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.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.

While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.

There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.

Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.

Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.

Salt donkey wrote:
*3) “Souping disacourges list diversity”. As you have probably guessed Based on my pros I fully disagree with this one. Now I think there’s a small degree of truth in this in that if a unit, or units are far too good, soup will increase there is usage even more. This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been. There are some which use knights, some which use more guard, some that use Custards, and even some that use different flavors of space marines. The evidence supports this as well as over the span of 8th (a year and 3 months) we’ve seen everything from deathguard, to all flavors of eldar, to even some space marine win large tournaments. In 5th we could go whole years where a single or a few codex’s would dominate the Meta. Part of that was lack of attempts by GW to shake up the meta yes, but also because if a single codex had fewer weaknesses and/or more OP units than the rest
If the field it would dominate for a while no questions asked.

4) I keep hearing that souping allies you to eliminate all your weaknesses, and while true to a degree, it also will reduce yout armies strengths. For example if I choose to run a tzaangor bomb in my death guard list, that means I’m losing some duribility in my list (as I won’t be able to as many durable deathguard units) in exchange for more hitting power. So yeah I’m helped cover a deathguard weakness by souping, but my list won’t automatically be better.

While i did write a long post, it stings a bit when you just repeat an argument I’ve already adressed without mentioning something new.

 Kriswall wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.

There is the added impact that some units are costed fine UNTIL you add them to a Soup list. Knights are costed partly with the understanding that a Knight army isn't going to generate many command points. Give Knights access to plentiful command points and they get significantly better.

And now the regeneration mechanics were nerfed to the ground it's not an issue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.

While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.

There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.

Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.

Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.

It's only a balance issue when GW can't give certain armies the ability to fight normally. Some, like Custodes, are forced to ally because they weren't given all the tools they need to succeed. Perhaps the upcoming IA will change that. Perhaps it won't. So unless you've actually got ideas to help these monofactions, Allies are a necessary crutch, rather than the original compliment they were supposed to be.

I think a solution to the IG CP battery would be to re-introduce Platoons.

It wouldn't inhibit our ability to field Guardmen as the Guard, but reduce the rate at which they generate CP [specifically, doubling the cost of a CP battalion, bring the cost/5 CP's roughly into line with the cost per 5 CP's that Astartes pay].

Really, I think the solution to many of the Guard problems would be to re-introduce features from previous editions.

Returning Command Squads to existence would also double the cost per order, decreasing the problematic buffed offensive efficiency of Guardsmen. There is precedent for a Character squad of mixed-wound models, and the heavy weapon option can be removed from the CCS and PCS to prevent a Character Lascannon from existing. It would further add almost 100 points to the cost of the CP battery.


This would, at least make a small commitment to Imperial Guard significantly less profitable [less soup], without breaking the Imperial Guard's ability to bring it's own units for their internal value to an Imperial Guard army.

Sure, something else, like Scouts or BSS or something would become the new CP battery, but I think similar philosophies can be expanded to reduce soup benefits without breaking units or nerfing them because they offer too much a benefit for other armies. An IG army will field 6+ or 12+ infantry squads without complaint, because we want Guardsmen for them being Guardsmen, so platooning up doesn't really annoy us [very much]. But small-commitment Guard detachments, like a CP battery, would be a less attractive option.



I think a key to balancing soup is to increase the effective cost of allied detachments and also decrease their benefit beyond the addition of the units offered.

Salt donkey wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.

While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.

There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.

Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.

Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.

Salt donkey wrote:
*3) “Souping disacourges list diversity”. As you have probably guessed Based on my pros I fully disagree with this one. Now I think there’s a small degree of truth in this in that if a unit, or units are far too good, soup will increase there is usage even more. This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been. There are some which use knights, some which use more guard, some that use Custards, and even some that use different flavors of space marines. The evidence supports this as well as over the span of 8th (a year and 3 months) we’ve seen everything from deathguard, to all flavors of eldar, to even some space marine win large tournaments. In 5th we could go whole years where a single or a few codex’s would dominate the Meta. Part of that was lack of attempts by GW to shake up the meta yes, but also because if a single codex had fewer weaknesses and/or more OP units than the rest
If the field it would dominate for a while no questions asked.

4) I keep hearing that souping allies you to eliminate all your weaknesses, and while true to a degree, it also will reduce yout armies strengths. For example if I choose to run a tzaangor bomb in my death guard list, that means I’m losing some duribility in my list (as I won’t be able to as many durable deathguard units) in exchange for more hitting power. So yeah I’m helped cover a deathguard weakness by souping, but my list won’t automatically be better.

