Well if you don't want to help test then what are doing here?

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

The list was developed well before the Plague Reaper was created and the Plague Reaper is a Nurgle specific unit.

The Decimator was created by Jervis for this list and that makes it about as official as the Plague Reaper.

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

As I mentioned earlier this is purely semantics. You'd reduce the cost and then add a similar cost to the formation simply to make it look like there weren't any "free" units.

And as you note, this isn't unique to the CSM list so maybe people could just get over it and move on.

Its a ridiculous non-issue and we shouldn't cater to this sort of silliness.

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

Like Neal said the "free" Lord thingie is mainly a bonus for small formations.

That said, I have never ever seen anyone trying to exploit this. Which would be difficult, since all of the (potentially) smallish formations are restricted, Terminators, the Forlorn Hopes and Raptors.

A change to costing Lords would also necessitate a fifth upgrade slot.

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You have to use your discretion to think about other than a straight silly bit of semantics.

So you take that idea.

Then you take the idea of some formations being undercosted.

So you remove the Lords, cost the resulting according to how good they are sans commander, then look at how much benefit the Lord brings that formation and assign that points total.

So as pointed out as a commander brings a fixed amount of benefit and his presence doesn't seem to affect unit cost for scaling units. With marines there are few reasons to use 8 assault marines instead of 4 terminators, but the 8 can have two chaplains, a considerable assault boost. Conversely 4 ass. marines on the ground are pretty poor and here 50 points for a chaplain is a waste. Maybe then formations should be figured costing wise for their 'optimum' composition numbers wise with above and below that left to points considerations and the commanders plan.

This could mean if say Raptors do quite well at 45 points each at the 6 or so range at x5 points without a commander, how much of a boost is it to stick him in? And so on. I understand this can get a bit complex to work out but I hope its easy to grasp after several playtests.

Lastly of course I suspect people would cut Lords from certain formations in just the same way they do with marines. Have a static AA formation? Don't need a Lord, chop him, save 25/50/2543 points for a demonic focus somewhere else and so on.

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PG, it is semantics.  However, semantics can drive perception and in this case the perception is the characters are "free".  Agreement that things are balanced is based entirely on perception.  "Free" is never balanced.  It's nice to have some objective facts to point to, but objective facts don't always overcome perception because humans aren't entirely rational.

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E&C:  Yes, the character issue was considered.  The exact same complaints have been around since playtesting.  For my part, I thought they would go away with experience and exposure.  They haven't.  Neither have any of the other complaints about the perception of "free" units or other bonuses (Avatar, Ork SC, Ulthwe +1 SR, Commisars, etc.).

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Neal

I fail to see why we should change the lists because some people are not able to see the difference.

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

People have a knee-jerk reaction to what is basically a red herring and they will continue to do so as long as people listen to their complaints about it.

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

Please Hena, I´ve complained about the free stuff in other lists just about every time anyone has brought up the "free" issue in these discussions.

Commissars are an absolute steal, assaulting intermingled IG formations is a nightmare as more often than not you´ll end up outnumbered and facing 3x Inspiring, I just love that. Or that lone Leman Russ rumbling off to claim distant objectives, sole survivor of its formation that was otherwise wiped out in Turn 1, now Fearlessly annoying, a faster and even more pesky variant is the Commissar´s Vulture. Before fixed-points Commissars you had Fearless single Sentinels getting into the way and snatching objectives on a good 2D6 roll. SHTs get proportionately harder to kill as well

The Avatar has an in-built drawback via its crit, it is constantly put in harms way, gets hurt a lot and seems to die to that nasty crit every second game, always in good sight of at least half-a-dozen Eldar formations.

The ork SC is just that - free! How the original playtesters deemed it fit to give them Orks +2 activation bonuses for what they´d do anyway and top it off with a free SC while pricing the SM SC at 100 points escapes me.

In short, SM were ripped off, but otherwise "free" is no big thing.
Why people who rip on the BL list for having "free" Lords and Warlord spare those other lists is a question they might care to answer.

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Which should be the case, indeed. Each unit should be slightly overcosted to account for the lord. This means that larger formation sizes should be paying slightly over the odds and/or smaller formation sizes pay less. This seems reasonable to me, as large formations like Chosen are vastly more effective than smaller ones.