Can you get by without command points?

[Trevak Dal]

They are useful and all, and there is a lot of min maxing with guard or chaos space cultists being command point batteries, are they so good that they are that necessary?

[thewarriorhunter]

I think unfortunately in the current meta if you don't play with them you're hamstringing yourself. They provide a lot of utility and opportunities to get things done. I think by choosing to not use them you are deliberately putting yourself at a disadvantage because your opponent will be using them.

[Panzer]

They definitely are that good and they are that necessary, yes. Not taking them is gimping your own army heavily. Why would you voluntarily not be able to shoot twice or get +1 to wound or do a 3d6 charge out of deep strike or re-roll a critical lascannon hit/wound/damage roll and so on and on?

[Tamiel]

I dislike the Guard CP battery, where you take a dirt cheap batallion of two platoon leaders and 3 infantry squads. You get a bunch of bodies which can deny deepstrike or hold objectives, and these units can run really fast if they need to thanks to orders, sometimes moving faster than landspeeders (or they can stand still and just shoot twice for some added damage if you don't need them to go anywhere). That's already really good. On top of that, you get 3 CPs, which you can use on whatever army's strategems you want. You don't even have to use guard stratagems (although they have great strategems too).

You get all of this for 180 points. It's almost like the game is forcing you to do this for every Imperium list you make, simply because of how good it is.

[Dosjetka]

How about neither player using CPs and Stratagems? Would that perhaps improve balance at least or bit?

[Xwingt65]

I dislike the Guard CP battery, where you take a dirt cheap batallion of two platoon leaders and 3 infantry squads. You get a bunch of bodies which can deny deepstrike or hold objectives, and these units can run really fast if they need to thanks to orders, sometimes moving faster than landspeeders (or they can stand still and just shoot twice for some added damage if you don't need them to go anywhere). That's already really good. On top of that, you get 3 CPs, which you can use on whatever army's strategems you want. You don't even have to use guard stratagems (although they have great strategems too).

You get all of this for 180 points. It's almost like the game is forcing you to do this for every Imperium list you make, simply because of how good it is.

Guard and CP’s are so broken it isn’t even funny. I have stopped playing the local guard players, because it just isn’t a fun army to face at all.

[Panzer]

How about neither player using CPs and Stratagems? Would that perhaps improve balance at least or bit?

 

Not really, no. Some armies are really dependant on Stratagems. Like Blood Angels and the earlier mentioned 3d6 charge out of deep strike for Jump Pack units. It's literally the only difference why they're considered more viable than vanillar Marines (and Captain Smash of course but that's 90% Stratagems as well).

 

I don't see any reason why we should play without such a crucial part of the current edition. That's like saying "lets play without saves" or something. Basically just a step back. Yes there are some armies with bad Stratagems and some armies with really good Stratagems and yes there are some armies who abuse the CP generation by design because GW is bad at designing some things but just giving up and removing all that is not the solution imo.

[The Unseen]

How about neither player using CPs and Stratagems? Would that perhaps improve balance at least or bit?

No.

It wouldn't.

Guard funnily enough don't care about CP, at least not for example, like Blood Angels do.

 

Pulling out strategems entirely just weights the game further in favor of cheap effecient units.

[Azekai]

 

How about neither player using CPs and Stratagems? Would that perhaps improve balance at least or bit?

No.

It wouldn't.

Guard funnily enough don't care about CP, at least not for example, like Blood Angels do.

 

As a chaos player, eating a 'Vengeance for Cadia' volley at every single opportunity is pretty lame.

 

That one stratagem makes the matchup really unpleasant- as if guard weren't bad enough.

[Skaorn]

How about neither player using CPs and Stratagems? Would that perhaps improve balance at least or bit?

I'd honestly be in favor of this. At worst I think it would be like scraping the frosting off of cake. It's not like you're cutting out something that affects core gameplay mechanics since you don't use CP to call in deep strikers, put a unit into overwatch, or rally a unit. The only thing you would have to do is probably work out something with detachments to curb people from doing things like just taking the supreme command detachments. I think I would, personally, probably go with detachments having the type of detachment you take equaling a set amount of points, SC detachment being the lowest, and have the person with the highest score go first in the game. Of course the people you play with might be fine with just using the old FOC if they aren't fans of soup. I'd personally be interested to see how the games play out.

[Panzer]

 

 

How about neither player using CPs and Stratagems? Would that perhaps improve balance at least or bit?

No.

It wouldn't.

Guard funnily enough don't care about CP, at least not for example, like Blood Angels do.

 

As a chaos player, eating a 'Vengeance for Cadia' volley at every single opportunity is pretty lame.

 

That one stratagem makes the matchup really unpleasant- as if guard weren't bad enough.

 

 

I'm pretty sure other armies think similarly about Veterans of the Long War. ^^

[Malios]

As a faction, dark eldar can operate well without using stratagems. However, you still need command points to shut down the opponent's stratagems so the arms race for command points continue.

 

The problem though if you remove the use of command points is that not only do you hamstring yourself in this edition like others above have mentioned, but you also take away alot of theme from your army: the theme and character of different factions in many cases are, at least partially, represented in their selection of stratagems.

 

For example, if you took strategems away from Blood Angels: yes they still have the red thirst and black rage rules. Yes they still have sanguinary guard, librarian dreads, baal predators and death company plebs / dreads, but its the stratagems that give these units their character. Effectively without them, it would feel like you're playing codex space marines.

 

If you're drastically worried about the balance of command points, and you want to reduce the number of command points, the best two ways is to tighten down how many detachments you can take, or homebrew the kill team / AoS version where command points accumulate per turn rather then hoarding the stash from turn one.

