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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
3: Make tanks/monsters more vulnerable when unsupported by infantry. (This is the option I like)

Please elaborate.

I'd imake infantry more deadly vs. Tanks in cc, for starters, using various routes like making grenades effective AT weapons in CC again, spreading them around, and having an entire squad be able to use them at once. You know, bring real Tankbusta capabilities back.

If we brought back the old damage charts or something similar, there might be ways to suppress tanks in the way that 'stunned/shaken' used to do.

Optional targeting of subsystems could be a thing, too.

For Monsters, I'd also consider grenades, but perhaps some bonuses could start applying in CC if the Monster were outnumbered by a certain amount.

Possibly add evasion or extra cover bonuses to Infantry type models, to help give them an edge when ambushing vehicles from concealed positions.

Bring back differing armor values, or bonus damage when firing at a vehicles flanks or rear.

 catbarf wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Agreed, tanks should fear those, but they're too cheap. Mine feel pretty durable outside of those things. But let's say vehicles in general aren't, what's your solution?

Tanks, or just vehicles in general? Because Rhinos and other light-armor vehicles don't feel too different from how they used to, but Leman Russes are now barely any more durable than Chimeras when they used to bounce lascannons 2/3 of the time.

I don't think it's vehicles on the whole that are too vulnerable; it's tanks and tank-analogue monstrous creatures that got hit hard by the transition to 8th. At the very least, an actual tank should have a 2+ save.

Yes, this. Vehicles in general aren't less durable, it's only the former AV14-14/13-X bricks that are less durable than they used to be. All my ork vehicles are way more tough now with the T and save system, including battlewagons, which used to be AV14 in the front. And even those bricks may be less durable but they're also more performing as they don't have limitations in firepower anymore: no arcs, can move and shoot at full capacity, can shoot in combat, can split fire, no more immobilized/weapon destroyed/useless for a whole turn etc...

 Insectum7 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
3: Make tanks/monsters more vulnerable when unsupported by infantry. (This is the option I like)

Please elaborate.

I'd imake infantry more deadly vs. Tanks in cc, for starters, using various routes like making grenades effective AT weapons in CC again, spreading them around, and having an entire squad be able to use them at once. You know, bring real Tankbusta capabilities back.

I think I'd like that. I miss fire dragons being able to slap meltabombs on things after shooting, hawks screwing up vehicles with haywires, etc.

If we brought back the old damage charts or something similar, there might be ways to suppress tanks in the way that 'stunned/shaken' used to do.

Maybe... I remember a lot of comments bemoaning stunlocked vehicles being a bug rather than a feature.

Optional targeting of subsystems could be a thing, too.

See, I really like the idea of being able to target specific chunks of sufficiently big models like you would in a video game boss battle, but that feels like it's probably too book-keepy for a game 40k's size. That seems like the sort of mechanic I'd enjoy in either an all-tanks-all-the-time game variant or in a game variant focused on 500-1000 point games where there's less to track.

For Monsters, I'd also consider grenades, but perhaps some bonuses could start applying in CC if the Monster were outnumbered by a certain amount.

I've never really understood why the game sometimes draws so many distinctions between monsters and vehicles. Especially when you have things like dreadnaughts and forgefiends and wraith lords that all kind of blur the line. You can probably latch a krak grenade onto a dreadnaught. You can probably latch a krak grenade onto a carnifex. Both would probably be similarly rattled by a "shaken" damage result. Both would probably have similar difficulties with overwhelming numbers of enemies.

Possibly add evasion or extra cover bonuses to Infantry type models, to help give them an edge when ambushing vehicles from concealed positions.

I like the sound of this. Would be wary of adding too much complication or bookkeeping.

Bring back differing armor values, or bonus damage when firing at a vehicles flanks or rear.

Eh. This risks running into the problems with every "bring back vehicle facings" suggestion. Although if you limit that to ONLY distinguishing between the rear and not-the-rear, you could just place a straight line marker against any part of the model's base/hull to determine whether or not attackers are "flanking" it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'd have a single FOC:

X-X HQ
0-6 Elite
X-8 Troops
0-4 Fast Attack
0-4 Heavy Support
0-2 Flyers
0-2 Fortifications
0-X Dedicated Transports.

