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Now that there are quite a few codex's out (I think a bit more than 1/3 and a bit less than 1/2) and we can see that even with some of the better balanced books, there are clear winners and losers with the detachments, should the good detachments have a small points cost to them?

For example, the CSM Pact Bound and Renegade Raiders detachments make the units in them much more impactful. Should you say need to pay 50 or 100 points to unlock those detachments to balance it out? Also, GW would never point units related to the detachments they are brought in i.e. Predators being x points in Pact Bound and y points in Raiders, so having points for detachments would let them not price units only for use in the best detachment. The Vindicator and Predators come to mind with the newest points increases clearly because of their over performance in Pact Bound and Raiders. Those units are not as good as their points in other detachments. I focus on CSM because that is my primary army, but I am sure you could make the same case for things like hypercrypt and Iron Storm. I would not put points on index detachments due to being limited to only one detachment.

Anyway do people agree if this would be a good idea or not so much?

Probably. It's almost the same issue that detachments had in the past; some are too good, some are okay, and some are just bad.

GW still hasn't learned that you can't balance things when you give "get X bonus for free".

It's also a big issue with their approach now of "take anything, a detachment just gives you a bonus" rather than detachments restricting how you build you army.

Wayniac wrote:
Probably. It's almost the same issue that detachments had in the past; some are too good, some are okay, and some are just bad.

GW still hasn't learned that you can't balance things when you give "get X bonus for free".

It's also a big issue with their approach now of "take anything, a detachment just gives you a bonus" rather than detachments restricting how you build you army.

lol, no.

The issue is, continually and always will be, that they're having to play reactionary to people who are hellbent on breaking the rules from day one.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Probably. It's almost the same issue that detachments had in the past; some are too good, some are okay, and some are just bad.

GW still hasn't learned that you can't balance things when you give "get X bonus for free".

It's also a big issue with their approach now of "take anything, a detachment just gives you a bonus" rather than detachments restricting how you build you army.

lol, no.

The issue is, continually and always will be, that they're having to play reactionary to people who are hellbent on breaking the rules from day one.

ALmost like 40k was never meant to be a competitive game, and GW still wants to chase that idea...

Frankly, it's more "this is why we can't have nice things" than "we can't make nice things".

The game plays much better when you actively play with people where both players' goals are for the other to have fun.

Wayniac wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Probably. It's almost the same issue that detachments had in the past; some are too good, some are okay, and some are just bad.

GW still hasn't learned that you can't balance things when you give "get X bonus for free".

It's also a big issue with their approach now of "take anything, a detachment just gives you a bonus" rather than detachments restricting how you build you army.

lol, no.

The issue is, continually and always will be, that they're having to play reactionary to people who are hellbent on breaking the rules from day one.

ALmost like 40k was never meant to be a competitive game, and GW still wants to chase that idea...

It's a competitive game. It might not be good for TOURNAMENTS, but it's inherently competitive-there's a winner and a loser when you play the game.

Obviously that doesn't mean you should ignore sportsmanship, or try to make it unfun for your opponent-but it's not like D&D or other TTRPGs where the players are on one side, for the most part.

Baby steps here. How about wargear having a points cost first in babby's dum dum wargame?

Opportunity costs make for more viable choices than point costs.

 LunarSol wrote:
Opportunity costs make for more viable choices than point costs.

Each works best when supplemented by the other.

A design element that the 40k design team USED to understand.

 Kanluwen wrote:
they're having to play reactionary to people who are hellbent on breaking the rules from day one.

You can play with people who want their opponent to have fun and still run into problems when you have to assume the responsibility of balancing the game yourself.

Especially when you're dealing with systems that are designed to encourage min-maxing. You are not a cheesy 'feth the other guy' powergamer if you choose the lots-of-tanks detachment and then take lots of tanks, and the balance shouldn't break if that's what you do.

I'm going to say no, but keep in mind I play far more assymetrical narrative games than balanced and competetive games.

I actually find the "Cult of Perfect Balance" severely inhibits the narrative capacity of the game, and I wish that we had maintained the separation between Matched and Crusade that existed in 9th.

