a few, e.g. IG, SM, Chaos, Eldar, Tau, if you look back to the beginning of 3rd, and not in any specific order).

As soon as you (like me!) start putting restrictions on your choices for the sake of something other than winning (e.g. I like my fluff-themed lists) then of course you increase your chances of losing: you're making it considerably easier for an opponent to leverage his mathhammer against you."

Fair enough. I don't expect to be top tier with mono-BA. Middle tier would be nice, though.

Yeah.

To bring up another topic that's been bugging me: why are we still talking about mono armies being in tiers? I'm not sure how to define a "mono-" army. I play an army with 1 mono-Inquisition detachment, 1 soup detachment, and another soup detachment. Is that an "Inquisition" army? Should an "Inquisition" army be able to be put on the tier list? It's certainly possible to build a mono-inquisition army, so at least they're better than mono-Assassins.

Having seen your list I'm actually still shocked that happened even without screening units. The army is basically Cawl + 3-6 Robots + some Dune Crawlers and then some screening.

However, to tell people to ally in better units is rubbish because not every army can ally. I'm a Necron player. What do you want ME to do?
Also I do think a mono-Inquisition army should at least be functional. To really say Assassins are their own codex though really buys into the blatant cash grab they did last edition.

I think Necrons are solidly middle-of-the-road with an Index list.

The main reason it happened were the 4 Neutron Onagers, which could delete a Stormhammer per turn (and the big tanks are not easily hidden).

Mono-Inquisition atm I think are worse than mono-anything else, and mono-Assassins is literally unplayable in a Matched Play game, despite them having had their own codex.

The issue with the idea of soup is that unless books that don't get that option (Orks, Crons, Tau) are designed to be powerful as stand alone armies they cannot compete with the options available to soup armies. Imperium literally makes up 1/2 of the game, so trying to compete with that level of options is tough for smaller factions. Throw in FW and it only exacerbates the problem of a few factions having far more options than others. Just my opinion but I would love GW to do away with "allies" in matched play or at least in tournaments, then if certain factions are soup armies (inquisition, Ynnari etc) restrictions can be placed on those armies for the sake of balance.

I’d be fine with allies only being for narrative/open play. It’s basically game breaking in my eyes for marched play but thankfully no one I play with likes soup.

Breng77 wrote:
The issue with the idea of soup is that unless books that don't get that option (Orks, Crons, Tau) are designed to be powerful as stand alone armies they cannot compete with the options available to soup armies. Imperium literally makes up 1/2 of the game, so trying to compete with that level of options is tough for smaller factions. Throw in FW and it only exacerbates the problem of a few factions having far more options than others. Just my opinion but I would love GW to do away with "allies" in matched play or at least in tournaments, then if certain factions are soup armies (inquisition, Ynnari etc) restrictions can be placed on those armies for the sake of balance.

I agree with this.

Declare your faction, you can have an allied detachment, but i can be no more than 500 points. Boom. So you get 3 detachments, 2 primary faction, 1 allied if you want. All detachments must be mono-faction.

I’d go with 2 detatchment s.
Battalion or regiment + 1 of your choosing.

I also still like the idea of playing highlander matches to keep spam at bay. That’s just me though.

I'd be thrilled to play only monofaction armies. Allies havent worked right ever since they were introduced in 6E. The armies arent built or balanced with allies in mind, and the availability to different armies is too inconsistent. Allies was a cool idea on paper to allow people more freedom and imagination, but in practice it overwhelmingly turns into just an extra grab bag of tricks and unintended synergies.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Actually AdMech are pretty bad off in terms of needing to compete. You've clearly not seen the army if you really believe that.

Also spamming one unit for Grey Knights isn't having choices to compete in the same way Tyranids did well the last two editions because of Flyrants.

By choices I mean the ability to ally other Imperial armies, just in case that is unclear.

And FWIW my superheavy tank company at NOVA got tabled by an AdMech brigade and it was before their codex (or mine). So that's just an anecdote from the past but there you go!

Martel732 wrote:"Quite so. Most hardcore tournament players I know are perfectly happy to army-hop to try out their new ideas, and are quite good painters (I have no idea how they manage to get such armies done so quickly when I can barely finish my casual ones!). In fact, I know some that have been playing for so long they essentially have 1 of everything already (since the top armies tend to rotate between a few, e.g. IG, SM, Chaos, Eldar, Tau, if you look back to the beginning of 3rd, and not in any specific order).

As soon as you (like me!) start putting restrictions on your choices for the sake of something other than winning (e.g. I like my fluff-themed lists) then of course you increase your chances of losing: you're making it considerably easier for an opponent to leverage his mathhammer against you."