While i did write a long post, it stings a bit when you just repeat an argument I’ve already adressed without mentioning something new.

I didn't say anything about list diversity. If you're referring exclusively to point 4, the simple fact that just about every placing list in amy 8E tournament has elements of multiple armies is compelling prima facie evidence to challenge your assertion.

Ultimately, you dont have to sub out much to gain a whole lot of new ability. For reference, a DE list that placed well at a recent tournament only included an allied farseer. It's not giving up a huge number of points or any particular core DE ability to take that Farseer, the DE list isn't losing anything meaningful, but it is gaining several powerful psychic buffs that dramatically enhance the capabilities of the army in ways otherwise not possible resulting in a much more powerful army than could be fielded with a monolist. A lot of armies take a Guard CP battery for just a couple hundred points. They don't give up anything meaningful from the primary army, that core strength remains intact, but they gain a whole lot of extra bodies, scoring unite, board control, and CP in the process. The tradeoff on far too many instances means little or nothing. Stuff can also combine synergistically in ways that are more powerful than particular elements might otherwise be in their original armies.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Salt donkey wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.

While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.

There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.

Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.

Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.

Salt donkey wrote:
*3) “Souping disacourges list diversity”. As you have probably guessed Based on my pros I fully disagree with this one. Now I think there’s a small degree of truth in this in that if a unit, or units are far too good, soup will increase there is usage even more. This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been. There are some which use knights, some which use more guard, some that use Custards, and even some that use different flavors of space marines. The evidence supports this as well as over the span of 8th (a year and 3 months) we’ve seen everything from deathguard, to all flavors of eldar, to even some space marine win large tournaments. In 5th we could go whole years where a single or a few codex’s would dominate the Meta. Part of that was lack of attempts by GW to shake up the meta yes, but also because if a single codex had fewer weaknesses and/or more OP units than the rest
If the field it would dominate for a while no questions asked.

4) I keep hearing that souping allies you to eliminate all your weaknesses, and while true to a degree, it also will reduce yout armies strengths. For example if I choose to run a tzaangor bomb in my death guard list, that means I’m losing some duribility in my list (as I won’t be able to as many durable deathguard units) in exchange for more hitting power. So yeah I’m helped cover a deathguard weakness by souping, but my list won’t automatically be better.

While i did write a long post, it stings a bit when you just repeat an argument I’ve already adressed without mentioning something new.

I didn't say anything about list diversity. If you're referring exclusively to point 4, the simple fact that every placing list has elements of multiple armies is compelling prima facie evidence to challenge your assertion.

Ultimately, you dont have to sub out much to gain a whole lot of new ability. For reference, a DE list that placed well at a recent tournament only included an allied farseer. It's not giving up a huge number of points or any particular core DE ability to take that Farseer, the DE list isn't losing anything meaningful, but it is gaining several powerful psychic buffs that dramatically enhance the capabilities of the army in ways otherwise not possible resulting in a much more powerful army than could be fielded with a monolist. A lot of armies take a Guard CP battery for just a couple hundred points. They don't give up anything meaningful from the primary army, that core strength remains intact, but they gain a whole lot of extra bodies, scoring unite, board control, and CP in the process. The tradeoff on far too many instances means little or nothing.

See that’s where I disagree with you. By taking the farseer detachment that DE list the opportunity to take another type of detachment. For example it could have taken a cheap wych battalion for more board control, or dropped some other stuff in his list to Make an entirely new type of
detchament. Clearly he went for the farseer for the reasons you mention, but there was opportunity cost to do so. In this instance I would say doom is more of a problem then soup just like how CP are generated for battalions and how cheap IG stuff is for the loyal 32.

Salt donkey wrote:
This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been.

This is completely wrong. Soup absolutely makes this problem worse by increasing the number of armies taking the overpowered thing. So yes, let's assume for the sake of argument that you're correct about guardsmen and company commanders being too cheap. Without soup there's a limit to how much you can exploit this. You can only take them in a pure IG army, which means accepting any weaknesses that come with playing pure IG. And the primary strength of company commanders is the ability to fill mandatory HQ slots for a minimum investment, something of essentially zero value in a pure IG army where you aren't required to take multiple detachments for each of your factions. Similarly, generating a ton of CP with cheap detachments isn't all that important because IG don't depend on high-CP stratagems and therefore don't need as much CP. But when soup exists every Imperial army can exploit those two units, and exploit them in ways that pure IG can't. Suddenly an army light IK gets a cheap CP battery to power stratagems that are supposed to be balanced by IK having limited CP generation, melee elite armies get cheap objective campers that also power their stratagems, etc. They're everywhere, because why wouldn't you take the overpowered thing when soup is allowed?

