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A lot of people agree that Command points can be out of hand for some factions. So here's my idea on how they could fix it.

Everyone starts with three before the start of the game:

Whatever Detachment your warlord is in determines how many command point you generate at the start of your turn. If you don't spend them, they roll over to the next turn.

Brigade: 3 CP a turn, 4 if your warlord is alive
Battalion: 2 CP a turn, 3 if your warlord is alive
All others: 1 CP a turn, 2 if your warlord is alive.

This way the harder to fill detachments get you more bang for your buck, but no one barring special rules, would get more than 4 command points every turn.

It's still a problem because the "fill" army just becomes the actual army.

For example, say someone has a specialized Custodes list with a brigade of IG.

You basically changed it from a custodes list with IG to a IG with a custodes majority element


Doesn't change anything. People would still soup for the CP and just make the CP battery as their "main" army. Still doesn't stop them from gettings strats or Relics. Just warlord traits, and even then in this scenario you can make a shield captain the warlord when ur IG commander pops

I think the main problem really lies with IG. You can get 4CP (including -1 for extra relic) and CP regeneration, as well as 32 squishy, but useful bodies for just 180pts. That's the real problem with CP, just how easy it is for Imperial armies to get that. For some armies such as Knights and Custodians it's very helpful whereas you'll normally have around 8CP in armies which are very CP dependent. I can't really think of Xenos or Chaos armies which have such a cheap and effective way to get CP, so if you want to fix this, you'll have to look solely at IG, perhaps something along these lines:

Command Hierarchy: Imperial Guard forces fighting alongside other Imperial forces often find their advice ignored or countered. Wherever due to hubris, arrogance or fear of failure: If an Imperial army contains detachments of both IG and non-IG forces, any CP generated by IG can only be used on IG strategems...

Something along those lines, it's probably not perfect (and I'm expecting a barrage of criticism for it), but it's an attempt.

I think a better way to handle the problem is reducing the reward for taking the minimum for a detachment and then giving a much bigger amount of cp for filling the entire detachment. You'd still see msu to fill things in, but it makes it harder to buy a cheap battery

The bodies that make up the battery being guardsmen is 1 issue but a minimum strength unit battalion of other armies can be built for similar points but only contain 17 bodies.

The real problem is in Grand Strategists and Kurov's being stacking CP generation mechanics in the same army.

If you remove grand strategist and Kurov's for IG the problem detachment is a lot less broken.
Why do guard need to farm CP if as pure guard players keep telling me that they haven't got any strategums worth using anyway.

Also in fluff terms guard are always dealing with political infighting and the incompetence of the admintratum. How can a faction thats consistently portrayed as fighting with it's hands tied is suddenly swimming in CP to pull of heroics via strategums.

In the other threads on this, BCB has a very interesting system based on detatchments costing CP instead of generating CP. The exact numbers could be tuned, but it would do what you're looking for.

I think a better change would be to bring Battalions back down to only 3CPs, but have all Battle Forged lists start with 5CPs.

In this way, armies that can spam cheap units to "farm CPs" don't get such a huge bump compared to those that prefer using Outriders or Spearhead detachments, etc.

Untill you remove grand strategist and Kurov's.
The farm isn't going to go anywhere.

Farm player starts with 12cp gets 4 back from strategist
The opposition starts with 9 and gives the Guard player another 3CP

Of the farmed CP 6 are used giving an additional 2cp wich combined with the 1 outstanding CP from the first garm is 3 CP for an additional 1CP

The IG CP farm just netted 10 CP over starting CP levels on an army starting with 12CP. This is something that actually gives even more returns the more CP the Guard player can start with.

Also, nids is the other army that can get cheap CP generation

Ice_can wrote:
Untill you remove grand strategist and Kurov's.
The farm isn't going to go anywhere.

Or even if they just added a bit to the rules for these items that state they can only be used to get back CPs that have been used on IG strategems.

I’m still a fan of only being able to spend CP on the army that generated it, with the base 3 being universal.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
I’m still a fan of only being able to spend CP on the army that generated it, with the base 3 being universal.

This absolutely should be a thing.

The problem isn't Command Points per se, it's soup and how they are used in soup armies.

 Valkyrie wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Untill you remove grand strategist and Kurov's.
The farm isn't going to go anywhere.

Or even if they just added a bit to the rules for these items that state they can only be used to get back CPs that have been used on IG strategems.

So you think an army being able to double it's starting CP is not going to cause issue's?
I don't understand why people think being able to double regen farm CP is not going to be a problem.

Stop the CP sharing would reduce the drop in bolt on factions like trip dawneagle dbags and the lone Castellen, but will just promote mono guard to the third most broken faction

Ice_can wrote:

 Valkyrie wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Untill you remove grand strategist and Kurov's.
The farm isn't going to go anywhere.

