6th Edition "Percentage Force Organization"....Who wins....Who Loses???

Well....this has been rattling around in my brain for a bit....so I will ramble it here. It appears that 6th edition will be going the same way as new Warhammer....i.e. A Percentage Based Force Org Chart. For those of you that dont know...Warhammer is now something link this.

Hero/Generals: Maximum 25% of points
Core: Minumum 25% of points
Elite: Maximum 50% of points
Rare: Maximum 25% of points

This same rule could easily be translated into 40k. So the question is....which armies are gonna love this....and which are gonna hate it?

Overall, I am not sure. I can see some upside (easier time getting lots of small "specific task" units), but an equal amount of downside (1 big tank/monster for a 1500 point game and your heavy points are almost gone). Just think how this will dramatically change how tyranid elite units are played....lol.

Thoughts?

I can't find my 2nd Edition Rule book, but it was similar.

Losers? Tau.

I could see that ruling could mess with royal courts.

there's quite a few of the codices that would be hurt by doing that, since most have to rely on everything but their troop choices to be effective in tournaments.

i've read quite a few rumors about 6th Ed changes, and this is one i don't see them doing. the main reason falls to one simple line; "Games Workshop is a miniature company that happens to produce a game that uses said miniatures."

No one here can deny the fact that the number one selling product in their line is the Space Marine. At least half of us here alone play them, and they make entire weekend-long events that focus on marine-only campaigns.

Moving back to (since i understand 2nd did this?) a percentage based system would harm their sales now, because they've expanded the product lines to have so many impressive, and best-selling, products in the Elite and Heavy slots. They won't change the rules for the game to something that will cut down product sales of their best-selling items.

That form of F.O.C. works for fantasy because most of their models they sell in largest quantities happen to be in the 'core' and 'elite' slots, with lower sales in the 'hero' and 'rare' areas.

Since they're now a really big company, and are controlled more by shareholders and less by the creative teams, they have to consider what brings them the most revenue and not make changes to the 'game' that effect sales to the 'miniatures'.

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All that said, I 'could' see them giving the option of alternate FOC's for either certain missions, or having certain HQ types unlock different FOC's. We're already close to that with HQ's that unlock Elites and Fast choices as troops, and anyone that's paid attention to the Badab War and Zone Mortalis releases will also know there's alternate FOC charts in there as well, with a couple HQs that allow 1 Elite choice to be a troop choice, or allowing you to trade a Fast slot for an additional Heavy slot, for examples.

If you watch the Imperial Armour books, you'll notice stuff they had released over the years is now becoming more commonplace in our current books, so it's possible to see this change in the next edition.

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They're also pushing for people to start accepting Forge World items as part of normal 40K games, so that's another item to look for in 6th's changes; imperial armour might be noted as acceptable so long as you give your opponent a heads up of what that model/unit does before the game starts. which isn't a big deal, since realistically, most people don't know all the codices and stats anyways, so you're usually having to explain your army to someone who hasn't played it in the first place. so one more model being explained isn't much of a change.

I'd predict the following:
HQ: no more than 50%
T: 50% min
All others: 33% max

Everyone get affected to a degree:
The ubiquitous "Bookmobile of Doom" (Crusader w/ 5 assault termies) takes up your entire E slot at 1500, so no Dreads to back them up.

Anything like Wolf Guard or Royal Courts are gonna be problematic.

This may boost some armies if it overrides the existing 0-3 limit. How many ravagers can you fit in 500 pts? Or broadsides? Or hive guard?

Royal courts dont take up force org chart though. So as long as u have 2 cheap overlords, u can rack up on royal court points and not care.

Same with space marine honor guard or de court of the archon.

As dusky said, I don't see this happening.

Would have to be massive FAQ's to support that sort of change, and i cant see it happening. The only reason to put out a new edition right now is because they need to take advantage of 25th anniversary and sell some more books.

TBH I just cant see them screwing with core concepts anymore. I'de be looking much more for rules governing Independent characters, wound allocation, melta and plasma weapon tweeks. 5th edition is hugely successful and fairly consistent.

% based FOC? I can only see it if 6th comes with an Army Builder CD and Iphone app.

Why would they borrow a rule from a spectacularly unsuccessful game to put into a successful game? I can't see this happening. If you think min/maxing and spam is a problem now can you imagine how bad it would be in a percentage based system? And Beau, min 50% troops? Yikes!

A % FOC works fine if you play marines. If you're say, ANY OTHER ARMY a % requirement on things seriously hampers what you can do. It would effectively shut down a large number of builds that aren't even necessarily cheesy or anything, but just awesome.

*IF* they were to go to % based, I think that's what they'd do. (Tim: I meant 33% min on troops, no idea why I wrote 50. I'll blame it on my pain meds:))

I think it's a horrible idea and rather pointless (for the reasons given, it nerfs some builds and makes others more powerful, but does nothing to really change the game or fix problems).

All it will do is piss people off because their current list will be more useless that an converted Noise Marine list, and they'll have to basically rebuild it from scratch.

Knowing GW, this means a good chance they will likely do it:)

Timbo wrote:Why would they borrow a rule from a spectacularly unsuccessful game to put into a successful game? I can't see this happening. If you think min/maxing and spam is a problem now can you imagine how bad it would be in a percentage based system? And Beau, min 50% troops? Yikes!

Is this in reference to fantasy? The percentage points system was in place way back when and the game was pretty succesful then.

I'll tell you what I do like about a percentage based system vs. a slot based system. At least as it pertains to fantasy. A slot based system works A-OK but when you're restricted to only taking a max of 4 slots of special choices and 2 slots of rare choices along with 4 slots of character's it means it's way less likely to take some of the units that might not be all that great vs. some of the no-brainer choices. When that restriction is moved to a percentage based system it means you can take some of the goofy-er choices and make different army builds out of them. I'll use both my beloved Goblins and Dwarves as examples.

