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a_typical_hero wrote: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.

Tyel wrote: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.

Wyldhunt wrote: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.

Thank you all (and everyone else who chimed in but whom I didn't quote) for the insight. I suspected it might be something like that - but it sounds even worse than I thought. The idea that my opponent's army should have always have something to do is an interesting one for list-building, but the overarching goal remains that everyone should have fun.

I did say earlier that I think that an oppressive albeit fluffy army should not be allowed. It stings when it is something that I like, but it still applies. I guess they'll be a cool painting project or something to pull out for doubles or 3000-point games where there's room for an allied detachment of super heavies. Is there even a way to add an allied Lord of War in 11e?

kirotheavenger wrote: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 wrote: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!

Household infantry could be interesting. I just hope that GW would make any household infantry look cool; I am not a fan of the whole "downtrodden peasant" aesthetic that makes me hesitate to play Bretonnia in the Old World. Duncan Rhodes painted up a Solar Auxilia to be a House Griffith infantryman, and it looked pretty good.

GW is at least flirting with the idea of Imperial Knights and Chaos Knights having supporting infantry as the Questor Forgepact detachment gives Imperial Knights up to 500 points of tech-priests and skitarii and the Iconoclast Fiefdom detachment gives Chaos Knights up to 500 points of Damned units.

Wyldhunt wrote: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.

This is a game, and I want everyone to have fun. Ideally, we can have both balanced and thematic armies, since the theme is part of the fun and why we're playing 40k and not some other game, but, if one has to give, I think it's appropriate to sacrifice a bit of fluff to make the game work better. I don't care whether it is one of the old FOCs, a new FOC, or something completely different (though I think what you described could be a FOC since it's just a list of rules). The goal for me, like you said, is that two people should be able to bring their armies to their FLGS, an official tournament, or their buddy's house and play a game without either of them feeling like the whole thing was a waste of time.

Haighus wrote:
The approach of missions encouraging a mix of units is what I mean. You can take skew, but it will not perform well in some missions that it cannot do effectively. If missions are selected randomly, on-the-whole people will naturally make their lists more balanced. Equally, skew lists can be given conditions to balance them in missions they might otherwise dominate. I think the funniest example of this was the 3rd edition Grey Knight rules. They had a bunch of buffs against daemons specifically, so to make it so they didn't just steamroll Chaos players the Chaos player also got buffs to their daemon units like recycling killed units of lesser daemons. Obviously if the Grey Knights were there it was a particularly massive warp rift...

That does sound like a fun example. Both sides get to do their thing.

catbarf wrote:Regardless, the second method is to move away from the listbuilding-in-a-vacuum structure to the game. If a sideboard mechanic meant that you could, when faced with all tanks, swap out all your specials and heavies for anti-tank weapons before the battle begins, that would help a lot with keeping skew from becoming overwhelming. If the designers were smart about allocating options, they could even create a game state where all those whizzbang elite/fast/heavy units have relatively little flexibility, while humble troops have the most capacity to tailor to match the threat, and that would inherently favor taking some regular dudes as a backbone to any force.

The sideboard idea is intriguing. The challenge, I think, would be figuring out points on the fly. Otherwise, it could perhaps be a variation on the "powerful and slow units deploy first, fast attack deploys last" idea where each person takes turns picking a unit from his or her sideboard to counter the other person's as the reconnaissance comes in - or maybe each person deploys a group/category/type at a time.

 Hellebore wrote:
I'm trying to say that the setting limits army formations just as much as gretchin weaponry, but people are arbitrarily giving army formation a freedom they won't give gretchin. It's not a consistent approach. Either the setting has limitations and you work within them or you don't. But to come from the perspective that it does have limitations except when it's not convenient smacks of hypocrisy.

...
If however, it's supposed to be representing the setting of 40k, then, neither stupid army design nor gretchin plasma cannons should be allowed. Those concepts sit within the same thematic limitations - the setting doesn't allow them. Either personal preference is paramount or it's not. Anything else is one person's personal preference gets to take precedence.

