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I've literally never played a game of 8th since the Ro3 came out where it wasn't used, across Kyushu and southern Honshu.

Not a fan of the Rule of 3, myself.

I find it odd that 3 Heavy Weapon Teams are exactly as scarce as a squadron of Leman Russ tanks.

It also doesn't seem to take into account the available options of different armies.

For example, if Dark Eldar want a Heavy Support choice that brings fire-support, they've got the Ravager... and that's it. Once they've taken 3 they immediately have to move on to other units, many of which are significantly different.

Ah, you say, but that's exactly the point of the rule of 3.

Okay. But now I look at my IG army. If want supporting firepower I can take 3 whole squadrons of Leman Russ tanks, so already I've been allowed 3 times as many Leman Russ as DE are allowed Ravagers (and if I take Command Leman Russes, I can take yet another 3). And when I finally run out of Russes, I can just move on to Basilisks, Manticores etc.


That's not to say I won't play with the Rule of 3, I just think it completely fails to address the problem it was meant to solve. If anything, it seems like a rule that only exists to further punish those armies that receive almost no support from GW.

 vipoid wrote:
Not a fan of the Rule of 3, myself.

I find it odd that 3 Heavy Weapon Teams are exactly as scarce as a squadron of Leman Russ tanks.

It also doesn't seem to take into account the available options of different armies.

For example, if Dark Eldar want a Heavy Support choice that brings fire-support, they've got the Ravager... and that's it. Once they've taken 3 they immediately have to move on to other units, many of which are significantly different.

Ah, you say, but that's exactly the point of the rule of 3.

Okay. But now I look at my IG army. If want supporting firepower I can take 3 whole squadrons of Leman Russ tanks, so already I've been allowed 3 times as many Leman Russ as DE are allowed Ravagers (and if I take Command Leman Russes, I can take yet another 3). And when I finally run out of Russes, I can just move on to Basilisks, Manticores etc.


That's not to say I won't play with the Rule of 3, I just think it completely fails to address the problem it was meant to solve. If anything, it seems like a rule that only exists to further punish those armies that receive almost no support from GW.

Yep. And considering how vehemently Dakka hates soup, I find it pretty hilarious that people fail to realise that Ro3 encourages soup and hurts monoarmies.

To the OP, it depends entirely on your group. If you and I were to play a pick up game I would be fine with it, so long as you were willing to let me do the same. I might do so, I might not.

I travel a lot (35-40 weeks a year) for work, so a lot of my week night games are against opponents I have never met before. In game stores at least the Ro3 is in my experience, without exception, the way pick up games are played by opponents that will square off against someone dropping in on a Wednesday from out of state.

My core group of opponents at home is of course a bunch of buggers who love to push all organised play rules all the while abusing all of the vehicle squadron / daemon prince etc Ro3 loopholes. Which is just proof that while the Ro3 might of had the right intent, it fails to prevent the abuse it was designed to stop. Its a bad rule.

In my opinion the offending units should be limited to one per detachment (de facto Ro3) while still allowing for the great majority of units to take advantage of the 8ed detachments. Leaving it untouched as a Beta rule isn't really helping anyone.

 Crimson wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Not a fan of the Rule of 3, myself.

I find it odd that 3 Heavy Weapon Teams are exactly as scarce as a squadron of Leman Russ tanks.

It also doesn't seem to take into account the available options of different armies.

For example, if Dark Eldar want a Heavy Support choice that brings fire-support, they've got the Ravager... and that's it. Once they've taken 3 they immediately have to move on to other units, many of which are significantly different.

Ah, you say, but that's exactly the point of the rule of 3.

Okay. But now I look at my IG army. If want supporting firepower I can take 3 whole squadrons of Leman Russ tanks, so already I've been allowed 3 times as many Leman Russ as DE are allowed Ravagers (and if I take Command Leman Russes, I can take yet another 3). And when I finally run out of Russes, I can just move on to Basilisks, Manticores etc.


