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 Galas wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

the issue is that armies are still designed, balanced, showcased, released, and organized as self contained forces. Armies are intentionally good at some things and worse at others, and allies basically tosses that all out the window.

Do you have any evidence for this?

I have plenty of evidence for armies being designed to cooperate together, such as Celestine buffing Guard, AM Techpriests repairing Guard vehicles, Custodes banners that work on all Imperium infantry, Inquisitors that buff all Imperium units... there's a large amount of evidence suggesting the armies are, in fact, designed to be mixed.

All of thats is pure 8th rules. The core principle of the factions is still to be stand alone forces.
<Some irrelevant nonsense about why it has to have downsides and how other games handle it>

Can you prove the bolded statement?

EDIT: Especially WRT factions like Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Inquisition, etc.

If you are gonna ignore half ow that i said and are gonna ask for hard evidence that is right there, in how things have been done for the past 7th editions (Custodes would be the first faction done in the new directive of souping), I'm not gonna enter your game. You win.

Galas wrote:If you are gonna ignore half ow that i said and are gonna ask for hard evidence that is right there, in how things have been done for the past 7th editions (Custodes would be the first faction done in the new directive of souping), I'm not gonna enter your game. You win.

Let me address what you said then:

Galas wrote:And as I said. I'm not opposed to souping. I play a mixed imperial faction. But it should have is downsides. In AoS you can play Grand Alliance (Chaos, Death, Order, Destruction) and min and max whatever you like, or you can play a faction and have all the bonuses to compete agaisn't Grand Alliance armies. Theres too a 20% max points in allies that don't dissallow you from your bonuses. That would be what Marmatag said of 2 Detachments of your primary army and 1 Detachment of allies. I wouldn't be opposed with that.

1) I'm not opposed to souping, though I play a mono-faction.
2) Why should it have downsides? Oh, right, that's what the rest of the discussion surrounds.
3) Personally not really concerned with how AOS does things.
4) Marmatag's post is okay, I guess. Would've replied if I felt strongly one way or another.

Boy that was productive to the discussion.

As for your actual post:
"How things were done in 7th" is both irrelevant (since literally everything about the design of the game has changed since 7th other than "it uses minis") and also wrong, unless you want to argue that Codex: Imperial Agents was a codex not meant for souping.

How is a mixed imperial faction (SoB + Custodes+Tempestus Scions) a mono faction?

And of course theres factions that where designed for allying with other forcers. Thats why Inquisition was the first faction that could be allied with other factions.

Why should it have downsides? Because then monofactions don't have a place in the game.

How I can prove that factions where designed to not have allies in the first place, with strenghts and weakness? Hmmm... Tau? I don't know. Is very obvious that factions were designed as stand alone forces. Even if in 8th they have add more and more cross-codex buffing factors.

 Galas wrote:
All of thats is pure 8th rules. The core principle of the factions is still to be stand alone forces.

But that's not entirely true is it? Obviously the allies matrix in 7th seems to indicate that the concepts of cross-list benefits were first gestated in 7th and that what we're seeing is simply a refinement of that process.

I would submit that stand alone forces are for leagues, narratives and other less strictly competitive game modes, tournament play is more likely to be balanced around mixed lists.

 Galas wrote:
How is a mixed imperial faction (SoB + Custodes+Tempestus Scions) a mono faction?

And of course theres factions that where designed for allying with other forcers. Thats why Inquisition was the first faction that could be allied with other factions.

Why should it have downsides? Because then monofactions don't have a place in the game.

How I can prove that factions where designed to not have allies in the first place, with strenghts and weakness? Hmmm... Tau? I don't know. Is very obvious that factions were designed as stand alone forces. Even if in 8th they have add more and more cross-codex buffing factors.

I play Mono-IG, not really sure where you got a bit about the SOB and Custodes and Scions, unless I brought it up in a hypothetical somewhere. I do have an SOB army as well.

Why does having soup automatically negate mono-factions? I certainly don't feel like my mono-IG is negated by the fact that someone can bring an Inquisitor or some Space Marines with their guard.

Tau might very well get allies, or perhaps be designed as a mono-faction that can compete with soup.

Why is it taken as fact that soup is flat out better than a mono-army without really any evidence existing? I play a mono army, it does fine, *shrug*.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

the issue is that armies are still designed, balanced, showcased, released, and organized as self contained forces. Armies are intentionally good at some things and worse at others, and allies basically tosses that all out the window.

