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**OldeSword**

Lord Damocles wrote:Imperial/Chaos Knights shouldn't be factions in standard 40K (at least without a fundamental re-design on how suerheavies and vehicles generally work mechanically).

a_typical_hero wrote:Knight and tank only armies don't belong into the (standard) game. No exceptions or themed lists for them. There, I said it.

Orkeosaurus wrote:I do respect that position, to be honest I wouldn't allow Knight Titans to exist as their own codex, I think that's absurd. There simply isn't enough to interact with to make the game fun, whether they're powerful or not. I would probably combine them with AdMech or something.

I've seen this sentiment in other threads too. What makes knights such a problem? I can hazard a guess, but I'm not aware of them dominating the tournament scene or anything.

My two favorite archetypes are knights and dwarves, so, when I learned about actually chivalrous warriors doing battle in giant robots, I was all for that idea. The only reason I haven't painted any yet is that I haven't developed my abilities enough yet to not mess them up. Yet it sounds like they are very Not Fun to play against, which would put a real dampener on things.

Orkeosaurus wrote:Ursula Creed can't get 10 Leman Russ tanks to a single battle? Or 30 scout sentinels? Ghazghkull can't surround himself with nothing but nobs? How many monoliths does the Silent King own? Those are all valid warlord options in 40k, people who command millions if not billions of soldiers with equivalent tank and artillery support.

Games of 40k represent relatively elite forces clashing over vital objectives. That's why they're battles of annihilation, that's why space marines and eldar are there at all, that's why important named characters can take to the battlefield. It isn't Necromunda or Gorkamorka or something centered around regular grunts. And it never can be because space marines are the most popular army. They would either need to be completely changed in the fluff to a common trooper or be relegated to a limited "elite slot" choice in a mostly-IG "Imperial" army. Both are a non-starter for GW, obviously.

Ultimately the Space Marine army is itself a sort of "skew" list, into "elites", that was just so ubiquitous that it went without saying. A "troop" tactical marine was always more elite than a stormtrooper or a flashgit or even a dire avenger. And Nazdreg could much more freely send 100 flashgits into a fight than any Imperial commander could send a company of Ultramarines.

I think your description of games of 40k is on point, which helps put some of the other questions into perspective.

Orkeosaurus wrote:No my argument is that a company of only Leman Russes is in no way difficult or unrealistic for Ursula Creed to deploy.

And on an aesthetic level I also think it's perfectly fine. It looks cool on the table, it's a classic tank company like WW2. The problem is neither fluff nor aesthetics, it's the gameplay issue of having an entire army that most of the opponent's models can barely interact with.

But if you tell me there is no gameplay issue when the all-Russ army is painted green, then don't prohibit me from playing an all-Russ army painted tan. Or tell me that I can only play an all-Russ army if Sergeant Tankius from the Cadian 123rd Armored Company is leading it. That's what the 4e and 5e FoC amounted to in reality.

This is closely linked to the previous quote, which is why I included both, and I think it's a fair point: In a clash of elite forces, Ursula Creed, Roboute Guilliman, the Lord Solar, the Silent King, Belisarius Cawl, or whoever else can probably field whatever they want. If any of those people are bothering to personally take to the field, they are bringing their choice of units. At least canonically. There's that whole game-balance thing.

It seems to me that GW is flirting with the idea of FOCs again what with detachments having Force Dispositions that map onto the previous core missions, Battleline units, the already existing Rule of Three, the spam tax, and even the modest return of wargear points. FOCs may not be their preferred or intended solution, but they've recognized some sort of problem and are looking to fix it. From what I've read in this discussion so far, there are lots of issues with previous implementations (When is there not a lot of issues with something?) including the proliferation of special FOCs that broke the system, the Rule of Three not doing anything for faction that have multiple units that fit the same role, and some of the restrictions feeling arbitrary.

What if there was one FOC per force disposition (easy and consistent across factions yet gives each force disposition its own flavor) or one per detachment (more nuanced, more fluffy, individual detachments could be balanced)?
Now... What if you could take more than your allotted number of X group - not Rule of Three unit but group - by paying a percentage tax on all the units of that group?
And this applied across the board so that everyone could choose to break the FOC for their fluffy bike squadron or tank company or whatever but they would have to pay for it?

The idea being that, if the FOCs represent balanced forces designed to play against each other, the FOCs establish the baseline for that force disposition / detachment, so they are "at cost." However, if you really want to color outside the lines, you can, but, since skew lists become increasingly difficult for other armies to handle, the lists are smaller the more that they are skewed to make them easier to handle.

If you want a thematic justification for it, sure, Ursula Creed can bring 10 Leman Russes into battle. She can pull three from this local depot and three from that local depot pretty easily. The next three have to come from that depot waaay over there, and, even though she is Ursula Creed and everyone does what she says, she can't overcome the logistics of moving those tanks that distance. And they actually had to reroute an orbital drop to get the tenth one, which was a real nightmare and got some bureaucrat at the Munitorum shot.

So it was expensive, and you didn't get as many tanks as you would have infantry for the same amount of logistics. But, if you really, really want to deploy nothing but tanks, you can.

**Breton**

Wyldhunt wrote:
Tyran wrote:
a_typical_hero wrote:
Which is more due to the units in question not being meta. If, for example, this composition would be able to table/outscore any opponent within 1-2 turns, you would see it frequently and it would be possible by the rules. Which is why I would keep balance related issues away from the core of the discussion. The pendulum can swing anytime and suddenly every Imperial army has a Knight, 32 Guardsmen and a bunch of Blood Angel Captains.

Funny thing you mention, but 8th edition still used a FOC system. The FOC system only died until 10th.

That aside, you cannot separate it from balance discussions because the FOC was often part of the balancing issues. Did a faction have overcrowded slots? Were their troops cheap or efficient to the point they weren't a tax? Did they have ways to modify the FOC?

All that and probably more I cannot even remember were balance issues from back then.

I think it's possible to discuss how well FOCs represent fluff as a semi-distinct conversation from balance. I'd argue that regardless of how broken or not banshees as troops would be, forcing an Iybraesil player to field other troops instead of/in addition to banshees is a mark against it as a tool for fluff. Or for a less obscure comparison, the FOC gets in the way of people fielding Death Wing armies or White Scars bike spam armies. Which is why there were workarounds to facilitate those lists pretty early on.

Deathwing or Ravenwing. White Scar Armies combined Troops in Transports with Bikes. Ravenwing (and Deathwing) Armies absolutely did not drag around two tactical squads of Green Wing who were not sufficiently indoctrinated into the Chapter hierarchy to see the secret mission they were on to find The Fallen. The other problem you had was just generic armies doing valid theme stuff - the all Phobos army doing a Recon mission - especially now that there are no Phobos units that count as Battleline. Right now you can't make the 10th Company because you can't get 60 Battle Line Phobos marines nor can you get 20 Heavy Support Phobos (though you can fudge the Heavy Support with Warsuits, and such.

