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Going to echo the sentiment that doctrines aren't really needed now that taking allies costs you CP. They made sense in 8th when there was no reason to NOT take a loyal 32. But now the loyal 32 costs you a handful of CP.

Also want to echo the sentiment that not all doctrines are created equally. Marines losing some AP depowers them a little, sure, but some drukhari units really don't function as intended without Power From Pain. Coven units, for instance, are meant to be the durable subfaction. Without PfP, they lose their invuln saves which reduces their ability to tank damage considerably. Reavers functionally lose 8" of melee threat range without PfP, and that means you might find yourself less likely to do their signature Eviscerating Flyby move because advancing means you aren't also charging that turn.

I'm hoping that the books for factions intended to be allies have a section saying, "By the way, you don't lose your doctrine equivalent when you take these guys as allies."

Possibly off-topic: I've found most of the doctrine and super doctrine rules to be kind of bland and clunky. I think it might be interesting to remove rules that live on those levels and replace them with more gimmicky, flavorful options. So if you're playing Raven Guard, you don't get extra AP or the current super doctrine; instead, you gain the option to ignore LoSir with bolters on tacticals that hold still and can reserve 75% of your army instead of 50%. Or maybe you even go so far as to give them GSC cult ambush blips. If you're playing Saim-Hann eldar, let all the bikes and skimmers in the army gain a Raven Wing Jink type rule, and let them move instead of charging in the charge phase. Let Alpha Legion armies upgrade their cultists to have more special weapons. Let Emperor's Children field daemonettes as troops.

Bigger, possibly more complicated effects that meaningfully change the way the army behaves rather than lots of little generic bonuses.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm hoping that the books for factions intended to be allies have a section saying, "By the way, you don't lose your doctrine equivalent when you take these guys as allies."

We already have this with AdMech being allowed to bring a Knight without breaking their doctrines no?

GSC will probably get something similar for Nids and/or IG. Ynnari with Eldar/DEldar

 Jidmah wrote:
Please inform yourself before defaulting to whining.

Please inform yourself before defaulting to being rude.

Orks did *not* get as much as Space Marines. Super Doctrines have no equivalent in the Ork codex, and basically everything you cited has an equivalent in the Space Marines codex.

Super Doctrines are another free layer of rules equal most of the time to half a Chapter tactics / Kultur. Orks have nothing like that, since Specialist Ladz REPLACE your kultur instead of adding something for free.

 Ordana wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm hoping that the books for factions intended to be allies have a section saying, "By the way, you don't lose your doctrine equivalent when you take these guys as allies."

We already have this with AdMech being allowed to bring a Knight without breaking their doctrines no?

GSC will probably get something similar for Nids and/or IG. Ynnari with Eldar/DEldar

Hopefully it gets applied to the Demons codex and lets you bring god-aligned demons in TS/DG/EC/WE

Wyldhunt wrote:
Going to echo the sentiment that doctrines aren't really needed now that taking allies costs you CP. They made sense in 8th when there was no reason to NOT take a loyal 32. But now the loyal 32 costs you a handful of CP.

I disagree as I consider soups something like legal cheating. I mean, armies should have their weak spots, and with soups you can eliminiate those. Examples: Drukhari don't have psykers and SM don't have cheap objective holders. Do you want to add a psyker to an army that is supposed to play without magic? Do you want to add cheap obj holders to an army that is supposed to be elite oriented with expensive and tanky infantries? Losing a handful of CPs isn't enough (unless bringing allies costs something like 8-10 CPs maybe), losing benefits is. You simply trade benefits: add units that aren't included in your codex, lose some army-wide bonuses. Seems fair to me.

 Blackie wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Going to echo the sentiment that doctrines aren't really needed now that taking allies costs you CP. They made sense in 8th when there was no reason to NOT take a loyal 32. But now the loyal 32 costs you a handful of CP.

