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How do?

So we're apparently getting a new edition of 40k this year. Which is nice.

And there are of course various rumours flying around, including that it might be taking inspiration from Age of Sigmar.

Now, some might panic. AoS was certainly a big change to Warhammer, and it's a very different game. But rather than discuss the merits of that particular game, I want to discuss which element could be transferred over to 40k as is - so no major changes to the basic rules (to hit, to wound, to save etc)

Here's some thoughts to get you started.

1. Floating Initiative.

Man, I love that rule. For me it gives you a lot to think about in each turn, as you never know if your opponent might be about to get two player turns back to back. Took me a bit to get my head round it, but now I'm used to it it's a really fun challenge.

2. Warscrolls/Datasheets

They're neat, they're tidy, they're a bit of a blessing. If you're not familiar, imagine not having to flip through various books because all the unit rules are right there on a single page. Not quite as instantly transferable to 40k, but can be done with minimal tweaking.

That's my two top picks. Now over to you.

Remember, this isn't a chance to bash either rules set!

I think you have to pay points for formations. Not sure since I've not played AoS since it's release.

But people actually paying for those super killy special rules would be nice.

The Floating Initiative format would ruin 40k in my opinion.
Can you imagine 2 back to back turns of Tau shooting?
Or even anyone good/average in the shooting phase vs chaos demons or orks?

Not much.

Nothing, I honestly can't think of 1 thing AoS improved on.

Maybe unit cards....they were kinda useful for the time we tried it.

Cost for formations. Pretty much that's it.

Can you imagine 2 back to back turns of Tau shooting?

I thought they already got two back to back turns of shooting. Oh wait..that's called overwatch...

I think it would be better if the people writing the rules learned from games outside of GW. Otherwise it might get incestuous.

I like battleshock tests better than morale tests, especially in melee (I'm not a fan of sweeping advances).

Points for formation seems obvious, I really don't understand why we don't have that in 40K.

Warscrolls are pretty convenient, but I would prefer a GW-sanctioned army-building app (an official battlescribe, kept up-to-date by GW).

IMHO:

1) Three ways to play; yes, Matched subsumed the others but sometimes you find people who want to play default AOS, and this would let them include battleplan equivalents (Eternal War?) for more than just pickup game style approaches.

2) Free rules/warscrolls (dataslates?) available with updates

3) Battalions costing points, although this has the effect in AOS of basically killing the mega-battalion/Decurion types since they require all the other battalions to also be included, and the points are insane (The Flesh-Eater court one, for example, comes to 720 points just for the cost of all the battalions)

4) Restrictions on Leaders/Artillery/Behemoth at points levels, this could correspond to either a CAD approach or limiting tanks and walkers and such in general.

I think floating initiative would be terrible for 40k as it's done in AOS; it should have been like "order dice" that Bolt Action uses, or hell just change it from IGO-UGO to roll to pick a unit (same principle but more random).

Degrading Vehicle/MC Rules

It's a bit funny that AoS has better vehicle rules than 40K, but it does. The multiple wounds / degrading functionality as you take damage would be much better at representing a Titan, Rhino or Land Raider losing functionality as it gets hit.

Similarly the variable weapon damage that goes along with it would simplify 40K greatly without losing complexity. You could drop all the interconnected rules around Instant Death and Eternal Warrior and just have Lascannons do 1d6 wounds.

 Asmodai wrote:
Degrading Vehicle/MC Rules

It's a bit funny that AoS has better vehicle rules than 40K, but it does. The multiple wounds / degrading functionality as you take damage would be much better at representing a Titan, Rhino or Land Raider losing functionality as it gets hit.

Similarly the variable weapon damage that goes along with it would simplify 40K greatly without losing complexity. You could drop all the interconnected rules around Instant Death and Eternal Warrior and just have Lascannons do 1d6 wounds.

This too completely forgot about degrading stats as it took damage.

I'd like them to scrap alp the psychic rules and use the AOS system for casting and denying.

One thing people always forget to mention about AoS formations (Warscroll Battallions) is that they still have to fit within the FOC. That's one thing I definitely want to see in 40k. I'm also a fan of how AoS handles Heroes (ICs). They can't be attached to other units and hidden away (so no more Death Stars!), but have increased survivability to compensate.

I'm not a fan of the shooting rule in AoS since you can still shoot into and out of combat, so I'm hoping that won't carry over.

Floating initiative is questionable since it can turn the tide too easily.
But warscrolls would be highly welcome. All rules at one sight similar to PP.

The AOS rule pamphlet is an insult to wargaming. If this kind of ruleset will be implemented in 40K, it will alienate a lot of veteran players. But maybe this is what GW really wants. These old guys just don´t buy enough stuff anyway and instead glorify the golden days of the past. Thats bad for business, so just get rid of them.

There are some very good things in AoS that would benefit 40k.

- Point costs for formations
- Degrading MC/vehicle stats
- The rending system! No more problems with 2++ rerollable saves when a Lascannon hit lowers your save by 4 I think this would help a lot with the save-stacking problem we see right now

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do?

So we're apparently getting a new edition of 40k this year. Which is nice.

And there are of course various rumours flying around, including that it might be taking inspiration from Age of Sigmar.

Now, some might panic. AoS was certainly a big change to Warhammer, and it's a very different game. But rather than discuss the merits of that particular game, I want to discuss which element could be transferred over to 40k as is - so no major changes to the basic rules (to hit, to wound, to save etc)

Here's some thoughts to get you started.

1. Floating Initiative.

Man, I love that rule. For me it gives you a lot to think about in each turn, as you never know if your opponent might be about to get two player turns back to back. Took me a bit to get my head round it, but now I'm used to it it's a really fun challenge.

