Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

With the severe lack of rules present for dealing with ruins and all the wacky interaction rising from it (i.e. base-to-base measurements, can titan be inside ruin if it can physically fit, bikers can't charge models in upper part of ruin, etc).

Ruins M- WS- BS- S0 T* W4d6 A0 Ld10 Sv7+

Wound Chart
24-17 T7
16-9 T6
8-1 T5

Abilities:
Uncertain Structural Integrity – at the beginning of the game before the first player turn, roll a 4d6 to determine the starting Wound value for this terrain.

Collapse! – If this model’s W is reduced to 0, roll a d6 for each model within the ruin. On a roll of 4+, the model suffers a mortal wound. MONSTERS and VEHICLES instead suffer a mortal wound on a roll of 6. Models placed on upper stories of multistory ruins are slain automatically - do not roll dice for these models. If these models have FLY keyword, roll as normal.

Faction Keyword: Unaligned
Keywords: Building

Obviously the penalties on collapse needs working. but the concept is to treat ruins, which are distinctively different terrain feature in comparisons to other terrains and begin treating it like a neutral fortification.

The Sv7+ is to reflect the ruins being able to be bolstered in the presence of techmarine equivalent unit within the ruin - each techmarine-esque units will have the ability "Bolster Defense", giving any BUILDING a +1 to Sv roll, giving the ruins a 6+ save roll.

Interesting thing to note, a Knight with a fist could instantly destroy a ruin with the death grip stratagem. Maybe increase it's strength a tad to avoid such interactions.

I think collapse should just reflect a vehicle exploding - roll a dice for every model in a unit at least partially on/in a ruin; on a 1, a model is slain.

Also, maybe make it a flat 10W to lower book keeping if they're are a lot of ruins on the table.

I like the idea I have to say, especially if you allow a ruin to be "destroyed" over and over, though I would roll the dice for the number of wounds the first time it takes damage, just an element of uncertainty there - and have both players roll 2 dice, and add all four (so both can use a re-roll if desired)

I would also adapt the mortal wounds thing based on size, a single floor ruin causes mortal wounds on a 5+, a two floor on a 4+ and so on, forget which floor you are on - you either fall a long way or get crushed - but if you assume its only a partial collapse I think it works nicely as an idea - make ruins a bit of a risk, but not a deathtrap

I'm also unsure you need to specify a different roll for Vehicles/MCs.

A Demon Prince on a structure that collapses taking a MW on a 4+ feels right. Yeah, it sucks that he has a piece of rubar where his femur used to be. But that's just one wound - he's still alive and kicking.

For higher floors, instead of slaying outright, you should increase the MW. If Abbadon is on the 2nd floor of a collapsing building, he should still have a chance to survive. Possibly roll for each floor? So IG on the 5th floor is almost certainly wiped, but a Termie squad on floor #2 is still around.

 skchsan wrote:
With the severe lack of rules present for dealing with ruins and all the wacky interaction rising from it (i.e. base-to-base measurements, can titan be inside ruin if it can physically fit, bikers can't charge models in upper part of ruin, etc).

Exploding rubble is always fun, but I'm not entirely sure what issues from the quoted part of your post these rules are meant to address. I'm guessing your main goal is to offer an alternative method for harming units in ruins other than shooting them? (To get around the complications of charging units on terrain.)

A couple of questions that are probably answered by the main rulebook but which I could see causing confusion (because they confused me):

1. I have model with two guns. The first weapon is resolved and degrades the ruin thus causing the toughness to go down. Do I now use the degraded toughness or the toughness the ruin had when I started shooting as I resolve my second gun's shooting?

