No primarchs ...

[Karhedron]

23 hours ago, ZeroWolf said:

Honestly they need to stick with the current system and refine it instead of throwing everything away every couple of editions.

 

I agree, the trouble is GW keep repeating the same mistake. 6th edition was pretty decent but they ruined 7th by piling on Formations with wildly varying bonuses. 8th edition started with a clean slate and was looking promising until Faction bonuses and stratagems got out of hand in 9th edition. I once did a count on my Imperial Knights army and worked out it was possible for a single unit to be under the effect of up to 8 layers of bonuses at a time.

 

10th is looking cleaner so far and the one-in, one-out phillosophy should prevent factions running away with crazy levels of bonuses. Now we just have to see what new craziness GW introduce in 11th edition. 

[Brother Raul]

Surprised to hear that people think there are not high stakes.

 

Interesting to hear how many books you have read and is it overexposure?

 

I personally find the dread in the imperium palpable. I am not well read in the lore however and have limited understanding of a lot of lore (think a commissar with a high school equivalency).

[Special Officer Doofy]

2 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Now we just have to see what new craziness GW introduce in 11th edition. 

 

Maybe this crazy concept where you pay points for each model and not set unit sizes, or even crazier one where different unbalanced wargear options have different point costs as well? Wooooaaaahhhhh

 

Jokes aside, one-in, one-out one page detachment rules is a good idea. Hopefully 11th doesn't ruin the best thing 10th has going for it.

[DemonGSides]

Give us another faction identity pass and some better force organization and I would consider it a huge success.  10th has been fine so far, way better than some other editions, a little worse than others.  The game is a bit vanilla due to a focus on worrying about competitive identities, but if they took a step back from that and handed out some weird :cuss: to everyone while also giving us a more fun way of putting armies together, then blammo, that'd be a really fun edition.

[SvenIronhand]

FOC+Percentages is the way to do it, actually. 

[Karhedron]

36 minutes ago, SvenIronhand said:

FOC+Percentages is the way to do it, actually. 

 

On what basis would you recommend that? I find percentages potentially misleading as some armies have very cheap chaff squads while others are all elites. If you mandate a percentage of points be spent on Battleline units, that could be oppressive for armies like Nids which would have to field hordes of Gaunts to meet that percentage. On the other hand, if you make the percentage by the number of units, that could be harsh on elite armies as having to field 3+ units of Custdian Guards for example would take up a big chunk of points and not leave much to spare for other toys.

 

As outlined above, I feel the FOC was designed for a different era and does not cope well with Knight armies and the like. Even armies like Deathwing and Ravenwing require significant changes to the FOC (or swapping which units count as Troops, Battleline etc) just to make them work.

 

The FOC was designed to enforce an element of uniformity when most armies were built around the concept of an infantry core supported by fast, elite and armoured elements. That paradigm simply doesn't work anymore. If you want "balanced" armies to be able to compete with Knights etc on an even footing then you need to rely on points and features like Objective Control to maintain balance.

[Evil Eye]

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Knights and other such things that make the FOC "not work" don't belong outside of Apocalypse. I know it would upset a lot of people if Knights were suddenly rendered obsolete as a regular 40K army, but let's be real- GW is no stranger to rendering entire armies obsolete with sweeping changes to the game. Look at AOS squatting Bonesplitterz, or Space Marines being replaced with bigger, slightly stupider looking versions in GI Joe vehicles (and not even cool ones like the MOBAT!).

 

If GW really are allergic to the idea of bringing back the classic FOC then maybe a WHFB styled rarity-based system would work better? In the homebrew ruleset I started writing before my notes were lost by virtue of dead laptop (should probably start again...) I had an idea for an FOC that worked like this:

Warlord: Self explanatory. 1 per army.

Heroes: Secondary characters who aren't the Warlord (Chaplains, Big Meks etc). Capped to 2 in smaller games (1000 or less), 3 in medium (2000 or less) and 4 in large games (over 2000).

Troops: Again, self explanatory. There is no limit on how many you can take but you MUST take at least 2 Troops units.

Elites: Rarer stuff like Dreadnoughts, Nobz, etc. Limited to 3 in small games, 4 in medium and 5 in large.

Rare: The big and shiny toys that aren't Apocalypse-units. Land Raiders, Monoliths etc. Limited to 2 in small games, 3 in medium and 4 in large.

Support: Miscellaneous units that don't quite fit into any other slot, too uncommon to count as a troop but not really powerful enough to qualify as Elite or Rare, also dedicated transports. No limit to how many can be taken but cannot fill any compulsory slots.

