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Earlier we were going on the premise that GW was forcing you to adhere to the contents of a box. Now they want you to buy extra boxes. Can we stick to one dastardly plan per edition?

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Earlier we were going on the premise that GW was forcing you to adhere to the contents of a box. Now they want you to buy extra boxes. Can we stick to one dastardly plan per edition?

Quite the opposite actually, that for some reason they want you to have one dude left over for proteus kill team. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Indexes were either: Rushed, not play-tested period, or suffer from extreme design conflicts within the team, or a mix of all three. I don't think there is a specific plan at this point with how schizophrenic the implementation of these indexes is. I cannot for the life of me find a coherent design philosophy behind these changes besides a generally overzealous attempt to trim things down, characters must go in unit or they serve little utility beyond beatsticks, and all units must have at least one ability, regardless of need or logical sense on a unit-by-unit basis.

How these go together in a coherent direction for the game however, is beyond me.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Earlier we were going on the premise that GW was forcing you to adhere to the contents of a box. Now they want you to buy extra boxes. Can we stick to one dastardly plan per edition?

Putting aside the melodrama, it fits with the mentality. The Vanguard/Terminator box has a Sergeant and 4 other models, and you can't have a second sergeant, therefore you can take 0-4. Bikes have a Sergeant and 2 other Bikes, therefore 0-2. You can see the "logic", and it is box-based.

I know you don't see it, but as ProfSrlojohn put it, it's all about patterns.

I like the changes. I think giving each unit a special thing gives reasons to take units beyond running a basic spreadsheet to find the mostly killy unit for their points. These special abilities also give another lever to tune units with.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
I like the changes. I think giving each unit a special thing gives reasons to take units beyond running a basic spreadsheet to find the mostly killy unit for their points. These special abilities also give another lever to tune units with.

I'm personally not against it in of itself, but some of them are just so odd.
Like, why do tacticals have shoot and charge, an ability they will likely never use, if at all, rather than the now defunct Combat Squads? An ability they have possessed since 3rd edition, if not earlier? (As I am not particularly familiar with 2nd ed). It would also allow them to still use razorbacks, as currently it is impossible for them to use one as they are locked to 10 man?

 ProfSrlojohn wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
I like the changes. I think giving each unit a special thing gives reasons to take units beyond running a basic spreadsheet to find the mostly killy unit for their points. These special abilities also give another lever to tune units with.

I'm personally not against it in of itself, but some of them are just so odd.
Like, why do tacticals have shoot and charge, an ability they will likely never use, if at all, rather than the now defunct Combat Squads? An ability they have possessed since 3rd edition, if not earlier? (As I am not particularly familiar with 2nd ed). It would also allow them to still use razorbacks, as currently it is impossible for them to use one as they are locked to 10 man?

The Fall Back, Shoot and Charge is basically just ATSKNF from pre 8th. And those Tacticals should be doing it all the time like the ballers they are.

They should have Combat Squads (applied to all 10 man squads) too, but GW gonna GW.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ProfSrlojohn wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ProfSrlojohn wrote:
What does this accomplish besides ruin pre-existing squads and leave customers making new teams with one extra guy for no reason I can conceive of besides not wanting people to accidentally include the sergeant in the squad and have people think it's special?

You know, now that you mention it, that's probably the exact reason.

Utterly nonsensical.

GW tends to be very predictable once you watch the patterns long enough and apply just a little healthy corporate cynicism.

Umfortunately yes.

 ProfSrlojohn wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Earlier we were going on the premise that GW was forcing you to adhere to the contents of a box. Now they want you to buy extra boxes. Can we stick to one dastardly plan per edition?

