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Let's face it: 40K is clunky. As my fellow cynics said in this thread, just fixing point costs isn't enough to "balance" the game. GW's layered edition over edition since Rogue Trader -- which in turn layered over Fantasy -- until the ruleset resembles an archaeological dig or Microsoft software, with any clarity there may have been at the start is lost under an accumulation of band-aid solutions that never fix the fundamental problems.

So burn it down.

If GW asked you to write a new Warhammer 40K ruleset from the ground up, staying faithful to the feel of the old game but without having to keep any individual rule, what would you do? What sacred cows need killing and what should be saved?

Here are my five ideas

1) No more player turns: players alternate moving/shooting/charging individual units


2) No more "saves": Incorporate cover into to-hit rolls & armor into Toughness


3) Homebrew Heaven: A point-cost system to price individual models


4) Bigger tables + more terrain = more tactics


5) A free dice-rolling app for your phone


That's five heresies so far. Only 95 to go to meet our goal!

I have mulled over a similar idea for simultaneous turns. Perhaps an alternate to the unit by unit framework is resolving your turns together but only removing models after both players have acted.

The way it would work would be Player A makes all their actions, including moving, shooting assaulting, etc... then Player B makes all their actions. Models are removed at the end of a game turn.

Huh. That kinds of loses the interactivity of unit-by-unit, though.

Use d8's or d10's to provide for a greater diffentiation between results than is available with a d6. This should also help cut down on dice rolling.

Leave my d6 alone.

There needs to be clear terrain placement as well as fort placement rules to fixs the current shenanigans.

I like your five heresies thus far,

Heresy Two reminds me of how Flames of War shooting system, using the competency of the unit verses the cover of the target.
Would ward saves just be counted as an armour save or a special thing on its own?

 Yonan wrote:
Use d8's or d10's to provide for a greater diffentiation between results than is available with a d6. This should also help cut down on dice rolling.

I don't know about dice. To get better differentiation of results, arguably it might be best to expand the unit stat scale, i.e. so instead of most units have S, T, I in the 2-5 range with 3 as the average, have them in a 1-10 range with 5 as the average. Of course then you might need bigger dice to maintain the same level of randomness as d6s with a smaller number range.

 wowsmash wrote:
Leave my d6 alone.

There needs to be clear terrain placement as well as fort placement rules to fixs the current shenanigans.

Yes! This! What I SHOULD have said in my Heresy #4 about more terrain.

LordSolar wrote:
Would ward saves just be counted as an armour save or a special thing on its own?

I think you could fold saves of all types into either cover bonuses vs. being hit or toughness bonsues vs. being wounded. Deny the Witch, for example, would be a cover bonus vs. psychic attacks hitting you (since physical cover wouldn't matter much there).

But aren't "ward saves" a Fantasy thing?

LordSolar wrote:

Heresy Two reminds me of how Flames of War shooting system, using the competency of the unit verses the cover of the target.

I haven't played Flames of War but unit-by-unit seems to be the new standard. And remember this is how classic games like chess work! "I move all my guys, you move all yours" is a weird fluke of 20th century game design.

You could make it even more dynamic by having this rule instead:
1) Every phase, each player nominates one unit to act.
2) Roll 1d6 for each unit and add that unit's Initiative. Higher total wins.
3) The player of the winning unit may choose either
- to move/shoot/etc. his unit first. The losing unit may not act this round, but it may attempt to act in another round.
- to make the enemy unit take its turn first. Then the winning unit may act or not act this round, but save its move for another round.

This would allow all a high-initiative army to take several "turns" in a row without the opponent getting a chance to respond OR to force the enemy army to make its moves, see what they're doing, and then react.

I think that shooting with small arms at 8" is very different than shooting with heavy weapons at 39 inches, so firefights have to be "winnable" the same way close combat is and that it probably should not even rely on the same stat as long-range shooting.

I think there is an interesting point in your very first few sentences, about stratified, additive design.

ugh. How many points does a jump pack cost? How many points does a jump pack cost?

How many damn points does a damn jump pack cost?


It is way different if you are a squad of marines, a character, or a bunch of Scourges.

You could say that since so many people think it is a good idea, and have such reasonable points, that it must be a good idea to have standardized point costs. However, there are similar amounts of people who found very reasonable points to the practice in the 3.5 ed Chaos book of having wargear costs that differed between multi-wound ICs and single-wound squad characters.


