Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Blackie wrote:
Problem isn't complexity, is avoiding a controversy which was the main issue with blasts/templates and AV facings.

It was only a controversy for people that were already out looking to argue about something. I personally haven't witnessed a discussion about blast template scatter/whom it hits or AV last beyond a few sentences and have been playing since 3rd. I think the real problem is it looked complicated, so the whole "display the game for new players in stores" wasn't chugging along.

Perhaps turning the thread a bit - but how many troops do people think people should be bringing?

Because to my mind if you brought 30 kabalites - that's surely enough kabalites. Okay it was only 180 points in old money before blasters etc - but still. Ditto with 30 fire warriors. Should every faction be going "I start with 90 boyz and work up"?

If someone brought 40 intercessors, don't you think "that's a lot of intercessors" - not "eh, standard."

To my mind min-troops would be literally taking none, or a couple of patrols to get away with just 10 of the cheapest models you can slot in. Most factions don't do this - and the ones that do are doing it because, as said, their troops are explicitly overcosted and bad.

Depends on the fluff.

In "real life" (i.e. the universe where they live), my Slaanesh Daemons have 30 'nettes as handmaidens for each Keeper. But I don't own enough Daemonettes for that (I have half as many as I would need), nor would I ever be able to play that many the way I like to play my army.

Conversely, my superheavy tank regiment for my Imperial Guard have no troops (since infantry regiments are kept very distinct from armored and superheavy regiments, etc).

My Inquisition would love it if inquisitorial acolytes counted as troops - I'd bring 3-10 for each Inquisitor. But sadly, they're elites, so I guess they don't count?

My Sororitas order brings 7 or 8 squads of 10 girls each in troops, with a squad of Celestians, 3 Retributor squads, and some characters / Seraphim / Dominions. No tanks.

My Eldar would prefer to have lots of troops (mechdar themed around modern mechanized forces, where the troops inside the Wave Serpent are like infantrymen and the wave serpent itself is a fire support and mobility platform) but Eldar troops are so trash it's hard to visualize, so right now I have 1x5 Dire Avengers in each transport, and plan to fill out the transports with other units (e.g. Howling Banshees x5) in an effort to make the infantry component of the army work. No wraiths.

Etc.

Tyel wrote:
Perhaps turning the thread a bit - but how many troops do people think people should be bringing?

Because to my mind if you brought 30 kabalites - that's surely enough kabalites. Okay it was only 180 points in old money before blasters etc - but still. Ditto with 30 fire warriors. Should every faction be going "I start with 90 boyz and work up"?

If someone brought 40 intercessors, don't you think "that's a lot of intercessors" - not "eh, standard."

To my mind min-troops would be literally taking none, or a couple of patrols to get away with just 10 of the cheapest models you can slot in. Most factions don't do this - and the ones that do are doing it because, as said, their troops are explicitly overcosted and bad.

Part of why I would like Troops to be useful rather than simply cheap is because I really don't like the idea of having to buy and paint up 50+ models that are essentially worthless cannon fodder, where you need 100+ for them to constitute any sort of actual force on their own.

If you were running pure Kabal at 2K with a generic well-rounded list, I'd expect around 40 Kabalites, split between footslogging and transported. That comes to about 20% of your army's points spent on Troops, which feels about right as a baseline. Yes, Kabalites currently underperform for their cost- but I'd like to see their capabilities improve, rather than the cost just dropped.

~20% of the points total means 60-80 Guardsmen (depending on loadout), 40-50 Boyz, Kabalites, or Fire Warriors, and 20 Tacticals/Intercessors. I think that seems about right, but you tell me what you think.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Troops are a necessary evil in the game.
This doesn't reflect in circumstance that troops should be a overwhelming part of an army.
Playing mostly with troops seems boring and so the larger emphasis on elites, FA and heavies is an outcome of this.

Troops can be plenty of fun, especially when they are customizable to your army . Even better when they are the quintesential vessle for "Your Dudes" kinda style lists...

i miss militia customisation...

