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.

I'm curious what ideas people might have for alternative ways that armies could be assembled that could provide for more balanced play.

A few consideration:

- Current approach: Multiple types of detachments can be combined in army, with players paying CP's to get more specialized detachments types

- Classic approach: Static force organization chart

- Ratio-based approach: E.g. You're list needs to maintain a 2:3 ratio of troops to non-troop units (excluding HQ units). Can also have a 1:1 cap between troops and specific type of non-troop unit.

- Highlander: Every unit is 0-1, except for troops (provided all troop choices are taken first).


One of the challenges is that some armies have LOTS of troop choices, and others are more limited. Some armies have particularly strong troop choices, others have relatively weaker troop choices. If the system is based around troops, how do you avoid it feeling like a troop tax for some armies and not others? Is there a way for this approach to incentive taking full strength units, as opposed to MSU's?

I'd be curious to consider some sort of modified highlander system that's a little less restrictive. What about, for example if for non-troop choices of a given type (e.g. elites) unit a second instance of a specific unit can only be taken once you a have a full set of units of each type. For example, if I wanted to take two units of space marine bikers, I'd need to first have a troop, elite and heavy support choice filled out. The first biker unit, plus the elite and heavy support would provide a "Set", and I could add more from there.

Anyway, I'm curious what ideas people might have in this space...

You'd have to identify, on a per-army and even per-subfaction basis, which units are "unbalanced" and which are not.

There are armies which would be unbalanced even in Highlander, some in Ratio-based, some in Classic, and some in Current.

Each army could have it's own unique force organization system intended to make sure an army of that type is "balanced", but the more you do this the closer you get to Kill Team 2.0's system of "you get X units. You can trade 1 for Y upgrade, 1 for Z upgrade, etc".

Personally I was fond of the old Force Organisation Chart approach. I think its easy to understand and grasp and provides a solid backbone for army composition both in terms of what you need to take in minimum and what you can take at most in any one slot. I think it also has an element of helping players to casually identify unit types and roles on the battlefield, which can be helpful to newer players.



That said the issue was it needed a big review. For example at one time Tyranids had quite a lot of models in the elite slot, all were very useful and very desirable things to put into the army. However there were too many to give you enough elite slots to take a good number.

And that was the issue, the FOC needed a major update to work with modern armies. It's also complicated by the fact that one army might have a LOT of troop types which are unlimited; but another might have a lot of elite unit types, which are limited. Even if the first army has troops which perform similar to elites.



Progressive unlocking can work, but it can also become very complicated and drawn out. Needing 3 different unit types to take a 4th unit type means many won't take the 4th unless its very veyr powerful at which point units 1-3 will be taken only as a "tax" so they'll be thinking purely of the cheapest options



One interesting approach I saw was Spartan Games Helix system. In that they combined buliding an army with boxed sets of models. Each boxed set was either 1 full Helix or half a Helix (that was mostly just for the core helix). Each Helix had a specific name and you could only take a limited number of Helix in an army.

The system was arranged around a central core helix and each "side" of the helix symbol let you take one of a specific helix type; if you doubled up on one type, you couldn't take the type on the opposing side of the helix



With each Helix having multiple different types of unit you were building an army in grouped units instead of individual units. It was an interesting approach and a neat one for their game as with each helix being a boxed set instead of blisters it made stocking, marketing and getting into the game really easy.

Personally I'm a big fan of the way HH does it.

Standard force org chart, with rites of war that make specific options troop choice but forces you to take a given amount of that troop choice.
Allowed 1 force org
Allowed 1 ally fore org slot

Then LoW can not exceed 25% of your forces total points.

A quick and relatively easy solution would be to give each faction/subfaction a base FOC for free and then charge CP for each other FOC that the player wants. For instance, say a faction was known for hit and run tactics. They would get the Outrider detachment for free. Whereas a faction that was known for destroying fortifications would get the Spearhead formation as its base FOC.

I do't see this as too hard to establish and if there is some faction/subfaction that has 2 focii then you can give the player his choice of 1 of 2 different FOCs (to show his commitment to one or the other type of tactics).

