Battleforged or Unbound?

[ElectricPaladin]

I'm curious to hear the answers to the following questions:

1) What armies do you play?
2) For each army, if your opponent agreed to allow Unbound armies, would you chose to bring an Unbound army or a Battle-Forged army?

I am interested to determine which codices, if any, prefer to play Unbound rather than Battle-Forged.

This is assuming, by the way, a "typical" balance of fun vs. competitiveness. I'm not asking "what would you bring to the high tables at a tournament?" I'm asking "what would you bring to a typical night at your FLGS where you intend to play to win?"

Go.

[skeletoro]

Space wolves - I think i'd just spam grey hunters either way.

[daboarder]

I'll bite.

1) I play
Blood Angels (all jump infantry/skimers/fliers, though I am considering some drop pods so I can go full reserve again)
Chaos Space marines (with an emphasis on T5 2+sv models, cultists, drakes and dreads)
Tyranids (endless swarm is and always has been my thing, though now I do sometimes run my tervigons and go psychic choir)

Of those 3 armies I would only really consider running the CSM list as an unbound list in order to maximise the number of terminator squads I can take. But even then the benefits (both socially and game wise) of dropping 100 or so points into 20 cultists kinda outweigh the advantage of grabbing a couple more terminators.

Nids work so well with the troops scoring as the army really goes for board control and very few players are willing to run into the swarm (really think maelstrom games are good for these guys)

And my blood angels dont really need anything form unbound, they can get everything they want from the FOC be it with allies or multiple detachments. furthermore, in this list its the troops backed up by priests that do the real heaving lifting.

[Voltigeur]

I play SM (Ultra, Relictors, BA and DA), CSM, Daemons and Guard.
For any of my SM armies I would take a battle forged list. I think it just makes sense for marines.
For my daemons I'd likely take an unbound list. I love greater demons and I have quite of collection of them so I'd want to use at least one from each god in my list. I have no idea how effective or ineffective that would be.
My guard army is built around troops choices so there's little point to go unbound.

[ElectricPaladin]

I'll bite.

1) I play
Blood Angels (all jump infantry/skimers/fliers, though I am considering some drop pods so I can go full reserve again)
Chaos Space marines (with an emphasis on T5 2+sv models, cultists, drakes and dreads)
Tyranids (endless swarm is and always has been my thing, though now I do sometimes run my tervigons and go psychic choir)

Of those 3 armies I would only really consider running the CSM list as an unbound list in order to maximise the number of terminator squads I can take. But even then the benefits (both socially and game wise) of dropping 100 or so points into 20 cultists kinda outweigh the advantage of grabbing a couple more terminators.

Nids work so well with the troops scoring as the army really goes for board control and very few players are willing to run into the swarm (really think maelstrom games are good for these guys)

And my blood angels dont really need anything form unbound, they can get everything they want from the FOC be it with allies or multiple detachments. furthermore, in this list its the troops backed up by priests that do the real heaving lifting.

Oh... that hadn't occurred to me. Using multiple Primary Detachments of Blood Angels is a good way to get more priests on the board. It would have to be for a very large game... though there's no reason you couldn't just bring scouts and death company as the "secondary" Primary Detachment's Troops choices, while your "main" Primary Detachment focused on bringing your actual front line scoring units.

[DrBored]

I play Space Marines. Chaos Marines, and Chaos Daemons.

I'd be willing to play Unbound under certain circumstances, mostly if there was some sort of narrative, or some other balancing force at work, for example someone just really wants to fit in an extra Heavy Support but wouldn't be able to normally, or someone wants to play out a 1st Company army, or someone wants to bring more Fortifications than they would normally to play something akin to Planetstrike (without the rules of Planetstrike I guess).

Really, there's a time and a place for Unbound. It's not for tournaments, it's not for competition, it's for fun. Fun.

FUN.

Not spam, not crush-your-opponents-at-all-costs, not competition, not Win-At-All-Costs.

It's for FUN.

[Chaoschrist]

I play Daemons, Chaos marines and Orks (well.. I'm building a small Eldar force as well).

I'm not overly interested in unbound armies since it will most likely be a shenanigan-fest rather than a fluffy battle. Though I guess that depends on the people you game with. The few people I can play with in my local store are kinda competitive, so I expect broken lists all over actually. Dual helldrakes and 9 nurgle oblits is already common place, so...

I like my codexes with a bit of structure and FOC to get a decent list going. This entire "bring all models you have" just feels too much like a marketing ploy to sell fancy models rather than something for a good game.

Though if I were to go unbound and not be restricted by a FOC, I'd probably end up spamming something that gives me a lot of mastery levels to summon demons. 20 something level 3 tzeentch heralds for 60 warp charges, just cast the primaris power (and probably summon Pink horrors for more charges; and eventually tarpit the entire table). That'll go over well, lol. Nope, that wouldn't be fun... but the fact that someone else could be just as much of a douche (and probably will be) to bring this takes out some fun. So clearly no unbound for me

[Katharon]

Considering how many VPs can be racked up in quick succession with BattleForged army lists using the Tactical Objectives, I really don't see there being too many Unbound lists -- unless you have that one guy who buys the most shtuff and gets his kicks out of tabling people.

[ElectricPaladin]

Interesting... so it looks like I'm seeing the following (contradictory) points:

1) For most codices, getting victory points is a better way to win than spamming powerful units.
2) Unbound lists would be so powerful it wouldn't be fun.

What I'd love to see is some folks volunteering to play test games where each player brings a list that is fun, workable, but not clearly broken - one UB one BF - and see what happens. I'm curious which of the community's impulses where turn out to be accurate.

[daboarder]

Interesting... so it looks like I'm seeing the following (contradictory) points:

1) For most codices, getting victory points is a better way to win than spamming powerful units.
2) Unbound lists would be so powerful it wouldn't be fun.

What I'd love to see is some folks volunteering to play test games where each player brings a list that is fun, workable, but not clearly broken - one UB one BF - and see what happens. I'm curious which of the community's impulses where turn out to be accurate.

You need 8 experiments
Battle forged fun vs unbound fun
BF Broken vs UB Fun
BF Fun Vs UB Broken
BF Broken Vs UB Broken

Get that data and you should be able to get a feeling for the strengths and weaknesses of various lists. I have a feeling the "order" will be something like

BF Fun = UB Fun < UB Broken < BF Broken.