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 Peregrine wrote:

"I don't care" =/= "I expect RO3 to be followed but might grant an exception". The poll does not show apathy towards RO3, it shows that most people expect it to be followed as the standard but some people might consider granting an exception in certain cases if the other player justifies it sufficiently and the army looks fun. I would not at all take that as an endorsement of showing up with a non-RO3-legal army and expecting people to be happy to allow it.

I didn't use words 'I don't care.' Most people of course will have some preference. They're just willing to be flexible about it.

Ultimately what the default assumption is will vary from place to place. Even if these numbers were accurate (which I doubt) 20% is not insignificant percentage and would certainly mean that in many places RO3 is not routinely assumed.

I voted "no".

I do not expect people to follow rule of 3 outside organised play but I do know that most people adhere to it in pickup games, so I'll usually build my lists following this guideline.

I have a friend who likes to be "tournament ready" in all his games, so I know he'll always follow the rule of 3. Sometimes I've played against him using a list that doesn't follow the rule of 3, but his always do. He's very familiar with my collection and knows I don't have any meta-busting combos so he's pretty relaxed about what I field, but 90% of the time we try to be consistent and both stick to the same restrictions.

I have another friend who plays power level and has about 10 different armies built off the Start Collecting boxes with a few extra things tossed in that he thinks are cool. A lot of them abide by the rule of 3, but it's largely coincidental.

I personally own 5 Foetid Bloat Drones for my Death Guard. Before the Rule of 3 was a thing my army was going to run 2 of each kind as it's heavy hitters. I would never field all 5 against someone without prior discussion, and I hope others hold themselves to the same standard but I'm not going to get upset at someone for not following the rule of 3 in a pickup game if we hadn't discussed it beforehand.

So yeah... there's my fairly self-contradictory take on it. I don't EXPECT people to follow it, but I ASSUME they are until proven otherwise.

I voted no. And outside of tournaments where we also explicitly point out that the rule of 2(our tourneys are 1000pts) is in play I really don't expect it.

But I also know that none of my opponents actually have 4 of any unit aside from troops

Stop calling it rule of 3. There is no such thing. The word rule suggests it's an actual rule, which it isn't. It's a suggestion for organized play. You don't have to follow it, if you and your opponent don't agree to use it. I fail to understand how 51% voted yes. You completely misunderstood this suggestion of 3.

Isn't it more accurately called the Organized Play Suggestion of 2/3/4?

Most of my games are 1,000 or lower, being limited to only two of thing sucks.

 Blndmage wrote:
Isn't it more accurately called the Organized Play Suggestion of 2/3/4?

Most of my games are 1,000 or lower, being limited to only two of thing sucks.

Yes. OPS234 is how it should be abbreviated.

I won't like the rule of 3 really until it feels like all the books were written with that rule in mind. As some units that used to be troops, were put into different slots because they were assumed to be no limits on them. It really chews my craw dads sometimes as it makes various set ups of my armies pointless and leads to many wasted models that since I made the army I could take limitless amounts of.

Like say guard heavy weapon squads, I get people spammed the hell out of them, but since 4th edition at least you could have tons of them around. Now, my totally legal units from 4th ed through 7th and decades of play are restricted by rule of 3 as their own squads because they are heavy. For me it sucks as I have a lot of various weapon squads I'd love to see the table but can't because other more bothersome choices made it bad.

Yet I can still field a 13 battle tanks with the greatest of ease if I wanted to, or all the storm troopers, yet only 3 vet squads, or even 3 commissars before I need to field lord commissars when they used to be individual squad upgrades for the last 3 edtions before this.

 p5freak wrote:
Stop calling it rule of 3. There is no such thing. The word rule suggests it's an actual rule, which it isn't. It's a suggestion for organized play. You don't have to follow it, if you and your opponent don't agree to use it. I fail to understand how 51% voted yes. You completely misunderstood this suggestion of 3.