Fair enough. I don't expect to be top tier with mono-BA. Middle tier would be nice, though.

Yeah.

To bring up another topic that's been bugging me: why are we still talking about mono armies being in tiers? I'm not sure how to define a "mono-" army. I play an army with 1 mono-Inquisition detachment, 1 soup detachment, and another soup detachment. Is that an "Inquisition" army? Should an "Inquisition" army be able to be put on the tier list? It's certainly possible to build a mono-inquisition army, so at least they're better than mono-Assassins.

Having seen your list I'm actually still shocked that happened even without screening units. The army is basically Cawl + 3-6 Robots + some Dune Crawlers and then some screening.

However, to tell people to ally in better units is rubbish because not every army can ally. I'm a Necron player. What do you want ME to do?
Also I do think a mono-Inquisition army should at least be functional. To really say Assassins are their own codex though really buys into the blatant cash grab they did last edition.

I think Necrons are solidly middle-of-the-road with an Index list.

The main reason it happened were the 4 Neutron Onagers, which could delete a Stormhammer per turn (and the big tanks are not easily hidden).

Mono-Inquisition atm I think are worse than mono-anything else, and mono-Assassins is literally unplayable in a Matched Play game, despite them having had their own codex.

Yeah I know what Onagers do. It's still something that's unlikely to happen, but your list didn't help entirely either.

Also you really have no idea what's going on if you think Necrons are middle of the road. They're easily one of the worst index armies, and the highest we had a placing for in the last big tournament that happened was 42. Or that was the previous one and we didn't even have a placing.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Also you really have no idea what's going on if you think Necrons are middle of the road. They're easily one of the worst index armies, and the highest we had a placing for in the last big tournament that happened was 42. Or that was the previous one and we didn't even have a placing.

Oh you meant tournaments.

Yeah I have no idea how to help 'crons. Hopefully their codex will bring some needed buffs.

Locally we have 2 Necron players and they're doing fairly well, I'd say. One of them is on the opposing team in the local campaign and I think he actually fought our Adeptus Mechanicus player to a standstill a few weeks ago, though the game ended early.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Also you really have no idea what's going on if you think Necrons are middle of the road. They're easily one of the worst index armies, and the highest we had a placing for in the last big tournament that happened was 42. Or that was the previous one and we didn't even have a placing.

Oh you meant tournaments.

Yeah I have no idea how to help 'crons. Hopefully their codex will bring some needed buffs.

Locally we have 2 Necron players and they're doing fairly well, I'd say. One of them is on the opposing team in the local campaign and I think he actually fought our Adeptus Mechanicus player to a standstill a few weeks ago, though the game ended early.

Literally anyone can do anything in a casual setting because nobody cares. Otherwise there's no point to the Tactics Subforum, to be frank.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Also you really have no idea what's going on if you think Necrons are middle of the road. They're easily one of the worst index armies, and the highest we had a placing for in the last big tournament that happened was 42. Or that was the previous one and we didn't even have a placing.

Oh you meant tournaments.

Yeah I have no idea how to help 'crons. Hopefully their codex will bring some needed buffs.

Locally we have 2 Necron players and they're doing fairly well, I'd say. One of them is on the opposing team in the local campaign and I think he actually fought our Adeptus Mechanicus player to a standstill a few weeks ago, though the game ended early.

Literally anyone can do anything in a casual setting because nobody cares. Otherwise there's no point to the Tactics Subforum, to be frank.

Nobody cares? I daresay that's bordering on an insult. I take my games very seriously!

And yeah, I don't go to the tactics subform for just that reason: I find it pointless and unhelpful. I'll be like "what variant of the Leman Russ is best?" and they're like "the Manticore."

I like my mixed Imperium army with SoS, Custodes, Ogryns, Celestine, Tempestus and Sisters of Battle

As always, when a problem arise the solution is "Just destroy the sistem!" instead of fixing the problems. Keywords where a great add-on to the game to stop from allied shenanigans.

Why don't we fix the allies system instead of just destroying it? Allies are like Flyers and Superheaveis, they are here to stay, so we can try to fix them or keep moaning on internet about the good old days.

 sennacherib wrote:

I also still like the idea of playing highlander matches to keep spam at bay. That’s just me though.

Insert a slew of Sisters players screaming that highlander is the worst game mode ever, despite the fact that it's super fun. We do allow multiple troop squads of the same name, though.

Nearly most of my armies are pseudo Highlander because I like to buy one box of everything of a faction, and normally I have no duplicates besides some transports, troops and elite units that I really like (As my 20 sisters of silence, a ton of terminators, 9 Bullgryns, 3 sentinels, etc...)

