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10-15 minutes is a long ass time. Although I rarely play with 3000 points.

I like the idea of moving one unit at a time, would be interesting to try out and see how it affects the game.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Griddlelol wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

While I agree with you, the whole point of an armour save is to give the opposing player something to do during the other player's turn. If I'm not rolling dice against a shooting heavy army I might as well go out and have a cigarette and let the other player just tell me what's destroyed after they're done.

Armour saves are an attempt to keep both players invested during every turn.

Steamline the rules so that turns are much faster and embrace the idea that you will not roll anything in your opponent's turn. Kings of War does this, even going so far as to have your opponent roll your moral checks for you. When it's your opponent's turn you don't touch your dice, but even playing games on par with 3000 point WHFB games a turn lasts 10 or 15 minutes, not 30-45 minutes.

Griddlelol wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


The solution to this is to get rid of IGOUGO, which is a terrible mechanic. If the only thing keeping a player doing something is rolling dice that are mathematically equivalent to their opponent rolling to beat an armor save, with no (meaningful) decisions involved at any point in the process, then that's a problem that needs to be fixed. And adding extra complexity for the sake of letting players pretend that something fun is happening is not the solution.

How do you propose it's done? Turn based games are a very easy to understand and nicely organised. I've never played a war-game that's not turn based, it seems like it'd be chaos.

I agree with you in theory, armour saves are not interesting, they're not meaningful decisions, they're just rolling a handful of dice, I just have no idea what the practical solution is.

Dystopian Wars and Star Wars Armada both immediately come to mind as games I've played with alternating activation and it works VERY well for those larger scale games (which anything over 1k points of 40k should be imo). It is literally as simple as pick 1 unit, move it, shoot with it, assault with it, maybe lay down a token to represent that it has acted, and then your opponent does the same.
It is very good at negating the 'alpha strike' effect that can leave an opponent removing multiple units from the table before they have even gotten to activate them. I've never found either game to be chaotic*, in fact I'd say they are a ton more engaging because of it if anything.




(*I have called Dystopian Wars chaotic on many an occasion, but that is purely because I tried playing several week-long games on 12 foot tables with absurdly large armies.)

Dust has a very similar system, where players trade off activating units until all of them have been activated.

@jonolikespie Honestly what makes the game take forever is melee combat and movement. Movement for horde or MSU armies can take a while as you got to measure movements, move each model (no movement trays), trying to fit models around/on terrain, and if blast weapons are a big deal making sure you maintain unit cohesion and spacing out as needed.

For melee or shooting the longest part is figuring out how many models can shoot/swing, have LoS, if they are in rapid fire range, looking up special rules, etc then counting out the dice needed to roll. For melee it gets even worse with pile in moves, multiple combats, calculating casualties for leadership checks, and then the whole sweeping, consolidation moves, falling back, etc that tack on more time to the game. Its these nuaunce rules and mechanics that bog the game down as they don't happen as often and most players aren't that quick at moving through those steps (I know I'm slow at it)

The whole To Hit, To Wound, and Save mechanic is relatively quick and easy for basic units like Tactical Marines, Fire Warriors, etc. Once know how many attacks are being made you roll and count out hits, roll and count out wounds and then your opponent makes saves. For units with all the same save it is a quick roll and remove wounds/models as needed. Even myself who is rather slow at playing can make these rolls relatively quickly.

 BoomWolf wrote:


You have added zero meaningful information to those not familiar with said systems.

LotR had items like armour and shields give a Defence (= Toughness) bonus instead of a save. As a result, Dain had T9 W3 if I recall correctly because his armour was so ridiculously good, though he was slow, expensive and had moderate attack power. Gondor soldiers like the movie had like S3 T6.

But then, shooting was a lot less powerful than in 40k (single shot las or boltguns being the norm) and in melee, only one side got to actually strike - the one that won the WS rolloff - but heroes and characters with high WS had more humble statlines than in 40k.

To be honest I don't think it is a lot of rolling. The main thing taking up time is movement.

Not saying I wouldn't be open to a new core ruleset, but I think the wrong thing is being complained about here.

tneva82 wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Of course we need a to wound roll. Otherwise there would be nothing to differentiate the power level of the weapons in the game. A Plasma gun instantly becomes as good as a Lascannon.