Want to add another Elite/FA/Flyer/HS? Pay 2 CP. No additional detachments. Then allow scaling for the troops/HQ requirement, so for 1000 points it'd be 1 and 1, for 1500 it'd be 2 and 3, and so on.

Then any special formations and what not could be handled via unique FOCs in each Codex, themed around that army, where appropriate.

So, to use a simple example, a Iyanden Spirit Host, where it's mostly Elites and HS, but Wraith units get a bonus (like Obsec or whatever). Also lets you play around with what gets 'Core'.

I mostly like this but limiting armies like IG to a single HQ choice at 1000pts (if I'm understanding your system correctly?) seems a bit screwy.

(Also, if we go this sort of route, I do hope DE gets to be a single, coherent army again.)

I suppose my only other concern is that I'd rather see CP (and Stratagems) go die in a fire, rather than still being used in listbuilding.

 vipoid wrote:
I mostly like this but limiting armies like IG to a single HQ choice at 1000pts (if I'm understanding your system correctly?) seems a bit screwy.

Sorry I was mostly talking about the required compulsory HQs, as in that would scale with the size of the game, as would the maximum amount, so a 3000 point list might be able to bring 4 HQs, where as a 1000 point list might be limited to 2, but only one of those is compulsory.

 vipoid wrote:
I suppose my only other concern is that I'd rather see CP (and Stratagems) go die in a fire, rather than still being used in listbuilding.

Whenever I write rules for these sorts of situations I generally try to work within the systems as they currently exist, or base the solution around the existing mechanic. So my base assumption is that Command Points and strats still exist, but how would I implement such a system.

I think CP should represent a strategic resource, the expenditure of which is used to change the nature of your army. It should not, for instance, be used for reactionary 'gotcha!' strats like Transhuman Physiology* or to make use of common upgrades like Smoke Launchers or Tankbusta Bombs.

It's only when I see nothing to salvage at all in an existing mechanic that I would advocate replacing it wholesale (eg. the morale rules as they currently stand).

*At the same time, I do think there's an argument for CP use for interactivity and reaction within the IGOUGO system. I just haven't figured out how exactly yet...

AOS doesn't have this same problem.

There are TONS of things that CAN wound anything - AOS makes extremely liberal use of the Mortal Wound mechanic.


.....but also, the number are just not the same, and there is a much much much MUCH greater percentage of the units in the game that are either extremely short-range shooting units or slow melee units.

And, in general, numbers in AOS are just lower. A big huge 300-pt monster like a Zombie Dragon might be able to drop 6 damage on a 4+sv target from full health with all its melee attacks - compare to something in 40k like a 165pt heavy melta eradicator squad that BEFORE any subfactions/doctrines/auras/strats/etc lays down 15 unsaved wounds vs T7 3+ in melta range.

The old FOC was ok during old editions, like 3rd, when armies had 3-4 choices at most in their Elites, Heavy Support and Fast Attacks. 3rd edition ork codex had specialists like tankbustas or burnaboyz merged into the troop section.

Now it would be too limiting (buggies alone have 5 different datasheets in the ork codex), and there's no problematic list that is actually problematic because it breaks the old FOC restrictions.

Instead, if you want to reduce skew lists and shape the game around troops, you could give troops a key role in the army. For example let them be the only units that can score, or make them score twice the points compared to a specialist infantry unit. Force players to bring min X points (mind, actual points invested, not min amount of units) of troops every Y points of the army maybe, IIRC WHFB had it at some point. Something like that.

The majority of the most common lists (SM ones for starters) around wouldn't change a bit if they had to satisfy the FOC restrictions instead of the current detachment system. Other armies would be heavily penalized instead, while there's no need for that to happen.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
For the tanks vs other stuff problem - originally 40k had masses of wounds on a vehicle (50+? for a land raider from memory), but AT weapons did stuff like 2D12 wounds.

