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I made a flow chart of a 40K turn to get a better grasp of the rules. I'm not sure if it's of any use to others, but I felt I learned a lot making it. Let me know if you see any obvious errors or omissions. I intentionally used the rulebook only, ignoring codices. You're free to do whatever you want with it. It was made in Microsoft Visio, so ask if you want a copy in that format. It was formatted to print tabloid (11x17).

Image: http://www.blackdiamondgames.com/images/40K.png.

Now that, is a nice lookin flowchart. Needs more bacon though:
http://images.foodproof.com/bacon-flow-chart.jpg

Mmmmm. bacon.

This should help you understand it

xkcd ftw

I could never get FreeBSD to install.

At first glance it looks pretty good, but it has quite a few flaws in it. Example:

If I have a Walker in difficult terrain and I want to move out of it an into another piece of terrain I'd have to (when following your chart) make 2 separate difficult terrain tests (which do nothing) and can still move up to 12 inch, but can't fire any weapons.

The result shoud be: "Trow 2d6 and move up to the number of inches of the highest dice trown. Can fire all weapons."

There are more faults like this one in the chart (skimmers can't use roads for another example).

I like the chart, but you have to do some serious tweakin' boy!

I'll work on it. More examples would be helpful.

Gwar! wrote:Now that, is a nice lookin flowchart. Needs more bacon though:
http://images.foodproof.com/bacon-flow-chart.jpg

Gwar! is bacon.

1. you only need one difficult terrain test then your free to move

2. walkers can only move 6" (not 12")

3. no mention of what you do with your difficult terrain test. (this is your movement this turn)

4. a use any psychic powers available option might be useful as Eldar players must use them at the start of the turn.

5.some Psychic powers are used in the shooting phase and may be used while in Close combat (a use any psychic powers available option might be useful)

6.can not shoot troops may run (troop spelt wrong but) should read "Infantry, jump infantry, monstrous creatures, beast & cavalry and walkers may run"

7."Roll to hit rapid fire twice" ... don't like how thats worded ... should read "each gun fires 2 shots" and then the arrow lead to the "roll to hit" box.

8. Missing the melta & tank hunter rule ... good place would be with the ordinance rule

9. missing the rules for modifying the roll on the damage chart. glancing hit -2, AP - -1, AP1 +1 and target is open topped +1

10. You locked in assault ... your done???? what happened to the close combat?

11. Roll to wound using the strength vs toughness (unless told other wise, i.e. poison weapons)

12. looser checks moral ...lalala... or if fearless take 1 addition wound equal to the amount they lost the combat.

13. Do any psychic test at the start of the phase


Think that's all the errors.

Thanks!

Revised.

I'm not including codex specific rules. That would be a neat project for someone else to do from this point.

Nice. Forgot to mention but this would be nice as a standard part of the rule book.

This is absolutely great and thank you. Not only is it a wonderful tool to help get the basics squared away myself, but for new players it's incredibly handy to teach them the flow of the game.

This is pretty awesome. I'm going to get a tattoo of this done on my right forearm.

And just change your tattoo every edition? Would be cheaper than playing, I suppose.

Here is a list of errors I found.

Movement
1. Under skimmers in the movement phase your rules have alot of issues, they seem to reflect fast vehicles rather than skimmers, a skimmer that is not fast follows normal vehicle rules (i.e. 6" and one main all defensive or 12" and no weapons).

2. Jump infantry are only granted a 6" move in your flowchart, this would be accurate for "jet pack infantry" however jump infantry such as assault marines get a 12" move.

3. The movement phase doesn't account for bikes at all and following the flow of it you would end up assuming bikes are vehicles which is incorrect.

4. You really need to know the unit type before resolving movement with regards to terrain, for example bikes take a dangerous terrain test instead of difficult terrain test and monstrous creatures can roll an extra d6 when testing.

Shooting
5. The way run is shown is slightly misleading since you can do it regardless of whether you can see enemies or not.

6. This one is knitpicking but you refer to the blast marker as a template, while the rules do not for clarity of seperating the flame template from the blast markers

7. There's nothing about determining cover in the shooting flow for shooting non-vehicles

Assaulting
8. The flowchart says units that ran may not assault, however if they have the USR Fleet they are allowed to.

9. If you don't wound in melee the combat ends prematurely the way the chart is established.



Overall it's a cool idea although I think to properly cover all the situations would require a horrible to read flowchart with lots of duplicate boxes that check the same thing.

