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 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
2 more to go, so another one I think will get wide support:

Battle Brothers and Desperate Allies - Cutting 2 of the 4 levels of allies leaving just 2, Allies of Convenience and Come the Apocalypse. Why? Even among the Imperium none of the factions really like each other, Marines think the Guard are incompetent cannon fodder, Guard thinks Sisters are psycho pyromaniacs, Sisters think Mechanicus are a half step from heresy and nobody likes the Inquisition or Assassins. They may all be fighting for the Emperor but they're not at the 'come on and ride in my APC' or 'hey want to lead my squad' level of friendship. So don't allow even natural allies to share transports, characters and buffs. And once you're bringing in various Xeno groups it gets worse. But I'd also go back to the 6th edition practice where all Imperial actions were listed seperately. I'd also make sure everyone, including Nids and Necs, gets at least two friends, probably Orks and Guard. They'll ally with anyone.

For Assassins and Inquisition, I think I'd just say they are elite/HQ picks for all Imperial forces (except maybe Dark Angels and Space Wolfs).

Agreed. Nothing makes my blood boil more than seeing SW and DA allied together. Seriously, that would never happen, DA are supposed to be loners. Probably the most offensive one I saw was a DE detachment, Eldar detachment, and TWC detachment. It was built just to spam OP units.

AoS plays exactly like 40k, and it's far less messy than 40k. If they were to take the next step and clean up the unit abilities a la 3E / KOW, that would be even better.

Alrighty. Let's go.

Unbound - I understand the concept. It's to let people make nice fluffy lists like Assault Companies, Tyranid Winged hordes or Kult of Speed style lists....but in practice it's just too easy to abuse and stack the uber units from different armies without care for theme or composition. Really, these variant armies could be better suited by a 'pool' of generic detachments that allow greater emphasis on specific aspects and could be taken by anyone.

Rule Retrogression - KK covered this with the weapon profiles. I will come out and state that this is also the case with the Wulfen (people saying they got 'old' Fleet back) and seems to crop up every other release. When we moved to 3rd ed everything got chopped and streamlined, to avoid the 2nd ed. 'skirmish' game dragging on forever and a day with everything (and I mean everything) having its own unique rules, profiles, charts, tables...

We've started moving back towards that. We have old rules cropping up in new units or as Formation bonuses. We have weapons getting different profiles (which almost immediately shafts people based on their modelling choices - how do you like your almost all I1 Khornate army because you thought Axes were fluffy, eh?) and we have more and more random charts for individual units, formations and so on.

Seriously, the Wulfen pissed me off in this respect. Not only are they a slathering of special rules but they also have 'unique' rules and 'unique' charts for interacting with other models in their own army.

Formation Freebies - No. Stop. Seriously. The most obvious one that comes to mind is the SM ones that give them free transports. In Exterminatus BA got formations that gave all their Veterans free weapon upgrades. In CotW the Wolves get a formation that gives their transports free upgrades.

This needs to stop. There's a reason weapons, transports and upgrades have point costs. There's a reason points exist within the structure of the game and indeed are used as the underlying factor to determine a balanced composition to play against someone else. So it'd be mighty nice if formations could just...STOP...ignoring that.

Apocalypse Rules at 40k Levels - Superheavies and the D - KK made a good point. There needs to be some sort of restriction on this. Between this and unbound it's just...meh. My local club had a no holds barred tournament recently - the restriction was no Unbound. Ok. I worked out a legal 1850 Eldar force that consisted of around 4 CADs that pretty much netted me 4 Wraithknights and 8 units of jetbikes to claim objectives with. Did I play? No. For one that sort of thing is pretty much blah for anyone not playing that sort of army.

But Superheavies and Gargantuans...do NOT belong in 40k without restriction. They are just too dominant at lower point values - hence why they originally only cropped up in Apocalypse games at 3k+ or had a whole slew of penalties in the forms of bonuses for your opponent in Escalation.

