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Position:

Battlefield roles (i.e. troops, elites, fast attack, etc.) are designations that should no longer hold any real mechanical value and thus should be discarded entirely. Currently, troops seem to still be viewed as units that should be intentionally less useful or less effective than non-troops. This is evidenced by the fact that you have to take a bunch of troops in order to earn CP, effectively rewarding you for taking "less good" units by making up for it with CP.

Once upon a time, the game required players build armies out of a single "detachment" called the force org chart. In the force org chart, an HQ and two troop units were mandatory. However, there were also often rules to allow players to redefine which units in their army could be taken as troops, effectively letting you play to a certain theme. Wraithguard in 10 man units could be troops to make an Iyanden theme playable. A marine captain on a bike made bikers troops so you could play a White Scars theme. That sort of thing.


These days, troops are no longer mandatory. You can play to an army theme by simply fielding a vanguard, outrider, spearhead, etc. detachment that reflects your army's fluff, but you're effectively punished for doing so by generating fewer command points than a troop-heavy list. Some may argue that this is a balance issue, that lists without troops are able to load up on heavy supports or elites or what have you, and that lists that play a "fluffy" number of troops (regardless of whether or not a given army theme actually should have a lot of troop units according to their lore) receive the bonus CP to make up for the fact that they take inferior troops.

There is some truth to this. Storm guardians are certainly less impressive than fire dragons. Tactical marines lack the raw firepower of sternguard or devastators. Riptides are more daunting than kroot. I would counter, however, that this A.) isn't always the case and that B.) it arguably shouldn't be the case at all.

A.) While a leman russ certainly packs more of a punch than a few 10 man guardsman squads, those guardsmen still have a role in the army as cheap screens and objective grabbers. Even without CP, you could make an argument for including them. Eldar lists would probably prefer not to include troops at all (outside of perhaps a guardian webway bomb), but a chaos list doesn't mind including large blobs of cultists or pox walkers. In short, while troops are often less powerful than non-troops, they still often have a role to play in the army, and some armies have much more desirable troops than others even though troopless armies are punished similarly despite the extent to which troop inclusion diminishes their overall power.

B.) Making troops less useful/powerful as a design choice means that units designed in such a way can end up being an undesirable "tax" rather than a desirable option in their own right. IN the lore tactical marines are considered to be just as useful as their more specialized assault marine and devastator peers, but on the tabletop they're allowed to be less powerful (than devastators at least) because they were once mandatory. Instead of allowing them to languish as a bad option, shouldn't the design paradigm be that they should be troops because they are desirable as a mainstay of the army? Shouldn't tactical marines be able to offer some benefit that warrants handing most of your army a bolter instead of a heavy bolter or a jump pack in the first place?

This isn't to say that troops can't be cheap, numerous, and individually weak, but we shouldn't feel the need to bribe people with CP to warrant taking a given unit. Certainly, guardsmen should feel like less of a threat than their well-trained, well-equipped scion buddies, but they should pay a sufficiently low price for their inferiority.

Do you agree? if not, present your argument. Change my mind.

I'm skipping responding to the entirety in the post because the basic premise is wrong: the categorization of unit type does have meaning due to taxes: you need X HQs and Y Troops for basic armies, but in some detachments the Troops become Elites or Fast Attack requirements. Transport units need at least 1 other non-Transport unit to be taken, and Super Heavies need a special detachment to take them in a list.

And beta rules cap every unit to no more than 3 of anything, except troops.

So while they may have less strict importance, the taxes are still real, they're just not crammed down our throats like they were in other editions due to CP encouraging lots of cheap units anyways.

I agree wholeheartedly.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I'm skipping responding to the entirety in the post because the basic premise is wrong: the categorization of unit type does have meaning due to taxes: you need X HQs and Y Troops for basic armies, but in some detachments the Troops become Elites or Fast Attack requirements. Transport units need at least 1 other non-Transport unit to be taken, and Super Heavies need a special detachment to take them in a list.

And beta rules cap every unit to no more than 3 of anything, except troops.

