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Leo_the_Rat wrote:
For those of you who think soup is a recent thing- it was allowed in 2nd edition. In fact up to 25% of your army could be made up of allies back then.

And then it went away until 6th edition, with the exception of certain factions like daemonhunters who could take limited allies. 6th had the "allied detachment": 1 HQ, 2 troops, and 1 each of the other FOC slots, and it's expanded from there with the initial naysayers being proved more right each edition.

No they weren't?
It wasn't any different before allies, except that if a codex wasnt the best, it didn't see ANY play, and you had entire factions who practically didn't exist.

Sure man, we keep seeing those GK being played left and right, because they can ally in custodes, knights and IG CP farms. Oh wait, no one wants to play bad armies with or without ally. The best ally can do is someone builds a weak army, already with an ally detachment from the start, and then just brenches out in to the ally section. And soon something that started as custodes with IG, and some GK, turns in to IG with custodes.

You say that but you also kinda prove his point by using in your example of soup. Without allies Custodes wouldn't be seen at all.

For that matter Knights probably wouldn't see much play either, given that mono-Knights tend to lack the board presence necessary to hold objectives.

Thing is in a non-soup enviroment Custodes can work. Most all lists in major tournaments are soup. So the level goes down a lot if you forbid soup in matched play.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Won't solve a thing.
CP farms would still farm CP.

For themselves alone. Might have to limit Relics to Warlord detachment as well.

Ice_can wrote:
The rule of three being updated to be more like the Tau commander rule I can see.
The rest of your suggestions are all way off the reservation.

The biggest issue right now is CP farming and CP sharing.

Non of the stuff you claim as thing's needing fixed are problems they are design changes, you might not like them but they are here to stay.

Also its an FAQ not chapter approved why would they be addressing missions?

CP is just a terribly lazy mechanic.

i don't mind it as a base mechanic. It's just too uneven currently to work with soup.

 Earth127 wrote:
i don't mind it as a base mechanic. It's just too uneven currently to work with soup.

Soup is a marketing tactic that isnt going away.

The base CP mechanic itself is extremely lazy.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
You say that but you also kinda prove his point by using in your example of soup. Without allies Custodes wouldn't be seen at all.

For that matter Knights probably wouldn't see much play either, given that mono-Knights tend to lack the board presence necessary to hold objectives.

Depends on the process.

If Soup wasn't a thing I suspect mono Eldar, DE and IG would be top tier.
Nerf Alaitoc (major meta shift if its gone tbh), 5 point Disies, maybe something on Coven 4++ & IG need work, lots of work.

Once you have gone through that though, you should be in a pretty healthy place.
I don't see how mono Custodes would not be a thing - or mono Harlequins.

Whether they would be top tier as opposed to say mono Eldar/DE/IG/Knights/Tau/Tyranids etc through to possibly Marines & Admech is open to debate - but I am not seeing what makes them "unplayable" and I don't really get the claims that they are clearly "meant" to be an allied detachment.

As for the whole "you know, Allies were a thing since 2nd" - sure. Taudar was a thing until 8th edition. People don't look back on Wraithknight & Riptide Wings as a fun combination.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
All the "beta rules" are de facto fully official.

The rule of 3 is not a beta rule. PLEASE STOP SAYING THIS.

I was going to ask you to cite your source on this, then went back and looked at the Big FAQ PDF, and apparently the Rule of 3 was straight errata, not a beta rule.

On the other hand, it is errata to a suggestion for Matched Play events, not a rule which is expected to be used at all events, so I can see why people might get confused about it.

As an aside, and unrelated to the Big FAQ, I do hope that CA 2018 includes a list of all points value changes which are in effect, rather than just the additional changes that they'll no doubt be making.

 Dysartes wrote:

As an aside, and unrelated to the Big FAQ, I do hope that CA 2018 includes a list of all points value changes which are in effect, rather than just the additional changes that they'll no doubt be making.

I hope they punish entirely new pages of all point values for all units in all codexes. It would take a good portion of the book, but a one stop reference would be really useful.

