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 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

Alternate activation
Keeps both players engaged.

The basic AA problem is that if you have to alternate every phase and you have a large number of units on the table (see: 8e Kill Team) it takes a really long time to get through a turn. Every AA system I've played that I've liked has restricted units to doing about two things a turn (move/shoot, charge/fight), which would require you to back off on some of more modern 40k's core assumptions about every unit getting to do everything it wants to every turn. It's doable, but I don't think it's doable while remaining close enough to 40k for existing 40k players to go for. AA 40k would probably look a lot like Bolt Action/Gates of Antares or Star Wars Legion. You'll also want to think about reducing the number of discrete activations it's possible to put on the table; if one army's cheapest activation is 200pts (Custodes) and another army's cheapest activation is 30pts (Guard) the Guard player gets pretty much complete activation control. Most AA games either are quite careful about making sure armies are usually similar in size (Crisis Protocol's points are set up so that you're almost always playing 4, 5, or 6 models), or have serious problems with people spamming cheap units to get more activation chances (competitive Bolt Action, Star Wars Legion).

What about a system based on activation point? It could be dolled out kind of like PL is now where it loosely follows points, but is much smaller. If say 1000 points = about 50 AP and each player can activate say (as a totally random example) 10 AP worth of units per activation, then the Horde armies would be able to activate a couple of units for each big unit from their opponent, but it would still balance out overall.

Wound allocation
Preventing abuse.

"Unit takes wounds. When the unit has wounds on it equal to its Wounds characteristic the defender removes one model of their choice." There. Done. (It precludes units with mixed wound counts, but that barely exists anymore.)

I think there are more of these than you think, especially in Troops. Ork Boys with Nobs, and Guardsman with Heavy Weapons jump out off the top of my head. I think Eldar Exarchs still have +1 W as well, but I'm not positive.

Environmental effects/hazards:
Rain, Fog, Night, Dim-light, Blizzard, Snowfall, Sunny, etc.

Doing distinct effects for all of these is probably too detailed on the scale of 40k.

Why do you think that? It doesn't have to be super complex. Personally I quite like the simplicity yet variation of something like the Twist system in Open Play in current 40k. Something along those lines would be simple but still achieve the desired effect.

Doing distinct effects for all of these is probably too detailed on the scale of 40k.

One of the few things in 6th edition that was actually fun was mysterious terrain and it works great in our kill team games, however in a 2K game you are looking at some serious bogging down of game play speed. Like i said before the great thing about 40K was the fact you could play this big battle where the rules were fun but not so complex like a skirmish game where you could do a 2K game in 2 hours or less.

his applies the same to

Wide range of modifiers

Works great in infinity, when you only have say 10 minis, not so much when i am throwing down dozens of infantry + vehicles.

Alternate activation

You would have to alter the game entirely and make it more like DUST where every unit that activates gets to do all of its actions-move/shoot, move/move, move/close combat etc... for the turn to make AA work in 40K

Move stat

Standardised move stats were clear, simple and worked great. it also gave units specific jobs.

move/run(no charge after run without fleet USR)/charge
infantry 6/d6/6
jump-12/d6/6
cav, leaping or beasts-6/d6/12
Bikes-12/12/6
Vehicles-6-12/6-12*/*
* Flat out with a vehicle on a road allowed non skimmers to move 18" in a straight line but they could not do anything else even pop smoke as the crew were driving so fast that had to concentrate on driving above all else.

Overwatch

Bog standard overwatch works just fine, we use it all the time in our 5th ed games, the key is remembering that the older edition were far less lethal in number of shots combined with hard saves. needing 6+ to hit a charging unit isn't breaking the flow of the game.

Wound allocation
Preventing abuse.

Probably the main complaint we hear about 5th ed core rules. i know why they did it and i know how the players abused the intent of the rule
The simple solution is the one we go with-

The controlling player removes the casualties as they like, multi-wound wounded models must be removed first. in the case of identical models with special or heavy weapons like a tac squad not removing the specials makes sense because even if you killed them some other member of the squad will pick them up as they are all trained to use them and would not leave something so important just lying about.

You could literally fix 5th edition's wound allocation by adding: "units may not contain more than one wounded model at a time" at the end of it.

Y'know, like fourth.

 Tawnis wrote:
...What about a system based on activation point? It could be dolled out kind of like PL is now where it loosely follows points, but is much smaller. If say 1000 points = about 50 AP and each player can activate say (as a totally random example) 10 AP worth of units per activation, then the Horde armies would be able to activate a couple of units for each big unit from their opponent, but it would still balance out overall....

