Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except those are already discussed on the datasheets. I don't really see a point to adding anything like that.

Except they are not. Nothing i. The rules themselves defines an aura but other rules reference auras.

 Lance845 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except those are already discussed on the datasheets. I don't really see a point to adding anything like that.

Except they are not. Nothing i. The rules themselves defines an aura but other rules reference auras.

Literally the only time it isn't clear is the extent of what the Necron dude negates.

Next question to be addressed, to my mind, is "vehicles". In the 3e-7e epoch there was an entire extra chapter of the rules describing how they interacted with various bits of the game and they had a different statline; the idea that hard targets should be treated differently from soft targets started to fade during the Monstrous Creature Epoch of 5e (when the Dreadknight, Wraithknight, Riptide, and Tyranids bigger than a Carnifex started to appear), but to my mind some of the principles of vehicles are sound.

What is a Vehicle: Assume for purposes of the following that all things that are currently "vehicles" and "monsters" have arcs/facings, but that they also don't necessarily have rules that reference them; weapons aren't always locked to specific fire arcs, and plenty of vehicles/monsters should have equivalent all-round armour (there isn't a good reason to give a Daemon Prince weak rear armour, for instance).

Arcs: 3e-7e described vehicle arcs in terms of physical properties of the model; it made them easy to measure if you knew what you were doing but screwed conversions/proxies, made it harder to know what you were doing, and made certain physical shapes of vehicle more powerful than others (see: the 7e Predator during the corner-to-corner arc area, where you were paying a lot of points for a high front armour value on a vehicle with a really narrow front arc). Weapon arcs also made for some really annoying measurement conditions; the Land Raider's sponson blind spot, for instance.

The solution on arcs, I think, is to go for the simplest path: arc boundaries are drawn from the corners of the bounding box to form constant 90-degree arcs (I may draw quick arc measurement tools for vehicles if I get around to it). Weapons, instead of having their own fire arcs, are defined by which of the vehicle's facings they can attack in; this produces some weird situations (mostly to do with sponsons that used to have arcs offset from the armour facings by 45 degrees) but it also makes them easier to measure and makes decision-making on which arc you present where easier.

Armour Facings: I do like 8e's decision to give vehicles full statlines; a lot of balance problems emerged in 6e-7e from vehicles essentially having higher Toughness but fewer Wounds and no save by comparison to Monstrous Creatures, and giving them saves makes them harder to plink out with relatively light weapons. The simplistic way to do armour facings would be to give vehicles three T/Sv values (one for each arc), but going back over old vehicles some patterns emerge that may make defining them somewhat easier. Vehicles can broadly be divided into several categories: "light" vehicles are meant to stand off protected by other effects more so than their armour and have the same AV all around (Land Speeders, Vypers), "heavy" vehicles are meant to get stuck in and not care about getting surrounded and thus have the same AV all around (Land Raiders, Monoliths), "artillery" vehicles have high front, intermediate sides, and weak rears since they're meant to stand off and keep their front facing on the enemy (Predators, Hammerheads), and "shock" vehicles have high front and sides but weak rears since they're meant to be able to push forward but aren't meant to be solo machines fighting while surrounded the way "heavy" vehicles are (Dreadnaughts, Falcons). To my mind this means differential AV can be described by giving vehicles in the later two categories a special rule ("artillery armour": -1 T in the side, -2 T/-1 Sv in the rear, "shock armour": -1 T/-1 Sv in the rear) and leaving vehicles in the first two categories alone. Fire arc is measured model-by-model when shooting just like range and line of sight, models straddling two zones get to be in the most advantageous one, and range/LOS is still measured from the model as a whole rather than by sighting down barrels or any other funny weirdness.

Melee: It may seem strange to start talking about melee by talking about guns, but in this I think it's time for a return to the concept of "defensive weapons" from older editions. Back in 4e/5e they were low-S weapons that could be fired in addition to the vehicle's main gun no matter how far the vehicle moved, but that doesn't really cover the concept to me; pintle and hull-mount weapons in the real world exist to defend tanks against close-quarters threats from infantry, and I think it'd be fun and interesting for vehicles to get to fire them like they were pistols. GW would implement this by writing "defensive storm bolter" as a distinct weapon from a normal one that had a separate Pistol profile; I think it'd be easier to write "defensive weapon" as a "prefix" special rule that can be added to any weapon and gives it the ability to be fired in melee as if it were a Pistol. On top of that we then need the Tank special rule: while within 1" of enemy models this model may fire any defensive weapons at units within 1" of it, and any non-defensive weapons at targets out of melee at a -1 penalty to hit. Making "defensive weapon" separate from "tank" also lets me make some weapons on non-tanks "defensive weapons" to replicate things like the Dreadnaught in the Dawn of War trailers roasting things with his flamer at point-blank range.

Tank Shock: I've run across plenty of people who regard tanks' typical three attacks hitting on 6+ as an uninspired descendant of the Tank Shock of older editions, so I'll suggest that models charged by a tank gain the Shaken condition (-1 to hit with all attacks until their opponent's next turn; has the same name as and is therefore not cumulative with the Shaken condition from models running away) to make the prospect a little more exciting.

Transports: I'm not sure they need much of an overhaul; the 8e rules are pretty crisp. Fire points aren't a hugely necessary thing to think about adding back given that so few things ever had them (armoured battlewagons and Rhinos, pretty much, barring editions where the Chimera's lasgun array was represented as fire points). Given some of my changes to movement I may permit open-topped vehicles and things that used to have assault ramps disembark troops after moving, though, given my shortening of charge distances. Hopefully without move-again powers this doesn't make long DE/Harlequin charges too much of a problem, I'm not hugely attached to it and will revisit if it does.



That's vehicles mostly handled. The next global special rule I need to reexamine is forward deployment; in older editions we had Infiltrate (deploy forward before the game starts), Deep Strike (deploy randomly anywhere after the game starts), and Outflank (walk on from a table edge after the game starts); I dislike Deep Strike as a concept because it's a tactical implementation of a fundamentally strategic mechanic, a general shouldn't be able to say "I need a meltagun to land right behind that tank over there exactly when I need it to" and adjust the positioning arbitrarily during the game. Let's imagine instead Deep Strike starts life as Outflank on the grounds that the paratroopers have landed somewhere nearby on the battlefront and need to walk from their dropzone to the battle proper in order to participate, then Outflank reads "Choose a table edge, then your enemy chooses a point on that table edge. Deploy the unit wholly within 9" of that point." At that point you may think "well, that's all well and good, but if you do that the only units that are worth deepstriking are fast or ranged because they can just play keep-away with slow melee units", but then we bring in Teleport Homers: "Units with (keyword) that deploy by Outflank may be deployed within 9" of the teleport homer instead". It keeps up with some of the cooler images of 40k (DoW2 bossfight: activate the beacon to bring Cap'n Gabe down to do some hammer-smashing), gives sneaky scout-type units more things to do, encourages combined-arms builds, and makes Deep Strike something your opponent can predict and play around by means other than just bubble-wrapping everything in a wall of Guardsmen.



And the last big global concept I think I should take another look at is Characters. Requiring them to take Command Squads for ablative wounds makes the whole character-targeting thing for infantry characters much less irritating, but that does nothing to address the fact that a Marine Captain protected by an honour guard of five dudes isn't really that durable anyway, and it does nothing for monster characters. My thought here is to introduce a sort of plot-armour "Heroic" rule for higher-tier characters that give enemies without the same rule a -1 penalty to hit them and their squads; it makes them tougher, gives them a more defined offensive role, and puts a sort of "soft" character-challenge mechanic back into the game where character v. character fights become an interesting thing to think about but aren't necessarily essential or required all the time.

Putting another global -1-to-hit thing on the table does make me worry some about the possibility of stacking to-hit penalties; I know there are people who want 6s-always-hit as a global rule, I'd rather take a leaf out of Infinity's book (sensor-Triangulated Fire) and do a global stratagem that makes a unit hit on 5+ regardless of modifiers to avoid pushing the game more towards volume-wins.



With most of the global special rules covered it's probably about time I took what I've got thus far and condense it into one document without all the commentary, then start writing some "books" for it. First batch is probably Marines/Guard (both Chaos and loyal), Craftworld Eldar, and Tau since that's the assortment I'm most familiar with; next posts in this thread are going to be more detailed unit-by-unit overviews one army at a time.

I think that when talking about arcs and armor facing, if you're trying to keep it simple, that reducing it down to halves rather than fourths since that's easier to find on different models, and the different toughness/armor save be a profile rather than a special rule so that it's more seamless. There's also a question on if units hit the vehicle's "back" if they're in assault with the vehicle.

How common are defensive weapons and "tank" going to be, in your mind? Melee is already kind of a joke in how easy it is to ignore it locking people down, and I remember back in 7 where everything was considered a tank. There was maybe 4 not tank that weren't either walkers or skimmers, and three of them were ork vehicles.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
...How common are defensive weapons and "tank" going to be, in your mind? Melee is already kind of a joke in how easy it is to ignore it locking people down, and I remember back in 7 where everything was considered a tank. There was maybe 4 not tank that weren't either walkers or skimmers, and three of them were ork vehicles.

The point of the defensive weapons/"tank"/speed-test-to-walk-out is to make it harder to lock up vehicles with things that shouldn't be a threat to them, and to make locking up a vehicle with something that can't kill it inhibit it instead of killing it. Under the current rules any tank smaller than a Baneblade can be rendered completely unable to shoot by a single T3 infantry model walking up and poking them with a stick; the current state of affairs is that vehicles without the ability to walk out of combat are only used if you can park enough expendable bodies in the way to make it physically impossible to charge them. I'd rather see vehicles regain some ability to defend themselves from infantry so armies that don't take fifty or a hundred expendable bodies can actually use them.

The intent of this structure is to shortcut the question of melee/ranged balance somewhat; if guns are made weaker so that melee units can reach combat without getting destroyed more easily I need a way to make sure that I'm not screwing over ranged-dependent armies (Tau, Guard, etc.). If guns remain useful after the enemy has made contact there's a lot more room for play from a wider variety of lists/builds. In theory. We'll see how well it works out.

An overview of Space Marines:

The sheer volume of units Space Marines have accumulated over the years are down to arbitrary distinctions based on slight variations in sculpt and archaic ideas of how the game worked; back in 3e when multiple Attacks across large swathes of units was rare and back when WS was more granular than it is now the division of Marines into Scouts (WS/BS 3 trainees), Marines (WS/BS 4 regular troops), and Veterans (A2/Ld9 elites with cooler weapons) made some sense, but Scouts getting pushed to WS/BS 4 and stat creep in other armies makes the distinctions less and less relevant over time. Once we factor in the idea that Primaris in Mk.X armour are resculpts rather than tangential new units that leaves us with a vastly cut range of models.

The next question is the idea of super-heavy armour. Right now we've got Terminators (2+/5++ 2W Marines on 40mm bases that replaced Breachers (combat-shield bolter troops) in the Legions during the Heresy), Gravis (T5/3+ 2W Primaris on 40mm bases that serve the same sort of shock role in Primaris formations), and Centurions (T5/2+ 3W models on 50mm bases that serve as bigass pseudo-Dreadnaught armoured support); if there's any argument to be made for any equivalencies here it's in making Gravis/Terminators equivalent since they're about the same size and have more similar wargear, at least relative to the nipple-bolters and twin arm-mounted heavy guns on the Centurions. The major advantage to making Terminators equivalent to Gravis is that it cuts down on the amount of character profiles and lets me push Terminator stats around more without stepping on the toes of another unit.

And the third question is finding a way to make one list that can be used by Chaos and loyalist Marines. At the moment if we discount the motor pool (which is relatively easily solved by saying "these choices are loyal only" or "these choices are traitor only") the non-vehicle units aren't hugely different; Raptors = Assault Marines and so on. Problems become more pronounced when we run into the more specialized Legions but I will note that the idea that there are three tiers of Chaos Marine (unmarked, mark, Cult) is an idea perpetuated by the 4e book and 8e's decision to tone down marks in favour of Cult units is pretty in line with how the 3e book worked, so it'd be a fairly straightforward process to flip the whole thing back and do marks as the distinguishing element (so instead of Chaos Marines and Rubric Marines having distinct profiles there's one Chaos Marine unit and you can buy them the Mark of Tzeentch as an upgrade). In practice all this does is permit conversions for units that wouldn't be available in 8e (want Rubric Havocs with cursed lascannons? Berzerkers on bikes? Noise Raptors?).

A summary of the units available to "Space Marines" under this scheme (units separated by a slash are either the Chaos/Loyalist names for the same thing or units with very similar profiles and wildly different weapons):

HQ: Command characters (1 per slot) (Captain/Lord, Librarian/Sorcerer, Chaplain/Apostle). Support characters (1-3 per slot) (Apothecary, Techmarine/Warpsmith, Lieutenant/Champion). HQ Dreadnaughts/Helbrutes (Contemptor or Castaferrum, probably no generic command Leviathans).

Troops: Marine Squad (corresponds to: Tacticals, Grey Hunters, Intercessors, all the Cult units). Recon Squad (corresponds to: Scouts, Reivers). Assault Squad (corresponds to Assault Marines, Raptors).