I personally loathe Imperial Knights. They have no right to be a standard 40k army. One superheavy is enough to imbalance a game against certain factions unless they specifically tailor their army to deal with that and ONLY that so bringing multiple along is just out of line.

D-weapons are another Apocalypse relic that cropped up in 40k and again, completely screw certain factions over with ease unless their tailor specifically to deal with it.

Flyers - Hey, remember the Apocalypse relics that made their way into 40k? Here's another. Before they were essentially slightly faster skimmers that switched modes for Apocalypse games. Ok. Fair enough. That's fine. Now they're something that is downright irritating or invulnerable depending on what faction you chose to play and paint. Do you play Sisters of Battle? Sucks to be you friend.

Revert these please and take another Apocalypse ruleset OUT of 40k.

Consistency of Units - Ok, can we talk Land Raiders? Can we talk why that Land Raider painted blue can carry more guys than this Land Raider painted red, this one painted silver or this one covered in spikes?

Can we talk about why the blue, red and silver ones can fire an additional weapon but the spiky one can't?

Can we talk about why the red Rhino inexpilicably moves faster than the blue, silver and spiky Rhinos?

Also, why do the silver vehicles generate warp charge dice?

Can we talk about why we are all paying pretty much the same points for the same models and yet they all have half a dozen different rules depending on what book you use?

40k has this thing called a Standard Template Construct - so why are these things not 'standard' in any way, shape or form?

Let's just...make all these vehicles that are used in different armies but the same thing (Land Raiders, Rhinos, Predators, Chimeras, Stormravens, Valkyries) actually have the same profile, cost and options. Let's make the faction-specific option an upgrade for that particular book rather than a free additional special rule just tacked on.

Speaking of things which are the same but used in different armies...

How about some 'generic' no-faction units?

The old 40k CCG had no-faction generic units in it that could be used by any of the decks. They were cheap. They were not amazing but they opened up options.

So how about some generic PDF? Some generic gangers? Some generic STC vehicles?

All these factions mention that units chosen can only be of X faction or No Faction...but there's not a single NO FACTION unit.

This would also open up some fluff and theme options for modellers out there.

Want a Genestealer Cult? Take the GC units, splash in some generic gangers and PDF!

Want Gue'vesa? Take Tau, splash in generic PDF.

Want Diggas? (DIGGA DIGGA DIGGANOB!) Take Orks, splash in generic gangers.

Want Frateris Militia? Take Sisters, splash in generic Gangers.

 Blacksails wrote:

 jer155 wrote:
What's wrong with unbound?

Its a joke. Its the absence of rules.

Unbound always existed. Publishing it is a waste of ink.

That's a really good point actually. If you're not playing in tournament, you can just play without the standard force organisation without it being published officially.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The biggest problem with 40k's rules is that they keep adding more of them. We don't need No Fear and Fearless and Stubborn - just Fearless. We don't need +1A for 2nd weapon and Hammer of Wrath -- just give the stat as A2. And so on. Cut the special rules and simplify the rest with a vengeance a la AoS!

Simplify yes.

Simplify a la AoS noooooooo.

KoW is simple, it has four pages of special rules and every unit in the game will only use those special rules. Once you learn them you can see a new unit on the table and ask what they do. The answer will be that they have X, Y and X, and you know EXACTLY what that unit is capable of.
AoS has no universal special rules, every unit seems to have something totally unique listed on their unit entry. A shield on one model might grant a +1 save if he charged, but on the next model it lets you reroll 1s on your save if you didn't charge, but then yet another rolls a dice for every unsaved wound and on a 6 ignores it.
This is a lot harder to remember when you're on the other side of the table and not as familiar with the army you are playing against, and requires a lot of reading the same rule again and again to remind yourself of it and asking your opponent what a unit does.
This isn't simple, it's just putting the information in the one place.

This, all of this.

