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Post by Geifer on Apr 29, 2014 14:16:46 GMT
Yeah, but the truth is that is that fluffy players for some reason as good as never use allies. It is also hard to within the point maximum have two armies that make sense together backgroundwise. For example say you want IG and SM (nice allies) wthin one army. Well it's quite hard actually if you also want both parts to make sense. Unless you minmax the ally it will quite fast take up half your allowed points which means you don't have enough points left for your guard. Depends what you want to do, of course. I could imagine having some fun with a Guard army defending a place that gets reinforced by a Captain and a Tactical Squad. Doesn't cost that much, can be combat squaded to help out in three places at once, and is consistent with something you would read about in, say, Storm of Iron or Warriors of Ultramar. I have no trouble taking Necrons and allying them with a Warpsmith (Magos Biologis) and a bunch of Cultists (Mechanicus/Explorator workforce) that submit to an Overlord, taking him to be a higher ranking servant of the Omnissiah. They don't cost a lot of points and may bring a Land Raider (modified as an exploration vehicle) or Predator (insurance against hostile creatures) along. Proper Tau with basic Imperial Guard gives you Gue'vesa. You can have a fairly effective force and still use only basic Guard units, and also include Kroot and Vespids for a full auxiliary army. Such forces wouldn't be possible without allies. It is my experience that most ally forces aren't actually more effective than a pure codex force, and that it's just a few combinations for a few armies that take it to undreamt of heights. I suspect that might be the reason for your experience. If you can make a perfectly good army adhering to the background and a theme, and like it, why would you weaken your army's performance any further if you have to expect your opponent to ignore the background and just bring the best army list they can? I think it may just be a case that your fluffy players are happy with what they can build without sacrificing effectiveness. After all, there's nothing wrong with that. If you like the theme, there's no problem. In fact, everything is just fine then. But there are those that like more exotic themes, who will have a hard time getting anywhere without ally rules. In real life (in contrast to the what is possible life ) I only ever faced powergamers using allies. Sad for you and sad for them. I am in the happy position that I have to worry about something like this only rarely, being otherwise blessed with sensible, likeminded players. At first they said allies would tone down powerbuilds as the top armies wouldn't want to ally and the weaker armies now slowly could add some units of those top armies and so become better themself. Yeah, like that was ever going to be the case. But reality has showed us that top armies are combined with top units of other armies and now become even more horrible, while the fluffy player doesn't want to ally because (well the matrix doesn't make sense for a big part from a fluff view and) they don't want to collect models from a top army just because it would make their army stronger. So the top armylists are now even harder to win from. Yep. That was inevitable. The matric does have a lot of problems. I'm not convinced they should have made such a matric to begin with, since half of the armies in the game are Imperial and a proper matrix would reflect this with a stupid bias towards Imperial armies, leaving everyone shafted. The alternative we have now looks less problematic in game terms, but makes about as much sense as Grey Knights bathing in Sororitas blood. As far as I'm concerned they should have just dumped the whole thing, made everyone allies of convience, maybe fine tune detachment interaction a bit, and call it a day. Let players decide what they can and can't justify. I think too much freedom all too often leads to chaos and abuse, and this leads to frustration with others, and this leads to people dropping out of the hobby. The problem I have with this is that you are basically asking for a rule that stops people from behaving like asses. That already exists. It's called THE Most Important Rule, I think, and the people that are giving you a hard time do the same with it that they do with every other rule. They bend it to the breaking point until their opponent's fun is no longer a consideration. As I said, I don't the rules are the problem. If the players cannot moderate themselves, or each other if that isn't possible, no ruleset in the world will save you. If more freedom is all we want, believe me, the hobby won't get more popular if you would allow people to choose from all armies when making their list, trusting them with the fact they will only combine units that make sense. More freedom isn't all I want, but less freedom is all I don't want.
