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 flamingkillamajig wrote:

My point is a lot of them don't fight directly. The dark eldar/drukhari generally don't fight protracted battles against a fair footed enemy.

Eldar/aeldari is a mix because they may have to force a craftworld against a hive fleet that'll overwhelm some large swathe of space otherwise.

Regardless i was just saying in general eldar of any stripe usually don't like to fight protracted battles which is true and i wasn't saying space marines can or can't but space marines can take on a force directly or be a quick insertion force. Eldar don't want to do that.

Then there are others like tau which are also sort of a mix but absolutely do fight direct battles but with high tech and movement shenanigans.

--------

Anyway point being eldar esp. dark eldar are a glass cannon/sword whereas tau are just a cannon. Dark eldar generally don't fight an enemy at a strongpoint. Vect's rise to power happened partly because he allowed space marines to kill adversaries in commorragh. If the dark eldar are facing a normal prepared battle line and they operate anywhere over a day or two weeks possibly they lose the element of surprise and lose. It's much different than imperial guard or orks which may operate on a planet for a long time esp. imperial guard which wins in attrition wars against opponents that last years.

Pretty much the only time dark eldar fight protracted battles is in the dark city which they are normally just fighting themselves or possibly daemons spewing out of the center of the dark city (god i pray gw doesn't permanently kill off dark eldar).

If the battles that the Eldar/Dark Eldar fight are 99.9% hit and run encounters the point of a tabletop battle is that it is the 0.1% of the time when they do have to stand and fight. The reason can be for you to decide.

 Jidmah wrote:


Are you, by any chance, confusing boarding action for combat patrols?
Boarding action is a separate game mode which requires an extra book and very specific terrain to play.
Combat patrol is the 500 point format with changed datasheets.

No I am not confusing anything. Check page 55 of the 10th Ed core rules. You will notice that game sizes are 1k, 2k and 3k.

If you want a 500 point game in 10th as written, your option is Boarding Actions.

Combat Patrol is NOT a 500 point game. It is a game of one unpointed, ready-made army vs another.

As for whether or not there is support for the 3k game, I just checked my Tyrannic War book- it's the only Campaign book I bought this edition, and none of the missions in it are actually organized by game size- I can't testify to the others; 10th ed campaign books were so light on rules compared to 9th that they didn't suit my personal taste. But I know that the Maelstrom campaign set has Apocalypse rules, which start at 3k, so that's something.

@Smudge:

Initially, when I saw your response to my post, I had a knee-jerk, angry response cued up and ready to be fired in your general direction, but the voice of sober second thought prevailed. Maybe you're right: maybe I was heavier handed than usual, and possibly even approaching rude.

Let me say it this way, so that the anger is not directed at a person, but rather at an idea:

If a version of this game is ever published where the BRB explicitly states that these rules are only for 2k games, and they then release a separate rules set for 1k games and another for 3k, I personally will have no choice but to walk away from the game until such a time as the pendulum swings back the other way, because at that point everything I like about the game will cease to exist.

As such, I take the suggestion as an existential threat to the hobby... But of course, as you point out, it's really only an existential threat to my enjoyment of the hobby. While that FEELS like the same thing to me, it isn't.

I also though of putting up a poll to ask whether people in general prefer 4 separate rule sets for 4 separate game sizes, or one rule set that makes escalation campaigns possible by offering games at all sizes. I really thought it was a no brainer, because I've seen HUNDREDS of complaints on Dakka from dozens of players who HATE needing more than two books (BRB + Dex) to play. I didn't think anyone using the forum could have missed those hundreds of posts... ANd to be fair, they were more common in 9th than 10th. Maybe I'm wrong.

If someone else wants to make the poll and find out, go ahead. Maybe I'm wrong.

 PenitentJake wrote:
Yes and no: in 9th edition, 500 point games were a part of the core rules.

In 10th, GW said "ALL 500 point games are now Boarding Action games."

I'm sure you won't mind supplying the actual rules quote for your claim.

And if that quote comes from the Boarding actions book itself? Then I will again point out that one must first be aware Boarding Action is even a thing.

 PenitentJake wrote:
As for whether or not there is support for the 3k game, I just checked my Tyrannic War book- it's the only Campaign book I bought this edition, and none of the missions in it are actually organized by game size- I can't testify to the others; 10th ed campaign books were so light on rules compared to 9th that they didn't suit my personal taste. But I know that the Maelstrom campaign set has Apocalypse rules, which start at 3k, so that's something.

