Army building

[apologist]

Can I plumb the collective wisdom of the cerebro-strategists here to pose a few fundamental questions? I've got caught in analysis paralysis while list building, and wondered what your thoughts were on the following:

 

1 – Activation advantage versus sturdiness

Having smaller Detachments means you have more activations than the other player, giving the tactical benefit of being able to draw out your opponent without revealing your own hand. Conversely, small detachments are easier to bracket and kill – and this will in turn make breaking the overall Formation easier.

 

Fewer, larger formations makes command and control easier. Your Commanders' orders will have more effect on larger Detachments. Secondly, having very large Detachments swaps flexibility for resilience – but there's clearly a limit. The short ranges of stands means that a very large Detachments will frequently have stands that are unable to find range to their targets. 

 

Where's the sweet spot for this? How large are you making your Detachments and Formations? Does the faction (Solar Auxilia/Astartes) make a huge difference for you? How about Legions? Are Word Bearers better able to make small Detachments work, for example?

 

***

2 – Transports and dedicated transports

There seems a lot of subtlety here. When purchasing Rhinos for a Detachment/Formation, what are the reasons you take them in their own Detachment (Transport), rather than as Dedicated Transports? Does one offer better flexiblity or resilience? What helps you to make a decision?

 

***

 

3 – Infantry and armour

This will of course come down to taste, but how do you balance the proportions of different unit types (infantry, tanks, super-heavies, aircraft, Titans) in your overall force? How much does the mission affect your decisions? How about the Legion?

 

[LameBeard]

All good thoughts! I have not played yet, but have a few musings on (1):

 

a) The designers seem to think bigger formations give worthwhile protection against being broken. And so, in practice, the limited slots might nudge you to bigger detachments.

 

b) My son plays Star Wars Legion, and those gamers care a lot about activations, and ‘waiting out’ an opponent. However, in the few practice games I’ve played, it seems sometimes you just want to hit the opponent really hard before they hit you - you need a big detachment to do that.

 

c) small detachments might be easier to hide/garrison/force your opponent into wasting shots on overkill (because Legions seems very lethal from what people have said).

 

Overall, I think larger detachments are classier and will speed up gameplay. I know my inability to keep painting the same thing will lean against this, but I’m going to aim for more than minimum. I will try to avoid using the “Independent” rule which just seems an annoying complication designed to compromise with what’s in the box, that might mean having to find someone to swap a few bits with - or have to buy a second starter set!

 

On (2) I think you are overthinking it. It’s probably just a way to limit land raiders later and I don’t think you should worry about the subtlety. I’m going to start using as own detachment just because I might not have enough rhinos to go round.

[SkimaskMohawk]

9 hours ago, apologist said:

1 – Activation advantage versus sturdiness

Having smaller Detachments means you have more activations than the other player, giving the tactical benefit of being able to draw out your opponent without revealing your own hand. Conversely, small detachments are easier to bracket and kill – and this will in turn make breaking the overall Formation easier.

 

Fewer, larger formations makes command and control easier. Your Commanders' orders will have more effect on larger Detachments. Secondly, having very large Detachments swaps flexibility for resilience – but there's clearly a limit. The short ranges of stands means that a very large Detachments will frequently have stands that are unable to find range to their targets. 

 

Where's the sweet spot for this? How large are you making your Detachments and Formations? Does the faction (Solar Auxilia/Astartes) make a huge difference for you? How about Legions? Are Word Bearers better able to make small Detachments work, for example?

 

In general, you want to have the larger activation economy to save the cagey plays until after your opponents have shown their hand with movement. Breaking also only kinda matters; advance and charge are the bread and butter orders, with first fire might as well being non-existent. March can suck to lose, but you can also still flip to it via master tactician so its loss (and first fire) can be mitigated. There's also a number of formations that really only care about shooting, like pioneer company, so the order thing matters even less depending on the point of the formation. No, the real downside is the morale penalty, which makes us circle back to still having enough models in key detachments so a casual volley doesn't make them flee with ease. 