Now that would vape characters, but that wasn't so much of a problem then. Now Abaddon players don't want their guy to disappear when a guardsman hits with an AT weapon, so that makes everything go weird with how the game treats vehicles as bigger people, but doesn't want special people to be turned into smoking boots.

There are limited ways round this sadly given the system. The only one I can see is going back to a lot more wounds for big tough things (MBTs) so its harder to deal with them using anti infantry weapons, AT weapons doing plenty of wounds to them to maintain that parity, and then one of two fixes to save the precious characters.

Either a) have AT weapons get -1 to shoot non tanks (not sure how Nids would fit in here, would need a sensible keyword for anything that is the favoured target of lascannon) OR b) have two damage stats vs tanks and everything else but that would be a lot clunkier.

The advantage of a) is you could expand it so weapons that were useless vs armour could get a -1 to hit and so on.

Special characters of medium size (e. g. humanoid infantry) couldn't be singled out in older editions. However running around with gargantuan primarch beatsticks should allow the opponent to waste 'em with lascannons and rockets. Sometimes being too big has also it' s disadvantages.

Has Abbadon suffered from growth hormones too? Damn, scale creep must be a warp-tainted disease. Well, I guess he can enjoy now too the Imperial disco laser light show like generations of greater daemons before him.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Wyldhunt:
Why so many distinctions among walkers?

That is the old question why Eldar Dreadnoughts were given a monster profile and SM/Ork Dreadnoughts received a vehicle statline since 3rd. One of the designer said that they wanted to boost the longevity of the Eldar machine and they achieved this goal.

I personally liked the difference between mechanical units and biological monsters. Only downside was that monsters wouldn't suffer from any kind of injuries so a mechanical unit was just a straight nerf compared to big gribblies.

I also miss the time when bikes were treated more like vehicles and not as horses.

I think the FOC has been absolutely pointless since 7th Ed. 7th formations meant there was no reason for it to exist, and being able to get multiple detachments and extra FOCs for nothing (and then later a paltry expenditure of CP) made it even more worthless.

I think the FOC should matter, and the fact that there are more choices than before actually enhances that, as you'd have to make choices.

As for 5 different types of buggies? That's no model/no rule fething up the rules. Blame GW for that.

 catbarf wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Agreed, tanks should fear those, but they're too cheap. Mine feel pretty durable outside of those things. But let's say vehicles in general aren't, what's your solution?

Tanks, or just vehicles in general? Because Rhinos and other light-armor vehicles don't feel too different from how they used to, but Leman Russes are now barely any more durable than Chimeras when they used to bounce lascannons 2/3 of the time.

I don't think it's vehicles on the whole that are too vulnerable; it's tanks and tank-analogue monstrous creatures that got hit hard by the transition to 8th. At the very least, an actual tank should have a 2+ save.

Yes, MBTs should have 2+ saves. I think you and I have agreed on that several times before. How gw ever came to the conclusion that AV14 should equal a 3+ save escapes me. Like I said: My tanks feel plenty tough against lighter weapons like heavy bolters and auto cannons, but that's because they all have 2+ saves. They are, however, plenty threatened by real AT weapons, like multi-meltas and Admech super lascannons, as they should be.

So, give 2+ saves to MBTs/formerly AV14 vehicles (and MONSTROUS CREATURES that are effectively living MBTs), and get the pricing on real AT weapons right so that killing a tank costs more than a pittance. I think tanks (and their MONSTROUS CREATURE equivalents) might be ok then.

By the time you all are done fixing 9th you'll have recreated some classic hybrid version of 40k

Regarding FOC - This is one I really strongly agree with, and in ProHammer you only use the standard FOC or if your codex has an alternate you can use that. But you get 1 detachment period. No allies. No formations. No lords of war. Flyers use up a specialist slot (and limited to max of two). If you want to be play a non-bound list that's of course fine if both players agree.

 Blackie wrote:
The old FOC was ok during old editions, like 3rd, when armies had 3-4 choices at most in their Elites, Heavy Support and Fast Attacks. 3rd edition ork codex had specialists like tankbustas or burnaboyz merged into the troop section.