Quite the opposite actually, that for some reason they want you to have one dude left over for proteus kill team. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Indexes were either: Rushed, not play-tested period, or suffer from extreme design conflicts within the team, or a mix of all three. I don't think there is a specific plan at this point with how schizophrenic the implementation of these indexes is. I cannot for the life of me find a coherent design philosophy behind these changes besides a generally overzealous attempt to trim things down, characters must go in unit or they serve little utility beyond beatsticks, and all units must have at least one ability, regardless of need or logical sense on a unit-by-unit basis.

How these go together in a coherent direction for the game however, is beyond me.

Overzealous perhaps, but if you were trying to make something more balanced then a more restricted set of options makes sense doesn't it?

The unit abilities largely promote a cohesive / combined arms approach. In TS the Helbrute helps with cabal, DG it helps spread their aura, Khorne sticks to fighting, and CSM helps with their Pacts. So all of these have a different ability, but they're all consistent with how those armies work.

Chaos Knights revel in spreading terror and their units work towards battleshock and benefitting from it. DA on the other hand become more resolute when the chips are down and the rules reflect that.

Aside from that the abilities often promote working around objectives, working together, changing target priorities, providing reactions, or just plain doing damage.

 ProfSrlojohn wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
I like the changes. I think giving each unit a special thing gives reasons to take units beyond running a basic spreadsheet to find the mostly killy unit for their points. These special abilities also give another lever to tune units with.

I'm personally not against it in of itself, but some of them are just so odd.
Like, why do tacticals have shoot and charge, an ability they will likely never use, if at all, rather than the now defunct Combat Squads? An ability they have possessed since 3rd edition, if not earlier? (As I am not particularly familiar with 2nd ed). It would also allow them to still use razorbacks, as currently it is impossible for them to use one as they are locked to 10 man?

That's a really useful ability and one that makes them better than average at contesting or flipping objectives.

No idea why they kill combat squads but perhaps they deemed it powerful enough to be a part of an upcoming detachment bonus.

Rules for rules sake is the definition of bloat, all the new abilities haven't been added to serve narrative or required game functions, they've been added because GW decided everybody should get an ability, the same way they decided every faction should get 40 Stratagems. It wasn't that without that last 40th Stratagem the faction would have felt less fluffy and would have been less interesting to play, it's just the writers keeping themselves employed and slowly kicking people out of the hobby as they get tired of keeping up with all the rules. Stuff like getting rid of ObSec and replacing it with 60 bespoke "I'm good at holding objectives" abilities is silly. Giving Deathwing Knights -1 Damage instead of increasing their T, W or Invuln because they have to have an ability is silly.

Doing a unique thing is not a reason to take a unit if that unit is still trash because it is relatively overcosted.

 vict0988 wrote:
Rules for rules sake is the definition of bloat, all the new abilities haven't been added to serve narrative or required game functions, they've been added because GW decided everybody should get an ability, the same way they decided every faction should get 40 Stratagems. It wasn't that without that last 40th Stratagem the faction would have felt less fluffy and would have been less interesting to play, it's just the writers keeping themselves employed and slowly kicking people out of the hobby as they get tired of keeping up with all the rules. Stuff like getting rid of ObSec and replacing it with 60 bespoke "I'm good at holding objectives" abilities is silly. Giving Deathwing Knights -1 Damage instead of increasing their T, W or Invuln because they have to have an ability is silly.

Doing a unique thing is not a reason to take a unit if that unit is still trash because it is relatively overcosted.

Isn't every rule in the game a rule for rule's sake? The game could be purely unit stats, weapon stats, and the core rules and be playable but that would be terribly boring.

Hecaton wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

I'm curious how you would design multiple activations for a knight. What would that look like?

Literally let it activate multiple times/game round. As it takes damage it loses activations.

