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Or, and just try to use your imagination, maybe what GW called a "Glancing Hit" is actually representing a hit that caused damage. Say, enough damage that the tank is 1/3 of the way to being destroyed.

People are reading "glancing hit" and thinking that it should be a failed penetration roll. That's not what it is. A "Glancing Hit" in 40k is a hit that harms a vehicle to a noticeable degree, but does not prevent it's further function.

I can't stress this enough. If you hit Ablative Armour, it doesn't stop the tank from functioning. But if you hit that same spot again, the guys inside are toast. Have your ablative armour go off? That's a "Glancing Hit" in 40k. Have an "explodes" result? You either hit that same spot again, or you hit a point that was vulnerable for whatever reason.

If you stop looking at the words "Glancing Hit" and thinking that it means "no significant damage" you'd be fine. Change your mindset to...

1: Fails to roll high enough = No Damage, shot glances off.

2: Rolls equal to a Vehicle's AV = Minor Damage

3: Rolls above a Vehicle's AV = Major Damage, consult Damage Table


Reword it in your head, and HP makes sense as a Game Mechanic. Maybe not real world, but again, we're trying to represent something on the table top, not make a simulation of the real world.

The fact that tanks have both hullpoints with no save AND the damage table is what makes them bad. Get rid of one or the other (I lean towards hullpoints cause that was why the AV system exists in the first place), and then they can fill a role and be costed appropriately. Then get rid of Jink for skimmers, and just leave them as the faster option.

I said it earlier.

Just unify the mechanics for dealing with MCs and Vehicles.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Or, and just try to use your imagination, maybe what GW called a "Glancing Hit" is actually representing a hit that caused damage. Say, enough damage that the tank is 1/3 of the way to being destroyed.

People are reading "glancing hit" and thinking that it should be a failed penetration roll. That's not what it is. A "Glancing Hit" in 40k is a hit that harms a vehicle to a noticeable degree, but does not prevent it's further function.

I can't stress this enough. If you hit Ablative Armour, it doesn't stop the tank from functioning. But if you hit that same spot again, the guys inside are toast. Have your ablative armour go off? That's a "Glancing Hit" in 40k. Have an "explodes" result? You either hit that same spot again, or you hit a point that was vulnerable for whatever reason.

If you stop looking at the words "Glancing Hit" and thinking that it means "no significant damage" you'd be fine. Change your mindset to...

1: Fails to roll high enough = No Damage, shot glances off.

2: Rolls equal to a Vehicle's AV = Minor Damage

3: Rolls above a Vehicle's AV = Major Damage, consult Damage Table


Reword it in your head, and HP makes sense as a Game Mechanic. Maybe not real world, but again, we're trying to represent something on the table top, not make a simulation of the real world.

Okay, let me explain this another way:

A Hit that fails to do anything is a hit that bounced off or got stuck in the armour. It did nothing period. Its gone. Forget that shot and try again.

A Glancing hit as was referred too in 40K prior to GW's derpaderp HP system, which does NOT represent how tanks work AT ALL, was a hit that failed to penetrate as above but by some miracle managed to hit a vital spot. The shot smacked into the tracks and sheared some links or shattered the sprocket of the final drive. Or maybe it hit the engine and killed it. Maybe it smacked into the gun barrel and broke it - I remember a picture I saw of a Valentine which had taken a hit to its main guns barrel - or smacked into the base of the mounting or damaged it in some way or other. Perhaps the impact of the shell on the armour, or the blast as the shell exploded on the tank, stunned the crew for a short while.
The shot failed to penetrate but managed to adversely affect the vehicle and/or its crew enough to impact on the performance of the vehicle for a short amount of time.

Now a penetrating hit, as was correctly represented by the 4th and 5th edition table, is a hit that through some means, be it by kinetic impact or sheer explosive force, managed to breach the tanks armour. This is a devastating blow and will usually result in the complete destruction or loss of the vehicle as a fighting unit. And even if it does not then the tank is usually severely incapacitated.