Why bother with a Special Rules and Weapons section in the main rulebook when every single codex basically requires it's own version in their own book (and sometimes subsections for THOSE ones as well. Specialist Ammunition comes to mind and that's not even a 7th or 6th edition thing!).

Also I think Warlord Traits and Psychic Powers should both be purchasable upgrades. This give some dynamic to design as there can be wildly powerful warlord traits/psychic powers and very weak ones, but balanced out by points so that you don't have to rely on a randomized table to ensure "fairness".

 DarkStarSabre wrote:


How about some 'generic' no-faction units?

The old 40k CCG had no-faction generic units in it that could be used by any of the decks. They were cheap. They were not amazing but they opened up options.

So how about some generic PDF? Some generic gangers? Some generic STC vehicles?

All these factions mention that units chosen can only be of X faction or No Faction...but there's not a single NO FACTION unit.

This would also open up some fluff and theme options for modellers out there.

Want a Genestealer Cult? Take the GC units, splash in some generic gangers and PDF!

Want Gue'vesa? Take Tau, splash in generic PDF.

Want Diggas? (DIGGA DIGGA DIGGANOB!) Take Orks, splash in generic gangers.

Want Frateris Militia? Take Sisters, splash in generic Gangers.

I really like this idea. A Scum and Villiany book with human gangs/priates/cults, Kroot, Hurd and some generic technical type vehicles would be fantastic.

Hell throw in Ambulls, Grox herds and other random ideas too. Just take John Blanche's sketch book and dump it into a 3d printer!

Oh, i'd also gut Tau from 40k. Or at least most of the new stuff. I really like the Vespids and Kroot armies, but that never sees play. Its usually Riptides, Stormsurges, Ghostkeels, etc.

 jreilly89 wrote:
Oh, i'd also gut Tau from 40k. Or at least most of the new stuff. I really like the Vespids and Kroot armies, but that never sees play. Its usually Riptides, Stormsurges, Ghostkeels, etc.

My co-worker who recently got into the game would be upset, as he came from building Gundams and really likes the look and feel of the Suits. Granted, he also brings things like Infantry, Ethereals, and Devilfish, but still.

That's like me saying "Get rid of Eldar because people don't use Guardians".

 jreilly89 wrote:
Oh, i'd also gut Tau from 40k. Or at least most of the new stuff. I really like the Vespids and Kroot armies, but that never sees play. Its usually Riptides, Stormsurges, Ghostkeels, etc.

Have an exalt. The newer suits are shoehorned into the fluff and lack any place in the Tau theme.

That said I would be quite happy for the Tau to keep their big suits if they became what they should have been from the start: Vehicles. To be specific Super Heavy Walkers. Give them an armour of 12/12/10 and let them keep their FNP save as an Invun save.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 DarkStarSabre wrote:


How about some 'generic' no-faction units?

The old 40k CCG had no-faction generic units in it that could be used by any of the decks. They were cheap. They were not amazing but they opened up options.

So how about some generic PDF? Some generic gangers? Some generic STC vehicles?

All these factions mention that units chosen can only be of X faction or No Faction...but there's not a single NO FACTION unit.

This would also open up some fluff and theme options for modellers out there.

Want a Genestealer Cult? Take the GC units, splash in some generic gangers and PDF!

Want Gue'vesa? Take Tau, splash in generic PDF.

Want Diggas? (DIGGA DIGGA DIGGANOB!) Take Orks, splash in generic gangers.

Want Frateris Militia? Take Sisters, splash in generic Gangers.

I really like this idea. A Scum and Villiany book with human gangs/priates/cults, Kroot, Hurd and some generic technical type vehicles would be fantastic.

Hell throw in Ambulls, Grox herds and other random ideas too. Just take John Blanche's sketch book and dump it into a 3d printer!

I'd love that myself. Just...a pool of generic things, complete with generic MCs, beasts and the like that could be used for missions or theme alone.

But the best bit is that as No Faction units...they could be taken by anyone. It lets GW do the oddball units and themes that don't really fit in currently with the armies but also makes it for anyone to buy. Plus, it covers that one really odd statement in every detachment or formation they seem to have produced.

