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Yaho,

Came up earlier; rather enamored with the idea but needs a bit of work:

Goals:
1. Remove the capacity for a game to be largely decided during the army list construction stage without recourse by allowing and encouraging active tailoring by it being built into the game
2. Reduce or remove the possibility for an alpha strike to destroy an entire army, by limiting the amount of assets on the table that can execute this
3. Introduce more strategic thought and player action in the opponent's turn, by actually giving the player something to do during the movement phase.
4. Render Game Ending detachments exactly that, only viable at the end of the game, or crippling the ability to score from the outset
5. Enable potentially large scale games allowing for Big Scary Things in smaller venues by drip feeding the table instead of everything all at once.

To do this, remove the fixed army list altogether, instead the following method is introduced:

Players agree to a point limit as normal, termed the Reserve, given to each player.
The Reserve is divided by 7 rounding down, the product defined as the Allocation from hereon.
At certain points during play, the player reduces their Reserve by the Allocation and adds it to a pool called Assets, termed Strategic Allocation. If not enough Reserve is left, the remaining amount is used and the player cannot use Strategic Allocation for the rest of the game.

Before play commences, players trigger the Strategic Allocation rule twice. They may then spend their Assets on at least one complete battle forged detachment. The Warlord MUST be included in this section, as well as any detachments from other factions you want to use. Any models with the Unique attribute must be purchased at this time, you may not add them later in the game.

The warlord and any HQ units are considered Faction Commanders. Where a faction does not have HQ units in its codex, you must instead choose up to 2 codex unit entries to use as Faction Commanders, with priority given (in order) to units which may take Warlord traits, Independent Characters, Elites Choices and then any unit if the faction has none of the above.

At the beginning of an opponent turn, the Player automatically triggers the Strategic Allocation rule. During the opponent movement phase, the player may spend all of their current Assets on whole new units for which they have Faction Commanders on the table (or in transports, including flying transports that have left combat airspace but NOT those otherwise held in reserve). Any random rolls that affect the units profile or abilities such as Daemonic Boons or Psychic Powers are carried out now.

If every one of the opponent's units is in close combat, or all of your units are in close combat, you may not purchase additional units this turn as the grind of sustained assault temporarily overwhelms your army's field command.

Each whole unit is held in reserve with a +1 to its roll so long as your Warlord is alive. To reflect the significance of reserves, the roll for reserve table is adjusted as follows:
turn 1 : may not deploy
turn 2 : 5
turn 3 : 4
turn 4+ : 3
Rules which allow for an automatic turn 1/2 reserve deployment are suspended, and instead come into play on the purchasing player's turn after the unit has been purchased.

When you purchase a new unit with your Assets, you may either assign it to a new complete detachment which must be bought entirely together, or assign it to a detachment with models in play.

For new detachments, you may choose for one unit in the detachment to arrive automatically.

When adding to existing detachments with the exception of the CAD, you must spend an additional 10 points for each unit. In the case of Superheavy Vehicles and Gargantuan Monstrous Creatures you must also spend an additional 40 points for each model including for CAD detachments. Detachments which have lost units may have those units replaced or substituted according to detachment restrictions, but a formation may not be extended beyond its limits. Models bought in this way benefit from any applicable command or formation benefits at the start of the purchasing player's turn.

Purchased Infiltrators may attempt to infiltrate as normal deployment, otherwise automatically outflank. Purchased units with the Scout USR may only outflank.

If all of your Faction Commanders for a specific faction are removed from play, you may not purchase any more units for that faction.

At the start of your turn before rolling for reserves, you can Reassign one of your units in either your opponent deployment zone or your own.A Reassigned unit in the enemy deployment zone returns the whole cost of the unit to your Asset pool as High Command routes more assets to a potential foothold in enemy territory. If it is in your own deployment zone, it returns the basic cost of the unit without upgrades or extra models, or 100 pts (whichever is less) to your asset pool. You may not Reassign a unit after turn 4.

