Local tournament trial rule.

[Morticon]

Hey all. 

The local circuit has an annual big 40k tournament called "The Veteran's" - its a very tactical tournament with a fair deal of soft scores that always tries to shake up the meta and push people out of comfort zones. 

This year is the 10th annual one in Cape Town, and one of the rules being suggested is as follows:

 

 

"Tactical Focus:  While Command Points may be generated as per regular detachment rues, you may only use Stratagems from the codex and faction your Warlord is drawn from".  

 

 

With the soup lists in full swing, I feel like this will go a VERY long way in cutting out some of the more unpleasant things we've grown accustomed to seeing.  

 

 

What do you guys think?   Would anyone else consider adopting something like this? 

[Charlo]

It's the AoS route - you can bring allies, but they only bring the units abilities and nothing else.

 

Personally, stratagems are not the issue with soup - it's the CP generation/ cheap battalions etc.

 

Allied Guard Bats are still going to fuel Smash Captains etc.

[Captain Idaho]

I've thought that for ages. If you want the soup lists, then the benefit is the selection of powerful combinations but the other side to that is you don't get all their army benefits of mono armies.

[Finkmilkana]

I’m not a fan of restricting CP in general. The small factions are not really balanced enough for that, the only thing it would result in would be eldar dominance. If you want to restrict soup, you at least need to restrict it down to the “chapter tactics” level (different craft worlds/ forge worlds/ chapters etc. having joint forces is far more uncommon than marines supported by guard).

 

Above and beyond those general concerns (which I admit come down to preference), the specific proposal at hand has another problem that weights heavier:

The typical loyal 32 (and similar) are there to create CP for the smash captain/knight warlord (i.e. the primary detachment) to use. The CP battery not being able to use stratagems themselves is almost completely inconsequential.

The proposed rule would therefore do almost literally nothing to reduce their appeal. Though it would admittedly very much hurt “flavorful” soup that has a healthy mix of forces. If you want to discourage CP battery soup (I.e. the most aggravating kind of soup) with a blanked rule, then it needs to also include the other converse, i.e.: No detachment but those that have the warlord’s faction create CP.

[Captain Idaho]

Personally I think CPs should only be generated by faction (not including Imperium, Chaos or Eldar) who are the same as the Warlord.

 

If you're thematic then you shouldn't care about getting all the extra competitive benefits anyway...

[Wassa]

I think allied detachments should still be able to use their own strategems on their own faction. Otherwise it would make the future Assassins and Inquisitors strategems pointless.

[Panzer]

It's the AoS route - you can bring allies, but they only bring the units abilities and nothing else.

 

Personally, stratagems are not the issue with soup - it's the CP generation/ cheap battalions etc.

 

Allied Guard Bats are still going to fuel Smash Captains etc.

^this

They would simply make the Captain Smash their warlord (as he often is so he can get the D4 Thunderhammer) and still use the AM CP to turn him into a monster. I mean it would prevent them from using the Imperial Knight Stratagems in such a list, but this doesn't feel like the solution we were looking for. I feel like reducing the CP generation would be the more elegant and productive solution.

[Morticon]

Really interesting commentary so far- thanks for contributing!!! 

 

 

What's most interesting to me, however, is first and foremost that the examples being cited are for list combos that, while prevalent due to their memey nature, dont really dominate the tournament scene and aren't particularly powerful.  The smash-cap is fantastic, its not those lists winning tournaments is it?

Under these rules, an AM-CP farm supporting a BA captain doesn't see any of the use from strats that affect the AM or their potential Knight allies - and the latter is the big one.  Sure he gets some nice CP to use, but he was getting that anyway.  Nothing changes that.  And thats the second point.  The only thing that changes is that the player now loses all other options of strats.  While it is a valid point in that CP farms will be built for certain units, is it not entirely moot given that this is the status quo already?

 

And I'm not sure how it would lead to Eldar dominance.  The same can be said for Eldar and Dark Eldar - even further - considering its for Faction.  So if you want Agents of Vect, you're only getting those strats from Blackheart and general DE strats.

 

It also prevents multi-faction "abuse" where there are unfluffy combos of detachments to mine the best strats  - in the case of Nids, Tau and Ork.  

 

 

To me it seems like a really easy, simple fix that will solve some of the silliness we see.  

[Finkmilkana]

Sure, it will reduce some types of soup abuse and the cookie cutter top lists will change a bit. What I mean is that it won’t remove the type of soup people usually complain about (CP batteries) while completely neutering moderate soup lists that contain multiple factions cooperating. Top lists will still not see much variation (though lists might be different from now), while the variation at the middle tables, where people like to experiment, will decrease.

 

I guess the main point I’m asking myself is ‘what’s the goal of this change’? It just feels the result is neither fully here (I.e. soup is encouraged) nor there (I.e. mono faction is encouraged). To me it looks like “soup is encouraged, but only as main faction + CP battery”. If that’s the goal, then the proposed rules works fine, but I’m not sure if that’s an equilibrium worth striving for.

 

Note though that I think it it would be a great change to split stratagems into ‘general faction stratagems’ and ‘faction command stratagems’, I.e. make certain, but not all, stratagems of every faction only usable if the warlord is from that faction.

Since some units are simply balanced around the availability of certain stratagems while others are not, banning all stratagems from secondary factions makes some kinds of soup bad while not bothering others, introducing a lot more balance problems. Other stratagems (especially most subfaction stratagems) on the other hand would make a lot of sense to only be available if your warlord is from that (sub-)faction. Though I fear such a distinction would have to be introduced by GW and cannot easily be done as a tournament rule.

