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 Horst wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 NurglesR0T wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 NurglesR0T wrote:
Personally I'd like to see Allies not bringing any benefits like CP etc.

That's too rough. If you have an army made out of about equal parts of two factions, you'd be playing at almost half the CP less than a monofaction. Now mono getting something like 3 CP more might be okay. Though the whole CP battery mess has been caused by an insane disparity of different factions' ability to generate CP, which was a huge mistake. It is probably too late to fix that now though.

Perhaps. But that's what Allies are being used for - either a CP battery or to fill in the weaknesses that are native to your codex that the codex is balanced around (obviously the degree of balance is up for debate around here)

I do concede to your point that perhaps the problem isn't allies in general, but the mechanics that allies are being abused to exploit. Fix the exploits and allies are fine and fluffy.

I think the problem is tying CP to troops tbh. GW and the community seem to have made the troops slots into something kinda mythical? Rather than just a force org slot. There's all this effort that goes into forcing people to bring troops for no adequately explainable reason(if you bring up fluff as a reason, slap yourself. This is about competitive balance.) in every way they can think of beside...yunno...just making troops good? Or bad? Like, if they made troops either consistently strong choices, or consistently terrible choices then that would help a lot. If troops were universally strong choices, you'd see double/triple battalion lists all over and at that point everyone has so much CP it wouldn't matter who has more. If troops were universally terrible overpriced garbage, then getting strong bonuses for taking them would make sense and create interesting list building decisions.

Right now GW are subsidizing troops across the board when some units don't need it, other units are so cheap the subsidy is worth more than they cost, and some units are so awful even the subsidy can't help them. Oh, and you also get to pick which of those 3 you want in your list, even if they're not present in your faction.

When you have these, honestly fairly deep, subsidies applied to a force org slot as schizophrenic in its design as troops, it creates a minefield as far as design space goes.

They could always go back to only having troops able to capture objectives.

Which takes the Boyz vs Tacs problem from 'disheartening major balance issue' to 'What's a space marine?'

I'd rather they just stop trying to push the troop slot altogether. I don't think that's the CORRECT solution, but I think it's better than increasing the importance of troops from 'dripping in CP' to 'Literally cannot win without at least a battalion'.

If GW and the community are dead set on seeing troops as a necessity to the game(for whatever reason) rather than just another couple of pages in your codex, then they need to be designed better and more consistenly. If troops are supposed to be showing up in every army, in every faction, then they should be designed like a core mechanic, rather than a crappy Elite slot unit with crutches.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see them take a leaf out of AOS and change CP to be a resource you gain each turn.

Mechanics are a bit different in AOS, but they could be adapted to fit into the 40k framework - something like you gain 3CP at the start of each turn.

So much of the problem that is allies is that it's used mostly for CP. Take CP out of detachments all together.

Wayniac wrote:
Not only that but GW almost always has things with different loadouts even when repeated. So you might see several dreads, but they're all differently equipped. You rarely if ever see even 2 with an identical kit. Same with how they evn build troop squads; it's always a mix of equipment never like 3 completely identical squads.

Yeah, I think that's called advertising.

Thankyou to Dhallnet, Galef and bullyboy for backing up my points over the last few pages.

I too would love to see some tournaments run with the restrictions mentioned. Not all tournaments, but some. I personally would find tournaments like that more fun to participate in. I recognise not everyone agrees, but clearly some do.
I'd also like to see a mirror match tournament style where everyone must use the same exact army to really prove who's the best.

Honestly, I wish GW had separated matched, open and narrative differently. I'd have chosen:
Narrative - bring whatever models you want to tell the story. Ignore points. Use power as a rough guide only.
Open - pick up play. Use points. All options open. Use the detachment system.
Matched - use points and strict army composition rules.

 Horst wrote:
They could always go back to only having troops able to capture objectives.

The way everything dies in 40k right now that would mean my opponent gets 1st turn, slaughters all my Skitarii (which are all on foot because my only transport option is a 130€ FW kit) or Kataphrons and then I lost the game because the only points I can score are killing related.

It would be nice if every Troop didn't have ObSec though. Cultists, Conscripts, Brimstones (Pink Horrors are fine) could eventually not have these rules. The -1 to Hit, 5++ and 5/6+++ TS Cultists I've seen the other day made me angry with the game. Why do Cultists have <Heretic Astartes> for starters ?

 Aaranis wrote:

 Horst wrote:
They could always go back to only having troops able to capture objectives.

