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Bolt action is basically a better written 40k. I'd suspect Gates of Antares or Warpath would do 40k better too since they are both written by the GOOD designers GW lost before they hired schnooks like they have now. I haven't checked BTGOA but Warpath seemed like 40k done properly, it had two scales (think how we now have 40k and apoc), with more balanced rules, no crazy superheavy bullgak. BTGOA looked good but seemed closer in size to 2nd edition, so a little small.

Antares is a great game. The models are poor though as is the background, which is why I can't get it going here.

If someone were to make 40k factions workable with antares I'd play that.

 auticus wrote:
Antares is a great game. The models are poor though as is the background, which is why I can't get it going here.

If someone were to make 40k factions workable with antares I'd play that.

I know when Warpath came out without its own models there were fanmade "not 40k" army lists made (also because the original rules were free, not sure if they still are), not sure if they're still around (or if they've been updated).

I've got what I hope to be a pretty glossy well-made book to use 40k models with for free. I like to write rulesets

 auticus wrote:
I've got what I hope to be a pretty glossy well-made book to use 40k models with for free. I like to write rulesets

What software do you use to make/edit your rulesets?

I start in notepad or a tablet writing out the structure. Then I move into microsoft word to get it typed and then last I'll use either Adobe or Publisher to get the layout in and add graphics.

 auticus wrote:
I start in notepad or a tablet writing out the structure. Then I move into microsoft word to get it typed and then last I'll use either Adobe or Publisher to get the layout in and add graphics.

Thanks!

Some cool ideas. Adapting the Bolt Action system to 40k is a popular idea. I like BA but prefer Chain of Command for ww2 platoon level and have thought about how its dice activation system could be tied to the 40 stuff. Its pretty much based on activating unit leaders and them commanding their soldiers. So you can get multiple units going at once, but never your entire force, or sometimes your chain of command breaks down and you can't get much of anything moving if you roll poorly. But regardless I find BA's turn structure to be a vast improvement over the 40k system.

Scenarios seem to be the only way to get listing out of games like 40k, but then you have to agree to the scenario. I prefer smaller engagements myself, rather than the sprawling table edge to edge layouts I see online and at the store. These kinds of changes for those playing pickup games gets even harder, but if you have a regular club that meets things like this become more doable.

Would love to see peoples ideas! I may tool around trying to marry Rogue Trader to Chain of Command for home games.

Slipspace wrote:
The counter-attack one is definitely borderline, but on the flipside I would argue removing it does remove the slightly weird situation where you get punished for charging because your opponent can now interrupt in an ongoing combat due to you being forced to activate your charging unit first.

It was your decision to stay in that ongoing combat and not charge support in though. Spending 2 CP on it isn't a no-brainer either, it's just an option your opponent has where he can spend resources to react to something happening in the opponent's turn. If anything, we should have more of that, not less.

I disagree about the hidden information though, because the information that should be hidden here isn't what your opponent knows about which stratagems you're going to use, since they can't do anything about that anyway, rather it's the information about whether you really need to activate one of those stratagems in the first place.

You aren't actually hiding that information though, you are just making those stratagems unreliable. Having them randomly fail on a 5+ would pretty much yield the same result.
For defensive stratagems, both kinds exist, the ones you use when you know you need them (Rotate Ion Shields, Lightning Fast Reflexes) and those where you need to decide during your turn/at the start of the shooting phase whether you want to protect a unit without knowing whether you actually need it. The later simply aren't used because you are wasting valuable resources for possibly no gain. People would just use other stratagems with guaranteed benefits, because even with the biggest CP farms, every single CP is valuable.


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 auticus wrote:
In my rewrite you get CPs for holding objectives and accomplishing secondary objectives.

You start with none.

There is a maelstrom mission very similar to that, which has been blacklisted in our group. You only get new mission objectives if you hold an objective marker at the beginning of your turn.
For some armies like Harlequins it's just ridiculously easy to just hold all 6 objectives at the end of turn 1, and then they snowball from there, basically winning the game by turn 2, even if they are wiped out.

