What is the point of limiting Black Legion to only four upgrades per detachment? As best as I can tell they are the only army with this restriction.

For example, just from a balance standpoint is there really anything wrong with this:

Black Legion Retinue (Nurgle)
8 Chaos Space Marine Stands
- Chaos Sorcerer
- Chaos Champion
- Icon Bearer
4 Cult Marines (Death Guard)
Daemonic Pact

That's five upgrades, and hardly abusive. If I didn't have a greater daemon waiting in the wings I'd just ditch the Champion, but as it stands if you want a greater daemon, you pretty much MUST buy 3 upgrades before anything else is considered (icon, champ, pact). Maybe the characters could be moved to a separate category that doesn't count against upgrades?

Here's my other retinue which blows the door off the 4 upgrade limit:

Black Legion Retinue (Slaanesh)
8 Chaos Space Marine Stands
- Chaos Sorcerer
- Chaos Champion
- Icon Bearer
- 4 Rhinos
4 Noise Marine Stands
- 2 Land Raiders
Daemonic Pact

Seven upgrades, lesser and greater daemons waiting in the pool. This is expensive, but dangit, I could build this as a Chaos Renegade army in every edition of 40k so far from RT on up... if I had a week or so to play a game of such size, that is!

One thing I really like about Epic is the ability to "scale up" from 40k, it seems backwards to have stricter army lists than the skirmish game.

Steel Legion Imperial Guard and Tau both are only allowed three upgrades per formation.

Space Marines are restricted to specific, limited upgrades per formation, averaging two per formation.

Eldar have no "generic" upgrades, only formation specific ones.

Even Orks are only allowed a specific subset of upgrades per formation.

So, Black Legion actually has it pretty good at four.

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Good points on all of those - I hadn't looked far enough down the Steel Legion list; I thought it would be in the header like the Chaos list, and even though there is no tacit limit on # of upgrades for Biel-Tan and Marines, you are right that there are fewer than 4 for most of their detachments... not for Tactical Detachments though.

Marines (and Guard) at least don't have to count transport against their upgrades. The only limitations on Ork upgrades are on the characters and nobs for the most part, but these limits are doubled or tripled with big and 'uge mobs if I'm reading the FAQ right.


Am I completely off base here though? On reflection a limit is good, but some of the options are just too necessary to certain builds and hamstring the list at that point. If you want daemons in your Retinue (and you want them to be effective), it seems like you need 3 upgrades to have them. If you want greater daemons, you must buy at least one champion, no ifs ands or buts, because otherwise you'll never have enough summoning points - and on average you usually won't anyways unless the summoning points are dropped to 7 as in the proposed changes pinned above. I'm not experienced enough with all the lists (obviously), but are there other lists that have "trap doors" like this?

I'd like to suggest that either rhinos/dreadclaws not be counted against the upgrade limit, the character options not be counted against the upgrade limit, or the character options and daemon options should be combined in some way.

Combining daemonic pact and icon bearer into a single upgrade or combining champion and icon bearer into a single upgrade wouldn't be problematic in my opinion. Maybe even bump up the base price of greater daemons, but give a "free" champion upgrade for each one purchased?

Game balance. What other reason would there be?

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Guns don't break formations. Blast Markers break formations.

Design for design's sake? Form over function?

How exactly does having a trapped/redundant choices balance the list?

Look at the formations I posted above... they're hardly power combos. I don't want to call them fluffy, because any fluff can be justified, but they're characterful.

Edit: I also admit the limit of 4 is a good one, since allowing too many upgrades could be a "trap" in and of itself, since it makes it very easy to cripple yourself on activations if units can get too big/costly. I'm more of a mind that some of the upgrades should not be upgrades per se, but options outside of the upgrade structure.

Double Edit: And now looking back to 2006 through the battle reports here, it doesn't seem like daemons are a popular choice in BL armies, and greater daemons even less so. What do you suppose the reasons for this are? Is it because they are outright bad choices or because they supplant the better choices? I'd guess it leans towards the latter.

My reason for not taking Daemons with Black Legion is simply that I'd rather spend those points on "troops on the ground" that won't disappear on me.  The "strengths" that Daemons bring is already available to Black Legion in regular troops... other than Chosen, most formations don't *need* the boost of Daemons.

They're good with Chosen because you can teleport a "small" formation so you don't have to worry about Blast markers and then beef it up for the assault.  For other formations that don't teleport, I'd rather have the extra bodies from the start.

Cultists, on the other hand, *don't* have the inherent strength Daemons bring, so they find them extremely useful.

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Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

What if the Chaos Champion upgrade were moved to the 'Cult Troops' updgrade instead? i.e. purchase 4 stands of berzerkers or wot not with the oppurtunity to buy the champion at the same time?

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Notably the French combined two of the 'summoning' upgrades into one upgrade, as nearly everyone took them all the time anyway.

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See? An entire nation agrees with me. I can't be that far off.

Different people (and nations) have their own playing styles. IMHO list design ought to permit people to make these choices and still get a reasonable game irrespective of the opposing list or which side they use.

Tournament players tend to avoid the greater daemons because of the chance they may not appear when needed, and as you point out, you really need various characters to make the formation work - and these can also be killed. General consensus is that the probability of failure is too high compared with the potential benefit if the beast appears.  

Whether you pick lesser daemons also depends on game style, and Daemons don't work well against some lists; I had a greater daemon assault some of my skimmers recently, licking his lips while he rushed into B-B contact - when the skimmers rose above the assault out of CC range (the GD has no FF) my opponent did take it very well, but his face was a sight to behold.

OTOH, I cannot remember seeing a Chaos army without any Daemon Princes in it. These critters really pack a punch, are highly resistant to damage and fearless - a good recipe for loitering with intent near the opponents BTS and Blitz

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

I'd noticed that on the Bloodthirster... one of the reasons I'm opting for KoS and/or GUO... though the Daemonettes have this problem as well.


I've been thinking over what everyone is saying, and consider me swayed. I'm completely convinced on keeping it to 4 upgrades and keeping the rhinos as upgrades. Especially since I made an error and counted the sorcerers in the above lists as upgrades. This makes the first example legal. The second one is still problematic...


Nevertheless, I don't think it would be amiss to give a "free" champion or icon bearer with the daemonic pact, while raising the price of the pact by the normal cost of the character (50). The other character type could then be taken as an upgrade at normal price. In this way you can spend completely "daemonize" a unit (prince/champ/icon/pact) and still have room for a single upgrade to give the detachment some individuality.

hehehe... :-) "I'll get you next time Gadget!"

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In playtesting mega-formations were a problem.  You could throw down 12 CSMs, high-armor Obliterators and full summoning kit.  The result were formations that could take a ridiculous amount of fire and barely be slowed down.  They were like large Ork warbands, only with better units.

To be fair, most of that observation was prior to the summoning revision, so it's probable that a substantial portion of the balance issue could be chalked up to summoning rather than an innate issue with large formations.

Personally, I wouldn't have a problem facing your larger formation.

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Neal

Yeah, well...   I ended up refiguring my list, and without the bloated formations I need some extra oomph to my army. As of last night I went ahead and built a doomwheel, some oblits, a wing of fighters, and some "Stalker" tanks.

I'd hate to cheese out my formations with daemons, so I guess it's war engines and obliterators for me.