[SvenIronhand]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

 

On what basis would you recommend that? I find percentages potentially misleading as some armies have very cheap chaff squads while others are all elites. If you mandate a percentage of points be spent on Battleline units, that could be oppressive for armies like Nids which would have to field hordes of Gaunts to meet that percentage. On the other hand, if you make the percentage by the number of units, that could be harsh on elite armies as having to field 3+ units of Custdian Guards for example would take up a big chunk of points and not leave much to spare for other toys.

 

As outlined above, I feel the FOC was designed for a different era and does not cope well with Knight armies and the like. Even armies like Deathwing and Ravenwing require significant changes to the FOC (or swapping which units count as Troops, Battleline etc) just to make them work.

 

The FOC was designed to enforce an element of uniformity when most armies were built around the concept of an infantry core supported by fast, elite and armoured elements. That paradigm simply doesn't work anymore. If you want "balanced" armies to be able to compete with Knights etc on an even footing then you need to rely on points and features like Objective Control to maintain balance.

WHFB has “25% must be spent on…” and “up to x%”. There’s a way to do it granularly.

[phandaal]

3 hours ago, Brother Raul said:

Surprised to hear that people think there are not high stakes.

 

People think there are high stakes, but the stakes are so high at this point that they are starting to run into the MCU problem. How do you top the universe getting snapped? By snapping multiple universes. How do you top that? By snapping multiple multiverses. Etc. Eventually the scale and scope becomes meaningless.

 

Going to use some 40k examples, and there will be some people who chime in that their experience with these things has been different. What I am offering is some perspective on how it could be that some people might perceive a lessening of the stakes even as those stakes in theory grow larger.

 

- The global Armageddon campaign. That was basically a single planet with campaigns fought over small portions of the planet, and people were very invested. The stakes were much smaller, with single units and individuals gaining notoriety throughout the campaign, and those stories are still popular to this day.

 

- The Gothic campaign. Stakes were bigger, with Chaos fleets threatening entire star systems and in one case even causing a star to go supernova, with the fate of the sector in the balance. People enjoyed this one but were not quite as invested in the outcome. Could be for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it used a new game system.

 

- Global Eye of Terror campaign. Stakes were simultaneously bigger and smaller than the Gothic campaign. Bigger in the sense that the threat of Chaos from the Eye of Terror was greater, but smaller in that the campaign focused on smaller arenas of combat.

 

Contrast that with today. Instead of the Eye of Terror and the Maelstrom, we have a warp rift that spans the diameter of the entire galaxy. Instead of sectors threatened by Chaos, we have half of the galaxy that is apparently in freefall, even amongst the species that do not use the Astronomicon. Instead of Blackstone Fortresses, we have a demon planet-machine that tunnels through the Webway. Instead of Generals, we have Primarchs. We do have individual planets and locations like the Nachmund Gauntlet, but those are presented more as stepping stones to the larger-scale narrative.

 

So it is not so much that the stakes are lower. It is more about the stakes being less relatable because they are so high.

[EverythingIsGreat]

49 minutes ago, phandaal said:

Contrast that with today. Instead of the Eye of Terror and the Maelstrom, we have a warp rift that spans the diameter of the entire galaxy. Instead of sectors threatened by Chaos, we have half of the galaxy that is apparently in freefall, even amongst the species that do not use the Astronomicon. Instead of Blackstone Fortresses, we have a demon planet-machine that tunnels through the Webway. Instead of Generals, we have Primarchs. We do have individual planets and locations like the Nachmund Gauntlet, but those are presented more as stepping stones to the larger-scale narrative.

 

Isn't this because this is basically the continuation of the Horus Heresy, and not just in scale and scope.

[One Paul Murray]

1 hour ago, phandaal said:

 

People think there are high stakes, but the stakes are so high at this point that they are starting to run into the MCU problem. How do you top the universe getting snapped? By snapping multiple universes. How do you top that? By snapping multiple multiverses. Etc. Eventually the scale and scope becomes meaningless.

 

Going to use some 40k examples, and there will be some people who chime in that their experience with these things has been different. What I am offering is some perspective on how it could be that some people might perceive a lessening of the stakes even as those stakes in theory grow larger.

 

- The global Armageddon campaign. That was basically a single planet with campaigns fought over small portions of the planet, and people were very invested. The stakes were much smaller, with single units and individuals gaining notoriety throughout the campaign, and those stories are still popular to this day.