 Galas wrote:
Because factions were designed as stand alone forces. Cultists were worse Guardsmen because they where chaff in a "elite" army as Chaos Space Marines. Imperial Guard had bad meele units because they weren't a meele army.
When Space Marines can take Imperial Guard as chaff and Imperial Guard can take Blood Angels as meele units, the game is less balanced.

And its even worse when you have macro factions like Imperium, Chaos or even Aeldari, and then you have poor Necrons, Orks or Tau.

Do you have any evidence for this?

I have plenty of evidence for armies being designed to cooperate together, such as Celestine buffing Guard, AM Techpriests repairing Guard vehicles, Custodes banners that work on all Imperium infantry, Inquisitors that buff all Imperium units... there's a large amount of evidence suggesting the armies are, in fact, designed to be mixed.

there are a few things intended to work with other factions, but these are exceptions (and a few exceptions are fine) and some of them are inconsequential (e.g. enginseers fixing other peoples stuff), broadly they do not however.

To the bigger point, armies are still built around concepts. IG for instance have plentiful access to battle tanks and walls of infantry but do not have fast, hard hitting, CC units with multiple deployment options or units that possess inherent extreme durability. Whereas Space Marines have both of the latter but little of the former. With allies, this basically allows one to take advantage of the benefits of all with the downsides of none in many respects, resulting in balance issues that dont exist for monofaction armies or factions that have no meaningful allies.

I still think you're attributing 5th edition think to an 8th edition game.

There's really no indication that mono-faction armies have weaknesses anymore. IG can have walls of infantry and plentiful battle tanks, or it can be an entirely elite force of Bullgryns mounted in Valkyries. It could be Crusaders in outflanking Tallarn Banehammers. It is no longer restricted to its old 5th edition style of "dudes and tanks".

Conversely, you could build Space Marines with gobs of predator tanks and Land Raiders, with Chronus as the HQ, and a bunch of scouts as the troops, who are fairly cheap (about the same as scions IIRC).

Factions no longer have "this faction is obviously just dudes and tanks while this one is fast and hurty but doesn't shoot well" as their taglines. In fact, some factions have almost nothing, and essentially have to soup or else you are forcing badness that is incoherent with 8th edition's soupy philosophy (inquisition and astra telepathica, arguably grey knights... etc.).

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Why is it taken as fact that soup is flat out better than a mono-army without really any evidence existing? I play a mono army, it does fine, *shrug*.

Because you play the single best monofaction army bar none, if it weren't for Eldar Dark Reapers disrupting the meta, Guard would really stand alone.

Also you run 3 baneblades in a casual environment as you are an admitted non-tournament player. So of course you do well. This isn't some great mystery.

Numerous armies are forced to play monofaction. Basically all Xenos except Eldar. And the evidence is plain as day, you just choose to ignore it. I think the real question is, on what grounds can you dispute massive amounts of tournament data? Your argument is effectively throwing a "#fakenews" reply and being done with it.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Why is it taken as fact that soup is flat out better than a mono-army without really any evidence existing? I play a mono army, it does fine, *shrug*.

Because you play the single best monofaction army bar none, if it weren't for Eldar Dark Reapers disrupting the meta, Guard would really stand alone.

Also you run 3 baneblades in a casual environment as you are an admitted non-tournament player. So of course you do well. This isn't some great mystery.

Numerous armies are forced to play monofaction. Basically all Xenos except Eldar. And the evidence is plain as day, you just choose to ignore it. I think the real question is, on what grounds can you dispute massive amounts of tournament data? Your argument is effectively throwing a "#fakenews" reply and being done with it.

I played mono-faction at NOVA too and went 4-4 in the GT, which is satisfactory, and was with the Index.

All xenos except eldar? I played a Tyranid army with four leman russ tanks in it yesterday.

And the problem with tournament data is you have to look at how many people showed up with mono-faction armies before you get any kind of data. Did half of the players show up with mono armies? A quarter? Like, 3?

I know there were a few mono-armies scattered throughout the rankings, including mono-BA in the top 8, IIRC, and plenty in the top 100 of a 500-person tournament. It's not all doom-and-gloom for them imo.

Mono-BA guy cheated. But maybe a list like that can work. I'm dubious. It's hard to overcome the raw efficiency of the IG.

