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 catbarf wrote:
I appreciate your reply and understand where you're coming from, so please don't take me singling out this quote as cherry-picking. Your comment reminded me of how another GW game I enjoy talking about has done exactly this. Yeah, I'm waxing poetic about Epic: Armageddon again.

In Epic, each faction has its own force composition system. So for Marines, the core of your army is formations, typically of 4-6 units- 6 stands of Tactical Marines, 4 of Terminators, 4 Land Raiders, et cetera. These formations then have upgrades to add support units, so you could add 2 Dreadnoughts or a Vindicator or whatever. And since they're Space Marines, an inherently mobile force, they get either Rhinos or drop pods for free. That's your core army composition system for Marines.

Then for Guard, your basic formations are Companies, so it might be 12 units of Guardsmen, or 10 Leman Russes, or 3 Baneblades. Right off the bat these are much larger than their Marine equivalents, both in numbers and points. You still have upgrades to directly add units to those formations, like Hydras or Ogryns or Snipers, but then you also can take up to 2 Support Formations per Company, which are independent units of more specialized things like 8 bases of Storm Troopers or 3 Basilisks.

Epic benefits a lot from its scale, but essentially this FOC-adjacent system allows the game to both constrain listbuilding and directly reflect the organizational models of the different factions through its listbuilding. Marines use numerous small, independent formations with organic support. Guard use giant sledgehammer formations and have separate specialists. Tyranids have swarms that can vary wildly in size and composition, Eldar have warhosts supported by troupes of specialists.

This circles back to what I said in my previous post, which is that this requires a lot more design work and attention than just building a roster and saying 'take whatever you like'. But it does allow the designer to further characterize the faction, as well as impose reasonable restrictions on what can be taken in a normal game.

What you're describing sounds quite similar to the Corsair Coterie system in 7th, where your army was made using a series of mini-FOCs, which each had core units that could be supplemented with additional units.

Would that be a fair comparison, or am I misunderstanding how the Epic Armageddon system works?

 Jidmah wrote:
So, how does the pro-FOC crowd explain that 90%+ of top tier tournament lists actually look like armies that would exist in-universe, while in every FOC edition the vast majority top performing lists was just spamming the best-in-slot unit as often as possible?

That's easy, and why I wrote: "Many of the complaints I read about the FOC seem to come from the idea that FOC was supposed to fix everything, when really it's designed to work alongside points values and codex design to provide more balance."

Reminder that there were no rules/points adjustments in the older era of FOC, and that it's very common now that a codex comes out, and people complain while also saying "wait for the inevitable nerf/points adjustments."

 Jidmah wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Isn't the root issue here that the game is so shallow that it cannot support different battlefield roles? If it could, spam, and systems to allow/prevent it, wouldn't be relevant.

I'd argue that there is no root issue. People are trying to find a problem for a solution they remember fondly.

Well, no. The thread title is specifically about the rule of three. FOC in isolation was a more thorough method of dealing with unit spam because RO3 has the obvious flaw where some units have different dataslates that suddenly allow 6/9/whatever of the same unit to be taken. Loyalists being able to field 9 Land Raiders, while Chaos only 3, simply because the weapons are different, is goofy AF.

But as we both aknowledge, both systems are still at the mercy of unit balance through other means.

 Polonius wrote:

I mean this without snark, but do you actually play modern 40k? The core rules absolutely encourage a wide range of battlefield roles.

This wasn't aimed at me, but. . .Admittedly, I've only played one game of 10th (played a crapload prior though). And it sure seems to me that one of the reasons more unit types show up is less "core rules" and more those mandated terrain layouts and mission types. In the grand scheme of things there are so, so many variables for adjusting balance.

I'd also argue that in order to balance the game they've chipped away at areas of flavor too. The fact that all weapon options for a squad have to be worth an equal number of points has it effect on how weapons get represented. Or other things like, last I checked, in order for Intercessors to work they had to shoot 4 times in a turn or something. I guess they're supposed to be that much better at shooting over other units? Balance is a fine objective. The methods I sometimes disagree with.

I vastly, vastly prefer Rule of 3 to FOC. Hated that thing and while I in some ways enjoyed Detatchments as its replacement, I think the Rule of 3 has overall just vastly opened up the game and made armies more varied and interesting.

