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BTNeophyte wrote:
Other than a balance pass, I would love to see a reduction in scale for the entire game. I think being able to take so many things is one of the things that hurts the balance of this game. I would also be interested in seeing the horus heresy force org become a standard (mainly the no more than 25% of points in the lords of war spot).

The scale is actually one of my favorite things about 40k. I love fielding large armies of mostly infantry (the SM army I'm building will have about 60 tac models in the main force)! I would, however, like to see different rule sets for different point levels. Maybe break them down into 250-750 points, 750-2000, 2000+.

 EnTyme wrote:

BTNeophyte wrote:
Other than a balance pass, I would love to see a reduction in scale for the entire game. I think being able to take so many things is one of the things that hurts the balance of this game. I would also be interested in seeing the horus heresy force org become a standard (mainly the no more than 25% of points in the lords of war spot).

The scale is actually one of my favorite things about 40k. I love fielding large armies of mostly infantry (the SM army I'm building will have about 60 tac models in the main force)! I would, however, like to see different rule sets for different point levels. Maybe break them down into 250-750 points, 750-2000, 2000+.

I would go so far as to say that more models means more balance. It's considerably harder to balance things the closer it gets to a 1v1 model scenario without making them all the exact same. It's sort of like one of the achilles heels of the game; the D6. There aren't enough sides on a D6 to convey nuances, so you get the massive leap between a 3+ save and a 2+ save, without nothing in between. (Honestly, they should give basically everyone FNP, and then use that as a sort of scaler in between save values to make more nuanced rolls, but that's me getting sidetracked.) In the same way, if we have a lot of models, there's much more potential to balance it around that without having a single model loss mean we've already lost the game.

That said, they're not even trying to balance, so to hell with it. I like the current scale though, because when fully painted, it looks great on the table, having a few units scurrying around, rather than individual models.

The shorter question would be, what wouldn't you change about 40k?

1: All armies are required to have 40% Troops.
2: Ditch the Allies rules.
3: Psykers can't use power dice from other psykers.

Fixes most of the glaring issues 40K has.

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:
1: All armies are required to have 40% Troops.
2: Ditch the Allies rules.
3: Psykers can't use power dice from other psykers.

Fixes most of the glaring issues 40K has.

That wouldn't fix one of the major issues, Eldar, just make guardians troops, nothing else, if it's on a bike, it's fast attack

 Formosa wrote:
if it's on a bike, it's fast attack

A man after my own heart.

Rules.
Cost.
Fluff.
Sculpts.

Not a single one of those things is good enough right now in my opinion for me to want to get back into the game.

Brother Armiger wrote:

Make Space Marines taller.I understand that the model is iconic, but it's pretty simple- I would like to see them less 'stubby' and a bit taller and bigger. As it stands, they're no bigger than the guardsmen.

Make the IG models slimmer. Pretty simple. Slimmer models could also mean it would be easier to use female bodies that would be compatible with male troops' arms.

Solved the first one.

Agree on the second one, which is why all my IGuard are the older metal which aren't so egregiously chunky.



As far as what I would fix:

Get rid of the bloat. Flyers, Knights, Superheavies. Formations. Detachments. Anything designed to "Kitchen sink" army lists, or simply to sell models (Oh look, this is awesome, but you have to take this one undesirable model to use it).

Tone down the Herohammer. Strip down the ability to create Death Stars.

Re-emphasize the core infantry and return to 40K's Futuristic Wargame roots with structured army lists similar to what the best Historicals games do, and then allow supporting units to be taken.

Alter the rules for shooting and cover to eliminate discrepancies that make cover valuable for some troops and nearly pointless for others. Fix the armor save/AP mechanic to get rid of the "all or nothing" aspect of it and thus eliminate the slow creep of low AP weapons neutralizing the armor that expensive units pay for.

Revamp army compositions to reduce the prevalence of hand to hand in some armies, and increase the shooting capability of core troops. This will help prevent drastic swings of effectiveness between troops and create a more representative point value for troops.

