Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

It's not about punishing the armies, it's about acknowledging there is a problem with allies. It becomes less of a problem when you limit the degree to which an army can be comprised of allies.

For instance, Age of Sigmar has a 400 point ally limit at 2000 points. I'm not saying that specific number works for 40k, but the idea might.

The idea that you need to make a Xenos codex that is, on its own, able to compete with the best-of-the-best from the Imperium and Chaos codexes is silly. A better solution is to make codexes that are generally well balanced, and limit the degree to which people can bring in allies.

So how would you make a reasonable Ynnari list if you can only bring 400pts of an ally?

Bharring wrote:
So how would you make a reasonable Ynnari list if you can only bring 400pts of an ally?

By taking the time/effort to make a formal Ynnari codex with its own unit costs or nuking the entire faction from orbit and admit it was a botched effort to save 7th edition that only served to poop on the game's balancing and lore even more.

I'm all for squatting Ynnari, personally. Let people run the HQ's as equivalent models from their respective original factions and be done with it.

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not about punishing the armies, it's about acknowledging there is a problem with allies.

But there isn't. There is a problem with badly balanced units.

Honestly, I would be fine with that as well. Squatting Ynnari and just giving DE and CWE access to those characters as a part of their factions.

I would also be fine with squatting GSC and just combining them with the Tyranids codex. As it stands they don't function as a standalone army anyway, after the last FAQ.

Same deal with corsairs, inquisition, etc. Special snowflake factions shouldn't be a thing.

Insert post here of a guy who has spent 20 years collecting a fallen army who is now outraged:

 Marmatag wrote:
Honestly, I would be fine with that as well. Squatting Ynnari and just giving DE and CWE access to those characters as a part of their factions.

I would also be fine with squatting GSC and just combining them with the Tyranids codex. As it stands they don't function as a standalone army anyway, after the last FAQ.

Considering that neither of those have gotten their own codex yet (yes, Ynnari will get their own codex and likely new models too), it seems a bit premature to squat them. Ynnari will likely be considerably different than their current rules and GSC especially since they are getting more models and their codex is being designed around the new rules.

I mean whatever, that's fine. But there needs to be some limitation on allies. I'm not saying 400 points is the way to do it - just that this is how Age of Sigmar works, and AoS reboot was a good predictor for a lot of how 8th edition works.

perhaps GD will take that into account when they will release 9th edition (im pretty sure that wont happen so late)

 Arachnofiend wrote:
I'm all for squatting Ynnari, personally. Let people run the HQ's as equivalent models from their respective original factions and be done with it.

The models and fluff already happened. They just need their own codex to balance out the unit points instead.

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not about punishing the armies, it's about acknowledging there is a problem with allies. It becomes less of a problem when you limit the degree to which an army can be comprised of allies.

For instance, Age of Sigmar has a 400 point ally limit at 2000 points. I'm not saying that specific number works for 40k, but the idea might.

The idea that you need to make a Xenos codex that is, on its own, able to compete with the best-of-the-best from the Imperium and Chaos codexes is silly. A better solution is to make codexes that are generally well balanced, and limit the degree to which people can bring in allies.

What if they are balanced (discounting the marine/terminator and IS problem)? Many mono codexes don't all have the pieces for take all comers. Knights alone don't work well, because they can get bogged down and have very limited CP. Custodes lack CP and long range anti-tank. A thunder hammer that does 4 damage just happens to be the perfect amount to ace a banana bike.

Placing an arbitrary point limitation on allies just ensures that those books that can fit under the limit and still bring synergy benefit most. A detachment limit means the armies that bring the best force multipliers benefit most. A CP restriction means small codexes that don't have chaff (or some other key element) will never be effective.

Limiting stratagems to one per phase removes all the cool synergies you can pull off. Increasing the cost of stratagems by 1 for each used in a phase just makes armies rely on CP generation even more.

I haven't seen a silver bullet put forth by anyone yet. In my head the only path forward is toning down CP regen (done) and balancing points until all units are modestly viable. People *want* to take things like terminators and giving them a reason to do so may naturally reduce use of allies....or increase it.

tneva82 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

SemperMortis wrote:

So what are you basing that on?

