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The other day I was thinking about the way the game is played at the moment, and the ever-growing diversity of units, weapons and game sizes. While I generally love 40k and it's ability to have these great epic battles, I feel the game would benefit from some kind of tiered playing system, where the core rules stay, but certain units are not allowed and some parts change to streamline or make things easier.

It may not be something I will get round to trying but I think it's an interesting aspect to think of the game.

I have some more specific ideas, but I'd like to keep it general at the moment, and see what people think would be included in this style of 40k.

Skirmish
This is for small games. Generally 40k is a skirmish game anyway, so I feel the rules are already quite suited to it.

Challenge rules could stand to be a bit more in depth, as this can be a more heroic kind of fight, where skilled warbands are fighting for something very important.
Definitely some kind of restriction on vehicles, I don't feel it would be a good idea to limit most vehicle types except for flyers, as a small group probably wouldn't be moving around with that...

Engagement
The mid-size game. Representing quite a serious affair, while still not all-out war!

I would still restrict flyers here, also all the extra things like Lords of War, Knights etc because this is still a localized thing.

I feel we could stand to see the move from individual models to unit mechanics here, with combat being slightly cleaned up, Challenge being taken back to it's basics etc

War!
This is when both sides have come to their final hope, lines have been drawn up, planets or systems are at stake, and there is nothing else to do but dig in and fight!!
This size game (somewhere in the range of 2500+) is in most need of help as every game I've played in this range seems drawn out, gets quite tedious and is generally too much effort.

Completely strip back individual model based rules. No Challenge, no Look Out Sir, unit cover is always determined on if any single model is touching area terrain/majority of unit is in it rather than cover taken for each individual model.
Movement should be massively simplified.

As I said, I probably won't get round to trying it, but I find it an interesting way to think of the game as in my opinion it tries too hard to be everything with only one ruleset and feels too bloated and varied as a result!

Oh, and just to be clear, this is a way of making the ruleset cleaner and easier, so my proposal is not to tack even more rules onto an already tacked-up game, but to find rules and features that could be deleted altogether from one tier or another, making a simple 40k foundation ruleset that should be easy to learn, and after that you pick up the specifics of each tier.

Let me know your thoughts

I agree it would benefit everyone if the rules for 40k were written focused on game play.

Detailed model interaction rules for skirmish games, from small war band/kill team type games up to large skirmish games.(2nd ed 40k sort of size.)

Detailed unit interaction rules for battle game rules , from small battle games ,(3rd/4th ed size games,) up to epic battles , Apocalypse sized games.

You could use the same basic rule system , stats and resolution methods , for both game types.
Just switch the focus from model interaction to unit interaction , as the game size grows.

As the WHFB based rules do not scale up that well, would you be interested in looking at alternatives?

Of course! I'd like to hear any suggestions that would make the apoc sized games work more fluidly and efficiently, I wanted to start a very open discussion about how people would go about fixing the clunky nature of bigger games.

@Altayre.
To be fair my gaming group tend to play larger battle games with smaller scale minatures.(6 to 15mm)
So the focus is squarely on 'the unit' at this level rather than individual minatures.

These are the games I have been using for reference , when looking at alternatives.

The simple change we made to make 40k a bit easier to handle, (literally.)
Was to change unit coherency from model to model, to distance from the unit leader/character in charge.

This means place the unit leader ,then place the rest of the models within the 'Command distance' of the unit leader.

So units with better leaders , can spread out more, and moving large units becomes less of a pain.

The Command distance acts like an 'invisible base' for the unit.

We have developed a new set of stats and resolution methods , to replace the WHFB ones 40k still uses.

Unit stats.
Mobility, how and how far a unit/model moves per action.(Infantry L 5". Uses (L)egs to walk, up to 5" per action.)

Armour value . How well protected the unit/model is.AV 1 to 15 (Large models like vehicles have 3 armour values for F/S/R)

Resilience.How hard the unit/model is to damage.Add this value to the target score the opponent needs to cause damage.

Wounds/Structure, How many successful damaging hits the unit/model can take before being destroyed in game terms.

Assault Skill. How hard the unit/model is to hit in close combat.(Opponent has to roll over this score to hit it.Assaults are resolved in assault value order.)

Stealth Skill.How hard the unit/model is to hit at range .(Opponent has to roll over this score to hit it.)

Morale, How well the unit recovers from suppression/routing.

Command, How well the unit leader/model can influence the actions of friendly unit/models around it.

These are the natural abilities of the unit without weapons.Their battle field survival type attributes.

We wanted to the units weapoms to display the net effect of the user and weapon combo.
So under the unit stats on the unit card/force roster, each unit gets its weapon profiles.(One for each weapon the unit carries into battle.)

Weapon name.Effective range. Armour Penetration , Damage Value.Attacks.Notes.

EG
IG trooper
Combat Knife, 0-2" 5,4,1,Close combat only.
Lasgun, 24",5,4,1,Small arms.

An example of ranged combat.

A SM squad fire on a Mob of Orks.
The Orks have a Stealth value of 3, but are in light cover(Light cover adds one to the target stealth value.)
So the SM player needs to roll 3+1=4+ to hit them.

The SM hits the Orks with 4 bolt gun shots,(AP 6) and 2 heavy bolter shots(AP 7)
The orks have armour value 2.
So they need to roll over 5 to save the bolt gun shots, and 6 to save the heavy bolter shots.

(To pass an armour save the target has to roll over the AP of the weapon hit,but adds their AV to the dice roll.)

The Ork passes 3 armour saves.These models are unnefected by the hits thier armour deflected them!

The 3 orks that failed thier armour saves are carfully placed face down to represent them being suppressed.

The SM player now rolls to wound the Orks.
Boters have a damage value of 3 and boltguns damage value 2 .
But as the orks have resilience 1 the SM player needs to roll 4+ and 3+ to wound the orks.
I may need to explain that better...

I should have said, what we tried to do was use the values on the stat line to generate the game play directly.

So every stat is either;-
Direct representation, a distance moved or effective weapon range in inches,or the number of dice rolled.

A target value , the dice roll required for success.

A dice modifier, the number you add to the dice roll .

These used with limited and easy to apply modifiers cover 80% of the game play of 40k.

So you look at the units card or force list, and know exactly how good, comparatively, any unit is at any given interaction.

No charts or table to refer to mid game that limit interaction , no long lists of 'special rules' that need looking up mid game, that conflict with other special rules you do not know about until you play.


If you are using the stat line for its basic function correctly, only actual special abilities need special rules.
(Appx 20% of the game play.Chemical weapons ignore cover, amphibious vehicles treat water features as open terrain etc.)

If the stats are used directly , it cuts out needless over complication, and allows the game to scale up much easier.

Also as the interaction is arrived at directly by the stat line, small changes to values can be made to fine tune units.

I hope that explains my position on a 40k re-write to open the game play up .
I am happy to discuss all ideas.