 Hellebore wrote:

It just strikes me as a real personal fiat that people are happy with being limited by the Fluff to not using culexus assassins in necron armies, not having sisters of silence with pet blood thirsters, not allowing gretchin to carry plasma cannons, but somehow the in-universe limitations that make it impossible to equip gretchin with plasma cannons don't apply when I want to equip my army with nothing but 15 captains a 9 land raiders.

I think our only real point of disagreement is that I don't believe army restrictions should be written specifically to prevent people from taking stupid but unviable armies. 15 captains in 9 land raiders, Ghaz with 500 grots, and silly stuff like that all falls in that category; I don't see this as a problem because the only time you'll see it on the table is friends doing it for laughs or someone trolling their opponent by losing on purpose. And the addition of restrictions on army-building increases the complexity of the game and often has unintended consequences; the set of rules that you added to prevent a ridiculous joke-army might inadvertently prevent someone from playing an unusual but fluffy and balanced army, and I don't think that risk is worth it.

That's not to say I think the list-building rules should be changed to accommodate these armies either, I think they should just be ignored from a rules-standpoint. So I'm fine with the fact that Rule of 3 doesn't allow Ghaz with 500 grots, but I'm equally fine if Rule of 3 does allow 15 captains in 9 land raiders because to me neither is a serious army played in a serious game.

The problem arises when, say, changes to the mission rules suddenly make 15 captains in 9 land raiders a decent pick for winning games. Now the stupid and unthematic army might reasonably appear in serious games, which hurts the fun of the players who enjoy the fluff (or even just the visuals of an army that doesn't look dumb on the table). Now I would say the rules must change, either to restrict list-building or change the mission-rules until this sort of army is no longer usable/viable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:
Regardless, the second method is to move away from the listbuilding-in-a-vacuum structure to the game. If a sideboard mechanic meant that you could, when faced with all tanks, swap out all your specials and heavies for anti-tank weapons before the battle begins, that would help a lot with keeping skew from becoming overwhelming. If the designers were smart about allocating options, they could even create a game state where all those whizzbang elite/fast/heavy units have relatively little flexibility, while humble troops have the most capacity to tailor to match the threat, and that would inherently favor taking some regular dudes as a backbone to any force.

You could make it simpler than that: the datasheets that comprise your army are static but all options within a datasheet are selected at deployment. So you always have your 4 squads of guard infantry but you can select flamers or meltaguns at the deployment step. (Obviously if options cost points you cannot take a more expensive one, though you could probably take a cheaper one.)

That would bolt-on very easily to the current set-up, only speedbump would be the need for extra models (though a sideboard would require that too).

If we didn't play a tournament/mass model game, a good way of fixing the one weapon too good or tank/knights invunerable to all weapons is to hand out "anti infantry/anti vehicle/anti monster" to more weapons. Let melta and Lascanons "kill" vehicles but be worthless vs infantry by most elite of elite (custodes, most veteran of veteran terminators/HQs), give hvy bolters (and other factions version of the gun) anti infantry, give anti tank to Autocanons, make "rocket launchers" the middle weapon with both traits, but with a damage that would be more chip. Create (those could be faction/special unit specific) over spill weapons, str 4 D4 ap1, but if it ain't saved it kills two 2wound guys. Give weapons more non damage effect (for melee weapons too). Enhance battleshocks, lower M (the suppresor autocanon is a good example of a rule, maybe all autocanons should have), if weapon Xs hit/ wound/ kill someone from the squad the next batch of damage from same type of weapon or same weapon group is either/or +XD,+XAP. Would help differentiate weapons, and move us away from "always take only weapon X, because all other are mechanicaly inferior in every way". What if swords would hit faster and axes got an extra AP on charge? and then on top of that add even more rare weapons, but with actual rules that work and non of that on +6 (meaning without re-rolls and 4+ attacks the rule may as well not exist ).

