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 Karnij wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

Alternating Activation by unit.

It isn't even possible for me to describe how much i agree with this. This is hands down the single best change they could make. It would not only massively improve the ability to balance because currently it's impossible to balance a game where one entire side get's to shoot everything before the other side get's to react.

It also would make for a much deeper more tactical game where players are actually interacting and countering each others actions instead of everything coming down to alpha-strikes and the ability to survive alpha strikes.

I always felt that Dust Warfare did a fine job of having a IGOUGO system with a couple of systems in place (Orders phase to activate a few units early and a reaction phase to allow some actions out of turn). It never felt unbalanced when I played. Of course the game had very, very few weapons with range of 36" and often required getting very close (you used almost all weapons that were in range) to actually remove some targets. It also sort of had a catch up/elite force mechanic the way initiative was based on the number of units allowing the player with the fewer units to have a better chance to go first too. I still think Andy Chambers did an excellent job with the system. It continues to be my favorite (probably nostalgically so) miniatures war game system.

I am not saying that 40k wouldn't be a better game moving away from IGOUGO. It probably would. I don't know if would make in all that much more tactical though. I have played a good deal more alternating/random activation games than anything else, and I, slowly, learned there are definitely ways to game the system (usually unit stacking but activation juggling can do it too) that feel more cheap than tactical. I also think 40k would definitely have to place unit limits (like they do in Kill Team) to accomplish it. Unlike a game like Bolt Action where unit stacking can only get you so far, 40k has lots of factions that could easily have some 30 units even in a 1000 points list without affecting the heavy hitters of the list. And a 30+ unit army is basically an IGOUGO army with the additional option of alternating activation to juggle their opponent when they get in range.

Like I said, 40k would probably be better for moving away from a pure IGOUGO, but it definitely needs to be careful how it is done given the crazy range of unit types/costs.

pet peeve of mine- change the over watch rules so that you can shoot incoming units regardless of how far away they started from the target unit. I mean it makes no sense. This is especially true with RL area effect weapons like flamers.

New Lt to his troops "Fire as they come into range men."
Veteran Sgt, "We can't Sir! They started their charge outside the max range of our guns so we can't get a proper bead on them."
Lt, "???"

Blastaar wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Some of these are good, but some are god awful

Thank you for this insight.

Alternating activation by unit? Terrible in a game with different levels of unit count to the extent 40k has, unless you implement a lot of other rules to balance out the advantage this gives to extreme MSU.

Not necessarily. Extreme MSU will have more activations, but larger or more expensive units will be more effective at their respective tasks. Morale is also an equalizing force. Players should need to rely on using the synergy between their units effectively.

NO locked in combat means dead combat units for the most part.

It means no mindless rolling turn after turn as your combat units are stuck in one place all game, making gameplay more dynamic and giving people with melee armies more to do. Melee units and armies would have the tools to succeed, particularly ways to suppress the enemy. Units would be unable to fire their non-pistol/assault weapons at units they are within a defined close-combat distance of. AA- the CC unit's controller would soon be able to activate other units.

Removal of saves makes the game even harder to differentiate between unit unless they are expanding the unit stats.

If saves are such a defining feature of units, that is a major problem that needs to be addressed. Yes, I would like to see expanded unit stats, as well as useful special rules that give units tactical capabilities, rather than merely adjusting some numbers to make them better at killing or not being killed.

FOC emphasising Troops that much requires a full game re-write, some armies have cheap effective troops, others do not, so if I can take cheap min troops to fill requirements, then spend points on better units I have a huge advantage against an army with more expensive troops.

Yes, I said I would like a full re-write in my first sentence. You didn't really read my post before you rushed to write your response, did you? Old FOC of 3 Elites, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support. None of those selections may outnumber your troop choices. Also potentially restrict the total number of units per detachment. List building should require choices. Cheap troops would need to be implemented in such a way that more expensive troops had the advantage in a 1:1 comparison. Morale.

Run and Charge rules - do these replace your regular move or are they in addition, can some units still run and charge? I mean do you want units with a 12" move that can run and charge to really be able to move 12", run 24", and Charge 24" so a 60" threat range? I mean even the 36" threat range is huge for that unit if they cannot run and then charge, or is it you can during movement, either move base distance, run x2 or charge x2, that would be ok but would work very differently than current systems as far as units that can shoot and do close combat.

