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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Delete them, you say?

So no more...

1. Gaunts.
2. Guardians
3. Tactical Squads/Intercessors.
4. Imperial Guardsmen.
5. DE Kabalites/Wyches.
6. Firewarriors.
7. Regular Custodes.
8. Chaos Space Marines.
9. Sisters of Battle.
10. Skitarii.
11. Bloodletters/Plagebearers/Daemonettes/Horrors.
12. Plague Marines.
13. Rubric Marines.
14. Ork Boyz.
15. Necron Warriors.
16. Genestealer Hybrids.

Just delete 'em all, hey?

Yeah... I don't think you've thought this through.

Yes? All of these do jobs that can be done by more interesting units, and most of these are taken simply because we HAVE TO. Thats not actual choice, and most often just ends up being "take the cheapest option".

If there is no more mandatory troops, you can rework these units to be more than basic bitches and therefore , interesting

Or they could just rework them to be interesting units rather than deleting them?

Personally, I'm all for more limited unit selection. Limitations are excellent for balance. You can't just load up on all the best units if there are more limits on the units you can actually take. Then you have to try and build the best combination of compulsory and discretionary units. The big problem here is GW hasn't shown a deft enough hand at knowing how to do the other things to make such a scheme work correctly.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Warp Spiders were a War Spider problem, not a Formation one though. That's the salient point here, imo.

Hard disagree. Fire Dragons, Dark Reapers, and Spears (though some say I would be overreacting with the latter) were all silly with the extra BS too. Eldar shooting was just that good, period. Those things are just overlooked because if the even BETTER shooting otherwise, Warp Spiders not counted!

Also the lack of requirements for that broken a benefit were badly written. At least Skyhammer made you use the bad Assault Marines, but MAN imagine if they were competent.

Yeah, well, I'm just not going to see hitting on 2s rather than 3s as all that busted, sorry. While Skyhammer was so abusive that even when people rolled out their hardest armies, I still never used Skyhammer in response. It felt that wrong.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Delete them, you say?

So no more...

1. Gaunts.
2. Guardians
3. Tactical Squads/Intercessors.
4. Imperial Guardsmen.
5. DE Kabalites/Wyches.
6. Firewarriors.
7. Regular Custodes.
8. Chaos Space Marines.
9. Sisters of Battle.
10. Skitarii.
11. Bloodletters/Plagebearers/Daemonettes/Horrors.
12. Plague Marines.
13. Rubric Marines.
14. Ork Boyz.
15. Necron Warriors.
16. Genestealer Hybrids.

Just delete 'em all, hey?

Yeah... I don't think you've thought this through.

Yes? All of these do jobs that can be done by more interesting units, and most of these are taken simply because we HAVE TO. Thats not actual choice, and most often just ends up being "take the cheapest option".

If there is no more mandatory troops, you can rework these units to be more than basic bitches and therefore , interesting

No way. I love troops. People that see troops as a tax are terribly mistaken imo.

Besides, Troops arent even mandatory these days. You can take your Vanguards and Spearhead detatchments and all that.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Forcing players to bring bad models (troops) in an attempt for some sort of balance is completely idiotic.

That's not a problem with the FOC. That's a problem with the Troops.

with both IMO, but yeah, fixing troops (aka : delete them) would make the game better.

You know you can do exactly that if your willing to spend the CP to field outrider/spearhead/vanguard detachments.

TBH I wish Troops were more mandatory, they should be 50% of your required points spend, IMO. Hate seeing armies that are built around spamming all the cool toys with no consideration towards the baseline grunts that actually do most of the fighting.

chaos0xomega wrote:
TBH I wish Troops were more mandatory, they should be 50% of your required points spend, IMO. Hate seeing armies that are built around spamming all the cool toys with no consideration towards the baseline grunts that actually do most of the fighting.

While 50% is extreme, I do agree with your overall point.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Warmahordes - always max units / if you don't pick the right caster some units can be total pants
Infinity - Availability "stat" that governs how many you can take
Chain of Command - you pick historically accurate platoon for the period

40K is likely the only game that offers such a wide variety of list building choices and they suffer for it.

