Soups and 8th Edition

[Schlitzaf]

Soups and 8th; this discussion I want to try and focus on usage of allies. Without devolving to “allies bad, nerf nerf nerf”. Or the implication only “Power Gamers” use Soups. And it should be within the confines of 8th Edition.

 

My personal opanion, allies are handled wonderfully in 8th Edition. I am currently running Black Templars with Metallica and Vostroyan support. Without really weird limitations. That was the Allied Detachment. And want to say I like how Detachment System support of either Mono or Soup Armies work.

 

A SM cannot just take a Leman Russ, they have to unless they are okay losing their tactic, take another Detachment. Which is 70 Point Or 5 Man Tactical Squad worth of points minimum or have to accept losing a command point. And one of the most commonly cited examples. Is the cheapest Gaurd Battlelion is 180. That is the price of 1 MSU Tactical + Razorback, 1 10 Men Geared up Tacticals Or 2 Intercessors. Which is a weird way to look at I know. The Intercessors comparison is espacially apt. The difference is those Squad will likely die to left over Bolter Fire, where Intercessors take dedicated firepower to dislodge.

 

However something I think Soups should lose; Relics. You can only use Relics on a character if your Warlord and that character share every faction Keyword. Warlord Traits and Relics, being two obvious things to lose.

 

But let’s open floor, if you ignore my rules, please give a better reason ‘soups’ are dumb.

[Lexington]

I don't mind "soups" overall (well, the name is unfortunate), but I don't like this change for the same reason i didn't like the famous old 3.5 Chaos lists - they're too "game"-y and non-narrative. Why did my Word Bearers stop being Word Bearers just because they brought along some Plague Marines? By the same token, why can't they bring their rad relic mace to the battle when they drag their LatD contingent along with them? Are they ashamed of it? Etc. Edited February 1, 2018 by Lexington

[Kinstryfe]

I like them in concept, because there are a ton of examples in the fluff of that sort of thing happening. In some ways, I even think that there should be a lot MORE options for weird allies and mercenaries, and would love a book of unaligned forces that could go almost anywhere (a rogue trader's private force helping a necron dynasty take back a tomb world in exchange for a piece of archaotech left on the surface by settlers, Ork mercenaries being hired by a Drukhari warband as a distraction so they can capture more slaves when they attack, a cadre of fallen Aeldari advising and influencing a group of traitor Astartes, etc etc etc). Right now there are 2 main problems I keep seeing popping up with soup lists. First, they are pretty much all Imperial (or chaos when Forgeworld gets involved or with multi-legion lists), with the closest xenos get being Ynnari Aeldari. The second is with Forgeworld, it expands the options tremendously, and many pairings seem to be overlooked for potential brokenness. I honestly have no idea how to address some of the Forgeworld stuff without completely overhauling the entire relationship between them and GW proper.

 

For the main issue, the problem I see is that Imperials just have too many options open to them for soup. (full disclosure: I say this as someone with multiple marine armies, a ton of guard, Custodes, and a counts-as Ministorum force, so all of this could theoretically benefit me). There's also a matter of perceived fluff rarity to certain situations. I almost feel like detachments should have a "rarity rating" for matched play. Something like "units from a codex with a higher rarity rating may not exceed the points or power levels of the lowest rarity codex detachment in the army." So give guard Rarity:1, Sisters Rarity:2, Astartes Rarity:3. You can ally marines into a guard army, but have to have more guard. Allying two units of Conscripts and a Commander into a Marine army would then be disallowed. This would also give some added bonus to units like Inquisitors, Grey Knights, and Custodes, who could have a rule where a detachment can be included with no regard to rarity. It would be slightly messy to work out the details, but would limit silly soup options a little bit.

 

I'd also like to see restrictions on effectively allying with the same codex. Two guard regiments, two marine chapters etc kind of bug me. It just screams of list building for advantage under weak fluff justifications of "mixed regiments" or "joint operations".

[The Yncarne]

I wouldn’t have as much concern with soup lists if mono codex builds could compete. It seems soup is mostly used to spam cheap units in turn to maximize command points. Said command points vary in usefulness.