The interesting point then is that design by institutional creep is the problem, but design by a collection of populist notions that have been lying around since day two is fundamentally the same thing.

So how many points does a jump pack cost? How many points does a heavy weapon cost if I can only buy one per ten expensive models per force org slot, vs six per force org slot per every ten cheap models?

How much does a weapon with Shred cost when it is on an s3 model vs an s4 model? You cannot say that it is an additive difference, because a reroll is worth more to a weaker model than to a stronger one.

See, it is a terrible process for making decisions. It does not matter what is correct or better when it comes to IGOUGO vs alternating activation, it matters that the criteria for evaluating whether these are even questions worth asking are haphazard and emotionally dishonest.

 SisterSydney wrote:

Spoiler:

Let's face it: 40K is clunky. As my fellow cynics said in this thread, just fixing point costs isn't enough to "balance" the game. GW's layered edition over edition since Rogue Trader -- which in turn layered over Fantasy -- until the ruleset resembles an archaeological dig or Microsoft software, with any clarity there may have been at the start is lost under an accumulation of band-aid solutions that never fix the fundamental problems.

So burn it down.

If GW asked you to write a new Warhammer 40K ruleset from the ground up, staying faithful to the feel of the old game but without having to keep any individual rule, what would you do? What sacred cows need killing and what should be saved?

Here are my five ideas

1) No more player turns: players alternate moving/shooting/charging individual units
[spoiler]
Instead of "all my units move, all my units shoot or run, all my units charge, now your turn," one player picks one unit to do all those things with, then the other player picks one of his units to do all those things with, and back and forth.
(The "leaked" 6th edition ruleset that turned out to be either fake or a wild & crazy GW experiment had this, I recall).
This eliminates a lot of waiting around while the other guy takes his turn and you can do nothing. This also makes it much more challenging for assault armies to charge towards the enemy in a single furious wave and much more challenging for shooty armies to concentrate fire and wipe out the enemy one unit at a time, because the targets get to react. You would get a much more dynamic and interactive game.
Potential wrinkle: This adds complexity, but what if you could test Initiative to interrupt the other player's unit in mid-action?
E.g. "Now I move my tank here..." "No, you don't, I shoot it first. Roll initiative!" [dice clatter] BOOM!
Or "My Fire Warriors shoot you to death!" "No, you don't, my Repentia charge you first. Roll Initiative!" [dice clatter] "CHAAARGE!" [Overwatch:] DAKKA DAKKA DAK.... [Eviscerators:] BUZZZZZZZZZ SPLATTER BUZZZ

2) No more "saves": Incorporate cover into to-hit rolls & armor into Toughness

Spoiler:

We have a three-step combat process: roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save. Let's cut that by 33% -- and make it worthwhile for armored troops to use cover while we're at it.
Instead of "to hit" in shooting being simply a function of the firer's Ballistic Skill, with the target getting to (maybe) take a cover save later on, make a chart like the one we already have for melee combat, only it's not WS vs. WS but BS vs. cover. Assuming "normal trained human" BS stays at 3, we can have "normal terrain" count as Cover 3, preserving a 50-50 chance to hit: Even level ground has little dips and valleys where troops can go to ground. A perfectly flat surface -- say a frozen lake or airport runway -- would be Cover 1. A trench system, a battlefield riddled with shell holes, or rubble might be Cover 4 or 5; a bunker, Cover 6. Weapons that "Ignore Cover" now would just reduce it by, say, 2: Being inside a bunker does protect you against being fried by a flamethrower, just not nearly as well as it protects you against being brained by a bullet.
Similarly, instead of "to wound" being simply a matter of Strength versus Toughness, with the target getting to (maybe) take an armor save later on, just make armor a straight bonus to toughness -- which your target doesn't get to take if your AP is high enough. This probably requires rejiggering Strength and Toughness values so the average Strength is higher than the average Toughness, because most targets will get a Toughness bonus from armor.
Note that this means a unit wouldn't have to choose between taking a cover save OR an armor save, it could benefit from both cover and armor at the same time. Instead of 5+ Guardsmen being desperate to get into those 4+ trenches while Marines might as well stand right in the open and take their 3+ armor save (until someone comes along with AP 2...), it actually makes sense for the well-armored guys to use cover, too.