Also as a side note, why not spend the 2pts? well at the moment there isn't a reason NOT to spend 2CP to get +1 armor turn 1. But that is because we have no Strategems worth using beyond the basic ones. So if I bring out a couple of detachments and have 10-15 CP yeah i'll probably spend 2 to get a tiny buff to my armor on turn 1 but as soon as the codex comes out and we have something worth saving CP for, then the +1 to armor strat goes out the window unless they drastically reduce the price of our more elite units so I can stop taking 180-240 boyz to every game to have a CHANCE of winning.

The way GW does these codexes. They upped the prices in index, got people play 2k, after that every codex has been steadily dropping point costs so people get to buy more models. Name one 8th ed codex that has systematic price ups to index? Generally units not only got free rules and stat increases loaded up on them AND price drops. If you are so sure about orks not getting price drops wanna wager a bet?-) Easy to be sure they won't get claiming GW hates orks but are you willing to put money on the line on that claim? I'm up for it provided we get 3rd party to whom money gets transfered in advance and who then transfers whole pile to the winner so that neither can claim they are in only to back out when they lose.

Or is this more of your "GW hates orks" conspicary theorists...

Yes the way GW has worked the codex's would indicate GW will give our index options a fairly substantial price reduction. I am not disagreeing with that point and NO I am not one of those conspiracy theorists who believe GW hates orkz.

What I am though is someone who has played orkz for a LONG time and realize that GW doesn't understand orkz nor do they know how to write a good codex for us (at least in the last decade). No codex for 2 editions and then we got the 7th edition codex which was as I mentioned, unarguably one of the absolute worst. Then we got the 1st supplement and the only thing in it that was competitive was Green Tide, it had some fluffy options but that was about it, then they realized they screwed up and gave us a 2nd supplement which was basically the same thing except they removed the Green Tide. We also were given a useless flyer and 2 giant knight sized walkers that didn't work unless you were playing a friendly game.

The 8th index showed more of the same lack of imagination and understanding of the faction by simply making everything unplayable except for boyz, stormboyz, Kommandos, KMKs and some characters.

So to summarize, I do think we will get a price cut, I just don't know if it will be enough or in the right places to make the ork codex decent as opposed to just "Playable". I mean, I have yet to figure out how someone legitimately thought a Trukk should be 82pts.

 Crimson wrote:
Or you balance units properly, so that regardless the group of units you bring (excluding some extreme rock-paper-scissors situations) it is balanced against other group of units.

This strength and weakness fallacy must stop.

It's not a fallacy. It's proven game design theory. Assuming it's a fallacy is pretty much on the same level as calling gravity a fallacy.

Units should pay points for their effectiveness and that they pay fair amount of points do not mean they need to be the same. If your army's strength is melee, and you spend 30% of your points for shooty units (be they allies or not) you've now diluted your melee strength and this is compenated by increased shootyness, resulting an army which is not more powerful nor less powerful, but one that requires different playstyle.

All of this is true and right, and it should be that way, no questions asked.

However, there is one thing you missed:
Not every army has T8 28W robots.
Not every army has cheap throw-away units with many bodies.
Not every army has reliable long-range anti tank.
Not every army has reliable and powerful psykers.
Not every army has super-durable elite units.

This is what differentiates Custodes from Ultramarine from Adeptus Militarum from Imperial Knights from Adeptus Mechanicus. All those units can be balanced under your premise, but allies won't stop being a problem.
Even if every chaff unit is equally powerful across all codices, but Custodes, Imperial Knights and Grey Knights still won't have such a unit.
Even if every titanic vehicle is equally powerful, Space Marines still don't have one.
Adeptus Militarum doesn't have land raiders or terminators, Imperial Knights don't have any infantry, Black Templars don't have psykers.

Either you have a mono-army that can win despite lacking certain types of units, then you need to provide their remaining units with tools to fill those gaps. Which means, making them more powerful than other representatives of their kind.
Or you have a factions where every unit is equally powerful, then mono-armies cannot compete because they have gaps they cannot fill.