But we are in a tournament game era. Meaning that the optimal list is almost always a highlander .A nd if it isn't for some reason, GW will make it so, after enough of the models that cause the 3 or more spam, are sold. I hate how samey armies felt in 10th, how certain detachments were clones of each other. Now we moved on to "we fix units with 1DP detachments", and while better, it does make me wonder, why not just (I know why because some people would not buy 3 or more of a unit) put the rules on the models data card. Why can't the Emp Champion just have the rules of his detachment, or why can't custodes dreads just have +2M?

The unit costs more for taking X number of it is a good idea, but the as with many ideas it is brought to life with the usual GW proficiancy. Because units X in army Y, have Z extra points for 2-3, then in army A the same will happen to unit B. Now this may not make sense for army A (because it has fewer unit options, the unit B isn't/wasn't a problem), while at other times you get the confusing (and clearly linked to new model sells) things like venetari or custodes jetbikes having not extra point cost for taking 3.

In general I expect the same stuff we had in 9th and 10th. The same (maybe faster) turn over of units. Same "OP release" go buy 3, followed by a nerf. Popular ways to play an army getting nerfed, without being given anything in return. Faction defining ways of playing (DWK will pay whole edition for 10th ed "sins") being relegated to very bad or worse. And also the more emotional one linked to despositions, when army X gets the right desposition (powerful, and the way the list&players want to play), while others wonder why they have to play assets, or worse recon, with a highly elite army.

A similar, but maybe more natural and immersive way (instead of gating the effectiveness of a weapon behind a keyword) would be to make "horde" armies actually hordy, so you would need to bring Flamers and Heavy bolters and such things in a balanced TAC list.

You only get 2,67 Termagants for 1 Intercessor. This doesn't scream "horde" to me. And please correct me, as I haven't played 10th edition, but this isn't enough to justify taking a Flamer over a Lascannon, where possible.

There's a lot more to it than that. Units that kill big stuff are often also good at killing small stuff on top. Beefy melee monsters who can crack tanks get sweep profiles to ensure hordes can't pin them down. Light guns often come essentially for free on top of heavy guns, like the myriad peashooters on a Repulsor Executioner.

Also, beefy stuff gets better detachment support. Horde detachments get nerfed quickly if they get remotely strong.

At the danger of white knighting, there is an argument that horde-meta (typically a Jail list) breaks the game arguably worse than Knights for casuals just as much as the pro-scene.

I agree the crying from pro's can be a bit false. "Nothing can be done about this, theatrical raising of hand to forehead." "But couldn't you just take lots of anti-horde options?" "No, because me and all my friends want to run a 7 unit deathstar Purge the Foe lists, not deal with your 200+ model 28 units nonsense".

But for casual games... this can be oppressive.
Fighting something like:
1 Tervigon (I know they kind of suck, but it fits the theme.)
1 Deathleaper
1 Lictors
1 Lictors
3 Von Ryan’s Leapers
3 Von Ryan’s Leapers
3 Von Ryan’s Leapers
10 Genestealers
10 Genestealers
10 Gargoyles
10 Gargoyles
10 Gargoyles
10 Termagants
10 Termagants
10 Termagants
10 Termagants
10 Termagants
10 Termagants
10 Hormagaunts
10 Hormagaunts
10 Hormagaunts
10 Hormagaunts
11 Neurogants
11 Neurogants
11 Neurogants
3 Venothropes
3 Venothropes
3 Venothropes

Might be fun - because a lot of that army will die to a stiff breeze and most of it can't really punch its way out of a paper bag. But if your army winds up stuck in your deployment zone the whole game so they score 100 points to your sub 50.... you might be a bit annoyed.

Tbh the "your unit must stay within a 9" circle" probably undermines jail lists enough to the point they aren't an issue (since you can just jog past them) - but the fear goes on.

I liked the FoC in theory.

I think part of the issue was that it didn't scale with either game size or expanding rosters.

On the latter, 2 HQs and 3 elites per army was fine when many armies only had 3-4 elite units. However, when they started to introduce a lot of demi-characters then it became much more difficult to fit them (along with the army-leader type HQs and the actual elite units you'd want). There were some workarounds (e.g. some demi-HQs were 3+ to an HQ slot), but overall it was still clunky. Feels like a better fix might have been to let you take 1-2 demi-HQs for each 'main' HQ in your army.