I do get the issues with it. Right now there's a lot of datasheets that are mostly weapon swaps that primarily have different datasheets for special rule purposes. I could definitely see a grouping system where "Dreadnaught" is a Rule of 3 keyword to avoid taking 9+ of them or something like that. It's not been too common of an issue this edition, but I wouldn't be sad to see them add something like that to clean up some of the gaps.

 Jidmah wrote:
So, how does the pro-FOC crowd explain that 90%+ of top tier tournament lists actually look like armies that would exist in-universe, while in every FOC edition the vast majority top performing lists was just spamming the best-in-slot unit as often as possible?

Outside of lynchpin units in codices with no other options and obviously busted things (hello, DG!), most units only appear once or twice in army rosters because flexibility is more important than raw power.

TL;DR: Data supports that anything the FOC tried to achieve, has been done much better without its help. If you are not willing to have your views changed by trivial things such as facts, feel free to stop reading now.

Looking at the top three lists from the Glasshammer Major in Nottingham last weekend, we have:
-A Death Guard list with three each of Bloat-Drones, PBCs, and Blight Haulers, and not a single Plague Marine
-A Marine list led by Guilliman, Ventris, and Calgar, with three Storm Speeder Hammerstrikes, two Ballistus Dreads, and a single Scout squad for regular infantry
-Thousand Sons led by Magnus, an Exalted Sorceror, two Infernal Masters, and three Tzaangor Shamans (half the army's points in characters alone), but at least this one has Rubrics, a Rhino, and some Tzaangors in addition to big beasts

That's zero out of three looking to me like armies that would exist in-universe, all three are hitting the RO3 limit somewhere, and all three would be violating the oldschool FOC.

Happy to hear a more cogent argument and I'll readily agree that the FOC was not some cure-all for army composition, and maybe plucking the most recent tournament is not looking at 'top tier', but this condescending attitude is really not a good look for you.

 catbarf wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
So, how does the pro-FOC crowd explain that 90%+ of top tier tournament lists actually look like armies that would exist in-universe, while in every FOC edition the vast majority top performing lists was just spamming the best-in-slot unit as often as possible?

Outside of lynchpin units in codices with no other options and obviously busted things (hello, DG!), most units only appear once or twice in army rosters because flexibility is more important than raw power.

Looking at the top three lists from the Glasshammer Major in Nottingham last weekend, we have:
-A Death Guard list with three each of Bloat-Drones, PBCs, and Blight Haulers, and not a single Plague Marine
-A Marine list led by Guilliman, Ventris, and Calgar, with three Storm Speeder Hammerstrikes, two Ballistus Dreads, and a single Scout squad for regular infantry
-Thousand Sons led by Magnus, an Exalted Sorceror, two Infernal Masters, and three Tzaangor Shamans (half the army's points in characters alone), but at least this one has Rubrics, a Rhino, and some Tzaangors in addition to big beasts

That's zero out of three looking to me like armies that would exist in-universe, all three are hitting the RO3 limit somewhere, and all three would be violating the oldschool FOC.

Lol, goddamn.

I will say my one game of 10th I played "opps all Lascannons" with two Land Raiders and three Devastator Squads. I had a bunch of Troops because I love Tac Marines and they could also take Lascannons, but I had at least 5 Heavy Support choices. My opponent quit after turn 1 because I blew up all his vehicles and it was probably just going to be a turkey shoot after that.

 vipoid wrote:
What you're describing sounds quite similar to the Corsair Coterie system in 7th, where your army was made using a series of mini-FOCs, which each had core units that could be supplemented with additional units.

Would that be a fair comparison, or am I misunderstanding how the Epic Armageddon system works?

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that system, but that sounds right. The key though for E:A is that there is no single universal mini-FOC structure. Each faction has their own approach to army composition, which then also translates to their command-and-control structures on the field.

A 40K comparison that I am familiar with would be the Platoon system for Guard back in the day. The different platoon types had different core requirements, and then different units you could add on. It was used primarily as a means of letting Guard shove more infantry into the standard FOC, but you could definitely take the same concept and use it as an army-building system.

A slightly different take on similar ideas is the 8th Ed Apocalypse standalone. It uses the same detachment system as 8th, but the detachments matter past the listbuilding stage, because every turn each detachment receives an order that applies to all its members. So you could exploit the permissiveness of the FOC to meet your requirements and then just stuff a bunch of artillery pieces and melee units in the same detachment- but it's probably not going to work out well on the table.

Lots of different ways to handle it, but using force organization both as a balancing tool and a shaping function for faction identity is a pretty standard part of this scale of game. The take-whatever-but-not-too-many-duplicates approach is more how skirmish games tend to do it.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
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.

