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Hey everyone,

So I do a lot of posting on the "proposed rules" section with various weird ideas I have for units and such. Honestly: for me it's really just an exercise in imagination and fun, but I also genuinely wouldn't mind actually trying to play a game or two with people's fun new units/armies ect. I've never actually DONE so, but that's because I've never really been in a position to get in more than about two nights a week at my local game store, and so the time I do have is taken up with more "normal" Warhammer/40k stuff.

So that got me thinking about the community here. How about it guys, have YOU ever given any weird custom ruled units/armies ect a chance at real tabletop play?

(I would love to hear some stories if you have!)

Don’t know if it counts, but I tried to use a fan-made custom Codex for Renegades, but my friends shot me down and said I could only use official rules.

Yeah, I think the only way anyone would likely want to play such a game is if both sides wanted to try out some funky fresh new units or whatnot.

For me: I would LOVE the chance to give a go to some weird 40k homebrew... but then again I also try really hard to be the kind of player that doesn't care overly much whether I win or lose (as long as the match is fun!)

For me the big thing is who wants to go though a codex and see if it's got a semblance of balance? That can be a fairly difficult task. And I don't want to really waste time finding out the homebrew is straight up broken playing through a game.

If it's something like some of the faction rules tournaments came up and used for neglected Kill Teams it's one thing. Someone breaks out the "Alternative Tau codex that 'matches the fluff'" and I'm going to be highly skeptical.

Heh, yeah... the whole "fluff vs. game balance" is always a bad argument to be in :-)

Obviously my five space marines should basically be able to take out 300-400 orks right?

I'm in the process of writing rules for my own Traitor Chapter.

We'll see how it pans out. I'm doing everything, strategems, psychic powers, custom units, special characters.

I think the big thing about creating your own stuff is to try and be conservative on the rules and power level. It's better to be underpowered than over powered.

The closest thing in recent years would be using the narrative version of Eisenhorn.

During 5th there were rules for possession in the DH codex that I used a couple of times for an homebrew saint, which turned out to be a little too effective with a blessed weapon canoness.

And the big one - a 5e witch hunters codex and a 7e re-write. 100+ pages with full art and fluff, but the local players were leaving the game after 6th dropped so it never saw enough testing to finish out.

I did a lot with homemade rules for Corsairs and for my 30k Mechanicum stuff early in 8e, but that petered off as I realized I was trying to design an army that didn't rely on relics/stratagems and I didn't really understand how to design an army that felt right within 8e. I may try again at some point but am holding off to let people get used to 9e before I try throwing any loops into the mixture.

Yeah, I had so many ideas for my own homebrew stuff that I ended up just adapting them into a new universe and writing them as a TV pilot! (which, if things don't fall through, I will actually get a chance to pitch this fall!)

Honestly, one of my favorite things about the 40k universe is the sense of both scale and possibility. There is really enough room in the lore for a thousand homebrew armies, races, ideas ect to do their own thing and not really change the dynamic!

Yes, many times.

First was the only thing I liked about 4th: kill teams. The way it worked back then was a few individual models from units in your army against trios of the weakest enemy troops and 1 "badass" boss model with "stealth" elements(randomized movement for the mooks until your models make enough noise to raise the alarm, or get too close without a charge-then kill)

In 8th we would play narrative games with points allowing 1 unit that has full access to the wargear/rules. Think of giving primaris supressors lascannons instead, or completely re-arming a tank with different weapons. But the models have to be WYSIWYG.

That 8th edition idea sounds insane in a great way :-)

In the old Citadel Journal, there was a campaign between a scout force and Adeptus Arbites. The history was that the scout company had to go into cryostasis to avoid complete destruction.

They wake up 4k years later on a planet where they doubt the Imperial control. Their chaplain becomes a street preacher, and they all disavow their identities to protect themselves. Their team includes a callidus assassin who never completed her training, an ogryn named buzzbox who had a custom forcefield implanted by a mad scientist and a mysterious "Fixer"

The coolest special rule was called urban infiltration. The idea was you created stands with 4-5 Imperial Citizens on them. You could move these around, and then have a character or MSU jump out from the crowd. So you could send out 4 stands of these things and move them around; your enemy would not know which one your unit would emerge from, so they had to be prepared to respond to any of them.