I disagree as I consider soups something like legal cheating. I mean, armies should have their weak spots, and with soups you can eliminiate those. Examples: Drukhari don't have psykers and SM don't have cheap objective holders. Do you want to add a psyker to an army that is supposed to play without magic? Do you want to add cheap obj holders to an army that is supposed to be elite oriented with expensive and tanky infantries? Losing a handful of CPs isn't enough (unless bringing allies costs something like 8-10 CPs maybe), losing benefits is. You simply trade benefits: add units that aren't included in your codex, lose some army-wide bonuses. Seems fair to me.

Do you really think an Adeptus Custodes formed from a single Patrol Detachment should start with 12 CP and an Imperium Soup army with an Adeptus Custodes Patrol Detachment and an Astra Militarum Battalion Detachment should have at most 4 CP? Why aren't Custodes running wild using Battalions of Astra Militarum at the low cost of 3 CP? What units would AdMech soup in if they did not lose Combat Doctrines? Army lists should have weak spots, factions should not, that's just poor balance. Neither Necrons or Orks should be bad at killing infantry or tanks, but perhaps Orks should lack ranged units to kill infantry and Necrons should lack melee units to kill tanks or something in that direction.

hobojebus wrote:
Soup lists were a broken mess, remember how every Eldar list was ynnari before the nerf.

*hissing in Drukhari*

No gods, no masters!

 Blackie wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Going to echo the sentiment that doctrines aren't really needed now that taking allies costs you CP. They made sense in 8th when there was no reason to NOT take a loyal 32. But now the loyal 32 costs you a handful of CP.

I disagree as I consider soups something like legal cheating. I mean, armies should have their weak spots, and with soups you can eliminiate those. Examples: Drukhari don't have psykers and SM don't have cheap objective holders. Do you want to add a psyker to an army that is supposed to play without magic? Do you want to add cheap obj holders to an army that is supposed to be elite oriented with expensive and tanky infantries? Losing a handful of CPs isn't enough (unless bringing allies costs something like 8-10 CPs maybe), losing benefits is. You simply trade benefits: add units that aren't included in your codex, lose some army-wide bonuses. Seems fair to me.

Except for the armies that work together in the fluff. Nurgle demons removing Contagions from DG is so stupid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

hobojebus wrote:
Soup lists were a broken mess, remember how every Eldar list was ynnari before the nerf.

That was in an edition where you wanted to have as many detachment as possible. In 9th you actually have to make sacrifices to patch out those weaknesses.
Also, just balance things better and you wont have problems like Ynnari. Soup was not the problem there.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Going to echo the sentiment that doctrines aren't really needed now that taking allies costs you CP. They made sense in 8th when there was no reason to NOT take a loyal 32. But now the loyal 32 costs you a handful of CP.

I disagree as I consider soups something like legal cheating. I mean, armies should have their weak spots, and with soups you can eliminiate those. Examples: Drukhari don't have psykers and SM don't have cheap objective holders. Do you want to add a psyker to an army that is supposed to play without magic? Do you want to add cheap obj holders to an army that is supposed to be elite oriented with expensive and tanky infantries? Losing a handful of CPs isn't enough (unless bringing allies costs something like 8-10 CPs maybe), losing benefits is. You simply trade benefits: add units that aren't included in your codex, lose some army-wide bonuses. Seems fair to me.

Why aren't Custodes running wild using Battalions of Astra Militarum at the low cost of 3 CP?

Because they were using Sisters of Battle as a far superior option prior to the new codex that removed miracle dice for souping.

Personally, I like the the army purity rules it rewards those who want to play one faction, which hasn't been a thing since allies was introduced in 6ht.

However, I would like to see certain ability to mix armies, but I think a better way of doing it would be the campaign books etc. Take the Bel'kor army for example. They could do the same thing for each god, so you can take an army mixing daemons, CSM and TS (or other god equivalent) in one detachment. Here are you strats, WL traits, etc. They get some kind of detachment/army bonus that is different than the underlying factions normal bonus. That would make me want to actually buy a campaign book. I plan on buying the book of fire when CSM or Daemons get redone so I can do a Bel'kor army (the suck now). Just my thoughts.