[BitsHammer]

Personally I like chili more than soup.... :P

Okay, more seriously the idea of building a fluffy army through soups (really needs a better name honestly) is great. I'm building an Ad Mech army focused around Deimos, the Forge Moon that supports the Grey Knights both through equipment and combat. I even have a plog now for them and thanks to their unique relationship I can see them also working with the Ordo Malleus/Hereticus on occasion due to their experience and expertise in dealing with daemons and cultists (who tend to summon daemons in the lore) creating room for me to bring in Inquisitors or Grey Knights (maybe even an assassin or two), or if I'm feeling especially crazy, Sisters of Silence since they can be studied on how they effect the warp...

Basically I'm saying that lists can be fluffy while still shoring up weak points in your army.

Guard (the basis of most current soups from what I've seen) really do work with just about anyone (and honestly should be able to replace <Imperium> with <T'au> or <Chaos> to represent their ability to be brainwashed persuaded into switching sides) so I honestly can't hate the idea too much, even if it's sometimes a bit silly looking on the table.

The problem I find is two-fold. First there is blatant cherry picking for high level competitive play (which usually trickles down net list style to lower levels to players looking for an easy power boost to their army) not for theme but rather for specific combos (which will hopefully be nerfed into oblivion in the future to fix the issues as they're found), the second is how lacking the options are for many armies.

Now most of this will likely be balanced by various sub-factions that will allow players to mix and match different things to soup, but honestly it will never compete with how many subfactions the Imperium can bring to the table in different detachments.

Honestly, if GW does anything to fix the problem, I'd say the biggest thing would be to limit stratagems to only the Warlord's faction. That would curb most of the competitive soup lists as the reason they exist is to spam multiple factions of stratagems. I'd honestly take it further and say that allied detachments from other factions should only be worth half CP (rounded up, I'm not a complete monster here) just to curb people spamming Guard for CP and start looking more at what they're trying to show flavorwise on the table.

[Shockmaster]

I would personally hate to see soups/allies lessened for everyone purely to neutralised the extreme lists seen in the more hardcore competitive scene, as allies are a great addition to the game and peoples collections for the vast majority of players.

 

Maybe it is something the tournament organisers should deal with if enough of those who take part in that style want them too.

 

Just make it a rule that your entire army must come from one codex or something similar.

[MARK0SIAN]

I like the ability to ally quite easily and use detachments from multiple factions in a battle, I actually think it helps me build a better narrative for the matches, like a hard pressed guard regiment getting a saving intervention from some space marines or an inquisitor requisitioning another imperial unit for a vital operation :)

 

However I do think something needs to be done to stop the exploits. Whilst I wouldn’t limit the stratagems used to just the warlord’s faction I would be happy to see CP restricted to the detachment/faction that generated it.

 

So if you’ve got 9CP from a guard detachment then those 9CP have to be spent on guard stratagems. They wouldn’t go into a pool to be used by any of your other non-guard detachments. It prevents people bringing allies just to generate CP for another detachment.

 

Obviously if you’ve got 3 Guard detachments in a list then they could use all the CP in a pool, I would just prevent CP from crossing over to other factions, even if they share the imperium or chaos keyword.

[The Unseen]

The abuse will always exist as long as allies are allowed.

Allies should be open/narrative play only.

Matched play should be mono-codex.

Otherwise the factions will never be balanced, and you'll continue to see imperial codexes not able to stand alone, because the "balancing" was done around everything with the keyword IMPERIUM.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

FWIW, there's very little chance I would have started a Renegades & Heretic army to go with my Daemons without the current rules system. 

 

As already said, I would be displeased if they nerfed this gift from Slaanesh because a few 'tournament types' abused it. Let the tournaments deal with them, they're not a problem for the vast majority of us.

[Kinstryfe]

I like the ability to ally quite easily and use detachments from multiple factions in a battle, I actually think it helps me build a better narrative for the matches, like a hard pressed guard regiment getting a saving intervention from some space marines or an inquisitor requisitioning another imperial unit for a vital operation :)

However I do think something needs to be done to stop the exploits. Whilst I wouldn’t limit the stratagems used to just the warlord’s faction I would be happy to see CP restricted to the detachment/faction that generated it.

