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I played a game this weekend that almost turned into a cities of death match after all the terrain was placed. Lots of tall structures, densely packed.

I just so happened to have pulled 2 predator tanks out of my list and swapped in some dakka dreadnoughts prior to setting up the game. Which totally worked out in my favor for navigating the tight corridors of the map. If I had kept my predators they would have had a hard time manoeuvring the map as well as getting decent line of sight.

With 6th ed, GW has put this idea out there that you should be able to pre measure all shots and movements because "after all, the soldiers are led by seasoned veterans who can accurately judge the range of their weapons even if we, the generals, cannot."

Could we extend this idea further to say a general would be able to judge which units to send into a battle field based on the terrain in front of them?

Proposed rule.

Before deployment, Once terrain and objectives are placed, a player is allowed to make a list swap equal to 20% of their army value. (2000 pt list can swap out 400 pts.)
This swap remains silent for both players up until deployment.

Obviously we want to keep the swaps from being based upon our opponents list.

Thoughts?

This will make a game go even longer than they already do. Sideboarding in Magic sometimes is bad enough.

I like that you are stuck with what you take.
It's not like equipment will always magically appear when you need it, and you're often stuck to make do with what you've got.

You could always run 1 predator and 1 dakka dread instead.


-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I like that you are stuck with what you take.
It's not like equipment will always magically appear when you need it, and you're often stuck to make do with what you've got.

You could always run 1 predator and 1 dakka dread instead.


-Matt

Well to be fair, terrain doesn't magically appear out of nowhere either. I think any general would make a point of knowing where a battle is to be fought.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
This will make a game go even longer than they already do. Sideboarding in Magic sometimes is bad enough.

Yeah I can see what you mean about game length. but hey its not like I have to be anywhere on a Saturday night. Tournament wise It may pose more of an issue.

He has a good point you could just say that after terrain is placed you can swap any tanks for drednougts or there counter parts
As a army will know the topography before the battle.

While sideboarding works well for card games like M:tG, I'm not sure how well it will work for a tabletop game like 40k. I would rather see a system similar to the one used for Warmahordes. In most Warmahordes tournaments, players are allowed to bring two army lists (although I believe that both lists either have to be for a different warcaster/warlock or a different faction, but I can't remember which), and before each match they review their opponents lists, then choose which of their lists to play. I think a similar system would work in 40k without causing a lot of arguments over what counts towards the 20% and what doesn't (for example, does swapping a Crusader to a Redeemer count as changing 10 points or 250). Ultimately, in terms of 40k, my proposed version is this:

Each player may bring up to 2 army lists to a game. Prior to the first step of each game (rolling to go first/terrain setup in most cases), each player is allowed 5 to 10 minutes to review their opponents army lists. They then write down (in secret) which list they will be playing for this game. Then, after 10 minutes or when both players are ready, they reveal which list they are playing, and then start the game.

This allows for changes to adapt to different armies or terrain types (for example, if you know you are going to be playing on an urban board, you could switch to a list with a lot of indirect fire) while also keeping things quick and easy (so you don't spend more time fiddling around with your list before the game than you do playing it) and helping preventing cheating (since the only lists you can play are clearly written out, it is easier to keep people from fudging numbers)

RegalPhantom wrote:
While sideboarding works well for card games like M:tG, I'm not sure how well it will work for a tabletop game like 40k. I would rather see a system similar to the one used for Warmahordes. In most Warmahordes tournaments, players are allowed to bring two army lists (although I believe that both lists either have to be for a different warcaster/warlock or a different faction, but I can't remember which), and before each match they review their opponents lists, then choose which of their lists to play. I think a similar system would work in 40k without causing a lot of arguments over what counts towards the 20% and what doesn't (for example, does swapping a Crusader to a Redeemer count as changing 10 points or 250). Ultimately, in terms of 40k, my proposed version is this:

Each player may bring up to 2 army lists to a game. Prior to the first step of each game (rolling to go first/terrain setup in most cases), each player is allowed 5 to 10 minutes to review their opponents army lists. They then write down (in secret) which list they will be playing for this game. Then, after 10 minutes or when both players are ready, they reveal which list they are playing, and then start the game.