There was also the issue that the FoC never changed or expanded. It was the same at 500pts and 3000pts. One feels that both the maximum and minimum unit requirements should have scaled with the point value. e.g. minimum 1HQ and 1 Troop at 500pts, 1 HQ and 2 Troops at 1000pts, 1 HQ and 3 troops at 1500pts, 2 HQs and 4 troops at 2000pts etc. (with e.g. the maximums for Elites, FA and HS being 1 for every 500pts - and Max Troops being double that).

Still not perfect but might have helped a bit.

You can argue for other variants for specific armies (e.g. the various biker/jetbiker subfactions), but I think this version of the FoC would have been a more solid scaling core.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Regardless, the second method is to move away from the listbuilding-in-a-vacuum structure to the game. If a sideboard mechanic meant that you could, when faced with all tanks, swap out all your specials and heavies for anti-tank weapons before the battle begins, that would help a lot with keeping skew from becoming overwhelming. If the designers were smart about allocating options, they could even create a game state where all those whizzbang elite/fast/heavy units have relatively little flexibility, while humble troops have the most capacity to tailor to match the threat, and that would inherently favor taking some regular dudes as a backbone to any force.

You could make it simpler than that: the datasheets that comprise your army are static but all options within a datasheet are selected at deployment. So you always have your 4 squads of guard infantry but you can select flamers or meltaguns at the deployment step. (Obviously if options cost points you cannot take a more expensive one, though you could probably take a cheaper one.)

That would bolt-on very easily to the current set-up, only speedbump would be the need for extra models (though a sideboard would require that too).

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I had in mind. If they're really against putting points on wargear, might as well make leverage the concept that wargear options are interchangeable and make it part of the gameplay.

As a bonus, it means they don't actually have to make, say, a plasma gun and a flamer equally appealing for a TAC list. It's okay if you'll pick the plasma gun most of the time and the flamer only when it's situationally useful, because now you've made it a tactical decision during deployment rather than a trap choice during listbuilding.

But I think this would require forgoing WYSIWYG because expecting players to have lots of alternate sculpts (or magnetized arms) is a bit much.

a_typical_hero wrote:A similar, but maybe more natural and immersive way (instead of gating the effectiveness of a weapon behind a keyword) would be to make "horde" armies actually hordy, so you would need to bring Flamers and Heavy bolters and such things in a balanced TAC list.

You only get 2,67 Termagants for 1 Intercessor. This doesn't scream "horde" to me.

Personally, I like when the designers remember that these are not ephemeral videogame characters, but physical models that cost money and take a lot of time and effort to put on the table. If I'm going to spend an hour painting a model I'd like it to be more than a 3pt speed bump to fulfill Marine power fantasies, especially when said model represents a 400lb bioengineered killing machine.

Besides, what makes a horde army a horde army isn't just how cheap the basic infantry are in relation to those of other factions, it's the fact that you're spending more points on basic infantry than elite stuff. For the cost of a Captain, 10 Intercessors, and a Redemptor I can nearly field 80 Termagants. That seems plenty horde-y to me.

An issue with sideboards and equipment swapping is factions that don’t have variety, especially in gear.

JNA beat me to it. But I think sideboards are still a good idea. You can always make part of your sideboard be an alternate loadout for a unit you're already taking if you want, but armies that don't really do marine style loadout variety can swap in new units entirely instead.

Personally, I like when the designers remember that these are not ephemeral videogame characters, but physical models that cost money and take a lot of time and effort to put on the table. If I'm going to spend an hour painting a model I'd like it to be more than a 3pt speed bump to fulfill Marine power fantasies, especially when said model represents a 400lb bioengineered killing machine.