Now it actually hurts me to do this but as you have persistently shown a lak of willingness to google some basic information I am going to have to cite a video game as evidence. I hope you feel proud son I really do because right now I am feeling dirty as hell.
War Thunder
There. I did it.
War Thunder, for all of it being a computer game and its noticeable, if very minor, Russian bias (T34's and KV1's wtf? They are bloody difficult to penetrate), is actually as close to tank on tank combat as you are ever going to come. When you shoot the target and your shot bounces it does nothing. Now you can shoot your target again and again and nothing will happen. He wont be magically glanced to death. In fact he will probably just shoot you right back and KO you.

Now take a penetrating hit. You penetrate and the spalling sprays inward. 9/10, unless you are a terrible aim or your opponent is incredibly lucky you kill that tank. THIS is a penetrating hit.

Sometimes you dont penetrate though, but your shell hits a gun, or jams the turret ring, or blows a track, or crits something vital. This reduces the targets performance. This is a GW Glancing hit.

Do you see now or do I have to debase myself further and link in in - game videos?

MoO, you're missing the point. 40k uses game mechanics. They're meant to provide a useful game.

And like I said, if you can't handle using the term "Glancing Hit" replace it with "Minor Damage" and your swelling will go down.

I know, that if I take a bat to a tank, it won't matter how many times I hit that tank, it's not going down. But that's because my Str + d6 does not equal the AV of that tank.

Now, if I take a torch, and cut a hole in the side of the tank, I've inflicted "Minor Damage" that exposes some inner workings. For the giggles, let's say that I expose some drive components. [1 HP] Tank still operates, life is good, but there's a vulnerable spot now.

So, because I'm like that, I keep cutting away with my torch. If you require it for your sense of *realism* we'll say I have a plasma cutter. Now, I've disabled some drive components. Maybe that's a stun, maybe that's immobilized, who knows? For the giggles, let's say it's treated as a penetrating hit. [2 HP]

But my suicidal nature isn't satiated, so I keep cutting. I cut my way into the fuel reservoir. Now, in reality, that's probably running on diesel, so rather than exploding, it just burns with an almighty vengeance. Without fuel, that tank is going to come to a halt. [3 HP] It might take a couple minutes, but after applying 3 rounds of "damage" to that tank, it is disabled. No sudden explosion, no utter devastation. Just a tank that ran outa fuel.

That's 3 HP, from "Glancing Hits / Minor Damage" that deactivated a tank. Honestly. It's a game mechanic that prevents a tank from taking 15 penetrating hits and having the crew be repeatedly shaken. If anything, 40k treats the hits that damage [would normally puncture the hull] as minor damage.

You're stating that you either glance off and do nothing, or you penetrate and annihilate the vehicle. The game mechanics of 40k instead allow some of those "weak" hits that inflict damage to allow the tank to move on all happy happy.

You can do 3 HP of damage to any vehicle in the real world by running out of gas. Or driving without coolant in your engine for a long time. Or having a wheel fall off. Two wheels, say. That's what HP damage represents. If your tank runs out of fuel, but you didn't explode, you ran out of HP. I'm sure you can imagine at least two other situations where a tank can no longer operate, without exploding / having the occupants turned into sausage.

What I would do -

Immediately issue FAQs and Errata for all existing armies.

Then -
Release 8th edition with all armies rolled into the core rulebook, and unit rules included in their box. Codexes released later would be akin to the Warmahordes faction books, rather than an essential purchase.

Ruleswise -
- Vehicles become MCs (Potentially with multi-wound models having degrading stats when wounded)

- Allow Blast weapons to snapfire without area-of-effect

- Make Overwatch fire more effective (Possibly -1 BS, instead of the flat 6-to-hit) but force the unit to forgo shooting in their shooting phase in order to 'ready' Overwatch.

- Return casualty removal to owner-chooses, with wounded multi-wound models having to take new wounds first, Torrent of Fire and Precision Shot to allow the enemy to select a casualty.