That's not to say I won't play with the Rule of 3, I just think it completely fails to address the problem it was meant to solve. If anything, it seems like a rule that only exists to further punish those armies that receive almost no support from GW.

Yep. And considering how vehemently Dakka hates soup, I find it pretty hilarious that people fail to realise that Ro3 encourages soup and hurts monoarmies.

I know! It's almost as though a hard cap on all units doesn't actually stop the broken units from being broken! Big think

 Crimson wrote:
Yep. And considering how vehemently Dakka hates soup, I find it pretty hilarious that people fail to realise that Ro3 encourages soup and hurts monoarmies.

Quite.

 dracpanzer wrote:

In my opinion the offending units should be limited to one per detachment (de facto Ro3) while still allowing for the great majority of units to take advantage of the 8ed detachments. Leaving it untouched as a Beta rule isn't really helping anyone.

The thing is, the whole mix of army-building methods just feels like a complete mess.

We've got this mass of detachments that were seemingly introduced to give players more freedom to build their armies how they wanted . . . but then they also added the Rule of 3 to limit army building. Why? What's the point? Why not just have a more restrictive detachment system in the first place?

Alternatively, why not abandon detachments entirely and have something along the lines of Warmachine - where each individual unit is a limit (Unique, 2-per-army, 3-per-army, unlimited), but that's basically the only restriction?

It's the classic GW problem of tacking on more bad rules, rather than fixing whatever is causing issues in the first place.

If you recall it was a knee jerk reaction to them getting owned by flyrants.

Martel732 wrote:
If you recall it was a knee jerk reaction to them getting owned by flyrants.

A sane fix for that would have been to increase the point cost of the wings upgrade on the Hive tyrants.

They did that, too.

Martel732 wrote:
They did that, too.

Well, if the points of the spammed problem units get sufficiently adjusted, Ro3 isn't needed.

We dont know bc they changed three things at the same time.

 Crimson wrote:
Yep. And considering how vehemently Dakka hates soup, I find it pretty hilarious that people fail to realise that Ro3 encourages soup and hurts monoarmies.

Fortunately there's an easy solution: ban soup, keep Ro3.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Yep. And considering how vehemently Dakka hates soup, I find it pretty hilarious that people fail to realise that Ro3 encourages soup and hurts monoarmies.

Fortunately there's an easy solution: ban soup, keep Ro3.

And feth over people like Dark Eldar, while barely touching Marines or IG? (Marines because they have more options in a single slot than some armies have total, IG because of squadrons.)

 JNAProductions wrote:
And feth over people like Dark Eldar, while barely touching Marines or IG? (Marines because they have more options in a single slot than some armies have total, IG because of squadrons.)

I would be fine with removing squadrons now that 8th edition treats them as individual units anyway. It's an obsolete rule from an era when split fire didn't exist and overkill damage from destroying one vehicle carried over to the next vehicle in the squadron.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Yep. And considering how vehemently Dakka hates soup, I find it pretty hilarious that people fail to realise that Ro3 encourages soup and hurts monoarmies.

Fortunately there's an easy solution: ban soup, keep Ro3.

Nope. Some armies have way more unit options, thus are way less hampered by Ro3 than others. DE struggle with it, Harlequins are crippled by it, Guard or Marines barely notice it.

 vipoid wrote:
We've got this mass of detachments that were seemingly introduced to give players more freedom to build their armies how they wanted . . . but then they also added the Rule of 3 to limit army building. Why? What's the point? Why not just have a more restrictive detachment system in the first place?

I'm all for ditching the Ro3. Not all lists are created equally though, some armies are more dependent on specific slots than others, bringing back the FoC or something like it doesn't account for this and will punish some armies more than others just like the Ro3 does.

 dracpanzer wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
We've got this mass of detachments that were seemingly introduced to give players more freedom to build their armies how they wanted . . . but then they also added the Rule of 3 to limit army building. Why? What's the point? Why not just have a more restrictive detachment system in the first place?

