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Since the codex is no longer a living thing, and I'm only really going to be tooling around with it with one or two friends, I'm just curious what house rules others might have had back in the day (or still use now) to rejigger the balance a bit.

Ah but only if you want it to be.....we have a dedicated 5th ed player group that allows all compatible codexes from editions from 5th-7th to be used in 5th ed.

My old edition topic where we discuss these types of things-
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789567.page

And Mezmorkis custom prohammer topic-

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/796101.page

One of our long time IG players loved the doctrines like close order drill, but chooses to base his army on the 5th ed book because it has more options/depth

 JNAProductions wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Just as a design aside, steer clear of negatives. If there is something you can forget and it benefits you (for example this unit doubles its move but has minus -1 to hit, you might remember the first bit but forget the second), or your opponent has to remember it, leave it out. Too much room for error, innocent or otherwise.

That could mean having to change base stats. For example I might want Catachans to rely on cover, so have base 6+ save but get +2 in cover. I might forget the 6+ save bit so would have to make infantry profiles all be 6+ and make getting to 5+ a buff a regiment can take.

So Catachans in cover get a 4+, and others in cover get... a 4+? Good plan.

Yes Of course they get a whole bunch of other benefits - personally I would still take 'em with that and it would be a minor nerf. It is an example of the sort of things to do if you wants to bring in such a negative.

I wanted to build a Penal Legion way back in the day. With Sentinels as guard towers, Ogryn COs, and Commissar wardens.

Haha. I had bought almost all the faction codexes from that Era. Ended up playing Chaos and Orkz in the end.

catbarf wrote:To me, just as important as giving regiments specialties was the fact that they could stack.

Which is to say that instead of just picking a special ability from a list- making all armies special in different ways- you could take cannon fodder basic Guardsmen, or you could take Vostroyans who were 50% more expensive but had 4+ saves, re-rolled 1s to hit, and were better in close combat.

It may not have been optimal from a competitive standpoint, but I liked that there was a difference in troop quality among the regiments, with some being more horde-y than others. Vostroyans were expensive to collect and I appreciated that they were worth more per man.

With Veterans back to Elites, so that taking an army of all Veterans is functionally off the table, that differentiation is pretty much gone- all Guardsmen have the same basic capabilities.

Yeah it is a really need system. It definitely needs some fine tuning as there are some have and have not abilities, but it is still a really neat system overall.

JNAProductions wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Just as a design aside, steer clear of negatives. If there is something you can forget and it benefits you (for example this unit doubles its move but has minus -1 to hit, you might remember the first bit but forget the second), or your opponent has to remember it, leave it out. Too much room for error, innocent or otherwise.

That could mean having to change base stats. For example I might want Catachans to rely on cover, so have base 6+ save but get +2 in cover. I might forget the 6+ save bit so would have to make infantry profiles all be 6+ and make getting to 5+ a buff a regiment can take.

So Catachans in cover get a 4+, and others in cover get... a 4+? Good plan.

Well in the context of 3rd/4th when this was alive, armor saves and cover saves were different. Now porting it over to 9th like that on its own would not be overly great, but for example Catachans had WS 4 base instead of 3, and gave them a base Infiltrate in wood/jungle terrain along with a few other nice buffs while in that terrain. Also every squad could take a Heavy Flamer. Mind you all these abilities also made the squads 85 points without any upgrades. Throwing some of these other abilities in and seeing how it works could make for some fun times.

aphyon wrote:

Since the codex is no longer a living thing, and I'm only really going to be tooling around with it with one or two friends, I'm just curious what house rules others might have had back in the day (or still use now) to rejigger the balance a bit.

Ah but only if you want it to be.....we have a dedicated 5th ed player group that allows all compatible codexes from editions from 5th-7th to be used in 5th ed.

My old edition topic where we discuss these types of things-
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789567.page

And Mezmorkis custom prohammer topic-

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/796101.page

One of our long time IG players loved the doctrines like close order drill, but chooses to base his army on the 5th ed book because it has more options/depth

Oh yeah, its been delayed due to scheduling snafus and the like, but the girlfriend and I are gonna be toying around with prohammer and I intend to work originally with the base Codex and slowly mold it a bit and maybe begin porting things from 5th into it. I figure should be safe since the oldest books she has access to are 5th which has a bit higher of a power scale than the old 3.5 dex.

 kurhanik wrote:

Oh yeah, its been delayed due to scheduling snafus and the like, but the girlfriend and I are gonna be toying around with prohammer and I intend to work originally with the base Codex and slowly mold it a bit and maybe begin porting things from 5th into it. I figure should be safe since the oldest books she has access to are 5th which has a bit higher of a power scale than the old 3.5 dex.

For a trek down memory lane. My perfect 3rd - 6th edition codex would have been:
- 5th edition codex as a baseline for points and unit options.
- 3.5/4th edition codex for doctrines to add customisation. With some points tweaks to balance the doctrines out. Also for special characters such as Gaunt, Schaeffer and Lt Kage.

For Guard tanks specifically:
- Still stick to 5th edition as a base line.
- The old Armoured Company Army List doctrines, as well as Command Tanks and Ace Tanks. Again, doctrine points adjusted to be more balanced.
- Additional vehicle and turret/bunker units from the original Imperial Armour 1. As well as the additional shell and vehicle options.

Jarms48 wrote:

...- 5th edition codex as a baseline for points and unit options.
- 3.5/4th edition codex for doctrines to add customisation. With some points tweaks to balance the doctrines out...

I'll happily second that, though I would want to merge the 3.5e and 5e named character lists. We had a number of good ones in 5e that I'd prefer to keep around (thinking mostly of Al'Rahem, admittedly).

 waefre_1 wrote:

Jarms48 wrote:

...- 5th edition codex as a baseline for points and unit options.
- 3.5/4th edition codex for doctrines to add customisation. With some points tweaks to balance the doctrines out...

I'll happily second that, though I would want to merge the 3.5e and 5e named character lists. We had a number of good ones in 5e that I'd prefer to keep around (thinking mostly of Al'Rahem, admittedly).

That's exactly what I meant in my second dot point. Combined both special character lists from the 3.5 and 5th edition codexes.