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So with the Flyrant List bending Adepticon over a barrel and making it cry Uncle, I was thinking, why does GW think it's ok for some armies to HQ spam but not others?

Why is Commander spam verboten in matched play but Daemon Prince, Flyrant and Tank Commander acceptable? Why did they semi-ban Tempestus Command Squads but not other examples of horrific spamability?

Flyrants is as strong if not stronger than Commander spam.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
So with the Flyrant List bending Adepticon over a barrel and making it cry Uncle, I was thinking, why does GW think it's ok for some armies to HQ spam but not others?

Why is Commander spam verboten in matched play but Flyrant and Tank Commander acceptable? Why did they semi-ban Tempestus Command Squads but not other examples of horrific spamability?

Flyrants is as strong if not stronger than commander spam.

The rumor was that the March FAQ might introduce other such restrictions on other armies...

I doubt GW really cares, and put little thought into it pre tournament watching. I’m sure you’ll see more reactive rulings limiting it in FAQs and future codexes, but you’re assigning far more intention to it than is the case from anyone at GW.

Because GW is GW. The march FAQ might change it, not sure. The end result will always be that the kind of stuff "competitive" players do will always be dealt with from GW, until they learn not to do it.

They shouldnt restrict any of them.

Look at the tables Adepticon was using. Flat, open playing fields with essentially no terrain.

All of that very easily set these Flyrant armies, which can just stay in reserves until it's their turn to go, drop down and tear anyone who isn't armed to the teeth with huge screens to shreds.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
They shouldnt restrict any of them.

Look at the tables Adepticon was using. Flat, open playing fields with essentially no terrain.

All of that very easily set these Flyrant armies, which can just stay in reserves until it's their turn to go, drop down and tear anyone who isn't armed to the teeth with huge screens to shreds.

I don't see any problem with restricting them. It's a good way to keep combat HQs powerful without outshining every other unit in the book. It also makes more sense fluffwise, they are supposed to COMMAND armies, not make up the bulk of them.

No it does need to be rolled out to hive tyrents, demon princes etc aswell.
Increasing the terrian wouldn't make flyrent spam less powerful. Even with lots of los blocking terrian they would still be OP, and limits how much of the enemy can shoot back at them.

GW probably restricted Tau Commanders because they had feedback from lots of players complaining about Tau spamming Commanders. If they end up with the same about Hive Tyrants, I could see them going for a similar rules change.

I don't think you're going to get that level of player hostility towards Daemon Princes or Tank Commanders.

I don't think they should restrict ALL HQ's, just the very powerfull and rare ones.

I called out flyrant spam as a problem build a while ago (actually the owner of my FLGS was crushing people with his 7 flyrant list).

GW doesn't understand what a balanced vs unbalanced unit is seems to be my guess. Either their playtesters aren't good enough or they are not listening to the feed back they are given.

Boards with lots of cover don't hurt flyrants because they just land/fly wherever they want and are big enough to see through/over/around whatever is on most tables (being able to shoot to/from a wingtip is a problem). The mission scoring is helpful to these types of list (end of game scoring, high emphasis on kill points so fragile units are bad while 4++ ones are good)

The fact that their profile doesn't degrade until the last wound level is also a problem (should have been FAQ'd but whatever). I'm not sure if adeptacon was using the beta rules but the smite nerf slightly reduces flyrant effectiveness (7 not so good but 3-4 still really strong).

I'm really starting to believe all the posters that say GW doesn't care about a balanced/competitive game and any attempts to make that a reality are just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole..

Pandabeer wrote:

 Cephalobeard wrote:
They shouldnt restrict any of them.

Look at the tables Adepticon was using. Flat, open playing fields with essentially no terrain.

All of that very easily set these Flyrant armies, which can just stay in reserves until it's their turn to go, drop down and tear anyone who isn't armed to the teeth with huge screens to shreds.

I don't see any problem with restricting them. It's a good way to keep combat HQs powerful without outshining every other unit in the book. It also makes more sense fluffwise, they are supposed to COMMAND armies, not make up the bulk of them.

I see no reason why instances of, for example, space marine captains all working together during an engagement is so foreign if we're using lore as a justification.

They are commanding the army. They're just fighting with them, as well. As they do.