The basic idea is that a player chooses a unit, makes its leadership check, then moves and shoots, moves and uses a psychic power, double moves, or charges.

My intention for morale is that units take a leadership check at the beginning of their activation. If passed, all is well and proceeds normally. If it fails, depending on the level of suppression, the unit is pinned in place, only hits on 6's, breaks and moves towards the opening player's table edge, and so forth. Horde armies would be somewhat more susceptible than elite armies, and immunity extremely rare.

Unless morale really screws MSU builds they still have a huge advantage, especially any army that can have cheap MSU troops and then a few great units. In games with they type of alternating actions you are describing, MSU armies always have the advantage unless they are penalized in some way, either allowing the opponent to pass activations, or setting it up so that their activations fail (which is a random and not so fun mechanic, though it still makes them good at what you want them for). Essentially you use your cheap troops to activate and pass back to your elite opponent who exhausts their activations and can then be attacked without fear of reprisal. The issue 1 to 1 advantage in troops doesn’t help when you largely cannot do anything of note. Envision the following an AM army with a 10 infantry squads backed by 4 leman Russ tanks square off against a grey knight army with 3 terminator squads and 2 dread knights (imagining these to be similar in cost based on current prices).

The AM player screens out deepstrikers, then deploys the leman fusses where they are out of LOS. The GK player gets to activate first and moves and shoots with a terminator squad killing 1 infantry squad, guard activates an infantry squad and moves away and hides. No other terminator squads have range, so the players go back and forth, until the GK player has activated everything and the guard player still has 4 Leman Russ squads and 5 guard squads to activate against the opponent who can no longer retaliate this turn. The tanks move out and blow away a unit or 2 of termies. Those same powerful units then activate early the next turn doing more damage, largely in answered.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
pet peeve of mine- change the over watch rules so that you can shoot incoming units regardless of how far away they started from the target unit. I mean it makes no sense. This is especially true with RL area effect weapons like flamers.

New Lt to his troops "Fire as they come into range men."
Veteran Sgt, "We can't Sir! They started their charge outside the max range of our guns so we can't get a proper bead on them."
Lt, "???"

Only if you can point out how in RL a modern military (WWII and beyond) would actually repel an assault with a flamethrower. As someone that has a better than average knowledge of WWII infantry warfare, a pet peeve of mine is thinking a flamethrower is an effective defense to assault. It would be just about the last thing I would want be armed with if the enemy wanting to attach bayonets and get stuck in. It simply wasn't the purpose of the weapon and has a lot reasons why.

You can't think of shooting only occurring during the shooting phase/over watch. I think it is important to consider the assault roll the combination of a bunch different things instead of the ability to cover the distance to the target or giving up and heading back to maybe cover you had. A successful charge could be performing an effective fire and maneuver tactic not giving them a good bead on the assaulters. It could also be baiting the flamer into using a good chunk of fuel before committing. It is also entirely possible that a successful charge doesn't even have the two units actually engaged in hand-to-hand fighting. It might just be point blank gun/grenade range between a squad of tacticals and guardsmen neither of which are actually armed with melee weapons. Point is, I think it is important to treat the Charge roll as an abstraction to a bunch of various elements, situations, conditions, etc. that either prevent a unit from engaging with the enemy as such a range that it takes of the entirety of their attention.

Part of my thought process is/was that 8" is about 80yds (for round numbers). As far as I can tell modern flamethrowers have an effective range of around 15yds. As you would no doubt agree the effective range difference is considerable. The extra time/range should enable the person using the flame thrower to shoot and either fall back or grab a weapon to be used in HtH combat.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Part of my thought process is/was that 8" is about 80yds (for round numbers). As far as I can tell modern flamethrowers have an effective range of around 15yds. As you would no doubt agree the effective range difference is considerable. The extra time/range should enable the person using the flame thrower to shoot and either fall back or grab a weapon to be used in HtH combat.