3) Homebrew Heaven: A point-cost system to price individual models

Spoiler:

Ovion's tried this, but it's hard to model what GW does because (1) they hide what they do from us and (2) they're pretty inconsistent and arguably even slapdash about how they do it. If we could figure out what it'd cost to get any particular set of stats, wargear, and special rules, then the only question with homebrew units would be how to price any new, unique SRs. And having the table out there would (probably) force GW to be more consistent.

4) Bigger tables + more terrain = more tactics

Spoiler:

Big armies tend to crowd the table and end up on top of each other with little maneuvering room. (The Outflank rule doesn't really help much: It just lets units pile in to the traffic jam from another board edge). There needs to be some rule to scale up the size of the board with the size of the army. If tournament organizers don't like it because they can't stuff as many tables into the hall they've rented, FETH THEM. Or they can just go with smaller-points games.... And with your friends? PLAY ON THE FLOOR.
People also really need to use terrain more to block line of sight so gunline armies can't just camp and kill everyone from a distance like World War I on the Western Front, because boring.

5) A free dice-rolling app for your phone

Spoiler:

"Ok, so my 50 guys shoot your guys with, um, three shots each.... Hold on, let me get my dice bucket."
"No, wait, I got this. 150 shots at BS 3, Strength 4, versus Cover 1, Toughness 3 is -- lemme hit 'randomize' -- ok, nine of my guys are dead."

That's five heresies so far. Only 95 to go to meet our goal![/spoiler]

You may all be intrigued to know that starting in the xmas hols, I plan to remake the WH40k rulebook (and thereafter, codexes).
These ideas are pretty damn useful pointers

...and I may have a way of solving GWs terrible formatting.

Don't expect much soon though, it'll take an age to complete, as I'm going for a full rework, with modifiability for when new units come out.

If you're going for a full rework, then you're also headed for an IP infringement lawsuit, but you know... good luck and everything.

chaos0xomega wrote:
If you're going for a full rework, then you're also headed for an IP infringement lawsuit, but you know... good luck and everything.

Eh, only if I try to make money from it, or claim their IP as mine...

..or advertize..


Just don't tell GW.

The OP makes some good points, especially 2,3 and 4. I think that 5 would be open to accusations of cheating/fixing etc. and there is something appealing about rolling lots of dice and then cursing your luck when a disproportionate number come up 1s!
As for 1, my personal view is that a system closer to that used in Epic40k would be better.
Keep the current phases and determine initiative at the start of each phase in some way (dice, drawing counters, rock paper scissors etc) winner would choose to go 1st or 2nd, then play alternates.
So in movement each player would move a unit (or formation/platoon) in turn, then when all movement is done shooting would proceed in the same manner, then assault.
It would keep easily defined turns whilst introducing a certain element of being able to react to your opponent, at the same time there would be an overlying cohesiveness to your army, instead of each unit acting independently of the rest of your army.
As for 2, i'm a fan of cover affecting the chance to hit (i still play 2nd edition, so slight bias there!), as for integrating to wound and to save rolls into one roll definitely makes more sense to me.
And lastly 4, bigger tables and more terrain is preferably but not a realistic proposition for a lot of people, a rules system that scales well from small skirmishes to epic battles would be a better option to aim for.

If it were up to me I'd knock $10 off every model and book, I'd can the production of finecast models and hand them all over to FW, and I'd make FW a bigger part of the game by doing so. I'd step it up and knock prices back, even if it meant having to do it myself.

The prices are way out of whack for what they are; plastic toys and the books are ridiculously over-priced too. In any other book store an over-sized hardcover of about 100 pages is around $12, maybe even $25 depending on subject matter. I would sell codices in bookstores like Chapters, alongside the Black Library stuff. Like... I'm not sure who is running the publishing department over there but it is just all kinds of mixed up.

I would also untie my panties about the whole internet retailers selling my product as well. This was like when Metallica sued Napster, it just doesn't make any sense and it has hurt GW, even if they refuse to admit it. Plenty of online shops that used to carry GW no longer do and it's because they just didn't want the hassle. And a hassle it was! I'm no webmaster but the idea of going through and reworking an online shop doesn't sound easy or fun and everyone who was carrying GW HAD to do it. Doesn't sound like the strategic moves of an intelligent corporation does it?