Check playing a crusade mission => determine mission.
The last three missions are onslaught, the others either incursion or strike force.

Tyrannic war is the most bland one of the four books, they get more complex in order. If you want complete rule insanity, check the rules for Armageddon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Yeah but as I said its typically nothing more than a copy-paste of the same value changes between 1K and 2K.

It's up there with playing games with multiple players or house rules. The book doesn't have to tell you can play at 3K or 4K or 5K points; you just kinda do it on your own.

I think we agree on this. I honestly prefer not having rules for such games, as you can change it to your tastes without someone waving a book in your face.

@ Jidmah- Thanks... I was sure it was there somewhere; I just quickly flipped through the missions themselves and the game size isn't labeled on the mission page itself. Now I know where to find it. Appreciated.

@ CCS- Maybe you didn't read the post immediately before yours: to reiterate-

On page 55 of the core rules for 10th edition WH40k, the three game sizes listed are Incursion (1k), Strikeforce (2k), and Onslaught (3k).

While true that it doesn't specifically say "Games smaller than 1k MUST be Boarding Actions" (as I had intitially stated erroneously), saying that games of 40k CAN'T BE LESS THAN 1k, having no 500 point missions, and saying that Boarding Actions ARE 500 points, while removing points altogether from the Combat Patrol variant of the game functionally ammounts to the same thing.

(My short hand getting me in trouble again)

I do think in one of the very early articles about 10th on Warcom, they specifically mentioned removing 500 point games from the regular 40k ruleset/ mission rules.

And yes, I know the same Warcom article would have mentioned Combat Patrol as a substitute, but it ISN'T a 500 point game. Units in Combat Patrols are not individually pointed- you don't select units for Combat Patrol, you select an entire premade army which cannot be modified in any way. It also can't escalate to a larger game size without changing the special game-mode specific rules that are used to "balance" Combat Patrol armies against each other.

Which leaves us with one choice of rules for playing an actual, player composed 500 point army: Boarding Actions.

And again, I like Boarding Actions- some of you might remember I played with my Drukhari in a Boarding action League from July-November last year. You CAN actually incorporate the Crusade Progression System into Boarding Action games (and I did).

That doesn't change the fact that in 9th (Prior to Arks of Omen), 500 points was a GAME SIZE called Combat Patrol, not a GAME MODE called Combat Patrol, which made it easier to escalate from 500 point to 3k and provided actual 40k missions designed for 500 point games.

Space Marines. They shouldn't be fighting pitched battles, they should be doing drop-pod or thunderhawk incertions into battles that are already happening between Imperial Guard and the threat they are facing. Or they should be using rhinos and other transports to rapidly re-deploy to strike the flanks or rearguard of the enemy or to take out the leadership of the enemy so they become disorganized.

Gray Knights. They should be deployed to stop demon cults and fight against demon invasions, throwing them against orks or whatever only makes sense if the orks are being manipulated into defending the demon summoning or whatever.

Dark Eldar. They don't seem interested on conquest of territory, I typically read them as only wanting to do slave raids on populations to fuel their hedonism and sadism.


You could make arguments for or against other factions, but sisters of battle and deathwatch are the other two that come to mind as "not pitched battle" kind of factions.

As much as I’d like a smooth transition of 40k on all points, different point scales let you focus on different things.

In KT the style of boltrife makes a difference. You might want one guy with the autobolt rifle on point, one with the sniper variant to hang back and cover, and a few flexible normal models. What sidearm the sarge is packing is relevent.

At 500 points, that level of granularity is not slowing down the game significantly.

But in a 2k game? Having that level of detail for every squad on the table is going to bog things down.

On the pitched battle front, I like the snapshot of a larger war idea. That 2k eldar raider force might be the only eldar on the planet, full of hundreds of thousands points of imperial warmachine. But the 2k vs. 2k matched play is their surgical strike. Would they like better odds? Yes, but that’s what the fates allowed. Critical points are guarded well, after all.

 PenitentJake wrote:


@ CCS- Maybe you didn't read the post immediately before yours: to reiterate-

On page 55 of the core rules for 10th edition WH40k, the three game sizes listed are Incursion (1k), Strikeforce (2k), and Onslaught (3k).

