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 Da Boss wrote:
Got another game in using objectives as I said, and it 100% improved the game. Much more interesting choices, and a much more dynamic game as well. We also played at 2000 points, which gave us a couple more units each to play around with.

Heroes seem fairly weak overall, and my opponent took three of them. A psychic, a captain in destroyer armour and an engineer. The captain really didn't seem worth the cost. The Psychic at least had some cool utility powers. I dunno, I think you'd almost always be better off with another unit or two. Having a hero commander is always cool of course, I just found the captains in particular underwhelming. They have very few attacks for their high points cost.

To me though the game definitely still "feels" like a proper wargame despite being very stripped down, and I'm enjoying watching my opponent learn the system and figure things out. Been a real blessing to have found this because I think it'd be a lot harder to teach 40K to my friend.

Excellent stuff! Glad you found objectives to really improve the game. Did you play with standard objectives, or did you try out the idea I suggested?

Characters are useful in units, they usually have a small Aura thar helps out the unit they are with. I find it refreshing that Characters are not one man wrecking machines. The focus is very much on units, which is where it should be.

I wanted to try out the standard version first, but we may give the alternate versions a try as we have more games.

I had a decade long dry spell with basically no wargames, so I'm so excited to be back to playing fairly regularly.

And I agree, I probably should have been clearer - I prefer just having one or two characters in minor support roles and I don't like heroes to be able to take on entire units. My friend is coming from roleplaying games and seems to undervalue units, so far he's been quite focused on heroes and vehicles.

I think it's also that I've just got a lot of space marine hero models accumulated over the years so he's got a lot of options, whereas most of my other forces have 1-2 heroes (aside from Orks where I've got multiples of each type). So he's just trying to see what each hero type does, and I guess basic units don't feel as significant.

I wonder if there'd be some way to introduce a FOC to this game. I guess you'd have to classify all the units...probably not worth the hassle.

So, I'm giving this system a try again, and after a few more games using more of the full rules, I still have to ask:

....what the heck are crappy units supposed to do against elite units in this system? My elite factions work fine in OPR, but any time i bring out the GSC I wonder what the hell I'm supposed to be doing.

Shooting into or over cover puts me at a 6+ to hit anything

My units are always subject to morale, basically all my opponents ignore it

All my special weapons are super expensive and they hit on 5s or 6s into cover

what am I missing?

I don't think you're missing anything, it does seem to me that there are balance problems with those factions. The new edition proports to fix some of this with a lower range of values but I'm skeptical. I think units with low quality are just overcosted generally because quality does so many things. I suspect it might be to do with not giving too much 'activation advantage' to low quality armies.

I'm pro these games because they're free, have lists for factions I am interested in and are easy to learn, teach and play. It would be great if it was balanced too, but I think they've focused on diversity of lists and faction representation over balance. Hopefully someone can chime in with something more helpful. Gonna try some games with human defense league after christmas and I'll report back how they do with their lower quality.

I think there was a recent rebalanced where 2+ saves are restricted to vehicles, could be wrong however.

Cheap units that are chaff are good for objective control, screening and for activiting before your key units active, this can put the opponent into a position where they have to active all their units before your damage dealing units can activate and be less likely to suffer retaliation... also having a chaff unit active afterwards to screen them adds to their usefulness.

While this is about the Fantasy OPR system, it might provide some helpful ideas.

 stonehorse wrote:
I think there was a recent rebalanced where 2+ saves are restricted to vehicles, could be wrong however.

Cheap units that are chaff are good for objective control, screening and for activiting before your key units active, this can put the opponent into a position where they have to active all their units before your damage dealing units can activate and be less likely to suffer retaliation... also having a chaff unit active afterwards to screen them adds to their usefulness.

While this is about the Fantasy OPR system, it might provide some helpful ideas.

The main problem i run into with them is that theyre actually very much NOT cheap. For example a unit of minions with 10 models is effectively the same cost as a unit of 5 battle brothers, but hasnt got a prayer against them in combat and any variable the BBs can throw in front of them (say, cover) makes the situation even worse because cover cuts the Minions' firepower by 50% while only reducing the BBs firepower by 25%.

what's frustrating is that I didnt actually end up with any more activations than my opponent, and I have to pay the exact same points for my Qua5+ Def5+ upgrade weapons that he does for his 2x as good Qua3+ Def2+. In some cases, I actually have to pay MORE - 45pts for a Heavy Machinegun in my army, +30pts for Battle Brothers where it's twice as effective!