Now it would be too limiting (buggies alone have 5 different datasheets in the ork codex), and there's no problematic list that is actually problematic because it breaks the old FOC restrictions.

Instead, if you want to reduce skew lists and shape the game around troops, you could give troops a key role in the army. For example let them be the only units that can score, or make them score twice the points compared to a specialist infantry unit. Force players to bring min X points (mind, actual points invested, not min amount of units) of troops every Y points of the army maybe, IIRC WHFB had it at some point. Something like that.

The majority of the most common lists (SM ones for starters) around wouldn't change a bit if they had to satisfy the FOC restrictions instead of the current detachment system. Other armies would be heavily penalized instead, while there's no need for that to happen.

Largely agree with this, although it seems to me (do correct me if I'm missing something) that with the changes from 8th–9th in the way Detachments work, Troops are fairly heavily incentivised as things currently stand. Both by being compulsory in the CP-refunding detachments, and the 'skew' detachments having a relatively high CP cost plus being fairly limited beyond a single slot-type. Essentially, you're getting awarded bonus CPs *and* increased unit-choice flexibility by taking Troops as part of your army. Are other people finding this to not be the case?

 Mezmorki wrote:
By the time you all are done fixing 9th you'll have recreated some classic hybrid version of 40k

Eh... no.

Classic 40k has its own share of issues, and If we are going to fix 9th, I would prefer to not fall back into the issues of classic.

I mean, for example, it would be good if armor facing came back to some degree, but not as the AV system that only worked on imperial metal boxes and made AP irrelevant 80% of the time. I would prefer something more simple, like a front vs rear mechanic that boosted the armour save. Moreover it shouldn't be limited to vehicles, tank-like monsters like the Tyrannofex should also have it.

The concept of FOC was terrible, good thing we got rid of it.
It was tailor made around some factions and all the other ones were crammed into it. If you really want it back, you need to define a different FOC for each faction.

I prefer for units to be made usable and wanted by the players because of themselves, not because I'm forced to take them as tax.


I have always liked thematic alternative lists like all minotaur or all troll armies or all night goblins armies. And thats one of the things I like about AOS.

And I'm a "spam the troops" guy most of the time, but I would never impose that way of playing in my opponent. I trust the game designers to allow for an army of mostly troops and an army of mostly elites to be balanced and give us a good game agaisnt each other. If you claim for a unique FOC and then codex-based FOC you are basically saying that a general FOC is useless in a game like 40k to allow all the variety of lists the game and fluff should allow.

For me, forcing 50% of all the armies to be the same is just lazy game design that have no place outside historicals were recreation is as relevant as gameplay.

And this is another "tell me you don't play 9th without telling me you don't play 9th". With the changes to army construction of 9th, they fixed all problem with skew/spam lists. Taking more troops or more specialized slots have their advantages and costs balanced agaisnt each other. As it should be. If thats not enough to you, maybe is because you want to force how the army of your opponent should look , but not because theres a problem in the game that needs fixing.

Spoletta wrote:
The concept of FOC was terrible, good thing we got rid of it.
It was tailor made around some factions and all the other ones were crammed into it. If you really want it back, you need to define a different FOC for each faction.

Do you have any examples in mind for factions that the FOC didn't work for?

Guard got their platoon structure to make it work, and the specialist subfactions got 'counts as troops' to let them stack particular units. I can't think of any factions that really struggled due to their faction identity, rather than because GW did a poor job of balancing units in certain slots.

I'm not sure that the Guard's "let's ignore the FOC with platoon and vehicle squadron shenanigans" is the best example of the FOC working.

 Tyran wrote:
I'm not sure that the Guard's "let's ignore the FOC with platoon and vehicle squadron shenanigans" is the best example of the FOC working.

Well, if someone's going to argue that the factions the default FOC didn't work for simply got left out in the cold, then yeah I think pointing out how exceptions were made to accommodate atypical armies is pretty relevant. I never said the default FOC with no exceptions was perfect for everyone.