Not really. Can be differentiated by this thing called "save".

And before you say both are AP2 and ignore who says saving would work in the same way?

While I'm not in favour of his proposal I'm not assuming nothing else would change. Lasgun wouldn't have to be much if any better against taking out wraithknight than it is now just because to wound roll is removed.

The problem is the op didn't ask if they wanted a rules overhaul, they only asked if the to wound roll should be scrapped.

RedNoak wrote:
the real question should be do we really need a negating ap system and cover saves... both could be simplyfied like in fantasy... but on the other hand that would completly mess up the point value of certain troops...

Except obviously pretty much all the changes suggested here require major rehaul to overall wounding system so will also require new evaluation of points and stats. Codexes would be invalidated.

Would be good opportunity to rework 40k from groundup.

Nobody(I hope) is suggesting to simply say remove wound roll and be done with that. THAT ain't going to work!

Surely it is obvious that the To Save roll isn't needed, and removing it would reduce the time needed to resolve a combat situation by 25 to 35% but a major stat line revision would required to being all the units' To Hit, To Save and relevant modifiers back to the same level of probability as before.

In short it certainly is doable if the whole game is revised.

I have a major regret about AoS that they stuck with To Hit/To Wound/To Save, when it was the perfect opportunity to ditch To Wound.

Of course it must be remembered that some people like to roll lots of dice. They would lose an aspect of the game if To Wound was ditched.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The better solution is to remove saves from the game. Get rid of the silly idea that the owner of a model always gets to roll a die to see if they can save it and just have a single roll of strength vs. toughness. The system would have to be re-scaled, of course, but the end result would remove some of the tedious dice rolling.

While I agree with you, the whole point of an armour save is to give the opposing player something to do during the other player's turn. If I'm not rolling dice against a shooting heavy army I might as well go out and have a cigarette and let the other player just tell me what's destroyed after they're done.

Armour saves are an attempt to keep both players invested during every turn.

Good games get around this by having alternating activations, or by instilling more mechanics that actually involve the other player, like reaction abilities and overwatch.

Starship Troopers has a really cool system based on this idea where each unit has "reaction zones" of a certain distance in a bubble around them, usually 10 inches. When enemy units finish an action in your bubble, you can perform a free action against them. Bugs could move toward the enemy unit, MI could ready or fire, etc. Keeps both players engaged even though the main rules were still IGOUGO.

Griddlelol wrote:Yea, I understand why they're there, I just don't think they're that great. It's an attempt to keep both players engaged during both turns.
I don't think they're fun or interesting though. 2+ saves make you feel like luck is against you when you roll a 1.
5+ saves make you feel like you're wasting your time rolling.

There must be other ways to engage each player in each turn.

There are. Reaction mechanics, which are epitomised by games like Infinity are becoming more and more popular. In Infinity, the cheeky com ent is it's always your turn.

Vankraken wrote:
As to the whole To Wound roll thing. Honestly rolling to wound isn't a bad thing as its very straight forward and it shows the differences in strength of different weapons, durability of a unit, and the type of defense (save) they have. It what differs a fire dragon's durability from a wratihguard or a space marine on foot with a space marine on a bike.

But it is counter intuitive, and it's an excessive mechanic in a game that is already extremely bloated. And let's be fair here - there is no reason that a to hit/ armour save system can't differ things between a fire dragon and a wraith guard - after all, infinity does it.

Vankraken wrote:
It what makes a krak missile work differently than a hotshot lasgun as they have the same AP but its the strength that matters for them.

The all or nothing AP system is another thing that needs to go. AP as represented by the 40k rules is again, excessive and counter intuitive. There is no reason thst the strength of a weapon and it's ability to penetrate armour need to be artificially separated.

Again, in a strength only system,or a two roll system what's stopping the krak missile and the hotshot lasgun bring represented differently on the table top? In infinity, they are.

Vankraken wrote:
If there is a "better" system then it would be worth looking into but honestly nothing on this thread has been close to a reasonable replacement in my opinion.