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The Irontooth
Bloodclaw
Tale of Gamers: 3 units, 4 pieces of terrain
Posts: 387
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Post by The Irontooth on Apr 29, 2014 14:37:11 GMT
I'm not saying I want more rules per se, but more rules towards army building. Because for most fluffy players these rules will already be 'there' (because some lists just don't make sense to them and so these restrictions are already unwritten rules), but WAAC players need these so they don't look like total **** to fluffy players. It's for their best interest. But it's true that within every ruleset there will always be people trying to exploit something, but I rather have it so that the things they can exploit doesn't grant them an autowin, or make you lose your fun playing the game. 40k and WHF battles just take too long to play (and too much time and money to build an army) to make you don't even want to start the game. (yes I'm now picturing it a bit very negative for some one who actually truelly likes these games )
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Post by Geifer on Apr 29, 2014 15:31:16 GMT
I'm not saying I want more rules per se, but more rules towards army building. Because for most fluffy players these rules will already be 'there' (because some lists just don't make sense to them and so these restrictions are already unwritten rules), but WAAC players need these so they don't look like total **** to fluffy players. It's for their best interest. A happy middle ground might not be such a bad thing. GW has been moving away from such limitations, no doubt prodded by their sales department in order to sell more models, but I also think that it was a good move in general. May have gone a bit far, but I can cite at least one example where it went in the opposite direction and that I don't like at all. But let's look back to 3rd ed 40k first. Consider the much beloved 3.5 Chaos Marine codex. Many are the voices cry for a return of legion rules to 40k, always looking back in nostalgia towards that lovely book and demanding a return to such glory days. Well, I remember that one a bit differently. That was very much the opposite of today, and could have easily had the title Codex Legion or Bust. World Eaters were the only followers of Khorne getting certain things. Great, huh? You either play World Eaters or you needn't bother playing Khorne. That's certainly a restriction I don't want back. Here's a different one. Only one Raptor Squad per army is allowed, unless you play Night Lords. Now here's the question: is that really how limited we want the universe? Why shouldn't Khorne followers have a larger interest in getting to the enemy faster than anyone else? But no, unless you're goth and paint lighting bolts on your blue army, you're not getting jump packs. A different one is from Codex Tau of the Time. You need one Crisis Commander and one squad of Fire Warriors, apparently because every force in the empire in the history of forever had these two units in them. Nevermind that there is nothing wrong with a theme of an Ethereal on a diplomatic mission or a retired Fireblade leading an auxiliary army against an unexpected enemy, to go with the alternate HQs the current codex provides. So, how many Riptides should an army have access to? One? Two? Or the three the current FOC allows? Why can Imperials have a Knight squadron of three Knights, the cutomary squadron size of the Imperium, when Tau don't get that many of their big stompy robots? Don't get me wrong, I'm not advodcating on thing or the other here. I just find it difficult to draw the line somewhere and they this is ok, but only if you play [insert army 1], but if you play [insert army 2] you're screwed. I understand why the studio wouldn't want to make that distinction. Better to allow everything and provide backgground, and then let players decide if they want to follow it or not. Of course the entire matter isn't helped by GW's inability to assign fitting points costs to many units, making comparable units across different codices vastly different in performance. How would you justify a similar limit if one unit was so good you only needed one, when another wasn't, but hey, same background restrictions for everyone. It's tough to balance out, I think. Balance versus background implemenentation versus freedom versus model sales versus Mat Ward. Hard to get it right, and hard not to displease someone over it. I could see that happy middle ground being enforced through more mandatory units, where you say, yeah, these murderbots from outer space don't operate independently but always have infantry support to guard their flanks, and than require a Troops unit for every one or two units from another FOC section. It would be along the same lines as handing out special/heavy weapons one per five models which they switched to halfway through 4th ed. that might work, rein in some of the potential for abuse and at the same time allow themed armies to stay viable. But this has downsides, too, and could just be abused in a different way. Edit: Oops, I forgot what I said up there about taking things in the wrong direction. The armory. Yep, that lovable little thing that GW robbed us of halfway through 4th ed 40k. I hear it's like dressing up Barbie dolls, for guys. Well, that sounds like fun, right? Can't have that. Except in Fantasy. Magic items are still there, with very, very few restrictions on their access. But in 40k, you're lucky to find anything in the way of interesting, unique options these days. For a time, until the end of 5th ed, each character got their own list of wargear. Cool, right? Yeah, cool if you're a Chapter Master. Or Captain. All the options for you. Just don't try to wear terminator armor. No options for Terminators, sorry. What's that? Chaplains? No, never heard of them. Do they have options? I don't think so. Librarians? Right... Then along came 6th ed and we got not only an armory, but also relics. But the design philosophy is still the same, basically. Because the armories are riddled with notes telling you who may and may not buy what. Essentially it's a way to save page space. Options were hardly added. But relics! Relics surely fix that! Do they? Sometimes. Imperial Guard got a relic list that has more items that are limited to a specific model than ones that are free for everyone. The point? I don't use relics from: Codex Chaos Space Marines Codex Dark Angels Codex Chaos Daemons Codex Tau Codex Eldar This is versus a Codex Tyranids that is an army I don't play, so that has no bearing on my personal list, and: Codex Space Marines, where I use the same relic everyone else uses because it is too good to pass up, in the unlikely event that I use a generic character that is not a Chaplain Codex Astra Militarum, because I want to use a relic and don't care that it technically doesn't help nine times out of ten For me that's not a happy list. I've literally spent hours sitting over the Fantasy list equipping my characters, contemplating what I want to use, what might be fun and what fits a theme. For the Guard codex? I speed read the rules for the relics and went no, no, no, no, funny but no, last one on the list, guess I'm taking that one, then. Took a minute to decide. That's the kind of thing I don't want, seeing limited options and having a spree of ruling out pretty much every good idea for a theme I have just because the rules are stupidly restricted to rein in those stupid tournament types. But it's true that within every ruleset there will always be people trying to exploit something, but I rather have it so that the things they can exploit doesn't grant them an autowin, or make you lose your fun playing the game. 40k and WHF battles just take too long to play (and too much time and money to build an army) to make you don't even want to start the game. Yeah, but that's surely general game balance and not just allies? Is it really so hard to not let a Dark Eldar character join an Eldar unit or vice versa, and pass on any benefits as if they were best buddies? What's so hard about making special rules conditional? Let a Chaplain make other Marines fearless, because they are indoctrinated to do so, Imperial Guardsmen stubborn because they at least get the sermons, but not the reverence for that particular hero, while Tau get no benefit from the joined character except from his mere presence, because why would they listen to Imperial holy speeches? But that would require GW to design the whole thing from the ground up, so to speak, instead of tacking on an ally system, seeing how it goes and hoping for the best.