[Mileposter]

As with most things in a game as complex as Warhammer40k, feelings on this are going to be strongly influenced by the local meta or whom plays whom most often.

 

Someone who eats a Vengeance for Cadia volley every turn of every other game is going to feel fairly strongly about the CP and Stratagems of Guard - partly stealing an example from a previous poster - while another chaos player who never faces Guard at all may not think much of it. Certain combinations shine strongly against other armies, certain combinations shine strongly regardless of opponent, and some just simply exist. There are certainly some armies that have sucky stratagems (Space Marines, looking at you) and some that have awesome ones, but overall, how strongly each set impacts you is going to be determined by your environment. And it's humanly impossible to balance every interaction that can occur.

 

In the meta I used to play in a little north of me (I recently moved), playing without CP would be super easy. No one played the big offenders. Doing it at the local GW? Impossible. Knights and Mechanicus are the local favorites - live and breathe with their CP.

[Skaorn]

I'm not buying the whole stratagem = character. How long has you army had this "character"? Why does your BA deserve to have more "character" than all the other former legions without their own codex? I'm sorry but this smells more like "I don't want to loose my super combo", if people wanted to play without stratagems, not any loss to the actual character of an army that has existed since before 8th. I doubt any army would be ruined if GW decided to scrap stratagems in a future edition.

[Malios]

I'm not buying the whole stratagem = character. How long has you army had this "character"? Why does your BA deserve to have more "character" than all the other former legions without their own codex? I'm sorry but this smells more like "I don't want to loose my super combo", if people wanted to play without stratagems, not any loss to the actual character of an army that has existed since before 8th. I doubt any army would be ruined if GW decided to scrap stratagems in a future edition.

For context, I dislike stratagems. I feel they are lazy and take away any remaining thought or strategy from the game. The intention is good, but like formations in 7th edition: "its not the system, its the players."

 

As it stands, stratagems give armies their character just as much as their rules associated with theier key words. Its not a case of butt hurtery, its an integral part of an army like formations were in 7th. If you weren't to use them (which is fine), then regretfully you're only getting part of the faction benefits.

[Kilofix]

I like the way CPs (or rather their equivalent) are handled in AoS, Necromunda, and Kill Team. You don’t need to (and can’t really) build your army around being a CP battery, it doesn’t seem that crucial or gamebreaking, yet they provide for some play variety in terms of the different Strats that can be used by different factions.

 

 

That said, I don’t know how they might be able to retrofit 40Ks system to something like AOS or KT where you get a set number of CPs a turn (while still providing incentives to field Troops, and not just Guard Troops for Imperium). Maybe something whereby everyone starts with 3 CPs, and gets 1 more a turn, and if you have a non-soup Battalion then you get 1 more or something. I dunno.

[ThatOneMarshal]

I'm not buying the whole stratagem = character. How long has you army had this "character"? Why does your BA deserve to have more "character" than all the other former legions without their own codex? I'm sorry but this smells more like "I don't want to loose my super combo", if people wanted to play without stratagems, not any loss to the actual character of an army that has existed since before 8th. I doubt any army would be ruined if GW decided to scrap stratagems in a future edition.

Yeah but a lot of the times GW has given the old rules that built character in an army to the strategems.

 

But hey maybe I’m biased since I primarily play blood angels and guard :D

[SillyDreadnought]

I'd use command points of my Space Marines had anything to use them on.

[Stonehorse]

It isn't that the Command Points system is bad, but how it is handled is.

 

I'd be all on favour of scrapping strategems in the Codexes and introducting more in the main rules. What we see are lists built to abuse several overpowered strategems, and also taking allies to produce cheap command points.

 

I'd also say that the detachment that contains the Warlord is the only source of Command points the army generates.

 

The current system is poorly implemented.

[Halfpint100]

I would be happy if all faction CP reclaiming warlord traits on a 5+ for their own strategems can ONLY be used for generic or their own codex traits. None of this reclaiming CP from knight strats using a guard CP farm. I play guard as my main 40k army and have done for over a decade, it is a shame that we are only used to bring CP in competitive meta and the amount of hate it brings down on those who play mono guard (maybe with some inquisitors cause I am a sucker for them) is painful. 

 

I find I have too much CP as a guard player using the CP farm, our strategems are average (exception vs chaos, sorry guys, you got the short end of the stick vs guard. But veterans of the long war is painful too, used on a 30 man cultist bomb hurts!).

[bluntpencil]

One uptick of the Guard CP battery:

 

Space Marines get to be small, elite, units of superheroes, coming to rescue a heap of beleaguered infantry, who are trying their best to hold the line.

 

Pretty much how it should be.

[Panzer]

One uptick of the Guard CP battery:

 

Space Marines get to be small, elite, units of superheroes, coming to rescue a heap of beleaguered infantry, who are trying their best to hold the line.

 

Pretty much how it should be.

 

It's not a fluff or narrative problem. Plenty of ways to justify that. It's a balance problem.

[Azekai]

Guardsmen and (whatever) fighting alongside each other is fine. It should not be so ideal that it becomes the obligatory configuration for Imperial armies.

[thewarriorhunter]

Guardsmen and (whatever) fighting alongside each other is fine. It should not be so ideal that it becomes the obligatory configuration for Imperial armies.

 

Completely agree. I don't want to have to buy a couple units of Guard and paint them up just so I can keep up in the CP game. I would love to be able to play mono-faction marines and not feel like I'm behind before I even start.

[SickSix]

I agree with many here that CP are to integral to codex design to not use them. Unfortunately, in my opinion, they are not just flavorful addon but are designed into the balance of an army.

 

It would be like playing with one arm tied behind your back.