How does your system prevent that? Honestly curious, because I like the idea of CP being rewards.

bigern314 wrote:
Some cool ideas. Adapting the Bolt Action system to 40k is a popular idea. I like BA but prefer Chain of Command for ww2 platoon level and have thought about how its dice activation system could be tied to the 40 stuff. Its pretty much based on activating unit leaders and them commanding their soldiers. So you can get multiple units going at once, but never your entire force, or sometimes your chain of command breaks down and you can't get much of anything moving if you roll poorly. But regardless I find BA's turn structure to be a vast improvement over the 40k system.

Scenarios seem to be the only way to get listing out of games like 40k, but then you have to agree to the scenario. I prefer smaller engagements myself, rather than the sprawling table edge to edge layouts I see online and at the store. These kinds of changes for those playing pickup games gets even harder, but if you have a regular club that meets things like this become more doable.

Would love to see peoples ideas! I may tool around trying to marry Rogue Trader to Chain of Command for home games.

Per emphases above,
that command structure could really characterize different armies, how they work.
Tyranids, for instance, vs orks - I could see nid commands structures working well on the advance,
but retreating bugs scurryin for cover long term before being useful again,
while orks would be going off like an ammo dump on fire on the attack (commands?),
but when broken, mob back up when met with sufficient numbers.

These sorts of dimensions could add to 'balance' if finessed.

Yeah! Rt + CoCommand + ...

About points sized games,
I am working on new travel cases custom fit for travelin armies,
and am wondering how I should build them out.
Build the cases to hold the models that work best in the current "meta"
or build the cases to hold the models that I for various reasons want to see on the table,
i.e. competitive, or casual?

Maybe I should start a poll.

 auticus wrote:
I start in notepad or a tablet writing out the structure. Then I move into microsoft word to get it typed and then last I'll use either Adobe or Publisher to get the layout in and add graphics.

See this is what I am talking about.
the 41st Age is upon us brothers!

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
[

 auticus wrote:
In my rewrite you get CPs for holding objectives and accomplishing secondary objectives.

You start with none.

There is a maelstrom mission very similar to that, which has been blacklisted in our group. You only get new mission objectives if you hold an objective marker at the beginning of your turn.
For some armies like Harlequins it's just ridiculously easy to just hold all 6 objectives at the end of turn 1, and then they snowball from there, basically winning the game by turn 2, even if they are wiped out.

How does your system prevent that? Honestly curious, because I like the idea of CP being rewards.

Me too. This is great.

 Sim-Life wrote:
I love how threads pop up like this where the OP suggests something in a sort of "hey, lets brainstorm some ideas, how about these as a starting point?" and people will eagerly dog pile on them to tell them why they're wrong and their ideas are stupid.

I'm not against the idea of messing with how lists are built but I feel like outright banning certain sections of an army book is against the Your Dudes style 40k goes for. A better idea might be to impose a CP penalty on certain sections. Like you can take one Heavy choice for nothing, a second for 1cp, a third for 2cp etc. But then you run into problems with armies like Imperial Guard who can take squadrons of tanks as one choice so maybe rather than doing it by unit you do it per model. So you say each model with the keywords [Vehicle] from the heavy section of the army.

There's likely problems with that too though that I'm not thinking of.

Re the bold selection,
this is a great idea too.

For some reason, first time through, I read this as an active pregame response
to a drawn mission card or scenario revealed pre-game at a a tournament.

So, you take your 'list' -
this round's scenario is revealed and
for instance says - supply lines knocked out by warpstorms.
Both sides must pay from CP or other points for each unit as described below:
... (for instance, named characters cost 5cp, flyers cost 3, support weapons 2, troop transports cost 2, heavy support 1 (units of 3 tanks cost 3), troops 0...
then players take turns making decisions,
deploying units as they pay for them with CPs (or some other mechanic),
adding a layer of decision before gameplay
beginning with most all their units
or beginning with more CPs,
or...