This allows for changes to adapt to different armies or terrain types (for example, if you know you are going to be playing on an urban board, you could switch to a list with a lot of indirect fire) while also keeping things quick and easy (so you don't spend more time fiddling around with your list before the game than you do playing it) and helping preventing cheating (since the only lists you can play are clearly written out, it is easier to keep people from fudging numbers)

This is a great solution! all the point counting/number crunching is done before hand, and there is still an element of surprise and randomness to it that makes table top gaming so fun.

RegalPhantom wrote:
While sideboarding works well for card games like M:tG, I'm not sure how well it will work for a tabletop game like 40k. I would rather see a system similar to the one used for Warmahordes. In most Warmahordes tournaments, players are allowed to bring two army lists (although I believe that both lists either have to be for a different warcaster/warlock or a different faction, but I can't remember which), and before each match they review their opponents lists, then choose which of their lists to play. I think a similar system would work in 40k without causing a lot of arguments over what counts towards the 20% and what doesn't (for example, does swapping a Crusader to a Redeemer count as changing 10 points or 250). Ultimately, in terms of 40k, my proposed version is this:

Each player may bring up to 2 army lists to a game. Prior to the first step of each game (rolling to go first/terrain setup in most cases), each player is allowed 5 to 10 minutes to review their opponents army lists. They then write down (in secret) which list they will be playing for this game. Then, after 10 minutes or when both players are ready, they reveal which list they are playing, and then start the game.

This allows for changes to adapt to different armies or terrain types (for example, if you know you are going to be playing on an urban board, you could switch to a list with a lot of indirect fire) while also keeping things quick and easy (so you don't spend more time fiddling around with your list before the game than you do playing it) and helping preventing cheating (since the only lists you can play are clearly written out, it is easier to keep people from fudging numbers)

I like this much more than list swapping around. It's simple, smooth, and not difficult to pull off. The ability to swap things out of your list allows you to tailor your list a bit too much, for instance if im going up against a green tide I can always swap stuff out for a ton of flamers, etc. This still forces me to think about TAC a bit, but allowing me to shift my list based off of terrain/etc

I'm enjoying all the love for my idea lol (which to be fair I am largely stealing). Only if I could get this kind of feedback from my resumes. As a side note, any mechanical engineers in either Canada or the UK who are looking for coop students for the summer?

EDIT: Heck, maybe I should see if GW is looking for interns. Their rules department definitely needs some outside ideas. I do have a British passport, might as well try to get some use out of it.

I can see one small downside to the army swaps, at a tournament for warhammer if it was 2000 points and you had 2 2000 point armies that could be alot of models to buy and carry and keep track of at the event, while I think it would work for smaller games at a friends house I think it would struggle in a tournament setting, nice idea though and is interesting.

 SalamanderMarine wrote:
I can see one small downside to the army swaps, at a tournament for warhammer if it was 2000 points and you had 2 2000 point armies that could be alot of models to buy and carry and keep track of at the event, while I think it would work for smaller games at a friends house I think it would struggle in a tournament setting, nice idea though and is interesting.

Depends on the lists you are taking. Warmahordes players manage to do it, and some of their models are not much smaller than a Titan (the Stormwall colossal looks to be at least 3 to 4 times the height of a normal warjack, which is just a bit smaller than a dread, and some players bring 3 similarly sized models to tournaments).

As an additional note, I'm wondering how this would effect the metagame of 40k? I think a real advantage of this system is that it would reduce the power of extremely one-dimensional lists, as everybody can take a TAC list that can deal with almost everything, and then a tailored list to deal with the 'power list'.

I like the idea. it makes a lot of sense that a force going to war would have some sort of idea of the terrain they would be fighting in. But as far as actual game play goes it would be smoother to just not roll for terrain density. or just insist on playing cities of death. lol.

Maybe I'm a bit sentimental, but I enjoy the challenge in building a single list that I must use with skill in order to take on any number of different lists in any number of different terrain set ups in a wide variety of deployment and game types.

Besides, sometime commanders don't have time to call for specialized reinforcements in time for battle. Sometimes, you just have to go with what you've got.