Elites: Dreadnaughts/Helbrutes (Castaferrum, Contemptor, Leviathan, Deredeo, Redemptor; probably one profile for each rather than the Venerable/normal divide). Breachers (corresponds to Terminators, Aggressors, all the Legion-specific Chaos Terminators), Veterans (corresponds to: Sternguard, Vanguard, Grey Hunters, Company Veterans, Command Squads, Sanguinary Guard, Chosen), Centurions (Centurions). Possessed (updated to be more like "daemonic veterans", complete with the ability to simulate Warp Talons).

Fast Attack: Bikes/Attack Bikes, Land Speeders, Inceptors (I don't know what to consolidate these guys with so they get to stay their own profile).

Heavy Support: Devastators/Havocs, Rapiers (includes Thunderfire cannon), Rhino chassis tanks (Predator, Whirlwind, Hunter, Stalker, Vindicator, all including FW weapon variants), Land Raiders (including FW weapon variants), Sicarans (all sorts), Repulsor.

Lords of War: Spartan/Cerberus/Typhon, Fellblade/Falchion/Glaive, Mastodon.

Flyers: Stormtalon/Stormhawk, Stormraven, Fire Raptor, Storm Eagle, Caestus, Xiphon.

Dedicated Transports: Rhinos, Razorbacks, Drop Pods, Land Speeder Storm.


Addendum: This is just the "Space Marines" portion of both the Imperials and Chaos; there are things you might expect to be here (Servitors, Daemon Engines) that will be accessed via allying in Guard/Traitor Guard or Mechanicum/Dark Mechanicum rather than being incorporated directly into the Space Marine list.


Following that each Legion/First Founding Chapter gets a subsection of things you only get if you're using them; in the short term/initial rollout I'd like to keep it to the army special rule/unique stratagem(s) and one or two 'things' (units/wargear); the 'things' in order are: Dark Angels (Deathwing/Ravenwing Knight wargear), Emperor's Children (sonic weapons), Iron Warriors (command-tier warpsmith, directly-integrated Mechanicum stuff), White Scars (overcharged vehicle engines), Space Wolves (Thunderwolves, Stormfang chassis), Imperial Fists (alternate Rapier ammo, breacher shields), Night Lords (grisly trophies of Ld-debuff), Blood Angels (Death Company, Sanguinary Guard equipment), Iron Hands (Immortals/breacher shields, command-tier Iron Father), World Eaters (chainaxes), Ultramarines (more CP?), Death Guard (plague weapons), Thousand Sons (Aspiring Sorcerers and the Rubric), Black Legion (some sort of super-elite Terminators), Word Bearers (some sort of daemon-summoning mechanism, Possessed Terminators), Salamanders (special-weapon squads), Raven Guard (Recon veterans), Alpha Legion (Recon veterans)




An overview of the Guard:

One of the fundamental problems they've always had integrating with the force org charts is that the ten-man Imperial Guard squad has always been way, way cheaper than the Troops available to most armies; back in the heady pre-allies/multiple-detachments days of 3e-5e the Guard got "platoons" of 1 command squad/2-5 infantry squads/assorted support as a single Troops choice to make up for the fact that they couldn't field thirty-man squads the way other "horde" armies (Orks, Tyranids) could. I think it might be time to let the "squad" as the basic unit of the Imperial Guard die; I've never seen anybody field them like Tactical Marines (10 men, one special/one heavy) despite the fact that the book thinks they're organized like Tactical Marines. The platoon structure of the old days (1 5-man command squad, 2-5 10-man infantry squads, 0-1 3-team heavy weapon squad, 0-1 6 bodies/3 guns special weapon squad, 0-1 20-50-man conscript squad) is needlessly complicated and unhelpful; so I think I'd like to look to the Solar Auxilia out of 30k for the infantry platoon of tomorrow. The Solar Auxilia themselves fall into the usual 30k pit of "take ten guys armed with the same special weapon as one squad to back up a vast amount of basic riflemen", however, and I'd rather stick with the more flexible/forgiving route 40k usually takes of mixing arbitrary guns into larger squads to give them more ablative bodies. An "infantry platoon" will consist of 1 "command squad" (containing the lieutenant) and 0-2 additional squads, each of which is 10-20 models and has the option of taking some mix of upgrade guns.

The next Troops question is what to do about Stormtroopers. I disagree on a pretty basic level with GW's decision to turn the old hellguns (S3/AP5) into "hot-shot lasguns" (S3/AP3) back in 5e since it rendered the unit overly efficient against a really narrow band of enemies and pretty pointless outside of it; that said the Solar Auxilia present us an interesting possibility for a quick fix for both hot-shot lasguns and FRF/SRF (which I find annoying because the name is long and unwieldy, because you shouldn't be giving units rifles that are so crap you need the ability to double their fire rate for them to do anything, and because throwing a hundred S3 shots into a Terminator squad is pretty representative of exactly what's wrong with 8e); rather than giving the Solar Auxilia super-AP S3 or vast amounts of S3 Forge World gave them the ability to overcharge-dump S6 shots at 36" range by sacrificing their ability to shoot next turn. I'm not going to keep the exact mechanics of doing it because keeping track of whose guns are empty can get annoying turn-over-turn, so in practice both the lasgun and the hellgun will keep their S3 Rapid Fire profiles but get a stronger Heavy 1 profile with slightly more range to let them contribute more effectively without pushing the volume of shots up into madness. At that point I can call what are now "Militarum Tempestus" "Veterans" to bring concepts like Kasrkin (Cadian Stormtroopers) back, put "Veteran platoons" (1-3 5-10-model squads) in Elites in generic Guard armies, and shunt the concept of a Stormtrooper army over into an alternate force organization chart that doesn't get all the heavy tanks normal Guardsmen do.

The last thing I want to address now is the Leman Russ; back in 5e GW decided it'd be interesting to add a whole bunch of new Russ turrets to the ones that already existed (I know the LRBT, Vanquisher, and Exterminator are older, and I think the Annihilator and Conqueror are as well); the problem with having eight Leman Russ turrets is that depending on the edition maybe one or two of them are ever actually used and the rest sit by the wayside since they overlap in role with a better tank. I don't know if the Annihilator turret (twin lascannon) still exists; in terms of role overlap I'd like to suggest the following profiles: Battle Tank (LRBT/Vanquisher models) with a single-target AT mode and an intermediate-power blast as the most flexible, Demolisher (Demolisher/Conqueror/Eradicator models) as the infantry close-support with the best blast and increased anti-structure/anti-cover effectiveness, Punisher (Punisher and Executioner models) as flexible high-volume most effective against light vehicles, and Executioner (Executioner models) as high-power anti-heavy-infantry blast with the increased risk of being a plasma weapon. By keeping the number of different profiles down and trying to keep the functions more distinct from each other the goal is to write four Russes and give players good reasons to take all four, rather than writing eight but only giving players a reason to take two of them.


Cutting redundancy and units that should be allies rather than Guard-specific does leave us with a pretty massively trimmed list of actual units, though. Addendum: For those that want to point out that Techpriests and Priests should probably be allies my dividing line here is that allied characters can't be taken attached to each others' units, and the Guard support officers are "Imperial Guard" in the sense that you can field them in Guard squads.

HQ: Command Squad (10 models including the company commander), support officers (Priest, Psyker, Techpriest, Commissar)

Troops: Infantry Platoon, Recon Platoon (I don't know why someone in the Departmento Munitorium decided that Guardsmen needed to be abhuman halflings to get sniper rifles and camo-cloaks, there really should exist an alternate option).

Elites: Veteran Platoon, Ogryn, Ratlings.

Fast Attack: Sentinels (Armoured, Scout, or Drop), Hellhounds (including weapon variants), Rough Riders (in drastic need of an overhaul, the lack of official models does give me a lot of flexibility to do that, though), Salamander, Tauros.

Heavy Support: Russes (variants discussed above), mechanized artillery (Basilisk, Manticore, Medusa, Griffon, Colossus, Hydra...probably needs some cuts in the vein of the Russ, to be honest), Malcador chassis (need to examine in detail). I'm torn on whether/how to do some of the non-mechanized artillery; the close-support towed Krieg batteries make a lot more sense to me than the stationary Basilisk (which shouldn't be anywhere near the front, while mechanized batteries at least have an excuse).

Lords of War: Baneblade, Macharius, Crassus, Gorgon.

Flyers: I'd much rather see Valkyries/Vendettas given Regiment keywords as Guard vehicles rather than farming all Flyers off to the Navy; Navy Flyers (Lightnings, Thunderbolts, etc.) really ought to be 0-1 auxiliaries but close-support hover-mode attack-helicopter things make sense to me as Guard units. This may contradict specific details of the official lore but I've already done quite a lot of that.

Dedicated Transports: Chimera, Taurox, a bunch of the smaller FW boxes (Trojan, Centaur).


Still need to look into just how much the army special rules are going to be "folks from this planet" as opposed to "this kind of doctrine (represented by folks from this planet)"; it's easier with the Space Marines since "Chapters descended from this First Founding Legion" are likely to retain similar cultural traditions, wargear, etc. while there's a lot more variety in Guard equipment/doctrines; also need to look into fusing Traitor elements into the "Guard" proper.

Xenos armies tend to be more straightforward to talk about/implement than Imperial armies since there are more different chassis and fewer weapon variants on the same kinds of things; I need to do a more detailed walk through the Mechanicum, Daemons, and the Inquisition/minor Imperial forces, but the xeno armies are going to get more cursory overviews; after that with notes down on paper I can start assigning numbers to things.

I dislike Deep Strike as a concept because it's a tactical implementation of a fundamentally strategic mechanic, a general shouldn't be able to say "I need a meltagun to land right behind that tank over there exactly when I need it to" and adjust the positioning arbitrarily during the game. Let's imagine instead Deep Strike starts life as Outflank on the grounds that the paratroopers have landed somewhere nearby on the battlefront and need to walk from their dropzone to the battle proper in order to participate,

I love this thinking, I think it's missing from a lot of both GW and player made material. It's true for lots of deep strikers, especially drop pods, and it can also cut down on the amount of drop pods on the table, a fairly uncharismatic, hard-to-transport model. There's also good reason to apply this kind of thinking to transport vehicles generally, you'd think they could help with flanking or reserve timing a little bit more than they do.

OTOH there are lots of things like crisis suits and jump marines who leap directly from high altitude mantas or thunderhawks into the middle of gunfire.

plenty of vehicles/monsters should have equivalent all-round armour (there isn't a good reason to give a Daemon Prince weak rear armour, for instance).
.....
the idea that hard targets should be treated differently from soft targets started to fade during the Monstrous Creature Epoch of 5e (when the Dreadknight, Wraithknight, Riptide, and Tyranids bigger than a Carnifex started to appear), but to my mind some of the principles of vehicles are sound.

The lack of fire arcs on mechanical or biological creatures makes sense for the same reason that a daemon prince can't have weak rear armor. From moment to moment, a riptide could be twisted along multiple axes of the shoulders and hips, and it could be oriented in space in different ways, it could be prone on the ground, standing or kneeling but twisted in a rifle firing position, or for that matter it could be prone in the air, shooting along on its jets. A tank or a walker can't reorient either its individual parts or its whole body like that.

That expanded to the MC vs. AV distinction. Armored units have a structurally separate box of armor around them, and creatures, including artillery like the thunderfire cannon, get most of their structure from their functional parts, with the as armor plating over those parts and probably not even structurally connected to the rest of the armor in most cases. Soft vs hard had very little to do with it as people inadvertently pointed out with necrons. Conceivably you could make a "soft" tank, where fleshy drives and weapons were covered by a separate fleshy shell, unlike tyranid gargantuan creatures where the exoskeleton functions as muscle-attached levers for locomotion and structure.

And the third question is finding a way to make one list that can be used by Chaos and loyalist Marines. At the moment if we discount the motor pool (which is relatively easily solved by saying "these choices are loyal only" or "these choices are traitor only") the non-vehicle units aren't hugely different; Raptors = Assault Marines and so on.

In-universe of course they can't be represented by a single list. Both because of their narrative role and because of their actual social structure, chaos marines a subject to conservation of ninjutsu. They have both diabolical villains, and bands of scum and gene-jacked thugs whom imperial heroes can outmatch with their virtue and discipline.

The Legions that still have complex structure have a certain amount of slapped-together marine fodder who aren't as good as loyalist marines. Recent renegades and lost-in-time heresy era marines also have some shoddy troops because of self-promotion by the skilled troops. When the loyalist hierarchy breaks down because the heretics are now out for their own interests, the good really good marines who were in the 60/20/20 infantry squads can strike out to take over other squads for themselves, or join a cult, or instead of waiting for promotion veteran they can effectively make themselves chosen. What's left are the ones who never earned the marksman's honor in the first place and who definitely don't follow the intense daily training schedule of a loyal marine.

Of course their are also chaos marines who are VotLW, and other marines who are professional and journeyman level troops equivalent to loyalists, although if a Lord is strong enough to have a disciplined army instead of a grouping of mini-warbands, he'd probably put his quality troops into support roles like bikers and havocs because of their better reliability to coordinate. That just means that there can't be a 1:1 equivalence between loyalists and chaos, because in chaos the strong and the chattel will be sorted, which is sort of the point of the ideology.