Infinity Mated with the core of Andy chambers' starship troopers rules (the originally intended 4th ed 40k). Greatest rules system that has never been made.
Oh there are far better rules sets out there that manage things far more intuitively, and with a lot less clutter and bloat than the mechanics you see in 40k.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 IllumiNini wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Toughness, Hits (Wounds), Armour Save and so on all can be part of the equation.

Strength can be folded into Ballistic Skill for a combined Attack roll, so Lasguns succeed on a 6+, whereas (IG) Lascannons succeed on a 5+ and Eldar Destroyer weapons succeed on 2+. Not that difficult.

You make it sound a lot more simple than it actually is. Such a system would also likely require a D10 or a D20 to properly account for all the current variation within the system. That being said, I like the idea but I have my doubts about this being a better system.

No, it actually is that simple, and it would work just fine with a d6. 40k doesn't need to be so fine-grained.

Exactly. All the rolls were fine when you were playing a small skirmish game with 20 or 30 models per side. Now the games are huge in comparison and things need to be streamlined.

The GW rules are archaic. Games take way too long and require way to many rolls of the dice. So many other miniature systems exist that are more elegant and play faster which is why I play 40K less and less. Eliminate to wound or to save or change the d6. Whatever, just do something to speed it up.

It's important to differentiate between streamlining and simplification.

Most of us will agree they want the game streamlined, whether that be through a serious revision, or a total re-write of the rules from the ground up.

A lot of players also want simplification of core mechanics for ease of play. This particularly seems to be the case for anyone who tends towards larger scale battles, and it's fully understandable. But other players, particularly those of us who like to play smaller games appreciate a level of detail to the mechanics of the game, we don't want dice rolling at the squad level etc. We want to kit out our squadies individually and want to be able to see that our sniper landed a clean hit that blew a hole clean through that Nurgle champions power armour but he barely felt the wound and just kept coming!

I think the problem is the rules developers are trying to appease both types of players, and it's not cutting it for either group. The large battle players are frustrated at clunkiness, overly-detailed mechanics and micro-managing, and the skirmishers are unhappy at the nonsensical elements that make the game swingy and tactically unrewarding at that scale.

Mantic have written up 2 separate rule sets (Warpath and Warpath: Firefight) for a battles and skirmishes, respectively. GW should follow suit.

Having three rolls in combat resolution isn't simpler or more difficult than having two, it's just more clunky.

But I think you're right that GW have managed to make an OK skirmish game into a fairly crappy big battle game that also works as a fairly crappy skirmish game.

I suggest the basic solution is to strip the rules down to a simpler core set of mechanisms and develop them into two alternative rulesets.

For example, in the Skirmish rules any combat resolution would be done per figure, while in the Battle rules it would be done per squad, with the various different weapons in the squad factored into an overall attack value.

The issue I can see arriving from taking turns to move individual units, rather than moving your whole army, is that it rewards the player for not killing off units.

You focus something until it's weak, then move on to the next target. Make that weak until everything is only 1 or 2 models left and can barely do anything. Then you finish off the unit.

Is that a bad thing?

Concentration of force is a basic military principle.

I don't really know if it's a bad thing, it's just strange and different. Instead of focussing a unit to death, you do it until it's neutered enough.

That could add some tactical nuance.

I think it seems strange to 40K players because the focus of the game for years has been on killing enemy units (Kill Points, etc) rather than winning the battle.

From the historical viewpoint, destroying enemy units actually is counter-productive if it uses up more combat power than is required to make a target unit functionally ineffective.

Without completely retooling the entire game to add more wounds as necessary, absolutely we need to wound rolls.

Though, I think there should be a point where we don't have to roll to wound - say, if the attack is triple toughness. For example, a lascannon should have a 100% chance of killing a grot, or a warboss v. a guardsman.

thegreatchimp wrote:A lot of players also want simplification of core mechanics for ease of play. This particularly seems to be the case for anyone who tends towards larger scale battles, and it's fully understandable. But other players, particularly those of us who like to play smaller games appreciate a level of detail to the mechanics of the game, we don't want dice rolling at the squad level etc. We want to kit out our squadies individually and want to be able to see that our sniper landed a clean hit that blew a hole clean through that Nurgle champions power armour but he barely felt the wound and just kept coming!