I might be in the minority, but I actually kind of liked respawn mechancis for horde lists. It kept your opponent from having more than X models on the table at a given time, but it still captured that feeling of the enemy being "endless." It also sort of indirectly conveyed this idea that the enemy was *so* numerous they couldn't help but arrive piecemeal. It forged that narrative pretty effectively.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
JNA beat me to it. But I think sideboards are still a good idea. You can always make part of your sideboard be an alternate loadout for a unit you're already taking if you want, but armies that don't really do marine style loadout variety can swap in new units entirely instead.

Personally, I like when the designers remember that these are not ephemeral videogame characters, but physical models that cost money and take a lot of time and effort to put on the table. If I'm going to spend an hour painting a model I'd like it to be more than a 3pt speed bump to fulfill Marine power fantasies, especially when said model represents a 400lb bioengineered killing machine.

I might be in the minority, but I actually kind of liked respawn mechancis for horde lists. It kept your opponent from having more than X models on the table at a given time, but it still captured that feeling of the enemy being "endless." It also sort of indirectly conveyed this idea that the enemy was *so* numerous they couldn't help but arrive piecemeal. It forged that narrative pretty effectively.

It's cool in theory.

However, a lot of the time it just means you bring on some melee units from your table edge far too late in the game for them to actually get across the board and accomplish anything.

Sideboards I think work great BUT they need a good delivery system into the game

GW has kind of done this already with things like drop pods; tunnels; teleporting; air transports and so forth. Though right now they are fixed compositions already present in your army. You can't switch up from termagaunts to genestealers emerging from your tunnels.


The benefit of a sideboard system in my view is that
1) It can allow you to bring more niche/situational models. The models that don't make it into the 2K list because they are not generalists; but which are great in specific matchups.

2) It lets you bring more of a collection to a game even if you're not getting to play with it all

This assumes that the sideboard is always larger than what you could deploy through the entire game; thus having slots/points within it that are free choice.



However I think that GW would need some big changes to how they do stats, unit loadouts and points. Sideboards in my view, work best with a simpler stats system and very few unit upgrades. This keeping the points and slots simple so that its easier to swap things in and out.
GW's current style is just a touch too complex and open to abuse right now..

Generally people who are not playing the horde list like recycling hordes because it's not very good.

I feel recycling works for GSC - which would suggest the issue could be mitigated by giving the recycling units deepstrike.

I'm a bit cynical on sideboards from a practicality perspective. First of all it feels a bit pay to win in that you obviously benefit if you have thousands of extra points of models that you can "swap to". And as JNA says, you clearly create a balance issue in how "good" your sideboard options are and how effective this potential list tailoring can be by faction. The second issue is bringing all these extra models along to a store/tournament/even just your friend's house isn't a trivial matter. (I think this another reason why Hordes are largely disdained by the pro-scene. Its generally easier to transport a small elite army.)

Now I'm sure you could say "if we reduced the game size down to 1500 with a 500 point sideboard you'd only need to own/transport a 2k points army like now". But I'm still not sure I'd like it.

Tyel wrote:
I feel recycling works for GSC - which would suggest the issue could be mitigated by giving the recycling units deepstrike.

Yeah, it might be better if the new units have a viable way onto the board.

Otherwise, it's probably only going to be useful for Infantry Guard or other shooty-horde lists.

Recycling needs two things to work

1) Be a universal concept for the whole game. Otherwise you run the risk that the recycled units are just wasted chaff that "do nothing but die" and people don't like building huge numbers of pure chaff like that.

2) Have means to enter the mid-table region at the very least. Ideally being able to pop up all over the place works. This just keeps the game flowing well and allows those fresh units to get stuck into the fight instead of spending 1-2 turns just getting to it.


With a game lasting only around 6 turns that is not very long at all for a unit to appear; move; engage; perform in the game. Especially when the are more likely to appear in turn 2 or 3 and thus already a good half way through the game.


I do like the idea of recycling; it introduces tactics like sacrificial units which changes a lot of meta-theory and unit value calculations. It also introduces the idea of not killing your opponents unit (can't recycle that which isn't dead yet).

However I also feel like it works in a game with a greater number of total turns and perhaps more of a skirmish/small battle approach. Big wargames I think can work with it; but might get very messy to play/might slow down game pace considerably.