Guys. Anyone advocating for marines to just get cheaper needs to realize that at some point. Things just can't get any cheaper. We're in the world of 4 point guardsmen. Marines should be BUFFED. Not made cheaper. The changes to the AP system were a big part of that. Flattening the AP and damage of certain weapons would help indirectly buff marines and terminators.

i) Critical effects: A hit is a "critical hit" if the die roll is 2 or more points higher than the to-hit value (i.e. a shot hitting on a 4+ is a critical on a die roll of 6). Most weapons do nothing on a critical hit, but the "critical (effect)" keyword indicates any additional effects.

It's a structural problem to have things like this as a keyword that can be handed out selectively and probably won't be given to things that should have is, especially since you say most weapons.

Depending on the scale of the game, critical effects could apply to every action. It's a bit silly that shooting someone in the throat with a laspistol or bolt pistol can't do more than the profile amount of damage, that seems like a critical hit.

The concept of depending on the scale is important, because criticals can be better accommodated by using different scales within the same game. It would be time consuming and unnecessary to track the criticals of masses of boyz and guardsmen shooting. However there are key moments, like taking aim at a behemoth or a character, when the scale could zoom in on an action to account for criticals, perhaps by passing a test or spending something like a command point.

the number of basic assumptions that I'm going to need to throw out to address the problems I have with the system are such that I suspect this will piss off people who regard things like the ability to build all-Knight armies or the ability to damage Land Raiders with lasguns as basic rights. I'm trying to preserve my image of the essence of the setting

It seems like a basic assumption, and unfounded, to think that all-knight armies aren't part of the essence of the setting. We all know that for a long time gamers had to go buy a GI Joe toy or an airfix model and paint it because citadel/gw didn't have many large vehicle kits. We also know citadel wargames exist as a business strategy, because people were buying fantasy models in ones and twos as DnD or GURPS figures and that wasn't making enough money. Warhammer even in the later editions where they'd discarded games masters included many scenarios like breakouts, capture the relic, and meatgrinder, and that the studio members largely play narrative games.

It's pretty evident that the idea that 40k is supposed to be 15-50 infantry and some vehicles on each of two sides fighting each other is a fetish artifact generated by the relationship between GW's production capacity at different times and the consumers' own social conditions. Examining all the factors that caused this false perception indicates that the game should be explicitly built around allowing 15-50 infantry to play a fair game against an all-knight army, or more exotically for two 15-50 model armies scurry around trying to achieve objectives while an all-knight NPC army stomps over them.

pelicaniforce wrote:

i) Critical effects: A hit is a "critical hit" if the die roll is 2 or more points higher than the to-hit value (i.e. a shot hitting on a 4+ is a critical on a die roll of 6). Most weapons do nothing on a critical hit, but the "critical (effect)" keyword indicates any additional effects.

It's a structural problem to have things like this as a keyword that can be handed out selectively and probably won't be given to things that should have is, especially since you say most weapons.

Depending on the scale of the game, critical effects could apply to every action. It's a bit silly that shooting someone in the throat with a laspistol or bolt pistol can't do more than the profile amount of damage, that seems like a critical hit.

The concept of depending on the scale is important, because criticals can be better accommodated by using different scales within the same game. It would be time consuming and unnecessary to track the criticals of masses of boyz and guardsmen shooting. However there are key moments, like taking aim at a behemoth or a character, when the scale could zoom in on an action to account for criticals, perhaps by passing a test or spending something like a command point.

The point of "critical effects" is to create a single universal structure for the critical effects that already exist in the game; snipers' bonus mortal wound, tesla/arc weapons, shuriken/monofilament, etc. It isn't there to create a D&D-style all-attacks-achieve-criticals-and-do-cool-things-on-a-6 structure, that would be bloat for the sake of bloat.

the number of basic assumptions that I'm going to need to throw out to address the problems I have with the system are such that I suspect this will piss off people who regard things like the ability to build all-Knight armies or the ability to damage Land Raiders with lasguns as basic rights. I'm trying to preserve my image of the essence of the setting

It seems like a basic assumption, and unfounded, to think that all-knight armies aren't part of the essence of the setting. We all know that for a long time gamers had to go buy a GI Joe toy or an airfix model and paint it because citadel/gw didn't have many large vehicle kits. We also know citadel wargames exist as a business strategy, because people were buying fantasy models in ones and twos as DnD or GURPS figures and that wasn't making enough money. Warhammer even in the later editions where they'd discarded games masters included many scenarios like breakouts, capture the relic, and meatgrinder, and that the studio members largely play narrative games.

It's pretty evident that the idea that 40k is supposed to be 15-50 infantry and some vehicles on each of two sides fighting each other is a fetish artifact generated by the relationship between GW's production capacity at different times and the consumers' own social conditions. Examining all the factors that caused this false perception indicates that the game should be explicitly built around allowing 15-50 infantry to play a fair game against an all-knight army, or more exotically for two 15-50 model armies scurry around trying to achieve objectives while an all-knight NPC army stomps over them.

pelicaniforce wrote:

I dislike Deep Strike as a concept because it's a tactical implementation of a fundamentally strategic mechanic, a general shouldn't be able to say "I need a meltagun to land right behind that tank over there exactly when I need it to" and adjust the positioning arbitrarily during the game. Let's imagine instead Deep Strike starts life as Outflank on the grounds that the paratroopers have landed somewhere nearby on the battlefront and need to walk from their dropzone to the battle proper in order to participate,

I love this thinking, I think it's missing from a lot of both GW and player made material. It's true for lots of deep strikers, especially drop pods, and it can also cut down on the amount of drop pods on the table, a fairly uncharismatic, hard-to-transport model. There's also good reason to apply this kind of thinking to transport vehicles generally, you'd think they could help with flanking or reserve timing a little bit more than they do.

OTOH there are lots of things like crisis suits and jump marines who leap directly from high altitude mantas or thunderhawks into the middle of gunfire.

In my current draft things can drop from high altitude into the middle of gunfire, but they require beacons on the ground (vox-casters, synapse creatures, teleport homers...) to actually land on the table. If they don't have a beacon they land somewhere else and walk on from a table edge.

plenty of vehicles/monsters should have equivalent all-round armour (there isn't a good reason to give a Daemon Prince weak rear armour, for instance).
.....
the idea that hard targets should be treated differently from soft targets started to fade during the Monstrous Creature Epoch of 5e (when the Dreadknight, Wraithknight, Riptide, and Tyranids bigger than a Carnifex started to appear), but to my mind some of the principles of vehicles are sound.

The lack of fire arcs on mechanical or biological creatures makes sense for the same reason that a daemon prince can't have weak rear armor. From moment to moment, a riptide could be twisted along multiple axes of the shoulders and hips, and it could be oriented in space in different ways, it could be prone on the ground, standing or kneeling but twisted in a rifle firing position, or for that matter it could be prone in the air, shooting along on its jets. A tank or a walker can't reorient either its individual parts or its whole body like that.

That expanded to the MC vs. AV distinction. Armored units have a structurally separate box of armor around them, and creatures, including artillery like the thunderfire cannon, get most of their structure from their functional parts, with the as armor plating over those parts and probably not even structurally connected to the rest of the armor in most cases. Soft vs hard had very little to do with it as people inadvertently pointed out with necrons. Conceivably you could make a "soft" tank, where fleshy drives and weapons were covered by a separate fleshy shell, unlike tyranid gargantuan creatures where the exoskeleton functions as muscle-attached levers for locomotion and structure...

In most cases yes, but it might also be interesting to give support-artillery monsters like the Exocrine weaker rear armour, or give Stonecrusher Carnifexes stronger front armour (rear is as strong as a normal Carnifex, front/sides are slightly stronger). My thinking here is that the way armour is distributed is dependent on the function of the vehicle/monster; things designed to stand back and shoot (like a Basilisk) can't be suddenly flanked the way something that's trying to penetrate enemy lines (like a Land Raider) can, so the "artillery" units are more likely to have weaker sides/rear.

And the third question is finding a way to make one list that can be used by Chaos and loyalist Marines. At the moment if we discount the motor pool (which is relatively easily solved by saying "these choices are loyal only" or "these choices are traitor only") the non-vehicle units aren't hugely different; Raptors = Assault Marines and so on.

In-universe of course they can't be represented by a single list. Both because of their narrative role and because of their actual social structure, chaos marines a subject to conservation of ninjutsu. They have both diabolical villains, and bands of scum and gene-jacked thugs whom imperial heroes can outmatch with their virtue and discipline.

The Legions that still have complex structure have a certain amount of slapped-together marine fodder who aren't as good as loyalist marines. Recent renegades and lost-in-time heresy era marines also have some shoddy troops because of self-promotion by the skilled troops. When the loyalist hierarchy breaks down because the heretics are now out for their own interests, the good really good marines who were in the 60/20/20 infantry squads can strike out to take over other squads for themselves, or join a cult, or instead of waiting for promotion veteran they can effectively make themselves chosen. What's left are the ones who never earned the marksman's honor in the first place and who definitely don't follow the intense daily training schedule of a loyal marine.

Of course their are also chaos marines who are VotLW, and other marines who are professional and journeyman level troops equivalent to loyalists, although if a Lord is strong enough to have a disciplined army instead of a grouping of mini-warbands, he'd probably put his quality troops into support roles like bikers and havocs because of their better reliability to coordinate. That just means that there can't be a 1:1 equivalence between loyalists and chaos, because in chaos the strong and the chattel will be sorted, which is sort of the point of the ideology.

In practice the one-list theory is possible but unlikely because I'd need to write "loyal only" or "traitor only" at the level of specific weapon options; in my head it was like the Chinese list for Bolt Action ("this unit can only be taken by Nationalists and Warlords", "this unit can only be taken by Communists", etc.) but the level on which I'd have to do that means it'd be much easier to read if I just split them up.

I disagree actually. Points cost and AP raising would help space marines quite a bit, not shifting their list around to be more confusing. I would remove units that don't serve a purpose in the codex (Centurions & vindicators for example).

But the crux of my argument is the following...

Essentially if space marines received a -1 ap to all BOLT weapons they would be far better and would deal with far more.
while also reducing the cost of melta weapons, grav, and heavy weapons up to a half cost (or 20%).
If a space marine is paying a premium cost of 17 points (almost the entire amount for a new model) then that should be changed... Veteran units should be encouraged to take special weapons and heavy weapons and take a cost reduction on all heavy weaponry.

Reducing terminator costs for equipment by 2/3s would help tremendously (Right now a chainfist is as expensive as a scout, previously a chainfist was only 1 pts more than a regular powerfist)

Allowing for 'legio' esque rules for each chapter to allow for interesting combinations, and giving all 'walker' units or dreadnoughts and vehicles access to special rules. And allowing space marines to have the "We fight alone" special rule that gives them the "bolter drill" Special rule if they are a mono army.

ON the topic of vehicles the entirety of 8th edition is anti-vehicle, there is no reason to take any space marine vehicle due to the sheer cost of having one, in previous editions space marine vehicles (predator and razorback for example) never broke the 130pts mark. Even in 7th and 6th.

Terminators need the following buffs: Ap -1 on their storm bolters / combi-bolters, and 6" movement. (assault cannons REND or gain an extra shot for each six rolled on WOUNDing rolls) and a points cost reduction to equipment (by 20 - 60%, storm bolters are FREE for terminators and Termies to have a special rule "SLOW But Relentless" which prevents them from being advanced upon and can fire heavy weapons at no penalty (Like they used to have)). I also believe that Terminators require some much-needed love in just crunching and/or being able to take more of them instead of being punished for taking them (more of them you take the less expensive they become!).

Space Marine Primaris are already good no changes needed for them. Scouts need to be reduced down from their current bs to BS +4 (as they are neophytes after all). While also reducing their effectiveness over taking a Tactical Squad who are meant to be the main part of a Space Marine Strike Force.

@AnomanderRake: I'm enjoying reading your thoughts behind your suggestions. I may not agree with all these proposals, but they're fun to consider. Some thoughts:

* Your deepstrike suggestions are interesting, and I'm a fan of them for many units. Letting tacs or scouts drop beacons for terminators, etc. is very appropriate. However, I do feel that there are plenty of examples of units for whom these changes would be an awkward fit. I don't deepstrike my hawks because I want to infiltrate. I deepstrike them to keep them safe or reposition them after using them to meat my minimal drops. Things like assault marines seem to have jump packs primarily for landing on the enemy's head rather than for racing ahead of the rest of the force (that seems like more of a biker thing). My warp spiders are absolutely waiting for the autarchs and the farseers to tell them exactly where to teleport so that they can unleash a spray of monofilament.

So it seems interesting with a lot of upsides, but it also seems likely to create some real winners and losers. Plus, some factions just don't seem like the "beacon" types. Sending rangers close enough to the enemy lines to let the warp spiders arrive within deathspinner range is basically suicide. Which is weird for eldar. Maybe if you handed out enough other options to support this ability? Let a farseer drop a beacon as part of a psychic power or stratagem? Give autarchs a set of IG style "orders" that include dropping a beacon anywhere on the table?

