Idea - Customizable Battallions

[Lemon Knuckles]

Battallions provide so many benefits to a competitive army that it is a real annoyance that access to them is  completely skewed across different armies.  Expecting GW to properly balance battallion access and quality across all of the different factions seems like something of a pipe-dream.

That got me to thinking.  What about a mechanic that allowed players to build their own battallions as part of the list design.  Think warscroll builder.  Something like 1. Select Units, 2. Select 1 or 2 benefits from a generic list of 10-20 pre-defined benefits.  Could be costed formulically... something like:  battallion cost = 50 + 10% of included unit cost + predetermined cost of selected benefit.

This would add a whole new dimension to list building and give all factions at least the possibility for some decent battallion options (kind of like realm artefacts did for artefacts).

Thoughts?

 

[Ahn-ket]

Some generic battalions for armies that don't have a battletome would be OK after all armies are out through battletomes they could think about a battalion builder I would say

[spoon_fed05]

Sounds like a good idea. It would also give you an idea of the cost effectiveness of the currrent battalions.

[BaldoBeardo]

Part of the reason for battalions is that they lock down your choices in exchange for a boon specific to those units - and the efficacy of those units interacting with that boon is defined and able to be analysed.

As soon as you open that mechanic up, it will take minutes before the most 'characterful' (broken) combos are figured out.

[spoon_fed05]

Shouldn’t that information be available to all rather than those that have the time to min max everything?   It might also lead to better balancing by GW (if that’s needed?).

[Lemon Knuckles]

14 minutes ago, BaldoBeardo said:

Part of the reason for battalions is that they lock down your choices in exchange for a boon specific to those units - and the efficacy of those units interacting with that boon is defined and able to be analysed.

As soon as you open that mechanic up, it will take minutes before the most 'characterful' (broken) combos are figured out.

Maybe.  But maybe it could be mitigated with smartish design.

For example:

1. Tip of the Spear.  Requires 3 cavalry units and 1 hero.  Cannot include battleline units.  Units from this battallion can retreat and charge on the same turn if at the start of your momvement phase they are within 6" of the battallion hero and wholly within the enemy territory.

Or maybe I just really want to play with some battallions and really dislike the options available to us. 

[kenshin620]

2 hours ago, Lemon Knuckles said:

Maybe.  But maybe it could be mitigated with smartish design.

For example:

1. Tip of the Spear.  Requires 3 cavalry units and 1 hero.  Cannot include battleline units.  Units from this battallion can retreat and charge on the same turn if at the start of your momvement phase they are within 6" of the battallion hero and wholly within the enemy territory.

Or maybe I just really want to play with some battallions and really dislike the options available to us. 

While not exactly the same, this would be similar to the 40k Detachment system where different Detachments favor certain builds?

 

Of course one tiny issue is that they would then need to FAQ/Reintroduce all units types back into the game like INFANTRY, CAVALRY, CHARIOT, WAR BEAST, etc.