The way everything dies in 40k right now that would mean my opponent gets 1st turn, slaughters all my Skitarii (which are all on foot because my only transport option is a 130€ FW kit) or Kataphrons and then I lost the game because the only points I can score are killing related.

It would be nice if every Troop didn't have ObSec though. Cultists, Conscripts, Brimstones (Pink Horrors are fine) could eventually not have these rules. The -1 to Hit, 5++ and 5/6+++ TS Cultists I've seen the other day made me angry with the game. Why do Cultists have <Heretic Astartes> for starters ?

Honestly, Cultists / poxwalkers / Tzaangors should have the keyword <Heretic>, and the "true Chaos Space Marines" have keyword <Heretic> and <Heretic Astartes>. That may be more fair.

Having single faction lists is something that is done at all of the No Retreat events (bar examples like assassins and admech+Knight etc). I think it does lead to interesting and fun games, but, it’s also a very different game to when you play a “standard” ITC or ETC game. Whether that is a good thing or not, is all down to personal preference. One issue it does highlight even more than the ITC format, is that, the codices aren’t balanced against each other. Souping exaggerates the issue, sure, but, the underlying issue is still there.

I played at the WHW Vigilus weekender last weekender, and even though it was only 1000 points, I enjoyed the 3 simple games of CA Eternal War missions only and as a result, I’m looking forward to the Heat 3 games next weekend. I think, as more time goes by, the need for things like the ITC/Nova/Adepticon mission formats will start to reduce, as the basic missions will suffice. They took a step in the right direction with the CA2017 missions, so we can look forward to the CA2018 missions with interest. ETC style missions still have a place imo, as it is essentially just a mix of basic Eternal War and basic Maelstrom in 1 game. But, I also agree, that “competitive” Maelstrom games should meet a fiery death.

I’ve not been to an ITC event since the new missions/changes were made. I have an event in Jan running them, but, until then, I’m not really that focused on running them.

I think the current rules regarding objective claiming are fine. Just because a unit is an elite choice, doesn’t mean it can’t “temporality” hold an objective. If anything, these are the guys that WOULD be going to secure the objective, allowing the troops to then come up and “permanently” hold it while they move onto another objective.

FW units don’t bother me at all. I don’t think they need banning outright across the board. All they need is the same treatment as all the broken (Both OP and massively UP) GW units. Treatment that is coming in the next couple of weeks via CA.

IF GW keeps up it’s growing level of support for events and mission styles, and a commitment to attempting to address balance issues, then, I think the future is good, and one that I personally think is a potential issue for FLG and the ITC mission format. ITC will survive as a ranking system and series of events, it just depends what happens to the mission pack.

Chaos Keyword issue – personally, I’d just remove the HERETIC ASTARTES keyword from some of the units and leave them with the <Legion> keyword. Easier fix.

 Aaranis wrote:
The way everything dies in 40k right now that would mean my opponent gets 1st turn, slaughters all my Skitarii (which are all on foot because my only transport option is a 130€ FW kit) or Kataphrons and then I lost the game because the only points I can score are killing related.

The point about only troops scoring is that things die the way they do right now because non-troops can score. If everything can score there's no incentive to bring anything but the biggest guns you can get. Limiting scoring to troops only, as it was in previous editions, means that you have to have a solid core of basic units with limited weapons and taking high-firepower offensive threats comes at direct cost in your ability to score objectives. If your opponent takes an alpha strike list that can wipe your troops out they have few scoring units of their own, and you can easily remove them in return.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
The way everything dies in 40k right now that would mean my opponent gets 1st turn, slaughters all my Skitarii (which are all on foot because my only transport option is a 130€ FW kit) or Kataphrons and then I lost the game because the only points I can score are killing related.

The point about only troops scoring is that things die the way they do right now because non-troops can score. If everything can score there's no incentive to bring anything but the biggest guns you can get. Limiting scoring to troops only, as it was in previous editions, means that you have to have a solid core of basic units with limited weapons and taking high-firepower offensive threats comes at direct cost in your ability to score objectives. If your opponent takes an alpha strike list that can wipe your troops out they have few scoring units of their own, and you can easily remove them in return.

I agree. But balancing Troops choices across all codices would become even more necessary, as SM players would have to play mechanised Troops, so the cheapest might be 5 Scouts in a Land Speeder. Tacticals/Scouts in a Rhino/Razorback, and Intercessors in a Repulsor.