Martel732 wrote:
Mono-BA guy cheated. But maybe a list like that can work. I'm dubious. It's hard to overcome the raw efficiency of the IG.

.... who are a mono faction themselves.

I still see no evidence that mixed-faction armies are so much better than mono-faction armies that people are getting fethed.

It may be true of individual mono factions (e.g. Grey Knights) because they got shafted so hard that even in a soupless environment they'd be screwed, but that's still not proof that allowing soup somehow completely invalidates mono-factions.

Yes Tyranids can technically bring Guard via GSC, but that should amplify how bad it is for Xenos that can't soup, or soup effectively.

It's an extremely circuitous path to get tanks that have no tactics, stratagems, etc, versus an army that can bring those same models, with cheaper, better chaff, and will have tactics, stratagems, etc. This is an example of ineffective souping, and it's made ineffective by rules.

No, you are not even approaching this right. Count the number of armies in the top 50 that aren't soupable. Imperium, Chaos, and Eldar dominate.

Look at the LVO, as a microcosm of the problem:

There were 0 Tyranids in the top 50.
There were 0 Orks in the top 50.
There were 0 Necrons in the top 50.
There was 1 Tau in the top 50.

So these 4 factions with no soup / heavily restricted/gimped soup had 1 person in the top 50.

Do you feel that's balanced? Do you not see the connection between souping and results?

I don't know about mono vs soup. I think its all about being able to spam undercosted units. I don't think mixing BA into IG makes IG better, myself. I think IG is better off mono than mixing in marines, who are horribly inefficient.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Why is it taken as fact that soup is flat out better than a mono-army without really any evidence existing? I play a mono army, it does fine, *shrug*.

Because you play the single best monofaction army bar none, if it weren't for Eldar Dark Reapers disrupting the meta, Guard would really stand alone.

Also you run 3 baneblades in a casual environment as you are an admitted non-tournament player. So of course you do well. This isn't some great mystery.

Numerous armies are forced to play monofaction. Basically all Xenos except Eldar. And the evidence is plain as day, you just choose to ignore it. I think the real question is, on what grounds can you dispute massive amounts of tournament data? Your argument is effectively throwing a "#fakenews" reply and being done with it.

The question is "why is it a fact that soup is better than pure?" not "why is it a fact that some factions have vaguer definitions of what pure means?"

Ultimately, it comes down to options and while numerous armies are forced to play monofaction, there's no parity in options between mono-faction armies. Orks are monofaction but still have a very large selection of options (outside of troops sadly). There are multiple factions in the game that only have only 1 or 2 options per unit type. It's not exactly "more balanced" for them to be the poorly designed one dimensional gimmicks that they are.

When you take soup into account it really feels like everything has a good range of options. Some of the factions could benefit from more (Necrons and Tau seem to be the most in need of diversity, IMO, but are also kind of... soulless... by design). Take that away though and I think you wind up with more useless factions than we have currently.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:
Yes Tyranids can technically bring Guard via GSC, but that should amplify how bad it is for Xenos that can't soup, or soup effectively.

It's an extremely circuitous path to get tanks that have no tactics, stratagems, etc, versus an army that can bring those same models, with cheaper, better chaff, and will have tactics, stratagems, etc. This is an example of ineffective souping, and it's made ineffective by rules.

No, you are not even approaching this right. Count the number of armies in the top 50 that aren't soupable. Imperium, Chaos, and Eldar dominate.

Look at the LVO, as a microcosm of the problem:

There were 0 Tyranids in the top 50.
There were 0 Orks in the top 50.
There were 0 Necrons in the top 50.
There was 1 Tau in the top 50.

So these 4 factions with no soup / heavily restricted/gimped soup had 1 person in the top 50.

Do you feel that's balanced? Do you not see the connection between souping and results?

I think the bigger deal for most of those armies is the lack of a codex, personally.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't know about mono vs soup. I think its all about being able to spam undercosted units. I don't think mixing BA into IG makes IG better, myself. I think IG is better off mono than mixing in marines, who are horribly inefficient.

We're on the same page here.

The underlying argument that's getting lost in the nonsense is that armies should balanced better, and if they're going to balance based on soup, they should dramatically improve the strength of the monofaction armies (Orks, Tau, Tyranids, Necrons).

