Hello 40k fans, Captain Morgan from Forge the Narrative here. On the edge of the new 40k meta post-FAQ, I wanted to take a moment to bloviate a bit on something that I’ve been making the rounds discussing in several groups and chats. Namely, I have observed a trend in the last two FAQ’s since the launch of 8th edition. It is my opinion that GW is wanting us to soup our armies and that we are long past the days of single-codex viability. I also think that this is bad for the game in general, and have prepared a preponderance of pontification to please your peepers. While in a large sense I’m speaking from a matched-play perspective, the problems I am addressing have an impact on non-matched play games as well.
Ok, Mr. Smartypants. Why?
The first counter-argument that I think people would bring up would be the Battle Brothers ruling from the first big FAQ. 
On paper, with a ruling like this, it would seem that the trend would be contrary to my assertion above. So, let’s break down some of the reasoning behind why the change was made. 8th edition, in its original form with the indexes at least, allowed players to mix detachments as long as they had one of the faction keywords in common (Imperium, Aeldari, Chaos, etc.). The term ‘soup’ as coined by my buddy Paul in editions past was how people would just slap whatever the best units that were available among factions together to make a super-optimized mega-detachment. We’re talking about seeing Celestine and Guilliman in the same detachment as some Imperial Guard. This created a game experience that was not fun for enough people that GW decided to reconsider, and focus the attention back on single-faction detachments (but not armies). Simply put, it was working too well, and it was killing the fun a bit too much. Thus the Big FAQ and the Battle Brothers ruling was born. I really shouldn’t have to do this, but I have to preface the rest of what may sound critical with a huge expression of appreciation for GW, the playtesters, and the new way they go about addressing concerns. Without these FAQ’s I couldn’t bloviate at all, and nobody doesn’t want that!
Even so, despite what Big FAQ 2 says about soup ‘still’ being off the menu, soup is definitely still on the menu and has been since 8th launched. Now you just have to serve the ingredients on the side instead of putting them in the same pot. In fact, one key difference to note between the Big FAQ 1 and Big FAQ 2 is that by the time the big FAQ 2 came out, most of the codexes in 40k have been released. In Big FAQ 1, we still had a relatively high proportion of index-only armies, which were certainly on the back foot when it came to rules and stratagems. The one exception being the Ynnari, who despite not having a codex (or perhaps by virtue of having two plus an index) remain an incredibly powerful enigma soup.
Soup: The Healthy Alternative to Your Index Army
The indexes were a stop gap; something to hold us over until our codexes were out. Having the ability to mix in a little flavor to make up for a deficiency in rules sounded like a great option. After all, didn’t GW promise us that we would be able to play how we wanted and still be viable, and all we needed to do was wait for our codexes to come out? It certainly seemed to be working after a fashion, since the addition of army bonuses like Chapter Tactics and the plethora of stratagems that codex-released armies got was making a huge difference on the tabletop. That success led to subsequent nerfs of characters like Roboute Guilliman and units like Dark Reapers. It wasn’t what these faction could do on their own that was causing the problem, however. The problem was the result of how the growing number of armies with multi-codex rules were fusing to stomp the mono-faction lists.
Souper-Food?
Battle brothers may have limited soup a tad, but it didn’t solve the key issue: Soup is always doing better than mono-faction. Mono-faction became the new ‘hard way’ to play (again) despite our hopes from the 8th edition pre-release promises. Even mono-faction armies with a codex were still struggling against soup-style armies. Ynnari is a big example of an army that despite several changes has remained a powerhouse on the table with an extremely high win rate. Seen any pure Ynnari lists around? Guard had/have an excellent codex, but even mono-guard are not making the cut at the top tables at tournaments and major events. Instead, guard are now the ‘loyal 32’ models that unlock command points and provide board control for the nice, easy price of 200 or so points. That’s from a good book! All we are seeing from a strong codex at events is the same 32 dudes mixed in a soup rocking up the rankings with a loyal, dejected mono-faction milieu dinking around the middle and bottom tables? Does that feel right? Unless you are an Adeptus Custodes player (a book designed with multi-faction tricks in mind, and more proof that GW wants us to soup more than it doesn’t), the answer should be ‘no.’
