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Topic...

You can only play 3 games of 40k in any given month

Pain4Pleasure wrote:
You can only play 3 games of 40k in any given month

If you'd said this yesterday (April 1st), I'd given you an exalt.

OnT:
With how detachments work in 8th, it's possible to say, field 10 Dreadnoughts in an army without running out of Elite-choices, or 10 Leman Russes, etc.
The rule of 3 says that you can only ever field 3 of the same unit/data-slates (excluding troops) in the same army. Max 3 Leman Russes, max 3 Whirlwinds, max 3 units of Obliterators, etc.

It's essentially to prevent spam and abuse due to the removal of the old Force Organization Chart.

(Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think I've ever had to pay attention to the rule of 3 as I don't tend to spamm the same unit when I play.)

On a more serious, not april 2nd fool's joke, note...



It is a way for Games Workshop to force people to buy more different units.
Seriously! Sort of.



It is a rule suggestion (which some people see as almost as important as ancient religious texts) which limits your army building to no more than 3 units, which are taken from the same datasheet, in any given army (or detachment).
So, if you want to build an old-school Space Marine battle company (6 Tactical, 2 Assault, and 2 Devastator squads, plus vehicles, elite support, and HQ command structure), you couldn't. You could not use a Battalion or Brigade Detachment and use six Space Marine Tactical Squads. The rule of 3 would forbid that. Time to get three boxes of Intercessors instead of three Tactical Squads (hence the forcing of buying more different units).

Why the objections to it? Some people like to quote the rule, even in narrative pick-up games, treating it as "Holy Text for Every Game" instead of a rule suggestion for tournament play. In my humble opinion (that being a non-tournament and very casual player), it leads to a lot of unnecessary discussion. I like to spend my time playing the game, rather than discussing why I (still) have five Scout Squads in my Scythes of the Emperor force.

 Lord Xcapobl wrote:
On a more serious, not april 2nd fool's joke, note...
So, if you want to build an old-school Space Marine battle company (6 Tactical, 2 Assault, and 2 Devastator squads, plus vehicles, elite support, and HQ command structure), you couldn't. You could not use a Battalion or Brigade Detachment and use six Space Marine Tactical Squads. The rule of 3 would forbid that. Time to get three boxes of Intercessors instead of three Tactical Squads (hence the forcing of buying more different units).

Wrong.
The rule of 3 does not apply to troops, so you can take as many tactical squads as you like.

 Dalymiddleboro wrote:
Topic...

It's when you have too many Sith (Chaos Sorcerers) together, backstabbing occurs, so the rule of three is one master and two apprentices.

On a more serious note, for non-troops, non-dedicated transports, you can't have more copies of a specific data sheet than you have in availible detachments. So if you're playing 1,000 points (two detachments), you can't have more than two copies of the same unit. This applies, even if you take one detachment. So in 1,000 points you can only have two assault squads, or two dev squads, or two of each. But you could take as many tac squads as your heart and points can bear. Just keep in mind two things. Some vehicles come in squads, and some Index and forgeworld data sheets have different names.

So even with the rule of three (3 detachments are the most common), you could still field tons of leman russ (each choice is 1-3, so up to 9), then 0-9 LR conquerors, 0-9 LR annihilators, 0-9 Demolishers, 1-3 commanders, and Pask. For a total of 40 leman russ...assuming you had the points.

MinscS2 wrote:

Pain4Pleasure wrote:
You can only play 3 games of 40k in any given month

If you'd said this yesterday (April 1st), I'd given you an exalt.

OnT:
With how detachments work in 8th, it's possible to say, field 10 Dreadnoughts in an army without running out of Elite-choices, or 10 Leman Russes, etc.
The rule of 3 says that you can only ever field 3 of the same unit/data-slates (excluding troops) in the same army. Max 3 Leman Russes, max 3 Whirlwinds, max 3 units of Obliterators, etc.

It's essentially to prevent spam and abuse due to the removal of the old Force Organization Chart.

(Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think I've ever had to pay attention to the rule of 3 as I don't tend to spamm the same unit when I play.)

Sort of incomplete.

While you can't take more than 3 of a data sheet, because squadrons are a thing you aren't actually limited to only 3 Russes.

Not to mention Troops and Dedicated Transports are not affected.

Lord Xcapobl wrote:On a more serious, not april 2nd fool's joke, note...

It is a rule suggestion (which some people see as almost as important as ancient religious texts) which limits your army building to no more than 3 units, which are taken from the same datasheet, in any given army (or detachment).
So, if you want to build an old-school Space Marine battle company (6 Tactical, 2 Assault, and 2 Devastator squads, plus vehicles, elite support, and HQ command structure), you couldn't. You could not use a Battalion or Brigade Detachment and use six Space Marine Tactical Squads. The rule of 3 would forbid that. Time to get three boxes of Intercessors instead of three Tactical Squads (hence the forcing of buying more different units).