There are two ways to fix this: Give every type of unit to every army, so no army has any gaps. At that point, you can just eliminate factions and codices all together, because there is no longer a difference in play-style. An IG gunline would equal an Ork gunline would equal a Chaos Soup gunline.
Or you simply put some sort of tax on allies, so armies with gaps have can pull even with armies that do not have gaps.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not about punishing the armies, it's about acknowledging there is a problem with allies. It becomes less of a problem when you limit the degree to which an army can be comprised of allies.

For instance, Age of Sigmar has a 400 point ally limit at 2000 points. I'm not saying that specific number works for 40k, but the idea might.

The idea that you need to make a Xenos codex that is, on its own, able to compete with the best-of-the-best from the Imperium and Chaos codexes is silly. A better solution is to make codexes that are generally well balanced, and limit the degree to which people can bring in allies.

What if they are balanced (discounting the marine/terminator and IS problem)? Many mono codexes don't all have the pieces for take all comers. Knights alone don't work well, because they can get bogged down and have very limited CP. Custodes lack CP and long range anti-tank. A thunder hammer that does 4 damage just happens to be the perfect amount to ace a banana bike.

Placing an arbitrary point limitation on allies just ensures that those books that can fit under the limit and still bring synergy benefit most. A detachment limit means the armies that bring the best force multipliers benefit most. A CP restriction means small codexes that don't have chaff (or some other key element) will never be effective.

Limiting stratagems to one per phase removes all the cool synergies you can pull off. Increasing the cost of stratagems by 1 for each used in a phase just makes armies rely on CP generation even more.

I haven't seen a silver bullet put forth by anyone yet. In my head the only path forward is toning down CP regen (done) and balancing points until all units are modestly viable. People *want* to take things like terminators and giving them a reason to do so may naturally reduce use of allies....or increase it.

What do you think of the fixed CP suggestion?

2 points base.
+2 CPs per 500 points of game size.
-1 or -2 CPs per ally.
No penalty for a Brigade or Battalion.
-4 or -5 CPs for any other type of detachment.

The Brigade would have to confer some other sort of bonus, or maybe just go away altogether.

The Newman wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
It's not about punishing the armies, it's about acknowledging there is a problem with allies. It becomes less of a problem when you limit the degree to which an army can be comprised of allies.

For instance, Age of Sigmar has a 400 point ally limit at 2000 points. I'm not saying that specific number works for 40k, but the idea might.

The idea that you need to make a Xenos codex that is, on its own, able to compete with the best-of-the-best from the Imperium and Chaos codexes is silly. A better solution is to make codexes that are generally well balanced, and limit the degree to which people can bring in allies.

What if they are balanced (discounting the marine/terminator and IS problem)? Many mono codexes don't all have the pieces for take all comers. Knights alone don't work well, because they can get bogged down and have very limited CP. Custodes lack CP and long range anti-tank. A thunder hammer that does 4 damage just happens to be the perfect amount to ace a banana bike.

Placing an arbitrary point limitation on allies just ensures that those books that can fit under the limit and still bring synergy benefit most. A detachment limit means the armies that bring the best force multipliers benefit most. A CP restriction means small codexes that don't have chaff (or some other key element) will never be effective.

Limiting stratagems to one per phase removes all the cool synergies you can pull off. Increasing the cost of stratagems by 1 for each used in a phase just makes armies rely on CP generation even more.

I haven't seen a silver bullet put forth by anyone yet. In my head the only path forward is toning down CP regen (done) and balancing points until all units are modestly viable. People *want* to take things like terminators and giving them a reason to do so may naturally reduce use of allies....or increase it.

What do you think of the fixed CP suggestion?

2 points base.
+2 CPs per 500 points of game size.
-1 or -2 CPs per ally.
No penalty for a Brigade or Battalion.
-4 or -5 CPs for any other type of detachment.

The Brigade would have to confer some other sort of bonus, or maybe just go away altogether.