*I'm open to a return to armour facings, but I'm doubtful that whatever rules we use for facing would be worth the complication an dhassle. Facing seemed like it mostly existed as a way to give vehicles a weak spot in editions where their front or side armor was impervious to small arms fire and most infantry. A space marine's backpack is theoretically a weakspot containing his power generator the same way the rear of a chimera theoretically contains its engine, but I don't really want armor facing on a marine either. I don't miss agonizing over that extra half an inch of movement that will decide whether or not my unit can meaningfully harm an enemy vehicle. Basically, armour facing is a lot like the old template rules for me. I see the appeal, but in practice it usually resulted in frustratingly precise model placement.

* Defensive weapons seem like a good idea to me. You can probably save a little complication by just giving any defensive weapons a secondary Pistol profile, but whatevs.

* The "stunned" condition from a charging vehicle is interesting. It's thematic and gives things like rhinos a job in melee beyond eating overwatch. Will this be too frustrating or abusable for some people? Baharroth charging in with a wave serpent already imposes a -2 to hit by itself, and I can easily throw more buffs on top of that.

* I really like the "plot armor" mechanic conceptually, but I don't think it would work as presented. If I'm allowed to shoot at something like a farseer or Guilliman right off the bat, I will absolutely do so. A -1 to hit is not going to stop me from nuking key characters to death. Even less important characters will suffer here. I'll absolutely pick off a banner nob for an easy kill point. Plus, if you give a retinue unit to every nob, shadowseer, and commissar in the game, you're going to be generating of extra work for yourself. At that point, you'd probably be better off just recreating rules to let characters join squads or something.

To my mind, characters being untargetable until they're the closest basically is their plot armor. If a bunch of guysin a trench die, characters are characters because they're the ones consistently still standing afterwards.

I like the general direction you've gone wiht marines and IG. Looking forward to what you come up with for xenos.I

Wyldhunt wrote:
@AnomanderRake: I'm enjoying reading your thoughts behind your suggestions. I may not agree with all these proposals, but they're fun to consider. Some thoughts:

* Your deepstrike suggestions are interesting, and I'm a fan of them for many units. Letting tacs or scouts drop beacons for terminators, etc. is very appropriate. However, I do feel that there are plenty of examples of units for whom these changes would be an awkward fit. I don't deepstrike my hawks because I want to infiltrate. I deepstrike them to keep them safe or reposition them after using them to meat my minimal drops. Things like assault marines seem to have jump packs primarily for landing on the enemy's head rather than for racing ahead of the rest of the force (that seems like more of a biker thing). My warp spiders are absolutely waiting for the autarchs and the farseers to tell them exactly where to teleport so that they can unleash a spray of monofilament.

So it seems interesting with a lot of upsides, but it also seems likely to create some real winners and losers. Plus, some factions just don't seem like the "beacon" types. Sending rangers close enough to the enemy lines to let the warp spiders arrive within deathspinner range is basically suicide. Which is weird for eldar. Maybe if you handed out enough other options to support this ability? Let a farseer drop a beacon as part of a psychic power or stratagem? Give autarchs a set of IG style "orders" that include dropping a beacon anywhere on the table?

Current plans for Beacons: Imperium and Tyranids would get teleport homers on advance-deploy models, Chaos would use Icons, Eldar (of all varieties) and Tau would have both teleport homers on advance-deploy models and stratagems that let them feed targeting data back to HQ, Orks would probably tie their Beacons to meks and elaborate vehicles with loads of antennae, and Necrons would have bizarre alien tricks that use enemy models as Beacons.

As far as the suicidal nature of Deep Striking Eldar that's always been a weird issue with how GW writes them; the idea that you're going to write an army that's faster and killier than everyone else so it has to be squishier to compensate ends up putting us in this weird place where a dying race with no manpower to spare has a game fundamentally built around piece-trading. I'm considering ways to deal with it.

*I'm open to a return to armour facings, but I'm doubtful that whatever rules we use for facing would be worth the complication an dhassle. Facing seemed like it mostly existed as a way to give vehicles a weak spot in editions where their front or side armor was impervious to small arms fire and most infantry. A space marine's backpack is theoretically a weakspot containing his power generator the same way the rear of a chimera theoretically contains its engine, but I don't really want armor facing on a marine either. I don't miss agonizing over that extra half an inch of movement that will decide whether or not my unit can meaningfully harm an enemy vehicle. Basically, armour facing is a lot like the old template rules for me. I see the appeal, but in practice it usually resulted in frustratingly precise model placement.

The point of vehicle facings is basically about target priority; I'm trying to revise the general set of damage profiles to incentivize players to take a range of specialist tools rather than finding the most efficient generalist weapon and spamming it (when was the last time you saw a Space Marine with a special weapon that wasn't a plasma gun?). In doing so I'd like to present vehicles that are impervious to all but dedicated anti-tank weapons without utterly screwing someone if they don't have enough or if their dedicated anti-tank weapons get blown up early, and vehicle facings do that by allowing people to engage really heavily-armoured vehicles. It's also a way to make mobility relevant; without armour facings the only advantage to a high Movement is the ability to get into melee more quickly or avoid melee; with vehicle facings faster light guns have some value, without them you just take bigger guns and sit on your butt in your deployment zone.

As far as frustratingly precise model placement goes I found imprecise weapon arcs based on the physical properties of the model a lot more fiddly and irritating than measuring armour facings so I'm hoping locking weapon arcs to the vehicle facings instead will help with that, but I suppose I'll have to do some more testing and see.

* Defensive weapons seem like a good idea to me. You can probably save a little complication by just giving any defensive weapons a secondary Pistol profile, but whatevs.

My current draft has descriptors on the weapon mount, but it'd probably be faster to do it this way, given that I've got the infrastructure already for "restricted" profiles.

* The "stunned" condition from a charging vehicle is interesting. It's thematic and gives things like rhinos a job in melee beyond eating overwatch. Will this be too frustrating or abusable for some people? Baharroth charging in with a wave serpent already imposes a -2 to hit by itself, and I can easily throw more buffs on top of that.

One of the things that annoys me about to-hit modifiers in the game as currently presented is that some armies (e.g. Eldar) have a lot of them and some armies (e.g. non-RG Marines) have few or none; there aren't going to be anything like as many to-hit modifiers in the Codexes as there are today.

* I really like the "plot armor" mechanic conceptually, but I don't think it would work as presented. If I'm allowed to shoot at something like a farseer or Guilliman right off the bat, I will absolutely do so. A -1 to hit is not going to stop me from nuking key characters to death. Even less important characters will suffer here. I'll absolutely pick off a banner nob for an easy kill point. Plus, if you give a retinue unit to every nob, shadowseer, and commissar in the game, you're going to be generating of extra work for yourself. At that point, you'd probably be better off just recreating rules to let characters join squads or something.

To my mind, characters being untargetable until they're the closest basically is their plot armor. If a bunch of guysin a trench die, characters are characters because they're the ones consistently still standing afterwards.

Right now most Characters are "attachments", which work just like Independent Characters used to except that they're stuck with the squad you put them in. This is there to reduce the number of entities on the table and to reduce the measuring burden of figuring out who's in range of what aura or who's closest to who; the fact that the defender chooses who to allocate wounds to is certainly part of their plot armour. The "Heroic" rule is there partially as a sort of soft character duel mechanic to try and incentivize heroes to go beat on each other rather than having your glorious hero die undramatically because some teenage Tallarn twit in a Leman Russ pointed a battle cannon in his direction at the wrong time.

The hole in units-as-plot-armour is that the way I've got units written there's no mechanism for the character's Toughness to come into play, so right now I've restricted characters to joining units that are about the same shape and size as them (a Marine Captain on a bike can only join a bike squad, for instance), which leaves vehicle/monster characters (Primarchs, character Dreadnaughts, Hive Tyrants, Daemon Princes...) out in the cold. Heroic is an extra defense for those characters as well; a -1 may not deter you from shooting a Wraithseer, but stack that on top of cover and nerfs to massive multi-shot blast weapons and you may be able to poke him from a distance but you're not going to dig him out of his position easily.

I like the general direction you've gone wiht marines and IG. Looking forward to what you come up with for xenos.I

I'll see about getting those written up, then. Glad you like it!

I had a chance to do a Tau v. Marines test game on Thursday, and it looks like my efforts to force players to take a wider variety of weapons to deal with different targets may have succeeded too well, as my opponent didn't have any of the weapons I'd planned on being used to root people out of cover and as a result the Marines advancing under fire got up close easily and were pretty destructive once they got there.

If I'm going to keep on using some of the core-rule to-hit penalties I've got planned I think I'm going to need to rethink some of the Ballistic Skill assignments in the game, especially in cases like Tau and Guard where the book's melee game isn't really up to compensating.

In the meantime, some thoughts on "command abilities"/stratagems: At the moment the structure is such that "command points" are generated turn-by-turn by certain HQ models and can be banked turn to turn, in the fashion that Kill Team and AoS2 implement them. In addition some effects (such as psykers) can create more limited forms of command points, which can't be banked turn to turn and which are used on a more limited set of stratagems. Another bit of my theory here is that armies may have a special set of ways to generate more command points; a brief summary of the methods:

-Characters: Having an HQ model with the Command ability on the table. Everyone gets at least a few CP this way, and Imperial armies tend to get more because they've got more junior officers that can be taken several to a slot to give more CP.

-Psykers: "Warp Charge" is temporary CP (can't be banked turn to turn) that can only be spent on "psychic power" stratagems. My current thinking on the powers is to have a set of common cross-army "disciplines" with about three non-attack powers in each, then give some armies' psykers unique powers they can know on top of that. Additionally some of the most powerful dedicated HQ psykers (Farseers, Chaos Sorcerer-Lords, Lords of Change) will get the ability to use their Warp Charge on normal command abilities to represent the role of diviner-psykers in some armies' command structure; they still can't bank it turn to turn but it increases their flexibility quite a bit.

-Sacrifices: The idea of sacrificing victims to the gods out of Chaos, Power from Pain out of Dark Eldar, and Ynnari Strength from Death, suggest to me a Blood Tithe-esque mechanism whereby Command Points are gained when units (friendly or enemy) die. I don't know how much work I'm going to get done on the Battle Sisters before seeing what their Codex/new models look like, but getting command points off friendly units dying certainly looks like old-school Martyrdom to me.

-Markerlights: My present thinking on Markerlights is to use them as limited command points that can be expended on stratagems when a unit attacks the unit that's been Markerlighted. The problem with Markerlights as weapons that require a to-hit roll is that they get disproportionately affected by to-hit penalties; playing Tau against Alaitoc or someone else with loads of to-hit penalties is a frustrating exercise in fishing for 5s/6s all game and watching all your stuff whiff, so at the moment I'm thinking make Markerlights place counters automatically to avoid the randomness and then put a 2-1 conversion on actually using them to avoid making things like Pathfinder squads and marker drones too efficient.

I don't have good ideas for special CP-generation mechanisms for the Necrons or the Tyranids right now; my tentative thinking on Tyranids is some kind of "consume and adapt" mechanism where a unit with feeder tendrils can take some kind of action to eat an enemy unit and generate more CP (which seems too close to the Chaos power-from-sacrifice trick) or some kind of off-map hive-mind model-less CP generator that keeps working as long as you have any Synapse Creatures at all on the field, and the new Necron fluff hasn't really presented me with much inspiration. As for Orks the temptation is to give them more CP based on how many of them are on the field, but I'm wondering if that isn't going to make for some kind of feedback loop where once the army starts loosing it keeps losing. Maybe give them stratagems to reinforce with duplicates of previously-killed units to compensate?

Any thoughts or remarks on Orks/Necrons/Tyranids from people who play those armies and are more connected to/attached to them would be appreciated; I have an intellectual understanding of how they work but without the emotional connection that comes from really liking/playing the army I'm afraid I'd make something that didn't feel right.

 AnomanderRake wrote:


In the meantime, some thoughts on "command abilities"/stratagems: At the moment the structure is such that "command points" are generated turn-by-turn by certain HQ models and can be banked turn to turn, in the fashion that Kill Team and AoS2 implement them. In addition some effects (such as psykers) can create more limited forms of command points, which can't be banked turn to turn and which are used on a more limited set of stratagems. Another bit of my theory here is that armies may have a special set of ways to generate more command points; a brief summary of the methods:

-Characters: Having an HQ model with the Command ability on the table. Everyone gets at least a few CP this way, and Imperial armies tend to get more because they've got more junior officers that can be taken several to a slot to give more CP.

-Psykers: "Warp Charge" is temporary CP (can't be banked turn to turn) that can only be spent on "psychic power" stratagems. My current thinking on the powers is to have a set of common cross-army "disciplines" with about three non-attack powers in each, then give some armies' psykers unique powers they can know on top of that. Additionally some of the most powerful dedicated HQ psykers (Farseers, Chaos Sorcerer-Lords, Lords of Change) will get the ability to use their Warp Charge on normal command abilities to represent the role of diviner-psykers in some armies' command structure; they still can't bank it turn to turn but it increases their flexibility quite a bit.