Well in reality a lot of the choices are false or pointless. Like a lot of the small 1/2 point upgrades where if there are multiple it is normally simple calculation to see the optimum one.

And GW have made rulesets with plenty of choice but better balance. I normally hark back to Epic at this point but I can take a chapter/battle company/any combination of troops. While there are a few things you should be doing, for example taking all tactical marines would kinda work - but really you would need AA and a few other things to counter enemy specialists - you are broadly free to get what you want within some competitive constraints, which are designed to encourage a force that matches the fluff and presumably the reason you want to play it.

 vipoid wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
TBH I wish Troops were more mandatory, they should be 50% of your required points spend, IMO. Hate seeing armies that are built around spamming all the cool toys with no consideration towards the baseline grunts that actually do most of the fighting.

While 50% is extreme, I do agree with your overall point.

I would settle for a slightly reduced minimum, but it needs to be over 1/3rd

 alextroy wrote:
Or they could just rework them to be interesting units rather than deleting them?

Personally, I'm all for more limited unit selection. Limitations are excellent for balance. You can't just load up on all the best units if there are more limits on the units you can actually take. Then you have to try and build the best combination of compulsory and discretionary units. The big problem here is GW hasn't shown a deft enough hand at knowing how to do the other things to make such a scheme work correctly.

That's also a much bigger handicap to a smaller faction. Custodes only have so many datasheets so the more compulsory choices you have, the more similar their lists are going to look. Eldar and space marines wouldn't be bothered because they have 100+ datasheets.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
TBH I wish Troops were more mandatory, they should be 50% of your required points spend, IMO. Hate seeing armies that are built around spamming all the cool toys with no consideration towards the baseline grunts that actually do most of the fighting.

While 50% is extreme, I do agree with your overall point.

I would settle for a slightly reduced minimum, but it needs to be over 1/3rd

Rather than limit it to troops, I'd say make a minimum amount of Core units. That way maybe some factions would need to be adjusted from troops toward whatever their faction identity is based upon (for example making bikes core for Ravenwing or White Scars, or making wraith constructs core for Iyanden Eldars.).

chaos0xomega wrote:
TBH I wish Troops were more mandatory, they should be 50% of your required points spend, IMO. Hate seeing armies that are built around spamming all the cool toys with no consideration towards the baseline grunts that actually do most of the fighting.

That would very greatly deprive me of options. (and that will cause me to both spend & play less)
Sometimes being heavy on troops is what I'm envisioning & in the mood for. Lord knows I own plenty of Guard infantry squads, use Necron Warriors & Immortal frequently, my DA force would be almost un-fieldable without them (my force is built on a core of 4 Tac squads), & I'm never leaving my SW Grey Hunters out of the battle....
Other times?
For ex;
* I love playing my Necron Destroyer cult list. There are no troops with the Destroyer KW though. :( Get GW to make me a destroyer KW troop & I'll buy it + play it.
* Recently I just built a Gretchin KW themed force. Virtually everything available to Grots is in either the fast or heavy slots. Sure, there's Gretchin as Troops (and I do have & use 4 squads of them). But spending 1k pts on Troops Gretchin would be 1) a colossal waste of $, 2) a very quick route to a loss. Grots on foot = poor fighters. Apparently they're cunning enough to realize this & compensate by going mekanized with large amounts of grot tanks, Kanz, & gunz....
* BTW, speaking of tanks.... Who do you imagine does the fighting in an Imperial Guard Tank Reg.?

On the topic of unit selection: I would like a system that gave a set of resources like in RTS
X Food
Y Metals
Z Fuel
Then each unit would have costs (x,y,z...)
Players could then mix high Food units with high Fuel units etc.

Jarms48 wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Depending on Army that was true. The Ork ones were just trash.

Necrons didn't even get one from memory. Or was that 8th edition specialist detachments? Or both?

Literally the opposite is true. Necrons had the "Decurion" which was so dramatically OP compared to anything else at the time that every other "super" formation was referred to as the Decurion style formation.