That's the opposite of what you want. You want to force a Knight to make multiple activations to utilize all its abilities. So instead of doing everything a unit can do in one activation, the Knight gets it's actions broken down into multiple activations: 1 Activation to Move; 1 Activation to fire weapon set A; 1 Activation to fire weapon set B; 1 Activation to charge and fight.

vict0988 wrote:Rules for rules sake is the definition of bloat, all the new abilities haven't been added to serve narrative or required game functions, they've been added because GW decided everybody should get an ability, the same way they decided every faction should get 40 Stratagems. It wasn't that without that last 40th Stratagem the faction would have felt less fluffy and would have been less interesting to play, it's just the writers keeping themselves employed and slowly kicking people out of the hobby as they get tired of keeping up with all the rules. Stuff like getting rid of ObSec and replacing it with 60 bespoke "I'm good at holding objectives" abilities is silly. Giving Deathwing Knights -1 Damage instead of increasing their T, W or Invuln because they have to have an ability is silly.

Doing a unique thing is not a reason to take a unit if that unit is still trash because it is relatively overcosted.

Giving each unit a niche where it is more effective than another unit provides a stronger reason for the unit to exist and a role in the game.

The former Troops units have higher OC than other units. Some have abilities that encourage camping on objectives. Some have abilities that encourage taking objectives from other units.

Some Elite units have abilities that promote survivability. Others have abilities that enhance their ranged firepower. Still others have enhancements to their ability to reach or in close combat. This allows to units with the same overall theme to have different niches.

If well executed, this provides reason for every unit to be used in an army rather than the old points efficiency removing units from the list of those to be used

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
You should break down your reasoning because I don't think you're following.

I'm guessing you can only activate certain "parts" of the model?

Not necessarily. Depends on how its damage output and mobility is balanced.


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 alextroy wrote:
That's the opposite of what you want. You want to force a Knight to make multiple activations to utilize all its abilities. So instead of doing everything a unit can do in one activation, the Knight gets it's actions broken down into multiple activations: 1 Activation to Move; 1 Activation to fire weapon set A; 1 Activation to fire weapon set B; 1 Activation to charge and fight.

No, why would I want that?

Hecaton wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
You can make that argument for every level of system complexity. My point stands.

so yes, the game should be alternate activations that finally people stop asking for it and kill that mode off for any other game as well by GW showing how bad it can be and no one will ever touch it

That doesn't make sense; if that were true people would never touch alternating turn systems like 40k currently has.

ok, it would be like it is with Alternating Turns and Universal Special Rules

people talking about how those things are bad and don't work and never would play a game that uses those because they know from 40k that this does not work
yet the problem is not that USR itself are bad but GWs implementation in 40k is bad, same with alternating turns

we already see this with Stratagems, other games that had this kind of command system long before 40k are considered bad as Stratagems are bad implemented in 40k therefore any game doing something similar must be bad as well (and same story with re-rolls)
"I wanted to try that game but than saw that it uses something similar so I lost interest" is something I heard way to often in the past years to think that GW trying any kind of activation based mechanic is a good idea for the hobby as a whole
(a game mechanic turns from "40k would be so much better if they used it" to "any game that use that is bad" once GW used it)

better let 40k suffer, as it will suffer anyway no matter what system GW uses as a base, and keep the good stuff for the other games

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Rules for rules sake is the definition of bloat, all the new abilities haven't been added to serve narrative or required game functions, they've been added because GW decided everybody should get an ability, the same way they decided every faction should get 40 Stratagems. It wasn't that without that last 40th Stratagem the faction would have felt less fluffy and would have been less interesting to play, it's just the writers keeping themselves employed and slowly kicking people out of the hobby as they get tired of keeping up with all the rules. Stuff like getting rid of ObSec and replacing it with 60 bespoke "I'm good at holding objectives" abilities is silly. Giving Deathwing Knights -1 Damage instead of increasing their T, W or Invuln because they have to have an ability is silly.

Doing a unique thing is not a reason to take a unit if that unit is still trash because it is relatively overcosted.

Isn't every rule in the game a rule for rule's sake? The game could be purely unit stats, weapon stats, and the core rules and be playable but that would be terribly boring.