 Blackie wrote:
Problem isn't complexity, is avoiding a controversy which was the main issue with blasts/templates and AV facings.

I'm going to agree with Unit on this one. Not once have I ever had an argument about templates or armor facings. The argument that a mechanic causes arguments is itself problematic- vague rules can lead to arguments, not mechanics, and the rules were perfectly clear on how these things worked.

It was not difficult to tell where a Falcon's front, rear, and sides were- the rulebook explicitly told us to draw an imaginary X centered over the vehicle- the vehicle's shape was irrelevant.

People who argue over templates or armor facings are people who are trying to eke out any small advantage they can- changing rules doesn't stop this kind of behavior.

Do vehicles need 4 facings? Probably not. Front and rear would have sufficed. But boy do I want to seed fined firing arcs for vehicle weapons and some widgets for it.

Templates were much cleaner, and far more visually appealing, than D6 hits, with an extra X hits from the new blast rule or whatever.

 catbarf wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Perhaps turning the thread a bit - but how many troops do people think people should be bringing?

Because to my mind if you brought 30 kabalites - that's surely enough kabalites. Okay it was only 180 points in old money before blasters etc - but still. Ditto with 30 fire warriors. Should every faction be going "I start with 90 boyz and work up"?

If someone brought 40 intercessors, don't you think "that's a lot of intercessors" - not "eh, standard."

To my mind min-troops would be literally taking none, or a couple of patrols to get away with just 10 of the cheapest models you can slot in. Most factions don't do this - and the ones that do are doing it because, as said, their troops are explicitly overcosted and bad.

Part of why I would like Troops to be useful rather than simply cheap is because I really don't like the idea of having to buy and paint up 50+ models that are essentially worthless cannon fodder, where you need 100+ for them to constitute any sort of actual force on their own.

If you were running pure Kabal at 2K with a generic well-rounded list, I'd expect around 40 Kabalites, split between footslogging and transported. That comes to about 20% of your army's points spent on Troops, which feels about right as a baseline. Yes, Kabalites currently underperform for their cost- but I'd like to see their capabilities improve, rather than the cost just dropped.

~20% of the points total means 60-80 Guardsmen (depending on loadout), 40-50 Boyz, Kabalites, or Fire Warriors, and 20 Tacticals/Intercessors. I think that seems about right, but you tell me what you think.

The only thing I'd disagree with is splitting Kabalites between footslogging and transported. That seems far less fluffy than starting all of them in transports.

Tyel wrote:
Perhaps turning the thread a bit - but how many troops do people think people should be bringing?

Because to my mind if you brought 30 kabalites - that's surely enough kabalites. Okay it was only 180 points in old money before blasters etc - but still. Ditto with 30 fire warriors. Should every faction be going "I start with 90 boyz and work up"?

If someone brought 40 intercessors, don't you think "that's a lot of intercessors" - not "eh, standard."

To my mind min-troops would be literally taking none, or a couple of patrols to get away with just 10 of the cheapest models you can slot in. Most factions don't do this - and the ones that do are doing it because, as said, their troops are explicitly overcosted and bad.

In a "standard" size game, I should think at least 3 units of troops in an army.

Blastaar wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Problem isn't complexity, is avoiding a controversy which was the main issue with blasts/templates and AV facings.

I'm going to agree with Unit on this one. Not once have I ever had an argument about templates or armor facings. The argument that a mechanic causes arguments is itself problematic- vague rules can lead to arguments, not mechanics, and the rules were perfectly clear on how these things worked.

It was not difficult to tell where a Falcon's front, rear, and sides were- the rulebook explicitly told us to draw an imaginary X centered over the vehicle- the vehicle's shape was irrelevant.

People who argue over templates or armor facings are people who are trying to eke out any small advantage they can- changing rules doesn't stop this kind of behavior.

Do vehicles need 4 facings? Probably not. Front and rear would have sufficed. But boy do I want to seed fined firing arcs for vehicle weapons and some widgets for it.

Templates were much cleaner, and far more visually appealing, than D6 hits, with an extra X hits from the new blast rule or whatever.