I think its time that we really look at the situation. If GW wanted us to do well with mono-faction lists, then we would be discouraged from bringing multi-detachment armies consisting of up to three factions. We would have Codexes that could function relatively evenly with each other instead of the giant imbalances we have between books like Grey Knights and Dark Eldar. We have to decide if we are on board with this or not. I feel confident in saying that GW wants us to soup, and I think we need to be honest about what accepting that means for the game. Before we do that, let’s pick some low hanging fruit so I don’t have to waste time with it in the comments:
1. GW is out to make money (like all of us) and having people buy stuff from different armies is good for business.
2. Codex Creep and imbalanced armies have always been a thing in the game.
3. GW have addressed soup in some ways, GW 2.0 is much better about feedback etc.
4. People playing non-matched play can, have, and will continue to do whatever they want and make up whatever to balance it in their own garages.
There, we addressed that. Let’s move on.
Soup Is Bad for Armies With Allies
If, in a large multi-faction ‘race’ in a game system like 40k with an incredibly diverse arrangement of unit options like the Imperium, your Blood Angels/Imperial Knights/Ultramarines/Dark Angels/Space Wolves army list building starts with 200 or so points of Imperial Guard – just so you feel like you have the bare minimum of tools (i.e. board control, command points, screens) – then there’s something wrong with the game and your codex. If 200 points of guard does more than 200 points of Scouts, then we need to re-evaluate its place in the game and its points value. It’s not just what the units do, but what they unlock – an entire faction’s worth of relics and stratagems to dice together. The iconic and unique units we like and love about a faction shouldn’t be sitting on a shelf or in a box (looking at you Baal Predators, GK terminators, Chaos Astartes, crisis suits, and Tyranid Warriors).
They don’t have to be the best, and they don’t have to be all equivalent and perfect (perfect is a journey not a destination), but they should at least matter. In an era of soup, they don’t matter. Worse, you as a player feel less like you are playing your army when you start your list with another armies’ units just to feel like you can keep up. How profitable can it really be when people are discouraged from buying products that you put money into developing? How worth it developing strong rules for an entire army like Astra Militarum when people are only using three unit profiles and 32 models from that army? It’s not creative, its not cool, and its not fun to have a cursory inclusion that your army can’t function without.
Soup Is Worse For Armies Without Allies
The armies doing the worst right now are mono-faction armies without the option to ally. We have pretty much relegated armies like Tau, Orks, and Necrons to the middle and lower tables because they can’t keep up with soup armies. The sad part (especially in the case of Orks) is that these players are incredibly passionate about their armies. These books, lacking soup, need to at least have access to adequate tools to keep up, which means a meaningful boost in power to their respective books (Orks are still up in the air with their impending release, but I have high hopes). If we are going to do that for them, then we need to do that for everyone. Like acupuncture, just because codex creep has been around for a long time doesn’t mean that it has value beyond a placebo.
One Thing Affects Another
While GW is paying attention to us at tournaments (and I think that is wonderful), the damages from soup affect non-competitive players as well. Non-competitive gamers are a major target audience for event organizers, since despite GW’s attention to the competitive crowd, we are still only a small margin of all the hobbyists around. The non-competitive crowd are the people who will benefit and detriment probably the most out of all of us from imbalances in book strength, and they make up a good portion of what we (too often dismissively) consider the ‘middle tables.’ If you are an event organizer or a T.O., then you should care about these people. They, not the high-stake competitive crowds, are the people who are filling the most tables and buying the tickets and goodies. They represent the majority untapped market for potential attendance and traffic at events, and the more they feel like they can even just start a game on a relatively even level, the more they will show up. I’m not just talking tournaments, but narrative events and ‘Friendly’ events will sell more tickets, we will get more foot traffic, and we will have more friends to game with at our local stores.