Units that have gone to ground, are pinned, immobilised, fleeing or locked in combat may not be Reassigned. You may not Reassign your Warlord.

At the end of the game, multiply each player's unspent Assets by the number of victory points they have scored, with the winner being decided by the greater total. If a player finishes their player turn with no models left on the table, the opponent wins automatically.

Standard game sizes under this method would be 2100 (for a 600 pt start, 300pts/ turn) and 1400 (for 400pt start 200/turn). Smallest viable would be 700, as every faction I know besides IK can do a CAD with 200 pts. It means that super special characters, super heavy assets, and general Big Scary Things are rocking up late game when the battle is already joined - as a hero would - instead of roving around like a murder hobo. Inversely also makes Unique Characters a chancy investment - typically leading a surgical strike force and then calling in more bodies to do the heavy lifting, but at serious risk of being caught and killed to the destruction of the entire army if used as a simple beatstick.

Thoughts?

That's a lot to break down, and I'm still pretty confused after reading it twice. But hey, it's late here. Maybe I"m just tired. Here are the things that jump out at me:

* The first thing I'm confused on is a biggie. You define the reserve as being a points limit. Am I correct in understanding that these are "raw" unspent points used to purchase models in the middle of the game? If so, doesn't this strongly favor players with a larger model collection? Or do you have specific models set aside rather than raw points?

* "Before play commences, players trigger the Strategic Allocation rule twice. They may then spend their Assets on at least one complete battle forged detachment. The Warlord MUST be included in this section, as well as any detachments from other factions you want to use. Any models with the Unique attribute must be purchased at this time, you may not add them later in the game. "

I don't really understand what most of that means. So you take turns buying units twice, right? And I have to purchase my warlord (and a detachment to contain him) as part of this, but I also have to fit in an HQ from each other detachment I want to include (and presumably their own detachments) as part of this? This seems like it could be problematic for things like my webway portal haemonculus who wants to deepstrike in with a unit of craftworlders. The autarch alone usually runs me around 130 points, and the haemonculus is usually around 100 meaning I'd only have 170 points left to play with. I probably won't be able to join that haemonculus to, say, a decent unit of grotesques or a squad of dragons if I need to fit in 3 troops (2 for a CAD and 1 for an allied detachment) using that 170 point budget before I can take anything else.

* You mention spending your assets in your opponent's movement phase, and I can only spend them on units from a faction that I have a faction commander for. So once my opponent declares the end of the movement phase, is it a "pencils down" situation where I'm not allowed to spend any more points? Or does my opponent sit there waiting for me to finish deciding how to allocate points first? And do the spent points arrive right away (meaning my "sucker punch" units arriving from deepstrike or outflank spend a turn getting shot up and assaulted before they can do anything), or do they arrive on my own following turn? If they arrive on my turn why can't I continue deciding how to allocate points throughout my opponent's turn?

Also, what happens if my opponent manages to shoot the commander of one of my factions off the table? Am I still allowed to purchase, say, dark eldar units if my archon goes down to a lucky scatter laser shot on turn 1? How should a player who has half his collection wrapped up in one faction deal with suddenly being unable to field enough points worth of models to make an even game?

* Being unable to spend points on allocations if all your units are in assault is potentially crippling. It won't be all that hard for some armies (genestealer cults, orks with transports, maybe even dark eldar or other brands of space elves) to pin down a drip-fed army on turn 2 and then continue to produce their own reserves with a unit they left out of combat while their opponent is stuck in an increasingly unfavorable situation.

* Many detachments and formations are too expensive to realistically field in this system. A harlequin Masque, for instance, comes in at something like 700 points if you're going relatively bare bones with it. Which you really shouldn't. I'm not sure there's a single eldar or dark eldar formation I could field with the 200 point per turn budget you list above. Maybe an avengers shrine, but the exarchs would be pushing it.

*I feel like you'll never have a warlord who is also an HQ because you'll want to milk an extra commander out of your forces. Meaning my farseer and archon will always be taking their orders from exarchs and sybarites.