 Overread wrote:
1) Be a universal concept for the whole game. Otherwise you run the risk that the recycled units are just wasted chaff that "do nothing but die" and people don't like building huge numbers of pure chaff like that.

Regenerating units perhaps. Blobs of gaunts and the like regaining numbers unless wiped out.

Tervigons kind of did it but ended up with a whole load of randomly sized mini-units tied to MCs. Crons had their own variations on the theme. Daemons didn't but could have.

Guard and orks feel a bit more like board-edge spawners - while it's not great for units getting up into the combat it does encourage an aggressive style of not keeping units back to hold objectives knowing that you'll get a second wave into your table quarter as the game goes on.

A.T. wrote:
while it's not great for units getting up into the combat it does encourage an aggressive style of not keeping units back to hold objectives knowing that you'll get a second wave into your table quarter as the game goes on.

I have to agree with the others. This sounds nice and thematic, but it didn't work in editions that had scoring at the end (and a respawning unit could grab an objective or table quarter) of a six-turn game, let alone now that we have progressive scoring and one less turn to work with.

I think it was 5th Ed where you could buy... Without Number, I think it was called, to make a unit of Gaunts respawn when destroyed. Problem was, even if you were really aggressive and got the unit wiped out by turn 2, you were optimistically looking at turn 4 before the replacement unit could get in a position to do anything useful- and both the original unit and replacement were, of course, weaker than just spending those points on more bodies. It just wasn't worth losing capability in turns 1-2 to be more relevant in turns 4-6.

In general though I would be interested in seeing other ways to make horde armies feel 'horde-y'. In Spearhead (for AOS) most factions have at least one unit that can be brought back after it gets wiped out, and it's a fun mechanic that makes the game feel less alpha-strike-dominated. But it works there because the board is 22x17, so you regularly see units getting wiped out turn 1, brought back turn 2, and immediately charging back into combat where they can remain relevant for the rest of the game.

Not sure about regeneration either; when a basic Marine averages killing almost 2 Gaunts or Guardsmen on his own it's just not hard to take out a squad of 20 in one turn.

I wouldn't mind a FOC system similar to what Heresy has now, where you have to take 'commander' characters to get the 'good stuff', relatively speaking.

A.T. wrote:

 Overread wrote:
1) Be a universal concept for the whole game. Otherwise you run the risk that the recycled units are just wasted chaff that "do nothing but die" and people don't like building huge numbers of pure chaff like that.

Regenerating units perhaps. Blobs of gaunts and the like regaining numbers unless wiped out.

Tervigons kind of did it but ended up with a whole load of randomly sized mini-units tied to MCs. Crons had their own variations on the theme. Daemons didn't but could have.

Guard and orks feel a bit more like board-edge spawners - while it's not great for units getting up into the combat it does encourage an aggressive style of not keeping units back to hold objectives knowing that you'll get a second wave into your table quarter as the game goes on.

Thing is every single army can justify reinforcements appearing mid-game even into the board. Because that's what real armies do in the setting and its what real world armies do as well. Especially in a sci-fi setting where the concept of things like transports/transportation is very well established.


So pretty much every faction in the game has ways to bring stuff on table. From birthing; teleporting; demonic summoning; tunnelling; drop pods; aircraft; webways; stealthed deployment and a bunch of other methods. They can all pull stuff into the battle in various ways - heck most armies have access to more than one potential method too. The key is if its part of the games mechanics or not; which is purely a game design choice.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
I wouldn't mind a FOC system similar to what Heresy has now, where you have to take 'commander' characters to get the 'good stuff', relatively speaking.

You just need to ensure to not fall into the pitfalls Age of Sigmar did when it tried the same thing! It's had a lot of trouble due to foot heroes generally being weak, and there being an incentive to take as few "detachments" as possible, encouraging the fielding of god models who can bring a kitchen sink of a retinue.

 catbarf wrote:
I think it was 5th Ed where you could buy... Without Number, I think it was called, to make a unit of Gaunts respawn when destroyed.