Never Point Out a Problem Without Offering Ideas for Solutions
GW-Based Solutions
If you asked yourself earlier, “Hey, doesn’t boosting all armies make all soups even better?” then you should have, but are OK because I just made you ask that by reading it to yourself just now. You’re welcome. Yes, this creates a problem, but not a problem impossible to solve. We’ve seen GW target specific and broad problems in their FAQs. Let me just say that banning soup is not the answer. We’ve have allies for three editions now, and there are some very valid hobby and lore-friendly reasons to keep the idea of multi-faction lists in the game.
I don’t think that the narrative and competitive have to be (or should be) separated even at the competitive level. Soup is one of those things that can be allowed to exist, but it should be limited in scope to make it useful instead of the only obvious choice for staying relevant on the table. Doing things like making players choose a main faction, make it consist of a large portion of the army’s points, and only giving them access to stratagems/warlord traits/relics from that faction and/or reducing command point generation in the pre-game for detachments not of that faction can still allow soup armies to have relevancy without making the fusion of their codexes too much to handle. This, combined with better starting balances between codexes, leads to greater list diversity, which leads to more creative ideas and positive game experiences.
Organizer/Player-Based Solutions
Sometimes the best way to discourage something is to encourage another thing. People like to compete at different things. Some people want to win the big prize, and will play whatever to get there. Some people (like myself) like to remain true to their army and still win. One thing that has caused contention among player groups since allies became a thing is how soup armies win ‘Best in Faction’ awards. Encourage players who want to play pure armies to come to events by rewarding them with best in faction awards instead of soup armies.
Are you really playing the faction better when you are using it as little as possible? Reward soup players for best Imperial Soup or best Aeldari soup as applicable, but show respect to players who are committed to their armies by judging them by the standard of their own real faction, not the mix of a bunch of others.
Yes, I Talk Too Much
If you made it this far, then you’re a champion! Congratulations! I know that was an eyeful. There’s even more that I want to say and get into, but I’m going to cut if off now. I am genuinely interested in what you all think about this. I want to end with this thought: In every show, for every codex that I review with Paul and the FTN crew, the first and most important question we want to know is if the book will function well as a stand-alone codex. It’s also one of the top questions we get from fans and listeners, and its not just us. I hear it from everyone on pretty much every 40k podcast or broadcast I listen to, including in questions directed to great players like Nick Nanavati on “which is the best mono-faction book out there?” This is a question constantly hanging on the community’s lips, so lets hash it out.
Decide if you like soup and how you want it to be a part of the game. Think about how it affects all players and factions, and then RESPECTFULLY make yourself heard by submitting feedback to Games Workshop. In the meantime, before then, I challenge you to pull the issue apart and figure out the goods, bads, and uglies here among people in this forum.
Cheers, and thanks for reading!
Captain Morgan
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
I have said beford that the best method to limit soup armies is to reign in what makes them good….. the strategems.
Having access to different powerful units is nice, but getting to use 3 armies worth of strats is what makes soup so powerful. The 32 man guard regiment is only powerful because it generates so many CP for the other armies ( of course this is much less viable with the new faq limiting free CPs to one per turn).
I had proposed limiting your Strats to only your warlords detatchment, but that does make thibgs less fun. Instead perhaps you could increase the cost of strats from other books besides you warlords faction by either double or perhaps 1 CP more.
Doing this still lets you make soupy armies, but could slow down some of the super soup detatchments without hurting the mono book armies.
I like limiting the strategems. Or maybe can only use it once a game, and if it’s once a game, can’t use it all.
The Loyal 32 could bring only it’s basic 5 CP without regen, and be tied to AM strats only, and it will still be a major part in most Imperial lists. It’s too good at board control and screening compared to literally anything else for the cost.
I agree that limiting the stratagem use and CP generation in matched play creates a better game environment. The loyal 32 still hold value for board control and scoring but don’t unlock relics or stratagems for cross-faction exploits.
I agree with all of this. Problem is making it balanced without smacking down all the creativity and fun. With the big faq 2 they changed cps… a first.