We will agree to disagree on the restrictions, but I am curious what GW will do.

Yeah tank commanders aren't competitive. Don't let them be caught up in all this.

Also, the opinion that "terrain wouldn't of mattered" may purely be a regional one. In the US, where ITC reigns supreme, ruins etc on the first floor block LoS, which very much would/could matter. This was not used at Adepticon, iirc.

Los only matters if they can't just blits what has a chance to shoot at them off the table, adding los blocking terain doesn't hurt flying models with a decent move stat more than gorund pounders who have to go around instead of just stait over.

Why do some armies get ObSec on all their troops and others don't? Because when that was true they hadn't released a big errata that was coming!

I'm not certain, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Tau Commander rule was coming to other factions in a big way. Maybe all HQs even.

Stux wrote:
Why do some armies get ObSec on all their troops and others don't?

All armies have 'Objective Secured' per page 88 of Chapter Approved.

 Ghaz wrote:

Stux wrote:
Why do some armies get ObSec on all their troops and others don't?

All armies have 'Objective Secured' per page 88 of Chapter Approved.

Yes. That's my point. A rule was released that addressed the balance.

I suspect the Tau Commander rule was made in an effort to kill Tau Commander spam without needing to rebalance the point value between Tau Commanders and Crisis Battlesuits.

The problem with the Tau Commander is that two Commanders can bring more dakka than three Crisis Suits (thanks to the better BS) and have the same number of wounds WHILE benefiting from being characters. These two options amazingly are worth about the same amount of points depending on the exact upgrades taken.

I think they should all be restricted. It makes no sense that we have different rules for different factions for no apparent reason and it also falls down from a fluff perspective.

Flyrants and other HQs should all be restricted.

If they do put a limit on big boss HQs then I do hope we see them come out with a Lieutenant equivalent for every faction.

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
If they do put a limit on big boss HQs then I do hope we see them come out with a Lieutenant equivalent for every faction.

Funnily enough, Tyranids have one, the Tyranid Prime. It's woefully unused, as it doesn't really fit some lists, is slightly overcosted, and has a limited amount of options for it (for nids).

Personally, I could see a 0-1 for Flyrants, but I think restricting it to Flyrants, and not walking Tyrants, might be a solution. I don't think anyone would have issue with that.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
So with the Flyrant List bending Adepticon over a barrel and making it cry Uncle, I was thinking, why does GW think it's ok for some armies to HQ spam but not others?

Why is Commander spam verboten in matched play but Flyrant and Tank Commander acceptable? Why did they semi-ban Tempestus Command Squads but not other examples of horrific spamability?

Flyrants is as strong if not stronger than commander spam.

The rumor was that the March FAQ might introduce other such restrictions on other armies...

That is just community speculation. No rumor afaik.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
So with the Flyrant List bending Adepticon over a barrel and making it cry Uncle, I was thinking, why does GW think it's ok for some armies to HQ spam but not others?

Why is Commander spam verboten in matched play but Flyrant and Tank Commander acceptable? Why did they semi-ban Tempestus Command Squads but not other examples of horrific spamability?

Flyrants is as strong if not stronger than commander spam.

The rumor was that the March FAQ might introduce other such restrictions on other armies...

That is just community speculation. No rumor afaik.

One might even call it "fake news."

Eh, unfortunately this is just patching holes in a leeky ship instead of trying to deal with the Man'o'War pepering you with shots. First it was erm.. its 4 am brain no work the renegade and heretics psykers... then smite spam, then commander spam, now people want flyrant spam gone.

If spam is a problem you have to instutite a generic "can only take 1 of X for every other Y HQ's" or something like across all armies, or maybe tweek supreme command so you MUST take 1 elites and / or LoW. Or something similar. Restricting stuff on a case by case basis just makes people move to the next fresh OP. And how do you stop for example just generic Dark Reaper spam without simply nerfing the unit? (wich isn't fun, having a powerfull centerpiece force is nice, but nerfing / overcosting it into unusable is just hurting all the Timmy's paying your bills).

Not that i want to see spam / soup armies go anywhere mind you but i'm more of a "new guard" player. I love the lore but as far as the tabletop goes i see as more of a TCG than a hobby and love the "deck" building aspect of it.