2. Can I theoretically charge a building and start smacking it in the fight phase?

3. If the answer to 2 is yes, does that mean punching the wall to death potentially kills my own assaulting models?

Aside from that, a few thoughts:
* Random HP for each piece of ruin terrain could turn into an annoying amount of bookkeeping. A standardized value, or a value determined before deployment, might be smoother.
* Collapse's wording should be cleaned up just a little. Specifically, you probably want a unit to roll a d6 per model in the unit and in the terrain. Then the UNIT should suffer a mortal wound for each 4+ rolled. As is, you potentially end up with a whole squad of terminators with 1 out of 2 wounds remaining. Which may be what you're going for after all, but it's worth noting that 8th edition usually kills off entire models rather than having a bunch of floating damage. Also, the "roll as normal" part is slightly ambiguous and could be interpreted as causing a flying monster or vehicle to suffer a mortal wound on a 4+ instead of a 6.

*Killing stuff on upper stories (i.e. any model that can see out of windows as the first floors are considered boarded up in some communities) seems way too punishing. I will never put my devastators or dark reapers on terrain that's less durable than a land raider if someone can just shoot the terrain and wipe them out.

*Killing an airplane whose base happens to be on a ruin's roof feels weird.

* You say ruins have a "severe lack of rules," but aren't they already unique in that they're too crumbly for vehicles and MCs to climb on top of and broken enough to allow infantry to crawl through them better than motorcycles, etc.? Perhaps it would be better to present these rules as a new type of terrain "(Crumbling Wreckage?") so that your group can continue using traditional ruins while also sprinkling in these cool, breakable ruins?

The proposed rule is to address the abuse of ruins as permanent source of 1+ save, immunity to assaults, all the while expending 0 points on them.

Our current paid-for fortifications are susceptible to damage and destruction - I just don't see why a ruin is theoretically more durable (as in indestructible) than full on battlements designed to withstand damage.

As for your specific questions:
1. Yes, although it does add a bit of bookkeeping, it's no different than keeping track of current wound chart system

2&3. Yes, if you charged a building and subsequently destroyed it, you would be susceptible to damage if the models in question are positioned in a way where they could be considered to be "in ruins"

The random hp could be resolvrd by using either a d20 or d100.(two d10's)

I would avoid putting new dice types such as D20's into the game, 40k has always (at least since 4th) used D6, and adding new dice may complicate things a bit.

I like the idea that ruins can be destroyed over time, but as previous people have noted, it can lead to some weird rule clashes that probably cause more irregularities that it solves. Additionally there's the issue of having to keep track of a much larger number of stats. You could easily have >8 ruins in a 2k game, that's 8x 4D6 wounds to keep track of, I can see people losing track quite quickly.

 Valkyrie wrote:
I would avoid putting new dice types such as D20's into the game, 40k has always (at least since 4th) used D6, and adding new dice may complicate things a bit.

I like the idea that ruins can be destroyed over time, but as previous people have noted, it can lead to some weird rule clashes that probably cause more irregularities that it solves. Additionally there's the issue of having to keep track of a much larger number of stats. You could easily have >8 ruins in a 2k game, that's 8x 4D6 wounds to keep track of, I can see people losing track quite quickly.

How do you keep track of +6 wounds if I may ask? I felt using d20's much like how you kept track of life in MTG worked much better whenever we need to keep track of wounds for models that have more than 6.

If a d20 seems too foreign, maybe you can make a wound counter?

 skchsan wrote:
With the severe lack of rules present for dealing with ruins and all the wacky interaction rising from it (i.e. base-to-base measurements, can titan be inside ruin if it can physically fit, bikers can't charge models in upper part of ruin, etc).

Ruins M- WS- BS- S0 T* W4d6 A0 Ld10 Sv7+

Wound Chart
24-17 T7
16-9 T6
8-1 T5

Abilities:
Uncertain Structural Integrity – at the beginning of the game before the first player turn, roll a 4d6 to determine the starting Wound value for this terrain.

Collapse! – If this model’s W is reduced to 0, roll a d6 for each model within the ruin. On a roll of 4+, the model suffers a mortal wound. MONSTERS and VEHICLES instead suffer a mortal wound on a roll of 6. Models placed on upper stories of multistory ruins are slain automatically - do not roll dice for these models. If these models have FLY keyword, roll as normal.