How do sisters field a Brigade in Highlander?

 Galas wrote:
I like my mixed Imperium army with SoS, Custodes, Ogryns, Celestine, Tempestus and Sisters of Battle

As always, when a problem arise the solution is "Just destroy the sistem!" instead of fixing the problems. Keywords where a great add-on to the game to stop from allied shenanigans.

Why don't we fix the allies system instead of just destroying it? Allies are like Flyers and Superheaveis, they are here to stay, so we can try to fix them or keep moaning on internet about the good old days.

So how would you fix a system that requires some factions to be balanced assuming the inclusion of allies? It literally means that in competitive play those factions can never be optimized on their own because they must assume the ability to take out of faction choices that would make their army stronger. My only thought was to disallow any "chapter" specific rules if you have any non-chapter models in your army. But most people don't like that idea.

I suppose you could add increasing benefits the more narrow your focus, but that still pisses people off because they feel like they are losing out on something. Lets put it this way, I'm fine with allies as long as taking them requires sacrificing other advantages, if not there is literally no reason not to optimize other than fluff. Given that the allies system can never be both fluffy and balanced I think it is a poor system and the easiest way to fix it would be to throw it out. When I mentioned previously "lose chapter specific relics, strategems, and tactics if you take allies." in another thread almost universally I got the response "I shouldn't be penalized for wanting allies." The result of which is people not taking allies will be penalized because their army is suboptimal.

How to balance allies:

Give them to everyone. Have a group called "mercenaries" that are essentially just 'trope units' e.g. A Generic Screening Unit, A Generic Infantry Squad, A Generic CC Squad, whatever. Like Tactical Marines without chapter tactics (or something).

Then, don't make a model and allow people to customize their own "mercenary forces".

Then, let everyone hire mercenaries. Don't give them stratagems or anything, but it still allows armies to cover their weaknesses.

Oh, your SM don't have screens and you don't like IG? Well, that's fine, hire these mercenaries! Or whatever.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
How to balance allies:

Give them to everyone. Have a group called "mercenaries" that are essentially just 'trope units' e.g. A Generic Screening Unit, A Generic Infantry Squad, A Generic CC Squad, whatever. Like Tactical Marines without chapter tactics (or something).

Then, don't make a model and allow people to customize their own "mercenary forces".

Then, let everyone hire mercenaries. Don't give them stratagems or anything, but it still allows armies to cover their weaknesses.

Oh, your SM don't have screens and you don't like IG? Well, that's fine, hire these mercenaries! Or whatever.

At which point the response will be, "you've eliminated allies, I cannot make my army any more because I cannot have these exact rules I used to have, or cannot take x tank I always use etc."

either that or the generic units will all be too powerful and people will always take them.

Further GW has been pretty clear it will never release rules without models any more.

Bit like Dogs of War in Fantasy Battles, you mean? That would probably be the best way to do it, really, if they kept it generic so they could be PDF or Tarellian Dog Soldiers or Rak'Gol or whatever, depending on your army. You'd still get people using it to cover their army's weaknesses (I remember a lot of complaining about Bretonnian players taking mercenary cannon, for example...), but it'd be much easier to balance for.

I think that's the point - use it to cover your army's weaknesses.

If Space Marines were having trouble screening, use the A Generic Screening Unit with whatever you wanted, and call them "Chapter Serfs."

If Tau were having trouble being stabbed, use A Generic Assault Unit and call them Kroot mercenaries.

If Necrons are having trouble capturing objectives, call in the A Generic Cheapo Infantry and name them the "we'll deal with you later, allies!" brigade.

etc. etc.

Then you can just leave in existing allies as well, so that Inquisition can still use Leman Russ tanks or Land Raiders instead of A Generic Tank or A Generic Transport, but Tau now actually have something they can use as allies as well.

Fair! I guess it's a different way of looking at things.

Either that, or it was just too much fun to talk crap at Bret players

If they did that, honestly, I'd almost rather they cut out the ally mechanic we have now, and leave Imperial Soup (fluffy as it is!) for the big multi-player games. Since the whole point is to bring back mono-book armies and keep things balanced...

Breng77 wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I like my mixed Imperium army with SoS, Custodes, Ogryns, Celestine, Tempestus and Sisters of Battle

As always, when a problem arise the solution is "Just destroy the sistem!" instead of fixing the problems. Keywords where a great add-on to the game to stop from allied shenanigans.

Why don't we fix the allies system instead of just destroying it? Allies are like Flyers and Superheaveis, they are here to stay, so we can try to fix them or keep moaning on internet about the good old days.