Not being able to unlock certain things is a big housekeeping task especial with multiple detachments. I have an idea that might work…Mainly spit balling here though…
Add 1 cost all to stratagems with the addition of an allied detachment(s) Of a non faction keyword ( eg: chapter, regiment, house, legion, etc…your tactic) increase To max of 4 cp with that you can reverse the already existing cp increases as this encompasses that.
So if BA/DA increase cp, if castellan list with guard increase cp, if death guard with other chaos increase cp.
This excludes universal strats such as relics and the anti alpha strike, and pre battle 1 round strats.
Pros:
Should Level the soup playing field because stratagems help ALOT…
More power to mono faction builds.
Cons:
Lower tier codexes/factions hindered:
EG: grey knights, gsc, imperial agents, Officio assassinorum, LOD, inquisition, Astra telepathica, the kill team one…
These factions would need either s point cost reduction or i think largely inclusions into the larger factions without penalty, like Legion of the Damned can be used for any or all imperium, same with sisters of silence, or GSC can be used in the nid codex.
I have nothing to contribute to this other than I wish we would stop calling this soup. I prefer bento box (a term I heard some people throw around) or buffet or 3 course meal – I know you mention this very thing at the start of the article – and I know Soup is the word that everyone has adopted to describe mixed factions – and I know I am just being pedantic, but….that’s all i got.
I second this.
Yep, that’s pretty pedantic. Nothing stopping you from using it in your own circles, but I don’t think that a movement to change soup to Bento is going to gain much traction. This is coming from a guy who speaks Japanese and loves bento lunches with a fierce passion.
I hear you and yet when the term soup began it was mixed faction in 8th edition – in 6th we called it allies, and in 7th allies. And I would say it isn’t even my circles, I remember Reece on a twitchcast arguing that soup was dead and arguing in chat and then simply resigning himself to the fact that the True ( yes very pedantic now) definition ( and gw’s definition of soup ) had been co-opted and distorted to lump any list with allies as soup – which it is not because: soup is a bunch of ingredients in the same bowl – detachments are a steak, a bun, and some corn on the cob.
But I will continue to beat this dead horse in a corner by myself (and publicly twice today 😉 )
Well I’m liking it the more you talk about it
As an off topic aside – never stop your very good and always apt wordplay on FTN. My favourites are the ones that dont stop Paul in his tracks but just cause him to skip a beat – I can almost hear his eyes blinking!
Thank you. Especially since battle brothers specifically references soup in the article
Why are any of those terms better than soup? If you’re just changing it for the sake of change, then yeah that’s pedantry.
Subjectively I think Bento is perfect as the plate format has dividers so the food doesn’t even touch ( symbolizing the detachments of course) . And besides being pedantic doesn’t mean i’m wrong – maybe just an arsehole
But they absolutely do touch- they share CP all the time.
(Pedantic means overly-focused on details, typically to the detriment of some greater purpose or understanding. So it _implies_ you are wrong, or at least wrongheaded, even if not outright stating it.
See? Pedantry!)
I prefer exact, precise, over scrupulous, fussy, punctilious, or any other synonyms I copied from google
I was conveniently trying to ignore that some factions can share stratagems and some cant as admitting it would weaken the point I was trying to make.
Bento for life!
(PS this may be bordering on farce or satire (which ever makes me look worse) at this point as I dont think I have ever had this long of an extended exchange on any topic here at Frontline and I certainly didnt wake up thinking this was the hill I would die on today 😉 )
1. One option would be to only give the +3 CP for Battle-forged if you’re mono-faction. A knight/color of marine/guardsman army is legal, but doesn’t get the +3 CP. A T’au Empire army of three different Septs would.
2. The problem seems to come back to two armies – Guard and Knights. Knights seems obvious, and rumor is they’re getting a points update. Just adjusting the humble lasgun wielder won’t fix everything. Maybe they need to go back to requiring Platoons, so 3 squads and a Lt., per troop slot. It makes the CP farm still viable, but it’s a bigger points commitment. I’d be open to other fixes to Guard as well.