To low starting number of CP's.
And I don't think there is a need or point to lose CP for both allies and per detachment. Just detachments is much cleaner.

Put the base CP for 2k points to like 16 instead of 10 (4 base, 3 per 500 points) and then lose CP per detachment

Brigades as a formation have no place in 40k scale battles.
My obly objection to the paying for detachment model is some traits or rules like Tau commanders requiring multiple detachments.

Ice_can wrote:
Brigades as a formation have no place in 40k scale battles.
My obly objection to the paying for detachment model is some traits or rules like Tau commanders requiring multiple detachments.

Yeah the brigade can be ditched completely. Hardly any factions even use it.

The Newman wrote:


What do you think of the fixed CP suggestion?

2 points base.
+2 CPs per 500 points of game size.
-1 or -2 CPs per ally.
No penalty for a Brigade or Battalion.
-4 or -5 CPs for any other type of detachment.

The Brigade would have to confer some other sort of bonus, or maybe just go away altogether.

That would mean the most you'd get at 2000 points is 10CP, except that if you take an outrider or spearhead you end up with only 5cp. That's a huge penalty. Especially if you're Chaos (for example) and you take a Daemons vanguard (which is totally fluffy and not at all powergaming), you end up on 3cp, which isn't even enough to play the basic stratagems required to make Chaos even vaguely competitive for one turn.

You basically end up with Mono armies being the only choice, and soup armies being totally unplayable. Which is a very GW kind of fix to the problem, but that doesn't mean it's a good fix.

It might work if you tweaked the numbers a bit, such as making battallions have zero downside but outriders etc give -1 CP. But you would need the base amount of CP to be a lot higher still.

Simpler to just use the rule that you can only spend CP on the army that produced them.

 Jidmah wrote:

All of this is true and right, and it should be that way, no questions asked.

However, there is one thing you missed:
Not every army has T8 28W robots.
Not every army has cheap throw-away units with many bodies.
Not every army has reliable long-range anti tank.
Not every army has reliable and powerful psykers.
Not every army has super-durable elite units.

I did not miss this.

This is what differentiates Custodes from Ultramarine from Adeptus Militarum from Imperial Knights from Adeptus Mechanicus. All those units can be balanced under your premise, but allies won't stop being a problem.
Even if every chaff unit is equally powerful across all codices, but Custodes, Imperial Knights and Grey Knights still won't have such a unit.
Even if every titanic vehicle is equally powerful, Space Marines still don't have one.
Adeptus Militarum doesn't have land raiders or terminators, Imperial Knights don't have any infantry, Black Templars don't have psykers.

Space Marines actually do have a bunch of titanic units via Forge World. But I get what you're saying.

Either you have a mono-army that can win despite lacking certain types of units, then you need to provide their remaining units with tools to fill those gaps. Which means, making them more powerful than other representatives of their kind.
Or you have a factions where every unit is equally powerful, then mono-armies cannot compete because they have gaps they cannot fill.

There are two ways to fix this: Give every type of unit to every army, so no army has any gaps. At that point, you can just eliminate factions and codices all together, because there is no longer a difference in play-style. An IG gunline would equal an Ork gunline would equal a Chaos Soup gunline.
Or you simply put some sort of tax on allies, so armies with gaps have can pull even with armies that do not have gaps.

Yeah, the fallacy that I speak of is that you need to have every type of unit to function, and that variety of units is automatically better than no variety. There are certain things a functional army needs to be able to accomplish: they need to be able to deal with different sort of enemy units, hordes, elite Infantry, big tough targets such as vehicles and monsters. They need to be ale to claim and hold objective. However armies do not need to approach these things in similar way. One army may deal with tough targets via long ranged big guns, while another may tackle them via flying monsters which punch the enemy vehicles to death. Both approach can and should be viable, as should be a mix of them.