And the same thing happens with other units. Instead of having a bunch of Imperial factions, each probably having their own separate balance mistakes, you have a single Imperial army that consists of the 1-2 most overpowered units from each codex. List diversity is gone for the Imperial faction.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Salt donkey wrote:
See that’s where I disagree with you. By taking the farseer detachment that DE list the opportunity to take another type of detachment. For example it could have taken a cheap wych battalion for more board control, or dropped some other stuff in his list to Make an entirely new type of
detchament. Clearly he went for the farseer for the reasons you mention, but there was opportunity cost to do so. In this instance I would say doom is more of a problem then soup just like how CP are generated for battalions and how cheap IG stuff is for the loyal 32.

Detachment count is rarely a limiting factor for a mono-faction army. Three detachments is more than enough to fit anything you could possibly take under 2000 points, the only reason you'd find it to be a limit is if you're trying to make a soup list and want to take more than three factions.

Salt donkey wrote:

Ultimately, you dont have to sub out much to gain a whole lot of new ability. For reference, a DE list that placed well at a recent tournament only included an allied farseer. It's not giving up a huge number of points or any particular core DE ability to take that Farseer, the DE list isn't losing anything meaningful, but it is gaining several powerful psychic buffs that dramatically enhance the capabilities of the army in ways otherwise not possible resulting in a much more powerful army than could be fielded with a monolist. A lot of armies take a Guard CP battery for just a couple hundred points. They don't give up anything meaningful from the primary army, that core strength remains intact, but they gain a whole lot of extra bodies, scoring unite, board control, and CP in the process. The tradeoff on far too many instances means little or nothing.

See that’s where I disagree with you. By taking the farseer detachment that DE list the opportunity to take another type of detachment. For example it could have taken a cheap wych battalion for more board control, or dropped some other stuff in his list to Make an entirely new type of
detchament.

Clearly he went for the farseer for the reasons you mention, but there was opportunity cost to do so. In this instance I would say doom is more of a problem then soup

Lots of things could be done. However, for the points available, nothing was going to match that new capability, the detchament opportunity cost was trivial, board control obviously wasnt lacking. Just because there are opportunity costs doesn't mean that there arent clearly superior choices. DE don't have native psyker support and the army is built around not having it. Adding it in the basically the cost of a single unit or a couple relatively cheap units isn't trading anything near that value. There is a reason mono-codex lists aren't placing at events, and it's because the Soup tradeoffs dont force anyone to give up anything meaningful, the marginal utility of allied psyker support is dramatically higher than equivalent investment in other DE units.

Doom is a powerful ability, but within its original Craftworld Eldar context is dramatically less of an issue than it suddenly being available to DE as well. That's what Soup fails to account for.

just like how CP are generated for battalions and how cheap IG stuff is for the loyal 32.

Ultimately, within a Guard army, the loyal 32 aren't an issue, within their native environment they are fine, or at least less of an issue. If you increased the ppm cost of guardsmen to 6 or 7ppm you may fix the CP battery, but you'd cripple monolist guard armies in the process.

I'm 50/50 on this.

Disclaimer: I don't play in tournaments - the only area where soup is considered a problem, and arguably rightfully so.

There's zero argument that soup is not an advantage for those able to take it - full stop. No discussion needed. If you don't understand that, there's no point in even having a discussion. However...does that matter in narrative games, casual gaming, etc? No, because people don't play with that attitude nor those lists. So on that side of things, I see zero issue with it. It's fluffy and cool to be able to ally stuff (though I still disagree with the Eldar allying with Dark Eldar so freely - personal qualm). But we're not here discussing soup with regard to fluffy and narrative casual games are we?

Even the OP seems like an argument in defense of soup for fluffy and narrative reasons - which is not at all the way it's played in tournament settings, though occasionally players will hide behind that as a kind of excuse to justify it. So, I agree...soup is cool in fluffy and narrative games. However it is absolutely an unbalancing portion of the game in the competitive and tournament scene. I've been waiting to see more tournaments go mono-codex anyway...a simple solution to it (and one which would generate a much more interesting tournament!).