I'm all for ditching the Ro3. Not all lists are created equally though, some armies are more dependent on specific slots than others, bringing back the FoC or something like it doesn't account for this and will punish some armies more than others just like the Ro3 does.

All Rule of Three does is, well, nothing. Broken units will continue to be broken if they're not at the appropriate cost, not if the opponent is only allowed three of them.

That's why I brought up the worst hyperbole I could. Let's say a Daemon Prince was only 50 points with weapons and all. If I slap "You can only take one in your army" on it, does that make it okay?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 dracpanzer wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
We've got this mass of detachments that were seemingly introduced to give players more freedom to build their armies how they wanted . . . but then they also added the Rule of 3 to limit army building. Why? What's the point? Why not just have a more restrictive detachment system in the first place?

I'm all for ditching the Ro3. Not all lists are created equally though, some armies are more dependent on specific slots than others, bringing back the FoC or something like it doesn't account for this and will punish some armies more than others just like the Ro3 does.

All Rule of Three does is, well, nothing. Broken units will continue to be broken if they're not at the appropriate cost, not if the opponent is only allowed three of them.

That's why I brought up the worst hyperbole I could. Let's say a Daemon Prince was only 50 points with weapons and all. If I slap "You can only take one in your army" on it, does that make it okay?

It does, to an extent, help. In theory.

If you're limited to three of a unit, it makes it harder to do full skew lists. If, for instance, your Codex has only one T8 option and it's 300 points, that's at most 900 points of T8 in your army before soup. So, if the rest of your force is between T3 and T5, small arms fire has a point against you.

Now, that's obviously not true IN PRACTICE. But in THEORY it helps.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 dracpanzer wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
We've got this mass of detachments that were seemingly introduced to give players more freedom to build their armies how they wanted . . . but then they also added the Rule of 3 to limit army building. Why? What's the point? Why not just have a more restrictive detachment system in the first place?

I'm all for ditching the Ro3. Not all lists are created equally though, some armies are more dependent on specific slots than others, bringing back the FoC or something like it doesn't account for this and will punish some armies more than others just like the Ro3 does.

All Rule of Three does is, well, nothing. Broken units will continue to be broken if they're not at the appropriate cost, not if the opponent is only allowed three of them.

That's why I brought up the worst hyperbole I could. Let's say a Daemon Prince was only 50 points with weapons and all. If I slap "You can only take one in your army" on it, does that make it okay?

It does, to an extent, help. In theory.

If you're limited to three of a unit, it makes it harder to do full skew lists. If, for instance, your Codex has only one T8 option and it's 300 points, that's at most 900 points of T8 in your army before soup. So, if the rest of your force is between T3 and T5, small arms fire has a point against you.

Now, that's obviously not true IN PRACTICE. But in THEORY it helps.

That doesn't make sense in theory either because we don't know what this T8 unit actually is. If it had like 100 wounds and 10 TL Heavy Bolters it wouldn't matter if it were a "skew" list or not. You can already make skew lists like that with most of the codices already.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That doesn't make sense in theory either because we don't know what this T8 unit actually is. If it had like 100 wounds and 10 TL Heavy Bolters it wouldn't matter if it were a "skew" list or not. You can already make skew lists like that with most of the codices already.

That's just an example of a horribly broken unit.

All I'm saying is that, despite the fact that Rule of Three does very little to stop skew lists in 40k as it stands, it does have a THEORETICAL good use.

I do agree that horribly broken units are broken whether they're limited or fully available, but that doesn't mean that limits have absolutely no place in a wargame.

Well based on a lot of feedback, I just decided to cut back on veteran squads and just take several infantry squads. To make it more fluffy, I'll garrison the veterans in the Stormlord while the normal rabble get stuffed in the chimera's.

