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I've mentioned this before when this topic has come up elsewhere, but I did always like the way Tyranid armies were structured in Epic/2nd Edition Space Marine, specifically the Hive War boxed set.

It was a hexagonal structure, with certain creatures having what were essentially 'hive nodes', and you would attach units to these nodes. A Dominatrix had 6 nodes - one on every side - where as Tyranid Warriors had, I believe, just one. So, you could keep attacking things with hive nodes to things with hive nodes, but most things didn't have them, creating a dead end on the chain.

Meant you had to balance leader beasts alongside everything else, and the more Hive Mind-projecting creatures you had, the larger your army could be.


If each army had a organisation system unique to them, I think that'd be far better than the FOC of 3rd-7th, the "take whatever you want with no real cost or consequence" system of 8th & 9th, and certainly any horrific percentage based system.

Like, bring back Guard platoon structure, FFS.

We sorta had that with some of the codices having modified FOCs. It isn't the worst idea in the world.

The problem with FoC manipulation back in the day was that, similar to how the FoC is now with being able to take whatever you want with no real consequence, you got extra FoC slots by 'giving up' things you might not have wanted to take in the first place.

The classic example is Iron Warriors from the 3.5 Codex. They could get an extra Heavy Support slot, but would have to give up a Fast Attack slot in order to get that. Wow. A whole FA slot, something most Chaos players (let alone Iron Warriors players) were never going to use as FA choices in the 3.5 Codex were quite lacklustre. So, you gave up something you weren't taking anyway, and got a huge boon as a result.

The 4th Ed Marine Codex was similar with its Chapter Traits. You had to take a negative trait to 'balance' the positive ones. One of the negative traits was 'No allies!'. So, if you didn't intend to take any allies (Inquisition, Grey Knights, etc.), you could just take that 'negative' trait and get the bonuses without actually losing anything.

This didn't just apply for FoC manipulation. The 3.5 Guard Codex has a wonderful(ly flawed) Doctrine system that was full of all sorts of amazing things, but if you took a Doctrines army you were forced to give up things like Ogryns and Ratlings and Sanctioned Psykers and Priestss - y'know, the kind of things that basically nobody took in the first place - so you weren't exactly missing out on anything truly vital to get these added bonuses. I mean, do I give all the infantry in my army +1Ld and +1 Initiative for free, or take a unit of Ratlings? Hard choice...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I've mentioned this before when this topic has come up elsewhere, but I did always like the way Tyranid armies were structured in Epic/2nd Edition Space Marine, specifically the Hive War boxed set.

It was a hexagonal structure, with certain creatures having what were essentially 'hive nodes', and you would attach units to these nodes. A Dominatrix had 6 nodes - one on every side - where as Tyranid Warriors had, I believe, just one. So, you could keep attacking things with hive nodes to things with hive nodes, but most things didn't have them, creating a dead end on the chain.

Meant you had to balance leader beasts alongside everything else, and the more Hive Mind-projecting creatures you had, the larger your army could be.


If each army had a organisation system unique to them, I think that'd be far better than the FOC of 3rd-7th, the "take whatever you want with no real cost or consequence" system of 8th & 9th, and certainly any horrific percentage based system.

Like, bring back Guard platoon structure, FFS.

That would be nice, yes.
What, you mean to tell me that all of these different alien races have the same army doctrine and composition as everyone else?
A lot of units probably shouldn't even take up slots. Stuff like Gretchin, Scarabs, Rippers, spore mines, all of these are supposed to be extremely numerous and an ubiquitous sight.
And yeah, Platoons need to come back. They are what made IG felt unique.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The 4th Ed Marine Codex was similar with its Chapter Traits. You had to take a negative trait to 'balance' the positive ones. One of the negative traits was 'No allies!'. So, if you didn't intend to take any allies (Inquisition, Grey Knights, etc.), you could just take that 'negative' trait and get the bonuses without actually losing anything.

Most of those traits cost points. You weren't getting freebies, you were getting options; and as I recall you didn't have to choose negative traits unless you wanted multiple positive traits.

Still better than the current subfaction system, where all bonuses are free regardless of comparative utility and you're tacitly encouraged to Flanderise your army to maximize the buffs.

I would like to see in 10th edition...

-Less complication
-Fewer rules
-Use a rule book, codex, and nothing more


Maybe something closer to like 5th edition or HH, but of course it allows flyers, super heavies, and whatever else.

Maybe make charging something different. Like you have your normal movement, but you also have a set distance to your charge move too. For example-

-move ( every unit has their own value/distance )
-shoot
-psychic
-advance or charge ( instead of rolling, your units have their own distance they can advance or charge ), so no failed dice roll, you either just make it or don’t

Maybe instead of turns 1-5, you play it like chess. You choose one unit to do all your normal stuff- move shoot charge fight etc. Then your opponent gets to choose a unit to do the same. I don’t know how units locked in combat would work in this? So maybe once combat is over, each unit is free to break off and do whatever. Also, maybe make it to where you can’t use the same unit twice in a row.

That’s all I got for now.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Guess I'm the one to defend Karol again.

Do you know how fething hard it is to get a community going for a game when those potential players aren't even sure their investment will result in more players? It takes a feth ton of effort and time.

It does, but it's totally doable. Of course, Karol won't do it because Karol's a troll account.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
Honestly in the US especially the game stores essentially control what's allowed to be played. If they don't outright tell you you can't play a game they don't stock then the players will ostracize you because they really do treat the game store like their turf. I have heard people outright say with complete seriousness that it is disrespectful to the game store to play something there that you can't buy there. I've seen people berated simply for saying hey this other store is having a tournament in 2 weeks, the store owner called the guy out and said it was disrespectful to talk about another game store in his establishment

That's the rarity. I've lived in multiple places and store owners that act like that lose customers fast. In the extreme people will play out of their garage instead.