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OldeSword wrote:

I've seen this sentiment in other threads too. What makes knights such a problem? I can hazard a guess, but I'm not aware of them dominating the tournament scene or anything.

The problem with knights is something that makes them worse not better. They have a harder time playing the mission lacking infantry to capture objectives in terrain they can't walk into. They don't have "action monkeys" either. They were designed for the earlier game - the I Kill You Before You Kill Me game, and that's no longer how its played.

**ccs**

Breton wrote:

The problem with knights is something that makes them worse not better. They have a harder time playing the mission lacking infantry to capture objectives in terrain they can't walk into. They don't have "action monkeys" either. They were designed for the earlier game - the I Kill You Before You Kill Me game, and that's no longer how its played.

You are 100% wrong about Knights not having access to infantry/action monkeys.

Imperial Knights can dip into Agents of the Imperium for cheap bodies.
And they might(?) have some detachment that grants access to some sort of infantry? (I dont recall, I dont play Imperial Knights as a faction so dont really oay attention to them)

Chaos Knights can dip into Demons.
And they most definitely DO have a detachment that allows infantry from CSM - units with the Damned KW. This one i play.

I'm the odd (chaos) Knights player in that i do play with infantry tag alongs.
And if I had to, or I felt like it, I'd dip into demons.

Everyone else? Loyalist or traitor?
They seem quite content to just spend all their points on more Knights....

**a_typical_hero**

OldeSword wrote:
Lord Damocles wrote:Imperial/Chaos Knights shouldn't be factions in standard 40K (at least without a fundamental re-design on how suerheavies and vehicles generally work mechanically).

a_typical_hero wrote:Knight and tank only armies don't belong into the (standard) game. No exceptions or themed lists for them. There, I said it.

Orkeosaurus wrote:I do respect that position, to be honest I wouldn't allow Knight Titans to exist as their own codex, I think that's absurd. There simply isn't enough to interact with to make the game fun, whether they're powerful or not. I would probably combine them with AdMech or something.

I've seen this sentiment in other threads too. What makes knights such a problem? I can hazard a guess, but I'm not aware of them dominating the tournament scene or anything.

My two favorite archetypes are knights and dwarves, so, when I learned about actually chivalrous warriors doing battle in giant robots, I was all for that idea. The only reason I haven't painted any yet is that I haven't developed my abilities enough yet to not mess them up. Yet it sounds like they are very Not Fun to play against, which would put a real dampener on things.

Knights and tanks should feel almost invulnerable to standard infantry weapons, whether that means only being wounded on 6s or not being woundable at all unless the attacker has sufficient Strength (Armor Values).

The problem is that this can make the game very uninteractive for a typical TAC list. Many of your units are suddenly reduced to blocking movement, holding objectives, and trying to survive while being hammered every turn.

I do not want to remove that immersive feeling just to balance around a pure, high-toughness vehicle list. For that reason, I do not think such a list should be part of the standard game.

**Haighus**

Orkeosaurus wrote:
OldeSword wrote:
I'd be willing to say that. If an canonically fluffy army is oppressive and therefore Not Fun, I think it is appropriate to say, "Sorry. This game was designed for and balanced around the idea of small forces of combined arms, and all tanks/infantry/whatever overwhelms the other players' ability to respond. You can only skew your army as far as the FOC allows." At the end of the day, this is a game, and it's supposed to be fun. Oppressive armies are bad for the tournament scene, as it upsets the meta until everyone is doing the same thing, and it's bad for casual games as my friends aren't going to want me around to throw dice, drink beer, and make sound effects if my army consistently tables theirs.
I do respect that position, to be honest I wouldn't allow Knight Titans to exist as their own codex, I think that's absurd. There simply isn't enough to interact with to make the game fun, whether they're powerful or not. I would probably combine them with AdMech or something.

But what I hate is this:

Haighus wrote:
I want to point out that both the Iybrasil and Scorpius examples you give could be comfortably played in 3rd (the edition that added FOCs) using the Swordwind list in Codex: Craftworld Eldar (this swapped near enough all Aspects into troops, except Shining Spears and Swooping Hawks). Whilst the list was named after Biel-Tan, the codex specifically mentioned all the lists were archetypes that could be found in any Eldar craftworld.
Then why is it restricted for everyone else? GW tells me that it's not unbalanced to have 9 squads of scorpions, because that's why Biel-Tan is allowed to have it. Okay I accept that. So why am I forced to call my Craftworld Scorpius army "Biel-Tan" in order to take the scorpions that my fluff says they're entitled to? Why do I have to awkwardly explain to my opponent that my purple and orange eldar models are "counts-as Biel-Tan" but are actually my own craftworld from my blog, but they need to take a bunch of scorpions and only "Biel-Tan" are allowed to do that?

If anything the system should be reversed: the FoC should only be imposed on named subfactions, while if you have a custom army you can take whatever you want (subject to game balance (but not subject to fluff)). A custom craftworld could be all scorpions, or all jetbikes, or a mix of both. Biel-Tan would (probably) not field all jetbikes. Biel-Tan is more restricted by the fluff, not less, because they're a single defined craftworld rather than any one of hundreds. The only exception would be things like unique named characters or relics, that truly don't exist outside of that subfaction.

Predefined named subfactions should be for: A) new or casual players who want a "pre-built" army and paint scheme that works well out-of-the-box B) players who really like the fluff of the subfaction and would willingly take on extra restrictions (explicit or implicit) to be faithful to it or C) players who wanted to play that exact army-type and find it more convenient to say "White Scars" than "bike-heavy space marines". There's nothing wrong with any of those but what I don't accept is imposing unnecessary, arbitrary, and unfluffy restrictions on custom armies for the sole purpose of making predefined subfactions "feel more special". That is all the FoC turned into, and that's why I'm glad it's gone.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hellebore wrote:
As for the idea of a tax - that's like saying the US army has a tax on infantry units rather than just deploying tanks. That's how armies work. There are limited numbers of some units, and there are units that are the core fighting force of the army.

If there was no limitations on units existing, real armies wouldn't rely on cheap infantry. Army comp free for all is like a general saying his army is just all nukes.

When the FOC interacts with the scenarios being played it also helps outline what the kind of force would actually be involved, rather than whatever composition you came up with.

FOC was a simulation mechanic to reflect that just because you the general may only want to deploy 10 shadow swords, you the general are lucky to get 1 leman Russ to go with your 10,000 conscripts.
Frankly I think this kind of "limited resources" argument is cherry-picked to justify the FoC retroactively.