Faction Keyword: Unaligned
Keywords: Building

Obviously the penalties on collapse needs working. but the concept is to treat ruins, which are distinctively different terrain feature in comparisons to other terrains and begin treating it like a neutral fortification.

The Sv7+ is to reflect the ruins being able to be bolstered in the presence of techmarine equivalent unit within the ruin - each techmarine-esque units will have the ability "Bolster Defense", giving any BUILDING a +1 to Sv roll, giving the ruins a 6+ save roll.

I can't see this being a rule. For me at least it would lead to abuse. As a comparison ( yeah i know it's not the same), the vehicles and what not in Battlefield don't just sit camped on a street corner shooting the building out hoping to kill people inside by crashing the building. a knight for instance has to use a stratagem to hit squads on 2nd and 3rd floor buildings. With this Beta rule he just has to wreck the building in order to slay the entire unit.

As a substitute. The buildings in battlefield take damage as the vehicle and what not damage them over time. The buildings fall late game eventually. SO maybe as a rule every turn after the first the building has a chance of collapsing if a unit inside is shot at from the previous shooting phase. The more turns spent on a shooting a unit the higher the chance of the collapse. This would provide incentive to try and shoot the 2+ save unit in the building versus ignoring them and going after another unit. As an additional note maybe this chance is only enabled if the unit inside is shot with a weapon with damage of d3 or more. This way slowly over the game it makes it more dangerous to be inside that building. Also would make a hazard to place objectives up there especially against armies with monsters that cant assault you.

mhalko1 wrote:
I can't see this being a rule. For me at least it would lead to abuse. As a comparison ( yeah i know it's not the same), the vehicles and what not in Battlefield don't just sit camped on a street corner shooting the building out hoping to kill people inside by crashing the building. a knight for instance has to use a stratagem to hit squads on 2nd and 3rd floor buildings. With this Beta rule he just has to wreck the building in order to slay the entire unit.

As a substitute. The buildings in battlefield take damage as the vehicle and what not damage them over time. The buildings fall late game eventually. SO maybe as a rule every turn after the first the building has a chance of collapsing if a unit inside is shot at from the previous shooting phase. The more turns spent on a shooting a unit the higher the chance of the collapse. This would provide incentive to try and shoot the 2+ save unit in the building versus ignoring them and going after another unit. As an additional note maybe this chance is only enabled if the unit inside is shot with a weapon with damage of d3 or more. This way slowly over the game it makes it more dangerous to be inside that building. Also would make a hazard to place objectives up there especially against armies with monsters that cant assault you.

Shooting at a destroyable ruin is no different than shooting at an open topped vehicle to get its contents out. The penalties for multi-level ruins I have to say is a bit biased as I have come across too many times where my opponents park their 48" guns on top of ruins for the whole game. The lack of universal "ignore cover" mechanism exacerbates this situation even further.

Also, why wouldn't you bombard a unit trenched up in a building with, say a vindicator? It seems like the perfect weapon for the job. Why should a titan need to spend a CP in order to assault models 2nd and 3rd story (which stratagem is this?). Ruins in general are so poorly designed that it leaves more room for abuse than you claim it doesnt. i.e. placing an objective marker on top of a ruin. All objectives should be contestable by any unit in the army, not just those who deployed on top of the objective or those with fly.

 skchsan wrote:

mhalko1 wrote:
I can't see this being a rule. For me at least it would lead to abuse. As a comparison ( yeah i know it's not the same), the vehicles and what not in Battlefield don't just sit camped on a street corner shooting the building out hoping to kill people inside by crashing the building. a knight for instance has to use a stratagem to hit squads on 2nd and 3rd floor buildings. With this Beta rule he just has to wreck the building in order to slay the entire unit.

