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We had a thread that went dormant and had a ton of speculation. There have been some reveals since then, so I thought I would start a fresh one to recap what we know and what we think the implications are for list building. I'll keep the first post up to date. The drip feed from Articles has now been joined by a torrent of authentic-looking leaks. What I think we know is:

a. CPs are fixed to your game size: 3 CP for Combat Patrol, 6 for Incursion, 12 for Strike Force (1001 to 2000 points) and 18 for Onslaught. I imagine that most of us will play between 1500 and 2000 points, so 12 points will be the norm.

b. Patrols cost 2 CPs - this was revealed this week in the Combat Patrol mission reveal. The Org Chart is the same as 8th Edition. The cost of the Patrol is refunded if your Warlord is from the Patrol.

c. Battalions cost 3 CPs - once again the same Org Chart as 8th Edition and the cost of the Battalion is again refunded if your Warlord is from the Battalion.

d. Patrols, Battalions and Brigades (4 CP) are referred to as Core detachments where your CP cost gets refunded if your Warlord is from it. The implication is that other detachments are not Core and if your Warlord is drawn from those you do not get a CP refund.

e. Drukhari essentially get their CPs refunded if they run 3 Patrols with their Warlord from one of them.

f. Super Heavy Auxilia cost 3 CP and Super Heavy Detachment cost 3 or 6 CP with a refund hinted at for some (that article dropped as I was posting - LOL).

g. Supreme Command Detachment: 0 CP, must be a Primarch, Deamon Primarch or Supreme Commander (not sure what that is yet) and only one. It must be your Warlord. +4CP if you have any Brigades, +3 CP if you have any Battalion, +2 CP if you have any Patrol. So this basically gives you a refund on one Core Detachment since this must be your Warlord. By inference it would seem that a Brigade will cost 4 CP.

h. Outrider, Spearhead and Vanguard are 3 CP each and you do not get a CP rebate with your Warlord.

i. Auxiliary Detachment are 2 CP.

j. There is a Fortification Network that costs 1 CP that gets refunded if your Warlord is from the same faction. Must be some new Fortifications coming out.

There are number of implications from these reveals. The "Captain Obvious" one is that Soup (adding cheap Battalions from other Codexes) for the sake of getting CPs is no longer a thing. Soup to add a capability will still be a thing, but there is a built-in CP cost just adding a second Detachment. Along with that, there is no real incentive to take minimum-sized Detachments. As a Dark Angel my standard lists settled on two Battalions with minimal Troops. That would have given me 13 CPs. Now, taking two Battalions would leave me with 9 CPs. I think we'll see more single Battalion forces, with the odd Brigade coming in even for Marines when you really need more than 3 HQs and rely on CPs.

Related will be that taking sub-factions from the same Codex will come at a cost. My Astra Militarum lists with Scions and Catachans or Cadians will have much less CP than they do now. On the other hand, taking a small Patrol of Scions to go with my Catachans or Cadians will not be a big deal. Before I would find a way to get them to Battalion to have even more CP. My AM lists before the For the Greater Good book were usually looking for ways to spend CPs, but now I'll have to think about it.

Specialist lists like Ravenwing and Deathwing will either still use Battalions or take the CP hit. Pure Terminators or Bikes will be looking at a very reduced CP pool. Forces of Elites can make a Battalion work with those 6 slots, but Fast Attack forces will have some limitations with only 3 in a Battalion. A single Outrider Detachment list will start with 9 CP and have only two HQs. Oh well..

Lists that relied on characters might struggle, especially those that brought in a Supreme Command with heavy-hitting HQs. To some lists this will not be a big deal, but some of the extreme ones out there that relied on souped-in Supreme Command detachments might suffer - not a bad thing I suppose.

All in all I think that the new system looks like it will rein-in list building. We might see less Characters out there. I think we will see more mono-faction forces out there. I would have preferred that Outriders and Vanguards could have the CP cost refunded with the Warlord, but heh, you can't always get what you want.

Thoughts? Any "known" factors that I am missing?

Cheers,

T2B

ps Regarding Strike Force, who knew the GW designers were 1980s WWE fans? Didn't know the BBC carried it.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/06/27/faction-focus-imperial-knights/





Tomorrow's Chaos Knights reveal will tell how the CP is refunded for the super heavy detachment.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
We do not know the full impact on specialist armies like Deathwing and Ravenwing. Without knowing the cost of Vanguards and Outriders its hard to say. Assuming that the CPs do not get refunded when your Warlord is drawn from an Outrider of Vanguard a "pure" Ravenwing list might be looking at around 9 CPs to start. Not as bad as the 4 or 5 CPs an 8th Ed one would have had, but again it will be quite constraining in terms of characters. The Sammael and two-Talonmaster build looks like a CP problem...