- Cover goes back to being based on unit majority rather than individual

- Remove the penalty for refusing a Challenge in close combat, but allow the result of a Challenge to determine the result for the whole combat.

- Allow players to select Psychic Powers and Warlord Traits.

- Change Warlord Traits to have more of an army-wide effect, with different characters having access to different types of traits, so that your choice of army commander is actually important to the functioning of the army.


I think that's most of the big stuff that I would like to see.



Now that I think about it, most of this is likely to make it onto my table anyway. We've already made the change to Snap-firing Blasts...

Ok what I am seeing with part of this thread is an Issue about nomenclature.

Now onto the Fixes, most of with we have been looking into ourselvers and some we are doing right now.
Random Charts: Add the line "Or Choose"
Hull Points: Add 1-3 Hull Points to every Vehicle, 1for Skimmers and Aircraft. 2 to Non-Skimmer Transports. 3 to Dedicated Tanks.
[As a note I hated how Pre-6th Vehicles worked, I saw a single Rhino take 21 Las Cannon shots in one game!]
Rapid Fire: Change Rapid Fire to to +1 Shot if the Model did not move, this includes Over-Watch or be able to 'Double Tap' if no movement.
Walkers: Make Walkers MCs Once Again or double their Hull Points. Give them Rampage as a default along with MCs.
Fliers: If a unit did not move fire as BS2, this includes Blast, but not Template Weapons.
Assault form Reserves: Some Units Yes, Cavalry, Beast, Bikes.

That is about it for the general stuff.
Invisibility: Just make it a BS1 Defense rather than snap Shots.

Update Sisters of Battle. Carefully playtest to make sure that both shooting and assaulting are viable-- they don't have to be perfectly balanced against each other, but at least enough that both types of play are worth trying for most armies. Not sure how to go about that in specifics though. Update immediately a FAQ for each army, including errata as necessary to change things up to and including points costs to make sure armies are internally balanced (IE, all units are worth taking; some may be a little better simply by the nature of the army, but no unit should be "don't take that it sucks" material) and externally (so that the win chance of one army against another, with players of equal skill, doesn't ever get more skewed than 40/60).

But that's all kind of vague, so not that useful.

Here is something. Advance the 13th Black Crusade a few days after-all Abaddon has been on this 13th Crusade for over 25 years, yes folks it has been Warhammer 40001 for 25 years.

 Achaylus72 wrote:
Here is something. Advance the 13th Black Crusade a few days after-all Abaddon has been on this 13th Crusade for over 25 years, yes folks it has been Warhammer 40001 for 25 years.

The '40000' is a tagline, not a precise date.

Murrdox wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
I'd take 5E, slap in 4E Victory Points instead of Kill Points & 4E wound allocation rules, put in 7E Rapid Fire, Snapshot, vehicle squadron, & transported passenger effects rules, reduce most non-Ruins cover to 5+ cover from 4+, maybe a couple of other tweaks, and you've got a damn near perfect 40k ruleset.

7E at this point is an unplayable mess for anything but small group play with extensive self imposed (explicit or implicit) restrictions.

Very much agree.

I think I'd still take the 7E Psychic Phase. I've grown to like it. The powers themselves just need to be adjusted, but imbalanced Psychic powers have ALWAYS been a thing with 40k.

I'd welcome getting rid of Hull Points and going back to 5th Edition vehicle rules. That said, I'm enjoying 7th Edition's vehicle rules MUCH better than 6th. I still think all vehicles could use at least 1 or 2 more Hull Points than they have though. There still isn't enough incentive to actually use armor penetrating weapons.

I enjoy 7th Edition, but we use quite a few house rules to make it better.

That's a pretty good idea. Say AV10=T6 scaling to AV14 being T10.

A boltgun glances an AV10 vehicle on a 6 and wounds T6 on a 6. A lascannon needs a 5+ to damage AV14, and likewise to wound T10.

 greatbigtree wrote:
MoO, you're missing the point. 40k uses game mechanics. They're meant to provide a useful game.