3. Limit the ability for small detachments to add CP, relics, strategems, etc. Maybe require them to be a certain percentage of the total points. I’d think about 1/(n+1), n being the detachments allowed for point size. If you are allowed 3 detachments, unless it’s more than 1/4 (25%) of the points – you can field the models, warlord can’t be in the detachment, can’t use strategems, don’t gain CP for the detachment, etc. If you’re allowed 2 detachments, it’d have to be 1/3 of the points, etc.
Guard are definitely part of the problem because what they bring for 200 points is the best possible Imperial source of board control and screening. Thanks to the Fly change on the charge, positioning your screens is easier, which means you could theoretically do it with less bodies now.
The problem is the cost here. Guardsmen, even at 6ppm, would be better at it than every marine troop in the game. Marines are just…not durable enough. Those armies also don’t bring that much damage unless you can stack a ton of gems, relics, and psychic powers to buff them – and only then it looks like that’s the only valuable units.
I don’t think working with percentages is going to be a fun fix. I do like the idea of limiting it to detachments of certain sizes. Perhaps there is some wiggle room for doing this where for side-detachments you can only pick stratagems from their book based on their CP contribution to the total army (like 1 CP for outrider = 1 stratagem from that book). Just shotgunning ideas here.
That’s not bad either. Percentages generally shouldn’t be that tough. For 2000 points, it’d be 500 pts. They could even just list on the point size vs detachment (“Rule of 3”) table as a hard number. Like, for anything over 2000 points, the detachment has to be 500 points.
ALLELUYA!
It ultimately doesn’t really matter what GW wants from the game at the highest competitive levels, Cap.
Because it isn’t GW that controls tournament rule packs. It’s the TO’s. And if ITC really has a problem with soup, there are a myriad number of steps to reign it in.
True, TO’s have a lot of leeway, but if we ever want to have an even playing field then we have to approach this from a standardized perspective. ITC is not in the business of taking the reigns on sweeping rules changes.
TO’s have huge leeway in how they define faction for “best in faction” and the ITC definition is far from the only way to do it.
If you play at Warhammer World the definitions are pretty simple, you need a keyword in common across your whole army to qualify. In that format you lose Adeptus Astartes faction if you take anything that does not have that keyword – there is no concept of being able to take X points in Guard before your army stops being Marines. It is simpler and to my mind does a better job of giving a decent reward to those players who want to play single-codex armies.
I am quite happy for the players who actively love crafting the most optimum list from across a mega-faction to play their game. I think the trick is to create categories in which other players can play and aim to win prizes and the faction prizes really should be that but currently are not.
I sure love being forced to look at every Imperium codex through the eyes of “what is the one thing this book does better than anyone else in the imperium faction” and forgetting the other 90% of the book. Before you were forced to use the “pretty good” units of the codexes, now you just replace “pretty good” with another faction’s “amazing”.
Yep. People claim soup lets them be creative, but if you are only picking 1 or 2 units from a codex then are you really being that creative?
Identifying and using the best units available to you is literally the definition of building a competitive list. Soup or not soup won’t change that.
It changes it completelly. Instead of IG with leman russes, AdMech with Onagers, Space Wolves with long fangs, Space Marines with whatever the f they use for anti-tank we only see Castellan, Castellan,Castellan,Castellan,Castellan…
But oh wait, it’s getting a points increase!!! Yaaaaaa—Oh, right, you can cherry pick the next in line in the long list of Imperium anti-tank and just run that instead. If you were punished for allying in Castellan or were rewarded for not doing so, we’d see way more variety on top tables. And that’s my problem.
(1) One of the Games Designers plays GSC – that can be one of the worst SOUP armies around. Look what’s happened at LVO, Adepticon and NOVA. A good general can select from the best of two Codexes and have a high probability of winning!! I feel we need to wait to see the GSC Codex to get a real feel for the issue of correcting SOUP. There are no seriously large tournaments before the Chapter Approved 2018 comes out (sorry but SoCal is not big!) Probably the week before GW GT 3 ;
(2) Increasing numbers of tournaments of changing the CORE rules to better reflect the TOs own idea of how the game should be played at tournament level. ITC changed the ruins rules; No Retreat have one Codex/ only max of one of each detachment; London GT had mixed scoring systems. In fact very few tournaments run the same way;
(3) most players are not going to tournaments! 7500 played ITC in 2017/18 (Reece’s own figures) yet millions buy the products every year. most players don’t even buy a separate Codex let alone update it. For them this entire issue passes them by … for 31 years we’ve never had this kind of support from GW and most are still unaware of it;
(4) There was a very vocal number of players at events attended by GW in 2018 that wanted the 3 detachment list as they could win with it. GW is taking a measured approach and inviting feedback to their specific e-mail address. That’s the place for responses NOT to blogs that they’ll probably never read.