If they're not balancing based on soup, there should be rules to restrict it, because it's impacting balance.

Soups are fine if balanced against opponents which might only have access to a single codex. Yet it seems fairly likely that being able to combine the strongest performers using each factions niche would give you a stronger combined force. The question becomes whether to balance the soup or each codex contained in the soup against outside (mono codex) forces.

I'm not sure GW (or anyone) is capable of balancing both soup and mono codex's within to match other codex's evenly. Giving a bunch of Custodes a 5++ which they already have isn't worth much but it might be ok for guardsmen and pure gold on Hellblasters or such; who do you balance the ability to? Do Guardsmen need to be more expensive because they can benefit from it in soup? Would that make them useless in pure IG where they don't have access to X ability?

Soup is cool, but seems to be a balance nightmare I'm a little hesitant to trust someone with GW track record with. Though it seems here to stay.

 Marmatag wrote:
Yes Tyranids can technically bring Guard via GSC, but that should amplify how bad it is for Xenos that can't soup, or soup effectively.

It's an extremely circuitous path to get tanks that have no tactics, stratagems, etc, versus an army that can bring those same models, with cheaper, better chaff, and will have tactics, stratagems, etc. This is an example of ineffective souping, and it's made ineffective by rules.

No, you are not even approaching this right. Count the number of armies in the top 50 that aren't soupable. Imperium, Chaos, and Eldar dominate.

Look at the LVO, as a microcosm of the problem:

There were 0 Tyranids in the top 50.
There were 0 Orks in the top 50.
There were 0 Necrons in the top 50.
There was 1 Tau in the top 50.

So these 4 factions with no soup / heavily restricted/gimped soup had 1 person in the top 50.

Do you feel that's balanced? Do you not see the connection between souping and results?

2 Questions:

1) Why are you only looking at the top 1/10th of players? I get where you're going, but you're only talking about a group of 50 people who are only allowed to bring one army each.
2) 3 of those are Index armies that lack a codex, which is more crippling than being able to soup or not.

What I see in the results from LVO is that taking soup away from people will restrict theme armies without harming the top lists. If you forced people to play mono faction, a bunch of Ynnari units would go feth off and die while Dark Reapers fought against Dark Reapers for the title, Guard and BA would do fine, and you'd still probably not have a lot of Orks, Necrons, or Tau in the top. The Tyranids are the only outlier, though without knowing how many showed up, it's hard to tell if they're a real outlier. If only like, 3 people showed up with them, then 0 in the top 50 is expected, whereas if there were 50 or 60 players, that's a bigger deal that they didn't make a showing.

Nothing in your post explains why soup is better than mono. What I see from your post is Indexes are worse than Codexes (a point against which I am not arguing), and Tyranids are anomalous.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I don't know about mono vs soup. I think its all about being able to spam undercosted units. I don't think mixing BA into IG makes IG better, myself. I think IG is better off mono than mixing in marines, who are horribly inefficient.

We're on the same page here.

The underlying argument that's getting lost in the nonsense is that armies should balanced better, and if they're going to balance based on soup, they should dramatically improve the strength of the monofaction armies (Orks, Tau, Tyranids, Necrons).

If they're not balancing based on soup, there should be rules to restrict it, because it's impacting balance.

Either modify their strength to match or allow them to soup, yes.

Personally I'm in favour of the latter.

 Marmatag wrote:
Yes Tyranids can technically bring Guard via GSC, but that should amplify how bad it is for Xenos that can't soup, or soup effectively.

It's an extremely circuitous path to get tanks that have no tactics, stratagems, etc, versus an army that can bring those same models, with cheaper, better chaff, and will have tactics, stratagems, etc. This is an example of ineffective souping, and it's made ineffective by rules.

No, you are not even approaching this right. Count the number of armies in the top 50 that aren't soupable. Imperium, Chaos, and Eldar dominate.

Look at the LVO, as a microcosm of the problem:

There were 0 Tyranids in the top 50.
There were 0 Orks in the top 50.
There were 0 Necrons in the top 50.
There was 1 Tau in the top 50.

So these 4 factions with no soup / heavily restricted/gimped soup had 1 person in the top 50.

Do you feel that's balanced? Do you not see the connection between souping and results?

