With the oncoming of 7th edition, I feel there are going to be quite few armies that are going to benefit from it. Some armies are going to work really well with Battle Forged, while others are going to be very good with Unbound. On another note, I do not think unbound should be banned or shamed as many have seemed to proposed. It could be abused, but the potential for fluffy armies and used to help certain weaknesses out weighs this. Sure the all lone wolf army may surface, but I seriously doubt it will become a common place army along with the other theoretical lists being thought up. The potential for abuse is not enough to ban or exclude something, that is why we are community to encourage the well intentioned and let them play even if we personally disagree with how they are going about it. Back to topic.
One army that I think is going to significantly benefit the new rules is the Militarum Tempestus. Currently it is limited by lack of orders and a cap on troops you can take. Unbound will free this army up, letting you take more command squads to issue orders and troops beyond your 6 max. As a big fan of this army, I am glad this option is here now. Not to say this army won't work under force org and their are merits to keeping it, but it can be very effective with Unbound.
In playing I find that the two command squads severely limits this army as it has great orders but not enough going around. Now you can fix this. I would take probably 4 command squads to have enough orders and then fill out with scion squads and taurox transports. The other advantage is that you do not have to take the tauroxes as dedicated transports in this case either. You can take them as fast attack, giving some flexibility if you want to go that route, or you can still stick to them being transports.
Tempestus is only a mini army with a few choices, no elites or heavy support and fast attack is more for transports that act on their own. So with unbound you can take large armies of scions and this could even make a foot slogging version of this army playable. This is what the intent of unbound is for, to make armies that the force org makes impossible.
I will certainly be playing around with this to see what works best but I am pretty confident that unbound tempestus scion armies will do quite well. Time will tell how well, but when the new rules come I will certainly be playing around with them.
While it is your choice whether to use unbound armies, I strongly encourage you to accept it and allow people to play it. We all spend lots of money on this hobby and this is a great way to get models onto the table that you normally can't because of the force org and how your army is built. Some are going to abuse it, let them, the world will not end and too many are getting to caught up in the theoretical and not the practical. Most will not go out and buy all those riptides or lone wolves etc to play those armies. Most are going to use unbound as intended, that has been my experience with 6th and it will continue in 7th. There is almost no one that I play with that uses the cheese armies regularly and there is no shaming involved, they just enjoy playing with their armies and making their idea of them work. And that is most players you encounter at your local store. Sure at big tournies you will encounter more of the worst offenders, but very few people's majority gaming time is done in this environment. So let it roll and have some fun.
GG
Ok your faith in humanity to not abuse the unbound armies is amazing. People who want to win will use unbound armies, and they will take ten helldrakes and ten cultists. Fantasy doesn't have unbound and every tournament there are a great many plays who take the killyiest and the most though as nails list, its these guys who (if they played 40k) would revel in the power that unbound can bring. Personally i think 40k tournaments would be wise to say no to unbound armies or seriously restrict what they can take (pretty7 much rending unbound pointless)
ReplyDeleteOut of interest why do you think the competitive 40k scene wont abuse the hell out of unbound? I am genuinely interested to hear why you think they wont because everything i have seen so far indicates they will.
Aside from unbound armies, i kinda like 7th ed 40k, i like almost all the changes (aside from demonology which sounds iffy, i mean how is the imperium ok with guard psykers summoning demons?), 7th ed may well re spark my interest in 40k.
Oh the competitive scene will, but I don't give a crap about that because I don't play "competitively", it simply does not affect my day to day gaming. When going into that environment there is an expectation that there will be those that use the system to the extreme, so you can join them or figure out how to beat them, or just enjoy your time there and not give a crap about taking away number 1. That has been the case for a very long while.
DeleteMy faith is based on my experience of playing with people, I have yet to see a seerstar etc unless someone asked to play it. People play what they think is fun, very few that I know and have played with think of the ultra cheese as fun, as like many of us we like to distill our favorite parts of the hobby and fluff onto the table top. Its faith backed up by experience and I think too many get caught up by what is said on the internet, but when asked they say that they never see it in their gaming groups except for the occasional guy or two. There is this proverbial boogie man that is out there crushing everyone with ultra cheese, yet I have yet to see this in person in many years of playing. So that is why I am ok with unbound.
