GW endorsing the loyal 32?

[MaliGn]

I'm not much of a gamer being more of a painter/collecter but I was struck when the latest white dwarf battle report features a soup imperial army featuring not only the loyal 32 but also a sidebar explaining how best to use and equip as a cp battery. I take it the days of wd decrying beardiness are dead and buried.

 

I guess that idea isn't getting needed anytime soon.

 

**edit** In fairness to the article I tend to flick backward through the mag, and as such had not often to the explanation that this was a battle report between uber optimised lists. Never mind. carry on.

[Lord Marshal]

Games Workshop love the idea of soup because it encourages you to dip into other armies rather than sticking to one and then drastically slowing your purchases down until they receive a new release (see: Warhammer Fantasy), which could be anywhere from two-to-seven years for some armies.

 

From there, they hope that person will expand that 'allied' collection further because "Hey I already have a few of them." 

 

WAAC'ers will obviously buy the strongest army anyway, but with soup they will buy that strong army and then powerful allies.

 

They've made it apparent they have no interest in nerfing soup.

[Arkhanist]

Not just the loyal 32 - 2 blood angels smash captains and mephiston and knights to boot. It's super soup.

 

To be fair, they explain in the preamble that they mostly play narrative games, so this was a deliberate attempt at a more 'tournament' style list game. I do get the feeling that they see points-based matched for more competitive tournament players where whatever they do people will twist the rules till they squeak, and they don't want to remove fluff options (or purchasing options, for the more cynical) for more easy-going players.

 

I imagine they simply don't have to deal with random pickup games with strangers, where you need a more rigid structure so that both players can have a level playing field to start from, but don't really want the full cheese of facing tournament lists (unless both players expect that going in, of course). When you work in a building full of warhammer hobbyists, you likely don't have to go far to get a game with people you know! And anyone being a knob will quickly get a reputation they can't escape from and games will dry up.

 

Their playtesters too seem to be have been drawn from some really cheesy tournament players, so I think that that niche - matched play, maybe at a club, but still looking for a game with a bit more variety than the same 3 netlists - isn't something they quite understand. I mean, if I had a regular group of friends I could play regular narrative games with, great, but all my friends are either full on children-mode now or past that and into mid-life crisis motorbikes. I've got kids, but my mid-life crisis is my plastic crack mountain, and my kids are too young to hold a paintbrush :)

[chapter master 454]

It shows they are aware of what is at the top and can address it more effectively rather than them balancing based around their own personal in-house group who only play while have drunk with models they painted while sober.

 

The Cynical approach is as stated above but I don't really think it works that well. Really, what makes a player buy more is what is the standard in points played. In my area it is 2000 but I am not sure about other areas (aren't tournaments now 1750?).

After all, why buy more than what you will use? Realistically this means once a player gets a "Core" of troops, they aren't going to buy more except a select few. Allies would really only expand on that by a small margin (think about it, we are talking barely 3 boxes of guardsmen and 2 commanders). Ok, it is a foot in the door but what would push that player to buy more is if they had the cash really. I mean, I have my Knights and I am planning on moving onto Tau soon just because I want to and since I have a job now.

 

This is a good sign. While it may seem out of place, it can also lead to GW making counter-measures against such armies more wildly known or become known as these players can be put up to play a game and actually going all out, show us what happens when top tier fights. This can lead to GW seeing who quickly the game can be decided as it often is by turn 2 (which is quite boring imo. Would like it if we could start to see some evidence of a lead at turn 3, not turn 0)

[Panzer]

White Dwarf is a hobby magazine and as such it would be wrong to ignore such things as the loyal32 and Captain Smash. That doesn't mean GW themselves wants us to use those things specifically.

However GW does like the concept of soup and doesn't really understand the problem people have with the loyal32 so there's that as well.

[PeteySödes]

You can’t nerf soup without nerfing cool fluff armies, they’re unfortunately bound to the cheese you see sometimes. The only option IMO is giving small boosts to mono keyword armies somehow.

 

The only beef I have with the 32 is how it’s obviously a better choice than anything in any imperial army. It’s boring.

[Panzer]

You can’t nerf soup without nerfing cool fluff armies, they’re unfortunately bound to the cheese you see sometimes. The only option IMO is giving small boosts to mono keyword armies somehow.

 

The only beef I have with the 32 is how it’s obviously a better choice than anything in any imperial army. It’s boring.

 

You can and it's rather simple. You just have to equalize CP generation between the factions.

[chapter master 454]

 

You can’t nerf soup without nerfing cool fluff armies, they’re unfortunately bound to the cheese you see sometimes. The only option IMO is giving small boosts to mono keyword armies somehow.

 

The only beef I have with the 32 is how it’s obviously a better choice than anything in any imperial army. It’s boring.

 

You can and it's rather simple. You just have to equalize CP generation between the factions.

 

 

Panzer Canned Worms. When you need to open a can of worms that really does keep happening!

