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I believe I remember from poles and a lot of discussion here that most people follow the rule of three. But, of course in a non-tournament setting, let’s say you had an opponent that doesn’t want want to use rule of three (I know, it’s a beta rule, and non-binding), how would you feel? Let’s say the scenario is a pure Militarum Tempestus army (and you’re don’t believe Scions can keep their doctrine if they take Advisors and Auxillia units).
Would you make an exception, as in that scenario, the Scion player only has three HQs, and that is it. Would you do it case to case, as not to fall victim to spamming? Genuinely curious.

It's fine. It's a suggestion for tournament play. It's not binding.

It also depends on the nature of whats being sued, if you just want to ignore it so you can spam an unfluffy list of some broken game winning unit thats gonna be differant from "hey my fluff bunnies chapter list happens to have 6 units of space marine bikes because I'm trying to recreate the force from page 132 of this novel"

Surely the rule of three is unfluffy? There's plenty of unfluffy stuff in the game on the table.

What about Khorne with (un?)holy numbers of 8... surely the rule of eight would work better with them

You can house rule anything if you all agree to it. Tournaments have their own rules too.

The rule is in place just to stop people spamming units, if you don't want to play it in a non-tournament setting that's fine as long as both sides are happy. I can't see any issues as long as it's not someone asking if they can bring 7 flyrants.

Nope. It's technically a "beta" rule, but we all know it's coming eventually. Might as well get used to the fact.

Crispy78 wrote:
It's fine. It's a suggestion for tournament play. It's not binding.

Yep, this. It is not an actual rule. People who want to use it outside tournaments are using houserules.

Depends on the list. If you’re running ecclisiarchy, assasins, Inquisition and guard I wouldn’t care. Similar if you want a chaos coalition with all 4 gods or something.

Whenever I play a casual game with my mates we always use the most up to date, tournament guidelines. Figure it's the most balanced. Also if and when we enter tournaments there isn't much of a change (if any) in our lists.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Whenever I play a casual game with my mates we always use the most up to date, tournament guidelines. Figure it's the most balanced. Also if and when we enter tournaments there isn't much of a change (if any) in our lists.

This is what frustrates me lately. Saying "these rules are for Organized Play only, you don't have to use them" is a cop-out. It's technically true, but it avoids the actual discussion.

MOST people want to use the latest rules and guidelines as you described - whether they think it's more balanced, or just the most "official" - so a large majority of pick-up games will involve all of these rules. They're viewed as standard, whether that was the intent or not. By desiring only games without them, you're going to cut out a lot of possible opponents at the Local.

I would never bring an army that doesn't comply with rule of three, max 3 detachments etc... however I wouldn't strongly object if my opponent didn't.

Clearly if they wanted to run 12 of a unit then we might have some issues but 4 Tempestor Primes? Whatever let's play.

*Bring back the good old force organisation chart!*


As for the thread question there isn't really an answer in my view. Outside of a tournament freeplay games are highly variable and situational. From being as close to tourney level as you can get through to being so casual that the impassable terrain in the middle of the table is the cat having a nap. In such a plethora of variable situations there is no hard fast rule.

I think the fun factor comes into it more than anything. If its an army you've never faced you might well say sure to find out what happens; if you've played it before and know its a hard game you might say yes for a challenge or no lets play something else cause I always get beaten by that army.

Or heck you might say "yeah! and hold on let my just change my army to suit too cause I've wanted to use my 5 *whatevers* for ages"

I don't play tournaments. So it's not an issue.
Not that you need more than 3 of anything.

I'd question why the player didn't want to use it. I don't really want to play a game against 8 Shield Captains on bikes for example!

But if as you say you just want to take an extra Prime to fill out a detachment without breaking your army's theme then cool, wouldn't bother me at all!

I think the standard will be the rule of three, but you won't have a real issue getting around it if you are not spamming something silly. Taking four tempestor primes won't make anyone flip a table.