By that rational, a .50 cal (say a Heavy Stubber) point target is 150". It just gets worse with vehicle weapons/artillery. I don't attribute any distances (or time) on the tabletop actual distances typically because it simply isn't feasible and things make any kind of sense. At best, I go with a sort of telescoping effect where distances are much further the the units are away from each other but never 1:1. Even units within 1" on the tabletop are somewhere between engaged in melee all the way out to 30-50m or whatever distance seems most appropriate for neither to ignore the other and too intertwined for ally units to discern friend from foe. My mind's eye theater usually has a typical game taking place over an area of at least a couple 100 square miles over the course of several hours which seems pretty good given 40k is a company level game. Not as much of meat grinder 1000s dead in seconds as I am sure it is intended, but I like the idea of the game being much greater than a postage stamp part of a bigger battle with a parking lot of armor and line infantry.

As to the flamer operator reacting, depends on their situational awareness. Maybe they thought the flamer thrower would catch the assualters but they proved to wily with a quick distraction wasting fuel and came in before the flamer operator could adjust. Maybe assault managed to throw some grenades in just the right spot to force the operator to keep their head down just long enough. Maybe the flamer operator did fall back but a strap took a little longer or the tanks tripped them up a bit and the assaulters closed the distance a little faster than they thought they would. Again, in the world of tabletop rpg describing the outcome a dice roll there are over 1,001 ways to describe why an action went they way it did based on the roll. As long as they aren't too far fetched for the setting, they don't bother me.

In 40k, flamers make effective counter charge weapons, but only up to a point. For the average assaulting squad it is basically a coin toss whether they can engage scott-free or become smothered in flames. Sounds close enough for me in the setting. I like close combat in the setting (and in general with miniatures war games), and I am glad it is at least as viable as it is.

More tanks, less infantry
Smaller size standard games.
~1500 points would probably be preferable to 2000. Generally I hear that the problem with Fantasy was that long time players had all the models they needed and weren't incentivized to buy a whole lot more since new-and-flashy was rather lacking, and potential new players couldn't get in because of prohibitively high model counts in games. [I generally also agree with this sentiment, since my friends tried to get me to play Fantasy many times and there's no way I was going to do another 150-200+ generic infantry models. That said, I was also just not into the models or the setting.] Infantry are not flashy, exciting, or fun for the most part. They're also generally more expensive than armor in the long run. Therefore, I think we need games that are A: smaller, and B: feature fewer hordes of infantry in favor of models that are exciting to work with, like heavy infantry and tanks.


Also:
Significantly reduced morale invulnerability. This phase might as well not exist, since every army has so many ways of ignoring morale. I have a warlord trait, a relic, 2 stratagems, a unit, an Act of Faith, and an Order Doctrine to deny morale effects in an army that's already entirely MSU and Ld 8. Seriously. And while SoB are an extreme case, only Necrons are really any vulnerable to morale in any meaningful way. If all this stuff exists because it's un-fun for your guys to run away, just get rid of it. Otherwise, remove the morale denial abilities, or change it to a suppression effect or something.

A general re balance of vehicle weapons, toughness, and the way they interact with each other and with infantry. Vehicle weapons are not appreciably more powerful than infantry-carried bazookas, which is a problem in the way the game feels. In addition, powerful tank guns are almost always worse than multishot weapons that aren't supposed to be AT guns because GW is apparently afraid that one shot for 2d6 damage on a 200 point tank will step on the toes of a 424 point Titanic that gets 3d3 for 2d6 at S16. It also is my opinion that tanks should have been T8 for medium tanks and T9 for heavy tanks, instead of T7 for medium tanks and T8 for heavy tanks, giving some appeciably definition in the range of AT weapons between S8, S9, and S10. Also, Melta needs to have a better chance at wounding, rather than a slightly improved damage roll, otherwise it has no role next to Plasma.

License Mk2 Warmachine rules for the game?

 jobalisk wrote:
Honestly. Id like to see the whole system scraped and returned to 5th edition based rules because there is very little I like in the current ruleset. Moral and template weapons especially.

Basically this, but with 3rd Edition instead. Rewrite the few broken Codices and you have a done deal.

A fully digitized, online, living ruleset.

Vaktathi wrote:I'd like to see a better defined scale to the game.

Why on earth are we differentiating between a power axe and power sword on a random squad sergeant in a game where they may be facing a tank company, knight lance, or Titan maniple? Why do we have air superiority fighters and strategic missile launchers in a game where handguns are relevant wargear?

I get that GW wants one scale of models to represent the entire game universe, but I really think 40k needs two or three different rulesets, with different levels of abstraction and model count, to portray different scales.