And hell, GW could have easily made diagrams for each vehicle in their range showing what facing was what and included them in the codex unit entry and on a piece of paper in the model box. Top down picture of model (which can also be used for marketing purposes), then add the arcs on it.

 catbarf wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Perhaps turning the thread a bit - but how many troops do people think people should be bringing?

Because to my mind if you brought 30 kabalites - that's surely enough kabalites. Okay it was only 180 points in old money before blasters etc - but still. Ditto with 30 fire warriors. Should every faction be going "I start with 90 boyz and work up"?

If someone brought 40 intercessors, don't you think "that's a lot of intercessors" - not "eh, standard."

To my mind min-troops would be literally taking none, or a couple of patrols to get away with just 10 of the cheapest models you can slot in. Most factions don't do this - and the ones that do are doing it because, as said, their troops are explicitly overcosted and bad.

Part of why I would like Troops to be useful rather than simply cheap is because I really don't like the idea of having to buy and paint up 50+ models that are essentially worthless cannon fodder, where you need 100+ for them to constitute any sort of actual force on their own.

If you were running pure Kabal at 2K with a generic well-rounded list, I'd expect around 40 Kabalites, split between footslogging and transported. That comes to about 20% of your army's points spent on Troops, which feels about right as a baseline. Yes, Kabalites currently underperform for their cost- but I'd like to see their capabilities improve, rather than the cost just dropped.

~20% of the points total means 60-80 Guardsmen (depending on loadout), 40-50 Boyz, Kabalites, or Fire Warriors, and 20 Tacticals/Intercessors. I think that seems about right, but you tell me what you think.

Emphasis mine. I agree completely. Troops need to be something we want to take, and enjoy using in games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Problem isn't complexity, is avoiding a controversy which was the main issue with blasts/templates and AV facings.

I'm going to agree with Unit on this one. Not once have I ever had an argument about templates or armor facings. The argument that a mechanic causes arguments is itself problematic- vague rules can lead to arguments, not mechanics, and the rules were perfectly clear on how these things worked.

It was not difficult to tell where a Falcon's front, rear, and sides were- the rulebook explicitly told us to draw an imaginary X centered over the vehicle- the vehicle's shape was irrelevant.

People who argue over templates or armor facings are people who are trying to eke out any small advantage they can- changing rules doesn't stop this kind of behavior.

Do vehicles need 4 facings? Probably not. Front and rear would have sufficed. But boy do I want to seed fined firing arcs for vehicle weapons and some widgets for it.

Templates were much cleaner, and far more visually appealing, than D6 hits, with an extra X hits from the new blast rule or whatever.

And hell, GW could have easily made diagrams for each vehicle in their range showing what facing was what and included them in the codex unit entry and on a piece of paper in the model box. Top down picture of model (which can also be used for marketing purposes), then add the arcs.

I know, right? it's almost like there are good ways to implement these things. It's amazing that GW still hasn't adopted stat cards for their primary games. Where's the side on a Croissant? Flip the card over!

Dark Footdar will rise again.

I'm afraid 20% of your points feels too high to me. If you were going to have a hard minimum I think it should be half that.

3 squads feels like a good number. I'm not sure if this is 8th getting to me - but it feels about right. Wasn't it just two squads in older editions?

For armies with loads of troop choices it might not be so bad - but saying "right, the first thing you need is 4-5 boxes of this same unit" feels really bad for the hobby. Going Highlander isn't a good way to build a competitive list - but I think its still the way a huge number of players initially put their collections together.

Tyel wrote:
Dark Footdar will rise again.

I'm afraid 20% of your points feels too high to me. If you were going to have a hard minimum I think it should be half that.

I don't know, 20% seems quite reasonable, honestly.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Troops are a necessary evil in the game.
This doesn't reflect the circumstance that troops should be a overwhelming part of an army.

Well, except of course for all the situations where they shouldn't be. Craftworld Iyanden's whole thing is that they're short on warm bodies and are forced to rely heavily on wraith units (elites). So if you're showing up with 60 guardians every battle, it's like, "Oh hey. I guess every living citizen of your craftworld showed up today." And of course there are the Death Wing and the Raven Wing and Iybraesil and the White Scars and IG tank companies and plenty of others.