I mean by that that transports would go from "viable option for some builds" to "necessity" and that would imply a lot of balancing issues. Dark Eldar/Ynnari would have a really good board control with their Flyers and cheap Troops.

 Galef wrote:
My position is that some people were saying that the Rule of 3 prevents fluffy lists...

In a few cases it does, in the majority of others it simply limits them and makes them much more difficult to do. Seriously, I can acknowledge that the rule of three does a good job at limiting people from spamming overpowered units, but it is ham-handed in that it prevents any kind of spam, even the good kind in thematic lists.

 Galef wrote:
Not only is this not true, but many who claim this aren't actually taking a fluffy list, but are trying to spam 1-2 good units under the guise of a fluffy list

So by spamming terminators (which are garbage) I'm not trying to make a thematic force, but instead am trying to secretly game the system and use overpowered units... LOL

 Galef wrote:
No one wants to face a list with a dozen of the exact same unit

Speak for yourself, I would have no problem playing against a spam/skew list so long as it made sense fluff-wise I'd consider it an interesting challenge.

Ice_can wrote:
I'm genuinely intrigued as to how you have made the rule of 3 a problem for a scion foot list given i can get past 1000 points without Breaking the rule of 2 they can bring an almost 2k points of pure infantry in 2 battalions without breaking rule of 3. Add in some valks or vultures or vendettas and your rappidly at 3k for your arial spec opps strike force

What if I want to have 4 officers for better order coverage? Nope, can't apparently that makes foot scions too broken.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
The way everything dies in 40k right now that would mean my opponent gets 1st turn, slaughters all my Skitarii (which are all on foot because my only transport option is a 130€ FW kit) or Kataphrons and then I lost the game because the only points I can score are killing related.

The point about only troops scoring is that things die the way they do right now because non-troops can score. If everything can score there's no incentive to bring anything but the biggest guns you can get. Limiting scoring to troops only, as it was in previous editions, means that you have to have a solid core of basic units with limited weapons and taking high-firepower offensive threats comes at direct cost in your ability to score objectives. If your opponent takes an alpha strike list that can wipe your troops out they have few scoring units of their own, and you can easily remove them in return.

I actually agree with this, with some caveats for armies that have options for running troopless lists. Like IG armored with their rule that lets their leman russes score like troops. Or ravenwing that lets bikers score.

w1zard wrote:
So by spamming terminators (which are garbage) I'm not trying to make a thematic force, but instead am trying to secretly game the system and use overpowered units... LOL

Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.

What if I want to have 4 officers for better order coverage? Nope, can't apparently that makes foot scions too broken.

Then you deal with not having four officers and 100% order coverage. Having four copies of a company-level HQ is not fluffy, you should be limited to one, maybe two at most in a typical 40k army. But thanks for admitting that it isn't about fluff and your goal is to get more buffs applied to your units.

Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.

that is not true, efore RO3 was a thing I was running 4 units of 3 paladins each and 3 apothecaries supporting them plus draigo. No I can no longer do that. I have to turn some of them in to termintors, which means am both taking worse units and it messes up my unit size, because I have to take normal termintors in 5 man sized squads.

 Peregrine wrote:
Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.

Not if I want to do MSU, which IS fluffy for terminators because every depiction of them I have seen in the fluff (especially space hulk stuff) has been in teams of 5, not 10.

 Peregrine wrote:
Then you deal with not having four officers and 100% order coverage. Having four copies of a company-level HQ is not fluffy, you should be limited to one, maybe two at most in a typical 40k army. But thanks for admitting that it isn't about fluff and your goal is to get more buffs applied to your units.

Not if you are treating tempestor primes as platoon-level commanders, which they are, they default to one order like guard platoon commanders, and only get two if you buy them an upgrade.

Karol wrote:

Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.

that is not true, efore RO3 was a thing I was running 4 units of 3 paladins each and 3 apothecaries supporting them plus draigo. No I can no longer do that. I have to turn some of them in to termintors, which means am both taking worse units and it messes up my unit size, because I have to take normal termintors in 5 man sized squads.

..... 4x3=12 ......... so does 3x4

All units of terminators can combat-squad into two units of 5.

w1zard wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.

Not if I want to do MSU, which IS fluffy for terminators because every depiction of them I have seen in the fluff (especially space hulk stuff) has been in teams of 5, not 10.

 Peregrine wrote:
Then you deal with not having four officers and 100% order coverage. Having four copies of a company-level HQ is not fluffy, you should be limited to one, maybe two at most in a typical 40k army. But thanks for admitting that it isn't about fluff and your goal is to get more buffs applied to your units.