Few if any of the endless stream of balance updates over the course of 9th actually affected Crusade, which was good for the game because it allowed people to just play the story without reworking their lists for compliance every 8-12 weeks.

I haven't even played 10th and I've had to readjust 2 armies 3 or 4 times. Balance isn't my priority, so I'd prefer to just use rules as written at launch for the duration of the edition.

No, I don't think so.

The game will never be perfectly balanced.

Charging points for a detachment would be rough estimation at best. After all, the value of the give-buffs-to-vehicles detachment is going to depend on how heavily you're leaning into vehicles. If it's worth 100 points when 90% of your army is vehicles, it's not still worth 100 points if only 25% of your army is vehicles.

Charging individual units points to unlock the detachment's benefits is its own can of worms but would ultimately still only go so far in balancing the game.

So with that in mind, detachments don't need to be perfectly balanced against one another. They just need to be balanced enough that they're all worth considering and all close enough in power to your opponent's detachments to make for a close game. If there are auto-takes and never-takes among your detachments, that's probably a sign that you need to buff or nerf some of them. And buffing/nerfing might actually be the easier/better approach here rather than trying to fix it with points.

Which is the opposite of the norm. Most problems are better solved by just making something a bit more expensive or cheaper.

No. Detachments should not have a points cost. How effective any detachment is on the board is strongly related to how many units you have in your list that are impacted by the detachment. There is no fixed value out of a list size that will represent that.

Instead, GW should slowly continue to adjust the average and bad detachments to be closer to the good detachments.

They should have costs. Or rather, different units should have different costs in different detachments. If you have an attachment that gives assault units +1 to hit in melee, they should pay for that. But the regular shooting units shouldn't.

Theoretically they should all be balanced against each other, so there's only an opportunity cost to taking one and you don't need a points cost. In practice I don't think that works because GW can't actually come up with detachments that work that way. Too many of their detachments just flat-out buff specific units, making it impossible to balance those units properly.

Take the Necron Canoptek Court as an example. Wraiths are a decent unit. They are pretty durable and have mediocre damage output but OC2 and good movement. Put them in a Canoptek Court, however, and their damage output goes through the roof, with easy access to re-rolls to hit, which is a huge boost for no actual cost. How do you balance that unit in a Canoptek Court as opposed to an Awakened Dynasty? If you cost it for the big buff the Court gives you, they just don't appear outside of that detachment. If you go for a more average number they're clearly too good in one specific detachment.

I don't have a problem with some detachments leaning into certain units, but GW has a tendency to go way too far and do so via easy, powerful buffs that don't especially reward play on the board and are mainly plugged in at list creation. They've shown they can't balance using the opportunity cost approach so I'd prefer to see them use points costs to balance detachments.

 alextroy wrote:
Instead, GW should slowly continue to adjust the average and bad detachments to be closer to the good detachments.

I think this would be the best approach - but I think GW probably don't care "that much" - and its hard to get accurate data when so few people are playing the "bad detachments" versus the good.

But I think it is an issue. I mean I was tempted to write a post when the CSM codex came out that Renegade Raiders and Pact Bound were not "good" for the faction.
They are in my view too powerful compared to the other options. So inevitably CSM get nerfed. But now you are even more dependent on these detachments as due to the point cost rises playing the others is even worse.

I don't really like the idea of paying points for a more powerful detachment, although there's no reason you couldn't balance the game on that basis. I guess cynically I'm not sure GW could get that any more right than writing rules in the first place. But maybe its something thats easier to solve by seeing how tournament metas develop.

I'm torn on the matter.

Generally speaking I'd say "No", but when GW apparently prices units on their performance in their "optimal" detachment, I'm starting to think that there perhaps should be some cost associated with it (not that GW would ever do that with how pts currently work...)

Case and point: The SM Redemptor Dread.
They where really good in Ironstorm detachments with the 6" Lethal Hits Aura enchantment, and the detachment rule was really good on them as well. Probably worth their 210 pts pricetag, but in other detachments? Heck no.