If we're using fluff to justify saying that people should be taking a ton of troops, then we should acknowledge the fluff that disagrees. Mechanically, there's not really anything sacred and special about troops unless they're understood to be designed to be intentionally bad for their points. (Which seems to only be true sometimes.)

Regarding templates, I didn't see a ton of full on arguments over them, but I did see a lot of polite hand waiving or acceptance of a result because it wasn't worth arguing. There were definitely plenty of times where the the template ended up scattering in a direction that didn't really match the die's arrow from my perspective, but I just didn't fuss over it unless it was really egregious. I do recall a team tournament game where my opponent was getting really passive aggressive about my team mate's scatter rolls, and I eventually just said, "Hey. On my turn, there are going to be some deepstrikers and some blast markers. I'm just going to let you tell me where they land because you seem to have much stronger opinions on these rolls than I do." He got flustered and backed down and obviously felt awkward. He wasn't trying to be a jerk, but he was on the receiving end of the blast template feel bads.

Vehicle facing is a lot more doable if you only have "Rear" and "Not Rear" values. It's pretty easy to agree where the "rearmost" part of a vehicle is and just draw a horizontal line across that. Involving the sides is where things get tricky. Someone mentioned a falcon. Do you draw your "X" from wing tip to the far side of the opposite wing (the leftmost/rightmost parts of the hull), or do you measure from wing tip to the opposite corner of the rear loading ramp section (the rearmost parts of the hull)? Both seem like reasonable answers to me, but one answer creates a significantly larger rear arc.

Vehicle facing and weapon arcs both also run into problems where conversions are involved. Is my opponent's looted land raider that he uses as a battle wagon modeling for advantage? What if he models one of his vehicles as having a turret because he thought it looked cool instead of leaving it fixed facing forward? Ready for the return of sponsons that can't shoot the same target because of line of sight issues? How about the return of harlequin void weaver butt guns that can only shoot in a 90* arc backwards while the other guns can only shoot in a 90* arc forward?

 vipoid wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Dark Footdar will rise again.

I'm afraid 20% of your points feels too high to me. If you were going to have a hard minimum I think it should be half that.

I don't know, 20% seems quite reasonable, honestly.

20% Seems low to me. Most of my lists feature 30-40% ish minimum, unles I'm playing Nids, in which case it's like. . . 70%

Wyldhunt wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Troops are a necessary evil in the game.
This doesn't reflect the circumstance that troops should be a overwhelming part of an army.

Well, except of course for all the situations where they shouldn't be. Craftworld Iyanden's whole thing is that they're short on warm bodies and are forced to rely heavily on wraith units (elites). So if you're showing up with 60 guardians every battle, it's like, "Oh hey. I guess every living citizen of your craftworld showed up today." And of course there are the Death Wing and the Raven Wing and Iybraesil and the White Scars and IG tank companies and plenty of others.

If we're using fluff to justify saying that people should be taking a ton of troops, then we should acknowledge the fluff that disagrees. Mechanically, there's not really anything sacred and special about troops unless they're understood to be designed to be intentionally bad for their points. (Which seems to only be true sometimes.)

Well, yeah. There are always exceptions to basic rules.

Regarding templates, I didn't see a ton of full on arguments over them, but I did see a lot of polite hand waiving or acceptance of a result because it wasn't worth arguing. There were definitely plenty of times where the the template ended up scattering in a direction that didn't really match the die's arrow from my perspective, but I just didn't fuss over it unless it was really egregious. I do recall a team tournament game where my opponent was getting really passive aggressive about my team mate's scatter rolls, and I eventually just said, "Hey. On my turn, there are going to be some deepstrikers and some blast markers. I'm just going to let you tell me where they land because you seem to have much stronger opinions on these rolls than I do." He got flustered and backed down and obviously felt awkward. He wasn't trying to be a jerk, but he was on the receiving end of the blast template feel bads.

