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Datasheets used to be only a document format... a layout that was designed for quick reference of stats and rules during a busy 40k game. But with the FOC having been replaced with the Rule of 3 (2 for smaller games), datasheets have effectively become the new FOC. The 3 slots once available for Fast Attack units can now be allocated to just one of the 4 variants of Land Speeder, allowing a total of 12 Speeders. Not even counting other hover-vehicles, or other units that used to fall under the Fast Attack category.

In essence, an army's spamming ability depends on whether variants of the same units have been given separate datasheets and keywords, or just extra bullet points under the Wargear Options section.

Will all variants be equally effective, or even worth taking? Of course not. I can also fully accept that GW's cash-cow armies like Space Marines will always get more units, and therefore more list-building freedom. But datasheet-based force org restrictions are just so arbitrary. The Adeptus Custodes' vaunted Caladius grav-tank, which some players never take the field without, gets only one datasheet even though it has access to two very different guns (one anti-vehicle and one anti-heavy infantry) and has a datasheet ability that depends on the gun it's equipped with (Lethal Hits vs. vehicles and monsters with the former gun, and Lethal Hits vs. all other units with the latter). The two weapon options are even sold in separate sets, under different names: the Caladius Grav-Tank and the Caladius Grav-Tank Annihilator. I'm not aware the "Annihilator" distinction appears anywhere outside the Web store... It's just a product name, not a datasheet or keyword.

Look, I'm not asking for two Caladius datasheets so that I can field 6 of them total. I just wish the list-building system were rooted in the unit's battlefield role rather than the layout of the codex.

This has been an issue for a while, and I know I'm far from the first to point it out. But given GW's obsession with tournament balance, always trying to keep all faction win rates within the narrow 45-55% range, it's completely inexplicable that they would nuke the FOC.

.

-Guardsman- wrote:

But datasheet-based force org restrictions are just so arbitrary.

Everything in 40k is arbitrary. It was arbitrary when you could spend half your army points on Characters on only 25% had to be from the Squads category. It was arbitrary when they created the FOC in third.

But given GW's obsession with tournament balance, always trying to keep all faction win rates within the narrow 45-55% range, it's completely inexplicable that they would nuke the FOC.
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It's not inexplicable. The FOC limited model sales. That's why they started doing vehicle squadrons back in the day. If my wraithlords compete for the same slot as my war walkers and support weapons batteries, I'm disinclined to acquire too many of any of them. But if I can have 3 wraithlords and 3 squadrons of war walkers and 3 support weapon batteries of 3, well then, I can buy those models because I can actually field them all.

 Arschbombe wrote:
It was arbitrary when they created the FOC in third.

That didn't feel arbitrary. That definitely felt like a mechanism to push "common force proportions" adjusted to each faction.

Rule of three feels far more arbitrary.

The issue with multiple sheets for similar models (let's just use Storm Speeders for an example) partially ties into the lack of points for weapon options. By making hard-coded variants they can both tweak the points of the associated weapons more easily (since you're not trying to make them all 'equal') and give each variant bespoke rules suited to its role.

...and now GW can sell you more versions, too. I have to imagine an army of nothing but Leman Russes can put out a lot of hurt.

 BorderCountess wrote:
. . . ties into the lack of points for weapon options.

Oh yeah . . .that too. :/

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:
It was arbitrary when they created the FOC in third.

That didn't feel arbitrary. That definitely felt like a mechanism to push "common force proportions" adjusted to each faction.

Rule of three feels far more arbitrary.

I would argue they weren’t really adjusted for each faction.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:
It was arbitrary when they created the FOC in third.

That didn't feel arbitrary. That definitely felt like a mechanism to push "common force proportions" adjusted to each faction.

Rule of three feels far more arbitrary.

I would argue they weren’t really adjusted for each faction.

I think it was good for the time but was eroded badly and supported badly by the end.

The current way is actually probably closer to more modern games, so GW switching to it seems reasonable.

I think currently it’s still a GW did something other games did better, but they trying!

The rule of three is a clumsy fudge to get around the fact that with no FOC restrictions people obviously spammed the best units.
Different datasheets which are just weapon variations are a clumsy fudge to get around the fact that most upgrades are obviously not equal to base equipment, and without a points system which can handle fine detail people obviously spammed the best options.
The lack of any FOC was a clumsy fudge to make the core rules more 'accessible' (ie. short).

GW's rules are just clumsy fudge perched on top of clumsy fudge. Because they're bad at designing rules.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:
It was arbitrary when they created the FOC in third.

