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So in the other thread, we were all in agreement that formations didn't work, but I and some other people were also in agreement that the system could have worked... so what do you think would need to be done to make it work?

Personally, I think that the biggest issue was the sizes of core formations. For GSC, the two core options were:


the smaller of the two still required running a leman russ and a sentinel. just one of the first one would be enough units to fill out an entire army. core formations either forced you into full armies at once, or pushed you into slant lists, like the smaller Eldar formation having three units of Windriders

any other thoughts on the matter?

Reduce the amount of required units and instead restrict what units can be taken.

Example 1:
A theoretical White Scars formation would require you to have every model be able to move at least x" per turn. Slower units can only be taken if they start the game in a transport vehicle.

Example 2:
A "Librarian Conclave" requires you to take 3-5 Librarians and restricts other HQ options.

Additionally, I would rather see the appeal in formations to be the possibility to take units in unusual amounts or - as it was still being used in 7th edition when they were introduced - Force Organisation slots, instead of giving them arbitrary buffs and stratagems. Would feel more immersive to me.

I remember the complaint was being forced to take units that you didn't want.

Just making formations have 0-1 instead of 1, would've fixed the issue.

Honestly?

I’d say modern Detachments are the fix they needed, alongside the removal of the FoC.

You get your bonuses which work better for certain, typically thematic, units. And no FoC means I’ve greater freedom in how my army looks.

Which means, I can now collect more or less what I fancy, and then pick a Detachment I think works best, rather than picking a Detachment, then number crunching which units are my Elite or Heavy Support picks etc.

That for me is why I’m dead chuffed with the Eldar Codex. Yes the skew Detachments encourage their Skew, but even stuff like Guardians aren’t left entirely out in the cold - and the Battle Host is nicely flexible, offering perks for everyone.

What Mad Doc said. Formations were just kind of a flawed concept to begin with. Detachments aren't perfect, but they do it better.

Compared to detachments or something like Rites of War, I don't see any advantage to the formations system.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I remember the complaint was being forced to take units that you didn't want.

Just making formations have 0-1 instead of 1, would've fixed the issue.

One of the other (I'd argue bigger) complaints was that they stacked rules on top of units without any real downside/opportunity cost. So a unit that was balanced without a boost from formations risked being boosted into OP/underpriced status, and a unit that was balanced around having the formation benefits was overpriced/underpowered without them.

Having a "bad unit tax" was theoretically one of the ways of offsetting that power boost to already decent units. Removing that tax means that you're doubling down on there being no cost to the free unit upgrades.

Detachments theoretically still kind of run into this issue (guardians in the guardian host detachment simply hit harder than guardians outside of it), but theoretically this is balanced by the fact that you're giving up some other opportunity to get it. So if you're fielding guardians+1 in the guardian host, you're not fielding aspects+1 in the aspect host. And as everyone is forced to have a detachment, you know that you and your opponent have the same roughly equal opportunity cost whereas the formation system meant that sometimes you were using formations, and sometimes you weren't. So someone running a CAD was just innately at a disadvantage compared to someone who was layering on formation rules.

Back in Apocalypse formations made sense because they were basically a way for huge quantities of regular units to compete with the new superheavies. They needed a bunch of free buffs because the superheavies were OP and regular units couldn't compete as-is.

I wasn't there when they brought them into regular 40k but my impression is that detachments do the same thing better. Formations occupy a weird middle-ground between units and armies that doesn't really fit the scale of a 2000 point 40k game. It's more appropriate to Apoc or Epic or something.

Formations existed on a spectrum of a sort.

You had some that were "all tax, no bonus" (IIRC, there was one in Khorne Daemonkin that required Warp Talons, and in exchange you got +1 Strength on Hammer of Wrath...an ability you could only use if your jump troops did NOT use their jump packs to move), and then you had some that were "all bonus, no tax" (looking at the Riptide Wing as the main offender here).

Then there were the "detachments of formations" like the Gladius and the Decurion and the Great Waaagh. Sometimes, the bonuses were exactly the same as the underlying formations (alas, poor Blood Angels and Orks), while in other cases, the bonuses were, well, "Free Transports."

Me? I played Chaos Space Marines and got about 2 or so months of enjoying Traitor Legions before 8th came out. It was roughly 'in the middle' of the pack in terms of neat flavor/options, though there were some aspects I enjoyed more than others, like the one formation that let you turn a walker into a Character...which could then transitively be your Warlord.