4th edition. +3 points per model on gaunts worth no more than 8 points each.
They came in automatically on the next turn but had to be wiped out to trigger (you couldn't disband a mauled unit), your table edge only, and your opponent got full victory points each time.

5e nids could create new spawn-points up the table but didn't have without number (and a whole bunch of other reasons why it didn't work). They had the 3d6 bonus gaunts per tervigon per turn mechanic which was wildly unpredictable and was all about getting more units in early rather than having a second wave in reserve.

Perhaps the weirdest respawner of the older editions was Celestine who had the full package of rapid respawn, choice of spawn location, and immediate effectiveness. Killing her just let her teleport across the board and attack something valuable.

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I think the 5e nids was my worst experience of respawning models throughout the various editions. It never felt like you were making any progress - either you were on top of the spawning and just spent every turn shooting the same handful of guant models back into the box or you weren't and the opponent was playing a 2000pt game with 3000pts of models by the end of it (roughly the result of a one-off doubles game that saw a generic all-comers lists run against five termigaunts and nine spyders).

I think it's also important to remember that the Tervigon doesn't actually solve the problem we were discussing.

The (theoretical) benefit of respawn mechanics is that a player needs fewer models to have a horde army because some of their units will be recycled, rather than starting play on the table.

Things like Tervigons are the opposite - they need additional models so that they can generate an unknown number of extra gaunts during the game.

In terms of respawn mechanics in general, I think most are doomed to fail because they don't account for the fact that having models on the board immediately is usually far more valuable than having them arrive later (missing turns of movement, shooting, combat, objective holding etc.).

Generally, the units you want to arrive later are ones that make up for it by being able to bring considerable firepower on the turn they arrive. Ideally also having a useful deployment method - e.g. Scions arriving by deep strike to immediately get within optimum range for Plasma/Meltas.

There is rarely any advantage to having units of melee infantry slog on from your own board edge, 3-4 turns too late.

I do wonder, though, if something between respawning gaunts and the Tervigon would work? e.g. if gaunts had to respawn but could do so from a Tervigon or perhaps from a Mawloc hole. Definitely not without issue, but would potentially allow them to return much closer to the action, rather than having to slog all the way from a board edge.

It also just bugs me because I feel like the design of my army is being warped to fit the power fantasy of my enemy killing bucket loads of my dudes who are endlessly respawning.

It feels like a mechanic designed to make my opponent feel cool, rather than me.

 vipoid wrote:
Generally, the units you want to arrive later are ones that make up for it by being able to bring considerable firepower on the turn they arrive. Ideally also having a useful deployment method - e.g. Scions arriving by deep strike to immediately get within optimum range for Plasma/Meltas.

Alpha strike from reserves needs counter-play though.

Teleport beacons, icons, gateways, etc. Every other book seemed to have a different set of rules tied to it, most of them in oldhammer hampered by the fact that the units held back could randomly be pushed into the game before their time or be unavailable when needed.

vipoid wrote:
I do wonder, though, if something between respawning gaunts and the Tervigon would work? e.g. if gaunts had to respawn but could do so from a Tervigon or perhaps from a Mawloc hole. Definitely not without issue, but would potentially allow them to return much closer to the action, rather than having to slog all the way from a board edge.

That would be cool!

What was wrong with the early 10th approach exactly? I know that several of the "horde" detachments had strats for respawning units, and they all got nerfed a while back to be once per game. But spending some CP to stick a bunch of guardsmen or gaunts into strategic reserves after they died seemed like a solid way to represent the fantasy of a horde of dudes on paper. It meant they had a way of returning to the game from mid-field (or from the enemy deployment zone if you were late enough into the game), but it also had a CP cost as a balancing factor. And because you got more bang for your buck using it on a large unit, it encouraged you to field big squads, which in turn helped add to the general vibe of being surrounded by lots and lots of swarmy critters. I imagine that there was a balance concern at the time, but I'm struggling to recall what that would have been. Was it just the ability to dump a hard-to-remove blob on an objective late game? Because we have enough uppy-downy for me to question how big a deal that would have been at the end of 10th.