Scatter isn't necessary for blasts and DS.

Vehicle facing is a lot more doable if you only have "Rear" and "Not Rear" values. It's pretty easy to agree where the "rearmost" part of a vehicle is and just draw a horizontal line across that. Involving the sides is where things get tricky. Someone mentioned a falcon. Do you draw your "X" from wing tip to the far side of the opposite wing (the leftmost/rightmost parts of the hull), or do you measure from wing tip to the opposite corner of the rear loading ramp section (the rearmost parts of the hull)? Both seem like reasonable answers to me, but one answer creates a significantly larger rear arc.

That's overthinking it. It really is simple to differentiate the sides from the rear of the curved vehicles in the game.

Vehicle facing and weapon arcs both also run into problems where conversions are involved. Is my opponent's looted land raider that he uses as a battle wagon modeling for advantage? What if he models one of his vehicles as having a turret because he thought it looked cool instead of leaving it fixed facing forward? Ready for the return of sponsons that can't shoot the same target because of line of sight issues? How about the return of harlequin void weaver butt guns that can only shoot in a 90* arc backwards while the other guns can only shoot in a 90* arc forward?

Would the difference in front facing between a LR and BW really be significant?

it would be better to give the weapon mounts on vehicles arcs on the data sheets instead of relying on the physical model, and vehicles should be allowed to fire at multiple targets. I don't expect a predator to shoot through itself. Yes, GW is dumb when designing models. Another item on the long list of needed changes.


Edit: Scatter could also be done BB style.

 catbarf wrote:


Part of why I would like Troops to be useful rather than simply cheap is because I really don't like the idea of having to buy and paint up 50+ models that are essentially worthless cannon fodder, where you need 100+ for them to constitute any sort of actual force on their own.

Completely agree with this.

I like building armies to be somewhat lore friendly, and for me that usually involves a good chunk of basic line troopers. In game though they tend not to hit very hard, and there are usually more resilient units to hold ground in other sections of the codex. 'Go to ground' used to work best on troops, it was wasteful to have heavy support infantry going to ground, or CC elites, or fast units, so it worked well for basic troopers

One rule that I love is the ork mob rule that lets big ork units share their leadership with smaller units nearby. It incentivises big units of boyz because it buffs the elite units nearby, and on top of that ork boyz have tended to be a strong unit anyway through the editions. Orks have had a really solid troop section for a long time and it results in fluffy lists, where boyz don't just get taken as MSU to hit the minimum requirement. Grots shielding more expensive units is another one. I miss the rule where units provided cover for each other, I can see why GW got rid of it to make things simpler, but it took away something done best by line infantry.

I guess the least GW could do is just under price troops slightly. In a game where knights and flyers exist I think making the little guys on the ground with lasguns, shootas, fleshborers and bolters a bit more efficient wouldn't hurt. The troops section of most codexes usually has few options, if one or two elite units are bad you don't need to take them, when chaos marines, guardians and gretchin are bad your options are much more limited.

 Snake Tortoise wrote:

Orks have had a really solid troop section for a long time and it results in fluffy lists, where boyz don't just get taken as MSU to hit the minimum requirement.

For a long time means actually since the current codex. Boyz and gretchins were garbage in 7th edition, to the point that no one was bringing gretchins and boyz were mostly played in a few min squads of trukk boyz, typically the minimum allowed for a CAD.

Best troops in older editions were bikes in 7th, nobz and bikes again in the previous codex.

Tyel wrote:
I'm afraid 20% of your points feels too high to me. If you were going to have a hard minimum I think it should be half that.

3 squads feels like a good number. I'm not sure if this is 8th getting to me - but it feels about right. Wasn't it just two squads in older editions?

For armies with loads of troop choices it might not be so bad - but saying "right, the first thing you need is 4-5 boxes of this same unit" feels really bad for the hobby. Going Highlander isn't a good way to build a competitive list - but I think its still the way a huge number of players initially put their collections together.