If you want more room or to force people into one FOC then you can just adjust a Battalion or Brigade to the same slant that the smaller FOCs do (replace Elite with Fast or Heavy).

I did like the old FOC, and then armies which can't run that (like knights) will have their own in their own book.

Armies of renoun would be a good way to mix that up with allowing different troops, but restricted options.

I think you'd struggle to find any form of ratio-based Force Org that didn't feel like there was a tax attached.
I dunno though, as a casual player who loves their narrative the current system works for me. If I want to field an Imperial Guard armoured column or a strike force of the Bringers of Despair I can do so without having to rely on Name Characters, special rules, or forking out boatloads for a FW book to get what I want.

The old FOC feels a little crude to me in how it railroaded certain army compositions. It curbed potential abuse, but by the same token was fairly restrictive. It really was designed around a company-level engagement where you were expected to take a 'balanced' set of capabilities, with fierce competition within the FOC roles.

I've always been fond of the WHFB approach. Divide units into Core, Special, Rare, and Characters. Stipulate minimum 25% Core, max 50% Special, max 25% Rare, and max 25% Characters. Rather than focus on battlefield roles (and create problems when multiple units compete for the same role), it allows units to be very straightforwardly categorized according to expected rarity. Core for the things you expect an army to include, Rare for things you don't want to see too much of, Special for the remainder.

Then throw in characters, subfactions, army archetypes, etc that switch around what slots certain units fall into, and you can get a lot of flexibility while still providing basic structure.

I like WHFB 8th FOC

% based instead of slot based. Makes it inherently scalable to various game sizes.

Of course this would work better with the return of stuff like "bring specific HQ, makes unit X count as troop" to allow for more variation to the army structure.

Also would need to rethink the %'s that WHFB 8th used because 50% combined on lords/heroes was busted.

EDIT: Also going to WHFB 8th style, remove the rule of 3, and add to each individual units datasheet a quanity allowed amount. (1+, 0-1, etc)

Rihgu wrote:
You'd have to identify, on a per-army and even per-subfaction basis, which units are "unbalanced" and which are not.

There are armies which would be unbalanced even in Highlander, some in Ratio-based, some in Classic, and some in Current.

Each army could have it's own unique force organization system intended to make sure an army of that type is "balanced", but the more you do this the closer you get to Kill Team 2.0's system of "you get X units. You can trade 1 for Y upgrade, 1 for Z upgrade, etc".

This. I'm a huge fan of highlander style but the cap on units should be well pondered, not arbitrary.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
I like WHFB 8th FOC

% based instead of slot based. Makes it inherently scalable to various game sizes.

Of course this would work better with the return of stuff like "bring specific HQ, makes unit X count as troop" to allow for more variation to the army structure.

Also would need to rethink the %'s that WHFB 8th used because 50% combined on lords/heroes was busted.

It only works when all the factions have a comparable amount of units for each army role, and basic troops don't differ too much from each other. It's not the current 40k case. It could maybe work if all infantries in light armour and all bikers are merged into the troop section, after all most of the infantries and all light cavalry were core (the equivalent of troops) in warhammer fantasy. As long as snowflake marines have like 7-8 troops with different abilties and other factions have 1-3 with basic stuff this approach would be completely unfair and unbalanced.

Some armies, AM specifically, should be exempt from certain FOC restrictions.
Especially when the whole FOC can be filled with what amounted to a single platoon in older codecii.

 carldooley wrote:
Some armies, AM specifically, should be exempt from certain FOC restrictions.
Especially when the whole FOC can be filled with what amounted to a single platoon in older codecii.

It depends. I think that being able to field 12 leman russes, in an army that has tons of other tanks, is pure nonsense. It's 3x the amount of russes that I'd tolerate .

 Blackie wrote:
It depends. I think that being able to field 12 leman russes, in an army that has tons of other tanks, is pure nonsense. It's 3x the amount of russes that I'd tolerate .

Well, sir that all depends on where you fall on the trusty Tank Alignment Chart!

In all seriousness, the Guard Codex has exactly one Tank and it is the Leman Russ with its 7 subtypes. The Chimera is an APC, Basilisks are Artillery, as are Deathstrikes, Manticores, and Wyverns, alongside the Hydra which is a mobile AA Battery.

