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Hey guys, I've been tinkering with this idea for a long while now and I wanted some feedback to keep me interested. Way back at the end of 5th edition, a complete rule book for the upcoming 6th edition was leaked to the internet. These new rules were slimmer and encouraged faster games. When the real 6th edition dropped, my group found it was a different book with more of the same problems we were used to. That disappointment kept us out of 6th edition. Since then I've been tinkering with those leaked rules and taking a look at other game systems, and I think I've come up with something interesting. I've written up a formal introduction for you to peruse here. It's not much yet and I have a lot of ideas I want to try, but let me know what you think about the over-all shape of the game. Comments are enabled on the document as well.

There were quite a few of these concepts floating around on the forums a few months back; my own attempt is linked to in my signature if you have any interest in perusing alternate approaches.

I'm personally standing on my earlier statement that alternating activations don't work well in asymmetrical games; I've seen them implemented playably in games where both sides play very similarly (WWII games, chess) but in games where the number of models/units on the table can vary widely you end up rewarding deathstars and punishing MSU armies since the deathstar gets to attack before the majority of the MSU army. I haven't done a lot of practical testing and there are people who disagree with me but I chose an approach that's effectively alternating phases in a shorter turn to keep things more straightforward.

That said I'm interested to see where you're going with this and I will endeavor to provide constructive criticism if you keep going.

I'm reading through the Aegis Project and it's an even larger overhaul than mine. It's a very different game. I like that the first thing anyone seems to change is the I-Go-You-Go structure. These rules I'm building should be compatible with all the existing 40k books, including add-ons and older codices because I'm not changing the stats or how combat is rolled for. The changes I'm making are mostly structural.

I was also concerned about the extremes of MSU and Deathstars. I've done tests and what ends up happening is that Deathstar lists are unable to react to their opponent, and MSUs react very slowly. In a test game with a double Nob Biker list (a menace ye olde days of 5th edition), a standard list stood out of the Nob's threat range and moved targets the Nobs didn't want to engage (transports, fast skimmers) first. The Orks had only a few units, so were eventually forced to either have the Nobs attack a bad target or move 0" (effectively skipping their turn) while the standard army still had several units to activate. When the Nobs killed a transport, the contents and the rest of the army were able to attack them for free. When the Nobs try to skip their turn and wait for a better opportunity, the standard army is able to move in formation uninterrupted and so continues to present only bad targets for the Nobs.

On the other hand, while MSUs can almost take their turns uninterrupted against Deathstars, they struggle against lists with, say, 60-75% as many units. Say the an MSU Dark Eldar army needs to kill a Landraider on an objective; they need to use Dark Lances from multiple sources to kill it, but can only activate one Ravager at a time. The Space Marines can see this and get ahead of the curve, activating their Devastators to attack another Ravager before it can fire. The MSU need to activate two units to equal the firepower of that Devastator squad, so the Space Marines kill that Ravager and are now free to think about dealing with the Dark Eldar troops waiting to assault the objective. The Dark Eldar still have to focus on killing that Landraider because the troops are useless until then. At the end of the turn the Dark Eldar can activate three or four Raiders at once, but the Raiders may already be damaged or the objective may have been reinforced.

The sweet spot seems to be about two units more or less than your opponent. While fewer units are better than more units, it flips drastically at the extremes where MSU can feed the Deathstar sacrificial units and ignore it while taking objectives. Transports also do funny things to the balance of power; a mechanized Space Marine army has 1500 points spread across 10 units but will only present ~1000 points in 6 units. I don't have a point about that yet, it's just something I've noticed.

I wouldn't expect to change the underpinnings of the game and have the stats built on those assumptions remain even remotely balanced; I went with a complete rewrite because it seemed easier to me.

I agree and I think that's the primary reason for GW's poor balance. Codex creep doesn't exist as such. Rather, the amount of firepower necessary to kill a given target (particularly vehicles) has gone up. Newer books account for this with cheaper units, while older books struggle.

