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If 40k was funneled into AoS game system some interesting things could happen. Here is a game design question for all the game theorists out there.

What mechanics/rules would have to be kept to make 40k still feel like 40k in an AoS game system?

In my opinion 40k Armor Piercing over AoS rend and army building/wargear are two big ones. Thoughts?

P.S. - Let's not make a debate about IF 40k should be more streamlined. This is just a fun game design question.

The obvious addition is vehicle rules.

I would like a rend mechanic that the AP we have now, simply being able to ignore armour makes room for a lot of cheese and having one save value like AoS would roll a lot of rules into one mechanic.

 DarkBlack wrote:
The obvious addition is vehicle rules.

They could be handled pretty much like monsters much like carnifexes, wraithlords etc. Indeed wraithlord WAS vechile before...

Yeah to be honest I'd prefer a rend system that modifies your armour as opposed to negating it completely. I feel the same way about ignores cover, it should modify your cover not negate it completely, but that's for a different discussion.

At it's core list building I think would need to stay, with our ability to buy wargear of course, without that I think it'd feel a bit hollow. Vehicle rules are an obvious one as DarkBlack said, not sure really if we'd need much more beyond that.

I haven't played AoS but I do like our missions, particularly Maelstrom missions (we houserule a couple things to fix the obvious problems with maelstrom of course) so I'd like to keep our current repertoire of missions too I suppose.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Yeah to be honest I'd prefer a rend system that modifies your armour as opposed to negating it completely. I feel the same way about ignores cover, it should modify your cover not negate it completely, but that's for a different discussion.

At it's core list building I think would need to stay, with our ability to buy wargear of course, without that I think it'd feel a bit hollow. Vehicle rules are an obvious one as DarkBlack said, not sure really if we'd need much more beyond that.

I haven't played AoS but I do like our missions, particularly Maelstrom missions (we houserule a couple things to fix the obvious problems with maelstrom of course) so I'd like to keep our current repertoire of missions too I suppose.

I thought the rending in AoS is innately differant to 40k, we have AP values they have rending, each are essentially the same but with differant mechanics. Rending in 40k I assumed was a completely differant entity.

Inb4 comllaint of weekly Age of Emprah threads since AoS's release.

Free rules would be a cool change though.

I too would just like to see vehicles get a toughness value. The end. No more crazy rules differences and charts and weird things to remember with rending. Just simple as hell toughness value.

It also enables better balance of all vehicles and monster types today. I would actually love to use devilfish and other Tau vehicles and I'm sure every player out there wants to use vehicles again.

Simple and consistent.

 Gamgee wrote:
I too would just like to see vehicles get a toughness value. The end. No more crazy rules differences and charts and weird things to remember with rending. Just simple as hell toughness value.

It also enables better balance of all vehicles and monster types today. I would actually love to use devilfish and other Tau vehicles and I'm sure every player out there wants to use vehicles again.

Simple and consistent.

Do you think there is any way to do away with the Strength versus toughness chart or do you think that is a core mechanic? I have put some thought in to it and I don't think there is a way around it.

Oh this thread again!

Might as well drop my 2 cents and make this a copy pasta so i can post it later.

Thing to fix in 7th going into 8th

-Vehicles
-Ease of access to D
-MC, GMC, SHW are to easily accessible.
-Pump the breaks on the amount of long range AP 2
-make assault a bit better right now its all about throwing out dakka, see Long range AP 2
-Bring back the old Phyker phase with leadership tests.

Things that should happen

-free core rules
-still pay for codex.
-codex come with a data sheet for each formation
- Each formation data sheet has the following information
- All universal Rules that apply to models in the formation
- All models that can be in said formation with stats
- List of all weapons that models in formation would have access to would have access to with rules
-Now all rules you will need will be on one, maybe 2 pages

There's a number of items in the rules that could be simplified to help stream-line game-play.

#1 - Reduce Special Rules in Core Rulebook
Not saying to scrap lots of the rules, but just move them from the Core Rulebook to the individual dataslates or codexes. Lance is a good example. There's only three codex weapons I can think of that use the Lance special rule; the Bright Lance, the Dark Lance, and the Prismatic Cannon, belonging to the Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Harlequins respectively. With so few weapons having this ability, why have it at all?

#2 - Reduce differences between "model with" and "unit with"
Just pick one or the other. I'd say pick "models with" personally. Right now they say these rules often belong to the units, but there are just SO many that go against this and make no sense. Why does a model with Relentless not confer its ability to a unit, but a model with Slow & Purposeful does? What's the point of Concussive if it's a model that gets wounded by it suffers the penalty, as opposed to a unit? There's lots of, effectively, junk rules and junk differentiations that do nothing except create frustration for the sake of realism, but then other rules that also do away with realism too.

#3 - Do away with "realism"
GW seems to think that when we tell stories with our games, that we're invested in the minutia and want to forget that we're playing a game. I personally don't think so. Getting so caught up in the small stuff actually causes me to lose sight of the bigger story of my game. Give some young players the models and templates and dice, and see what they do with them. Don't intervene and tell them they're getting rules wrong or anything, just watch what they instinctively do with the game pieces. Do they centre blasts on models? Do they randomize which models get hit? Do they measure closest to closest? There's a reason they do things this way, and it's not because it's more realistic, it's because it's more stylistic. It lets them imagine the battle better, with their heroes and villains, than a realistic story. Remove the restrictions on a lot of things and you'll both shrink the rules, and make battles more engaging.

#4 - Change Vehicles to Toughness
As others have stated, there's a lot more memory work involved here than there should be. Make vehicles and monstrous creatures function more similarly to each other by giving vehicles toughness and armour saves. Make it so that a gun that ignores armour causes critical hits that reduce the vehicle and monstrous creature's abilities. Make Super heavies and Gargantuan creatures affected by these critical hits too and not completely immune to them.

#5 - Reduce setup randomization
Having a longer setup is okay if players feel engaged in it. For example, it took a while to start a game in 3rd edition because you alternated deploying units. This was fun because it was like a mini-game. Rolling random dice to see what random powers you have to fight from a random table edge during a random mission with random objectives and then have an opponent randomly go first despite it all... it's too much. You can keep a lot of these things, but make them tactical and strategic choices. If they have to stay random, have the randomness happen first, then allow the other choices be able to play around that.