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Hi to all of you! This is my first post on Dakka, still I have always been an avid reader since I started the hobby
5 years ago.

I'm not really a competitive player, and mainly have casual games with a very small group of friends that all shared the hobby for at least the same time as me.

We love improvising rules in our games, and it’s been a while since I've wanted to right up alternate rules for playing 40K at a relatively small scale, using 6th edition as the basis. Nothing to complicated.

I just wanted to know how other casual gamers would react to such a rule set. The basic desire was really to streamline the turn process, remove a lot of the random stuff, especially with movement. Also, as it’s designed for smaller games, we wanted more freedom concerning what units you could field, while at the same time limiting the ability to spam stuff that was considered too powerful for a game at that points size.

If anyone is interested to help me fix bugs or expand this homemade rule set, give some ideas or criticism, it would be great! If the idea is received positively, it would be my pleasure to work on this a lot more and to right up a free downloadable PDF, with thanks for anyone that helped. The goal of our small group is really to make a simple and enjoyable rule set for relatively quick and small games, while still aiming at adding more depth and options.

I think that what we devised so far lets you play fast-paced and tactically engaging games with elite and very specialized armies. In my mind it’s a very effective way to portray the scale of battle of Recon Forces. There's a much stronger emphasis overall on the movement and the position of units.

If anyone is interested in the full rules, I’ll update the post or probably give a link to them.

Those are the big lines; it’s basically for 100pts to 500pts games, no FOC.

- All units with the "infantry" type, Characters and Independent Characters are "Scoring".
- The amount you can spend on war gear options is limited to 1/3 of your points.
- The amount you can spend on Flyers, Vehicles, Walkers, Flying or non flying Monstrous Creatures aswell as Buildings and Fortifications altogether is limited to 50% of your points.
- Strength D weapons, Armor 15 and Superheavies are not allowed.
- "Flamer" and "Blast/Large Blast" weapons, aswell as S8 or more and AP3 or less weapons all combined are limited to 1 per every 100pts.
- For every 100pts, 1 model may take "Specialist Doctrines", Kill Team style. (Characters can take up to 2; Independent Characters may take up to 3)

Some major and other minor changes made to the Core Rules:

- Changed turn sequence (Player one moves, player two moves, player one shoots, player two shoots... etc.)
- Models hitting by comparing BS and WS with target's Initiative while shooting or in combat.
- Streamlined and simple movement rules.
- Units gaining a fixed movement value depending on their type
- Units always able to make a full move value during each phase, instead of shooting at full BS or assaulting
- Introduction of "Hull Saves" for Flyers, Vehicles and Walkers as well as a modified Damage Chart.
- Introduction of “Situational Accuracy Modifiers" for shooting.
- New quick and simple rules for Flamers that spread well, fire, and Exploding Effects from Grenades and Blasts.
- Target Priority Tests.
- New Rules for Reserves and Outflanking.
- Units gaining +1 Attack and +1 Initiative on the Charge can replace +1 Attack to make "Assault Fire" shooting attacks before the charge, resolved simultaneously with Overwatch.
- Assault move equals movement value +D6 (6"+D6 for infantry)
- Vehicles Suffering Amor Damage, also able to repair in game.
- Flyers able to land, rules for crashing flyers
- New USRS and some changes to old USRS.
- New Injury Table for Multi-wound models.
- Clear and balanced Terrain Placing rules.
- New simple mission table.


FULL RULES HERE ==> http://proton-pixel.blogspot.fr/

 Pyreshard wrote:

Spoiler:

Hi to all of you! This is my first post on Dakka, still I have always been an avid reader since I started the hobby
5 years ago.

I'm not really a competitive player, and mainly have casual games with a very small group of friends that all shared the hobby for at least the same time as me.

We love improvising rules in our games, and it’s been a while since I've wanted to right up alternate rules for playing 40K at a relatively small scale, using 6th edition as the basis. Nothing to complicated.