I should be explicit; specific issues of balance fall outside this project's purview. That occurs in the codices, and, barring some miraculous competitive adoption, it isn't worth rewriting all of them. The objectives of this project are to make the games enjoyable and concise, and to increase the quantity and impact of player decisions. I want to make shorter games, with fewer extraneous rolls, and no downtime for the players to get bored.

 DarkHound wrote:
I agree and I think that's the primary reason for GW's poor balance. Codex creep doesn't exist as such. Rather, the amount of firepower necessary to kill a given target (particularly vehicles) has gone up. Newer books account for this with cheaper units, while older books struggle.

As someone who has played through the mech heavy game of 5th, I disagree. With hull points killing vehicles has gotten easier because even glances remove hull points and weaken the target.

Well, in third and especially in fourth, transports were considered rolling coffins because a glance could destroy them outright. Compared to that fifth made them juggernauts, and while they've gotten weaker they're still sturdy. No, sixth's "power creep" was the poor introduction of fliers. Fliers had always been in the game, but they were relegated to Apocalypse where they faced abundant anti-air. Of course you know the real issue wasn't that fliers were stronger (at least not compared to how they had always performed in Apocalypse), but that older books weren't allowed to use their anti-air. They were forced to spend a lot of points to get a round-about way to kill fliers, like Orks taking more Lootas, or Tau taking additional Markerlights, when in Apoc they could just snag some 75 point Hydra platforms.

Anyway, I dropped in a new section here. The only thing of significance to you will be the force organization structure.I came to the conclusion that story players don't need to be told the faction allies matrix, and for competitive players such a matrix is arbitrary anyway. It tied the hands of competitive and narrative players alike. Coupled with GW's new attitude towards Unbound armies, I felt tentatively safe letting players go nuts.

That being said, there's no game if you just let the players figure out what the best unit is and take as many as possible. Detachments were a concept Games Workshop never really did anything with outside of Apocalypse, and very often players would use it internally anyway by combining Chapters or displaying different heraldry. I'm torn on whether or not to restrict the number of detachments, but unrestricted seemed to be the least complex way to go. Is the choice to make an additional detachment meaningful if the only consequence is taking more troops?

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:
I agree and I think that's the primary reason for GW's poor balance. Codex creep doesn't exist as such. Rather, the amount of firepower necessary to kill a given target (particularly vehicles) has gone up. Newer books account for this with cheaper units, while older books struggle.

As someone who has played through the mech heavy game of 5th, I disagree. With hull points killing vehicles has gotten easier because even glances remove hull points and weaken the target.

I think the killer for most vehicles, mine anyway, is that close combat attacks always hit rear armor, so even unarmed Space Marines can wreck a leman russ with their hands. Giving vehicles ws1 has helped a bit, but frankly a heavy vehicle shouldn't have rear armor of 10.

 TheSilo wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:
I agree and I think that's the primary reason for GW's poor balance. Codex creep doesn't exist as such. Rather, the amount of firepower necessary to kill a given target (particularly vehicles) has gone up. Newer books account for this with cheaper units, while older books struggle.

As someone who has played through the mech heavy game of 5th, I disagree. With hull points killing vehicles has gotten easier because even glances remove hull points and weaken the target.

I think the killer for most vehicles, mine anyway, is that close combat attacks always hit rear armor, so even unarmed Space Marines can wreck a leman russ with their hands. Giving vehicles ws1 has helped a bit, but frankly a heavy vehicle shouldn't have rear armor of 10.

What hurts is the fast vehicles pay for defense for movement which no longer applies. A WS 1 when moving 24" as compared to a WS 1 for moving 6".

 megatrons2nd wrote:

 TheSilo wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:
I agree and I think that's the primary reason for GW's poor balance. Codex creep doesn't exist as such. Rather, the amount of firepower necessary to kill a given target (particularly vehicles) has gone up. Newer books account for this with cheaper units, while older books struggle.