I think the problem is the rules developers are trying to appease both types of players, and it's not cutting it for either group. The large battle players are frustrated at clunkiness, overly-detailed mechanics and micro-managing, and the skirmishers are unhappy at the nonsensical elements that make the game swingy and tactically unrewarding at that scale.

Mantic have written up 2 separate rule sets (Warpath and Warpath: Firefight) for a battles and skirmishes, respectively. GW should follow suit.

I agree that designers should decide on the type of game they want to make and focus on that, trying to include players that want different things is going to make a bad game. I'm not convinced that GW should follow what Mantic is doing though. Why compete when you can just target a different market?
It is actually what I think is what GW did right with AoS. May people don't like AoS, because it isn't the kind of game they wanted, but the game they wanted already existed. Instead of making a GW brand KoW, they did something (very) different. AoS is well written (and the controversial decisions make sense) for the casual; "put awesome stuff on the table and have epic happen" game that GW wanted to make.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Coming from ancients, the triple roll was new to me. Intuitive, but maybe excessive.

I played games where we used comparative scores.Best roll (with modifiers) wins, what happens to the loser would then depend on how badly they lost.

In case you were wondering; I'm referring to DBM and FoG and a game of either takes 3 hours, but the scale is way smaller (i.e. more troops on the field).

Do we really need a to wound roll?
No, because the current rules don't take an advantage of the "to wound" table.

But having a S VS T chart with a hardcap of e.g. +/-2 (so S9 automatic wounds T6 and S6 cannot wound T9) add some more posibilities to the game. Low Strength high rate of fire would not be the answer to everything and an additional system for tanks would not be needed.
Like if you don't want Super Heavies being killed by standard weapons, give them T15 and add Titankillers with S15 to the game.

 DarkBlack wrote:
I'm not convinced that GW should follow what Mantic is doing though. Why compete when you can just target a different market?

Why limit yourself to only half* of your potential customers? The bulk of their costs is in the models themselves, and the artwork. If they re-released 40k as a fast paced mass battle system it would not be a big investment for them to also create and maintain a skirmish / small battle rule set. It's jsut one more rulebook. The amount of money this would cost to create and maintain would not be a financial risk.

*I say half as a ball park figure -I have no idea what the actual breakdown is.

 Griddlelol wrote:
The issue I can see arriving from taking turns to move individual units, rather than moving your whole army, is that it rewards the player for not killing off units.

You focus something until it's weak, then move on to the next target. Make that weak until everything is only 1 or 2 models left and can barely do anything. Then you finish off the unit.

Uhhh, what alternate activation rulesets have you played that rewarded not killing enemy units?

Because I've yet to see one where it rewarded you not killing a unit. Sometimes the unit runs or something but even if its functionally "dead" fighting wise, it still offers the owning player an advantage of giving him a weak "throwaway" move at the start of a turn if he wants to wait to react to your moves.

Bolt Action rewards you by eliminating an order die the unit owns, making it more likely you draw a die first, so killing units is very important. A common strategy is to buy cheap, small units like a medic or a kubelwagen just to get another die. A unit with even just a single soldier cowering in a foxhole still has use in that game.

Dropzone Commander makes it where it just has each player activate a unit at a time, so killing a unit never hurts you, and usually helps with killpoints and is a tiebreaker for missions.N ot to mention you can activate any order you want, so a weak unit can be used to stall in a turn and burn an activation without having to move before youre ready.

X-Wing is kind of alternate activation in that units move in a set order by pilot skill, meaning that players can alternate in all sorts of ways, and tournament play is entirely decided by killpoints.

Armada also has back and forth activation and killing a unit there doesnt hurt you in anyway and offers no advantage for leaving a unit maimed but alive.


Can you provide an example for your reasoning, because it sounds like youve never played an alternate activation system at all, or at least are very bad at them.

I think the to wound roll is needed. Rather, I would make an argument that it is the save roll that needs to be ditched because it is superfluous when you already have a wound roll which could represent armour or a tough skin and such stopping or failing to stop a hit (and thus wounding or not wounding).
They could re-structure it like in the LotR system.
In LotR there is only a to wound roll (which measures the strenght of the attacker vs the defence value of the defender). To hit rolls are only needed for ranged weapons and are very simple, while close combat is decided through both players throwing a dice (to represent both combatants fighting each other simultaneously rather than two guys hitting each other alternately) with the player rolling the highest winning the fight and getting a to wound roll.
I've always thought it a fast and intuitive system. Two rolls are all you need.