What stat lets a Monolith teleport a friendly unit on the battlefield over to it? See how weird and specific that piece of fluff is for something to require an ability. Necron Warriors healing more and healing more more when near an objective? Random and unnecessary bloat.

 alextroy wrote:
Giving each unit a niche where it is more effective than another unit provides a stronger reason for the unit to exist and a role in the game.

The former Troops units have higher OC than other units. Some have abilities that encourage camping on objectives. Some have abilities that encourage taking objectives from other units.

Some Elite units have abilities that promote survivability. Others have abilities that enhance their ranged firepower. Still others have enhancements to their ability to reach or in close combat. This allows to units with the same overall theme to have different niches.

If well executed, this provides reason for every unit to be used in an army rather than the old points efficiency removing units from the list of those to be used

What is points efficiency? What matters in the end is VP scored by you and your opponent. Whether you get VP by killing infantry or bikes and whether you deny VP by hiding or being unkillable doesn't matter. The question is whether you can get something that will on average increase your win percentage more by spending your points in a different place. Having anti-mounted 2+ is cute, but it's not as good as S16, so if you're paying S16 prices for anti-mounted then your unit is bad, just like your unit is bad if it has S12 and you're paying S16 prices. You're averaging out the utility across games to see what value a unit has to you, a part of that will be either S16 or anti-mounted 2+, which it is doesn't change that the number will either be relatively higher or lower than that of other units available to you. This is also ignoring all the cases where these abilities aren't necessary, we know those cases exist because we know every unit is getting them regardless of need, the same way we know GW released Stratagems that did not convey fluff or fixed other problems in 9th because the writers were designing according to a Stratagem QUOTA instead of trying to design the most well-written codex possible.

You are right that doing spread sheets for damage is kind of hopeless, would you guys still be interested in it or do you think all the abilities makes it useless, I was actually planning on doing it as a summer project.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Overzealous perhaps, but if you were trying to make something more balanced then a more restricted set of options makes sense doesn't it?

Not really because it only sucks all excitement out of the game and thus incites people to look for broken combos (/excitement)... the broken combos that's going to stick out even worse due to how bland everything else is. Basically the current Hellfire Sternguards case in a nutshell. It is better to have a gajillion but carefully mapped-out options to swamp player attention, but it takes legit effort and commitment so I can see why GW didn't go for it.

Hecaton wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
You should break down your reasoning because I don't think you're following.

I'm guessing you can only activate certain "parts" of the model?

Not necessarily. Depends on how its damage output and mobility is balanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 alextroy wrote:
That's the opposite of what you want. You want to force a Knight to make multiple activations to utilize all its abilities. So instead of doing everything a unit can do in one activation, the Knight gets it's actions broken down into multiple activations: 1 Activation to Move; 1 Activation to fire weapon set A; 1 Activation to fire weapon set B; 1 Activation to charge and fight.

No, why would I want that?

Because without completely nerfing the knight into the ground, for the cost of one knight, you then get knights times activations for the same cost.

Imagine playing a 2k game where your opponent essentially gets 4k worth of knights. That wouldn't be overly fun.

 alextroy wrote:
Giving each unit a niche where it is more effective than another unit provides a stronger reason for the unit to exist and a role in the game.

The former Troops units have higher OC than other units. Some have abilities that encourage camping on objectives. Some have abilities that encourage taking objectives from other units. Some Elite units have abilities that promote survivability. Others have abilities that enhance their ranged firepower. Still others have enhancements to their ability to reach or in close combat. This allows to units with the same overall theme to have different niches.

Giving each unit a niche isn't the issue. It's that they've created a system of USRs and then immediately undermined that by creating tons of bespoke rules and, worse, tons of repeated bespoke rules between sheets in the same and other factions where they could have just made a new USR and saved themselves a ton of time.