GW isn't going to revitalize because of a few petty rule changes, in fact I kind of like the mysterious miasma that surrounds the rules. It leaves the game open to interpretation. What will change GW is a shift in values. Once they remember how fun it is to actually play Warhammer maybe then they will take their business seriously.

I played a ww2 game once and it was player 1 moves all his stuff, then he chooses one unit to shoot, then player 2 chooses a unit to shoot, and so on until its player 2 turn to move. Player 2 moves all his stuff then chooses a unit to shoot and then player 1 chooses a unit to shoot and so on. Stopped a lof of issues but other than that ive had no other experiences to draw on. but that way worked fine because it was still clear who did what when kinda thing.

Clear fething rules by way of grammar and such.

As for 2, i'm a fan of cover affecting the chance to hit (i still play 2nd edition, so slight bias there!), as for integrating to wound and to save rolls into one roll definitely makes more sense to me.

The problem with this direction, that i ran into when trying this in my own custom ruleset, is that that 3 step damage resolution affects so much of the game. Consolidating armor saves and toughness into one stat speeds up damage resolution a ton, but as a result everything dies waaaaay faster, so you have to come up with another change to compensate for this, which results in changes to other systems that have to be accounted for, and it spirals out of control from there and eventually pretty much everything is different from where you started. This isn't even mentioning the loss of diversity that result from the combination, as things like poison, rending, power weapons, etc all depend on having separate steps and components to work on. But im right there with you for wanting a cover system more like 2nd edition, everything i've read about it sounds awesome.

If you're going for a full rework, then you're also headed for an IP infringement lawsuit, but you know... good luck and everything.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?community=&catId=&categoryId=&pIndex=3&aId=3900002&start=4
GW legal states that custom rules and background is fine so long as you clearly state that it is an unofficial, derivative work based off of their trademark/IP/whathaveyou, and make sure it doesn't look too official. And of course making money off of it will have them knocking down your doors .


On to the suggestions:
1) Make leaders actually feel like leaders. My sergeant should have some way to affect his squad other than slightly improved leadership and an extra attack. Currently, support HQ's are much preferred over combat-oriented HQ's because the latter have a hard time making their points back, and support HQ's provide massive force multipliers. Most of these combat-oriented HQ's are meant to the be the force commanders and tacticians, but just function as expensive beatsticks instead, so give them a way to be act as commanders while still being great warriors.

2) This next one would probably end up tying into making leaders feel like leaders, but give players more tactical choices on the battlefield. I dont want my guys to just stand there and get charged. Maybe they can make a small movement to try to avoid the charger, or meet the rush head on the deny the enemy the charge bonus, or maybe they stand and try to get some last shots in via overwatch. The places where such choice has been implemented have massively improved the game, such as the option to run instead of shooting and going to ground, so lets keep that momentum going.

3) Increase the role movement plays in the game. It seems like GW has realized that having units locked into these 6" movement blocks is extremely limiting, and have been trying to find creative ways around the problem rather than fixing it. Something like the Slaanesh rule that adds D3 to movement distance is good example of this. Also make more interesting ways to enter the battlefield available. Deep strike is just not worth the dangers for the most part, so that needs to be changed so its more of an option, but things like warp rifts for daemons to enter through, gateways like the necron monolith's dark portal, Tyranid tunnels dug by the mawloc and the dark eldar's webway portals are examples of what could be done to make movement on and onto the table more exciting.

4) While i like the way unit-by-unit activations would work, in practice it means lots of counters and record-keeping so you know which units have moved, and when the game turn is over. You also run into the problem of if one side has far more units than the other, say draigowing vs footguard, does the bigger force just get a lot of uninterrupted activations in a row? Does the outnumbered player get to activate a unit multiple times in one game turn? So alternating phases would probably be a better direction. Anything really, so long as we get away from the 3 phase IGOUGO system in place, which heavily favors first turn alpha strike armies.

5) Get rid of randomness from the core rules. It's not fun, its frustrating and is a pretty clear way to avoid having to balance anything. Standardized psychic power lists in the core rulebook would have been awesome if you could pick them, rather than hope you get the one you want, or failing that, one that's actually useful. Random charge ranges need to go. Randomness may fly in the chaos codex's, because they're neck deep in chaos' craziness, but the results still need to be balanced so you can use any of them, not just hope you get the best one or the one you planned for. Something like the Champion of Chaos/Chaos Boon rules might be a good place to look, as while its overly complex and convoluted, its got interesting results in it, such as the chance to turn into a daemon prince or chaos spawn.