Yes, I agree with that. It's not the To Wound roll in itself, the point is that three rolls are not needed. It doesn't matter what they are called. To Hit, To Save allows both sides to have a go during the round, which is a benefit.

On a personal note, I always found it a bit silly that you would do all the work to get enemy figures "wounded" just for them to save.

Or, just call it "attack" and "defense"...

Mechanically, is there any reason not to roll X attacks for hits, removing misses vs. Y "saves", removing fails, and cancelling 1:1? Probably not. It'd probably be even faster than the current system because the dice could be rolled simultaneously, rather than waiting for attacker successes.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Having three rolls in combat resolution isn't simpler or more difficult than having two, it's just more clunky.

But I think you're right that GW have managed to make an OK skirmish game into a fairly crappy big battle game that also works as a fairly crappy skirmish game.

I suggest the basic solution is to strip the rules down to a simpler core set of mechanisms and develop them into two alternative rulesets.

For example, in the Skirmish rules any combat resolution would be done per figure, while in the Battle rules it would be done per squad, with the various different weapons in the squad factored into an overall attack value.

See here is where the issue comes in because as a skirmish game 40k is SUPER dull, 1000pts is pretty much the lowest point level I still enjoy playing and I can usually wrap that size game in about 90 minutes, which is not terrible, basically like a big board game.
I would rather they scrap any attempt to make it a skirmish game and put that effort into making the 1000-2000 point range games quicker and more intuitive, especially in terms of pregame set up.

As for it being a 'fairly crappy' big battle game, i say relative to what? Up to about 2500 where it starts to fall off hard, I find 40k extremely fun, if poorly balanced, especially compared to other 28mm big battle games. Horus Heresy is pretty much the same game up to 2500pts where it can go even more nuts than 40k. WHFB is basically writing a statline on a movement tray in sharpie and pushing it at your opponent until you hit something, Warmachine/Hordes, (which are absolutely big battle game/s, screw what PP says) is super fiddly and whenever I play it I get the same feeling I get when I try to get a picture frame to sit even without a level; that I'm expending a lot of energy to do something that probably won't work, definitely won't accomplish anything meaningful, and will leave me wondering why I ever bothered. Also I have 0 interest in playing any modern or WWII miniature games.

ERJAK wrote:
As for it being a 'fairly crappy' big battle game, i say relative to what?

5th ed 40k for one. I never played 3rd or 4th, but in 5th my club regularly played 3k games on regular club days. 2k points was considered a small game when we played, and 2500 was the standard yet we got games done on time.

Dystopian Wars and Star Wars Armada both come to mind as larger scale games I've personally played that have appropriate rules to play out huge battles in a reasonable amount of time, and I believe Dropzone Commander and Flames of War both do it very well.

Simple fact is 7th ed 40k is a mass battle scaled game but it includes rules like Look Out Sir, challenges, remove models from the front, and others that have NO place in mass battle games slowing it down.

40k is a hugely oversized individual model skirmish that only works when you use giant models to bring the total model count down.

Yeah, it can't decide if it wants to mass battle or skirmish.
It needs to go back to how it was in 4th, with mostly infantry and a few vehicles.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Can you provide an example for your reasoning, because it sounds like youve never played an alternate activation system at all, or at least are very bad at them.

I've never played one. My instinct is that:

Say there are 3 tactical squads of 10 men.

If I shoot one, and reduce it to 2 models, it's now basically useless. 2 bolters aren't going to be a threat to anything. There's now no reason to shoot at it again. So I move on to the next unit. Shoot it until it's neutered and continue until all units are no longer a threat, but never wasting so much firepower as a unit is entirely destroyed - what's the point? At 2 models it's no longer a threat to anything.

Of course it depends if the unit activation is set, or whether it's changed depending on the player's choice. If it's set then you just attack what ever unit is next. If it depends on the player's choice it's different.