There's a lot more to go into here. I don't think I"m a fan of this suggestion. :( Frequently stopping to work out how you'll spend points seems like a great way to slow the game down and strongly favors collections and armies that have a wide variety of models and unit types. The limitations imposed by the faction commanders seem like they make it very easy for huge chunks of your army to be denied to you and potentially mess up a lot of combos or force really awkward deployment. Harlequins would struggle to put a commander on the table at all. The whole thing feels confusing, slow, overly-complex, and highly-prone to favoring certain army types over others. Imagine tyranids trying to bring in both a synapse creature and non-synapse creature each turn.

Also, did I miss something that allows newly-purchased non-infiltrators/scouts/deepstrikers to meaningfully cross the table after coming in halfway through the game? I'm picturing squads of orks on foot arriving turn 3 or 4 and then spending the whole game trying to jog across the field while a shooty army (which is effective more or less the turn they come in) continues to pick them apart a couple hundred points at a time.

There are some interesting ideas in here, but this execution could stand to be improved quite a bit. Unless I'm misunderstanding the whole thing, which is entirely possible!

If you want to encourage list tailoring, why not use a "sideboard" method wherein you have players prepare 2 or 3 "side lists" and 1 "main list" and then declare which of the side lists they want to use after seeing their opponent's army? Something along those lines. It lets you do all the prep work ahead of time, eats up no additional time once the game begins, allows units that need to start on the table to be effective to start on the table, and still helps you ensure you'll have the tools for a given situation.

I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "drip feed" thing in the first place either. It strongly favors some armies over others and actively prevents some perfectly "fluffy" army concepts. Imagine foot-based tyranids trying to meaningfully engage an ever-growing enemy gunline while they're forced to cross the table. Imagine orks versus tau or daemonkin versus eldar. My dark eldar would never be able to launch a crippling, synchronized assault; they'd instead be shouting at their pals to join in the fight while one or two raiders per turn plink away at a target ineffectually. I see a lot of force commanders hiding behind buildings and going to ground as they desperately try not to die before they can bring in more models. And then a droppod lands behind them, and they get shot up, and then you auto-lose because you only have one faction's worth of models.

Sorry, but this is a lot of work for a system that doesn't address the main problem with list tailoring: the fact that it favors the players with the most money to spend on alternate list-building options. The person who has a 2000 point collection and can only bring a single 1850 list with minor weapon upgrade variations is going to lose every time against a player who has 50,000 points of whatever they want and can always bring the ideal tool for every situation. List tailoring is not a concept that should be saved.

Also, being unable to call in additional units because your opponent's units are in close combat makes no sense at all. If my opponent has a single surviving unit on the table, locked in combat with one of my units while ten of my other units stand around watching why should the "grind of sustained assault" completely break my army's command abilities?

Wyldhunt wrote:
That's a lot to break down, and I'm still pretty confused after reading it twice. But hey, it's late here. Maybe I"m just tired. Here are the things that jump out at me:

Thanks for taking the time

Wyldhunt wrote:

* The first thing I'm confused on is a biggie. You define the reserve as being a points limit. Am I correct in understanding that these are "raw" unspent points used to purchase models in the middle of the game? If so, doesn't this strongly favor players with a larger model collection? Or do you have specific models set aside rather than raw points?

Yes on both counts. Unspent points to be used later in-game on whatever, up to and including re-using units that have been wiped out.

I'll elaborate on the specific problem i'm dealing with here. Players in my area in particular have large, diverse but frequently sub optimal collections with perhaps one or two mega units which they can't bring against their peers due to a sense of fair play. By changing the fight to small scale grunts with escalating power levels in-game ( think Supreme Commander style) it provides a framework for folks to use whatever they have to a meaningful end, without the pleasant ordeal of Apoc.

Wyldhunt wrote:

* "Before play commences, players trigger the Strategic Allocation rule twice. They may then spend their Assets on at least one complete battle forged detachment. The Warlord MUST be included in this section, as well as any detachments from other factions you want to use. Any models with the Unique attribute must be purchased at this time, you may not add them later in the game. "

I don't really understand what most of that means. So you take turns buying units twice, right?

