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 Marmatag wrote:
Allies should not be eliminated. This is ridiculous.

There is a middle ground between "MONO ONLY LULZ" and "SOUP 4 LYF LULZ"

Guess it depends on how much unbalance you want. Any allies will lead to imbalance(that or allies are so lol bad nobody wants to take them) so it's matter of how much imbalance you are willing to deliberately inject into the game.

Reanimation_Protocol wrote:
We need to get over it already, GW ... Will .. Never ... kill .. allies!

and rightly so.

I say this as a Necrons player with about as many options as a quantum one sided coin.

But this said, the imbalance should be addressed.

whether by giving the pure factions (Orks, Necrons, T'au) or anyone that chooses to play a mono faction or minimal allies (one extra detachment) a benefit of some kind.

My option would be 3CP battleforged for Every detachment that matches the warlords codex faction.

-3CP for every allied detachment (on top of the usual benefit it adds ... so a Brigade would add 12 -3 = 9 CP)

so you could take 3 detaches, and it would zero sum out .. or pay a fortune to take your IK/BA/IG or DE/HQ/CWE combos.

I feel like just one of those would do because a difference of up to 18 CP between a soup player and a strong mono codex player would be a bit ridiculous.

 kastelen wrote:

I feel like just one of those would do because a difference of up to 18 CP between a soup player and a strong mono codex player would be a bit ridiculous.

true yes

mono player 3 detach :
BF 3
Battalion 5
Outrider 1 +3
Van 1 +3

16 CP total

Allied detach...
BF 3
Battalion 5 (Warlord faction)
Outrider 1 (Faction 2)
Van 1 (Faction 3)

10 CP total

Allied detach +1
BF 3
Battalion 5 (Warlord faction)
Outrider 1 (Warlord faction) +3
Van 1 (Faction 2)

13 CP total

cheap guard Brigade would still offer a huge amount but the mono player would be able to keep up at least.

and I don't think it kills Eldar for Vect etc. which now doesn't overly punish factions like Necrons that have expensive Battalions and low amount of CP currently

Any particular formations you can think would be utterly broken by this ?

Guard for example are already able to get 20+ CP ... more than they can use .. 6 more would not break them

Off the top of my head probably knights and any other CP reliant army along with DE because of their already good multi detachment CP gain.

Why are we adding additional convoluted rules to fix a bad fix rather than just starting over again.

Take battalions brigades back to old school CP levels.
Make battal forged be 6 or 9 CP.

No need for knight CP rules, drukari CP rules and now everyone else getting overly complicated CP rules just to stop people sliding in cheap formations of Guard.

The 32 are a lot less appealing at 3CP and even more so at 5ppm.

Ice_can wrote:
Why are we adding additional convoluted rules to fix a bad fix rather than just starting over again.

Take battalions brigades back to old school CP levels.
Make battal forged be 6 or 9 CP.

No need for knight CP rules, drukari CP rules and now everyone else getting overly complicated CP rules just to stop people sliding in cheap formations of Guard.

The 32 are a lot less appealing at 3CP and even more so at 5ppm.

Yep, this.

Ice_can wrote:
Why are we adding additional convoluted rules to fix a bad fix rather than just starting over again.

Take battalions brigades back to old school CP levels.
Make battal forged be 6 or 9 CP.

No need for knight CP rules, drukari CP rules and now everyone else getting overly complicated CP rules just to stop people sliding in cheap formations of Guard.

The 32 are a lot less appealing at 3CP and even more so at 5ppm.

Wouldn't it simplify things if CP was based off points versus detachments?

If you get down to it, when balancing the game, its got to be simpler to do that if everyone was in the same ball park of CP over something where you can end up with extremes. IK are basically maxed mono build at 9 CP, and guard can show with 20 without working hard at it.

If there is something where some armies are suppose to have more CP, build it into them if they are mono build. Example:

If your playing 2K you get 10 CP. If your playing Mono faction marine you get 3 more points for battle forged. If your playing Mono faction Guard you get +6 CP points for battle forged. If your playing soup, you get 1 CP for battle forged to recognize the confusion of forces that haven't worked together as much.