Furthermore, if variety of units offered via soup would be inherently and advantage, then such an advantage already exists for some monoarmies over other monoarmies. Chaos Marines for example have, chaff, elite infantry, flying big monsters, titanic vehicles with big guns, powerful psykers and many other things. Meanwhile the Harlequind have fast clowns with some psychic support and that's about it. So can you explain to me why it is not a problem that Chaos Marines have a such massive advantage of variety over Harlequins while it is somehow a problem that a soup army has a similar advantage over a monoarmy?

The whole thing is fallacy. Sure, some armies may have more ways to be effective, but they cannot be supremely effective in all those way in the same time! If Chaos Marines use their points for flying daemon princes or Primarchs then it is less point for big guns and so forth. People are acting like points were not a thing, like an faction could just bring all units in its disposal simultaneously...

Remember, In previous edition the Eldar could ally, but they usually didn't, as their own stuff was good enough.

Dandelion wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Brigades as a formation have no place in 40k scale battles.
My obly objection to the paying for detachment model is some traits or rules like Tau commanders requiring multiple detachments.

Yeah the brigade can be ditched completely. Hardly any factions even use it.

Can you qualify this statement? I see brigades everywhere in my local meta - across friendly games and tournaments.

The brigade is a bit of a problem as it accentuates the issue of cheap units being able to generate a crapton of CP.

Brigades have a use if your playing 5k points. For 2k they only matter to Guard bring even more CP while giving 2 possible detachments to Allies.
I don't see a problem with removing Brigades and Supreme Commands from the game (the latter used almost only to 'cheat' in powerful allies for minimal cost)

Edit:
And yes we can lose the Airwing aswell for tournament games.

I would prefer to see the detachments be dictated by points.
For example...

0-999pts - Patrol, Vanguard, Outrider and Spearheads only.
1000 - 1999pts - Same as lower value, plus Battalion, Super Heavy Auxilliary (1 Super Heavy)
2000pts+ - Same as previously but add Brigade, Supreme Command, Super Heavy, Airwing, and Forts as options.

Yes, this means that a full knight army can't be played below 2000pts, but c'mon, let's be serious....should it be? We're talking about knight titans. You could still play with a single one at lesser points. Also cuts back on the Airwings, and Supreme Command at lower points.

This also gives TOs some power to manipulate an event by deciding if they want everythng (2000pts or more) or something a little different (1750pt events).

 Crimson wrote:
The brigade is a bit of a problem as it accentuates the issue of cheap units being able to generate a crapton of CP.

The only reason brigades popped up more is because the 3 detachment limit keeps them from spamming battalions. A brigade actually keeps them from spending on more acutely powerful units though those units are more useful for strategic play.

Bumping up the cost of mortars and IS really puts the squeeze on such lists.

Lemondish wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Brigades as a formation have no place in 40k scale battles.
My obly objection to the paying for detachment model is some traits or rules like Tau commanders requiring multiple detachments.

Yeah the brigade can be ditched completely. Hardly any factions even use it.

Can you qualify this statement? I see brigades everywhere in my local meta - across friendly games and tournaments.

How many different factions regularly use the brigade?
I'm not talking number of players, just the variety factions. Guard, and Nids can likely fill out a brigade fairly easily without sacrificing too much flexibility, but even once you start looking at Tau, admech, Sisters, it becomes a lot harder to achieve. And as the army gets more elite the less likely they are to fit in a brigade, till you get to certain factions where it's just impossible to fit in a 2000 pt game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
The brigade is a bit of a problem as it accentuates the issue of cheap units being able to generate a crapton of CP.

The only reason brigades popped up more is because the 3 detachment limit keeps them from spamming battalions. A brigade actually keeps them from spending on more acutely powerful units though those units are more useful for strategic play.

Bumping up the cost of mortars and IS really puts the squeeze on such lists.

Ah, but if they are taking the brigade instead of the more "acutely powerful units" then isn't the CP better than those units? So tossing out the brigade would be a nerf no?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ordana wrote:
Brigades have a use if your playing 5k points. For 2k they only matter to Guard bring even more CP while giving 2 possible detachments to Allies.
I don't see a problem with removing Brigades and Supreme Commands from the game (the latter used almost only to 'cheat' in powerful allies for minimal cost)

Edit:
And yes we can lose the Airwing aswell for tournament games.