As someone who has played through the mech heavy game of 5th, I disagree. With hull points killing vehicles has gotten easier because even glances remove hull points and weaken the target.

I think the killer for most vehicles, mine anyway, is that close combat attacks always hit rear armor, so even unarmed Space Marines can wreck a leman russ with their hands. Giving vehicles ws1 has helped a bit, but frankly a heavy vehicle shouldn't have rear armor of 10.

What hurts is the fast vehicles pay for defense for movement which no longer applies. A WS 1 when moving 24" as compared to a WS 1 for moving 6".

Do you mean skimmers, that can now gain insta-4+ cover? Because I'm rather unsympathetic.

Being able to glance vehicles to death is what killed vehicles. You shouldn't be able to do that. I don't mind hull points, but if vehicles were too durable in 5th edition, than what GW should have done was implement the HP system and have it so that only pens knocked off HP's. That would fix the 5th edition nonsense of penning a vehicle 3 times and doing nothing, while still keeping vehicle durability strong.

It would also make high AV vehicles like Land Raiders worth their points again. You need a 15 to pen it, and its got 4 hull points so its supremely tough. It's also 250 points with mediocre firepower, so the durability is all its got.

Not relying on glances to kill vehicles would also make lance and melta useful again. Suddenly, having those near-guaranteed pens is extremely valuable.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Being able to glance vehicles to death is what killed vehicles. You shouldn't be able to do that. I don't mind hull points, but if vehicles were too durable in 5th edition, than what GW should have done was implement the HP system and have it so that only pens knocked off HP's. That would fix the 5th edition nonsense of penning a vehicle 3 times and doing nothing, while still keeping vehicle durability strong.

It would also make high AV vehicles like Land Raiders worth their points again. You need a 15 to pen it, and its got 4 hull points so its supremely tough. It's also 250 points with mediocre firepower, so the durability is all its got.

Not relying on glances to kill vehicles would also make lance and melta useful again. Suddenly, having those near-guaranteed pens is extremely valuable.

I'm not sure about that - the main problem with vehicles in 5th was that glances couldn't kill them. So, if you couldn't penetrate them, you just ended up shaking or stunning them, and a great deal of vehicles could ignore those effects by some means or other.

I think the problem is that vehicles get so few Hull Points. It seems like it would be better to increase the numbers, and have some/all penetrating hits strip multiple hull points (Perhaps 2 for shaken/stunned results and 3 for 'Weapon Destroyed' and 'Immobilised' - which would also reward weapons with better AP values). So, whilst it would still be possible to glance a vehicle to death, it would take a lot more effort. But, whatever their other effect, vehicles can only withstand a few penetrating hits before being wrecked.

You could also give vehicles armour saves.

There are a lot of interesting facets here I hadn't considered. My idea is to make the damage table a 2D6 roll so that there would be an expected outcome. I'm a child of 5th, so hull points just don't sit well with me. In real life, tanks just keep working until a critical component is hit. Something like:

2-3: Shaken
4-5: Stunned
6-7: Weapon Destroyed
8-9: Immobilized
10-11: Destroyed
12: Explodes

With glances subtracting 2. This is just an example, and I'd like to come up with more interesting damage results. Anyway, a penetrating hit is overwhelmingly likely to cause permanent damage, but is unlikely to kill it outright. After a few penetrating hits a tank is likely to be useless. It makes a tank's durability a more measurable quantity, accomplishing organically accomplishing what hull points do.

With regards to melee, I think adding a WS to them in certain situations requires a little bit too much thought from the player. A flat 4+ to hit a vehicle capable of moving (even a "stationary" tank crew won't sit still when assaulted), 6+ against 12" moves, and 6+ re-roll 6+ hit requirement against fast skimmers and fliers going over 18". Faster equals harder to hit is straightforward.

