I can already do this with no detrimental effect by spacing out formations affiliated with one faction with Undivided armour units.

My main reason for removing it is that is has no effect and people can easily get around it anyway.

So why have it?

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

I'm for dumping it from both BL and L&D.

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Neal

I say dump it.

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*opens dump bucket*

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1) Most obviously, this rule has been completely removed from 40K and Fantasy, even the Daemons of the four gods are able to play happily together. Indeed, it is now much more difficult to play a mono-god army in any army and either system (although I persist despite the current as my soul belongs to Slaanesh whatever system I play...)

A key design philosophy for games designers these days is to always have only 'positive' special rules to remember. So if forgotten they don't act to your opponents detriment. The -1 init rules don't...

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As a player who has tested a LatD army with Slaanesh & Khorne formations and war engines I say keep the rule. It adds a little extra spice to playing with chaos forces, however for BL I won't mix factions as I don't see the risk as worth while.

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I guess that's the problem; Although in theory the 'hated' rule adds some extra spice, in practice it will never get used by the majority of people... and army list construction is made unweildy as a consequence.

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This "hated factions" rule and the way that Chaos armies can be created to get the 'automatic' +1 initiative is one of the irritations that I have with the list. Essentially there is no incentive or benefit for fielding multiple factions, and many reasons not to.

Rather than dropping the rule altogether which just relaxes the list further and removes a vital part of the design, IMHO it would be better to require that armies only consist of followers of the relevant factions (as the "Hated factions" would not be seen dead together - pun intended ).

Also as TRC says, it would be better if the rules were worded so that the army and/or formations get a better initiative if certain circumstances or units are present rather than absent, ie where the formation is within range of something or someone it gains the benefit rather than the reverse. For example
a) Any formations within 30 cms of their faction's Altar get +1 to their initiative roll;
b) Any formations within 30cms of the greater daemon get +1 to their initiative roll;
c) Where the Supreme commander is on the battlefield, all formations get +1 to the initiative roll

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Why?

And how does it "relax" the army list any if the rule has no effective impact at present? I always get 1+ initiative for my formations in my CSM armies so how is the removal of this rule going to "relax" anything?

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

Ginger makes some exceptionally good points.

Well, all except C.

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The point is not what you can achieve with the rules as they are currently worded - we all agree that they do very little and worse that they are easily forgotten. But the rule was obviously put there for a reason, otherwise why waste the space?

So rather than just discarding it, we should really be asking what that reason was and furthermore, whether the result was in line with the general fluff.

As far as I can see, the rule was put in to provide a boost under certain circumstances - in other words to raise the Chaos armies initiative above 2+, but not quite to the same level of the marines 1+. Equally, from the comments of others it seems that "Hated factions" would not act together; hence the two suggestions to force armies to be made of 'friendly' factions and to provide some condition that the Chaos player can purchase or engineer that will boost the army initiative.

By adopting these proposals, (with an appropriately worded condiditon) the army list would still work exactly as it does now. But it would also require the Chaos player to maintain that condition and would equally give the opponent a slightly different set of strategic and tactical options - so the game is more fun.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

No, it wasn't. It was put there because in the past the Chaos armies in most games have had Hatred rules.

It is the rules manifestation of fluff.

- in other words to raise the Chaos armies initiative above 2+, but not quite to the same level of the marines 1+.

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

With the recent change to the Marine list that removes Drop pods as an option for Scouts, should we also introduce the same restriction to the Forlorn Hope, removing Dreadclaws as an upgrade to prevent the same abuses?

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