My person opinion is the game is best balanced when your have between 10-15 CP per side in a 2K game.

If you are going to change the CP for battalions and brigades, I’d just go 4/10 respectively. I think with a lot of releases now, going back to the 3CP for a battalion is pretty restrictive, but, yes, 5CP for 180-250 points is a bit much. Brigade wise, has to be worth more than 2 battalions, but only just imo. 2 battalions and a spearhead etc should match a brigade imo, so I’d also advocate an increase in the spearhead/vanguard/outrider detachments from 1CP to 2CP to further aid those elite style armies, like pure Ravenwing DA etc etc.

CP for points, I’m still not sold on. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to start with 1-6 extra CP with my pure Knight army at 2k, and I’m sure a DA Wing player would love to triple their starting CP from 4 to potentially 15, but, that to me feels… Too much.

Kdash wrote:
If you are going to change the CP for battalions and brigades, I’d just go 4/10 respectively. I think with a lot of releases now, going back to the 3CP for a battalion is pretty restrictive, but, yes, 5CP for 180-250 points is a bit much. Brigade wise, has to be worth more than 2 battalions, but only just imo. 2 battalions and a spearhead etc should match a brigade imo, so I’d also advocate an increase in the spearhead/vanguard/outrider detachments from 1CP to 2CP to further aid those elite style armies, like pure Ravenwing DA etc etc.

CP for points, I’m still not sold on. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to start with 1-6 extra CP with my pure Knight army at 2k, and I’m sure a DA Wing player would love to triple their starting CP from 4 to potentially 15, but, that to me feels… Too much.

If More CP is needed make battle forged CP scale with points 3 CP per 1000 points.

In the current system double battalion list rocks 13CP(5+5+3)
Under the system I suggested that list has 12 CP ( 3+3+6)
Not really seeing the need to make battalions 4CP

The idea that is to get away from cheap detachments being auto include for their CP, i genuinely don't believe that it's helped the issue GW thinks it does.
the brigade structure should not have been included in a game the scale of 40k.

Kdash wrote:
If you are going to change the CP for battalions and brigades, I’d just go 4/10 respectively. I think with a lot of releases now, going back to the 3CP for a battalion is pretty restrictive, but, yes, 5CP for 180-250 points is a bit much. Brigade wise, has to be worth more than 2 battalions, but only just imo. 2 battalions and a spearhead etc should match a brigade imo, so I’d also advocate an increase in the spearhead/vanguard/outrider detachments from 1CP to 2CP to further aid those elite style armies, like pure Ravenwing DA etc etc.

CP for points, I’m still not sold on. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to start with 1-6 extra CP with my pure Knight army at 2k, and I’m sure a DA Wing player would love to triple their starting CP from 4 to potentially 15, but, that to me feels… Too much.

The CP issue has 3 parts. CP amount. CP Regen, and Stratagem effectiveness. GW cleared the CP regen fairly, and showed that they are very willing to change CP cost for Stratagems.

Hopefully they do something about the CP amount. While I would pin that to Game size, I'm sure other things could be used.

Ice_can wrote:

Kdash wrote:
If you are going to change the CP for battalions and brigades, I’d just go 4/10 respectively. I think with a lot of releases now, going back to the 3CP for a battalion is pretty restrictive, but, yes, 5CP for 180-250 points is a bit much. Brigade wise, has to be worth more than 2 battalions, but only just imo. 2 battalions and a spearhead etc should match a brigade imo, so I’d also advocate an increase in the spearhead/vanguard/outrider detachments from 1CP to 2CP to further aid those elite style armies, like pure Ravenwing DA etc etc.

CP for points, I’m still not sold on. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to start with 1-6 extra CP with my pure Knight army at 2k, and I’m sure a DA Wing player would love to triple their starting CP from 4 to potentially 15, but, that to me feels… Too much.

If More CP is needed make battle forged CP scale with points 3 CP per 1000 points.