1. We don’t need to see GSC to see there is a problem with soup. GSC aren’t the fulcrum by which all soup operates.
2. I don’t really see what this has to do with my article.
3. See ‘Captain Obvious’ above. Just because people aren’t coming to tournaments in those numbers doesn’t mean we can’t improve their personal game experiences through providing feedback, or create welcoming atmospheres for them at events in the future.
4. You must have missed my CTA there, bud. I told people to contact GW about how they feel about it. I can do that too, just by copy/pasting this into the email. You might be surprised what they read and don’t. Considering I have direct access to some of the GW staff and have published an article on Warhammer Community, you have to think about audience and format. This type of article might not get published on WHC, but here it provides a forum for reference. People are more willing to write a comment than to send an email (for whatever reason).
I think they could solve the problem with keeping everything in their current codex’s (points for stratagems) and still keeping the diversity that the current system gives the player not being too powerful by picking the best units and stratagems from different codex’s.
1. keep the cp for detachment as their are in the current rule book. BAT 3cp ,BRI 9cp ( i hate it when u have nicely printed rules in your book and their are not valid anymore)
Then add a new rule like
Warlords authority – The warlords knowledge of his own army is without question. If your detachment is from the same codex as your warlord u get +2 cp from all detachments except patrol detachment, supreme command detachment and auxiliary support detachment .
This would mean you get for spearhead , vanguard and outrider 3cp which will help the elite army’s which really cant get their command points. (the reason for all the soup nonsense)
And the second rule
Too many commands – Even the most powerful and skilled warlords get lost in the diverse tactics of their allied forces. All stratagems used before and during battle that are not from the same codex as your warlord cost additional +1 cp
All the powerful 1cp command points would now cost 2cp (and u would not nerf the stand alone army’s with the flat cp increase) also pre battle extra relics would now cost 2/4 CP
This would solve a lot and all the printed rules and stratagems could stay the same in the books.
Except that won’t affect soup in the slightest cos nobody brings the Loyal 32 for their strats. If someone takes a Guard Brigade to power Knights, they will be fine non the less. It would affect 3x codex armies, but with the new limitations on farming they seem to already be going away a bit.
Also in monoarmies it encourages you not to take troops, which is not as bad an issue, but issue nonetheless.
U will get only 3 CP for a BAT now and u used up one detachment. For a nice cheap screening. And your farming relics will cost 2 and 4 cp. This would exactly solve the builds that are now annoying.
And good players will always have screening and troops because u need it to win games. If u decide to not take troops u will not be punished with 5 cp for the rest of the game. This would bring a lot of diversity to the tables.
The thing I definitely firmly agree with here is challenging the current definition of best in faction – the definition used by most tournaments is complex and is really not working for the diversity of the game.
Best in faction should be for pure armies, no allies at all of any type. No crutches. Just one faction. Lots of mid-table players love their one-faction armies and this will give them all something to play for – without having to compete against mashup armies.It is a simple fix to help make the events more compelling for that wider spread of players who really are the majority of the player-base and who provide the bulk of the numbers and hence income.
Then if you are taking any form of allies at all you are competing for the best overall but for nothing else because why does the TO need to give any further incentive for mashup armies.
Preach!
I think this is the best and easiest answer to the “Bento Box” problem (to shout out to the poster above), because it is entirely within the hands of tournament organizers. So no need to try and find a place on the FAQ/CA schedule.
Furthermore, it is possible that if enough players bring mono-faction lists to compete for the true best in faction, the meta will evolve to the point that the Bento Box is no longer the problem it currently seems to be.
