How to fix LI

[Crablezworth]

6 hours ago, Mandragola said:

Lots of complaints about infantry being too fast. What would happen if we had a look at the movement stats of infantry and perhaps other things? Dropping their speed to something like 3” would make a big difference, crucially making almost all weapons reach further than charge range.

 

 

I think they remain as is, you just only allow double not triple move. A carve out for roads as an optional terrain rule where if they start and end entirely on a road they can 3x might help keep the change less contentious. The bigger thing for me is they should only charge their movement stat, no 10-14 inch charges. That would hopefully also incentivize assault transports more.  

 

6 hours ago, Mandragola said:

i think you would then also want to reform overwatch to only work on first fire (and perhaps point defence), as suggested. That would also help speed the game up a bit.  

 

100% agree on overwatch only on first fire but allow it on pd still, it has worked well in massively reducing the big center scrums where it feels like every other unit is overwatching and the game just sort of disappears down a rabbit hole. Not to mention it fixes flyer interactions and lets interceptors actually do their thing. 

 

6 hours ago, Mandragola said:

I think you’d still want things like bikes and assault marine to be quite fast. 
 

 

I think they can stay the same, I largely just hate vehicles charging. Bikes, at least outriders, could use a tiny shred of love like furious charge as jetbikes largely outclass them. 

 

6 hours ago, Mandragola said:

im not sure what to do about walkers if we slowed infantry. Things like dreadnoughts would be a bit rubbish with only a 3” move. 4” might be ok. 
 

 

Walkers main thing should be that they're rarely slowed and should largely be like knights and effectively have nimble. I also think more terrain needs to slow infantry, if you want to see absurd, look up the rules for cliffs. Somehow infantry can advance up them, like navy seals can't rebel up a sheer surface while firing battle rifles one handed, its a bit silly. We've made rules for cliffs where infantry need to be on march to even climb them. And honestly some games we've just agreed they can't. But ya, walkers I think should by synonymous with being able to maneuver over difficult ground with ease compared to vehicles and other units like bikes. 

6 hours ago, Mandragola said:

I’m also interested in tackling activations. I’d be curious to see what happened if we activated Formations rather than Detachments. Things might get pretty messy though. Actually it would help here if only first fire detachments could overwatch. By definition they wouldn’t be moving, making it easier to track what was going on. 

 

We've moved away from even tracking breaking points and also deploy armies at once instead of alternating formations, this was done both for time and the fact that it was just too much of a deterrent to playing bigger games and tracking is just a nightmare as scale of play increases. 

 

I think activations and formations need caps. As simple formula that seems to work okay is 100pts = 1 activation/detachment so at 1500 you can have 15 detachments, 2000, 20 and so on. 3k can be a manageable game, but not if its like 40 activations on each side. 

 

There should either be a hard formation cap like max 4 formations at 2k, for example, one could even go further and limit how many of any one formation can be fielded multiple times. Some formations are guaranteed to be problems because they require so few points to field. A new example of that is the taghmata 3 tank formation, i call it that because one of the options is karacnos, which can fielded in detachments of 1 for all 40pts. So the formations has a whole buy in of 120pts, without limits, one could have an entire army of single detachment karacnos legally. This isn't a new problem, but a good example of the extremes the army construction can currently legally be  taken to without any limits on formations. At 3k, you could have 75 activations in 25 formations of 3 lol. 

 

[Crablezworth]

58 minutes ago, DuskRaider said:

I would also say that infantry should not have the ability to assault anything larger than other infantry (or as others have suggested one scale above their own). Maybe give them the ability to purchase Melta Bombs and give them the opportunity to attack detachments two scales above their own. 
 

 

 

I think baseline infantry should largely be doing 2 things, sitting in cover or a structure near an objective, or, attacking enemy infantry in cover or in a structure. I'm tired of people thinking they're genius for spamming ogryns, even those imo should be doing one of the two things mentioned and not like tearing a apart heavy armour in combat. My thought is though if charging changes to be just infantry's movement stat, and no more triple march, I can live with them as is, but I think anything charging something larger scale should have to pass a morale test. If failed can still move their full movement stat in any direction including forward but can't actually come within an inch and thus engage. Basically, keep it at "you can try, but its way harder now". 