In the current system double battalion list rocks 13CP(5+5+3)
Under the system I suggested that list has 12 CP ( 3+3+6)
Not really seeing the need to make battalions 4CP

The idea that is to get away from cheap detachments being auto include for their CP, i genuinely don't believe that it's helped the issue GW thinks it does.
the brigade structure should not have been included in a game the scale of 40k.

Oh, I didn’t realise you were also discussing the potential of upping the battleforged bonus as well, when reverting back to 3CP for battalions.

It’s an option that I like as a starting point. To be fair, most of the CP levels between your suggestion and mine would equal out the same, the only difference being when we start looking at any option including a brigade, where my system awards 1 less CP than yours does, or where your system awards 2CP more for single Vanguard/Outrider/Spearhead detachments than mine does.

Any changes to the CP for each detachment type has massive repercussions at both ends of the Points cost scale but that assumes that armies are costed properly.

and where they are already not (Just to use Necrons as an example but feel free to look at GK, Marines or any other low-mid tier army instead) it really stuffs them up.

so under the above changes Crons would end up with 2 crappy battalions and less CP than they currently get.

so yeah you might catch the polar extremes of cheap guard etc. for 2 less CP (boo hoo) ... you really affect other forces badly.

and it still does not even touch allied forces. in fact giving them more CP somehow?

I would change the rule to

Battleforged - For every detachment that has the same faction (not Imperial, Chaos etc.) as the Warlords faction your army gains +3 CP

so you play 1000 points and take a battalion you get 5+3 = 8CP
you play 2000 points and scrape to 2 battalions (Mono) 5+3 +5 +3 =16 CP

you play 2000 points and take a mixed army of two battalions = 5+5 +3 = 13 CP

'Soup' (allies) still works but mono faction gets a mild boost to compete.


--- complete overhauls to the system have wild and varying effects ... we need a surgical precise fix here.. not a hatchett job.

Reanimation_Protocol wrote:
Battleforged - For every detachment that has the same faction (not Imperial, Chaos etc.) as the Warlords faction your army gains +3 CP

Really like this suggestion. Would be simple to implement, and gives a nice CP buff for not taking allies that would narrow the CP gap without swinging things too far in the opposite direction.

Reanimation_Protocol wrote:
Any changes to the CP for each detachment type has massive repercussions at both ends of the Points cost scale but that assumes that armies are costed properly.

and where they are already not (Just to use Necrons as an example but feel free to look at GK, Marines or any other low-mid tier army instead) it really stuffs them up.

so under the above changes Crons would end up with 2 crappy battalions and less CP than they currently get.

so yeah you might catch the polar extremes of cheap guard etc. for 2 less CP (boo hoo) ... you really affect other forces badly.

and it still does not even touch allied forces. in fact giving them more CP somehow?

I would change the rule to

Battleforged - For every detachment that has the same faction (not Imperial, Chaos etc.) as the Warlords faction your army gains +3 CP

so you play 1000 points and take a battalion you get 5+3 = 8CP
you play 2000 points and scrape to 2 battalions (Mono) 5+3 +5 +3 =16 CP

you play 2000 points and take a mixed army of two battalions = 5+5 +3 = 13 CP

'Soup' (allies) still works but mono faction gets a mild boost to compete.


--- complete overhauls to the system have wild and varying effects ... we need a surgical precise fix here.. not a hatchett job.

I disagreeas your trying to mildly fix a system thats already contains a fix that doesn't work.

How do Necrons end up with less CP?

Taking 1 battalion plus and specialist detachments currrently gives 5 +1 +3 for 9 CP total
My suggestion would give them 3+1+6 for 10 CP so your necrons would actually gain a CP.

The idea is to stop forcing people into double battalion or brigades just for workable amounts of CP.
Even a tripple outrider raven wing list works with 9 CP under what I'm proposing instead of it's current 6

Whiile the old IG/BA/IK list goes from its current 21 CP insanity down to 9(not got a book to check old CP for a battalion) +3 +0+6 for a total of 18 thats still higher than I would like but my original idea was a bit more refined in that the bonus CP was only for mono.
Soup takes a small nerf thats a huge cut while actually leaving mono builds that can't spam relatively untouched was My idea.