I could easily see faction-specific FOC's that reflect the faction's specialization, organizational structure or expected unit count. Or even a FOC for each detachment type, such as the Imperial Guard's artillery detachment having more slots available for heavy support units.

There was also a recent edition (was it 8th or 9th?) where starting CP's depended on your choice of FOC, with a balanced FOC providing more CP's than a specialized FOC. This acted as an "adaptability multiplier" for balanced armies, and forced spammy players to trust that they could win without clever tricks.

 vict0988 wrote:
I think the best argument is for simplicity, without a good argument simplicity is always better and many of these units shouldn't have an ability in the first place, them having 3 different abilities based on the gun they have is insane bloat. Strip most unique abilities from the game, consolidate datasheet where possible. Give units different complementing roles, using abilities when necessary to encourage varied army lists and give every unit a thing it does neatly.

Every ranged weapon already has its own USR's such as Blast, Indirect Fire, Sustained Hits or Anti-X, which are usually good enough for whatever the gun is intended for. Datasheet-specific weapon rules like "triggers Deadly Demise on a 5+" are the sort of thing you end up forgetting. Instead, vehicles with a wide choice of weapons could simply have a versatile datasheet ability that all variants can take advantage of.

Look at the Leman Russ Battle Tank, for example. Its datasheet ability makes it re-roll hits against units on an enemy-controlled objective marker. Is this not also something that the Demolisher and the Punisher could use?

 LunarSol wrote:
I do get the issues with it. Right now there's a lot of datasheets that are mostly weapon swaps that primarily have different datasheets for special rule purposes. I could definitely see a grouping system where "Dreadnaught" is a Rule of 3 keyword to avoid taking 9+ of them or something like that. It's not been too common of an issue this edition, but I wouldn't be sad to see them add something like that to clean up some of the gaps.

Keyword-based RO3 would def make more sense than datasheet-based.

.

Has anyone seen the actual new list builder for HH3 and what it entails?

HH2 was a cost prohibitive system that punished Knight players for trying to play with their Knight models.

During the Heresy and beyond, Knights are formed into 4 Questoris Knights called a Lance.

In HH2 to field a single Lance, you needed 8 Armigers minimum.

I have never been a supporter of the model tax idea, but I think their should be "Detachments of Reknown." If you build an army around a theme or Named Character and take certain forces, you get a bonus to do so. This would be the only break in a standard FOC that everyone has access to normally.

Unfortunately for some, this would require named heroes to unlock, and a lot of players don't like playing with Primarchs, or
Named Captains.

I know that not everyone will be appeased, but there needs to be some foundation for army building.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

I mean this without snark, but do you actually play modern 40k? The core rules absolutely encourage a wide range of battlefield roles.

This wasn't aimed at me, but. . .Admittedly, I've only played one game of 10th (played a crapload prior though). And it sure seems to me that one of the reasons more unit types show up is less "core rules" and more those mandated terrain layouts and mission types. In the grand scheme of things there are so, so many variables for adjusting balance.

I shouldn't have used the term core rules, but my point is that the nature of the game in itself rewards brining a range of units. The terrain rules can feel "gamey," but they really do encourage infantry. Secondaries aren't part of the core rules, but they encourage light, mobile units. The need to seize middle objecitives starting turn two discourages gunlines.

You could build a list that is 9 Broadsides, 3 Hammerheads, 3 Sky rays, shadowsun, and a squad of fireknives. this army would haven been bananas in 4th edition, and now is...a weird skew list that might win half it's games through sheer firepower?

I'd also argue that in order to balance the game they've chipped away at areas of flavor too. The fact that all weapon options for a squad have to be worth an equal number of points has it effect on how weapons get represented. Or other things like, last I checked, in order for Intercessors to work they had to shoot 4 times in a turn or something. I guess they're supposed to be that much better at shooting over other units? Balance is a fine objective. The methods I sometimes disagree with.

40k pre 8th edition was very firmly a traditional wargame, where the stated goal was to line up armies that made sense to fight a battle and see who wins. In 8th and beyond, GW is actively balancing the game as a competitive exercise. I'll agree that things seem to b elosing flavor, but weirdly I think that outside of top play more units in more armies are playable in a useful way than at any other time.