While true that it doesn't specifically say "Games smaller than 1k MUST be Boarding Actions" (as I had intitially stated erroneously), saying that games of 40k CAN'T BE LESS THAN 1k, having no 500 point missions, and saying that Boarding Actions ARE 500 points, while removing points altogether from the Combat Patrol variant of the game functionally ammounts to the same thing.

(My short hand getting me in trouble again)

I do think in one of the very early articles about 10th on Warcom, they specifically mentioned removing 500 point games from the regular 40k ruleset/ mission rules.

No, I read it.
And then I went and re-read the Core Rules on GWs community site (I don't have the app). As well as all the errata, faqs, data slates etc. Including the page of errata for BA.
And then I went & read my physical copy of BA.
You know what I found? Not one word of what you're saying about the only way to play 500pt games being BA.

They don't even include the RULES for BA on the Community downloads section, just the errata. (Maybe on the App??)
The book is also "Temporarily Out Of Stock" on GWs site* - but to even realize its a thing (that you can't get)? You have to look under the Ways To Play tag.
You know what that tells me? That its of no importance to general play. So clearly not the only way to play sub-1k games.

*No idea how long it's had this status.

 PenitentJake wrote:
Which leaves us with one choice of rules for playing an actual, player composed 500 point army: Boarding Actions.

No, it doesn't. The core rules are quite sufficient & you know it.

 KingGarland wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

My point is a lot of them don't fight directly. The dark eldar/drukhari generally don't fight protracted battles against a fair footed enemy.

Eldar/aeldari is a mix because they may have to force a craftworld against a hive fleet that'll overwhelm some large swathe of space otherwise.

Regardless i was just saying in general eldar of any stripe usually don't like to fight protracted battles which is true and i wasn't saying space marines can or can't but space marines can take on a force directly or be a quick insertion force. Eldar don't want to do that.

Then there are others like tau which are also sort of a mix but absolutely do fight direct battles but with high tech and movement shenanigans.

--------

Anyway point being eldar esp. dark eldar are a glass cannon/sword whereas tau are just a cannon. Dark eldar generally don't fight an enemy at a strongpoint. Vect's rise to power happened partly because he allowed space marines to kill adversaries in commorragh. If the dark eldar are facing a normal prepared battle line and they operate anywhere over a day or two weeks possibly they lose the element of surprise and lose. It's much different than imperial guard or orks which may operate on a planet for a long time esp. imperial guard which wins in attrition wars against opponents that last years.

Pretty much the only time dark eldar fight protracted battles is in the dark city which they are normally just fighting themselves or possibly daemons spewing out of the center of the dark city (god i pray gw doesn't permanently kill off dark eldar).

If the battles that the Eldar/Dark Eldar fight are 99.9% hit and run encounters the point of a tabletop battle is that it is the 0.1% of the time when they do have to stand and fight. The reason can be for you to decide.

The problem with this, I think, is that it means eldar/dark eldar always end up feeling like they're out of their element or failing to show off some of their iconic traits/behaviors.

My instinct is to say thatthere should be some kind of mechanic nodding to what their normal modus operandi is. So back in the day, dark eldar ships being able to move crazy fast and take chain snares to help them scoop up victims as they flew by helped convey this idea that they were raiders. They felt like they were equipped to travel to the least protected location and pick up some relatively unprotected individuals. They had night vision that let them ignore the downsides of Night Fighting and used said night fighting to be less prone to getting wiped out in the first turn meaning they had time to get into position or start hitting the foe unawares.

Whereas now, they're just squishy trading pieces who can pounce a little farther than some armies.


Old Battle Focus for eldar (move-shoot-move) encouraged you to hide units after they shot, which conveyed this hit & run guerilla warfare style of doing things. This both gave them a form of speed-as-defense and emphasized their reluctance to waste lives if they could avoid it. Whereas now they are *also* just a trading pieces army that can pounce a little farther than some armies.

Perhaps there should be an extraction mechanic to represent hit and run / surgical precision type missions.
Where instead of staying to fight over objectives like in conventional warfare, the mission is to take out a specific target and then bail.

What's sad is that 4th ed used to have missions like that. I forgot what they were called, but they were meant to represent those sort of operations, complete with guard movements.

The point is that is that there should be more asymmetric objectives and mission types.
The default missions are great for simplified gameplay as everyone is on the same page, but they don't do a good job in representing the fluff and how each faction actually operates.