Da Boss wrote:It also just bugs me because I feel like the design of my army is being warped to fit the power fantasy of my enemy killing bucket loads of my dudes who are endlessly respawning.

It feels like a mechanic designed to make my opponent feel cool, rather than me.

I hear you. What would you like them to do instead in order to make a horde style of army feel satisfying for the horde player?

Personally, I like playing horde-ish armies from time to time, but I have to adopt a different mentality when piloting them compared to one of my more elite armies. First, a horde is sort of like a "tanky" build. But instead of shrugging off damage entirely, you simply have so many "hit points" (bodies) that you can laugh as your opponent puts a bunch of work into removing only a fraction of your force. And second, I have to think of losing a bunch of bodies as a feature rather than a bug. When I'm running something like my tyranids, letting my opponent see a massive deadpileat the end of the game is a feature rather than a bug. It makes me feel good to know that they got to do the power fantasy of chewing through a horde. But if I win, it means I get the power fantasy of controlling this massive army that simply can't be stopped from achieving its goals (scoring points) even as my enemies bury themselves in expendable corpses. And the neat thing about horde lists is that those two power fantasies aren't mutually exclusive. You can feel good about overwhelming your opponent and winning the game even as they feel good about killing a million models.

Side tangent: The opposite of this is kind of one of the reasons knights as an army can be annoying. The non-knight player usually struggles to kill models making his supposedly elite force feel impotent even if they do eventually drag down a handful of giant stompy robots. A knight army looks at an army of eldar or marines and goes, "You wanted the power fantasy of controlling a horde, right?" When the person who wrote the marine/eldar list probably wanted the power fantasy of controlling a small, elite force instead.

 Da Boss wrote:
It also just bugs me because I feel like the design of my army is being warped to fit the power fantasy of my enemy killing bucket loads of my dudes who are endlessly respawning.

It feels like a mechanic designed to make my opponent feel cool, rather than me.

Entirely fair.

But then, I'd argue that line was crossed when Marines were made W2.

A.T. wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Generally, the units you want to arrive later are ones that make up for it by being able to bring considerable firepower on the turn they arrive. Ideally also having a useful deployment method - e.g. Scions arriving by deep strike to immediately get within optimum range for Plasma/Meltas.

Alpha strike from reserves needs counter-play though.

Teleport beacons, icons, gateways, etc. Every other book seemed to have a different set of rules tied to it, most of them in oldhammer hampered by the fact that the units held back could randomly be pushed into the game before their time or be unavailable when needed.

I'm fine with counterplay for reserve units.

My point was more about the type of units that you want to hold back to enter later, and how they differ significantly from the units that would be returning with 'without number' type rules.

 Da Boss wrote:
It also just bugs me because I feel like the design of my army is being warped to fit the power fantasy of my enemy killing bucket loads of my dudes who are endlessly respawning.

It feels like a mechanic designed to make my opponent feel cool, rather than me.

I do get that, though it does lets you up the ceiling a bit. I can only paint so many Hormagaunts before my brain turns to mush, and respawns let the models get a bit more time on the table.

There are a couple of ways to represent a horde.

You can literally make lots of models a requirement for the army, so the orks are always outnumbering everyone 3:1 or more. that could get expensive given GW's sales policy.

you could do the recycle units thing. Which could be like they come from a board edge, or they teleport into a place within D6" of where the previous unit died. Abstractify what it represents.

you could provide abstract rules to your units that make it harder to remove models, to reflect that 20-ork mobs reflect a lot more orks, so 'killing' some doesn't reduce the effective number of them. It could be any number of things, but a 'mob X' rule that lets you ablatively tank the first X number of wounds per battle round could work. But those tanked wounds could still be used to affect Battleshock, so it's not completely ignored.

You could do a necron style reanimation rule where it reflects that another boy has shown up for the fight to replace the dead one.


I think GW doesn't want to go down the true horde route anymore due to the cost and barrier to entry.