Legions Imperialis - Incentives

[DuskRaider]

There have to be scale limitations to close combat. Scale 1 detachments should not have the ability to cause injury to anything over Scale 2. You can make exceptions for things like Rend and give them the ability to take down Scale 3 (so two higher), but leave it at that. This may also help Titans and Knights quite a bit, as it would mean that you can no longer just swarm them and down a Warmaster with a quarter of its points in infantry. Along with limiting movement to max 2 x the speed listed in the profile, this could help tame the infantry issue in the game. 
 

This may also help with the activation issues we currently have in the game. While there would still be incentive to take infantry detachments, as they’re the only ones who can reliably take / contest objectives which is the primary objective of the game, it might also limit the amount people are willing to field, open up lists to more variety, and thus cut down on the proliferation of infantry activations which seem to really affect the game overall. 

[Hallas]

I also think about he activation game problem.

What about the simplest thing possible: you can pass and activate later if you have less activations left than the opponent (like in War of the Ring board game).

 

And yes, it would be a pain to track the number of activations left, so let's say you can pass if you're at or below some easy to asses threshold of activations left (like 6?) and have less activations left than the opponent. It would probably be good to skip Reveal Orders Step and reveal the order when a Detachment is activated. You remove some admin, get fog of war effect and increase readability of the activation progress during Movement Phase.

 

Now, this makes initiative stuff not important at all, but does it have any importance now? Probably you want to make the first firing in Combat Phase but that's it I think.

Now you want to have big detachments, I think. Big detachments on both sides means the lack of split fire less painful.

[Crablezworth]

On 2/7/2025 at 3:50 AM, Hallas said:

As reported by more experienced players, close combat and overwatch (needed to defend against charge) are major problems. To make things worse, models are priced based on their ranged dice output and armour save, ignoring possible close combat damage output. For example, when looking at close combat, the dreaded Missile Launchers Support model cost 9 points and probably four of them obliterate Kratos costing 150 points (I would have to calculate probabilities to have the exact numbers).

 

 

The problem too is the huge variance in detachment sizes and the fact that combat is just so incentivized for infantry, esp ones that are given like terrible shooting attacks with lower ranges than they can charge, which is still insane to me. Overwatch and point defense really mucks things up, esp considering its not tied to first fire, so it always feels weird going on first fire only to have all these things occur beforehand. Overwatch also just doesn't kill enough given the size of some detachments can be like 16-17 models, and it feels like those were largely made to help the starter box function, the legion and aux "mega blobs" don't really make any sense. 

[Crablezworth]

On 2/7/2025 at 3:50 AM, Hallas said:

So let's look at a targeting card of a Kratos with best anti-infantry setting possible: 6 front arc dice from point defence bolters. Currently, those translate to expected number of 1.33 charging infantry models killed during overwatch when no additional rules are in place. But certainly there are some additional rules like form HQ detachments, so there will be less than 1.33 kills during overwatch. Roughly speaking again, 6 Missile Launchers Support models would obliterate such Kratos. 54 points vs. 150 points.

 

To kill two birds with one stone: that is remove overwatch and mitigate infantry overpower I would change some stuff.

 

1. CAF0 or less means a unit cannot charge and then set this to all units we do not want to do such things. We have got rid of charging transports.

2. Some limitation to what can be charged. I think charge in a straight line is a solution here. It limits the possibility to go around to rear arc but still in urban environment, if tanks are between buildings,

the infantry would be able to charge through the buildings and make some kills.

3. Point Defence weapons always can fire in First Fire Stage. That actually moves overwatch to First Fire Stage but makes movement phase dedicated to actual movement.

4. Point Defence weapons always hit in First Fire Stage when targeting a model engaged with the firing detachment.

5. Give a bonus to AP to Point Defence weapons when firing to detachment which charged at the firing detachment. This needs some testing to get the number right but even upgrading AP by 1 would make 2 dice from bolter to expect nearly 1.66 models killed.

 

Sadly, this is only viable solution on hose environment and requires more changes something in Skyfire and Flying rules...

... LI rules are bad.

 

 

I agree on the some units cannot charge, I think top of the list would be arvuses. 

 

I don't think it's so much about charging in a straight line as limiting how far they can charge, I don't think they should be running triple either, they should only double move on march and charge only their move stat, this would reduce the insanity with charging from structures, and also increase incentives on transports, esp assault transports. 

 

Overwatch in ff starge doesn't really work, but I do think overwatch should only be allowed on first fire or with point defense. 

 

I do find it odd that skyfire weapons don't incur a penalty for shooting ground targets, it makes the aa missle tarantulas a bit nuts. Had them chew through a detachment of dreadnoughts and their cost is way too low to be doing that. 

 

Agreed the li rules aren't great, but I also think some stuff can be improved. Imagine allowing saves in combat and limiting what can be charge by scale, perhaps detachments can only charge something 1 scale higher and it requires a morale test or something. I know that won't fix problem units like missile launchers, but could also just cap stuff at like 16 or 32 max like the aussie event did. They'll likely have to do that with karacnos eventually.

[Crablezworth]

On 2/7/2025 at 9:57 AM, DuskRaider said:

There have to be scale limitations to close combat. Scale 1 detachments should not have the ability to cause injury to anything over Scale 2. You can make exceptions for things like Rend and give them the ability to take down Scale 3 (so two higher), but leave it at that. This may also help Titans and Knights quite a bit, as it would mean that you can no longer just swarm them and down a Warmaster with a quarter of its points in infantry. Along with limiting movement to max 2 x the speed listed in the profile, this could help tame the infantry issue in the game. 
 