Speculation - Belial and Sammael (and other characters where this may be appropriate - not going to try to list them) gain a special rule where a, if they are the Warlord; and b, if they are in a Vanguard/Outrider Detachment, then the CP cost of that detachment is refunded in the same way a Battalion would be for a "normal" army.

Allows for that sort of "theme force" (to borrow a WMH term) without doing anything too game-breaking, I think?

They just added an article on Knights, 3 CP for a super heavy aux, 3 CP for a super heavy detachment if it doesn't include titanic units (IE: a pure armiger list), and 6 CP if the detachment does include titanic units.

At this point I think we have enough info to make an educated guess about the other force orgs. The cost for outriders, spearheads, Vanguards, airwings, and supreme command will probably be 3CP.

As for list building in 9th ed, the penalty is focused on additional detachments beyond the one your warlord is in, so there is no penalty for taking a non battalion as your primary. So necrons with a crowded fast attack slot, might be better off taking an outrider, and guard can do a tank army without loosing CP.

 Grimgold wrote:
They just added an article on Knights, 3 CP for a super heavy aux, 3 CP for a super heavy detachment if it doesn't include titanic units (IE: a pure armiger list), and 6 CP if the detachment does include titanic units.

At this point I think we have enough info to make an educated guess about the other force orgs. The cost for outriders, spearheads, Vanguards, airwings, and supreme command will probably be 3CP.

As for list building in 9th ed, the penalty is focused on additional detachments beyond the one your warlord is in, so there is no penalty for taking a non battalion as your primary. So necrons with a crowded fast attack slot, might be better off taking an outrider, and guard can do a tank army without loosing CP.

I concur with your assessment on CP costs. Regarding Warlord refunds, the original article referred to Core detachments getting the Warlord refund, and that "your first detachment is usually free." Usually is not the same as always, but perhaps I am reading too much into that and I'd be happy to be wrong. Maybe its that your first Detachment would "usually" have your Warlord, and therefore be free? Guess we'll see. The Knights apparently getting some kind of refund that will be announced tomorrow does give me hope for my Deathwing/Ravenwing. Being completely free of the CP Troops Tax would be nice and would jive with what Stu was saying in the early chats.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
They just added an article on Knights, 3 CP for a super heavy aux, 3 CP for a super heavy detachment if it doesn't include titanic units (IE: a pure armiger list), and 6 CP if the detachment does include titanic units.

At this point I think we have enough info to make an educated guess about the other force orgs. The cost for outriders, spearheads, Vanguards, airwings, and supreme command will probably be 3CP.

As for list building in 9th ed, the penalty is focused on additional detachments beyond the one your warlord is in, so there is no penalty for taking a non battalion as your primary. So necrons with a crowded fast attack slot, might be better off taking an outrider, and guard can do a tank army without loosing CP.

I concur with your assessment on CP costs. Regarding Warlord refunds, the original article referred to Core detachments getting the Warlord refund, and that "your first detachment is usually free." Usually is not the same as always, but perhaps I am reading too much into that and I'd be happy to be wrong. Maybe its that your first Detachment would "usually" have your Warlord, and therefore be free? Guess we'll see. The Knights apparently getting some kind of refund that will be announced tomorrow does give me hope for my Deathwing/Ravenwing. Being completely free of the CP Troops Tax would be nice and would jive with what Stu was saying in the early chats.

I can see that, though it could also be that super heavy is an exception. There are lots of super heavies out there that would make awkward super heavy armies, like baneblades or wraith knights. So maybe they took away the warlord benefit from the super heavy detachments to discourage those kind of forces, and will give knights something in specific to allow them to do it. Or it could be that only patrol, battalion, and brigade get the benefits of having the warlord, and GW is working to discourage all non-standard force orgs.

Random amusing tangent, could you build a 2k list using only a supreme command detachment?

 Grimgold wrote:
They just added an article on Knights, 3 CP for a super heavy aux, 3 CP for a super heavy detachment if it doesn't include titanic units (IE: a pure armiger list), and 6 CP if the detachment does include titanic units.