So if you’ve got 9CP from a guard detachment then those 9CP have to be spent on guard stratagems. They wouldn’t go into a pool to be used by any of your other non-guard detachments. It prevents people bringing allies just to generate CP for another detachment.

Obviously if you’ve got 3 Guard detachments in a list then they could use all the CP in a pool, I would just prevent CP from crossing over to other factions, even if they share the imperium or chaos keyword.

Maybe even a CP penalty for each codex beyond the first. -1 for the first list, -2 for the second, etc. Exclude certain combos that make sense (Inquisition or Custodes as allies to Imperium, Daemons as allies to csm). And yeah, tighten up stratagems and relics and stuff. Something to make things a little more in check across factions.

[Bulwyf]

I personally strongly dislike soup lists. I run mono armies. My DG are all DG, Space Wolves are all SW, Emperor's Children are all EC, etc. I play for the fluff and lore and watching people cobble lists together just for the edge in a game is deflating.

[Feral_80]

As an Imperial player I really dislike sup, although I acknowledge that allies are handled much better than 7th ed. It's just that there is too much freedom and you often see lists that have no flavour nor identity, they are just a bunch of (imperial) guys which vaguely share some iconography.

I'd prefer a system that forces a player to take the bulk of his army from one faction, then gives some freedom to take allies as minor contingents only.

 

I'm especially pissed off by the fact that, due to the current game (im)balance, by far most of the competitive imperium lists are soups. I find it very bad for the game generally, and a great loss of character.

 

Ps: RaW, it seems ro me that the stratagem that allows you to take 1/2 extra relics actually gives you a way to take relics from a different detachment from your warlord's. I even suspect that is intentional...

[Lord_Caerolion]

As an Imperial player I really dislike sup, although I acknowledge that allies are handled much better than 7th ed. It's just that there is too much freedom and you often see lists that have no flavour nor identity, they are just a bunch of (imperial) guys which vaguely share some iconography.

I'd prefer a system that forces a player to take the bulk of his army from one faction, then gives some freedom to take allies as minor contingents only.

 

I'm especially pissed off by the fact that, due to the current game (im)balance, by far most of the competitive imperium lists are soups. I find it very bad for the game generally, and a great loss of character.

 

Ps: RaW, it seems ro me that the stratagem that allows you to take 1/2 extra relics actually gives you a way to take relics from a different detachment from your warlord's. I even suspect that is intentional...

 

There's even an FAQ that addresses the Relic issue you mentioned, specifically between Chaos Marines and Death Guard, agreeing that it does work that way.

 

Personally, I'm in favour of the possibility of soup, but do agree that currently there's no real downside to it. Imperial Guard are becoming a cheap way to get bubble-wrap, and to spam CP's. If they had some sort of rule that CP's gained from Detachments of a different Faction than the Warlord are halved, to a minimum of 1, or something like that, it'd help a lot.

[MARK0SIAN]

halving the number of cp from other detachments would definitely be a downside but the problem is, people would feel pressured to make their warlord the leader of the faction with the most cps, no matter how unfluffy.

 

If you’ve bought a cheap Guard Brigade you’ll get 9cps, if you ally that with a space marine battalion you’ll get 3cps. Now there’s no way you would make the SM guys your warlord because you’d lose 4cps whereas making the Guard your warlord you’d only lose 1cp (I’m assuming the usual GW practice of rounding up).

 

It means you’d end up with lists where a 30 point company commander is the warlord in the same army that includes Dante, Calgar, Grimnar or some other more suitable person.

 

I think the best way to counter people exploiting soup is to rebalance the CP system. Make it so that it is much more evenly distributed amongst factions. If I recall, the point of CP was originally meant to encourage and reward fluffy lists. Therefore I would redesign it so that say, 2000 points of any battleforged faction yields roughly the same amount of cp. instead of now where 2000 points of guard could net you up to 18 additional CP (granted it wouldn’t be an amazing list) whereas 2000 points of space marine would probably max out around 9 CP.