 

- The Gothic campaign. Stakes were bigger, with Chaos fleets threatening entire star systems and in one case even causing a star to go supernova, with the fate of the sector in the balance. People enjoyed this one but were not quite as invested in the outcome. Could be for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it used a new game system.

 

- Global Eye of Terror campaign. Stakes were simultaneously bigger and smaller than the Gothic campaign. Bigger in the sense that the threat of Chaos from the Eye of Terror was greater, but smaller in that the campaign focused on smaller arenas of combat.

 

Contrast that with today. Instead of the Eye of Terror and the Maelstrom, we have a warp rift that spans the diameter of the entire galaxy. Instead of sectors threatened by Chaos, we have half of the galaxy that is apparently in freefall, even amongst the species that do not use the Astronomicon. Instead of Blackstone Fortresses, we have a demon planet-machine that tunnels through the Webway. Instead of Generals, we have Primarchs. We do have individual planets and locations like the Nachmund Gauntlet, but those are presented more as stepping stones to the larger-scale narrative.

 

So it is not so much that the stakes are lower. It is more about the stakes being less relatable because they are so high.

I think this is a huge issue with the Black Library content, to be honest and it puts me off because it breaks my immersion.

 

When you can torture an astropath to blow up multiple planets, well why wouldn't you just do more of that? There'd be no Imperium left. 

 

For me, by far and away the most enjoyable books focus on narrow stories where the protagonists matter, like the Chris Wraight Space Wolf books, or the Iron Snakes novels. Or the Eisenhorn / Ravenor / Bequin books. Stakes can be localised and feel more impactful because of it, while antagonists can be individually compelling. It is boring when the hero carves through enemies by the cartload, despite them being superhuman in their own right.

 

A lot of these scale criticisms I think apply to the game too (lethality killing a 'Your Dudes' sense), but at a setting level I think the writers need to be really careful that it doesn't end up being hopeless. The balance needs to be that it always feels like they can repair the dam, but it just keeps cracking a little bit more no matter what they do.

[Karhedron]

2 hours ago, SvenIronhand said:

WHFB has “25% must be spent on…” and “up to x%”. There’s a way to do it granularly.

 

Yes it could be done but what problem do you feel that this solves? How does this make the game better and for whom?

[DemonGSides]

16 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

Yes it could be done but what problem do you feel that this solves? How does this make the game better and for whom?

 

Immediate fix comes in that there's less points to use on "just the broken stuff" that every list skews towards right now.

I want some sort of benefit for taking a force that makes sense for the lore, so the game doesn't keep trending to "Take the most powerful stuff with no downside."  The game doesn't reward that right now.  If they want to get granular enough to say "This faction has these force org restrictions" that's cool too, but I think that's bloat-y and more awkward.

[Karhedron]

Just now, DemonGSides said:

Immediate fix comes in that there's less points to use on "just the broken stuff" that every list skews towards right now.

 

Yes but it does so at the expense of bringing in other problems. Armies with cheap Troops can basically ignore it while more elite armies are penalized. Also it reduces the incentive to fix the broken stuff. It doesn't really solve the problem of broken units, it just papers over the cracks unevenly depending on the faction.

  

Just now, DemonGSides said:

I want some sort of benefit for taking a force that makes sense for the lore, so the game doesn't keep trending to "Take the most powerful stuff with no downside."  The game doesn't reward that right now.  If they want to get granular enough to say "This faction has these force org restrictions" that's cool too, but I think that's bloat-y and more awkward.

 

GW tried to provide bonuses for following force org patterns from 7th - 9th but it wasn't exactly well implemented. The Formation bonsuses in 7th were not well balanced between armies. CPs in 8th/9th were a good idea in principle but spamming broken stratagems and front loading the damage potential of the game made it detrimental to the game.

 

Ultimately the only real solution to broken units is to fix them. If points are done properly then 1000 points of any army should be equal to 1000 points of any other. GW have already shown that they are willing to fix armies on the points-per-unit level in 10th edition and I think that is a better way forward. Most SM Battleline units have seen a significant price reduction since the launch of 10th while good stuff like Inceptors and Aggressors have seen their points go up. Once armies are balanced against each other, balancing units within a faction should solve the problem of people spamming powerful units because those units are no longer more powerful for their points than multiple smaller units. I would far rather take Troops because they are effective for their points and perform a role in my army than because an arbitary force org chart says that I have to. 