I think solving that will make a whole lot of other balance issues easier to grapple with.

That's actually one of the things I really like about 40K, and especially 8th edition with unified statlines.

BaconCatBug wrote:TITANIC models banned in matched play below 3k points.

That seems a little over-kill. Even limiting to 1 TITANIC unit per 1000 points would require a rethink of the IK and RK rules.

 Ginjitzu wrote:
A fully digitized, online, living ruleset.

So pay a subscription for specific rulebooks? In a way that's a really good idea, apart from the fact that a lot of players like having physical books at their games.

What could work is making a year's subscription less than the cost of a physical book, and give a year's subscription to each book free with the physical copy. All rules changes could then go into the digital edition to get rid of all the scrappy FAQs/errata.

Those GKs would be dead- unless they could activate multiple times, utilize movement shenanigans, or disrupt large parts of the AM army.

GW could reduce lethality across the board. Full-strength units being destroyed in a single turn or activation should be a rare occurrence. (There is also such a thing as cover, which is in dire need of improvement) Limiting detachments to a set amount of units is another option. A universal restriction would be ideal, but there could be some wiggle room for horde armies. Scoring VP per round by completing objectives, some of which do not involve simply killing a unit, is another tool. Units that have been heavily suppressed failing their activation check, and suffering a compulsory action or other penalty, is also something I mentioned in my last post. Whether that kind of gameplay is "fun" is up to the individual.

Herbington wrote:
Fully Digital Rules and Codexes updated with regular errata/faqs - containing everything but points. Move points into a quarterly Chapter Approved.

I'd like the digital stuff to be free, but wouldn't mind paying for CA or some sort of subscription for both.

Quarterly CA means they would be deciding next CA's point values before even first one is even out


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Remove CP in its current form, all battle forge get 3 cp, generate 1 a turn, relics and artifacts give a chance to generate an additional on a 6+, all strats cost 1 cp

So pre-game stratagems screwed. And 1 CP for all means huge amount of stratagems needs to be just dropped.

Remove super heavies from standard games.

Might just as well ask for moon from the sky. Too much ££££ for GW to do so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 buddha wrote:
Wow, glad no one here is a game designer. 8th just needs refinement like a consolidation of the FAQs to the core rules, not a return to previous failed edition mechanics.

Previous edition had issue with codex. Rules were vastly superior in terms of balance, fun and logic. Codex were issue. 8th ed is mess. Illogical and broken and lot slower.

Previous edition had issue with codex. Rules were vastly superior in terms of balance, fun and logic. Codex were issue. 8th ed is mess. Illogical and broken and lot slower.

7th was a total mess, the terrible general balance, pyschic phase of boredom, the stupid weapons firing rules, broken codexes and formations,

We find 8th alot quicker and at least we are having fun with it - something that did not happen with 6th/7th.

tneva82 wrote:
Previous edition ... Rules were vastly superior in terms of balance, fun and logic.

I disagree.

tneva82 wrote:8th ed is mess. Illogical and broken and lot slower.

I really disagree.

Problem is always the same

There is no strict concept for the game and future factions
(I mean with the big changes in the core rules regarding it would have been necessary to change all unit profiles to adopt to them instead of keeping most of them the same for legacy reasons)

So the core is written with existing faction rules in mind and to solve problems of the previous edition
New stuff is added with the rule of cool without sticking to the original concept and the more is released the more it gets a mess

8th edition worked well at the beginning and with lower points


For 9th I hope GW will finally write core rules with 2000 points /2 hours in mind and have a concept for all factions

(if the standard space marine is the thing everything is balanced around, giving him a profile that is in the middle of the range and a high enough point cost that bigger adjustments are possible would be a good start)

Blastaar wrote:

Spoiler:

[spoiler]

Breng77 wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Some of these are good, but some are god awful

Thank you for this insight.

Alternating activation by unit? Terrible in a game with different levels of unit count to the extent 40k has, unless you implement a lot of other rules to balance out the advantage this gives to extreme MSU.

Not necessarily. Extreme MSU will have more activations, but larger or more expensive units will be more effective at their respective tasks. Morale is also an equalizing force. Players should need to rely on using the synergy between their units effectively.

NO locked in combat means dead combat units for the most part.