I just wanted to know how other casual gamers would react to such a rule set. The basic desire was really to streamline the turn process, remove a lot of the random stuff, especially with movement. Also, as it’s designed for smaller games, we wanted more freedom concerning what units you could field, while at the same time limiting the ability to spam stuff that was considered too powerful for a game at that points size.

If anyone is interested to help me fix bugs or expand this homemade rule set, give some ideas or criticism, it would be great! If the idea is received positively, it would be my pleasure to work on this a lot more and to right up a free downloadable PDF, with thanks for anyone that helped. The goal of our small group is really to make a simple and enjoyable rule set for relatively quick and small games, while still aiming at adding more depth and options.

I think that what we devised so far lets you play fast-paced and tactically engaging games with elite and very specialized armies. In my mind it’s a very effective way to portray the scale of battle of Recon Forces. There's a much stronger emphasis overall on the movement and the position of units.

If anyone is interested in the full rules, I’ll update the post or probably give a link to them.

Those are the big lines; it’s basically for 100pts to 500pts games, no FOC.

- All units with the "infantry" type, Characters and Independent Characters are "Scoring".
- The amount you can spend on war gear options is limited to 1/3 of your points.
- The amount you can spend on Flyers, Vehicles, Walkers and Monstrous Creatures altogether is limited to 50% of your points.
- "Flamer" and "Blast/Large Blast" weapons combined are limited to 1 per 100pts.
- S8 and AP3 or less weapons combined are limited to 1 per 100pts.
- For every 100pts, 1 model may take "Specialist Doctrines", Kill Team style. (Characters can take up to 2; Independent Characters may take up to 3)

Some major and other minor changes made to the Core Rules:

- Changed turn sequence (Player one moves, player two moves, player one shoots, player two shoots... etc.)
- Models hitting by comparing BS and WS with target's Initiative while shooting or in combat.
- Streamlined and simple movement rules.
- Units gaining a fixed movement value depending on their type
- Units always able to make a full move value during each phase, instead of shooting at full BS or assaulting
- Introduction of "Hull Saves" for Flyers, Vehicles and Walkers as well as a modified Damage Chart.
- Introduction of “Situational Accuracy Modifiers" for shooting.
- New quick and simple rules for Flamers that spread well, fire, and Exploding Effects from Grenades and Blasts.
- Target Priority Tests.
- New Rules for Reserves and Outflanking.
- Units gaining +1 Attack and +1 Initiative on the Charge can replace +1 Attack to make "Assault Fire" shooting attacks before the charge, resolved simultaneously with Overwatch.
- Assault move equals movement value +D6 (6"+D6 for infantry)
- Vehicles Suffering Amor Damage, also able to repair in game.
- Flyers able to land, rules for crashing flyers
- New USRS and some changes to old USRS.
- New Injury Table for Multi-wound models.
- New simple mission table.

I like everything in the green section, and the lack of FoC. Though line 4 should read "Weapons with S:8+ and/or Ap:3-".
I like the theory of some of the stuff in orange, but a lot of it would really be down to player-to-player preference (and I like how you separated the two sections, it makes sense).

Priority tests, new missions, Injury Tables and Reserve/Outflank rewrite look like excellent ways to make dramatic/tactical engagements.

However, giving fliers "Hull Saves" sounds like a way for my Heldrake to inspire even more rage...

If your going for quick games then orange should be avoided.
changing too much and adding additional tables will slow the game down.

Green is fine, though id just make it simple and say change force org to 1 2 1 1 1
should stop a bit of the cheese.

I'll edit the S8 thing ! ^^'

Really, thank you for the kind words, I really appreciate it.

Hull Saves are always equal to a vehicle's current ammount of Hull Points. (A vehicle with 3 Hull Points would have a 4+ Hull Save, if he loses a HP, it gets down to 5+).

Also combined with the revised Damage Chart, it's not that of a boost. Basically vehicles become harder to glance, but easier to pen; For each penetrating hit, you have to roll a Hull Save for each of your remaining Hull Points and roll on the chart.