(And now the enchantment for Ironstorm is nerfed, but they're still 210 pts each, which becomes even more pecular when the Telemon Dreadnaughts got lowered from 235 to 215 pts, which means that for +5 pts you essentially get a Redemptor with +1WS, +1BS and a 4++.)

No, there should be no cost for Detachments. No need to rediscover why the Loyal 32 was bad.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Probably. It's almost the same issue that detachments had in the past; some are too good, some are okay, and some are just bad.

GW still hasn't learned that you can't balance things when you give "get X bonus for free".

It's also a big issue with their approach now of "take anything, a detachment just gives you a bonus" rather than detachments restricting how you build you army.

lol, no.

The issue is, continually and always will be, that they're having to play reactionary to people who are hellbent on breaking the rules from day one.

Oh yeah, it's the player's fault that a Gladiator in Ironstorm is better than one in 1rst company task force.
And it's totally the players "breaking the rules" by picking a detachment that makes their models better....


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PenitentJake wrote:

I actually find the "Cult of Perfect Balance" severely inhibits the narrative capacity of the game, and I wish that we had maintained the separation between Matched and Crusade that existed in 9th.

crusade is still its own category....

 PenitentJake wrote:


I haven't even played 10th and I've had to readjust 2 armies 3 or 4 times. Balance isn't my priority, so I'd prefer to just use rules as written at launch for the duration of the edition.

if you havnt played 10th after a year of it being out, you're not even affected by the changes really. Plus, nothing is stopping you from playing with the unmodified rules (if you find someone else willing to do the same)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Breton wrote:
No, there should be no cost for Detachments. No need to rediscover why the Loyal 32 was bad.

what does the loyal32 have to do with paying points for detachments?


I'd much rather units have different price for every detachments tbh, a thing that would be pretty simple to implement if GW paperless for its rules

Breton wrote:
No, there should be no cost for Detachments. No need to rediscover why the Loyal 32 was bad.

I'm not sure how that's relevant. The proposal here is just to charge points for certain detachments. You still only get to pick 1. How is that the same as the Loyal 32?

I think there should not even have to exist detachments. Most wargames can do without such rules.

Slipspace wrote:Theoretically they should all be balanced against each other, so there's only an opportunity cost to taking one and you don't need a points cost. In practice I don't think that works because GW can't actually come up with detachments that work that way. Too many of their detachments just flat-out buff specific units, making it impossible to balance those units properly.

Take the Necron Canoptek Court as an example. Wraiths are a decent unit. They are pretty durable and have mediocre damage output but OC2 and good movement. Put them in a Canoptek Court, however, and their damage output goes through the roof, with easy access to re-rolls to hit, which is a huge boost for no actual cost. How do you balance that unit in a Canoptek Court as opposed to an Awakened Dynasty? If you cost it for the big buff the Court gives you, they just don't appear outside of that detachment. If you go for a more average number they're clearly too good in one specific detachment.

I don't have a problem with some detachments leaning into certain units, but GW has a tendency to go way too far and do so via easy, powerful buffs that don't especially reward play on the board and are mainly plugged in at list creation. They've shown they can't balance using the opportunity cost approach so I'd prefer to see them use points costs to balance detachments.

I wouldn't give up on balancing on balancing via opportunity cost just yet. Especially as slapping a points cost on a detachment comes with its own problems.

I think you're making a good case for why kill-more-better rules are kind of a questionable choice. If detachments primarily focused on how units move, how they support each other, how they score, how they do damage (rather than how much damage they do), etc.... detachments would be a great way to keep an army fresh and provide people with different ways to play with their toys. But when detachments focus on just being raw offense/defense buffs, you end up with issues like the ones you've identified with the canoptek court. I'm sort of dreading the eldar codex because how do you price something like a bright lance war walker when it either has or doesn't have a free to-hit and to-wound reroll every time it shoots depending on which detachment you choose?

Gitdakka wrote:I think there should not even have to exist detachments. Most wargames can do without such rules.