And like I said, if you can't handle using the term "Glancing Hit" replace it with "Minor Damage" and your swelling will go down.

I know, that if I take a bat to a tank, it won't matter how many times I hit that tank, it's not going down. But that's because my Str + d6 does not equal the AV of that tank.

Now, if I take a torch, and cut a hole in the side of the tank, I've inflicted "Minor Damage" that exposes some inner workings. For the giggles, let's say that I expose some drive components. [1 HP] Tank still operates, life is good, but there's a vulnerable spot now.

So, because I'm like that, I keep cutting away with my torch. If you require it for your sense of *realism* we'll say I have a plasma cutter. Now, I've disabled some drive components. Maybe that's a stun, maybe that's immobilized, who knows? For the giggles, let's say it's treated as a penetrating hit. [2 HP]

But my suicidal nature isn't satiated, so I keep cutting. I cut my way into the fuel reservoir. Now, in reality, that's probably running on diesel, so rather than exploding, it just burns with an almighty vengeance. Without fuel, that tank is going to come to a halt. [3 HP] It might take a couple minutes, but after applying 3 rounds of "damage" to that tank, it is disabled. No sudden explosion, no utter devastation. Just a tank that ran outa fuel.

But in your description your not doing any real damage to the vehicle itself. What you are doing however is immobilising it. y cutting the drive train you prevent it from moving. Then you drain the fuel tank and the tank is classed as destroyed. The immobilisation is the same as a glancing hit, a minor hit that just managed to do some damage. The fuel tank being drained destroys the tank, but by that point you have cut deep enough to do some real damage.

That's 3 HP, from "Glancing Hits / Minor Damage" that deactivated a tank. Honestly. It's a game mechanic that prevents a tank from taking 15 penetrating hits and having the crew be repeatedly shaken. If anything, 40k treats the hits that damage [would normally puncture the hull] as minor damage.

I would GLADLY drop HP for a pair of separate damage tables, the penetrating one of which has a base 50% or 66.6'% chance to see the vehicle destroyed.

You're stating that you either glance off and do nothing, or you penetrate and annihilate the vehicle. The game mechanics of 40k instead allow some of those "weak" hits that inflict damage to allow the tank to move on all happy happy.

But as history has shown many minor hits do not equate a single powerful hit. Take the Tiger 1's. When they first entered combat in Tunisia they where almost unstoppable. The US M3 'Honey's' went out to face them and their guns did nothing. The puny 37mm shots just bounced off the Tigers hull. Then the M3 'Lee/Grant's' tried it. And even there 75mm guns where unable to hurt the Tigers.
Their shots bounced. Not one Tiger was disabled.
As proven, many ineffective shots do not a dead vehicle make.

You can do 3 HP of damage to any vehicle in the real world by running out of gas. Or driving without coolant in your engine for a long time. Or having a wheel fall off. Two wheels, say. That's what HP damage represents. If your tank runs out of fuel, but you didn't explode, you ran out of HP. I'm sure you can imagine at least two other situations where a tank can no longer operate, without exploding / having the occupants turned into sausage.

Or: You roll to damage. The wheel falls off because you got an immobilised result. The same for the coolant being lost. The fuel tank was hit and destroyed, resulting in the tank being wrecked because you penetrated the hull and got one of the several 'Destroyed' results. Not because your 37mm shells bounced off the armour several times.

 Flugel Meister wrote:
As the title says, and only if you think it needs changing. I wouldn't suggest lowering the price because that is unlikely to happen. However, I would like the rulebook and codices to drop a little. I believe that's a reasonable expectation.

So, it can be rules, armies, terrain, fiction, anything.

Streamline the rules, too many special fiddly rules. They got smarter with the special rules section in the main rulebook, which is still too big, but then keep adding even more special rules into each new codex. Streamline also does not mean AoS the rules either.