 

[Crablezworth]

16 minutes ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

Infantry:

I have seen years ago battle reports of Dropzone Commander. Infantry without transports are moving like snails across the battlefield which makes sense considering they are supposed to be fighting in a city and not a village like it is done in 30K/40K.

 

20 minutes ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

 

 

Walkers:

Movement should be taken into account depending on it´s type. Siege and artillery dreadnoughts are slow by nature. A contemptor however should have still a move of 4´´. Same logic should apply to SA & Mechanicum walkers. Is it of a more cumbersome design? Then give it a low move stat. Otherwise keep it at 4´´.

 

 

 

 

 

Well infantry aren't speed demons in real life, there's a reason modern armies are largely mechanized, but sadly the way gw's made them, transports largely sit empty and end up getting used for silly stuff like charging other vehicles. I feel like infantry should largely be static, sitting in cover holding ground. Or if attacking, largely focusing on dealing with enemy infantry, but currently they can charge basically anything and its a bit silly. 

 

I think walkers should like knights and titans largely never be slowed by difficult terrain, that should be their main thing imo. As to whether 4 or 5 inch move, I'm fine with a variety move stats for them based on how heavy or lightly armoured they look. 

 

 

 

20 minutes ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

First Fire & Overwatch:

Only allowing Overwatch on First Fire will turn games into static affairs. Tanks should be rolling forward and shooting their point defence weapons as protection against the likes of swift bikers who may have been lurking nearby to suckerpunch them. Otherwise you will never have "Blitzkrieg" moment and be forced to play trench warfare which means the player who moves first into no man´s land loses instantly.

 

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It would still allow for overwatch with pd, but would greatly reduce the absurdity of unlimited overwatch in a game hat might have 30-60 detachments in play. It just adds to these 2 turn games of a giant central mosh pit because everything just advanced towards each other. That's also what the current progressing round based scoring encourages as well, so it at least tempers that. Also, book 4 has a few mission that are only scored at the end of the game, those would be good examples of where a slower pace/less rush to the center sorta tempo will make help highlight how much more sense it can make in terms of game flow. 

 

24 minutes ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

 

 

Legion Traits:

We haven´t talked about those at all yet but the overall sentiment is that some are good and others are garbage. I know that it is impossible to balance 18 traits fairly but you can at least erase those which only apply in very specific situations. The best way to do it is to give each Legion a passive perk which is active all the time.

I am playing Iron Hands (big surprise!) and even their perk which doesn´t sound too bad on paper evaporates into thin air when you take into account that in order for it too work (tanks on first fire orders are harder to destroy) you have to close the gap to the opposition first in order to activate your weapons. Problem is your tanks die very fast to the opposing vanquisher tank turrets of the SA WHILE on the move. So nice try from the dev team here but it just doesn´t work. The IH perk also includes infantry making them tougher to ranged attacks but only when a medic is in the general area. Again another fine example of making a trait useless when dumping a prerequisite into the mix.

 

 

 

Yeah balancing 18 of them is impossible, so many need work. The biggest upset was taking what should be a core game mechanic, pushing back infiltrate, and hiding it behind space wolves. They could have just made space wolves the best at doing it, but no. Total absurdity. I also at the same time don't like legion armies being able to have unlimited mixing of legions, even beyond just ruleswise, aesthetically its not great to look at armies that resemble crayons, but going back to ruleswise, it just leads to gamey silly stuff, I'd say 2 legions max in one army list. But that can be dealt with at an event level, the bigger issue is just how bad and how good some traits really are. 

 

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

You could address the issues with Legion perks and mixed Legions forces by doing the following:

 

1. Army consists of only one SM Legion: Legion gains access to their Primary Legion perk which is a passive perk and thus active all the time.

