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One of the challenges with strategems is that you technically have access to every single one at any time and get to pick which one you use so you maximize its effect.

It would be like buying a heavy weapon upgrade and getting to choose which heavy weapon it was whenever you fired it.

Hence why having to choose your strategems at army creation makes it easier to balance and makes it a resource you have to think carefully about.

At the moment, you basically have the ability to only apply the most potent strategem for the situation you are currently in at any given time, making it less a tactical decision and more of a matching game- which one of these strategems maximizes outcomes in the turn I'm in.

Hellebore wrote:
At the moment, you basically have the ability to only apply the most potent strategem for the situation you are currently in at any given time, making it less a tactical decision and more of a matching game- which one of these strategems maximizes outcomes in the turn I'm in.

I think that's a problem of opportunity cost. If one stratagem or combo clearly outperforms everything else, of course it's the only one you'll care about.

Not Online!!! wrote:
No,
that would just facilitate abuse and skew, same with old flyer rules etc. Some factions got then a distinct major advantage whilest others could twiddle their thumbs.

Ok you're confusing me. First you propose removing super heavys from the game, then you complain that the 25% rule would eliminate mono knights. If you want less super heavys in the game why do you care if the 25% rule gets rid of mono knights?

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
No,
that would just facilitate abuse and skew, same with old flyer rules etc. Some factions got then a distinct major advantage whilest others could twiddle their thumbs.

Ok you're confusing me. First you propose removing super heavys from the game, then you complain that the 25% rule would eliminate mono knights. If you want less super heavys in the game why do you care if the 25% rule gets rid of mono knights?

No, you misunderstand me, i have nothing against the elimination of knights f.e., i just brought it up as a point that the 25% rule has consequences that would eliminate an army ( which is iffy regardless of your position torwards said army).
Allowing them to bypass the rules however is like the old flyer and skimmer rules when not every faction hat atleast something to deal with it.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
No,
that would just facilitate abuse and skew, same with old flyer rules etc. Some factions got then a distinct major advantage whilest others could twiddle their thumbs.

Ok you're confusing me. First you propose removing super heavys from the game, then you complain that the 25% rule would eliminate mono knights. If you want less super heavys in the game why do you care if the 25% rule gets rid of mono knights?

No, you misunderstand me, i have nothing against the elimination of knights f.e., i just brought it up as a point that the 25% rule has consequences that would eliminate an army ( which is iffy regardless of your position torwards said army).
Allowing them to bypass the rules however is like the old flyer and skimmer rules when not every faction hat atleast something to deal with it.

Ok I understand you now. I also don't care if the rule would eliminate knights as a standalone army. An entire army compromised of just a few big models makes for boring games in my opinion.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
I think its 100% fine to dump it all at once, its a limited resource. Now what i don't agree with is how many stratagems there are, how easy it is to make 3 detachments and get lots of CP and that some stratagem are even in the game.

Stratagems and CP should be highly viable, game changing and limited, a strong tactical tool that if used at the wrong time its basically wasted. But.... sadly that nots 8th.

And for when i was playing nids all the time, Nids ONLY WORKED b.c i could use 15-17 CP turn 1, without that it was impossible for me to even win.

Given how 8th is, this would be a terrible change even if i don't like the system. We need a full new system or do nothing but balance the CP cost of more stratagems than what they are doing now.

Sounds like you were playing Nids very poorly then. That's not what you should be doing.

Nope your wrong, with genestealers able to move faster, fight twice, move between fighting twice, and having double shooting, along with double moving other units (yes they take a couple MW's), etc.. it was extremely effective.

When i am able to actual win with them vs this crap in the game, i think i'm doing what needs to be done.

TLDR... I think there should be a set of core stratagems that can be used once per phase (i.e. reroll, melee interrupt and auto-pass morale and mission specific ones) and all others are one use per game. This completely eliminates stratagem abuse and puts less pressure on needing a large pool of command points.

 oni wrote:
TLDR... I think there should be a set of core stratagems that can be used once per phase (i.e. reroll, melee interrupt and auto-pass morale and mission specific ones) and all others are one use per game. This completely eliminates stratagem abuse and puts less pressure on needing a large pool of command points.