This is basically the same thing as trying to keep a single unit within a narrower range of possible points values, only requiring extra bookkeeping.

Environmental effects/hazards:
Rain, Fog, Night, Dim-light, Blizzard, Snowfall, Sunny, etc.

Doing distinct effects for all of these is probably too detailed on the scale of 40k.

Why do you think that? It doesn't have to be super complex. Personally I quite like the simplicity yet variation of something like the Twist system in Open Play in current 40k. Something along those lines would be simple but still achieve the desired effect.

All right. Go for it. Pitch me on distinct effects for rain, fog, night, low-light, blizzard, and snowfall that don't overlap with each other.

 aphyon wrote:

Move stat

Standardised move stats were clear, simple and worked great. it also gave units specific jobs.

move/run(no charge after run without fleet USR)/charge
infantry 6/d6/6
jump-12/d6/6
cav, leaping or beasts-6/d6/12
Bikes-12/12/6
Vehicles-6-12/6-12*/*
* Flat out with a vehicle on a road allowed non skimmers to move 18" in a straight line but they could not do anything else even pop smoke as the crew were driving so fast that had to concentrate on driving above all else.

I'm going to at least partially disagree with you on this one - setting all infantry to 6" had two major problems.

A, Given human/Marine base speed was 4" in 2nd, you've suddenly upped their speed by 50% while not changing weapon ranges. Have we zoomed in on the battlefield (so 4" on the old table was 6" on the new), or are we looking at a longer time per round (in which case, should weapons be firing more shots).
B, You've removed a differentiation between units/species that actually matters on the table. We've seen this partially come back in 8th/9th, but the base speed being designed around is still too high.

It might be simpler - initially - but I strongly disagree that it was better. And that's before things like Fleet started cropping up so that units which should be faster than others in their category could actually be so - until those options get spread out to everyone in future editions.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
You could literally fix 5th edition's wound allocation by adding: "units may not contain more than one wounded model at a time" at the end of it.

Y'know, like fourth.

I never understood why they changed that.

 Gert wrote:
Good God, I'm agreeing with H.B.M.C, what has the world come to

Just bask in the glory of being right for a change.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
You could literally fix 5th edition's wound allocation by adding: "units may not contain more than one wounded model at a time" at the end of it.

Y'know, like fourth.

I never understood why they changed that.

In general I feel like they changed some things from 4th to 5th just to have a new RB to print. Can't make money if you don't have a reason to print a new rulebook!

So they took a functional wound allocation system and changed it, because why not!

They gave everyone Fleet (Run moves) because why not!

They changed the vehicle damage chart because why not! (Well in this case players actually thought transports were deathtraps; clearly those players hadn't played 9th yet. No invuln, no alive!)

They tore out the Campaign system (it's like Crusade with less bookkeeping but more narrative!)

They took out all the fun special missions (anyone remember sentries? Or the actually good bunker assault mission?). Don't worry, they sold you ANOTHER book at the end of 5th called Battle Missions that put them back in...

They removed the Extra Detachment system (and then brought it back in 6th but worse).

*Sigh*

Just for me to understand some things better:

you want a new game that is 40k in name only with the known faction (although you have to clear out the mess of codex and units to get things in line again) but with AA and a different dice system (direct rolls with D8/10/12 instead of D6+tables)

what is the game size you are aiming for, company level (aka, current 2000 points lists) or platoon level game?

and you want to build it from scratch, because taking some exiting rules (that are testing and have all the problems a different dice system and AA would bring already sorted out) would be too easy?

A.T. wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
Could someone please post links to the variant unofficial rules? I would like to read them first before working on this.

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

I'd offer you a copy of simplehammer but it is caught in mid-revision limbo, as it ever has been (and based on your list not what you are after anyway).

Thanks.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 aphyon wrote:

Could someone please post links to the variant unofficial rules? I would like to read them first before working on this.

Got an entire thread on it here-


https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789567.page

Thanks.

 Tawnis wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
You need core rules before you can do faction work.

True.

My post also mentioned the basic rules. I stressed the point of doing these factions first to prevent codex bloat from burying such a project from the very beginning. Take a look at Epic Armageddon. It had only three factions and was good enough to play. So limiting oneself to only work on six factions would be prudent. Once those factions work well and are different enough from one another work could continue on others.

Just some thoughts what I would like to see in a community edition. I won´t go into detail as there are many ways to incorporate these ideas into the game and to not create a wall of text:

Emphasis on USR:
Keeps a gamer life simple and stress free. Totally Agree.

Alternate activation
Keeps both players engaged. Totally Agree.