 

2. Army consists of two SM Legions: Legions gain access to their Secondary Legion perk which is a lesser passive perk and thus active all the time.

 

3. Army consists of a maximum of three different Legions (inspired by Shattered Legions rules from HH 2.0): Legions gain access to their Tertiary Legion perk which is situational and thus has very little impact upon the game.

[DuskRaider]

Personally I think my Legion should have the best traits and every other one should suck. 
 

Seriously, though… there’s a massive imbalance between the Legions and their traits. Some are extremely powerful to the point that it’s game breaking (Alpha Legion, Raven Guard) where others are nigh useless. There has to be a middle ground and I’m not sure why they didn’t just kinda port those from the 28mm game over to 8mm where possible. The same can be said for the various Titan Legios and Knight Households in AT. Most of that could be ported into LI with minimal effort or issues, but just… wasn’t. I suppose you could say it may slow the game down, but it can’t be worse than it is now.  

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

52 minutes ago, DuskRaider said:

Personally I think my Legion should have the best traits and every other one should suck. 
 

Seriously, though… there’s a massive imbalance between the Legions and their traits. Some are extremely powerful to the point that it’s game breaking (Alpha Legion, Raven Guard) where others are nigh useless. There has to be a middle ground and I’m not sure why they didn’t just kinda port those from the 28mm game over to 8mm where possible. The same can be said for the various Titan Legios and Knight Households in AT. Most of that could be ported into LI with minimal effort or issues, but just… wasn’t. I suppose you could say it may slow the game down, but it can’t be worse than it is now.  

Why they don´t port them over? Because it is VERBOTEN! You cannot even have basic USR from 30K/40K mean the same thing in LI. As LI is a different game it needs to have different rules even if the perks are called the same as in other systems.

[DuskRaider]

2 hours ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

Why they don´t port them over? Because it is VERBOTEN! You cannot even have basic USR from 30K/40K mean the same thing in LI. As LI is a different game it needs to have different rules even if the perks are called the same as in other systems.

From what I understand, there’s some internal battles between SG and GW Main concerning crossover of products, which is why a lot of the 30K units are now considered “Legends” units now. Actually, same for a lot of the FW 40K units. It’s ridiculous. 
 

I have a feeling that the fan base could, should and probably will make a better ruleset for LI eventually. The sooner the better, because I don’t trust the people over at GW to be able to fix the problems and make a better system after I’ve seen what they’ve done to 40K over the years and the massive downgrade of 30K from FW’s rendition to GW’s current one. 

Edited November 3 by DuskRaider

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

16 minutes ago, DuskRaider said:

From what I understand, there’s some internal battles between SG and GW Main concerning crossover of products, which is why a lot of the 30K units are now considered “Legends” units now. Actually, same for a lot of the FW 40K units. It’s ridiculous. 
 

I have a feeling that the fan base could, should and probably will make a better ruleset for LI eventually. The sooner the better, because I don’t trust the people over at GW to be able to fix the problems and make a better system after I’ve seen what they’ve done to 40K over the years and the massive downgrade of 30K from FW’s rendition to GW’s current one. 

There is a guy who posted on this very forum rules for Orks & Eldar for play in LI in practically no time. Maybe he can take an attempt at it. And yes, the community can do great things. Examples would be 9th Age and the first Living Rulebook for Blood Bowl.

[Crablezworth]

The community can do great things but there's such a heavy logistical side to rebalancing units. It's about the nature of what is to change with each unit, if for example its just a re-costing, that still might mean a not insignificant edit and if not edit, having to index a new price list to everything. There's also the card factor, there are thankfully people doing fan made card files so its not hopeless, but it is indicative of gw not ever intending to do anything drastic because although they can update a digital book in theory, they can't update the cards without a new print run and a lot of hassle. 

 

They largely missed an opportunity with book 4 to at least start the process with titans and knights and, well, that didn't happen. The only real positive change was seeing armigers and moirax able to operate on their own in some formations. 

 

 

I think being realistic involves making as few changes as possible but at a core level and to re adjust incentives, and introduce some hard limits on army construction. 