 

Sorry but had to, since you know...how many times have we talked about various elements of 40k. TO be fair, that one hasn't come up in a while.

The issue with it is just how CPs are given. Since all detachments are based from one book for all, it means certain factions benefit more than others. What we need is what we have with Knights as that helps ALOT as right now, if knights were EVER fielded without their special addendum to Super-Heavy Detachments you would likely never see a single mono-knight list get anywhere really.

 

Each faction needs to reward different things. Imperial Guard I believe should have one of the most insane Brigade CP bonus as that is their thing. Dark Eldar have an interesting idea I believe with having 3 different detachments so maybe something like that for other armies? A dirty word incoming but a form of "pseudo-Formation" when if take certain combinations of detachments for certain codexes you gain certain benefits or even certain unit combinations within a detachment change the benefits (like what knights do). Nothing overly complicated but for example, if you were a white scars player maybe bringing an outrider detachment would yield certain benefits. If you were raven guard bringing a patrol might be a good idea, reinforcing their notion of sneaky warfare (doing a lot with a little). The benefits could also be some stratagem point reductions, possibly letting you get a stratagem cheaper if you take that loadout and this idea can apply to others.

 

For imperial Guard, you could see a spearhead detachment that takes nothing but artillery tanks become a siege detachment that maybe gives you a free prelim bombardment + another one if you spend the CP on it. Things like that that let players build their lists around certain concepts and abilities and not just units, because that is what people are doing now. We may as well be still using indexes because NO-ONE builds around their abilities unless you are are eldar and that isn't even building around it, it is just abusing it!

[Panzer]

I'm not even sure what you are talking about to be honest.

[Trevak Dal]

They sell models first and foremost. If the rules support command point batteries to whore out command abilities, then they will sell models.

 

In preparation for the inevitable second coming of third edition where stuff gets pared back to the bone (like the indexes) and they gradually add back in Over powered stuff (to get you to buy more stuff).

 

They key (as in most things) is to be focused on being happy with what you got so you can walk away from the bull when you get tired of getting thrown trying to ride it.

 

That said, I'd like to see a "hard"/competitive battlereport where they use...Grey Knights, Warp Talons, mutilators, chaos marines, terminators-and throw out ideas for how to use them.

 

I want Phil Kelly to play a chaos army against a :cussing ball breaker Eldar Fondue list with Ynarri and all his OP crap coming at him.

[deathspectersgt7]

Super Soup !!!! Now waiting for the Campbells release .

[Doghouse]

I really like the idea of the loyal 32 in games, it's actually in line with the lore despite the reason behind it.

[Arkhanist]

I have no problem with Guard/Marine/Knight combined armies for fluff reasons, but it's the ubiquity and cheesiness of it that grates and that you're actively choosing to play a weaker army if you don't use it.

 

At the very least you should only get the stratagems of your warlord's faction, and/or have CP not be transferable between factions in matched play. Loyal 32 on the field for fluff/cheap cannon fodder/holding objectives, fine, but they shouldn't then be feeding smash captain or knight stratagems, it just doesn't make fluff sense, including every Guard formation having a better Strategist than say, Dante.

 

Conscripts, poxwalkers, stormravens, razorbacks, Fly etc etc all got (over) nerfed when they were proving too strong. Yet the loyal 32 march on.

[Elzender]

I really like the idea of the loyal 32 in games, it's actually in line with the lore despite the reason behind it.

Well, to be a bit more in line with the lore, it wouldn't hurt to add some heavy weapon squads to beef up the gunline, and a command squad to assist the officer. Maybe a commissar to ensure the guardsmen hold the line when most necessary? This way, one would still get those CPs, and probably the opponents would not be too miffed about the soup list, as the Guard detachment would not feel like it is just a CP battery, but a proper part of the army. I don't know how many more points would that be, but maybe doing around 500 points of IG and the rest spent on the other army would be kinda reasonable.

[RandyB]

Why no hate for the AdMech 17 (Two Enginseers, three squads of 5 Skitarii Rangers each)? 165 points minimum, as compared with 180 for the Loyal 32. Plus, the Enginseers can repair Knights.

[Panzer]

Why no hate for the AdMech 17 (Two Enginseers, three squads of 5 Skitarii Rangers each)? 165 points minimum, as compared with 180 for the Loyal 32. Plus, the Enginseers can repair Knights.

 

Because we (as in the community) had barely time to experience the AdMech 17 yet and because it's imo not as strong as the loyal32. Cheaper and better quality per model but the amount of models is one of the good aspects of the loyal32 as well since it covers a lot of ground to deny reserves and to screen things or capture objectives.

[MARK0SIAN]

Why no hate for the AdMech 17 (Two Enginseers, three squads of 5 Skitarii Rangers each)? 165 points minimum, as compared with 180 for the Loyal 32. Plus, the Enginseers can repair Knights.