Emphasis on small-sized engagements
Scale of the game shouldn´t be Epic with 40K minis. Totally Agree.

Several different actions possible for units
Take a look in Epic Armageddon. Spices up the game. I've never played Epic Armageddon but this sounds promising.

Abstract area cover
Essentially every model on a terrain base gains the advantage of it´s cover bonus. Scatter terrain works differently. Would have to be defined clearly how to target units that have some models in and out, but I like this if done well.

Wide range of modifiers
Ranged combat: Distance, Quality of cover, Speed of target, Size of target & Wargear. Cautiously agree. Distance and cover 100%. The others, you want to be careful not to add too many modifiers and especially things that people have to keep in their heads like how fast any given unit moved.
Close combat: Wargear and Quality of opponent. Totally Agree, I think the old WS vs WS system is a great baseline for this.

Facings
Definitely for vehicles. Still undecided for infantry. Totally Agree. I think Infantry could be done pretty simple, like all infantry have 180 degree facing so it's pretty easy to tell what they can shoot without busywork while vehicles are done in 90 degree arcs.

Templates
Yep, they are back. Ehhh. Okay, so I personally really like templates because they felt very thematic, however, they did certainly have their issues. See the mass infantry players that had to space every model out exactly 2" to make sure they would loose less models to blast. Tell them they can't do this and it puts them at a disadvantage, allow it and it's a huge pain in the ass. I dislike this from a game design perspective as it is something that is impossible to balance because each player will handle it differently.

Move stat
Yep, those are back too. No more idiotic SR to differentiate between fast and slow units. Keep random speed only for the likes of drunks (LOL!) and plague zombies. I feel like I'm missing something here, units all have a Movement stat.

Overwatch&Crossfire
Take a look in Epic Armageddon. Again, haven't played, but changing it up certainly sounds like it could be a good idea.

Pinning/Stagger mechanic
Should come in levels. Units coming under fire should behave worse than those who are not being shot at. Epic Armageddon uses the blast mechanic for that. Some weapon types should obviously be more useful for suppressing enemy units such as template weapons. I was actually just thinking about this and have a few ideas that are a little too long to type out here, but yeah, I like this.

Wound allocation
Preventing abuse. In what way? Or do you just meant TBD come up with something for this.

Close Combat Result Modifiers/Effects:
Wounds caused, Outnumbering, Fear & Terror, etc. Totally Agree.

Scenarios
Take a look in 4th edition. If that was the edition with the Battle Missions book, yes, totally agree. (I get my older editions mixed up a bit as I only played off and on through them.

Environmental effects/hazards:
Rain, Fog, Night, Dim-light, Blizzard, Snowfall, Sunny, etc. Yes! 100% Totally agree, it still baffles me that the only place we see this is the Open War Twist Cards in actual 40k.

As many people have pointed out, community editions do already exist, but as they have also pointed out, no one agrees on everything and I think working on a new version would be a lot of fun. I think a full redesign with keeping the ideas and concepts but implementing them differently would make it feel very much like it's own thing as oppose to other fan versions.

If you're willing, I'd be happy to help out with this, can't guarantee I'll be able to spend a lot of time on it, but I've certainly been thinking about it a lot since I read this and sketching out some broad strokes Core Rule ideas if you'd like to see them.

Sounds great. I will contact you via pm in a couple of days.

For the sake of discussion, there is a very advanced project of the kind at this adress:

https://wargame.indiegamerules.com/games/stellar_frontiers

 Dysartes wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

Move stat

Standardised move stats were clear, simple and worked great. it also gave units specific jobs.

move/run(no charge after run without fleet USR)/charge
infantry 6/d6/6
jump-12/d6/6
cav, leaping or beasts-6/d6/12
Bikes-12/12/6
Vehicles-6-12/6-12*/*
* Flat out with a vehicle on a road allowed non skimmers to move 18" in a straight line but they could not do anything else even pop smoke as the crew were driving so fast that had to concentrate on driving above all else.

I'm going to at least partially disagree with you on this one - setting all infantry to 6" had two major problems.

A, Given human/Marine base speed was 4" in 2nd, you've suddenly upped their speed by 50% while not changing weapon ranges. Have we zoomed in on the battlefield (so 4" on the old table was 6" on the new), or are we looking at a longer time per round (in which case, should weapons be firing more shots).
B, You've removed a differentiation between units/species that actually matters on the table. We've seen this partially come back in 8th/9th, but the base speed being designed around is still too high.

It might be simpler - initially - but I strongly disagree that it was better. And that's before things like Fleet started cropping up so that units which should be faster than others in their category could actually be so - until those options get spread out to everyone in future editions.