Best approach to CP farming that I can see is to make relics exclusive to the warlord's detachment and double the cost of stratagems from a faction other than your warlord's. You'd still have people taking min battalions, but that's inevitable as long as there's a benefit to taking battalions in the game. This way you might see Sororitas or AdMech instead of AM sometimes.

 BoomWolf wrote:
No they weren't?
It wasn't any different before allies, except that if a codex wasnt the best, it didn't see ANY play, and you had entire factions who practically didn't exist.

Aaaah yes that's why in tournaments you only saw one codex...Umm no.

Tyel wrote:
Depends on the process.

If Soup wasn't a thing I suspect mono Eldar, DE and IG would be top tier.
Nerf Alaitoc (major meta shift if its gone tbh), 5 point Disies, maybe something on Coven 4++ & IG need work, lots of work.

Once you have gone through that though, you should be in a pretty healthy place.
I don't see how mono Custodes would not be a thing - or mono Harlequins.

Whether they would be top tier as opposed to say mono Eldar/DE/IG/Knights/Tau/Tyranids etc through to possibly Marines & Admech is open to debate - but I am not seeing what makes them "unplayable" and I don't really get the claims that they are clearly "meant" to be an allied detachment.

As for the whole "you know, Allies were a thing since 2nd" - sure. Taudar was a thing until 8th edition. People don't look back on Wraithknight & Riptide Wings as a fun combination.

This.

We have been told that armies are valued against their relative strength to others as a standalone force. This all falls apart when a player can soup. And players can literally pick one or two units as they wish - auxiliary detachments exist and certain keywords are so common they allow almost any combination of units.

Armies are supposed to have strengths and weaknesses - what IK lack in board presence they more than make up for in firepower. When they can throw in a ton of IG bodies at will for cheap it completely negates their weakness and balance is thrown out the window.

Harlies and Custodes would be absolutely fine if soup was removed. As would knights.

It's pretty impossible to say what the non-soup meta would look like since it'd be such a huge change from what we're used to. I expect a lot of people would immediately assume Guard would be the kingpins, but almost from the start of 8th Guard has relied on a fast and hard-hitting melee component to win at top tables, whether that be Celestine or Custodes Bike Captains; how strong is Guard if their best choice for filling that role is Bullgryns in a transport? Maybe they would be fine, or maybe their now one-dimensional play style would get run over by the armies that do still have a fast melee component to supplement their shooting. I really can't say for sure.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
It's pretty impossible to say what the non-soup meta would look like since it'd be such a huge change from what we're used to. I expect a lot of people would immediately assume Guard would be the kingpins, but almost from the start of 8th Guard has relied on a fast and hard-hitting melee component to win at top tables, whether that be Celestine or Custodes Bike Captains; how strong is Guard if their best choice for filling that role is Bullgryns in a transport? Maybe they would be fine, or maybe their now one-dimensional play style would get run over by the armies that do still have a fast melee component to supplement their shooting. I really can't say for sure.

Though it's not massively relevant to this thread I'd say its a solid guess to assume Guard would be the top dogs, closely followed by Craftworld and perhaps Tau. All of these factions manage to compete in the current, soup meta as mono builds so I don't think they'd have a massive issue in a mono meta that would, in theory, be easier for them. I don't think Guard has to have a fast and hard-hitting melee component to win st top tables either, there are quite a few strong Guard builds that do not have such a component and still do very well.

I remain surprised that they don't enact a similar system to Age of Sigmar where approximately 20% of your points can be spent on "allies" before your army stops being valid for a specific Allegiance. Which is where the powerful rules are.

So - for example - 1600 points of Catachan 400 points of soup can be a Catachan army. 1500 of Catachan and 500 of soup no longer gets catachan bonuses.

Pretty hard to retrofit to 40k now, though - and there would need to be exceptions otherwise no army could ever take a Knight unless it was pure knights.

 Silentz wrote:
I remain surprised that they don't enact a similar system to Age of Sigmar where approximately 20% of your points can be spent on "allies" before your army stops being valid for a specific Allegiance. Which is where the powerful rules are.

So - for example - 1600 points of Catachan 400 points of soup can be a Catachan army. 1500 of Catachan and 500 of soup no longer gets catachan bonuses.

Pretty hard to retrofit to 40k now, though - and there would need to be exceptions otherwise no army could ever take a Knight unless it was pure knights.