It means no mindless rolling turn after turn as your combat units are stuck in one place all game, making gameplay more dynamic and giving people with melee armies more to do. Melee units and armies would have the tools to succeed, particularly ways to suppress the enemy. Units would be unable to fire their non-pistol/assault weapons at units they are within a defined close-combat distance of. AA- the CC unit's controller would soon be able to activate other units.

Removal of saves makes the game even harder to differentiate between unit unless they are expanding the unit stats.

If saves are such a defining feature of units, that is a major problem that needs to be addressed. Yes, I would like to see expanded unit stats, as well as useful special rules that give units tactical capabilities, rather than merely adjusting some numbers to make them better at killing or not being killed.

FOC emphasising Troops that much requires a full game re-write, some armies have cheap effective troops, others do not, so if I can take cheap min troops to fill requirements, then spend points on better units I have a huge advantage against an army with more expensive troops.

Yes, I said I would like a full re-write in my first sentence. You didn't really read my post before you rushed to write your response, did you? Old FOC of 3 Elites, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support. None of those selections may outnumber your troop choices. Also potentially restrict the total number of units per detachment. List building should require choices. Cheap troops would need to be implemented in such a way that more expensive troops had the advantage in a 1:1 comparison. Morale.

Run and Charge rules - do these replace your regular move or are they in addition, can some units still run and charge? I mean do you want units with a 12" move that can run and charge to really be able to move 12", run 24", and Charge 24" so a 60" threat range? I mean even the 36" threat range is huge for that unit if they cannot run and then charge, or is it you can during movement, either move base distance, run x2 or charge x2, that would be ok but would work very differently than current systems as far as units that can shoot and do close combat.

The basic idea is that a player chooses a unit, makes its leadership check, then moves and shoots, moves and uses a psychic power, double moves, or charges.

My intention for morale is that units take a leadership check at the beginning of their activation. If passed, all is well and proceeds normally. If it fails, depending on the level of suppression, the unit is pinned in place, only hits on 6's, breaks and moves towards the opening player's table edge, and so forth. Horde armies would be somewhat more susceptible than elite armies, and immunity extremely rare.

Unless morale really screws MSU builds they still have a huge advantage, especially any army that can have cheap MSU troops and then a few great units. In games with they type of alternating actions you are describing, MSU armies always have the advantage unless they are penalized in some way, either allowing the opponent to pass activations, or setting it up so that their activations fail (which is a random and not so fun mechanic, though it still makes them good at what you want them for). Essentially you use your cheap troops to activate and pass back to your elite opponent who exhausts their activations and can then be attacked without fear of reprisal. The issue 1 to 1 advantage in troops doesn’t help when you largely cannot do anything of note. Envision the following an AM army with a 10 infantry squads backed by 4 leman Russ tanks square off against a grey knight army with 3 terminator squads and 2 dread knights (imagining these to be similar in cost based on current prices).

The AM player screens out deepstrikers, then deploys the leman fusses where they are out of LOS. The GK player gets to activate first and moves and shoots with a terminator squad killing 1 infantry squad, guard activates an infantry squad and moves away and hides. No other terminator squads have range, so the players go back and forth, until the GK player has activated everything and the guard player still has 4 Leman Russ squads and 5 guard squads to activate against the opponent who can no longer retaliate this turn. The tanks move out and blow away a unit or 2 of termies. Those same powerful units then activate early the next turn doing more damage, largely in answered.

Those GKs would be dead- unless they could activate multiple times, utilize movement shenanigans, or disrupt large parts of the AM army.

GW could reduce lethality across the board. Full-strength units being destroyed in a single turn or activation should be a rare occurrence. (There is also such a thing as cover, which is in dire need of improvement) Limiting detachments to a set amount of units is another option. A universal restriction would be ideal, but there could be some wiggle room for horde armies. Scoring VP per round by completing objectives, some of which do not involve simply killing a unit, is another tool. Units that have been heavily suppressed failing their activation check, and suffering a compulsory action or other penalty, is also something I mentioned in my last post. Whether that kind of gameplay is "fun" is up to the individual.

I don’t think letting more expensive units acting multiple times is likely the best idea as that flips the advantage hard in the other direction. Wasted activations among cheap stuff don’t hurt much in the game as often that is the whole point. As to decreasing lethality you can only do that so much, for instance it likely shouldn’t be possible for a 200 point unit to survive 1500 points of enemy offense for the most part. So unless you are adding things like target priority checks to prevent focus fire to some extent.