Until the day when Ro3 is either gone or amended to exclude units like veterans, that's how it is going to have to be.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I know! It's almost as though a hard cap on all units doesn't actually stop the broken units from being broken! Big think

You do know that there is such a thing as game pieces getting more powerful the more of them you play? As soon as you allow unlimited list building you must put a hard cap on each single datasheet, otherwise playing big amounts of a single datasheet might become broken, despite the single unit not being broken. This is a hard fact and has been proven by many, many games. Almost every game with a deck-building component that tried to go without a hard cap on single cards has had the same issues as WH40k with their flyrant spam, commander spam, PBC spam.
If you think that WH40k list building is any different from building a deck out of cards because is WH40k is a unique special snowflake... let's say you should do some research on game design before talking about it.

There is such a thing as units getting too powerful when being played 6+ times which are a non-issue when played in threes. Repeating your opinion three times per page in every thread on this topic doesn't make you any less wrong.

Is the rule of 3 badly implemented because squadrons and datasheet variants(DP, carnifexes, battlewagons) can get around it? Yes.
Is balance with Ro3 worse than without? Hard no.
And this is all that matters to people. More balanced is better than less balance, even if some units get caught in the blast.

 Jidmah wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I know! It's almost as though a hard cap on all units doesn't actually stop the broken units from being broken! Big think

You do know that there is such a thing as game pieces getting more powerful the more of them you play? As soon as you allow unlimited list building you must put a hard cap on each single datasheet, otherwise playing big amounts of a single datasheet might become broken, despite the single unit not being broken. This is a hard fact and has been proven by many, many games. Almost every game with a deck-building component that tried to go without a hard cap on single cards has had the same issues as WH40k with their flyrant spam, commander spam, PBC spam.
If you think that WH40k list building is any different from building a deck out of cards because is WH40k is a unique special snowflake... let's say you should do some research on game design before talking about it.

There is such a thing as units getting too powerful when being played 6+ times which are a non-issue when played in threes. Repeating your opinion three times per page in every thread on this topic doesn't make you any less wrong.

Is the rule of 3 badly implemented because squadrons and datasheet variants(DP, carnifexes, battlewagons) can get around it? Yes.
Is balance with Ro3 worse than without? Hard no.
And this is all that matters to people. More balanced is better than less balance, even if some units get caught in the blast.

The Rule of 3 exists to nerf two things: Flyrant-spam, and Tau Commander-spam, and it didn't actually catch Tau Commanders because there are six or seven different datasheets for them, so they had to write an entire extra rule to stop that.

Everything else is either a) rendered powerful by psychic powers/stratagems/relics/warlord traits that you can't duplicate and therefore not really worth spamming (ex. Hive Guard, Knight-Castellan), b) so spammable within the Rule of 3 that a typical 2,000pt limit is more of a limiting factor than the Rule of 3 (ex. Leman Russes, of which you can have 12 (3 squads of 3 and 3 commanders) before running afoul of the Rule of 3), c) not really worth spamming, or d) Troops and therefore unaffected.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The Rule of 3 exists to nerf two things: Flyrant-spam, and Tau Commander-spam, and it didn't actually catch Tau Commanders because there are six or seven different datasheets for them, so they had to write an entire extra rule to stop that.

Tau commanders were limited before the Ro3, and there are more units that made the Rule Of 3 necessary. At the same tournament that made GW aware of the hive tyrand problem, there was a high-placing list with 8 PBC, as well as dark reaper and shining spear spam. There are also tons of spamable HQ units, like dawn eagle captains, GMDK or TS daemon princes. There was also scion spam and storm raven spam, each needed to be handled by their own rule to nerf them.
So saying that spam is not a problem in 8th edition is flat out wrong.