I was never a fan of the vehicle squadrons, though. The default list wasn't meant to be an Armored Company, and the special list for that build archetype included additional rules intended to balance the inherently skewed nature of having potentially 10+ Leman Russes in one list.

I mean, that's why the FOC existed: To enforce some modicum of balanced list composition for structured/competitive play, and you didn't have to follow it if you were doing narrative games. 8th/9th's approach of loose force composition hard-limited by Rule of 3 seems like the worst of both worlds- I still can't use Veterans as all my infantry, but I can take an effectively unlimited number of Leman Russes anyways.

^^^^ Yes

I liked the old FOC. I always felt and assumed that factions with weaker troops were indeed "paying a tax" but that was by design to compensate for other areas of strength in the list. I always felt that troops were supposed to be the backbone of a TAC list, and hence why at least two were always required and other slots more limited.

Lists with unique/special FOC were, I assumed, likewise designed for balance while allowing for a specifically different thing. Eldar 3rd editional craftworld supplement was a great example, Sam Hain (sp?) being table to take way more bikes, or Iyanden more wraith units, etc.

Foc is a way to level factions. Designers can use this to “balance” factions.

For illustration, eldar are supposed to be dying out. So guardians should cost more points than equivalent troops for factions with more expendable bodies, I.e. most everyone else. The troop tax as it is called is a way to offset eldar superiority in other areas e.g. fast skimmers, high ap long range energy weapons, warp jump and defensive fields.

On the other hand, orks should have plentiful troops and pay relatively more for high tech high mobility. So, to have a kff requires a big mek and is limited by big mek slots, being hq slots, so often limited to one or max two army wide.

Alternatively, the citizen-soldiers of a dying race shouldn't be on the front lines except in the most dire of situations so Guardians should be an Elites choice. And sure, let's cost them at 20 points to show how valuable Aeldari lives are.

Orks have among the best Tellyporta tech in the galaxy, so they should pay LESS for high tech high mobility. They also love bikes a lot, and buggies, and trukks, so those should all be cheap to show how plentiful they are in ork armies. There's a Ciaphas Cain novel where the orks built 13 gargants in a relatively short amount of time, and besides they show up in almost every battle with orks so let's cost them discount, too.

Nah, I don't think I like fluff costing armies very much. Their points cost, a gameplay mechanic, should probably reflect their gameplay efficacy.

"Fluff costing" leads to Eldar taking the minimum troops and spamming skimmers, while Orks forget about vehicles and spam infantry.

That kind of game design rarely ends well.

jeff white wrote:For illustration, eldar are supposed to be dying out. So guardians should cost more points than equivalent troops for factions with more expendable bodies, I.e. most everyone else.

Tyran is spot on- this is an amateur approach to balancing that never works out. In practice it means you take as few Guardians as possible, and then max out on whatever is undercosted to compensate.

The better way to encourage this sort of fluff-based army composition is to balance access to capabilities, not the cost of those capabilities. Eg, don't give Tau melee-only units and then make them overpriced; give Tau mixed melee-shooting units that are appropriately priced, so that they don't have the option to lean fully into melee.

If you wanted to reinforce Eldar as a dying race with lots of elites, maybe you'd limit their Troops choices to 4 (rather than 6) but give them an extra Elites slot. That would open up a more elite-focused army composition and disallow a horde of Guardians, without having to muck with individual unit balance.

"Fluff costing" and real costing would be the same if:

1) the fluff made sense (the only two factions in the game with "militia" units are the Dying Race and Imperial Guard... but only makes sense for 1...)

2) the rules matched the fluff. ("One SM has an even chance against 10 men? 10-1 cost ratio!")

Tellyportas and da jump are new. Don’t recall those being part of the game twenty years ago, let alone ten, but might be wrong.

So called fluff costing… I beg to differ. The game started that way. Explains why some factions pay more or less for access to different things. How else do you propose that gets explained?

So, guardians end up few, and kept relatively safe to hold objective only after the lines of fire are cleared and charges held back with other tougher units e.g. wrathbone animates. What about them makes them elites! In the background, we learn than many had walked warrior paths but might have stopped. These may end up leading units. But the elites are the practicing specialists.

