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I think even GW recognises that free wargear isn't the way. They had already begun pulling it back during 10th indirectly by splitting up datasheets (which achieves the same thing in a roundabout way, but consumes way more page space and is impractical for complex units) and now 11th edition continues it.

I can only hope 12th edition seals the deal again. The truth is, a unit like Scourges in a free wargear world will just -always- take Dark Lances (occasionally haywires if the meta is -very- vehicle heavy). They had to split off the sheet to make the carbines stop being a troll pick, but that still leaves plenty of guns like blasters, splinter cannons and shredders which will never exist while their big brothers are free.

Special/heavy weapons are at least an ideal case for differentiating options as sidegrades rather than upgrades. It isn't going to break the lore if Blasters, Splinter Cannons, and Shredders all have respective strengths and weaknesses that put them on par with Dark Lances, so there's a reason to take any of them. Then having the choice of either Shardcarbine squad as fast harassers or heavy weapons squad as fire support is a decent way to split it up.

The reason I chose plasma pistols and power fists on sergeants as my example is because they're an example of a free wargear choice where (1) balancing the options to be functionally equivalent isn't a viable option, and (2) the objectively correct choice doesn't match the lore; it has never been the case that every single Krieg or Scion sergeant is supposed to be packing a plasma pistol.

So the result of this free wargear scheme is that the fluffy, historically standard loadout represents a trap choice that is strictly worse than the competitively optimal one, and an army built to maximize the rules doesn't fit the fluff. It's the worst possible outcome.

In order to balance these options GW would need to either attach significantly useful special rules to the suboptimal options, nerf the better options to be on the same level as the weaker ones (or consolidate their rules), nix the better options entirely... or just attach a points cost to taking the better stuff.

Are options #1-3 actually easier than #4? I doubt it. So GW hasn't settled on a design that makes it easier to balance the game, they've simply decided to focus on external balance at the expense of internal balance.

 catbarf wrote:
Special/heavy weapons are at least an ideal case for differentiating options as sidegrades rather than upgrades. It isn't going to break the lore if Blasters, Splinter Cannons, and Shredders all have respective strengths and weaknesses that put them on par with Dark Lances, so there's a reason to take any of them. Then having the choice of either Shardcarbine squad as fast harassers or heavy weapons squad as fire support is a decent way to split it up.

Are they going to be on par though? Not every role is equally viable. Shredders are a close-range, anti-light infantry gun, and that's not what people are clamouring to get more of in their lists.

You'd have to give it obscene stats for it to contribute the same value as a dark lance does, and then you'd end up making life even worse for said light infantry units which themselves don't tend to have a very good time at all in this game (there's a reason Termagant swarms aren't flooding the boards...)

There was some talk about some of the wargear points coming back, at least for "big things." I don't know what that means, but some wargear points is better than none.

And I think that at least for marines, sergeant gear matters. Power fist on a marine is a meaningful upgrade over a chainsword. They are just releasing a new intercessors, with a sergeant in a very cool chainsword slashing pose. I'd like to actually use that model and not be punished for it.

I've been saying for a while that a good compromise between the old points system and the simplified-but-unsatisfying setup we have now is to basically break up a unit's wargear options into a smaller number of simplified options. So using scourges as an example, your options would look something like the following. Points values are placeholders:

* Take your basic scourge squad: 60 points.
* Take up to 5 extra bodies: +40 points.
* Let the solarite swap out his shard carbine for options on the solarite wargear list: +10 points.
* One of the following either:
A.) Up to 4 scourges swap their carbines out for one of the good weapons (blasters, splinter cannons, shredders, etc.) for +20 points OR
B.) Up to 4 scourges swap their carbines out for one of the option A weapons or one of the better weapons (lances, haywire blasters, etc.) for +40 points.

So instead of calculating a bunch of different prices for individual models, you just have to add together at most 4 numbers to determine the price of the squad. The designers at that point don't have to try to make blasters and shredders equally as appealing as dark lances; they can acknowledge that the lances are better than a lot of the other options, but they also don't have to agonize over whether a lance and a haywire blaster are *exactly* as desirable as one another as long as they're in the same ballpark and have reasonably appealing use cases.

You'd end up with a feeling of customization and ownership over your unit. You have a reason to not give your sergeants plasma pistols every time (because you'd save the 5 or 10 points per squad that it would normally take to unlock the plasma pistol option). And the designers still get a relatively small number of combinations to stress stress about balancing.

 catbarf wrote:
Special/heavy weapons are at least an ideal case for differentiating options as sidegrades rather than upgrades. It isn't going to break the lore if Blasters, Splinter Cannons, and Shredders all have respective strengths and weaknesses that put them on par with Dark Lances, so there's a reason to take any of them. Then having the choice of either Shardcarbine squad as fast harassers or heavy weapons squad as fire support is a decent way to split it up.

Eh. I get the point you're making but I think even this is stretching it, honestly.

