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Now that I've started putting together army lists to try out, I've come to the question: since the Warlord refunds the CP cost of whatever Detachment they are in, is there ever any reason not to make your main Detachment a Brigade size? I'm not fully versed in all the rules yet, but I can't recall anything that says you can't do so nor any reason to restrict yourself with a smaller Detachment if you're just getting the CP back anyway. Am I missing something important?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wait nvm. I had a derp moment. Forgot that Brigade has a huge minimum requirement across the board. That's why Battalion is the normal size used.

Some folks don't like the mandatory choices in a brigade; others like builds that contain so many of a particular battlefield role where they need to use a Battalion + Specialist Brigade to get the appropriate number of slots.

But other than that, no, I can't really think of anything preventing you from leaning heavily on the Brigade.

Brigade is tough for most armies in Strike Force or smaller games. But it could be really useful in a 3000 point Onslaught game.

Another question I just thought of. Is there anything preventing one from using something other than Patrol, Battalion, or Brigade as their main force? Say someone wanted to roll out a fully mechanized IG with a Spearhead or they wanted a DA list of only Deathwing with a Vanguard or only Ravenwing with a Outrider. Is that legal in all game sizes?

There's considerations beyond the CP refund.
For ex;
*As the default in Crusade you start out with only a Patrol.
*Your collection might not allow you to field a Brigade if you don't own enough stuff in a particular category. This happened to me when I dusted off my SW during 8th. I had to go buy a 3rd Grey Hunter squad.
*The size of game you've decided to play might make it difficult/impossible to cover the Brigades min. requirements pts wise.
*Brigades are nice. But I like to run lists heavy on Elites, or Fasts, or Heavies. The various specialist detachments allow me to do this without forcing me to waste pts on Troops/additional HQs/other stuff. Sure, I don't get a CP refund. But I'm OK with that as I'm putting the force I want on the table.

Thank you. Your comment made me realize that the downside of the specialist detachments is that they don't get CP back even if the Warlord is in them.

You see a downside.
I just see myself paying CP to get more of what I want rather than having to invest precious Pts in _____ instead of more Elite/Fast/Heavy.

I would say it is a downside. Just a different one from the normal Detachments and a cost you obviously consider worth the benefit. The downside of the normal Detachments is that you are required to sink points into Troops and can have less of whatever you want more of.

 SergentSilver wrote:
I would say it is a downside. Just a different one from the normal Detachments and a cost you obviously consider worth the benefit. The downside of the normal Detachments is that you are required to sink points into Troops and can have less of whatever you want more of.

It's like hearing an echo....

The only limitation on your detachment selection is in Combat Patrol (500 Points/25 Power Level). There you are allowed only 1 detachment that must be either a Patrol (duh, Combat Patrol) or a Super Heavy detachment (which allows for Chaos Knights and Imperial Knights using all Wardogs/Armigers).

 SergentSilver wrote:
Another question I just thought of. Is there anything preventing one from using something other than Patrol, Battalion, or Brigade as their main force? Say someone wanted to roll out a fully mechanized IG with a Spearhead or they wanted a DA list of only Deathwing with a Vanguard or only Ravenwing with a Outrider. Is that legal in all game sizes?

The Dark Angels have some special rules that allow them to refund the CP for an all-Ravenwing Outrider Detachment or an all-Deathwing/Inner Circle Vanguard Detachment as long as the Warlord is in that Detachment.

9th Ed flipped the script on Detachments. In 8th you took as many Detachments as you could to gain CP. Now, you try to cram as much as you can into a single Patrol or Battalion Detachment to conserve CP.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

 SergentSilver wrote:
Another question I just thought of. Is there anything preventing one from using something other than Patrol, Battalion, or Brigade as their main force? Say someone wanted to roll out a fully mechanized IG with a Spearhead or they wanted a DA list of only Deathwing with a Vanguard or only Ravenwing with a Outrider. Is that legal in all game sizes?