As a substitute. The buildings in battlefield take damage as the vehicle and what not damage them over time. The buildings fall late game eventually. SO maybe as a rule every turn after the first the building has a chance of collapsing if a unit inside is shot at from the previous shooting phase. The more turns spent on a shooting a unit the higher the chance of the collapse. This would provide incentive to try and shoot the 2+ save unit in the building versus ignoring them and going after another unit. As an additional note maybe this chance is only enabled if the unit inside is shot with a weapon with damage of d3 or more. This way slowly over the game it makes it more dangerous to be inside that building. Also would make a hazard to place objectives up there especially against armies with monsters that cant assault you.

Shooting at a destroyable ruin is no different than shooting at an open topped vehicle to get its contents out. The penalties for multi-level ruins I have to say is a bit biased as I have come across too many times where my opponents park their 48" guns on top of ruins for the whole game. The lack of universal "ignore cover" mechanism exacerbates this situation even further.

Also, why wouldn't you bombard a unit trenched up in a building with, say a vindicator? It seems like the perfect weapon for the job. Why should a titan need to spend a CP in order to assault models 2nd and 3rd story (which stratagem is this?). Ruins in general are so poorly designed that it leaves more room for abuse than you claim it doesnt. i.e. placing an objective marker on top of a ruin. All objectives should be contestable by any unit in the army, not just those who deployed on top of the objective or those with fly.

That's what I meant though. The unit gets the bonus to it's save unless a weapon ignores that but then a unit like a vindicator can attempt to shoot them and as a side note destroy the building potentially. Being able to target the building/ruin itself would invalidate the 2nd floor rule. There would be no need to target that unit just shoot the building a bunch. additionally players would no longer choose to put units in buildings as they would get instantly wiped if the building did crash. The focus should be on shooting the unit out of the building.

 skchsan wrote:

 Valkyrie wrote:
I would avoid putting new dice types such as D20's into the game, 40k has always (at least since 4th) used D6, and adding new dice may complicate things a bit.

I like the idea that ruins can be destroyed over time, but as previous people have noted, it can lead to some weird rule clashes that probably cause more irregularities that it solves. Additionally there's the issue of having to keep track of a much larger number of stats. You could easily have >8 ruins in a 2k game, that's 8x 4D6 wounds to keep track of, I can see people losing track quite quickly.

How do you keep track of +6 wounds if I may ask? I felt using d20's much like how you kept track of life in MTG worked much better whenever we need to keep track of wounds for models that have more than 6.

If a d20 seems too foreign, maybe you can make a wound counter?

I just use multiple D6's. I sometimes use 4 Knights in a game, D20 isn't enough for 24 wounds, so I just use a few D6's. Also saves money; I have the AdMec container of 125 D6's, might as well use them instead of buying D20's that I'll otherwise have no use for.

mhalko1 wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

mhalko1 wrote:
I can't see this being a rule. For me at least it would lead to abuse. As a comparison ( yeah i know it's not the same), the vehicles and what not in Battlefield don't just sit camped on a street corner shooting the building out hoping to kill people inside by crashing the building. a knight for instance has to use a stratagem to hit squads on 2nd and 3rd floor buildings. With this Beta rule he just has to wreck the building in order to slay the entire unit.

As a substitute. The buildings in battlefield take damage as the vehicle and what not damage them over time. The buildings fall late game eventually. SO maybe as a rule every turn after the first the building has a chance of collapsing if a unit inside is shot at from the previous shooting phase. The more turns spent on a shooting a unit the higher the chance of the collapse. This would provide incentive to try and shoot the 2+ save unit in the building versus ignoring them and going after another unit. As an additional note maybe this chance is only enabled if the unit inside is shot with a weapon with damage of d3 or more. This way slowly over the game it makes it more dangerous to be inside that building. Also would make a hazard to place objectives up there especially against armies with monsters that cant assault you.

Shooting at a destroyable ruin is no different than shooting at an open topped vehicle to get its contents out. The penalties for multi-level ruins I have to say is a bit biased as I have come across too many times where my opponents park their 48" guns on top of ruins for the whole game. The lack of universal "ignore cover" mechanism exacerbates this situation even further.