I’ve always felt the best idea for alternating activation is not by unit, but instead by groups of units. For instance take the total points in the game divide that number by say 5 and make as close as possible groups of units in your army that fit into each of those chunks. So for a 2000 point game each player has as close as possible 5 groups of 400 points, and then they alternate activating those groups. So if we were to look at our prior example. The GK army might have 5 groups of one unit, and guard might have 5 groups of 3 units, but points would not allow putting all the Russes into a single group, or even most of them.

Sometimes it might work that one side has one less group due to how the points work out, but that is not the huge disadvantage of being out activated.

I feel like there is too much of a discrepancy in possible unit counts in 40k to really work with a unit by unit model.

Breng77 wrote:

I feel like there is too much of a discrepancy in possible unit counts in 40k to really work with a unit by unit model.

there are other games with a unit by unit model with a similar or even bigger difference in numbers of units and they work well.

depending on the rules there are multiple ways to balance those problems, as there are multiple ways to balance alpha strike (in a turn by turn based system), the problem is just that I don't think GW is able to do it as they are not able to balance any system no matter what it is.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
pet peeve of mine- change the over watch rules so that you can shoot incoming units regardless of how far away they started from the target unit. I mean it makes no sense. This is especially true with RL area effect weapons like flamers.

New Lt to his troops "Fire as they come into range men."
Veteran Sgt, "We can't Sir! They started their charge outside the max range of our guns so we can't get a proper bead on them."
Lt, "???"

Only if you can point out how in RL a modern military (WWII and beyond) would actually repel an assault with a flamethrower. As someone that has a better than average knowledge of WWII infantry warfare, a pet peeve of mine is thinking a flamethrower is an effective defense to assault. It would be just about the last thing I would want be armed with if the enemy wanting to attach bayonets and get stuck in. It simply wasn't the purpose of the weapon and has a lot reasons why.

You can't think of shooting only occurring during the shooting phase/over watch. I think it is important to consider the assault roll the combination of a bunch different things instead of the ability to cover the distance to the target or giving up and heading back to maybe cover you had. A successful charge could be performing an effective fire and maneuver tactic not giving them a good bead on the assaulters. It could also be baiting the flamer into using a good chunk of fuel before committing. It is also entirely possible that a successful charge doesn't even have the two units actually engaged in hand-to-hand fighting. It might just be point blank gun/grenade range between a squad of tacticals and guardsmen neither of which are actually armed with melee weapons. Point is, I think it is important to treat the Charge roll as an abstraction to a bunch of various elements, situations, conditions, etc. that either prevent a unit from engaging with the enemy as such a range that it takes of the entirety of their attention.

Pet peeve of mine is people insisting that a game set in a fantasy future with all manor of impossible things happening already (cavalry charge against robots bristling with guns?!?!) must have some element of ultra realism to the gameplay. I'm in favour of mechanics that improve the gameplay, either by giving more tactical options, or reducing those of your opponent. It does not have to have a real life counterpart to make it viable. I hope you don't complain about deny the witch roles as they have no real life counterpart?

Anyway, even with some added element of realism, you may not like the idea of a flamer as a defensive weapon, but if it was being used as one, and you had to charge that position would you charge straight into the flame if it was been fired in your direction? You may go round it, but that's more time taken to reach your target.

No.... So whilst it may not be an effective defensive weapon, it can still be used as one.

I have an idea to make flamers more relevant for OW without increasing the killyness (necessarily) and adjusting the range.

When an enemy unit makes a charge against a unit with a flamer weapon, the enemy units charge distance is automatically reduced by 2". The enemy can choose to ignore this penalty but it will automatically take maximum flamer hits from a flamer weapon of the defending players choice as a consequence to this (D6 = 6 hits, D3 = 3 hits etc)

Please note that this ability would not stack with other multiple flamers. Other flamer weapons in a unit would continue to act as they usually do with the range they currently have.