'

Blackie wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Going to echo the sentiment that doctrines aren't really needed now that taking allies costs you CP. They made sense in 8th when there was no reason to NOT take a loyal 32. But now the loyal 32 costs you a handful of CP.

I disagree as I consider soups something like legal cheating. I mean, armies should have their weak spots, and with soups you can eliminiate those. Examples: Drukhari don't have psykers and SM don't have cheap objective holders. Do you want to add a psyker to an army that is supposed to play without magic? Do you want to add cheap obj holders to an army that is supposed to be elite oriented with expensive and tanky infantries? Losing a handful of CPs isn't enough (unless bringing allies costs something like 8-10 CPs maybe), losing benefits is. You simply trade benefits: add units that aren't included in your codex, lose some army-wide bonuses. Seems fair to me.

I'm all for armies having interesting weaknesses. However, I don't think GW has been treating those gaps/weaknesses as an intentional balancing tool in quite some time. Like, the second GW decides chapter serfs will sell well without hurting guardsman sales too much, I bet marines suddenly end up with a cheap scoring unit. And the 6th/7th/8th edition ally rules made it easy or even beneficial to soup psykers into a drukhari army. I don't think their lack of psykers suddenly returned to being an intentional balancing element when 9th edition dropped. Which factions have access to what kinds of units seem to be mechanically arbitrarily and more aesthetically driven.

So with that in mind, paying X CP to add some Thousand Sons to a mostly World Eaters list doesn't seem like an unreasonable cost. If nothing else, CP don't seem like a worse cost for taking allies than losing doctrines. If anything, the impact of starting the game with X fewer CP seems easier to predict (and scale) than the impact of losing whatever goes in your army's doctrine slot. If marines lose doctrines, they're a bit worse at getting through your armor. If drukhari lose Power From Pain, 4th of the codex dedicated to Coven units stops working, and every melee unit in your army functionally spends half the game with -1 to hit in melee. Bit of a difference there.

And I'd be tempted to argue that for the cost of that extra point of AP, marines are gaining access to a significantly greater range of allies that aeldari are. Sure, drukhari can gain access to psykers and tanks, but most of what you're gaining access to is some variation on "fast, fragile space elf." And for any given craftworld unit you're allying in, there's a decent chance the drukhari already have access to something that does the same job better.

Basically, I wouldn't pay 8-10 CP to give marine doctrines to my eldar, so I doubt you'd have to charge 8-10CP to make them consider not souping.

xeen wrote:Personally, I like the the army purity rules it rewards those who want to play one faction, which hasn't been a thing since allies was introduced in 6ht.

Sure, but the current CP rules also do that, right? So hypothetically, players would still be rewarded for playing a single faction even if doctrines were removed.

However, I would like to see certain ability to mix armies, but I think a better way of doing it would be the campaign books etc. Take the Bel'kor army for example. They could do the same thing for each god, so you can take an army mixing daemons, CSM and TS (or other god equivalent) in one detachment. Here are you strats, WL traits, etc. They get some kind of detachment/army bonus that is different than the underlying factions normal bonus. That would make me want to actually buy a campaign book. I plan on buying the book of fire when CSM or Daemons get redone so I can do a Bel'kor army (the suck now). Just my thoughts.
'

Agree with you there. Of course, at that point, they should probably just role the Tzeentch portion of Codex: Chaos Daemons and Codex: Thousand Sons into a single Codex: Servants of Tzeentch. Which I'd be all for.

 Ordana wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Going to echo the sentiment that doctrines aren't really needed now that taking allies costs you CP. They made sense in 8th when there was no reason to NOT take a loyal 32. But now the loyal 32 costs you a handful of CP.