You know what rarely ends well? Prideful ignorance.

 jeff white wrote:
Tellyportas and da jump are new. Don’t recall those being part of the game twenty years ago, let alone ten, but might be wrong.

So called fluff costing… I beg to differ. The game started that way. Explains why some factions pay more or less for access to different things. How else do you propose that gets explained?

So, guardians end up few, and kept relatively safe to hold objective only after the lines of fire are cleared and charges held back with other tougher units e.g. wrathbone animates. What about them makes them elites! In the background, we learn than many had walked warrior paths but might have stopped. These may end up leading units. But the elites are the practicing specialists.

You know what rarely ends well? Prideful ignorance.

If you balance based off the fluff, there should be 10,000 Orks to fight a small detachment of Marines. Say, three Tac Squads, a Dev Squad, an Assault Squad, and their ancillary support.

Do you think the Ork player wants to get 10,000 models to fight less than 100?
Do you want to make the game balanced around that?

Or, is it better to make a balanced game that is fun for every faction, with the understanding that it may not perfectly reflect the lore owing to concessions made for gameplay's sake?

Sure, 40k started with fluff costing, but GW always has sucked at balance so I do not know why we are using their decisions as positive examples.

 catbarf wrote:

jeff white wrote:For illustration, eldar are supposed to be dying out. So guardians should cost more points than equivalent troops for factions with more expendable bodies, I.e. most everyone else.

Tyran is spot on- this is an amateur approach to balancing that never works out.

Spoiler:

In practice it means you take as few Guardians as possible, and then max out on whatever is undercosted to compensate.

The better way to encourage this sort of fluff-based army composition is to balance access to capabilities, not the cost of those capabilities. Eg, don't give Tau melee-only units and then make them overpriced; give Tau mixed melee-shooting units that are appropriately priced, so that they don't have the option to lean fully into melee.

If you wanted to reinforce Eldar as a dying race with lots of elites, maybe you'd limit their Troops choices to 4 (rather than 6) but give them an extra Elites slot. That would open up a more elite-focused army composition and disallow a horde of Guardians, without having to muck with individual unit balance.

Still using the foc and manipulating to suit different factions is fine. Might match the background but the elite units should be just as rare, all things considered. Eldar are tech superior. So wraith units are a thing, whereas orks might have kans, wraith units are better.

And as for amateur, this is the way things were. You wanna be insulting, be that way. Doesn’t change facts. Just shows ignorance. Won’t ruin my day. Does make me wonder why I bother engaging with people of a certain caliber but whatevs. You do you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tyran wrote:
Sure, 40k started with fluff costing, but GW always has sucked at balance so I do not know why we are using their decisions as positive examples.

It was an illustration.

Some people just like to be mean and argue, I guess.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Tellyportas and da jump are new. Don’t recall those being part of the game twenty years ago, let alone ten, but might be wrong.

So called fluff costing… I beg to differ. The game started that way. Explains why some factions pay more or less for access to different things. How else do you propose that gets explained?

So, guardians end up few, and kept relatively safe to hold objective only after the lines of fire are cleared and charges held back with other tougher units e.g. wrathbone animates. What about them makes them elites! In the background, we learn than many had walked warrior paths but might have stopped. These may end up leading units. But the elites are the practicing specialists.

You know what rarely ends well? Prideful ignorance.

If you balance based off the fluff, there should be 10,000 Orks to fight a small detachment of Marines. Say, three Tac Squads, a Dev Squad, an Assault Squad, and their ancillary support.

Do you think the Ork player wants to get 10,000 models to fight less than 100?
Do you want to make the game balanced around that?

Or, is it better to make a balanced game that is fun for every faction, with the understanding that it may not perfectly reflect the lore owing to concessions made for gameplay's sake?

Some people purposefully misread to make themselves feel superior at the expense of anyone else. Sith type reasoning. You do you, man. I was offering a harmless example.

 jeff white wrote:
And as for amateur, this is the way things were. You wanna be insulting, be that way. Doesn’t change facts. Just shows ignorance. Won’t ruin my day. Does make me wonder why I bother engaging with people of a certain caliber but whatevs. You do you.