40k has had plenty of editions without detachments. They're still a new-ish concept for the game. Generally, people like the idea of their subfaction feeling special by behaving a bit differently from other subfactions. I like the concept of detachments as a way to tweak the way an army works to keep things fresh or lean into mechanics that would be too clunky if you put them in the base rules. Ex: maybe rules for Moving Flatout and Jinking are too clunky if every army is dealing with them every game, but letting a Saim-Hann or White Scars type detachment unlock those mechanics can be a good way to emphasize the feeling that those armies are fast and mobile.

Part of the issue, I think, is that GW only *sometimes* treats detachments as a way to change how an army behaves; other times they just use detachments as a way to slap damage buffs on units as they behave the same way they were going to without the detachment. Eldar index rerolls every time I shoot or fight is boring. Saim-Hann detachment rerolls if my model is at least 15" away from where it started this turn (forcing me to constantly move fast and far to get buffs) is more interesting.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
40k has had plenty of editions without detachments. They're still a new-ish concept for the game.

Ehh....

If we take detachments to mean "subfaction special rules" - I feel we've had them since at least 3rd edition. Some questions perhaps on how involved they were, but I'm not sure we can say they are new.

I guess I did like the idea that you could make your dudes even more your dudes back then. These days though, I think the crux should be on making multiple paradigms within a faction fun, interesting and, dare I say, competitive to play.

Sometimes I think the current detachments are a bit too "unit focused", rather than "style of play" focused. But that raises the question of "how many styles of play" there really are in 10th. I mean you've kind of got "Board Control", "High damage assault", "High damage shooting". Then you've got "lots of cheap bodies", "smaller number of elite bodies", "Lots of Tanks and Monsters". And I guess you have hybrids of all of these - but you probably lean into one or the other.

That's very broad-brush. But am I missing anything obvious?

The problem is hard to get past this. I mean you look at say the Ad Mech Codex, you have 5 detachments. 3 of which are unit based. Spam Skitarii. Spam the non-Skitarii Infantry. Spam Robots and Vehicles.
And then you have two that are more generic. Punish the opponent for staying in their deployment zone, and punish the opponent for standing on objectives. And while I think you'd imagine this should work out a wash, I think expert oppinion is that the second just doesn't work as well.

What else could you do with the codex?

Sometimes this sort of matches up. Ignoring power, Tyranids have a gaunt-tide detachment (board control with lots of bodies), which is a clear archetype, and "take the big stuff" (go face, win), which is also an archetype. Take all the infiltrators is I guess also a concept - but I feel movement tricks are hard to do given the limited number of turns/actions in 40k. (It tends to either work, and feels broken or it just doesn't, and also feels broken.) Then you have the other 3, which to my mind are much of a muchness despite arguably changing the optimal units you'd want to take.

Tyel wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
40k has had plenty of editions without detachments. They're still a new-ish concept for the game.

Ehh....

If we take detachments to mean "subfaction special rules" - I feel we've had them since at least 3rd edition. Some questions perhaps on how involved they were, but I'm not sure we can say they are new.

I guess I did like the idea that you could make your dudes even more your dudes back then. These days though, I think the crux should be on making multiple paradigms within a faction fun, interesting and, dare I say, competitive to play.

Sometimes I think the current detachments are a bit too "unit focused", rather than "style of play" focused. But that raises the question of "how many styles of play" there really are in 10th. I mean you've kind of got "Board Control", "High damage assault", "High damage shooting". Then you've got "lots of cheap bodies", "smaller number of elite bodies", "Lots of Tanks and Monsters". And I guess you have hybrids of all of these - but you probably lean into one or the other.

That's very broad-brush. But am I missing anything obvious?

The problem is hard to get past this. I mean you look at say the Ad Mech Codex, you have 5 detachments. 3 of which are unit based. Spam Skitarii. Spam the non-Skitarii Infantry. Spam Robots and Vehicles.
And then you have two that are more generic. Punish the opponent for staying in their deployment zone, and punish the opponent for standing on objectives. And while I think you'd imagine this should work out a wash, I think expert oppinion is that the second just doesn't work as well.

What else could you do with the codex?