I disagree as I consider soups something like legal cheating. I mean, armies should have their weak spots, and with soups you can eliminiate those. Examples: Drukhari don't have psykers and SM don't have cheap objective holders. Do you want to add a psyker to an army that is supposed to play without magic? Do you want to add cheap obj holders to an army that is supposed to be elite oriented with expensive and tanky infantries? Losing a handful of CPs isn't enough (unless bringing allies costs something like 8-10 CPs maybe), losing benefits is. You simply trade benefits: add units that aren't included in your codex, lose some army-wide bonuses. Seems fair to me.

Why aren't Custodes running wild using Battalions of Astra Militarum at the low cost of 3 CP?

Because they were using Sisters of Battle as a far superior option prior to the new codex that removed miracle dice for souping.

I'm not seeing it, most Adeptus Custodes top 4s at GTs have been solo, a few have been with AM and one with AdMech. What I am seeing is that Custodes are majority pure without a purity bonus and that a purity bonus would crater that balance and make Custodes soup absolute garbage relative to pure Custodes. It's not that killing soup would be the end of the world, but even outside this argument I don't think Combat Doctrines are good for the game, it's too much bloat.

The bloat is definitely a thing. A lot of it feels unnecessary/redundant, and I'd generally prefer that design space go towards something more evocative than what we've generally gotten.

I'd like to see fewer random effects and stacking offensive bonuses and more weird stuff. Give us mechancis that change how we play the armies; not long checklists we have to follow to maximize our damage output.

 vict0988 wrote:
It's not that killing soup would be the end of the world, but even outside this argument I don't think Combat Doctrines are good for the game, it's too much bloat.

Killing the soups it's not the end of the world, it's the exact opposite: it's an excellent thing!! Some armies can't have soups, so in competitive gaming no one should be able to use soups without losing important bonuses, which is what we currently have. And what we currently have works very well.

In friendly casual games people are still able to bring whatever soups they like and being friendly games I'm sure that the opponent would even allow to keep otherwise lost bonuses if the list doesn't become overpowered by the soup.

I am fine with what they did to soup lists personally. It is absolutely not true that Soup lists do not gain benefits and only suffer from losing Doctrines or their equivalents.

People often soup to get the best of both worlds from two factions. Look at for example a Soup List of Astra Millitarium and Custodes. AM has lots of cheap bodies in infantry, has lots of ranged shooting, but suffers from being fragile and often die quickly in melee. Custodes on the other hand, are super durable, and are good in melee. Soup the two together and you get the best of both worlds. Even if Custodes and AM get new codexes, this will be true because of what these two armies have always been about. Custodes are not going to have fragile units even if they get a 9th ed codex. And AM will remain shooty and have cheap bodies even if they get a 9th ed codex as well.

Doctrines encourage people to stick to a book and take the weakness of their army with the bad. If Doctrines or equivalent didn't exist, even the cost of CP wouldn't be enough to stop Soup armies from being the default.

If you think its cool to soup for fluff reasons. By all means go for it. Just lose the doctrines or their equivalent. You can totally make such a list and have a game without having the doctrines. Its not like Soup lists are autolose.

Blackie wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
It's not that killing soup would be the end of the world, but even outside this argument I don't think Combat Doctrines are good for the game, it's too much bloat.

Killing the soups it's not the end of the world, it's the exact opposite: it's an excellent thing!! Some armies can't have soups, so in competitive gaming no one should be able to use soups without losing important bonuses, which is what we currently have. And what we currently have works very well.

In friendly casual games people are still able to bring whatever soups they like and being friendly games I'm sure that the opponent would even allow to keep otherwise lost bonuses if the list doesn't become overpowered by the soup.

Eh. Part of me agrees with the general sentiment you're going for, but I feel like there are some significant leaps in logic there. Bolded the text in the quote for discussion's sake. Why does
"...so in competitive gaming no one should be able to use soups without losing important bonuses..."
follow from
"Some armies can't have soups..."?