Stop making "split fire" only for special snowflake units and let everyone do it. Totally stupid that a lascannon has to shoot at infantry when a tank is also bearing down on the unit, just because the rest of the unit is shooting at the infantry and vice versa. Also it is dumb for half a unit to not shoot at all because they cannot see the target the other half of the unit is shooting at, but have viable targets to fire at themselves.

Actually bring some balance to the point costs, especially so units in codecies makes sense with each others costs. No more of this better unit being cheaper to field crap. With a new base marine codex it should be uber simple to at least balance all of the marine armies with that base line book. From there they can work on fixing it across the board.

Finally stop completely changing the power level/plan for the game or adding completely new unit types to the game that require special targetting without being ready to bring all armies up to that power level in short order.

Those changes would make me a really happy camper.

 master of ordinance wrote:

Now it actually hurts me to do this but as you have persistently shown a lak of willingness to google some basic information I am going to have to cite a video game as evidence. I hope you feel proud son I really do because right now I am feeling dirty as hell.
War Thunder
There. I did it.
War Thunder, for all of it being a computer game and its noticeable, if very minor, Russian bias (T34's and KV1's wtf? They are bloody difficult to penetrate), is actually as close to tank on tank combat as you are ever going to come. When you shoot the target and your shot bounces it does nothing. Now you can shoot your target again and again and nothing will happen. He wont be magically glanced to death. In fact he will probably just shoot you right back and KO you.

Now take a penetrating hit. You penetrate and the spalling sprays inward. 9/10, unless you are a terrible aim or your opponent is incredibly lucky you kill that tank. THIS is a penetrating hit.

Sometimes you dont penetrate though, but your shell hits a gun, or jams the turret ring, or blows a track, or crits something vital. This reduces the targets performance. This is a GW Glancing hit.

Do you see now or do I have to debase myself further and link in in - game videos?

I actually love that game, it is one of the most realisitc deciptions of tank warfare in video games, and I get your analogy completely, I just think that the one I presented with Glancing hits rolling on a table and pens stripping HP and rolling on another table fit better. But I get where you are coming from.

 insaniak wrote:

Ruleswise -
- Vehicles become MCs (Potentially with multi-wound models having degrading stats when wounded)

No, AV works and has worked, no need to fully turn tanks into MC just because Tyrannids can't figure out how to make biological steel yet.

 insaniak wrote:
- Allow Blast weapons to snapfire without area-of-effect

Better yet, roll d6 per, if it gets a six, fires as blast with normal BS. Do the same for all snap shots

 insaniak wrote:
- Return casualty removal to owner-chooses, with wounded multi-wound models having to take new wounds first, Torrent of Fire and Precision Shot to allow the enemy to select a casualty.

- Cover goes back to being based on unit majority rather than individual

No, the rules for model removal is good as is.

 insaniak wrote:

Immediately issue FAQs and Errata for all existing armies.

Then -
Release 8th edition with all armies rolled into the core rulebook, and unit rules included in their box. Codexes released later would be akin to the Warmahordes faction books, rather than an essential purchase.
- Remove the penalty for refusing a Challenge in close combat, but allow the result of a Challenge to determine the result for the whole combat.
- Allow players to select Psychic Powers and Warlord Traits.

- Change Warlord Traits to have more of an army-wide effect, with different characters having access to different types of traits, so that your choice of army commander is actually important to the functioning of the army.

- Make Overwatch fire more effective (Possibly -1 BS, instead of the flat 6-to-hit) but force the unit to forgo shooting in their shooting phase in order to 'ready' Overwatch.

I agree with this stuff

 Skriker wrote:

Streamline the rules, too many special fiddly rules. They got smarter with the special rules section in the main rulebook, which is still too big, but then keep adding even more special rules into each new codex. Streamline also does not mean AoS the rules either.