Store owners live on goodwill. They try to be friendly people. The ones who aren't will lose to the ones who are.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SemperMortis wrote:
I'd really like GW to break the mold and do the unthinkable. Hire an Ork player to write ork rules so that way we aren't left with rules which sound good for a SM but are utter garbage for an Ork army. I know, asking too much but hey we can hope right?

Ork players' job is to give SM players easy wins. If they stop doing that they'll nerf them or abandon the army entirely.

Afrodactyl wrote:The issue with the FOC approach is that it limits the builds an army can use. If I want to make an Ork Speed Freaks list, I must take X amount of troops and can only take a maximum of 3 units out of warbikes, deffkoptas, buggies, etc? That doesn't seem like a Speed Freaks army, it seems like a bog-standard Ork list with a handful of bikes.

Unless the FOC approach comes with options to change up the slots units take up. Like a Deffkilla Wartrike letting you take 3 buggies as troops/core/whatever or a Warboss on Bike letting you take bikers.

But then we're at the same point as the detachment scenario and we've spent all this time amending the rulebook and changed basically nothing, as I would just take an Outrider detachment and have 6 FA slots.

I don't personally see the issue with the Detachment system, or how it's a 'convoluted mess'. I think it works pretty well for allowing people to make the army they want to make.

If someone here does have an issue with it, please explain. My acceptance of the system may just be out of ignorance of the woes that other factions have.

No it helps build a structure to the theme of the army you're trying to build. And without all the CP/Stratgem/Formation X,Y,Z, Battalion D, and Boxcar 4, hire a rules lawyer to review the list and get it notarized in triplicate current way of army building, it's just BETTER and simpler to bring back the old school way that WORKS.

Also if you wanted a Speed Freaks army there was a sentence of rules that was to the equivalent of Bikes and Buggies are now Troops, and everyone that walks has to have a transport. That was EASY to understand and do. Cause I did it back in 3rd. So no, you could have 6+ Units of bikers, A warboss on a bike, or in the back of a battlewagon with a mob of boyz. And elite choices like burna boyz in trukks.

You also had the Blood Axes getting Kommandos as troops and the ability to take looted Chimeras

Bad Moons got Flash Gitz, Dethskulls got a looted vehicle. All cool flavorful options.

So why go through the trouble of doing all these attachments for CP and to keep Battle forged or whatever when you have a simple and easy to use chart to drop your units into? It's literally a sentence or a paragraph of rules to do compared 1/4 of a book and an algebra class to figure out.

Amishprn86 wrote:Honestly just let us take anything and actually balance units lol.

And then you have to deal with an entire army of Space Marine Chapter Masters, or instead of 3 units of cheese in an army, you have to deal with 15 units of the cheese. There's a certain point where sanity has to come in. And also, still have a 'vision' for how an army is supposed to come together and be utilized.

catbarf wrote:

VladimirHerzog wrote:what are leman russes?

Amishprn86 wrote:Guard had troop tanks for a long time

I played Guard from 3rd-5th and have no idea what you guys are talking about. You never could just forgo infantry and take all Russes in that era. And only in 5th could you really mass Russes thanks to squadrons.

Yeah, you could take Armored Fist squads and have lots of Chimeras- not tanks. In 3rd and 4th if you wanted a tank skew, you had to take the Armored Company list by opponent's permission and which came with a bunch of special rules to try to offset the skew.

They had all Leman Russ armies all the way when 3rd came out, it's in the back of the book in the IG army list. You didn't need opponent's permission either. Only things you ever needed opponent's permission for in 3rd was taking Special/Named characters, which as a rule is something that does SERIOUSLY need to come back in a bad way.

Spoletta wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

 Afrodactyl wrote:
The issue with the FOC approach is that it limits the builds an army can use. If I want to make an Ork Speed Freaks list, I must take X amount of troops and can only take a maximum of 3 units out of warbikes, deffkoptas, buggies, etc? That doesn't seem like a Speed Freaks army, it seems like a bog-standard Ork list with a handful of bikes.

Unless the FOC approach comes with options to change up the slots units take up. Like a Deffkilla Wartrike letting you take 3 buggies as troops/core/whatever or a Warboss on Bike letting you take bikers.

But then we're at the same point as the detachment scenario and we've spent all this time amending the rulebook and changed basically nothing, as I would just take an Outrider detachment and have 6 FA slots.

I don't personally see the issue with the Detachment system, or how it's a 'convoluted mess'. I think it works pretty well for allowing people to make the army they want to make.

If someone here does have an issue with it, please explain. My acceptance of the system may just be out of ignorance of the woes that other factions have.

There's nothing convoluted in it, it is a very simple system which offers real choice with effective costs and gains (those who think that 3 CP is not a cost should look at how many competitive lists run more than one detachment)

Which means that no one takes Outrider / Vanguard / Spearhead, because those don't give you the CP refund. Also, a single detachment that uses an army organization scheme that everyone uses sounds an awful lot like the old FoC to me.

IIRC, The CP cost was added because players were mixing and matching different detachments with subfactions, and it got real messy real fast.
So yeah, it was convoluted in that sense, and now players are just using single detachments anyway, thereby making the other detachments pointless.

Not to mention that the old FoC just required you to take an HQ and 2 troops. Simple.
Now you have to choose between Combat Patrol (which is too small), Battalion (which requires you to field 2 HQs and three troops), Brigade (huge requirements, so you probably aren't going to use it) or pay 3 CP (lol, no). Not so simple, not that practical.

What they needed to do was tweak the old FoC to scale better for larger games or release variations of it for armies. Not introduce something that feels even more awkward.

Or maybe you need to inform yourself instead of talking about stuff you don't know about.