FWIW, I miss the old days. I don't like that a game of 40k looks more like a futuristic paintball match than a battle with some story. But people are voting with their wallet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Insectum7 wrote:I will say my one game of 10th I played "opps all Lascannons" with two Land Raiders and three Devastator Squads. I had a bunch of Troops because I love Tac Marines and they could also take Lascannons, but I had at least 5 Heavy Support choices. My opponent quit after turn 1 because I blew up all his vehicles and it was probably just going to be a turkey shoot after that.

At the risk of being that guy... that's 100% a case of not enough terrain. Or if he went first, an amazingly good turn for your lascannons.

-Guardsman- wrote:I could easily see faction-specific FOC's that reflect the faction's specialization, organizational structure or expected unit count. Or even a FOC for each detachment type, such as the Imperial Guard's artillery detachment having more slots available for heavy support units.

Okay, 7th edition basically had this, only they were "formations" and were bespoke for each army and everybody hated them.

If you want to bring back FOCs, my idea would be to tag a handful of units in each codex as "core" or something similar, and included a similar number of core slots to the FA, HS, and Elites. So for example, Space Marines might have core dreadnoughts, infiltrators, company heroes, and scouts. IG might have core LRBT, Kasrkin, and field artillery. This will allow an army to bring iconic units win addition to the normal FOC allotment.

There was also a recent edition (was it 8th or 9th?) where starting CP's depended on your choice of FOC, with a balanced FOC providing more CP's than a specialized FOC. This acted as an "adaptability multiplier" for balanced armies, and forced spammy players to trust that they could win without clever tricks.

 vict0988 wrote:
Look at the Leman Russ Battle Tank, for example. Its datasheet ability makes it re-roll hits against units on an enemy-controlled objective marker. Is this not also something that the Demolisher and the Punisher could use?

Weirdly, I think Leman Russes are one the better arguments for separate datasheets with different rules. Sure, something like reroll ones to hit is a solid all around buff for any shooting unit. But the demolisher being able to shoot it's main gun in combat is a super flavorful rule that has in game benefits. The punisher is trash regardless, so sure, I guess reroll ones is better than dev wounds against small things. But the Exterminator has a great support tech rule, and the Vanquiser's rule makes it a little bit more reliable. They play like very different units with only one weapon and a rule change. Also, the russ variants were different rulesets going back to 2nd edition.

Keyword-based RO3 would def make more sense than datasheet-based..

At the expense of themed lists. Guard can build a legit tank company now. It's not unbalanced or broken, it works but has weaknesses. What would be gained by limited all Russes to three per list?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Has anyone seen the actual new list builder for HH3 and what it entails?

I don't know if its a sign of getting old - but I find it borders on the incomprehensible.

 Polonius wrote:
There was also a recent edition (was it 8th or 9th?) where starting CP's depended on your choice of FOC, with a balanced FOC providing more CP's than a specialized FOC. This acted as an "adaptability multiplier" for balanced armies, and forced spammy players to trust that they could win without clever tricks.

This was 8th and while I kind of adored it, it was hilariously abusive and not something I'd like to see return. It was probably the height of punishing armies with expensive Troop choices and was the leading cause of 8th's reliance on spending huge amounts of CP for alpha strikes.

 Polonius wrote:

Spoiler:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

I mean this without snark, but do you actually play modern 40k? The core rules absolutely encourage a wide range of battlefield roles.

This wasn't aimed at me, but. . .Admittedly, I've only played one game of 10th (played a crapload prior though). And it sure seems to me that one of the reasons more unit types show up is less "core rules" and more those mandated terrain layouts and mission types. In the grand scheme of things there are so, so many variables for adjusting balance.

I shouldn't have used the term core rules, but my point is that the nature of the game in itself rewards brining a range of units. The terrain rules can feel "gamey," but they really do encourage infantry. Secondaries aren't part of the core rules, but they encourage light, mobile units. The need to seize middle objecitives starting turn two discourages gunlines.

You could build a list that is 9 Broadsides, 3 Hammerheads, 3 Sky rays, shadowsun, and a squad of fireknives. this army would haven been bananas in 4th edition, and now is...a weird skew list that might win half it's games through sheer firepower?

I'd also argue that in order to balance the game they've chipped away at areas of flavor too. The fact that all weapon options for a squad have to be worth an equal number of points has it effect on how weapons get represented. Or other things like, last I checked, in order for Intercessors to work they had to shoot 4 times in a turn or something. I guess they're supposed to be that much better at shooting over other units? Balance is a fine objective. The methods I sometimes disagree with.