Yeah. The execution was poor. And as you say, Detachments varied wildly in usefulness across the different armies.

10th Ed Detachments feel like the right application. As I mentioned above, they encourage a theme, without dictating playstyle. And whilst not the expert, I don’t think any stand out as especially beardy or unfair.

I agree. I think detachments are the only significant improvement of 10th edition

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yeah. The execution was poor. And as you say, Detachments varied wildly in usefulness across the different armies.

10th Ed Detachments feel like the right application. As I mentioned above, they encourage a theme, without dictating playstyle. And whilst not the expert, I don’t think any stand out as especially beardy or unfair.

Some are generally considered better than others even within a given faction, but they're also pretty easy to reign in when they are broken. (See: Bearers of Flame for a clear if overdone example.) You can adjust strat CP costs, individual rules, or enhancement costs to fine tune a detachment as needed. To adjust a formation, you'd have to either adjust the unit composition (messy as a balancing mechanic) or edit the benefits each time. And that still wouldn't address some of the more fundamental issues I mentioned earlier.

Detachments also at least partially do away with sub-codexes.

Want to play Iyanden? There’s a detachment for that. Biel Tan? Ditto. And so forth. If you want to spec into a given background theme. But importantly, again to the best of my knowledge, none outright exclude specific units. So for Iyanden you can soup up your Wraith Constructs, without losing out on Aspects, Guardians, Psykers etc.

Which, as a given player’s collection grows, means they can in time fiddle with the other Detachments on offer, without having to essentially rebuy their army.

I'm glad Model Tax is not in 10th edition.

Model tax is one of the main reasons I quit playing HH. To run a single Knight, you must take 2 additional armigers.

So if you want a Lance (4 Knights) you must also take 8 Armigers (no Moriax though, they aren't allowed).

One of the things formations helped fix is being tied to the FoC, which is no longer an issue. While that never bothered me as a marine player, it was not the same for every army.

One of the other things it helped with was boosting sup par units. Of course, now with a more active update schedule, that’s also a little less needed.

What I thought they did best was give small boosts to reward fluffy combos that you might not otherwise take. Things like taking landspeeders to act as spotters for whirlwinds, making the artillery a little more effective. Or a small buff if you took a demi-company of marines (not the full one with the free transports). In a world where assault marines and tac squads were lackluster, it gave a bonus for fielding something that actually looked like a marine army should.

What was bad were the ones with powerful rules and no real drawbacks. Take 3 squads of aspect warriors (any, mix and match, your choice) and they all get +1 WS or BS. Or the skyhammer, where if you took devs in drop pods and some assault marines, you got a list of crazy overpowered rules. And then there were the free points ones. All upgrades free, or free transports. Do you enjoy having a 20-30% point advantage? Seems a little broken.

And then there was the roll out. Did you have yours yet? Or still waiting on your codex. Because the power gap between the haves and have nots was massive.

Some also felt like they were put out by the sales/marketing team just to move models.

Mechanically you would also have issues with identical models haveing different rules depending on what formation they were part of.
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How to fix?

Are you looking to repair them for use in prior editions? The have/have not issue goes away. I might try them without the meta-formations like the decurion. Layered rules often lead to trouble, and not all were created equal. Then you need to balance them. Either by tweaking tax units, adjusting rules, or maybe having a point cost attached to them.

The whole concept of formations is a bit anathema to 10th. One of the core principles is cutting down on special rules and layers of power. I think a lot of the flavor can be done with detachments, where you are rewarded by sticking to a tight theme.

If you wanted to bolt on formations to 10th, I might do it in 2 parts. All the big ones should just be detachments. For small ones, I might work them as enhancements?

Skyhammer assault: XX points. choose exactly 2 assault marines with jump pack squads, 2 devastator squads, and 2 drop pods. They all gain the “skyhammer assault” and “formation” keywords and cannot be chosen to be part of other formations. They must all start in reserves, and arrive together. On the turn they arrive, they may re-roll charge distances and all their attacks gain sustained hits 1 until the end of the turn.

Tactical uplink: xx points. Choose 1 land speeder and 2+ whilwinds. Give them keywords, cant double dip as above. pick one target hit by the LS, whirlwinds in the formations gain ignore cover and can disregard indirect fire penalties for the turn.

Obvioulsy random examples made up on the spot. But with 10th freeform structure on army creation, we can just pick units in the list that meet the criteria for the formation and pay for a little flavorful upgrade.