And before people moan about this reducing the viability of CC even more, I would change how random charge rolls work anyway. I'd change them from 2D6 to 1D6 plus movement. Charge rolls are fun and add drama to the game, but at the same time, they make CC too unreliable, I think this would be a good compromise between the two.

 insaniak wrote:

 Karnij wrote:

It isn't even possible for me to describe how much i agree with this. This is hands down the single best change they could make. It would not only massively improve the ability to balance because currently it's impossible to balance a game where one entire side get's to shoot everything before the other side get's to react.

It also would make for a much deeper more tactical game where players are actually interacting and countering each others actions instead of everything coming down to alpha-strikes and the ability to survive alpha strikes.

It's only one way to do that, though, and in a game where the armies can be as varied in size as they can be in 40K it leads to other problems.

The imbalance from one side getting to shoot before the other gets to react could also be dealt with by giving the other side a way to react when shot at, or simply by making shooting less effective at wiping out entire units in a single turn.

We do get to react. We get to roll saves.

 Togusa wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Karnij wrote:

It isn't even possible for me to describe how much i agree with this. This is hands down the single best change they could make. It would not only massively improve the ability to balance because currently it's impossible to balance a game where one entire side get's to shoot everything before the other side get's to react.

It also would make for a much deeper more tactical game where players are actually interacting and countering each others actions instead of everything coming down to alpha-strikes and the ability to survive alpha strikes.

It's only one way to do that, though, and in a game where the armies can be as varied in size as they can be in 40K it leads to other problems.

The imbalance from one side getting to shoot before the other gets to react could also be dealt with by giving the other side a way to react when shot at, or simply by making shooting less effective at wiping out entire units in a single turn.

We do get to react. We get to roll saves.

It also doesn’t need to be IGUGO per unit. It could be per phase. All move one player, the second player moves going like that.

You can mitigate the first person getting a shooting advantage by moving out of line of sight, or into cover etc, maybe that required an advance roll. I think it would naturally balance the phases providing there is appropriate terrain. I.d also bring back firing arcs personally as well.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
You can mitigate the first person getting a shooting advantage by moving out of line of sight, or into cover etc,

meh. Seizing is a thing. Not terribly often, but still. If you deploy aggressively and your opponent seizes, that's on you. What I would like is a chance for the second player to activate their cover bonuses and auras before the game begins.

 kodos wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

I feel like there is too much of a discrepancy in possible unit counts in 40k to really work with a unit by unit model.

there are other games with a unit by unit model with a similar or even bigger difference in numbers of units and they work well.

depending on the rules there are multiple ways to balance those problems, as there are multiple ways to balance alpha strike (in a turn by turn based system), the problem is just that I don't think GW is able to do it as they are not able to balance any system no matter what it is.

There are some ways you could do it, but I cannot think of any game that has the same possible unit discrepancy that works well. I mean you can allow a player with fewer units to pass activations, you can randomly decide activation, you can give each player a number of activations based on game size. There are things you can do, but none are straight alternating activations. I think the passing activations thing is probably the best solution if you want to go as close as possible to straight alternating activation. You give both players a number of “activations” equal to which ever player has more units, but only allow each unit to activate once.

Man some of these are simply “make this rule so my army that I love and the way I build it is viable.” That’s not what the rules are about
I say just slightly improve the rules. Leave the meta where it lies. Marines being pretty much is awesome

Pet peeve of mine is people insisting that a game set in a fantasy future with all manor of impossible things happening already (cavalry charge against robots bristling with guns?!?!) must have some element of ultra realism to the gameplay.

Its called having a high interest in immersion.

You may not care about immersion. A lot of people don't. Other people do.

The hand waive "its a fantasy game with demons and dragons and death stars so things don't need to make sense" doesn't appease someone that requires immersion.

A good game should have a bit of both gamer gamer mechanics and immersion. In my opinion.

40k and AOS went more towards collectible card game mechanic style play which has rubbed the immersion folk the wrong way intensely because few bones have been thrown back their way since.

I know 9th edition is coming at some point, but I’m strongly determined to not migrate to it.

I think GW has had more than ample opportunity to get their ruleset “right”, and I just don’t think it will ever become what I really want. I’ll happily hang on to my (houseruled) 8E books, but I don’t expect to follow GW to 9E.

However, What would it take to get me to buy into 9th? Moving to alternating activations, cutting down on the bucket o’ dice rolls and better terrain rules should do it. There’s still other concerns (morale that matters, game size, less randomness and “out of bounds” effects and updating Eldar aspects to plastic) but the three above are the big ones.