So how would you fix a system that requires some factions to be balanced assuming the inclusion of allies? It literally means that in competitive play those factions can never be optimized on their own because they must assume the ability to take out of faction choices that would make their army stronger. My only thought was to disallow any "chapter" specific rules if you have any non-chapter models in your army. But most people don't like that idea.

I suppose you could add increasing benefits the more narrow your focus, but that still pisses people off because they feel like they are losing out on something. Lets put it this way, I'm fine with allies as long as taking them requires sacrificing other advantages, if not there is literally no reason not to optimize other than fluff. Given that the allies system can never be both fluffy and balanced I think it is a poor system and the easiest way to fix it would be to throw it out. When I mentioned previously "lose chapter specific relics, strategems, and tactics if you take allies." in another thread almost universally I got the response "I shouldn't be penalized for wanting allies." The result of which is people not taking allies will be penalized because their army is suboptimal.

I like the Age of Sigmar system. In 2k point games, you can have up to 400 points in allies. More than that, you lost all of your faction bonuses.
Faction bonuses shouldn't be for Soup lists. And yes I know "But why a Salamander marine forgot how salamanders tactics work when he fights with imperial guardsmen?" And I'll say: Balance>Fluff in "Matched Play"

Unit, you're suggesting open play.

 Marmatag wrote:
Unit, you're suggesting open play.

Except that you still get CPs for detachments, and pure detachments can still use their regiment/chapter/hivefleet/legion/craftworld rules. And you pay points.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think that's the point - use it to cover your army's weaknesses.

If Space Marines were having trouble screening, use the A Generic Screening Unit with whatever you wanted, and call them "Chapter Serfs."

If Tau were having trouble being stabbed, use A Generic Assault Unit and call them Kroot mercenaries.

If Necrons are having trouble capturing objectives, call in the A Generic Cheapo Infantry and name them the "we'll deal with you later, allies!" brigade.

etc. etc.

Then you can just leave in existing allies as well, so that Inquisition can still use Leman Russ tanks or Land Raiders instead of A Generic Tank or A Generic Transport, but Tau now actually have something they can use as allies as well.

So it becomes Imperium gets the good allies, but here is a bone for you other armies with these crappy generic allies? No thanks, but then I think armies should have weaknesses and the issue with soup armies for me is that those gaps get plugged.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Unit, you're suggesting open play.

Except that you still get CPs for detachments, and pure detachments can still use their regiment/chapter/hivefleet/legion/craftworld rules. And you pay points.

Okay, so you're suggesting every list should be imperial guard + malefic lords, and a couple other chaos highlights.

And you wouldn't have A Generic of everything - like no A Generic HQ or A Generic Lord of War...

... so yeah nothing like open play at all really.

 Galas wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I like my mixed Imperium army with SoS, Custodes, Ogryns, Celestine, Tempestus and Sisters of Battle

As always, when a problem arise the solution is "Just destroy the sistem!" instead of fixing the problems. Keywords where a great add-on to the game to stop from allied shenanigans.

Why don't we fix the allies system instead of just destroying it? Allies are like Flyers and Superheaveis, they are here to stay, so we can try to fix them or keep moaning on internet about the good old days.

So how would you fix a system that requires some factions to be balanced assuming the inclusion of allies? It literally means that in competitive play those factions can never be optimized on their own because they must assume the ability to take out of faction choices that would make their army stronger. My only thought was to disallow any "chapter" specific rules if you have any non-chapter models in your army. But most people don't like that idea.

I suppose you could add increasing benefits the more narrow your focus, but that still pisses people off because they feel like they are losing out on something. Lets put it this way, I'm fine with allies as long as taking them requires sacrificing other advantages, if not there is literally no reason not to optimize other than fluff. Given that the allies system can never be both fluffy and balanced I think it is a poor system and the easiest way to fix it would be to throw it out. When I mentioned previously "lose chapter specific relics, strategems, and tactics if you take allies." in another thread almost universally I got the response "I shouldn't be penalized for wanting allies." The result of which is people not taking allies will be penalized because their army is suboptimal.

I like the Age of Sigmar system. In 2k point games, you can have up to 400 points in allies. More than that, you lost all of your faction bonuses.
Faction bonuses shouldn't be for Soup lists. And yes I know "But why a Salamander marine forgot how salamanders tactics work when he fights with imperial guardsmen?" And I'll say: Balance>Fluff in "Matched Play"

I'd be fine with allies being that restricted because then it isn't as much of an obvious choice. I'd still prefer their to be an additional bonus for no allies at all, I think similar to old Warmahordes theme lists where there were levels of benefits for taking more restrictive lists.