As far as balancing Void's by forcing you to take core...no. Fix the damn units so they are balanced. The entire premise also falls apart when you realize that Troupes are also already some of the best troops in the game, not to mention everything else that gets core. Just across the board no. Its just annoying that GW doesn't playtest any of their damn armies before release, or hire a faction specific SME to check the codex before release. Having 1 guy on staff who knows orkz really really well could have saved them from having to look stupid putting out a bad codex with units/gear that is illegal to use by its own existence. Not to even touch on the fact that they nerfed/buffed the wrong units and made the aforementioned illegal units...ILLEGAL AGAIN! lol.

Its not enough to have 1 expert if he gets vetoed by others.

Its weird seeing people just through hoops to try and make a completely broken Voidweaver not actually break the game through limits and what not instead of *shock* simply assigning it a point value that is more balanced.

Why is just making them 150 points not an option? Why make things complicated? The voidweaver is not some sort of weird combination of rules and skew that a simple point cost can't balance it.

Its just a mobile, good gun with a bunch of special rules to make its seemingly flimsy body tough. With an absurdly low points cost.

 Ordana wrote:
Its weird seeing people just through hoops to try and make a completely broken Voidweaver not actually break the game through limits and what not instead of *shock* simply assigning it a point value that is more balanced.

Why is just making them 150 points not an option? Why make things complicated? The voidweaver is not some sort of weird combination of rules and skew that a simple point cost can't balance it.

Its just a mobile, good gun with a bunch of special rules to make its seemingly flimsy body tough. With an absurdly low points cost.

Fun exercise, Against a T8 2+ save vehicle, 150pts of Deffkoptas gets 12 shots, 4 hits, 2 wounds and a grand total of 3dmg.
At 150pts the Voidweaver would get 2 shots for 1.33 hits, 0.88 wounds, 0.74 go through after saves for 2.96dmg The shurikens fire off 6 shots, 4 hits, 1.33 wounds for 0.88dmg.

So 150pts of Deffkoptas average 3dmg a turn against T8 2+ save, the Voidweaver with its prismatic averages 3.84 if it was nerfed to 150pts.

Ohh, and if you just say "the Prismatic cannon is the problem!" The haywire cannon averages 4 shots, 2.66 hits, 1.33 wounds (1/3rd of those wounds become D3 mortals) for 2.66dmg bringing it to 3.55dmg

To put it another way for simplicity sake. A single Voidweaver right now AVERAGES MORE dmg per turn against vehicles than 150pts of Deffkoptas. And that is without any buffs like kulture/strats/re-rolls/Laughing god/faction etc.

 Ordana wrote:
Its weird seeing people just through hoops to try and make a completely broken Voidweaver not actually break the game through limits and what not instead of *shock* simply assigning it a point value that is more balanced.

Why is just making them 150 points not an option? Why make things complicated? The voidweaver is not some sort of weird combination of rules and skew that a simple point cost can't balance it.

Its just a mobile, good gun with a bunch of special rules to make its seemingly flimsy body tough. With an absurdly low points cost.

The fear would be that the optimal choice goes from 9 voidweavers to 0 because 1-8 can never be optimal.

You would need "concave" preferences in people. like... u(X,Y)= X^alpha*Y^(1-alpha)

SemperMortis wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Its weird seeing people just through hoops to try and make a completely broken Voidweaver not actually break the game through limits and what not instead of *shock* simply assigning it a point value that is more balanced.

Why is just making them 150 points not an option? Why make things complicated? The voidweaver is not some sort of weird combination of rules and skew that a simple point cost can't balance it.

Its just a mobile, good gun with a bunch of special rules to make its seemingly flimsy body tough. With an absurdly low points cost.

Fun exercise, Against a T8 2+ save vehicle, 150pts of Deffkoptas gets 12 shots, 4 hits, 2 wounds and a grand total of 3dmg.
At 150pts the Voidweaver would get 2 shots for 1.33 hits, 0.88 wounds, 0.74 go through after saves for 2.96dmg The shurikens fire off 6 shots, 4 hits, 1.33 wounds for 0.88dmg.

