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I kind of got the impression that all Faction Keywords would confer some sort of fluffy bonus to a dedicated detachment, but it doesn't seem to be the case. I don't see an IMPERIUM benefit, and whilst it's reasonable that Astartes always get ATSKNF I was looking forward to seeing the option for a Space Marines detachment where Blood Angels and Salamanders units don't get their CHAPTER trait but do get a general ADEPTUS ASTARTES one. It'd make a joint Astartes force feel organisationally different to one where the detachment officers also have to organise a Basilisk and Assassin, you know?

Likewise, I was excited that the KHORNE Faction would present the option for a Daemonkin-style detachment, where some sacred Bloodletters have brought together some World Eaters and Word Bearers. Or for Abaddon to lead a detachment of Death Guard and Thousand Sons who get the HERETIC ASTARTES bonus. Or a Herald, Sorcerer, Khârn, Chaos Knight, and Marauder Squad to come together and get the CHAOS bonus.

Right now it seems there's no perk to focussing on an ULTRAMARINES army as opposed to an IMPERIUM army with an ULTRAMARINES Warlord?

Even if there's limited Faction perks, Command Points seemed like a really easy thing to build up on. Like, instead of getting three for turning up, you get one for every Faction Keyword that is common to ALL units in your ARMY. That right there would distinguish between the perfected drills and language of a Space Wolves army, contrasted with the language and cultural and doctrinal disruption that comes from incorporating Pask and a squadron of Hellhounds and a Knight into a practiced ambush strategy that is second nature to the blood brothers. Or the rivalry and bickering that some SLAANESH Possessed might have with some KHORNE Warp Talons, denying a Black Legion player the extra CP an Emperors' Children player would get for their religious (if not auditory) harmony.

I think they wanted to keep things simpler this time around - especially with the Indexes, which were really just stopgap measures until the Codexes came out.

Now that they have their own book, Ultramarines DO have benefits for being purely Ultramarines.

I guess they also wanted to stop the worst of the Allies shenanigans, by limiting mixed-faction benefits.

Well yeah, there's a perk to a *detachment* being purely Ultras, but there's no perk difference between 'Ultra/Blood Angel/Space Wolf' detachment as opposed to 'Ultra/Cadian/House Balthazar'. I think it'd be interesting to have some sort of perk that scaled with the familiarity amongst all of the army.

You,could have a rule for '(Homeworld) PDF' as a REGIMENT, which for the purposes of army purity would count as the same as CHAPTER. So if you took Calgar and three Terminator Squads, and a load of blur-armoured IG with no special characters of other regiments, you could have perks for your army having IMPERIUM and ULTRAMARINES/MACRAGGE PDF in common, representing a better level of doctrinal and cultural harmony compared to when Warlord Cassius is trying to understand the accents of Yarrick and Marbo.

I don't know, I'm glad detachments are faction-locked for their bonuses.

"Codexes that give faction specific bonuses aren't out yet so I am going to complain that we don't have faction specific bonuses."

Would you rather we didn't have any rules whatsoever for non-marine armies for months/years?

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I don't know, I'm glad detachments are faction-locked for their bonuses.

I`m glad for that too. It rewards players for using pure "chapter" detachments instead of mixing everything the Imperium or any other "main-"faction got.
Too much allies were an aweful idea. Though i agree the Imperium has too many sub-factions not or not really capable of being played on their own. Most of them are splinter groups of the AM, but the others like assassins or knights should be able to be taken by other Imperium factions.

Formation Detachments with Perks that are not equal to each other in perk strengths.

No such thing as a "Ultra Marine Army", Only a "Ultra Marine Formation Detachment"

 lindsay40k wrote:
I kind of got the impression that all Faction Keywords would confer some sort of fluffy bonus to a dedicated detachment, but it doesn't seem to be the case. I don't see an IMPERIUM benefit, and whilst it's reasonable that Astartes always get ATSKNF I was looking forward to seeing the option for a Space Marines detachment where Blood Angels and Salamanders units don't get their CHAPTER trait but do get a general ADEPTUS ASTARTES one. It'd make a joint Astartes force feel organisationally different to one where the detachment officers also have to organise a Basilisk and Assassin, you know?