Sometimes this sort of matches up. Ignoring power, Tyranids have a gaunt-tide detachment (board control with lots of bodies), which is a clear archetype, and "take the big stuff" (go face, win), which is also an archetype. Take all the infiltrators is I guess also a concept - but I feel movement tricks are hard to do given the limited number of turns/actions in 40k. (It tends to either work, and feels broken or it just doesn't, and also feels broken.) Then you have the other 3, which to my mind are much of a muchness despite arguably changing the optimal units you'd want to take.

Good points. When I think of detachments in 10th that I like and want to see more of, I think of things like:

Hyperphase Crypt: Takes a generally slow-ish army (if you're not fielding vehicles or wraiths) and gives them a flavorful set of redeployment shenanigans.

The Tyranid Vanguard Detachment: Changes how all those infiltrator units behave. Genestealers outside this detachment can infiltrate, but then they're left just sort of haunting the area they deployed near. The detachment expands their threat range. It also gives them tools to keep your squishy infiltrators alive when you're leaning into them more instead of focusing on non-infiltrator units. And notably that defense has some counterplay; it's not just a FNP or a +1 to saves. Plus it gives you things like the strat that grants a squad precision. So now your 'stealers have the speed and tools to roam around without dying and can focus on taking out enemy character support. Which is pretty different from how genestealer spam in a different detachment would behave.

Assimilation Swarm: I know it's unpopular, but some of the core concepts are cool here. By having the right units stand in the right places (not always the place they want to be standing at a given moment), you can turn them into a source of buffs and healing for the rest of your army. It takes non-support units and turns them into support units, changing up your playstyle.

Basically, I feel like the goal of a detachment should be to change how an army and/or its units behave. If all a detachment does is make units hit harder when behaving exactly the same way they would in another detachment, then that might be a poorly-designed detachment.

I think there's also probably room for detachments to go a step further and be more like Rites of War. Change up what is and isn't battleline. Unlock terminator sergeants for marine squads. Unlock warlock sergeants for guardian squads. Require that armeis start with everything in a transport or on a bike. Add interesting downsides that you have to play around. If we ever switch from stratagems to Command Abilities, having a detachment add certain Command Abilities to characters would make sense.

Obvious point is obvious - if charging points to use a detachment, cost needs to scale by game size.

As someone else mentioned earlier, I'd prefer different points for units in different detachments, but that has the potential to be messy.

 Dysartes wrote:
Obvious point is obvious - if charging points to use a detachment, cost needs to scale by game size.

As someone else mentioned earlier, I'd prefer different points for units in different detachments, but that has the potential to be messy.

Most likely it results in units being worse in their own detachment because they're not as efficient for their cost.

 LunarSol wrote:
Most likely it results in units being worse in their own detachment because they're not as efficient for their cost.

So just... don't overcost them, then? Not seeing the logic here.

Right now we have a situation where units with an optimal detachment get balanced around their inclusion in that detachment and then underperform elsewhere because they have the same cost and yet two different levels of capability. Assigning different costs for different capability can't make it worse.

Or, better yet, just don't design detachments around unit buffs, which is generally not a very interesting way to do things to begin with. I want to make a Gaunt horde, so I'll... take the detachment that buffs the Gaunt horde. Not exactly the deepest or most strategically thrilling decision, is it?

I think that given the large number of units available in most armies, it is nearly impossible to get a points value that is broadly applicable and make every unit equally valuable. GW seems to be using detachments as a way to break armies down into smaller forces that synergizes subsets of an army into thematically effective forces. If this is done in an manner that doesn't lean too heavily into stat-enhancement effectiveness and instead goes for playstyle enhancement, it can be an effective way to give a greater range of any army play without the need for detachment-based costing.

Sometimes they don't stick the landing on their good idea, but that doesn't make the idea bad.

Rather than adding point costs to the detachments, might it not make more sense to increase the cost of certain units in the detachments?

e.g. Wraiths will be a little more expensive in the Canoptek detachment.

This way, it will automatically scale based on the number of (relevant) units you take, and it means that there are advantaged to taking units in both their optimal detachments and also in other detachments as well.