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The Irontooth
Bloodclaw
Tale of Gamers: 3 units, 4 pieces of terrain
Posts: 387
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Post by The Irontooth on May 7, 2014 13:35:41 GMT
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Post by Geifer on May 7, 2014 13:54:50 GMT
Yep. Tree colored trees look nice. Speaking of trees, you know what I think is best about this release? That the Wood Elves battle force box is just a Wood battle force. Not a single elf in sight.
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on May 7, 2014 14:59:41 GMT
Definitely! I'd do mine all brown "wood" colours with a red wash. But also my elves would be in an Autumnal theme.
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Jul 8, 2014 10:56:12 GMT
After seeing this. Expect more rumours of Fantasy 9th appearing...
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Post by Geifer on Jul 8, 2014 11:44:37 GMT
Pft, that's no big secret. It's just 8th ed 40k in September.
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Aug 15, 2014 10:32:09 GMT
The return of Nagash!I think he's looking ace! Also does this mean a return of "standard" undead as an army? As Nagash hates the Vampires for betraying him and he'll be fighting the Tomb Kings of Khemri just as much as anyone else, if not more so!
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Post by Geifer on Aug 15, 2014 10:58:47 GMT
Ooh ooh ooh, hands off! He's all mine! The picture isn't great, but I think I love the model. Barring grave design flaws, the new Nagash is a must buy for me. Looks like the new Spirit Hosts have gladly moved away from flying nightgowns, too. And the timing couldn't be better. I started Fantasy with Tomb Kings and after the new army book release ruined most of my enthusiasm for the army (mostly by not rectifiying bobble head skeletons and making a construct theme nearly impossible to play), I tried Dark Elves and Chaos Warriors since I had an interest in them, with High Elves because, for the most part, I got so many from two starter sets (no interest in Skaven, so I swapped mine), and a bit of interest in Empire because I like normal humans, but undeath is the only thing that really pulled me into Fantasy and undead the only ones I thoroughly enjoyed playing (and of the two, Tomb Kings specifically). I started to miss my undead lately, and look what soothing sweetness I get for it. As fo combining the two armies, I don't think that is likely in the vein of a book or army list, but since 40k has unbound and allies, I think we can expect the same for Fantasy. Maybe that's just me being biased, though. I think Fantasy is a bit messed up in the army selection department. Anyway, woo! Nagash!
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Aug 15, 2014 14:47:26 GMT
Also his rules are floating about too, here is the forum post with them in.
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Post by Geifer on Aug 15, 2014 16:07:34 GMT
Undead Legion, eh? Well, guess something is going on after all. Could be good.
I do wonder what Nagash's points cost means for army selection. Either something about the percentages must change, or he gets a special exception. Otherwise you could only field him in 4000pts games, which would even top the stupidity of trying to play a Lord on dragon we have to put up with at the moment.
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Aug 15, 2014 17:45:15 GMT
Well with his boosted magic of raising dead you could probably just start with him on the table versus 2000pts and be fine!
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Post by Geifer on Aug 15, 2014 20:11:41 GMT
Call me funny, but if I put him in front of an enemy army alone, I'd rather put him in front of 1000pts worth of enemies. Not that I actually expect to play him. I like the model and will buy it for its own sake, but I exclusively own anti Nagash armies. I don't mind the world ending as such, I do mind if it's not me ending it, though.
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Aug 19, 2014 7:37:57 GMT
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