People have discussed potential solutions ad naseum in dozens of threads here on Dakka, so no point really pouring more fuel on that fire.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Salt donkey wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.

While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.

There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.

Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.

Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.

Salt donkey wrote:
*3) “Souping disacourges list diversity”. As you have probably guessed Based on my pros I fully disagree with this one. Now I think there’s a small degree of truth in this in that if a unit, or units are far too good, soup will increase there is usage even more. This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been. There are some which use knights, some which use more guard, some that use Custards, and even some that use different flavors of space marines. The evidence supports this as well as over the span of 8th (a year and 3 months) we’ve seen everything from deathguard, to all flavors of eldar, to even some space marine win large tournaments. In 5th we could go whole years where a single or a few codex’s would dominate the Meta. Part of that was lack of attempts by GW to shake up the meta yes, but also because if a single codex had fewer weaknesses and/or more OP units than the rest
If the field it would dominate for a while no questions asked.

4) I keep hearing that souping allies you to eliminate all your weaknesses, and while true to a degree, it also will reduce yout armies strengths. For example if I choose to run a tzaangor bomb in my death guard list, that means I’m losing some duribility in my list (as I won’t be able to as many durable deathguard units) in exchange for more hitting power. So yeah I’m helped cover a deathguard weakness by souping, but my list won’t automatically be better.

While i did write a long post, it stings a bit when you just repeat an argument I’ve already adressed without mentioning something new.

I didn't say anything about list diversity. If you're referring exclusively to point 4, the simple fact that just about every placing list in amy 8E tournament has elements of multiple armies is compelling prima facie evidence to challenge your assertion.

Ultimately, you dont have to sub out much to gain a whole lot of new ability. For reference, a DE list that placed well at a recent tournament only included an allied farseer. It's not giving up a huge number of points or any particular core DE ability to take that Farseer, the DE list isn't losing anything meaningful, but it is gaining several powerful psychic buffs that dramatically enhance the capabilities of the army in ways otherwise not possible resulting in a much more powerful army than could be fielded with a monolist. A lot of armies take a Guard CP battery for just a couple hundred points. They don't give up anything meaningful from the primary army, that core strength remains intact, but they gain a whole lot of extra bodies, scoring unite, board control, and CP in the process. The tradeoff on far too many instances means little or nothing. Stuff can also combine synergistically in ways that are more powerful than particular elements might otherwise be in their original armies.

That's literally because Doom as written is a broken power. If it were sticking to only Craftworld units gaining benefit it wouldn't be an issue.

I have yet to see a competitive person in person say "allies are a problem." This seems like an outcry coming more from the casual community than anything else.

It doesn't make what they're saying invalid. You can be casual and still want a good matched play ruleset. But let's not start attributing things to the competitive playerbase as a whole. Most people are happy with the current state of the game. Which is why you see huge numbers at tournaments.

Here is a list of the one-loss or better factions at SoCal:

Astra Militarum
Tyranids
Dark Eldar
Ynnari
Custodes
Chaos Daemons
Eldar
Chaos Space Marines
Tau
Imperial Knights
Harlequins
Thousand Sons
Death Guard
Renegade Knights
Orks

I removed duplicates. For instance, Nurgle Daemons and Chaos Daemons, i lumped together in Chaos Daemons.

That's really impressive from a balance perspective. Anyone with 1 loss could easily have been in the top 10, or ended up undefeated winning the whole thing. Basically 1 loss means you're doing damn good.

It's also worth noting that winning 4 games was good enough for top 50. Considering there was over 170 players, that's not bad. If you look at the top 50, pretty much every major faction is represented.

Balance doomsayers need to chill.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

That's literally because Doom as written is a broken power. If it were sticking to only Craftworld units gaining benefit it wouldn't be an issue.

Oh please. It is a deniable power than hits one unit. It's only good on big targets that will soak a lot of firepower. Guilliman is a walking army-wide doom for 400 points.

 Marmatag wrote:
I have yet to see a competitive person in person say "allies are a problem."

Allies are a problem. In fact they're a significant reason why, despite loving competitive play, I compete in better games and don't play in 40k tournaments. But I'll note your "in person" requirement, which limits it to a self-selecting group of people who are happy with the current state of 40k and rejects everyone who is unhappy enough with it to stop playing. Of course when you impose that limit you're going to find that people are not complaining.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:
Here is a list of the one-loss or better factions at SoCal:

How are you defining "faction" here? Is that Custodes army a pure Custodes army, or a generic Imperial soup army that happened to pick "Custodes" as its title?

