Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
I would think that GW only allowing the army’s supreme commander give orders to those units was a sure sign they are intended to operate just fine without orders.

Why? The unit in question is in the codex and legal in normal games, why does making the shiny new model an auto-take unit mean he isn't supposed to be necessary?

Who says he is an auto-take? That seems to be you. It was not me nor GW.

Since no unit is a compulsory unit in Index Astra Militarum, it is easy to conclude that the army is intended to be run without any specific unit in your army.

 alextroy wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
I would think that GW only allowing the army’s supreme commander give orders to those units was a sure sign they are intended to operate just fine without orders.

Why? The unit in question is in the codex and legal in normal games, why does making the shiny new model an auto-take unit mean he isn't supposed to be necessary?

Who says he is an auto-take? That seems to be you. It was not me nor GW.

Since no unit is a compulsory unit in Index Astra Militarum, it is easy to conclude that the army is intended to be run without any specific unit in your army.

I’m playing my imperial guard on Sunday and don’t even own the model! I’ll let you know how it goes.

 alextroy wrote:
Who says he is an auto-take? That seems to be you. It was not me nor GW.

Since no unit is a compulsory unit in Index Astra Militarum, it is easy to conclude that the army is intended to be run without any specific unit in your army.

Do you honestly think that "auto-take" means it is literally in the rules that it's a mandatory unit or are you just arguing in bad faith to score internet points?

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
If everyone consents then why do you need a rule? You only need a rule if someone doesn't agree, otherwise people just naturally don't bring named characters in their lists because they don't want to.

Someone has to suggest it. We're not telepathic lmao.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
And consent doesn't make a rule good. Everyone can consent to a rule that squats get 25% less points than every other faction but it's still a stupid rule.

Why is it a bad rule?

Hecaton wrote:
Someone has to suggest it. We're not telepathic lmao.

Why does it need to be suggested? If nobody likes using named characters then nobody will take them and you don't need a rule. It would be like insisting that you need a rule where each player must take a minimum of 500 points in a 2000 point game. You only need to suggest a rule if people are taking named characters and some of the group wants them to stop.

Why is it a bad rule?

For the same reason that banning squats is a bad rule. Named characters are part of the game and we don't need scrub rules about "playing the right way".

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
I would think that GW only allowing the army’s supreme commander give orders to those units was a sure sign they are intended to operate just fine without orders.

Why? The unit in question is in the codex and legal in normal games, why does making the shiny new model an auto-take unit mean he isn't supposed to be necessary?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:
We play on boards that are 5 - 8 feet long.

Which is much larger than the standard. I'm not sure why range issues on your non-standard tables are supposed to have anything to do with how the codex is meant to work?

It might not have been my initial plan to deploy that Demolisher that far away on the flank, but as need/opportunity dictates....

Demolishers can at least use the other source of orders, even if it isn't nearly as good. And if you're taking a Baneblade (or more than one) that's going to be the focus of your army and where your best buff unit goes.

1) I suggest you go back & read the rules/learn to actually play this game.
Because the standard listed size for an Incusion/Strike (1k - 2kpts) size game is 44x60 inches.
The standard for Onslaught (3k pts) is 44x90 inches.
So no, I'm not playing on anything much larger than standard. Especially at the 2k lv.

2) I also recommend that you let me worry about what the "focus" of my army is. Afteall, I know my plan/theme better than you ever will.

ccs wrote:
So no, I'm not playing on anything much larger than standard. Especially at the 2k lv.

44"x90" vs 5'x8' is not much larger? It's damn near 50% larger.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

ccs wrote:
So no, I'm not playing on anything much larger than standard. Especially at the 2k lv.

44"x90" vs 5'x8' is not much larger? It's damn near 50% larger.

I think he said 5 to 8 feet, not 5 by 8 feet. Even the old tables GW tables were 4 by 8 feet - a sheet of plywood sized - you have to add another board for 5 by 8.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:


Why does it need to be suggested? If nobody likes using named characters then nobody will take them and you don't need a rule. It would be like insisting that you need a rule where each player must take a minimum of 500 points in a 2000 point game. You only need to suggest a rule if people are taking named characters and some of the group wants them to stop.

For the same reason that banning squats is a bad rule. Named characters are part of the game and we don't need scrub rules about "playing the right way".

Nah, it's not an open invite league. People who don't want to play by the campaign rules don't have to play.

It needs to be suggested because we want a cogent narrative that doesn't involve multiple primarchs etc.

Hecaton wrote:
Nah, it's not an open invite league. People who don't want to play by the campaign rules don't have to play.

Cool, thanks for acknowledging that the reason for the rule is that not everyone shares your feelings about named characters and you need to force them to comply or get out.

It needs to be suggested because we want a cogent narrative that doesn't involve multiple primarchs etc.

Rules =/= lore. There is a long tradition of using the rules for a named character to represent your own character, just like people use the generic character rules to represent their own characters.

Compromise is okay, you know.