In the context of my game system, I'm concerned about orks and Tyranids who forgo ranged anti-tank. As I was writing my question here, I had an idea for a solution. When a unit assaults another unit, they don't deal damage until the end of the turn and are entangled in the mean time. Traditionally tanks can just drive away from close combat, and this makes sense as a depiction of reality. In this system that would mean driving away before they were dealt damage, yet it also doesn't seem right to make the tank lose its turn. Instead, if the tank is assaulted before it's been activated, it can Defensive Fire like any other unit (to keep it from being robbed of its turn), or it can try to 'Tank Shock' without firing weapons. This Tank Shock can be in any direction in a straight line, which will often be away from the attackers, but if you charge through them they can try a Death or Glory (why not?). Of course if the tank has already been activated to fire or move, it's fair game to get fragged. Additionally, if after this Tank Shock another unit assaults it, then it's also fair game.

At a glance it seems like an ork player will never get to assault a mech Eldar since they'll just fly 24" across the board at the first sign of danger. In practice, this will affect maybe one or two vehicles, since as the turn progresses the grav tanks must be activated and thus become ineligible. Additionally, any fleeing tanks forgo dealing damage as well as give up their position, which makes this maneuver useless for contesting and controlling objectives. If you aren't dealing damage, and you aren't holding an objective, then you're losing the game; in this way, the orks are getting an advantage even though they aren't killing units. At least that's my theory; I'll have to fire up Vassal and run some tests.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
You could also give vehicles armour saves.

If you're doing that, wouldn't it be better to give them toughness values and do away with AV altogether?

 vipoid wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
You could also give vehicles armour saves.

If you're doing that, wouldn't it be better to give them toughness values and do away with AV altogether?

Oh, yeah, totally, if you're doing a complete reboot, might as well.

Armour saves are a quick-fix that can be backwards compatible with existing codexes.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
You could also give vehicles armour saves.

If you're doing that, wouldn't it be better to give them toughness values and do away with AV altogether?

Oh, yeah, totally, if you're doing a complete reboot, might as well.

Armour saves are a quick-fix that can be backwards compatible with existing codexes.

I went to the extreme and gave vehicles the same statline as infantry in my reboot, but I lost armour facings and the damage table and I'm still working on putting them back in for the second iteration.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
You could also give vehicles armour saves.

If you're doing that, wouldn't it be better to give them toughness values and do away with AV altogether?

Oh, yeah, totally, if you're doing a complete reboot, might as well.

Armour saves are a quick-fix that can be backwards compatible with existing codexes.

I went to the extreme and gave vehicles the same statline as infantry in my reboot, but I lost armour facings and the damage table and I'm still working on putting them back in for the second iteration.

You can give different facings a different armor saves. As to the damage table, maybe allow for the defending player to chose, lose a wound, or take a chance on the table(which may stun, still lose a wound, knock off a weapon, or outright kill it).

I think that game mechanics should try to depict some kind of reality. Giving the defending player a choice about how that railgun's damage resolves is an awkward narrative to explain.

 vipoid wrote:
I'm not sure about that - the main problem with vehicles in 5th was that glances couldn't kill them.

I don't understand why that's a bad thing.

if you want a permanent solution to a vehicle (I.E. killing it): then pen it.

It may be better to just give weapons an anti tank profile and an anti infantry profile.

That way you have more control over what can hurt what.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
You could also give vehicles armour saves.

I think giving standard vehicles a 3+ and AV14 a 2+ would work. It would stop from being glanced to death instantly from bolters, and keep anti tank weaponry effective.

Hi folks.
So with a re write are we doing the standard.
Re introduce movement value(and method) to remove pointless special rules?
Use a more interactive game turn, alternating actions (with heavy unit revisions/balancing with reaction mechanics,) or alternating phases?

Now we are on to damage resolution?