 Blackie wrote:

 carldooley wrote:
Some armies, AM specifically, should be exempt from certain FOC restrictions.
Especially when the whole FOC can be filled with what amounted to a single platoon in older codecii.

It depends. I think that being able to field 12 leman russes, in an army that has tons of other tanks, is pure nonsense. It's 3x the amount of russes that I'd tolerate .

Wouldn't 12 Leman Russ's basically fill your entire roster if you were to take it?
I don't have points memorized but this is 126PL so likely more than 2k

The "multiple types of detachments, as many as you like" structure we've got now is very close to just letting people spam whatever they want, unless they have the misfortune to be stuck with expensive Troops/HQ. If you want the force org chart to be an actual set of restrictions and not just an obnoxious bookkeeping requirement that barely impacts list-building at all you're going to need to go back to something closer to the single force org chart only structure of 3rd-5th.

 Gert wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
It depends. I think that being able to field 12 leman russes, in an army that has tons of other tanks, is pure nonsense. It's 3x the amount of russes that I'd tolerate .

Well, sir that all depends on where you fall on the trusty Tank Alignment Chart!

Spoiler:

In all seriousness, the Guard Codex has exactly one Tank and it is the Leman Russ with its 7 subtypes. The Chimera is an APC, Basilisks are Artillery, as are Deathstrikes, Manticores, and Wyverns, alongside the Hydra which is a mobile AA Battery.

They're all tanks. Even chimeras are tanks. A tank commander, 3 leman russes, and even just one of the other kinds of tanks (including the one from FA) is A LOT of tanks . Not to mention that there are also LoWs tanks!

Problem when allowing that many russes is if russes become incidentally or intentionally OP spamming them breaks the game. Same with anything else that isn't the basic grunts. That's why I advocate for an highlander style, worked for ork buggies which are still good but don't break the game due to the restrictions they now have. Now I want russes to be good, they're one the most iconic AM units, but not too good to encourage players to bring lots of them and overshadow the other vehicles. Putting a cap on the number of models allowed helps, points aren't always the solution.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tittliewinks22 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 carldooley wrote:
Some armies, AM specifically, should be exempt from certain FOC restrictions.
Especially when the whole FOC can be filled with what amounted to a single platoon in older codecii.

It depends. I think that being able to field 12 leman russes, in an army that has tons of other tanks, is pure nonsense. It's 3x the amount of russes that I'd tolerate .

Wouldn't 12 Leman Russ's basically fill your entire roster if you were to take it?
I don't have points memorized but this is 126PL so likely more than 2k

Neither do I, but the game isn't limited to 2000 points .

 Blackie wrote:

 Gert wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
It depends. I think that being able to field 12 leman russes, in an army that has tons of other tanks, is pure nonsense. It's 3x the amount of russes that I'd tolerate .

Well, sir that all depends on where you fall on the trusty Tank Alignment Chart!

Spoiler:

In all seriousness, the Guard Codex has exactly one Tank and it is the Leman Russ with its 7 subtypes. The Chimera is an APC, Basilisks are Artillery, as are Deathstrikes, Manticores, and Wyverns, alongside the Hydra which is a mobile AA Battery.

They're all tanks. Even chimeras are tanks. A tank commander, 3 leman russes, and even just one of the other kinds of tanks (including the one from FA) is A LOT of tanks . Not to mention that there are also LoWs tanks!

Problem when allowing that many russes is if russes become incidentally or intentionally OP spamming them breaks the game. Same with anything else that isn't the basic grunts. That's why I advocate for an highlander style, worked for ork buggies which are still good but don't break the game due to the restrictions they now have. Now I want russes to be good, they're one the most iconic AM units, but not too good to encourage players to bring lots of them and overshadow the other vehicles. Putting a cap on the number of models allowed helps, points aren't always the solution.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tittliewinks22 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 carldooley wrote:
Some armies, AM specifically, should be exempt from certain FOC restrictions.
Especially when the whole FOC can be filled with what amounted to a single platoon in older codecii.