So while they may have less strict importance, the taxes are still real, they're just not crammed down our throats like they were in other editions due to CP encouraging lots of cheap units anyways.

yes!

they do serve a purpose but need specific faction related changes i.e. saim hann bikes, etc

Op Sec was suppose to make Troops choices a preferred option. But if you're a casual player and don't play mission with objectives then Troops are poor army building choices.

Doesn't matter, though. All your points speak to game balance and makeing 40k fair & fun to play. But the current environment exists so that GW can sell more models. Marketing will always trump game design.

Imo lots of Troops are great units in their own right. So I disagree with that section of the OPs argument roght off the bat.

Just go the AoS route and make some stuff "Battleline"(mandatory percentage of your army), some stuff "Battleline if..."(certain Heroes as your General make them count as Battleline), Behemoths, Warmachines, and then uncategorized.

It's funny how people didn't want them to bring the AoS system over but now it seems there's a clamor to do things more like that setup.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Just go the AoS route and make some stuff "Battleline"(mandatory percentage of your army), some stuff "Battleline if..."(certain Heroes as your General make them count as Battleline), Behemoths, Warmachines, and then uncategorized.

It's funny how people didn't want them to bring the AoS system over but now it seems there's a clamor to do things more like that setup.

Yeah, that would probably be a better system. Distinction between Elites, Heavy Support and Fast Attack is arbitrary and pointless. Keep HQ, LOW, Troops (Battleline) and combine the rest under Elites (uncatecorised.) Maybe keep the flyers separate, but there probably is no reason for that in this edition.

(Also, not all AOS rules are bad, only most of them )

Flyers just need to be keyworded as "Warmachine" or "Monster" to really 'fit'.

Since some Flyers can be organic monstrosities and some can be machines of death.

The point of force org charts is to enforce army composition in such a way that you can built an all-comers list with a certain proportion of anti-infantry, anti-tank, etc. and expect to see viable targets for your weapons/units. With the "take-as-many-detachments-as-you-want" attitude from 6e forward, Imperial Knights as a standalone Codex, the no-restrictions Lords of War slot, and the like, the current system is so bad at curtailing skew and so easily abused based on whose armies have the cheapest compulsory-unit tax that it might as well not exist, especially with the army-wide 3-copies restriction out of the current FAQ.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Just go the AoS route and make some stuff "Battleline"(mandatory percentage of your army), some stuff "Battleline if..."(certain Heroes as your General make them count as Battleline), Behemoths, Warmachines, and then uncategorized.

It's funny how people didn't want them to bring the AoS system over but now it seems there's a clamor to do things more like that setup.

I don't at all play or understand AoS (but that's because I'm pretty casual, not because I don't think it wouldn't be a decent game), but it certainly sounds like the old WFB (or even older 40k) army building mechanic in which you had your army list split into three sections - (using the Ultramarines Codex from 2ed as an example) "Characters, Squads and Support". Now, you MUST have 25% of your army chosen from "Squads", and up to 50% of your points on Characters and up to 50% of your points on Support.

So an army might look like 25% Squads (again, this was the "tax" at the time), 40% Support and 35% Characters. Or 25% Squads, 50% Characters and 25% support.

That being said, let's examine the "Squads" section of the army list for comparison to the current "Troops" Section of the current SM codex. We have Terminator Squads, Veteran Squads, Tactical Squads, Assault Squads, Devastator Squads, Scout Squads and Bike Squads. So even with the mandatory "tax", one could tailor their list to suit their chosen theme. So it felt less like a tax than being forced to take "troops" does currently.

The big issue with that mechanic was bamboozling younger and less experienced players to have to do heaps of maths. Looking at the current shift towards "power level" being the default way to read a codex, it seems they're trying to push away the use of points altogether.

AoS doesn't have percentages like that. It just has a few battle line units needed and maximums on characters, artillery and truly large monsters. The amount changes based on the size of the game.

I've been playing 40k pretty much ignoring the force org chart. We tend to just sort of not bother checking and just be like "let's have 6 command points each this game" and it's been fine.