If you take a look at the lists being played you will notice that indeed a single battalion is the most common type of list, but it is by no means the only one. It takes around 60% of the lists, but you see patrols, patrol+outrider, vanguard + outrider, patrol + patrol, brigades, super heavy detachments... in short, there is choice and there is a cost. And it is working well, to the point that the standard choice is common but not too common and many players opt to pay the price to gain flexibility in list construction. This is a lot more than the old FOC offered, which was no choice and no cost, play like a space marine or get out. The current detachment system has very few faction rules which interact with it (Real Space Raid and the knight ones), only in those cases were the faction acts in a really weird way. And even there, it doesn't change what those detachments do, it only alters the CP cost. This is proof that the system is working very well at representing the lists that players want to put on the battlefield.
The old FOC system had more exceptions than rules, because on its own it was a flawed system which completely prevented any sort of thematic list, which also had the problem of tying said thematic list to a named character of some kind, in a game where a lot of people HATE named characters. There was nothing good about it. I can accept those that liked templates, armor facing and so on, but FOC simply cannot be defended it has no merits of any kind.

But if you got rid of CP as a mechanic, then you don't need to do all the combo this with this or worry about a cost for trying to do mental gymnastics. The old FOC was plenty flexible enough, and easy to use. The exceptions were small flavor or army theme things, and they made sense. You could write out a list for a 2000-point army on a sheet of notebook paper. You can't do that today. But I do agree. I hate named characters in my regular/matched games. They only have a place in narrative games.

H.B.M.C. wrote:The problem with FoC manipulation back in the day was that, similar to how the FoC is now with being able to take whatever you want with no real consequence, you got extra FoC slots by 'giving up' things you might not have wanted to take in the first place.

The classic example is Iron Warriors from the 3.5 Codex. They could get an extra Heavy Support slot, but would have to give up a Fast Attack slot in order to get that. Wow. A whole FA slot, something most Chaos players (let alone Iron Warriors players) were never going to use as FA choices in the 3.5 Codex were quite lacklustre. So, you gave up something you weren't taking anyway, and got a huge boon as a result.

The 4th Ed Marine Codex was similar with its Chapter Traits. You had to take a negative trait to 'balance' the positive ones. One of the negative traits was 'No allies!'. So, if you didn't intend to take any allies (Inquisition, Grey Knights, etc.), you could just take that 'negative' trait and get the bonuses without actually losing anything.

This didn't just apply for FoC manipulation. The 3.5 Guard Codex has a wonderful(ly flawed) Doctrine system that was full of all sorts of amazing things, but if you took a Doctrines army you were forced to give up things like Ogryns and Ratlings and Sanctioned Psykers and Priestss - y'know, the kind of things that basically nobody took in the first place - so you weren't exactly missing out on anything truly vital to get these added bonuses. I mean, do I give all the infantry in my army +1Ld and +1 Initiative for free, or take a unit of Ratlings? Hard choice...

Except the tweaks made sense for those armies. Iron Warriors move as slow as a slug uphill, in inch deep molasses. They are all about artillery and fire support. (Also, it's a crying shame they lost their basilisks.) I also take umbrage with the FA choices in the 3.5 dex being lackluster as the mounted demon units that were FA, and Raptors which at that time were one of the key components of my Red Corsairs. And for Night Lords, Raptors are their bread and butter.

And no allies, didn't have as big a negative as others, iirc there was major bonuses, minor bonuses, and minor negatives and major negatives. And no allies was a minor one. Even still during 3rd and 4th you still had some good options to drop into SM armies, like Grey Knight units and Inquisitors, Preachers, etc. And they just used a slot in the FOC you didn't have to do the detachment truffle shuffle for them.

And the 3.5 Guard dex the only units no one took was the rough riders. Ratlings were pretty strong since they were cheap and could cause pinning. And several army THEMES were built around sanctioned psykers, priests, you even had a prototype for the Adeptus Mechanius armies with the cybernetics doctrine and one of the example armies became an Ad Mech army iirc. Also, that +1LD and initiative came at the cost of getting easily nuked by templates as you had to have everybody touching one another in a neat row. It's not a 'hard' choice if the army I want to build is a scrappy sniper army, or a close quarters pistol and axe army with ogryns marching behind the platoons to clean up assaults. That one book could make 50+ different armies and the current book can't touch it for customization. The 3.5 Chaos book, the Green Ork book, the light blue Eldar book, the 3.5 IG, and the build a chapter Marine dex were ALL vastly superior to the books we got now that are tied to the garbage pail mess of a system we got now.

Garukadon wrote:I would like to see in 10th edition...

-Less complication
-Fewer rules
-Use a rule book, codex, and nothing more


Maybe something closer to like 5th edition or HH, but of course it allows flyers, super heavies, and whatever else.

Maybe make charging something different. Like you have your normal movement, but you also have a set distance to your charge move too. For example-

-move ( every unit has their own value/distance )
-shoot
-psychic
-advance or charge ( instead of rolling, your units have their own distance they can advance or charge ), so no failed dice roll, you either just make it or don’t

Maybe instead of turns 1-5, you play it like chess. You choose one unit to do all your normal stuff- move shoot charge fight etc. Then your opponent gets to choose a unit to do the same. I don’t know how units locked in combat would work in this? So maybe once combat is over, each unit is free to break off and do whatever. Also, maybe make it to where you can’t use the same unit twice in a row.

That’s all I got for now.

Yeah bringing back USRs would cut down on rules bloat for sure. And I'm a big advocate for just needing a rulebook, and army book and nothing else. Though it'd also help to have something similar to the army lists in the back of the book like 3rd started off with. If for any reason to make it easier to know what other armies' rules, and units can do. So, there's not as many surprises.