Remove the stupidity. Lots to include here, but stuff like requiring vehicles, beasts and bike and jump infantry (etc) to move less than 6" in order to score objectives (no fly-bys and last-turn steals).


Basically things that will never happen to 40K outside of a fan-created ruleset, because it would invalidate large chunks of many peoples' collections. I've toyed with the idea of making 40K playable and enjoyable again for the disaffected old school fans who don't like what the game has mutated into. But it's a lot of work.

1. Remove Super-Heavies, GMCs, Flyers and D-weapons, or restrict those to at least 3000 point games. The presence of these, and the need to counter these, is one of the biggest things hampering regular troops.
2. Bring back some form of FOC
3. Modernize all model lines, especially SOB and CSM

Those are the quick answers, but to go deeper:
4. Ground-up rewrite of all rules

And finally, the big one and the one that can never happen:
5. Change to D10 or D12, as was mentioned before, there are now way too many units for a D6 to handle

Emphasize tactical maneuvering. What does this mean? It means that where you move you units both in accordance to your other models, and your enemies has a dramatic effect on the battlefield. As of now flanking an enemy is worthless due to how the wound and armor system works. Suppressing fire is useless for 90% of the armies because of ridiciliously high leadership values. Movement for infantry is often too slow to even advance far enough to pull off a flank, or to bound from one piece of cover to another.

I should be able to suppress an enemy squad and then use that gap in the enemies defenses to obtain flanking positions on the enemies other forward defenses. Taking those out from that position should then allow more of my forces to advance.

- change cover saves to being to hit roll modifiers. Existing mechanic makes no sense.

- vehicle rules all feel like a huge mess where things keep being piled on. Tank shock is a good example of a disaster. If you can't make it usable, rip it out.

- actually, the entire rule book is this way. Simplify things so that I don't have to look through 12 pages to figure out how a skimmer moves. everything feels like special rules layered on top of other special rules. No wonder there are so many rules "lawyers" in the community. You practically have to get a degree in deciphering codexes to understand what's going on. Incidentally this is probably why the rules team is lost: even they don't know how it works.

- bring some sanity back to unit classification. A riptide is not a monstrous creature. It isn't a creature at all. It's a walker. Bikes, any shape or form, aren't troops.

- spend some quality time on the codexes. This means everything from proofreading to just making sure everything in it has a place. See DE Wyches as an example of cool models looking for a rule set.

 Formosa wrote:

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:
1: All armies are required to have 40% Troops.
2: Ditch the Allies rules.
3: Psykers can't use power dice from other psykers.

Fixes most of the glaring issues 40K has.

That wouldn't fix one of the major issues, Eldar, just make guardians troops, nothing else, if it's on a bike, it's fast attack

Our Eldar players don't abuse Scatbikes. If they did, we'd have to address it. Most likely in the way you suggest. Windriders are ridiculous. They should never have been made Troops in the first place.

Bikes as troops is an artifact left over from when there used to be maneuver specialist variants of armies (Bel Tan, White Scars, Speed Freeks). As mentioned above, maneuver has been gradually removed from the game. So. Bikers are all now fast attack. Agreed. But there are no restrictions on quantity of FA any more. They can all hold objectives but are trumped by OBSEC. Not sure that is fair to the biker specialist armies.

I'd do away with most or all rules that carry over to the next round (think Concussive). These are fine in smaller games but a PITA to keep track of if there's lots of them at play in a really big game.

clively wrote:
vehicle rules

Jesus, man. Why are Walkers vehicles when Dreadknights aren't? Why are bikes not vehicles? What the hell is a Centurion trying to be? How come nearly every single flyer that is used is also a skimmer? Maybe that combination shouldn't have been so common? Why are SKitarii chickenriders not Open Topped? Who is John Galt?

Honestly, I like bikers better as troops, and I wish walkers were too. Although Onager Dunecrawler is straddling a crevice between the walker and tank, looking like a bit of both.