The problem with the premise of this thread is that a lot of troops are actually really good. Kabalites, Guardsmen, Guardians, Ork Boyz, Genestealers and Fire Warriors are all excellent choices and they're not the only ones. The idea of troops being an unwanted tax is rather outdated this edition and proven false by the performance of many of these units on the table.

The biggest strength of the force org chart is that it is a framework or guide for collecting. Having all sorts of different ways to combine different detachments to the point that you can nearly have any possible combination means that framework can be a bit lost for people. The Dark Eldar codex having the refocus on the patrol detachment was a great idea. More stuff like that.

I like the Force Organization Charts because they strike me as fairly fluffy distinctions, rather than necessary for game balance (though CP's are a "soft balance" in a way).

Spearhead Detachment = Tank/Artillery/Heavy Support company, representing the 5-Land Raider attack by the Iron Hands on that one Forge World, or the typical 10-Tank IG tank company, or the like.

Outrider Detachment = Cavalry/Bikes/Speedy detachment, representing Saim-Hann bike swarms or Kult of Speed Ork hordes or Blood Angels jump-pack-marine spam.

Vanguard Detachment = Elite Troopers detachment, like special forces or the like, representing elite bodyguards like Lychguard and Celestians, or powerful strike forces like Terminators or whatnot.

EtC. ETC.

The problem being, of course, that this sort of shorthand for fluffy organization has little value, since people don't play for fluffy organizations...

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I like the Force Organization Charts because they strike me as fairly fluffy distinctions, rather than necessary for game balance (though CP's are a "soft balance" in a way).

Spearhead Detachment = Tank/Artillery/Heavy Support company, representing the 5-Land Raider attack by the Iron Hands on that one Forge World, or the typical 10-Tank IG tank company, or the like.

Outrider Detachment = Cavalry/Bikes/Speedy detachment, representing Saim-Hann bike swarms or Kult of Speed Ork hordes or Blood Angels jump-pack-marine spam.

Vanguard Detachment = Elite Troopers detachment, like special forces or the like, representing elite bodyguards like Lychguard and Celestians, or powerful strike forces like Terminators or whatnot.

EtC. ETC.

The problem being, of course, that this sort of shorthand for fluffy organization has little value, since people don't play for fluffy organizations...

Yes, except that to have those cool formations you have to sacrifice CP generation, and the Rule of Three limits your ability to field enough units for your formation to fill up 1500 or 2000 points.

phydaux wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I like the Force Organization Charts because they strike me as fairly fluffy distinctions, rather than necessary for game balance (though CP's are a "soft balance" in a way).

Spearhead Detachment = Tank/Artillery/Heavy Support company, representing the 5-Land Raider attack by the Iron Hands on that one Forge World, or the typical 10-Tank IG tank company, or the like.

Outrider Detachment = Cavalry/Bikes/Speedy detachment, representing Saim-Hann bike swarms or Kult of Speed Ork hordes or Blood Angels jump-pack-marine spam.

Vanguard Detachment = Elite Troopers detachment, like special forces or the like, representing elite bodyguards like Lychguard and Celestians, or powerful strike forces like Terminators or whatnot.

EtC. ETC.

The problem being, of course, that this sort of shorthand for fluffy organization has little value, since people don't play for fluffy organizations...

Yes, except that to have those cool formations you have to sacrifice CP generation, and the Rule of Three limits your ability to field enough units for your formation to fill up 1500 or 2000 points.

Yes, though the rule of 3 is a balance change, not a fluff one. I'm not surprised fluff is sacrificed on the altar of balance, again.

CP generation is, I think, an attempt to get players to play more flexible formations. The Iron Hands don't have enough Land Raiders for everyone to play that epic attack, and Infantry Regiments outnumber Tank Regiments by a large margin in the Imperial Guard, just as examples. So GW stuck in command points as a way to try to get players who can't really decide on what formation they would like to play in the fluff to pick a more "typical" one. That's what I'd guess.

It's not worthless but it often shows just how woefully unsupported some armies are. A lot of them have very token inclusions at best.

Elite feels like the most problematic slot. It exists as a nebulous nexus of Fast Attacking Heavy Support Troops. Flyers likewise could probably all be put into either Heavy Support or Dedicated Transport without much issue.

