I would be happy to explain the old system to every new player - but I don’t know any new player.
And maybe I am to dumb, but I don’t get the new system. The Companion always tells me I have to take more of this or more of that, otherwise my army is not legal.
But as I understood the old system, which seems to be so complicated, I still consider myself to be a genius.
I still don’t understand why units which are clearly no monster or warmachine need to be unlocked then and why an additional restriction simplifies the list building….
I remember when I started that the old system was pretty arcane. The new system is fundamentally simpler. To reiterate, not saying better, but definitely simpler.
After playing at örb wars and looking at a variety of well-performing army lists, I think there’s some room for improvement in the army building selection.
Some trash armies can field a lot of support and/or characters which are not a problem when taken in single or duos but become troublesome in trios/quartets.
The goblin armies come to mind, but the night stalker army featuring 4 terrors were also horrible to face. Likewise, my ogre army had a lot of benefit using 4 blasters and I can imagine my opponents not liking them a lot. Salamanders are notorious for using 4 Komodons, so there’s something in most army lists.
Instead of nerfing all those individual units, why not limit duplicates? For instance, each army can only have:
4 copies of a given core unit (any size)
3 copies of a given special unit (any size)
2 copies of a champion and support unit. ( (any size)
This will not hamper most balanced builds, but will prevent the spam-builds.
Some armies will have problems with their core, especially armies with limited options. In these cases, maybe a unit needs to be moved from special to core. Goblins have plenty options, ogres not so much.
Yeah, I agree. In general, what makes lists “broken” tends to be spamming the same thing multiple times. I like your limits, they seem sensible suggestions. The only thing would be to adjust for different points sizes or some sort of per battalion system (that would need checking for spam abuse!)
Crossroads GT in September is going to be 2300 points with one battalion, and I’m hearing about other single battalion events being kicked around. Seems like an obvious solution that’s baked into the rules of the game. Don’t want people to run 4 Komodons? Well, maybe they were limited to 2 per battalion for a reason
As for spam caps at large, Dead of Winter here in Albany, NY has often placed restrictions on duplicated entries (typically a limit of 2 of each size of unit). We didn’t this year because of the new edition but I would suspect they’ll come back in some form.
i personaly dont like these “hard” limits, because they take away freedom in lager Battles. And, there is somthing like that allready. just limit your games to one Battalion! i see so many lists from the US with 2 Battalions, while reading whining about 4 copys of things. Why are you guys playing like that? if you dont want 4 artillery, dont allow a second battalion…
This is true. For larger battles, this kind of limits don’t work out. I think the limits posted above should apply to tournament-level (i.e. 2.300 or 2.000) armies. Spam in tournaments has always been a problem. Back in 3rd we played 1,995 in our tournament just for this reason. In 2k armies you could take everything in threes, in 1,995 only in twos. While the goal was to create more diverse sarmies in 4th, this hasn’t worked out.
In casual games, spam isn’t really a problem unless one player is testing a tournament list and the other is just goofing around. This should be avoided by just talking to your opponent before hand. So instead of baking additional limits into the core rules, they should be put into tournament packs. That said, it would be good to keep this consistent throughout most tournaments and supported by the companion.
That said, a limit to one batallion -which is the easiest option- does have its own disadvantages. First and foremost, this limits all armies to 4 special choices, 3 champions and a single warlord. Instead of increasing options, we decrease them by a lot.
Second, some of the “spammed” units are core. For instance Jeff Schilten’s varangur, the dreaded 14-rabble regiment goblins and the mostly-corsair salamander army using Firebrand.
When special, support and characters are severely limited by having access to only a single batallion, it’s simply a matter which army has the most efficient core option. I think this will only decrease variety instead of increasing. To avoid facing the same army over and over again, I think this is not the way to go.
One option is allow 2 battalions but have the [2] limits apply across the army, not per battalion. Gives you ability to take 2 warlords, more specialists etc but only 2 komodons, terrors, cannons etc.
Amen to that! The TO’s should limit to 1 battallion if they want to, and I think TO’s should feel free to impose further limitations as well, if they want to.
These ideas all work for specialist and support spam, core spam could be limited via a [n] limit on any unit per battalion, coupled with battalion limits. Goblins could still spam by using both rabble and the slightly more expensive sharp sticks of course…
+1 for the 1 battalion limit.
An elegant solution to limit spam that is easy to implement. I’ve only played with 1 battalion so far, and for my armies it seems reasonable, but it might punish some armies more than others though?