This sort of thing would bring out the experts who can exploit weaknesses in other armies
and adapt to changing conditions e.g. the win button is gummed up with nid guts,
only an expert can pull off a win in these conditions.

Plus, with 15% of an army off the table, tables feel bigger and games get finished.

jamshaman wrote:
Jeff, pay no attention to the pathetic douches on here that take advantage of someone's vulnerability when making a suggestion, and use it as an opportunity to be insulting. They're all cowards, and I doubt would be so bold if speaking face to face.

Good on you for trying to improve the game, it definitely needs it.

I'd humbly suggest taking a look at the rules of AT-43, which are free online as PDF. I used to play it when it came out, and for a version 1.0 I thought it was amazing. The company went under because they made poor business decisions, but the game itself was brilliant. It's the same scale and sci fi. It might give you some fun ideas!

Thanks man!
Yeah, I have hear nothing but good things
and the game had an interesting theme.
I will try to find a copy on the dl.

 Horst wrote:
Good luck convincing people to play by your weird house rules.

Randomly removing parts of my army does not seem fun. What if you say no fast attack, and it just so happens all my fast attack had my anti-tank? Now my opponents heavy support just automatically wins.

It doesn't encourage balanced listbuilding, it encourages spamming troops choices and HQ units that you know cannot be removed from the game. A Guard player, for example, would simply take as many Tank Commanders as possible, then all Scions and Infantry, so they don't risk losing their units to weird rules. Orks would have a big advantage, just spam warbosses, weirdboyz, big meks, and boyz.

Your idea with deployment "stopping" just encourages the largest possible units to be deployed, or to game the deployment system to get fewer drops. For example, I take a Chimera with my Guard army, so I can deploy it and 6 characters inside it at once, so I'm sure my command structure can be deployed.

you can make house rules all you want, but they will more often than not make the game less balanced, not more, and are only going to be "fun" if your army isn't getting dicked over by them.

Unless the order of deployment was dictated by mission parameters?
And, yeah, this is basically the idea -
in order to not get dicked over, people take more 'balanced' armies composed of multiple synergies rather than one, e.g. the Magnus and support or whatever is the gimick of the month...


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 Jidmah wrote:

Other ideas?

Things that did work and lead to fun games:
- This is my castle: Have the player going second set up the entire table and pick a deployment map and deploy first. Then the player going first deploys his army and gets the wrecker stratagem (2CP, destroy a piece of terrain). This can turn into some fun siege games, where you try to break the opponent's bastion. Requires a decent terrain collection.
- Speed Freak race: Both players deploy within a 6" of the right table edge, and up to 24" from their table edge. Along the middle of the board you have on objective every 24". At the end of each battle round, you determine who scores an objective and remove those which are scored. Then, all units, objectives and terrain are moved 6" to the right. Anything moved off the table this way is destroyed, terrain moved off the table is moved to the left side, if the objective furthest to the left is 24" from the left table edge, add a new one on the table edge.
- Other places: Have portals, teleporters or tunnels on the board where units can move to artillery platforms, underground force field generators or large warp portals. These are small battlefields (killteam board works well) with 3 objectives on them. Whoever controls most of those objectives gets the benefit from them (free orbital strike stratagem, 5++ for the entire army, +2 to cast/deny, free daemon summoning). You cannot move, measure or draw LOS to anything on a different battlefield, but you can deepstrike or re-deploy to there.
- Grand melee: Deployment zone of both players is everywhere, but you must stay 12" from enemy models. Works best if both armies are melee oriented.
- More explosions!: Models that have some sort of explode rule always explode. Models that don't now explode on a 4+: Models with 1-3 Wounds deal 1 MW within 1", models with 4-6 wounds deal d3 MW within 3" and models with 7+ wounds deal d6 MW within 6". And yes, chain-reactions are possible.

Love the first one especially.
Would like to see this game played twice, with each payer in both roles once.

Why do people think that having RNG decide the game is in any way fun?

 auticus wrote:
Antares is a great game. The models are poor though as is the background, which is why I can't get it going here.