An ork waaagh has more MANs than the entire Imperium has space marines. One splinter fleet has more carnifexes. I would assume Cadia had more Kasrkins. To say nothing of the ultra-rare Grey Knights, titans, primarchs, and one-of-a-kind relics that the game is full of. Compared to a land raider full of grey knight terminators nearly anything in the game is common as hell. And concentrating a bunch of tanks into an armored company or a bunch of stompas into a dread-mob is common, again way more common than concentrating 50 space marines in one place is. In large-scale games like Epic you see a bunch of that, and you could easily zoom-in on part of an Epic game and call that a game of 40k.

Why would guard ever deploy basic guardsman if their generals could build armies out of whatever they wanted, no logistics limitations, no costs issues. No imperial guard general has the freedom to build an army as absurdly as a 40k player does, so which guard general are you actually playing then?
Ursula Creed can't get 10 Leman Russ tanks to a single battle? Or 30 scout sentinels? Ghazghkull can't surround himself with nothing but nobs? How many monoliths does the Silent King own? Those are all valid warlord options in 40k, people who command millions if not billions of soldiers with equivalent tank and artillery support.

Games of 40k represent relatively elite forces clashing over vital objectives. That's why they're battles of annihilation, that's why space marines and eldar are there at all, that's why important named characters can take to the battlefield. It isn't Necromunda or Gorkamorka or something centered around regular grunts. And it never can be because space marines are the most popular army. They would either need to be completely changed in the fluff to a common trooper or be relegated to a limited "elite slot" choice in a mostly-IG "Imperial" army. Both are a non-starter for GW, obviously.

Ultimately the Space Marine army is itself a sort of "skew" list, into "elites", that was just so ubiquitous that it went without saying. A "troop" tactical marine was always more elite than a stormtrooper or a flashgit or even a dire avenger. And Nazdreg could much more freely send 100 flashgits into a fight than any Imperial commander could send a company of Ultramarines.

I do actually agree with you and vastly prefer generic archetypes over named variants. So to use the Eldar example- I prefer a "Swordwind" list over a "Biel-Tan" list. Granted, since that codex the name Swordwind has also become heavily associated with Biel-Tan exclusively but hey ho. Likewise for Guard, I prefer "Mechanised Guard" list over "Armageddon Steel Legion" list.

Incidentally, that is mostly how GW did it then. The list in Codex Armageddon was the Mechanised Company list, not the Steel Legion. They did make some rules for the Armageddon PDF specifically for the campaign though.

Even the Craftworld Eldar codex said this:

Essentially pointing out they'd used the big names for recognition, but any Craftworld fielded forces organised in this way at least sometimes.

Really only Space Marines were actually somewhat named-faction-locked, rather than being archetypes in how they were presented. Again though, successor Chapters were encouraged for homebrews. I think it only got a bit sticky if you tried to play your (named faction) Ultramarines as (named faction) Blood Angels just because you prefered the rules, rather than doing a blue Blood Angels successor Chapter.

**Hellebore**

Orkeosaurus wrote:
No my argument is that a company of only Leman Russes is in no way difficult or unrealistic for Ursula Creed to deploy.

And on an aesthetic level I also think it's perfectly fine. It looks cool on the table, it's a classic tank company like WW2. The problem is neither fluff nor aesthetics, it's the gameplay issue of having an entire army that most of the opponent's models can barely interact with.

But if you tell me there is no gameplay issue when the all-Russ army is painted green, then don't prohibit me from playing an all-Russ army painted tan. Or tell me that I can only play an all-Russ army if Sergeant Tankius from the Cadian 123rd Armored Company is leading it. That's what the 4e and 5e FoC amounted to in reality.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
How about another example: 1 ork warboss + 500 grots

Is this a cool thematic army? No, except in the sense that it's funny.

Is this something that a warboss could choose to deploy? Yes, easily.

Is this something that you would be likely to encounter in the setting? This is actually mixed, it would be strange but I can come up with scenarios where it would happen. (Deposed by a rival and given an "army" of grots as a joke while marooned, for example). Statistically you would still be more likely to encounter this than an army of custodes, which players are allowed to field freely.

Would this be overpowered? No it would suck, they would just get pushed off the objectives because they lack any killing power.

Would this be fun to play against? No, it would be an amusing novelty at first but get really annoying if played out.

Should GW write rules specifically to prevent someone from playing this army? My answer is actually no, for the same reason that GW doesn't need to right rules forcing you to ever move a unit outside of your deployment zone. The rules are for a game in which both players are trying to win, if one player is trolling the other by deliberately losing in some absurd way then that's a sportsmanship issue.

Should GW write their rules to specifically ensure that this army can be played? My answer is also no, because this is a goofy joke-army and effort isn't needed to preserve it.

You're over simplifying Ursula. She could only deploy extra Russes if she could actually get access to them , her being famous and important is only part of the story. It also ignores that she wouldn't be the CNC of an armoured company.

The point is that you just can't deploy an army of say a bunch of Russes and commissars, that's not how they work. If you want an armoured company you have to accept the consequence of deploying an armoured company. Once you get to a certain size of the force, other factors come into play.

Which is how multiple focs are used. Ursula would have her own troops directly under her, her body guard, hq support etc. and then she would have called in a chunk of an armoured company with its own hq and troops.

The troops are only part of the equation, the hq is also important.

Those 500 grots have to come with grot herds, or they aren't sticking around. The warboss needs bully boys to force them into the fight, him being by himself isn't enough.

Every army composition is acted on by a range of factors beyond the biggness of the HQs name. Those factors absolutely affect what a force they deploy will look like, no matter their personal fantasies. Even inquisitors only have nominally infinite power, until someone says no to them with enough force to back it up.

Freedom to build your army is one thing, withi ln constraints..the current game's constraints have nothing to do with the setting and everything to do with restricting your combo counts which is a problem of their own making.

**Tyel**

OldeSword wrote:
I've seen this sentiment in other threads too. What makes knights such a problem? I can hazard a guess, but I'm not aware of them dominating the tournament scene or anything.

I think you've got to separate most posts about the FOC (or lackthereof) being a problem/competitively good, with bugbears of the community.

The general issue with Knights isn't that they are necessarily good/competitively broken, its that they don't feel like "proper 40k".
1. Every model (unless they take agents/daemons allies etc as advertised) is relatively tough. Yes people flag up how you can hose down tanks with bolters, but in reality you need either tons of stacking buffs, extreme luck, or a phenomenal amount of shots to do much more than take the odd wound. If you only have a few dedicated anti-tank units this can be frustrating - especially if they are targetted and killed early.
2. This results in it being quite easy to completely fluff a turn and kill nothing. People as a rule hate this. You can decisively lose a game on victory points - but if you killed 70% of the opponents list, it may not "feel" like it was a waste of time. This is in turn I think why people have often liked fighting armies like Orks and Tyranids (ignoring relative balance issues) - because there's often "stuff you can kill". People disliked it when Custodes had a 3++ because if they got lucky, they just walked through all your attacks and there wasn't much you could do about it.
3. The combination of both can result in uninteractive - or at least predictable - games. The Knight player stomping around trying to crush your guys like bugs, while you just run around maxing out objectives. You can argue 40k doesn't have "that much" variety, but I find after you've played Knights once or twice, you tend not to want to play them again for a while.