The trouble is, particularly with regard to Shredders and Splinter Cannons, you're having to try and balance around not only their effectiveness in the anti-infantry role but also taking into account that most units in the DE list have basically the same profile by default.

As in, even if the Splinter Cannon and Shredder are considered as good at anti-infantry as Dark Lances and Blasters are at anti-vehicle/monster, the ubiquity of anti-infantry weapons in the DE list mean those options are still likely going to be inherently less valuable than the anti-monster/vehicle weapons.

Anyway, not disagreeing with your overall point. Just wanted to point out that, even when you're only comparing 'upgrade' weapons, it's still extremely difficult to not have clear winners and losers if they all cost the same.

 Crimson wrote:
There was some talk about some of the wargear points coming back, at least for "big things." I don't know what that means, but some wargear points is better than none.

And I think that at least for marines, sergeant gear matters. Power fist on a marine is a meaningful upgrade over a chainsword. They are just releasing a new intercessors, with a sergeant in a very cool chainsword slashing pose. I'd like to actually use that model and not be punished for it.

Definitely. In 5e I mained Orks (ah, how time flies) and my favoured strategy was flooding the field with Orks.

I could fit 180 Boyz into a standard FOC's troops slots, and it set me back just over 1000 points naked. It was completely overwhelming for many enemies to deal with and incredibly effective. 6 points for 4 S4 WS4 attacks on the charge killed plenty of things, including mowing down whole Terminator squads before they could fight back.

But when going more restrained, you could see how the options really mattered. I could take a mob of 10 boyz and they're a fair, effective infantry unit, cheap, great at using cover saves since they waste little of their power budget on armour, and easily bodying other units in their weight class such as Hormagaunts.

On the other hand, I could buy them a Nob (+10 points) and give the nob a Power Klaw (+25 points). Now the unit is quite a bit more expensive, but drastically more dangerous, to the point its role is basically completely transformed. Extremely few things in the game wanted to deal with a PK nob sitting behind 10+ ablative boyz in melee.

Making the Nob free and the PK free would have made the game play way more shallow and boring. The naked boyz mob had plenty of purpose.

Disappointed, now that all games are using terrain layouts the game is cooked. It'll be minimum 6yrs of not playing, which at that point there will be no going back to my once hobby.

 vipoid wrote:
For one, if the game wants to focus on the squad-level then it seems weird to not only permit but actively enforce having as many different weapon types in a given unit as possible.

I honestly don't see the difference between a big tank or walker having a bunch of different guns and any of your examples.

Both the kill rig and the battlewagon have three ranged and three melee profiles they can use at the same time.

The game pieces are squads now, often single or double sized. How many different profiles they have, and whether that makes sense is a discussion completely detached from that.


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 Ashiraya wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I'm not sure the difference between 0 and 0.5 points is meaningful to a game.

Because the point isn't that it should be half a point. The point is that some people will go "omg, if they weren't free, I would never take a plasma gun on my guardsmen squads" and I think that's extremely narrow-minded. If the plasma gun was half a point you can bet I would take it. It'd make its points back 20x with every shot. That's a good investment in my book.

There are a bunch of free plasma pistols scattered over the DG codex. They have caused less than 10 wounds over the course of 10th edition, and most of those were inflicted on the shooter themselves. If those pistols were 0.5 points and a bolt pistol is 0, I would never bring a single one of them.


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 Crimson wrote:
There was some talk about some of the wargear points coming back, at least for "big things." I don't know what that means, but some wargear points is better than none.

They were talking about role-defining wargear options like the main guns of big walkers. It enables them to make both guns on a tank like the repulsor executioner relevant, while also not needing 20 datasheets to cover all versions of the leman russ. Outside of those cases, they seem to be fairly happy with the results of removing datasheet costs.

 Jidmah wrote:
There are a bunch of free plasma pistols scattered over the DG codex. They have caused less than 10 wounds over the course of 10th edition, and most of those were inflicted on the shooter themselves. If those pistols were 0.5 points and a bolt pistol is 0, I would never bring a single one of them.

Cool. I'd not force you to bring them. I sure would, and by mathhammer, at 0.5 points they would be probably the most insanely undercosted thing in the entire game. To put it this way, if you could pay 50 points to give 100 cultists plasma pistols, would you? I sure would (assuming I am doing a cultist horde in the first place). Boom, these 100 cultists have now gone from a moveblocking nuisance to a Problem that will delete whole squads if ever left to shoot. Or hell, imagine seeing 50 Black Templar Crusaders who -all- have been given plasma pistols for 25 points total. Horrifying!

You might go "oh, but that's 100 plasma pistols, 100 plasma pistols might do something but 1 plasma pistol won't". Okay, but this is Warhammer. Prices in Warhammer don't scale. The maths here are genuinely additive. Two plasma pistols do twice as much average damage as one. Yes, in tactical practice there all manner of considerations involved, but the game has never and will never price around it. Your third Lictor has never been cheaper or more expensive than your first. Your 100th boy has never been cheaper or more expensive than your first. That's just not how Warhammer works*.