 

So the answer is have a mix. Msu detachments that aren't going to have a huge impact in your plans, while going heavy on a core of something like kratos, russes, rapiers, etc...9 preds are 300 points, which is really not a lot, as is 6 kratos for 350. 

 

9 hours ago, apologist said:

2 – Transports and dedicated transports

There seems a lot of subtlety here. When purchasing Rhinos for a Detachment/Formation, what are the reasons you take them in their own Detachment (Transport), rather than as Dedicated Transports? Does one offer better flexiblity or resilience? What helps you to make a decision?

 

So right now there's some debate on how dedicated transports interact with break point. The rules say they're not used to calculate break point, but there's arguments about whether that means...uh, calculating that initial break point (like 20 bases and 10 rhinos = break point of 10), or also counting the dead models to see if youve exceeded the break point and are broken (so only those 20 tac marines would count towards the break point of 10). RAW, it reads as only the former (as you only calculate the break point once, to get that number), which makes large amounts of dedicated transports super detrimental to a formation, as the break point is super low but everything gets counted towards it. I don't think it's intentional at all and a terrible interaction...but if it's the way it goes then you want to avoid dedicateds except on units that just want to charge and advance (and have a large detachment size to avoid morale).

 

But if it works the sane way, then why not make them dedicateds, with the caveat that unless your HQ can get a dedicated it can't really attach if you don't pay attention. Like, once pods are out, you can have rhinos in dedicated and pods in the transport slot.

 

11 hours ago, apologist said:

3 - Infantry and armour

This will of course come down to taste, but how do you balance the proportions of different unit types (infantry, tanks, super-heavies, aircraft, Titans) in your overall force? How much does the mission affect your decisions? How about the Legion?

 

Off the bat, titans (and knights to a lesser extent), have a lot of trap builds/units; it's really easy to just misinvest by taking a titan. Otherwise going really hard on any of those is valid; every archetype has some super scary, super cheap options to spam. Really easy to hit critical mass of any good unit and have them do work in your list. Planes are particularly annoying when spammed since they have the 6s, high fire power and extreme range. If you don't have enough anti tank/melee you can get rolled by armoured companies; if you don't have enough anti infantry they can genuinely flood the board. 

 

There really isn't any dud options; you can get skewed, but not also have to feel bad about army comp on the whole. Unless it's like, all autocanon preds and there's contemptors. 

 

 

[LameBeard]

Yeah I wasn’t even thinking that dedicated transports not contributing to break point (but contributing to being broken!) RAW was possibly intended.  I’m sure we won’t play it that way.

 

on (3) I can’t help feeling that terrain will be a big factor in how the armour/infantry split is favoured. Personally, I am going to try to stick to a balanced force and then experiment with different terrain set-up (rather than stick to same terrain and then change army). But no doubt some will already have an eye on tournaments or at least ‘events’ and that may influence them. 
 

 

[SkimaskMohawk]

3 hours ago, LameBeard said:

on (3) I can’t help feeling that terrain will be a big factor in how the armour/infantry split is favoured. Personally, I am going to try to stick to a balanced force and then experiment with different terrain set-up (rather than stick to same terrain and then change army). But no doubt some will already have an eye on tournaments or at least ‘events’ and that may influence them. 

 

So ya, it's tricky on the terrain.

 

Everything but impassable and rivers basically helps infantry as they ignore difficult, like the added durability, and can melt through structures; using structures and obstructing to get safe charges.

 

Tanks also like obstructing and difficult for the survivability, but don't like being slowed down (though vanqs don't care).

 

Planes don't really care at all though.

 

Honestly, as people accept the madness of painting mass LI infantry, they'll probably have the best success. Missile marines are rude and you can get 48 missile bases in a 520 point demi company.

[Interrogator Stobz]

Anyone bringing 48 missile bases to this game has missed the point, in my humble Casual at all Costs opinion. 

I wouldn't even bother to unpack my minis to face that.

[Interrogator Stobz]

Just checked the Army Builder app.

It let's you have 56 Missile bases,  in a Demi for 520! Forgive me if I'm miscounting. 