While I agree with you, the only issue I see is that removing Supreme Command would no longer allow certain LOWs from sharing faction traits unless you take 3. I'd just move the LOW slot to the battalion at a minimum, and possibly the vanguard, outrider etc... ones too.

Dandelion wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Brigades as a formation have no place in 40k scale battles.
My obly objection to the paying for detachment model is some traits or rules like Tau commanders requiring multiple detachments.

Yeah the brigade can be ditched completely. Hardly any factions even use it.

Can you qualify this statement? I see brigades everywhere in my local meta - across friendly games and tournaments.

How many different factions regularly use the brigade?
I'm not talking number of players, just the variety factions. Guard, and Nids can likely fill out a brigade fairly easily without sacrificing too much flexibility, but even once you start looking at Tau, admech, Sisters, it becomes a lot harder to achieve. And as the army gets more elite the less likely they are to fit in a brigade, till you get to certain factions where it's just impossible to fit in a 2000 pt game.

T'au brigades are super common - they're ridiculously cheap, too. I see Nids, Tau, and Guard most often in tournament play.

I see a decent number of space marine brigades lately, too. Lots of scouts, scout bikes, buffbots, etc.

Brigades are actually more common than outrider, vanguard and spearhead combined.

Dandelion wrote:


Ah, but if they are taking the brigade instead of the more "acutely powerful units" then isn't the CP better than those units? So tossing out the brigade would be a nerf no?

They sprang for CP, because they had units that were very powerful and CP hungry.

As a relative measure tossing the brigade means they lose 7 CP, but gain space to bring other strong units. So, sure they can't pump the Castellan and Smash Cap all game long, but they might grab Custodes over BA or a Gallant.

Lemondish wrote:

T'au brigades are super common - they're ridiculously cheap, too. I see Nids, Tau, and Guard most often in tournament play.

I see a decent number of space marine brigades lately, too. Lots of scouts, scout bikes, buffbots, etc.

Brigades are actually more common than outrider, vanguard and spearhead combined.

Interesting. I've tried building a tau brigade, but it forced me to sacrifice too much flexibility and to take units I don't like. Plus, with the whole 1 Commander per detachment, it's generally better to run 3 battalions.

But the question still remains: how many of all the factions take brigades? You've listed 4 (super surprised by marines there tbh), but what about Eldar, Custodes, Admech, Sisters, Necrons, Orks, Grey Knights, Deathwatch etc... ?
My stance is that most factions don't use brigades regularly, and that it's function can easily be taken up by the battalion. Ultimately it's kinda redundant.

 Crimson wrote:
Furthermore, if variety of units offered via soup would be inherently and advantage, then such an advantage already exists for some monoarmies over other monoarmies. Chaos Marines for example have, chaff, elite infantry, flying big monsters, titanic vehicles with big guns, powerful psykers and many other things. Meanwhile the Harlequind have fast clowns with some psychic support and that's about it. So can you explain to me why it is not a problem that Chaos Marines have a such massive advantage of variety over Harlequins while it is somehow a problem that a soup army has a similar advantage over a monoarmy?

Uh, my argument is that this is a problem? Having more access to more things is a form of power.

For harlequins as a very limited mono-army to be just as powerful as an all-round mono-army like CSM, their units need to be more powerful than comparable units from Codex: CSM - because they don't have psyker to buff them/debuff the enemy, daemon princes to flip some tanks or predators and helbrutes to blow up tanks from a distance.
Let's assume GW managed to balance this and harlequins are almost as powerful as CSM.
Now, if allies have no drawback, you can now just add those powerful harlequin units to eldar and dark eldar units and have more powerful combat units than CSM, while also having more powerful shooting from the dark eldar codex and more powerful psykers from the eldar codex. Mono-CSM is now weaker than eldar soup.

Also note how CSM is not the best at any of the things you named:
CSM chaff is worse then AM, elite infantry are worse than Custodes or Eldar, flying big monsters are weaker than Tyranids, titanic vehicles are done better by knights, psykers are done better by thousand sons. The famous jack of all trades, master of none.
I do not consider forgeworld part of the equation because I assume that GW will continue to call exterminatus on any FW over performers, meaning most will be of the radar for competitive play anyways.