Ice_can wrote:

I disagreeas your trying to mildly fix a system thats already contains a fix that doesn't work.

How do Necrons end up with less CP?

Taking 1 battalion plus and specialist detachments currrently gives 5 +1 +3 for 9 CP total
My suggestion would give them 3+1+6 for 10 CP so your necrons would actually gain a CP.

And I'm saying that is not enough of a benefit to mono factions to encourage them up the charts.

1 extra CP for not selling my crons and buying a knight and some guard to be able to win a game once in a while

Yes I play in a Semi competitive meta, like a LOT of folks I would imagine here on Dakka, I like to win once in a while .. and we dislike houseruling out certain things,

Just like in 7th Decurion got a blanket Ban in a lot of places ... I don't think that's fair to do the same to Imperial players that have invested in the hobby buying knights and painting their models.

I'm not after punishing them by saying yeah you can play .. but you only get 6 CP

I want them to Enjoy the game as much as I would ... changes to Benefit mono factions to give them access to the tools to deal at the same level.

Not Nerf the ever loving crap outta them

 ikeulhu wrote:

Reanimation_Protocol wrote:
Battleforged - For every detachment that has the same faction (not Imperial, Chaos etc.) as the Warlords faction your army gains +3 CP

Really like this suggestion. Would be simple to implement, and gives a nice CP buff for not taking allies that would narrow the CP gap without swinging things too far in the opposite direction.

I must be missing how this would work. Two Guard Battalions with a Grand Strategist Warlord adds an additional 6 CP on top of the 10 from the Batts?

The argument is over what is a "workable amount of CP."

People don't chase CP just for the sake of it. You can build a Necron Brigade if you want to. Its just highly restrictive and means bringing a lot of "bad" options - and its not as if there are bags of stratagems you want to spam every turn anyway.

By contrast Guard can produce cheap (ish) brigades and dirt cheap battalions composed of useful units. You then slot in something like a Knight which has very expensive but powerful stratagems. Suddenly you get to have your cake and eat it to.

Knights don't "need" 20 (or say 30+ pre-faq) CP to function. They are just a lot better for it because their stratagems were designed (if they were designed at all and not just thrown down) with the idea that you wouldn't get to use many of them.

But this isn't just about Guard. You get Eldar or Chaos soup - which isn't as obviously about harvesting CPs. Instead its just about putting a lot of powerful abilities together to generate something greater than the sum of its parts. How do you solve that? Say Doom etc just doesn't work with DE or Harlie units?

Probably would be best to revert Battalion and Brigades to their original CP values if the +3 per detachment matching warlord idea was implemented. That would reduce the effectiveness of bringing two guard bats + an ally detachment, which could potentially be a concern otherwise, as pointed out by Lemondish.

Okay Soup & 8th; I’m gonna be that guy and say I am happy with 8th Allies setup. And furthermore something to say about the Gaurdsman Battery, is 180 points for an average of 9CP post changes. Or 20 points a CP. What does this cost you?

The equivalent points of 2 MSU PlasmaGun Tactical teams. Now let’s look at that famous 3++ Analysis of Gaurdsman > Tacticals? To save the math, the point is that a Gaurdsman cause wounds more efficiency per point spent than the Tactical equivalents.

That isn’t false, but neither is it true. Better put, 30 Gaurdsman (120) cause around 1.2-1.5 wounds to MeQ to an MeQ Tactical Squads (130) causing 1.1.-1.2 wounds. More efficient? Let’s look at the issue a second way. On a 6 by 4 table with several units and vehicles of varying size. Try menuvauring those 30 Gaurdsman into a position to bring their guns to bear on a single target.