"Shocking" for weapons that reduce move/advance/charge distance, "Objective Secured" for sticky objectives, "Sharpshooters" for re-rolling 1's to hit with melee weapons, and so on. "Turbo Boost" for an auto-6" advance. Hell, some of these could even be scalable (X)-style rules to allow variation and for some units to be better or worse at a particular thing.

 alextroy wrote:
If well executed, this provides reason for every unit to be used in an army rather than the old points efficiency removing units from the list of those to be used.

Execution is GW's biggest failing. For all their vaunted ideas, they so often trip on their own feet and faceplant when it comes to the execution. So far, from what we've seen, they are failing in the execution because they're creating a legion of unique special rules for every unit when there is no need for such a thing.

Not every special rule can be (or even should be) a USR, and this is especially appropriate for Special Characters, but when the corporate mantra is "Simple, not simplistic", and there are 7 Land Speeders with 7 different rules, I don't think they're living up to that. And that's just Marines, and not even including Dark Angels Land Speeders.

 Afrodactyl wrote:
Because without completely nerfing the knight into the ground, for the cost of one knight, you then get knights times activations for the same cost.

Imagine playing a 2k game where your opponent essentially gets 4k worth of knights. That wouldn't be overly fun.

Of course you would have to rebalance offensive output for a multiple activation unit. That would be implied.

I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say the new system for detachments is going to make gotcha moments and cognitive load more of an issue, especially when it comes to stratagems.

The issue with 8th and 9th was that while factions could have loads of strats, realistically you were only ever using a tiny handful. Probably 6-8 at most, usually far less than that. It was just a lot of wasted ink or highly specific abilities that could've probably just been on datasheets instead, especially when it was a strat for specific units. However one of the benefits of this system is that no matter what list you faced of a specific faction, you could always be expecting certain stratagems and mechanics to be constant. Since 10th's subfactions entirely replace things you're now in the situation of having to potentially re-learn what a faction does every time you fight them, especially if GW has intended for all 6 of the replacement strats to be equally as impactful.

So now it's not just a case of "okay I'm playing vs CWE so they have Lightning Fast Reactions, Phantasm, Fire and Fade and Forewarned" it's now I hope you potentially memorized all the strats and enhancements from all 5-6 of their detachments.

 Bosskelot wrote:
I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say the new system for detachments is going to make gotcha moments and cognitive load more of an issue, especially when it comes to stratagems.

The issue with 8th and 9th was that while factions could have loads of strats, realistically you were only ever using a tiny handful. Probably 6-8 at most, usually far less than that. It was just a lot of wasted ink or highly specific abilities that could've probably just been on datasheets instead, especially when it was a strat for specific units. However one of the benefits of this system is that no matter what list you faced of a specific faction, you could always be expecting certain stratagems and mechanics to be constant. Since 10th's subfactions entirely replace things you're now in the situation of having to potentially re-learn what a faction does every time you fight them, especially if GW has intended for all 6 of the replacement strats to be equally as impactful.

So now it's not just a case of "okay I'm playing vs CWE so they have Lightning Fast Reactions, Phantasm, Fire and Fade and Forewarned" it's now I hope you potentially memorized all the strats and enhancements from all 5-6 of their detachments.

6 Stratagems is few enough that you don't need to do preparatory homework, you can just learn it at the start of the game.

Yeah I don't see how the detachment system is going to increase the cognitive load over the wide-awake nightmare of 9th.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Yeah I don't see how the detachment system is going to increase the cognitive load over the wide-awake nightmare of 9th.

Especially with free PDF downloads (assuming those stay in the PDFs after Codex rollouts - I'm expecting to just print the Datasheets into a 3 Ring Binder and pull them out as necessary at the start of the game.

Breton wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Yeah I don't see how the detachment system is going to increase the cognitive load over the wide-awake nightmare of 9th.

Especially with free PDF downloads (assuming those stay in the PDFs after Codex rollouts - I'm expecting to just print the Datasheets into a 3 Ring Binder and pull them out as necessary at the start of the game.