What I need is not a flow chart but just an A4 piece of paper that says "DIFFICULT TERRAIN TESTS ARE 2D6 PICK THE HIGHEST" game after game I have a mental snap and just roll 1d6 for them and I don't really know why.

Good catches on all of those. I've updated it. I agree that the chart begins to get overly complex, due to all the variations. That's before adding all the variant rules in the codices! I've learned an awful lot by making this, but I'm doubtful of it's value to others.

I've got the Quick Reference Sheet from somewhere. You probably need something with twice that information.

Another mistake:
Difficult terrain tests are not always 2D6. Models with MTC roll 3D6, models hit by a tremor Shell move 1D6, models with MTC and hit by a tremor shell move 2D6 etc.

MTC (move through cover) is now part of the "Is it a monstrous creature?" question. What are tremor shells?

blackdiamond wrote:MTC (move through cover) is now part of the "Is it a monstrous creature?" question. What are tremor shells?

It's a Weapon in the Space marine codex that causes the target to take a Difficult terrain test at one less dice than normal. All I am saying is it would be better to just say "Take a Difficult terrain test with Applicable Modifiers"

Wow! You must think very logically I will have to see if this helps me or confuses me... thanks for posting it!

I can't help myself, but they made me draw flowcharts in college and there are issues with the flowchart:

Movement:
1. Fast vehicles can move up to 12" and fire a weapon.

2. Jump infantry starting or ending in difficult terrain need to take a dangerous terrain test if moving 12", but can choose to move as normal infantry.

3. The box which says "Is it a MC?" should say "Does the unit have move through cover or skilled rider?" since that covers MC's, IC's, and the various other units which get the 3D6" difficult terrain.

4. Roads only give a bonus if moving at crusing speed or flat out and the entire movement is along the road.

5. The option for turboboosting is missing for bikes.

Shooting:

1. A Daemon with 'Boon of Mutation' or 'Aura of Decay', both of which are ranged weapons, may fire that weapon even if locked in close combat. Actually, both of those weapons have enough exceptions to the shooting rules that you might want to just add an asterisk to note the exception.

2. The "Run D6" You cannot assault. You are done." is incorrect because it ignores units with Fleet.

3. Units with Fleet do not require the ability to see an enemy model to run.

4. The "Choose a target and measure" should be "Choose a target, declare which models are firing and which weapons are being used, and then measure"

5. In general, the flowchart doesn't work for the case of a unit firing a mixture of blasts, ordance, templates and regular shots. You're going to need to add atleast one loop to be accurate.

Assault Phase:

1. Beasts, calvary, and a few other models can assault 12".

2. The assault phase flow chart doesn't cover the effects of moving through difficult terrain to perform the assault.

3. There are numerous abilities which either have fixed to wound rolls, or allow rerolling either to hit or to wound.

4. "Opponent counterattacks. Resolve counter attack" is misleading because both the attacker and the defender attack in initiative order (unless one side or the other has "Always Strike First") so there are situations where the counterattacks will happen first and quite commonly the attacker and the defender are striking simultaneously. This section really should be restructured into a loop.

For Sweeping Advance, the winning unit wipes out the losing unit if they tie or beat the losing units initiative+d6.

Fast Skimmers can move up to 6" and fire all weapons, or up to 12" and 1 main plus all defensive.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Fast Skimmers can move up to 6" and fire all weapons, or up to 12" and 1 main plus all defensive.

Just like Fast Non Skimmers, hence the Type being classed as "Fast"

solkan wrote: 3. The box which says "Is it a MC?" should say "Does the unit have move through cover or skilled rider?" since that covers MC's, IC's, and the various other units which get the 3D6" difficult terrain.

Actually skilled rider only allows a re-roll of dangerous terrain tests, of course, bikes aren't effected by difficult terrain (it's treated as dangerous) while cavalry are still slowed by it.

...I looked at it and...well, I got lost.

Sorry, since we were posting flowcharts i couldn't resist...

blackdiamond:

The concept is very good. Consider what's you've done to be a rough copy. Now you need to edit, expand, and reformat. It would also be good if you include the Codex rules, etc.

Grinshanks- I laughed out loud

Is that your picture? I'm going to save a copy of it and want to give the creator credit

Blackdiamond- This is great, I don't know if you're going to be able to cover every possibility / unit type without it getting too complex! But it's a great idea even if you needed a separate one for certain specific units / circumstances.