What do you think about that.. Would it actually nerf vehicles or make them broken .. ?

Need more specifics

" Target Priority Tests. " for instance doesn't mean anything to me

Dakkamite, simply Put:

Target Priority
Units must pass a LD check if they wish to shoot at or assault an enemy unit that is not the closest enemy unit in line of sight. (“Fearless” units ignore this rule).

Edit:
I didn't add too much specific information as I thought it would be to much for an introduction. Like I said however, if anyone is really interested in the complete rules I will be
more than happy to put them online (just warning that it's quite a long read and that it's not quite finished - still not nearly as big a the BRB though thankfully).

Ok, you have my attention now. I wanted to include that exact rule (sans the fearless exception) myself.

Details would be good. I love small games and hate vanilla 40k, as do a few others around where I play

Great !

I'll put the rules up on my blog and update my first post with a link to it.

Bare with me, I personnaly still find the whole thing a little "patchwork" for now, but I'm working on it everyday.

If you find any glaring issues that would totally nerf or break certain types of armies or specific units, please let me know !

It'll be ready in a few hours.

Personally I would just modify the FOC to: 1 HQ, 1(3) Troops, 1(2) Fast Attack, 0(1) Elite and 0(0) Heavy Support. And make all non-vehicles scoring.

 S.K.Ren wrote:
Personally I would just modify the FOC to: 1 HQ, 1(3) Troops, 1(2) Fast Attack, 0(1) Elite and 0(0) Heavy Support. And make all non-vehicles scoring.

While that would undoubtably be far simpler for everyone, it's not really what we're looking for.
As I said, we wanted to try to change a lot of the current rules in order to make the whole thing more streamlined, more fluid and less clunky.

It's all about movement, postionning and decisive choices to be made in your army list aswell as in-game.

We're also trying to fix balancing issues simply; If my opponent wants to field loads of vehicles or even an all bike army because he finds it fluffy, he can. But without infantry
he won't be able to take objectives, and that might cost him most games.

Basically we're aiming for people being able to field a healthy dose of whatever they find cool, be it considered overpowered or not. Restrictions to specialist weapons insures
the balance that the missing FOC does not.

Oh and i forgot to mention in the first post that minimum squad sizes are divided by two, rounded up.

 Pyreshard wrote:

Oh and i forgot to mention in the first post that minimum squad sizes are divided by two, rounded up.

Gimme!

 Selym wrote:

 Pyreshard wrote:

Oh and i forgot to mention in the first post that minimum squad sizes are divided by two, rounded up.

Gimme!

Haha xp

You would be able to field a larger variety of units that way, or very cheap suicide squads of 5 ork boyz or termagants. At a low points game, target saturation
works pretty well if your opponent only has very few units.

I have been working on a similar idea for the minimum sized squad idea divided by 2
But I just went with all units have a max size of 5 or their minimum size
chaos marine bikes would be 3-5 models
ork boyz have a minimum of 10 so their maximum size would be 10
Once you have your unit then you combat squad into 2 equal halves if your original unit is an odd number like 5 then you make 2 combat squads as even as possible so you would have 2 combat squads of 3 and 2
Maximum points spent on a unit is 125 points not including dedicated transport

That's a pretty neat idea Hummus ! I'll think about it..

Man, the 1/2 max size rule has been on my wishlist too. Though hummus' one is pretty neat as well.

Wheres your rules mate? What happened to a couple of hours?

Sorry Dakkamite, I had an unfortunate change of plans at the last minute yesterday..

However I had enough time to patch up the rules a bit and make a reasonably structured version of them.

As of now the only things I haven't really touched upon are Independant Characters, Psykers, and Transports, aswell as minor things
like some USRS that need tweaks.

I'll upload the full thing before the end of the day, for sure. In the mean time, if anyone of you guys always wished to introduce something to the game, I'll be more than happy to hear about it !