Or even if they just added a bit to the rules for these items that state they can only be used to get back CPs that have been used on IG strategems.

So you think an army being able to double it's starting CP is not going to cause issue's?
I don't understand why people think being able to double regen farm CP is not going to be a problem.

Stop the CP sharing would reduce the drop in bolt on factions like trip dawneagle dbags and the lone Castellen, but will just promote mono guard to the third most broken faction

Where did I say that doubling CP is not going to cause an issue?

While I agree CPs only being able to be used for the faction that generated them, it adds more bookkeeping that should just not exist.
There has to be a better way.

I'd like to see Battle Forged provide 5CPs to everyone, and Battalions go back to only 3 CPs. That helps against armies that can just add cheap Troops and HQ to build up lots of CPs

Next, I would either cap the total possible CPs (say 20 for the whole game, both starting with and generated later)
Or, only allow generated CPs to recover used CPs. So if you started at 12CPs, you cannot generate more before having to used some first and can't go above 12 at one time.
Or both

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 Valkyrie wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Untill you remove grand strategist and Kurov's.
The farm isn't going to go anywhere.

Or even if they just added a bit to the rules for these items that state they can only be used to get back CPs that have been used on IG strategems.

Grand Strategist just needs the FAQ undone so its not strictly better than the equivalents available elsewhere. Make it return 1 CP max like the rest and its fine and will see considerably less use.

That fix doesn't work for the Aquilla, since its used to steal CP from the opponent. I'm actually not sure how to fix that thing as there really shouldn't be multiple CP regen options out there in general. It just needs to do something else. Not sure what exactly. Maybe reduce the cost of IG strats by 1 to a minimum of 1 or something like that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:

I'd like to see Battle Forged provide 5CPs to everyone, and Battalions go back to only 3 CPs. That helps against armies that can just add cheap Troops and HQ to build up lots of CPs
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I rather like this, though I might go as far as to bump the base to 6 or so. I think the strategem system is in need of the larger volumes of CP out there in general.

The other version of this I'd be interested in is dropping Battalions (and the other buffed detachments) back to the way they were and giving you +1 CP at the start of each turn if your Warlord is on the table. This provides more CP overall then we even have now, but in a way where it can't be dumped into an alpha strike turn 1.

Or give all armies of the same points value the same number of CP.

Be it "A" number of CP per "B" number of points, or "C" CP between "D" and "E", "F" CP between "G" and "H" points, and "I" number of CP for battles over "J" number of points.

The only way to properly balance CP generation is to divorce it from Detachments. Either you reward taking multiple detachments (and soup lists, by extension, as with the current system), you punish multiple detachments (detachment buying) or you make it separate, dependant on points level.

Whether it's a point pool, or points per turn (plus pre-game points for pre-game stratagems) the only balance is an equal resource for both players that they can choose to spend as they see fit.

Some armies are more CP dependant? This will help them. Some aren't? This won't hurt them. CP are resources, just like points when building an army. Not all armies are balanced, or equal. The power of a strategem should be relative to others. A strategem that lets a Knight reroll its attack rolls for the turn should cost a crap-load of CP, while the same ability used on a Guard (non super heavy) unit should cost less CP... and that would make sense if both players started with the same number of CP.

If Knight strats are priced on the assumption that Knights have trouble generating many CP, but they can triple their CP by allying one Knight's worth of Guard Brigades... any Detachment reward system will be broken by that.

Anyhow, make CP relative to point level, give everyone the same number of CP, and price the abilities with even resources in mind. That's the real fix.

 greatbigtree wrote:

Anyhow, make CP relative to point level, give everyone the same number of CP, and price the abilities with even resources in mind. That's the real fix.

There's value in CP rewarding players for "proper" army composition. It corrals the meta a bit and reduces the degree in which skew trumps the ability for an army to have the tools in sufficient quantities to take all comers. Taking a significant CP penalty to take advantage of the freedom available in some of the other detachment options is not inherently a bad thing for the game overall.

Sooo... you're arguing for purchasing detachments from a beginning pool of points? This encourages single (large) detachment forces to save CP for in game use.

How do you get that initial pool, set value for all armies? Do you get more CP to buy detachments at higher point levels? Does everyone have 10 cp to use in the game, regardless of point levels?

Because I have no innate problem with purchasing detachments. I'd rather see it limited than rewarded, but I also think that detachments are no longer relevant to 40k when you can have IG Brigades with many hundreds of models, Knight detachments with 3 models, and anything in between.

Ideally, I'd like to see something like 1 cp per 100 points (15 cp at 1500 points) and then you have to purchase *Factions* (one for free, additional factions raise the CP per point. IE. 1 CP per 150 points for double faction, 1 cp per 200 points for triple faction) which encourages mono-faction builds. A "Faction" defined by a codex. No "Imperial" faction, no "Chaos" or "Eldar" faction... codex factions.

