The new Horde Army: less models, more reinforcements?

[jaxom]

I've been wondering at the future of horde factions as models get more expensive and less customizable. An army with a hundred plus models becomes a serious financial endeavor when 20 models costs 55 $US/35L. It also doesn't look as good on the table when every batch of 20 looks almost the same (if not identical). It struck me that a way around this would be to increase the point cost of "chaff" or horde units and then build reinforcement mechanics into the army. These could be stratagems ("when a unit is destroyed put a new unit on the board" type stuff) or unit rules ("during the command phase bring back D3 models") or something else. We've seen it already with Necrons. What do others think of horde armies becoming average model count (40-60), but with "more waves" coming onto the board to replace losses as the game progresses?

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

I think with Orks becoming t5 with their new codex, that GW is definitely trying to reduce model count. That said I don't think that trying to get every one down to 40-60 models either.  The problem with reinforcement abilities is that typically you need to spend a couple of turns getting the new unit into position. I do think most horde fractions should have elite builds to make the army cheaper to collect that should be good. For example Nids have always been that army that I like but I just cant justify starting and if they buffed warriors more I'd probably be in trouble lol. 

[MegaVolt87]

I think with Orks becoming t5 with their new codex, that GW is definitely trying to reduce model count. That said I don't think that trying to get every one down to 40-60 models either.  The problem with reinforcement abilities is that typically you need to spend a couple of turns getting the new unit into position. I do think most horde fractions should have elite builds to make the army cheaper to collect that should be good. For example Nids have always been that army that I like but I just cant justify starting and if they buffed warriors more I'd probably be in trouble lol. 

 

This. Plus GW should be selling such horde type units in 20+ model boxes for what they charge per box at the moment. 10 man boxes of basic guard, orks, nids etc is a joke. 

[Azekai]

The problem with reinforcement abilities is that typically you need to spend a couple of turns getting the new unit into position.

That's not a bug, its a feature; if you mow down 25 boys and they 'respawn' in a place that is immediately tactically advantageous, you might as well have not bothered shooting them at all. If the reinforcements have to set up in a more restricted way, your 'free' units can still be countered and dealt with. 

 

Personally, I would love if the tyranids were given a respawn mechanic that didn't suck. Maybe double the cost of termagants and let them come back whenever. It would feel very cinematic if the ravening hordes got gunned down and just kept coming.

[MegaVolt87]

 

The problem with reinforcement abilities is that typically you need to spend a couple of turns getting the new unit into position.

 

That's not a bug, its a feature; if you mow down 25 boys and they 'respawn' in a place that is immediately tactically advantageous, you might as well have not bothered shooting them at all. If the reinforcements have to set up in a more restricted way, your 'free' units can still be countered and dealt with. 

Personally, I would love if the tyranids were given a respawn mechanic that didn't suck. Maybe double the cost of termagants and let them come2 back whenever. It would feel very cinematic if the ravening hordes got gunned down and just kept coming.

Thats fine, but if its gunned down completely twice etc, I expect that same unit to count as two seperate units destroyed/damaged for tge relevent secondaries.

[Rik Lightstar]

The new Soulblight Vampires book for AoS has some very similar ideas to this.

 

Destroyed "Summonable" units can be deployed on the table at half strength within range of Grave Markers that you place (4 of) at the start of the game. They also have to be at least 9" from enemy units.

 

With Imperial Guard especially I could see it working well with them reinforcing from the home table edge. Give them a rule where when the unit is destroyed you roll and if you get UNDER the current turn number they can come back. This gives your opponent a tough choice, focus down the basic stuff first to make it less likely to come back, or take on the bigger things but risk being swamped by Infantry later.

 

Rik

[Vermintide]

Disgruntled Necron noises

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

 

 

The problem with reinforcement abilities is that typically you need to spend a couple of turns getting the new unit into position.

That's not a bug, its a feature; if you mow down 25 boys and they 'respawn' in a place that is immediately tactically advantageous, you might as well have not bothered shooting them at all. If the reinforcements have to set up in a more restricted way, your 'free' units can still be countered and dealt with.

 

Personally, I would love if the tyranids were given a respawn mechanic that didn't suck. Maybe double the cost of termagants and let them come back whenever. It would feel very cinematic if the ravening hordes got gunned down and just kept coming.

I get that but its really tough to balance in progressive objective games. So making it a wide spread feature is going to be tricky.

[Warhead01]

Lots of interesting thoughts on this here. 

I had a few yesterday but my post got way off track so I scrapped it. 
In short it might be a reasonable idea  to make reinforcements a pregame/deployment stratagem where the player has to pre pay for a number of units to freely return through strategic reserves. This could sit side by side with other return to play stratagems that might be more unique to some factions but not others and in this way giving to every faction without taking away from any faction. is that balanced? I don't know. But both players would know that a number of units were eligible to return during the game. 
The text of the stratagem needs to be clear about when it can be used and possibly have a unit cap, this could be as simple as a fixed number of units or a combined power level cap. 
I like this idea because it shouldn't be a gotcha moment as it would be known before turn 1 by both players. 
I also like keeping other strats for return to play like The green tide strat for Orks because it would cost a bit more but be more flexible for the Ork player, or equivalent. 
Another unknown would be, does this bog down the game and of course the specific language of a universal return to play stratagem. (which is key.)

Beyond that I don't know. But I do like the idea of returning units in Horde type armies to play as I/we expect most ppm to raise, 8 to 10 for boys possibly as an example. 
And to me this would seem to let new players to horde armies grow their armies to a playable size a bit faster as they would need less models in the beginning as they collected their army allowing them to buy and use a larger selection of units from their codex and enjoy those. Painting 90 to 300 Ork boys is probably not something a new player looks forward to.

It could be good.