And also eliminates all stratagem depending armies.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 oni wrote:
TLDR... I think there should be a set of core stratagems that can be used once per phase (i.e. reroll, melee interrupt and auto-pass morale and mission specific ones) and all others are one use per game. This completely eliminates stratagem abuse and puts less pressure on needing a large pool of command points.

And also eliminates all stratagem depending armies.

Yes, csm players shouldn't need cp for their legions to play as they should. "A talent for murder " should have been a legion trait, not broken up between a stratagem and a warlord trait.

And no army should require strategems just to function.

Yoyoyo wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Nobody is going to double tap with a 5 man Chaos Marine unit to begin with though. Just make it 3CP like all the other double fighting Strats.

You're inviting problems that way.

- 1CP to double-fire CSM with 2x special weapons = good.
- 2CP to double-fire Havocs = good.
- 3CP to double-fire 3x Oblits = good.

If you make it 3CP for every single unit? You're penalizing CSM compared to Oblits, and excacerbating the overarching problem of taking units specifically for their stratagems.

You're still not going to use it because the density of weapons is terrible, so it shouldn't even be considered a possibility someone would waste their one shot a turn to use it on a Chaos Marine squad.
Besides, Stratagems like that shouldn't exist to begin with. There's no strategy to a Stratagem that just has a unit shoot twice.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You're still not going to use it because the density of weapons is terrible, so it shouldn't even be considered a possibility someone would waste their one shot a turn to use it on a Chaos Marine squad.

This kind of rational conclusion is exactly what we want to avoid through rules tweaks. Look at this possibility. Say you have 3CP to spend this turn, and you’re holding two unachievable Tactical Objectives. If you want to double-fire your Oblits, you can’t re-prioritise your Tactical Objectives and that costs you VP.

The bigger question is ‘opportunity cost’. If there’s no better way for a faction to spend CP than on one preset combo, it’s not making the game more interesting.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 oni wrote:
TLDR... I think there should be a set of core stratagems that can be used once per phase (i.e. reroll, melee interrupt and auto-pass morale and mission specific ones) and all others are one use per game. This completely eliminates stratagem abuse and puts less pressure on needing a large pool of command points.

And also eliminates all stratagem depending armies.

Yes, csm players shouldn't need cp for their legions to play as they should. "A talent for murder " should have been a legion trait, not broken up between a stratagem and a warlord trait.

And no army should require strategems just to function.

Ohh absolutely agree but so long we are stuck with an 8.1 dex i am not willing to Part with the stratagems so long traits and General army rules aren't fixed and considering the ammount of times GW attempted to fix those but allways failed i have no high hopes.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 oni wrote:
TLDR... I think there should be a set of core stratagems that can be used once per phase (i.e. reroll, melee interrupt and auto-pass morale and mission specific ones) and all others are one use per game. This completely eliminates stratagem abuse and puts less pressure on needing a large pool of command points.

And also eliminates all stratagem depending armies.

Yes, csm players shouldn't need cp for their legions to play as they should. "A talent for murder " should have been a legion trait, not broken up between a stratagem and a warlord trait.

And no army should require strategems just to function.

Ohh absolutely agree but so long we are stuck with an 8.1 dex i am not willing to Part with the stratagems so long traits and General army rules aren't fixed

Yeah I hate the current situation of csm. Without strategems we're fethed. Which forces cp farming thus limiting our unit and detachment options.

Meanwhile loyalists have options galore.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 oni wrote:
TLDR... I think there should be a set of core stratagems that can be used once per phase (i.e. reroll, melee interrupt and auto-pass morale and mission specific ones) and all others are one use per game. This completely eliminates stratagem abuse and puts less pressure on needing a large pool of command points.

And also eliminates all stratagem depending armies.

Yes, csm players shouldn't need cp for their legions to play as they should. "A talent for murder " should have been a legion trait, not broken up between a stratagem and a warlord trait.

