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 Jidmah wrote:

As for DG, it wouldn't change much since LoC can also have the same aura that DP and lords have and the most important aura is the arch-contaminator warlord trait which can go on whatever character you want.
Fluff-wise it doesn't make much sense to make Lords and DP mutually exclusive, since there are examples where a single plague vector has both.

Well according to this, if I have understood it well, it will be still possible. But you will need a second detachment. Which will make sense fluff wise.

Worst case scenario o guess that you can still pay for an auxiliary detachment and therefore you will just need to pay 2 CP, which can be justified fuff wise as the overhead to have to equal voices in command and therefore more difficulty in making decisions.

I feel a better solution to HQ caps would be to remove Primarchs and their ilk from regular 40k (these should be Apocalypse models), and tone down other HQs considerably.

It seems that a big problem is that so many HQs get to eat their cakes and still have them. That is, in previous editions an HQ might be expected to have to choose between speed and durability. Do you take a Jump Pack for extra movement, or Terminator Armour for a 2+/5++? But now virtually all HQs come with a 4++ save (I remind you that this used to have to be purchased, and for many armies it was the equivalent of a Relic), and getting a good armour save is rarely difficult either.

Similarly, it used to be that larger HQs would be stronger and tougher than infantry-sized HQs, but couldn't attach to units and were a lot harder to hide. For example, Daemon Princes could be seen as being stronger than a Lord and Sorcerer combined, yet they paid for it by being much more vulnerable to enemy fire as they couldn't hide in infantry squads. But now, daemon princes can hide just as well as the much-smaller Lords and Sorcerers, whilst still being vastly better statwise, so why bother with either of the other two?

And added to that, we've got the mess that is auras. So now HQs can power up their entire army just by standing in the middle of the battlefield and doing bugger-all. This costs them nothing, requires no investment of resources, and leads to 0 tactical choices. It's terrible design and should have been one of the first things 9th removed from the game. But no, 9th was too busy drooling over new Marine statlines to consider fixing the godawful core rules.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Actually, I think bringing down the allowance is more important than bringing down the requirement, because I've yet to see an army this edition that didn't max out their HQ slots

As usual, Dark Eldar come to mind as an obvious counterargument.

Wakshaani wrote:
... Tyrannid getting a single Hive Tyrant...

God I hope not...

 vipoid wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Actually, I think bringing down the allowance is more important than bringing down the requirement, because I've yet to see an army this edition that didn't max out their HQ slots

As usual, Dark Eldar come to mind as an obvious counterargument.

Dark Eldar are pretty my the "obvious counterargument" to anything detachment based, because GW decided that it was 3 factions each with basically nothing.

If you take a single battalion you only get 3 slots, so I don't think its that surprising they get filled.

nekooni wrote:
While I see the point for some armies and for specific HQs, I'd rather be able to actually use my marine HQs. Moving to 1-2HQs for batallions would effectively remove most marine HQs from the game. I'm struggling with the current limit already, and no, I'm not trying to bring 3 smash captains. But bringing 1 Captain and a Lt already locks me out of multiple choices, as I will only be able to bring a chaplain OR a techmarine OR a librarian, and I think that's already very limiting. Having Captains limited to 1 is fine, though.

I don't subscribe to the idea that having heroes on the table is a bad thing, though. I really love building Marine HQs (well firstborn), and I want to use them.

I think the proliferation of heroes isn't a good thing. The buff stacking is just ridiculous, and the power of smashy heroes is ridiculous. It was ridiculous before [see: death stars], and it's ridiculous now.

At the very least, cutting HQ allowance would force choosing between the buffs you want and smashy heroes, so that there's less stacking of everything.


Also, the variety of characters aren't what's seeing the board anyway right now, so like cutting the limit wouldn't really hurt that.

 Irbis wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Also it makes it easy to FAQ on an individual basis rather than adding a global "rule of 3" sledgehammer to what should really be a scalpel.

It always amuses me how quickly people forgot about seven editions where FOC did exactly that and treat something that was tiny outlier in the whole life of 40K as the norm now

*cough*FIVE*cough*

2nd edition used % of your points to determine how many characters could be brought, and in many cases that allowance was up to 50%. I think the same was true in Rogue Trader, though that took a while before army lists were really a thing.

The Holy Force Organisation Chart only became a thing with the launch of 3rd edition, and meant many a player having to rethink existing armies.