I think what Catbarf was trying to get across is that simply changing points is often an inelegant and perhaps something of a 'brute force' method to game balance that does not always work the way you want it.

The phrase I always use in this situation is: Points are not the great leveller. That is to say, you can't always rely on changing the points as your one-stop-shop to fixing problems in the game.

This is especially true when it comes to rarity within the fluff. Forget Guardians for a moment, and look at something on a smaller scale. Way back in the day Guard paid 6 points for Plasma Guns. Every infantry squad had one. GW decided that Plasma Guns should be rare, so jacked their cost to 10 points each. Did this change the amount of Plasma Guns in Guard armies? Did it make them "more rare", as their points were supposed to indicate? Of course not. Guard players just took less of other things to ensure they had enough points to maintain their supply of Plasma Guns. If they wanted to make Plasma Guns rare, they should have made Plasma Guns rare!!!. Change them to 0-2 per Platoon, rather than just upping their cost.

So to go back to your Guardians example. Making Guardians more expensive wouldn't make them more rare. It would just make them more expensive. If someone wants to bring a large amount of Guardians, they'll just keep doing that, and make compromises/sacrifices elsewhere to ensure that.

 Galas wrote:
With the changes to army construction of 9th, they fixed all problem with skew/spam lists.

Really?

People have just exchanged soup-ing different armies to soup-ing small detachments from different Forge Worlds/Cabals/etc..

Life... uhh... found a way, as it were, and the method has changed even though the results haven't.

 catbarf wrote:
If you wanted to reinforce Eldar as a dying race with lots of elites, maybe you'd limit their Troops choices to 4 (rather than 6) but give them an extra Elites slot. That would open up a more elite-focused army composition and disallow a horde of Guardians, without having to muck with individual unit balance.

That's precisely what I would want.

Everyone would always have the standard FOC available to them (slightly expanded and more scalable to game size), but each faction would have their own unique FOC (maybe more, if appropriate). An Eldar one that emphasises Elites is a great example of something that could exist. I picture a Tyranid one that branches outwards like a web as Synapse creatures are taken (kinda like how 2nd Ed Space Marine did it). A Word Bearer 'Summoning Circle' one that emphasises taking multiple Daemon units alongside CSMs (and none of this "You took a Daemon, so your troops forgot your core rules!" nonsense purity bonuses). That Iyanden one I mentioned with a heavy emphasis on Wraith constructs. And so on.

Make the fluff and army composition work hand-in hand rather than at odds with it, as it so often is now.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Galas wrote:
With the changes to army construction of 9th, they fixed all problem with skew/spam lists.

Really?

People have just exchanged soup-ing different armies to soup-ing small detachments from different Forge Worlds/Cabals/etc..

Life... uhh... found a way, as it were, and the method has changed even though the results haven't.

 catbarf wrote:
If you wanted to reinforce Eldar as a dying race with lots of elites, maybe you'd limit their Troops choices to 4 (rather than 6) but give them an extra Elites slot. That would open up a more elite-focused army composition and disallow a horde of Guardians, without having to muck with individual unit balance.

That's precisely what I would want.

Everyone would always have the standard FOC available to them (slightly expanded and more scalable to game size), but each faction would have their own unique FOC (maybe more, if appropriate). An Eldar one that emphasises Elites is a great example of something that could exist. I picture a Tyranid one that branches outwards like a web as Synapse creatures are taken (kinda like how 2nd Ed Space Marine did it). A Word Bearer 'Summoning Circle' one that emphasises taking multiple Daemon units alongside CSMs (and none of this "You took a Daemon, so your troops forgot your core rules!" nonsense purity bonuses). That Iyanden one I mentioned with a heavy emphasis on Wraith constructs. And so on.

Make the fluff and army composition work hand-in hand rather than at odds with it, as it so often is now.

I still think that having a Knight + guardsmen + Space marine army is more fluffy and interesting than having 3 different forgeworlds in a single list of admech