I'd still play ya, but I'd probably want to swap lists first. Takes some of the surprise out, but you'd have mine too.

If you were someone I knew, who I have fun games with, no list swap would be required.

I have zero interest in being blindsided by an intentionally unfun list that I gave ambiguous approval to because I probably wouldn't play the game on principal since it sets a bad precedent and would royally piss me off.

Rule of three doesent matter in open or narrative games.

You're actually encouraged to create whatever fluffy/spammy/ridiculous list you want in open play.

I dont really understand people who vehemently oppose Open Play, but instead will cherry pick the rules they like or dislike from Matched play.

"Ew! Open Play! That's unfair and unbalanced! But let me ignore this suggestion to stop spamming units because I wanna Forge the Narrative my own way!"

My suggestion is to try and play with Rule of Three, if not for anything else but to have a more balanced army in the end. I actually laugh out loud every time the OP tournament spam list of the month gets nerfed down. Conscript Blobs? Triple Fire Raptors? HAHA. Don't see those anymore. But likewise you should just ask your own opponents, since their opinion might be different.


Now, back to the OP suggested army of Scion, I probably wouldnt think that list is unplayable.

I just don't want anyone to end up with an army they can't field a year from now. I myself have an all Biker Space Marine Force that I can't use under Rule of Three.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Rule of three doesent matter in open or narrative games.

It shouldn't matter in matched either, except for some reason people have decided that their random pick up games are now actually tournaments.

 Crimson wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Rule of three doesent matter in open or narrative games.

It shouldn't matter in matched either, except for some reason people have decided that their random pick up games are now actually tournaments.

This has kind always been the case, at least in my experience. Most places I've played, pickup play tends to mirror whatever the local tournament rules are. It's an easy standard for people to just bring stuff and get a game in. I'm not always enthused about that or its consequences, but that's been a thing for as long as I've played, and is why certain subjects that aren't necessarily tied to casual and pickup play often get a lot of blowback even when they appear to be strictly tournament oriented.

Stux wrote:
I'd question why the player didn't want to use it. I don't really want to play a game against 8 Shield Captains on bikes for example!

Which shows the issue with the unit itself, not being able to take it in multiples. Otherwise people only ever really take at max 4 or 5 of something.

After reading them... Yes, you can safely ignore the chart. Especially since a 1000 point game means you cannot use any stratagems requiring 3 identical units... Good luck using killshot with your two Preds.

I completely agree that, for a pickup game, you play as if you're using tournament rules by default. If you err on the side of caution, you don't risk anything being an issue. So yeah, the "rule of three" is important.

That being said, if you're honest and upfront about what your intentions are, and why you're doing it, I likely couldn't care less. Especially if it's to comply with a theme or fluff or something else like that. I don't care if it changes to an "open game" then in which we're using all the rules of matched play EXCEPT the "rule of three", whatever you want to call it, I just want to play a fun game and throw dice around.

Rule of Cool trumps everything in my mind. You enthuse me about your army idea, or your modelling, or your story, and we still have a fun game? Bring it on and let the dice fall where they may.

Since the Rule of three is a lazy attempt by GW to get out of actually even trying to balance out their game that not only fails at improving balance but also fails at improving unit diversity, do what you want.

The rule of 3 is the second worst rule GW has ever written behind the realm rules for AoS.

 Larks wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Whenever I play a casual game with my mates we always use the most up to date, tournament guidelines. Figure it's the most balanced. Also if and when we enter tournaments there isn't much of a change (if any) in our lists.

This is what frustrates me lately. Saying "these rules are for Organized Play only, you don't have to use them" is a cop-out. It's technically true, but it avoids the actual discussion.

MOST people want to use the latest rules and guidelines as you described - whether they think it's more balanced, or just the most "official" - so a large majority of pick-up games will involve all of these rules. They're viewed as standard, whether that was the intent or not. By desiring only games without them, you're going to cut out a lot of possible opponents at the Local.