Tyel wrote:
If you take a single battalion you only get 3 slots, so I don't think its that surprising they get filled.

And in 8th, we were seeing lists with 6 HQ's. Cutting to 3 or 4 [I'm actually seeing 2x Patrol or Batt+Patrol as pretty common] is an improvement, but not enough of one

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

nekooni wrote:
While I see the point for some armies and for specific HQs, I'd rather be able to actually use my marine HQs. Moving to 1-2HQs for batallions would effectively remove most marine HQs from the game. I'm struggling with the current limit already, and no, I'm not trying to bring 3 smash captains. But bringing 1 Captain and a Lt already locks me out of multiple choices, as I will only be able to bring a chaplain OR a techmarine OR a librarian, and I think that's already very limiting. Having Captains limited to 1 is fine, though.

I don't subscribe to the idea that having heroes on the table is a bad thing, though. I really love building Marine HQs (well firstborn), and I want to use them.

I think the proliferation of heroes isn't a good thing. The buff stacking is just ridiculous, and the power of smashy heroes is ridiculous. It was ridiculous before [see: death stars], and it's ridiculous now.

But this comes back to the point that the real issue isn't the number of HQs at all - it's that power creep and poor game design has made a lot of HQs too strong, and many with ridiculous buffs that can be applied to near enough an entire army every turn for free.

 vipoid wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

nekooni wrote:
While I see the point for some armies and for specific HQs, I'd rather be able to actually use my marine HQs. Moving to 1-2HQs for batallions would effectively remove most marine HQs from the game. I'm struggling with the current limit already, and no, I'm not trying to bring 3 smash captains. But bringing 1 Captain and a Lt already locks me out of multiple choices, as I will only be able to bring a chaplain OR a techmarine OR a librarian, and I think that's already very limiting. Having Captains limited to 1 is fine, though.

I don't subscribe to the idea that having heroes on the table is a bad thing, though. I really love building Marine HQs (well firstborn), and I want to use them.

I think the proliferation of heroes isn't a good thing. The buff stacking is just ridiculous, and the power of smashy heroes is ridiculous. It was ridiculous before [see: death stars], and it's ridiculous now.

But this comes back to the point that the real issue isn't the number of HQs at all - it's that power creep and poor game design has made a lot of HQs too strong, and many with ridiculous buffs that can be applied to near enough an entire army every turn for free.

We were seeing this pre-8th too in 7th, and 6th.

Heroes have always been too strong, or at least been too strong for a long time, and I think the solution is to limit the number of heroes from "lots" to 1-2 tops.

Then you'd be both making trade offs in what buffs/smashy heroes you want, and you'd have less of them to spread around.

 vipoid wrote:
I feel a better solution to HQ caps would be to remove Primarchs and their ilk from regular 40k (these should be Apocalypse models), and tone down other HQs considerably.

You've read what Supreme Command Detachments have to consist of now, right?

Yesyesyes, it's not them being "banished to Apocalypse"(and really, that's never going to happen unless Apocalypse becomes '40k with more points' again) but it's a Big Deal.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

We were seeing this pre-8th too in 7th, and 6th.

Heroes have always been too strong, or at least been too strong for a long time, and I think the solution is to limit the number of heroes from "lots" to 1-2 tops.

Then you'd be both making trade offs in what buffs/smashy heroes you want, and you'd have less of them to spread around.

IIRC the strength of heores in 6th was more to do with janky wound-allocation (put a character with a 2+ save at the front of a unit and have them soak all non-AP2 fire, whilst diverting all other fire to the unit via LoS), and I don't remember many characters in 7th being an issue until very late in the edition (when you started to see stuff like Iron Hands Biker Captains).

Anyway, I guess I just see it as being the opposite way around.

If you make heroes more reasonable in terms of power level, then players can include numerous heroes without it causing balance issues. To me this seems like a better solution as it would reverse the power creep that's been happening for most armies in the last few editions, whilst also allowing armies (particularly ones with cheaper HQs like guard) to field numerous HQs without feeling cheesy for doing so.

 vipoid wrote:

Voss wrote:
I'd welcome it, personally.

But I welcome pretty much anything that devalues characters and puts the focus back on normal units.

I feel that particular ship sailed when they introduced primarchs into regular 40k.