Probably because it hasn’t had time to filter into the mainstream yet. The changes from CA haven’t been used in a big tournament yet and it probably hasn’t been long enough to filter into the local scene either. I think once it does people will start to complain about it more.

[Doghouse]

 

Well, to be a bit more in line with the lore, it wouldn't hurt to add some heavy weapon squads to beef up the gunline, and a command squad to assist the officer. Maybe a commissar to ensure the guardsmen hold the line when most necessary? This way, one would still get those CPs, and probably the opponents would not be too miffed about the soup list, as the Guard detachment would not feel like it is just a CP battery, but a proper part of the army. I don't know how many more points would that be, but maybe doing around 500 points of IG and the rest spent on the other army would be kinda reasonable.

 

 

For mine I'm planning on doing them as Penal Legion but I love the idea of Imperial Crusades with guard and marines fighting together.

[Fajita Fan]

I'm more a modeler than a player and all of my armies are fluff-based rather than WAAC lists.  With that said here's an honest question:

Why do we have CP at all? 

 

To put it simply why do we need to have buffs per formation taken?  Why not just have players pick one buff from a table and get an extra buff if they take a traditional battleforged list?  That's it.  One buff, and one extra buff if your main formation is a traditional one.  Then you don't have this race to the bottom of getting minimum-sized formations to maximize CP generation.  

 

No fights, no soup lists, no CP maximization, and less complaints.  

[sairence]

I'm more a modeler than a player and all of my armies are fluff-based rather than WAAC lists. With that said here's an honest question:

 

Why do we have CP at all?

Because that's the ruleset GW came up with for this edition. Plain and simple.

 

Conscripts, poxwalkers, stormravens, razorbacks, Fly etc etc all got (over) nerfed when they were proving too strong. Yet the loyal 32 march on.

 

Because 30 Guardsmen and 2 Company Commanders by themselves aren't the problem. It's a handful of very weak troops and characters that only become decent through synergy.

 

The problem lies solely in how CPs interact between different armies.

[Wayniac]

FWIW they purposely invited two tournament players to the studio to play that game. It wasn't the staff doing it.

 

Both of the guys involved wrote about it on other forums. They were basically asked to show GW how a tournament list looks and plays.

 

That said, I do sort of agree with the idea that GW doesn't really understand "pick up game" mentality and that gray area between narrative and tournament where you need some balancing mechanic that's not "discuss with your opponent" but you don't want to see tournament cheese lists. Power Level was a nice idea for this but with the changes to matched it's more difficult to slot into a matched play game (e.g. if using PL how do you pay for summoning?) and PL got a bad rep due to people immediately jumping on "I'll just take all the best upgrades since everything is free" but it definitely feels like the design intention is that it's only tournaments that should use matched play, when that's really nowhere near true.

 

I feel there was a missed opportunity; Tournament Play should have been a stricter subset of matched play to minimize cheese, so it could be independently adjusted without affect all points-based games. Nevermind the fact that their tournament play testers are often using a houseruled version of the game (i.e. ITC Missions) which it's been shown vastly changes the type of lists you see.

[Xenith]

You can’t nerf soup without nerfing cool fluff armies,

 

Then why not keep armies based around the fluff/narrative in narrative games? The whole narrative ruleset allows you to play games based on the fluff.

 

In the fluff, the thousand points of blood angels you see on the table is ten times more likely to be fighting with another thousand points of blood angels than it is with 32 guardsmen...

[Charlo]

 

You can’t nerf soup without nerfing cool fluff armies,

Then why not keep armies based around the fluff/narrative in narrative games? The whole narrative ruleset allows you to play games based on the fluff.

 

In the fluff, the thousand points of blood angels you see on the table is ten times more likely to be fighting with another thousand points of blood angels than it is with 32 guardsmen...

 

OR IS IT? Theres a lot more Loyal 32's than there is BA! :D /devils advocate

 

It's actually quite nice for them to put it in the magazine and acknowledge it. Pete Foley and others have said on stream in the past that they like mixed Imperium armies, as it is exactly how they tend to fight and how they managed to conquer the galaxy in the first place. I think the CP generation nerf helped just enough to bring it in almost line as opposed to fully broken.

 

My only suggestion is you look at the type of detachments included and maybe limit it on points like in AoS. Your "biggest" detachment (read: most troops) is your primary faction and as such X% of your points must be from them.

[Panzer]

I don't think it's any more or less fluffy to have a mixed army. It just shouldn't give such a huge advantage to take allies outside of what the models themselves bring to the table.

[PeteySödes]

I don't think it's any more or less fluffy to have a mixed army. It just shouldn't give such a huge advantage to take allies outside of what the models themselves bring to the table.

 

Exactly this. I think in most games similar mixing mechanics are taking the good with a bit of bad, like taking a knight for the obvious benefits but you would then not get your chapter tactic or something. Hell maybe it costs 50 points more since its outside your supply chain. These arent serious suggestions but you get the idea.

 

That theres no downside irks me a bit.