Everything else is either a) rendered powerful by psychic powers/stratagems/relics/warlord traits that you can't duplicate and therefore not really worth spamming (ex. Hive Guard, Knight-Castellan), b) so spammable within the Rule of 3 that a typical 2,000pt limit is more of a limiting factor than the Rule of 3 (ex. Leman Russes, of which you can have 12 (3 squads of 3 and 3 commanders) before running afoul of the Rule of 3), c) not really worth spamming, or d) Troops and therefore unaffected.

So, if nothing is affected and at least one unit is nerfed by it, there is no reason not to use it.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I know! It's almost as though a hard cap on all units doesn't actually stop the broken units from being broken! Big think

You do know that there is such a thing as game pieces getting more powerful the more of them you play? As soon as you allow unlimited list building you must put a hard cap on each single datasheet, otherwise playing big amounts of a single datasheet might become broken, despite the single unit not being broken. This is a hard fact and has been proven by many, many games. Almost every game with a deck-building component that tried to go without a hard cap on single cards has had the same issues as WH40k with their flyrant spam, commander spam, PBC spam.
If you think that WH40k list building is any different from building a deck out of cards because is WH40k is a unique special snowflake... let's say you should do some research on game design before talking about it.

There is such a thing as units getting too powerful when being played 6+ times which are a non-issue when played in threes. Repeating your opinion three times per page in every thread on this topic doesn't make you any less wrong.

Is the rule of 3 badly implemented because squadrons and datasheet variants(DP, carnifexes, battlewagons) can get around it? Yes.
Is balance with Ro3 worse than without? Hard no.
And this is all that matters to people. More balanced is better than less balance, even if some units get caught in the blast.

The Rule of 3 exists to nerf two things: Flyrant-spam, and Tau Commander-spam, and it didn't actually catch Tau Commanders because there are six or seven different datasheets for them, so they had to write an entire extra rule to stop that.

Everything else is either a) rendered powerful by psychic powers/stratagems/relics/warlord traits that you can't duplicate and therefore not really worth spamming (ex. Hive Guard, Knight-Castellan), b) so spammable within the Rule of 3 that a typical 2,000pt limit is more of a limiting factor than the Rule of 3 (ex. Leman Russes, of which you can have 12 (3 squads of 3 and 3 commanders) before running afoul of the Rule of 3), c) not really worth spamming, or d) Troops and therefore unaffected.

Nah, there were other problem units. Remember that list with I think it was 7 Dark Talons that was doing rather well?

Look, it's not perfect. But it keeps a bunch of degenerate lists in check. Sure, some still slip through. Could probably do with tightening up still. But I'm very glad it's a thing.

 Stux wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I know! It's almost as though a hard cap on all units doesn't actually stop the broken units from being broken! Big think

You do know that there is such a thing as game pieces getting more powerful the more of them you play? As soon as you allow unlimited list building you must put a hard cap on each single datasheet, otherwise playing big amounts of a single datasheet might become broken, despite the single unit not being broken. This is a hard fact and has been proven by many, many games. Almost every game with a deck-building component that tried to go without a hard cap on single cards has had the same issues as WH40k with their flyrant spam, commander spam, PBC spam.
If you think that WH40k list building is any different from building a deck out of cards because is WH40k is a unique special snowflake... let's say you should do some research on game design before talking about it.

There is such a thing as units getting too powerful when being played 6+ times which are a non-issue when played in threes. Repeating your opinion three times per page in every thread on this topic doesn't make you any less wrong.

Is the rule of 3 badly implemented because squadrons and datasheet variants(DP, carnifexes, battlewagons) can get around it? Yes.
Is balance with Ro3 worse than without? Hard no.
And this is all that matters to people. More balanced is better than less balance, even if some units get caught in the blast.

The Rule of 3 exists to nerf two things: Flyrant-spam, and Tau Commander-spam, and it didn't actually catch Tau Commanders because there are six or seven different datasheets for them, so they had to write an entire extra rule to stop that.