Unfortunately wrong. Troops are not affected by rule of 3.

Here, because having the official source is best...

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/04/16/warhammer-40000-big-faq-1-the-low-downgw-homepage-post-1fw-homepage-post-2/

You can get it from the Rulebook FAQ as well here...

https://whc-cdn.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/warhammer_40000_rulebook_en.pdf

Right...

Considering I have this info from a tournament player as I didn.t even read the rule itself carefully enough (indeed the little text in parenthesis below the main body of the ...

I stand corrected. Shame on me.
But it still is a way for GW for force people to buy more different sets. No more Terminator spam. No more devastator spam. No more Dreadnought hordes. An end to biker companies and Heldrake swarms.

In tournaments.

I ust found this Bell of Lost Souls article about it. Interesting read.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/09/40k-the-rule-of-three-needs-to-go.html

SM can still easily spam Dreadnoughts though.

3x Dreadnoughts, 3x Ironclad, 3x Venerable, 3x Redemptor and 3x Contemptor. That's 15 Dreadnoughts before adding FW-stuff.

Edit: And Terminators: 3x Terminators, 3x Assault Terminators, 3x Cataphractii and 3x Tartaros.

 Lord Xcapobl wrote:
Right...

Considering I have this info from a tournament player as I didn.t even read the rule itself carefully enough (indeed the little text in parenthesis below the main body of the ...

I stand corrected. Shame on me.
But it still is a way for GW for force people to buy more different sets. No more Terminator spam. No more devastator spam. No more Dreadnought hordes. An end to biker companies and Heldrake swarms.

In tournaments.

I ust found this Bell of Lost Souls article about it. Interesting read.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/09/40k-the-rule-of-three-needs-to-go.html

Well, the "rule-of-3" is not a rule. It's a recommendation of something that events can do. The specific wording will depend on the respective tournament package or tournament rule, depending on how they formulate "their rule-of-3".

As far as BoLS & co. feeling hemmed in by it, the event recommendation by GW very explicitly says people (organising tournaments) should modify this "guideline" to suit their needs. There is nothing there that would prevent any given tournament to make it a rule-of-4, or a rule-of-7, or a rule-of-1-of-each-type-of-detachment or whatever you fancy.

You can actually field like 66 Leman Russes because they come in squadrons and there are a bunch of Forge World Leman Russ variants that are unique datasheets. Unfortunately, a lot of them are Vanquishers, which are really, really bad.

Anyway, the rule of 3 states that you can only include up to 3 of any unique datasheet, with the exception of units with the Troops or Dedicated Transport role. It's designed to stop things like 8 Flyrants as a list.

It's got good points and bad points. On the upside, things like 8 squads of Dominions, or 12 Flyrants, aren't things anymore. On the downside, not all armies have as wide a selection of options/viable options as Space Marines, and combined with the high requirements for mandatory HQ's in detachments, it's possible to hit a limit on fieldable detachments. [Dark Eldar, for example, only have one HQ choice +1 special character for a given subgroup, so you can have at most 2 battalions of a kind]

Interesting you should mention specifically that, MinscS2.

As the datasheet named "Space Marine Dreadnought" (or something like that) is limited to three.
And then the datasheet named "Ironclad Dreadbought" (or something like that) is limited to three.
And...
And...
And...

That Bell of Lost Sould article went into this. Spam still being available if you just take all the different datasheets with 'sort of the same' models. A feature for some armies, but not for others. And in doing so, GW shot the rule way past its purpose.

 Lord Xcapobl wrote:
Interesting you should mention specifically that, MinscS2.

As the datasheet named "Space Marine Dreadnought" (or something like that) is limited to three.
And then the datasheet named "Ironclad Dreadbought" (or something like that) is limited to three.
And...
And...
And...

That Bell of Lost Sould article went into this. Spam still being available if you just take all the different datasheets with 'sort of the same' models. A feature for some armies, but not for others. And in doing so, GW shot the rule way past its purpose.

Again, the "rule-of-3" is explicitly a loosely worded recommendation for TOs which every tournament must specify. If it's not in the tournament package, it doesn't apply, because it is not a real matched play rule.

If a tournament feels this is a problem, they can easily formulate it along the lines of "no more than 3 datasheets with the dreadnought keyword" or whatever.

In Matched Play games that use the rule, you can only have up to 3 units that share the same Datasheet unless that unit is from the Troops or Dedicated Transport battlefield role.

Its a band-aid fix to limit spamming the most cost efficient effective units without having to address the underlying issue of internal codex balance.

 NurglesR0T wrote:
In Matched Play games that use the rule, you can only have up to 3 units that share the same Datasheet unless that unit is from the Troops or Dedicated Transport battlefield role.