If someone were to make 40k factions workable with antares I'd play that.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/733472.page
Beyond the gates of 40k

 Peregrine wrote:
Why do people think that having RNG decide the game is in any way fun?

Because to many people, playing the same thing over and over is boring, and thats what happens when you have little random elements in a game. The game becomes like chess, where you are doing the same maneuvers over and over game after game with the same static results.

Which for many people is boring.


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 Lance845 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Antares is a great game. The models are poor though as is the background, which is why I can't get it going here.

If someone were to make 40k factions workable with antares I'd play that.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/733472.page
Beyond the gates of 40k

Neat thanks for the link.

 Lance845 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Antares is a great game. The models are poor though as is the background, which is why I can't get it going here.

If someone were to make 40k factions workable with antares I'd play that.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/733472.page
Beyond the gates of 40k

The advanced rules link doesn't work. Anyone have those?

In any event thanks for the link! I'll be checking these out. I play Bolt Action but never tried Gates of Antares.

Does Heralds of Ruin still do a good Kill Team?

I know GW put out a Kill Team. It has some things I like, but it doubles down on much of what I hate.

My first thought is that this seems like something that should be done in the actual list-building stage, not just before a game starts.

As in, you'd know beforehand if units with Fly were going to be disallowed, so that you could avoid including any in your list in the first place.

My second thought, though, is that even if players can tailor their lists beforehand, some armies will really struggle.

e.g. banning units with Fly seems pretty devastating to the Eldar races.

 jeff white wrote:
In another thread,
one commenter suggested ways to take
list-building and the win-button gotcha CCG combo attitude
out of the game experience equation.

That suggestion effectively changes the motivation driving the assembly of "lists"
by adding layers of mission parameter
that change the way that the list plays in the mission,
e.g. a card that says "All fast attack units are unavailable [for reasons]" or
"All heavy support units are unavailable [for other reasons]".

Another possibility might be this:

1) Players array their "lists" (say, 2000 points of models) on side tables.
2) Missions are selected.
3) Deployment begins with highest dice. This player may deploy one unit.
4) Second player deploys one unit.
5) Player one deploys a unit.
6) Player two deploys a unit, and rolls a dice.
HERE, things can happen. For instance,
On a 6, deployment stops.
OR
7) Repeat 5 and 6. On any second result of a 6, deployment stops.
8) If 2 sixes are not rolled after any two phases of player 2 deployment,
then the complete armies are deployed as listed in the full "list".


Other ideas?

I could see this as a variation:
-Each unit you have is assigned a card in your deck
-Start of game: Draw cards, one at a time, until you have X points or more in your hand
-The first player plays a card - playing a card adds said unit to the army, and allows said player to draw back up to X points
-After a card is played, the player with fewer points in their army goes next. Ties go to the person who didn't play a card last.
-A player may pass. If both players pass in a row, the the player with fewer points may play as many cards as they have in their hand, provided they don't exceed the other player's points
-You now have a game between those lists

This is just a random idea I'm throwing out there. Do you think it'd work?

Bharring wrote:

I could see this as a variation:
-Each unit you have is assigned a card in your deck
-Start of game: Draw cards, one at a time, until you have X points or more in your hand
-The first player plays a card - playing a card adds said unit to the army, and allows said player to draw back up to X points
-After a card is played, the player with fewer points in their army goes next. Ties go to the person who didn't play a card last.
-A player may pass. If both players pass in a row, the the player with fewer points may play as many cards as they have in their hand, provided they don't exceed the other player's points
-You now have a game between those lists

This is just a random idea I'm throwing out there. Do you think it'd work?

There used to be a player on the The Waaagh! forum who had his entire army arranged in fully configured squads and just randomly generate his army from those squads.

Otherwise, I think the idea is cute, but you need to have a pretty big collection of your army for it to work.

 Jidmah wrote:

Slipspace wrote:


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 auticus wrote:
In my rewrite you get CPs for holding objectives and accomplishing secondary objectives.

You start with none.

