Should points increase across the board in 11th?

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Not sure where the FOC talk came from, but I will definitely support returning to some sort of FOC, I really dislike how so many armies are purely elite, fast attack, and  heavies now.

 

imho battle line/troops should be much more represented.

 

i don’t mind alternate FOCs for marine first company, or guard armored companies, etc, but there should be something that offsets that.

[kabaakaba]

If they make battleline mandatory it's would be cool. May be how it's in LI it would be good. 

[Xenith]

3 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

At 1000 points it gets very difficult to deal with any army that is armor/big monster focused.

As an example. A lot of armies will struggle against a guard army that has a Dorn, and a few chimeras with infantry.

 

they’ll likely either be too short on AT or short on anti-infantry.

 

That's where Wheaton's law comes in, and all versions of smaller game rules limit tough units. Anyway, not being able to deal with something is half the fun - you prepare for it next game. I remember in 3rd ed, someone bringing a land raider was actually a scary thing, they did feel impressive and near invulnerabe at 1000pts, eactly how they should be. 

[Antarius]

To some degree, playing small games does a bit of balancing in itself (but not always, of course). I played a game of, I think, 750 points and my friend brought a Defiler and some Rubric Terminators. The Terminators I massacred spectacularly (which admittedly was due to some insane dice rolling on my Captain’s part) after they had teleported in and destroyed two small units of Intercessors and the Defiler I simply avoided by staying out of its line of fire, as he had it parked on an objective and didn’t have enough units to claim objectives after I wiped out his Tzaangor.
In that game at least, it worked quite well, because both of these units were scary and actually did something (by cutting off the Defiler, I also cut off myself from a big part of the board, including two objectives) but it wasn’t like I couldn’t still win through tactical gameplay.

 

As for the FOC, I think there’s a couple of different things to be said:

- The FOC is a kind of restriction, but not all restrictions are an FOC. I get the sentiment, but I think it muddles the issue a bit as the FOC is not merely restrictive and not purely about curtailing units; it’s also about making an army feel like an actual army.

- There’s a lot of nostalgia for the FOC (which I guess is the only thing that might make GW bring it back, which is perhaps somewhat ironic). It definitely had its flaws and there were a lot of armies that had disruptive shenanigans regarding it. However, it defined armies and their feel for several editions.

- More broadly, I think they need to introduce some sort of limitations, be it an FOC or not. People have always complained about “troops tax” and similar, but I think the game needs restrictions for both gameplay and “feel” reasons. They could simply make a “free play” mode for people who don’t like it and that ought to solve the problem (“ought” being the operative word as wargamers will always find something to complain about).

[Karhedron]

12 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

imho battle line/troops should be much more represented.

 

I agree with that but I don't believe that FOCs or a mandatory troops is the best way to do it. All this does is punish armies that have poor Battleline options like Eldar while rewarding those who have a good selection of Battleline units (I honestly don't think Marines need extra help here).

 

A much better solution would be to make Battleline units desirable in themselves rather than mandating a minimum number of makeweight units. Take Eldar as an example. Guardian Defenders have sucked ever since 3rd edition because Gav Thorpe made the stupid design decision to give them short-ranged machine pistols and tinfoil armour. No wonder they are a dying race if that is how they equip their citizen militia. 

 

Defenders are supposed to be the unit that holds ground while the Aspect Warriors advance and storm the enemy so give them rules to reflect that. Give them sticky Objective. Give them lower ROF but longer ranged weapons. Give them a special rule that incoming attacks have -1 to Wound on them if they are within range of an Objective. There are lots of possibilities but just give them rules that make them worth taking rather than just stuffing as many Aspect Warriors and Phoenix Lords as possible into one army. Battleline don't have to be more killy but they do need some rules and points to actually make them worth taking. Fix the rules/points and you don't need artificial restrictions like FOCs or minimum Battleline, people will take them because players want them!

[kabaakaba]

We have OC which can be used to make battleline important. Just make such no other unit can overscore battleline. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

5 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

I agree with that but I don't believe that FOCs or a mandatory troops is the best way to do it. All this does is punish armies that have poor Battleline options like Eldar while rewarding those who have a good selection of Battleline units (I honestly don't think Marines need extra help here).

 

A much better solution would be to make Battleline units desirable in themselves rather than mandating a minimum number of makeweight units. Take Eldar as an example. Guardian Defenders have sucked ever since 3rd edition because Gav Thorpe made the stupid design decision to give them short-ranged machine pistols and tinfoil armour. No wonder they are a dying race if that is how they equip their citizen militia. 