-Sacrifices: The idea of sacrificing victims to the gods out of Chaos, Power from Pain out of Dark Eldar, and Ynnari Strength from Death, suggest to me a Blood Tithe-esque mechanism whereby Command Points are gained when units (friendly or enemy) die. I don't know how much work I'm going to get done on the Battle Sisters before seeing what their Codex/new models look like, but getting command points off friendly units dying certainly looks like old-school Martyrdom to me.

Sounds good! Question. About how many CP do you intend for players to have in a given game or game turn? At, say, 2,000 points it's pretty easy to take a bunch of cheap imperial characters. So say you take 4 characters (two batallions worth), you'll be generating 4 CP every game round for at least the first couple of turns. That probably scales pretty well with a sacrifice mechanic at 2k. At, say, 1,000 points a lot fewer models will be dying each turn, but you can probably still have 3 or 4 imperial characters without hindering yourself much.

So I like the general concept here, but it's hard to weigh such mechanics without having some idea of how much CP you're expecting to be working with. What kind of CP cost can we expect spells and stratagems to have? Also, I'm mildly concerned about how this would impact reserve mechancis. The ork 'dex, for instance, makes it easy to deepstrike a ton of stuff relatively cheaply. My aeldari armies enjoy deepstriking stuff to replicate "webway ambush" scenarios. So how much CP can I expect to have available for such things pre-game? Or will such mechanics even use CP?

-Markerlights: My present thinking on Markerlights is to use them as limited command points that can be expended on stratagems when a unit attacks the unit that's been Markerlighted. The problem with Markerlights as weapons that require a to-hit roll is that they get disproportionately affected by to-hit penalties; playing Tau against Alaitoc or someone else with loads of to-hit penalties is a frustrating exercise in fishing for 5s/6s all game and watching all your stuff whiff, so at the moment I'm thinking make Markerlights place counters automatically to avoid the randomness and then put a 2-1 conversion on actually using them to avoid making things like Pathfinder squads and marker drones too efficient.

Would it be unreasonable to let markerlights ignore to-hit penalties? Maybe even to-hit modifiers in general? IIRC, most markerlight platforms hit on a 4+. So you'd basically be hitting with half the markerlights you took each turn. Autohitting and having a 2:1 conversion is probably fine as well though.

That said, I've always felt like markerlights, from a fluff perspective, probably should be subject to many to-hit modifiers. If my mandrakes are basically invisible in the darkness making them difficult to aim a laser pointer at in the first place, you should probably have trouble aiming a laser pointer at them. If an ork biker squad is zipping around wildly (using their -1 to hit stratagem), then it should probably be harder than usual to keep the laser pointer aimed at them effectively. Maybe it's not such a bad thing for markerlights to be subject to to-hit penlaties and basically just unlock special stratagems. Isn't that thoeretically comparable to psykers being subject to anti-psyker rules but unlocking access to special powers?

I know markerlights are an iconic aspect of Tau, but it would feel kind of lame to fail to generate X bonus CP every turn because you didn't feel like taking marker drones or pathfinders. On the other hand, having markerlights basically just unlock markerlight CP that can only be spent on markerlight-related stratagems is a fun, optional sub-system. Or maybe I misunderstood your proposal and that's what you're aiming for in the first place.

As an off-the-top-of-my-head alternative form of CP generation, how about having the warlord select Mont'Ka or Kau'Yon before the battle. The former gives you bonus CP when you destroy targets that meet certain criteria. Maybe you call out the target a turn in advance. Maybe it's just any target of a certain PL or any target in the enemy deployment zone or on an objective. The latter would give you bonus CP for destroying enemy units not in their own deployment zone or something else sufficiently "patient huntery."

I don't have good ideas for special CP-generation mechanisms for the Necrons or the Tyranids right now; my tentative thinking on Tyranids is some kind of "consume and adapt" mechanism where a unit with feeder tendrils can take some kind of action to eat an enemy unit and generate more CP (which seems too close to the Chaos power-from-sacrifice trick) or some kind of off-map hive-mind model-less CP generator that keeps working as long as you have any Synapse Creatures at all on the field, and the new Necron fluff hasn't really presented me with much inspiration. As for Orks the temptation is to give them more CP based on how many of them are on the field, but I'm wondering if that isn't going to make for some kind of feedback loop where once the army starts loosing it keeps losing. Maybe give them stratagems to reinforce with duplicates of previously-killed units to compensate?

Any thoughts or remarks on Orks/Necrons/Tyranids from people who play those armies and are more connected to/attached to them would be appreciated; I have an intellectual understanding of how they work but without the emotional connection that comes from really liking/playing the army I'm afraid I'd make something that didn't feel right.

Some thoughts that I haven't really analyzed thoroughly:
* Tyranid biological adaptation is awesome, but it's usually the sort of thing that happens over an extended period of time rather than in the middle of the battle. Perhaps "consume and adapt" should be "feeder tendrils;" a special rule found on Lictors and maybe brood lords that generates CP when they kill stuff. Their job is to analyze the enemy and send feedback to the hivemind after all.

* Perhaps tyranids should generally generate fewer CP but have access to stratagems that can be 'broadcasted" across synapse. So maybe you only get 9 CP over the course of the game compared to an imperial player's 12 or 15, but you can spend an extra CP to have the stratagem affect all units within synapse range of a selected synapse unit.

* Maybe tyranids generate CP based on the type of synapse available. Something like 3CP at the start of the game round if their warlord is alive, 2CP if at least one synapse creature worth X PL is alive, and 1CP if they have any synapse around at all. Then just make certain units (warriors, warrior primes, Old One Eye, etc.) Command units. So theoretically, tyranid CP generators cost more than imperial ones ( a prime is more expensive than a company commander), but they make up the difference with the synapse CP bonus and then spend those CP more efficiently with the aforementioned synapse aura stratagems.

* When I think Necrons, I think Sanctuary 101 where they sort of... wake up more and more units (and progressively more competent commanders) until a problem is dealt with. So maybe they generate a number of CP based on the turn number. 'Crons are pretty bad at alpha striking but seem to be intended to win in the mid-to-late game where they've (supposedly) retained a larger chunk of their army than their opponent. So having CP amp up over the course of the game seems fitting for that. Take a rough first turn or two, but throw around all kinds of fire power by turns 4 and 5. In theory, this has a "feel good" effect for the 'cron player. Sure, that last turn was rough, but now you're throwing stratagems around like a mad man. Of course, this is based on assumptions about 'cron design that don't seem to really hold true in more competitive settings ('crons aren't as tough as they're probably meant to be), so...

* Not sure about orks. Maybe a toned down version of the sacrifice mechanics mixed with bonus CP when one of their normally undesirable random rules kicks in? So if you shoot a shock attack gun and roll poorly for its profile, for instance, or if you manage to blow up your own model with Perils or Gets Hot. Combine that with bonus CP when you wipe out an enemy character or an enemy unit worth X PL, and you'll be rewarding orks both for doing well and for doing badly. Positive feedback on both ends.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Sounds good! Question. About how many CP do you intend for players to have in a given game or game turn? At, say, 2,000 points it's pretty easy to take a bunch of cheap imperial characters. So say you take 4 characters (two batallions worth), you'll be generating 4 CP every game round for at least the first couple of turns. That probably scales pretty well with a sacrifice mechanic at 2k. At, say, 1,000 points a lot fewer models will be dying each turn, but you can probably still have 3 or 4 imperial characters without hindering yourself much.

So I like the general concept here, but it's hard to weigh such mechanics without having some idea of how much CP you're expecting to be working with. What kind of CP cost can we expect spells and stratagems to have? Also, I'm mildly concerned about how this would impact reserve mechancis. The ork 'dex, for instance, makes it easy to deepstrike a ton of stuff relatively cheaply. My aeldari armies enjoy deepstriking stuff to replicate "webway ambush" scenarios. So how much CP can I expect to have available for such things pre-game? Or will such mechanics even use CP?

1) At the moment I'm expecting each character to generate between 0 and 2 CP per turn depending on function and tier (a Warlock might not generate CP normally, but an Autarch would generate 2), for an average of 4-6 CP/turn at 2,000pts, reduced as characters die. I am considering the possibility of a basic CP income independent of characters to make possible army builds more flexible. Mind also that everyone's getting locked to one detachment only, the details of which have yet to be worked out.

2) Stratagems will probably end up being smaller and/or more expensive than they are currently to account for the increased CP supply; a large part of the overhaul to psykers is that GW wants to make individual psychic powers too powerful so they brought in the Rule of One to fix it and just ended up screwing the incentives around building a psyker-heavy army. Considering the Eldar, for instance, Doom might put some number of tokens on the target that can be expended to reroll failed wound rolls rather than allowing all wounds from anyone to be rerolled, or Conceal might grant Obscured, in which case it wouldn't stack with cover that also grants Obscured.

3) I'm not expecting to keep using pre-game stratagems. In the case of allowing arbitrary models to Deep Strike I'd rather take a leaf out of pre-8e approaches and make things like Teleportation Transponders (Custodian/Deathwatch infantry/Dreadnaughts) and Screaming Jets/Void Burners (Eldar vehicles) costed upgrades that permit things to Deep Strike, or in the case of Eldar infantry put them in Reserves normally and then give someone a portable webway gate the way the 3e Dark Eldar had so you can plop down a marker on the table that things can arrive from Reserves out of. The current timing of Reserves is that they deploy during your end phase (dodging the issue of charging out of deep strike) and are Obscured (-1 to hit) the turn they come down, whether that is going to be enough remains to be seen. In the case of other pre-game stratagems I'm not expecting to use Relics in their current form at all (advanced character equipment that does some of the same things, sure, but free unique upgrades that are frequently of dubious value definitely not) and we're not going to see Chapter Masters as something separate from Captains for a while yet, if at all.

-Markerlights: My present thinking on Markerlights is to use them as limited command points that can be expended on stratagems when a unit attacks the unit that's been Markerlighted. The problem with Markerlights as weapons that require a to-hit roll is that they get disproportionately affected by to-hit penalties; playing Tau against Alaitoc or someone else with loads of to-hit penalties is a frustrating exercise in fishing for 5s/6s all game and watching all your stuff whiff, so at the moment I'm thinking make Markerlights place counters automatically to avoid the randomness and then put a 2-1 conversion on actually using them to avoid making things like Pathfinder squads and marker drones too efficient.

Would it be unreasonable to let markerlights ignore to-hit penalties? Maybe even to-hit modifiers in general? IIRC, most markerlight platforms hit on a 4+. So you'd basically be hitting with half the markerlights you took each turn. Autohitting and having a 2:1 conversion is probably fine as well though.

That said, I've always felt like markerlights, from a fluff perspective, probably should be subject to many to-hit modifiers. If my mandrakes are basically invisible in the darkness making them difficult to aim a laser pointer at in the first place, you should probably have trouble aiming a laser pointer at them. If an ork biker squad is zipping around wildly (using their -1 to hit stratagem), then it should probably be harder than usual to keep the laser pointer aimed at them effectively. Maybe it's not such a bad thing for markerlights to be subject to to-hit penlaties and basically just unlock special stratagems. Isn't that thoeretically comparable to psykers being subject to anti-psyker rules but unlocking access to special powers?

I know markerlights are an iconic aspect of Tau, but it would feel kind of lame to fail to generate X bonus CP every turn because you didn't feel like taking marker drones or pathfinders. On the other hand, having markerlights basically just unlock markerlight CP that can only be spent on markerlight-related stratagems is a fun, optional sub-system. Or maybe I misunderstood your proposal and that's what you're aiming for in the first place.

As an off-the-top-of-my-head alternative form of CP generation, how about having the warlord select Mont'Ka or Kau'Yon before the battle. The former gives you bonus CP when you destroy targets that meet certain criteria. Maybe you call out the target a turn in advance. Maybe it's just any target of a certain PL or any target in the enemy deployment zone or on an objective. The latter would give you bonus CP for destroying enemy units not in their own deployment zone or something else sufficiently "patient huntery."

The problem I have with Markerlights in their current form is that a lot of the Tau stats are predicated on having five Markerlights on everything you want them on (most Tau units aren't great at BS 4+ but are almost too good at BS 3+ rerolling 1s and ignoring to-hit penalties from moving). The game ends up feeling like you live or die based solely on how many markerlight hits you manage to get, and forces you into taking as many as you can to even try to play. With auto-hitting markerlights the randomness aspect fades, and needing to expend them to do things makes them more of a resource management game than they are currently.

As to to-hit penalties the timing of the draft rule I've got floating around is "place markerlight counters for each unit with the Markerlights ability, then remove one markerlight counter from each unit that's currently Obscured", just to make it do something. It doesn't seem too complex but it's an extra step and I've got to do some testing to see how much it matters.

I don't have good ideas for special CP-generation mechanisms for the Necrons or the Tyranids right now; my tentative thinking on Tyranids is some kind of "consume and adapt" mechanism where a unit with feeder tendrils can take some kind of action to eat an enemy unit and generate more CP (which seems too close to the Chaos power-from-sacrifice trick) or some kind of off-map hive-mind model-less CP generator that keeps working as long as you have any Synapse Creatures at all on the field, and the new Necron fluff hasn't really presented me with much inspiration. As for Orks the temptation is to give them more CP based on how many of them are on the field, but I'm wondering if that isn't going to make for some kind of feedback loop where once the army starts loosing it keeps losing. Maybe give them stratagems to reinforce with duplicates of previously-killed units to compensate?