Oh yeah, going back to old school 3rd would fix that in regard to charges. Randomly rolling for charge distances is pure stupidity. Anywhere random effect rolls can be cut out, that needs to be done. A flat move 6-charge 6 for infantry, move 6-charge 12 for calvary/beasts/nids, move 12-charge 6 for jump packs and bikes, etc.

Also remove overwatch from the game entirely.

I like that tweak on you go, I go way things are done, but if you bring back Initiative and make it play a meaningful factor, like in X-wing, moving last to represent better reactions to opponents moves) but shooting first/melee attacking first (because faster reflexes). I'd be down for something like that.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Except the people that want the FOC chart don't want the same restrictions, they want their special snowflakes to ignore the FOC and everyone else to have far fewer options. Why should you be able to bring 6 Raptors but me not bring 6 Scarabs or even just 3 Scarabs and 3 Canoptek Wraiths. 3x20 Raptors is enough to make a Raptor army. 3x5 Raptors is already quite a bit.

WOW, you're being so disingenuous, just because i only listed 2 examples, you assume i don't want your necrons to get the same treatment?

And no, if i want my whole army to be with jump packs, 3x10 (the actual limit) isn't enough. I want to be able to run some anti-tank squads with melta AND some anti infantry squads with flamers. And to me, bringing squads of 10 is less sneaky than what i envision my NL warband to fight like. Small squads hidden away that pounce on their prey


Anyway, i'll say it again : GET RID OF THE FOC, put a limit on the datasheet themselves, allow subfactions to change the limits of certain units

Why is it a problem when Alpha Legion takes 6 units of Raptors but not a problem when Night Lords do it? Yes I assume Necrons won't get the same treatment, because they haven't had it in the past and it doesn't make sense lore-wise. I'm not being insincere, I'm being pessimistic. What is the point of having limits if you can break several of the limits anyway? If Ophydian Destroyers end up being OP then a cheeser is just going to play the Destroyer dynasty and take 6 units of Ophydian Destroyers. The limit of max 3 Wraiths hardly matters when I cannot afford 4x6 Wraiths + 6x6 Ophydian Destroyers, so you might as well just play Open Play, with all the anti-cheese community building that is necessary to make that work in a casual context. You still have the problem of 6x6 Ophydian Destroyers being boring to play against and monopose models just makes the issue worse, that should be 3 models repeated 12 times.

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
In current 40k, you can not have more than 3 units of raptors period. Because of the unit cap of 3.

That's a good thing, I want to play against a collection of different units, not just the same thing over and over again. More CSM jump units would be cool though, it could even be Night Lords only and I would be ok with that. And to the people screaming at me for making strawmen it's pretty clear Tittliewinks thinks that breaking the FOC for certain subfactions is a great idea, so it was not a strawman, it was a Tittliewinksman. KingmanHighborn also thinks that breaking the FOC should be possible and says how easy it was in 3rd. Now I would like people to withdraw their statements that I was making a strawman and say that they only personally feel that FOC should not be broken and accept that people wanting the FOC chart back but also thinking it should have exceptions is a common opinion instead of a strawman.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Many Necron players want to do Canoptek armies, so I'm not sure what you're rambling about as most would support this to begin with. Or is this just old man yelling at cloud?

Considering how often I do it ironically who really knows. But no, I do not think you should be able to take more than 3 units of Scarabs. 90 Scarab Swarms is not an army it's a meme. 27 is already tonnes, it's a fun list to play backed up by Spyders.

Blood Angels ARE an Assault Marine Chapter. Why shouldn't Chapters have a way to access more? 3×10 isn't broken but somehow 4×5 is? The FOC being brought back and GW's arbitrary rule of three are created out of their laziness to balance, not for balance itself.

They absolutely aren't, they have tactical and devastator companies just like everyone else, were you convinced otherwise by the 5th ed codex rules? All restrictions will be somewhat arbitrary, if you don't want any restrictions play open play. It's like the people that hate a max% of the army being spent on a specific battle role, saying that 1 point over makes the list illegal, it's the same thing with 2000 pts, 2001 pts is illegal.

Wayniac wrote:
Rites of War is a great way. If you pick X you can take more of Y, but less of Z. It should change around the "FOC" to suit subfactions, with actual restrictions. So for example a speed freak Ork army may get unlimited buggies and such, but can't take any mega armor or things like that.

You are going to have the exact same problems as open play with less freedom only in ways that don't matter and the system will end up being ten times more convoluted than the currently fairly streamlined system. You don't have to make laws against something that no one does, why would you bring mega armour in a buggy list?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I've mentioned this before when this topic has come up elsewhere, but I did always like the way Tyranid armies were structured in Epic/2nd Edition Space Marine, specifically the Hive War boxed set.

It was a hexagonal structure, with certain creatures having what were essentially 'hive nodes', and you would attach units to these nodes. A Dominatrix had 6 nodes - one on every side - where as Tyranid Warriors had, I believe, just one. So, you could keep attacking things with hive nodes to things with hive nodes, but most things didn't have them, creating a dead end on the chain.

Meant you had to balance leader beasts alongside everything else, and the more Hive Mind-projecting creatures you had, the larger your army could be.


If each army had a organisation system unique to them, I think that'd be far better than the FOC of 3rd-7th, the "take whatever you want with no real cost or consequence" system of 8th & 9th, and certainly any horrific percentage based system.

Like, bring back Guard platoon structure, FFS.

Checking list legality would be a nightmare if every faction had this, I think it would be more suited for a single player game where balance is less relevant and deep complex systems are more okay. I think you should post versions for the factions you play in suggested rules, I updated the Necron Decurion for 8th or 9th in this way. Updating the old gold triarch command structure from 3rd for Necrons could be cool as well. Another problem is how oppressive some of these systems could end up being.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
What, you mean to tell me that all of these different alien races have the same army doctrine and composition as everyone else?