Most people (at least that I know) have more than just a 2k list. They can swap stuff out, if they feel like it or if points change or if rules call for it.
I don’t know of many people who are so hardcore about a named character that they desperately need to field them-and anyone who feels so, can just not join that league.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Compromise is okay, you know.

Most people (at least that I know) have more than just a 2k list. They can swap stuff out, if they feel like it or if points change or if rules call for it.
I don’t know of many people who are so hardcore about a named character that they desperately need to field them-and anyone who feels so, can just not join that league.

Why is compromise needed here? Do you think people should compromise with someone who arbitrarily insists that units should not be allowed to take upgrades and you should only get the default equipment? That everyone should bring two lists and play half their games with the house rule and half with the normal rules?

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Rules =/= lore. There is a long tradition of using the rules for a named character to represent your own character, just like people use the generic character rules to represent their own characters.

Nah. A divorce of rules and narrative is toxic to the kind of campaign that we wanted our Crusade to be.

And yeah, when someone's a league organizer they use "force" to dictate certain things. That's not a bad thing. In this case, it was my feelings, and everyone who played agreed to play under those restrictions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Why is compromise needed here? Do you think people should compromise with someone who arbitrarily insists that units should not be allowed to take upgrades and you should only get the default equipment? That everyone should bring two lists and play half their games with the house rule and half with the normal rules?

I mean if someone wanted to run a league like that... people are free to play or not. I had 20 people in my league, it was most of the store's regular players. Nobody cited not using named characters as a reason they didn't want to play - everyone was interested in creating their own named characters and fleshing them out. People who didn't play were busy, didn't like narrative leagues, etc.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Compromise is okay, you know.

Most people (at least that I know) have more than just a 2k list. They can swap stuff out, if they feel like it or if points change or if rules call for it.
I don’t know of many people who are so hardcore about a named character that they desperately need to field them-and anyone who feels so, can just not join that league.

Banning named characters is exactly the same level of stupid as banning all primaris, grey knights or eldar.

If an event organizer enforces rules from two decades ago, it's extremely likely that their understanding of game rules, balance and socially acceptable behavior is just as outdated.

 Jidmah wrote:
Banning named characters is exactly the same level of stupid as banning all primaris, grey knights or eldar.

Wouldn't that be situational?

If mean, if it's just a straight up tournament, fine, banning gak just comes across as stupid. But if it was't, a themed event, a narrative event, or something that was tied to a specific location or point in the timeline (eg. before the return of Guilliman, for example), would it be ok then?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Banning named characters is exactly the same level of stupid as banning all primaris, grey knights or eldar.

Wouldn't that be situational?

If mean, if it's just a straight up tournament, fine, banning gak just comes across as stupid. But if it was't, a themed event, a narrative event, or something that was tied to a specific location or point in the timeline (eg. before the return of Guilliman, for example), would it be ok then?

You can find my opinion on that on the previous page of this thread if you really want to know, I speficially addressed that case. It will most likely be similar to your take on this.

The event in question was not a narrative event, but a competitive league format.

 Jidmah wrote:

The event in question was not a narrative event, but a competitive league format.

Wait is there a second argument going on here? I was under the impression the current discussion was regarding whether making certain rules for what you can or can't take in a narrative crusade is bad (it's not, imho, just be up front about it). Now that I think about it, the OP might have mentioned a competitive event, but the conversation has moved on as their question seems to have been resoundly answered as "don't worry about it".

And before someone points a finger at people who think it's okay to ban special characters in crusade, a) if the crusade organizer is going to surprise you with that rule after getting you invested in the crusade, you don't want to be in that crusade, b) if special characters are something really important to you in your narrative head cannon of your army, talk to them about it, the other players might be okay with am exception, and c) special characters are softly discouraged by crusade rules anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:


Why does it need to be suggested? If nobody likes using named characters then nobody will take them and you don't need a rule. It would be like insisting that you need a rule where each player must take a minimum of 500 points in a 2000 point game. You only need to suggest a rule if people are taking named characters and some of the group wants them to stop.

[

Because it manages expectations and avoids hurt feelings. In our crusade, we aren't banning special characters, but we are making several other rules changes and clarifications and we have those all written down. These are things we've all agreed on. It's nice to have them explicitly layed out so I can go remind myself of them when needed.

I've never really been a fan but then I started back in 2nd where you had to have permission to field them. None of my friends at the time seemed to care one way or the other.

Given that the customisation aspect has been bloodily torn out of the game, is there even a difference between special and generic characters at this point?

It just seems like a choice between a named dude with no options or an unnamed dude with no options.

alextroy wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
I would think that GW only allowing the army’s supreme commander give orders to those units was a sure sign they are intended to operate just fine without orders.

Why? The unit in question is in the codex and legal in normal games, why does making the shiny new model an auto-take unit mean he isn't supposed to be necessary?

Who says he is an auto-take? That seems to be you. It was not me nor GW.