Any thoughts or remarks on Orks/Necrons/Tyranids from people who play those armies and are more connected to/attached to them would be appreciated; I have an intellectual understanding of how they work but without the emotional connection that comes from really liking/playing the army I'm afraid I'd make something that didn't feel right.

Some thoughts that I haven't really analyzed thoroughly:
* Tyranid biological adaptation is awesome, but it's usually the sort of thing that happens over an extended period of time rather than in the middle of the battle. Perhaps "consume and adapt" should be "feeder tendrils;" a special rule found on Lictors and maybe brood lords that generates CP when they kill stuff. Their job is to analyze the enemy and send feedback to the hivemind after all.

* Perhaps tyranids should generally generate fewer CP but have access to stratagems that can be 'broadcasted" across synapse. So maybe you only get 9 CP over the course of the game compared to an imperial player's 12 or 15, but you can spend an extra CP to have the stratagem affect all units within synapse range of a selected synapse unit.

* Maybe tyranids generate CP based on the type of synapse available. Something like 3CP at the start of the game round if their warlord is alive, 2CP if at least one synapse creature worth X PL is alive, and 1CP if they have any synapse around at all. Then just make certain units (warriors, warrior primes, Old One Eye, etc.) Command units. So theoretically, tyranid CP generators cost more than imperial ones ( a prime is more expensive than a company commander), but they make up the difference with the synapse CP bonus and then spend those CP more efficiently with the aforementioned synapse aura stratagems.

* When I think Necrons, I think Sanctuary 101 where they sort of... wake up more and more units (and progressively more competent commanders) until a problem is dealt with. So maybe they generate a number of CP based on the turn number. 'Crons are pretty bad at alpha striking but seem to be intended to win in the mid-to-late game where they've (supposedly) retained a larger chunk of their army than their opponent. So having CP amp up over the course of the game seems fitting for that. Take a rough first turn or two, but throw around all kinds of fire power by turns 4 and 5. In theory, this has a "feel good" effect for the 'cron player. Sure, that last turn was rough, but now you're throwing stratagems around like a mad man. Of course, this is based on assumptions about 'cron design that don't seem to really hold true in more competitive settings ('crons aren't as tough as they're probably meant to be), so...

* Not sure about orks. Maybe a toned down version of the sacrifice mechanics mixed with bonus CP when one of their normally undesirable random rules kicks in? So if you shoot a shock attack gun and roll poorly for its profile, for instance, or if you manage to blow up your own model with Perils or Gets Hot. Combine that with bonus CP when you wipe out an enemy character or an enemy unit worth X PL, and you'll be rewarding orks both for doing well and for doing badly. Positive feedback on both ends.

I like bonus CP based on the number of living Synapse creatures for Tyranids, I think I'll work with that. As for Necrons riffing off your idea maybe the "not really dead" aspect should come into play; characters who have "died" are just ported back to base for repairs and may still be able to communicate with/command the battle so they keep generating CP after dying?

I've been thinking about the Orks, and while I personally don't like an army to run on random silliness and I'm not sure hooking CP generation into random silliness from a variety of different special rules is feasible I do see the appeal of the random silliness enough to think about trying to implement it. It might be interesting to work something like old-school Animosity into the mix; imagine rolling a die for every unit within 12" of the Boss, and they generate a CP on a 4+ but on a 1 they start squabbling and take d3 wounds from the nobz wading in to restore order? And Mek Bosses could get something similar that triggers off vehicles.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I've become more and more convinced lately that the fundamental issue with 40k today is that GW set out to write a game based on an ill-considered formula for converting 7e stats into 8e stats ("blast" = d3 shots, "template" = d6 auto-hits, "AP 4" = "AP -1", etc.), and the assumptions they made when writing their formula produce degenerate relationships. High-volume mid-power weapons were introduced in 5e and 6e to control the proliferation of light vehicles and in 8e have rendered light vehicles and heavy infantry close to obsolete as the tables shift to make them efficient tools for killing all possible targets, uniform-damage blasts have gotten stronger every edition since I've been playing as obstacles to firing them get removed but their targets haven't gotten any tougher, and the proliferation of skew builds and looser detachments continues to punish armies with weak/expensive mandatory choices and forces all-comers army builds to take the weapons to handle unit-type skew to a degree that punishes armies with an even distribution of unit types.

I don't know how far I'm going to get with this overhaul, but the number of basic assumptions that I'm going to need to throw out to address the problems I have with the system are such that I suspect this will piss off people who regard things like the ability to build all-Knight armies or the ability to damage Land Raiders with lasguns as basic rights. I'm trying to preserve my image of the essence of the setting without getting attached to specific mechanical concepts; I'm going to proceed without regard for what unit statlines currently exist or how Codexes are currently divided, so specific army builds may not be relevant. I'd like to make sure any models that currently exist remain but I have no particular attachment to special characters and as I dislike GW's implementation of special characters they are going to be de-emphasized.

With the introduction out of the way some concepts:

1. Detachments and Allies. 8e Matched Play has chosen to write the army-building rules as "take as many detachments as you like from whatever book you like"; I regard the ability to splash the Loyal 32 (a minimum Battalion of Guard) into arbitrary Imperial lists and the ability to build an army consisting entirely of one unit type as undesireable, unbalancing, and restrictive. In an army with expensive units if an all-comers army has to be prepared for both an army of Knights and an army of all Guardsmen overly-efficient generalist weapons are almost enforced, since any specialized anti-armour weapons put on the table against an army with no armour are wasted, as are anti-infantry weapons against an army of all armour. List-building and weapon choices are made less interesting by the unrestricted nature of the whole thing. I'd like to move to a one-detachment model with heavily restricted allies; rather than "take another arbitrary detachment from another book" allies should be "you can take things off this limited list of things" after the manner of the 3e Inquisition Codexes.

2. Unit stats. 8e's to-wound table, AP-as-modifier system, and damage/wounds relationships have created a system wherein there are two classes of target: "hard" targets are vehicles of all stripes and heavy infantry, "soft" targets are light infantry. Weapons useful against light infantry have a single consideration: rate of fire per cost, which makes them a race-to-the-bottom weapon where cheap cost and low stats are the most important things, while weapons used against "hard" targets are most efficient when they've got intermediate damage and high rates of fire rather than high damage and a low rate of fire, leaving little to no niche for heavy single-target weapons and rendering a high percentage of the weapon options that exist irrelevant. I'd like to reexamine relationships between stats on a broad scale in an attempt to create more categories of target rather than making the weapons useful against a Monolith, a Space Marine, and a Venom have fundamentally similar properties.

3. Psykers and mortal wounds. Ever since the introduction of the "psychic phase" in 6e GW has been pushing to make individual psychic powers have ever greater impact and making them more random to make up for it; 8e's unbalanced powers and the Rule of 1 makes the game unnecessarily random and the denial mechanics put the game in an uncomfortable prisoners'-dilemma sort of state where armies are punished for taking a large number of psykers and punished for taking fewer psykers than their opponent. I'd like to go back to a mechanism where individual psychic powers are less significant and more reliable, in particular I'd like to remove mortal wounds from the picture. Mortal wounds are useful in certain contexts (to represent headshots on sniper rifles, for instance) but their use for things like Smite and vehicle explosions creates a bizarre situation where cheap light infantry are less vulnerable to being clustered around an exploding vehicle than armoured infantry.

***

Basic notes on army/detachment structure: The problems with outright deleting Allies are armies that don't function on their own (from cripplingly limited options, no sane Troops options, or both), and sane lore-friendly builds that happen to cross armies. To summarize the cross-current-book relationships that should exist:

Imperial Auxiliaries: Certain Imperial armies (Assassins, GK, Custodians...) make way more sense as limited deployments in supplement to another army rather than a full army of their own. In the tradition of the 3e Inquisition list I'm thinking the implementation here is to allow a short list of units from minor Imperial factions to be used in a detachment with one of the core standalone ones (Guard, Marines, AdMech). This may also cover cross-book auxiliaries between the major factions; a Space Marine army might take some Guard units in the guise of Chapter serfs, who don't have all the in-book support abilities they might have normally, for instance.

Inquisitorial Armies: The Chambers Militant have been growing apart from the Inquisition proper in recent editions, and the Inquisitors have lost their Stormtroopers. To my mind either I resurrect the idea of "Inquisitorial" versions of certain units that have some kind of special effect, or the Inquisitors themselves should carry some kind of broad army buff to represent information or assets they're providing troops under their command. I'd prefer the second since it means less copy-pasting of unit entries.

Knights: I really dislike the idea of Knights as a standalone book; I know GW has written all this lore about how Knight Households are these big standalone entities but I'm going to keep them as limited auxiliaries available to other Imperial books.

Chaos: The fact that there's a whole Guard army with a proper Codex while Traitor Guard are a FW thing that doesn't deserve proper updates, except for one chaff unit stuffed in the CSM book, and that the Dark Mechanicum doesn't actually exist, kind of bug me. I'm going to be looking at ways to bring them both more into line with the loyalist versions; Knights and Daemons are going to work similarly to Imperial auxiliaries.

Eldar: I don't know why DE/Craftworld allies are necessary, and the whole Ynnari thing is too heavily dependent on special characters and screws with fundamental assumptions about the action economy of the game beyond what I'm comfortable with. Harlequins are likely to remain auxiliary units for both DE and Craftworlds.

Tyranids: The relationship between Guard and GSC is easily rectified by just giving GSC their own versions of the vehicles. I'm unsure as to the basis for fielding GSC units alongside proper Hive Fleet units is (I was always under the impression that when the Hive Fleet actually arrived the cults got eaten and used for more biomass to make more Tyranids, not kept intact and fighting).

Orks, Necrons, and Tau are all single standalone books with no possible allies anyway; making more Kroot units may be beyond the scope of this project, so for now Kroot will stay directly integrated into the Tau book.

I'd like to add that it is now almost 2019, can we please get alternating activation? Alpha-striking would die a great death if you couldn't ram your entire army down my throat on turn one with zero consequences. That new stratagem they gave us to "mitigate" alpha-striking does jack all, my games still mostly come down to "he who goes first, wins."

 Togusa wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I've become more and more convinced lately that the fundamental issue with 40k today is that GW set out to write a game based on an ill-considered formula for converting 7e stats into 8e stats ("blast" = d3 shots, "template" = d6 auto-hits, "AP 4" = "AP -1", etc.), and the assumptions they made when writing their formula produce degenerate relationships. High-volume mid-power weapons were introduced in 5e and 6e to control the proliferation of light vehicles and in 8e have rendered light vehicles and heavy infantry close to obsolete as the tables shift to make them efficient tools for killing all possible targets, uniform-damage blasts have gotten stronger every edition since I've been playing as obstacles to firing them get removed but their targets haven't gotten any tougher, and the proliferation of skew builds and looser detachments continues to punish armies with weak/expensive mandatory choices and forces all-comers army builds to take the weapons to handle unit-type skew to a degree that punishes armies with an even distribution of unit types.

I don't know how far I'm going to get with this overhaul, but the number of basic assumptions that I'm going to need to throw out to address the problems I have with the system are such that I suspect this will piss off people who regard things like the ability to build all-Knight armies or the ability to damage Land Raiders with lasguns as basic rights. I'm trying to preserve my image of the essence of the setting without getting attached to specific mechanical concepts; I'm going to proceed without regard for what unit statlines currently exist or how Codexes are currently divided, so specific army builds may not be relevant. I'd like to make sure any models that currently exist remain but I have no particular attachment to special characters and as I dislike GW's implementation of special characters they are going to be de-emphasized.

With the introduction out of the way some concepts:

1. Detachments and Allies. 8e Matched Play has chosen to write the army-building rules as "take as many detachments as you like from whatever book you like"; I regard the ability to splash the Loyal 32 (a minimum Battalion of Guard) into arbitrary Imperial lists and the ability to build an army consisting entirely of one unit type as undesireable, unbalancing, and restrictive. In an army with expensive units if an all-comers army has to be prepared for both an army of Knights and an army of all Guardsmen overly-efficient generalist weapons are almost enforced, since any specialized anti-armour weapons put on the table against an army with no armour are wasted, as are anti-infantry weapons against an army of all armour. List-building and weapon choices are made less interesting by the unrestricted nature of the whole thing. I'd like to move to a one-detachment model with heavily restricted allies; rather than "take another arbitrary detachment from another book" allies should be "you can take things off this limited list of things" after the manner of the 3e Inquisition Codexes.

2. Unit stats. 8e's to-wound table, AP-as-modifier system, and damage/wounds relationships have created a system wherein there are two classes of target: "hard" targets are vehicles of all stripes and heavy infantry, "soft" targets are light infantry. Weapons useful against light infantry have a single consideration: rate of fire per cost, which makes them a race-to-the-bottom weapon where cheap cost and low stats are the most important things, while weapons used against "hard" targets are most efficient when they've got intermediate damage and high rates of fire rather than high damage and a low rate of fire, leaving little to no niche for heavy single-target weapons and rendering a high percentage of the weapon options that exist irrelevant. I'd like to reexamine relationships between stats on a broad scale in an attempt to create more categories of target rather than making the weapons useful against a Monolith, a Space Marine, and a Venom have fundamentally similar properties.