No, the balance concerns are just similar. One unit could end up being super undercosted, better not let anyone spam just one datasheet (on top of this being a boring way to play). Taking only fast units or taking only heavily armed and armoured units could end up being OP, give them a CP lovetap so that Battalion/Patrol armies are the standard way to build a list. If you want to build lists according to whatever structure you think is fluffy for Your Dudes then that is possible within this system, but if the rules say you can take up to 1 Ophydian Destroyer per Destroyer Lord then I cannot take 18 Ophydian Destroyers led by an Overlord even if it makes sense within the canon in previous editions and my headcanon for my personal dynasty for example.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

And no, those restrictions don't actually JUST help. Despite what the other guy I replied to said, Blood Angels ARE an Assault Marine Chapter. Why shouldn't Chapters have a way to access more? 3×10 isn't broken but somehow 4×5 is? The FOC being brought back and GW's arbitrary rule of three are created out of their laziness to balance, not for balance itself.

The 3x10 vs 4x5 is fair point but as a point...All assault marine army is actually very unfluffy for BA like all bikes for white scars. Both are still codex chapter as a rule of thumb and basic tactical marines(or intercessors these days) still form the basic core. Main battle forces are 2-5 companies of which is 6 regular squads, 2 assault squads and 2 support squads.

The "BA are all about jump packs" came not from fluff but them getting free bonus rules. WAAC min maxing over fluff. If BA had got free rules for heavy weapons players would convince themselves all heavy weapons is BA way. As usual with people glamoring for chapter rules to be represented it's just about desire to have free bonus rules.

@KingmanHighborn I feel like you're being needlessly hostile toward the Detachment system. It isn't complicated and doesn't require mental gymnastics to figure out. Also, there's no need for an algebra class, it's basics maths. But if you can't figure out 6-2 or 6-3 then I suggest you use the calculator that every smartphone comes with.

You're saying to bring back an old system that works, but why bother when we can just keep the system we have now that also works.

And you 100% can write an army list nowadays on a notepad with 0 issue.

I feel like you're just a bit of a grognard that only wants the old way back because it's the old way, not because of anything other reason.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:


If each army had a organisation system unique to them, I think that'd be far better than the FOC of 3rd-7th,

I like this idea. One thing I'll give GW credit for is that their staff is imaginative when they're allowed to be and I could see them coming up with a lot of good stuff for this. Sure they wouldn't all work or be balanced in the least but honestly I'm well beyond expecting GW to put out any sort of mechanically sound game, but unique army organisation for each faction sounds like it could be a lot more fun than what we have.

If I'm being honest I don't care if 40k is a good game, I only care that it's a fun game and currently it's just an incredibly tedious game to play.

 Sim-Life wrote:
If I'm being honest I don't care if 40k is a good game, I only care that it's a fun game and currently it's just an incredibly tedious game to play.

Your conditions are wrong if your conditions for what make a good game are different from what makes a game fun. When I say that an effect that reads "on a D6 roll of 4+ the unit suffers D3 mortal wounds" is worse than an effect that says "the target suffers D6-3 mortal wounds" or "roll 4D6, the target suffers 1 mortal wound for each 4+ rolled" (same result math-wise 1 fewer dice roll, the last option has slightly different math) it is not because of some Plato-esque idea of what is good game design, it's because I find pointless dice rolling slows the game down in a bad monotonous way and streamlining dice rolls (like changing Disgustingly Resilient) makes the game more fun.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
If I'm being honest I don't care if 40k is a good game, I only care that it's a fun game and currently it's just an incredibly tedious game to play.

Your conditions are wrong if your conditions for what make a good game are different from what makes a game fun.

No they aren't. I can just understand the difference between an objectively well designed (i.e. "good" in this context) game and a fun game. A good game can also be not a fun game.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Except the tweaks made sense for those armies.

I never said they didn't. Of course more HS slots made sense for Iron Warriors. My point was that in order to get that bonus you weren't really giving anything up.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
I also take umbrage with the FA choices in the 3.5 dex being lackluster as the mounted demon units that were FA, and Raptors which at that time were one of the key components of my Red Corsairs. And for Night Lords, Raptors are their bread and butter.

Daemonette Cav were good, but that's about it. Raptors could be made good with a lot of points invested into them, something an Iron Warriors player would be better off using on their four heavy support slots. And I wasn't talking about Night Lords. Plus Red Corsairs weren't even a thing in that book, as far as rules went.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
And no allies, didn't have as big a negative as others, iirc there was major bonuses, minor bonuses, and minor negatives and major negatives. And no allies was a minor one. Even still during 3rd and 4th you still had some good options to drop into SM armies, like Grey Knight units and Inquisitors, Preachers, etc. And they just used a slot in the FOC you didn't have to do the detachment truffle shuffle for them.

You're right, it was a minor one, not a major one. Even so, the point stands: If you're not actually giving anything up, if your "sacrifice" is something you were never going to take in the first place, then it's not actually a sacrifice.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
And the 3.5 Guard dex the only units no one took was the rough riders.

RR's were great unit, but that's not the point...

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Ratlings were pretty strong since they were cheap and could cause pinning. And several army THEMES were built around sanctioned psykers, priests, you even had a prototype for the Adeptus Mechanius armies with the cybernetics doctrine and one of the example armies became an Ad Mech army iirc.

I never saw anyone take those, and the Cybernetica Doctrine was a complete waste point points. A colossal waste of points.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Also, that +1LD and initiative came at the cost of getting easily nuked by templates as you had to have everybody touching one another in a neat row.

Totally worth it for the bonuses you got, especially as it was free. Close Order Drill + Iron Discipline was a damned staple of Guard lists.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
The 3.5 Chaos book, the Green Ork book, the light blue Eldar book, the 3.5 IG, and the build a chapter Marine dex were ALL vastly superior to the books we got now that are tied to the garbage pail mess of a system we got now.