Likewise, I was excited that the KHORNE Faction would present the option for a Daemonkin-style detachment, where some sacred Bloodletters have brought together some World Eaters and Word Bearers. Or for Abaddon to lead a detachment of Death Guard and Thousand Sons who get the HERETIC ASTARTES bonus. Or a Herald, Sorcerer, Khârn, Chaos Knight, and Marauder Squad to come together and get the CHAOS bonus.

Right now it seems there's no perk to focussing on an ULTRAMARINES army as opposed to an IMPERIUM army with an ULTRAMARINES Warlord?

Even if there's limited Faction perks, Command Points seemed like a really easy thing to build up on. Like, instead of getting three for turning up, you get one for every Faction Keyword that is common to ALL units in your ARMY. That right there would distinguish between the perfected drills and language of a Space Wolves army, contrasted with the language and cultural and doctrinal disruption that comes from incorporating Pask and a squadron of Hellhounds and a Knight into a practiced ambush strategy that is second nature to the blood brothers. Or the rivalry and bickering that some SLAANESH Possessed might have with some KHORNE Warp Talons, denying a Black Legion player the extra CP an Emperors' Children player would get for their religious (if not auditory) harmony.

Things are done at the detachment level now, yes. But, even though you don't get detachment bonuses for being, say, Slaanesh, you do get access to unique, smaller bonuses, such as:

-the god-specific psychic powers affect Slaanesh, Khorne, Nurgle, etc.
-the god-specific stratagems (fury of khorne, endless cacaphony, plaguefather's gift, IIRC they can be used by any God unit not just marines)
-Certain unit synergies (I know several of my Tsons units have abilities that affect all of Tzeentch)

These bonuses are smaller than if you'd narrowed down your detachment to a single legion, yes. Why? Because there has to be some disadvantage to mixing, or you just get Allied Soup again where you just take allies to cover every weakness your faction has.

If it seems like there's none of these bonuses to taking an Imperium army (except for the units and abilities that do cross-pollinate from the indexes) that's because faction-specific buffs for playing a themed army is the selling point of the codexes.

I think the benefits for playing say "Imperium" is getting access to everything imperium. You don't really need bonuses to encourage cherry picking units, you need bonuses to give people a reason to do anything but that. If anything, the current system is still arguably too lenient about mixing. But that won't be an issue if a few factions finally get some additional allies (orks and tau in particular).

 lindsay40k wrote:
Well yeah, there's a perk to a *detachment* being purely Ultras, but there's no perk difference between 'Ultra/Blood Angel/Space Wolf' detachment as opposed to 'Ultra/Cadian/House Balthazar'. I think it'd be interesting to have some sort of perk that scaled with the familiarity amongst all of the army.

You,could have a rule for '(Homeworld) PDF' as a REGIMENT, which for the purposes of army purity would count as the same as CHAPTER. So if you took Calgar and three Terminator Squads, and a load of blur-armoured IG with no special characters of other regiments, you could have perks for your army having IMPERIUM and ULTRAMARINES/MACRAGGE PDF in common, representing a better level of doctrinal and cultural harmony compared to when Warlord Cassius is trying to understand the accents of Yarrick and Marbo.

Why not just take separate Ultra/BA/SW detachments and benefit from their chapter tactics for the specific units in each detachment? Why the need for a special "mixed space marine" buff in a single detachment? Unless you want imperium armies to get even more benefits. By allowing "mixed space marine bonus" detachment + "mixed IG detachment" bouns + specific other detachment bonus.