Long before that. Even the ridiculously classic Orks vs Space Wolves battle report back in second edition involved Ragnar, Njal, Ghaz and Mad Doc. Problem was the spent so many years talking about how taking Special Characters were terrible, but would do it in mass quantities in WD battle reports and still making the silly things. Pivoting to actually trying to sell them made business sense, but it still feels weird.

 Nazrak wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 carldooley wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Being T3 4+ save they generally do die when looked at by anything with the marine keyword.

I thought guard only had a 5+

Thats a Firewarrior, unfortunately 4+ save doesn't make you meaningfully more resilient vrs marines. Definataly not when that's 9 point models.

I dunno, I'd say a 50–100% better chance of not dying to standard Bolt-weapon fire is pretty meaningful. Don't get me wrong, it think 9pts is probably quite a lot compared to a 5pt Guardsman, but suggesting they're essentially the same thing and stat differences are meaningless seems a bit hyperbolic to me.

Well when it's Intercessors in tactical doctrine yeah that might save on a 6 vrs no save makes a huge difference when you have 5 wounds vrs 9 for the same point's.

Though I suspect that's really the problem for 90%of light infantry currently they have no meaningful damage output, the durability of soggy loo roll to kitchen roll.
Sadly they just arn't really worth fielding in meaningful numbers as they do not have a positive impact on the game.

 vipoid wrote:

It seems that a big problem is that so many HQs get to eat their cakes and still have them. That is, in previous editions an HQ might be expected to have to choose between speed and durability. Do you take a Jump Pack for extra movement, or Terminator Armour for a 2+/5++?

Never happened because said HQs were pointless if they couldn't move around to actually kill anything. Even in 4th when I started nobody was using any Terminator HQs because of that exact problem. GW never points absurd speed correctly.

 vipoid wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

We were seeing this pre-8th too in 7th, and 6th.

Heroes have always been too strong, or at least been too strong for a long time, and I think the solution is to limit the number of heroes from "lots" to 1-2 tops.

Then you'd be both making trade offs in what buffs/smashy heroes you want, and you'd have less of them to spread around.

IIRC the strength of heores in 6th was more to do with janky wound-allocation (put a character with a 2+ save at the front of a unit and have them soak all non-AP2 fire, whilst diverting all other fire to the unit via LoS), and I don't remember many characters in 7th being an issue until very late in the edition (when you started to see stuff like Iron Hands Biker Captains).

Anyway, I guess I just see it as being the opposite way around.

If you make heroes more reasonable in terms of power level, then players can include numerous heroes without it causing balance issues. To me this seems like a better solution as it would reverse the power creep that's been happening for most armies in the last few editions, whilst also allowing armies (particularly ones with cheaper HQs like guard) to field numerous HQs without feeling cheesy for doing so.

7th was really bad about the character buff stacking. That's what gave us death stars wherein you add a bunch of characters to a unit and wind up with something full of thunder hammers that's only hit on 6's with a 2++ and a 3+++ and moves like 12" + run + charge and so on and so on...


IG shouldn't really be fielding more than 1 CC and/or 1 TCC unless they're like in double brigade or something. And the widespread ability to field them is why IG armies had like 3x TCC and 3x CC and you didn't see Platoon Commanders like, at all, and didn't see regular Leman Russes until all three TCC's were taken. IG is something I would say is a perfect example of why the hero limits need to be made lower.

 Sim-Life wrote:
If they want to go down this road they should just bring back a cap on all units and stick it in the top corner of datasheets. Don't want people spamming a certain unit? Put a 0-2 up there. Job done. Don't mind people spamming? 0-*. Also it makes it easy to FAQ on an individual basis rather than adding a global "rule of 3" sledgehammer to what should really be a scalpel.

Woo! I wake up to find the thread hopping. Good!

On this one, they have, to a degree. There's a limit of 3 in the tournament rulebook, for example, which becomes a rule of TWO for 1000 pt games, so, that's a step in that direction. We have the one-per rule for Commanders and, as noted, it looks like Marines are getting it as well in terms of Captains (and 0-2 Lts) so I think that they might have caught on to spamming being a problem.

Insert classic "Wait what?" match between GW members and tourney players dropping six flying hive tyrants into a game.

With the Supreme Command Detatchment having been changed significantly, and the number of HQ units in Battalions lowered, I think that we're seeing the advance work needed for that.

Of course, if they *really* wanted to go wild, they could shuffle a few other HQ units from forces into an elite role, akin to how Apothecaries are now, to split "Leadership" from "Does cool stuff". IE, moving the Librarian to an Elite slot but having a Grand Librarian as an HQ option. This part's quite unlikely tho as I've seen no evidence of such a thing.

