No one, to my knowledge, used a duel force org. chart at all! Everyone, also, knew about it...so why did no one use it? Well lets dive into list development to find out....
So it seems, just as Allies seem to be rare once you hit 1500 points and below that level, duel force org. use took a hit at the 2000 point level, but why?
Well it seems GW smartened up a bit when they wrote these two force org chart changing rules when they wrote the Big Green Book (Yes, I am calling it that for now). Lets take a look at allies to compare and contrast these two concepts. Realistically when it comes down to simple game terms, not codex terms, when you take an ally you technically only suffer. Depending on what army you take you could suffer on three levels for your army. So what am I talking about? Well Battle brothers for instance the only downside is you cannot get into each others transports. Now that is a small downside to what eventually becomes such a huge benefit. Allies of convenience suffer just a bit more by not allowing psychic powers between the two and desperate allies being the worst by possibly causing your units to not do anything, or even your flyer's to crash to the ground. Each level puts just a slightly larger hit on your overall force to allow certain advantages you could gain by adding in another codex's unit in your force. Also you have requisite levels of units from an allies codex you would need to be able to reach the goodies in the rest of the codex. Now a thrifty player would only take an ally if the troop and HQ were useful if not needed. Yet with the costs already in play with the main detachments pre-requisites the mandatory 2 hq's and 3 troop choices could be a burden on some lists so therefor the smaller the points level the harder these abilities become to use without taking a hit on the integrity of the rest of the list and its balance.
So when we translate this into duel force org use we see the need to take 2 hq's and 4 troop choices before we even get to all the fun stuff we would even need more than 3 or more of anyway so unless 2 hq's and 4 troops already exist in your list it could be tough to make room. Lets say the average troop and hq unit costs around 175 points (for example). We would need to spend 1050 points before we even got to add extra units from any of the remaining slots. This makes a 2000 point list using this rule a liability in some cases. Saying you wanted to take 4 heavy slots all costing around 175 points also we are already at 1475 and we haven't even touched another slot and just had taken advantage of the duel force org. chart. The list, unless planned for, would probably suffer some balance issues and would lose some games fairly hard.
The next consequence I noticed in the tournament is the real cost. Most players, unless they are a hardcore collector of a specific book, never have more units then they planned to use in previous editions anyway. So having 4 or more heavy, elites, or fast units never really came into play. Now we would need to go out and double some of our actual models and we have not yet had the time or the money to risk buying double of a unit we already have 3 of. Time and money come into a factor when the 6 land raider list you just spent $360 just on the vehicles and spent 48 hours painting them gets blasted off the table when you had a perfectly balanced list already at 2000 points without them.
So with these factors in mind I would not expect duel force org to be reasonably used, except maybe for an extra HQ choice you wanted to use and already had 4 troop choices budgeted out anyway, below the 2500 point level. Now I am not saying it cannot be used and surely there are some cheesy or broken combos available reasonably at 2000 points yet for at the least the time being they will probably be rare....more on this later...
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I'm probably inclined to lean more towards the most likely reason for lack of use to be the "simply don't have the models" reason followed by the "and likely aren't going to buy them either unless I know more people will start using double force org".
ReplyDeleteI mean, if I knew we were all going to be using double force org, I wouldn't even hesitate to run 36 wraiths or 6 Doom Scythes. :)
I think that this really helps people like me who typically run 2 HQ and 4 troops at the 2000 point level, and have a collection that includes more than 3 Fast Attack, Heavy Support or Elites. I actually run into the 6 troops wall sometimes too. The two force org charts lets me stretch my legs a bit without having to resort to allies of some sort.
ReplyDeleteWell since 36 wraiths only costs 1260 points it can be done hahaha. but also 6 doom sythes I think that puts it way over 2000 without the pre requisite 2 overlords, 2 veil teks and 40 warriors haha
ReplyDeleteThe winning Tau player was the only one to use double FoC....does it meen anything? Need more data, but since he spamed mostly fire warriors, maybe not.
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