[Bryan Blaire]

Why not simply limit CP generated to be used on stratagems for those units that generate them? That way AM CP can only supply AM Stratagems, Knight CP is the only thing that can power Knight Stratagems, Marine CP is the only thing that can power Marine Stratagems.

 

If that gets to be too much book-keeping for the player, then maybe they will need to seek out some way to reduce that burden.

[Tyriks]

I think an easy fix is making the current detachments "primary" detachments with the same benefits but an added restriction - must share faction with your warlord; then adding "allied" detachments that don't have to be the same faction but also don't generate as much cp. Maybe none for Vanguard / Spearhead / Outrider, 2 or 3 for Battalion and 5 or 6 for Brigade. That way you still can use allies, but it's not as overwhelming a benefit.

[MARK0SIAN]

I think this rule is actually going to result in more Loyal 32s or Rusty 17s. You will basically be killing off more flavourful and well rounded allied lists because what’s the point in taking 2 similarly sized allied forces if only half your army can use stratagems. There’s no Reason to take the allies other than their CP contribution if they can’t use their stratagems so take two min sized ad mech battalions for 10 cp and use it to power your main force.

 

I think this rule will see more of the worst aspects of allies and lessen the thematic or evenly balanced lists.

[PeteySödes]

I think allied detachments should still be able to use their own strategems on their own faction. Otherwise it would make the future Assassins and Inquisitors strategems pointless.

 

Stuff like that though they've already said aren't going to be a full faction so easily can have bespoke rules to get around that should it come to that.

[Tordeck]

The real answer is keep the mixed forces to open or narrative play where they belong and make matched play 1 codex lists only.

[Bryan Blaire]

The real answer is keep the mixed forces to open or narrative play where they belong and make matched play 1 codex lists only.

So you don’t think a five man Chaos Marine unit supported by a corrupted local PDF force has any place in Matched Play? If not, why not?

 

“Where they belong” is pretty hard to justify seeing as GW wrote the rules so that allies belong in all three “Modes of Play.”

 

What needs to happen are some sane methods of reining in the extent that some things such as CP batteries can be stretched.

[Tyriks]

The real answer is keep the mixed forces to open or narrative play where they belong and make matched play 1 codex lists only.

It won't happen that way. It hurts GW financially to restrict allies like that. Realistic solutions need to allow for them but rein them in a bit.

[utilityzero]

Maybe only the primary faction should generate CP?

[PeteySödes]

So honest question. Are the issues people have with soup in the mixing itself or just because there’s no downside?

[Panzer]

I don't have a problem with the mixing itself. Just with the CP battery abuse and that there's such a huge power gap between imperial soups and imperial mono armies.

[Tordeck]

For me its both the no downside as well as that even in the fluff the cases of mixed forces are the exception not the rule. While tournaments like LVO do bring in a large number of players, the competitive element is just a drop in the bucket of over all people involved in GW products in one way or the other. The net loss on sales to correct the disaster that is the current ally system would be negligible in comparison to keeping the over all player base happy.

[Morticon]

So honest question. Are the issues people have with soup in the mixing itself or just because there’s no downside?

 

Personally, I dont mind the mixing as much, though the oldskool side of me tweeks a tiny bit every time I see DE/Eldar - though this was desensitized greatly thanks to abominations like Taudar and the other atrocities of 7th.

 

For me it's more because it feels like its more about finding loopholes, exceptions and min-maxing of multiple army books. 

Given the nature of the beast, GW and 40k has always, and will always have balancing issues with a single codex given the scope of the game.  Open a player's options to multiple books and suddenly you make the problem exponentially greater and see a strong migration to cherry picked units, and/or CP farm troop tax.  There's more often than not no real reason for the army, there's no real story for their being together - and while I'm the furthest thing from a fluff/story player, it just doesn't leave me feeling like i'm battling another faction - maybe I'm sick of seeing every "Imperial" army have the loyal 32 (x2) + Castellan  + flavour of choice.  Eldar is the same, but more annoying with the DE/Eldar mix. 

 

One way or another, the CP system is intrinsic to a good dex, and at the moment, there are too many armies that just need farms to make them viable.  That's terrible game design (brilliant business though)

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

In between streamed games from the LVO championship this weekend they interviewed a high level manager in charge of 40k and he said that allies are a common feature in novels, etc. Sounds like they are fully on-board with soup now imho .

[MARK0SIAN]

Allies are definitely a common theme in most Imperium novels. Even the Space Marine battles novels feature a host of allies. In fact, I don’t know the breakdown, but I’d be willing to bet there are more examples of Imperium forces fighting with allies than there are of them fighting on their own.

 

Ironically, given the state of allies in 8th, it’s actually the Guard novels from BL where they fight without allies more than with them.

[Tordeck]

Ive read 30ish BL books in the last few months and there was only one that involved mixed forces.  Thats not counting the other 2 dozen of so I've read in years past of which again the case of mixed forces may be 1 as I cant actually think of any. Extrapolate that out. say 1 in 25. At that rate even keeping the ally system in narrative play is making less and less sense.

[utilityzero]

There are almoat always other Imperial forces involved but I think it isn't normally in the sort of intermingled sorts of forces we see on the table. Also novels aren't the be all end all, like how marine players always decry the disconnect between fluff marines and table marines.