Keep in mind I'm basing this off the assumption that you're only using Kabalites. A 'Highlander' style Drukhari collector is going to have Kabalites, Wyches, and Wracks, and a single unit of 10 of each gets you to around 20% with upgrades (and obviously a lot more if you include transport). A box of 10 Kabalites, a box of 10 Wyches, and a box of 5 Wracks is over a quarter of your points in a 1K list even with conservative upgrades, so new players don't even need to double up on anything.

Also, when I said 20%, I didn't mean as a hard requirement; I was just answering your question about what sort of troops representation I would like to see in a balanced army. I would like for players to have the option to take less, but for neglecting Troops to be a real trade-off. Right now it really isn't, and from a raw competitive standpoint the Troops that see use beyond minimum requirements are the ones that either provide direct combat utility worth their cost or can be taken in sufficient numbers to swamp anti-MEQ lists.

FWIW Fantasy used a 25% Core requirement. Someone correct me if I'm grossly misremembering, but I seem to recall that 2nd Ed 40K also specified that 25% of your army had to be Troops; although the battles were much smaller so 2-3 squads could generally meet that requirement.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Dark Footdar will rise again.

I'm afraid 20% of your points feels too high to me. If you were going to have a hard minimum I think it should be half that.

I don't know, 20% seems quite reasonable, honestly.

20% Seems low to me. Most of my lists feature 30-40% ish minimum, unles I'm playing Nids, in which case it's like. . . 70%

Oh wow, that sounds like a fun army.

I think the closest I can come to that would be my IG army, which had about 50% troops in 8th.

 Blackie wrote:

 Snake Tortoise wrote:

Orks have had a really solid troop section for a long time and it results in fluffy lists, where boyz don't just get taken as MSU to hit the minimum requirement.

For a long time means actually since the current codex. Boyz and gretchins were garbage in 7th edition, to the point that no one was bringing gretchins and boyz were mostly played in a few min squads of trukk boyz, typically the minimum allowed for a CAD.

Best troops in older editions were bikes in 7th, nobz and bikes again in the previous codex.

exactly, and that goes all the way back to the 4th edition. So prior to that you are talking 3rd edition orkz.

Have troops score double points on Objectives (along with Objective secured).

 Stormonu wrote:
Have troops score double points on Objectives (along with Objective secured).

And what are you doing about factions that have gak troops?
They at that point might aswell just not play anymore on objective basis?

Blastaar wrote:

Well, yeah. There are always exceptions to basic rules.

Okay, but where do you draw the line? If Death Wing terminators, White Scar bikes, Saim-Hann bikes, Iyanden wraiths, Iybraesil banshees, CSM cult marines, maybe CSM chosen, and IG tank regiment tanks can all be troops, then what shouldn't be allowed to be troops? And if the list of things that can't be troops ends up being longer htan the list of things that can, it makes me think that we shouldn't be treating "troops" differently from any other unit.

Scatter isn't necessary for blasts and DS.

That's fair. Now how would you bring back blast templates without punishing hordes for not spreading out exactly 2" to mitigate template effectiveness? Because I don't want to wait for my opponents to measure exactly 2" between all their dudes, and I also don't want to feel like I'm punishing them for not wasting my time by doing so.

Vehicle facing is a lot more doable if you only have "Rear" and "Not Rear" values. It's pretty easy to agree where the "rearmost" part of a vehicle is and just draw a horizontal line across that. Involving the sides is where things get tricky. Someone mentioned a falcon. Do you draw your "X" from wing tip to the far side of the opposite wing (the leftmost/rightmost parts of the hull), or do you measure from wing tip to the opposite corner of the rear loading ramp section (the rearmost parts of the hull)? Both seem like reasonable answers to me, but one answer creates a significantly larger rear arc.

That's overthinking it. It really is simple to differentiate the sides from the rear of the curved vehicles in the game.

I politely disagree. Again, on the falcon, I see a couple reasonable ways to draw the "X". Some of them will result in a significantly larger rear arc than others. Now, we're talking about toy soldiers, and the way I'd end up playing out such ambiguities is to just let my opponent decide whether they're in the rear arc or not. But that's still not great rules writing, and some people are inclined to get saltier about such things that I do. Also, what about asymmetrical conversions? I'm picturing a battle wagon with a "side car" or some crazy, extra chaotic defiler conversion.