6) More interesting ways of building armies. Buying individual units and giving them upgrades and whatnot is wonderful, but something like apocalypse formations would really liven it up some more. Say i want an assault squad, a tactical squad, and a devastator squad for my army. Rather than just buying these three units indivudually, maybe i could buy them as a formation for some change in points (up or down) and they would have some bonus ability or restrictions. Increase the points cost for buying the formation instead of individual squads, they get a bonus ability. Decrease the points for the formation over individual units, maybe they have to stay within 12" of each other or something. Maybe even let there be "Formation upgrades" that let you get around limitations or buy additional abilities or models.

7) Kinda ties into the above but change the FOC so spamming is less favorable, and you can make more interesting armies. If i want to build a Ravenguard army based around assault marines, i should be able to do that easily, not try to hash it with minimal troops, a different codex, and/or unwanted units. We're halfway there already with so many HQ's offering changes to the FOC, we might was well drop the entire premise right now.

8) Increase the diversity in stats, this doesn't necessarily mean changing from a D6 though. D6 are easy to come by, are cheap and easy to read, and rolling a lot of them at once is simple. Changing the way stats interact with each other could increase diversity without having to change dice.

Beyond these, a lot of the other suggestions are good too. Counter-Charging a unit via an initiative test is interesting, and i might play with that in my own ruleset, not only standardizing the costing formula but making it available, better rule wording, generally better balance work, etc are all needed as well.

@Selym im always interested in what changes and modifications people are making to the rules, so id be very interesting in reading whatever you come up with.

Rav1rn wrote:

As for 2, i'm a fan of cover affecting the chance to hit (i still play 2nd edition, so slight bias there!), as for integrating to wound and to save rolls into one roll definitely makes more sense to me.

The problem with this direction, that i ran into when trying this in my own custom ruleset, is that that 3 step damage resolution affects so much of the game. Consolidating armor saves and toughness into one stat speeds up damage resolution a ton, but as a result everything dies waaaaay faster, so you have to come up with another change to compensate for this, which results in changes to other systems that have to be accounted for, and it spirals out of control from there and eventually pretty much everything is different from where you started. This isn't even mentioning the loss of diversity that result from the combination, as things like poison, rending, power weapons, etc all depend on having separate steps and components to work on.....

Actually, if you just add armor as a bonus to Toughness and keep current Toughness and Strength values the same, wouldn't everything be harder to kill? Anyway I imagine changing the to-wound chart would be the easy way around this.... or better yet junk the chart and say " IF (Strength plus 1d6) > (Toughness plus Armor), THEN one wound."

AP would still be important: It'd just deny targets their armor bonus instead of their armor save.

Rending likewise could ignore armor bonus on 6 or something. Poison, hmm, I'll have to think.


As for leaders who actually lead -- yes, yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. If you did roll-off Initiative vs. Initiative to see who got the next turn to move, one big thing would be to roll on the highest Initiative in the unit, which would represent your high-Initiative HQ characters getting everyone to GO GO GO much faster than the lower-Initiative grunts would figure out on their own.

Actually, if you just add armor as a bonus to Toughness and keep current Toughness and Strength values the same, wouldn't everything be harder to kill? Anyway I imagine changing the to-wound chart would be the easy way around this.... or better yet junk the chart and say " IF (Strength plus 1d6) > (Toughness plus Armor), THEN one wound."

Yeah i was working on a ruleset that did pretty much exactly this, and we had all kinds of problems with it. We also incorporated increased diversity in stats and used a significantly modified to-wound and to-hit chart, but it wound up almost doubling how fast models died, essentially turning the fight into who fired first or got into melee faster. We ended up having to double the wounds on every model to account for this, then had to have all sorts of conditions to make sure stuff still played out right, even leading to some weird allocation rules. And if you keep a D6 and increase the roll needed to wound to account for this, almost everything is wounding on a 6, 5, or the occasional 4, with the exception of monsters, special characters and weapons, etc, which was boring and took out a lot of diversity. And the more complicated you make the formula to determins wounding, the slower it is, which kinda defeats the purpose of dropping a resolution step in the first place. Im still interested in working on a system like this, but i've seen the problems it causes and have serious doubts about its viability without major overhauls of the rules based off of it.