What goes for Knights tends to go for "Knight-style" armies with a small number of very powerful units.

I can't say why for example "all bikes" bother people - since bikes in the old rules were often just guys but a bit faster. There were issues with wound allocation rules on things like nob bikers. Eldar Jetbikes became broken in 7th. Ravenwing 2++ rerollable saves were obviously obnoxious (maybe with invisibility, I forget tbh 7th sucked). But these were examples of crap GW balancing. I don't remember anyone complaining about Saim-Hann lists with lots of regular shuriken catapult jetbikes and vypers in the previous editions because they weren't great. (This being the internet there's bound to be someone somewhere. But this is like someone on Reddit saying their mass Ork buggy list was proving OP against their friends in 10th, while the competitive scene found it largely non-viable.)

**Da Boss**

Knights just don't fit the scale of a 28mm game played on a 6'x4' gaming board to me. They're better for special scenario battles on bigger boards. And the boards are even smaller these days, which makes the problem even worse.

I feel the same about Flyers, which I think should be doing bombing runs over the table and then leaving the other side at most, and I think the game is generally better without them, even if the models are nice.

The game was designed around a few squads and a couple of vehicles and I think that's where it works best. It's already making loads of scale compromises to make that work on a standard table, Knights and Flyers are just pushing it too far for my suspension of disbelief.

Not opposed to them existing but I've no interest in collecting them or playing against them at that scale - much better for a 6mm game imo.

**kirotheavenger**

Ultimately I think it's an important principle of the game that any legal army can be played against any other legal army and be a fun evening.
Balance isn't so important for your casual game, except insofar as it affects the fun.

"Oops, all [blank]" armies can be fun, but sometimes they won't be. Which usually depends more on the nature of the units being spammed.

Spamming an entire army of heavy armour is particularly egregious because a typical "TAC" army list will find probably about half of their army rendered completely ineffective, and the other half quite vulnerable to simply being focus--fired and removed.
Can these sorts of armies be lore-friendly? Yes. But fielding a lore-friendly army is secondary to *both* players having a fun evening.
I think this sort of army should only ever be legal "with opponent's permission" type thing.

That's where the concept of FOC comes in, it physically limits a player and forces them to bring a reasonable spread of units.

However, GW hasn't really used it properly previously.
As soon as they throw out character/faction special rules like "due to lore reasons, you're allowed to spam Leman Russ" - you've just removed literally the entire reason for the FOC to exist.
Or "There's a version of this in every slot, so it basically doesn't matter" is similar.

I like the videogame Steel Division, it's a WW2 tactical battle game. It has a FOC that I think works a lot better.
You've got "recon", "infantry", "anti-tank", "tank", "artillery", and "aircraft".
The specifics are obviously unique to the game and the period, but the idea of having stuff split along those lines forces you to field an army not skewed too heavily into a single "defensive profile" but also forces you to bring an army with a reasonable "TAC" level of offensive output.
Some armies will push the ratios around but you're never getting more than like 2/3rds one "thing".

And I do think pretty much any army you want to run can easily justify diversifying the portfolio a bit.
Leman Russ tank company? Well they should really have some supporting infantry.

Knights are the same. GW has clearly tried to reduce to effect of "oops, all superheavies" by introducing Armigers, but it's not really enough.
IMO Knights should have household infantry. It certainly used to be a thing in the lore until GW introduced the knights faction and lore aligned to the codex. But even then it still kinda is a thing as we're often told in lore an unsupported knight is vulnerable to infantry ambushes (very true) so we should see the supporting infantry reflected on the table.

**Da Boss**

It'd be a great chance to make some infantry with a really strong Space-Feudalism aesthetic as well, so I don't know why they don't go for it!

**Overread**

I think the problem is that functionally on the table if you want to take knights as a support with regular infantry you'd just take Mechanicus or Imperial Guard.

Meanwhile if GW wanted to change Knights to include that with their own unique units they'd likely have to either bite the bullet and annoy Knight players a lot by adding the new models and then seriously restricting how many knights they can take; or by slowly phasing it in through several editions of creeping "Oh my knights keep costing more and more"

**kirotheavenger**

Hasn't GW already done that? Aren't Armigers compulsory per Knight?
But also I have limited sympathies for "but all I want to play is big stompy Knights!" And I want to run an army of just Hammerheads but we can't all get what we want.
I don't enjoy playing against all-knights, but also I don't want to spend £10 on a table and bus fee just to turn around and go home if I find myself meeting a Knights player, plus the social faux par of leaving a well meaning person with a legitimate army high and dry.

If GW released some awesome Household Infantry I think that'd really add to the faction.

**Overread**

The thing is GW created the problem by allowing and encouraging all knight armies. Going back on that is tricky because they've got fans who have spent lots of money on a knight focused army.

Telling them "ok so we are taking away half your knights from the table now and you have to replace them with infantry" can backfire and be a negative experience for people who did just want to play with big stompy robots*.

*who will then point at tyranids and say "they've been playing with big stompy monster armies for decades"

**the Signless**

GW has a tool that they use to encourage people to bring balanced lists: the missions.

Most missions in 10th (I haven't played 11th yet) require the player to use a variety of tools to max out points. The want you to be able to move around quickly to threaten different board positions early (fast attack), hold positions (elite), kill the enemy off of their objectives (heavy support and elite), and have cheap mooks that can complete actions or sit on a safe objective (troop). While you can deviate from this formula, a lot of winning lists follow these rough guidelines. This naturally pushes armies towards a balanced composition while not stopping people from trying out wilder, more thematic versions. It is usually not optimal to forgo all of your troops to only take elite units, but some playstyles and detachment rules can compensate for this and reward it.

A player that wants to build a list outside of the balance of the missions is either playing some fun homebrew scenario with friends, in which case discussion and common sense serve to regulate the lists, is intentionally throwing, which is regulated by them gaining a reputation as a person not fun to play against and is not stopped by a FOC, or has found some rule imbalance, which GW has been generally good at pointing and balancing out. For the hypothetical 15 SM Lieutenants list, if they are playing with friends in a stupid custom scenario, the have probably already thrown out so much of what makes 40k balanced that trying to then impose the FOC makes little sense and would have already been thrown out if it had existed. A player trying to troll with this stupid, meme list would be stopped from taking this list, but they still do other nonsense. The FOC will force troop taxes on the player, but they can still make a game miserable with their remaining slots. Finally, the FOC has not prevented broken units from existing in the past. The current (I have yet to play 11th) three defiler spam simply translates into three heavy support slots filled.