You seem to be implying that armies that can soup up are at an inherent advantage over armies that can't and that doctrines discouraging players from souping helps to alleviate this imbalance. Except....
A.) Some factions have more options than others. Even without soup, I'm pretty sure marines have way more units to pick from than tyranids and GSC combined.
B.) Doctrines (and their equivalents) are giving bonuses to armies as a reward for NOT souping. So either souping or not souping will be the most powerful option. If marine players are avoiding souping in order to keep their doctrines, that means that they've judged the doctrines to be even more powerful than souping.

Also, the post you quoted is making the argument that, soup issues aside, the doctrines add rules bloat. Your post doesn't seem to contradict that. Are you in agreement about the bloat?

Eldenfirefly wrote:I am fine with what they did to soup lists personally. It is absolutely not true that Soup lists do not gain benefits and only suffer from losing Doctrines or their equivalents.

I don't think anyone is really making that argument. Just that some armies lose more when they give up their Doctrine equivalents than others. See: Marines losing a point of AP versus drukhari losing advance + charge, WS 2+, and the invuln saves that make their tanky units tanky.

Doctrines encourage people to stick to a book and take the weakness of their army with the bad. If Doctrines or equivalent didn't exist, even the cost of CP wouldn't be enough to stop Soup armies from being the default.

What makes you say so? Surely it's a matter of just how much CP you're paying for those allies. Someone in an earlier post suggested that an allied detachment should cost as much as 10CP to unlock. Do you sincerely feel that adding guardsmen to your marine army is worth 10CP? I'm not saying it isn't, but I am saying that a price tag like that would, at minimum, have me sorely tempted to stick to a single faction.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I don't think anyone is really making that argument. Just that some armies lose more when they give up their Doctrine equivalents than others. See: Marines losing a point of AP versus drukhari losing advance + charge, WS 2+, and the invuln saves that make their tanky units tanky.

Marines lose more than that as their "super doctrine" is tied to staying pure as well. Things like +1D on all melee weapons for White Scars or the "counts as remained stationary" for Ultramarines.

a_typical_hero wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I don't think anyone is really making that argument. Just that some armies lose more when they give up their Doctrine equivalents than others. See: Marines losing a point of AP versus drukhari losing advance + charge, WS 2+, and the invuln saves that make their tanky units tanky.

Marines lose more than that as their "super doctrine" is tied to staying pure as well. Things like +1D on all melee weapons for White Scars or the "counts as remained stationary" for Ultramarines.

That's true. Super doctrines are a bit tricky in this discussion because they're in a slightly different slot than doctrines. They're not the benefit you get for sticking to a single codex; they're the benefit you get for sticking to a single chapter. They're an extra level of bonuses that most armies don't have access to. (I think technically some sororitas orders tie into their Rites mechanic?) GW chose to tie them to the mechanic you get for sticking to one codex, but they're kind of a mostly-distinct benefit that you unlock with different prerequisites than you do doctrines. Theoretically, the melee super doctrines could be reworded as, "You get these benefits starting on turn 3 if your whole army is <CHAPTER>."

Still, while super doctrines are powerful, I feel like there's a bit of distinction between super doctrines giving extra bonuses and Power From Pain making units playable. Super doctrines take White Scars bikers from good to great. Losing Power From Pain takes coven units from good down to, "Can't fill its intended niche in the army."

Marines have multiple layers of arguably unnecessary buffs as a reward. Drukhari have arguably essential rules taken away as a punishment.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Some factions have more options than others. Even without soup, I'm pretty sure marines have way more units to pick from than tyranids and GSC combined.

Exactly. That's why competitively speaking, they don't need other buffs. If they want access to even more units they lose some benefits. It's a fair tradeoff. Paying 2CPs for a patrol isn't.

Wyldhunt wrote:

B.) Doctrines (and their equivalents) are giving bonuses to armies as a reward for NOT souping. So either souping or not souping will be the most powerful option. If marine players are avoiding souping in order to keep their doctrines, that means that they've judged the doctrines to be even more powerful than souping.