Hell, a generic No Faction army might be an army in itself. Probably weaker overall than any of the others but a lot more varied and aesthetically mixed.

 Toofast wrote:

 undertow wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
Remove the closest wound.

This was my favorite change when going from 5th to 6th edition. I would be mad if it went away.

Why is agonizing over individual model placement in a game with 200 models on the table a good thing? This is a classic case of GW trying to escalate everything, and then throwing a bunch of hyper detailed skirmish rules in that just slow down the game. They need to decide what they want more, giant tanks, planes and big stompy robots running around or detailed, model by model interactions. When you try to do both at the same time, the ruleset suffers. If they want us all to cover the table in models, they should probably give us a simpler way to resolve things.

What you refer to as 'agonizing' I see as tactical flexibility. When I was learning the game in 5th edition, one of the things that annoyed me to no end was people keeping special weapons-bearing models alive until it was the last thing remaining in a unit. Or people allocating one wound each to multi-wound models.

Removing the closest model allows you to place your shooting until in locations that remove a specific model, or avoids really tough models that are sporting a stormshield or re-rollable save of some sort.

Random Warlord Traits. My 400 year old chapter master fething knows how to wage war his own goddam way.

Random Psychic Powers. I spent the points on my fething psycher, let me pick my goddam powers. What, do people buying Power Weapons randomly roll to see if it's a Power Sword or a Power Axe this game? No? Then feth you! Let me pick my powers.

 kronk wrote:
Random Psychic Powers. I spent the points on my fething psycher, let me pick my goddam powers. What, do people buying Power Weapons randomly roll to see if it's a Power Sword or a Power Axe this game? No? Then feth you! Let me pick my powers.

... and if you don't have the appropriate model, the PW weapon is treated as a regular Close Combat Weapon with no special effects.

Dammit, don't give give those fethers at GW any new ideas!

And #1 is...

I thought long and hard on this one, yeah for old time's sake I considered my old stand by of 'Space Elfs'. The Eldar after all are a Mary Sue army, required by the fluff to be the best there is at EVERYTHING and as result they've had more than their share of bad rules and broken units. WAY back in the 90s my friends and I talked about the 'cheezy eldar weapons phase' of the game and things haven't gotten any better.

I also thought about S4, T4 space marines as the #1 thing to go. Like the Eldar they're a Mary Sue army, the best and the coolest. And it's their relatively lackluster stats (just 1 higher than the cannon fodder army) that has led to an endless succession of patches and picky rules from Rogue Trader onwards (remember Rapid Fire? Shaken and Stirred? Or the '@#$% this Marines are now T4' article?). I wonder how the game would have evolved if Marines had been T5, S5 (etc) from 3rd edition onwards? Yeah there are good commerical reasons not to have marines too powerful (imagine if you only needed 10 of them for an army) but it would be interesting.

But no... the winner is... the #1 thing that has to go is...

One size fits all - The problem with 40k (any most large open ended rule systems) is the problem of human nature. Like the politician who hates special interests, but will fight to the death to protect soy bean subsidies, we all hate silly rules, broken rules, trivial rules, EXCEPT for the ones we like.

So the best answer seems to be to go back towards 4th and 5th edition where the game just had different levels of detail depending on size.

So at the skirmish level you have flash grenades, conversion fields that blind people, Autarch powers, random daemon weapon tables etc.

At the battle level you drop those but still keep track of whether Rhino #5 is stunned or decide if you need to remove the heavy weapon guy or can just take rifleman.

At the apocalypse level it's all about speed. Tanks are either 100% intact or dead, you remove whomever you want, wargear is rounded off to easy counterparts (rending becomes +1 strength, deamon swords and lighting claws become power weapons).

Rules would be marked with some icon for skirmish, battle or apoc so people would know what applies when.