I could probably have phrased it better. The per-turn allocation of, let's say 200 pts for a 1400 point game is doubled at the start, so you'd have 400 points of models to start with, and then a Reserve of 1000 points doled out in 200 point increments every turn until you run out of the Reserve (or as you put it, raw unspent points) or the game ends.

Wyldhunt wrote:

And I have to purchase my warlord (and a detachment to contain him) as part of this, but I also have to fit in an HQ from each other detachment I want to include (and presumably their own detachments) as part of this? This seems like it could be problematic for things like my webway portal haemonculus who wants to deepstrike in with a unit of craftworlders. The autarch alone usually runs me around 130 points, and the haemonculus is usually around 100 meaning I'd only have 170 points left to play with. I probably won't be able to join that haemonculus to, say, a decent unit of grotesques or a squad of dragons if I need to fit in 3 troops (2 for a CAD and 1 for an allied detachment) using that 170 point budget before I can take anything else.

The Warlord and HQ factor is only for *factions* not detachments. So in your example you could take a bare bones Eldar HQ with two troops, and an allied DE HQ with a single troop. Then after that you would use your unspent points later in the game to bring on any formation belonging to either of those factions, assuming your HQ units are still alive. I will have to work out how multi faction detachments work though. There will be some faction level tweaking that needs to be applied to this i'll admit, but the goal is to reduce the power level on the table for the first and possibly second turn, so those restrictions would be intentional.

Wyldhunt wrote:

* You mention spending your assets in your opponent's movement phase, and I can only spend them on units from a faction that I have a faction commander for. So once my opponent declares the end of the movement phase, is it a "pencils down" situation where I'm not allowed to spend any more points? Or does my opponent sit there waiting for me to finish deciding how to allocate points first?

That is a problem I haven't figured out a solution to yet. The way I'd see a game going is you'd already know what you want to bring in general, (and probably have written them up) with the ability to adapt on the fly, so you'd be picking 1-3 units off a prepared roster which would take all of 20 seconds.

Wyldhunt wrote:

And do the spent points arrive right away (meaning my "sucker punch" units arriving from deepstrike or outflank spend a turn getting shot up and assaulted before they can do anything), or do they arrive on my own following turn?

Everything you buy goes into reserve immediately, so they'd arrive your turn in whatever fashion applies.

Wyldhunt wrote:

If they arrive on my turn why can't I continue deciding how to allocate points throughout my opponent's turn?

To address the situation where you bought something from a faction you lost the qualifying HQ/Faction Commander for during the opponent's psychic/shooting/assault phase.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Also, what happens if my opponent manages to shoot the commander of one of my factions off the table? Am I still allowed to purchase, say, dark eldar units if my archon goes down to a lucky scatter laser shot on turn 1? How should a player who has half his collection wrapped up in one faction deal with suddenly being unable to field enough points worth of models to make an even game?

See above; and that's part of the strategic challenge being introduced - either invest in a mono faction with multiple redundant commanders (which goes right in the face of standard meta), or take a chance with synergy and the risk of crippling your army if you're not playing a good enough defense.

Wyldhunt wrote:

* Being unable to spend points on allocations if all your units are in assault is potentially crippling. It won't be all that hard for some armies (genestealer cults, orks with transports, maybe even dark eldar or other brands of space elves) to pin down a drip-fed army on turn 2 and then continue to produce their own reserves with a unit they left out of combat while their opponent is stuck in an increasingly unfavorable situation.

I was a bit iffy about this, and you're probably right - it should go. The issue is the system heavily favors shooting armies, so I was trying to add in a strategic benefit to achieving an all out assault.

Wyldhunt wrote:

* Many detachments and formations are too expensive to realistically field in this system. A harlequin Masque, for instance, comes in at something like 700 points if you're going relatively bare bones with it. Which you really shouldn't. I'm not sure there's a single eldar or dark eldar formation I could field with the 200 point per turn budget you list above. Maybe an avengers shrine, but the exarchs would be pushing it.