If your not into the competitive scene then i completely understand, hell in my local club i am being allowed to play with a fan made Tanith codex, so i can see why unbound doesn't concern you now. Your are lucky, in my local 40k scene we have a power gamey eldar type who has killed my enjoyment of 40k, and 7th ed will do wonders for reducing how much he spoils my enjoyment of the game.
DeleteAs for the competitive scene, they will need to ban unbound armies if they want to keep their events fair and balanced. My main concern about unbound armies stems from competitive play, if your local scene doesn't have any power gamers then unbound will be exciting, i agree that fluff armies will get a big boost from unbound.
I don't think an out right ban is necessary, but I think tournaments will be fine with just running Battle forged and then an all in tournament side by side for those that want that. While its true you never needed permission from GW to use fluffy army lists, but now Unbound makes it much easier to do so as everyone has an even playing field and understanding what the rules are, its less debating involved whether your army is legal or not.
DeleteWe have a few but most that are competitive do not bring their tournament armies to weekly gaming. The one or two guys that like to WAAC don't really bother me, and I usually don't play them if i'm not looking for that type of game. But it is nice on one hand to have them as it can be good practice to play against those armies from time to time.
What would be cool is tournament where you could only bring unbound armies, that would be a nice event to go to just to see what people would bring, outline that is just for fun and see what happens,
DeleteThe issue with not having a outright ban is that there will always be that small group of people who want those top positions, and they will use unbound to do that. Now that will mean that they will eventually play each other but for the first 2 games its unlikely that they will. Now what this means is that the say top 5 positions become a unbound armies only club, maybe every so often you get a tactical genius who breaks through but it would be rare
1) People will abuse everything. But, they do it already. Unbound wont change that. So, please, people screaming in anguish from Unbound... tell me, how my, certainly not " fluffy, for fun, not chance of winning" army should compete with truckload of boring deathstars. Better, how can my friends Khorne should cry Blood for Blood God! against Tau in anything else than their own heap of blasted meat?
ReplyDeleteNope. "Competetive" players already proved to be able to find small holes in rules and build crap from it.
2) So it will still come to common sense. On tournament - I will let TO set the rules and after that I will choose if participate. And in random pick games in store? Same style as now. "Sorry mate, Taudar are not fun for me, I understand you like just not my cup of tea for the evening - Yeah, screamerstar, nope, sorry - You have nice Blood Angels list, eh, no skyfire? OK, I will dump vendetta."
And Unbound gives chance to make truly fluffy and experimental armies. Grumpy is right about Tempestus scions. Also, I can finally make some crazy lists like Ogryn expedition force, Las Ride of Horses (did someone said a lot of horsemen?) or just really dig to my homwbrew fluff and put some minor tweaks outside of FOC.
In the end, its still about making compromise with your opponent. And if he is "competetive player" all the time, he is already squeezing last drop from rules and Unbound wont change anythin about his so entertaining 2++ rerolls.
Heck, I god a little bit agitated :)
What "Competitive" gamers do is build finely honed perfected lists. They are the pinnacle of wargaming lists, they are deigned soloy to win. They don't "Build Crap" they build lists designed to win in the best way possible.
DeleteAlso if you truly wanted a fluffy army you didn't to to wait for GW to give you the go ahead, i am playing with a fan made tanith codex, and i didn't need GW's blessing to do so, what unbound does is main stream the idea of fluffly lists which is good, but it doesnt take a power gamer to absue a "No restriction" rules set.
My bad, poor choice of words. Czech doesnt translate idioms to english well :) By build crap I mean that they take even small hole in rules and makes from it broken army. Or at least boring as hell. Is it necessary to win on big tourneys? Yes, because of the same people, but its necessary.