Of course it's a rule. A suggested rule is still a rule. It fits the defintion of what a rule is, it's a totally valid term for it.

 p5freak wrote:
Stop calling it rule of 3. There is no such thing. The word rule suggests it's an actual rule, which it isn't. It's a suggestion for organized play. You don't have to follow it, if you and your opponent don't agree to use it. I fail to understand how 51% voted yes. You completely misunderstood this suggestion of 3.

Same goes for the whole rulebook. Its not a suggestion if every event uses it.

Rules on tournaments have their own house rules, some are even more restricted.

I voted No, I don't play in tournaments so don't really care about suggested rules that aren't relevant. Thankfully most of the tournament players have moved to a different FLGS so most of the people I play against also ignore it. Which makes for a more enjoyable experience

While numbers have lessened a bit, little seems to have changed since I did a similar poll about a year ago.

It's also fairly representative, as polls on other sites usually also end up with 75-85% in favor of limiting datasheets.

So it's safe to assume that people will not be ok with you bringing more than 3 of any non-troop, non-transport choice without asking first.

What's also an interesting take-away from this is that if you have a very good chance of being able to play your oddball army that has more than three of some unit for fluff/budget/nostalgic reasons if you ask first (70-75%) - which happens to be one of the main arguments against employing the rule of 3.

Voted yes, but with exceptions. I am fully on board with it not being an actual rule except in tournament play, but honestly, if your army is made up of 90% the same unit I'm probably going to think you're lacking in imagination and not going to expect a fun game from your boring army. Then again, in some cases, mainly fluffy ones, I'd be willing to overlook or even encourage it.

 Blndmage wrote:
Isn't it more accurately called the Organized Play Suggestion of 2/3/4?

Most of my games are 1,000 or lower, being limited to only two of thing sucks.

If you take more than two copies of a unit at 1000 points you are almost certainly making a boring spam list, exactly the sort of nonsense that the rule is intended to keep out of the game.

In a pick up game I would use it myself in any list I brought, and expect my opponent to do the same, armies and/or opponents unseen.

In a pre-arranged game where my opponent asked if he could bring 4+ of a unit, and gave me a decent explanation of what and why, I'd be fine with allowing exceptions if it was not clearly stupid OP.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
Isn't it more accurately called the Organized Play Suggestion of 2/3/4?

Most of my games are 1,000 or lower, being limited to only two of thing sucks.

If you take more than two copies of a unit at 1000 points you are almost certainly making a boring spam list, exactly the sort of nonsense that the rule is intended to keep out of the game.

I can think of a number of units one would take more than two of at 1000pts that would hardly be boring spam, stuff like Guard HWS's and SWS's for example.

Likewise, it's not like there aren't tons of goofy loopholes, I can bring 6 Hellhounds or 6 Predators in a 1000pt game under "rule of 2". Likewise, I can bring at least 8 dreadnoughts of different types in a Space Marine army under a rule of 2 (assuming I have points to spare), but only 2 Helbrutes in a CSM army

Now, I broadly am ok with the rule for matched play to curb people spamming entire armies composed of one absurdly undercosted unit, but beyond that, it's difficult to see much value or greater intent given the loopholes and other realities of army construction that GW has gone out of its way to offer.

 Jidmah wrote:
Since we are discussing this again, I wonder how the acceptance has shifted. Last time I did a similar poll more than 80% were using that rule.

Once again, I'm asking about how you handle it in games you actually play, not about hypothetical events you will probably not attend.
If the answer differs for you because you play under varying conditions, pick the one you would apply for most of your games.

I've gotten away from it. TBH it was a cheap excuse to fix a glaring issue with other rules by gimping certain models.

Crisis Suits were trash compared to Commander Suits, so instead of fixing Crisis Suits, they just gimped the commanders and called it good. However, doing this actually gimped ALL armies commanders as it was applied as a nice cozy blanket!

I think one person at my FLGS actually changed what lists they were running due to the Rule of 3. It banned a lot of things people weren't bothering with anyway.