 

Defenders are supposed to be the unit that holds ground while the Aspect Warriors advance and storm the enemy so give them rules to reflect that. Give them sticky Objective. Give them lower ROF but longer ranged weapons. Give them a special rule that incoming attacks have -1 to Wound on them if they are within range of an Objective. There are lots of possibilities but just give them rules that make them worth taking rather than just stuffing as many Aspect Warriors and Phoenix Lords as possible into one army. Battleline don't have to be more killy but they do need some rules and points to actually make them worth taking. Fix the rules/points and you don't need artificial restrictions like FOCs or minimum Battleline, people will take them because players want them!

Then improve those bad battleline units somehow.

extra movement and 1ppm less seems like it could work.

 

4 hours ago, kabaakaba said:

We have OC which can be used to make battleline important. Just make such no other unit can overscore battleline. 

Idk about anyone else, but actually competing for an objective has been very uncommon. For me if my models and my opponents’ models are occupying the same objective, it’s typically for only part of one player’s turn, until the other shoots and melees the currently occupying unit off the objective, or at least kill enough that battleline’s OC isn’t nearly enough to keep it.

 

so unless we make battleline de facto win the objective against non-battleline units no matter what, I don’t see any OC stuff making a difference.

[Antarius]

I agree that standard troops/battleline units shouldn't be a punishment; they should be worthwhile in and of themselves. However, I still think it pays to have some rules that make armies look, feel and perform like armies, rather than a random selection of units.

Again, they can just have a "free play" mode for people who don't want to be forced to take anything. In my opinion, though, the standard game absolutely should have some mechanics and rules for army selection beyond "don't take more than three".

[Karhedron]

12 minutes ago, Antarius said:

Again, they can just have a "free play" mode for people who don't want to be forced to take anything. In my opinion, though, the standard game absolutely should have some mechanics and rules for army selection beyond "don't take more than three".

 

I disagree because as soon as you invent that restriction, you have to start introducing exceptions. Deathwing and Ravenwing armies have been a thing since at least 2nd edition. IG armoured companies struggle to fit as well unless you start doing strange things like giving Tanks and Terminators battleline. One option is to balance these special cases by introducing restrictions but then you have to try and making it fairly balanced. You then just end up introducing a whole new tier of winners and losers based on who has access to the best divergent FOC.

 

By bringing back an FOC, you are reintroducing a whole set of problems. Some of them have solutions but each solution introduces another potential set of imbalances which need to be playtested and balanced out. It probably could be done but it is a lot of effort to solve a problem that does not need to exist. The only problem FOC solves is the perceptual one that armies should have more Battleline units.

 

I think that it should be fixed by making Battleline units better so that players would be seriously handicapping themselves by playing without them. My preference would be to give all Batteline units the following rules as standard:

1. Sticky Objective
2. Can Move, Shoot and fight in Melee normally while performing actions

Units that already have one of these rules (e.g. Intercessors) can be given a replacement special rule as an errata or when their next codex refresh rolls around.

[kabaakaba]

The problem with such rules, there again would be exceptions. Current system is good enought, just need to make battleline idk valid? Cheaper may be.

I don't play competitive. And my current list have 5 blobs of 20 cause I play infantry regiment. They pretty good for their points. And with buffs from crusade they even better.

Though in competitive scene we also see use of battle line, at least IG players use cadians and krieg and catachans. 

[Antarius]

I think it's a little bit misguided to approach the problem from an angle of "either FOC or make troops/battleline units worthwhile", because noone wants any units to not be worthwhile and it shouldn't be the case that some codexes have overpowered/underpowered battleline units. It seems a bit strange to argue that this problem will persist under an FOC but be removed under a non-FOC solution, because we're obviously all arguing for resolving those problems.

 

We're talking about possible changes to the game, after all, so I don't think it's reasonable to assume that e.g. Guardians wouldn't be changed if they were to become a mandatory unit in (some) Eldar armies. But again, it all seems a bit pointless as nobody seems to argue for, much less believe, that the FOC will make a return. All I'm saying is, I think troops/battleline should be worthwhile and I think there should be some restrictions on army building beyond "Rule of three", as I don't think armies should feel too "random".

[kabaakaba]

The Armies ain't random. In most cases they are cost effective. No one take Deathstrike cause it's ain't cost  effective, though it's really cool thing. But many ppl add dorn or two cause of it's dakka per point. 

 

[Antarius]

I think you may be misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying these armies are actually random. I'm saying they don't feel like armies but a selection of random stuff (which is clearly taken because it's good in-game, not because it's the kind of things that would make up an army).

Edited Wednesday at 04:26 PM by Antarius

[kabaakaba]

I understand. I don't like the armies on the tabletop are like remnants of some normal army. But there always gonna be power play. And such armies.

In narrative/crusade gaming it should be better. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

If we get an FOC back, we should have significant restrictions on some units.

