More help: Troop Choices?

[Chase]

A few questions about troop choices....


1) Does every army have more than one "cool" (your definition) troop choices?

2) How many armies have an obvious troop choice that they want to or do spam (your definition)?

3) If you had to approximate the average cost (points) of a troop choice, where would you put it?

4) What armies rely on (your definition) a particular troop choice?

[Benjamin]

Players MUST take Troop choices, and like anything mandatory, that pretty much says it all. I'll grant there are likely exceptions, but the name of the game is to keep your worst units alive until the end of the game when both you and your opponent know where you're putting them (on objectives).

Most players I know will say they need to take 3-4 choices in a competitive list, so they don't look at it entirely from a points perspective. "Here's what I have to take, now what's left over for the cool stuff I actually want to play?"

I hope I'm not being a wet blanket, but Troops are generally bland unless they're some typically non-Troop unit unlocked by an awesome character (Kharn, Kantor, etc).

[Grimwulfe]

1) Does every army have more than one "cool" (your definition) troop choices?

No there are still some books I believe that only have 1 choice (may be wrong) Usually troops arent special but can be good when paired with certain combos.

2) How many armies have an obvious troop choice that they want to or do spam (your definition)?

Usually there is an obvious choice in all books on which makes the better troop and what should be spammed.  There are some exceptions though where all troops are fairly good.

3) If you had to approximate the average cost (points) of a troop choice, where would you put it?

Cant really answer this as it is far to dependant on the army.  For instance an average eldar troop costs 8 points wherea SM costs 15.  Both of these point costs are great for thier respective armies.

4) What armies rely on (your definition) a particular troop choice?

I would say Space marines in general rely heavily on their troops as well as Nids but not as much.

[andalucien]

1) Does every army have more than one "cool" (your definition) troop choices?

Sisters of Battle have only one troop choice, period.  Many are lucky to get one "cool" troop choice (and that's an advantage for those armies that have it), in general they're often seen as a tax to be able to actually win the game while the rest of your army does the killing.   When you hit on an army build that lets you take something actually interesting as your troop choice (like Tyranid Tervigons or Eldar Jetbikes) you do the fist pump.

2) How many armies have an obvious troop choice that they want to or do spam (your definition)?

Hmm, only one I can think of that is a NATIVE troop choice spammed for its own virtue is Ork Shoota Boyz.  Anybody think of any others?  There are definitely UNLOCKABLE  troop choices that people spam... Tyranid Tervigons....  White Scars Bikes... Ravenwing bikes...  Deathwing... Plague Marines... etc... but those all make you have to take some specific unit in another force org slot to do it.  And there are selections that people spam b/c of the dedicated transport that comes with the troop choice, like Necron warriors with their Scythes or Dire Avengers with their Wave Serpents.

3) If you had to approximate the average cost (points) of a troop choice, where would you put it?

Varies highly, but say average points for a min troop choice that does nothing more than score is, what, 50 or 60?  If you can get a scoring unit for less than 50 you start to feel happy b/c you can get that cheap deck chair that just hides, and it doesn't cost you much...  Necrons in old codex used to be SCREWED on troops because their useless deck chairs cost 180 points.   Grey Knights I think can do it the cheapest (with coteaz) at 12 points for 3 little henchmen guys.

4) What armies rely on (your definition) a particular troop choice?

Again, Tyranids, green tide Orks, sisters b/c there IS only one troop choice...
Lots of popular army builds rely on their troop Transports (as mentioned above): Dark eldar venoms, wave serpents, night scythes, razorbacks, etc etc.

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[andalucien]

If I can smell where you're going with this, a troops-only event would be interesting in that it's totally different from anything anyone has done, but ultimately would prove boring and not at all balanced between armies.  (IMHO).

[PhoenixFire]

a few other problems with a "troop only" event are...

points value: cant be too low or some codexs will have an advantage and others wont be able to afford many units

dedicated transports: probably have to ban them completely to be fair, some codexs have dedicated transport flyers like Necrons, some have OP transports like Eldar, and some have no transports.

maybe something like the armor war with you having to spend x amount of points on power armor would work here. you have to spend x amount on troops

[Sir_Prometheus]

1)  I think everyone besides Sisters (and remember that Sisters were initially meant to be an ally codex, like old daemonhunters) has at least two (base, no FOC swap) troop choices, and at present, I think those two are usually pretty balanced for most of the armies.  People have their favorites -- Kroot are often considered a steal over Firewarriors, but no one would argue FW don't have their advantages, for instance.  CSM troops are pretty bad -- Cultists are cheap but useless, the Chaos marines themselves are two expensive compared to normal marines with ATSKNF.

2) You can't spam troop choices, by definition, if you ask me.

Arguably, the great strength of marines is the generic usefulness of tac squads.  You can have an OK army that was nothing but troops, that's not really possible of any other codex. 

3) 100 pts.  12-25 pt units are really rare, but a lot of troop choices can be bought for around 50 pts, and the big fancy uses can get up near 300 pts.  (450 for terminator troops)

4)  Mur?  All armys need troops.  All army's I think you could make two different functional lists that used opposite troop types, if you wanted to, besides Sisters.  I could make an all Kroot list, or all FW, or all scouts, or all tac squads. 

[MM3791]

The only reason to take troops is to capture objectives, prior to 5th ed anyone could do it.. which is why in 4th everyone min-maxed troop choice in favor of max elite/heavys.

Regarding troops, they are probably the most difficult unit type to look at in a vaccuum. Some troops rely on transports, some rely on deepstriking, and some rely on character HQs. In other words, most times troops rely on the other components of there army on a more broader scale, so a troop only event might need a lot of special rules in order to make it fair.

I don't mean to jump the gun, but I think more people might prefer a "special forces event", where only Elite choices can be taken. THAT would be cool, like powder keg cool lol

[Grimwulfe]

Or maybe after the Monster Mash Chase finally has the bug and is looking at armies to play!!   Dont get ahead of yourselves my friends

[Chase]

There are no plans for a troop only event.

[Sam Butler]

Given nids posdibly being released soon...   maybe a troop choice based bughunt? 

[Chase]

That sounds cool, but I'd prefer if people didn't speculate in this thread.

[bradpowers]

I don't necessarily *rely* on my troop choices, but I have to say, in terms of raw offensive output, Death Company and DC Dreads are among the best troops in the game.  Sure, they don't score, but scoring is boring (HA!).

[andalucien]

Scoring is boring.

That's a great line....

[Pat.H]

1. Most only have two without using special characters or HQ's to unlock different units as troops choices. Demons have five. Eldar and tyranids have a few different ones too. Tyrandis have a monstrous creature as a troops choice

2. Most armies that are run as horde armies spam troops. Imperial Guard, Tyranids, and Orks. If the army has really powerful transports that troops can take(Necrons/Eldar) people can take six bare minimum squads and give each of them the transport.

3. Depends on which army and if it's being run as a horde. But it seems like a unit of troops with the max number of models runs about 180-250 depending on upgrades. Guard infantry platoons can cost a lot more than that. Sometimes people just take a bare miimum of 2 troops choices with the base number of models to meet the force org requirements so they have extra points to load up on elite, heavy, and fast attacks.

4. Orks almost always need Boyz, and Imperial Guard that are running big infantry blob armies obviously need lots of Guardsmen.