I'm not sure this was JUST a Tau issue. Because Tau/Chaos weren't dominating Meta like Guard/Eldar were/still are. So I think there were other considerations.

The worst offenders for the spam were the ones who got called out by name, but I don't see why they never limited any of the IG vehicle squadrons. Or made it possible to "squadron" other units, say Predators.

I voted option 2, with most of my exceptions being for either newer players, or players who like to use lists that tend towards high/fluff, lower/power.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I'm not sure this was JUST a Tau issue. Because Tau/Chaos weren't dominating Meta like Guard/Eldar were/still are. So I think there were other considerations.

Yes. Like Command Squads for Guard, Commander Suits being better than Crisis Suits, etc.

The worst offenders for the spam were the ones who got called out by name, but I don't see why they never limited any of the IG vehicle squadrons. Or made it possible to "squadron" other units, say Predators.

Why would they limit the vehicle squadrons? They get affected by your precious Rule of 3 when it's active, it just lets them do the fluffy thing: have more tanks than you.

And frankly, the Skorpius and Onagers should get squadrons before frigging Predators.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I'm not sure this was JUST a Tau issue. Because Tau/Chaos weren't dominating Meta like Guard/Eldar were/still are. So I think there were other considerations.

Yes. Like Command Squads for Guard, Commander Suits being better than Crisis Suits, etc.

The worst offenders for the spam were the ones who got called out by name, but I don't see why they never limited any of the IG vehicle squadrons. Or made it possible to "squadron" other units, say Predators.

Why would they limit the vehicle squadrons? They get affected by your precious Rule of 3 when it's active, it just lets them do the fluffy thing: have more tanks than you.

And frankly, the Skorpius and Onagers should get squadrons before frigging Predators.

Command squads are self limiting. You are only allowed to have 1 per commander. So self imposed rule of 3, since the start of 8th. Did you mean SWS?

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Command squads are self limiting. You are only allowed to have 1 per commander. So self imposed rule of 3, since the start of 8th. Did you mean SWS?

You stated:

I'm not sure this was JUST a Tau issue. Because Tau/Chaos weren't dominating Meta like Guard/Eldar were/still are. So I think there were other considerations.

Guard Command Squads didn't have the 1:1 ratio until the book dropped and it was a direct result of people whining about Command Squad spam from the Index. Which could simply have been avoided by making them an HQ choice with the Commander in the first place but whatever.

That's one of the "other considerations". They directly added a Matched Play only caveat as a result of those "other considerations" rather than fix the problem(Command Squads were a dirt cheap way to get a full squad of suicide plasma gunners) in other ways.
The same thing happened with that derptastic Commissar/Conscript "change". They added the stupid "Raw Recruits" rule to make it so there's a 50/50 chance of Conscripts receiving Orders rather than simply removing the <Regiment> tag from them...and gutted the Commissar at the same time, apparently not realizing they could have added a caveat to "Raw Recruits" to make it so Conscripts lost more than 1 model at a time to Summary Execution.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Command squads are self limiting. You are only allowed to have 1 per commander. So self imposed rule of 3, since the start of 8th. Did you mean SWS?

You stated:

I'm not sure this was JUST a Tau issue. Because Tau/Chaos weren't dominating Meta like Guard/Eldar were/still are. So I think there were other considerations.

Guard Command Squads didn't have the 1:1 ratio until the book dropped and it was a direct result of people whining about Command Squad spam from the Index. Which could simply have been avoided by making them an HQ choice with the Commander in the first place but whatever.

That's one of the "other considerations". They directly added a Matched Play only caveat as a result of those "other considerations" rather than fix the problem(Command Squads were a dirt cheap way to get a full squad of suicide plasma gunners) in other ways.
The same thing happened with that derptastic Commissar/Conscript "change". They added the stupid "Raw Recruits" rule to make it so there's a 50/50 chance of Conscripts receiving Orders rather than simply removing the <Regiment> tag from them...and gutted the Commissar at the same time, apparently not realizing they could have added a caveat to "Raw Recruits" to make it so Conscripts lost more than 1 model at a time to Summary Execution.