The campaign was like half of the issue. It was AWESOME, and I encountered it during my formative years, so it sunk in hard, and really influenced the way I play this game. 9th ed's Crusade system was made for me, but it's going to have to be amazing to compete with that old Citadel Journal Article.

Absolutely have. Have some custom characters, and we allow custom vehicles.

We use custom characters regularly. Profiles are exchanged and discussed in advance to avoid surprises and sometimes adjust them together. It's funny how often these discussions reveal how differently characters are costed between Codizes. It often goes like, "what, only 150 points for all of that? It's close to unit z In my Codex and that costs 175 points, you should make it more expensive." "But it's based on x in my Codex, just with that additional special rule, and that one only costs 110 points."
In the actual games those points differences rarely mattered, really.

Hmm...

You know what? I don't think I ever have.

I mean I've written rules for the odd special character, or revised an existing unit or Codex, but I've never thrown down something completely new. Something created out of whole cloth, so to speak.

I've done it in the 40K RPGs. My take on Skitarii (long before GW released plastics) eventually became the Venatorii that are in the Lathe World's book. I've done some work on my Kyaire xenos race, again, some of which made it into the Alien Without book for Dark Heresy 2.0, but I've not translated them into 40K.

The weird part is that I don't really know why I haven't. The Kyarie especially, as I went out and bought a massive AT-43 Therian army to represent them on the tabletop.

Hmm... thank you for this thread OP. It's given me something to think about.

Yep usually in a narrative scenarios or to let someone try something.

Usually good fun and less unbalanced than problem units from Codexes

Technically, I did play once against a homebrew army.

I also several times played with units that weren't legal loadouts, so that might count, because I didn't own a codex for my first few games of 40k [to be fair, my army looked like 35 Guardsmen, a tank, and a lot of Green Army Men] , so there were things that I had the impression that existed but did not actually exist, including other people's homebrew things and just flat out mistakes. This was cleared up for 40k when I got my codex, but persisted when called upon to play Apocalypse, when I didn't know what things existed, what formations could be taken, etc. and wound up with things that people had created that I hadn't fact checked to ensure they actually did exist.


But, for the most part, with the exception of that one time, no, I haven't deliberately played actual 40k with homebrew units.

In the past, I did it all the time with a few close friends. We would make up units that we thought would fit and make sense, and a few characters of course. At some point, we even started repointing things in codexes because they just didn't make sense as is. Tgat however isn't what one would do in pickup games and the like.

A local guy loves the primaris armour look but really likes the codex astartes style army structure so he just took tactical, assault, devastator and the veteran squads and made them primaris for +5 points a marine. All his stuff is intercessors converted to have the right weapons for their squad. He used Kromlech jet packs for his assault squads. Also his stuff being transported in land raider and drop pod was no problem.

Nothing broke and everything was fine, but he wasn't attempting to break things, so that's probably the reason why it worked.

Mainly ‘counts as’. Two Buggies as a Trukk with Flak Gun, Blasta Buggy as Trukk with Heavy weapon, that sort of thing.

Culmination of a series of games with Eldar, raised Zogwort for 8th ed as the Ork Big Boss.

I made kustom rules for my looted bastion superheavy back in 6th/7th, used it for fun games. I overpriced it, but if it pulled off a good shooting phase, it could level half an army. It was about 1800 points!

Yes, lots of times!

The last occasion was a little while ago as my main opponent is currently collecting a Crimson Fists battle company to fight my orks.

One of his favorite bits of fluff about them is the story of that psycho Land Raider machine spirit (can't recall off hand its exact name) that went on a rampage after its crew were killed.

We thought it would be a cool idea to play out that fight so we took a land raider, gave it the character keyword (pls note..NO relics heh) and the ability to auto detonate itself if destroyed within explosion range of any models with the ORK keyword or the end of movement phase if on less than 5 wounds remaining.

This worked quite well, though the character bit didn't really come into play so we are looking at making a table of machine spirit personality upgrades that could be given to a vehicle character by using a relic slot from your army.

I myself am trying to come up with a way of turning a Neurothrope into an equivalent of the old Doom of Malantai without it being as horribly broken as that thing used to be.

As we play power level games, working out exact points isn't required and often just boils down to pay 1 or 2 more PL over a normal one, if you have a group that is willing to experiment, things can be really fun.

4th ed had official Vehicle Design Rules.
They were awesome!