And screw the fluff-allies thing. If your Blood Angels want to team up with Necrons to blast Nids... go for it. If your Nids can hold off on eating the Orks for a couple hours so they can beat the hell out of some Eldar and Daemons that are working together... go for it. Just pay a tax for mixing the abilities of different factions through fewer CP and get on with it.

Some armies. like Eldar, have superior Stratagems in general. This is balanced by those armies having a bit of difficulty obtaining CPs to use them. I don't think I've seen a successful Eldar list with more than a dozen CPs
That alone should prevent X points = Y CPs.

It makes sense to assign CPs per detachment. It doesn't make sense to make the disparity so great between Battalions and everything else, which is how it is now.
Reward armies that take Battalions, but don't make that reward so great that the other detachments are worthless unless you limit the Battalion to 1 per army. or something like that
Otherwise, the best fix is to give BF armies a higher CP start and detachments only add a little bit after that. That's why I suggest BF give 5-6CPs and no detachment granting more than 3CPs after that.

I also really like the idea of CPs being a turn based thing.
Instead of getting X CPs for the game, you generate X CPs at the start of each Battle Round as long as you WL is alive.
At the end of the Battle Round, unused CPs are lost.
Implement that change and you get far more CPs overall no matter how you build your army and the method itself creates a "Cap" of sorts to mitigate midgame CP generation.

Maybe you always get 3CPs for being BF each battle round, but the WL needs to be alive to generate the detachment earned CPs?

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While I get what your going for, your unintended (I assume) knock on is that knights or alpha legion, raven guard that want to spend lots of CP pre game are being nerfed hard ir given a large boost over armies with no pregame CP strategums.

Also the warlord requirement makes the trip dawneagle dbags even more appealing to soup as they can shoulder the mantel.

Also some armies will struggle to be able to play strategums later in the game though that might be more of an issue with some strategums design. Though that probably shouldn't be a reason to not change things as Agents of broken already made those one time use strategum builds useless anyway.

Ice_can wrote:
While I get what your going for, your unintended (I assume) knock on is that knights or alpha legion, raven guard that want to spend lots of CP pre game are being nerfed hard ir given a large boost over armies with no pregame CP strategums.

Also the warlord requirement makes the trip dawneagle dbags even more appealing to soup as they can shoulder the mantel.

Also some armies will struggle to be able to play strategums later in the game though that might be more of an issue with some strategums design. Though that probably shouldn't be a reason to not change things as Agents of broken already made those one time use strategum builds useless anyway.

Fair enough, I didn't think about pregame Strats.

How about this:
BF=5CPs, Battalions=3CPs as they did pre-FAQ. All other detachments unchanged
CPs earned from detachments are available from the start of the game, but once spent are gone (exactly like now).
BF CPs, however, are generated at the start of each Battle Round as long as the WL is alive. These CP, as well as any generated in-game, are lost at the end of the Battle round whether used or not.

So, in theory, detachment CPs are limited, but available for pregame Strats and once they are gone, they are gone.
And by removing BF and in-game generated CPs each round, rules that "farm" CPs end up having a cap of sorts. You can only use so many CPs per turn.
It makes it fair for armies that can't farm CPs either by spamming a few Battalions or having CP generating rules

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I would be good with that with the small caviate that

CPs earned from detachments are available to be spent on pregame strategums for that detachment only, but once spent are gone (exactly like now).
BF CPs, however, are generated at the start of each Battle Round as long as the WL is alive. These CP, as well as any generated in-game, are lost at the end of the Battle round whether used or not.

Yeah that seems about right. I'm not super keen on the bookkeeping involved, but if we are already separating CPs, may as well only allow them to work for the detachment.

But what about this:
CPs generated by detachments are available for the same Faction as the detachment that generated them, excluding Imperium, Chaos, etc. in the same way as army construction.

So an army with a Salamanders Battalion(3), Blood Angel Outrider(1) and Guard Battalion(3) would have 7CPs.
The Salamanders and Blood Angels could share their 4CPs because they are both Astartes, but the Guard can only use their 3.
Anyone can use the BF CPs generated in each Battle Round.

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 Galef wrote:

I also really like the idea of CPs being a turn based thing.
Instead of getting X CPs for the game, you generate X CPs at the start of each Battle Round as long as you WL is alive.
At the end of the Battle Round, unused CPs are lost.
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I'm actually cool with keeping CP round to round. 40k is rarely a game that rewards players for holding anything back. "Charging up" for a big turn is fine as long as its not turn 1.

I'm good with there being a decent chunk available on turn 1 as well though, since every faction seems to have a good chunk of ways they want to spend CP before the game really starts. Without completely overhauling the system, I think around 8 at the start of the game with +1 each round (about 14 total) is a good goal to aim for just based on how I've seen CP flow.