DeleteBut pinnacle of wargaming lists? Hell no! Depending on rule abuse isnt and wont be some art. Its rather unimaginative making really simple army by stacking of abilities. With some exceptions, of course... Pinnacle? Nope :)
For the fuffy army - yeah, I didint need it, but its easier. You have Tanith list, good for you, but the people you regularly play with probably had to say "yes". With unbound its much easier to say "hey, I have unbound cavalry list, wanna play"? Its on same level as I hve written earlier, just say to stranger the list and thats all. No dancing around its actually breaking rules, FOC etc.
Ah sorry i didnt know you were running through a translator, i do apologize for my tone.
DeleteWhat is a wargaming list meant to do? In my mind the answer is win games, and thats what competitive players design their lists to do. By combing the right units and weapons they aim to generate synergy in the army and thus win in the most effective manner possible. If you want a winning list then take a look at competitive lists, or course the list is only half the battle with he other half being knowing how to use the list.
Easier? I guess so i mean it took 30 seconds to be able to play with the tanith list, but yes i can see your point
So far from what's have seen, I agree with grumpy. Those who bring W AAC lists will continue to do so, those who bring tauDar spam will continue to do so. Those who play fluff will continue the same, yes, the scale and way may change slightly but at the end of the day there will be little difference for the majority of us.
ReplyDeleteI think my difference from most posters is that I am a mix of both gamers. I want a fun game like most non-competitive types, but for me, the fun is in the competition. For example, we have a kind of slow guy who plays black templars. His lists are never thought out and I stomp him easily with any list I bring. There is no competition playing him, its not fun. I want you to do whatever you can within the rules to beat me because I want to beat your best shot. But when the rules give certain people an unfair advantage, I'm not losing because you played better, or you out strategized me, it is because I was playing with one foot in the bucket. And that isn't fun. Here is a ludicrous example to demonstrate the point. Lets say for some reason the rules let me take a 2,000 point army and you only got to take 1,000 points. I would beat you 99% of the time, no matter how good you were, no matter how awesome your strategy. What I am hearing from people lately sounds like 'well 6th ed already let you take 750 points more than me, so how is letting you take 1,000 points going to be worse?' Well that would be worse. The goal of the new rules should be to lower it to 500 points, if not totally even. Granted my example is a bit of an exaggeration, and total balance likely isn't possible, but the rules should at least move in that direction. Since I will likely be accused (again) of having nothing positive to say, here is one improvement that brings some balance, the psychic phase. Now armies that don't have psychers will at least get a couple of dice to strategically cancel out some of those spells, and that is balancing.
ReplyDeleteServicious, the Disgruntled Dark Eldar
If you can win when you've got one foot in a bucket you can win without it. In the long run being able to win games with a handicapped army will make you a better player, and the fact that you can win with D E the way they are means you are obviously a good player. Rules will never mean things are completely balanced unless everyone runs the same armies.
DeleteYes the psychic phase will help some armies, but many of them get help already from special rules.
Sigh...the point is you don't have a good shot at winning with one foot in the bucket, in some cases you can never win with one foot in the bucket. That isn't fun to play. The point of the game is to have fun. No army should ever have to know it is almost definately going to lose before the game even begins. Getting mudstomped doesn't make you a better player. Case in point, I played a Chaos player who brought 3 Helldrakes with bale flamers yesterday. My list, like all DE lists, had only two units that could really deal with anti-air, my flyer and an aegis line with quadgun. Top of turn two all the Helldrakes come on the board, my ageis does one glance two one of them. Two of the drakes then wipe out the squad on the aeigis, auto hit, 2+ to wound, no armor save, no cover save, no feel no pain because of str is double tough. Bottom of turn 2 my flier comes on the board and blows up a helldrake yeahy, looking better right? My ravager gets really lucky and puts two glances on the wounded helldrake, but he makes his demon save on one of them. Top of turn 3 he vector strikes my flier out of the sky with two pens with his wounded drake, one of which makes it go boom. The same drake takes my jet bike squad down to 1 guy, again, no cover or armor save, just dead. The other drake vector strikes my ravager 3 times, glancing it to death, i made no jink saves, then pens my last troop choice in a raider, blowing it up and killing 5 warriors, taking it to half strength. At this point we called the game because all I had left was a ravager with disintigrators and my lord with incubi in a venom, nothing that could really do anything to his fliers. I hadn't even touched any of his other troops as he just hid them out of sight while the drakes killed everything. This wasn't bad luck on my part or epic luck on his, i even rolled REALLY well killing a drake from the air and hitting another with a good ammount of ground fire. It wasn't bad strategy either, all my units were spread to the max to deny as much template damage as possible. Because of what the baledrake brings to the table, there just isn't really anything I can do against it. The game was not fun. Unfortunately telling the guy I won't fight his list would not have worked either becuase he was the only guy at the FLGS last night to play against, it was him or nothing.