I do like the idea though but every time this something like this is brought up someone mentions that they play Inquisition and that they'd be unplayable. They could just add some exceptions though.
For knights it could be a singular knight or a squadron that could be added without breaking battleforged, since the squadrons can only be armigers.

So, after some thoughts I think CP farming could be toned down with a single sentence.

“If your army is battle forged, it may contain up to 1 source of Command Point regeneration.”

Alternatively, if you wanted to take a milder approach you could say
“Armies may contain up to 1 relic that regenerates Command Points.”

The difference between the two, is that the first one would restrict you to 1 WL trait or 1 relic, whereas the second one will allow you 1 WL trait AND 1 relic.

Personally, I’m all for the first option, as it allows other WL trait options and relics to be looked at, outside of the “standard” – though it’d have to be monitored as it might eventually mean the WL traits regenerating CP will need to be reworked in the future.

Additionally, I’d like to see a CP bonus be given to HQs like Chapter Masters (across all factions). Essentially a “If this model is your WL gain +1 CP”. Essentially like how Creed, Abaddon etc etc work. Units with this bonus already would be compensated by getting a +1 CP bonus in addition to their current bonus (with the exception of Bobby G).

As for the deep strike rule. I’m ok with it, but, I think it, and “what ability/stratagem counts as deep strike, or reserve or nothing” needs 100% clarification so there are no more instances of “well, it doesn’t say it goes into reinforcements so I can still …..”. I also think there should be very limited options to get around it. Drop pods potentially could do it, with the old rule in place saying only half of your drop pods can deep strike turn 1. Not sure how it’d work for other factions though.

I’d change the CP bonus on Supreme Command detachments as well. If it doesn’t contain a LoW it doesn’t give CP. A minor penalty, but nothing too devastating as I don’t think it is to “busted”.

Finally, I’d just bite the bullet and give everything access to their given Chapter Tactic in all codices, but, I’d also restrict to -1 to hit penalties capping out at -2.


Whether or not GW will do any of these though, is highly debatable.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
All the "beta rules" are de facto fully official.

The rule of 3 is not a beta rule. PLEASE STOP SAYING THIS.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
It is my belief, that for competitive 40k it would be much, much easier to balance if souping was not an option. Keep it for narrative and open play. There it makes sense. But I can't justify it for competitive, where factions exist that are unable to.

Then armies that simply cannot stand alone like Harlequins and Custodes become unusable in matched play.

Harlequins stand alone incredibly easily. They are so mobile that most armies are creamed on that alone. Using 4 models to prevent a tank from leaving combat, then leaving combat themselves before shooting that tank with melta pistols, and then following that up with charging another unit of any kind with 4 attacks a piece on a troupe...yeah, no. Sure, they can't take casualties well, but with just a decent amount of terrain on the board, they become unstoppable.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
It's pretty impossible to say what the non-soup meta would look like since it'd be such a huge change from what we're used to. I expect a lot of people would immediately assume Guard would be the kingpins, but almost from the start of 8th Guard has relied on a fast and hard-hitting melee component to win at top tables, whether that be Celestine or Custodes Bike Captains; how strong is Guard if their best choice for filling that role is Bullgryns in a transport? Maybe they would be fine, or maybe their now one-dimensional play style would get run over by the armies that do still have a fast melee component to supplement their shooting. I really can't say for sure.

A meta can usually be defined by pinch points. So right now for instance you need to be able to beat an Eldar Soup and Imperial Soup because odds are high in your games you will encounter these armies (variants may well represent half your games). If you change those pinch points (with buffs, nerfs, new datasheets) the meta evolves.

I don't think guard have to be a one dimensional gunline that doesn't shift. Buffed up Catachans, Ogryns, Hellhounds etc are reasonably mobile concerns that are not camping on the backline.

But really - if they nerfed Alaitoc (and maybe the other -1 to hit outside 12" abilities) and/or stripped the Lightning Reflexes Stratagem while nerfing DE damage output and this hurt Eldar competitiveness (soup or no soup) then I think gunlines would be more competitive than now. I might be wrong, but I think the fact Eldar soup is so good - and so prevalent - is a major limiter on mono guard/Tau winning tournaments - because its hard to beat these armies 20-0, and to be top you need to manage that. I think mono guard is mathematically superior to Tau, so without some nerfs they would be my meta pick. It doesn't mean they would be the winner of every tournament ever - but they would be the army you built to beat.