40k pre 8th edition was very firmly a traditional wargame, where the stated goal was to line up armies that made sense to fight a battle and see who wins. In 8th and beyond, GW is actively balancing the game as a competitive exercise. I'll agree that things seem to b elosing flavor, but weirdly I think that outside of top play more units in more armies are playable in a useful way than at any other time.

FWIW, I miss the old days. I don't like that a game of 40k looks more like a futuristic paintball match than a battle with some story. But people are voting with their wallet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Insectum7 wrote:I will say my one game of 10th I played "opps all Lascannons" with two Land Raiders and three Devastator Squads. I had a bunch of Troops because I love Tac Marines and they could also take Lascannons, but I had at least 5 Heavy Support choices. My opponent quit after turn 1 because I blew up all his vehicles and it was probably just going to be a turkey shoot after that.

At the risk of being that guy... that's 100% a case of not enough terrain. Or if he went first, an amazingly good turn for your lascannons.

You're not "that guy" for bringing up terrain, but in response to the entire post I want to point out that throughout the history of 40k the issue of terrain would play a huge part in those other examples you gave as well. Three Baneblades in 4th might have been nuts on some tables, but absolutely terrible on others. In the same vein, Infantry or CC troops will fare much better on some tables over others. In which case the difference has little to do with modern day GW force management efforts.

And even with following the terrain rules by letter,l (and I think we did) can still result in a turkey shoot anyways. I don't even think I was optimizing my buffs from the Gladius detatchment rules.

Is there anyone that truly likes the FOC?

The way I see it, the most beloved codexes in the old FOC system were the ones that could modify it, occasionally to the point of borderline ignoring it.

No one truly likes being limited by the FOC. People like the idea of their opponent being limited by the FOC, while assuming they will get a codex with FOC shenanigans.

 Tyran wrote:
No one truly likes being limited by the FOC. People like the idea of their opponent being limited by the FOC, while assuming they will get a codex with FOC shenanigans.

What on earth makes you think that?

Can’t just look at army selection in a vacuum. You’ve got to consider the game itself.

Consider Objectives, and How To Score Them.

Whilst Rule of Three does indeed mean I can field nothing but say, lots and lots and lots of Leman Russ, Basilisk, Hellhounds and that? The game itself may well dictate that whilst such a list will have its fun, against an opposing list better suited to scoring Objectives, I may be hamstrung from the get-go.

I’m not saying it’s perfect. I’m not even saying it’s good. But it does give the player the most choice.

The FoC was kind of welcome after the relative freedoms of 2nd Ed, and in theory it should’ve helped ensure more thematic armies, such as Tactical Squads being the backbone unit of nearly every Marine army.

But, the implementation at least was flawed. Some armies had one or two Troops choices, and an Elites section jampacked. But when you could only field three Elites? Some units simply lost out to others.

My best expression of this would be the 3.5 Iron Warriors list.

There, you had certain restrictions and benefits. Whilst I couldn’t field any Daemon units, I had the option to trade in two Fast Attack slots, for one additional Heavy Support slot. Which does sound like an intriguing option.

Except….with Daemons out of the running? There were only two Fast Attack units left to me. Raptors (originally excellent shock troops thanks to unit wide Daemonic Visage helping to break enemy units super quickly) and Chaos Bikes. Which were, in my opinion, a bit naff. Oh, and Raptors (outside of Nightlords) were a strict 0-1 option.

So….the trade in was hardly a downside. Give up the potential to field two units of Chaos Bikes for another Defiler, or Predator, or a Vindicator, or a Basilisk. All of which were pretty fine.

But other Codexes had their own similar problems. Sometimes it was 0-1 limits. Sometimes it was say, Heavy Support having a single outstanding option (Hi, Wraithlords!) or a section being so oversubscribed most of the units just weren’t played.

Rule of Three at least does away with that. Whether your Codex has outright duff units I couldn’t venture a guess. But, in theory, it is the more flexible system.

 Tyran wrote:
Is there anyone that truly likes the FOC?

The way I see it, the most beloved codexes in the old FOC system were the ones that could modify it, occasionally to the point of borderline ignoring it.

No one truly likes being limited by the FOC. People like the idea of their opponent being limited by the FOC, while assuming they will get a codex with FOC shenanigans.

I liked it just fine. It felt really limiting in particular with my Crons, but I appreciated that that was just part of balance, and I appreciate that it gave me some hard choices to make during army design.