 

On army construction, some formations have sort of questionably low cost in terms of compulsory slot. There are attempts to sort of tax or force some kind of structure to the whole thing, akin to the old 40k foc of like 1 hq 2 troop, but there's also formations that are simply "take 3 detachments of tanks" or super-heavies, etc. I don't think its a sign of game health that a legal list could be like hundreds of jetbikes, or 27 stormhammers. A legal list, right now, is 75 karacnos, each individual detachments, in 25 fomraitons. That's 3k on the nose. 

 

I don't think those edge cases will ever come close to seeing the tabletop, but the fact that they're completely legal clearly shows the game is just way too open for poor balance. But the point is to show that the army construction does a poor job to incentivize fewer larger detachments over trying to take as many as possible. Book 2, literally, gives zero point saving incentive on any detachment in the book, so its by definition he "msu" (multiple small units) book because they went right back to discounting in book 3 and now book 4.  

 

So pulling a random number out of my mind, lets say at 2k you could only field maximum 4 formations, or 1 per 500pts basically, so 3 at 1500. Its mostly just as food for though but, starting there. You'd be capped at 6 at 3k, which doesn't even seem like that much of a limit. There's also the question of duplicate formations, I don't want to be the fun police by I think many can agree that formations like pioneer company being spammed can be a bit obnoxious, as well as any sort of skew. I think the goal should be combined arms is sorta the way to go, if not by incentive alone, by structure of army construction. If that means some formations can only be taken once or twice, so be it. Even just as an example, if each formation was 0-1, outside of silly stuff like all titan or knight armies, the hope is you'd more of a combined arms approach, but I'm sure there are ways to still do skew of one wants to. 

 

 

 

 

So in the name of efficiency, and without getting into more of a pure faq territory of correcting small mistake in unit/weapon stats, here's the 5 core changes I think would be worth consideration:

 

1. Infiltrate needs to be replaced in most scenarios with forward deployment or outflank. The new book 4 mission with the bridges is a great example of a cool scenario that will get totally ruined by infiltrate in its currents state. That and even when in play, infiltrate should never allow turn 1 charge, it just ruins the game. 

 

2. Armor and other saves in close combat. The hope here is we'd see less silliness with infantry beating up much larger units, they still can, but now that kratos has its 2+ save, think on it. 

 

3. Infantry should only march 2x, and should only charge their movement stat, no longer double. I'd also want them to have to pass morale in order to charge anything scale 2 or higher. If they fail they can still move their movement stat in any direction even toward the enemy but can't come within 1 inch/engage. 

 

4. Reserves as a core mechanic. Example, a mission/scenario with reserves would require say 1/3 of each sides detachment to begin the game in reserve, similar to deep strikers and outflankers, but in this case just arriving by board edge. (or the other aforementioned methods). Reserves would be in two tiers, the kind you roll for from turn 2 onwards or a tactical reserve where you simply choose when they arrive as it currently works. However in the case of the latter, those detachments would be in addition to your 1/3 reserve, meaning they don't count for the overall % of detachments in reserve. Example, i have 15 detachments, so i need to put at least 5 in reserve. I may place more in reserve, like a 6th detachment of terminators i intend to deep strike. As i've already got 5 detachment i can just put them in tactical reserve and choose when they arrive as normal instead of rolling. 

 

Rolling might sound like a drag but it adds an element of uncertainty equally to both sides, especially in a game that once deployed can seem very "telegraphed" because both sides have a birds eye view. To all of a sudden have a unit arrive from reserves you did not expect or on the flanks or from deep strike can really make the game more interesting. But also it can help mitigate disparity in activation somewhat. It also keeps the temp of the battle a bit more even handed instead of the usual 2 turn beat downs you see then its just sorta peters out. 

 

5. Detachments and formations need caps. If I were to run an event right now, the baseline I would use is 1 activation/detachment per 100pts, so 20 max at 2k, 15 at 1500 and so on. As for formations, I'm less confident but I do think approximately 1 per 500pts. I would also just say max 2 of any formation largely not to upset anyone but it probably should be closer to 0-1, at least of the really broken formations. 