That didn't feel arbitrary. That definitely felt like a mechanism to push "common force proportions" adjusted to each faction.

Rule of three feels far more arbitrary.

I would argue they weren’t really adjusted for each faction.

I'd probably disagree with you, and claim that some factions feeling pressed or sparse in certain areas of the FOC is actually by design.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:
It was arbitrary when they created the FOC in third.

That didn't feel arbitrary. That definitely felt like a mechanism to push "common force proportions" adjusted to each faction.

Rule of three feels far more arbitrary.

I would argue they weren’t really adjusted for each faction.

I'd probably disagree with you, and claim that some factions feeling pressed or sparse in certain areas of the FOC is actually by design.

Tyranids not being able to field venomthropes because they already took some zoanthropes, Iybraesil not being able to field banshees without fielding guardians or dire avengers, death wing not being able to field all terminators without a special rule letting them break the FOC. None of that reads as intentional to me.

Respectfully, I feel like a lot of people have some rose-tinted glasses when it comes to the FOC. It wasn't some perfect army organization tool that cleverly enforced perfectly fluffy and balanced armies. It was just another clunky attempt at keeping you from spamming a million of whatever the most broken unit of the day was. Just like the rule of 3, except its limitations were harsher. Harsher limitations prevented some specific problems, but it didn't actually fix things so much as it shuffled the problems around.

Sure, you couldn't spam 9 leman russes (except in the editions where you could because "vehicle squadrons"), but now you had to worry about whether or not your army had big guns spread around each of its force org slots. So the army with lots of heavy hitters in its Heavy slots *and* Fast Attack/Elite slots was at an advantage over the armies whose big guns were concentrated purely in the Heavy slots. And armies with congested slots frequently ended up having to sacrifice more unique units for whatever their autotake units were. Want to take venomthropes? That's cute, but where's your third unit of zoanthropes for tank busting? You want to play Saim-Hann? You've got 3 slots to put your iconic shining spear and vyper units into, and heaven forbid you wanted to take some other fast unit like swooping hawks in your army.

I suspect that people who want to return to the FOC probably played armies that were comfortable in the FOC. And/or armies that had lots of ways to ignore the FOC. (Squaddable vehicles, rules that move force org roles around, stuff like marine dreadnaughts that were split up across elite and heavy slots, etc.) The FOC didn't really do a lot for balance, and it actively made it harder to field certain fluffy army themes.

(Note: The FOC is definitely a pet peeve of mine, so please feel free to call me out if I'm beingly overly spicy here.)

Now all that said, the rule of 3 definitely isn't perfect. It's a bandaid, and a bandaid that specifically gets wonky with the whole no-points-for-wargear thing. I'm all for some sort of system to limit or otherwise account for things like skew and unit spam. But such a system wouldn't be based on "battlefield roles" because those were always arbitrary and didn't really relate to the actual stats/problems that needed to be accounted for. I don't care if someone is spamming "elites" if those elite units aren't particularly game-breaking. I do care if my opponent is fielding 90% vehicles thus creating a skew list that renders any anti-infantry units in my army basically pointless. I care if they're spamming cheap bodies so they can statcheck me with 200 grots or gaunts or whatever and see if they have more bodies than I have bullets. I care if the heavy hitter unit they're spamming is too few points for the amount of damage it does. I care if unit A and unit B synergize to be notably too efficient for their points.

Neither the FOC nor the rule of 3 are particularly good at addressing any of those concerns.

Wyldhunt wrote:It wasn't some perfect army organization tool that cleverly enforced perfectly fluffy and balanced armies.

I don't think I've ever heard it portrayed as such, but it was inarguably a stronger shaping mechanism insofar as it enforced a more 'balanced' army archetype than the current system does.

A lot of the issues you cite come down to implementation. Three Leman Russes in a single slot was a mistake. Zoanthropes getting moved from Heavy Support to Elites was a mistake. It's a little odd that you mention Saim-Hann as getting screwed by this, but then also 'rules that move force org roles around' as an exploit, because in at least some editions that was how Saim-Hann were supported, able to take appropriate units. Those variant FOCs were fun in that they allowed for some radical variants to army composition, but had built-in disadvantages that could be tweaked for balance; skew was either forbidden entirely or allowed only with severe constraints to offset it.

At the core of it I think the FOC was a much better mechanism for discouraging skew, but GW didn't want to maintain it. And as the game becomes more abstract and less historical-wargaming-influenced, players don't want to hear that they can't bring Guilliman and three tanks and call it an army. So it's not surprising that it went away, but I don't think the result has been an improvement.

