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I'm wondering if I'll like 40k more if I'm playing Cities of
Death as opposed to regular 40k. How does it change your
list building? What else does it affect?

The game becomes more about building your list to handle the terrain then to handle your enemy. If you play on a fully built up table with only a few roads, then transports and tanks will have little value. On the other hand, with a lighter set up, there's enough terrain to really block flanks for tanks, while still providing lanes of fire.

In general, footslogging short range infantry become better: Berzerkers, Harlies, Sisters, Orks, chaos termies.

cities of death is a nice change from the scenarios is the rulebook. there is a decent amount of content in the book to simulate fighting in heavily built-up areas. it comes down to taste. if you like lots of cover and close quarters fighting then you should have fun with COD, but if you like setting up in a big line and blasting your opponent with big guns CoD probably isnt for you. i find its nice to have a mixture. my gaming group usually play about 1/2 our casual games normally and about 1/2 CoD.

CoD is good about making strong units vulnerable and weak units strong.

Ogryns get kinda scarier, all those Sisters units that can't survive to get to CC now can, and so many other units that just don't live to do much due to concentrated fire won't get wiped away easy. Sisters, GK, DE, and more all get a second lease on life in CoD.

CoD is a lot of fun. It can be very objective based and due to the terrain you typically see more mobile forces duking it out.

And ditto on the bad troops becoming good. Nothing more annoying than my opponents 20+ Kroot squad sitting on the objective in a 4+ cover building with the Feel No Pain bonus. Even in cc they aren't that bad so it was tough to root them out.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Much like Apocalypse, the Strategems in CoD are not very balanced. Some of them stand out as very powerful (Medicae, Sewer Rats) and can multiply the power of units greatly.

Just this weekend I watched a building packed with Necron Warriors simply destroy anything within range. The Necron player had used the Medicae facility and so his models all had FNP and WBB combined! It was just sick.

There are 2 parts to cities of death. The first part is the rules for buildings. There are basically tighter, more specific rules for how to deal with multi level buildings and ruins. All in all, the rules are well written and make quite a bit of sense. Coming from someone who has an 8' x 4' city with some buildings being as much as 5 stories tall, I really like the rules. The second part of cities of death is the stratagems (much like those from apoc). They are neat little ways to add flavor to the game. Some are significantly more powerful than others and some work better for certain units than others. I'm not all that fond of them in general so many times my opponent and I will just skip them.

Now while the rules were written with the idea of fighting in heavy urban areas in mind, they don't have to be applied that way. I would love it if every game I played used the cities do death rules for buildings. It works a lot smoother and nicer than the basic 40k rules do. I don’t care if there are only 1 or 2 buildings on the table.

Just as City Fight made 3d ed a better play, CoD makes 4th ed play dazzling.

Agree with Phoenix. COD rules should be default for any game of 40K involving buildings, and abstractly they could be applied to other types of terrain as well.

Suddenly all of those units that you wouldn't put in a list now suddenly have a place.

The stratagems can be overpowered, especially when considering some combos, but thats how it goes and doesnt make the game any less fun.

I was making some buildings with an eye toward small
skirmish games like infinity. Thus, access to interiors for
large numbers of models didn't matter quite so much. But
these posts about CoD intrigue me and now I'm going to
want to make more ruins.

Yeah, 40K does play alot better with COD Malfred. You might actually like 40K if using those rules.

Besides, it gives you a chance to dust off those eldar.

I am a huge booster of Cities of Death. Some reasons are:

The terrain placement system and mission levels make for many types of game.

The amount of terrain makes different units viable

The stratagems are both fun to play with and model.

I really like small (1000-1250 points) COD games at the alpha or gamma level on a 4x4 board.