Poison, hmm, I'll have to think.

Yeah poison was the one of the major problems we ran into. As for rending and power weapons, the idea of armor bonuses sounds better than the system we were using, but i'll have to work with it some to see if it suffers the same problems, as we were never able to get power weapons to feel right, and rending weapons were always overly complex.

As for leaders who actually lead -- yes, yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. If you did roll-off Initiative vs. Initiative to see who got the next turn to move, one big thing would be to roll on the highest Initiative in the unit, which would represent your high-Initiative HQ characters getting everyone to GO GO GO much faster than the lower-Initiative grunts would figure out on their own.

If you're interested in some ideas for this direction, go look at Lanrak's Xenos and Zealots ruleset, he's got some great ideas on leaders and how they could be used more interestingly. One of my favorites was a "Target zone", where your leader (usually a sergeant or equivalent) picks a point, and the unit he controls can fire at any unit within 6" of that point, essentially allowing split-fire without being broken as hell.

I think weight of fire (small or big) should have a negative impact on leadership tests, like melee has with combat res.

 Brometheus wrote:
I think weight of fire (small or big) should have a negative impact on leadership tests, like melee has with combat res.

Well, in Epic 40k, each formation would recieve a "blast marker" each time it lost a unit or came under fire, something similar could be implemented here, but it would drastically increase gun power, and make footslogging utterly pointless when facing a gunline.

I used to post in these sorts of threads alot, until I noticed one massive underlying trend in the ideas that they come up with;

You can find the majority of them in Mantic's Warpath game.

I know this looks like a plug or whatever, but honestly just go check it out - the rules are free online, and so simple you can learn them in half an hour. Just counts-as 40k gak with mantic unit rules, and since the games in beta, just flat out invent unit entries as needed - nothing different and probably less work than any meaningful 'reboot' of 40k would require, and your immediately good to go.

Warpath is a great base for people who want to actually play an improved ruleset for 40k, rather than just talk endlessly in circles. Use it, change it if needed, and get back to enjoying your damn game.

Some sort of suppression system would be welcome. Definitely would make low strength, low AP, high fire rate weapons useful for once (Cough Psilencer Cough). Maybe make it so having X number of shots fired at the unit reduces is leadership by 1, and forces a morale test. Probably far too clunky of a system to work, but a stepping stone to something better. Maybe a suppression trait for certain guns that would make them more effective at suppression than others.

change the dice used, preferably d10's (mostly because I have a bajillion of the things from playing FFG/WW stuff)

Currently 40k is an addative system for the most part. Your "to hit" is really just comparing your BS+d6 to 7. Do you meet or exceed 7? you hit. Otherwise you miss. "characteristic tests" are pretty much the same. if 7-d6 >= (characteristic), You're ok! [6 = auto-fail]

This works just fine, except that it uses (mostly) a 0-10 stat system. So stats over 5/6 become wonky. BS is handled well, mostly because it allows you to effectively check if 2d6+BS>=7, with toughness being similar 7-(2d6 drop highest) >= you're ok!

Where this system really starts to lack sensibility to me is the To-Wound system, as well as the WS to hit tables. Lucky, the 1-legged blind grot still has a 30% chance to hit Daemon Lord Murderificus The Weaponmaster, Destroyer of Worlds!!!. Now, they use the ambiguation of "Hey, It's the rush of combat, that flailing grot could get lucky!!!" This would be fine if most close combats had 100-200 soldiers fighting at once, but when there are usually at most 20ish actually swinging on BOTH sides, then said daemon would most likely never be hit. Also, to use that same ambiguation, how the heck would Veteran Steve have enough time/lucidity/skill to arm a complicated demolition charge such as a melta bomb, affix it to a 50 foot tall winged daemon (who is murdering him/his comrades) and NOT be hit by the resulting explosion assuming he (by some miracle) managed to do it right?


How would I go about fixing this? Honestly I have no idea. Seeing that 40k holds a somewhat uniquie niche as so far that they are neither a skirmish nor war-scale game, but pulling elements from both. And from typing all of this it has me thinking HOW ON EARTH you could possibly 'fix' this game without a complete re-write... my head hurts... Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Suppression is some serious stuff in real life, and it makes sense to add some mechanics as that gentleman mentioned above.