Rule of 3 bothers me far more. I can take 9 Land Raiders or 6 Predators, but only 3 Devastator Squads because . . . Weapons? But I can *gasp* change weapons on my Devastators too! All this talk about people wanting to field all Terminators with the 1st, and me over here wanting to field the 9th.

 Insectum7 wrote:
^Back when the Armored Company rules were released, the designers actually did include a couple special rules to aid in softening the skew with the list.

I had to go look that up and you're right, I missed that. It's a strange case where the core rules for the game change when you play that army, only rather than changing to favor an otherwise terrible army (like Catachans needing the Jungle Fight rules to be viable) they change to handicap the AC. But they actually applied to every tank in the game, including your opponent's Land Raiders. They changed the mission rules too. Sort of like a "scenario army".

 Polonius wrote:
At this point, the rule of three exists as a circuit breaker to prevent super efficient datasheets from overwhelming the game. They also use the balance dataslate, points, and mission design to do the same, so as Jidmah pointed out, rarely is a player simply spamming three of the "best unit."

I think this is important. Ro3 isn't saying that an army comp will be okay so long as it doesn't have 4+ of one datasheet, but it is saying that an army will not be okay if it does have 4+ of one datasheet, and I think that's a lot easier to defend. I can't think of many examples where taking 4+ of one (non-Battleline) datasheet wouldn't be obnoxious.

But the real limiting factor is supposed to be the mission rules. You need enough "Troops" to claim objectives in order to win. You need "Fast Attack" to rush ahead and score secondaries, but having too many of those is superfluous. You need "Elites" and "Heavy Support" to kill things but you can lose on points even if you table the other army. You need "HQ" to get access to special abilities that buff the other elements.

Now I don't know how well that's actually working out, Catbarf's tournament lists suggest you can still circumvent a lot of that with sheer killing power. But overall I prefer the idea of different battlefield roles being required by the structure of the game to just mandating them by FOC. It makes you feel like you're taking troops because they are good for something, and not just because command couldn't spare enough Russes.

I liked the FOC, but as a primary Ultramarine player, it really was designed to let me field my army. I always made a point to take something from every slot in all my lists, as that’s the TAC flexible Ultra way.

I get that the FOC, like the rule of 3, was very codex/datasheet dependent. Some armies had to make hard calls for what they were able to take, while it was a non-issue for others.

The worst was "Heavy Support", which typically included both your heavy tanks and your infantry equipped with anti-tank guns. Completely opposite battlefield roles and if you needed to divide your 3 HS slots between them it could be very bad for you. Whereas if you had strong anti-tank "Elites" (toss-up) you were much better off.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
The worst was "Heavy Support", which typically included both your heavy tanks and your infantry equipped with anti-tank guns. Completely opposite battlefield roles and if you needed to divide your 3 HS slots between them it could be very bad for you. Whereas if you had strong anti-tank "Elites" (toss-up) you were much better off.

If you don't think of HS as "Heavy Tanks" and more just "Heavy Firepower" then there's no "role" conflict. "Stuff that shoots more than most other things".

Battle tanks are a mobile spearhead that break through lines of infantry, anti-tank guns are a static defense of that infantry from those battle tanks. I guess exempting "tank hunter" tanks like an Annihilator, which are closer to the second role.

The problem is that "heavy (fire)power" is too broad of a niche, and HS became a sort of grab-bag of anything special that wasn't either light recon or elite infantry. So eldar had dark reapers, wraithlords, and falcons sharing a single "role" despite totally different usage.

catbarf wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote: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.

I appreciate your reply and understand where you're coming from, so please don't take me singling out this quote as cherry-picking. Your comment reminded me of how another GW game I enjoy talking about has done exactly this. Yeah, I'm waxing poetic about Epic: Armageddon again.

In Epic, each faction has its own force composition system
...
Epic benefits a lot from its scale, but essentially this FOC-adjacent system allows the game to both constrain listbuilding and directly reflect the organizational models of the different factions through its listbuilding. Marines use numerous small, independent formations with organic support. Guard use giant sledgehammer formations and have separate specialists. Tyranids have swarms that can vary wildly in size and composition, Eldar have warhosts supported by troupes of specialists.

This circles back to what I said in my previous post, which is that this requires a lot more design work and attention than just building a roster and saying 'take whatever you like'. But it does allow the designer to further characterize the faction, as well as impose reasonable restrictions on what can be taken in a normal game.