There is a maelstrom mission very similar to that, which has been blacklisted in our group. You only get new mission objectives if you hold an objective marker at the beginning of your turn.
For some armies like Harlequins it's just ridiculously easy to just hold all 6 objectives at the end of turn 1, and then they snowball from there, basically winning the game by turn 2, even if they are wiped out.

How does your system prevent that? Honestly curious, because I like the idea of CP being rewards.

My solution to this „rapid objective inflation” problem was that you can only generate new card from each objective once. Additionally, on top of every turn you can either draw a card or copy single not yet achieved card from your opponent. Along with three cards drawn before game this system has proven to provide quite ballanced non-repetetive mission generator. To sum up: over 5 turn game both players have 8 tactical objectives guaranteed, 5 of which can be somewhat chosen and can play towards generating another 6 to a 14 cards total. This works best with „supremacy” style deck that includes difficult multiturn objectives.

Small disclaimer: the reason for such format was that I play a lot (hundreds of games a year) with just few people and we needed variation and don’t mind occasional strong assymmetry that can still occure with this type of mission generation. If you play once every blue moon, you will not find it balanced enough.

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:
My first thought is that this seems like something that should be done in the actual list-building stage, not just before a game starts.

As in, you'd know beforehand if units with Fly were going to be disallowed, so that you could avoid including any in your list in the first place.

My second thought, though, is that even if players can tailor their lists beforehand, some armies will really struggle.

e.g. banning units with Fly seems pretty devastating to the Eldar races.

That's why you ban actual flyers, not just the FLY keyword ("Aircraft" as they are now). And Titanic, not necessarily just Lord of War.

But yeah all of that sort of thing is stuff you do beforehand. I don't think anyone is advocating it being "Surprise, this mission allows no flyers!" at the last minute. Part of the issue there is you get people who ALWAYS field flyers in their list, and get gravely offended at the idea of NOT bringing them and will throw a fit like a child over things like that even if it's known beforehand because god forbid they have to rework their list.

I have touched on this in my kingmaker update for AOS, that being randomly generated restrictions on your list based on mission parameters that change battle to battle.

A common scenario I run into is people only buy 2000 points and thats it, typically whatever is needed to play in local tournaments.

Posting restrictions in an open play way usually precludes them because they don't have the collection to do that.

Instead you roll back to the sudden death objectives and other boosters for those that are at a points handicap.

Suddenly being down in points is not as killer, if all you have to do is find a way to kill the enemy commander to win the game.

Wayniac wrote:

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:
My first thought is that this seems like something that should be done in the actual list-building stage, not just before a game starts.

As in, you'd know beforehand if units with Fly were going to be disallowed, so that you could avoid including any in your list in the first place.

My second thought, though, is that even if players can tailor their lists beforehand, some armies will really struggle.

e.g. banning units with Fly seems pretty devastating to the Eldar races.

That's why you ban actual flyers, not just the FLY keyword ("Aircraft" as they are now). And Titanic, not necessarily just Lord of War.

But yeah all of that sort of thing is stuff you do beforehand. I don't think anyone is advocating it being "Surprise, this mission allows no flyers!" at the last minute. Part of the issue there is you get people who ALWAYS field flyers in their list, and get gravely offended at the idea of NOT bringing them and will throw a fit like a child over things like that even if it's known beforehand because god forbid they have to rework their list.

Very much depends on whether you have enough of a collection to allow for a random chunk of your army to be blacklisted.

Crispy78 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:
My first thought is that this seems like something that should be done in the actual list-building stage, not just before a game starts.

As in, you'd know beforehand if units with Fly were going to be disallowed, so that you could avoid including any in your list in the first place.

My second thought, though, is that even if players can tailor their lists beforehand, some armies will really struggle.

e.g. banning units with Fly seems pretty devastating to the Eldar races.

That's why you ban actual flyers, not just the FLY keyword ("Aircraft" as they are now). And Titanic, not necessarily just Lord of War.

But yeah all of that sort of thing is stuff you do beforehand. I don't think anyone is advocating it being "Surprise, this mission allows no flyers!" at the last minute. Part of the issue there is you get people who ALWAYS field flyers in their list, and get gravely offended at the idea of NOT bringing them and will throw a fit like a child over things like that even if it's known beforehand because god forbid they have to rework their list.