At this point I think we have enough info to make an educated guess about the other force orgs. The cost for outriders, spearheads, Vanguards, airwings, and supreme command will probably be 3CP.

As for list building in 9th ed, the penalty is focused on additional detachments beyond the one your warlord is in, so there is no penalty for taking a non battalion as your primary. So necrons with a crowded fast attack slot, might be better off taking an outrider, and guard can do a tank army without loosing CP.

I am curious as well if there will be any typical ways of refunding from vanguard / outrider and such.

I think not (maybe with the odd special character exception), as avoiding a troop tax is the benefit you get from those detachments. So you are trading CP for points. Seems perfectly fair to me.

The only ones I see as legitimately upset is maybe Chaos (Dark Eldar got a hand up), as their army is kind of designed to mix and match, as opposed to the Imperium just having a buffet of choices, cause fluff.

It's worth noting the detachment limit based on game size in your OP.

At Combat Patrol, you only get 1 detachment. Are you Drukhari? No raiding force for you. At Incursion Level? Nope, not there either. Stike Force? That's the sweet spot, but you've now got enough points that the heavy or fast attack spots from 3 patrols aren't enough- especially in the 1 Kabal, 1 Cult, 1 Coven model.

At onslaught, you could add a 4th patrol, but you'd have to pay for it. You could also add a battalion, shift your warlord to that detachment and pay for one of the 3 patrols.

But to describe Raiding force as functional for 9th is not accurate, unless they FAQ up an exception for Drukhari. It's also with noting that the advanced version of raiding force (+8CP / 6 Patrols) is not available at any size of game.

From what GW has said so far only Patrol, Battalion, and Brigade give CP refund if the Warlord is in it. They also said that Drukhari Raiding Party and the Knight Lance rules will still be in effect.

For Raiding Party, the can issue no errata and half the rule works in Strike Force or Onslaught games (+4 CP if your army includes 3 Drukari Patrols). The second half doesn't work because the rules no longer allow you to take 6 detachments.

Knight Lance needs updated errata since it used to increase the Command Points awarded by a Knight Lance based on the number of Titanic Knights in it. If they mimic the current rules, it will refund 3 CP if you Super Heavy detachment includes 1 Titanic Knight that is your warlord and possibly all 6 CP if the detachment includes 3 Titanic Knights including your warlord.

I suspect the CP refund for knights and chaos knights will be an errata first their codexes rather than something for all armies using those detachments, similar the the DE getting their faction specific rule. That would explain why it’s not mentioned in the rules for the detachments themselves.

Aash wrote:
I suspect the CP refund for knights and chaos knights will be an errata first their codexes rather than something for all armies using those detachments, similar the the DE getting their faction specific rule. That would explain why it’s not mentioned in the rules for the detachments themselves.

Yeah let's just Hope GW actually manage to word it correctly so it doesn't make Knight allies free for Guard and Admech too.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
They just added an article on Knights, 3 CP for a super heavy aux, 3 CP for a super heavy detachment if it doesn't include titanic units (IE: a pure armiger list), and 6 CP if the detachment does include titanic units.

At this point I think we have enough info to make an educated guess about the other force orgs. The cost for outriders, spearheads, Vanguards, airwings, and supreme command will probably be 3CP.

As for list building in 9th ed, the penalty is focused on additional detachments beyond the one your warlord is in, so there is no penalty for taking a non battalion as your primary. So necrons with a crowded fast attack slot, might be better off taking an outrider, and guard can do a tank army without loosing CP.

I concur with your assessment on CP costs. Regarding Warlord refunds, the original article referred to Core detachments getting the Warlord refund, and that "your first detachment is usually free." Usually is not the same as always, but perhaps I am reading too much into that and I'd be happy to be wrong. Maybe its that your first Detachment would "usually" have your Warlord, and therefore be free? Guess we'll see. The Knights apparently getting some kind of refund that will be announced tomorrow does give me hope for my Deathwing/Ravenwing. Being completely free of the CP Troops Tax would be nice and would jive with what Stu was saying in the early chats.

I hope not. That's ridiculously punishing for armies that just like to mix and match chapter tactics. 2CP would be expensive enought that you'd only ever include one extra detachment, making them 3 would see them only ever used if there was some obscenely broken BS model like pre-nerf flyrants you could pick up with them.

Ice_can wrote:

Aash wrote:
I suspect the CP refund for knights and chaos knights will be an errata first their codexes rather than something for all armies using those detachments, similar the the DE getting their faction specific rule. That would explain why it’s not mentioned in the rules for the detachments themselves.