I've long felt that a WHFB-esque core/special/rare system might have been more appropriate, but that still has the same issue of player choice vs constraints for balance (see: 'core tax') that a lot of players seem to have strong feelings about.

I think we have an issue of two different rules meant to do different things intersecting in an non-satisfactory way:

The Rule of 3 is intended to keep players from spamming an unbalanced unit so many times that it seriously hampers your opponent's experience. If a unit is 20 points too efficient, three copies puts you 60 points "above" upper opponent. Not to much in a 2000 point game. 10 copies would but you 600 points above your opponent, over 1/4 the army value. Allowing 6 copies of Battleline units isn't an issue because Battleline units are never very good. It doesn't really matter how over efficient they are 6 units of Intercessors are not going to throw the game off much.

Different Datasheets for different weapon layouts allow them to better sculpt a unit's stats, abilities, and points value without making them overcomplicated. You could put the Predator Annihilator and Predator Destructor on the same datasheet because the only differences between the unit is the main weapon and the Ability. But imagine the potiential confusion from having two special rules that both start with "If this unit is armed with X, then ..."? This is avoided by having a completely different datasheet.

Of course, this then leads to the possibility that you can now field 3 Predator Annihilators and Predator Destructors instead of 3 Predators. It also feels unfair to players of other armies that don't get to "double up" on a unit that has a similar main gun difference on the same datasheet, like Adepta Sororitas Exorcist with the option of either Exorcist conflagration rockets (anti Infantry) or Exorcist missile launcher (anti tank).

It's not perfect, but it is just a game.

I don't think I could really support the FOC when it incentivised taking minimal amounts of actual line infantry just so you could get to the "good" stuff - and by "minimal", that meant cheapest.

Yes, I'm talking Space Marine armies that took two Scout Squads, and then whatever else took their fancy. Sorry, but Scouts should never have been Troops.

FOC was just as arbitrary as Rule of Three, and I entirely agree with Wyldhunt's assessment. Is Rule of 3 and GW's current approach perfect? Gods no! But they both had faults, their own arbitrary restrictions, and both prevent (and allow!) otherwise "reasonable" looking armies.

You ask me, I genuinely think that the best army building mechanic GW did was Decurions/Formations. The "here's a free bonus for taking XYZ" part, no way, but the "here's a template detachment, fill it with a bit of X, a bit of Y, and your choice between A and B", and that *felt* like a meaningful army builder.

I think HH3 is experimenting with something which feels like that, but until I see it in action and in context, I can't say for certain what I feel on that. Certainly wish it felt less clunky to read though.

I definitely preferred the FOC to the Rule of 3.

To my mind, the issue with the FOC was more that the game expanded beyond what was foreseen when the FOC was drawn up - e.g. instead of a handful of Elites to choose from, a given faction might have a couple of dozen - so they can only bring a small fraction of them in any given game). To say nothing of the addition of Fliers and Super-Heavies.

I did appreciate some of the attempts to give armies variations of the FOC to better fit their theme (or a sub-faction or such) - either with separate FOCs or by characters moving units around. Alas, as with so many things GW do, it was entirely dependant on your faction having a designer that actually gave a damn about it. Otherwise, you'd end up with either nothing at all or a half-arsed FOC that basically solved nothing.

As for the Rule of 3, I would say that it feels lazy and half-arsed.

Even leaving aside the issue with some factions having a myriad of dataslates and others having barely any (oh look, we're once again back to the issue of favouritism), it feels like someone at GW started designing a balancing mechanic but then never bothered actually finishing it.

Why is it 3 for every unit, save troops? Why not have different numbers for different units? Hell, you could even make this scale with points and/or change with the detachment being used.

Let me give you an example from a different game system - in Warmaster, each unit in the army has two numbers; the first is the minimum per thousand points, the second is the maximum per thousand points. e.g. Orcs must take 2 Orc Warrior units and 2 Goblin units per 1000 points. This comes to a little under 200pts, so (notwithstanding the mandatory Warboss) you've still got ~4/5ths of your budget left to spend.
However, while you can take any number of Orc Warriors and Goblins, Artillery, Giants, Ogres and Black Orcs are each limited to 1 per thousand points. Wolf Chariots and Trolls are 3 per thousand points, and wolf- and boar-riders are unlimited.

