fun with the decurions

[angkor what?]

Okay so I'd like to see what uses people think we may get out of decurion style detachments into the future.
They are clearly for the larger 'full' factions as they have the options to make it work.
One thing that GW may be doing is giving a significant boost to playing with one faction, and to non imperial factions who don't have a wealth of battle brother options ( just a theory don't shoot!!). Yes it seems that they are all about allies but it gives an alternate for a strong build.
For the record I'm all about fluffy builds and am always trying out ways of writing up interesting lists.

Going way back I think GW tried to represent different factions within a codex but the FOC often held that back, and FOC swaps often compromised internal balance. For example I have 5000 pts of eldar and with the 4ED codex I could represent Iyanden,Beil tan, Saim hann, ulthwe and alaitoc . The problem I could see though was that it was quite a bland way of doing it and your opponent wouldn't know which faction it was if your army wasn't painted as such.

This brings me to space marine chapter tactics. On the plus side they are a great way of giving fluffy, flavoured rules to represent founding chapters and their successors. On the flip side they are often quite powerful upgrades, which I think the main gripe people have with them is that their free.
How I think these differ from decurions and formations is they're unrestricted, a small difference but an important one.

Another thing I've noticed is supplements haven't been the same since crimson slaughter (I could have this well wrong). Not in their composition but on the force they represent. In one corner you have factions Iyanden,black legion, farsight etc, in the other you have something else haemonculus covens, waaagh ghazgkul, champions of fenris. I could be splitting hairs here but it seems a slight change to me. I believe mini dexes ala harlequins and skitaari will replace the faction specific supplements. Now what to do with the unrepresented factions?

I proposed an idea a while ago on the many, many discussions of what to do with CSM. The problem is that with chaos being so multi faceted how do you cover this without a myriad of codecies, mini dexes and supplements? Which will all need to be updated at the same time. My proposition was that you could do this with decurion style detachments.
Codex chaos: chaos space marines could be a way of representing renegades and legions..surely not!

World eaters detachment, iron hands detachment, 21st founding detachment etc. It would be varied and also give a possibility of some renegade chapters having access to more modern astartes wargear. Chapter tactics could be reformed into a decurion style to bring parity with others. What about those craftworlds as well? Craftworld specific rules and organisation all under one roof.

So this is my take on decurion style detachments, more fluff and less convolution for factions needing more than one book, a winner in my eyes.
But what do you all think? How would you construct a decurion for your unrepresented faction and where would you put it?

[Deathmage]

This, just this. If anyone really cared you could just collaborate with people to make our own. I'd be willing to help, if anyone's interested

[angkor what?]

There's good chatter on warseers eldar imminent thread About this. Saim hann, Beil tan detachments etc. I might knock a few together and post them here later.

[Den Jemp]

As it happens I already started a decurion thread for chaos legions on dakka.
Just look for Decurion Style Chaos Legions. I'm curious what you think about it^^
So far people have liked it but I'm still surprised at the lack of comments given how everybody always cries about legions with every chaos release.

[angkor what?]

People like to have a good moan though. I like to look at what can be done better its more fun that way. lve checked your thread out over on dakka and its spot on! Exactly what I'm getting at as well. It would be so easy in this way to cover all the bases of chaos like this. It would be a lot of options and alot of detachments but that is what chaos players have been asking for. Also I think they could go as far as having detachment specific options for war gear and warlord traits etc

[Den Jemp]

That's probably how they should have done supplements from the get go. If they added the odd special units to supplements where appropriate and then used fleshed out formations that would make them worthwhile assuming they were cheap enough. Like one Codex to cover the generic base and then small books to cover all the variants. It would make more sense to me than different a different codex for various space marine chapters, since they're really not that different they all use the same wargear for the most part. Just add a weapon or two to the armoury list and your golden.

Right now now though I'd be happy to get some formation sugar coating for the under represented factions lol.

[angkor what?]

Yes all this small faction attention has got me buzzing, especially for codex:kroot!
I really do believe they can cover sub factions in one book. Just use a decurion style formation for each chapter, craftworld, waaagh or legion. Give that detachment access to its own rules, separate wargear table and war lord traits and jobs a good 'un, and everyone should be happy.

[angkor what?]

We could be only mere hours or days away from knowing the true state of the game, in regards to force organisation and army composition.
We have seen a new detachment leaked for eldar and it looks like it will be the vanilla decurion, as opposed to a craftworld specific one.

But... What if there is a saim hann detachment or a iyanden detachment? Speculation on my part would suggest that is the route they will be taking for craft worlds, chapters, klans etc.
This would mean:
-no expensive supplement to play your iron hands or black legion etc, its already in the codex
-could be the return of ork clans in a simple WD datasheet
-no need for codex chaos renegades, codex chaos legions or any other supplement to support your warband/legion of choice

Yes they come with restrictions but in this age of unbound and multiple cads I reckon it's potentially more balanced list building than those two ( Yes they did miss the boat with a couple of necron ones)

Excited for what this week will bring and what that means for the future

[angkor what?]

Ok so we've seen the description now on the new eldar codex and I noticed there will only be one unique detachment for the eldar. so no craftworld specific ones, but hey Ho all is not lost for other factions getting that treatment. Still possible for chapter tactics and legions/warbands but less likely for ork klans as they're on a similar tabletop function as craftworlds. I've preordered the codex so hopefully formations will help the craftworlds find some flavour but shame it's not in detachment form