Would Orks and Tyranids really care about sitting down on a point and holding it?
Would Craftworld Eldar really want risk their incredibly precious soldiers trying to defend territory when they are essentially a ship born civilization?
The missions just don't match their MO. Orks and nids wouldn't care about holding specific points on the map, they just want to kill and eat. CWE and DE wouldn't want to engage in static, defensive warfare because they don't have the manpower or gear to engage in such doctrine, and would rather deny the enemy such advantages by destroying them so they can move on and not waste time and soldiers.

What if instead of the mission having objectives it just determines map type and maybe some unique conditions and modifiers, and the objectives actually comes from what the faction wants to do?
Like, Imperial Guard would want to hold an objective for a certain number of turns, but CWE and Space Marines would want to kill leaders and sabotage equipment and leave after achieving those objectives. DE would want to harvest lives (Individual models slain in close quarters to represent captives) and similarly extract, and Orks, Necrons and Nids would want to kill as many units as possible and still be on the board. Chaos would want to do rituals, I suppose, by corrupting objectives that have to be "cleansed" by the opposing player to deny the Chaos player points and be worth something to a faction who wants it.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

Charax wrote:
I remember having conversations like this back in the 90s

Broadly speaking, you have "Raider" factions and you have "Massed Battle" factions

Raider factions are Eldar (all types), Genestealer cultists, awakening Necrons, the Leagues, things like that

Already I would disagree...

Eldar have titans, they fight pitch battles. GC take over a worlds military and the scale of insurgency in just one country in the modern day involves tens of thousands of fighters.

EPIC described that the eldar don't fight for ground the same way other armies do. Having titans doesn't mean they fight conventionally, it means they have titans. Which are twice as fast as other titans and work more like armoured cavalry than the virtually immobile imperial and ork weapon batteries with feet.


EPIC did a good job of explaining how the different armies fought battles differently.



This keeps coming back to the fact that any army can fight in any way, but none of them try to fight pitched battles except the orks and guard. Because numbers are part of their tactics - the human wave tactic is legitimately a guard tactic so they don't try to outnumber the enemy 3:1 when they fight.


We can argue that every time a marine force, eldar, custodes, et al appear in a pitched battle they have either just inserted themselves into the a narrow slot of a larger battle, or they've been caught in an unfavourable position. There is no reasonable justification for marines to ever treat pitched battles as valid strategies.

Someone mentioned death guard using massed infantry - even at 50,000 strong, massed infantry isn't massed infantry. It's a guard regiment. And being more resilient than a normal human doesn't mean anything when in a pitched battle those 'massed' infantry are still going up against 'massed artillery' which will kill a marine no matter how tough.

The death guard didn't fight pitched battles, they fought battles like all marines do, they just used more infantry to do it than everyone else. They don't have enough troops to do anything more than other marines.

A war is fought at a scale larger than EPIC and at that scale 2 hearts is virtually meaningless. Marines can only function in highly controlled scenarios where they know the weapons that can kill them aren't present or not in enough quantities to be a threat.

No amount of marine glazing will make one tactical marine with a bolt rifle capable of firing a 1000 rounds and replacing a regiment. They can't march across no mans land like massed infantry and expect to do anything unless their enemy has no anti marine weapons of any kind.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
What if instead of the mission having objectives it just determines map type and maybe some unique conditions and modifiers, and the objectives actually comes from what the faction wants to do?
Like, Imperial Guard would want to hold an objective for a certain number of turns, but CWE and Space Marines would want to kill leaders and sabotage equipment and leave after achieving those objectives. DE would want to harvest lives (Individual models slain in close quarters to represent captives) and similarly extract, and Orks, Necrons and Nids would want to kill as many units as possible and still be on the board. Chaos would want to do rituals, I suppose, by corrupting objectives that have to be "cleansed" by the opposing player to deny the Chaos player points and be worth something to a faction who wants it.

Something I keep half-heartedly starting to work on before losing motivation and setting it aside is a form of mission where one player chooses a primary mission (including deployment) from a short list (like 2 maybe 3 options per side), and then the other player chooses a twist and/or secondary objective from a similarly short list.

So in an ork vs drukhari match, the drukhari player might choose the mission from a list that looks something like:

* Krump Da Boss: Earn points at the end of the game based on the percentage of ork characters that are still alive.
* Contain the Horde: Progressively earn points for keeping orks out of board quadrants.
* Slave Raid: Earn points for finishing off units in melee, or with poison weapons, or near transports.
* Strike and Fade: Kill points, but drukhari can leave the game starting on round 3 if they begin a movement phase wholly within 6" of the table edge. So the goal is to strike fast and early, then gtfo.