An example that I have played is in Sisters it is usually correct to take a list that roughly follows the FOC with possibly a few extra elite units depending on how celestians are placed. However, sometimes in Army of Faith I replace the troop choices with units of jump pack infantry, trading bodies and sticky objectives for speed and the ability to combo with the detachment rule better. While we could spend time looking up alternative FOC to account for this (I don't think any specialised in elite and fast attack picks) or try to come up with rules about how certain detachments make certain units troops, the current system lets me build a balanced list. It's a workable solution to the problem.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

There have been other army selection methods down the years.

1st Ed - I’ll be honest, I’ve never really figured that one out! Probably because it’s really 2.5 editions in a trench coat pretending to be a single game.

2nd Ed - Characters, Units, Support with different percentage minimums and maximums. Some units also required a specific character to unlock them (no Tanks without a Techmarine for instance).

3rd Ed of course introduced the FOC.

But? Oddities still existed.

2nd Ed Imperial Guard allowed one support units for each Infantry unit.

5th (maybe 6th?) Ed WHFB Chaos had my personal favourite. Pick, equip and pay points for a character. Then buy them a retinue of at least equal value, comprised of non-character units. Then rinse and repeat until you’ve met the points threshold.

2nd Ed Space Marine (the game, not the army) used a Card System. First select a Company Card. That then opens up 0-5 Detachment Cards and 0-1 Special Card.

Legions Imperialis has formations with set detachment options. Some compulsory, some optional, some optionals an “either/or” choice.

Epic 40K had another take, but I hated that game so have erased all knowledge other than it sucked from my mind.

As ever, it’s swings and roundabouts. You need to offer some restrictions to prevent abusive lists. But not at the price of denying someone’s personal vision of an army theme.

And there’s always going to be relative winners and losers in any system. What matters most is closing the gap between Good, Average and Cack as much as possible. I’d say if you can get it down to a matter of perspective and opinion over fact? You’re doing about as well as any system can.

**kirotheavenger**

Overread wrote:
The thing is GW created the problem by allowing and encouraging all knight armies. Going back on that is tricky because they've got fans who have spent lots of money on a knight focused army.

Telling them "ok so we are taking away half your knights from the table now and you have to replace them with infantry" can backfire and be a negative experience for people who did just want to play with big stompy robots*.

*who will then point at tyranids and say "they've been playing with big stompy monster armies for decades"

Armies have come into and out of legality for longer than Knights have existed, and many of those armies have been completely fine to play.

**BanjoJohn**

I skipped a lot of posts because I was gone all weekend and just got back to the board.

I will say that I have never seen any Troops units as "Bad" so they don't feel like a "Tax" to me.

If you wanted a specific sub-faction or force, then having a different army list for that sub-faction which lays out what count as Troops for them is the way you'd play it.

For example, bike squads are "Troops" for Raven Wing, Terminators are "Troops" for Death Wing.

FOC is a good system, anything broken about it is just as broken with modern 40k.

As for "Super Heavies", the way the rules worked in 3rd edition for Super Heavy vehicles was this: For each Detachment you have in your army, you can take one Super Heavy Detachment.

A Super Heavy Detachment may contain 1-3 Super Heavy vehicles of the same or similar type. For example you could have like... 2 bane blades and another similar tank, or 1 thunderhawk gunship and a thunderhawk transporter.

Since I have been steeped deep in 3rd edition for the better part of a year and a half now, reading the rulebook and all the supplements and stuff, I can say that if you read the 3rd edition rulebook from cover to cover and understand the rules, you will see that the rules say that you build your army using 1 or more detachments, each detachment needing to fill the minimum requirements for the force org chart you are using for the mission that you are playing.

Somewhere along the line the word "detachment" started to mean something else though and it still confuses me.

But really, whats so wrong with FOC? All arguments I have seen against it feel paper thin. Maybe you don't like that a specific sub-faction got their own army list detailing what units count as for that sub faction? that's a legitimate complaint, but you know what 3rd edition rulebook says to do? Make your own house rules/armies.

You feel like you want to run a space marine 9th company of devastators? Use devastator squads as troops.
7th assault company? use assault squads as troops.
There were like... 4 sub-faction army lists based around the 3.0 imperial guard codex, 5 if you count codex catachans. space marines had 8 sub-faction lists for their 3rd edition codex, some of which were their own codex.
chaos had about 7 sub-faction army lists for their 3.0 codex

**kirotheavenger**

BanjoJohn wrote:

If you wanted a specific sub-faction or force, then having a different army list for that sub-faction which lays out what count as Troops for them is the way you'd play it.

For example, bike squads are "Troops" for Raven Wing, Terminators are "Troops" for Death Wing.

I think this completely defeats the point of the FOC though.
If the point of the FOC is to impose some lore-accurate forces and thus you give every Tom Dick & Harry a special exception to the FOC - why even bother? You might as well have open list building then, and you have the added bonus that I can run whatever lore-friendly army I want without first needing GW to okay it. The FOC isn't doing anything useful if used in this way.

Conversely, if we look at the FOC as a means of preventing unfun skew - you're not doing anyone any favours by enabling it for SoAndSo Faction. Is a wall of Terminators any less skewed because they're painted bone? Not really.

**Selfcontrol**

FOC is pointless because all factions have sub-factions that justify exceptions to it. Once a general rule has 36 432 exceptions ("my sub-faction can take bikes as Troops !", "mine gets extra Heavy Support slots !", etc.), it loses its meaning entirely. You might as well remove the general rule and replace it with something else (or not, the current abstract system is fine).

**a_typical_hero**

kirotheavenger wrote:
BanjoJohn wrote:

If you wanted a specific sub-faction or force, then having a different army list for that sub-faction which lays out what count as Troops for them is the way you'd play it.

For example, bike squads are "Troops" for Raven Wing, Terminators are "Troops" for Death Wing.

I think this completely defeats the point of the FOC though.
If the point of the FOC is to impose some lore-accurate forces and thus you give every Tom Dick & Harry a special exception to the FOC - why even bother? You might as well have open list building then, and you have the added bonus that I can run whatever lore-friendly army I want without first needing GW to okay it. The FOC isn't doing anything useful if used in this way.

Conversely, if we look at the FOC as a means of preventing unfun skew - you're not doing anyone any favours by enabling it for SoAndSo Faction. Is a wall of Terminators any less skewed because they're painted bone? Not really.

By moving around battlefield roles for themed lists, you are also able to build in drawbacks, like not allowing "slow" units in a Biker list unless they start the game in a transport or requiring a minimum amount of slots filled with unit x.