I totally agree that all units should resolve damage the same way.
But if you look at the current damage resolution for all units except vehicles , their seem to be a lot of additional rules required beyond roll a D6 , value X+ saves.
Even if you say that having 'invunerable' save is ok , there is still a load of USRs and special rules tied into the current damage resolution.

How about the alternative?
Universal armour resolution using a free range of Armour and Armour penetration values.

Roll a dice add the models AV to the score.If this is higher then the weapons hits AP value the model passes its armour save.

EG a boltgun has a AP value of 6.
An ork has an AV of 2.
The ork needs to roll 5+ to save.
(5+2=7 and 7 is higher than 6.)

This give fully scalable and proportional results , without having to use separate modifier values, like 2nd ed did.

This also allows weapons to have built in higher function limit.(They can not beat armour values of equal or higher value.)

But to add extended functionality a simple suppression mechanic can be used.(Halve number of shots and double AP of weapons, but can only cause suppression not physical damage.)

TTFN

That is quite an idea and I like it. It would take errata'ing all the armors and APs, but that's small enough to be doable. There is definitely an interesting potential to make Terminators actually immune to lasguns, but that would be disastrous to the game balance. Extremely high AVs could be explored with monstrous creatures, I think.

It also begs to have armor penetration actually be a component of penetrating a vehicle's armor, but I can't quite think of an elegant way to do it.

Hi DarkHound.

The same system works for vehicles.
Eg
A predator front AV of 13 , is hit by a las-cannon AP 15.The predator needs to roll 3+ to save.(3+13 = 16 which is higher than 15.)
So the following saves for current vehicle AV hit by the AP 15 las cannon would be ..
AV 14 2+
AV 13 3+
AV 12 4+
AV 11 5+
AV 10 6+


Terminators SHOULD be invunerable to las gun fire.In so far as they can not be physically damaged by it.
HOWEVER, they should be able to be suppressed by it .

So las gun AP of 5 can not penetrate AV 7 of the Terminators.
BUT if they use suppressive fire half shots fired (rounded down) , and double AP value.

Instead of 6 normal las gun shots at AP 5.
They fire supressively 3 las gunshots at AP 10.
So the terminators need a 4+ save to stop them being suppressed, from each those 3 shots if they hit.

Here is my idea for suppression .
If a model fails its new armour save roll, it becomes suppressed.(Roll to damage normally as well)
If over HALF the models in the unit become suppressed(or casualties) the unit becomes suppressed.

Suppressed units may;-
Move, to cover within single movement rate, or pull back from enemy units they can see.(Large models may turn to put highest AV towards incoming fire.)
OR.
Shoot, Return fire on enemy unit that suppressed them.Or shoot at closest enemy unit.A suppressed unit can not fire move or shoot weapons .(The unit is too busy trying to avoid incoming fire to set up heavier weapons.)


Also rather than having damage charts.
How about having several 'hit points' in armament and mobility.
And each point reduces movement or removes a weapon/ attack ?

Eg land raider M 6" 3 main weapons(2 sponson, and one front hull.).

Has 3 mobility structure points and 3 weapon structure points.

When it takes a damaging hit it losses a armament OR a mobility structure point .
Each Armament structure point lost disables one weapon system.
The fist mobility structure point lost reduces M to 4"
The second mobility structure point reduces M to 2"
The last mobility structure point lost immobilizes the land raider.

I probably need to explain that better...

Lanrak wrote:
A predator front AV of 13 , is hit by a las-cannon AP 15.The predator needs to roll 3+ to save.(3+13 = 16 which is higher than 15.)
So the following saves for current vehicle AV hit by the AP 15 las cannon would be ..

