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Today I wrote up a minor adjustment to the rules the would hopefully accomplish 2 things while still keeping the 40K flavor. It needs more playtesting as current playtesting is only limited to what my local playgroup has, so any constructive feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Rules Design Notes & Goals
1. Remove the devastating first turn issue. The first turn can be devastating if your opponent makes all of it’s rolls and you don’t make all of yours. I believe having an alternating activation sequence would solve this issue and add an level tactics and strategy to game play.
2. Add some usefulness to having an HQ. Other than being a really good model with lots of abilities the HQ serves no general in game purpose outside of combat. Rolling for control of the round would make the HQ more important and giving them a leadership range again adds new tactics and strategy.Here are the rules adjustments I’m proposing folks to try out.

A Game Round
A game round is divided into 4 phases, Control Phase, Movement Phase, Shooting Phase and Assault Phase. When all phases have been completed a new round begins.

Control Phase - Both players roll 1D6 for control adding their HQ’s Leadership stat plus your army’s Strategy Rating. If the HQ is no longer in play take the highest Leadership stat of the models currently in play but do not add your Strategy Rating to the total. The player with the highest total gets to decide who goes first this round.

Movement Phase - Player who goes first moves one unit then the opposing player moves one unit. Both players continue to move units until all units have been moved.

Shooting Phase - Player who moved first shoots with one unit then the opposing player shoots with one unit. Both players continue to shoot until all units have shot.

Assault Phase -Player who shot first assaults with one unit then the opposing player assaults with one unit. Both players continue to assault until all units have assaulted.

Delayed Activation
If you have less units than your opponent you may opt to delay your activation during any of the phases. For example if you have 3 units on the table and your opponent has 4, during the current phase I may delay the activation of unit. Once both players have an equal amount of units that are not deployed you can no long delay your activation.

HQ Modifications
Your HQ has a Leadership Range equal to it’s Leadership value in inches. Your HQ is the main model in it’s unit and range is measured from that model. Model’s within Leadership Range of your HQ do not need to make a Targeting Priority Test during it’s shooting phase if required to do so.

Problem:

You play Grey Knights. You have your Grand Master + Retinue, Two squads of GK Marines, a TelAttack Squad, a Dread, a Land Raider and maybe another squad in there.

I play Guard. I have my CHQ, 4 HW units, 2 more Command Sections, 8 different squads, 2 Chimeras, 2 Russes and Basilisk, 2 Cyclops Demo Vehicles, a squadron of Sentinels a unit of Rough Riders and two units of Storm Troopers. And an allies Inquisitor w/Assassin.

You have 7 units. I have 28 units.

40K above 1000 points would be too big for this sort of system. It's a good system - don't get me wrong - and us at the Revisited Project are working on a 40K Advanced System that uses an initiative based system such as this, but our scale is much smaller (2 characters, 3 squads and maybe a tank or two).

You start playing people who have Guard or Orks, and this runs into problems.

BYE

Larkin Vain -HQ Modifications
Your HQ has a Leadership Range equal to it’s Leadership value in inches. Your HQ is the main model in it’s unit and range is measured from that model. Model’s within Leadership Range of your HQ do not need to make a Targeting Priority Test during it’s shooting phase if required to do so.

I like that one particularly mate. Nice to see somebody thinking "outside the box" so to speak.

With Smace Marinez(hurr), would a Chapter Master still use his 'Rites of Battle' as usual, but then apply above rule with a 10" limitation?

The other ideas seem to negate the harshness of the whole 'you go, I go'-(if I have anything left after that-lol)

H.B.M.C. wrote:Problem:

You play Grey Knights. You have your Grand Master + Retinue, Two squads of GK Marines, a TelAttack Squad, a Dread, a Land Raider and maybe another squad in there.

I play Guard. I have my CHQ, 4 HW units, 2 more Command Sections, 8 different squads, 2 Chimeras, 2 Russes and Basilisk, 2 Cyclops Demo Vehicles, a squadron of Sentinels a unit of Rough Riders and two units of Storm Troopers. And an allies Inquisitor w/Assassin.

You have 7 units. I have 28 units.

40K above 1000 points would be too big for this sort of system. It's a good system - don't get me wrong - and us at the Revisited Project are working on a 40K Advanced System that uses an initiative based system such as this, but our scale is much smaller (2 characters, 3 squads and maybe a tank or two).

You start playing people who have Guard or Orks, and this runs into problems.

BYE

Thank you for your feedback. The issue of the vast difference in units numbers have come up and that is why we thought that option to delay an activation would help that out. As long as you have less units to activate during any of the phases than your opponent you may choose to delay an activation.

For example, player 1 is first and does the move for 1 unit of storm troopers. Player 2 has less models than player 1 at that point and delays activating any models. Player 1 then activates another unit of stormtroopers and moves them. Player 2 still has less units on left to activate but doesn't delay his activation this time and activates his Grey Nights and moves them into position, and so on.

akira5665 wrote:

Larkin Vain -HQ Modifications
Your HQ has a Leadership Range equal to it’s Leadership value in inches. Your HQ is the main model in it’s unit and range is measured from that model. Model’s within Leadership Range of your HQ do not need to make a Targeting Priority Test during it’s shooting phase if required to do so.

I like that one particularly mate. Nice to see somebody thinking "outside the box" so to speak.

With Smace Marinez(hurr), would a Chapter Master still use his 'Rites of Battle' as usual, but then apply above rule with a 10" limitation?

The other ideas seem to negate the harshness of the whole 'you go, I go'-(if I have anything left after that-lol)

Thanks for the comments. Glad you liked that little addition. I would say he could use it as normal as that is his normal ability.

Larkin Vain wrote:Thank you for your feedback. The issue of the vast difference in units numbers have come up and that is why we thought that option to delay an activation would help that out. As long as you have less units to activate during any of the phases than your opponent you may choose to delay an activation.

Oh I understand how it works, but what I'm saying is that the system falls apart under its own complexity when you get armies with a significant disparity between the amounts of units. This is why I chose two extremes - GKs with virtually no units and Guard with loads of units.

I'm coming at this from a BattleTech perspective. At the start of each turn in BTech both players roll for initiative, and then both players taken turns moving, then shooting and then physical assault. If one player has twice as many 'Mechs as the other person, then they move/shoot/assault with 2 'Mechs for every 1 'Mech the opponent uses. And this works fine. But if one person had 40 'Mechs and the other person 3, it would get tedious and fall apart quite quickly.

So I think your system is fine - and I'm sure it'll work - just not on anything beyond a 1250 point scale of game. Once you hit 1500+ you're getting too many units to do this with.

BYE

Good point. I've never played any game above 1500 and 1000 looks like a good threshold. I've got experiment at that level of play.

Oh by they way I love the work you guys are doing over the revisited project. I thought of doing that one time but it's a lot of work so I just settled for a minor modification as I'm too lazy to do more