[Valkyrion]

7 hours ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

Anyone bringing 48 missile bases to this game has missed the point, in my humble Casual at all Costs opinion. 

I wouldn't even bother to unpack my minis to face that.

 

I'm not sure I agree here - sure it's a naff thing to do if it's a surprise, but where else should 240 Missile Launcher marines be if not Epic?

There's sort of lore precedent with Khorne Berzerkers charging a Blood Angels Devastator company in 40k, and with the Legions being ramped up to 11 in terms of sizes I could easily see half the Legions viably deploying 20 Heavy Support Squads in a large engagement. 

[Pacific81]

I would use a word other than 'epic', and I will also say I am glad I am not playing any of you guys xD

[SkimaskMohawk]

10 hours ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

Anyone bringing 48 missile bases to this game has missed the point, in my humble Casual at all Costs opinion. 

I wouldn't even bother to unpack my minis to face that.

 

I mean, maybe 48 models of a type is on the nose, but id be careful about that mentality.

 

People have a ton of super-strong flyers because they collected imperial Navy for AI. People have a ton of kratos because it was the only standalone tank available to buy for marines. As soon as the russ and predator boxes drops we're going to see units of 8 at a time with vanqs or twin las, per box. The lightning box has 6 and comes to 490 points (and are, you know, super strong).

 

So ya, might be obvious when someone rolls up with a a ton of terminators/assaults/missiles/rapiers/tarantulas/dreads that they've targeted the unit to spam. But you can and will see spam from the vehicles, and it doesn't even require anything more than buying a box or two to get the same level of impact/points as the infantry. 

 

 

[apologist]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. My main goal was to get a general sense of where to start – I'm finding the rules weirdly hard to get my head round. It's not as simple as the card system of 2nd, not as flexible as the warband style of Epic 40,000, and not as restrictive as Epic: Armageddon. If anything, it reminds me of the wonderfully byzantine battalion rules of the original Epic: Space Marine (which I'm only familiar with from White Dwarfs from before my time!).

 

I'm sure things will become clearer with a few test games under my belt, but at the moment, there are some real fundamentals – I don't really see the advantage in taking multiple formations, except if you want/need to take lots of allies to make up the points. I'm foreseeing test games using lots of minimally sized formations, then larger games with just one mono-themed formation – which seems a bit backwards for learning the ropes.

[SkimaskMohawk]

8 minutes ago, apologist said:

I don't really see the advantage in taking multiple formations, except if you want/need to take lots of allies to make up the points. I'm foreseeing test games using lots of minimally sized formations, then larger games with just one mono-themed formation – which seems a bit backwards for learning the ropes.

 

Theres two real reasons to take multiple formations from a game-play perspective.

 

The first is to get expanded access to restricted detachments. Unless you go aerial assault, marines can only take 1 flyer per detachment; if you want to use a thunderhawk and a fire raptor in a list, you need multiple detachments. Similarly the solar aux only get 2 bastion slots, and only in a pioneer company; if you want more than 2 units of tarantulas and rapiers, you need to take more than 1 pioneer. Did you get the starter set and want to use the tanks? You need either 2 demi companies or to buy some kratos and do demi company+armoured company. It's very easy to cram all the infantry into a demi company in some unwieldy mega-bricks, but as soon as you start taking other stuff you'll see the limits pretty fast.

 

The second is that it's super obvious the developers meant for marines to take a bunch of different legions in a list, and you do that by taking multiple formations. Barebones emperor's children one will give you a once-per-game initiative; multiples (aka a full army) doesn't do anything extra. Same with death guard and their dangerous terrain thing. Past that, a number of legions have very specific bonus; white scars with jink, world eaters with melee, ultras with shooting, raven guard with infantry. They push you to specifically tooled formations to leverage their bonuses, and the rules encourage this by allowing free mixing of the Legions in a primary army without it going into allies. This is where some of the disparity with solar aux comes in too; their units generally have higher base output to balance around assault marines having the option to always reroll a dice, or just having rerolls to hits on all your shooting.