In the same way that it's strange that AP is vestigial when shooting a vehicle, the weapon's strength should continue to be factor. Use the whole animal. Given that, the effect of giving tanks any save is a >16-50% durability increase across the board. Doesn't matter what the damage table is, because no one will ever see it at that point. It's fine to give Lascannons an absurd AP of 19 so only the hardiest tanks could bounce the shot, and the AP against infantry is the same whether it's twelve or twenty. The problem comes with versatile weapons like the autocannon. If the AP is low enough that heavy infantry get a save, tanks will always bounce the shells. You need to keep a unit's durability roughly the same in relation to everything else, or all the codexes will need to be rewritten.

The solution then is to either bump all the AV of infantry and AP of anti-infantry up, or reduce vehicle AVs. Since we're already changing the infantry, let's just bump them up. Even then, if power armor has an AV of 9 and an autocannon has an AP of 13, then the autocannon gets bounced by most vehicles. What you can do at that point is make the damage table really lethal so the amount of guns per kill averages out to the same, but nobody likes all or nothing rolls. I think I have a better plan.

If you've ever tried a tank simulator or studied tank warfare, you know tank shells come in about three flavours: armor penetrating, high explosive, and high explosive armor penetrating. Armor penetrating tries to defeat the tank's armor so it can hit the vulnerable innards. High explosive is like taking a mace to plate mail: it doesn't need to defeat the armor if it breaks the gun, wrecks the treads, and kills the crew. That's basically what glancing hits do already. My idea is instead of glancing being a part of the Str vs AV, the save roll causes a shot to glance instead of causing the shot to be ignored. Then high strength weapons with poor penetration can consistently cause damage with glances, while extremely high AP weapons will either fail penetrate or cause terrible damage. That establishes a dichotomy in weapon philosophy instead of 'moar strength, maor shots.'

Terminators SHOULD be invunerable to las gun fire.In so far as they can not be physically damaged by it.
HOWEVER, they should be able to be suppressed by it .

This is a design trap. It fits the narrative that Terminator armor should be impervious, but of course that would break the game. So you add rules to give the shooter an alternative. However, this doesn't change the player's available decisions at all. He still has to either shoot the Terminators with very little effect, or not. The extra rules are just that: more stuff he has to remember and roll for. Simple is better.

Also rather than having damage charts.
How about having several 'hit points' in armament and mobility.
And each point reduces movement or removes a weapon/ attack ?

One of the versions of Mechwarrior had a similar system where damage reduced effectiveness in predetermined quantities. I don't think that system is bad, I just don't think it represents how vehicles are actually damaged. That and giving each vehicle their own damage chart is an unimaginable amount of work.

@Dark Hound.
Using armour piercing values to determine if the shot goes through the armour is JUST to get ALL units rolling saves in the same way.

The other aspect of the 'strength of the weapon hit' also determines what damage the weapon does after it gets through the armour for ALL units.

Using strength to determine damage vs infantry and armour penetration vs vehicles is just over needlessly over complicated, and counter intuitive.

Splitting the weapon power into 'armour penetration' and also 'damage' after it penetrates the armour is more logical.(As it gives direct opposed values for armour value and toughness for ALL units!)

I am proposing to use the following resolution for ranged and close combat attacks.
Roll to see/hit, roll to save . roll to wound/damage.
(As it is more intuitive than roll to hit. roll to wound, then roll to see if the armour sucks the bullet out and heals the wound and self repairs! )

I am familiar with modern weapon systems , (as I was a conformance engineer working on medium and large caliber weapon systems for BAE for 12 years. )

If the only effect in game for any attack, is to cause physical damage/kill models , how do you balance fire power and assault?
Why risk assaults when you can just stand back and shoot the snot out of the enemy?(Notice how assaults/assault units have been marginalized for 3 editions in 40k)

If you look at the large battle games set in the same universe, (GW Epic series.)All these games ALWAYS include suppression mechanics .And seem to deliver loads more game play with a fraction of the pages of rules that 40k uses.

if shooting can reduce the effectiveness of enemy units without destroying them, then that leaves Assault as a valuable tool to destroy units that need to be removed for tactical reasons.