It depends. I think that being able to field 12 leman russes, in an army that has tons of other tanks, is pure nonsense. It's 3x the amount of russes that I'd tolerate .

Wouldn't 12 Leman Russ's basically fill your entire roster if you were to take it?
I don't have points memorized but this is 126PL so likely more than 2k

Neither do I, but the game isn't limited to 2000 points .

I agree with unit caps like there use to be in 5th edition or WHFB 8th. I do not agree with the ham-fisted way GW did it in 8th and continues to do it in 9th.

Good: 1 warboss/captain/commander per detachment (fits the fluff of the unit)
Bad: rule of 3

If some units are breaking your game because of spam, then maybe the FOC was the way all along, we basically have 7th unbound right now and they refuse to acknowledge this.

The reality is that it doesn't really matter, as any of those systems will get abused, they only shape the abuse differently.

As I said before the FOC means nothing when you can bring tons of leman russes (11 according to the old FOC), without breaking it . Or 9 ork buggies of the same kind. But one manticore, one wyvern, one heavy weapon team and a basilisk or an ork buggy, a unit of warbikes, a unit of stormboyz and a unit of deffkoptas break the FOC. Or when you have heavy shooters with basically the same profile that are troops in one army (Heavy intercessors) and heavy support in another one (Flash Gitz)

I don't really like the one commander per detachment, it should be one commander per army. Especially now that it's not allowed to mix up subfactions. Fluffwise I don't think it makes sense that there are 2-3 commanders in armies of the size of 2000 points. Fluffwise you might see the second commander in armies represented by hundreds of models.

Also I agree about rule of 3 as it shouldn't be arbitrary; some units should follow the rule of 2, others the rule of 1.

They could try making troop units good enough to be taken on their own merits? Not just as a tax to take something better.

Just a thought.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
It depends. I think that being able to field 12 leman russes, in an army that has tons of other tanks, is pure nonsense. It's 3x the amount of russes that I'd tolerate .

Well, sir that all depends on where you fall on the trusty Tank Alignment Chart!

Spoiler:

In all seriousness, the Guard Codex has exactly one Tank and it is the Leman Russ with its 7 subtypes. The Chimera is an APC, Basilisks are Artillery, as are Deathstrikes, Manticores, and Wyverns, alongside the Hydra which is a mobile AA Battery.

I refuse to live in a world where a Toyota land cruiser with a 50 cal on the back isn't considered a tank.

 Mezmorki wrote:
- Classic approach: Static force organization chart

This, but scaled based on points levels.

I think you need to determine what is upsetting you about the current situation - and therefore what the change is meant to achieve.

You could bring in rules saying "thou shalt spend 25% of your points on troops". Or "the only detachment is the battalion, deal with it". But that's just going to change the meta, not intrinsically result in a more balanced game.

How about another option - narrative army building on a per-codex basis with bespoke army building rules!

The 3.5 edition IG codex obeyed the normal FOC, but also was constrained by:
1 (no less, no more) Command Platoon as one of the HQ slots.

1 or more Infantry Platoons (every other option was 1 for 1 with a platoon, so to field any other troop units you had to have equally many platoons) that will always be 50% of your troops selections.

0-1 Hardened Veterans squad (veterans don't live long in the Imperial Guard... unless you take the Veteran Regiment doctrine choice, which removed the 0-1)

And then you had the Rare Troops component - any deviation from the standard infantry company list (i.e. Doctrine selections) meant reduced access to certain Rare Troops, which then took one of your doctrine points to gain access to. Thinks like Enginseers, Storm Troopers, Ogryns, etc.

Effectively, a base, purely doctrinal IG infantry company had access to everything, whilst variant infantry companies gained something but lost elsewhere.

I've said it before : Scrap the FoC, add a stat to the datasheet that tells you how many copied you can take.

 Blackie wrote:
They're all tanks. Even chimeras are tanks. A tank commander, 3 leman russes, and even just one of the other kinds of tanks (including the one from FA) is A LOT of tanks . Not to mention that there are also LoWs tanks!