Then the ork player would choose a twist from a list like:
* Good Lootin': Vehicles drop objective tokens that can be looted as an action for bonus VP.
* Orky Dust Cloud: Vehicles provide cover to non-vehicle units within 6" of them.
* Dusk/Dawn Strike: Units become harder to target in either the first or second half of the game.
* Slave Pits: Several objective markers spread through the drukhari deployment zone empower drukhari that stand near them, but opponents can spend an action to remove these tokens for bonus VP.

The overall idea being to get something similar to 5th edition Battle Missions style missions, but with some of the flavor of the other player's faction mixed in. It would maybe be easier/less work to just come up with a list of traits that can be applied to multiple factions, let people choose a couple of traits that they feel represent their army, and tie the missions/twists to those. So instead of having to come up with options for every codex, you just come up with options for "Mighty," "Swift," "Tricky," etc. armies.

Hellebore wrote:[This keeps coming back to the fact that any army can fight in any way, but none of them try to fight pitched battles except the orks and guard. Because numbers are part of their tactics - the human wave tactic is legitimately a guard tactic so they don't try to outnumber the enemy 3:1 when they fight.

I think the issue is less that no faction *tries* to fight pitched battles outside of a few rare exceptions and more that *not* fighting pitched battles is a bigger, more iconic part of some factions' identities than others. When World Eaters or necrons get stuck in a messy fight, that just feels like those factions doing their thing. But when every single 40k game involving a craftworld army is a messy, fair fight, it feels like the type of battle that should be the exception rather than the norm.

"Oops. Guess my eldar failed to predict the future well enough and also couldn't leverage their extremely mobile technology to muster an overwhelming force again. "

This is where the disappointment in marine survivability or eldar shenanigans comes in.

It's all vaguely unfulfilling because you're not playing your army in a way its sold.

You line your guard or orks up and you feel satistifed that you're playing them 'right'. No cognitive dissonance there. Or swarming with nids.

It's bland for everyone else.

Bespoke scenarios that showcase those fighting styles explicitly gives the opportunity for you to feel what those factions feel by playing the way they're supposed to.


Marines fighting a pitched battle is like guard fighting an ambush where they have only infantry, because neither are how they prefer to prosecute a war.

 Hellebore wrote:
This is where the disappointment in marine survivability or eldar shenanigans comes in.

It's all vaguely unfulfilling because you're not playing your army in a way its sold.

You line your guard or orks up and you feel satistifed that you're playing them 'right'. No cognitive dissonance there. Or swarming with nids.

It's bland for everyone else.

Bespoke scenarios that showcase those fighting styles explicitly gives the opportunity for you to feel what those factions feel by playing the way they're supposed to.


Marines fighting a pitched battle is like guard fighting an ambush where they have only infantry, because neither are how they prefer to prosecute a war.

Yep. Exactly. If 40k revolved around campaigns rather than one-off battles, it would probably be easier to represent this sort of thing by having eldar and marines do something fancy between major battles. Like letting marines take away campaign-level assets through surgical strikes or letting eldar maneuver and reposition in ways that let them avoid a lot of conflicts or influence the mission/deployment/twist of a given battle, etc.

I know a couple of editions back, Kill Team tried experimenting with a pre-game phase where units could scout things out, plant booby traps, etc. I wonder if it would be feasible to do something along those lines with 40k. Pre-battle, players have access to various assets depending on their warlord and detachment. Some of those assets are things like access to extra strats, free fortifications, etc. Others could be things like Intelligence that let you veto/redraw a primary mission or deployment card in matched play representing your seers and kill teams influencing the events leading up to the inevitable main clash.

It's one of the things I liked most about the 3-5 ed era, they put a lot of effort into mission design and suggestions of how to build campaigns by telling stories with the types of missions you're playing.

The current tournament balance paradigm has pushed a lot of that mission design out, so that they just aren't different enough to really evoke the feel of a marine drop assault, or an eldar manipulated crossfire.

ccs wrote:
[

No, I read it.
And then I went and re-read the Core Rules on GWs community site (I don't have the app). As well as all the errata, faqs, data slates etc. Including the page of errata for BA.
And then I went & read my physical copy of BA.
You know what I found? Not one word of what you're saying about the only way to play 500pt games being BA.