No way GW is releasing codexes for free, it'll be like with the app at the start of 9th with 8th edition codexes being free.

 Tyran wrote:

I'm telling you that pre-8e facing system didn't really force a maneuver based game. Other games may and do make it work, but not 40k.

To be fair, this was mostly caused by weapon ranges and restrictive rules for moving and shooting. The pay-off for moving vehicles often wasn't there, especially for stuff like russes and predators. You could just plonk your tank down with its butt against the table edge and blast away with your 36-48" range big guns. You might have a turn or two of shooting a suboptimal target, but that beats a turn of moving (more than 6" at least); being unable to shoot the guns you paid all those points for in the first place, with the added bonus of possibly exposing your sides/rear. The only vehicles I saw moving were transports or the occasional vindicator.

I always thought vehicle moving and shooting should've been less restrictive back then. This works fine in bolt action, for example. I think the issue wasn't with vehicle facings, it was with gw's implementation of facings and vehicles in general.

 vict0988 wrote:
6 Stratagems is few enough that you don't need to do preparatory homework, you can just learn it at the start of the game.

Right now with one detachment its simple.

Flash forward though and say there's say 2 additional detachments in the codex plus 2 "armies of renown" detachments from supplements and a "we just thought it was cool" detachment in White Dwarf. So there's potentially 36 stratagems (and 24~ relics) in 6 groups to remember. Apply that the 24~ factions in the game (and I suspect we'll see more) and that's 850+ stratagems in nearly 150 different detachments.

Okay maybe at the start of the game you could say to your opponent "I'm playing X Detachment, that means I've got stratagems 1-6, try to remember them" - but I'm not sure its that easy.

Now the counter argument will be that much like today, people will only "really" play the best Detachment, so the fact there are 5 inferior ones you don't know shouldn't matter. But if the criticism of 9th was "its hard to be a walking encyclopedia and know everything" then that could very quickly apply.

This could be cut down dramatically if in reality you only swapped out say 1 stratagem or relic with the detachment - but we wait and see on that.

shortymcnostrill wrote:

I always thought vehicle moving and shooting should've been less restrictive back then. This works fine in bolt action, for example. I think the issue wasn't with vehicle facings, it was with gw's implementation of facings and vehicles in general.

Don't forget lack of terrain and not much scoring that made movement relevant. On current tables with current mission design with old vehicle facing a tank that got to use their front facing value all the time is probably not doing anything of note. If there is less penalty for moving and more incentive to move, due to terrain/scoring, then it would actually be a decision between protecting the flanks or rear or expose them but get line of sight or contest an objective.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Rules for rules sake is the definition of bloat, all the new abilities haven't been added to serve narrative or required game functions, they've been added because GW decided everybody should get an ability, the same way they decided every faction should get 40 Stratagems. It wasn't that without that last 40th Stratagem the faction would have felt less fluffy and would have been less interesting to play, it's just the writers keeping themselves employed and slowly kicking people out of the hobby as they get tired of keeping up with all the rules. Stuff like getting rid of ObSec and replacing it with 60 bespoke "I'm good at holding objectives" abilities is silly. Giving Deathwing Knights -1 Damage instead of increasing their T, W or Invuln because they have to have an ability is silly.

Doing a unique thing is not a reason to take a unit if that unit is still trash because it is relatively overcosted.

Isn't every rule in the game a rule for rule's sake? The game could be purely unit stats, weapon stats, and the core rules and be playable but that would be terribly boring.

What stat lets a Monolith teleport a friendly unit on the battlefield over to it? See how weird and specific that piece of fluff is for something to require an ability. Necron Warriors healing more and healing more more when near an objective? Random and unnecessary bloat.

You are the one who claimed that GW was just adding rules for rules' sake. I countered that we could remove every rule, every special ability, and doing so wouldn't improve the game.