Eldar for instance didn't win every 7th tournament despite I think being the best codex - in fact, I think when you considered that they represented 33% of lists taken to events they did pretty badly. But because they were 33% of the lists you were almost certainly going to face one Eldar player, probably 2, potentially 3 in a tournament. If your list couldn't cope with scat bikes, spiders & knights you were in trouble. Which meant a lot of lists were never seen, because they had almost no chance.

Tyel wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
It's pretty impossible to say what the non-soup meta would look like since it'd be such a huge change from what we're used to. I expect a lot of people would immediately assume Guard would be the kingpins, but almost from the start of 8th Guard has relied on a fast and hard-hitting melee component to win at top tables, whether that be Celestine or Custodes Bike Captains; how strong is Guard if their best choice for filling that role is Bullgryns in a transport? Maybe they would be fine, or maybe their now one-dimensional play style would get run over by the armies that do still have a fast melee component to supplement their shooting. I really can't say for sure.

A meta can usually be defined by pinch points. So right now for instance you need to be able to beat an Eldar Soup and Imperial Soup because odds are high in your games you will encounter these armies (variants may well represent half your games). If you change those pinch points (with buffs, nerfs, new datasheets) the meta evolves.

I don't think guard have to be a one dimensional gunline that doesn't shift. Buffed up Catachans, Ogryns, Hellhounds etc are reasonably mobile concerns that are not camping on the backline.

But really - if they nerfed Alaitoc (and maybe the other -1 to hit outside 12" abilities) and/or stripped the Lightning Reflexes Stratagem while nerfing DE damage output and this hurt Eldar competitiveness (soup or no soup) then I think gunlines would be more competitive than now. I might be wrong, but I think the fact Eldar soup is so good - and so prevalent - is a major limiter on mono guard/Tau winning tournaments - because its hard to beat these armies 20-0, and to be top you need to manage that. I think mono guard is mathematically superior to Tau, so without some nerfs they would be my meta pick. It doesn't mean they would be the winner of every tournament ever - but they would be the army you built to beat.

Eldar for instance didn't win every 7th tournament despite I think being the best codex - in fact, I think when you considered that they represented 33% of lists taken to events they did pretty badly. But because they were 33% of the lists you were almost certainly going to face one Eldar player, probably 2, potentially 3 in a tournament. If your list couldn't cope with scat bikes, spiders & knights you were in trouble. Which meant a lot of lists were never seen, because they had almost no chance.

I have been keeping tabs on tournaments results for a while now, and let me tell you that aeldari faction have had the highest winning lists/partecipating lists ratio since the CWE codex has been released. They are simply the top faction/soup.

If CP farms were to be eliminated right now, my best bet would be on aeldari dominating the scene.
Luckily the aeldari don't have actually have overpowered codici, they just have an handful of OP units and stratagems.

A nerf to alaitoc and dissie cannons, and a lower squad limit on dark reapers and shining spears would be a serious hit.

I like the 20% rule, but 400 points feels rather limited.

One I heard and liked was:

You get a new detachment called Ally. The Ally detachment can have 6 of HQ,Troop, Elite, Fast, Heavy, LOW, Flyer. So basically anything you want in it. Ally detachments generate no CP, and you can't use Stratagems from army used in the Ally detachment.You can only have 1 Ally detachment. Any other detachments in your army have to have all the same Factional keywords.

Reemule wrote:
I like the 20% rule, but 400 points feels rather limited.

One I heard and liked was:

You get a new detachment called Ally. The Ally detachment can have 6 of HQ,Troop, Elite, Fast, Heavy, LOW, Flyer. So basically anything you want in it. Ally detachments generate no CP, and you can't use Stratagems from army used in the Ally detachment.You can only have 1 Ally detachment. Any other detachments in your army have to have all the same Factional keywords.