 

6 (unofficial) I joking include this because it would have been in the list but it seems GW has already listened, somewhat in that end game scoring is present in a few of the new scenarios/missions in book 4. This sets a good precedent for shifting away from progressive scoring to end game scoring. It's much lower, you can't really get an early lead and in terms of narrative games or more historical style, it makes a lot more sense because you can literally summarize a game in a couple photos, here's a pic after deployment but before turn 1, here's a pick end game, you can see who controls which objectives.  

 

 

 

 

 

[Crablezworth]

Okay so this isn't perfect, the combat res stuff could probably be worded better or more explicitly, the hope is common sense prevails in terms of combat res. 

 

TL;DR

 

This core change is designed to shift the meta back from infantry being king. This big change means that those cool expensive units players pay a lot of points for finally get their resilience in combat and not just from shooting. It's meant to adjust incentives because now charging isn't a guarantee of likely causing some wounds. 

 

I left rend out of it, so veletarii and ogryns will still hit hard but they don't cause an ap, so the hope is they'll focus more on lighter targets like other infantry and leave the heavy tanks and knights and titans alone as they'd get their saves. 

 

Inv saves work, as do ion saves. Ion works like with shooting, so ap -1 won't shift the integer, but ap -2/3 shifts it 1, ap -4 shifts it 2. Also still only works in front arc. 

 

 

I still don't think this "fixes" infantry by a long shot, they're still great, still run 3x and charge 2x and so on, would love to address those things as well. This also doesn't fix rhinos arvuses and other cheap vehicles charging. But it's a start. 

[DuskRaider]

The infantry movement is the easiest fix in the world, IMO. Same with vehicle and infantry movement interactions. Infantry moves twice their speed on March. Any other movement is their base number. If they’re in a vehicle and it moves its base movement, they can jump out and move their base movement. If it goes on a March order, they cannot leave the vehicle.

 

The movement is probably the second worst thing about infantry and it compounds all the other problems that they bring to the table. 

[Crablezworth]

1 hour ago, DuskRaider said:

The infantry movement is the easiest fix in the world, IMO. Same with vehicle and infantry movement interactions. Infantry moves twice their speed on March. Any other movement is their base number. If they’re in a vehicle and it moves its base movement, they can jump out and move their base movement. If it goes on a March order, they cannot leave the vehicle.

 

The movement is probably the second worst thing about infantry and it compounds all the other problems that they bring to the table. 

 

Yeah agree on all of those. 

[BrutalCities]

Have you tried epic 40k/armageddon rules? I keep hearing that's one of the best games GW has ever done. And a great rules set for combined arms games.

I haven't played it, but watching a game sold me.

[Crablezworth]

5 hours ago, BrutalCities said:

Have you tried epic 40k/armageddon rules? I keep hearing that's one of the best games GW has ever done. And a great rules set for combined arms games.

I haven't played it, but watching a game sold me.

 

It can certainly inform LI and how to fix it I'm sure. I think though there may be aspects I wouldn't like, I do think LI needs suppression fire but I also don't relish having to find/make a bunch of explosion tokens/markers. That was also something I didn't love about battlefleet gothic. Another aspect I don't think would work is the abstracting of weaponry, li's gone too far down that road to go back now, I also have to say people that want to dismiss WYSIWYG entirely for li to be more like older epic games I just think won't work too well. The main reason I wouldn't go back to older editions of epic is simply, its already very difficult to find opponents for li. 

[Gillyfish]

Interestingly, I always liked the visual impact of the explosions...

 

Anyway, you are correct. This is based on the second edition of the game more than the subsequent editions. That was always quite a swingy game and had some real issues with the game effectively being over by turn 2 (granted my friends and I were playing 6-10k games, which was probably not what was intended).

 

I think trying to fix the game needs to be broken down into stages.