Everything else is either a) rendered powerful by psychic powers/stratagems/relics/warlord traits that you can't duplicate and therefore not really worth spamming (ex. Hive Guard, Knight-Castellan), b) so spammable within the Rule of 3 that a typical 2,000pt limit is more of a limiting factor than the Rule of 3 (ex. Leman Russes, of which you can have 12 (3 squads of 3 and 3 commanders) before running afoul of the Rule of 3), c) not really worth spamming, or d) Troops and therefore unaffected.

Nah, there were other problem units. Remember that list with I think it was 7 Dark Talons that was doing rather well?

Look, it's not perfect. But it keeps a bunch of degenerate lists in check. Sure, some still slip through. Could probably do with tightening up still. But I'm very glad it's a thing.

frankly, some hard limits on certain units wouldn't hurt.
(%based, or o-1, etc.)
The rule as it stands still doesn't hurt certain lists as much as it should whilest also punishing lists that would regularly not ben an issue.
Limits like 0-1 or similiar might also make units which are outliers more easily balancable due to their more restricted availability.

I'd be ok with that, works in Kill Team. Could make it all detachment based even, like the Tau Commander rule.

 Jidmah wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The Rule of 3 exists to nerf two things: Flyrant-spam, and Tau Commander-spam, and it didn't actually catch Tau Commanders because there are six or seven different datasheets for them, so they had to write an entire extra rule to stop that.

Tau commanders were limited before the Ro3, and there are more units that made the Rule Of 3 necessary. At the same tournament that made GW aware of the hive tyrand problem, there was a high-placing list with 8 PBC, as well as dark reaper and shining spear spam. There are also tons of spamable HQ units, like dawn eagle captains, GMDK or TS daemon princes. There was also scion spam and storm raven spam, each needed to be handled by their own rule to nerf them.
So saying that spam is not a problem in 8th edition is flat out wrong.

Dawneagle Captain-spam was a joke list and pretty effectively nerfed by the changes to character targeting anyway (you can't prevent the other guy from shooting the damaged one by parking the undamaged one in front anymore). And the main reason people take three Captains is because Custodian infantry are expensive and bad, which means the Supreme Command detachment is a better way of getting them into a list than spending the thousand points you'd need to take an Outrider detachment or wasting a hundred and fifty points on a pointless Guard squad.

Dark Reapers/Shining Spears are rendered powerful by Soulburst actions (now limited to one of each variety per turn) and psychic powers/stratagems (always limited to one of each per turn). The more different units you take the worse the Soulburst action/psychic power is (since you aren't taking max squads) and the worse subsequent units are (since they don't have rerolls/save bonuses/to-hit penalties/shoot-and-scoot).

Stormraven-spam was powerful in the Index, before Dawneagles, before the Knight-Castellan, before Russes and Fire Prisms got price drops and double shots...I have a sneaking suspicion if you tried to run a five-Stormravens-and-Guilliman list today you'd see one or two Stormravens crashing every turn. Not to mention the fact that they have to stop (giving up Hard to Hit and unchargeability) to score.

I don't see how the GMDK is that big of a problem given the diminishing returns on taking more psykers and given that the Rule of 3 still allows six Dreadknights. People spammed them more because there are no other playable units in that army book than anything else; similarly Thousand Sons Daemon Princes are much more of a spam threat because the rest of the book (Rubrics, vehicles) are kind of crap. Those two are more internal problems than external problems and would be fixed if you fixed their army books.

Everything else is either a) rendered powerful by psychic powers/stratagems/relics/warlord traits that you can't duplicate and therefore not really worth spamming (ex. Hive Guard, Knight-Castellan), b) so spammable within the Rule of 3 that a typical 2,000pt limit is more of a limiting factor than the Rule of 3 (ex. Leman Russes, of which you can have 12 (3 squads of 3 and 3 commanders) before running afoul of the Rule of 3), c) not really worth spamming, or d) Troops and therefore unaffected.

So, if nothing is affected and at least one unit is nerfed by it, there is no reason not to use it.