Not if you are treating tempestor primes as platoon-level commanders, which they are, they default to one order like guard platoon commanders, and only get two if you buy them an upgrade.

As said above you can combat squad terminators if you so choose.
Also even with squads of 5 you have 3 x normal, assualt, Catafract and tartarus armour for 60 terminators with rule of 3 and MSU.

Again your complaining about orders, order coverage doesn't prevent you running a full scion list at 2K your equating efficiency with unplayable which given how often guard players conplain that orders arn't automatic complaining you can use orders on your troops is hypocrisy. Either your troops are OK because you pay for orders with your HQ's or if order coverage for everyone is "how guard should work" the orders have to be baked into the points cost of these units in which case you can add 2ppm to all guard infantry straight off.

gendoikari87 wrote:

Karol wrote:

Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.

that is not true, efore RO3 was a thing I was running 4 units of 3 paladins each and 3 apothecaries supporting them plus draigo. No I can no longer do that. I have to turn some of them in to termintors, which means am both taking worse units and it messes up my unit size, because I have to take normal termintors in 5 man sized squads.

..... 4x3=12 ......... so does 3x4

If I take 3 squads they die too fast. With 4 squads, one was alive at the end of turn 2. It also let me capture objectives. Most missions played at my store have 5 objectives, and most event games, which aren't all games of course, require to have at least 4 infantry units. If I take 3 units of paladins, I don't have the points to take a 4th unit most of the time, and it really sucks to pay an event fee mostly to pay for prizes for other people.

Also even with squads of 5 you have 3 x normal, assualt, Catafract and tartarus armour for 60 terminators with rule of 3 and MSU.

Well that is great for normal marines I guess. But GK have only paladins and normal termintors, they don't have the access to the other terminator units or the flying primaris termintors or the ground shoty ones etc.

Karol wrote:

gendoikari87 wrote:

Karol wrote:

Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.

that is not true, efore RO3 was a thing I was running 4 units of 3 paladins each and 3 apothecaries supporting them plus draigo. No I can no longer do that. I have to turn some of them in to termintors, which means am both taking worse units and it messes up my unit size, because I have to take normal termintors in 5 man sized squads.

..... 4x3=12 ......... so does 3x4

If I take 3 squads they die too fast. With 4 squads, one was alive at the end of turn 2. It also let me capture objectives. Most missions played at my store have 5 objectives, and most event games, which aren't all games of course, require to have at least 4 infantry units. If I take 3 units of paladins, I don't have the points to take a 4th unit most of the time, and it really sucks to pay an event fee mostly to pay for prizes for other people.

Also even with squads of 5 you have 3 x normal, assualt, Catafract and tartarus armour for 60 terminators with rule of 3 and MSU.

Well that is great for normal marines I guess. But GK have only paladins and normal termintors, they don't have the access to the other terminator units or the flying primaris termintors or the ground shoty ones etc.

1 Hence why I wasn't replying to a comment about Grey Knights. Them sucking has nothing to do with tge rule of 3 and all to do with them being overpriced upgrades to overpriced marines.
2 Primaris don't have terminators Gravis armour has more like bike stats changes than terminator stats.

Karol wrote:
Well that is great for normal marines I guess. But GK have only paladins and normal termintors, they don't have the access to the other terminator units or the flying primaris termintors or the ground shoty ones etc.

Grandmaster
Librarian

Ancient
Apothecary
5 Paladins
5 Paladins
5 Paladins

5 GKT
5 GKT
5 GKT

There, 2011 points of terminator armor. What exactly is your problem with the rule of 3?

 Jidmah wrote:

Karol wrote:
Well that is great for normal marines I guess. But GK have only paladins and normal termintors, they don't have the access to the other terminator units or the flying primaris termintors or the ground shoty ones etc.

Grandmaster
Librarian

Ancient
Apothecary
5 Paladins
5 Paladins
5 Paladins

5 GKT
5 GKT
5 GKT

There, 2011 points of terminator armor. What exactly is your problem with the rule of 3?

jfc lol, thats going to be approximately 300-400 points cheaper after ca. Smdh. At least after ca you can add some land raiders to that list.... 2 maybe if you get rid of an ancient or two.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Tournament can of course set whatever houserules they want. It however becomes a problem if GW starts to balance the game based on results of those tournament, which are not even playing proper 40K.