[DemonGSides]

18 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

Yes but it does so at the expense of bringing in other problems. Armies with cheap Troops can basically ignore it while more elite armies are penalized. Also it reduces the incentive to fix the broken stuff. It doesn't really solve the problem of broken units, it just papers over the cracks unevenly depending on the faction.

 

I'm pretty okay with factions feeling differently, including on how they interact with the troop tax.

19 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

GW tried to provide bonuses for following force org patterns from 7th - 9th but it wasn't exactly well implemented. The Formation bonsuses in 7th were not well balanced between armies. CPs in 8th/9th were a good idea in principle but spamming broken stratagems and front loading the damage potential of the game made it detrimental to the game.

 

If we're just gonna use the argument that GW Can't Be Trusted To Do It Right, then we might as well shut the thread down right now :P

 

19 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

Ultimately the only real solution to broken units is to fix them. If points are done properly then 1000 points of any army should be equal to 1000 points of any other. GW have already shown that they are willing to fix armies on the points-per-unit level in 10th edition and I think that is a better way forward. Most SM Battleline units have seen a significant price reduction since the launch of 10th while good stuff like Inceptors and Aggressors have seen their points go up. Once armies are balanced against each other, balancing units within a faction should solve the problem of people spamming powerful units because those units are no longer more powerful for their points than multiple smaller units. I would far rather take Troops because they are effective for their points and perform a role in my army than because an arbitary force org chart says that I have to. 

 

I think there can be more done beyond just Datasheet changes, but if that's the only avenue you think is possible, then so be it.  I think incentivizing the troops through Battleshock/OC interactions would also go a long way; bladeguard shouldn't be allowed to capture points, neither should an Avatar of Khaine.  Technically a data sheet change, but it's a fundamental change at how they view the OC game and everything like that.

A lot of the flavorful changes I'd want would walk the game far, far away from a competitive experience, and I'm thrilled at that idea but I am under no illusions it's gonna happen.

[Noserenda]

That still relies on troop units being bad to "balance" though, what if the super broken unit is in your comp section?

 

[Karhedron]

41 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

I think there can be more done beyond just Datasheet changes, but if that's the only avenue you think is possible, then so be it.  I think incentivizing the troops through Battleshock/OC interactions would also go a long way; bladeguard shouldn't be allowed to capture points, neither should an Avatar of Khaine.  Technically a data sheet change, but it's a fundamental change at how they view the OC game and everything like that.

 

I agree with you there. I think that OC is baby steps and I would be happy with changes to capitalise on that. Some units do have OC 0. Both Wulfen and Death Company are far to feral to do anything strategic like take Objectives. Perhaps expanding on this would be a good way to go.

 

I wasn't meaning to shut down other avenues of discussion, sorry if I came across as overly negative. You are right that just because force org bonuses were handled bandly in the past, does not mean that the approach should not be revisited. I actually liked the idea of compliant Force Orgs generating more CPs as it felt very fluffy. I feel it was the stratagem-bloat that caused the problem. Front-loading could be avoided by saying that armies that comply with a Force Org chart get +1 CP each battle round in their Command Phase. It provides a good incentive while also providing a steady benefit throughout the game, rather than a ton of CPs to burn in T1/2.

 

The popularity of Characters like Calgar and Azrael who provide +1CP per turn shows that this is a decent and valuable buff that players would value.

[Karhedron]

6 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

That still relies on troop units being bad to "balance" though, what if the super broken unit is in your comp section?

 

Agreed, I would rather units were properly balanced in the first place rather than trying to mitigate poor balance by implementing arbitary restrictions.

 

If units are well balanced then the problems that the Force Org chart was trying to solve largely go away.

[TheArtilleryman]

2 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Armies with cheap Troops can basically ignore it while more elite armies are penalized

Not sure about other factions but in one of the editions guard had to take a whole platoon to count as one troops choice, which mitigated this somewhat.

[Kallas]

2 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Agreed, I would rather units were properly balanced in the first place rather than trying to mitigate poor balance by implementing arbitary restrictions.

You can't make 1000 points of Intercessors equivalent to 1000 points of pure Knights (as an extreme example). Even with the greater number of bodies the Intercessors bring, the Knights' high toughness and wounds, plus bevy of heavy firepower mean they'll be demolishing Intercessors left and right while the Intercessors will only plink away a few wounds per turn.

 

This is where battlefield roles are important: Intercessors aren't a unit intended to face down heavy armour and come out on top. They might do some damage, hell they might get lucky and take out a big chunk, but realistically they're not going to kill off one Knight reasonably well at all. 