Edit:
- Here they are; http://proton-pixel.blogspot.fr/

The advantage of the combat squadding idea is that you wouldn't have to think about if a minimum sized 1/2 squad should have access to special weapons or a champion upgrade or heavy weapon option.
i.e. a 5 model chaos marine unit can take 1 special weapon so that means you could buy your 5 man squad a flamer then combat squad into a 2 man squad and a 3 man squad and one of the combat squads gets the flamer, so you don't have to worry about balance so much.
If you wanted squads to have more options you could extend the 5 man minimum to a 10 man minimum before combat squadding so that the chaos marine squad would have the option for a heavy weapon.
I like the idea 5 man model idea more as it feels more skirmishy

hummus wrote:
The advantage of the combat squadding idea is that you wouldn't have to think about if a minimum sized 1/2 squad should have access to special weapons or a champion upgrade or heavy weapon option.
i.e. a 5 model chaos marine unit can take 1 special weapon so that means you could buy your 5 man squad a flamer then combat squad into a 2 man squad and a 3 man squad and one of the combat squads gets the flamer, so you don't have to worry about balance so much.
If you wanted squads to have more options you could extend the 5 man minimum to a 10 man minimum before combat squadding so that the chaos marine squad would have the option for a heavy weapon.
I like the idea 5 man model idea more as it feels more skirmishy

And IG armies could get very tactical

My idea is that you have 1 system were you can combat squad any of your units and in the other system you must combat squad all of your units

must combat squad all of your units

You know your idea is a good one when multiple people all come up with it independently. Seriously I'm taken aback as to how much of the stuff suggested here mirrors ideas I've had in the past, and assumably shared by many other players as well. That says to me that this could be a very fun set of rules.

As for the rules themselves;

Deployment

~Alternating terrain deployment; I think this concept is inherently flawed, and your changes are too minor to fix this terrible game mechanic

~Initiative; I'd recommend "The winner of the Initiative Roll chooses to either pick their deployment zone, or to choose who will place the first unit." Would also incorporate a 'secret deployment' wherein each player can keep one unit back to deploy last, after all other troops are deployed.

Additional Suggestions;
~Army lists are kept completely secret until the units are placed on the board.
~The two 'halves' of a unit that is combat squadded are deployed simultaneously, and perhaps within some sort of coherency of the other part of the squad.
~Make it so all forts are deployed from both players. Then all regulars. Then all infiltrators. Etc etc. I'm not 100% sure how it works now, but if I run out of regulars and have to start dropping infiltrators while you are dropping regs that seems less than great.

~Stealing the Initiative; having this be an initiative test on your Warlord's INT makes it pretty damn broken. Highly recommend this rule get taken out or reduced. Even Orks are often fielding INT 4 on their Warboss man, let alone Eldar scum.

~Reserves; Your system is a bit clunky. Would replace with something like "Roll a number of dice equal to the turn number. For each 5+ one unit arrives" or something similarly simple

~Outflanking; I love outflanking, but even I reckon "adversaries table edge" is a bit much. Outflanking restrictions/modifiers seem more clunky than anything else.

Turn Sequence

~Random Game length; Didn't like this one man, not too fond of setting up all those models and stuff only to play for 3 turns if we get snake eyes. I do agree with setting game length before the game rather than randomly on turn 5, if your having random game length at all that is.

~Unit Initiative Order; Idea is good but boy is it incredibly clunky as is. Separate them into "fast, medium, slow, etc" categories instead.

~I move, you move, I shoot, you shoot...; Far better than IGOUGO

Possible Alternative; Phases are Movement, Assault, Shooting. This would make people make choices about whether to punch or shoot a target. You'd be able to tie up enemy shooters in assault before they can shoot, but at the cost of being able to shoot at that target yourself. Overall would add a crapload of decisions to be made and decisions are good.

Possible Alternative; Same dealy but we each move one unit at a time, then shoot one unit at a time, etc.