The most nonsensical thing about the Rule of 3 is the arbitrary divisions between which tanks can be taken in squadrons and which can't, or which tanks are separate datasheets and which are weapon options on the same datasheet. If the Rule of 3 is necessary for game balance you're telling me that nine Russes are completely fair but four Onagers would be broken, and that it's totally okay if I take twelve Predators but if any more than three of them have flamers the game would collapse, unless I'm playing Blood Angels and then it's fine. There are also a lot of units (Guard Veterans, Servitors, Assault Marines, Inquisitorial Acolytes, Sisters of Silence...) that could allow for interesting build variety if you were allowed to take more of them.

I'd rather see instead of the Rule of 3 a generalization of the Tau Commander rule that says you can't have duplicate HQ datasheets within detachments (or in the case of Tau Commanders only one thing with the Commander keyword); it'd catch out things like Flyrants and Tau Commanders that are issues when spammed, patch gibberish soup builds with Supreme Command detachments of upper-tier SM/Custodes characters running about with armies of Guardsmen or three Thousand Sons daemon princes deciding it'd be fun to leave their own armies behind and hang out with a Death Guard army, and wouldn't interfere with people who want to do sensible things that involve having a large number of duplicate non-Troops units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stux wrote:
...Nah, there were other problem units. Remember that list with I think it was 7 Dark Talons that was doing rather well?

Look, it's not perfect. But it keeps a bunch of degenerate lists in check. Sure, some still slip through. Could probably do with tightening up still. But I'm very glad it's a thing.

I'm reasonably certain that SM flyer-spam was only really a thing before the scoring nerf came down, and neither the scoring nerf nor the Rule of 3 has put a crimp in Eldar flyer-spam simply because they have three datasheets' worth of good airplanes.

 Stux wrote:
I'd be ok with that, works in Kill Team. Could make it all detachment based even, like the Tau Commander rule.

I guess nearly everything would be better then the band aid we got now, except for no rule at all.

There should not be any reason f.e. to not allow more then 3 termi squads beeing played , etc. At the same time the DP sheets should get a uniified keyword and then stopped there to succesfuully curb them there a bit.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Spoiler:

 Jidmah wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The Rule of 3 exists to nerf two things: Flyrant-spam, and Tau Commander-spam, and it didn't actually catch Tau Commanders because there are six or seven different datasheets for them, so they had to write an entire extra rule to stop that.

Tau commanders were limited before the Ro3, and there are more units that made the Rule Of 3 necessary. At the same tournament that made GW aware of the hive tyrand problem, there was a high-placing list with 8 PBC, as well as dark reaper and shining spear spam. There are also tons of spamable HQ units, like dawn eagle captains, GMDK or TS daemon princes. There was also scion spam and storm raven spam, each needed to be handled by their own rule to nerf them.
So saying that spam is not a problem in 8th edition is flat out wrong.

Dawneagle Captain-spam was a joke list and pretty effectively nerfed by the changes to character targeting anyway (you can't prevent the other guy from shooting the damaged one by parking the undamaged one in front anymore). And the main reason people take three Captains is because Custodian infantry are expensive and bad, which means the Supreme Command detachment is a better way of getting them into a list than spending the thousand points you'd need to take an Outrider detachment or wasting a hundred and fifty points on a pointless Guard squad.

Dark Reapers/Shining Spears are rendered powerful by Soulburst actions (now limited to one of each variety per turn) and psychic powers/stratagems (always limited to one of each per turn). The more different units you take the worse the Soulburst action/psychic power is (since you aren't taking max squads) and the worse subsequent units are (since they don't have rerolls/save bonuses/to-hit penalties/shoot-and-scoot).

Stormraven-spam was powerful in the Index, before Dawneagles, before the Knight-Castellan, before Russes and Fire Prisms got price drops and double shots...I have a sneaking suspicion if you tried to run a five-Stormravens-and-Guilliman list today you'd see one or two Stormravens crashing every turn. Not to mention the fact that they have to stop (giving up Hard to Hit and unchargeability) to score.