Would the difference in front facing between a LR and BW really be significant?

Probably not. Bad example. But something like a looted wave serpent or devilfish would have a much wider front arc (the most durable arc) than the default wagon model.

it would be better to give the weapon mounts on vehicles arcs on the data sheets instead of relying on the physical model, and vehicles should be allowed to fire at multiple targets. I don't expect a predator to shoot through itself. Yes, GW is dumb when designing models. Another item on the long list of needed changes.

Not opposed to illustrated diagrams showing weapon arcs and armor facings, but it does seem like a lot of work for kind of limited returns. Plus, you're still going to occassionally end up in awkward scenarios where you or your opponent ends up agonizing over trying to pivot a vehicle to just the right angle to shoot at two preferred targets. I never felt like a land raider's side sponson being unable to draw a bead on its preferred target was a boon to the game. Weapon arcs and armor facings both seem like mechanics that might make more sense in a dedicated vehicle combat variant. Sort of a Gangs of Commorragh or Speed Freaks but for tanks.

Edit: Scatter could also be done BB style.

I'm afraid I'm not familiar. :(

 catbarf wrote:
Keep in mind I'm basing this off the assumption that you're only using Kabalites. A 'Highlander' style Drukhari collector is going to have Kabalites, Wyches, and Wracks, and a single unit of 10 of each gets you to around 20% with upgrades (and obviously a lot more if you include transport). A box of 10 Kabalites, a box of 10 Wyches, and a box of 5 Wracks is over a quarter of your points in a 1K list even with conservative upgrades, so new players don't even need to double up on anything.

Also, when I said 20%, I didn't mean as a hard requirement; I was just answering your question about what sort of troops representation I would like to see in a balanced army. I would like for players to have the option to take less, but for neglecting Troops to be a real trade-off. Right now it really isn't, and from a raw competitive standpoint the Troops that see use beyond minimum requirements are the ones that either provide direct combat utility worth their cost or can be taken in sufficient numbers to swamp anti-MEQ lists.

FWIW Fantasy used a 25% Core requirement. Someone correct me if I'm grossly misremembering, but I seem to recall that 2nd Ed 40K also specified that 25% of your army had to be Troops; although the battles were much smaller so 2-3 squads could generally meet that requirement.

I guess the question is whether everyone's including transports in this troop %? I feel it makes mech a bit mandatory - but then yes, its a lot easier to hit 20, 30, maybe even push towards 40%.

Fantasy did have 25% Core Requirement - although Core in WHFB was *usually* a broader range of units than troops were for most factions in 40k right now. Even then I don't think it was considered a good feature - because as said, it resulted in "oh, playing Empire? Better go buy and assemble a 40 man block of Halberdiers to meet your core requirement". (Admittedly if 8th edition WHFB had been balanced like modern 40k, I think a lot of the internal and external imbalances in the army books could have been resolved - or at least got better - but I feel this seeming requirement was certainly a bar on new players.)

Realistically I wouldn't mind a significant Troops requirement, if a significantly greater number of units for most factions were in "troops". Having to make say a quarter of your list from just 1-4 units feels kind of bad.

Being forced to pay 800+pts in troops, when there exists a much better and more point efficient elite version of them isn't good either.

If I want to play termintors, I would rather take paladins then regular ones, because GW decided to give the troop termintors bad rules and make them too expensive. they cost as if they had access to gear they don't have access to, like storm shields for example.

Wyldhunt wrote:

That's fair. Now how would you bring back blast templates without punishing hordes for not spreading out exactly 2" to mitigate template effectiveness? Because I don't want to wait for my opponents to measure exactly 2" between all their dudes, and I also don't want to feel like I'm punishing them for not wasting my time by doing so.