3. Psykers and mortal wounds. Ever since the introduction of the "psychic phase" in 6e GW has been pushing to make individual psychic powers have ever greater impact and making them more random to make up for it; 8e's unbalanced powers and the Rule of 1 makes the game unnecessarily random and the denial mechanics put the game in an uncomfortable prisoners'-dilemma sort of state where armies are punished for taking a large number of psykers and punished for taking fewer psykers than their opponent. I'd like to go back to a mechanism where individual psychic powers are less significant and more reliable, in particular I'd like to remove mortal wounds from the picture. Mortal wounds are useful in certain contexts (to represent headshots on sniper rifles, for instance) but their use for things like Smite and vehicle explosions creates a bizarre situation where cheap light infantry are less vulnerable to being clustered around an exploding vehicle than armoured infantry.

***

Basic notes on army/detachment structure: The problems with outright deleting Allies are armies that don't function on their own (from cripplingly limited options, no sane Troops options, or both), and sane lore-friendly builds that happen to cross armies. To summarize the cross-current-book relationships that should exist:

Imperial Auxiliaries: Certain Imperial armies (Assassins, GK, Custodians...) make way more sense as limited deployments in supplement to another army rather than a full army of their own. In the tradition of the 3e Inquisition list I'm thinking the implementation here is to allow a short list of units from minor Imperial factions to be used in a detachment with one of the core standalone ones (Guard, Marines, AdMech). This may also cover cross-book auxiliaries between the major factions; a Space Marine army might take some Guard units in the guise of Chapter serfs, who don't have all the in-book support abilities they might have normally, for instance.

Inquisitorial Armies: The Chambers Militant have been growing apart from the Inquisition proper in recent editions, and the Inquisitors have lost their Stormtroopers. To my mind either I resurrect the idea of "Inquisitorial" versions of certain units that have some kind of special effect, or the Inquisitors themselves should carry some kind of broad army buff to represent information or assets they're providing troops under their command. I'd prefer the second since it means less copy-pasting of unit entries.

Knights: I really dislike the idea of Knights as a standalone book; I know GW has written all this lore about how Knight Households are these big standalone entities but I'm going to keep them as limited auxiliaries available to other Imperial books.

Chaos: The fact that there's a whole Guard army with a proper Codex while Traitor Guard are a FW thing that doesn't deserve proper updates, except for one chaff unit stuffed in the CSM book, and that the Dark Mechanicum doesn't actually exist, kind of bug me. I'm going to be looking at ways to bring them both more into line with the loyalist versions; Knights and Daemons are going to work similarly to Imperial auxiliaries.

Eldar: I don't know why DE/Craftworld allies are necessary, and the whole Ynnari thing is too heavily dependent on special characters and screws with fundamental assumptions about the action economy of the game beyond what I'm comfortable with. Harlequins are likely to remain auxiliary units for both DE and Craftworlds.

Tyranids: The relationship between Guard and GSC is easily rectified by just giving GSC their own versions of the vehicles. I'm unsure as to the basis for fielding GSC units alongside proper Hive Fleet units is (I was always under the impression that when the Hive Fleet actually arrived the cults got eaten and used for more biomass to make more Tyranids, not kept intact and fighting).

Orks, Necrons, and Tau are all single standalone books with no possible allies anyway; making more Kroot units may be beyond the scope of this project, so for now Kroot will stay directly integrated into the Tau book.

I'd like to add that it is now almost 2019, can we please get alternating activation? Alpha-striking would die a great death if you couldn't ram your entire army down my throat on turn one with zero consequences. That new stratagem they gave us to "mitigate" alpha-striking does jack all, my games still mostly come down to "he who goes first, wins."

The problem I have with Markerlights in their current form is that a lot of the Tau stats are predicated on having five Markerlights on everything you want them on (most Tau units aren't great at BS 4+ but are almost too good at BS 3+ rerolling 1s and ignoring to-hit penalties from moving). The game ends up feeling like you live or die based solely on how many markerlight hits you manage to get, and forces you into taking as many as you can to even try to play. With auto-hitting markerlights the randomness aspect fades, and needing to expend them to do things makes them more of a resource management game than they are currently.

As to to-hit penalties the timing of the draft rule I've got floating around is "place markerlight counters for each unit with the Markerlights ability, then remove one markerlight counter from each unit that's currently Obscured", just to make it do something. It doesn't seem too complex but it's an extra step and I've got to do some testing to see how much it matters.

Marker lights are all jacked up. Having 2 is useless because no one uses seeker missiles, having three also seems useless most of the time because units charging your gunline aren't concerned with cover, and having 4 marker lights also is something I yawn at and never remember to use.

I think the system would be a lot better if it were something like this:

Fire marker light, re-roll 1's against the target.

That's it. All the other nonsense could be done away with. Seeker missiles could just use their ballistic skill, because it's not like a krak missile is all that OP that it needs to hit on a 6+ and Destroyer missiles could gain the benefit of rolling full bS if there is a marker light on the target. You could even give the D-missiles -1 to hit after that if you feel it's still too unbalanced, treating them like a power fist in cc.

I'd like to add that it is now almost 2019, can we please get alternating activation? Alpha-striking would die a great death if you couldn't ram your entire army down my throat on turn one with zero consequences. That new stratagem they gave us to "mitigate" alpha-striking does jack all, my games still mostly come down to "he who goes first, wins."

This. Alternate Activation (Not Alternating phases mind you, that's alot more broken without redoing the entire thing) is much more fun and involves the players alot more than IGOUGO.

Have run into some pretty major problems during testing; going back through the math it's starting to look like the "volume wins" problem is a reaction to scale creep. The bigger guns get bigger and more spammable, so things have to get tougher to compensate, and we're left down a hole where small arms fire is just sort of generally not useful, which is where GW writing in mechanisms to make pulse rifles and lasguns fire four shots, and massive AP on bolt rifles and hellguns, and that kind of thing comes in. It's very much the issue with high-quality infantry today; T4/3+ is a good statline when faced with a lasgun, but an irrelevant statline when faced with hundreds of them.

I think putting people in a position where they need to roll 80-100 dice to get anything done proves destructive to the concept of the game, but I don't know how much I can do about it when lasguns take 18 shots on average to do a wound to Space Marines in the open (54 shots to do a wound to a Space Marine in cover/concealment according to my current rules).

I could try rolling back to the pre-8e state of the game (with AP as ignore-saves-of-X-or-worse rather than as a modifier, no to-hit modifiers, and cover as an alternate save if your armour is ignored), but that just leads us down another rabbit hole where 2+ armour and AP2 weapons are nigh-impossible to price (2+ armour is 6x as effective against AP3 as it is against AP2).

I've been throwing around the idea of massively cutting rates of fire and moving to a system of two rolls (to-hit, then d6+penetration v. armour the way Bolt Action and pre-8e vehicles worked), but at that point I'm sort of screwing my original design parameter (which is to keep as much of 8e as I can).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sir Heckington wrote:

I'd like to add that it is now almost 2019, can we please get alternating activation? Alpha-striking would die a great death if you couldn't ram your entire army down my throat on turn one with zero consequences. That new stratagem they gave us to "mitigate" alpha-striking does jack all, my games still mostly come down to "he who goes first, wins."

This. Alternate Activation (Not Alternating phases mind you, that's alot more broken without redoing the entire thing) is much more fun and involves the players alot more than IGOUGO.

I've seen alternating activation work well in games where either there's a hard ordering to activations (i.e. X-Wing, where pilot initiative determines the order of play), or in games where players tend to have a fairly similar number of activations (i.e. Bolt Action, where the platoon org chart severely limits spamming). Games without those constraints tend to shoot themselves in the foot somewhat; i.e. Kill-Team's system discourages movement because you'll get shot before you have a chance to do anything if the other guy holds still and you don't.

Between my concerns about spamming and three-rolls (above), your concerns about alternating activations, and the incessant refrain of "would 40k be better if it used d10s/d12s?" elsewhere in this forum it sounds like we're retracing Rick Priestly's thought processes leading up to Gates of Antares/Mithras' "Beyond The Gates of 40k". Antares has some of its own problems in the form of clunky wound allocation, overly-symmetrical army design, and narrow range of builds/types, and the Beyond the Gates of 40k thread involves porting the activation structure over and leaving the rest of the screwiness in place, but there's much to recommend it as an idea. I've played a lot more Bolt Action/K47 than Antares but I think I'm going to sit down with that rulebook for a while and see what emerges.

(Addendum: Other issues with Gates of Antares include unit types in 40k with no real parallel in those rules (melee vehicles/monsters, airplanes, super-heavies), but I do find it kind of amusing that I'm looking at porting another set of GW miniatures to a Warlord Games rulebook after my draft port of WHFB to Black Powder proved fun.)

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Have run into some pretty major problems during testing; going back through the math it's starting to look like the "volume wins" problem is a reaction to scale creep. The bigger guns get bigger and more spammable, so things have to get tougher to compensate, and we're left down a hole where small arms fire is just sort of generally not useful, which is where GW writing in mechanisms to make pulse rifles and lasguns fire four shots, and massive AP on bolt rifles and hellguns, and that kind of thing comes in. It's very much the issue with high-quality infantry today; T4/3+ is a good statline when faced with a lasgun, but an irrelevant statline when faced with hundreds of them.

I think putting people in a position where they need to roll 80-100 dice to get anything done proves destructive to the concept of the game, but I don't know how much I can do about it when lasguns take 18 shots on average to do a wound to Space Marines in the open (54 shots to do a wound to a Space Marine in cover/concealment according to my current rules).

I could try rolling back to the pre-8e state of the game (with AP as ignore-saves-of-X-or-worse rather than as a modifier, no to-hit modifiers, and cover as an alternate save if your armour is ignored), but that just leads us down another rabbit hole where 2+ armour and AP2 weapons are nigh-impossible to price (2+ armour is 6x as effective against AP3 as it is against AP2).

I've been throwing around the idea of massively cutting rates of fire and moving to a system of two rolls (to-hit, then d6+penetration v. armour the way Bolt Action and pre-8e vehicles worked), but at that point I'm sort of screwing my original design parameter (which is to keep as much of 8e as I can).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sir Heckington wrote:

I'd like to add that it is now almost 2019, can we please get alternating activation? Alpha-striking would die a great death if you couldn't ram your entire army down my throat on turn one with zero consequences. That new stratagem they gave us to "mitigate" alpha-striking does jack all, my games still mostly come down to "he who goes first, wins."

This. Alternate Activation (Not Alternating phases mind you, that's alot more broken without redoing the entire thing) is much more fun and involves the players alot more than IGOUGO.

I've seen alternating activation work well in games where either there's a hard ordering to activations (i.e. X-Wing, where pilot initiative determines the order of play), or in games where players tend to have a fairly similar number of activations (i.e. Bolt Action, where the platoon org chart severely limits spamming). Games without those constraints tend to shoot themselves in the foot somewhat; i.e. Kill-Team's system discourages movement because you'll get shot before you have a chance to do anything if the other guy holds still and you don't.

Between my concerns about spamming and three-rolls (above), your concerns about alternating activations, and the incessant refrain of "would 40k be better if it used d10s/d12s?" elsewhere in this forum it sounds like we're retracing Rick Priestly's thought processes leading up to Gates of Antares/Mithras' "Beyond The Gates of 40k". Antares has some of its own problems in the form of clunky wound allocation, overly-symmetrical army design, and narrow range of builds/types, and the Beyond the Gates of 40k thread involves porting the activation structure over and leaving the rest of the screwiness in place, but there's much to recommend it as an idea. I've played a lot more Bolt Action/K47 than Antares but I think I'm going to sit down with that rulebook for a while and see what emerges.

(Addendum: Other issues with Gates of Antares include unit types in 40k with no real parallel in those rules (melee vehicles/monsters, airplanes, super-heavies), but I do find it kind of amusing that I'm looking at porting another set of GW miniatures to a Warlord Games rulebook after my draft port of WHFB to Black Powder proved fun.)

Something that rattles around in my brain every now and again is how many of the mechanics in 40k seem to lend themselves to a smaller scale of game. If the assumption were that an average game looked more like a 1k or 1500 game instead of a 2k game, and if there were rules to stop people from stuffing as many beefy models as possible into those games, you'd have a lot fewer hard targets to get through. Something like a whirlwind or fire prism would be your opponent's hardest hitting unit, but you wouldn't have the other two prisms and a maxed out ynnari dark reaper squad all gunning you down at once.

I've also kind of been wanting to see astartes armies reworked from the ground up so that each marine feels very durable and killy. Sort of like a halfway point between what 8e marines look like and what movie marines look like.

If we scaled down the intended size of the game (through army construction rules, mostly) and accepted that it's okay for some armies to feel like a small band of mini-bosses, would that help to address some of the scale problems you're running into? I feel like I'd be okay with it taking 18 or 36 lasgun shots to kill a marine provided I was only facing, like, 3 squads of marines and a tank. My eldar would then theoretically be about as killy as the marines but less innately durable. This would also open up some turn order options that don't really work with armies of the modern size. Keeping track of the alternate activations of 15 different units per side is a pain, but 5 per side seems pretty doable.