I love soup because it allows me to run three separate crappy armies as one super-fluffy, super-crappy army.

So, leave 'soup' exactly as it is except make CP only expendable by the Faction that generated them. [Expletive Deleted] it, I don't care. There's no justifiable logic behind a handful of Guardsmen making a bunch of Space Marines fight better.

Like, are they flirting?

More options is more power. That is without a doubt. Especially with the ability to cover for army weaknesses. This alone could be the strength of the Imperium as a whole, though. They can fill in the gaps of the other armies. The problem is that this makes it very difficult to balance pure armies in the Imperium to those that use allies to shore up their weak sides. Really, the ally system does need some changes if the game is going to continue to develop in a positive direction as far as balance goes. The command point battery thing is also really silly but I think everyone is unanimous on that one already.

 Peregrine wrote:

Allies are a problem.

 Peregrine wrote:

I [blah blah] don't play in 40k tournaments.

You believing something is a problem doesn't mean that it is. If you aren't actively playing a game, are you qualified to evaluate it, in any capacity? The answer is no.

 Marmatag wrote:
You believing something is a problem doesn't mean that it is. If you aren't actively playing a game, are you qualified to evaluate it, in any capacity? The answer is no.

Like I said, you're only considering the self-selecting group of players who like 40k in its current state and rejecting any opinions from people who dislike it enough to stop playing. Of course you get a positive overall reaction when you do that.

Martel732 wrote:
As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.

This 10000 times

The point is that a unit's cost depends on the army its in.

A Castellan is a lot better with an Imperial Guard brigade for bags of CP, chaff and objective hugging than it is in a mono-Knights list.

What should its points cost be?

Tyel wrote:
The point is that a unit's cost depends on the army its in.

A Castellan is a lot better with an Imperial Guard brigade for bags of CP, chaff and objective hugging than it is in a mono-Knights list.

What should its points cost be?

This is only because certain things offer too much CP for their cost. It should be a tough choice whether take more hard hitting knights or squishy CP providers. But The point cost of certain CP providers is so negligible, and they punch above their weight otherwise too, that this doesn't really work.

 Crimson wrote:
This is only because certain things offer too much CP for their cost. It should be a tough choice whether take more hard hitting knights or squishy CP providers. But The point cost of certain CP providers is so negligible, and they punch above their weight otherwise too, that this doesn't really work.

You're just proving the point. That cheap IG CP battery is composed of units that are not a problem in a pure IG army, and the level of point increase that would make them balanced as a CP battery for an IK army would make IG cease to exist as a playable faction. The proposed 5ppm cost would only mean spending +30 points on a CP battery, a negligible difference. Even 10ppm guardsmen would probably still be powerful when you're still only spending 300 points for a bare-minimum CP battery. But add that +6ppm to an entire IG army that depends on having lots of infantry squads and you've destroyed the faction.

The only way to balance every unit for all situations is to remove the ability to mix factions to cover your weaknesses. As long as soup exists there will always be situations where a unit is overpowered.

They are absolutely a problem in pure ig lists. 4 ppm guardsmen in the same army as cheap t8 is soul crushing.

Martel732 wrote:
They are absolutely a problem in pure ig lists. 4 ppm guardsmen in the same army as cheap t8 is soul crushing.

Yep, this. The only reason they're comboed with Castellan instead of one of their own superheavies, is that Castellan is too good for its points too.

IG pay 500 pts and effectively turn off every melee unit in the game.

So then answer the question: what ppm cost would be appropriate for guardsmen? What makes them balanced both as the core troops choice of a pure IG army and as a CP battery for IK? What is the point cost where including the CP battery is a tough choice, but IG haven't been nerfed out of existence?

5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?

Martel732 wrote:
5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?

So you honestly think that a 30-60 point increase in the cost of the CP battery would make it a tough decision and not an auto-include?

(Correct answer: it would still be an auto-include.)

 Peregrine wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?

So you honestly think that a 30-60 point increase in the cost of the CP battery would make it a tough decision and not an auto-include?

(Correct answer: it would still be an auto-include.)

It's all points that add up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
So then answer the question: what ppm cost would be appropriate for guardsmen? What makes them balanced both as the core troops choice of a pure IG army and as a CP battery for IK? What is the point cost where including the CP battery is a tough choice, but IG haven't been nerfed out of existence?