Stop making "split fire" only for special snowflake units and let everyone do it. Totally stupid that a lascannon has to shoot at infantry when a tank is also bearing down on the unit, just because the rest of the unit is shooting at the infantry and vice versa. Also it is dumb for half a unit to not shoot at all because they cannot see the target the other half of the unit is shooting at, but have viable targets to fire at themselves.

Actually bring some balance to the point costs, especially so units in codecies makes sense with each others costs. No more of this better unit being cheaper to field crap. With a new base marine codex it should be uber simple to at least balance all of the marine armies with that base line book. From there they can work on fixing it across the board.

Finally stop completely changing the power level/plan for the game or adding completely new unit types to the game that require special targetting without being ready to bring all armies up to that power level in short order.

Those changes would make me a really happy camper.

I agree with all of this.

 saithor wrote:
No, AV works and has worked, no need to fully turn tanks into MC just because Tyrannids can't figure out how to make biological steel yet.

My desire to change the vehicle rules is nothing to do with tyranids. It's simply that I don't see any particular value in having a separate system for vehicles in a game that's aiming for the scale that 40K is. In a smaller skirmish game, sure. But in 40K, those extra rules are uneccessary, and just add an extra place for balance to go awry.

No, the rules for model removal is good as is..

They're really not. Removal from the front is an absurd system, and turns unit movement into an exercise in micromanagement. It's ridiculous that the guy at the front with the storm shield catches every single incoming round until he dies. It's ridiculous that template weapons need to be hidden inside the unit where they're going to be next to useless, because otherwise they become the first casualties. It's ridiculous that the system rewards you for hiding your 'inspirational' characters at the back of the unit... or if you do choose to put them at the front, winds up with you rolling LoS and saves one... at... a... time...

Allowin the owning player to choose the casualties is simpler, faster, and results in less silliness.

Here is how I could improve it.

By not playing and playing a different game entirely. As much as I love the 40k setting, GW has only sunk my dreams and hopes of the game ever being as good as it was eight or seven years ago. Now it is abhorred mess.

I've seen games by students in game design with more thought put into it.

I can see that their work goes more into the models than the actual game itself. Which is along the lines of "The more prettier it is" the better!

If I wanted to buy models I would buy plastic model kits from sears or the hobby store.

I like that the current casualty removal system rewards clever movement and attack angles.

I dislike that you do wind up with BS micromanagement of which model is where within the unit. Such a waste of time agonizing over whether to put 5 guys to the left and 3 to the right, or 4 and 4.

As awkward and potentially open to abuse as it would be, I'd rather see casualties removed from the front, but give the user the option to swap out the removed model with another. It would allow shooty armies to build space, without requiring the model by model micromanagement that the current system runs you into. Effectively allow anyone to Look Out Sir by swapping position with another model.

Attacker controls the position that models are removed from, defender controls which equipment is lost.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I like that the current casualty removal system rewards clever movement and attack angles.

It really doesn't. It rewards micro management on the defending player's end. Simply put, the table size, average army size/game size, and weapon ranges means that movement and flanking maneuvers mean very little. There's no morale effect, no bonus to damage, and only vehicles have to worry about facings. All this system does is reward people who spend the extra time to nestle their important models as deep as possible within their unit. Nothing more.

I dislike that you do wind up with BS micromanagement of which model is where within the unit. Such a waste of time agonizing over whether to put 5 guys to the left and 3 to the right, or 4 and 4.

Exactly. The minute advantage of having to spend some sort of incredibly minor and frankly extremely basic tactical thought on considering where your opponent could be generally shooting from next turn isn't a good tradeoff for the waste of time.

As awkward and potentially open to abuse as it would be, I'd rather see casualties removed from the front, but give the user the option to swap out the removed model with another. It would allow shooty armies to build space, without requiring the model by model micromanagement that the current system runs you into. Effectively allow anyone to Look Out Sir by swapping position with another model.

Attacker controls the position that models are removed from, defender controls which equipment is lost.