Tyel wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
6 Stratagems is few enough that you don't need to do preparatory homework, you can just learn it at the start of the game.

Right now with one detachment its simple.

Flash forward though and say there's say 2 additional detachments in the codex plus 2 "armies of renown" detachments from supplements and a "we just thought it was cool" detachment in White Dwarf. So there's potentially 36 stratagems (and 24~ relics) in 6 groups to remember. Apply that the 24~ factions in the game (and I suspect we'll see more) and that's 850+ stratagems in nearly 150 different detachments.

Okay maybe at the start of the game you could say to your opponent "I'm playing X Detachment, that means I've got stratagems 1-6, try to remember them" - but I'm not sure its that easy.

Now the counter argument will be that much like today, people will only "really" play the best Detachment, so the fact there are 5 inferior ones you don't know shouldn't matter. But if the criticism of 9th was "its hard to be a walking encyclopedia and know everything" then that could very quickly apply.

This could be cut down dramatically if in reality you only swapped out say 1 stratagem or relic with the detachment - but we wait and see on that.

I expect it will become like 7th's bajillion detachments and dataslates all over the place.

'Oh you didn't realise that I was using a Mephrit Cohort? Well sucks to be you'

'Too bad that you're too poor to be able to afford the Court of the High King Detachment. Now roll over while I stomp you'

Tyel wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
6 Stratagems is few enough that you don't need to do preparatory homework, you can just learn it at the start of the game.

Right now with one detachment its simple.

Flash forward though and say there's say 2 additional detachments in the codex plus 2 "armies of renown" detachments from supplements and a "we just thought it was cool" detachment in White Dwarf. So there's potentially 36 stratagems (and 24~ relics) in 6 groups to remember. Apply that the 24~ factions in the game (and I suspect we'll see more) and that's 850+ stratagems in nearly 150 different detachments.

Okay maybe at the start of the game you could say to your opponent "I'm playing X Detachment, that means I've got stratagems 1-6, try to remember them" - but I'm not sure its that easy.

Now the counter argument will be that much like today, people will only "really" play the best Detachment, so the fact there are 5 inferior ones you don't know shouldn't matter. But if the criticism of 9th was "its hard to be a walking encyclopedia and know everything" then that could very quickly apply.

This could be cut down dramatically if in reality you only swapped out say 1 stratagem or relic with the detachment - but we wait and see on that.

The difference is both players only need to remember 6 strats once the game starts, regardless of how many total strats a faction has access to. It's easily possible to ask about the strats available and either remember that or ask to see the page when you need to. It's very similar to how a game like MTG or X-Wing has billions or trillions of possible combinations of cards and abilities but that doesn't really matter once you're at the table.

You do need to comb through everything for your faction before deciding which detachment to use, but that's all work that's done prior to the game so it doesn't really matter once you start playing. Judging by the detachments we've seen for BA, DA etc, it also seems likely some strats may be repeated across detachments, further reducing the number you need to worry about.

Tyel wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
6 Stratagems is few enough that you don't need to do preparatory homework, you can just learn it at the start of the game.

Right now with one detachment its simple.

Flash forward though and say there's say 2 additional detachments in the codex plus 2 "armies of renown" detachments from supplements and a "we just thought it was cool" detachment in White Dwarf. So there's potentially 36 stratagems (and 24~ relics) in 6 groups to remember. Apply that the 24~ factions in the game (and I suspect we'll see more) and that's 850+ stratagems in nearly 150 different detachments.

Okay maybe at the start of the game you could say to your opponent "I'm playing X Detachment, that means I've got stratagems 1-6, try to remember them" - but I'm not sure its that easy.

Confirming the Detachment in use should be part of confirming which Army you're using at the start of the game. And people should have a copy of the card/page with the Detachment rules with them, so you'll only need to worry about the Detachment in front of you, not all the possible ones.

I can see WD using their card inserts for any Detachments that get printed in issues, for example.