I want to like this system but every time I play it, it feels a lot like all the people who say "9e sux lel play heresy" which actually means "all the marine players get to play their game and everyone else gets to feth right off because they dont even exist in this 'alternative' system."

GDF might be a better game if youre a marine fan, but the effort put into everyone else just seems laughably minimal.

I don't know if you can access it without paying their patreon but here's a link to the beta 2.5 rules
https://webapp.onepagerules.com/game-systems/grimdark-future

Battle Brothers are 3+/3+ and fearless for 145 points/5. Minions are still 5+/5+ but only 120/10 which isn't a huge change but it seems like Heavy Machine Guns are now a total of 50 points with the additional Tough(3) body, so even more expensive.

I dunno, it might be better as one of the goals is to make hordes better against elites. Whether it actually achieves that I can't say as I haven't played the 2.5 rules yet. Scanning at a glance Battle Brothers vs Soul Snatcher Cults still seems like a rough matchup.

10 Minions with 2 plasma rifles, and an attached weapon team with a Heavy Machine gun is 180pts. 11 bodies, one of which has tough (3). Their quality and defence is low.

5 Battle Brothers with a Heavy Machine gun is 175pts. Their Quality and Defence is high.

The Minions can take 8 casualties before they lose their gun firepower, where as the Battle Brothers can take 4.

GDF isn't always about kills, objectives are crucial, and with more bodies you can cover a bigger area and hang on to an objective for a while.

 stonehorse wrote:
10 Minions with 2 plasma rifles, and an attached weapon team with a Heavy Machine gun is 180pts. 11 bodies, one of which has tough (3). Their quality and defence is low.

5 Battle Brothers with a Heavy Machine gun is 175pts. Their Quality and Defence is high.

The Minions can take 8 casualties before they lose their gun firepower, where as the Battle Brothers can take 4. Yes but you lose 2 Minions for every 1 dead BB...because Defense 5+ vs Defense 3+ (now, apparently, I was unaware about the beta rules). Also, minions care about morale quite a lot, while Marines as you mention..are fearless

GDF isn't always about kills, objectives are crucial, and with more bodies you can cover a bigger area and hang on to an objective for a while. As I just pointed out, their durability is identical except that you can make Minions go away via morale.

The Minions can pack more firepower, reducing the defence of the Battle Brothers to 6. 2 Plasma Rifles and a Weapons team with a Heavy Machine Gun is going to drastically increase how much damage out put the Minions can achieve.

The overall fore power is also worth looking at. The above Minion squad has 8 attacks with rifles, 2 with Plasma Rifles, and 3 with the Heavy Machine Gun. So a total of 13 dice needing 5 or 6's to hit. The Battle Brothers have 4 Heavy Rifles, and 3 from a Heavy Machine Gun. So 7 dice needing 3 or 4's to hit.

The Battle Brothers have better odds, but with fewer dice, the Minions have weaker odds, but with more dice. Battle Brothers can save against a wider scope of damage, but don't have the numbers, where as the Minions have weak armour, but more bodies gives them some protection.

If we have 2 squads of each facing off against each other, both Battle Brother squads would struggle to delete a Minion squad in one turn (14 dice vs 10+3 wounds) Where as both Minion squads could delete a Battle Brother Squad (26 dice vs 5 wounds). Again how activations occur is vital to how this would play out. As the Soul Snatchers Cult have more cheap options they should be able to out activate the Battle Brothers.

Maybe. I'd have to try the game with the beta rules. It at the very least seems that some effort was put in to the problem that I was unaware of. Back when the BBs were 2+ to save it definitely felt like pretty bad-joke level game balance.

You know its bad when you play a game and you go "damn, 40k feels more balanced than this!"

It looks like the soul-snatcher rules have undergone a pretty serious rework. I note that "Neophytes" are now a separate unit entry with Qua4+. And also, the no-brainer choice to go for 'shotguns' has been removed from them and presumably BBs as well - shotguns are now slightly higher quality but cost a significant amount of points.

It's fast play 40k.