DeleteServicious, the Disgruntled Dark Eldar
Yeah, we get it, your codex is bad and needs an update.
DeleteBut this story proves one point:
Unbound itself isn't the problem, broken units are the problem.
If you can already get all the broken units into FOC, no one needs Unbound.
In case of tournament lists, besides OP units, the deathstar allies USR spam are currently the core problem, who needs more than one such unit to give USRs anyway?
Drakes, Riptides etc. go up to 4 anyway thanks to allies, if someone can't get the job done with that number then another one won't change that.
The other way around, if the units aren't broken, no one cares about Unbound.
FOC as it currently stands has relatively low restrictions, except for themed lists you lose a lot of variety if you go one way even further, simply because the points are lacking elsewhere.
Some Unbound list ideas I'd play against any day, from here or my FLGS:
-Tempestus (good to get enough options out there)
-lazzor horsemen army
-LotD with dreadnoughts and stuff
-genestealer cults
-classic stormtrooper regiment (carapace vets/chimeras/valkyries all the way)
-second-line PDF emplacement
None of those units are OP, so no one cares if unbound or not.
Would be fun to play against, something different than usual...
That list would give most people a hard time, my army included. There are always ways to win, its just a case of finding them.
DeleteI think the point I am making is that there are not always ways to win, and by acknowledging that 'that list would give most people a hard time' concedes the point. Just 'finding' a way to win is bunk. Find me a way 5 guardsmen beat my Archon in CC? Sure it COULD happen, but the mathammer says its like a 1% chance.
DeleteServicious, the Disgruntled Dark Eldar
Then you stay out of cc, and just keep shooting. And winning doesn't always mean tabling your opponent, play to the victory points and objectives.
DeleteAnd I don't believe it does concede the point, as I said it would give most armies a hard time, I didn't say they would always loose. I've faced lists with 4 necron flyers and still won with a guard infantry list, sure I had less than a quarter of my army left, but I had the objectives.
The point of this story is, Unound isn't the problem, broken units are.
DeleteOnly feared part of Unbound is that more broken cheesy units are massed.
The current deathstar dilemma doesn't even need that to get rerollable 2++, as one unit to give a USR is enough to make it work.
By allying with yourself, you can already field at least 4 of a single unit, be it Riptide, Drake or whatever. Even more with Serpents.
If you can't get the job done with 4 of these, you probably can't get it done with more.
And points will be lacking somewhere else, which you can exploit.
Yeah, 10 drakes and 10 cultists...guess which squad will be nuked turn 1 and cause the game to end instantly.
On the other hand, codices or army varieties with few options can be beefed up to fluffy armies that would be impossible otherwise. Examples from here or my FLGS:
-Tempestus
-lazzor horsemen charge
-LotD with dreads and stuff
-genestealer cult
-classic stormtrooper regiment (carapace vets, chimeras, valkyries all the way)
-Ciaphas Cain and the Relictors
No one cares in this case, as no OP units are spammed.
I'm in agreement with you on this, but short of going back and issuing errata to specific codexes, the new edition was the best way to correct it. On one hand, it may have made it worse with unbound, but on the other hand some of the new rules may actually balance out some of the broken units that get spammed. My helldrake dilema may be solved with the new snapshot rules and the nerfing vector strike (if those rumors proves true) also making jink into its own save and not a cover save (would be awesome). D weapons being toned down, but still having the ability to negate invul saves on 6 may bring balance to deathstars.
DeleteServicious, the Disgruntled Dark Eldar