NOT including a suppression mechanic in 40k is a BIG oversight. As this means all in game functions become binary.
With a suppression mechanic and tactical use of LOS blocking smoke, this makes everything more of a graduated scale from a tactical P.O.V.

I was assuming we would be using 'unit cards' or 'force list' for in game reference (Will much ,more direct use of stat values.)

So the vehicle unit profile would have how many structure points it has in each.
(We mark the damage on units with different colored smoke.White smoke (cotton wool) for armament hits on weapons, and black smoke (wire wool) on engine decks for mobility hits.)

I am looking at adding detail into an epic style large battle game to get a good rule set for 40k.

Rather than chopping lumps out of a skirmish game and patching up the gaps with special rules.(As that has failed miserably for the past 16 years,IMO.)

I am not very good at explaining my ideas.So please let me know if things need explaining better.

Lanrak wrote:
Using armour piercing values to determine if the shot goes through the armour is JUST to get ALL units rolling saves in the same way. The other aspect of the 'strength of the weapon hit' also determines what damage the weapon does after it gets through the armour for ALL units. Using strength to determine damage vs infantry and armour penetration vs vehicles is just over needlessly over complicated, and counter intuitive. I am proposing to use the following resolution for ranged and close combat attacks: Roll to see/hit, roll to save . roll to wound/damage.

Ah, I see. I was also trying to align all attacking rolls as 'to hit, then str vs toughness/AV, then AV+D6 vs AP to save' in the vein of the current system. The strength roll against the AV would signify the potential for damage. An example of high penetration with low damage would be an anti-material rifle against a technical; it'll go through the armor like tissue but actually disabling the vehicle (by hitting the engine block or the driver) is no small feat.

I totally see the sense that 'rolling to hit, then to save, then for damage' makes. For vehicles it's easy to make the damage table a strength plus D6 roll or something. However, I'm a little leery of making armor penetration suddenly the only means of causing damage to vehicles if only because the codices don't account for it. For instance, plasma weaponry could accidentally end up as anti-tank comparable to lascannons while half the price. And again, balancing autocannons is a concern. I suppose the solution is in the numbers, which I'll give some thinking to and put out a chart in the next few days. I still like the idea of a failed save roll being a glancing hit, but I'll give up on that idea if I don't think of something elegant.

If the only effect in game for any attack, is to cause physical damage/kill models , how do you balance fire power and assault? Why risk assaults when you can just stand back and shoot the snot out of the enemy?(Notice how assaults/assault units have been marginalized for 3 editions in 40k). If you look at the large battle games set in the same universe, (GW Epic series.) all these games ALWAYS include suppression mechanics. And seem to deliver loads more game play with a fraction of the pages of rules that 40k uses. If shooting can reduce the effectiveness of enemy units without destroying them, then that leaves Assault as a valuable tool to destroy units that need to be removed for tactical reasons. NOT including a suppression mechanic in 40k is a BIG oversight. As this means all in game functions become binary. With a suppression mechanic and tactical use of LOS blocking smoke, this makes everything more of a graduated scale from a tactical P.O.V.

Actually in fourth and fifth editions, assault was strong. Fourth edition had consolidating into assault, and fifth had sweeping advance. I'm more familiar with 5th's competitive scene, where everything was either a parking lot (because vehicles were the strongest they had ever been) or was some kind of assault list. Off the top of my head, the biggest lists were Parking Lot Guard, Nob Bikers, Fatecrusher Daemons (Fateweaver buffing a bunch of Bloodcrushers), Grey Knights in general (which were very strong in close combat), some Space Wolf Wolf Rider lists, and the tiniest bit of MSU Dark Eldar where the troops were generally Wyches and the vehicles did the shooting. Three things killed assault lists in 6th: random charge distances, being (mostly) unable to assault from vehicles, and fliers. I'm removing the first two, and now that anti-air is more prevalent, assault is going to be strong again.