Yeah let's just Hope GW actually manage to word it correctly so it doesn't make Knight allies free for Guard and Admech too.

Purely speculation on my part, but I expect they will have a rule in the knights and chaos knights codex that says that if a battle forged super heavy detachment of knights/chaos knights includes your warlord then it refunds the CPs for that detachment.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
There are number of implications from these reveals. The "Captain Obvious" one is that Soup (adding cheap Battalions from other Codexes) for the sake of getting CPs is no longer a thing. Soup to add a capability will still be a thing, but there is a built-in CP cost just adding a second Detachment. Along with that, there is no real incentive to take minimum-sized Detachments. As a Dark Angel my standard lists settled on two Battalions with minimal Troops. That would have given me 13 CPs. Now, taking two Battalions would leave me with 9 CPs. I think we'll see more single Battalion forces, with the odd Brigade coming in even for Marines when you really need more than 3 HQs and rely on CPs.

Given patrols only cost 2CP *AND* have the lightest troop tax, I really don't consider Soup a dead concept.

The reason people used battalions over patrols in 8th was you effectively paid 2 extra units troop tax (which for plenty of armies was <100 points) in return for 5CP. I can imagine if there was a terrain piece that cost 100points but gave you 5CP, there would have been plenty of people taking them...

I expect to continue to see soup lists in 9th.

sanguine40k wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
There are number of implications from these reveals. The "Captain Obvious" one is that Soup (adding cheap Battalions from other Codexes) for the sake of getting CPs is no longer a thing. Soup to add a capability will still be a thing, but there is a built-in CP cost just adding a second Detachment. Along with that, there is no real incentive to take minimum-sized Detachments. As a Dark Angel my standard lists settled on two Battalions with minimal Troops. That would have given me 13 CPs. Now, taking two Battalions would leave me with 9 CPs. I think we'll see more single Battalion forces, with the odd Brigade coming in even for Marines when you really need more than 3 HQs and rely on CPs.

Given patrols only cost 2CP *AND* have the lightest troop tax, I really don't consider Soup a dead concept.

The reason people used battalions over patrols in 8th was you effectively paid 2 extra units troop tax (which for plenty of armies was <100 points) in return for 5CP. I can imagine if there was a terrain piece that cost 100points but gave you 5CP, there would have been plenty of people taking them...

I expect to continue to see soup lists in 9th.

My point was that Soup to gain CP would no longer be a thing - you really want that extra capability for its own sake from Soup and pay CP for it.

Looking at the 3 x Knights, Loyal 32 and Supreme Comd Smash Captain list that was popular circa 2018/19, it would have started at around 15 CP. Now, it might have 6 or even 3 CP depending who the Warlord is and how Supreme Comd gets costed for CP. Do you still take those Smash Captains?

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

My point was that Soup to gain CP would no longer be a thing - you really want that extra capability for its own sake from Soup and pay CP for it.

Looking at the 3 x Knights, Loyal 32 and Supreme Comd Smash Captain list that was popular circa 2018/19, it would have started at around 15 CP. Now, it might have 6 or even 3 CP depending who the Warlord is and how Supreme Comd gets costed for CP. Do you still take those Smash Captains?

Ah, you weren't clear about your point regarding soup for cp Vs soup for effect.

In your example, I would expect the loyal 32 to get dropped and an elite unit added to the Smash Caps in replacement, leaving the list on ~9cp base.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Personally, I would be very happy to see the Supreme Command detachment to go away in 9th...

sanguine40k wrote:

Given patrols only cost 2CP *AND* have the lightest troop tax, I really don't consider Soup a dead concept.

The reason people used battalions over patrols in 8th was you effectively paid 2 extra units troop tax (which for plenty of armies was <100 points) in return for 5CP. I can imagine if there was a terrain piece that cost 100points but gave you 5CP, there would have been plenty of people taking them...

I expect to continue to see soup lists in 9th.

I think people saying its dead are possibly exaggerating the value of a few CP - but it may not be competitively optimal, which would make me happy.

If your soup list was say 2 battalions (okay it probably wasn't but go with it) - you go from 13 CP to 9+5 CP over a game, assuming there isn't some special soup tax. By turn 4 you are therefore in the same position. Your 2 turn 40k alpha strike is going to be down 2 CP, but I doubt that is the end of the world.