Just ask any grunt what's more important- Getting kills and looking cool or getting the other person away from you by any means possible. Weight of fire = heads down, or run away/reposition.

I miss Epic 40k.

Lucky, the 1-legged blind grot still has a 30% chance to hit Daemon Lord Murderificus The Weaponmaster, Destroyer of Worlds!!!. Now, they use the ambiguation of "Hey, It's the rush of combat, that flailing grot could get lucky!!!" This would be fine if most close combats had 100-200 soldiers fighting at once, but when there are usually at most 20ish actually swinging on BOTH sides, then said daemon would most likely never be hit.

Yes the WS system is horribly designed, but you also touched on another good point, in that if you made it realistic, that is to say you have to be within a couple of WS points of that daemon prince, and since you can't fire into melee, all you have to do is get it into combat and it would be immortal against anything but elite melee troops. While realistic, i don't think it would be fun to see one model rip its way through my entire army of guardsmen without me being able to so much as scratch it outside of shooting.

You can find the majority of them in Mantic's Warpath game.

I know this looks like a plug or whatever, but honestly just go check it out - the rules are free online, and so simple you can learn them in half an hour. Just counts-as 40k gak with mantic unit rules, and since the games in beta, just flat out invent unit entries as needed - nothing different and probably less work than any meaningful 'reboot' of 40k would require, and your immediately good to go.

Having just given it a quick run through, i like a bunch of the bits and pieces they use, but I would still prefer a "fixed" 40K over warpath.
PROS
-Unit-by-Unit activation system is excellent
-Formation system is way better than 40K's consistency rules, and help focus on the units leader
-vehicle overrun is actually powerful now, probably too much so(D6 hits on every model run over anyone?)
-simple cover and shooting modifiers
-speed as a stat is very nice
-rolling for nerve(Leadership) on a unit every time its shot at feels weird, but would probably work fine, especially if adapted properly

Unfortunately, by stripping out all of the depth and complexity of 40K, warpath is left with a simplistic game of shooting and charging with units that look fairly similar. Melee in particular looks horribly bland.
-Very few choices and opportunities for upgrades
-flamers are boring and seemingly too powerful (10 shots, 12" range, autohit on a 4+)
-If you fail an activation test for a unit, it cannot be used that turn, you could potentially never use a unit in a game if you fail enough 3+ rolls

Ultimately, Warpath feels like a war-game that scaled down to use individual models, instead of 40K's skirmish game that scaled up to use lots of individual models. Id rather keep the depth and variety 40K offers, and focus on reworking the execution and details rather than try to streamline by cutting elements out.

 Dakkamite wrote:
I used to post in these sorts of threads alot, until I noticed one massive underlying trend in the ideas that they come up with;

You can find the majority of them in Mantic's Warpath game.

Exactly why I decided to port 40k to Deadzone rather than try to fix 40k. A non-broken ruleset made by someone good at what he does is a much better place to work from. No need to design a new wheel to replace your triangular ones when someone has already designed a round one for you.

 Dakkamite wrote:
I used to post in these sorts of threads alot, until I noticed one massive underlying trend in the ideas that they come up with; You can find the majority of them in Mantic's Warpath game..

Just downloaded Warpath and read it. Wow, it really reads like a streamlined Warhammer -- right down to where they failed to change one reference to "a normal Run move" to their Definitely Not A 40K Clone term "an At The Double! order." In fact it strikes me as streamlined to a fault, e.g. you don't remove individual models as casualties, just track damage to the whole unit abstractly (why have individual models then?), and any weapon seems to have the same chance of doing damage to a particular target based on that target's Defense value.

Also it's stuck with "all my guys move, all my guys shoot, all my guys melee" instead of interactive unit-by-unit, which I find way more interesting.

So fie upon thy Warpath! Fie, I say!


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 Yonan wrote:
I decided to port 40k to Deadzone rather than try to fix 40k. .....

I could only find these demo rules for Deadzone. It seems very different from 40K, with a lot of RPG elements, but it's hard to tell much from such an abbreviated version of the rules....


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Also, suppression rules would be good. Could be as simple as having to test Leadership every time you got shot at and Going to Ground if you fail.


