Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: We Need to Do Something About Squadrons
The biggest issue within 40k right now is the good old vehicle squadrons rule. Let’s talk.
This rule goes from being fairly meh in some army builds to downright broken in others. Heck we saw it broken enough to warrant the biggest unit nerf we have seen without just outright banning the unit from the game. My question is – what do we do about it?
The Squadron Problem
What makes a big pile of a Vehicles taking up a single battlefield choice an issue? I think the biggest “problem” is allows you to exaggerate abusive rules combos to an unbalanced degree. An example is when you can select a large swath of powerful units in one single stratagem. It is one thing to protect a single vehicle/model. It is a whole other thing to see 3 of them protected for one strategem choice. Even if this choice costs a lot of points to engage it still can be worth it as you get 3 activations basically for the price of one.
Stuff like methods to protect those unit options or make them hit better. We saw how bad it was that Admech could chain up a ton of powerful upgrades on the chicken walkers so it would make sense another army would outdo them with a similar style of issue. I am of course talking about the Voidweaver and being able to take up to 9 of them. It has become an issue.
Do you think if you could take 9 Fire Prisms we would have the same problem? Is the point limitation on the Fire Prism in a book with a lot of expensive choices part of the issue? Instead of 9 maybe just having 6 might be too good? These are the types of things I wonder about when I look at other vehicles and if they could all of a sudden have an issue.
Orks became a problem not really due to inter-weaving rules. Instead theeir squadrons allowed too much hyper efficient damage dealing mixed with a powerful force multiplier in Freebootaz. Thus the whole nerf to one “choice” per Buggy purchase instead of saying things like max of 3 or some kind of mixed buggy choice unit. It makes me wonder how we would look at Harliequins and ways to limit some of this in a meaningful way.
The Voidweaver Problem
The bigger issue with the Harlequin -Aeldari codex is you just don’t have a ton of options. I wonder if this one of the reasons why that vehicle got a Squadron rule when it didn’t have it before – or might have been tested with that rule. It becomes a weird thing to think of that it was really hard to make a pure Harlie army when you didn’t have ways to sink points into non Troop units.
I also wonder if the little flyer was less tough. Too many overlapping rules that make it hard to deal with as it chips away all of your opponents efficiencies by dumping off a few hits here and there. Mix this all in with a 50/50 save to just ignore your bad touch and you start to see how things just go into the danger zone of too good to not use.
The Squadron Solution
So how do we fix it? We can’t really do a blanket statement of Rule of 3 to all squadrons as there are a few that are not too bad. When was the last time you saw 9 Deff Dreads? Or how about 9 Myphtic Blight-Haulers? Are those options terrible? What about the GSC Ridgerunners? Is it worth it to knock down an armies potential due to another’s armies bad interactions?
I get the feeling a nerf will be thrown out like the Ork one – directly to the unit itself instead of some kind of broader rule. They might make it with the Light interaction doesn’t work for Vehicles or limit how many you can take. They will probably also hike up the points a good deal as it is way too cheap right now for a tough little boat that is fast and can do damage to big/little stuff too easily.
Ww’ll just have to wait and see what shows up in the coming months. GW saw how bad of a streamed 40K game it was to see a parking lot of vehicles with no one driving them shooting their pew pew lasers at each other. At least put the gunners on there to make me feel better as I get laser’d off of the table.
How would you fix squadrons?