This means that each army has a defined core of units and a decent amount of flexibility to build the rest of the army as desired. However, there still remain some boundaries - both for balance and to stop armies going to far from their core themes/units. e.g. Orcs can't just take a ton of artillery units or giants, though they are free to lean heavily towards Orcs or Goblins or even Trolls.

Anyway, I think 40k would benefit greatly from leaning more towards this sort of system, rather than just an arbitrary rule of 3 for every dataslate.

 catbarf wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:It wasn't some perfect army organization tool that cleverly enforced perfectly fluffy and balanced armies.

I don't think I've ever heard it portrayed as such, but it was inarguably a stronger shaping mechanism insofar as it enforced a more 'balanced' army archetype than the current system does.

Fair that no one is calling it perfect. That's me being hyperbolic and letting my cranky anti-FOC opinions out. "More balanced" feels iffy to me. I started playing in 5th, and the FOC introduced a lot of its own balance issues. Said issues were just slightly more complicated. Things like having crowded force org charts or too many ways to bypass the FOC. It was more about haves and have-nots of force org slot distributions rather than an issue of spamming 3 of each leman russ variant or what have you. But like, skew lists were possible when I started playing in 5th too. Maybe the FOC was really solid in 3rd and 4th edition? Although I know there were generally ways of bypassing it in those editions as well.

A lot of the issues you cite come down to implementation.

I'd definitely be open to seeing a better implementation. However, I think the FOC innately runs up against a few major hurtles. Like, if you want a Death Wing army (represented by the inclusion of lots of terminators and the exclusion of "troop" units) to be a playable force on the tabletop, then you have to make exceptions to the FOC and/or move Death Wing termies to troops. And then that begs the question of why some termies are troops and others aren't. And should stealthy infiltrator elites and melee blender elites really be competing for the same slots? And if you get a 5th edition guard/space marine situation where you have vehicles in multiple Force Org slots, then none of these limitations are preventing skew lists even if they're forcing you to some fast attack vehicles to go with your heavy, elite, and HQ vehicles.

Basically, the FOC has never really had any direct benefits. It prevents you from fielding fluffy thematic units regardless of whether taking those units is OP, and it forces you to take the troop/core "tax" even in thematic lists where their presence doesn't make sense. It creates disadvantages right out the gate for armies whose only troops aren't particularly points efficient or simply aren't something you want to field multiples of. It allows skew lists and hyper points-efficient unit spam in armies that have enough variety of datasheets in a variety of slots.

To me, it feels like it was taking a roundabout approach to addressing some problems that it never actually solved. Whereas the 10th edition approach is far from perfect and doesn't fix skew/spam, but at least it doesn't get in the way of me playing a thematic list or penalize me for playing an army with lazily designed troops.

It's a little odd that you mention Saim-Hann as getting screwed by this, but then also 'rules that move force org roles around' as an exploit, because in at least some editions that was how Saim-Hann were supported, able to take appropriate units. Those variant FOCs were fun in that they allowed for some radical variants to army composition, but had built-in disadvantages that could be tweaked for balance; skew was either forbidden entirely or allowed only with severe constraints to offset it.

If we're talking about having lots of variants of the FOC with their own bespoke advantages and disadvantages though, then I feel like we're not really talking about the FOC any more. We're talking about a bespoke army composition chart with theme-specific rules. Which I'm fine with. As much as I like my freedom of list design in the current system, I think any kind of "org chart" list building approach would probably need to do something vaguely like Boarding Actions/what you're describing. Basically giving each detachment its own chart and limitations.

In a straight-up 5th-7th style FOC, Saim-Hann runs into the issue that two of its iconic units (shining spears and vypers) are both competing for the 3 available Fast Attack slots. So if you wanted more than a single unit of both, you were out of luck. You could either take two vypers or two spear units, but not both. And if you wanted three vypers, you simply weren't allowed to take shining spears at all. And this would have been worse if guardian jetbikes hadn't been troops at the time. But guardian bikes being troops felt like it was just a baked-in exception to the force org chart in its own right, right? No other faction got bikers as troops. They were clearly only in that role to avoid screwing over Saim-Hann players even more.

tldr; I think this all drives home just how bad the FOC was at facilitating iconic army themes unless you had ways to bend/break the FOC.

At the core of it I think the FOC was a much better mechanism for discouraging skew, but GW didn't want to maintain it. And as the game becomes more abstract and less historical-wargaming-influenced, players don't want to hear that they can't bring Guilliman and three tanks and call it an army. So it's not surprising that it went away, but I don't think the result has been an improvement.