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Rav1rn wrote:
Yeah poison was the one of the major problems we ran into. As for rending and power weapons, the idea of armor bonuses sounds better than the system we were using, but i'll have to work with it some to see if it suffers the same problems, as we were never able to get power weapons to feel right, and rending weapons were always overly complex.

How about Poison always reduces the target's toughness to, say, 2? That gets the same effect as rolling a fixed number to wound in the current game. Of course armor would fact in differently (it'd be a bonus against being wounded in the first place rather than a separate "save" if you are wounded) but I think this would still capture the essence of Poison (poisonous essence?) as something that can bring the toughest enemies down as easily as the weakest.

For a unit/weapon with Rending, how about a to-wound roll of six treats the enemy's Toughness and non-invulnerable Armor as zero (invulnerable armor still works, though). That's similar to is current Rending automatically wounds and has AP 2 to nullify all non-invulnerable armor saves.


Oh, also, vehicles should have Toughness, Armor, and Wounds just like everyone else, not Armor Values and Hull Points. It's silly to have an entirely separate damage system for vehicles, especially when Monstrous Creatures and Walkers look so similar but have such different rules. Presumably a heavy tank's Armor bonus would be higher than any infantry Armor, and things like Melta would just give you crazy high AP to counter it -- and Poison & Fleshbane would just have a "doesn't work on vehicles" clause.

How about Poison always reduces the target's toughness to, say, 2? That gets the same effect as rolling a fixed number to wound in the current game. Of course armor would fact in differently (it'd be a bonus against being wounded in the first place rather than a separate "save" if you are wounded) but I think this would still capture the essence of Poison (poisonous essence?) as something that can bring the toughest enemies down as easily as the weakest.

So poison essentially acts like a power weapon against toughness instead of armor? I think that could work, especially if you made options for something like Poison (1) and Poison (2) to demonstrate that some poisons are more potent than others, so think on how that could work. However,this still doesn't address the main issue of units dying far faster than normal, since they no longer have that second save to keep them alive. So you either need to move to a different die (d12 would be my recommendation as its a simpler conversion from D6 and is much easier to read than D8 or D10) or increase their wounds somehow. This is where we hit a lot of problems in our system, as we wanted to stick to a D6.

As for treating vehicles like normal models, i would argue it would be simpler to treat monsters as vehicles with slightly altered rules similarly to how walkers are implemented, rather than try to force the normal traits to apply to vehicles. Vehicles (and monsters to a lesser extent) are fundamentally different from normal infantry models, so trying to get them to work within that framework requires all sorts of exceptions and special cases, and you'll end up with rules clarifying rules, which isn't any better than what GW does right now.

 SisterSydney wrote:
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 Yonan wrote:
I decided to port 40k to Deadzone rather than try to fix 40k. .....

I could only find these demo rules for Deadzone. It seems very different from 40K, with a lot of RPG elements, but it's hard to tell much from such an abbreviated version of the rules....

Backers have had the rulebook for a while, and the game is arriving for people atm. Yep it's a skirmish scale game so you'll be running ~5-15 individual models in 2x2 games, but it can scale up to 6x4 so can get fairly large games. Has solid campaign rules so your troops can gain experience and equipment upgrades etc. Not a replacement for 40k (that would be warpath) but Deadzone it's looking great so far.

Well I can fullfill heresy 5 several hundred time over. https://play.google.com/store/search?q=dice+app&c=apps...and even specifically for WH40K https://play.google.com/store/search?q=40k%20dice&c=apps

[1] Weapon ranges all reduced so that units shooting across the board was not a common thing. This would bring back more importance to the movement phase.

[2] Change cover to fantasy to hit modifiers but leave my armour save rolls alone. Removing armour saves would also remove a lot of excitement out of the game. Making that 4++ iron halo save against the ID attack is one of those memorable and heart pounding events in the game.

[3] Reign in the invulnerable saves and make them like ward saves in fantasy. This would really help many of those beleaguered TEQ units.

[4] Clarify rules with clear and concise writting

[5] Bring back the 3ed vehicle shooting rules (aka super splitfire)...why do my bolter gunners fire at tanks again?

[6] Either reactive actions (ie don't shoot in your turn allows you to shoot in response to an enemy entering your range) or go Player 1 Move, Player 2 Move, Player 1 Shoot, Player 2 Shoot, etc. Going unit by unit makes the game either incredibly unfair to one side based on number of units and/or extremely complicated.