I agree fully. It's made even worse because people confuse what is and is not a beta rule. Rule of 3 is not a beta rule. The only beta rules are Battlebrothers and Tactical Reserve. It even says at the top of the page there are 2 beta rules and specifically lists those two by name.

Since it's been brought up that most people play by tournament rules, I thought I'd comment on why: it's practice. Just like anything, people like to practice with their lists to get down all the combos by heart, iron out any kinks or unexpected counters and do it using tournament rules to better understand them prior to playing in an actual tournament.

To "get gud" requires effort after all, and so people put in that effort to do it.

That said, I feel that outside of the top table level of play that people aspire to reach, the game does encourage wide arrays of units (save for specific combos that tell you to just spam 3x of something to use a strategem) mainly because the combos those units can pull off do a lot to make those armies more balanced. It's only in those top table lists do the armies tend to lean more towards hyper optimization and spamming identical units to get the most bang for your buck.

Honestly, the rule of 3 isn't a bad idea, it just lacks a key element that would push those top tables further away from spamming the same options: more strategems that require different units for a combo (like the old Whirlwind + Landspeeder formation we had before) encouraging a mix of units on the table to take advantage of a wider array of different options instead of just spamming a single combo.

There definitely needs to be an adjustment to how CP is generated (perhaps 1 for every 10 pl in your army so unit count becomes less important to the generation of CP) to break up the CP farms and move to allies being based on different interesting combos they can bring over what we currently see in most lists.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Since it's been brought up that most people play by tournament rules, I thought I'd comment on why: it's practice. Just like anything, people like to practice with their lists to get down all the combos by heart, iron out any kinks or unexpected counters and do it using tournament rules to better understand them prior to playing in an actual tournament.

Not just that - tournaments aim for balanced games. Why wouldn't you want your random pick-up game to be balanced as well?

That said, if you want to break the rule of 3 because you want to play and army you have had for a long time and simply can't fit all your models anymore, I don't mind. Almost always when this comes up, you have some all bikes army or an army with very limited choices that were collateral damage of the rule of 3.

If you want to play more units for no reason besides a more optimized list or MSU spam, I'm going to decline. Your army is still valid if you can field 3x 15 of some model instead of 9x 5. It's just less powerful.

I'm all for not using the rule of 3. It isn't a problem but I would like to know ahead of time so I also have what I really want in my list, especially if it's my more competitive opponent. Just so we have a good game. To be hones it's hardly changed my lists. Now I just run 3 small mobs of burna boys and not 4. 4 was better.
2 mobs in ride in a trukk and 2 mobs ride in another trukk.

I obey every matched play recommendation/rule/whatehaveyou that I can when building my list, because I want my opponent to have fun during the game and the best way of ensuring that is to make the game as balanced as possible.

That said, if my opponent asked me before the game / during deployment "hey, is it ok if I brought 4 detachments / 5 of the same datasheet / whathaveyou" then I'd be okay with it, just like I'd be okay if they asked to be 3 points over. I love armies with theme more than I love balanced games! But I can't be sure my opponent feels the same way, so I tend to err on the side of Matched Play balancing recommendations over theme when constructing my own armies.

It helps that only my Inquisition risks violating the Rule of 3 at the moment. I'd be much saltier if I had a list idea that it broke.

Personally I'm of the opinion that if people want me to use their houserules in a random game then they should ask me beforehand whether that is OK.

 Crimson wrote:
Personally I'm of the opinion that if people want me to use their houserules in a random game then they should ask me beforehand whether that is OK.

Depends on the house, of course. My club follows the published GW rules, including recommended ones, so if you don't I'd expect you to ask me, first. After all, our house, our houserules. Oh, and that goes for a GW store too, since it's also GW's houserules.

The fact that they're published and recommended for everyone should be enough warning that they might be relevant houserules in some, if not the majority, of "houses".