So maybe 4 for the Battalion and then +4 for being Battleforged? Seems to mess with armies less but help out the little guys still.

Battalions should not be more than 2 CP above 1CP detachments. Otherwise why ever bother with anything but Battalions?
It causes too much disparity between armies that can easily take 2 Battalions to generate CPs and have plenty of points left on other detachments and those armies that struggle to get 1 Battalion.

If Outriders/Spearheads/Vanguard/Command/Flyer are only 1 CP each, a Battalion shouls be 3 max. If you want a 5CP Battalion, those other should be 2-3 CPs each. It doesn't make sense for a Battalion to have 5x the CPs as other choices.

The largest number of CPs should be given for being BF, because every army equal access to that. Not every army functions well if trying to cram in a second Battalion, especially ones with mediocre Troops.
So you lower the CPs of a Battalion, but still have it be more than other detachments and you raise the CPs of being Battle Forged

That should happen regardless of further changes. That is what the Beta rules should have done instead of bump Battalions.

My suggestion was to have BF CP be renewable from turn to turn. Not only to give armies more CP, but also as an excuse to force in-game generated CPs to have a "shelf-life" so to speak. Rules that seem to stock pile more CPs should have some kind of limitation

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If Eldar strats are better value, then just like I suggested for Knights, their strats should go up in cp cost.

And then, balance. Seriously, there's no real reason to force detachment restrictions on anyone. That's no longer a balancing factor in list design. For reals, if an army has solid Troops and HQ's like Guard, and are cheap, it's an imbalance to reward them with more CP than Vanilla Marines with poor troop choices and mediocre HQ's.

There's no good reason to have two players with the same points size army have an arbitrary second resource that is unequal. It unequally rewards gaming the detachments to produce higher cp/points than your opponent. It is yet another encouragement to soup.

Anyhow, all of the systems presented are attempting to reduce the difference in CP levels between different army builds. The simplest way to do that is to just give equal cp to each player, and then...

Just like different units get different point costs...

Charge a proper cost for the strat. If a strat A is better than strat B, A should cost more CP. If a strat has the same function (reroll charge range) between 2 factions, but faction C is clearly going to make better use of it than Faction D (Blood Angels vs Guard) then faction C should pay more CP for that strat then faction D.

It's clean, simple, works like points in that both players get an equal resource and list variety increases as every tournament Imperial list doesn't have a CP battery included. Connecting CP generation to Detachment generation is poor design, as it encourages MSD-etachments instead of encouraging fewer, larger detachments. Again, if we're trying to equalize CP for different styles of armies, get rid of the detachments altogether.

Everyone can play whatever they want. Everyone has equal access to CP. All other systems are needlessly complicating a simple solution that everyone seems to be circling. Play what you want, have CP be equal.

Just had an idea for limiting detachment spam: only one detachment is counted towards your CP totals and you get to pick which one counts. All other detachments are there for allies, or if you run out of space.
Example:
I have 2 Battalions and a Vanguard. I pick the Battalion bonus which nets me +5 points in addition to being battleforged for a total of 8.

This could still be mixed with the CP per turn idea: So the chosen detachment lets me start with X CP but then I generate 1 CP per turn standard and then an additional 1 CP for so long as my Warlord is alive.
Example:
I decide to run a battalion which lets' me start with 5 CP, first turn I get +2 CP which gives me 7 total to use right then. Then I get +2 each turn for the remaining 4-6 turns (8-12 CP) which means that on average a player will get 15-19 CP per game provided the Warlord stays alive.
If I choose a Vanguard detachment I get 1 CP +2CP at the start. By the end I will have gotten around 11-15 CP.
If I run a Brigade that's 12+2 CP right off the bat for a total of 22-26 CP.

Ditch CP recovery while were at it and I think we're golden.

I would not put such a heavy emphasis on the warlord for CP generation(as in you only get your CP if he is still alive) as that just makes the warlord a target above targets. And with the way characters work no one in their right mind would ever make the warlord a character with more than 10 wounds.

That takes out Knights,Greater daemons,Hive tyrants,Daemon primarchs ect.

Cause who in their right mind would ever make them the warlord as if they die then your CP goes bye bye, Your opponent already wants to kill them cause of slay the warlord and kingslayer tactical card, so why would you want to give them more incentive?

10 wound or less warlords would not be as safe either cause your opponent would try every trick in the book to try and kill that warlord first, unless you surround him with your entire army with him being in the exact center. But i doubt people would like that strat

Instead i would propose that you generate 6 CP for a battleforged each turn and if your warlord is dead you only generate half of your cp per turn. This way it gives an incentive to try and kill the warlord without the warlord being a huge clutch, but at the same time rewards the player for keeping your warlord alive