The Dark Angels have some special rules that allow them to refund the CP for an all-Ravenwing Outrider Detachment or an all-Deathwing/Inner Circle Vanguard Detachment as long as the Warlord is in that Detachment.

9th Ed flipped the script on Detachments. In 8th you took as many Detachments as you could to gain CP. Now, you try to cram as much as you can into a single Patrol or Battalion Detachment to conserve CP.

I've heard about that. I'm guessing they made it first one way with a certain mindset, then got surprised when people exploited it heavily in a direction they weren't expecting, so they had to flip their own mindset and the rules to get it back to where they envisioned it being. That or the rules department are just a bunch of loonies with no real direction for where they want to go with this, so they just mess around with it as much as possible hoping something comes out right.

All things considered though, the latter option wouldn't entirely surprise me at this point.

Pretty sure it was the former. They expected people to put as much as possible into the biggest necessary detachment and purchase additional detachments as necessary. However, people quickly figured out that you could either toss a small amount of not terrible units into a battalion for access to cheap CP or build a second detachment to allow you to both get more CP and take advantage of another faction/sub-faction. Basically, they accidently made diversifying an duel advantage because GW has a bad habit of writing rules with their preconceived notions on how thinks work in mind rather than asking themselves "what will the players do with the rule I have written"?

 alextroy wrote:
Pretty sure it was the former. They expected people to put as much as possible into the biggest necessary detachment and purchase additional detachments as necessary. However, people quickly figured out that you could either toss a small amount of not terrible units into a battalion for access to cheap CP or build a second detachment to allow you to both get more CP and take advantage of another faction/sub-faction. Basically, they accidently made diversifying an duel advantage because GW has a bad habit of writing rules with their preconceived notions on how thinks work in mind rather than asking themselves "what will the players do with the rule I have written"?

Yeah, that basically sums up my best bet. I hope so at least. The other option was more of a joke than anything, though I still wouldn't be surprised if it was actually the truth. Greatly disappointed, but not surprised.

As the Dawn of War Blood Ravens took such great joy in grinding into the player's skull, "Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."

Some of the FAQs after the 8.5 Marine codex supplements were great. The opening paragraphs of several included some variation of 'We didn't realize players would use these rules that way.' This was repeated a couple times.

It was hilarious.
And also sad. Because it took about 10 minutes after rules snippets were seen for people to start suggesting the uses GW 'didn't realize,' followed by arguments that, magically, there would be more to the rules to prevent abuse and then the full versions would come out and... nope. It really was that abusable. Pretty much came to a head with Iron Hands, for several problems.

---
9th edition so far has been a little bit better, beyond losing track of point values (chapter command upgrades points values, cost for reavers in dark eldar), absurd exceptions (like Apothecaries resurrecting ATVs) and the technical difference between 'can move' and 'move characteristic' for death guard.

Voss wrote:
Some of the FAQs after the 8.5 Marine codex supplements were great. The opening paragraphs of several included some variation 'We didn't realize players would use these rules that way.' This was repeated a couple times.

It was hilarious.
And also sad. Because it took about 10 minutes after rules snippets were seen for people to start suggesting the uses GW 'didn't realize,' followed by arguments that, magically, there would be more to the rules to prevent abuse and then the full versions would come out and... nope. It really was that abusable. Pretty much came to a head with Iron Hands, for several problems.

---
9th edition so far has been a little bit better, beyond losing track of point values (chapter command upgrades points values, cost for reavers in dark eldar), absurd exceptions (like Apothecaries resurrecting ATVs) and the technical difference between 'can move' and 'move characteristic' for death guard.

Wow. The gak I hear about 8th makes kinda glad I missed it for the most part, though it'll be a few years before I could have said I completely missed it thanks to snail pace codex updates. They should really wait to release a new edition until they can at least get all the basics of every faction balanced. Stuff like this loyalist marine timed buff is unacceptable to me, and I've actually been meaning to give SM a try since before I took a roughly 7 year break.