Of course they were, but you seem to have completely missed the point I was getting at:

If you are forced to give something up in order to get a bonus, and that thing you're giving up was something you were never intending on taking in your list, then you aren't really giving anything up.

It'd be like someone saying that I could have $1 million dollars, but I would have to forgo eating avocados ever again. Well, avocados make me physically ill, so sure, I'll "give them up" for the cool million. What a sacrifice!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The problem with FoC manipulation back in the day was that, similar to how the FoC is now with being able to take whatever you want with no real consequence, you got extra FoC slots by 'giving up' things you might not have wanted to take in the first place.

The classic example is Iron Warriors from the 3.5 Codex. They could get an extra Heavy Support slot, but would have to give up a Fast Attack slot in order to get that. Wow. A whole FA slot, something most Chaos players (let alone Iron Warriors players) were never going to use as FA choices in the 3.5 Codex were quite lacklustre. So, you gave up something you weren't taking anyway, and got a huge boon as a result.

The 4th Ed Marine Codex was similar with its Chapter Traits. You had to take a negative trait to 'balance' the positive ones. One of the negative traits was 'No allies!'. So, if you didn't intend to take any allies (Inquisition, Grey Knights, etc.), you could just take that 'negative' trait and get the bonuses without actually losing anything.

This didn't just apply for FoC manipulation. The 3.5 Guard Codex has a wonderful(ly flawed) Doctrine system that was full of all sorts of amazing things, but if you took a Doctrines army you were forced to give up things like Ogryns and Ratlings and Sanctioned Psykers and Priestss - y'know, the kind of things that basically nobody took in the first place - so you weren't exactly missing out on anything truly vital to get these added bonuses. I mean, do I give all the infantry in my army +1Ld and +1 Initiative for free, or take a unit of Ratlings? Hard choice...

Iron Warriors also had super restricted Fast Attack options to begin with.

First, no Daemons allowed at all at all. That left you with Chaos Bikes and Chaos Raptors. And of those two, Chaos Raptors were a 0-1 for everyone but Night Lords (there may have been another Legion?).

So by trading in two Fast Attack slots for another Heavy Support, one was basically just surrendering Chaos Bikes, which weren’t all that appealing to me in the first place, and even less so in the face of a 4th Defiler and it’s gorgeous Pie Plate Of Marine Squelching Doom.

Spoletta wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

 Afrodactyl wrote:
The issue with the FOC approach is that it limits the builds an army can use. If I want to make an Ork Speed Freaks list, I must take X amount of troops and can only take a maximum of 3 units out of warbikes, deffkoptas, buggies, etc? That doesn't seem like a Speed Freaks army, it seems like a bog-standard Ork list with a handful of bikes.

Unless the FOC approach comes with options to change up the slots units take up. Like a Deffkilla Wartrike letting you take 3 buggies as troops/core/whatever or a Warboss on Bike letting you take bikers.

But then we're at the same point as the detachment scenario and we've spent all this time amending the rulebook and changed basically nothing, as I would just take an Outrider detachment and have 6 FA slots.

I don't personally see the issue with the Detachment system, or how it's a 'convoluted mess'. I think it works pretty well for allowing people to make the army they want to make.

If someone here does have an issue with it, please explain. My acceptance of the system may just be out of ignorance of the woes that other factions have.

There's nothing convoluted in it, it is a very simple system which offers real choice with effective costs and gains (those who think that 3 CP is not a cost should look at how many competitive lists run more than one detachment)

Which means that no one takes Outrider / Vanguard / Spearhead, because those don't give you the CP refund. Also, a single detachment that uses an army organization scheme that everyone uses sounds an awful lot like the old FoC to me.

IIRC, The CP cost was added because players were mixing and matching different detachments with subfactions, and it got real messy real fast.
So yeah, it was convoluted in that sense, and now players are just using single detachments anyway, thereby making the other detachments pointless.

Not to mention that the old FoC just required you to take an HQ and 2 troops. Simple.
Now you have to choose between Combat Patrol (which is too small), Battalion (which requires you to field 2 HQs and three troops), Brigade (huge requirements, so you probably aren't going to use it) or pay 3 CP (lol, no). Not so simple, not that practical.

What they needed to do was tweak the old FoC to scale better for larger games or release variations of it for armies. Not introduce something that feels even more awkward.

Or maybe you need to inform yourself instead of talking about stuff you don't know about.

If you take a look at the lists being played you will notice that indeed a single battalion is the most common type of list, but it is by no means the only one. It takes around 60% of the lists, but you see patrols, patrol+outrider, vanguard + outrider, patrol + patrol, brigades, super heavy detachments... in short, there is choice and there is a cost. And it is working well, to the point that the standard choice is common but not too common and many players opt to pay the price to gain flexibility in list construction. This is a lot more than the old FOC offered, which was no choice and no cost, play like a space marine or get out. The current detachment system has very few faction rules which interact with it (Real Space Raid and the knight ones), only in those cases were the faction acts in a really weird way. And even there, it doesn't change what those detachments do, it only alters the CP cost. This is proof that the system is working very well at representing the lists that players want to put on the battlefield.
The old FOC system had more exceptions than rules, because on its own it was a flawed system which completely prevented any sort of thematic list, which also had the problem of tying said thematic list to a named character of some kind, in a game where a lot of people HATE named characters. There was nothing good about it. I can accept those that liked templates, armor facing and so on, but FOC simply cannot be defended it has no merits of any kind.