Which is why you 'save' reserve, spend 1-2 turns without buying anything and use the allocation to buy them in turn 3, where they can still wreck face but at the cost of having less time to do it.

Wyldhunt wrote:

*I feel like you'll never have a warlord who is also an HQ because you'll want to milk an extra commander out of your forces. Meaning my farseer and archon will always be taking their orders from exarchs and sybarites.

One view and entirely accurate which would need a bit of consideration. The way I saw it was you have a lowly field commander (your sybarite) who is suddenly joined by a Significant Hero on the field, who goes into the business of Wrecking Face, leaving the strategic consideration and paperwork to your field commander. Think, say, the battle of Helms Deep where Gamling does all the field commanding, but Theoden and Aragorn get all the glory. While HQ units are *supposed* to be the paperworkers, the in-game reality is they end up as Grand Marshal Beatstick, who somehow has the time to requisition another crate of bolter shells whilst careening a bike through an ork mob and dueling a blood thirster.

Wyldhunt wrote:

There's a lot more to go into here. I don't think I"m a fan of this suggestion. :(

Shucks :\

Wyldhunt wrote:

Frequently stopping to work out how you'll spend points seems like a great way to slow the game down and strongly favors collections and armies that have a wide variety of models and unit types.

The former is why i'm looking for feedback to adapt, the later is intentional. While there's overlap between WAAC types and mahoosive collections, there's a lot of people (like me) on the fringe with varied collections and OP units but never the chance to field them without breaking the game outside of Apoc. It's also to give in game benefits to a varied collection, instead of, say, 60 warp spiders, so you have a reason to get nice models which are unfortunately not very good in the standard meta.

Wyldhunt wrote:

The limitations imposed by the faction commanders seem like they make it very easy for huge chunks of your army to be denied to you and potentially mess up a lot of combos or force really awkward deployment.

Also intentional, but evidently needs a lot of tweaking.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Harlequins would struggle to put a commander on the table at all. The whole thing feels confusing, slow, overly-complex, and highly-prone to favoring certain army types over others. Imagine tyranids trying to bring in both a synapse creature and non-synapse creature each turn.

I will need to work on cross faction HQs. However i'll highlight the Faction Commander distinction - if you don't actually have HQ in your codex, you can nominate 2 unit types in your elites choices instead (so you could set all solitaires and shadowseers to act as commanders).

Wyldhunt wrote:

Also, did I miss something that allows newly-purchased non-infiltrators/scouts/deepstrikers to meaningfully cross the table after coming in halfway through the game? I'm picturing squads of orks on foot arriving turn 3 or 4 and then spending the whole game trying to jog across the field while a shooty army (which is effective more or less the turn they come in) continues to pick them apart a couple hundred points at a time.

In that specific situation, the mob would probably start on the table, and be augmented later. However you're right in that its a serious issue i'll need to think about. Perhaps extending your deployment area one 12" square along a table side every turn after the first until you hit the enemy deployment zone.

Wyldhunt wrote:

There are some interesting ideas in here, but this execution could stand to be improved quite a bit. Unless I'm misunderstanding the whole thing, which is entirely possible!

If you want to encourage list tailoring, why not use a "sideboard" method wherein you have players prepare 2 or 3 "side lists" and 1 "main list" and then declare which of the side lists they want to use after seeing their opponent's army? Something along those lines. It lets you do all the prep work ahead of time, eats up no additional time once the game begins, allows units that need to start on the table to be effective to start on the table, and still helps you ensure you'll have the tools for a given situation.

I've looked at the sideboard method and while it works in Magic, which only has two random factors (the deck orders), I don't see it working with 40k due to non deterministic results, and the question of what you do in counter-countering (your opponent sideboard has 3 leman russes, you take 5 anti tank units, he changes his mind - who choose first?). Building on that the sideboard there is based on 3 games in a row, which easily take up most of an afternoon in normal 40k.