Problems stemming from the author not playing their own game are part of the 40k experience.

Yeah it's definitely true that some lists are very bare bones, and just reading it the snatcher cults seem that way. It's really unfortunate and I think the point about a squad weapon being the same cost on Q3+ vs Q5+ is a good one. I'm definitely open to the criticism that GF has some wonky balance, I prefer it because it's more accessible and lighter, not because it's balanced. If I find the balance to be a big problem we'll just fix it in our group, which I feel less aggrieved about with free rules. We also swap sides to see how different people feel about the balance. May not work depending on your group.

I think it is impossible to balance any game system, due to there being too many moving parts (force selection, unit options, terrain available, missions, etc). I've come to the realisation that it is an impossible task. What games should focus on is 'player engagement'.

40k lacks this as it is stuck with the IGOUGO system and the lethality has been ramped up to ridiculous levels now. GDF while very lethal at times is alternative activations, so it is impossible that a player will not get to participate in the game.

The other thing that I personally think makes 40K lack player engagement is the sheer number of special rules/abilities. These can often catch an opponent off guard as they may not have known about them, and all of a sudden they have lost.

I dunno I think the point about more effort being put into some factions compared to others is a fair one. OPR is a one man show and it's a pretty good one, but sometimes it shows. The creator does try to balance stuff with further passes but I think robust game balance is a lower priority than having all factions at least nominally represented.

For a model-agnostic system it also has the bizarre problem of being model driven. Your faction identity boils down to "what models does GW/Mantic/FFG make for this faction" rather than any lore or tactical considerations, while at the same time the removal of special rules means factions lose any unique mechanics that could compensate for missing battlefield roles, so you're not a chaff army that compensates by being super good at infiltrating, you're just a generic army that doesn't have access to tough units trying to compete with generic armies that do on an even playing field.

I had thought I had read conscripts could come in units up to 50 models but now I can't find it. My brains are mush. I was going to ask about unit coherency for units of large size that might not fit into the 6" over all area for coherence and any need for house rules or recommendations. Now I am not sure what I read.

How do you figure Conscripts can get up to 50 models? In the Human Defense Force list they're a base unit of 10, which means they can be deployed with another unit of 10 for up to 20 max in a single unit.

Rihgu wrote:
How do you figure Conscripts can get up to 50 models? In the Human Defense Force list they're a base unit of 10, which means they can be deployed with another unit of 10 for up to 20 max in a single unit.

You're correct I think my eyes crossed somewhere.

When things feel unbalanced, I check the points calculator. Surprisingly enough, the author often does not actually follow his own calculator, and the adjusted points (or stats) when using the calculator often feel fair.

Rounding to 5 pts also often mean that the low quality troops that should have payed 1-2 pts for an upgrade pay the same 5pts as the Q3+ units, where the upgrade should have cost 6-7pts. Small things, but it certainly adds up over an entire army.

That said, the pts calculator also has some clear unbalanced options, for example fixed cost on a bunch of special rules, meaning more valuable models of course get a ton more benefit than cheaper ones. Same with multi-mode weapons, where you only pay for one of them, getting the option for the other firemode for free.

If you are looking to spruce up the missions a bit, you may consider giving these mission cards a go:



I've been writing alternate rules for 40k for a while and it was refreshing to work with something so streamlined as OPR.

Hope you guys enjoy it, feel free to grab the files to print and share away, the more hobby the better!

You can find them all here: https://wargamingrebel.blogspot.com/2022/01/alt-rules-one-page-rules-custom-awesome.html

Those are super cool, I will use them in my next game.

However, why give the winner of the roll off double benefits? I think the idea of having three separate benefits is very cool, but isn´t it enough for the winner to be able to choose first?

I didn´t understand the clearing fog card at first, only made sense when I saw the next one, it should say "increased" to make sense

Priority assignment is once per game, or round? Same with bombardement

Thanks! I'm glad you liked them. I need to play test these further, so there may well be a revision coming up soon.

Great questions. My thought is that initiative priority is kinda dicey and can be double edge if you deploy aggressively and still lose the roll. But yeah I may well leave that to players.

Both priority assignment and bombardment are meant to affect all battle rounds. Complete mayhem!

