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Keeping in mind the fact that battles are part of wars and/or just a moment of a epic battle, going for many and many days, troops should run out of ammo sooner or later.
So, there is an idea - starting from second turn, each unit that shot in shooting phase should roll a dice - on a score of 6+, plus one for each turn after they can't shoot at all for remainder of a game (autofail at turns 6 and 7).
That will not only make game FUN*, but also will balance shooting and CC that 6th brought to us.

*The Chaos Gods do not guarantee fun. Fun is subject to early termination at Tzeentch's discretion. Fun is to be taken in context of Dwarf Fortress.

That only works for armies like Marines and Eldar that operate in isolation.

Guard have supply lines, Sisters have supply lines, Ork guns don't even always need reloading... and so on.

Some weapons don't need reloading for long periods of time. The ammunition requirements are very different for different armies.

I'm fairly sure necron weapons have quite a few shots.

Yeah...no....that sounds like a terrible idea...maybe in a themed game, but otherwise I can't see the point.

Seeing as your average marine will only fire 14 shots in an entire game and the smallest clip you can get for a bolter is 20. I imagine ammunition wont be a problem.

 Vexler wrote:
Keeping in mind the fact that battles are part of wars and/or just a moment of a epic battle, going for many and many days, troops should run out of ammo sooner or later.
So, there is an idea - starting from second turn, each unit that shot in shooting phase should roll a dice - on a score of 6+, plus one for each turn after they can't shoot at all for remainder of a game (autofail at turns 6 and 7).
That will not only make game FUN*, but also will balance shooting and CC that 6th brought to us.

*The Chaos Gods do not guarantee fun. Fun is subject to early termination at Tzeentch's discretion. Fun is to be taken in context of Dwarf Fortress.

Yeah, how about no pointless complexity for little to no gain. Why not slap power and chain weapon power failures, armor failures aswell.

Yeah let me stick a new gauss rod into my gauss flayers...

Sorry man, I reckon rules like this belong more in smaller scale games in the style of necromunda rather than 'mass battles' like 40k, where we disregard such minor things as "ammunition" or "tactics" and just roll dice at each other for four hours until someone wins on first blood

 welshhoppo wrote:
Seeing as your average marine will only fire 14 shots in an entire game and the smallest clip you can get for a bolter is 20. I imagine ammunition wont be a problem.

Each bolt gun shot fired represents more than a single shot. Same goes for all rapid fire weapons. It's a squeeze of the trigger, which would be about 3 to 4 shots. You really imagine your Rapid Fire 2 weapon being a marine going "Tap, tap" is all?

Anyway, if you wanted to introduce a rule in a themed game or a campaign where something like this could happen, sure. As a main rule that'd be a part of every last game, no, I'm not for it.

I've played using the Cold Weather rules suggestions listed wherever that is in the main hardback BRB before and we had fun, so introducing things like this in theme/campaign games is totally fine and can be really cool. Thematic games tend to be my favorite ones, even if I lose. Played another friend once where we determined in advance what he'd get from reserves every turn, and I just had some Deathwing guys sitting in the middle of the board. We gave them 3 shots a turn instead of 2, representing the overwhelming number of enemies so they could basically fire blind into a crowd and hit a bunch of guys. My goal was to survive as best I could then kill his Daemon Prince, but I wasn't able to do it. Game was seriously great, though.

I would love a rule for when power armour runs out of batery power. ^_^

How is this 'fun' in the least?

In a linked campaign I could see where this would have potential, but given the timescale covered in a standard game of 40k most if not all units would have enough ammo to last

The last thing this game needs is more dice rolls determining wether or not you're allowed to play.

This or something like it has been used as a scenario rule in the past; I could see it in a themed campaign, but doing it across the board would be a bit much.

 welshhoppo wrote:
Seeing as your average marine will only fire 14 shots in an entire game and the smallest clip you can get for a bolter is 20. I imagine ammunition wont be a problem.

*Magazine*

I think this is a great idea, but would obviously need some serious refinement. The biggest problem being, as mentioned, that 40k is already full of random rolls for nonsense. So, we get rid of a bunch of other random tables, and add this.

This would be a great rule to somehow integrate into Tau, who's with me?

It would work perfectly combined with the "without numbers " rule from the BRB.
Representing a defending force cut off from their supply lines for several days while defending against the countless tyranid horde, for instance.
Or the winner of the supply raid may force this rule on his opponent in the next game in a campaign.
But, I wouldnt want this rule as a "standard" rule in a normal game, as fluffwise most armies will bring enough ammo for a single battle.

It seems to me that tabletop battles represent a skirmish lasting just a few minutes.

It's been said already, but I think it'd only make sense in the context of a campaign of several battles, or a custom "Alamo" game type.

 Truth118 wrote:
It seems to me that tabletop battles represent a skirmish lasting just a few minutes.

I'm sure a conflict in 40K is supposed to last longer than a few minutes in in-universe terms. After all, it otherwise would take only a minute to go from 'that guy standing at fifty paces is hard to see' to 'oh, my vision is perfect now'. In other words, Night Fighting rules wouldn't make sense.

I personally always prefer to think that models and terrain are actually oversized representatives of themselves (because else 24" range would be stupidly low), whereas the rest remains the same. In the end, I suppose neither answer is the correct one, and you should just think 'it's a game, not a simulation'.

Running out of bullets is only for a) weapons that actually has a limited power cell or magazine or b) armies with a disrupted supply line.

Orks - fire magical bullets anyway, they only reload when they think they need to.
Daemons - fire magical energy from the everpresent warp.
Eldar (any flavour) - most of their weapons have a reactor rather than a fuel cell, are excessively easy to reload and their armies can open supply lines from hidden bases of operation easily via the webway.
Necrons - These use reactors as well rather than fuel cells, no? In any case, their fuel cells are also extremely power-dense.

The only armies that "out of bullets" would make sense for are some Tau weapons and most Imperial weapons - and even the Imperials boast a large amount of highly efficient laser weapons.

Tau would immediately become useless
Half of DE would suck
The other half would be invincible.

It could be OK for a special mission on an individual unit basis.

Good idea put incredibaly annoying.