Exactly. My intention is to dial back movement speed for infantry. Advantages of such action:

1. Transports become more valuable.
2. Infantry doesn´t behave in stupid ways breaking immersion. I read a thread in the past in which someone explained how Genestealers were cosplaying as Usain Bolt sprinting around the board at a breakneck speed. Gonna have to delete such garbage fast.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You'll never get anyone to agree to anything.

There are people here who want to consolidate the rules down into an optionless nightmare where the 8th Ed Indices would be seen as giving too much freedom. There are others who want to expand on everything - Chapter rules aren't enough, every Marine Company should have its own unique rules!

There are people who want the old AP system back, who want to enhance the current AP system, who want vehicles with armour values, who want to alter the core rule fundamentally and those who want to operate within existing bounds. I mean within four posts of the OP people are already discussing using alternate dice.

There are those that hate strats, love strats, want to change strats, want to remove them altogether. Replace 'strats' in the previous sentence with 'relics', 'warlord traits', and 'chapter tactics' as you see fit, 'cause they all exist.

There are people who refuse to acknowledge that there's anything wrong with the game, and will say "You can't change that!" at every turn, often with a bad "... because then this would happen!" excuse because either they only see singular things in a vacuum, or think we do.

There are those who want to remove Tau from the game completely and, as hard as it is to believe, insane people who disagree with them!

You'll never find a consensus.

yes, because everyone sees its favorite army in a vaccum and refuse perceived "nerfs" or the need for further balance.

I've said it in the past, but it's GW's job to provide a working Core and modular ruleset focused on simplicity for the community to accept it. Unfortunately, that's not their strategy.

Except, as H.B.M.C. says in their post people disagree upon core rule concepts, not just favourite armies.
For example, I like 8th/9th but I don't want HH to use the same system. 40k had serious problems with equipment and relics that generally doesn't exist in HH, that and there is a much greater variety of weapons, wargear and upgrades for HH that likely wouldn't survive a port to the 8th Ed rule styling.
Some people like the R+F system from WHFB whereas others prefer the way AoS works.
It doesn't matter if GW provided a "working Core" ruleset because there will always be people who don't like it. That's where the lack of community consensus comes in, its not possible.

I think that GW should produce a rule compendium with layers and alternatives taken from prior editions and which people then choose to use or not depending on the degree of realism that they are trying to achieve.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
... people disagree upon core rule concepts, not just favourite armies.
...
It doesn't matter if GW provided a "working Core" ruleset because there will always be people who don't like it. That's where the lack of community consensus comes in, its not possible.

That would fix this problem... I think that this is possible.

 jeff white wrote:
I think that GW should produce a rule compendium with layers and alternatives taken from prior editions and which people then choose to use or not depending on the degree of realism that they are trying to achieve.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
... people disagree upon core rule concepts, not just favourite armies.
...
It doesn't matter if GW provided a "working Core" ruleset because there will always be people who don't like it. That's where the lack of community consensus comes in, its not possible.

That would fix this problem... I think that this is possible.

The only viable way I can see this sort of thing working is by expanding Narrative play to have more simulationist rules. 3 ways to play is enough for one system, GW is already having major struggles with balancing as is. Organising a matched play game should be easy, matched play, pts level, mission pack, casual or competitive lists are and gameplay etiquette should be enough, I don't want to discuss how many layers into the dreamworld we are going.

I think that GW should produce a rule compendium with layers and alternatives taken from prior editions and which people then choose to use or not depending on the degree of realism that they are trying to achieve.

Catalyst already did this with classic battletech

you can play hexes or 3d terrain rules and they have the core rules for them in the main book.

Then they have a second book (tactical operations) that is literally all the official optional rules you are free to use if your player base wants to.

Different ammo types, armor types, ECM modes etc....

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


They tore out the Campaign system (it's like Crusade with less bookkeeping but more narrative!)

Hard disagree. Every single army in 4th had the same skill trees, no territories, no unique army goals or achievements. There were Kill Team missions, and combat patrol missions, but the two were regarded as separate both from each other, and the main game which included only missions suitable for 1500-2k points.

Fourth's campaign system was great for its time, and Crusade owes it a debt of gratitude; without the grand experiment of including a campaign system in the BRB at all, we probably wouldn't have Crusade. I liked the kill team missions- the idea of Bosses and Brutes, Sentries, etc. I'm not saying the system was without merit.

But comparing Crusade to 4th's "Campaign System" is like comparing 3.5 D&D to Basic D&D - You know, the soft cover book, where Elf was considered a class because game designers thought having both a race and a class was too confusing for entry level players.