 

If you could even out the CP across factions people would still be free to take allies for fluff reasons without penalty but wouldn’t benefit as much from just taking them to maximise CP.

 

Just an idea though and I’m not sure how exactly you’d balance CP fairly across factions :)

[totgeboren]

Perhaps rules such as access to Chapter/Legion traits, stratagems and relics should be decided by the detachment the Warlord is in? So if my Warlord is a Word Bearer, other WB detachments would get their full rules, but including a detachment of Death Guards would not give me access to DG stratagems, nor would those DG get to use DG relics or their DG traits.

 

Fighting under a commander that does not share the doctrinal preferences and expectations of some of the troops under his/her command is bound to lead to some reduction in efficiency, and by the same token, being commanded by someone who is not 'One of us' can also lead some some loss of battlefield efficiency. So it at least makes sense from a thematic point of view.

 

So the 'main force' would still get to keep their rules, but the allies would be a bit more plain? If I play a WB army with Daemon support, I'm fine with the Daemons having somewhat more limited options compared to fielding a pure Daemon army.

 

It would reduce some of the worst excesses of soup list-building at least, while still retaining the ability to theme your army. But yeah, it's not perfect.

Edited February 2, 2018 by totgeboren

[MARK0SIAN]

Perhaps rules such as access to Chapter/Legion traits, stratagems and relics should be decided by the detachment the Warlord is in? So if my Warlord is a Word Bearer, other WB detachments would get their full rules, but including a detachment of Death Guards would not give me access to DG stratagems, nor would those DG get to use DG relics or their DG traits.

 

Fighting under a commander that does not share the doctrinal preferences and expectations of some of the troops under his/her command is bound to lead to some reduction in efficiency, and by the same token, being commanded by someone who is not 'One of us' can also lead some some loss of battlefield efficiency. So it at least makes sense from a thematic point of view.

 

So the 'main force' would still get to keep their rules, but the allies would be a bit more plain? If I play a WB army with Daemon support, I'm fine with the Daemons having somewhat more limited options compared to fielding a pure Daemon army.

 

It would reduce some of the worst excesses of soup list-building at least, while still retaining the ability to theme your army. But yeah, it's not perfect.

I quite like this idea, the thematic explanation works quite well for me too. The only thing I personally would change is that I would let the allied detachment keep their traits. Lose the stratagems and the relics definitely but keep the traits.

 

I’ll admit I’m a lot less familiar with the CSM codex but in the SM one, the only thing that gives the chapters any flavour at all (outside of special characters) is their chapter tactics. Similar for Guard regiments. I’d be reluctant to see that go :)

 

Otherwise though I think it’s great. It’s an army’s warlord who should be using the stratagems so it makes sense that a WB or IF warlord wouldn’t have access to Guard/daemon stratagems.

[Feral_80]

 

There's even an FAQ that addresses the Relic issue you mentioned, specifically between Chaos Marines and Death Guard, agreeing that it does work that way.

 

Personally, I'm in favour of the possibility of soup, but do agree that currently there's no real downside to it. Imperial Guard are becoming a cheap way to get bubble-wrap, and to spam CP's. If they had some sort of rule that CP's gained from Detachments of a different Faction than the Warlord are halved, to a minimum of 1, or something like that, it'd help a lot.

 

 

Ah, good to know. Happy to hear that.

 

As for limiting CPs, I don't think it would work. The problem is hard to fix because they just messed up things with keywords and their interactions. It's the same issues with other rules that are currently breaking the game: they are largely unfixable because the mechanics are just poorly written and hard to change now. I don't know, once in the pastime allies were limited to 25% of your pts (= your warlord's faction). That could fix some forms of soup, but not others. Or you could state that all your detachments must have 2+ keywords in common, except one, but that would surely leave some holes and unnecessary limitations, such as prevent taking 1 inquisitor and 1 assassin in an otherwise mono-faction army.

 

As an AM player I'm definitely pissed off by the way AM is currently being used, also because AM has largely lost most of its strength as a standalone army due to the current balance of the game. So both AM players and other Imperium players tend to see it more and more as a CP/body farm rather than as a viable choice. Back to the old days I guess.