So 150pts of Deffkoptas average 3dmg a turn against T8 2+ save, the Voidweaver with its prismatic averages 3.84 if it was nerfed to 150pts.

Ohh, and if you just say "the Prismatic cannon is the problem!" The haywire cannon averages 4 shots, 2.66 hits, 1.33 wounds (1/3rd of those wounds become D3 mortals) for 2.66dmg bringing it to 3.55dmg

To put it another way for simplicity sake. A single Voidweaver right now AVERAGES MORE dmg per turn against vehicles than 150pts of Deffkoptas. And that is without any buffs like kulture/strats/re-rolls/Laughing god/faction etc.

So make it 175 points? You completely missed the point they were trying to make.

The problem is there is little incentives to not min-max because rate of substitution is (almost) constant

Harlequins are also quite a small faction in terms of unit choices. So yeah people are gonna take the best thing for competitive games, and since there are so few choices only a few will be stand out and as a result list diversity will suffer.

It's hard to ballance a faction like that, if you nerf the good units too much, or limit what units can be taken, there will just not be enough left to make a strong army. Obviously their intent is that harlequins are a supporting faction to other Aeldari, but they still have to be worth taking instead of just going full Eldar or Dark Eldar.

 M0ff3l wrote:
Harlequins are also quite a small faction in terms of unit choices. So yeah people are gonna take the best thing for competitive games, and since there are so few choices only a few will be stand out and as a result list diversity will suffer.

Even a faction with billions of choices would min-max

 Manchild 1984 wrote:

 M0ff3l wrote:
Harlequins are also quite a small faction in terms of unit choices. So yeah people are gonna take the best thing for competitive games, and since there are so few choices only a few will be stand out and as a result list diversity will suffer.

Even a faction with billions of choices would min-max

IMHO this is a bit of a fallacy.

The only reason to min-max is if you have a unit that can accomplish everything and do everything and be everything. In 40k, of course, it is easy for a unit to do this - all you have to do is kill and not be killed.

But in other games, combined arms is encouraged because units have roles. For example, you wouldn't spam anti-tank guns in COC because, while they are fantabulous at killing tanks, they don't help you in the same ways that an Infantry Field Gun, an HMG, a flamethrower, etc. all do.

So instead of a support allocation that is "the best thing, as many as I can get" you typically see a mixed or balanced support allocation, because the definition of the best thing changes as the situation on the tabletop evolves.

 Ordana wrote:
Its weird seeing people just through hoops to try and make a completely broken Voidweaver not actually break the game through limits and what not instead of *shock* simply assigning it a point value that is more balanced.

Why is just making them 150 points not an option? Why make things complicated? The voidweaver is not some sort of weird combination of rules and skew that a simple point cost can't balance it.

Its just a mobile, good gun with a bunch of special rules to make its seemingly flimsy body tough. With an absurdly low points cost.

I think half of it is that GW is unlikely to adjust points in the slate so they have to get fixed by some other avenue until July.

 Manchild 1984 wrote:

 M0ff3l wrote:
Harlequins are also quite a small faction in terms of unit choices. So yeah people are gonna take the best thing for competitive games, and since there are so few choices only a few will be stand out and as a result list diversity will suffer.

Even a faction with billions of choices would min-max

If most (or all for sake of argument) units in a codex are on a similar power level, and there are enough choices, there will be build diversity just in terms of playstyle and strategy. Yeah people will minmax, but it wont be 9x voidweaver in every list. Some would run 9 of something else, or a mix of 3 different things. Point values limit the amount of things you can take, and if there are enough powerful options that provide different gameplay, list variety will be better for it, it's just really hard to do that for factions that have like 4 non character kits.

The main point I'm trying to make, if they limit voidweavers to 1 unit per army, what are harlequins gonna take instead?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Manchild 1984 wrote:

 M0ff3l wrote:
Harlequins are also quite a small faction in terms of unit choices. So yeah people are gonna take the best thing for competitive games, and since there are so few choices only a few will be stand out and as a result list diversity will suffer.