It’s a change that has been discussed, but it is worth pointing out that it makes it _impossible_ to play as a number of factions in the game.
This is true but realistically how many people are playing Imperial Agents or Eldar Corsairs at the moment?
I mean, I am. 😛
Can well just agree that Chris Morgan doesn’t understand much about competitive play? Anyone who listens to FTN can identify that almost immediately. The only quality shows they have these days are the ones that include Val and manage to leave him and Troop off.
I would be much more open to reading an article that addresses soup from someone who actively participates in the tournament scene.
They call me Salty…
I can’t speak to Chris playing in tournaments or not, but I must say I generally agree with what he’s written in this article. I do note however that you aren’t taking umbrage with anything he’s written, rather you decided to go full ad hominem from right out the gate. Bold move. I would be much more likely to give your comment serious consideration were it to expand upon what you found lacking in this particular article about the competitive scene and back up how you thought those failures prove you think we shouldn’t be listening to Chris’ opinions on the matter. While Forge the Narrative is indeed light on the competitive side of the discussion, it does literally have Narrative in the title. I would be much more open to reading a comment from someone and take it seriously if they provided actual feedback on the topic at hand and proof of their assertions.
Daww, I’ve got a fan! Hey buddy, thanks for listening 😉
Leave it to a BA fan to have an irrational opinion like not loving me unconditionally. 😉
What a relevant name
Excellent article. I’ve nothing to add, it covers the issue thoroughly and in a clear, articulate manner. Now just let me copy the whole thing amd paste it into the comments of the last Chapter Tactics as a rebuttal :p
I find that their should simply be a tax of either points or CP to bring allies. Raise the price of guard for a knight army. But not for an AM.
Conditional variables would do wonder for balance
Much like bringing 20 mariens is cheaper then 2×10 in 30k
“Detachments give 1CP per full 100 points up to their datasheet limit”
Adjust at will (like adding offsets)
I mean, looked at on the most basic level, you want all armies to start the game with ~18CP?
Also, keep in mind the current system is designed to reward taking Troops (because they give more CP for those Battalions/Brigades); your proposal removes that incentive, so there is little reason to take them anymore except in rare circumstances.
Well that SHOULD be what pushes troops to the top. However when you look at chaos you see that not only are troops good for CP, obsec, board control, ruins interractions – they are also the most efficient units as well… I have no idea what they were thinking here. Shouldn’t the trade-off be troops get all these in-game bonuses, but other roles are actually more efficient? Because right now there’s no reason to take most other stuff. Which is why you see cultists, letters, bearers, tzangors, etc.
Given the way past editions have played out and the complaints people have had, I’m not sure your paradigm is actually good.
(And the problem with the non-Troop options in the Chaos books is not that they don’t get Troop benefits, it’s that they are power armor- which is overcosted- and daemon engines- which are also bad. The power armor troop options never get brought to the table, either.)
Oh ok, I’ll keep picking troops because they’re more efficient and have troop benefits. That’s cool AP. Crushers, flesh hounds, furies, skull cannons, ex flamers, flamers, screamers, burning chariots, bloodthirsters, great unclean ones, beasts of nurgle, seekers, fiends, keepers of secrets, lords of change, slaanesh chariots will just stay in my shelf because troops are just better than them.
Your complaint seems to be more of “the daemon codex isn’t very good” rather than “troops are too powerful.” And I’m sorry, man, it’s true, but lashing out at every other part of the game ’cause you got a shitty codex ain’t gonna help.
I never said troops are too powerful. I said they’re more powerful than everything else in the book on top of having troop benefits. These things are what make wanna go “was this game tested really?”
Also I have all the shitty codexes: necrons, admech, chaos daemons. Maybe that’s why I’m annoyed all the time. 3 for 3, fk my life. I still somehow always win but that’s “big fish small pond”. Maybe orks – my last hope, can remedy that.
I do wonder what they’ll do with all the shit tier codexes. Since if CA comes and goes with just some tame pts drops – yikes, that’s a year of playing the same crap. Maybe suplements?