Define faction keywords as that sounds exceptionally punishing to certain codex's where subfaction bonuses are important.
Like is Adaptes Astartes enough or is mixing salamander and ravenguard now now result in one of them having 0 CP?

Ice_can wrote:

Reemule wrote:
I like the 20% rule, but 400 points feels rather limited.

One I heard and liked was:

You get a new detachment called Ally. The Ally detachment can have 6 of HQ,Troop, Elite, Fast, Heavy, LOW, Flyer. So basically anything you want in it. Ally detachments generate no CP, and you can't use Stratagems from army used in the Ally detachment.You can only have 1 Ally detachment. Any other detachments in your army have to have all the same Factional keywords.

Define faction keywords as that sounds exceptionally punishing to certain codex's where subfaction bonuses are important.
Like is Adaptes Astartes enough or is mixing salamander and ravenguard now now result in one of them having 0 CP?

Not to mention the various non-<REGIMENT> bits in the IG book - would taking an Enginseer or a Scions squad break your main detachment?

Pancakey wrote:

 Earth127 wrote:
i don't mind it as a base mechanic. It's just too uneven currently to work with soup.

Soup is a marketing tactic that isnt going away.

The base CP mechanic itself is extremely lazy.

I feel like the idea being CP is solid and even tying them to detachments is a neat idea. The problem is they implemented it poorly. I think they need to make more use of the negative cp on some detachments and on mixing keywords so allying increases your versitility for model usage, but penalizes you in your strategems.
I always wondered if they did something like you had to choose a "primary" keyword when creating an army. (with some keywords not being allowed as primary like Imperium, Chaos, Aeldari) This primary keyword defines which warlord traits/Relics/Strategems you get access to as others have noted. Then if you take any detachments that are not entirely comprised of models with that keyword you get -X command points (not sure what the right number would be). So you could take that guard allied detachment to get some more bodies into your elite custodes list, but maybe the battalion only gives you +2 CP instead of +5 since you have an "ally" tax. I remember Malifaux did something similar with soulstones where if you took mercenaries in a non mercenaries list they cost 1 additional soulstone (which are kindof like points and CP in that game).

Another potential, is instead of the CP penalty you could designate that only certain detachments are eliglble for your "non" primary keyword. So maybe you can only take a Patrol Detachment and/or an auxilery support detachment for allies.

Not likely to be addressed, more of a wishlist, but compared to the Imperial knights, shadowsword and primarchs (demons plus gorilla man) all other Titan, large vehicle models, and large kits are rather overcosted. There are several threads about it, riptides, wraithknights, stompas, tesserect vaults etc. that for the point they do not put out nearly the damage and are mostly less durable so points costs need to be put in line. Note I am not saying the imperial knights are undercosted (well maybe the 2 new big guys should be more points btu the rest seem ok) but rather the other large models need to be brought into more reflective points ranges.

I know what I would like to see... and in priority order.

1. Character targeting reverted to original, first print rules.
2. Carnifex 1) increase to 10 wounds. 2) add damage table.
2a. Increase points of Spore Cysts to a min. of 30
3. Rule of 3 expanded upon to effect some units in a more significant way (e.g. only 1 Hive Tyrant per detachment and only 1 Daemon Prince per detachment)
4. Battalion and Brigade detachments reverted to original, first print Command Point bonus.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Would anyone get upset if the CP's your army generates are limited by faction? For example, your Imperial Guard detachment gives you 6 Cp's, you're Custodes detachment gives you 3, and your Blood angles jumppack captain detachment gives you 1.

You could only used the CP's generated by the IG on the IG. Only those generated by Custodes on Custodes. Only those generated by Blood angels on Blood Angels. The 3 you get before detachments are generic and can be used anywhere.


This would still allow elite armies to have horde bullet catchers while not letting the little guys spam abilities for the elite armies.

upset or not, it's more bookkeeping, requiring like 3 separate CP counters and awareness of which one is which, and difficult to keep an eye on both your own and your opponents. It's basically counter productive to their entire design goal this edition, so they won't do it.

Take a piece of paper, draw three columns. Write down each faction and how many CP you started with. When you use some, cross out the old number and right the new number. As far as book keeping goes this is about the same as being able to count to ten in your head.