[A.T.]

The biggest problem with soups (and new FoC 'restrictions') is that it removes any ability to limit armies based off faction and organisation restrictions.

You just can't balance a faction to be good and shooting and weak at assault (for instance) when they can ally in all the beatsticks they need from the good at combat/bad at shooting faction.

 

I think the solution at this point, other than restricting CPs generated by a faction to being used by that faction, would be to design armies with actual internal synergy. Something akin to the old 3rd edition sisters of battle who could soup up but rarely did to any real degree because it weakened the army.

[D3L]

ban them all.

 

nothing good will come of allies.

 

to make a better game, we need some structure.

[MrZakalwe]

I think the best way to counter people exploiting soup is to rebalance the CP system. Make it so that it is much more evenly distributed amongst factions. If I recall, the point of CP was originally meant to encourage and reward fluffy lists. Therefore I would redesign it so that say, 2000 points of any battleforged faction yields roughly the same amount of cp. instead of now where 2000 points of guard could net you up to 18 additional CP (granted it wouldn’t be an amazing list) whereas 2000 points of space marine would probably max out around 9 CP.

If you made command points keyword specific, that would help. If the Astra Militarum command points could only be used on Astra Militarum strategies (for example) they you'd solve the command point issue of soup lists.

[Chapter Master Valrak]

 

Perhaps rules such as access to Chapter/Legion traits, stratagems and relics should be decided by the detachment the Warlord is in? So if my Warlord is a Word Bearer, other WB detachments would get their full rules, but including a detachment of Death Guards would not give me access to DG stratagems, nor would those DG get to use DG relics or their DG traits.

 

Fighting under a commander that does not share the doctrinal preferences and expectations of some of the troops under his/her command is bound to lead to some reduction in efficiency, and by the same token, being commanded by someone who is not 'One of us' can also lead some some loss of battlefield efficiency. So it at least makes sense from a thematic point of view.

 

So the 'main force' would still get to keep their rules, but the allies would be a bit more plain? If I play a WB army with Daemon support, I'm fine with the Daemons having somewhat more limited options compared to fielding a pure Daemon army.

 

It would reduce some of the worst excesses of soup list-building at least, while still retaining the ability to theme your army. But yeah, it's not perfect.

I quite like this idea, the thematic explanation works quite well for me too. The only thing I personally would change is that I would let the allied detachment keep their traits. Lose the stratagems and the relics definitely but keep the traits.

 

I’ll admit I’m a lot less familiar with the CSM codex but in the SM one, the only thing that gives the chapters any flavour at all (outside of special characters) is their chapter tactics. Similar for Guard regiments. I’d be reluctant to see that go

 

Otherwise though I think it’s great. It’s an army’s warlord who should be using the stratagems so it makes sense that a WB or IF warlord wouldn’t have access to Guard/daemon stratagems.

 

 

Marko, is that you? :D

[MARK0SIAN]

 

I think the best way to counter people exploiting soup is to rebalance the CP system. Make it so that it is much more evenly distributed amongst factions. If I recall, the point of CP was originally meant to encourage and reward fluffy lists. Therefore I would redesign it so that say, 2000 points of any battleforged faction yields roughly the same amount of cp. instead of now where 2000 points of guard could net you up to 18 additional CP (granted it wouldn’t be an amazing list) whereas 2000 points of space marine would probably max out around 9 CP.

If you made command points keyword specific, that would help. If the Astra Militarum command points could only be used on Astra Militarum strategies (for example) they you'd solve the command point issue of soup lists.

Yeah I’m quite a keen advocate of that, you shouldn’t be able to use those juicy guard CP for Marine stratagems and vice Versa. Lock CP to the faction that generated it.

[Commander Dawnstar]

Obviously they're very different games, but personally I find it interesting just how much 40k and AoS differ when it comes to allies and it's largely thanks to Detachments.