This sounds exactly like the old 'choose you advent...errr, death' system. Maybe you just didn't fully explain it, but it sounds like it'd have the exact same end result, but still complicated. Just let the player decide. Until 40k is an actual skirmish game that bothers with facings and a better morale system, its just not worth the hassle and isn't any better of a table top abstraction.

I'd remove most any rule that must be kept track of in a subsequent turn.

Yes, I think it could use it, and some more conservative changes:

Streamline some of the squad level stuff.

Balance things properly, including toning down formations and making superheavies fit properly if they're part of the game (without just making killing smaller single targets even easier).

Get rid of some of the stupid random.

Allow split fire in some way so heavy weapons in squads aren't wasting efficiency.

If anything vehicles should remain mostly the same, it's mc's that should borrow a few rules from vehicles IMO like some way to reduce mc movement/shooting temporarily.


I like the level of details with vehicles, the varying fire arcs, different armour facings. You make them mc's then you lose a lot of the detail.

I'd like to see more seperation of shooting at man sized models vs vehicle models so we end up with less lascannon/krak missile sniping.

 master of ordinance wrote:

Now it actually hurts me to do this but as you have persistently shown a lak of willingness to google some basic information I am going to have to cite a video game as evidence. I hope you feel proud son I really do because right now I am feeling dirty as hell.
War Thunder
There. I did it.
War Thunder, for all of it being a computer game and its noticeable, if very minor, Russian bias (T34's and KV1's wtf? They are bloody difficult to penetrate), is actually as close to tank on tank combat as you are ever going to come. When you shoot the target and your shot bounces it does nothing. Now you can shoot your target again and again and nothing will happen. He wont be magically glanced to death. In fact he will probably just shoot you right back and KO you.

I'm going to disagree. War Thunder was actually good at representation near the beginning of the game, but as you level up things got super ridiculous. A Stuart tank deflecting high velocity 105mm rounds off it's flat side? Not like at an angle, but at a flat trajectory that when it hits causes the round to go in another direction. No thank you. Especially since the tanks were not MBT's, but used for Recce'.

The most accurate representation I've seen has been Combat Mission, either the early 2000's or the newest version of the game. About as real as it gets, down to morale and status of the crew.

I guess a moot point in the argument. But I think Combat Mission is by far the best representation out there.

Refocus the TT game on capturing the feel of a 40K battle. If Space Marines are supposed to be humanity's finest warriors, and the boltgun is a feared weapon, make sure that is reflected in the game. If terminators are supposed to be deadly and dangerous, and nearly impossible to kill, then make sure that they are.

Don't make changes to the rules because something is unbalanced; make changes to the points cost in that case. If particular weapons are supposed to be rare and powerful, then make sure that is reflected in their points cost and their availability. If grav guns and plasma pistols are rare artefacts, then they need to be restricted in availability through points costs or other mechanisms.

Armies full of specialist troops and gear should be points costed appropriately. There should be a meaningful game incentive to use basic troops. While some people want to play with all the specialist toys, the person who wants to field the poor bloody infantry (or the poor bloody gaunts) should be able to have an effective army as well.

I love objectives, but the current objectives are simply too abstract. Figure out a way to have objectives that should actually matter to the troops on the tabletop. As an example, in the older Cityfight codex, some games had the highest terrain that you could deploy on as an objective. That's something that troops might actually want, not a random marker, placed on the board, that has a random effect. Objectives should matter before terrain is even on the board.

Only use random charts when you actually want random events. Your psyker trained for years--he knows what he can do. Your warlord has decades of experience--he isn't randomly skilled. The heap of scrap on the battlefield probably isn't a temporal distortion field. Don't allow 'you can't choose the result' to sub in for 'balanced'.

Don't be afraid of uselessness. There is too much effort in the game to make sure everything can do something all the time. It should be fine to have things too tough to wound, and armor too thick to penetrate. I'm thinking of Warmachine, where (when I played, at least), troops might find themselves unable to combat a warjack effectively.