 

Well it could just be gamifying the mechanics of who can initiate. I'm not sure about giving rend a pass either, it's been real disappointing watching ogryns beat up armigers in combat. But my point is, we know mechanically anything can fight in cc, but can just limit who initiates. Could be only 1 scale higher unless you pass a morale test, or perhaps it could be an integer bump requiring an hq be in range to inspire the detachment. Combat is so incentivized because its like one pre measure away from being pretty much an auto succeed short of a lot of overwatch/point defense, and even then you have to do pretty well to remove enough bases to keep them entirely out of combat with crazy charge ranges like 10-14 inches. At least this way knights and titans might feel more imposing, the psychology is more "correct" as even though say marines know no fear, they're not dumb enough to just run out of cover and have an ok coral with a titian in the street, unlike now where we're to believe even solar aux lasgun bois are like fearless zealots that never met a titan shin they didn't immediately want to kick. 

On 2/7/2025 at 9:57 AM, DuskRaider said:

This may also help with the activation issues we currently have in the game. While there would still be incentive to take infantry detachments, as they’re the only ones who can reliably take / contest objectives which is the primary objective of the game, it might also limit the amount people are willing to field, open up lists to more variety, and thus cut down on the proliferation of infantry activations which seem to really affect the game overall. 

 

I'd love to see a game mode that flat out requires all foot sloggers be in transports, perhaps even cap detachment size of infantry at like 8 max. But overall infantry should be just ablative wounds next to an objective, they don't all need to be this thing that's moving and charging every turn. If they'd just open up weapon ranges for some on like first fire, and cut down their combat ability it would be a huge quality of life improvement. 

[Crablezworth]

On 2/7/2025 at 3:29 PM, Hallas said:

I also think about he activation game problem.

What about the simplest thing possible: you can pass and activate later if you have less activations left than the opponent (like in War of the Ring board game).

 

And yes, it would be a pain to track the number of activations left, so let's say you can pass if you're at or below some easy to asses threshold of activations left (like 6?) and have less activations left than the opponent. It would probably be good to skip Reveal Orders Step and reveal the order when a Detachment is activated. You remove some admin, get fog of war effect and increase readability of the activation progress during Movement Phase.

 

Now, this makes initiative stuff not important at all, but does it have any importance now? Probably you want to make the first firing in Combat Phase but that's it I think.

Now you want to have big detachments, I think. Big detachments on both sides means the lack of split fire less painful.

 

It's too much to track imo, esp considering the game has people tracking break points, something that already we've stopped doing because its just not worth the admin. 

 

I still just think a detachment cap is a good start. It might not be enough, would likely still have to consider other things like capping spam of any one problem detachment type to like max 16/32 depending on size of game. If it were my event I'd just say only the big 3(4), legions, solar aux and mechanicum/dark mech. So no all knight/titan forces, but still allow them as 30% allies or within the mech list itself. That would hopefully at least partially curb the 2 warmaster stuff. As for saving time, could just deploy entire army at once as opposed to alternating formations. 

[Crablezworth]

So another event in the states with 18 players posted a rundown and some interesting info about their event on facebook. 

 

 

This is the same event series that had their last event be 2k with a 14 detachment/activation cap. This event was higher points and a higher activation cap but they still only had 3 hour rounds, I asked if all the games still got to turn 5 and this was sadly no the case, I believe they're going to roll back points/activations for their next event as they've sorta hit a wall in that they don't really want to do longer rounds, so it makes sense that with 3 hours there's only so much in terms of activations it can accommodate before things start to grind down.

 

One thing they did to help speed things up was I believe 2 or the 3 missions used hidden deployment, they had some kind of barriers that could be placed across the centerline of each board and both sides just deployed simultaneously. The reason I mention this/highlight this in particular is it also capped infiltrators at only up to half the board in terms of deployment. A sort of round about balance. I'm not sure how feasible hidden deployment would be, I'm also fine with just deploying whole army/declaring what's arriving via outflank/deep strike instead of alternating deploying formations. Hidden deployment is neat but I just think its too much of an ask logistically but kudos to them for making it work for like 9 boards. 

 

Another thing the event did that I found notable is they sort of force everyone to take at least one titan/knight unit, basically everyone has 300pts they have to spend on knights or titans, but I believe its like a credit, so for example if one were to take a warlord titan, it fulfills the requirement as you spent at least 300pts (600 in this case) on a titan. I think this is preferable to allowing all titan or all knight armies, players are still free to spend up to 30% on allies and mech and dark mech can still field more than that in terms of titan and knights natively in their lists, without totally tanking the activation count/making the game worse. 

 

I believe when they polled their attendance they mostly prefer the higher point level/more activations but I think this is a key issue for me, most of the players in li seem to bite off more than they can chew in that, everyone is trying to play at point levels that realistically should take like 4-5 maybe 6 hours at a reasonable pace to resolve, and trying to shove it into 3 hours. I think this is also part of why we don't see very much LI from GW, they don't really know how to show "less" ie not a 6000pt game. They're afraid to show like 1500pts a side. I believe this event series is adjusting the point levels again but not back to 2k/14. I'm just happy an event is pushing for a limit on detachments/activations, I find without that the game will just always sorta disappoint. I still can't believe my last list was 18 activations at 1430pts.

 

There has to be some reason/incentive not to just take as many activations as possible, so again very glad to seen event keep with this, even if they're straying perhaps a bit given the stringent timeline they have for rounds (3 hours).