In a perfect WH40k game, the power budget of each codex is the same, and it is allocated to multiple aspects of the game, creating the unique feel of each army.
Let's do a quick example, based on the Chaos faction. I assume the total budget for each codex is 30, each mono-army is assumed to be balanced against each other mono-army, higher values are better than lower ones.
DISCLAIMER: The number do not reflect my opinion of the current state of the game in any way, they are just used to prove a point.

So, all those mono-codices are balanced against each other.

Now I go and optimize my CSM army with DG and TSM detachments:

Chaos Space Marine Soup:
Light Infantry 6 (from CSM)
Elite Infantry 7 (from DG)
Big guns 5 (from DG)
Monsters 8 (TS/DG Primarch)
Titanic 3 (from CSM)
Psykers 9 (from TS)
Total: 38
Neither Harlequins, nor Orks with their measly power budget of 30 can compete with that, despite being perfectly balanced against all single codices. The only way to prevent this is either equalizing TS, DG and CSM (removing the reason to have different codices in the first place) or making allying cost something worth 8 power-budget.

All that is before even considering cross-codex synergies like Magnus/Mortarion having a higher chance of surviving turn 1 because the other one is present, or warp-time being cast on Mortarion.

This is the sole reason why lists made from three codices are dominating competitive play. Bringing allies is strictly better than not bringing allies, as long as there are allies that can do anything better than you can.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dandelion wrote:
But the question still remains: how many of all the factions take brigades? You've listed 4 (super surprised by marines there tbh), but what about Eldar, Custodes, Admech, Sisters, Necrons, Orks, Grey Knights, Deathwatch etc... ?
My stance is that most factions don't use brigades regularly, and that it's function can easily be taken up by the battalion. Ultimately it's kinda redundant.

Orks could easily be fielding brigades, it's just a mixture of "all our non-boyz units suck" and not having anything good to spend those CP on that keeps people from doing that.
Most ork armies in tournament are bringing enough elite/troops/heavy support to fill up a brigades already, but additional battalion provide actually useful HQ slots rather than useless CP.

Niiru wrote:

The Newman wrote:


What do you think of the fixed CP suggestion?

2 points base.
+2 CPs per 500 points of game size.
-1 or -2 CPs per ally.
No penalty for a Brigade or Battalion.
-4 or -5 CPs for any other type of detachment.

The Brigade would have to confer some other sort of bonus, or maybe just go away altogether.

That would mean the most you'd get at 2000 points is 10CP, except that if you take an outrider or spearhead you end up with only 5cp. That's a huge penalty. Especially if you're Chaos (for example) and you take a Daemons vanguard (which is totally fluffy and not at all powergaming), you end up on 3cp, which isn't even enough to play the basic stratagems required to make Chaos even vaguely competitive for one turn.

You basically end up with Mono armies being the only choice, and soup armies being totally unplayable. Which is a very GW kind of fix to the problem, but that doesn't mean it's a good fix.

It might work if you tweaked the numbers a bit, such as making battallions have zero downside but outriders etc give -1 CP. But you would need the base amount of CP to be a lot higher still.

Simpler to just use the rule that you can only spend CP on the army that produced them.

Doesn't a spearhead or outrider only grant 1 CP as it is? A -4 or -5 point penalty is actually making them comparatively stronger, and your alternative would give an army comprised of a single spearhead only one CP less than a battalion. That said I was just spit-balling numbers, and I see nothing wrong with the end product being -3 for a spearhead or outrider and -2 for some of the others that currently grant 3-5 CPs or something

I'd originally though 3 CPs per 500 points rather than 2, and I put a range in on the penalties because I'm not sure where the right balance would be. On the low end of what I suggested it would give a mono-build with only Battalions 14 CPs at 2000, and your average two-Battalion ally list only loses one. I have no idea whether it's possible to build a viable demon battalion though.