And no army should require strategems just to function.

Ohh absolutely agree but so long we are stuck with an 8.1 dex i am not willing to Part with the stratagems so long traits and General army rules aren't fixed

Yeah I hate the current situation of csm. Without strategems we're fethed. Which forces cp farming thus limiting our unit and detachment options.

Meanwhile loyalists have options galore.

Which isn^'t inherently bad.

The bad part is that GW just switched mid edition again their Dex design. That is the issue.

Yes, and as usual everyone is left waiting for their new code and hoping it'll be good. If they really wanted to they could have fixed a lot of the problems with pa. At least fix the legion traits and give the legions back their respective troops.

Gadzilla666 wrote:
Yes, and as usual everyone is left waiting for their new code and hoping it'll be good. If they really wanted to they could have fixed a lot of the problems with pa. At least fix the legion traits and give the legions back their respective troops.

but then they'd miss out on dex 2.0 sales, which could be stacked with PA sales.

see the issue.

Yoyoyo wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You're still not going to use it because the density of weapons is terrible, so it shouldn't even be considered a possibility someone would waste their one shot a turn to use it on a Chaos Marine squad.

This kind of rational conclusion is exactly what we want to avoid through rules tweaks. Look at this possibility. Say you have 3CP to spend this turn, and you’re holding two unachievable Tactical Objectives. If you want to double-fire your Oblits, you can’t re-prioritise your Tactical Objectives and that costs you VP.

The bigger question is ‘opportunity cost’. If there’s no better way for a faction to spend CP than on one preset combo, it’s not making the game more interesting.

Yes, and at no point did someone think to themselves "boy I wish I could double fire with my Chaos Marines or Chosen XD"
If you're gonna spend that many CP to double shoot, you should actually be thinking carefully instead of making affordable all nillywilly so you don't think about it. In fact, the only reason the double fighting Stratagem should be 2CP is just because melee is hard to achieve. There's no good reason to make it cheaper for certain units. Decide if it's actually worth fighting twice or not.

Your way takes actual thinking out of the game. Regardless of making it more expensive for certain units, only certain units will see use of those Stratagems.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
Yes, and as usual everyone is left waiting for their new code and hoping it'll be good. If they really wanted to they could have fixed a lot of the problems with pa. At least fix the legion traits and give the legions back their respective troops.

but then they'd miss out on dex 2.0 sales, which could be stacked with PA sales.

see the issue.

Yeah I see it. Just like announcing new fw books and immediately trying to get people to buy the current ia books that will soon be obsolete.

Cash is king.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Yes, and at no point did someone think to themselves "boy I wish I could double fire with my Chaos Marines or Chosen XD"

There is zero thinking involved if you are just matching stratagem XYZ with whatever unit gives you the most mathhammer return on using it.

If you want to encourage not re-enacting for the same canned combo every game -- you need real opportunity costs. Not "my oblits shoot better than my CSM" for the exact same 2CP spent. That's the concept of "internal balance".

These things need to go completely.

I think I would rsther see 40k go more the AOS route. Having detatchments that provided bonuses but cost points in list building. Then attaching certain strats to character and heavily restricting the command points you get per turn.

Well, this would be an option to think about.
Would take the sting out of some combos and lead to less ''power gaming''.

While I'm not sure 1 Stratatem per phase is the correct answer, 8E edging nearer 7E's bloat and it's clear that the stratagem system is becoming increasingly unwieldy. People used to recoil in horror early in the edition at armies with 20+ CP, but often without anything terribly powerful to spend them on most of the time however. Now armies are dumping 7 CP before the game even starts on significant new capabilities that often radically alter power levels, and get crazier from there. I'm afraid we've probably reached the point in this edition where it's only going to get worse with Stratagems until a new edition comes up with a new system for GW to introduce and slowly bloat to take their place.

CPs have been the bane of this edition. Lock all an armies flavor behind CP use and as its rolled on they get more and more out of control until you find broke lists that as has been said drop it all in one super CP explosion to try and hammer blow the opponent away.