I don't think that correlation is a result of the causation you're suggesting, or at least, it's not the only cause. As has been discussed extensively in this thread (and I'm really not intending to bring this up again), many Ork and Tyranid lists simply weren't getting the rounds in because of time limits, that, which also shouldn't be used as the sole indicator of balance. Eldar play relatively quickly because they sit and shoot quite a bit and only have a few units usually in an army that need to really be moved a lot.

Wrapping the entire thing up and putting a soup bow on it, isn't entirely fair.

I agree they need to work harder to provide additional options for the more esoteric xenos armies, but that takes time, so we'll have to see. If Tyranid lists had been able to play out the full games, would they have done better? Do Eldar excel in a 2-3 round environment because of their style of play?

I think we all have a tendency to want to point to a single point of failure and claim that removing it would fix everything, but that's simply not the case. It's definitely not the case in a tournament environment where the length, style and results of the game rely heavily on so many human factors.

Of course, we'll probably have AI in a year or two that can analyze every permutation and spit out the optimal list for the vast majority of circumstances.

Then what will we bitch about?

Unit, you're ignoring the actual way tournament armies have been built.

No one is just taking a cool Inquisitor for flavor in their Imperium army. What you're mentioning is precisely why soup is fine...for narrative games. It's not balanced at all, and creates entirely unfluffy silly armies which are aimed solely at tournament wins when put in a competitive environment.

If you want a tournament to be remotely balanced, having one player free to pick from 8-10 codices while his opponent has one codex isn't balanced. You're aware of this, stop dodging it.

Another solution:

If i hit the lottery, i'll just host a $100k championship series, where the winner takes home 100,000 us dollars. I'll write my own soup restrictions and rules. They will become the meta because everyone wants a chance to win $100k every few months.

I would also do what MTG does, and have a restricted / banned list. Some units would be banned, some units would be restricted to a specific number.

 Elbows wrote:
Unit, you're ignoring the actual way tournament armies have been built.

No one is just taking a cool Inquisitor for flavor in their Imperium army. What you're mentioning is precisely why soup is fine...for narrative games. It's not balanced at all, and creates entirely unfluffy silly armies which are aimed solely at tournament wins when put in a competitive environment.

If you want a tournament to be remotely balanced, having one player free to pick from 8-10 codices while his opponent has one codex isn't balanced. You're aware of this, stop dodging it.

[Citation Needed] for the red part, and explanation for how the blue part is different than the tournament builds you saw when mono-faction armies existed exclusively.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Galas wrote:Make armies lost all specific benefits if they are mixed, instead of being a Detachment thing. So an Imperium army can't have blood angel stratagems, or chapter tactics, etc...

Boom. Soup fixed.

I do love it when my Ultramarines fight as Ultramarines on battlefield A of the Campaign, and my Tallarn fight like Tallarn on Battlefield B. But god forbid you put both of them on battlefield C. It's chaos! Ultramarines forget their mental indoctrination, Tallarn stumbling all over themselves instead of advancing swiftly...

Breng77 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

IMO it does (or not doing so needs an upside which is the same thing essentially), I want both styles to be viable, right now there is 0 reason not to soup.

Why is that a problem? It is certainly 'viable' not to soup - I don't think that mono-Imperial Guard or mono-BA is in a cripplingly bad spot like you make it seem.

And mono-GK? Admech? Is mono-guard mono regiment or multiple regiments (another form of soup to some extent). I'm not saying those armies cannot be played at all just that generally soup is in the advantage, so why should there not be a bonus to not playing soup to even things out for people that don't want to play soup but still want to compete.

It's worth noting that having access to a large number of codices is less impactful when a large number of those codices have the same units copy pasted across them.

I think the key to soup being balanced though is making sure its worthwhile for detachments to be for the most part pure. The limit of 3 detachments does a pretty good job providing tradeoffs when they grant important abilities like the Custodes +1 Invul or other, similarly important passives.

The need to do something like AOS has; AOS got it right. If you take a mix, you don't get all the specific benefits. This detachment system is a bunch of gak, and is the reason for this problem. You should not be able to take a UM detachment and then a tallarn tank detachment and have both benefit from their own specific abilities. That should be the tradeoff for doing a mixed army versus a mono build.

Wayniac wrote:
The need to do something like AOS has; AOS got it right. If you take a mix, you don't get all the specific benefits. This detachment system is a bunch of gak, and is the reason for this problem. You should not be able to take a UM detachment and then a tallarn tank detachment and have both benefit from their own specific abilities. That should be the tradeoff for doing a mixed army versus a mono build.