When an assault unit gets to a target, all of that target's other advantages are useless. It either has to be better in close combat, or another assault unit has to save it. The game is built so that it takes either a lot of firepower or very specialized weaponry to kill an entire squad in a single turn. On the other hand, a good assault unit is expected to kill their target in a single turn. As it stands, if the game mechanics allow assault to occur (and they will), then assault units will be strong.

I agree that suppression mechanics need to be in the game, but there are better places to implement them. If Terminators are impervious to lasgun fire, then there's no way they should be suppressed by them. Tanks are not suppressed by small arms fire; that's why tanks were designed a hundred years ago. Suppression is a function of the fear of injury, and being suppressed is as much a matter of morale as firepower. I think that pinning tests should occur after the unit has lost 25% of its members (instead of current morale tests), and more units shooting should cause more pinning tests. I also think pinning weapons should be more valuable. I haven't given a lot of thought to pinning yet specifically, but it might be next on my list.

I am looking at adding detail into an epic style large battle game to get a good rule set for 40k. Rather than chopping lumps out of a skirmish game and patching up the gaps with special rules.(As that has failed miserably for the past 16 years,IMO.) I am not very good at explaining my ideas.So please let me know if things need explaining better.

Right now I'm mostly concerned with making the game smoother and more simple. Detail can come later.

 DarkHound wrote:
Actually in fourth and fifth editions, assault was strong. Fourth edition had consolidating into assault, and fifth had sweeping advance.

In 5th, assault was still second to shooting.

However, the gap was a lot closer than it is currently, and assault still had useful roles - getting a unit out of cover, killing a unit with massed AP2 etc.

But, the dominant armies were those with strong shooting elements - IG, GK, SW (though, the latter two also had good CC elements).

 DarkHound wrote:
Off the top of my head, the biggest lists were Parking Lot Guard, Nob Bikers, Fatecrusher Daemons (Fateweaver buffing a bunch of Bloodcrushers), Grey Knights in general (which were very strong in close combat), some Space Wolf Wolf Rider lists, and the tiniest bit of MSU Dark Eldar where the troops were generally Wyches and the vehicles did the shooting. Three things killed assault lists in 6th: random charge distances, being (mostly) unable to assault from vehicles, and fliers. I'm removing the first two, and now that anti-air is more prevalent, assault is going to be strong again.

Nob bikers were good in 5th, but far from dominant. Same with daemons and SW wolf riders. SW's main strength wasn't combat - it was Long Fangs and access to very cheap (but strong) troops, who could be spammed in razorbacks (I'm talking very competitive lists here).

You're forgetting several other factors in 6th that hurt assault:

- Casualties removed from the front (every injury pushes a unit back)
- Overwatch (free bonus to shooting units and, combined with the above and random charge distances, can really hurt assault units at a crucial time)
- Nerfed AP of many melee weapons (abundance of AP2 was one of the main reasons to engage in melee - and now that's gone)
- A lot of melee units and melee weapons are badly overcosted (and were overcosted even before the nerfs to melee).
- Massive buffs to shooting. Rapid Fire weapons are now more mobile, even heavy weapons can snapshot after moving, and the general power of shooting weapons has increased dramatically. Also, there are far more torrent-flamers and other cover-ignoring weapons - which further impacts on the usefulness of melee.

The thing is, melee's two main roles (removing units in cover and high volume of AP2) can now be accomplished by most armies through shooting. And, since shooting offers far more tactical benefits - greater range, sequential firing, firing from reserves etc., there's really very little reason to go back to melee.

i suppose the difference is when you compare editions of 40k to each other, as opposed to other games the imbalance in shooting and assault is less pronounced.
(NO edition of 40k managed to balance shooting and assault that well.)

Other games that include simple suppression mechanics , and tactical use of smoke etc.Seem to have the tools to fine adjust the game play to improve balance between fire power and assault that 40k is sadly lacking.