Which is what they do, seeing how they kneejerk react to things in ITC tournaments that are often made possible due to how the ITC missions/objectives work. At this point, they should just fully endorse the ITC as the tournament rules for 40k and be done with it. "We are partnering with the Independent Tournament Circuit to standardize a set of rules and scenarios for competitive Warhammer 40,000 gameplay"

That would be fantastic. Or in the reverse if GW made an acceptable matchplay rule set - they should just adopt that. Casual match play and tournament play should be playing by the same rules.

Why?

I see no reason why tournament play needs to align 100% with matched play.

"Every tournament play game is a matched play game, but not every matched play game is a tournament play game."

The way I see it is - are preseason football games played by different rules? Exhibition baseball games? No - they play the exact same game there is just no stakes. They are practice games. Why exact should matched play and tournament play not align - IYO?

 Xenomancers wrote:

The way I see it is - are preseason football games played by different rules? Exhibition baseball games? No - they play the exact same game there is just no stakes. They are practice games. Why exact should matched play and tournament play not align - IYO?

Because tournament play's one very specific way of playing the game that appeals to a certain player mindset, and a general "balanced-enough" set of matched play rules is good enough for most people playing "competitively-but-for-fun" rather than "hardcore-competitvely". I don't disagree that there's an argument to be made for tweaking the rules for the sake of competitive play, but not everyone's really all that interested in playing hyper-competitively. Don't really see the problem with Tournament Organisers setting additional rules as they see fit.

There's a *lot* more moving parts to something like 40K than most sports, so I'm not sure how useful an analogy it is, but when I'm playing footy with my mates in the park, we're certainly not referring every disputed decision to the VAR, we're just getting on with it and enjoying ourselves.

 Nazrak wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

The way I see it is - are preseason football games played by different rules? Exhibition baseball games? No - they play the exact same game there is just no stakes. They are practice games. Why exact should matched play and tournament play not align - IYO?

Because tournament play's one very specific way of playing the game that appeals to a certain player mindset, and a general "balanced-enough" set of matched play rules is good enough for most people playing "competitively-but-for-fun" rather than "hardcore-competitvely". I don't disagree that there's an argument to be made for tweaking the rules for the sake of competitive play, but not everyone's really all that interested in playing hyper-competitively. Don't really see the problem with Tournament Organisers setting additional rules as they see fit.

There's a *lot* more moving parts to something like 40K than most sports, so I'm not sure how useful an analogy it is, but when I'm playing footy with my mates in the park, we're certainly not referring every disputed decision to the VAR, we're just getting on with it and enjoying ourselves.

I don't think we need another definition of the game supported by GW. You already have Open, Narrative, and Match. And we want Organized.

I think it should redefined as Easy mode (and open Narrative casual play) Hard (match play) Organized (Match play with lots of restrictions to try to allow what is left to be as balanced as possible)

The match play rules should hopefully be the best way to get a balanced 40k game - just like the rules in football. Due to the dynamics this will mean "balance" around the 1750 point bracket that GW has decided is standard.

If you want to play differently - like say kicking the ball around with your friends - then that's what open play is for.

I think all of you declaring what "should" happen are setting yourselves up for disappointment, tbh. GW have clearly made a decision to go with the "three ways to play" that they've had in place since the first AoS General's Handbook, and I can't see them firing that all into the bin (and thereby invalidating a significant chunk of the existing materials for 8th edition) in a CA update.

There's nothing to stop players, or tournament organisers, imposing their own additional restrictions in order to tighten up the competitive "balance" of games played within a certain set of parameters, but I can't see GW suddenly pivoting from "here's a variety of rules to allow you to play the game in a variety of ways" to ploughing all their time and effort (which is, ultimately, a finite resource) into fine-tuning the way a certain faction of the player base chooses to play.

Anyway shouldn't it start being trailered in Warhammer Community from next week - if it hasn't all been leaked by then?

I prefer facing a decent spammy list if it means my opponent knows what he's doing and can easily identtify his units.

I don't think tournaments should ahve a different ruleset to matche play (bedsides event specifc variants). Certainly not something GW should do themselves in a CA.

Rule of 3 is better than no rule of 3, but fixing miscosted units would be better. Keep raising price of Flyrant until you only see 2 or 3 used per list. Done.

Exactly my view, as well. Assuming Flyrants are a standin for "anything".

The corollary to this is lower the price on units until you actually start seeing them appear in 1's 2's or 3's.

I think the GW team never wanted to lose to something like heptaflyrant ever again. There was some ego bruising there. I've noticed that lots of game designers don't accept it when players understand the game better than they do.