IE: Daemon Sword (Skirmish) Roll on this table to see what power you have
(Battle) AP2 power weapon, causes a wound (saves apply) on roll of a 1
(Apoc) Power weapon

This would add some complexity, some additional length to rules but would let people have their cake and eat it too.

Like everything else on my list it probably won't happen. Or if it did it would be overturned when the next edition comes around.

If there's one thing 20 years (off and on) of playing GW games taught me it is that they didn't get where they are by making well-balanced, well-written or fun rules.

- Walkers: All of them could be MC:s.
- Glancing hits.

 Draco wrote:
- Walkers: All of them could be MC:s.
- Glancing hits.

MCs: most of them could be walkers

Like I said before I prefer the walker rules to MCs. Walkers can be shot in rear armor, they can be damaged, they can be hurt by various anti-tank special weapons etc.

You can actually use tactics against them.

MCs follow the drastically simplified rules for models, rules that work fine for 1W models but not for giant bugs/demons/robots the size of Chevys.

MCs should work like the big monsters in AoS, with their capabilities declining as their hit points are reduced,

 undertow wrote:

 Toofast wrote:

 undertow wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
Remove the closest wound.

This was my favorite change when going from 5th to 6th edition. I would be mad if it went away.

Why is agonizing over individual model placement in a game with 200 models on the table a good thing? This is a classic case of GW trying to escalate everything, and then throwing a bunch of hyper detailed skirmish rules in that just slow down the game. They need to decide what they want more, giant tanks, planes and big stompy robots running around or detailed, model by model interactions. When you try to do both at the same time, the ruleset suffers. If they want us all to cover the table in models, they should probably give us a simpler way to resolve things.

What you refer to as 'agonizing' I see as tactical flexibility. When I was learning the game in 5th edition, one of the things that annoyed me to no end was people keeping special weapons-bearing models alive until it was the last thing remaining in a unit. Or people allocating one wound each to multi-wound models.

Removing the closest model allows you to place your shooting until in locations that remove a specific model, or avoids really tough models that are sporting a stormshield or re-rollable save of some sort.

Which is fine in a game like WMH where there are 20-30 models per side. Not in 40k where that number can simply be one unit.

The best wound allocation system was 5th's (yes, it was exploitable but by literally a handful of (admittedly popular due to being able to exploit it. Go figure) units) with a couple of caveats from 4th brought back.

Use the wound allocation from 5th but with the caveat you can only remove models from range and LOS of the unit (not from anywhere like in 5th) and add back in the "torrent of fire" where if you cause more wounds than there are members of the unit then you as the shooter can allocate one.

Done. No agonising over where individual models are to an extent, but tactical enough that you can snipe out those key models with some good positioning.

As for people allocating multiple wounds to multi wound units. Either you only ever faced Nob Bikers, TWC, Bloodcrushers and GK Paladins or you got cheated. The model's needed to be equipped differently to spread out wounds like that and only the above units could actually make use of said rule to its fullest extent in 5th.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Like I said before I prefer the walker rules to MCs. Walkers can be shot in rear armor, they can be damaged, they can be hurt by various anti-tank special weapons etc.

You can actually use tactics against them.

This is something I 110% agree with. Unlike MC's, positioning counts for a hel of a lot against a vehicle and using high S low AP weapons matters.

Kilkrazy wrote:MCs should work like the big monsters in AoS, with their capabilities declining as their hit points are reduced,

This. If MC's lost abilities as they took damage then they would be far more acceptable.

How about this, eliminate the wound stat entirely?

replace it with toughness and armor buffs. Maybe give some special charcters fate points to reroll.

Everything else follows the vehicle rules.

Nobody probably has any sympathy for this or interest in even reading this, but apocalypse is exactly the place where there should be more detail, not less.

It should matter that a veteran unit is better at getting cover against airstrikes and Titan guns. It should matter that a better squad leader is the spotter/commander for a squad anti tank weapon and they can do more damage to a Knight Engine than a less competent sergeant. It should matter that a single character can be in command of an entire front so killing him can cause extreme damage, but that flyers or Titan engines don't even have the ability to see where single individuals are, so you need to send a kill team or a champion to kill him at speaking range.