Man, the old Conscript spam method seems like AGES ago....

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I'm not sure this was JUST a Tau issue. Because Tau/Chaos weren't dominating Meta like Guard/Eldar were/still are. So I think there were other considerations.

The worst offenders for the spam were the ones who got called out by name, but I don't see why they never limited any of the IG vehicle squadrons. Or made it possible to "squadron" other units, say Predators.

No doubt, there were other offenders, I think Dark Reapers were a big part of it too. But I remember at the time, Tau were getting gak on from every corner of the meta and then when this rule suggestion hit, a lot of the suit players I knew hung up their scrubs and moved on to other games out of frustration.

 Togusa wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I'm not sure this was JUST a Tau issue. Because Tau/Chaos weren't dominating Meta like Guard/Eldar were/still are. So I think there were other considerations.

The worst offenders for the spam were the ones who got called out by name, but I don't see why they never limited any of the IG vehicle squadrons. Or made it possible to "squadron" other units, say Predators.

No doubt, there were other offenders, I think Dark Reapers were a big part of it too. But I remember at the time, Tau were getting gak on from every corner of the meta and then when this rule suggestion hit, a lot of the suit players I knew hung up their scrubs and moved on to other games out of frustration.

Flyrants? Remeber those.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
Isn't it more accurately called the Organized Play Suggestion of 2/3/4?

Most of my games are 1,000 or lower, being limited to only two of thing sucks.

If you take more than two copies of a unit at 1000 points you are almost certainly making a boring spam list, exactly the sort of nonsense that the rule is intended to keep out of the game.

I can think of a number of units one would take more than two of at 1000pts that would hardly be boring spam, stuff like Guard HWS's and SWS's for example.

Likewise, it's not like there aren't tons of goofy loopholes, I can bring 6 Hellhounds or 6 Predators in a 1000pt game under "rule of 2". Likewise, I can bring at least 8 dreadnoughts of different types in a Space Marine army under a rule of 2 (assuming I have points to spare), but only 2 Helbrutes in a CSM army

Now, I broadly am ok with the rule for matched play to curb people spamming entire armies composed of one absurdly undercosted unit, but beyond that, it's difficult to see much value or greater intent given the loopholes and other realities of army construction that GW has gone out of its way to offer.

I agree fully on this, but I think this is a case of the guard book was before the rule of 3 was handed down from on high. So I quietly hope we see some of those choices rolled back into a platoon set up kind of structure in troops so we can use them once more freely.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
Isn't it more accurately called the Organized Play Suggestion of 2/3/4?

Most of my games are 1,000 or lower, being limited to only two of thing sucks.

If you take more than two copies of a unit at 1000 points you are almost certainly making a boring spam list, exactly the sort of nonsense that the rule is intended to keep out of the game.

I play a themed Necron list.
If you know anything about them, you'd know that Spyders and Scarabs aren't all that good.
My entire collection is based around a sleeping Tombworld that's only just awakening.
I have 4+ units of Scarabs, 6 Spyders, 59 warriors, etc, my collection isn't competitive in any way, it's purely narrative.

Are you saying that more than two copies of ANY unit is spamming at 1,000 and under? Even troops?

 Blndmage wrote:
Are you saying that more than two copies of ANY unit is spamming at 1,000 and under? Even troops?

No. Troops, meaning the basic infantry of an army and not any of the various "but this elite/heavy/whatever unit should really be troops in MY army" excuses, should have an exception because they should be the core of your army. But for anything else two is plenty at 1000 points and under. Let's say those units are 100-150 points each. That's now 20-30% of your points spent on copies of the same unit, and you really think you should be able to dedicate more of your list to it? Try taking something else and making an interesting list instead of just copy/pasting the same unit over and over again.

It's a short-sighted imposition from an optional rule that directly flies in the face of playing a Raiding Force that's directly called out in a core rule from the Drukhari codex. Classic baby-with-the-bathwater nonsense.