frogbear wrote:
Why can't initiative be based on the flavour and leadership of the army? Having to cow-tow to LatD (a less superior leadership) does not make sense to me... Initiative represents leadership and what is being stated here is that Daemon Engines in a Cult list are no more different than in a LatD list.
Initiative is not just "leadership" skill. That's only part of it.
It's also battlefield intelligence so the leadership knows that an order needs to be issued. It's the army's communication ability to make sure the formation is notified quickly and accurately.
It's the formation's willingness to follow orders. It's the formation's ability to follow orders - discipline, internal communication, etc.. It's the formation's individual initiative and military acumen when leadership, intelligence or communication from above fails.
Only those formations that are amazing at all aspects get 1+. Just improving the leadership doesn't necessarily equate to an increase in Initiative level. It's not that it's "no different" just that it's not different enough.
There are all sorts of reasons why a formation might not benefit from improved command leadership sufficiently to warrant an increase in Initiative. Maybe the formation doesn't consider themselves "under command" of the primary force and tends to ignore orders or pursue their own tactical preferences (a fine rationale for House Devine). Maybe the daemons possessing the vehicles tend to be overcome with other drives, regardless of the commander. Maybe on the rare occasions that commands are slow or based on poor intel or are just a bad call, the daemon engines just don't have enough military sense to know how to correct for that.
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Strategy rating does not represent Leadership. It represents the ability to move a large force here to there.
Again, it's intended to represent a lot more than that. It's not just moving forces to choose battle sites and which forces end up fighting. It's intel to know where the enemy is going. It's counter-intel and deception so the enemy fails to understand where they should go. It's controlling the operational tempo of the battle. It also includes many of the factors listed above for Initiative, as they would be applied to pre-battle planning - communicating plans effectively to the parts of the army, capability to follow those orders (SMs can force march a lot faster and farther than IG when necessary), small unit initiative to make adjustments versus high command micro-management.
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I would challenge anyone to show me reported games with assault based Cult Lists (not shooty or horde lists) with highly specialised assault troops that would not be adversley effected by this ruling. ... I genuinely believe from my past experience that the two lists I am working on will be greatly effected by the ruling far beyond any other list whose Daemon Engines do not need to reach Engage range due to their other support options. World Eaters are the biggest loser in this as their Daemon Engines are the back bone to their support.
As far as disproportionate effect, all the cult CSM lists are assault-based and rely on support from other sources. I don't think you can sustain an argument that EC or WE are disproportionately harmed.
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The fact that Daemon Engines are found in smaller formations once again compounds the issue.
Luckily, you already dropped the per-unit price of Knights by several points from what it is in the L&D and increased the formation size. You also created downgraded Khorne assault engines so you can readily increase the formation size without having large, expensive formations.
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As far as balance, if it makes a substantial difference in the performance of the formation then drop the cost.
This appears to be my only option.
That's part of a collaborative project.