 

But, most people don't immediately go to legion soup when they think about collecting marines in 30k. They want to collect a large chunk of a legion, and min-maxing formations doesn't feel great.

 

 

[Interrogator Stobz]

6 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

I mean, maybe 48 models of a type is on the nose, but id be careful about that mentality.

...

 

I hear you Brother, you're not wrong; context is important of course.

For those of us without existing huge Epic armies spam of this kind is most unappreciated. Bigger games kind of demand this sort of thing.

 

As more units are added to GWs availability list things will certainly change and make spamming less wonky.

These 48 ML dudes kill 4 of those dangerous planes on overwatch, or 8 Leman Russ or 4 Baneblade tanks on normal fire... which is really good; they get their points back in the blink of an eye. 

Having a few stands of Tacticals in there to take wounds on means they don't diminish firepower before the next round too.

Seriously un-fun.

But I can't wait to see how 8 Basilisks get on in reply lolz.

 

Lolz, just clicked... can get 48 bases of TDA for even less points. 

Deepstrike Madness Spam.

I might be a hypocrite 

Edited January 24 by Interrogator Stobz
Laughs

[Crablezworth]

Well I think if one thinks spamming missiles is odious, this is a game where kratos can be taken in detachments of 6 and contemptor dreadnoughts base detachment size is 4 and goes up to 8, so like, it's not like this game is really coloring inside the lines when it comes to detachment sizes. You can for better or worse have an entire legal army comprised of lemans russes and a single baneblade, true on the marine side as well with an army comprised entirely of sicarans or predators with 2 kratos. 

 

What I'm saying is, there's no like highlander or start slow mode for low point levels. Whether playing 500 point game or 4000 point game, the formations are never limited, the detachment caps and minimum never change. I could honestly see doing like sub 1500pt version of formations where the detachment sizes and caps are different. Because this much variance in firepower per activation can really get wonky. 

 

But even going to the high end, the problem is if you don't cap formations you can do some pretty silly stuff, as skimask mohawk mentioned the amount of super friending one could do with marines is a bit silly seeing as it doesn't eat into their allies at all. It also would look sorta bad. 

 

Even limiting an event to say 4 formations max, one can almost break 3000k with a single tank formation, the solar aux armoured formation last I checked with russes for some reason being up to 10 per detachment, can field like 50 russes and 12 baneblades at just 2965pts. So if one were to have access to a 3d printer, meaning they may have a work around for the current supply issues, its feasible to spam just about anything with rules currently. On the plastic only side, collection vary a lot on account of pre existing collections of AI and AT models, so the meta is a bit weird. For those just starting out it's all tank and infantry for the current meta, but that will change. 

 

I'm not overly concerned about skew lists yet or spamming, yet, but I do really hope the incentives are there and remain for people making combined arms forces. I also think policing individual formation breaking points is a non-starter for events, especially at higher point levels, so will still do combined breaking points. There just isn't enough sideboard to have room for units in transports, units in structures and then a whole bunch of separate dead piles with their own breaking points. It's too much space, and already we may have to do 4x4's just to have enough sideboard on store's 6x4 tables. 

 

Sorry to write a book but last and final point hopefully tying it all together. An overall concern is quite simply from a balance perspective, army construction is and can be very cynical. You can not only take what objectively performs better in terms of units, but also specific loadouts because so few weapons cost an addition upgrade fee. So my point is, once once has played enough, noted the trap weapon options and the objectively better ones, and in many cases no amount of context may change that some weapons are simply better in every context for the points. So once you've had enough games, done the math, purchased or printed enough units, games are going to be very brutal. That mostly all leman russ army mentioned earlier of 50 russes in 5 detachments of 10, those could all be vanquisher/lascannon. So I get both sides of things, its epic, we're meant to have a lot of everything, at the same time, when one realizes that unlike foc's of old formations don't always have a lot of tax/fat and can unfortunately let people make entire armies out of 2 unit types, some other form of restriction or requirement might be needed to keep everyone honest.