The Page 55 I quoted IS from the digital download- here's the screen shot:




500 points does not appear on this page because it is not a playable game size. The book doesn't have to say that it ISN'T allowed. If the book doesn't say it IS allowed, that automatically means that it isn't, without anyone needing to be told.

Now, your point might be that nothing can stop me from house ruling a 500 point game if I can find an opponent willing to play, and IF that's your point, I 100% agree- in fact, I've done it.

BUT as the rules are written, the only place (to my knowledge) where the rules say you ARE allowed to play a 500 point game is in the Boarding Actions Supplement. Also possibly in White Dwarf special scenarios, and possibly some of the campaign books I don't own and can't check... Though I think missions across the entire range of products are described as Incursion, Strikeforce and Onslaught, which are clear references back to this core rule, which does not include 500 point games.

The first sentence says 'select one of the battle sizes below'.

None of those are 500 points, so the game is telling you you can only choose one of those 3 point levels to play. It's not an inference, it's an instruction to pick 1000, 2000, or 3000. Those are your only points level options the game offers to pick from.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Would Orks and Tyranids really care about sitting down on a point and holding it?
Would Craftworld Eldar really want risk their incredibly precious soldiers trying to defend territory when they are essentially a ship born civilization?
The missions just don't match their MO. Orks and nids wouldn't care about holding specific points on the map, they just want to kill and eat. CWE and DE wouldn't want to engage in static, defensive warfare because they don't have the manpower or gear to engage in such doctrine, and would rather deny the enemy such advantages by destroying them so they can move on and not waste time and soldiers.

The ork lore is weak in this one.

Orks are extremely possessive of things, and get into fights with their own to defend scrap, fuel or useful tech from other warbands. We have quotes of imperial commanders, tech priests, drukhari archons and even necrons who dread the thought of orks fortifying a defensible position because those fortifications can only be taken back at great costs. More often than not those costs are obliterating everything that was worth defending in the first place, because it's just that hard to remove,
In addition, if you start a fight to clear an objective, more orks will flock to that objective, just because there might be something worth fighting for. This behavior played a major role in the downfall of the ad mech forgeworld Hephaesto, where the Tech-Priest Dominus' carefully calculated feints backfired because his heavily defended positions didn't funnel the orks into apparently less defended choke points. Instead it caused more and more orks pile onto the well defended positions until they were overwhelmed.
Most members of other species struggle to understand ork logic, but orks are not irrational at all.

If you are interested in this, I suggest reading Da Big Dakka or finding the specific excerpt of the chapter online. There is a discussion where an Ork Warboss explains orks to a Drukhari Archon, obviously resulting in neither one understanding the other and then both assuming the other is stupid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PenitentJake wrote:
500 points does not appear on this page because it is not a playable game size. The book doesn't have to say that it ISN'T allowed. If the book doesn't say it IS allowed, that automatically means that it isn't, without anyone needing to be told.

I'd like to point out that you are arguing semantics here.
And if we are arguing semantics already, a game of 500 points is just a game of incursion, just like a game of 1500 points is a game of strike force.

There is no rule requiring you to play the maximum amount of points possible for those battle sizes.

 Jidmah wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Would Orks and Tyranids really care about sitting down on a point and holding it?
Would Craftworld Eldar really want risk their incredibly precious soldiers trying to defend territory when they are essentially a ship born civilization?
The missions just don't match their MO. Orks and nids wouldn't care about holding specific points on the map, they just want to kill and eat. CWE and DE wouldn't want to engage in static, defensive warfare because they don't have the manpower or gear to engage in such doctrine, and would rather deny the enemy such advantages by destroying them so they can move on and not waste time and soldiers.

The ork lore is weak in this one.

Orks are extremely possessive of things, and get into fights with their own to defend scrap, fuel or useful tech from other warbands. We have quotes of imperial commanders, tech priests, drukhari archons and even necrons who dread the thought of orks fortifying a defensible position because those fortifications can only be taken back at great costs. More often than not those costs are obliterating everything that was worth defending in the first place, because it's just that hard to remove,
In addition, if you start a fight to clear an objective, more orks will flock to that objective, just because there might be something worth fighting for. This behavior played a major role in the downfall of the ad mech forgeworld Hephaesto, where the Tech-Priest Dominus' carefully calculated feints backfired because his heavily defended positions didn't funnel the orks into apparently less defended choke points. Instead it caused more and more orks pile onto the well defended positions until they were overwhelmed.
Most members of other species struggle to understand ork logic, but orks are not irrational at all.