**BanjoJohn**

kirotheavenger wrote:
BanjoJohn wrote:

If you wanted a specific sub-faction or force, then having a different army list for that sub-faction which lays out what count as Troops for them is the way you'd play it.

For example, bike squads are "Troops" for Raven Wing, Terminators are "Troops" for Death Wing.

I think this completely defeats the point of the FOC though.
If the point of the FOC is to impose some lore-accurate forces and thus you give every Tom Dick & Harry a special exception to the FOC - why even bother? You might as well have open list building then, and you have the added bonus that I can run whatever lore-friendly army I want without first needing GW to okay it. The FOC isn't doing anything useful if used in this way.

Conversely, if we look at the FOC as a means of preventing unfun skew - you're not doing anyone any favours by enabling it for SoAndSo Faction. Is a wall of Terminators any less skewed because they're painted bone? Not really.

Selfcontrol wrote:FOC is pointless because all factions have sub-factions that justify exceptions to it. Once a general rule has 36 432 exceptions ("my sub-faction can take bikes as Troops !", "mine gets extra Heavy Support slots !", etc.), it loses its meaning entirely. You might as well remove the general rule and replace it with something else (or not, the current abstract system is fine).

kirotheavenger wrote:
BanjoJohn wrote:

If you wanted a specific sub-faction or force, then having a different army list for that sub-faction which lays out what count as Troops for them is the way you'd play it.

For example, bike squads are "Troops" for Raven Wing, Terminators are "Troops" for Death Wing.

I think this completely defeats the point of the FOC though.
If the point of the FOC is to impose some lore-accurate forces and thus you give every Tom Dick & Harry a special exception to the FOC - why even bother? You might as well have open list building then, and you have the added bonus that I can run whatever lore-friendly army I want without first needing GW to okay it. The FOC isn't doing anything useful if used in this way.

Conversely, if we look at the FOC as a means of preventing unfun skew - you're not doing anyone any favours by enabling it for SoAndSo Faction. Is a wall of Terminators any less skewed because they're painted bone? Not really.

Built in to the FOC for specific sub-faction army lists is not only the benefit of having certain units as troops, but limiting certain units as well. For example, you can't take 3 predators, 3 whirlwinds, 3 demolishers and 3 land raiders in your army, all of them take 1 Heavy Support choice, unless you have 4 detachments.

Flexibility to represent specific factions, limitations for that faction.

**Haighus**

a_typical_hero wrote:
kirotheavenger wrote:
BanjoJohn wrote:

If you wanted a specific sub-faction or force, then having a different army list for that sub-faction which lays out what count as Troops for them is the way you'd play it.

For example, bike squads are "Troops" for Raven Wing, Terminators are "Troops" for Death Wing.

I think this completely defeats the point of the FOC though.
If the point of the FOC is to impose some lore-accurate forces and thus you give every Tom Dick & Harry a special exception to the FOC - why even bother? You might as well have open list building then, and you have the added bonus that I can run whatever lore-friendly army I want without first needing GW to okay it. The FOC isn't doing anything useful if used in this way.

Conversely, if we look at the FOC as a means of preventing unfun skew - you're not doing anyone any favours by enabling it for SoAndSo Faction. Is a wall of Terminators any less skewed because they're painted bone? Not really.

By moving around battlefield roles for themed lists, you are also able to build in drawbacks, like not allowing "slow" units in a Biker list unless they start the game in a transport or requiring a minimum amount of slots filled with unit x.

This is the key part, although I think it does highlight the challenge with the FOC in trying to achieve two things at once- improve balance, and make lists fit lore themes better. If you have lists for each archetype, it does make the FOC worse at balancing, although maintains its function for theming by, as you say, restricting options. Whilst restricting the options can also keep the balance better, by definition some thematic lore forces like armoured companies are just going to trend towards skew and making that not become a list that either wins big or loses badly is tough.

I think the key is mission design, which someone mentioned above. You can build in extra mission requirements for thematic skew lists to balance them, like the Siege Objective for Siege Assault Vanguard lists in 5th edition. Regardless of the rest of the mission being played, if the Siege Assault Vanguard didn't hold the Siege Objective at the end of the game they couldn't win. That said, this does run into the other problem already mentioned in which a lot of people don't find wargaming satisfying if they can't destroy enemy units, so winning through surviving and objective management does not make for an enjoyable game for many.

I don't think it is possible to balance all of these concerns. Not everyone wants the same thing out of a wargame. I like FOCs accompanied by multiple missions that interact with the FOC in different ways and don't rely on destruction to win, and multiple themed lists per faction representing archetypes that fill the FOC in a way that makes sense for each archetype. Others do not.

**Selfcontrol**

Built in to the FOC for specific sub-faction army lists is not only the benefit of having certain units as troops, but limiting certain units as well. For example, you can't take 3 predators, 3 whirlwinds, 3 demolishers and 3 land raiders in your army, all of them take 1 Heavy Support choice, unless you have 4 detachments.

No it won't be.

Your entire point about FOC is disconnected from reality. The reality is that, in order to allow certain sub-factions to build themed army lists, it will be circumvented by GW through other means, exactly as has happened before. A Tank Commander will become an HQ choice, a Leman Russ will become a Troop choice (which can convinently be also put into a Heavy Support slot so that the player can double down on Leman Russes), with only artillery vehicles being the units filling only the Heavy Support slots, thereby distorting the FOC until it becomes little more than an empty shell.

The FOC is a rigid system that only works if the rules writers strictly adhere to that rigidity. We live in the real world, and we all know that GW's writers will not maintain that level of strictness (which is exactly what happened to the FOC in the past).

The FOC is a fun, casual rule set for games with friends where they all agree to abide to it in order to achieve a specific gaming experience. That's it. Everything else is pure fantasy.

**Haighus**

Selfcontrol wrote:
Built in to the FOC for specific sub-faction army lists is not only the benefit of having certain units as troops, but limiting certain units as well. For example, you can't take 3 predators, 3 whirlwinds, 3 demolishers and 3 land raiders in your army, all of them take 1 Heavy Support choice, unless you have 4 detachments.

No it won't be.

Your entire point about FOC is disconnected from reality. The reality is that, in order to allow certain sub-factions to build themed army lists, it will be circumvented by GW through other means, exactly as has happened before. A Tank Commander will become an HQ choice, a Leman Russ will become a Troop choice (which can convinently be also put into a Heavy Support slot so that the player can double down on Leman Russes), with only artillery vehicles being the units filling only the Heavy Support slots, thereby distorting the FOC until it becomes little more than an empty shell.

The FOC is a rigid system that only works if the rules writers strictly adhere to that rigidity. We live in the real world, and we all know that GW's writers will not maintain that level of strictness (which is exactly what happened to the FOC in the past).

The FOC is a fun, casual rule set for games with friends where they all agree to abide to it in order to achieve a specific gaming experience. That's it. Everything else is pure fantasy.