I would be fine with this as a balance change in regards to souping.

Wayniac wrote:
You should not be able to take a UM detachment and then a tallarn tank detachment and have both benefit from their own specific abilities.

Why not? It would be one thing if they were benefiting from each other's abilities, but their own seems fine. I'd rather see a UM detachment supporting some guard and tanks than seeing the UM detachment doubled up.

 Marmatag wrote:
Another solution:

If i hit the lottery, i'll just host a $100k championship series, where the winner takes home 100,000 us dollars. I'll write my own soup restrictions and rules. They will become the meta because everyone wants a chance to win $100k every few months.

I would also do what MTG does, and have a restricted / banned list. Some units would be banned, some units would be restricted to a specific number.

In an effort to do good you will do great evil.

Players will work harder than ever to find combos that break the system within it's limits. In addition the tournament will feature some of the most toxic and unsportsman-like behavior.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Galas wrote:
All of thats is pure 8th rules. The core principle of the factions is still to be stand alone forces.

But that's not entirely true is it? Obviously the allies matrix in 7th seems to indicate that the concepts of cross-list benefits were first gestated in 7th and that what we're seeing is simply a refinement of that process.

I would submit that stand alone forces are for leagues, narratives and other less strictly competitive game modes, tournament play is more likely to be balanced around mixed lists.

Allies should be compliments, not entirely getting rid of weaknesses or crutches

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I still think you're attributing 5th edition think to an 8th edition game.

There's really no indication that mono-faction armies have weaknesses anymore. IG can have walls of infantry and plentiful battle tanks, or it can be an entirely elite force of Bullgryns mounted in Valkyries. It could be Crusaders in outflanking Tallarn Banehammers. It is no longer restricted to its old 5th edition style of "dudes and tanks".

You can do these things. They dont work terribly well. An elite force of Bullgryns in Valkyries are not going to do terribly well, they're not the equivalent of something like a Smashhammer captain or Shining Spears or TWC's or other such units. Such forces can be physically made, but doesn't mean they have the tools to properly work at the level of other armies.

Conversely, you could build Space Marines with gobs of predator tanks and Land Raiders, with Chronus as the HQ, and a bunch of scouts as the troops, who are fairly cheap (about the same as scions IIRC).

Scouts, while capable of serving as a screening unit, are not the same as fielding infantry the way IG can. Scouts can make a passable screening unit, but are not analgous to IG infantry, same way Scions are, by comparison, elite specialists. Yeah, SM's *can* field a tank army as a result of the detachment rules, but they don't have tanks to cover all the specialties and capabilities IG do, nor do they have the same support elements and rules that the IG do for running tank armies. Chronus, while powerful, is not really a command unit the way an IG Tank Commander or Pask is. SM detachment rules do not allow their tanks to make use of ObSec the way IG do. A Space Marine army in this vein is not generally going to match an IG army in this vein. SM armies rely a whole lot more on characters and their infantry to do the job of fighting, the tanks are support elements.

Factions no longer have "this faction is obviously just dudes and tanks while this one is fast and hurty but doesn't shoot well" as their taglines.

They can all run more varied force compositions, but it doesn't mean they can all be successful or capable with them. We're not going to get Tau armies able to successfully field a heavy infantry melee army in the vein of the GK's or AC. We're not going to see Ork armies with fantastically accurate, high strength long range shooting.

In fact, some factions have almost nothing, and essentially have to soup or else you are forcing badness that is incoherent with 8th edition's soupy philosophy (inquisition and astra telepathica, arguably grey knights... etc.).

These are largely niche factions that arent fully fledged factions. Things like that are fine. Having assassins or inquisitors available as general "Imperium" add-ons is one thing, thats not really an issue. The problems with Grey Knights isn't so much that theyre not supposed to be their own army, GW very much went out of their way to do so (hence why the Daemonhunters codex was replaced by a Codex Gey Knights with a dramatically expanded array of GK units), they just didnt execute it well, as is tradition

The big issue is being able to tailor units and detachments both to optimal internal factions (e.g. regiments, craftworlds, chapter rules) *and* external factions where including elements otherwise unavailable becomes an option.

I'm totally onboard with faction benefit requirements being more stringent and making mixnmatch less accessible, at least for matched play.