Grimdark Future. My friends and I are going to give this system a try. I just read on here a new version (2.5?). This does not match the free version on their webpages (which is version 2.15.)

So, is the latest version only available after becoming a PAtreon supporter? Or do they plan to update this old version? Are they that different?

2.5 should be available without being a Patreon subscriber. This link works even when I'm not logged in.

2.5 is basically just a rebalancing of army lists. it doesn't change core rules in a big way that I'm aware of.
https://webapp.onepagerules.com/game-systems/grimdark-future

Thanks Rihgu. Somehow the page for one page rules I have links to a different set of army lists.

It goes here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NdG_RJBc14RIP8hEO49aAma-xIEqfqTC

Currently the 2.5 lists are just about to be released, so they are not listed on the site as the "official" up to date army lists, yet.

2.5 most drastically affects armies with 2+ Defense troops, like Battle Brothers and their variants, but most of the rest of the update is small tweaks.

Instead of using the Army Books link, go lower to the Webapp(Beta) link. It leads you to the new stuff where each army has two buttons, one for a standard PDF army list, and one for the army builder app.

Thanks Aegis and Rihgu. Appreciate the responses. Found them and hoping to give a good try in a couple of weeks. Like most, just burned on the flavor of the month creep CCG 40k has turned into. Know people love it, I used to.

Hoping this thread gets a lot more feedback to share. I don't see OPR as perfect, but at least the lethality looks like less "Place a unit, remove opponents, repeat". If I wanted to play rock, Paper, Scissors...I would...

I find that even in the situations where it's just as deadly as 40K, the alternating activation mechanic makes it feel FAR different than watching someone systematically delete your newly-deployed army on their first turn, with nothing that you can do about it.

I have yet to play any full games of AoF or GDF, I have been more into the skirmish versions of each game, which ALSO have quite nice campaign rules that enable the kind of model growth between games that I liked about old games like Mordheim/Necromunda back in the late 90's.

My friend and I played our first game of OPR, Grim Dark Future. Wolf Brothers vs Havoc Lust brothers (with some void daemons). Just sharing my thoughts for anyone who cares.

We really enjoyed it. Reasons (please see below for a basic overview of my gaming groups style of play, since that does influence things):
A: The alternating activation system worked smooth and changed the entire table top play. As others have said, there was no sitting there removing a third of your army for an hour. The ability to react to your opponents moves was so refreshing. I cannot say enough about this difference from IGOUGO. In particular, the ambush mechanic was so much less lethal/auto-win. Getting to use one unit from Ambush before the other player could react (or vice versa) was game changing.
B: The lowering of AP and damage values throughout the armies. Defense rolls came into play at medium levels often (we were playing armies with majority 3+ to start though). Wearing armor felt like wearing armor. Only once did I feel a unit being targeted was going to be deleted. Having remnants of units on the table felt good. Having a vehicle survive shooting for several turns felt good.
C: One less set of rolls per attack sequence made the game play much faster. I understand this is a debatable thing, and I am not saying a "wound" roll is wrong, but for my group, speed of game play was much better. Same with no rerolls, strats, aura etc etc etc. Speed of play was worth more for us.
D: All of these changes meant movement upon the table felt important, beyond rush to an objective and hope you survive. I've been playing 40k for two decades. I am an expert at strategy games of all types (I routinely win my FLGS tourneys, although I do not claim the competition is LVO level, but it is above average). For me, 40k over the last five years has had 90% of its strategy/gameplay in list building, and 10% in place and choose appropriate target. That is my opinion, please don't waste time arguing this one point.
E: It didn't feel like a collectible card game...for all the reasons people have argued over and over in other places.
F: The armies, although not perfectly balanced, did not feel like the creep which has become a sprint 40k is in.

Overall, I felt like I was back playing a tabletop, miniatures battle game. Note that my group is made up (like a lot of groups) of long term nerds all with a real interest in military history (it is my actual career)). We almost never min/max. We generally have an attachment to the armies we've built for various reasons including: Model is cool, this unit feels like it should be in this army, I have a theme, this feels like a "believable" force for a battle etc. We can and will house rule things and rarely have RAW type arguments. The hobby side matters to us. So this system seems to fit our style of play better than the build a tournament deck of the rarest and most powerful cards 40k has become.

Okay, too long, I get it. So, take it for what it's worth.