I don't know if it would be the most powerful option. Game is about scoring and some armies can definitely lose some army bonuses if they can score more or they get access to other shenanigans. The fact that doctrines are more powerful than benefits acquired through souping is good game design. Everyone has some sort of doctrines or armywide bonuses, but not everyone has access to soups. And among those who have access to allies some have access to way more different codexes and datasheets compared to others.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Also, the post you quoted is making the argument that, soup issues aside, the doctrines add rules bloat. Your post doesn't seem to contradict that. Are you in agreement about the bloat?

I agree about bloat. Generally speaking I like armies having their own specific rules, and chapters equivalents also bringing their own specific benefits, but codexes are full of almost identical options, completely useless options, options that are different from other codexes' equivalents for no reason, and rules that are scattered everywhere. That's the bloat I don't like but having a few unique rules that are granted to the army, like doctrines, is not really a problem. They can be a problem only if they make one faction too powerful maybe.

Wyldhunt wrote:
You seem to be implying that armies that can soup up are at an inherent advantage over armies that can't and that doctrines discouraging players from souping helps to alleviate this imbalance.

Being able to soup up IS an inherent advantage, and this has been proven over and over again. At this point claiming otherwise is just denying facts and flat out wrong.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
People often soup to get the best of both worlds from two factions. Look at for example a Soup List of Astra Millitarium and Custodes. AM has lots of cheap bodies in infantry, has lots of ranged shooting, but suffers from being fragile and often die quickly in melee. Custodes on the other hand, are super durable, and are good in melee. Soup the two together and you get the best of both worlds.

I use my anti-elite guns to shoot the Custodes and my anti-infantry melee units to attack the Astra Militarum, the soup army is weak to both as opposed to a pure AM list that is not weak to my anti-elite guns or a pure Custodes list that is not weak to my anti-infantry melee units.

Doctrines encourage people to stick to a book and take the weakness of their army with the bad. If Doctrines or equivalent didn't exist, even the cost of CP wouldn't be enough to stop Soup armies from being the default.

Why isn't Custodes soup the default now? Why is pure Custodes the default despite their lack of a purity bonus? Could it be the auras that don't affect AM or building with a concentrated plan instead of trying to do two things at once is as good or better of a tactic?

 Jidmah wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
You seem to be implying that armies that can soup up are at an inherent advantage over armies that can't and that doctrines discouraging players from souping helps to alleviate this imbalance.

Being able to soup up IS an inherent advantage, and this has been proven over and over again. At this point claiming otherwise is just denying facts and flat out wrong.

The advantage does not have to be unfair. Taking steroids in a cycling competition provides an unfair advantage, having naturally high red blood cell counts provides a fair advantage. Orks have had an above 50% win rate for most of 8th and 9th AFAIK despite their lack of soup, whatever advantages they have had have been equal to or greater than the advantages of some soup armies have had. I aknowledge a lot of soup armies were extremely OP for varying durations of time, but armies with purity bonuses reached peak broken, you're really just replacing the soup boogyman with the Combat Doctrine boogyman, which is why Combat Doctrines should be removed from the game and soup should be reined in when it overperforms.

You are kind of right.

The unfair advantage is between a souped army and an army that could soup, but chose not to.

A pure blood angel, imperial guard or knights army never stood a chance against the smash captain+castellan+loyal 32 cherry picking which was rampant for quite a while.

Losing a bonus of adequate power in exchange for gaining the most powerful stuff from another codex and eliminating your own weaknesses is a good solution. It also is clearly working well since we are now seeing both soup and non-soup placing high in competitive games despite purity bonuses.

Orks were (more or less) balanced against those soup lists, so they didn't need any help in tournaments. But this only meant that "pure" lists had an even harder time winning. Now that soup and pure lists are in the same ballpark, orks can simply be balanced against both.

 vipoid wrote:
Dark Eldar just had one of their core rules changed into a super-doctrine (so they no longer benefit from PfP if they ally).

 Nym wrote:
Ditto for Drukhari whose Super Doctrine is just their previous "faction" ability...