If we are expecting continuity from GW rules writing as a prerequisite for discussing rules mechanics we may as well not bother. GW doesn't reliably stick to any paradigm. They explicitly churn through a 3 year edition cycle nowadays, and happily alter the game wholesale when they feel like it.

**Wyldhunt**

Playing catchup on the thread, so sorry if this ends up being kind of a long one. (Well. Longer than my rambling posts already are by default.)

Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:Or alternatively, I swing in the opposite direction and think that if we're going to impose GW's vision of what a "thematic list" is onto the rules, we should really lean into it. Create a bunch of relatively specific detachments each with their own force org chart that allows more of certain thematic units and makes less thematic units harder to field en masse. Almost Boarding Action style.
I strongly support this.
...
Maybe even insert additional gameplay restrictions into those "skewed" formations - perhaps the 1st Company force loses VP from their final total if X% of their units are destroyed/battleshocked. Perhaps the 10th Company need to accomplish an additional objective, or they lose VP. Something - something to say "hey, you CAN skew into this fluffy detachment, but you need to commit to it, and it'll be made harder in some ways to win".
...
This is just for Space Marines. I'm sure that the same could be done for the other armies - Imperial Guard with their platoon structure, Orks following bosses in smaller splinter warbands, etc. This is the sort of stuff I liked about formations - scrap all the "if I take these units I was already taking, I get extra buffs" nonsense.

Yeah. This is more or less what I picture. You don't necessarily have to give the more specialized army themes drawbacks if they're balanced enough without them, but the lever is there if you need it. So if GW really wanted to make the armored company an option, you'd make it one of the core detachments available, but then you'd give it some additional, more vehicle-y rules to make it more interactive in a random pickup game. Maybe you add a mechanic that defines "rear armor" so you can nod to the old armor facing system, but in a "bad way" that gives all those tanks a weak spot for S4 weapons to interact with. Stuff like that. I think you can keep some amount of buffs as part of your core detachments as a way of helping to lean into a theme and creating an opportunity cost. So the oops all terminators detachment can get less appealing buffs than the vanilla demi company detachment or whatever, but now you have a slot for doing something fluffy with a teleportation strike, or that armored company can have a place to put some rules that nod to the old Defensive Weapons thing or whatever.

I like the idea of thematic detachments that have you take thematic units. If we're not going to give people the freedom to take the units they want and define that theme for themselves, then some tighter restrictions to help make the army feel like it fits the theme makes a certain amount of sense. Basically, don't pretend the FOC is good at representing most/any thematic army. Instead, explicitly state what themes of army are available and support them while putting unit restrictions in place. Now you don't have to worry about skew lists outside of the detachment designed to make them play nice with the rest of the game.

Orkeosaurus wrote:
But what I hate is this:

Haighus wrote:
I want to point out that both the Iybrasil and Scorpius examples you give could be comfortably played in 3rd (the edition that added FOCs) using the Swordwind list in Codex: Craftworld Eldar (this swapped near enough all Aspects into troops, except Shining Spears and Swooping Hawks). Whilst the list was named after Biel-Tan, the codex specifically mentioned all the lists were archetypes that could be found in any Eldar craftworld.
Then why is it restricted for everyone else? GW tells me that it's not unbalanced to have 9 squads of scorpions, because that's why Biel-Tan is allowed to have it. Okay I accept that. So why am I forced to call my Craftworld Scorpius army "Biel-Tan" in order to take the scorpions that my fluff says they're entitled to? Why do I have to awkwardly explain to my opponent that my purple and orange eldar models are "counts-as Biel-Tan" but are actually my own craftworld from my blog, but they need to take a bunch of scorpions and only "Biel-Tan" are allowed to do that?

To be fair, this is just a presentation issue. If you're fine with the "Biel-Tan rules" but don't want to call them that, they could just as easily be called the "Aspect Host rules" instead. At which point, the idea is basically that you can choose for your army's "theme" or "detachment" or whatever we're claling it to be that they field aspect warriors where most eldar lists field guardians.

Hellebore wrote:Your argument is because you can conceive of some combos they are possible and should be accessible. I can conceive of a 4 cornered triangle, doesn't give it any value. Having an idea and that idea being possible are 2 separate things.

every player has their own definition of what's acceptable from the 'lore' and plenty of power gamers used the lore to justify their broken armies because it's subjective.

The FOC or something like it is the game saying that this setting and IP has a freedom within this scope, rather than letting player fiat dictate.

No other part of the game allows player fiat and this particular part of the game is one of the most heavily tied to IP where there are actual limitations.

I can make up and bs to justify an army of marine scouts carrying plasma cannons, or Gretchin with kustom forcefields and a shock attack gun each.

The ability to invent crap to justify your army is the easiest part of the conversation. Words are cheap

Respectfully, Hellebore, I'm having a little trouble pinning down what your position is. Earlier, it seemed like you were making the case that the FOC was good because it was "fluffy" for forcing people to take some number of troops. Now it seems like you're acknowledging that the fluff can vary wildly and shouldn't be used to justify army building rules.

So are you saying that balance rather than fluff should be the driving factor in army creation rules? If so, then that means the FOC probably wasn't a very good system, right?
Or are you saying that even though fluff (including the fluff of many canon subfactions) shouldn't be a driving factor for the army creation rules, you still want to impose a certain flavor of fluff-based restrictions that happen to force everyone to take some number of troops?
Or am I missing your point entirely?

**Tyel**

I don't think GW ever really considered the FOC a balancing tool. At best it was a mechanism for encouraging people to buy a bit of everything. Although really in this era I think GW's approach to balance was... questionable at best.

FWIW I think the FOC sort of worked in 3rd edition when rosters were much smaller than today, and the theoretical scope for shaping an army was smaller because you were usually playing with fewer points.

Something like Space Marines might have been:
HQ: Commander with Command Squad+Librarian.
Troops: 2 units of Tactical Marines, maybe Rhinos. Unit of Scouts.
Elites: Unit of Terminators. Dreadnought
FA: Unit of Assault Marines. Unit of Bikes+Attack Bike. Land Speeder
Heavy Support: Unit of Devastators, a Predator and maybe a Vindicator.

Dare I say it - but this is a reasonably balanced soft-highlander list of the style you'd read about in that era's White Dwarf and GW would try to sell you in both the codex and stores.

I think this would be quite a large army in 3rd edition - pushing towards 2k points or more when fully blinged out without a single duplicate choice beyond the 2nd tactical squad.

IIRC 1500 was standard towards the start of 3rd, drifting up later in the edition? You might even play just 1000 points (cos stuff was expensive, and you were only 14). So you can sort of "make a theme" by ditching stuff rather than the other way round. If you scrapped say the tanks and terminators, and took a second unit of bikes over the Land Speeder, its starting to look like quite a Bike Heavy army.