Also, why wouldn't you bombard a unit trenched up in a building with, say a vindicator? It seems like the perfect weapon for the job. Why should a titan need to spend a CP in order to assault models 2nd and 3rd story (which stratagem is this?). Ruins in general are so poorly designed that it leaves more room for abuse than you claim it doesnt. i.e. placing an objective marker on top of a ruin. All objectives should be contestable by any unit in the army, not just those who deployed on top of the objective or those with fly.

That's what I meant though. The unit gets the bonus to it's save unless a weapon ignores that but then a unit like a vindicator can attempt to shoot them and as a side note destroy the building potentially. Being able to target the building/ruin itself would invalidate the 2nd floor rule. There would be no need to target that unit just shoot the building a bunch. additionally players would no longer choose to put units in buildings as they would get instantly wiped if the building did crash. The focus should be on shooting the unit out of the building.

The unit hiding inside the ruin is protected until it is destroyed, are they not? I think it will still be worth putting units inside ruins as this will deter enemies from trying to directly fire at the unit in hiding. Weapons that have high S, low AP (i.e. autocannon) will have better luck trying to wither the building down. If a weapon has high enough AP (plasmas, hotshots) that makes the 1+ save negligible, you'd be more inclined to shoot at the unit and not the building.

Of course, as I have stated, the penalties have to be adjusted, but I think camping on a ruin needs to have a certain level of risk.

 skchsan wrote:

mhalko1 wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

mhalko1 wrote:
I can't see this being a rule. For me at least it would lead to abuse. As a comparison ( yeah i know it's not the same), the vehicles and what not in Battlefield don't just sit camped on a street corner shooting the building out hoping to kill people inside by crashing the building. a knight for instance has to use a stratagem to hit squads on 2nd and 3rd floor buildings. With this Beta rule he just has to wreck the building in order to slay the entire unit.

As a substitute. The buildings in battlefield take damage as the vehicle and what not damage them over time. The buildings fall late game eventually. SO maybe as a rule every turn after the first the building has a chance of collapsing if a unit inside is shot at from the previous shooting phase. The more turns spent on a shooting a unit the higher the chance of the collapse. This would provide incentive to try and shoot the 2+ save unit in the building versus ignoring them and going after another unit. As an additional note maybe this chance is only enabled if the unit inside is shot with a weapon with damage of d3 or more. This way slowly over the game it makes it more dangerous to be inside that building. Also would make a hazard to place objectives up there especially against armies with monsters that cant assault you.

Shooting at a destroyable ruin is no different than shooting at an open topped vehicle to get its contents out. The penalties for multi-level ruins I have to say is a bit biased as I have come across too many times where my opponents park their 48" guns on top of ruins for the whole game. The lack of universal "ignore cover" mechanism exacerbates this situation even further.

Also, why wouldn't you bombard a unit trenched up in a building with, say a vindicator? It seems like the perfect weapon for the job. Why should a titan need to spend a CP in order to assault models 2nd and 3rd story (which stratagem is this?). Ruins in general are so poorly designed that it leaves more room for abuse than you claim it doesnt. i.e. placing an objective marker on top of a ruin. All objectives should be contestable by any unit in the army, not just those who deployed on top of the objective or those with fly.

That's what I meant though. The unit gets the bonus to it's save unless a weapon ignores that but then a unit like a vindicator can attempt to shoot them and as a side note destroy the building potentially. Being able to target the building/ruin itself would invalidate the 2nd floor rule. There would be no need to target that unit just shoot the building a bunch. additionally players would no longer choose to put units in buildings as they would get instantly wiped if the building did crash. The focus should be on shooting the unit out of the building.