(*exceptions for occasions where units have been X points each for the first Y models and then Z points each for every model beyond that, but that's mostly a thing in 10th to compensate for frontloaded wargear, and is otherwise rare.)

Crisis Suits, 9th Edition, had guns cost X for the first copy, X+Y for the second, and so on.
So not 100% accurate, Ashiraya. But mostly accurate.

For what it's worth, I don't think the jump from Laspistol to Bolt Pistol is worth even a single point. But going from Las or Bolt to Plasma should, ideally, cost at least a couple. Not much-it's uncommon for it to be used. But something.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Definitely. In 5e I mained Orks (ah, how time flies) and my favoured strategy was flooding the field with Orks.

I could fit 180 Boyz into a standard FOC's troops slots, and it set me back just over 1000 points naked. It was completely overwhelming for many enemies to deal with and incredibly effective. 6 points for 4 S4 WS4 attacks on the charge killed plenty of things, including mowing down whole Terminator squads before they could fight back.

But when going more restrained, you could see how the options really mattered. I could take a mob of 10 boyz and they're a fair, effective infantry unit, cheap, great at using cover saves since they waste little of their power budget on armour, and easily bodying other units in their weight class such as Hormagaunts.

On the other hand, I could buy them a Nob (+10 points) and give the nob a Power Klaw (+25 points). Now the unit is quite a bit more expensive, but drastically more dangerous, to the point its role is basically completely transformed. Extremely few things in the game wanted to deal with a PK nob sitting behind 10+ ablative boyz in melee.

Making the Nob free and the PK free would have made the game play way more shallow and boring. The naked boyz mob had plenty of purpose.

That's not how I remember it at all. During 5th I already was writing tactics on this page and dakka was kind of the top tier WAAC competitive community, similar to what goonhammer or r/warhammercompetitive is today.

If you were playing to win, PKs, boss poles and nobz were mandatory in boyz mobs, full stop. Units of 10(12!) had no place outside of trucks, 'ard boyz and stikkbombs were a trap choice and large mobs were usually best played as units of 20 because otherwise you would loose out on nobz, clump up around terrain and often couldn't get everyone in combat. Shootas were vastly more powerful stronger than choppas.
The classic green tide was nothing but a skew list that won against badly prepared opponents. Many competitive armies like guard, GK, space wolves, BA could easily handle them. It wouldn't have survived a single balance dataslate if those existed back then.

The only true choice boyz offered was whether you spent 10 points on a rokkits or not and whether you were willing to spend more money to build shoota boyz instead of using your bucket of AOBR boyz you found on ebay for $4. Everything else was just the illusion of choice, baiting you to spend points to get an objectively worse unit.


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 Ashiraya wrote:
Cool. I'd not force you to bring them. I sure would, and by mathhammer, at 0.5 points they would be probably the most insanely undercosted thing in the entire game. To put it this way, if you could pay 50 points to give 100 cultists plasma pistols, would you? I sure would (assuming I am doing a cultist horde in the first place). Boom, these 100 cultists have now gone from a moveblocking nuisance to a Problem that will delete whole squads if ever left to shoot. Or hell, imagine seeing 50 Black Templar Crusaders who -all- have been given plasma pistols for 25 points total. Horrifying!

You might go "oh, but that's 100 plasma pistols, 100 plasma pistols might do something but 1 plasma pistol won't". Okay, but this is Warhammer. Prices in Warhammer don't scale. The maths here are genuinely additive. Two plasma pistols do twice as much average damage as one. Yes, in tactical practice there all manner of considerations involved, but the game has never and will never price around it. Your third Lictor has never been cheaper or more expensive than your first. Your 100th boy has never been cheaper or more expensive than your first. That's just not how Warhammer works*.

(*exceptions for occasions where units have been X points each for the first Y models and then Z points each for every model beyond that, but that's mostly a thing in 10th to compensate for frontloaded wargear, and is otherwise rare.)

Congratulations, you have understood why units must be costed as a whole and why costing single pieces of war gear does not work

I know the debate of Boys vs. Toys was still an open debate in 5th, and had proponents on both sides. Even as a non-ork player. “The best upgrade you can give a boy is another standing next to him” Now people might have been unyielding in their camps convinced that there was only one correct answer, and I cant speak for performance at the tournament level. But my recollection was is was not codified into a final absolute.

As a marine player I was alway in the boys camp. More squads was generally better then fewer, overequipped ones. That said, you needed to make sure they had the tools they needed to get their job done. But there was a place for a sternguard squad just pumping out special ammo, and not combi-weapon spam. Or bare-bones scouts vs. camo cloaked snipers. The tac squad does not need a sword or a fancy pistol, but a combi to match the special in the squad was worth the points to get the unit to function at it’s job better.