These are silly questions. The answers are really pretty obvious.

In general, GW is bad at balancing things and so when they release rules you often have a couple units in each book that are just way too good. It was obvious upon the release of the indexes that Scions were one such unit. People quickly figured out that Tau Commanders were too, though they weren't really nearly as bad. Shortly afterwards, Scions got restricted, and then nerfed in the codex. Commanders got restricted with their codex, which otherwise would have made them stupidly overpowered given the new options for Coldstars.

Index Hive Tyrants were pretty poor. GW over-corrected and as a result codex Leviathan Tyrants are a whopping 92% more durable against lascannons and similar for the same price, and they're twice as shooty. That's pretty normal for GW. And it's only been a bit over 4 months since the codex release, and really only one or two since enough people cottoned on to how strong Tyrants are that people are starting to take notice, so it's just very weird to talk like this is at all surprising. This isn't different from Commanders and Scions at all -- it's exactly what we saw with Commanders and Scions. So I'd bet that GW will do something about them after the amount of time that it usually takes them to do something about this kind of thing. Possibly in the imminent March FAQ but failing that in the July (?) one, or perhaps as an emergency patch in between.

Meanwhile Daemon Prince and Tank Commander spam are more acceptable because they're not nearly as powerful. Duh, right?

I think with the Tau it was cause you could spam bs2+ guys with pretty strong loadouts and there was no reason for people to take the normal xv8s; unless they had the foresight to see that commander spam was too strong and too likely to be FAQed out.

Then with this update and coldstar being able to take whatever weapons it wants, the problem would have only got worse without intervention like this.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
They shouldnt restrict any of them.

Look at the tables Adepticon was using. Flat, open playing fields with essentially no terrain.

All of that very easily set these Flyrant armies, which can just stay in reserves until it's their turn to go, drop down and tear anyone who isn't armed to the teeth with huge screens to shreds.

That’s why I don’t play there any more - just not worth it IMO.

 Carnikang wrote:

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
If they do put a limit on big boss HQs then I do hope we see them come out with a Lieutenant equivalent for every faction.

Funnily enough, Tyranids have one, the Tyranid Prime. It's woefully unused, as it doesn't really fit some lists, is slightly overcosted, and has a limited amount of options for it (for nids).

Personally, I could see a 0-1 for Flyrants, but I think restricting it to Flyrants, and not walking Tyrants, might be a solution. I don't think anyone would have issue with that.

It's the wrong fix.

Tyrants should give wings a melee profile (similar to scytal) and have wings replace a weapon. Then, give MRC a cost that is reasonable instead of free. If you have to choose between weapon options and mobility it becomes a much more difficult choice.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Carnikang wrote:

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
If they do put a limit on big boss HQs then I do hope we see them come out with a Lieutenant equivalent for every faction.

Funnily enough, Tyranids have one, the Tyranid Prime. It's woefully unused, as it doesn't really fit some lists, is slightly overcosted, and has a limited amount of options for it (for nids).

Personally, I could see a 0-1 for Flyrants, but I think restricting it to Flyrants, and not walking Tyrants, might be a solution. I don't think anyone would have issue with that.

It's the wrong fix.

Tyrants should give wings a melee profile (similar to scytal) and have wings replace a weapon. Then, give MRC a cost that is reasonable instead of free. If you have to choose between weapon options and mobility it becomes a much more difficult choice.

That's not bad actually. Maybe they should have done something like that with Coldstars too!

 n0t_u wrote:
I think with the Tau it was cause you could spam bs2+ guys with pretty strong loadouts and there was no reason for people to take the normal xv8s; unless they had the foresight to see that commander spam was too strong and too likely to be FAQed out.

Then with this update and coldstar being able to take whatever weapons it wants, the problem would have only got worse without intervention like this.

There's still no reason to take normal XV8s, so whatever's GW's reasoning it likely wasn't an effort to get more players to take Crisis suits; if they cared about that, they wouldn't have made the only semi-reasonable Crisis loadout 96 points a model.

Dandelion wrote:

That's not bad actually. Maybe they should have done something like that with Coldstars too!

Coldstars aren't that much better than the other Tau Commanders. If they got worse, Tau players would just take Enforcers or XV8s.