Whilst I would agree that the FoC had issues and scaled poorly for larger games, the current system isn't that much of an improvement.
You still suffer from arbitrary requirements (except it's arguably worst, because you need to to field more models to start with. Great for GW, bad for us). Even for the supplementary detachment you have to fill out requirements. Yes, there's a CP cost, but that was a hasty bandaid slapped over it to try to reign in the broken stratagem system and mix matching detachments.
From a list writing perspective it's also a bit of a mess as you have to basically write two lists, one for each detachment. It's just not elegant, and if you need to introduce clunky rules like CP costs and "Rule of Three" to reign it in, then that would indicate something fundamentally wrong with the system, no?

And no, you didn't always have to take a special character for FoC manipulation. Bog standard warbosses allowed you to take nobs as a troops choice, iirc.

When 8th edition promised big changes with simplifications of the cure rules and a blank slate with the indexes, I was excited, because the game really needed streamlining. But they rapidly moved away from that design shift again to the detriment of the game.

1. The rules team need to create a design document they all have to adhere to. Currently it feels like they try to come up with new core mechanics for every codex and it hurts the game.
2. They need to bring back USR's and make all weapon profiles follow them. Right now there are simply too many long paragraphs in the weapon profiles that you have to read and remember.
3. They need to bring back strict FoC. Currently there is too much flexibility in list building and it is clearly difficult to balance.
4. They should cut 90% of stratagems and move to universal stratagems instead, with each faction having one unique.

A bunch of the suggestions about FOC in this thread nearly 1:1 match the Right of War system from HH.

-It allows different army compositions, want a tank company? Allowed. Want a recon party with perks to being forward deployed? Allowed. Want an air Calvary list of fully mechanized drop troops? Yup can do.

-It offers meaningful restrictions beyond just "less FA slots". That tank company list now REQUIRES you to take dedicated transports for any infantry units you bring, fits the theme of an all mechanized/armored company. That recon party forces your heavy support and slower units to be held in reserves turn one, because the recon party is scouting ahead. The air cavalry list requires all of your infantry without jump packs to start in reserves or on a flying transport.

Yes the FOC stock standard with zero changes would have issues. The RoW system is great, and hopefully they adopt it in 10th.

Also there's no CP involved, so they could easily drop stratagems without any worry. If they keep the current 9th FOC/Detachment system then the likelihood of dropping CP/Strats is much lower.

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
A bunch of the suggestions about FOC in this thread nearly 1:1 match the Right of War system from HH.

-It allows different army compositions, want a tank company? Allowed. Want a recon party with perks to being forward deployed? Allowed. Want an air Calvary list of fully mechanized drop troops? Yup can do.

-It offers meaningful restrictions beyond just "less FA slots". That tank company list now REQUIRES you to take dedicated transports for any infantry units you bring, fits the theme of an all mechanized/armored company. That recon party forces your heavy support and slower units to be held in reserves turn one, because the recon party is scouting ahead. The air cavalry list requires all of your infantry without jump packs to start in reserves or on a flying transport.

Yes the FOC stock standard with zero changes would have issues. The RoW system is great, and hopefully they adopt it in 10th.

Also there's no CP involved, so they could easily drop stratagems without any worry. If they keep the current 9th FOC/Detachment system then the likelihood of dropping CP/Strats is much lower.

That might be interesting. It could be that HH is a testing ground for 40k rules, sort of like how AoS was a testing ground.
Looking at the FoC chart, it does seem to be a modified version of the old chart, just with the Rites of War to mix it up a little.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
You still suffer from arbitrary requirements (except it's arguably worst, because you need to to field more models to start with. Great for GW, bad for us). Even for the supplementary detachment you have to fill out requirements. Yes, there's a CP cost, but that was a hasty bandaid slapped over it to try to reign in the broken stratagem system and mix matching detachments.
From a list writing perspective it's also a bit of a mess as you have to basically write two lists, one for each detachment. It's just not elegant, and if you need to introduce clunky rules like CP costs and "Rule of Three" to reign it in, then that would indicate something fundamentally wrong with the system, no?

I don't think needing an HQ is arbitrary, that HQ is leading that detachment from a logistics standpoint. Generally which detachment a unit joins is irrelevant, what matters is how many CP you start with, you can just write a list, see if it can legally fit into a number of detachments and then write down the cheapest possible combi at the end of your list. The only time you have to actually list who goes where is for the final list you submit to a TO.

The current detachment system with Ro3 and flyer spam prevention leads to a tonne of freedom without compromising much on balance and only making a slight compromise on difficulty. You could write it all out in a way without detachments and just list the CP costs of deviating from a balanced list and that would get rid of the inherent flaws in the system but that would be even more complicated I think, so having the patched up version we have now is great. FOC is too restrictive. Open Play is too prone to abuse and expanded FOC are too difficult to manage without them just turning into open play because of meaningless downsides you get for expanded freedom. Learning 25 different detachments so you can check whether a list is legal would be a hassle, 9th ed detachments have easily memorable patterns, faction detachments might not and if they do have too many patterns then that sort of defeats the purpose of having them in the first place.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
If I'm being honest I don't care if 40k is a good game, I only care that it's a fun game and currently it's just an incredibly tedious game to play.

Your conditions are wrong if your conditions for what make a good game are different from what makes a game fun.

No they aren't. I can just understand the difference between an objectively well designed (i.e. "good" in this context) game and a fun game. A good game can also be not a fun game.

What makes a a game objectively well designed if it does not lead to engaging (fun) experiences?

 vict0988 wrote:

I don't think needing an HQ is arbitrary, that HQ is leading that detachment from a logistics standpoint.

A HQ, yes. 2-3 HQ? Overseeing a couple of squads? That's a bit excessive, no?
That's not even getting into the "troops" tax.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

I don't think needing an HQ is arbitrary, that HQ is leading that detachment from a logistics standpoint.