I can get behind that. Essentially giving each detachment (and it would probably have to be each detachment rather than each faction) its own chart would probably work pretty well. That's just definitely not the same thing as a generic one-size-fits-all FOC at that point.

alextroy wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
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.

This handy dandy article shows how the new edition of Horus Heresy is handling army building.

At the most basic, you start with a Primary Detachment, which consist of a number of Battlefield Role selections you may take. From the example Primary Detachment, you get a High Command (high ranking officer), some Command (officer), some troops, and some transports.

For each Command selection you fill, you are allowed to add 1 or 2 (depending on the unit) Auxiliary detachments to your army.

If you fill the High Command selection you are allowed to take either an Auxiliary or Apex detachment.

Auxiliary detachments give you slots for various themed unit types. Apex detachments are for specialized units, like Legion specific units, more Command, or Retinue units.

So basically, you need to use Command units to unlock other detachments that allow you to go beyond your basic units. There are no compulsory choices, but you must take Command models before you can take additional detachments. So no armies running around without leadership.

Hm. I only sort of understand after skimming the article, but it sorta sounds like a mix between 8th/9th's detachmetns (take a leader and a bunch of units fitting a general theme) mixed with the old decurion style army building (take a core detachment and then slap on extra detachments to taste.) I could see that working in large games. I'm not sure how well it would scale down to smaller games though.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
Battle tanks are a mobile spearhead that break through lines of infantry,

Eh?

Outside of 40K most tanks I think of are armed with a big anti-tank gun. they often also have other guns, sure. . . but AT firepower is a primary feature. but more broadly, firepower is a feature.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
anti-tank guns are a static defense of that infantry from those battle tanks. I guess exempting "tank hunter" tanks like an Annihilator, which are closer to the second role.

The problem is that "heavy (fire)power" is too broad of a niche, and HS became a sort of grab-bag of anything special that wasn't either light recon or elite infantry. So eldar had dark reapers, wraithlords, and falcons sharing a single "role" despite totally different usage.

For most armies the goal is just keeping a cap on firepower-focused units so you don't wind up with too much skew on the receiving end. If you broke up tanks and infantry with big guns into two different categories, then your opponent gets to experience getting blasted in an unfun kind of way (queue the lingering bitterness of many left from 3.5 Iron Warriors, right?)

But beyond that, it's not just about pressures formulating list building. Where do Wraithlords go? Obviously not Troops or Fast Attack. Maybe Elite? Ok maybe, but then it steps on slots for Aspect Warriors while also enabling both Wraithlords and Fire Prisms to be taken in relative abundance, which the designers decided is not the way a typical army should show up.

I played Necrons a lot in 3rd/4th, and their Heavy Support was Monolith (a giant moving building), Heavy Destroyers (Jetbikes with Lascannons), and Tomb Spiders (a slow, support Monstrous Creature with paltry shooting and CC). It's hard to imagine units more different han one another. But there they were, forcing hard decisions about list makeup and intended synergies. . . and I liked it. There was definitely a balancing act there.

 catbarf wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
What you're describing sounds quite similar to the Corsair Coterie system in 7th, where your army was made using a series of mini-FOCs, which each had core units that could be supplemented with additional units.

Would that be a fair comparison, or am I misunderstanding how the Epic Armageddon system works?

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that system, but that sounds right. The key though for E:A is that there is no single universal mini-FOC structure. Each faction has their own approach to army composition, which then also translates to their command-and-control structures on the field.

A 40K comparison that I am familiar with would be the Platoon system for Guard back in the day. The different platoon types had different core requirements, and then different units you could add on. It was used primarily as a means of letting Guard shove more infantry into the standard FOC, but you could definitely take the same concept and use it as an army-building system.

A slightly different take on similar ideas is the 8th Ed Apocalypse standalone. It uses the same detachment system as 8th, but the detachments matter past the listbuilding stage, because every turn each detachment receives an order that applies to all its members. So you could exploit the permissiveness of the FOC to meet your requirements and then just stuff a bunch of artillery pieces and melee units in the same detachment- but it's probably not going to work out well on the table.

Lots of different ways to handle it, but using force organization both as a balancing tool and a shaping function for faction identity is a pretty standard part of this scale of game. The take-whatever-but-not-too-many-duplicates approach is more how skirmish games tend to do it.

Okay, thanks for elaborating.

From how you're describing it, it definitely sounds like a system I could get behind.