Also, there are a variety of reasons for MCs, including mechanical MCs, to be different than walkers. Mostly they have to do with the models not being good indicators of, just like infantry models, where the creature is facing at any given moment, because of the wife variety of poses it could adopt while shooting, jumping, crouching, running, etc. They are also different structurally from walking vehicles.

You certainly can put more detail into Apocalypse rather than less, but it will make playing the game a slower business.

 Hanskrampf wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
One take away from my playing 40k a bit this Christmas break is there much too much out there in the rules.

So with no further ado, here's what I think could be cut and no one would miss them...

Special rules that can be built into stats - Feel No Pain is the first one I think of, turn it into a blanket +1 toughness.

Disagree with FnP. It's a save after saves. I still remember my bionics from 3rd edition. I would miss it.

Unbound - No, just no.

Agreed.

Superheavies in every game - Give each a minimum game size before they can be used. And yeah that includes Knights, and Dreadknights and Riptides and all that stuff.

Agreed. 30k has a good approach to this problem.

Formation special rules - I actually kind of like the idea of formations, but not the idea that buying XYZ gives you some random benefit like bonuses in overwatch or free Rhinos. So keep formations as a way to do odd armies like Deathwing, or 10th Company or whatever but don't offer bonuses for them.

Then there would be no point in using them. Give them a bonus fitting of the formation. But not some broken gak like free transport or Decurion.

Giant Robots that count as models - OK, from now on if you're bigger than like an ogre, you're a vehicle. You have front/side/rear armor so there's a point in flanking you. You lose weapons and attacks as you take damage. You follow the same rules as everyone else.

IF it's a vehicle. I'm fine with big Tyranids having a T value. But Mechanicum robots? Tau suits, regardless how big? No way.

Granular weapon rules - One thing I really liked about 3rd edition was the belated realization that when there's 50+ models on the table and tanks and robots and demons... no one cares if you have an axe or a sword or a board with a nail through it. So everything short of a lightsaber became a generic close combat weapon. Not only did this cut book keeping, it also freed up modelling opportunties. Now if I wanted to give my assault marines spears or nunchucks or broken bottles I could! But now... Different rules for power swords, axes and maces, plus every army seems to get newer and siller weapons. Trans-sonic blades? What do they even do? So back to basics. CC weapons get a simple AP, or maybe rending and they're in broad categories so there's still some modelling freedom.

I have to say, I quite like the different power weapon sytles, even if it's a lot to remember.

Almost agree on everything what you ve mentioned but i would add a limit to formations. like 1 or two each but both got to got some in their army for equality of power.
What i would change is almost evry change which have ben made for orks from 6th to 7th. they are totally nerfed. not good 0... not good. there should be some bonus for melee armies like 500 points bonus for evry game against a shooty army.
most important change psychic phase to second edition. instaed of using dice use cards. nerf chaos d3mons spam liwts. make summoning demons harder, if not with cards with a successful roll of 6 + instead of 4+.

pelicaniforce wrote:
Nobody probably has any sympathy for this or interest in even reading this, but apocalypse is exactly the place where there should be more detail, not less.

Nope.

While I like to play the occasional Apoc game, I'd like to get past Turn 2.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Like I said before I prefer the walker rules to MCs. Walkers can be shot in rear armor, they can be damaged, they can be hurt by various anti-tank special weapons etc.

You can actually use tactics against them.

MCs follow the drastically simplified rules for models, rules that work fine for 1W models but not for giant bugs/demons/robots the size of Chevys.

The two main differences between walkers and MC are the fixed/360° fire arc and the possibility to insta-kill walkers: keep both profiles to differentiate slow walkers and agile MC but find a way to insta kill a MC with a meltagun (6 to wound with a VP1 weapon maybe?).