@Captain Morgan:
Great article and in facts cuts off the one I was composing since you covered, almost all the points I would raise. You nailed it on the head by saying that Soup* will always > mono-faction since Soup is able to make up for the inherent weaknesses of its component parts. The biggest design issue is that Codexes/Factions are designed with pluses/minuses. Those minuses (i.e. just how CP hungry BA are, or prone to Morale damage horde armies can be, etc…) are** meant to offset the pluses that a given book brings. Custodes are meant to be perpetually outnumbered and have to engage a certain part of the brain in order to be all the places they need to be on a table.
Soup, by its very nature, upsets that designed balance. If a Custodes player can bring allied Imperial Guard, suddenly s/he doesn’t need to worry about being everywhere at once: they can instead focus their efforts and get maximum bang before their buck.
Therefore Soup ALWAYS > mono-faction.
And THAT is the problem.
If there is a case where it is advantageous to take a single soupable book*** in a mono-faction build instead of in a Soup configuration, please let me know. And that’s the issue:
there is no choice in the matter. Soup is always better.
I think one way for GW to rectify that is to have “Secondary Chapter Tactics” that are unlocked if every model in an army has the same /equiv. I.e. something that present the tabletop general with a set of (somewhat) equally viable options: go “all in” on A, or do 1/3 A, 1/3 B, and 1/3 C. Both options (or anything in between) SHOULD present different-yet-proportionally-viable options for the commander to choose between.
Example: an Imperial Guard army. They typically lack reliable damage/Elite units. Voila! Just add Captain Smash/Custodes/Imperial Knight! However, if there was a “Secondary Chapter Tactic” then perhaps all models in the army gain +1LD and +1 to cover saves. Or perhaps there’s a special rule called “Munitorum Supply drop” that lets all weapons from the Special, Heavy, or Melee weapons lists cost half-price.
2nd Example: World Eater Berzerker army. They are good at stabbing things (duh), but they can lack in shooting. It is thus the “obvious” choice to add in allied shooting to shore up this inherent weakness and make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. As an alternative, a player could go “all in” and take all World Eaters to unlock a “secondary CT” that would give them +1AP (so all cqw get 1 better AP value) and +1D to all their attacks. Whoa! Mono faction ain’t so bad, perhaps…
3rd Example: “If every model in your army includes either the or keyword, than all models with the keyword may be deployed in a Teleportarium and may be deployed anywhere on the table at the end of the controlling player’s Movement phase so long as all such models are deployed at the same time and are set up wholly within 12″ of a model and more than 9″ from an enemy model. If a model has a Teleport Beacon, then can be set up anywhere outside of 1″ of enemy models.” <– bit of a crowd pleaser, but you can see how it is both fluffy and crunchy. Yes, it can be powerful, but the opposing player also knows they wont be facing Knights or hordes at the same time. Besides, who uses Terminators anyways…
Long post, but I wholeheartedly agree with @Chris Morgan's analysis and feel that with a little creativity (and will), the game could easily be tweaked to present OPTIONS to players that encourage both fluffy and crunchy rules.
…and at the end of the day, isn't that what we all want? Fluffy viable options?
*we’re talking someone who deliberately builds a Soup list with a coherent plan in mind, not someone who just grabs a smorgasbord of assorted models off the shelf
**presumably
***some options like Necrons have no choice
the solution is simple
CP is generated by the amount of points your army is 3+CP for each 500 points period.
units such as Girlyman dont generate CP but give you access to a stratagem
for each 500 points you are required to bring 1 troop choice
each faction has to bring at least 1 troop choice (if you bring salamanders and black Templars they each provide a troop choice)
each detachment is completely mono (salamanders dont mix with black templars they simply dont)
introduce a rule called “army coherency”
this means that each detachment has to share at least 2 keywords for example imperium and space marines or militarum and imperium
if army coherency is breached with adding a non coherent faction you lose -1cp (tactics between these allies differ too much)
if you add another you lose another -1 cp etc
this should solve most if not all issues with CP cheese detachments.