true, it just wouldnt be fair to the thunderhawk assault brick player to actually fight back. taking all the fun out of the game. :P

it is quite a lot of AA, but to be fair, the thunderbolts are there to chase down the enemy rather than intercept enemy aircraft. and i like aircraft. the hydras are there to as you say, stop my opponent from casually wiping it off the table with his first activation, but also as activation buffers and they can do the occasional sniping themselves (i've had some success tearing up warhounds with a flak battery on sustain)

and i am totally onboard with listening to powergamers when it comes to finding strengths to exploit, but weaknesses should be allowed so long as it doesnt weaken the entire list by default (for instance, making upgrades more accessable means people might take them, which in an activation-war, is a bad thing most of the time)
basically why i said that i'd be wary of lowering artillery company costs. (also for the record, artillery can sustain for the +1. something that my harbinger laments being unable to do)
my biggest problem with small artillery formations (which is, to be fair, what i use more often) is that when the enemy shoots at them, they stop being useful. 3 basalisks get shot at, one of them is going to die, thats a broken unit, and even when it rallies, unless it has a commissar, its still pretty much useless for the rest of the game. (this is a common problem for my blood pact, who dont have commissars, and whose basalisks have a 6+ save)
what an 18BP formation can do, is outlast its smaller cousins, remain active for longer while under fire, and with those extra BMs, can actually break more stuff (plus, of course, it can break something pretty much immediately, at which point the thunderbolts will decimate it) and thanks to the extra templates, they can clip multiple units and break several formations in one go, so unless the enemy REALLY spreads out, they can do as much BM damage as the smaller ones. and if the enemy wants to spread out that much, pick apart the edges, and when they're forced to converge upon the objectives, let it rip.

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These proposed changes do not seem 'game breaking', at least not for the 3K tournament game, but obviously need testing.
At higher levels the differences may start to show up as additional activations, which will start to have a greater impact.

So keeping them to the 25pt steps is probably the best way to go, though like Zombo I wonder whether there are slightly too many - put another way, which changes are seen as the most relevant to the various IG lists?

To Artillery companies in particular I am not sure about the 50pts drop. I do not think there will be much effect at 3K basically because they are not really competitive at that point. Their use starts to increase at 4k-5k, and this is where the points drop will start to be noticed. But 50pts at that level is not likely to be game-breaking (in really massive games with multiple batteries this will start to make a significant impact, but is outside the scope of the lists intentions).

TRC always maintained that three batteries were significantly better than 1 company - so now we get a 150point difference between them to make up for the activations (BMs and templates are effectively even). Certainly the 3K list rapidly runs low on activations in order to prevent the artillery company from becoming the BTS while paying for the regimental HQ for the supreme commander. This tends to preclude their use at the 3K level, but I have a feeling that this is also true at all levels. Sure it is nice to be able to lay 18BP on a single target with 9x Manticores - but more pragmatically, with three batteries you can target three different fomations (or the same one three times), and it takes more effort to silence the artillery.

Ultimately the weakness of the Artillery company (its lack of armour) means that unlike other formations it has difficulty in finding secondary roles (like Blitz defence, capturing enemy objectives etc), and it requires other formations to defend it, tying up a relatively large parts of the army in a relatively static role which does not leave the IG player with much for the offensive role.

Obviously, this is coloured by the army strategies used, the terrain and tactics employed to attack / defend the artillery company and specifically to different interpretations on Barging, ZoC, etc and what can or cannot be done under assault conditions (witness the recent lively debates). But I am not sure that these considerations change the underlying issues greatly.

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On the upgrades, it seems reasonable to drop their points since so many of them are poor upgrade choices. It's arguable whether list flexibility should be considered a factor for balance in its own right though - something to bear in mind. If you give an army more viable options, does that make it more powerful than another list? Do armies with lots of good builds pay for it in points or other areas?

I'm not sure about the justifications for dropping artillery company points, it seems to me that their problem is their large overall cost rather than their cost per unit. That is to say, perhaps they are powerful enough for their points cost, but using formations of that power and cost to perform that role in a 3k list is not competitive. I would expect in larger battles a 650 point formation becomes much more practical, and it is a pretty powerful and game-shaping formation after all.