Yeaaaah, no, they are not all tanks. They are all armoured vehicles but they are not tanks. The only ones that could reasonably be considered tanks are the Hellhound/Devildog/Banewolf but the rest, no.

Problem when allowing that many russes is if russes become incidentally or intentionally OP spamming them breaks the game. Same with anything else that isn't the basic grunts. That's why I advocate for an highlander style, worked for ork buggies which are still good but don't break the game due to the restrictions they now have. Now I want russes to be good, they're one the most iconic AM units, but not too good to encourage players to bring lots of them and overshadow the other vehicles. Putting a cap on the number of models allowed helps, points aren't always the solution.

Or, and hear me out, people want to play Tank Companies because they've been around for donkeys (AFAIK) with naff all chance to use them outside of Apocalypse, a FW army list, and now with 8th/9th. You could do Infantry Companies or Mechanised Companies but not a pure armour force despite the background explicitly stating that's how the Guard operates and it being present in numerous books/novels.

Spam isn't a problem you can fix with Force Org changes because it will punish some armies over others. It's all well and good for an expensive army to have caps on certain unit types because it's then easier to fill out the other slots without wastage, something like Space Marines, Necrons or Thousand Sons. What about an army like Guard, Craftworlds or T'au? "Oh no, you've maxed out your one expensive unit, guess you'll have to take the maximum Troops units to fill out your points." It just forces people into styles of play or collections of models that they don't want.

 Gert wrote:
Spam isn't a problem you can fix with Force Org changes because it will punish some armies over others. It's all well and good for an expensive army to have caps on certain unit types because it's then easier to fill out the other slots without wastage, something like Space Marines, Necrons or Thousand Sons. What about an army like Guard, Craftworlds or T'au? "Oh no, you've maxed out your one expensive unit, guess you'll have to take the maximum Troops units to fill out your points." It just forces people into styles of play or collections of models that they don't want.

That's why percentage-based systems have always seemed better to me than slot-based FOCs. Custodes and Guard should not be equally slot-limited, and it's a lot easier to use a percentage system than to design bespoke FOCs for each faction (as much as I loved the Platoon system back in the day).

I think the way detachments now work is fine. I'd just give them more restrictions.

Such as:
- Patrols, Spearheads, Vanguards, and Outriders should only get 1 Flyer slot. Which could have been a nice alternative to the new matched play rule.

- Brigades should get 0 - 1 Fortification slots and 0 - 1 LoW slots.

I'd just do it by percentage. 25% (or more) of your points must be Troops. All other slots must be 25% or less of your total points value. If a unit can be made to take up no slots, then it does not count towards any total.

Percentages just put hard caps on the points one can put towards a certain unit type. Your whole army could be illegal because of 1 point taking it just beyond 25% or something. The points limit of the game could make certain units illegal simply because they are 25.003% of your points allowance. That, to me at least, seems way more arbitrary than any FOC. At least an FOC can be based in the structure of the army, tied into fluff, and so on. Flat hard-cap numbers? No thanks.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
How about another option - narrative army building on a per-codex basis with bespoke army building rules!

I'd call that 'Armies of Renown'.

 catbarf wrote:
Custodes and Guard should not be equally slot-limited, and it's a lot easier to use a percentage system than to design bespoke FOCs for each faction (as much as I loved the Platoon system back in the day).

GW realised this once, which is why Guard had platoons.

Jarms48 wrote:
I think the way detachments now work is fine. I'd just give them more restrictions.

If you can just keep taking more detachments, then there are no actual restrictions.

 the_scotsman wrote:
I'd just do it by percentage. 25% (or more) of your points must be Troops. All other slots must be 25% or less of your total points value. If a unit can be made to take up no slots, then it does not count towards any total.

The problem is that still locks out the armies with dirt-cheap Troop options from attaining anything good without also being forced to having masses of Troops. Now I love to see a good horde of Infantry but when Guardsmen, Guardians, and Fire Warrior Strike Teams are 3/4/5 Power respectively for just what comes in one unit box, that's gonna suck for anyone. To get to the 25% minimum of a 100 Power army you're fielding 80 Guardsmen just to get access to 2 Leman Russ's and a Heavy Weapons Squad in your HS slots.