Just make doing that a drawback. I often ally blasts in with my Daemons to make the enemy spread out, which gives their units huge frontages that can easily be assaulted by 4 or 5 Daemon units that are now safe from shooting unless they fail a morale check or wipe them out to a man.

Please, please spread your troops out to give my assaulting units more frontage...

(That sort of thing is called tactics and makes positioning important, unlike the current iteration of blast.)

Something I mulled over a little bit while trying to drift off last night was making blasts function thus:

Each weapon has a Blast (X) special rule, where the X is the maximum number of hits it can cause. Furthermore, a blast cannot cause more hits against a unit than the target unit has models, so a Blast 10 weapon shooting at a unit of 6 models cannot get more than 6 hits.

The number of hits is further affected by a single to hit roll made by the model firing. If it makes its hit roll, then it causes the maximum allowed number of hits. If it fails then the maximum allowed number of hits is reduced by the difference between the number rolled and the to hit roll required (e.g. an Ork with a BS of 5+ firing a Blast 10 weapon and rolling a 3 would end up with a maximum number of hits of 8, as they rolled 2 under the required value).

So as an example, we have an Ork firing their Blast 10 weapon at a unit of 30 enemies. If they roll a 5+ to hit, then they will get their maximum 10 hits, if they roll a 4 they'll get 9, 3 they'll get 8 and so on.

No longer need to roll for number of shots, only need to make 1 hit roll, no arguments about templates, scatter direction etc., models accuracy still plays a role, don't need to faff about with model spacing eating up game time, weapons are easily scalable.

Well, question that should be answered first: Why should troops be incentivised?

40k operates on a scale I’d roughly call the heart of the conflict. You have some commanders facing off with the forces immediately around them. If you zoomed out, it’s likely the battle has millions, even billions more combatants than are shown on the table.

So does it particularly matter that this set of 40 marines doesn’t have any tactical squads? The tacs are probably half a mile away keeping a line of guardsmen from breaking or something.

Blastaar wrote:

Scatter isn't necessary for blasts and DS.

This is true, but then removing the possibility of a blast causing damage to other targets would seem to remove one of the only possible reasons to bring back templates in the first place.

The more pressing matter, though, is that 40k seems like a game that should be doing more abstraction at the infantry level - not less.

If the game is going to include Imperial Knights and Baneblades, then it absolutely shouldn't be concerned with the minutia of individual guardsman placement.

Honestly, I think we're at the stage where units in general should be done in a more abstract way. e.g. pick a model in the unit (usually sergeant or equivalent, and basically measure all ranges and LoS to and from that one model). The other models will track the squad's strength and such in a visual manner, but they will not be used on an individual basis.

 vipoid wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Dark Footdar will rise again.

I'm afraid 20% of your points feels too high to me. If you were going to have a hard minimum I think it should be half that.

I don't know, 20% seems quite reasonable, honestly.

20% Seems low to me. Most of my lists feature 30-40% ish minimum, unles I'm playing Nids, in which case it's like. . . 70%

Oh wow, that sounds like a fun army.

I think the closest I can come to that would be my IG army, which had about 50% troops in 8th.

It's all Tyranid Warriors, then 2 Primes and 2 Neurothropes, in it's purest form.

 vipoid wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

Scatter isn't necessary for blasts and DS.

This is true, but then removing the possibility of a blast causing damage to other targets would seem to remove one of the only possible reasons to bring back templates in the first place.

The more pressing matter, though, is that 40k seems like a game that should be doing more abstraction at the infantry level - not less.

If the game is going to include Imperial Knights and Baneblades, then it absolutely shouldn't be concerned with the minutia of individual guardsman placement.

Honestly, I think we're at the stage where units in general should be done in a more abstract way. e.g. pick a model in the unit (usually sergeant or equivalent, and basically measure all ranges and LoS to and from that one model). The other models will track the squad's strength and such in a visual manner, but they will not be used on an individual basis.

That's a pretty radical notion. I'm not sure I can get on board with the idea of removing the importance of squad "expansion and contraction". Despite the benefits of using d3-d6s for blasts, I very much miss the extra importance given to unit formation that came with using actual templates.