This is showcased in that if 30 Gaurdsman fight 10 Tacticals, 12” deployment and the models starting 24” apart. The Tacticals actually win. Why? Because only around 10-14 Gaurdsman can actually be in range. Or more accurately get in rapid range. While all 10 mans can. Secondly a single rapid volley actually kills a unit of gaursdman. 6-7 Gaurdsman die then 3 more die to battleshock.

But because the unit of 130 is only removing 40 points, while Gaurdsman squads of 40 points removing only 2/3 of a model in rapid. The efficient is that every 13 points removes 4 points or you have an efficiency less of just under 1/4. While the equivalent Gaurdsman Squad is 40 points to deal 1 wound. So spends 40 to remove 13 points. A ratio of just over 1/4. But we return to that issue. A the 3 Gaurdsman Squads in this scenerio removes only 3/10 of the the Marine Squads firepower while the Marine squads remove 1/3 (30% vs 33%). And additionally around half of the Gaurdsman models simply cannot get in rapid until turn 3. So it’s more like 1/5 or 20% of the Tactical Squads loss of effective firepower.

Now how does this play until the analysis of Gaurdsman? Well 30 Gaurdsman take 3 times the table space as 10 Marines. While that is normally seen as a good thing, it also means that those 30 Gaurdsman have issue bringing all their guns to bear against a single target.

Now back to the initial point, 180 points gives you 9CP on average 5-1+4-5ish more (assuming you get a CP back each turn). Those same 180 points as noted could also get 2 MSU Tacticals w/DblPlas, 1 10 Man Tactical w/DBlPlas&GravCannon*. A many of the various named Chapter Masters. 2 Temple Assasins and almost a Celestine. Or SmashHammer + Auxillary HQ.

Those 32 Gaurdsman unlike the units I listed above beside being warm bodies don’t do anything and are functionally worthlessness. For them to add to the game all 30 have to be within 12/24 of one unit or their lasguns bluntly are ineffective scratch damage (while if they act as one 30 man glorified blob it becomes effective scratch damage). And to do so you risk your CP generation. Meaning you want those warm bodies in front but not the models make said warm bodies useful.

All this together? Gaurdsman are costed accurately. Efficiency questions/issue ignore that while their wounds are per point spent more efficient than an MeQ equivalent. It ignores the fact the reality of in regards to actual number of the wounds caused. There is a difference between 3 squads taking one wound each and 1 Squad taking 3 wounds.

*Contrary to popular belief a 10 Man Tactical w/Plas&Plas and HvyWeapon (GravCannon&Lascannon) are not less efficient than 2 5 man. The GravCannon and Lascannon do the same net number of wounds as a two Plasmas. Secondly, for those who say “but moral”. If I inflict 4 wounds on one squad of 2 5 man, I am assured to kill a specialBro. In contrast a 10 man I need to kill 5-6 before I do so. And due to and they shall know no fear you need to kill 7 and even then it’s still a 20% chance to not fall the test on my end).

This is silly. Guard is obviously the problem child in imperium that enables funky shenanigans.

But remember, most Space Marine armies can't create a viable brigade in the first place.

You can't come up with a balance for soup that doesn't involve an adjustment of how cheap imperial guard is. There is always a way around any rule using guard.

Why not just give fixed number of CP to people based on the armies they play? Some would get more, some would get less. Some armies like orcs could get random numbers of CP. And then limit the ally to a procentage of points spent on the army.
Mono armies would get better, CP problems wouldn't exist, because GW could design stratagems for one army and not worry what happens, if someone runs IG farms. Ally could still be a thing for those people who would want to spend 10-20% of their points on them.

I'm just spit balling....fixed number of stratagems per turn?

+1 stratagem per turn for existing
+1 stratagem per turn if your warlord is also in your largest (point-wise) detachment (battalion/brigade only)

This doesn't really solve pointy eared factions (or maybe nothing at all), I think, but other changes (WC/points) can tackle that issue.

The current rules for stratagems work fine.

Guard are just undercosted.