Only being allowed to take 4 hero slots means that if you take an all goblin army and max out your 4 slots with goblin hero's you only get 4 characters (At around 250 points from your army) and that's not enough bodies to fill out and support a 2000-2500 point army. It makes the goblin army not a viable choice. at even a 25% max amount you can take the neccessary 7-8 hero's with a wizard or two for support. Likewise for the special choices (Normally limited to 4) if you can take 25% you can opt for units of squig hoppers and such that are usually only 100 points or so for the unit as well. Trolls are a horrible option as one of the rare choices because it means you can't opt for the no brainer of the Giant (a must have for an OnG army). at 25% you can opt for 2-3 small units of trolls as well as something usefull like a doom diver.

For dwarves you could never take the odd lone slayer character as your slots were almost certainly filled up with essential but often low point heros like BsB's and a runesmith or two. A lone slayer for 100 points can round out your point total and make for some more fun tactical choices. Also slayers are cool. Defo not worth taking in place of... you know... useful stuff... but fun enough to sink a small amount of your list total into.

Those are my thoughts. I would think some of that criteria must move over to 40K somewhere along the lines. All in all I like the removal of the slot based organization chart from fantasy and think it makes for more varied and interesting armies.

Thankfully 40K and Fantasy are two very different games. While the % system could work for a couple 40K armies, having no limits on numbers of units could be easily abused. I for one would not like to play against 20 scoring lasplas razorbacks in a 1750 point game. In fantasy the rules benefit horde units, while in 40K generally having larger numbers of cheaper units is better. There are exceptions of course, but this is generally the case. So an MSU fantasy army has nowhere near the capability of an MSU 40K force. When you remove the limit of 17 foc slots you are going to see some truly horrifying builds.

what would space marines look like using % FOC? they'd probably look like this:
"This is MADNESS!" "madness? THIS. IS. % FOC!!!!"

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2500 Pts - Codex: Space Marines Roster
Composition Report:
HQ: 7.1%
Elite: 25.5%
Troops: 40.1%
Heavy: 27.3%

HQ:
Chapter Master Pedro Kantor

Elite:
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Troops:
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Heavy Support:
5 Devastators, 4 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Devastators, 4 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Devastators, 4 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

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2250 Pts - Codex: Space Marines Roster
Composition Report:

HQ: 7.8%

Elite: 28.1%

Troops: 44.1%

Heavy: 20%

HQ:
Chapter Master Pedro Kantor

Elite:
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Troops:
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Heavy Support:
5 Devastators, 4 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Devastators, 4 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

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2000 Pts - Codex: Space Marines Roster
Composition Report:

HQ: 8.8%

Elite: 31.7%

Troops: 49.7%

Heavy: 9.3%

HQ:
Chapter Master Pedro Kantor

Elite:
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Troops:
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Heavy Support:
5 Devastators, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

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1750 Pts - Codex: Space Marines Roster
Composition Report:

HQ: 10%

Elite: 33.4%

Troops: 56.6%

HQ:
Chapter Master Pedro Kantor

Elite:
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Sternguard, 2 Missile Launchers, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
5 Sternguard, Razorback

Troops:
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback
Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

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1500 Pts - Codex: Space Marines Roster

Composition Report:


HQ: 11.7%


Elite: 22.3%


Troops: 66%



HQ:

Chapter Master Pedro Kantor



Elite:

5 Sternguard, 1 Missile Launcher, Razorback
5 Sternguard, Razorback



Troops:

Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

Combat Squad, Plasma/Lascannon Razorback

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the end summary? you're X% FOC'd each time you play against marines.

That... is a lot of razorbacks...

I would assume this would be taken into account in the vehicle or mission/deployment rules in some way. (if it were to happen, which i doubt it would)

currently zero downside to taking metal bawkses. and metal bawkses with guns on them are even better.

Perhaps just more annihilation style missions that penalize MSU. right now one of the reasons msu works so well is that 2 out of 3 book missions don't care about KP's. Even in the nova style missions KP's only really matter 1/3 of the time and even then, you need 3 more than your opponent for them to be meaningful. no other mission requires you to have more than 1 objective/quarter over the opponent to be declared a victor.

btw. i dont see how those lists are that much different from NOW

Those parking lot pictures just make me want my doom scythes even more >.<;;

I am also skeptical about a %'age army list restrictions. The Force Org chart has been in play since 3rd ed and I'd say it works fine. I do however beleive it is likely that they could return to rules that alter the force org chart like armies and hero's that let you swap slots.

Planes wrote:Those parking lot pictures just make me want my doom scythes even more >.<;;

QFT... Doesn't happen much in our local meta.

hard for most people to invest $400 in razorbacks so that they can play one game against most people and then never get another one.....

$400 is a little low. GK henchmen could field $700-800 worth in a 1750 list. How about 12-15 single multi-melta attack bikes running around? % just simply cannot work in 40K. Unless maybe they put some further restriction on numbers of units allowed, but FoC slots already does this anyhow.

dam i can get some relly big guard armys in here. now i can say this

WHAT I CAN NOT CRUSH WITH WORDS I WILL CRUSH WITH THE TANKS OF THE IMPERAL GUARD

Timbo wrote: Unless maybe they put some further restriction on numbers of units allowed, but FoC slots already does this anyhow.

the question to be asked i guess, is why bother? the current system seems to be working. why mess with it? is there some grand strategy or massive interwebz campaign for a return to complexity?

Some people just can't let 2nd ed go, I think.