Basically, what if every game felt like a 1k 3rd edition battle? But maybe that's too radical a shift for what you're going for.

Keeping track of the alternate activations of 15 different units per side is a pain, but 5 per side seems pretty doable.

It's really not. Get little markers, a single die will work. I use small D6s. Put it next to a unit when it's done doing its turn. It's really not hard. I don't know why this complaint about alternate activation became a thing, but managing 30 units in it is completely possible.

Sir Heckington wrote:

Keeping track of the alternate activations of 15 different units per side is a pain, but 5 per side seems pretty doable.

It's really not. Get little markers, a single die will work. I use small D6s. Put it next to a unit when it's done doing its turn. It's really not hard. I don't know why this complaint about alternate activation became a thing, but managing 30 units in it is completely possible.

Even if you don't use dice, do you loose track of which of your units have moved or not now? How about which units have shot yet? How about who fought yet in assault?

You don't need tokens NOW to keep track of who activated on your turn why is it suddenly a problem? And if, for some reason, it is. Like above, use a dice. We all have buckets of them. Pick a color and put it next to the unit when it's been activated.

 Lance845 wrote:

Sir Heckington wrote:

Keeping track of the alternate activations of 15 different units per side is a pain, but 5 per side seems pretty doable.

It's really not. Get little markers, a single die will work. I use small D6s. Put it next to a unit when it's done doing its turn. It's really not hard. I don't know why this complaint about alternate activation became a thing, but managing 30 units in it is completely possible.

Even if you don't use dice, do you loose track of which of your units have moved or not now? How about which units have shot yet? How about who fought yet in assault?

You don't need tokens NOW to keep track of who activated on your turn why is it suddenly a problem? And if, for some reason, it is. Like above, use a dice. We all have buckets of them. Pick a color and put it next to the unit when it's been activated.

I've had no first-hand experience trying to use alternating activations in 40k, so you may well be correct. My concern when looking at such a thing on paper is in regards to the number of "events" that happen between unit activations. Currently, if I have 15 units on the table, I'll have about 14 "events" before I get to my 15th unit. I.e. I'll move or shoot or whatever about 14 times before I get to that last unit. Maybe less if some of my units don't move or shoot or whatever for some reason. Each phase lets me sort of "check in" on a unit when I activate it.

If my opponent and I both have about 15 units that all potentially want to move, shoot, charge, and fight (we'll ignore psychic stuff for now), then my last unit could end up sitting around for about 112 events ((14 * 4 = 56) + (14*4 = 56) = 112) before I check in on it again.

But again, that's just "on paper." I'd be willing to try an alternating activation system.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

Sir Heckington wrote:

Keeping track of the alternate activations of 15 different units per side is a pain, but 5 per side seems pretty doable.

It's really not. Get little markers, a single die will work. I use small D6s. Put it next to a unit when it's done doing its turn. It's really not hard. I don't know why this complaint about alternate activation became a thing, but managing 30 units in it is completely possible.

Even if you don't use dice, do you loose track of which of your units have moved or not now? How about which units have shot yet? How about who fought yet in assault?

You don't need tokens NOW to keep track of who activated on your turn why is it suddenly a problem? And if, for some reason, it is. Like above, use a dice. We all have buckets of them. Pick a color and put it next to the unit when it's been activated.

I've had no first-hand experience trying to use alternating activations in 40k, so you may well be correct. My concern when looking at such a thing on paper is in regards to the number of "events" that happen between unit activations. Currently, if I have 15 units on the table, I'll have about 14 "events" before I get to my 15th unit. I.e. I'll move or shoot or whatever about 14 times before I get to that last unit. Maybe less if some of my units don't move or shoot or whatever for some reason. Each phase lets me sort of "check in" on a unit when I activate it.

If my opponent and I both have about 15 units that all potentially want to move, shoot, charge, and fight (we'll ignore psychic stuff for now), then my last unit could end up sitting around for about 112 events ((14 * 4 = 56) + (14*4 = 56) = 112) before I check in on it again.

But again, that's just "on paper." I'd be willing to try an alternating activation system.

Search "Beyond the Gate of 40k"

Its a mash up rule set of 40k and Beyond the Gates of Antares. The creator made a d6 version a d12 version and a simplified version. It most directly translates 8th into AA with lots of player interaction and mostly just works. When you activate a Character you can activate 1 other unit within x inches with it and potentially 1 other protector unit (Activate a cryptek and you can also activate his lychguard and some warriors) allowing you to keep auras going. You can also sacrifice a units activation to do reactions, interrupting the enemies turn to do a kind of half activation (just moving, just shooting, etc etc...) It also includes Antares terrain rules updated to function with 40ks keywords and those rules alone make the game significantly more tactical.

The Beyond the Gates of 40k thread I've found has Antares turn order bolted directly onto 40k damage mechanics; I find that the list-building and damage mechanics of 40k 8e tend to cause at least as many problems as the turn order, so while I will be drawing some on that as I proceed this isn't a "but someone's done that already, why are we bothering?" sort of situation.

In practice the Antares attack mechanic (hit roll/armour roll, either the target dies if it's a 1-W infantryman or rolls on the damage table if it's a vehicle) makes for a faster game where small arms are far less irrelevant and you don't need to roll hundreds of dice to get anything done; in my first gut-feeling test I found that I'd assigned some Rapid Fire traits based on how 40k would handle them and throwing twenty burst cannon shots downrange in that system is a pretty quick recipe for utterly destroying whatever you're aiming at, and the damage mechanics make anti-tank weapons feel very 4e where one good solid lascannon hit can blast a tank off the table in one shot.

The biggest issue adapting 40k to that system is the amount of heavy-weapon-spam inherent in the army lists; to drop back to Bolt Action (Antares' WWII-based ancestor) for a moment in that list your force org chart is a "platoon" with one junior officer and 2-5 infantry squads consisting of dudes with rifles. Sometimes you get light machine guns, submachine guns, or assault rifles (more shots but no more penetration), but unless you're German and have disposable panzerfausts or are playing Konflikt '47 and have rifle grenades written into most of the line infantry squads you don't have any high-explosives or anti-tank weapons in your basic unit selection. Each platoon has 0-1 each of a selection of support weapons (heavier machine guns, anti-tank guns, field artillery) and vehicles, but you tend to buy one-shot-at-a-time anti-tank guns as a single thing that doesn't fill compulsory slots, far removed from 40k's 2-3 long-range anti-tank guns available to most Troops units.

That said one of the problems I've got with 40k today is scale creep where the guns keep getting bigger and the smaller guns are only relevant in vast quantity; lascannons aren't relevant unless you can get four or five, plasma has to come in 30k-style full plasma squads. It's entirely possible that this is an opportunity more so than it is a problem.

In the interests of trying to be a more different project from BTGo40k I think I will lift more of the Antares damage mechanics and present a d10-based draft. I've got more math to do before I write down any specific numbers but I've got some ideas of where to go next, at least.

His goal was not to address issues with individual units, but instead to just transplant 40k as is to a better turn structure and a more interactive and tactical game play. Individual unit changes was beyond the work load and scope of what he wanted to do.

By all means, take what you like and ditch or change what you don't. None of us own any of this.

I personally dislike damage tables. I think they create more book keeping. I think the way 8th is handling monsters/vehicles is much faster and more fun.

Something to note is Pin Markers. (I personally ordered these - https://www.ebay.com/itm/Pyrkol-Blast-Markers-Marker-set-for-6mm-10mm-15mm-Epic-40k-Dropzone-Commander/112922600720?hash=item1a4ab62510:g:iMoAAOxyCTtTc9kj:rk:4:pf:0 because 1) cheap 2) good aesthetic and 3) you can use the ones with 3 bursts on them as a single token worth 3 pins)



You don't need to kill models as much since Pin Markers add an additional tactical element. We decided that it wasn't successful HITS that caused Pins but instead successful WOUNDS even if the wound was saved. Pretty much every army in 40k would run right through enemy fire that was hitting their armor if it wasn't successful in causing a risk in wounds. It's a solid mechanic and works well with the order system.

I believe he chose d12 initially because it was easy to convert the d6 and keep the same ratios for success. (a 6+ roll becomes a 11+ roll / 5+ = 9+ / 4+ = 7+ / 3+ = 5+ / 2+ = 3+) which is also why he made a d6 version. BtGoA is made for d10s. It just takes a lot more work on your part to adjust every units stat line to a d10 because it doesn't translate directly. But by all means do what you want. But if you stick with the d6 you need to limit or remove one of the effects of pin markers (a penalty to to hit rolls due to panicking from being under fire) since those -1s have such a bigger impact on a scale of 1-6 as opposed to 1-12. Also, it's easier to justify a 12 always hits and a 1 always fails when the chance of it is a 1 in 12 vs the 1 in 6 it is now.

Interested to see your draft when you post it.

Btw, might I recommend getting rid of the FOC? I've never liked it, and prefer how it used to be done (In what, 2nd edition, and Fantasy?)

1 unit in a list must be a CHARACTER unit.
25% of a list must be SQUAD units.
25% of a list can be CHARACTER units.
50% of a list can be SUPPORT units.
50% of a list can be ALLY units (Cannot fill the compulsory SQUAD units.)

Something like this, it also removes the need for Infantry Platoons.

On the note of Guard, I'd like to see the options for the following on their base troops:
Laspistols and Brutal Assault Weapons (Something like a feral gang/penal legion)
Lascarbines (Drop Troops and Catachans are known for this, think it'd be cool)
Lasguns
Long-las (If we have regiments with carbines, why not this?)

Stole the idea from Primaris marines, I'd like to see that variation with other units.

Sir Heckington wrote:
Btw, might I recommend getting rid of the FOC? I've never liked it, and prefer how it used to be done (In what, 2nd edition, and Fantasy?)

1 unit in a list must be a CHARACTER unit.
25% of a list must be SQUAD units.
25% of a list can be CHARACTER units.
50% of a list can be SUPPORT units.
50% of a list can be ALLY units (Cannot fill the compulsory SQUAD units.)

Something like this, it also removes the need for Infantry Platoons.

On the note of Guard, I'd like to see the options for the following on their base troops:
Laspistols and Brutal Assault Weapons (Something like a feral gang/penal legion)
Lascarbines (Drop Troops and Catachans are known for this, think it'd be cool)
Lasguns
Long-las (If we have regiments with carbines, why not this?)

Stole the idea from Primaris marines, I'd like to see that variation with other units.

Arguments could be made multiple ways on the FOC; I find that making it "number of units" rather than "percentage of points" feels more like it's an extra cost axis and helps restrict gun-spamming more than making things a percentage of points might. If a sniper team is a "support weapon" choice and a tank is a "support weapon" choice it's hard to argue that the sniper team should cost as much as the tank, but if you're going pure percentage-of-points then the same list requirement might let you spam a lot more sniper teams than you should be able to. A number-of-units FOC also lets me have one without having to worry about assigning specific points to things early in the test process. I'll be looking at both as I proceed, however.

As far as weapon options on basic troops the structure of most armies and the weapon rules in Gates of Antares supports a "small arms" list of a carbine, a rifle, a shotgun, and pistol/CCW; the Guard are certainly no exception. I'm probably not putting a long-las in as a small arms option, however, because the ten-guys-with-ten-sniper-rifles model GW uses for scouts/rangers/ratlings/etc. seems very antithetical to what a "sniper" is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lance845 wrote:
...I believe he chose d12 initially because it was easy to convert the d6 and keep the same ratios for success. (a 6+ roll becomes a 11+ roll / 5+ = 9+ / 4+ = 7+ / 3+ = 5+ / 2+ = 3+) which is also why he made a d6 version. BtGoA is made for d10s. It just takes a lot more work on your part to adjust every units stat line to a d10 because it doesn't translate directly. But by all means do what you want. But if you stick with the d6 you need to limit or remove one of the effects of pin markers (a penalty to to hit rolls due to panicking from being under fire) since those -1s have such a bigger impact on a scale of 1-6 as opposed to 1-12. Also, it's easier to justify a 12 always hits and a 1 always fails when the chance of it is a 1 in 12 vs the 1 in 6 it is now.

Interested to see your draft when you post it.

Not necessarily in all cases; Bolt Action uses the -1-to-hit-per-pin-marker with d6s, but Bolt Action starts everyone's ranged to-hit from 3+ instead of from 5+ on a d10 and the range penalties and penalties from cover are less punishing. You can still be pushed down to hitting on 6+/6+ (anything worse than a 6+ to hit is roll a 6, then roll a 6 again) but it tends to happen when a unit is pinned down by sustained fire from multiple enemies.

I find the major problem with pin markers is that they disproportionately reward smaller units since "a unit shooting" is what generates a pin marker; with the relatively symmetrical army lists in Bolt Action it ends up being a list-building consideration to figure out the middle ground between having big enough squads to stick around/do damage and having smaller squads to do more pins/get more order dice, but in an asymmetrical setting where one side's Troops might be Guardsmen and another's might be Space Marines it's something to keep in mind.