Hard disagree myself.

Who cares what the progression trees are? There is so much more to narrative than mere 'progression.' IMHO, a game with no story that lets me level One Handed, Archery, Sneak, Illusion, etc. is way worse than a game that lets me level "combat" or "magic" but actually has a rich and compelling story.

And 4th had bits that actually taught you how to build and execute a campaign of each different type, including some I hadn't even heard of at the time.

I am here with Unit1126PLL, 4th had a more well rounded system than 9th

You got everything you need including rules for small games and Kill Teams

the big advantage is that it is the same for everyone and not "you have a new Codex so you can have fun with Crusade, and you have to wait 2 years before it is worth playing)

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Hard disagree myself.

Who cares what the progression trees are? There is so much more to narrative than mere 'progression.' IMHO, a game with no story that lets me level One Handed, Archery, Sneak, Illusion, etc. is way worse than a game that lets me level "combat" or "magic" but actually has a rich and compelling story.

And 4th had bits that actually taught you how to build and execute a campaign of each different type, including some I hadn't even heard of at the time.

To be fair, it's not like 9th's crusade doesn't have that, it's just that GW has scattered that content across roughly 160€ worth of books...

 Jidmah wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Hard disagree myself.

Who cares what the progression trees are? There is so much more to narrative than mere 'progression.' IMHO, a game with no story that lets me level One Handed, Archery, Sneak, Illusion, etc. is way worse than a game that lets me level "combat" or "magic" but actually has a rich and compelling story.

And 4th had bits that actually taught you how to build and execute a campaign of each different type, including some I hadn't even heard of at the time.

To be fair, it's not like 9th's crusade doesn't have that, it's just that GW has scattered that content across roughly 160€ worth of books...

This I will grant, since I don't own more than one Pariah book (which does not do this) and the War Zone Octarius 1 book (which also does not do this).

I will leave open the possibility the others do I suppose. But honestly if they do I would be surprised.

The OP has my support. I could even fundamentally disagree with some of these changes but I would much rather the OP’s vision of 40k than GW’s. There was another version that sort of died as well, that may be worth looking at.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/796766.page#11073836

 Lance845 wrote:
The issue isn't acquiring d12s. Its mini d12s. Standard d12s are quite a bit larger than d6s and when a single unit of termagants are rolling 90 dice you need to fit as many in your hands as possible.

If there was one thing a community edition of 40k could do to really offer something, it would be to cut back on dice and rule bloat in the game. Too many dice. Too many rules. Honestly, too many models even.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
The issue isn't acquiring d12s. Its mini d12s. Standard d12s are quite a bit larger than d6s and when a single unit of termagants are rolling 90 dice you need to fit as many in your hands as possible.

If there was one thing a community edition of 40k could do to really offer something, it would be to cut back on dice and rule bloat in the game. Too many dice. Too many rules. Honestly, too many models even.

Sounds like you want to play KT.

I did try Kill Team and I do like it, but it's also a very different game from 40k.

40k has become increasingly unwieldy over the years as its scale, number of dice, and number of rules have bloated. It's possible to cut all that back into a more manageable package without just creating another kill team.

 vict0988 wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
The issue isn't acquiring d12s. Its mini d12s. Standard d12s are quite a bit larger than d6s and when a single unit of termagants are rolling 90 dice you need to fit as many in your hands as possible.

If there was one thing a community edition of 40k could do to really offer something, it would be to cut back on dice and rule bloat in the game. Too many dice. Too many rules. Honestly, too many models even.

Sounds like you want to play KT.

yeah, because you either have to play with 10 models or 100 models, there is no space for something in between

I mean you could always play lower point/power games. Why does the entirety of 40k need to change when you could just not play large games? Combat Patrol is very much a thing.

 Gert wrote:
I mean you could always play lower point/power games. Why does the entirety of 40k need to change when you could just not play large games? Combat Patrol is very much a thing.

Common complaints about combat patrol seem to be that it is difficult to make the game work at that points level. Case in point: that thread from the brand new player wondering why his admech combat patrol was practically tabled in the first turn against a space marine combat patrol (the lists were basically what was in the start collecting or combat patrol boxes)

No, I remember that thread, and the issue stemmed from them being new to the game, a bad table, and an opponent with a better understanding of their army. None of these are "issues" with 40k but with the players.
So it's clear that people don't take the wrong message here (because I know at least one of you will), I'm not saying 40k is perfect, God knows it isn't. I'm saying try actually using the tools you've already been given before throwing them out and going out for new ones.