Its a band-aid fix to limit spamming the most cost efficient effective units without having to address the underlying issue of internal codex balance.

/shrug


Limiting availability is perfectly viable way to balance things.
- That is why Stratagems run on a limited CP currency an a 1-per-phase-basis instead of "use as much as you want".
- That is why most matched play games use a 3-detachment limit instead of use as many as you want.
- That is why Warlord Traits and Relics are limited instead of use as many as you want
- That why some characters are 0-1 (e.g. "named character", which is just a fancy word for a 0-1 limit) and you cannot run as many Mortarions as you want.
- That is why points limit things in the first place instead of just use as many as you want.
- Etc..

All valid points, but the codex has no internal balance if there are only a handful of units out of 20-30 Datasheets that are any good. The rule of 3 was brought on because of Tau Commander spam which was superior in every way to any other battlesuit you could take.

It was brought on because of 9x Plagueburst Crawler spam and so on.

Rather than an arbitrary number and say "you can only take 3" doesn't fix the underlying balance. Make those other 15 datasheets worth looking at based upon the army build you're going for instead of flicking through a book saying "ok, ok, trash, trash, really good and cheap, meh, trash, trash" - which is what the competitive meta has devolved into these days.

Well, because balance is mathematically impossible, if you have "free" effects like re-roll auras or chapter tactics or stratagems, etc... that aren't priced specifically to how many models/units of each type of unit are affected at any given moment.

How much is a Chaos Lord's re-roll 1 aura worth in a 1000 point game? In a 2000 point game? In a shoot list? In a close combat list? In a shooty list with a combat-oriented chapter tactic? In a shooty list with a shooty-oriented chapter tactic?


If people were serious about adapting 40K to a competitive format, there'd probably need to be far more restrictions, not less restrictions. For genuine "designed-for-competitive" you'd probably need to copy from games like Shadespire that are genuinely designed for a competitive format and have a handful of fixed lists that you can use in tournaments, and the rest is all non-tournament-play only.

E.g. the TOs, GW or the ITC or whatever would release a 2019 Space Marine list (per popular point level, e.g. one for 2000, one for 1750, etc..), fixed to the last piece of equipment, that's the 2019 space marine tournament list and that's the one you can use for playing in competitive play. The rest of the "build-what-you-want" sandbox of 40K probably shouldn't be a tournament thing at all.

These kinds of datasheet based restrictions don't always work great. For instance my club hosted a tournament with a rule of 1 system (the TO must have been a fan of the Star Wars Legacy comic books). There was still someone running two Daemon Princes - since there are two datasheets for it.

Besides, I did the math and you could have played a 100% Leman Russ army and still respected that limitation.

See the older Space Marine (loyalist or traitor) HQs who have multiple datasheets. Like for the sorcerer, you have vanilla, terminator, on disk and so on. You'd never need THAT many sorcerers.

Others have said what it is already (no more than 3 of a particular datasheet, barring troops and transports).

The part everyone just assumes though is that it's a Matched Play rule. It's an ORGANIZED Play (i.e. tournaments/events) rule that everyone has just adopted as a global Matched Play rule to be used in every game everywhere from tournaments down to casual games in your garage. This is important because you'll often see people point it out in any list, regardless of if its for an event or not. It's basically become a global rule even though that's not what it says, showing once again that too many people don't read everything and just assume it works the way they think it works. Not saying it's a bad thing, but it's not a rule that is universally applied.

Rule of three is you can only post 3 topics on Dakka per day.

The rule of 3 means collecting minis up to the multiple of three so that GW can make a profit.

Wayniac wrote:
Others have said what it is already (no more than 3 of a particular datasheet, barring troops and transports).

The part everyone just assumes though is that it's a Matched Play rule. It's an ORGANIZED Play (i.e. tournaments/events) rule that everyone has just adopted as a global Matched Play rule to be used in every game everywhere from tournaments down to casual games in your garage. This is important because you'll often see people point it out in any list, regardless of if its for an event or not. It's basically become a global rule even though that's not what it says, showing once again that too many people don't read everything and just assume it works the way they think it works. Not saying it's a bad thing, but it's not a rule that is universally applied.

It has nothing to do with the lack of reading. Everyone (especially here) fancies themselves a top table tournament player after all.

3 of a type of mini.

Brought about as an easy fix to flyrant and tau commander suit spam. basally regular crisis suits were/are kinda meh but the coldstar and commanders can be awesome, so people were takign just lists ful of them and other strong units.

limiting any nontroop unit to 3 made it so only really imperium or chaos can pull this off (IE want 6 smash captains... you can still do that with 3 blood angels captains and 3 ultramarine captains. or for chaos 3 nurgle demon princes and 3 khorne demon princes)