A HQ, yes. 2-3 HQ? Overseeing a couple of squads? That's a bit excessive, no?
That's not even getting into the "troops" tax.

Overseeing 3-20 units, if you're only taking a couple of squads a Patrol with 1 HQ will do. If you don't want Troops you can just not take them and eat the CP tax for a Spearhead/Outrider. The only system with an actual Troops tax is the old FOC.

 vict0988 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

I don't think needing an HQ is arbitrary, that HQ is leading that detachment from a logistics standpoint.

A HQ, yes. 2-3 HQ? Overseeing a couple of squads? That's a bit excessive, no?
That's not even getting into the "troops" tax.

Overseeing 3-20 units, if you're only taking a couple of squads a Patrol with 1 HQ will do. If you don't want Troops you can just not take them and eat the CP tax for a Spearhead/Outrider. The only system with an actual Troops tax is the old FOC.

if you want to start with full CP (especially with nephilim), troops ARE a tax unless theyre good

 vict0988 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

I don't think needing an HQ is arbitrary, that HQ is leading that detachment from a logistics standpoint.

A HQ, yes. 2-3 HQ? Overseeing a couple of squads? That's a bit excessive, no?
That's not even getting into the "troops" tax.

Overseeing 3-20 units, if you're only taking a couple of squads a Patrol with 1 HQ will do. If you don't want Troops you can just not take them and eat the CP tax for a Spearhead/Outrider. The only system with an actual Troops tax is the old FOC.

Right, so that's 1 HQ overseeing one troop in a patrol, and 1 HQ overseeing 3 FA/Elite/HS units. That's still 2 HQ. Logistics have nothing to do with it; you'd have to be a pretty inept "warlord" if you can't manage more than 1 unit of infantry, just because the other 3 squads are in another group and they won't speak to you if they don't have their rep. Even in the Grim darkness of the Far Future, there are high school cliques, I suppose.
Eating the CP tax is still tax to pay to field a detachment.

Pages and pages on an FoC change when that's the least problematic issue in 9th edition. Never change, dakka.

Army composition is an important part of the game, and if it's flawed then everything else is flawed as a consequence.
Unless you mean to tell me that "rule of three" and slapping on a CP tax is healthy game design and not a bandaid to cover up problems.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
A bunch of the suggestions about FOC in this thread nearly 1:1 match the Right of War system from HH.

-It allows different army compositions, want a tank company? Allowed. Want a recon party with perks to being forward deployed? Allowed. Want an air Calvary list of fully mechanized drop troops? Yup can do.

-It offers meaningful restrictions beyond just "less FA slots". That tank company list now REQUIRES you to take dedicated transports for any infantry units you bring, fits the theme of an all mechanized/armored company. That recon party forces your heavy support and slower units to be held in reserves turn one, because the recon party is scouting ahead. The air cavalry list requires all of your infantry without jump packs to start in reserves or on a flying transport.

Yes the FOC stock standard with zero changes would have issues. The RoW system is great, and hopefully they adopt it in 10th.

Also there's no CP involved, so they could easily drop stratagems without any worry. If they keep the current 9th FOC/Detachment system then the likelihood of dropping CP/Strats is much lower.

That might be interesting. It could be that HH is a testing ground for 40k rules, sort of like how AoS was a testing ground.
Looking at the FoC chart, it does seem to be a modified version of the old chart, just with the Rites of War to mix it up a little.

HH focuses on bigger games though which is why it works slightly better there.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:

catbarf wrote:

VladimirHerzog wrote:what are leman russes?

Amishprn86 wrote:Guard had troop tanks for a long time

I played Guard from 3rd-5th and have no idea what you guys are talking about. You never could just forgo infantry and take all Russes in that era. And only in 5th could you really mass Russes thanks to squadrons.

Yeah, you could take Armored Fist squads and have lots of Chimeras- not tanks. In 3rd and 4th if you wanted a tank skew, you had to take the Armored Company list by opponent's permission and which came with a bunch of special rules to try to offset the skew.

They had all Leman Russ armies all the way when 3rd came out, it's in the back of the book in the IG army list. You didn't need opponent's permission either. Only things you ever needed opponent's permission for in 3rd was taking Special/Named characters, which as a rule is something that does SERIOUSLY need to come back in a bad way.

I have my 3rd Ed codex out and see no such thing. The army list (explicitly named an Infantry Company, no less) ends on p21, then there are rules for Macharius, Yarrick, Nork Deddog, and the Last Chancers, and then the rest of the book is hobby content.

The Armored Company list was released in White Dwarf, I still have the issue. Again, it requires opponent's permission, it's given as experimental rules, and it had a whole bunch of special rules to add extra disadvantages to the Armored Company player, like letting low-S weapons fish for 6s to inflict glancing hits, implementing vehicle morale, and requiring infantry in close support for vehicles to get close to enemy infantry (providing an incentive to take more than just tanks).

I don't know where you folks got the idea that you've always been able to build an army of entirely tanks if you wanted as part of the core rules, but it's just not true. The old FOC was designed to prevent exactly that sort of skew, and when bespoke exceptions made it possible (eg the 5th Ed Guard codex allowing 9 Leman Russes plus Valkyries), it was broken as hell.

8th/9th have made all-vehicle lists less oppressive but the ability to skew is still there, and the gatekeeper nature of infantry hordes or Knights at various points in these editions has come from them being skew that the average TAC list can't effectively deal with.

 vict0988 wrote:

What makes a a game objectively well designed if it does not lead to engaging (fun) experiences?

Lots of things. I play board games all the time that I can see are super well designed but I just don't like them for whatever reason. Like I can see that stuff like Spirit Island, Brass: Birmingham, Great Western Trail and most recently Ark Nova are all well designed games and are rightly hugely popular and successful in relative terms because they're well designed. But I didn't think they were fun.