Consider say an army of
1 Farseer
Some Warlocks
20 Guardians
10 Wraithguard
2 Wraithlords

Again - blinged out that's probably getting towards 1000 points - and the Wraith theme is quite obvious. For a 1500 point game you aren't getting to add much more.

To be fair its roughly 1000 points today too. But the game is much more clearly written for a 2k points standard.

**Wyldhunt**

OldeSword wrote:

I've seen this sentiment in other threads too. What makes knights such a problem? I can hazard a guess, but I'm not aware of them dominating the tournament scene or anything.

It's the same issue as an armored company list: they're automatically a skew list because they have no units other than big chonky vehicles. Which means that any units your opponent fielded that aren't geared for killing tanks are reduced to action monkeys and sacrificial bodies. If I took, say, some striking scorpions because I wanted to see my cool ninja sneak up on some enemy infantry and get in a sword fight with them, I'm out of luck. The knight army has no infantry to sneak up on. Instead of getting into sword fights, those scorpions are going to spend all game standing around on objectives waiting for an imperial knight to decide to step on them while their S4 swords and pistols bounce off of Their high Toughness bodies.

Which just kind of feels bad. A vanilla game of 40k generally features hyped-up units getting to show off their cool moves as they clash against eachother. Imperial knights turn anyone who isn't a tank killer into just some shmuck standing around waiting to get stepped on. That unit of legendary duelists? They won't cross steel with anyone. That unit of guerilla harrassment units shooting and scooting around cover? You can fish for 6s, but you probably won't do any damage worth mentioning.

**A.T.**

Tyel wrote:
I don't think GW ever really considered the FOC a balancing tool. At best it was a mechanism for encouraging people to buy a bit of everything. Although really in this era I think GW's approach to balance was... questionable at best.

I always thought of it as a 'skew limiter', or more often than not a pie plate limiter.

Also forced choices between flexibility and redundancy and limited the total number of targets in a game without split fire. Though a lot of books tended to be 'best unit' and 'not taken' regardless of FoC.

**Wyldhunt**

Haighus wrote:

This is the key part, although I think it does highlight the challenge with the FOC in trying to achieve two things at once- improve balance, and make lists fit lore themes better. If you have lists for each archetype, it does make the FOC worse at balancing, although maintains its function for theming by, as you say, restricting options. Whilst restricting the options can also keep the balance better, by definition some thematic lore forces like armoured companies are just going to trend towards skew and making that not become a list that either wins big or loses badly is tough.

Well put. I might be making assumptions here, but I think that what a lot of defenders of the FOC are actually defending is the notion of a system that forces an army to fit into a broad, well-rounded shape. They want a system that prevents you from fielding oops-all-tanks, encourages you to take at least a few infantry units for your bolters to point at, etc. A lot of the defenders of the FOC seem to be okay with the idea of having a million exceptions to move force org roles around and make things troops so long as it isn't anything too crazy.

And all that makes me think that maybe what they want is a system that doesn't actually restrict theme per se, but instead just promotes balance and helps make random matchups more likely to be satisfyingly close games. Which means they don't actually want the FOC. They want something that targets and prevents/disincentivizes skew. They want something that checks an army list once it's written and goes:

"Ah. I see you're spamming tanks. Let's do something about that."
"Ah. I see that less than X% of your list is T4 or less. Let's make sure your opponent's bolters have something to do."
"Ah. I see that your list contains more models than is recommended for this game size. Here are some rules to avoid turning your game into a stat check."

The FOC doesn't actually do any of that, but I get the impression that this is essentially what FOC defenders hope it will accomplish in a roundabout way.

I think the key is mission design, which someone mentioned above. You can build in extra mission requirements for thematic skew lists to balance them, like the Siege Objective for Siege Assault Vanguard lists in 5th edition. Regardless of the rest of the mission being played, if the Siege Assault Vanguard didn't hold the Siege Objective at the end of the game they couldn't win. That said, this does run into the other problem already mentioned in which a lot of people don't find wargaming satisfying if they can't destroy enemy units, so winning through surviving and objective management does not make for an enjoyable game for many.

I don't think it is possible to balance all of these concerns. Not everyone wants the same thing out of a wargame. I like FOCs accompanied by multiple missions that interact with the FOC in different ways and don't rely on destruction to win, and multiple themed lists per faction representing archetypes that fill the FOC in a way that makes sense for each archetype. Others do not.

While I do think mission design can be a big help (10th was actually pretty successful in making people want to take a mix of units), I'm reluctant to put too much of the burden on mission design. Partly because it's a big ask to get right in the first place, partly because it's hard to make a mission for every general sort of matchup (this seems to be sorta kinda what 11th is going for?) and partly because playing the same mission against your opponent with the limited collection every game would get dull.

**kirotheavenger**

I don't think mission design can really help. Winning doesn't make a naff evening fun.

It's like Necrons in Battlefleet Gothic - incredibly obscenely powerful fleet, but they had a special rule that if they suffered enough damage they automatically lost.
So they'd run rings around their opponents and beat the holy snot out of them, but still "lose" because their opponent doing half as much in return was considered a victory.
That didn't make the Necrons fun to fight though, it just feels like a cheap pity victory.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wyldhunt wrote:

And all that makes me think that maybe what they want is a system that doesn't actually restrict theme per se, but instead just promotes balance and helps make random matchups more likely to be satisfyingly close games. Which means they don't actually want the FOC. They want something that targets and prevents/disincentivizes skew. They want something that checks an army list once it's written and goes:

"Ah. I see you're spamming tanks. Let's do something about that."
"Ah. I see that less than X% of your list is T4 or less. Let's make sure your opponent's bolters have something to do."
"Ah. I see that your list contains more models than is recommended for this game size. Here are some rules to avoid turning your game into a stat check."

The FOC doesn't actually do any of that, but I get the impression that this is essentially what FOC defenders hope it will accomplish in a roundabout way.

I think I'd agree with the characterisation... but what system would you propose? How would the game control what forces you bring unless it has some kind of structure about your force organisation?
A force organisation chart can absolutely do all of those things.
"You can't spam tanks, you've only got 4 tank slots", "you need to bring some infantry, there's a compulsory slot/you don't have enough tanks not to", "You can't bring that many conscript blobs, there aren't enough slots for that" -- or whatever.

I wonder if there's some confusion of terms here?
When I say "force organisation chart" I mean the general concept. But I wonder if others are using it to mean literally GW's exact implementation from prior editions?
I also think GW's previous tendency to hand out special rules undermining their FOC is a slightly separate matter, and certainly in no way inherent to the FOC.

1st edition Horus Heresy had a much better approach to themed armies than just "you're now allowed Leman Russes as troops". It had Rites of War that often came with some real brutal restrictions