You'd need to put more support in to several armies for that jr command role, however. The Orks getting a Big Boss that would be between a Warboss (waaagh) and a nob, for instance, like the Tau have a Commander but also room for Fireblades. Guard would need Sr Officer and Jr Officer, but that kind of nudges things a bit. I don't think this cripples any army, but, I'm not familiar with everyone's designs, either.

If anyone's army would fail to function with this, please raise yoru hand? I'd like to know more about why.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I really hate this kind of arbitrary design restriction.

The issue isn't taking multiple captains, the issues are Auras are too good. Remove all auras and replace them with Order/MWBD type effects, imho.

I agree that it's arbitrary and I don't like it either BCB, It's treating a symptom instead of the cause, but I think the issue is some units being too pts-efficient because of damage output, not because of buff-output. If you were just looking for a buff you would still only take one, but you would see than 1-of in every list, but that's not what we've seen, we've seen Commanders, DPs and Smash Captains spammed for their damage output and relatively low cost. Changing auras into MWBD effects would only further incentivise spamming HQs to cover all the units you want to be covered with these abilities, it's still a good idea for other reasons, but if you don't also get rid of all the free re-rolls attached to Chapter Tactics then re-rolls will still be overabundant. The change to Necron Overlords I like, they've been given an aura to disincentivise spamming them. Lords need to go in the other direction, there should be a greater incentive to spam Lords because we should be seeing more Lords than Overlords on average on the tabletop. Tank Commanders are the perfect unit to show how targeted abilities can be a bad idea because they can target themselves and get more out of that than they ever could from buffing a regular LRBT, they should have an aura ability instead. AM Company Commanders are just too cheap compared to the Elites with Voice of Command. Despite being literally mandatory in 5th-7th they've been nowhere in my games of 8th.

As I understand it Dark Eldar, Sisters and some others are getting new HQs anyway?

I'd rather have limited HQ's than weak HQ's, honestly. It's really disappointing how much of a wet noodle the Overlord is.

I am pro-captain/HQ restrictions. My annoyance at the current Battalion organization is that I have to take 2 HQs. Plus, seeing multiple Cpatains in a SM army is kinda annoying anyways. I think this is a good rule, thematically.

This shouldn't have any impact on the Sammael + 2x Talonmasters that my army will likely run.

 Mr Morden wrote:
As I understand it Dark Eldar, Sisters and some others are getting new HQs anyway?

for dark eldar we're getting a new model for lelith, a named character locked to a subfaction's subfaction that is already in the codex.

It's fine to implement when there's plenty of HQ options to use, as it encourages diversity without strongly discouraging larger cohesive detachments.

As a T'au player, it was the second part where things got hung up.

I suspect the same will be true for most factions that don't start with Spa- and end with -ines.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
As I understand it Dark Eldar, Sisters and some others are getting new HQs anyway?

for dark eldar we're getting a new model for lelith, a named character locked to a subfaction's subfaction that is already in the codex.

She might also get the Ynnari keyword....which would be 'great'

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Never happened because said HQs were pointless if they couldn't move around to actually kill anything. Even in 4th when I started nobody was using any Terminator HQs because of that exact problem. GW never points absurd speed correctly.

I would have to at least partially disagree. I can certainly tell you that I saw a lot of terminator HQs used in 3rd and 4th.

Honestly, I think the balance between terminator and jump pack HQs was usually about right. It seems like the issue is almost always with bikes - as they grant speed *and* durability. So basically they're the best of both worlds.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

7th was really bad about the character buff stacking. That's what gave us death stars wherein you add a bunch of characters to a unit and wind up with something full of thunder hammers that's only hit on 6's with a 2++ and a 3+++ and moves like 12" + run + charge and so on and so on.

You're probably right. I think I may have repressed some of my memories of 7th.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
As I understand it Dark Eldar, Sisters and some others are getting new HQs anyway?

for dark eldar we're getting a new model for lelith, a named character locked to a subfaction's subfaction that is already in the codex.

Exactly this.

Dark Eldar need some actual new HQs (or at least more options for existing ones - like jetbikes/wings/skyboards and their wargear back), not just yet another remake of an existing character sculpt.

 harlokin wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
As I understand it Dark Eldar, Sisters and some others are getting new HQs anyway?

for dark eldar we're getting a new model for lelith, a named character locked to a subfaction's subfaction that is already in the codex.