Honestly I'm for half a point. 45 points for an Infantry squad seems alright but we all know GW won't price it that way.

 Peregrine wrote:

Salt donkey wrote:
This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been.

This is completely wrong. Soup absolutely makes this problem worse by increasing the number of armies taking the overpowered thing. So yes, let's assume for the sake of argument that you're correct about guardsmen and company commanders being too cheap. Without soup there's a limit to how much you can exploit this. You can only take them in a pure IG army, which means accepting any weaknesses that come with playing pure IG. And the primary strength of company commanders is the ability to fill mandatory HQ slots for a minimum investment, something of essentially zero value in a pure IG army where you aren't required to take multiple detachments for each of your factions. Similarly, generating a ton of CP with cheap detachments isn't all that important because IG don't depend on high-CP stratagems and therefore don't need as much CP. But when soup exists every Imperial army can exploit those two units, and exploit them in ways that pure IG can't. Suddenly an army light IK gets a cheap CP battery to power stratagems that are supposed to be balanced by IK having limited CP generation, melee elite armies get cheap objective campers that also power their stratagems, etc. They're everywhere, because why wouldn't you take the overpowered thing when soup is allowed?

And the same thing happens with other units. Instead of having a bunch of Imperial factions, each probably having their own separate balance mistakes, you have a single Imperial army that consists of the 1-2 most overpowered units from each codex. List diversity is gone for the Imperial faction.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Salt donkey wrote:
See that’s where I disagree with you. By taking the farseer detachment that DE list the opportunity to take another type of detachment. For example it could have taken a cheap wych battalion for more board control, or dropped some other stuff in his list to Make an entirely new type of
detchament. Clearly he went for the farseer for the reasons you mention, but there was opportunity cost to do so. In this instance I would say doom is more of a problem then soup just like how CP are generated for battalions and how cheap IG stuff is for the loyal 32.

Detachment count is rarely a limiting factor for a mono-faction army. Three detachments is more than enough to fit anything you could possibly take under 2000 points, the only reason you'd find it to be a limit is if you're trying to make a soup list and want to take more than three factions.

Ok I will concede that soup worsenings the impact that powerful unit combination have on the game. That being said I can assure you that cheap IG Battalions would be still be too good in a soupless world. The reason I know this is because my friend plays pure guard, and runs a very competitive lists that still make good use of its command points. Similarly, doom would be very powerful even if it was limited to just craftworld eldar. To finish this point problems units and abilities are bad for the game with or with our allies.

The second point i’d like make is the new problems would pop up if soup was removed. If certain armies (Tau, dark and craftworld elder, IG, tyranids.) can be competive without allies, what happens to meta game when all the soup factions are removed/heavily nerfed. As someone who played 5th edition, the answer is there will be less faction diversity.

To answer your second point, I was being up the 3 Detachment thing as something which limits soup, making it less problematic. For example dark eldar have the alliance of agony stratagem, a powerful strat which allies you to bring 2 extra warlord traits if you run a cabal, coven, and cult, You can’t really get full value from alliance if you run allies, so in this case 3 detachments cause there to be more of an opportunity Cost for running allies.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Honestly I'm for half a point. 45 points for an Infantry squad seems alright but we all know GW won't price it that way.

So now we're talking about a 15 point increase in the cost of a CP battery. Do you honestly think that this will make them any less of an auto-include? That we won't still see every IK player taking a CP battery?

 Peregrine wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?

So you honestly think that a 30-60 point increase in the cost of the CP battery would make it a tough decision and not an auto-include?

If it was combined with returning detachment for their original CP levels and upping the battleforged CP, yeah, it might.

(Up guardsman cost by one point, commander cost by ten points, that's 50 point increase, and now you get three CPs instead of five.)

 Peregrine wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
You believing something is a problem doesn't mean that it is. If you aren't actively playing a game, are you qualified to evaluate it, in any capacity? The answer is no.

Like I said, you're only considering the self-selecting group of players who like 40k in its current state and rejecting any opinions from people who dislike it enough to stop playing. Of course you get a positive overall reaction when you do that.

I'm pretty sure it's a good idea to value informed opinions more than uninformed ones isn't it?. Lots of things have changed almost monthly with this game as new codexes roll out and FAQs hit.

It's a little like saying there is no climate change, because you're not actively measuring the temperatures.

I agree with Marmatag's general sentiment. It doesn't mean there aren't things that can't be fixed.