Mono Army wise what I do is simply put
“for every faction keyword that is shared by every unit in the army, that army has an additional CP.” So an All RavenWing list would have +4CP, +1 for Imperium,1 for Adeptus Astartes, +1 for DA, +1 for RavenWing. This would could also be done, by replacing battleforged +3, you use this rule instead. Most Mono Armies would +2 or +3.

And is also cool is that implicitly supports armies that share a couple faction keywords that would otherwise go unnoticed (SoS having Astra Telepethica). Secondly it would help ‘flavor’ soup notably Chaos god allignment. The armies most hurt is Kroot/Vespid due to having 1 degree of shared keyword with other Tau. Likewise with Inquisition*.

*What I would like to happen there is for Tau to create another faction keyword, Tau Empire, (Species: Kroot/Tau/Vespid/Other), (Sept) or (Kindred) or Auxillary (Vespid/Other). And for the chamber militant to get (Ordos)

 Marmatag wrote:
The current rules for stratagems work fine.

Guard are just undercosted.

I guess if you ignore the fact that pretty much all tournament winning lists are Soup lists abusing allies and stratagems, be they Imperial, Xenos or Chaos, and by no means are all the Imperial lists using Guard

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
The current rules for stratagems work fine.

Guard are just undercosted.

I guess if you ignore the fact that pretty much all tournament winning lists are Soup lists abusing allies and stratagems, be they Imperial, Xenos or Chaos, and by no means are all the Imperial lists using Guard

What Imperial lists don't use IG in the top end of tournaments?

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
The current rules for stratagems work fine.

Guard are just undercosted.

I guess if you ignore the fact that pretty much all tournament winning lists are Soup lists abusing allies and stratagems, be they Imperial, Xenos or Chaos, and by no means are all the Imperial lists using Guard

Are we at the part where you pretend to know what happens at tournaments?

And don't conflate allies with stratagem use. They are two completely different aspects of this game. There are numerous examples of allies that work solely because of stratagem usage (Knights + Guard), and other examples wherein allies work even with no stratagem benefits (Morty + Magnus).

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
The current rules for stratagems work fine.

Guard are just undercosted.

I guess if you ignore the fact that pretty much all tournament winning lists are Soup lists abusing allies and stratagems, be they Imperial, Xenos or Chaos, and by no means are all the Imperial lists using Guard

What Imperial lists don't use IG in the top end of tournaments?

I think he's simply pointing out that we have come full circle. 9/10 if not 10/10 top lists at almost every tournament are soup based (obviously imperium soup usually contains guard, not always, just most of the time). He's simply pointing out that you're looking at the molehills and missing the mountains right next to them. While guard are a common ingredient in imperium soup the fact is that no factions that can not soup are really doing all to hot and all top lists are containing soup. So it might be a better idea to do something to curve soup instead of one unit in one faction soup that, if nuked, will simply be replaced by the next best option.

It's not a function of whether or not they can use soup, it's if they can functionally address super heavies.

If you don't have an answer to knights right now, or Primarchs, you won't have a seat at the table. Every other table has Knights on it, both Renegade / Imperium. And you won't have to look far to see Primarchs, as well.

Don't have an answer to these things?
You won't place.

And since all you guys look at are tournament results, it's going to give you the impression that "can't soup no chance." It's more "no answer to good invuln high toughness insane damage output no chance." Since Custodes dropped the meta has been curving hard towards elite armies.

Many armies have a way of playing 200-300 points Battalions, the problem isn't Guard alone. Nids can play Neurotropes+Rippers, Daemons can play Heralds+Brimstones, CSM can play cheap Chars+Cultists, and so on.

Atleast it's my opinion that not Soup is the problem, but being able to get a huge amount of CP for tiny Detachments. It's so damn good, everyone has to do it, and this feels wrong. No one is complaining about playing 1400 points guard with an allied Knight. People are complaining about 200 points guard, with X points this and Y points of that for maxing out CPs while still getting good units.

Hence my post earlier, make Detachments convert their points cost or power level into CP and not just a flat amount.
Or take the easier approach and just do what many people have called out: Make CP scale with the army size and both armies always get the same amount. 2000 points game? 15 CP each. Done.