If you are going to retain the use of penetrating hits and hull points, then make them make sense. Things that glance do not penetrate the hull, so they should not remove hull points. There should be a great deal of glancing hits, with most of those hits doing nothing more than scoring the paint, and the occasional glancing hit doing something minor like killing a crewman or passenger, or taking out a pintle-mounted weapon.

Formations and the like should not change the basic rules of the unit, for the most part. Formations that make weapons more reliable, or give away free upgrades, seem 'gamey' and unbalanced. Formations that reflect specialist tactics and training 'feel' right to me. If your formation allows you to field things in a different way than a standard force org, or gives you different deployment options, etc., those things make sense to me.

Increase the value of Weapon Skill. It's ridiculous that, for the most part, no matter how skilled you are, you miss with a third of your attacks, no matter who you are fighting.

Decide specifically when and how players can interrupt the Igo-Ugo sequence. If you are going to disallow first-turn assaults, AND disallow assaulting out of vehicles and from Deep Striking, AND allow Overwatch, AND have random charge distances, you have done too much to inhibit assaults. If it is possible to intervene and discourage assaults (by overwatch and random charge distances--where you fail to reach and they retreat), then it should also be possible to intervene and encourage assaults. Why can the shooty army take actions to discourage assaults when the army that is eager to reach close combat do nothing in these cases?

Come up with some common sense modifications to True Line of Sight. TLOS slows down the game horribly, if you actually apply it consistently, and discourages a lot of dense terrain (which can make the game more interesting) by making that terrain hellaciously difficult to check line of sight in.

Emphasize terrain, deployment, and force organization restrictions as part of the missions. The current ruleset basically assumes that all games, unless previously agreed, will be on terrain sparse enough to allow you to deploy and use flyers, superheavies, vehicles, monstrous creatures, etc. Those games are fine, but I don't think that they should be a default assumption--or at least, there should be ways to specify missions that rule out some of those choices. A 'space hulk' mission, for example, might make it clear that very dense terrain will be the norm, and superheavies, large walkers, flyers, and monstrous creatures will be unable to deploy. A urban warfare mission might have some of the same restrictions. A jungle fight scenario might be different. Those options should be part of the basic ruleset, so that there exists a way to communicate expectations about games at tournaments, pickup games, and clubs.

Not to go back to the 3rd edition WYSIWYG mania (with purity seals and terminator honors, etc.), but for the most part, rules should be associated with models and their stats. It's insane to have the level of 'free-floating' special rules that we have now. You have rules because of your warlord trait, your formation, your detachment, etc. It discourages modeling creativity (since the model's actual rules vary from game to game) and it makes the models seem more like bland tokens than 'wargaming models'.

If I could change one and only thing about 7th, it would be this: Go back to 6th where only Troops were scoring, and then make all units in a CAD scoring units (instead of the Objective Secured benefit). That would give people a meaningful reason to take a CAD, and, I think, level the competition with all these crazy formation reprints they are putting out, and this would give the codex user a reason to consider anything other than the best "Decurion" they have in their book.

If I could change one thing about 40k. It would be to stop trying to make it backward compatible to previous editions Codex books.

Trying to make improvements without actually changing any thing to address core issues , is why the current rules are such a complete mess.

Blimey! This picked up more steam than I thought it would. An interesting read, though.

Make all models truescale! There's nothing more frustrating than having space marines stand the same height as your average guardsman and fire warrior vehicles included, we wouldn't be able to fit as many on the table but it certainly would look better!

 RileyJessup wrote:
Make all models truescale! There's nothing more frustrating than having space marines stand the same height as your average guardsman and fire warrior vehicles included, we wouldn't be able to fit as many on the table but it certainly would look better!

That's easy! Just make smaller humans and Tau then everything will be truescale.

I would love to implement several changes.

1. overwatch happening in opponents turn as reaction fire. as in if a unit enters line of sight you can choose to fire at them.
2. dashing cover. i.e. if running from cover to cover a bonus is conferred
3. vehicle hull down and ammo tracking. Hit locations on vehicles etc.