Idk. I feel like it's kind of a wash. Guard were spamming tanks just fine in 5th with hell hound variants and sentinels in fast attack, russes and artillery in heavy, and dedicated transports all over the place. It's not super unreasonable to stick fast tanks in the fast attack slot, so that's giving you 6 slots for killy vehicles right off the bat. Plus another slot for each cheap infantry unit that unlocks a dedicated transport. Unless you rework the FOC to put all vehicles in the same slot, it's really just not an innately good tool for limiting skew. And on the opposite end, things like gaunt carpets get most of their bodies from spamming troops, which the FOC gives you plenty of slots for.

I've long felt that a WHFB-esque core/special/rare system might have been more appropriate, but that still has the same issue of player choice vs constraints for balance (see: 'core tax') that a lot of players seem to have strong feelings about.

See above for strong feelings about the "core tax". But even setting aside the player choice aspect of it, "core/special/rare" still wouldn't be a very good way of breaking things down, right? So long as players have enough access to "core" vehicles (dedicated transports for instance), tank skew is still going to remain a problem. It maybe improves the problem a bit by making it so that the number of super lethal tanks goes down and they have to be replaced with less killy tanks (fewer russes, more chimeras), but the skew is still there. And if all of a faction's tools for handling the current meta are tied up in special/rare, then you're just restricting some armies' abilities to respond to the meta.

Basically, the FOC only encourages fluffy armies if you happen to be playing an army that fits in the FOC. For any kind of unconventional army organization (regardless of how optimal it is), your end up with your options restricted and/or you're forced to field units that detract from your ability to convey your army's fluff (tac marines in a Death Wing army). The FOC doesn't really prevent skew. It kind of prevents people from spamming their strongest units, but only if those units are all in the same slot; if they're in multiple slots then it's only really as effective at this as the rule of 3.

If we want to actually address issues like skew, hyper-lethal unit spam, and armies generally "feeling like armies" (as it has been phrased in other threads), we should be looking for something new and better; not returning to an old approach that didn't really do what we want it to in the first place.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sgt_Smudge wrote:
FOC was just as arbitrary as Rule of Three, and I entirely agree with Wyldhunt's assessment. Is Rule of 3 and GW's current approach perfect? Gods no! But they both had faults, their own arbitrary restrictions, and both prevent (and allow!) otherwise "reasonable" looking armies.

Cheers! And agreed.

You ask me, I genuinely think that the best army building mechanic GW did was Decurions/Formations. The "here's a free bonus for taking XYZ" part, no way, but the "here's a template detachment, fill it with a bit of X, a bit of Y, and your choice between A and B", and that *felt* like a meaningful army builder.

I think HH3 is experimenting with something which feels like that, but until I see it in action and in context, I can't say for certain what I feel on that. Certainly wish it felt less clunky to read though.

For those of us without the books, can you elaborate a bit on what HH3 is doing? While there was something satisfying about the decurion army building style, it also felt pretty arbitrary and prone to haves and have-nots. So I'd worry about the execution of such an approach.

vipoid wrote:
To my mind, the issue with the FOC was more that the game expanded beyond what was foreseen when the FOC was drawn up - e.g. instead of a handful of Elites to choose from, a given faction might have a couple of dozen - so they can only bring a small fraction of them in any given game). To say nothing of the addition of Fliers and Super-Heavies.

Absolutely. The FOC, even a more restrictive version of it, seems well suited to a version of the game with like, 6 units per side only one or two of which are vehicles in a given battle. But it never felt appropriate for my space elves, especially at higher points where I suddenly wasn't allowed to field more anti-tank aspect warriors for some reason even though the number of tanks that needed busting kept going up as the game size increased.

I did appreciate some of the attempts to give armies variations of the FOC to better fit their theme (or a sub-faction or such) - either with separate FOCs or by characters moving units around. Alas, as with so many things GW do, it was entirely dependent on your faction having a designer that actually gave a damn about it. Otherwise, you'd end up with either nothing at all or a half-arsed FOC that basically solved nothing.

Yeah. Again, I kind of wonder what the game would look like with an expanded version of Boarding Actions' army building rules.

Anyway, I think 40k would benefit greatly from leaning more towards this sort of system, rather than just an arbitrary rule of 3 for every dataslate.

Hmm. Maybe. Minimum troop taxes still rarely sit well with me. But again, tying this to your detachment might help. Requiring X amount of ork boyz in a green tide type detachment seems reasonable. Expecting X amount of intercessors in a Death Wing army less so.