Short of reducing formation size, it is impossible to change overall cost without changing cost per unit, which means dropping the cost enough to get people to use them in 3k games would make them undercosted in 5k games. The same goes for other large points-cost formations like warlords. To use an analogy, a points reduction to make arty coys more common in 3k games is like reducing warlords so that they fit in the 1/3 allowance for 2500 point games... it may not be the same mechanic but both are factors of "game points level" and not formation balance. I guess the problem for guard is that these are their core formation choices.

A 25 point drop to stop them being BTS seems a realistic option - they make poor BTS choices, and even at 5k points it's a tough choice to include an arty coy AND an upgraded tank/mech company, especially since flak is so important for them.

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If we're looking at radical changes like the ST chimeras then why not reduce the size of the artillery company? A 6 unit formation would be a lot more useful and reasonably priced.

I think that's a shame, as it's just a small, easy and probably underpowered choice. I don't think the option of Chimera mounting them in a list themed around Chimeras is radical. It'd just offers be an alternative transport option, not a replacement of Valkyries - it wouldn't effect players using them in Valkyries in the slightest.

Those bits. The concept that a fully optional formation being overpriced, is a balancing factor. It's possible to price things above the norm if they are required, or are part of an abusable combo, but it tends to be an excuse, rather than actually working in the way intended. Unless the game is inherently combo-driven, points values should represent true worth, not a balance issue.


Oh, I kind of agree on upgrades. One of the things I've found with Epic is that unless upgrades serve a specific purpose (like adding AA), they tend to be ignored. That's the result of the system itself, rather than any specific list. The advantage of activations, is typically worth more than any additional robustness gained from bulkiness upgrades (with a few exceptions).

And I do accept that the changes might make a change to the feel (Steel Legioness) of the army. But I'd rather see some other form of restriction being put in place, rather than just pricing the formations out of the contest. An example might be that Artillery and Leman Russ companies have a restriction ratio (figure how many you'd not want to see, and figure a way to limit it to less than that number, either as a hard limit "No more than 1 Artillery or Leman Russ company per 1500pts", or as a soft limit, like the Warhound's synergy surcharge.), or that you can't have more Artillery/LR Companies than Infantry Companies (if you want to make sure it's Infantry driven).

The surcharge thing might seem like the same thing as the current inefficiency price thing, but it's not quite the same. Restricting the purchase of larger quantities in this manner won't restrict the ability to take the formation in the first place. But it's not necessarily the preferred approach.


Oh, I don't doubt it. I've just got a big issue with the balancing factor stated above. I've seen too many other games systems justify internal imbalance based on things being prohibitively expensive. And it lead to the exact issue being discussed here, that it just meant that those formations might not have been in the list at all, as they're rarely taken, or taken as a detriment to the army.

Morgan Vening

Only if the new pricings put the formations in question as "must buy". If taking no core but infantry companies are still equivalently a reasonable choice, you'ld have people taking differing armies based on aesthetic and playstyle preference, rather than just the stuff that's better priced. That's what I see as the goal.


Depends on how it's approached. My suggestions were by no means a complete set of possibilities. I just put out some options, rather than just say "I don't like it, change it!". I'm sure there's an innovative way to both make (particularly) the core formations points/cost comparative, while still retaining the 'feel' of Steel Legion-ness.


Never had any concern for that. And yes, small steps are better than massive overhauls.

Morgan Vening

I will playtest after the current campaign at my club ends (4 more weeks iirc) and will ask those using SL in the campaign to start testing immediately.

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I'll ask the local group if they're happy testing the changes as well. We have 4 people who play steel legion now, 2 are new to SL though.

Can we get a post of the list of current changes some were easy to find? just to get the pipe line going so that all of us that are testing are getting our info from the same page. also with a list of what ones are priorities like - this one IS getting changes, - this one likely will be getting some changes, and - this one is in the air, but try it if you want.

Because I really want to try these out but am kinda backing off till I see some thing... Unofficially official , to go off.

At a guess, this is what you're looking for.