 

units like terminators should be a max of 1, so one tac terminator squad, and one assault terminator squad.

 

a first company list would limit your list to only units with a <veterans> key word and leaders.

 

something like 30 terminators in a single list just shouldn’t happen outside of a full first company deployment.

[Karhedron]

40K battles are often meant to represent specific battles across a broader front. I don't mind imagining that there are companies of basic grunts "just offscreen" of the heroes. Besides, who is to say what a balanced army should look like in a fictional future where mutants spew mind-bullets, daemons are real half the galaxy is being fought over by undead robots and bio-engineered killing machines.

[kabaakaba]

Yeah, we always could imagine there is all our infantry off screen and just roll out tank company, it's very balanced army it's have anti-infantry and anti-vechicles weapons. Good saves. Some utility. Nice. And it's fast every thing have 12" move and advance without roll. And it's not imba. It's just a thing ppl uncomfortable play against.

[Magos Takatus]

One thing I never really liked about the FOC was that it was based around a Space Marine battle company template, and every other army was shoe-horned into that. Why wouldn't Eldar naturally want to use more fast attack units? What's causing them to artificially hamstring one of the aspects of war that they excel at? It just about works from a balance point of view, but from a lore point of view, it's horrible quite a lot of the time. It also means you need to make a dozen variant army lists. At the moment if you want to use the Eldar example from before you can build a jetbike heavy army and then have a detachment that may boost that. With the old FOC system you literally couldn't field that army at all until a variant army list was published. If the 10th edition Eldar codex suddenly deleted the datasheet that boosts jetbike-heavy armies, you could still field it, though it might be a bit less effective.

[DemonGSides]

7 hours ago, Magos Takatus said:

One thing I never really liked about the FOC was that it was based around a Space Marine battle company template, and every other army was shoe-horned into that. Why wouldn't Eldar naturally want to use more fast attack units? What's causing them to artificially hamstring one of the aspects of war that they excel at? It just about works from a balance point of view, but from a lore point of view, it's horrible quite a lot of the time. It also means you need to make a dozen variant army lists. At the moment if you want to use the Eldar example from before you can build a jetbike heavy army and then have a detachment that may boost that. With the old FOC system you literally couldn't field that army at all until a variant army list was published. If the 10th edition Eldar codex suddenly deleted the datasheet that boosts jetbike-heavy armies, you could still field it, though it might be a bit less effective.

 

I think that part of the convo often gets lost as people see FoC and immediately think of 7ths insanity. It doesn't have to be that way, but it could also use some structuring.

[HeadlessCross]

On 2/4/2026 at 3:02 AM, kabaakaba said:

We have OC which can be used to make battleline important. Just make such no other unit can overscore battleline. 

Or GW can actually experiment with the OC values more. I don't think it's reasonable for a single Plague Marine or Gaunt to hold an objective over 10 heroic Terminators or Wraithblades holding the line. If you want to hand out sticky objectives more as a rule that's a reasonable debate. 

[Orange Knight]

Will GW make armies smaller so people have to buy less models?

I doubt it.

[kabaakaba]

13 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

Will GW make armies smaller so people have to buy less models?

I doubt it.

Tbh I like the fact armies grew larger. It's at least stoped to look like it's a skirmish. We don't need bigger points we need larger tables. 

[gaurdian31]

5 minutes ago, kabaakaba said:

Tbh I like the fact armies grew larger. It's at least stoped to look like it's a skirmish. We don't need bigger points we need larger tables. 

I am on the other side, I think we need things to cost more or stay where they are so their are less models on the field. I want a quicker game, not one where I have to move over 100 models if I decide to play a heavy infantry list. That takes a lot of time. I think most infantry models should be roughly 16 points per model for more elite armies like marines and no less than 8 points per model for the horde armies. Then adjust from there based on loadouts.

[kabaakaba]

Why don't you play smaller format then? If you pick horde infantry it's strange you complains 100+ models

[gaurdian31]

To me horde is different then infantry heavy. I mean I don't want 100 marines on the field if I decide I don't want to take 15 tanks. If I am playing Tyranids having 100 infantry models makes sense. 5 squads of 5 man intercessors squads feel like they should be more than 400 points. I know that a base intercessor is 16 as a 5 man is 80 points, but I think that 16 is where they should start without equipment and they should be more like 18 to 20 points per model. They don't really feel like the Imperium's elite. A 5 squads of 10 termagaunts is 300 points and honestly that feels like they should be more too. Again I know they are roughly 6 points per model as 10 man squad is 60 but they should be more like 8 to 10 with weapons. They do feel appropriately like cannon fodder as I can have more for the horde. Hopefully that makes things a little clearer.