Really I'd only see your point if things like chapter tactics were army specific, meaning you only get the ultra chapter tactic if all detachments in your army are ultra marines. Even at that point the Imperium should have had no benefit because the benefit would be access to half the game. But if it were army wide, then I could see having a "space marine" specific bonus. As it is not I see no reason to have benefits for anything but the smallest most restrictive groupings of units.

But, Breng; then you couldn't take just the best units from each of those sub-factions and get a buff for them. I mean; do you really want to tie the hands of the player who wants to take space marine hqs, elites, and fast attack with IG cheap troops-tax and a couple onager dune crawlers while gaining all the iron-hands buffs?

I like the new Imperial faction even without the buffs. Like Allies of earlier, but even better, it allows you to play a narrative and take units you like and look cool in the same army.

That's one of the reasons I loved the Inquisition codexes of the old days because you could take imperial guard and space marine allies with all the cool inquisition stuff. I hope that a newer inquisition codex will bring back inquisitional storm troopers though (even if there is already a MT faction) just for fluff purposes.

This is a big part of why I only have 10 grey knights strike squad models and a few Termie models(as generic masters/libbys) and a single killteam of deathwatch.

In 7th I added one or the other as allies to my guard(depending on enemy army, fluffwise)

I also have a very small skitarri force(get started box) which I would ally in with my guard.

Then my marines are Sons of Medusa; so adding a small allied force of them to admech supported guard fits fluff as well.

Now in 8th I can just load out a brigade or a few smaller detachments with all of the above and if points/power levels allow; I can take a knight.

 lindsay40k wrote:
I kind of got the impression that all Faction Keywords would confer some sort of fluffy bonus

Well, that's where you're mistaken. Keywords are an added measure of granularity to improve rules elegance. This allows things like Emperor's Middle Finger that is Strength 4 but against DAEMONIC it's Strength 10. Or a historical scenario for Rynn's World that says "all CRIMSON FISTS have +1 Toughness cuz they're hopped up on combat drugs fighting their last stand". Etc.

 lindsay40k wrote:
I was looking forward to seeing the option for a Space Marines detachment where Blood Angels and Salamanders units don't get their CHAPTER trait but do get a general ADEPTUS ASTARTES one. It'd make a joint Astartes force feel organisationally different to one where the detachment officers also have to organise a Basilisk and Assassin, you know?

Likewise, I was excited that the KHORNE Faction would present the option for a Daemonkin-style detachment, where some sacred Bloodletters have brought together some World Eaters and Word Bearers. Or for Abaddon to lead a detachment of Death Guard and Thousand Sons who get the HERETIC ASTARTES bonus. Or a Herald, Sorcerer, Khârn, Chaos Knight, and Marauder Squad to come together and get the CHAOS bonus.

Right now it seems there's no perk to focussing on an ULTRAMARINES army as opposed to an IMPERIUM army with an ULTRAMARINES Warlord?

I thought Ultramarines now had a faction special rule? Bonus to leadership and the ability to fall back out of combat and still shoot, or something? It's not the most exciting thing in the world maybe, but it's pretty good game-wise. And, like AdMech, you only get the rule if every unit in the detachment is ultramarine, so if you do a mixed force it would indeed have slightly different rules/playstyle. Not sure how much you were expecting from a chapter tactic, without it getting far too complicated to ever balance.

Remember, this is just *chapter* tactics, and there's a lot of chapters in speshh mareenz. Think yourself lucky you're not a poor xeno, with no variety (or even decent rules or units) incoming for at least another year.

Filing this under #firstworldexterminatusproblems

Like others have said, I can't see the top tier keywords getting any extra rules (eg chaos, Imperium, Eldar) as the benefit is the mix and match of units. Hopefully that side will get more balanced as the other factions get expanded (Kroot mercenaries anyone?)

What I can see happening once the first round of codexes are done (for everyone) is the second tier getting a small bonus. So with Marines, maybe a free chapter master upgrade (no SP's used) to represent the nominated leader of the combined for, but you loose all chapter tactics.