Yeah, poor Dark Eldar and their sad 70% win rate. They really deserve more on top of it to boost it to 90% like 7th edition Eldar, eh?

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
I think theyre overcorrecting a problem once again. Soup is fine if the units are balanced.
And some soup shouldnt break "Super doctrines".

Allying a knight with anything Imperium/Chaos Space Marines should be allowed
Tzeentch demons + Thousand sons should be allowed
Nurgles demons + Nurgle should be allowerd

No, soups are still gak that is nearly impossible to balance. And even your examples don't really disprove it, these can be solved by giving a knight Inquisition-like rule and taking a page from AoS book and rolling TS/demons into Forces of Tzeentch book (ditto with DG into Forces of Nurgle). We have way too many army books as it is anyway. But that would require going back to 5th edition troops being decided by your warlord and for some reason 40K team hates doing this now.

 Irbis wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
I think theyre overcorrecting a problem once again. Soup is fine if the units are balanced.
And some soup shouldnt break "Super doctrines".

Allying a knight with anything Imperium/Chaos Space Marines should be allowed
Tzeentch demons + Thousand sons should be allowed
Nurgles demons + Nurgle should be allowerd

No, soups are still gak that is nearly impossible to balance. And even your examples don't really disprove it, these can be solved by giving a knight Inquisition-like rule and taking a page from AoS book and rolling TS/demons into Forces of Tzeentch book (ditto with DG into Forces of Nurgle). We have way too many army books as it is anyway. But that would require going back to 5th edition troops being decided by your warlord and for some reason 40K team hates doing this now.

I agree with this, there should be a standard clause where including a knight etc into a chaos/imperial detachment is OK'd (obviously as a super-heavy auxiliary, so the pay off is the knight doesn't get all it's faction stuff which is kind of the sacrifice anyway), same could apply with harlequins into other eldar forces. I'm not sure how I feel about the stealer cult/tyranid interactions, not sure how best to manage that, I kind of feel it should be a for each stealer cult detachment you may include X from this list of tyranid units in your detachment, they do not gain the cult keywords etc. but don't break it. But I don't think the other way round works, it shouldn't be a majority nids, minority cultists.

For chaos I agree whole heartedly that god specific books would have been way smarter and then a generic "what's left" undivided book.

 Irbis wrote:
No, soups are still gak that is nearly impossible to balance. And even your examples don't really disprove it, these can be solved by giving a knight Inquisition-like rule and taking a page from AoS book and rolling TS/demons into Forces of Tzeentch book (ditto with DG into Forces of Nurgle). We have way too many army books as it is anyway. But that would require going back to 5th edition troops being decided by your warlord and for some reason 40K team hates doing this now.

Or they could just write summoning rules that allow CSM characters to summon daemons in a way that's not completely useless but still not superior to just running pure daemons or DG.

To be fair Orks not having a "Super Doctrine" is still better than the BS the Necrons were stuck with.

Imo, Necron Command Protocols are just about completely useless and usually not worth wasting brain power on. Most of the games I've played with Necrons I don't even bother with them.

I wouldn't say completely useless, but the impact is pretty low.

I think it would have been a better mechanic if the effects were less flexible but more powerful, to improve the "exactly as planned!" effect. Right now it feels like necron players are trying to find the least terrible one for each turn.

Still waiting for Spoletta to tell me why there's "nothing wrong" with Command Protocols

The times I have played Necrons I don't even use Command Protocols, as others have said, the benefit I gain from having my mental energy spend elsewhere on the game is superior to the rule benefits the protocols give me ingame.

Cynista wrote:
Still waiting for Spoletta to tell me why there's "nothing wrong" with Command Protocols

Because the answer was literally in the next post? Read

 vict0988 wrote:
Necrons lose access to multi-dynasty armies which is an insignificant loss and gain protocols, an insignificant buff. If protocols were stronger multi-dynasty armies would be relatively weaker. Orks are stronger than Necrons because of pts costs on a few units being low, not because of rules or Necrons being terrible.