She might also get the Ynnari keyword....which would be 'great'

Forcing choices is always bad. I really hope that Ynnari gets fixed by letting us run any Aeldari in a single Ynnari detachment. All while still allowing Lelith/eldrad/the other ynnari-aligned named characters to be run in their own codexes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:

Exactly this.

Dark Eldar need some actual new HQs (or at least more options for existing ones - like jetbikes/wings/skyboards and their wargear back), not just yet another remake of an existing character sculpt.

the worst part is how easy these options are to convert, if only GW broke their own rules for us just like they do with their space marines captains on bike

 vipoid wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Never happened because said HQs were pointless if they couldn't move around to actually kill anything. Even in 4th when I started nobody was using any Terminator HQs because of that exact problem. GW never points absurd speed correctly.

I would have to at least partially disagree. I can certainly tell you that I saw a lot of terminator HQs used in 3rd and 4th.

Honestly, I think the balance between terminator and jump pack HQs was usually about right. It seems like the issue is almost always with bikes - as they grant speed *and* durability. So basically they're the best of both worlds.

The on a bike = tougher thing has always baffled me because IRL we know that a motorcycle greatly increases your chances of ending up dead or seriously injured.

 vipoid wrote:

Dark Eldar need some actual new HQs (or at least more options for existing ones - like jetbikes/wings/skyboards and their wargear back), not just yet another remake of an existing character sculpt.

Aside from named characters, what HQ are they missing? Legit question as I'm not terribly familiar with them. I know there's a Wych leader and a Kabal leader, and each would need a Jr option, but I'd rather listen to someone that's invested in the faction on this one as I'm largely ignorant here.

Wakshaani wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Dark Eldar need some actual new HQs (or at least more options for existing ones - like jetbikes/wings/skyboards and their wargear back), not just yet another remake of an existing character sculpt.

Aside from named characters, what HQ are they missing? Legit question as I'm not terribly familiar with them. I know there's a Wych leader and a Kabal leader, and each would need a Jr option, but I'd rather listen to someone that's invested in the faction on this one as I'm largely ignorant here.

Sure.

Well, for starters, DE are a faction based around mobility... with 0 access to mobility options for their HQs.
They used to be able to take skyboards and jetbikes on Archons and Haemonculi, but those were all removed and currently don't even exist in Legends.

Second, as you already alluded to, they have no junior HQs. They used to have both Archons and Dracons, and Haemonculi and Haemonculi Ancient. However, the lesser versions were removed in both cases in the 7th edition book. So currently each subfaction has just a single generic character to its name. This means that a lot of detachments are basically forced to use two of the same HQ and is really annoying from a fluff/flavour perspective (as if I don't want to include special characters, I have to include 2 Archons in a Kabal Battalion - who absolutely do not jointly lead raids.)

Third, the 7th edition book also removed 5/8 of DE's special characters - including the supreme leader Vect (this would be the equivalent of removing Abaddon from CSM or Ghazghkull from Orks). These were never returned to the codex, nor were they ever replaced with other characters or even other generic HQs.

Finally, on a purely personal note, I've always wanted a Mandrake HQ. For me they're one of the most interesting DE units and have some of the nicest models, in spite of their age. However, with the loss of Kheradruakh the Decapitator (one of the casualties of the 7th edition book) they've been left without any HQ representation at all. This is something I find very sad, as I've always wanted a Mandrake-themed army. However, whilst I freely admit that this is a personal request, I do think it would serve multiple purposes on a mechanic front:
- Mandrakes currently can't benefit from the auras of any other HQs, so giving them their own HQ would provide a means to actually buff them a little.
- The current army-building rules are very restrictive, especially in terms of HQs, but a Mandrake HQ would give a generic option that could be taken in Kabal, Coven or Cult detachments (as opposed to, say, a remake of Lelith - who can only be taken by Cult detachments, and then only if they're Cult of Strife).
- Given that Mandrakes have repeatedly demonstrated pseudo-magic abilities in the fluff, a Mandrake character could be the DE equivalent of a psyker, giving the army some much-needed support abilities.

(I could also make an argument for a Scourge HQ, but honestly I think that would be served just fine by an Archon with wings and a better selection of wargear.)

Anyway, hopefully this has helped answer your question.