If spearheads/outriders etc wind up being 2 CP you are only 1 CP down by turn 2. And as you said - it may be possible to do a patrol (although I feel the inability to take say 3 of a key unite, dilutes its usefulness a bit.)

the screw over to Gulliman is annoying. but maybe trhe brigade will now allow for 1 LOW slot thus making Gulliman etc more a "3000 points game" unit?

Let's look at my last Astra Militarum list (not saying that it was very meta or competitive but its what I know). I had a Battalion of Cadians, a Battalion of Catachans and a Battalion of Scions. This gave me 18 CPs, some of which went into secondary Warlord Traits and relics. It also gave me three complementary "doctrines." Now, I would have 6 CPs, or 7 if I made the Scions a Patrol. Seeing as I would likely be spending at least 2 CPs before the game I would be looking at starting with 4 or 5 CPs. So while the Scions might still make the cut for me next month, my line will either be Cadian or Catachan and not both. Additionally, it will likely be a Brigade. So there is still "Soup" for effectiveness, but certainly not the same level and its for effectiveness' sake only. I am sure other players will face similar decisions.

I run Imperium and Eldar soup, and I love these new detachment rules so far. Cost/reward is finally getting applied to detachments properly, and unit restrictions are finally gaining some meaning. Whereas in 8th you had loads of spare slots in detachments, now pressure will be on you to cram and pare down to what fits. Very nice.

mlem

Aash wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Aash wrote:
I suspect the CP refund for knights and chaos knights will be an errata first their codexes rather than something for all armies using those detachments, similar the the DE getting their faction specific rule. That would explain why it’s not mentioned in the rules for the detachments themselves.

Yeah let's just Hope GW actually manage to word it correctly so it doesn't make Knight allies free for Guard and Admech too.

Purely speculation on my part, but I expect they will have a rule in the knights and chaos knights codex that says that if a battle forged super heavy detachment of knights/chaos knights includes your warlord then it refunds the CPs for that detachment.

Their existing rule (+3 CP for a Super-Heavy Detachment with at least one Titanic, +6 CP for one with at least 3 Titanics) works well to basically zero out with the new costs. Like with Dark Eldar, I think the fix will mostly be keeping the existing rule with minor errata.

 Asmodai wrote:

Aash wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Aash wrote:
I suspect the CP refund for knights and chaos knights will be an errata first their codexes rather than something for all armies using those detachments, similar the the DE getting their faction specific rule. That would explain why it’s not mentioned in the rules for the detachments themselves.

Yeah let's just Hope GW actually manage to word it correctly so it doesn't make Knight allies free for Guard and Admech too.

Purely speculation on my part, but I expect they will have a rule in the knights and chaos knights codex that says that if a battle forged super heavy detachment of knights/chaos knights includes your warlord then it refunds the CPs for that detachment.

Their existing rule (+3 CP for a Super-Heavy Detachment with at least one Titanic, +6 CP for one with at least 3 Titanics) works well to basically zero out with the new costs. Like with Dark Eldar, I think the fix will mostly be keeping the existing rule with minor errata.

Actually the codex one is +3CP for 3 titanic units and 0 for anything less, the one your refering to is only in the errata, which I believe die with 8th edition and are replaced with the day 1 FAQ's for each codex. However they did imply they are going to explain more stuff in the choas knights faction focus, which I suspect qill tell us that and more obvious blast weapons are blast weapons

However these articals haven't exactly been crammed with details and so far have already proven themselves to be wrong.
I'm also concerned that it doesn't line up with what stu said in the live and if he doesn't know well who the does know someone should have a studio copy of the rulebook by now for sake check it before you publish the articals lads.

 Asmodai wrote:

Aash wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Aash wrote:
I suspect the CP refund for knights and chaos knights will be an errata first their codexes rather than something for all armies using those detachments, similar the the DE getting their faction specific rule. That would explain why it’s not mentioned in the rules for the detachments themselves.

Yeah let's just Hope GW actually manage to word it correctly so it doesn't make Knight allies free for Guard and Admech too.

Purely speculation on my part, but I expect they will have a rule in the knights and chaos knights codex that says that if a battle forged super heavy detachment of knights/chaos knights includes your warlord then it refunds the CPs for that detachment.

Their existing rule (+3 CP for a Super-Heavy Detachment with at least one Titanic, +6 CP for one with at least 3 Titanics) works well to basically zero out with the new costs. Like with Dark Eldar, I think the fix will mostly be keeping the existing rule with minor errata.