 

In AoS you effectively only have a single Detachment, your choices for allies are typically quite limited despite the Grand Alliances (i.e. Dwarf factions can only ally with the other Dwarf factions and Stormcast but no other Order factions), and if your allies exceed 20% of your total points then you lose access to your primary faction's unique faction traits, warlord traits and relics and have to use your Grand Alliance's faction keyword and generic options instead. The whole system is designed to create a situation where you have to focus on a specific army if you want full access to its unique options but also have the option to draw upon a range of sources, including those within your Grand Alliance beyond your permitted allies, in much the same way that you could run a mixed Imperium Detachment featuring Space Marines rather than an Ultramarines one in 40k.

 

In 40k Detachments essentially allow you to have multiple self-contained armies on the field, the big blocs (Imperium, Chaos and Aeldari) have a wide range of factions to draw upon and no restrictions beyond the necessary shared keyword, and all of your mono-faction Battleforged Detachments retain full access to faction traits, relics and stratagems regardless of their size or composition. This system gives no direct benefit to primarily mono-build armies and instead rewards those factions with a broad spread of potential allies by allowing them to pick and choose to cover their strengths and weaknesses or meet the meta concerns of the day and to keep all their special rules while doing so.

 

I'm not trying to suggest that 40k needs to adopt something similar to AoS' system, but I can't help but but find it fascinating that GW has such radically different stances in both games. A 180-ish point Imperial Guard Battalion in a 2,000 point army can still claim Regiment rules, use Stratagems and even take Relics or Guard-specific Warlord Traits if you're that way inclined, whereas an equivalent faction in an Age of Sigmar army would have to represent at least 1,600 points of that total to be able to do the same. Detachments have created a system where the rules GW uses to reward sticking to a theme in AoS can be claimed by small or highly-specialised portions of a greater whole in 40k and in doing so have basically removed the trade-off for that extra bit of flavour and power. Obviously people wouldn't like it if they had to play 'Space Marines' or 'Imperial Guard' rather than Black Templars or Catachans, but making those rules so easy to access has left the mono-faction force without an identity all of its own.

 

The 'soup' army is the result of there being basically no incentive to stick closely to a theme or single faction across your whole army and every incentive to draw from multiple Codexes and add their strengths to your own. On the one hand this allows for much greater freedom in putting together armies and uses far less arbitrary restrictions than AoS' system, but on the other it creates a system of haves and have-nots where the Necrons, Orks or Tau have to go up against Imperium, Chaos or Aeldari alliances that have many times the options (and subfactions and stratagems) they do and leads to a difficult situation where units and factions are being fielded and potentially nerfed for their power in 'soup' armies rather than within the scope of their own faction. Even this whole discussion about Imperial Guard and CP generation stems from the fact that what really should be a significant aspect of the Imperial Guard's identity in this Edition (easy access to large quantities of CP) is instead a an easily-accessible strength of the Imperium as a whole. Detachments just make it far too easy to slot a powerful aspect of one army into a multi-faction list with little to no trade-off.

Edited February 2, 2018 by Commander Dawnstar

[MARK0SIAN]

I agree there is also an issue with detachments. It’s almost self-contradictory, GW originally said that detachments were there to reward fluffy lists. But then they made the detachments such that you could field almost any force you liked, no matter how un-fluffy it appeared.

 

A detachment of tank commanders with no tanks to command? Not a problem - supreme command detachment

 

A detachment of all your elite options? Not a problem - Vanguard detachment

 

Want a heavy gun line? - Not a problem - Spearhead detachment.

 

Now this is fine on its own in a mono-codex list because the CP is supposed to make some detachments more appealing than others. The problem is when you can ally so easily. Your main force lacks in a certain area? Not a problem, take some allies in a detachment that’s geared exactly towards filling your weak spot with that factions best units and no taxes.

 

It means soup armies can plug weaknesses that others can’t and get CP for doing so. To fix soup armies I don’t think the answer lies in restricting your ability to actually take allies, it lies in fixing the detachment and CP system so it less easily abused and has some potential downsides for your force.

Edited February 2, 2018 by MARK0SIAN

[Lexington]

I wonder if completely removing Strategies and CP from the game would make this problem better or worse.