Wyldhunt wrote:

I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "drip feed" thing in the first place either. It strongly favors some armies over others and actively prevents some perfectly "fluffy" army concepts. Imagine foot-based tyranids trying to meaningfully engage an ever-growing enemy gunline while they're forced to cross the table. Imagine orks versus tau or daemonkin versus eldar. My dark eldar would never be able to launch a crippling, synchronized assault; they'd instead be shouting at their pals to join in the fight while one or two raiders per turn plink away at a target ineffectually. I see a lot of force commanders hiding behind buildings and going to ground as they desperately try not to die before they can bring in more models. And then a droppod lands behind them, and they get shot up, and then you auto-lose because you only have one faction's worth of models.

I still haven't worked out how to make hordes viable (any ideas?) which is indeed a valuable outcome from this system if I can get it to work, since it's about providing an alternative meta where hordes *should* be a scary prospect. As for the eldar bit, you absolutely could; but you'd need to hide for 2-3 turns to make it happen (which as I understand it is entirely in keeping with DE doctrine; fear and disorder followed by a shock assault) with the time spent drawing your enemy out of position - assuming you're not playing on planet bowling ball.

As for the FC bit, that's genuinely intentional - if you're taking beatstick commanders and throwing at the enemy, damn the torpedoes... you're going to pay for it. If you're actually working truly combined arms, spreading your hurt capacity around evenly and playing like a *strategist* instead of a dice chucker, you get more out of the game




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Sorry, but this is a lot of work for a system that doesn't address the main problem with list tailoring: the fact that it favors the players with the most money to spend on alternate list-building options. The person who has a 2000 point collection and can only bring a single 1850 list with minor weapon upgrade variations is going to lose every time against a player who has 50,000 points of whatever they want and can always bring the ideal tool for every situation. List tailoring is not a concept that should be saved.

Obviously I disagree; if the possibility to optimise anything at all is present, there is nothing in the world that's going to stop it from happening. Instead it should be brought into the game as part of it and reduced in effectiveness instead of fruitlessly fought against. Beyond that, this system isn't necessarily for beginners anyway - it's to provide enthusiasts who've been around long enough and have enough investment to be interested in an occasional alternative without the time investment of Apoc.

 Peregrine wrote:

Also, being unable to call in additional units because your opponent's units are in close combat makes no sense at all. If my opponent has a single surviving unit on the table, locked in combat with one of my units while ten of my other units stand around watching why should the "grind of sustained assault" completely break my army's command abilities?

As above; it was an attempt at rewarding close combat armies in a setup which favors shooting; done the wrong way apparently. Perhaps if it was just 'all your units in CC' it might work?

 malamis wrote:
Obviously I disagree; if the possibility to optimise anything at all is present, there is nothing in the world that's going to stop it from happening. Instead it should be brought into the game as part of it and reduced in effectiveness instead of fruitlessly fought against. Beyond that, this system isn't necessarily for beginners anyway - it's to provide enthusiasts who've been around long enough and have enough investment to be interested in an occasional alternative without the time investment of Apoc.

The way to fix the tailoring problem is to standardize point costs and require lists to be written before you know your opponent. If 40k night is 1500 point games and you're required to bring a finished 1500 point list with you then it's impossible to list tailor. You have no idea what you might be facing, just like in a tournament, so you bring a TAC list or risk losing because you tailored against the wrong opponent.

As above; it was an attempt at rewarding close combat armies in a setup which favors shooting; done the wrong way apparently. Perhaps if it was just 'all your units in CC' it might work?

First of all, even if you accept the premise that close combat armies need to be better (I don't) this is not the place to do it. Make this mechanic work well on its own, don't throw in random buffs/nerfs at the same time. You can fix those issues with their own rules and do a better job of it.

Second, the revised rule still makes no sense and is in fact a nerf to assault armies. The result of successfully charging with all of my units is that I lose the ability to bring in more? No thank you. My assault-focused army is required to hold at least one unit back to avoid triggering the "no more reinforcements" rule instead of going all-in on my primary strategy.