Not at least three - it is 6 for any Titantic.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Asmodai wrote:

Aash wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Aash wrote:
I suspect the CP refund for knights and chaos knights will be an errata first their codexes rather than something for all armies using those detachments, similar the the DE getting their faction specific rule. That would explain why it’s not mentioned in the rules for the detachments themselves.

Yeah let's just Hope GW actually manage to word it correctly so it doesn't make Knight allies free for Guard and Admech too.

Purely speculation on my part, but I expect they will have a rule in the knights and chaos knights codex that says that if a battle forged super heavy detachment of knights/chaos knights includes your warlord then it refunds the CPs for that detachment.

Their existing rule (+3 CP for a Super-Heavy Detachment with at least one Titanic, +6 CP for one with at least 3 Titanics) works well to basically zero out with the new costs. Like with Dark Eldar, I think the fix will mostly be keeping the existing rule with minor errata.

Not at least three - it is 6 for any Titantic.

Wrong check the FAQ its atleast 3 dude

Change the last sentence to read:
‘The Command Benefit of each Imperial Knights Super-
heavy Detachment is changed to ‘None’ if it does not
contain at least one Imperial Knights Titanic unit,
and is changed to ‘+6 Command Points’ if it contains at
least three Imperial Knights Titanic units.’

Oh. Right. I missed that you were referencing the old rule.

I think it may destroy any LoW that isnt in their own codex - wraithknight, stormsurge, etc. 3cp is a big hit just to take one of those if knights have a work around.

Should be interesting to see how they juggle this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On the other end triple Lord of Skulls is dead, so....I can cope.

 Grimgold wrote:

Random amusing tangent, could you build a 2k list using only a supreme command detachment?

2x Farseer Syrunner
2x 10 Warlock Syrunner Conclave
Spiritseer
7 Wraithcannon Wraithguard
Wraithknight Sword n Board w/ 2 Starcannons.

Go Children of Prophecy and Wrath of the dead. It's... Ok. Not to tier competitive, but competent fur regular play.

I wonder at which point 40K became all about CPs. A few years ago, no-one had heard of them. Now they govern every aspect of "competitive play". It controls our choice of army, it controls our strategy, it determines which units are useful, it compensates for crap units, in fact it now seems necessary to let many units do their job at all. "I can shoot my gun faster because the magical hand of the Emperor... er... does something really important."

I dunno, I remember when clever use of units and positioning could win games, instead of deus ex machina.

 NoPoet wrote:
I wonder at which point 40K became all about CPs. A few years ago, no-one had heard of them. Now they govern every aspect of "competitive play". It controls our choice of army, it controls our strategy, it determines which units are useful, it compensates for crap units, in fact it now seems necessary to let many units do their job at all. "I can shoot my gun faster because the magical hand of the Emperor... er... does something really important."

I dunno, I remember when clever use of units and positioning could win games, instead of deus ex machina.

Rose tinted glasses.

CP doesn't control our choice. It gives weight to choices.

Now that its level set CP becomes more like a resource to carefully manage and stratagems may not be the free for all that they were.

 NoPoet wrote:
I wonder at which point 40K became all about CPs. A few years ago, no-one had heard of them. Now they govern every aspect of "competitive play". It controls our choice of army, it controls our strategy, it determines which units are useful, it compensates for crap units, in fact it now seems necessary to let many units do their job at all. "I can shoot my gun faster because the magical hand of the Emperor... er... does something really important."

I dunno, I remember when clever use of units and positioning could win games, instead of deus ex machina.

I think now that we actually have terrain rules, positioning will become very important, and will win games.

I do see your point; and I think in 8th, it was way more of a problem because a) people had to build detachments to game the CP system and b) the only way to spend CP was on strats, which can definitely seem gimmicky.

Ninth eliminates the first of those problems outright. Now command points are still critically important to the game, for sure, but I think there are so many ways to use them now that they probably won't seem quite as gimmicky. You will find people using fewer stategems- 12 at 2k points is lower than what a lot of armies were hitting in the first place, and some of those 12 are going to be eaten before the battle. Using them for reserves is interesting too; I think that could give you the tactical feel you're looking for- I think it'll be really fun to coordinate deepstrikers with reserves given all the new terrain rules.

The small games and their limited CP is also worth mentioning. At those lower levels, I think the game will have a more tactical feel.