I don't see how the GMDK is that big of a problem given the diminishing returns on taking more psykers and given that the Rule of 3 still allows six Dreadknights. People spammed them more because there are no other playable units in that army book than anything else; similarly Thousand Sons Daemon Princes are much more of a spam threat because the rest of the book (Rubrics, vehicles) are kind of crap. Those two are more internal problems than external problems and would be fixed if you fixed their army books.

Everything else is either a) rendered powerful by psychic powers/stratagems/relics/warlord traits that you can't duplicate and therefore not really worth spamming (ex. Hive Guard, Knight-Castellan), b) so spammable within the Rule of 3 that a typical 2,000pt limit is more of a limiting factor than the Rule of 3 (ex. Leman Russes, of which you can have 12 (3 squads of 3 and 3 commanders) before running afoul of the Rule of 3), c) not really worth spamming, or d) Troops and therefore unaffected.

So, if nothing is affected and at least one unit is nerfed by it, there is no reason not to use it.

The most nonsensical thing about the Rule of 3 is the arbitrary divisions between which tanks can be taken in squadrons and which can't, or which tanks are separate datasheets and which are weapon options on the same datasheet. If the Rule of 3 is necessary for game balance you're telling me that nine Russes are completely fair but four Onagers would be broken, and that it's totally okay if I take twelve Predators but if any more than three of them have flamers the game would collapse, unless I'm playing Blood Angels and then it's fine. There are also a lot of units (Guard Veterans, Servitors, Assault Marines, Inquisitorial Acolytes, Sisters of Silence...) that could allow for interesting build variety if you were allowed to take more of them.

I'd rather see instead of the Rule of 3 a generalization of the Tau Commander rule that says you can't have duplicate HQ datasheets within detachments (or in the case of Tau Commanders only one thing with the Commander keyword); it'd catch out things like Flyrants and Tau Commanders that are issues when spammed, patch gibberish soup builds with Supreme Command detachments of upper-tier SM/Custodes characters running about with armies of Guardsmen or three Thousand Sons daemon princes deciding it'd be fun to leave their own armies behind and hang out with a Death Guard army, and wouldn't interfere with people who want to do sensible things that involve having a large number of duplicate non-Troops units.


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 Stux wrote:
...Nah, there were other problem units. Remember that list with I think it was 7 Dark Talons that was doing rather well?

Look, it's not perfect. But it keeps a bunch of degenerate lists in check. Sure, some still slip through. Could probably do with tightening up still. But I'm very glad it's a thing.

I'm reasonably certain that SM flyer-spam was only really a thing before the scoring nerf came down, and neither the scoring nerf nor the Rule of 3 has put a crimp in Eldar flyer-spam simply because they have three datasheets' worth of good airplanes.

Even if I ignore that you get half your facts wrong and have no clue what some units do, you just provide the same fallacy as many other posters. Just because the rule is not the perfect, sensible solution to everything, doesn't mean it makes the game worse.
WH40k with Ro3 is still better than WH40k without it because unit spam has been a problem and will continue to be one unless you put a limit on datasheets.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:
There should not be any reason f.e. to not allow more then 3 termi squads beeing played , etc. At the same time the DP sheets should get a uniified keyword and then stopped there to succesfuully curb them there a bit.

I have yet to see a single battle report of some one getting curb-stomped by the fabled 9 daemon prince list.

Yet, you still think that there should be a rule of three for daemon princes, but not for terminators. Which feels pretty hypocritical, considering that chaos can field 9 units of terminators for the same reasons they can field 9 daemon princes. Loyalist marines can field 12 units of terminators without even adding a second codex. Imperium can have a total of 33 Terminator squads by combining codex marines, dark angels and space wolves. I guess someone put a stop to that as well.