I said it way in the beginning, CP for Strats is this editions formations, you even use CPs to buy the current formations. They aren't a good thing and while at first I thought, maybe they'll just add some depth, they have evolved into being make or break aspects for most armies in consideration of use.

I still like stratagems as a concept. It's just that the execution needs a little refinement. Basically what I expected when they were introduced to "normal" 40k this edition.

I think a lot of the issue with strats is that they're trying to be a bunch of things all at once.

* You use them to buy unit upgrades like relics, flakk missiles, veteran intercessors, and chapter masters/great harlequins/alliances of agony, but those things could and probably should just be upgrades that cost points. Possibly with a 0-1 limit on how many of each one you can take.

* You use them for large-scale tactics and special actions like orbital bombardments, infiltrating, deepstriking, etc. These, to me, are what "stratagems" are advertsised as. These seem fitting.

* You use them for special attacks/maneuvers on individual units. Almost like a new fangled version of "Might" from the old days. Like a mana bar shared across every unit in your army. While I really like most of these abilities (lightning fast reactions, stalker bolt rifles sniping characters, fighting twice), it seems very odd that a smash captain's ability to go on a rampage is based on how many guardsmen or tactical marines are present at the start of the battle.

If we think of these as three different types of benefits rather than classifying them all as "stratagems," we could open up some interesting means of modifying how they're handled. Maybe the first category go back to being wargear/units that you pay points for. Maybe the second category is paid for with "command points" per now. Maybe the third category is fueled by a new resource called "Might" that isn't generated based on army composition (so no more loyal 32 cp batteries for smash captains). Or maybe you simply put a limit on how much Might can be spent on a given unit each turn.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, this would be an option to think about.
Would take the sting out of some combos and lead to less ''power gaming''.

(except if you are numarines )

I apologize if this was already asked and answered, but what about pre-match strats? Victors of the Blood games? etc. I would say this is a good start but we could go further to address the issue this is attempting to help, which is strat abuse.

Start by making all IH lists only able to use certain strats usable on certain conditions. The repaid strat, make that only when the target is below hald health. Double shoot, only if the target hasn't had a full movement that turn etc. You can balance many of the more abusive strats by makingf them more speciific

 Daedalus81 wrote:
As I watched the LVO games it became apparent to me that many players were doing massive CP dumps. Nayden dropped literally all of his turn 1 for example.

Marines are driven by this, but with the addition of leaning on warlord traits. However, with a TFC not getting double shoot AND tremor, or players deciding between transhuman or duty eternal this turn could drastically reduce issues.

There may be some caveats. Just as Thousand Sons get unrestricted smite the armies that operate on strats like GSC may need to be allowed two or more.

Thoughts? Do you think this would hurt you more than help the game? Can you separate your desire for crazy combos for the health of the game?

My thought is that you almost realized how stupid a blanket restriction like this is when you immediately had to make exceptions within 3 paragraphs of the proposed rule.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, this would be an option to think about.
Would take the sting out of some combos and lead to less ''power gaming''.

(except if you are numarines )

Yeah, play a game with no stratagems vs numarines and see how well you do while their 17 chapter tactic blanket army wide rules dunk you off the table.

This is less than I'd expect from you deadalus.

Some armies should be allowed more strats per turn? Just not marines? This is a terrible idea.

The way you fix this issue is one of the main issues I have been complaining about all edition. Stacking stratagems is the problem. 1 Strat per unit max. So you get double shoot or tremor - not both. No issue for playing 2 seperate buffs a turn on 2 units. That just costs a lot of CP. Transhuman is actually a very fair stratagem - you can completely ignore it if you shoot a weapon that wounds on 4's or 5's. Unlike a -1 to hit which can't be ignored. Or a +1 armor which can't be ignored unless you have ap-4 or something.

Some armies are built around stacking stratagems like CSM - they should be compensated in some way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jeff white wrote:
These things need to go completely.

I would also be in favor of this.