The unit hiding inside the ruin is protected until it is destroyed, are they not? I think it will still be worth putting units inside ruins as this will deter enemies from trying to directly fire at the unit in hiding. Weapons that have high S, low AP (i.e. autocannon) will have better luck trying to wither the building down. If a weapon has high enough AP (plasmas, hotshots) that makes the 1+ save negligible, you'd be more inclined to shoot at the unit and not the building.

Of course, as I have stated, the penalties have to be adjusted, but I think camping on a ruin needs to have a certain level of risk.

Well with my proposed changes there still would be the risk of the building collapse. You just can't target the building directly. All high damage weapons would go straight there. You also wouldn't be wasting your high damage weapons on infantry. I don't think focusing the building is conducive to good mechanics and strategy. Deployment in that building is a strategy and only helps against melee, monster type armies. units with fly and infantry can still attack there. If 2 gunlines fought then the only bonus is the cover save modifier. For these 2 same gunlines, if they both are on the top of building then the game would be who can bring down the other's building first. again not something I would look forward to in playing this game, especially since my main opponent usually brings a knight.

if someone's dug into ruins why not just send a melee infantry squad or something to deal with em?

I like the idea behind this as I think it makes terrain a bit more dynamic, but as others have said it seems like it should be streamlined a bit. The idea of rolling a die for every floor of terrain is cool. A unit on top of a 5 story building could still get lucky.

My one question would be what happens to the terrain feature once the ruin is destroyed? I personally wouldn't want to see it removed from the battle entirely. A large ruin would leave quite a large pile of rubble behind if it collapsed. Perhaps only multi level ruins should be destroyable in the sense that they are eventually reduced to a single story ruin. The ground level could still be usable for cover and what not.

As for those that feel like ruins are currently abused, why shouldn't players use terrain to prevent charges, strengthen the saves of their units, and hold objectives that are unreachable by things like tanks? I'd say if your army list isn't tailored for flexibility and to address this aspect of the game you're not thinking as tactically as your opponent is and you need to make adjustments to the units you are fielding. Likewise, perhaps you also need more weapons, units and stratagems that ignore cover.

I like the idea of the battle actively damaging the landscape.

What you can look at would be to say you can only shoot models in ruins, not ruins themselves. Shots that miss the target then roll to hit the ruins.

So if you're a marine vindicator, you are likely to hit something - and more likely for it yo be the intended target, but also likely to damage the building some too.

If you're a unit of ork lootas, you might hit the unit, you might hit the ruin, you might hit nothing.

Initially I was going to say that misses hit the ruin, but that would make orks exceptionally good at destroying ruins, and woe bedite anyone who charges out of ruins - all that overwatch hitting the ruin, instantly vapourising it and bring it down on the enemy!

I would then have a simple system where it has 10 wounds and gives +2 to saves, at 5 wounds it gives +1, when it's 0 wounds it has no effect - the floors are still there, but the walls are so damaged they offer no protection.
so if someone it holed up in a ruin, concentrated firepower can reduce their cover to nothing.

If the ruin is destroyed, why not use the emergency disembarkment rule? This assumes the building takes a few moment to collapse, and those inside can try to get out.

Likewise, could use the vehicle explosion rules as well for when the building collapses, but limit the radius to “within the building” or maybe even 1”, letting those too close take the risk of being hit by falling debris.

Cool idea and all but i feel like there may be an issue with charging buildings.

Primarily in that its a free movement against an unoccupied terrain which could potentially come up.

could be fixed with a simple you can only charge occupied buildings i guess. but at the same time some times you just need to pop a building so you can advance up and make more interesting decisions or fire lanes.

 Desubot wrote:
Cool idea and all but i feel like there may be an issue with charging buildings.

Primarily in that its a free movement against an unoccupied terrain which could potentially come up.

could be fixed with a simple you can only charge occupied buildings i guess. but at the same time some times you just need to pop a building so you can advance up and make more interesting decisions or fire lanes.

That's why some of us have suggested alternate rules where terrain gets damaged as units inside are targeted. But you can't directly target the terrain.