 Polonius wrote:
Okay, 7th edition basically had this, only they were "formations" and were bespoke for each army and everybody hated them.

I don't think that's quite fair.

From what I recall, many people quite liked the concept of Formations.

What they didn't like was the absurd buffs that some Formations provided, nor the massive discrepancy in power between the early Formations and the late Formations. With the former providing buffs such as '+1 to the PFP turn counter if your extremely-fragile HQ is alive and it's a Tuesday and it's not raining. And then the late-7th Formations included effects such as 'all your upgrades are free' and 'here, have an extra 1000pts of vehicles in your 2000pt game'.

If the effects had been more minor (or at least roughly on the same level between codices) then I think most people would have been fine with them.

But, as with virtually everything else, GW just binned the entire system rather than trying to refine it.

 Tyran wrote:
Is there anyone that truly likes the FOC?

The way I see it, the most beloved codexes in the old FOC system were the ones that could modify it, occasionally to the point of borderline ignoring it.

No one truly likes being limited by the FOC. People like the idea of their opponent being limited by the FOC, while assuming they will get a codex with FOC shenanigans.

I'll put up my hand as liking the old FOC.

And I say this as someone whose armies had few, if any, shenanigans with the FOC.

I rather liked the old FOC plus Formations. The Chaos book that came out towards the end of 7th (Traitor Legions?) seemed to do a really good job of giving the different CSM legions a really different look and feel. Shame it was so short-lived. What was it, 6 months? I never even got a copy of it before 8th hit and invalidated it.

Formations as a concept were fine. Have a minor buff to some units you might not otherwise use when you put your army together in a fluffy way. You could still use the basic FOC and spam the best units it you wanted, but were rewarded when using the bespoke ones for your army together bring a fluffy force.

The execution, of course, in a typical GW fashion, was botched. More as a sales tool from the marketing department to push sales, and less as a game balance tool.

And the power creep and imbalance were all over the place and out of control.

The rule of 3 is "good" if your army had their weapon option split to be different units. Floating predators, regular predators,primaris dreads being their own unit for each load out. Ork buggies when buggies were good etc

Where rule of 3 is really bad is for faction with few unit options, and even fewer good ones. It often ends the way it did for GK, where for a span of time the army was 3 GM NDKs and 3 regular NDKs. Custodes are in an even worse position, because the design studio half pretends the army isn't 50% resin with units which are super expensive and often hard to impossible not to take. On top of that because they are FW the speed at which GW fixes a faction with bad FW units after the "lets make all FW bad" is the speed species evolution. Custodes do have terminators and jetbikes that are the same but different, GW just left them with horrible rules and gigantic point costs. Would it have been nice (takes like what 2 min maybe to add it to a FAQ/Errata) if custodes got better transports, working light vehicles or the tanks split in to two separate units, like for other factions? sure. but it would only be good for the players. GW, and this isn't a bad thing, has a focus on a different group when it comes to making people as happy as possible.

I don't see how you thread the needle on formations. The initial options were incredibly limited. The Dark Eldar Kabalite Raiding Party for instance was something like 1500~ points worth of stuff.

Maybe it was the most fluffy DE force GW could imagine. But this felt stupid.

Then at the other end as people say it just became "this unit is good? How about you take 3 and make it even better."

I think working with the current detachment system is likely to be much better at encouraging list diversity.

yeah, but is there ever list diversity. A codex has to be either over powered with rules or, and often and, over costed to support even two builds. And in some cases it is stuff like, well you could play a non ultramarine codex space marine army, but why would you do that when the space marine with ultramarine special characters is just tiers better.

Every quarter we get a new pre build best way to play a detachment and one has to pray to GW that they don't decide that the way people have to/like to play the army, isn't going against some internal feeling the design studio has how a faction should be played vide Black Templars swarm.

The only way to avoid the take 3 of the best, is if there were so many best that people could actualy build different armies. Problem with that is that such a book would be exeptional and EVERYONE not playing it, would be up in arms about it (rightfuly so).

The 3 year turn over. the reaction to meta stuff that is not longer a thing. The insanity of year 3 of every edition, where GW mostly thinks about the next edition. On top of a quarterly seson system for events. It is virtualy impossible to write rules that would be good for the players. Because they would have to write and test, and only later adjust them, at the same time. And they are not going to do that, because rules are secondary to models. Faction X is Y focused? bummer because Y is suppose to come out in 2-3 editions, X faction players will somehow have to survive for the next 6 to 9 years lol.