Even a faction with billions of choices would min-max

IMHO this is a bit of a fallacy.

The only reason to min-max is if you have a unit that can accomplish everything and do everything and be everything. In 40k, of course, it is easy for a unit to do this - all you have to do is kill and not be killed.

But in other games, combined arms is encouraged because units have roles. For example, you wouldn't spam anti-tank guns in COC because, while they are fantabulous at killing tanks, they don't help you in the same ways that an Infantry Field Gun, an HMG, a flamethrower, etc. all do.

So instead of a support allocation that is "the best thing, as many as I can get" you typically see a mixed or balanced support allocation, because the definition of the best thing changes as the situation on the tabletop evolves.

Except than you'd just find a way to min-max that. Because then you'd min-max what best possible combined arms you'd have. What anti-tank is the best? What does the best against infantry? What tank is the best against X Y and Z? Does Y infantry deal with anti-tank and flamers better then Z? You can easily min-max a combined arms force because unless there is a lack of choice. There will always be choices that may or may not be better.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Its weird seeing people just through hoops to try and make a completely broken Voidweaver not actually break the game through limits and what not instead of *shock* simply assigning it a point value that is more balanced.

Why is just making them 150 points not an option? Why make things complicated? The voidweaver is not some sort of weird combination of rules and skew that a simple point cost can't balance it.

Its just a mobile, good gun with a bunch of special rules to make its seemingly flimsy body tough. With an absurdly low points cost.

Fun exercise, Against a T8 2+ save vehicle, 150pts of Deffkoptas gets 12 shots, 4 hits, 2 wounds and a grand total of 3dmg.
At 150pts the Voidweaver would get 2 shots for 1.33 hits, 0.88 wounds, 0.74 go through after saves for 2.96dmg The shurikens fire off 6 shots, 4 hits, 1.33 wounds for 0.88dmg.

So 150pts of Deffkoptas average 3dmg a turn against T8 2+ save, the Voidweaver with its prismatic averages 3.84 if it was nerfed to 150pts.

Ohh, and if you just say "the Prismatic cannon is the problem!" The haywire cannon averages 4 shots, 2.66 hits, 1.33 wounds (1/3rd of those wounds become D3 mortals) for 2.66dmg bringing it to 3.55dmg

To put it another way for simplicity sake. A single Voidweaver right now AVERAGES MORE dmg per turn against vehicles than 150pts of Deffkoptas. And that is without any buffs like kulture/strats/re-rolls/Laughing god/faction etc.

Deffkoptas (and most ork shooting really) are bad examples because they lose 50% effectiveness vs Xweavers. You'd want to compare them against a bigger variety and accept that Voidweavers are a particularly good counter to ork shooting. Orks, in general, should be restructured into a combined arms faction, but that's ork balance for you.

There's also a matter of practicality. A harlie player only has a choice of units in the HQ (2) and Elite (2) slots so unless he wants to buy a lot of troupes he really doesn't have a lot of choice but to bring in as many void weavers as points allow. There's also the problem of just how many units he can really use in a game. How many troupes do you really want on the battlefield. If you take a battalion then he can have both of his unique HQs, only 4 Elites max (but 2-3 is the practical limit), after taking 3 Troop choices he can spend points on FA and Hvy. If he loads up on FA then people will start complaining about Skyweaver spam.

Just for math's sake - 2HQs+ 3Elites + 3TroopsI(3*6)= 629pts w/o options. 18 skyweaver (the max)=810 w/o options. Total 1439 points. If you spend 200 point on options you still hae 371 points left over (about 3 Starweavers). What's a harlie player to do?

Toofast wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
Or they could just rework them to be interesting units rather than deleting them?

Personally, I'm all for more limited unit selection. Limitations are excellent for balance. You can't just load up on all the best units if there are more limits on the units you can actually take. Then you have to try and build the best combination of compulsory and discretionary units. The big problem here is GW hasn't shown a deft enough hand at knowing how to do the other things to make such a scheme work correctly.