 

1. Core rules using 'vanilla army lists without legion rules, etc.) - so the interaction of the core rules can be tested and modified as required. This might also require some quite 'basic' armies initially using units with limited special rules initially and then adding back in those more unusual units. For example, testing knight and titans later on rather than including them early. So there are some inherent sub-divisions here that we may wish to consider.

2. Army list structures. Thinking here of the detachment and unit costs as well as unit special rules. With amendments to the core rules that we are happy with, is unit X too good or unit Y really bad? Should there be a different way of selecting armies and detachments (minimum/maximum numbers of types of detachment, for example)?

3. Special army rules and how these are applied and when they are applied in the context of army selection.

 

The above does need further teasing out, but might be a good way to approach some of the issues.

[Pacific81]

It's very difficult to know how much of a change you should try and make to the game, and the point at which you go too far and then may as well be playing Armageddon or NetEpic, as you've created something with so many house rules it will only be playable with your close gaming group. Like some bastard Frankenstein of a game that has limbs and extra flesh bits hanging off in every direction and comes shambling towards you, sending gamers running off and screaming in terror.

 

For me, there is an element of, if I want to add Orks, Eldar, Tyranids.. why not play the original aforementioned games? They were designed with the different factions in mind, they've had 20 years of community play testing and so are generally balanced. Very subjective, but I think (and this is something that isn't talked about nearly enough) they are a lot more fun to play.

 

For an event we are running next year we will try and use the end of game scoring that the Tabletop-Standard YouTube guys tried recently. I also like some of the maximum activation and formation rules that have been posted in this thread and section of the forum. The problem is if you make too many changes you risk alienating the people that show up at your event and expecting the rules to be ubiquitous (which is really, as far as I can see, the one major benefit of Legions and it being a currently supported game).

[Crablezworth]

7 hours ago, Pacific81 said:

It's very difficult to know how much of a change you should try and make to the game, and the point at which you go too far and then may as well be playing Armageddon or NetEpic, as you've created something with so many house rules it will only be playable with your close gaming group. Like some bastard Frankenstein of a game that has limbs and extra flesh bits hanging off in every direction and comes shambling towards you, sending gamers running off and screaming in terror.

 

For me, there is an element of, if I want to add Orks, Eldar, Tyranids.. why not play the original aforementioned games? They were designed with the different factions in mind, they've had 20 years of community play testing and so are generally balanced. Very subjective, but I think (and this is something that isn't talked about nearly enough) they are a lot more fun to play.

 

For an event we are running next year we will try and use the end of game scoring that the Tabletop-Standard YouTube guys tried recently. I also like some of the maximum activation and formation rules that have been posted in this thread and section of the forum. The problem is if you make too many changes you risk alienating the people that show up at your event and expecting the rules to be ubiquitous (which is really, as far as I can see, the one major benefit of Legions and it being a currently supported game).

 

I'll risk alienating the player that, before had to at least play a certain point level to field a warmaster who can now basically have it at almost any point level. I'll also risk alienating someone who thinks its reasonable to have like 30 activations at 1.5k

 

I completely agree that if you change the game too much you may as well play netea or epic armageddon, but neither of those are much of an option at least locally. But agreed that there is a risk in balkanizing whatever small pool of li players there may be in any one place with too many house rules or fixes. I can't stress enough though that the one size fits all of the games current state just doesn't work. It reminds me too much of 40k when they forced knights and all the apoc stuff into and formations. There was nothing fair about a 1500pts game where one side had a 40k army an the other side had 3 knights. I'm just tired of the race to the bottom, of feeling like the marketing department is really running the show. 

 

But I think the army construction is a big cop out, to mask a fairly exploitable system with no guard rails they try and make it convoluted/have the occasional tax unit to seem like there are limits on things but there really aren't. The event where they capped detachments at 14, every game went to turn 5. But that also preceded book 4. 

 

Agreed on end game scoring being a big improvement to how enjoyable the game is to play or watch, their battle report with it is the most enjoyable li game to watch yet I think because it actually doesn't feel telegraphed like the other battle reports with progressive scoring where the writing is just always on the wall.