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My friendly gaming group is wanting to run a few games focused on heavily-infantry detachments and are throwing around rules to facilitate this. Some of the suggestions so far:

No vehicles with an AV > 10 (or 11...or 12...) on any given side
No monstrous creatures with a T > 6
Nothing with a Tank or Heavy rule, unless it's a dedicated transport

Any others, suggestions, or feedback from people who've tried this?

What is the purpose for this? Can you explain that?

 curran12 wrote:
What is the purpose for this? Can you explain that?

Just to try something different/fun. Sometimes having restrictions can make things more interesting.

I think just an agreement between players to run only infantry, or a limitation like "only up to 25% of your army can be anything other than infantry" would work best for this. I've run an apocalypse game of "only vehicles", and we included an exception where a dedicated transports could only house a unit that it's dedicated for, and it was hilarious and epic! I've wanted to do the reverse, with only infantry, but allowing vehicles that are dedicated transports, and only the squad that it's dedicated for can ever be in it.

Just curious, what armies are you and your friends bringing?

 mrhappyface wrote:
Just curious, what armies are you and your friends bringing?

There's a pretty good variety; between us there are a few SM chapters, Craftworld & Harlequin Eldar, Necrons, Khorne Daemonkin, CSM, and Necrons. Craftworlds and SM are probably the most commonly used.

A gentlemans agreement for no more than X points be spent on vehicles/MC should suffice.

Have you considered Zone Mortalis by Forgeworld? It pretty much restricts you to Infantry.

A friend of mine and I played an 1850 point match similar to this: All infantry, no vehicles of any kind, bikes, jetbikes, etc. We did allow jump and jet infantry. He was playing Eldar and I was playing Space Wolves. As you could imagine, he won fairly quickly because of his warp spiders and his striking scorpion exarch, but it was still a very fun match. There is just something satisfying about a blob of blood claws destroying two units of dire avengers and then evaporating to a howling banshee counter charge.

Are you looking specifically for infantry battles? Might also outlaw beasts, cavalry, and bikes.

HuskyWarhammer wrote:


Any others, suggestions, or feedback from people who've tried this?

* No ordnance, alternative no indirect fire (to avoid IG artillery spam)
* Minimum X% of the points must be spent on troop choices (to avoid spamming of warbosses, warp spiders and other "infantry"). This may be a problem with detachments/character that are allowed to take other units "as infantery".
* Maximum X% of the points may be spent on non-infantry (vehicles, artillery etc).
* No MC, no GC, no flying MCs, no superheavy fliers and some agreement regarding ordinary fliers and AA.
* Psykers could be a problem. Tau vs demonspam wouldn't be fun. But there is probably some solution/balance.

A different approach could be that the defender gets 1000 points (with some restrictions as above) and fortifications for 250 points, while the attacker gets 2000 points (with some restrictions). Just avoid a long and boring footslogging episode for the attacker. And have victory conditions such as "hold the fortifications in X turns".

A third possibility could be that both sides are low on supplies. Each vehicles, artillery and other "non infantry" units must roll a D6 at the beginning of the players turn. If the die shows less or equal than the number of turns the vehicle is out of gas/ammo/spares, and is removed from play. Infantry (and maybe some other units) don't have to roll dices.

 Happyjew wrote:
Have you considered Zone Mortalis by Forgeworld? It pretty much restricts you to Infantry.

I agree. Nothing more than on a 60mm base and penalities for stuff like skimmers and bikes.

No MCs, period.
No T higher than 5 (unmodified, if you get iron arm, good for you!)
Cannot move further than 12 in any turn (does not include charging) This will keep stuff like warp spiders, bikes, wraith, beasts and any other crazy fast stuff down on level with infantry. So if you are plague drones, with jet pack cavalry, sorry bud, stuck with just 12 a turn, use it as you wish.
No vehicles whatsoever.
No ML over 2
No adding additional units to the game at any time.
Must run CAD. (prevent stuff like decurion from imbalance)

 gwarsh41 wrote:
No MCs, period.
No T higher than 5 (unmodified, if you get iron arm, good for you!)
Cannot move further than 12 in any turn (does not include charging) This will keep stuff like warp spiders, bikes, wraith, beasts and any other crazy fast stuff down on level with infantry. So if you are plague drones, with jet pack cavalry, sorry bud, stuck with just 12 a turn, use it as you wish.
No vehicles whatsoever.
No ML over 2
No adding additional units to the game at any time.
Must run CAD. (prevent stuff like decurion from imbalance)

I agreed with you up until "No mastery levels over 2".
Why no ML over 2? This seems like a strange restriction when a ML3 librarian is still infantry.

Or, say, a Farseer...

Yeah, some things can't help but be Mastery Level 3 or more. Half of what makes high mastery level stuff so scary is that the best ones are either on bikes/jetbikes, or arrive via Droppod.