Very much depends on whether you have enough of a collection to allow for a random chunk of your army to be blacklisted.

True, but I would question if you are ONLY buying a specific list, rather than a collection which you build a list from. Which, I think, is ultimately a big part of the underlying issues in general. Some people do one, some people do the other. Personally I never got the idea of planning out a list and then buying ONLY the models for that list, as opposed to buying enough models so you had an actual collection that you built a list from.

 auticus wrote:

Basically adapt what is given, beginning with an older edition, or... BA?

I get told a lot to just gtfo and play a different game if I don't like 40k so much. Problem is I have a sizable 40k collection, I like the models, and I like the story. I just hate the game.

So … play a different game. I mean, the game rules are the least important part of the package. The setting and miniatures are unique to 40k, but 28mm company-level sci-fi rules are pretty common. There's nine flavours been produced just by GW over the years, after all. Admittedly most other rules might need some tweaks to incorporate the variety of combatants (for example Dirtside 2 or Tomorrow's War both assume the game only involves humans with roughly equivalent technology are involved, so don't need to deal with everything from a goblin with a stick up to a superhuman in power armour with an anti-tank laser).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Open War rules in the 2019 General's Handbook seem to have some sort of random army generation rules, going by the battle report in July's WD. Might be worth taking a look at that and adapting it to 40k.

Yes, it might not be suitable for people with a limited assortment of units to choose from, but only you can decide if that's a problem. It's irrelevant for me, because no-one round here has that small a collection.

You have to adapt those rules to play with 40k factions. Which I don't mind doing.

Thats why I'm writing my own ruleset.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Personally I never got the idea of planning out a list and then buying ONLY the models for that list, as opposed to buying enough models so you had an actual collection that you built a list from.

The competitive formats typically require you to sell off your collection and buy whatever GW has made powerful in the latest chapter approved.

Buying more than required is just not something a lot of people consider if collecting or having a collection is not their real goal knowing they will be selling as soon as their list gets nerfed.

Wayniac wrote:
Very much depends on whether you have enough of a collection to allow for a random chunk of your army to be blacklisted.

True, but I would question if you are ONLY buying a specific list, rather than a collection which you build a list from. Which, I think, is ultimately a big part of the underlying issues in general. Some people do one, some people do the other. Personally I never got the idea of planning out a list and then buying ONLY the models for that list, as opposed to buying enough models so you had an actual collection that you built a list from.

 auticus wrote:
Antares is a great game. The models are poor though as is the background, which is why I can't get it going here.

If someone were to make 40k factions workable with antares I'd play that.

I rather like their models. Or the concepts in them. The Freeborn absolutely blow me away...

I am right sick of the grimdark and need something else. But 40k is the only thing anyone plays... anywhere. Its really frustrating.

I am right sick of the grimdark and need something else. But 40k is the only thing anyone plays... anywhere. Its really frustrating.

Indeed. Where I am 40k is the main game. Has been the main game for a long time, being temporarily unseated by xwing for a couple years, but is now back in its glory.

Its also where most of the tournament guys go so if you like 40k and you live here you also have to love min/maxing and playing by ITC rules.

We have other gamers going but they are tiny. I run a rotation throughout the year to try to get people to break out and play something else, which has a small group of people going with it.

It does take a lot of energy and cheerleading to get that done though.

What could be interesting, but would probably require an overly complicated spreadsheet:

Random points modifications between games.

So you have an opponent, points limit, and faction.
Each point value has a 10% chance to vary. If it varies, it varies by (D100-50)%. So you could wind up paying 7ppm for your Tac Marines. Or your Guardsmen could cost 6ppm. Maybe your Repulsor is super cheap this game.

Then build a list. Then play.

It'd certainly be less balanced, but might be more interesting. Incubi could actually be a worthwhile unit. You may actually take a Power Sword if it were cheap enough. Who knows.