Once or twice. Way back in 4th there where some very intresting rules for Catachans. A friend took those rules and swapped them to be cityfight instead, with ruins instead of jungle. Thought that was cool.

Have played a few times with units that where pretty much the same as another one but with a diffrent special rule.

Have several times adapted or invented rules for terrains. Points costs for walls and such. We had the fantasy medieval castle set at my local game shop so we stuck some guns on it and gave it point values and ways to break the walls. Lead to several very fun battles.

Have played a few games with custom special characters and heroes. Theese where all before the recent make your own hero rules.

Custom units, scenarios with forces made up to taste without consulting points, changing exsting units stats. All sort of fun stuff.

I homebrewed a Dark Eldar codex last edition, it was definitely a step up in both strength and fun over the 7th ed codex but it was right at the end of the edition so I only got to run it a couple times before 8th dropped.

I've only used homebrew rules for the Craftworld Phoenix Bomber and Lynx this edition, which you have to do to make those 2 units half way usable, but have only used them once.

I ran a league with custom hero rules lol. I also played my fan Corsair dex a couple times (its not fun to play fan dex's tbh, even if they are fluffy, fun to play, and not OP. There is just something about not playing an official book).

But i have been thinking about doing another fun league for my local with Movie marine rules (modified to fit now).

 Imateria wrote:
I homebrewed a Dark Eldar codex last edition, it was definitely a step up in both strength and fun over the 7th ed codex but it was right at the end of the edition so I only got to run it a couple times before 8th dropped.

I've only used homebrew rules for the Craftworld Phoenix Bomber and Lynx this edition, which you have to do to make those 2 units half way usable, but have only used them once.

I played Corsairs over my DE, oh and i happy i did!

leerm02 wrote:

Hey everyone,

So I do a lot of posting on the "proposed rules" section with various weird ideas I have for units and such. Honestly: for me it's really just an exercise in imagination and fun, but I also genuinely wouldn't mind actually trying to play a game or two with people's fun new units/armies ect. I've never actually DONE so, but that's because I've never really been in a position to get in more than about two nights a week at my local game store, and so the time I do have is taken up with more "normal" Warhammer/40k stuff.

So that got me thinking about the community here. How about it guys, have YOU ever given any weird custom ruled units/armies ect a chance at real tabletop play?

(I would love to hear some stories if you have!)

Oh yeah, absolutely. I have a friend who's obsessed with converting other factions' stuff to Da Orks (his latest project is Deep Orks, Idoneth conversions from AOS for feral orks hailing from an underwater world) and I have a whole army worth of Mechanicum units that can't play in 8th ed that I've written fan rules for. I play all kinds of custom scenarios and custom units, the trouble is that the average joe just has absolutely no clue how to make something remotely balanced, lol.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
I homebrewed a Dark Eldar codex last edition, it was definitely a step up in both strength and fun over the 7th ed codex but it was right at the end of the edition so I only got to run it a couple times before 8th dropped.

I've only used homebrew rules for the Craftworld Phoenix Bomber and Lynx this edition, which you have to do to make those 2 units half way usable, but have only used them once.

I played Corsairs over my DE, oh and i happy i did!

I did both. I loved the feel of Corsairs when you lean heavily into their jet pack set up to make use of Reckless Abandon and their Wild Psykers, but they didn't feel like a DE army which is why I did the homebrew.

 Imateria wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
I homebrewed a Dark Eldar codex last edition, it was definitely a step up in both strength and fun over the 7th ed codex but it was right at the end of the edition so I only got to run it a couple times before 8th dropped.

I've only used homebrew rules for the Craftworld Phoenix Bomber and Lynx this edition, which you have to do to make those 2 units half way usable, but have only used them once.

I played Corsairs over my DE, oh and i happy i did!

I did both. I loved the feel of Corsairs when you lean heavily into their jet pack set up to make use of Reckless Abandon and their Wild Psykers, but they didn't feel like a DE army which is why I did the homebrew.

Thats understandable, but you could just did venom spam too.

I love the JSJ of the army so much. Mine was normally Prince, 4 Barons, lots of 5mans with Jet packs and 2 fusions, 2 Hornets, 1 Warp hunter, 2 units of Balestrikes with 4 Shuriken cannons (basically mobile jsj heavy team), and 1 Bike unit with 3 Felchers + prince all Void sabers.