Heh, fair enough then.
That sounds really funny as a game rule too. Maybe something like orks getting bonus movement towards a contested objective.

GW seems to think so, too. Some units, like lootas, already have rules related to this behavior and the most recent detachment they release is solely focused on fighting on objectives.

 Hellebore wrote:
The first sentence says 'select one of the battle sizes below'.

None of those are 500 points, so the game is telling you you can only choose one of those 3 point levels to play. It's not an inference, it's an instruction to pick 1000, 2000, or 3000. Those are your only points level options the game offers to pick from.

So you read the "select one of the battle sizes below" part and then just kind of lost interest after that, drifted off, had a snack or something? because it's immediately followed by:
"This will determine the total number of points each player can spend to build their army"

CAN

Not MUST

No minimums are listed, so if you are playing at 500pts, or 750pts, or 999pts, then you can use the Incursion rules
I mean hell, you can play 500pt games using Onslaught rules if you really want to, because the game size is the total number of points you can spend, not the number of points you must spend.

 Jidmah wrote:
GW seems to think so, too. Some units, like lootas, already have rules related to this behavior and the most recent detachment they release is solely focused on fighting on objectives.

Yeah, but having an entire army rushing B amuses me
If Games Workshop were Russian, the Orks would be Gopniks and someone would have made them Bandits from Stalker by now.

I think it is worth at this point highlighting what a pitched battle is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitched_battle

That is a battle both sides expect to fight. Very rare these days but rife in warhammer fiction. It isn't the same as a really big battle.

I'm happy one other Hellebore understands that rules function by telling you what you CAN do... Not by listing the thousands of things that you can't. When the rules say pick 1k, 2k or 3k, that is explicitly what is allowed by the rules.

Anything not explicitly allowed by the rules, by definition is forbidden. Therefore, by the rules AS WRITTEN, 500 point games using standard 40k rules (ie. not Boarding Action rules) are forbidden.

I have already acknowledged that we can easily ignore the prohibition, and I've admitted to doing so myself. That does not change the fact that doing so is against the rules AS WRITTEN. But a more salient point to the discussion at hand, is that SINCE GW has excluded 500 point games of standard 40k from their design, Incursion missions were created with the assumption that 1k forces would be used.

Contrasting this with 9th, there WERE missions in core books that were specifically designed for 500 point matches. It is THAT distinction, more than the exclusion of these battles from explicitly written rules, that matters. Because those missions specifically designed for 500 point matches were better for these small army/ subfaction lists.

A 9th edition Combat Patrol sized mission (ie. a Mission specifically designed for a 500 point game) was GREAT for an Inquisition force... Or any of the other forces that don't have a lot of units.

Could you find an 10th ed Incursion mission designed for 1k forces and play it with 500 point forces? Sure- absolutely. The rules don't say you can, so it's technically "not allowed," but that doesn't mean you can't do it... It just counts as houseruling if you do. Whether or not it will lead to a satisfying game is another question- the Mission isn't designed for 500 point games, so you might, for example, find that you have too few units to have a realistic chance to complete all of the listed objectives.

In 9th, you were less likely to be in that situation because there WERE missions designed specifically for 500 point games.

In 10th, the only Missions designed specifically for 500 point forces are Boarding Action missions... And the Boarding Action rules do limit some of the armies you might want to bring. When I play an Ordo Xenos Army, a pair of Inquisitors, each leading a 5 man DW Kill Team all packed into a Blackstar is a great little army... Even leaves me with 10 points for an Enhancement.

Ain't legal in Boarding Actions, and unlike 9th (or even 8th), there are no 10th edition 40k missions designed specifically for a battle that size, regardless of whether or not you agree that 500 point games of 40k aren't allowed by the rules as written.

I'll have to check my Boarding Actions book when I get home- I forget whether the Cavalry units in the Kroot army are allowed in Boarding Actions.

On relative raiding forces? Craftworld Eldar may well get themselves involved in a massive fight, because their objectives (ok, not so much in-game) are more esoteric.

Guided as they are by their Farseers, the whole intent may be to eliminate, or potentially preserve, a given individual foreseen to be the key to some coming disaster for the Craftworld.