Since no unit is a compulsory unit in Index Astra Militarum, it is easy to conclude that the army is intended to be run without any specific unit in your army.

ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
Who says he is an auto-take? That seems to be you. It was not me nor GW.

Since no unit is a compulsory unit in Index Astra Militarum, it is easy to conclude that the army is intended to be run without any specific unit in your army.

Do you honestly think that "auto-take" means it is literally in the rules that it's a mandatory unit or are you just arguing in bad faith to score internet points?

Why is it that whenever someone disagrees with your analysis that they are arguing in bad faith? That seems to be a bad faith argument in itself

Named Characters are useful units. They often provide capabilities that are hard if not impossible to acquire in non-named characters. That does not mean that armies or units are not supposed to be usable without them. To argue otherwise is simply incorrect.

 Jidmah wrote:


You can find my opinion on that on the previous page of this thread if you really want to know, I speficially addressed that case. It will most likely be similar to your take on this.

The event in question was not a narrative event, but a competitive league format.

Which event?

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
I tend to avoid them as I’m always afraid tourneys won’t allow them or people will get annoyed at their use. Do you guys run them or ever see any pushback?

I never use named characters in my armies. I always love making up lore for my legion/waaagh! so i usually name a leader to make him a character in my mind. Cringe, I know, but isn't 40k anyway?

 Jidmah wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Banning named characters is exactly the same level of stupid as banning all primaris, grey knights or eldar.

Wouldn't that be situational?

If mean, if it's just a straight up tournament, fine, banning gak just comes across as stupid. But if it was't, a themed event, a narrative event, or something that was tied to a specific location or point in the timeline (eg. before the return of Guilliman, for example), would it be ok then?

You can find my opinion on that on the previous page of this thread if you really want to know, I speficially addressed that case. It will most likely be similar to your take on this.

The event in question was not a narrative event, but a competitive league format.

I was talking about narrative events.

For a tournament, yeah, no reason to bar named characters from the game.

Narrative events, by definition, are meant to tell a story.

Naturally, the storyteller gets a say in what characters can participate in the story. Kind of how a TTRPG GM can veto your idea of playing the BBEG's mother.

And even then, a general ban on named characters is highly questionable, as there are plenty of characters that fit into pretty much any setting (Badrukk, Trayzin and many Eldar come to mind), as well plenty who are scattered around the particular part of the galaxy where your story is taking place.

In my experience crusade has already hit the sweet spot. Named characters were still played regularly in my group, but not every game since they miss out on essential parts of the system and if they manage to score an agenda, it's reward might just disappear into nothingness making them odd to use.
On the flip side, nothing is lost when you use your named character as a narrative element, since they wouldn't be gaining or losing anything from the game anyways.

 Jidmah wrote:
i

And even then, a general ban on named characters is highly questionable, as there are plenty of characters that fit into pretty much any setting (Badrukk, Trayzin and many Eldar come to mind), as well plenty who are scattered around the particular part of the galaxy where your story is taking place.

Nah, the galaxy is a gigantic place. Perfectly reasonable to ban them. What do you do if multiple people want to run them?

Hecaton wrote:


Nah, the galaxy is a gigantic place. Perfectly reasonable to ban them. What do you do if multiple people want to run them?

Then one of them will be running Shmeldrad, the long lost brother of Eldrad.

 warhead01 wrote:
I've never really been a fan but then I started back in 2nd where you had to have permission to field them. None of my friends at the time seemed to care one way or the other.

Same. The named characters of that era were mostly about flavor and I don't recall any of them being a fixture. I never used them because I wanted more guys with guns and in that edition everything was so deadly that even a Bloodthirster could be laid low by a single lascannon shot.

It sounds like GW has (typically) weaponized them by only offering certain buffs if you take them. No idea how orders work, but it seems pretty bad game design to say that all units can get orders, but only special characters can give them to certain units.

Well, maybe not bad game design, but certainly greedy. May as well require special printed cards to give orders and then price them differently based on how cool the order is. (I would not be surprised if that isn't already the case.)

As a now and then thing, they can be neat enough I guess? Plus at this point a few armies are basically built around them sadly like World Eaters (or at least they were on release I believe).

I'd personally drastically prefer customizable generic characters with special characters being a specific build of them. Like why is Marneus Calgar the only person to think of double fisting people? Or Harker the only guardsman capable of carrying a heavy bolter by themself? The galaxy is huge, so if even just one in ten billion people have thought of either of these and are capable of it, just the sheer scale of the Imperium means that there would be tons of people capable of it.

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
I tend to avoid them as I’m always afraid tourneys won’t allow them or people will get annoyed at their use. Do you guys run them or ever see any pushback?

Just a HH player's opinion here. I think that if you're bringing a Primarch or a character that can significantly alter an army (Sevatar, for example), you should tell your opponent. It's just good sportsmanship, IMHOP.

I haven't seen problems with named characters since 2nd Ed. There are no restrictions on them where I play, and we even have a tournament where you have to have a named character as your Warlord.