 

What we have in 10th Edition balancing is basically the 40k version of this:

Spoiler

1. Reality is that some units are dominant, and they need datasheet fixes to make them not overly powerful for their role and cost (or adjusted cost to be appropriate).
2. Equality is every unit being allowed 3 datasheets and no other restrictions - yes, it's equal, but units aren't made equal.
3. Equity is help being given to make the poor units actually fieldable - in my opinion, this should be done through FOCs and other avenues beyond points/datasheet changes.
4. Liberation, hell I dunno, maybe it's perfect balance and respect for the lore at the same time - not really possible in game terms, and wasn't part of my original point, but probably should mention it anyway.

In my opinion, FOCs inherently restrict the upper end power of some strong units by making them literally less available. Maybe in the 10th style framework it's not "3 Heavy Supports", it's giving each individual unit a new stat: Availability, which can be anything from 1 up to either the current 6 of Battleline, or possibly even higher if you want to make a particularly cheap horde-ish unit more available, eg, maybe you rebalance Termagants into 10-strong units, but give them something like Availability 18 - so you can still field a ton if you want. It's just an example, but it'd be an additional lever of balance (that doesn't necessarily disagree with lore either) that could help curtail units that would skew things. It wouldn't work alone either, just giving each of the Knights AV2 wouldn't change much - you'd still have an army of pure Knights, so it'd need something else alongside it, possibly Faction-based (ie, Codex rules) limitations, or combined AVs or something - or more appropriately would be some kind of Battlefield Role designation that could have a cumulative limit, but that's coming back around to just going full FOC again.

 

Anyway, it's a half baked idea, mostly for illustrative purposes. Point being that large units like Knights and Primarchs are inherently powerful, simply by their high Toughness/Wounds/Saves - balancing on datasheets and points alone is often not sufficient; an additional measure realistically needs to be put in place to both help curtail those situations where armies are just skewed towards X/Y/Z unit type, which would also help bring armies more into line with how they've typically been portrayed in Codexes, artwork, visual and written media.

[Triszin]

12 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

Now we just have to see what new craziness GW introduce in 11th edition. 

From rumors....

 

And my guesstimates.

 

Orks take armegeddon, teleport it back home.

 

Lion is on eradication duty(nids)

Russ is back on ring of fire saga (killing orks all day long)

 

Now, does Russ save Isha?

[Special Officer Doofy]

1 hour ago, Triszin said:

Now, does Russ save Isha?

 

I know I'm not up to date on my lore, but wasn't he looking for the tree of life (viking mythology), not exactly Isha? Plus Isha is in Nurgles garden. Is daddy going to possess him like Guilliman and do a godblight 2.0 electric boogaloo? That would be terrible.

[Karhedron]

12 hours ago, Kallas said:

You can't make 1000 points of Intercessors equivalent to 1000 points of pure Knights (as an extreme example). Even with the greater number of bodies the Intercessors bring, the Knights' high toughness and wounds, plus bevy of heavy firepower mean they'll be demolishing Intercessors left and right while the Intercessors will only plink away a few wounds per turn.

 

True but anyone choosing to take an army with no anti-tank capability cannot really blame the FoC (or lack thereof). In any case, 12 squads of Intercessors would be hard for 2 or 3 Knights to wipe out before they stickied enough Objectives to outscore the Knights. Conversely you could run an army of Eradicators (still Marine infantry) which would wipe out 2 big knights per turn at close range, even with RIS.

 

This is what I mean about making units valuable. You are not taking Intercessors to wipe out the enemy in most cases (certainly not their tanks) but to take and hold Objectives which is something they do very well for their points.

[Karhedron]

10 hours ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

I know I'm not up to date on my lore, but wasn't he looking for the tree of life (viking mythology), not exactly Isha? Plus Isha is in Nurgles garden. Is daddy going to possess him like Guilliman and do a godblight 2.0 electric boogaloo? That would be terrible.

 

When you are dealing with the Warp, mythology can be as solid as steel. On the whole thought, different races seem to have different deities in the Warp. Khaine is not Khorne, despite both being war gods. The exception seems to be Slaanesh who started out as an Eldar god but broadened its tastes to include humans too.

[Rain]

I guess the idea is that different sapient species experience emotions differently, so they create different warp gods. Ultimately I think it’s a matter of only human factions having Chaos “versions” of themselves as separate factions and models, so that’s all that’s ever talked about in lore. There’s no reason that there shouldn’t be Khornate Orks, Tzeentchian Eldar, Slaaneshi Dark Eldar, etc., but such things have never had models, so they’ve never been mentioned.