~Difficult Terrain slows by 1d3 inches; Much better rule

Dakka Dakka Dakka

~Run then shoot, Assault Phase run; Not very fond of these. The latter in particular will lead to a nightmare of kiting and make melee very useless

Possible Alternative; *Give up* shooting and/or assault for additional movement. Kiting is not an issue if the shooters cannot shoot and run in the same phase.

~Target Priority; A+ definitely approve of this. Maybe have an exception with regards to anti-tank weapons having to shoot the nearest vehicle.

~Size BS Modifiers; Would recommend you just cut this back to "Large Target; +1 BS". Swarms would actually be damn easy to hit, and we don't really need dividers between big, bigger, and biggest

~Speed BS Modifiers; Movement needs to penalize shooting too. If anything, it'd penalize it even more than enemy movement

~Weapon Range BS Modifiers; Needs to be based on weapons actual range

~Line of Sight; This will get real fiddly, real fast. If you insist on using it, make it a 180 degree facing for simplicities sake. 90 degrees will be a nightmare.

~BS vs INT; The problem here is that models are priced for what INT does now. If suddenly Eldar are all impossible to hit, yet cost the same, we'll have problems.

Possible alternative; compare to target BS rather than INT. Skill with firearms is much less "accuracy" and more knowing what the hell you are doing with them, including how to use cover etc. BS can very easily translate to overall shooting combat skill instead of just pure accuracy

~Assault Fire; Not needed, unless you changed the turn order to put assault ahead of shooting. Overwatch as a whole isn't really needed either

Taking Damage

~Multiple Wounds damage chart/fatigue; Worried this is too clunky and too much paperwork. Would have to try it out first. Regardless the Fatigue idea is a keeper IMO.

Suggestion; Use toughness as a modifier of some sort for the chart roll. Alternatively make a toughness test for each wound, if failed you are "Fatigued" which makes you slow and gives penalties to BS etc.

~Vehicle Damage; Hull Saves and the "make a save for each hull point" mechanic for penetrating hits is good. I don't believe a Penetrating and Glancing table are needed, just have the one table. A pen simply causes multiple rolls on the table because you'll lose several hull points in one shot. The actual damage charts themselves are nothing special, I'd recommend changing them to be at least as detailed as anything your applying to multiwound models.

~Strength vs Armour table; Absolutely unnecessary and horrible. Strength + d6 works fine. Charts are crap, no exceptions.

~Per Facing Armour Damage; A nightmare of book keeping. Trust me when I say this has got to go.

Stopped there because the remaining stuff is more niggly details than important specifics

While I do agree with you on certain points, notably on the BS vs Init thing (It would make high initiative units very hard to hit indeed), I however have to disagree with you on many of your assumptions.

You have to bare in mind that this is for games on average of 250pts, so keeping track of "battle effects" is not taking you that long, especially as you'll hardly see more than 3 vehicles max on the table at 500pts due to the limitations applied.

The turn sequence in my opinion is quite fair as while a unit elects to run in the shooting phase, it gets -1 to BS for each inch moved if it desires to shoot afterwards.

The "Kiting" effect that still would be relevant for such units like Bikes and Jetbikes is taken care for in the form that their maneouvrability is quite limited, as you can check in the "Unit Type" section.

I'll give a go at trying to simplify not quite as important stuff as you suggested. Still, thank you for the feeback as it is widely appreciated.

If I may ask only one more thing of you; Try it out, at least at a 100pts, to see if the problems you mentionned in theory do actually apply and if they are not counterbalanced by other things.

I myself will do so today, and I'll let you know how it went.

The turn sequence in my opinion is quite fair as while a unit elects to run in the shooting phase, it gets -1 to BS for each inch moved if it desires to shoot afterwards.

Your rules don't say that, they just say a flat -1 if they move in the shoot phase. Its a huge difference, the kiting won't be an issue with the rules if they are like that

Sorry Dakkamite, my bad ! Will fix this right up !