 LunarSol wrote:
It's not worthless but it often shows just how woefully unsupported some armies are. A lot of them have very token inclusions at best.

Elite feels like the most problematic slot. It exists as a nebulous nexus of Fast Attacking Heavy Support Troops. Flyers likewise could probably all be put into either Heavy Support or Dedicated Transport without much issue.

I feel like Flyers fit Fast .attack, by their very nature.

If I'm not mistaken, weren't the Nid Flyers Fast Atacks?

Bigger problem is CPs. I think you should pay CPs for taking vanguard or spearhead and the like. Cost of a specialist army. That would make troops more relevant.

Andykp wrote:
Bigger problem is CPs. I think you should pay CPs for taking vanguard or spearhead and the like. Cost of a specialist army. That would make troops more relevant.

But you already pay a cost in CP for Vanguard, Spearhead, and Outrider, you only get 1 CP, which is a huge loss when compaired to the others.

 Blndmage wrote:

Andykp wrote:
Bigger problem is CPs. I think you should pay CPs for taking vanguard or spearhead and the like. Cost of a specialist army. That would make troops more relevant.

But you already pay a cost in CP for Vanguard, Spearhead, and Outrider, you only get 1 CP, which is a huge loss when compaired to the others.

This. Unless you run 3 of them (giving you 6CP total if Battleforged) you're nowhere near the 8CP a Battalion gets on it's own. And it's usually Battalion+Specialist detachment or Double Battalion leaving you even further behind on the CP game.

I think you should actually pay to take them. -1 or more. -3 for supreme command.

Andykp wrote:
I think you should actually pay to take them. -1 or more. -3 for supreme command.

So we should kill fluffy build options by charging just to take things? I'm going to have to disagree pretty heavily there.

I usually play no higher than 1,500, but I'm making my first 2,000 list and actually filling out more than one Detachment, an Outrider and a Spearhead, be cause that's what I have for models. Yes I have some troops, but each of those allow 3 troops, without requiring me to get more HQs.

The specialist detachments are amazing, and you can pry them from my stasis locked robot hands!

For the first time ever, I can finally field the army I want without having to make compromises! It's not like it's some crazy powerforce, it's a waking Necron Tombworld, mostly Scarabs, Spyders, a few Wraiths, a few Warrior blocks and some Sentry Pylons.

It's a fluff based force, and I don't need special rules or a special mission to run it. That's why Specialist Detachments are amazing.

They're already penalized enough, even at 2,000, I'm only getting 4 or 5 CP, it's the same no matter my points.

Detachments exists to be filled, not hit the minimums and make another. Detachments can guide your entire collection.

 Blndmage wrote:

Detachments exists to be filled, not hit the minimums and make another.

I missed this rule.

Elites, Fast Attack, Flyers, and Heavy Support might as well not have any differences.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

Detachments exists to be filled, not hit the minimums and make another.

I missed this rule.

Glad I wasn't the only one.
I'll be honest I start any competitive list with usually minimum strength battalion then a second detachment of main force.
With sometimes a third detachment if I need a different faction or subfaction specific detachment.

Ice_can wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

Detachments exists to be filled, not hit the minimums and make another.

I missed this rule.

Glad I wasn't the only one.
I'll be honest I start any competitive list with usually minimum strength battalion then a second detachment of main force.
With sometimes a third detachment if I need a different faction or subfaction specific detachment.

And that's where things get broken.
Why do you think they show the rest of the limitations of the various detachments, to 0-X stuff?
It's to show how they want the detachments filled out, even if it's from a fluff standpoint, that's really where the game is from.
Not everyone plays competitively, actually the minority of players do.
This thread isn't just about the comparative mindset, but the game in general.
Stop looking at from an optimization standpoint, and look at it from the narrative side.
I totally, and 100% get what your saying, but not everyone has the ability to do that.

Andykp wrote:
I think you should actually pay to take them. -1 or more. -3 for supreme command.

Compared to the detachments which closer match the old FOC/CAD, you are paying for them with -1 or more CP. I know you actually mean that they are more the single slot detachments, but seriously, that is over the top.