That's also a much bigger handicap to a smaller faction. Custodes only have so many datasheets so the more compulsory choices you have, the more similar their lists are going to look. Eldar and space marines wouldn't be bothered because they have 100+ datasheets.

You say this like it somehow isn’t true today. Despite their smaller unit selections, Custodes and Harlequins are doing just fine. As always, the devil is in the details.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
There's also a matter of practicality. A harlie player only has a choice of units in the HQ (2) and Elite (2) slots so unless he wants to buy a lot of troupes he really doesn't have a lot of choice but to bring in as many void weavers as points allow. There's also the problem of just how many units he can really use in a game. How many troupes do you really want on the battlefield. If you take a battalion then he can have both of his unique HQs, only 4 Elites max (but 2-3 is the practical limit), after taking 3 Troop choices he can spend points on FA and Hvy. If he loads up on FA then people will start complaining about Skyweaver spam.

Just for math's sake - 2HQs+ 3Elites + 3TroopsI(3*6)= 629pts w/o options. 18 skyweaver (the max)=810 w/o options. Total 1439 points. If you spend 200 point on options you still hae 371 points left over (about 3 Starweavers). What's a harlie player to do?

Again, the problem isn't 'spamming' 9 voidweavers. its that the voidweaver is insane for 90 points and could easily be 150 points for the stats, rules and gun it gives you. Its a broken unit for its cost no matter if you run 1, 9 or anywhere in between.

Fix the point cost and bring as many as you want.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Manchild 1984 wrote:

 M0ff3l wrote:
Harlequins are also quite a small faction in terms of unit choices. So yeah people are gonna take the best thing for competitive games, and since there are so few choices only a few will be stand out and as a result list diversity will suffer.

Even a faction with billions of choices would min-max

IMHO this is a bit of a fallacy.

The only reason to min-max is if you have a unit that can accomplish everything and do everything and be everything. In 40k, of course, it is easy for a unit to do this - all you have to do is kill and not be killed.

But in other games, combined arms is encouraged because units have roles. For example, you wouldn't spam anti-tank guns in COC because, while they are fantabulous at killing tanks, they don't help you in the same ways that an Infantry Field Gun, an HMG, a flamethrower, etc. all do.

So instead of a support allocation that is "the best thing, as many as I can get" you typically see a mixed or balanced support allocation, because the definition of the best thing changes as the situation on the tabletop evolves.

Except than you'd just find a way to min-max that. Because then you'd min-max what best possible combined arms you'd have. What anti-tank is the best? What does the best against infantry? What tank is the best against X Y and Z? Does Y infantry deal with anti-tank and flamers better then Z? You can easily min-max a combined arms force because unless there is a lack of choice. There will always be choices that may or may not be better.

Except they have different roles because the game rules are about more than just killing... which was my point.
The best anti-tank can mean:
1) Rawly, the best a killing a tank.
2) The best at deterring and constraining a tank's maneuver. (because there are ways to do this more easily and quickly and cheaply than just killing it)
3) The best at coming out ahead in a firefight with a tank. (because sometimes protecting yourself is more important than killing the enemy, and a prolonged firefight is preferable to death)
4) The best at constraining a tank's firepower. (because there are ways to do this more easily and quickly and cheaply than just killing it)

The best against infantry can mean:
1) The best at killing infantry
2) the best at suppressing infantry (because there are ways to do this more easily and quickly and cheaply than just killing it)
3) the best at coming out ahead in a firefight with infantry (because sometimes protecting yourself is more important than killing the enemy, and a prolonged firefight is preferable to death)

etc.

Combined with the actual weapon statline differences (e.g. ranges, degree of ignoring cover, durability of the carrying unit, maneuverability of the carrying unit), this can mean that your battle plan may be best served by a mortar to drop smoke on a tank and blind it to keep it from shooting well, rather than just buying the biggest, baddest, and most expensive anti-tank option in your support list.