Breng77 wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

I feel like there is too much of a discrepancy in possible unit counts in 40k to really work with a unit by unit model.

there are other games with a unit by unit model with a similar or even bigger difference in numbers of units and they work well.

depending on the rules there are multiple ways to balance those problems, as there are multiple ways to balance alpha strike (in a turn by turn based system), the problem is just that I don't think GW is able to do it as they are not able to balance any system no matter what it is.

There are some ways you could do it, but I cannot think of any game that has the same possible unit discrepancy that works well.

Mantics Warpath, Starship Troopers, Stargrunt II are an example for SciFi, but there are more and also some historical rules use it (won't say Bolt Actions as this would be equal 780-1000 points 40k but mass battle games). Some Starship Troopers lists would be comparable of 100 Tyranid Warriors fighting 3 Imperial Knights and it worked as there would have been no clear winner until the end.

passing activation is one option, giving both players a limited amount of activation with each unit being allowed to activate 2 or 3 times another, or adding reactions to the game that are triggered by enemy activation in a specific range (or a mix of those)
some games also use different victory conditions for different sized armies (like the mass army will get a "kill all" against the elite force while the elite army will get a "hold the line" or "breakthrough" against the mass army)

The common things in all those rules is close combat is devastating while ranged combat is more about pinning/suppression than killing and that nothing interrupts the activation of another unit (so no Overwatch before the attacking unit has done the damage).


Than the other thing is, if GW would add a proper reaction system to their game (and not that "I once read about reaction game mechanic so add something a like to our game" stuff that we have now) and make shooting more about pinning and close combat more about killing, the exiting turn based rules would also work out well

I want some sort of "blast" designation for weapons. a battle canon shoul;dn't be able to make 1d6 attacks against a single target

BrianDavion wrote:
I want some sort of "blast" designation for weapons. a battle canon shoul;dn't be able to make 1d6 attacks against a single target

I was actually pretty ok with this change. Big heavy blast weapons were dramatically underwhelming against single targets in previous editions, a Battlecannon basically being a slightly better single krak missile was not terribly functional at fighting other big things as the main weapon of a big scary MBT. I think it better represents a target taking the full brunt of a blast (particulary now that only one unit can be affected by a blast weapon) and/or the opportunity for multiple shrapnel/debris wounds.

In general focus on converging towards rules that work well enough that they don't need to be thrown away and redone every few years, just incrementally tweaked. To that effect, increase the ability to quickly correct mistakes by making all rules freely available in digital form. Physical books can be for lore, art, tactical suggestions, painting ideas, etc. I'd still buy 'em.

Then, take advantage of that easy iteration to make some some big changes quickly:
- Remove CPs and strategems
- Introduce formal amount-of-terrain requirements for matched play games so that there's always enough line of sight blocking terrain to not totally cripple low-save CC armies with other changes that improve shooting
- No Titanic models allowed under 2k points in Matched Play


Next, bring back good features of past editions that were lost in 8th:
- Bring back old wound table so that different strength weapons are actually well-optimized for attacking different kinds of targets, rather than just massing up on S5 and S6 weapons because they're good enough at everything. No more "everything can hurt everything else"
- Bring back old AP system (or a tweaked variant of it) so that high armor saves are actually useful and more weapons can have low to moderate amounts of AP without crippling high-save armies
- Make area terrain block line of sight through it, impact unit movement speed, and have a stronger protective effect
- Only visible models in a unit can be killed when some are completely out of line of sight
- Allow an embarked unit to to disembark and shoot after the transport has moved (additionally able to charge if the transport is open-topped)
- Bring back some sort of bonus for infantry attacking vehicles in close combat


Next, tweak the current rules:
- Generally reduce re-rolls as a game mechanic as much as possible
- Make charge distance based at least partially on the unit's movement speed and eliminate or reduce randomness; like maybe movement + D6"
- Better differentiate area effect type weapons (e.g. flamer and blast weapons) from other multi-shot weapons and give them niches and make them worth taking again
- Make far fewer units able to advance and charge, and for units that are supposed to be slow, remove the ability to advance altogether or make it D3"
- More interesting morale rules; e.g. maybe require a morale test to be able to fall back out of combat