So in a sense? They operate like the Astartes. Get in quickly, kill what needs killing and anyone else you think you can get away with, then get back out again.

So what we’re seeing on the board may be the totality of the Craftworld strike force, concentrated against a portion of an opponent’s far larger army.

Likewise Dark Eldar. We could argue that what we see are Raids gone a bit wrong, where the resistance was stronger than anticipated. Or, a calculated risk against a thornier foe to ensure the captives taken are combat trained, and so more interesting Arena Fodder than a bunch of farmers.

 PenitentJake wrote:
I'm happy one other Hellebore understands that rules function by telling you what you CAN do... Not by listing the thousands of things that you can't. When the rules say pick 1k, 2k or 3k, that is explicitly what is allowed by the rules.

Anything not explicitly allowed by the rules, by definition is forbidden. Therefore, by the rules AS WRITTEN, 500 point games using standard 40k rules (ie. not Boarding Action rules) are forbidden.

As are 1500 point games, or 2250 point games? Seems like needlessly nit-picky semantics to me. According to your definition, anyone playing 1500 point games isn't actually playing 40k "properly".

When it comes to different versions of 40k for different size games, I think having 4 completely independent sets of rules is probably overkill. However, if the core 40k rules had more depth I could easily see a set of modified rules for different points values being a thing. We used to have Kill Team in the rulebook in earlier editions (5th? Maybe 4th?) and I could see a set of rules streamlined to work better at 3000 points being a useful addition. Four completely different sets of rules with different rulebooks, Codices, etc, would be a terrible idea though.

Jake, your train of though would assume that an army of 1995 points is illegal to play in incursion. It's clearly not, therefore your entire argumentation falls apart.

 Jidmah wrote:
Jake, your train of though would assume that an army of 1995 points is illegal to play in incursion. It's clearly not, therefore your entire argumentation falls apart.

You are correct: this is the greatest weakness in the argument, and at this point, I'll concede. My most recent post was half-way there anyway: I'm not longer concerned about whether or not 500 games are forbidden due to a lack of explicit permission to use them. In fact, I even did a search on the Warcom site to find an article from 10th's release, and it DOES explicitly state that 500 point games ARE possible, undermining my initial argument even further. So yeah, abandonning ship.

However, the larger point, that 10th ed Incursion Missions are designed for 1k armies, not 500 point armies is still valid, and the Warcom Article mentioned above explicitly confirms that as well. I think if you look at each Incursion Mission, you can decide individually whether not it is as good a fit for a 500 point army as the 8th and 9th Missions that were specifically designed for armies of that size. I would imagine some work better than others.

 Jidmah wrote:

Orks are extremely possessive of things, and get into fights with their own to defend scrap, fuel or useful tech from other warbands. We have quotes of imperial commanders, tech priests, drukhari archons and even necrons who dread the thought of orks fortifying a defensible position because those fortifications can only be taken back at great costs. More often than not those costs are obliterating everything that was worth defending in the first place, because it's just that hard to remove,
In addition, if you start a fight to clear an objective, more orks will flock to that objective, just because there might be something worth fighting for. This behavior played a major role in the downfall of the ad mech forgeworld Hephaesto, where the Tech-Priest Dominus' carefully calculated feints backfired because his heavily defended positions didn't funnel the orks into apparently less defended choke points. Instead it caused more and more orks pile onto the well defended positions until they were overwhelmed.
Most members of other species struggle to understand ork logic, but orks are not irrational at all.

If you are interested in this, I suggest reading Da Big Dakka or finding the specific excerpt of the chapter online. There is a discussion where an Ork Warboss explains orks to a Drukhari Archon, obviously resulting in neither one understanding the other and then both assuming the other is stupid.

Also Orks are known to do things just because it will lead to a good fight. So if a Warboss understands that the Space Marines want to take a fort or something that Warboss is likely to hold on to it, even if he doesn't really care for it, just because he knows others will come a try to take it from him.

Orks in general yes, a warboss much less so. Orks at warboss level are usually quite intelligent, often more so than imperial field commanders or low ranking space marines.

A warboss would most likely assume that just because the marines want it, it's worth holding onto. Giving the lads a good fight in the process is just the cherry on top.
Larger orks are often more concerned with their standing within an ork Waaagh!, how to keep potential rivals in check, or with getting the best loot. Throwing themselves into a fight without reason is quite unlikely, though the reason might be "got nothing better to do, might as well go fight something".