2. Warscrolls/Datasheets

They're neat, they're tidy, they're a bit of a blessing. If you're not familiar, imagine not having to flip through various books because all the unit rules are right there on a single page. Not quite as instantly transferable to 40k, but can be done with minimal tweaking.

That's my two top picks. Now over to you.

Remember, this isn't a chance to bash either rules set!

Floating init would murder this game. Imagine a black legion raptor talon alpha striking on turn 1 and THEN taking an turn right after. Thats a auto win unless you play Tau. 40k is far to deadly to allow this.

I wouldnt mind warscrolls. WOuld save me hundreds of dollars on books.

AoS has plenty of great aspects, but I don't think there's much that could or should carry over to 40K.

- The damage charts for MC would be fantastic to have in 40K. This could probably be one generic chart.
- Points for formations, obviously. This would require a new publication of some sort.

Otherwise a simple removal of unnecessary bloat and overabundance of special rules from 40K should be fine.

Rules distrubution.
Pointed formations and CAD type restrictions still in use.
Degrading performance of large centerpiece models as damage is accrued.
Characters not being able to join units while still being important for buffing/debuffing etc.

AoS is an abysmally bad system. Compete garbage through and through

The random initiative rule that it has is possibly the worst thing i've ever seen. Thats all we need is more fething randomness in this game.

Can you possibly fathom an army like Tau or Eldar getting two turns of shooting in a row? Think about that for a second.

Characters not being able to join units is incredibly stupid and immersion breaking.

The Magic system is so simple it requires no thought, attention or dice management. The might as well just remove it all together and make the spells automatically cast. Not that I'm defending the 40K psychic phase. That thing is fething terrible too. They need to revamp the whole thing.

The ONLY thing I might want to see is monstrous creatures getting worse as they take wounds. But again that requires more note taking which might slow the game down unnecessarily.

Here are some things I was playing with. Its war-scrolls I made for Horus Heresy games played using the AoS rules unmodified.

It seems to play fairly well so far and greatly reduces the special rule searching normally found in 40k.

I picked 30k units to start with since they are generally all the same and I wouldn't have to do multiple codexes just to have a test game.

http://imgur.com/rhLIEg0

http://imgur.com/7SOuJjI


I thought this might pertain to the conversation here, let me know what you think.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have more done but this is just a quick taste. if anyone knows how to embed these images let me know....

I think there's a few great things in AoS that would work well for 40k.

Degrading monsters/vehicles.

A simplified spell/psychic system.

A change to the IGOUGO system. Even if it isn't the initiative system the AoS uses (which is very similar to the LotR initiative system, which I also like).

I really like the idea of warscrolls, but I'm afraid it would mean massively simplifying unit entries. There is NO WAY you can list all the wargear options for most generic characters, or even sergeants, on a single page with all their stats. In order to Warscroll 40k, the options are gonna need serious streamlining.

There's a fan made 40k AoS rule set out there made by Hive Fleet Charybdis. I think it gives a pretty good idea of SOME of the things we can expect. But it's HUGELY simplified from current 40k list building.

Ushtarador wrote:
There are some very good things in AoS that would benefit 40k.

- Point costs for formations
- Degrading MC/vehicle stats
- The rending system! No more problems with 2++ rerollable saves when a Lascannon hit lowers your save by 4 I think this would help a lot with the save-stacking problem we see right now

What is the rending system? I don't know anything about AoS

I like the Vehicle/MC degradation system but I'd rather see the XWing initiative system than the AoS one, Eldar would need some reigning in first but after that the XWing initiative system would really represent how Eldar are different to a Space Marine - Stupidly high initiative and skill but average-human fragility.

Rending is kind of like the AP system.

If a weapon has rend it reduces the armour save value of it's target by the allotted amount.

So Rend -1 reduces the armour save of the opponent by one, Rend -2 by 2 and so on.

Actually, now that I think on it, the rend system might benefit 40K. Depending on other factors like how ranged weapons will be implemented into the system.

I think the biggest thing was "people don't just want to play with completely unstructured sandboxes". GW has this idea that their customer base just wants to put pretty things on a table and treat them like toys, and that failed with AoS and it took them a year to get around to realizing that, I'm hoping they apply that lesson more to 40k as well since that's the direction it's been heading.

I think a lot of the point has been missed here. What 40K can learn from AOS isn't just the basic rules.

For example the random turn order wouldn't work in 40k as several people have rightly said. Examples have been given that two rounds of tau shooting would be brutal and thats right. But the problem is not the random turn order, the problem is that certain armies in this game are far too destructive. Certain units can delete other units at will.

That is the problem with 40k.

Yes, the degrading monster/vehicle stats are cool, paying for formations is welcome, but this is window dressing.

The best thing for 40k to absorb from AOS is balance and parity. Anything can harm anything, there are no deathstars, and there is much better balance between armies in AOS.

40k has produced super build armies, overpowered formations, inexplicable disparity and consistency between points for different units. Some armies literally have no chance against others.

Ask an ork, AM or CSM player.

The approach to fixing things is to add more formations, extra complexity, extra layers of rules rather than fix the fundamentals of the army.

40k is a fun game, but the factions are in desperate need of some AOSing.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Rending is kind of like the AP system.

If a weapon has rend it reduces the armour save value of it's target by the allotted amount.

So Rend -1 reduces the armour save of the opponent by one, Rend -2 by 2 and so on.

Actually, now that I think on it, the rend system might benefit 40K. Depending on other factors like how ranged weapons will be implemented into the system.

Sounds like a pretty good system for 40k. It would make units with high armor saves still usefull

Meh, stuff that used to bypass armor now barely lowers the save