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I've been toying around with the idea of writing my own version of 40k (let's call it Edition 7.5). I'm considering revising both 7th's core rulebook as well as all of the codexes. I was wondering how many people out there actually bother to use homebrew rules, fan-dexes, etc.

I play 6.5th edition.

It's like D&D all over again..

I don't use any variation of homebrew rules. There's no point; I'm not going to convince the other 10 people at my store and certainly not any of the regional tournaments I've attended. Or if I move in a few years...odds are I won't convince them either. I'd rather not dedicate the required time and effort for what will likely be very little actual gaming on my part. As bad as the current ruleset is, at least it's universal.

 greyknight12 wrote:
I don't use any variation of homebrew rules. There's no point; I'm not going to convince the other 10 people at my store and certainly not any of the regional tournaments I've attended. Or if I move in a few years...odds are I won't convince them either. I'd rather not dedicate the required time and effort for what will likely be very little actual gaming on my part. As bad as the current ruleset is, at least it's universal.

Exactly right. My group plays a modified 5th edition with modified 5th codices. We are happy but we could never go anywhere else and play a game and certainly not tournaments. I will reconsider when 8th comes out but if it continues down the same path as 7th then who knows....

 greyknight12 wrote:
I don't use any variation of homebrew rules. There's no point; I'm not going to convince the other 10 people at my store and certainly not any of the regional tournaments I've attended. Or if I move in a few years...odds are I won't convince them either. I'd rather not dedicate the required time and effort for what will likely be very little actual gaming on my part. As bad as the current ruleset is, at least it's universal.

I, though wanting to rewrite the rules, very much agree with this. Though I play almost exclusively casually and within my own home, there is a lot to say for standardization in a wargame's rules.
I guess I have a sort of "I'll go build my own ruleset with blackjack and hookers" mindset at times.

We normaly play stuff the way it is writen, but when 7th came the drawing and discarding and VP per mission had to be house ruled, otherwise the game was unplayable.

We also ban any faction specific missions, that lesson was learned hard durning the single event when they were allowed.

There was 40k on D10s back in 3rd and 4th. It was really awesome, gave a much better scale to weapons and armour

Do you consider army list restrictions has revised ruleset or integral part of the rules? If yes, than my gaming group do use a revised ruleset.

My group veered off in the middle of 5th Ed. because most couldn't stand the would allocation changes among other things. We keep developing our rules, taking bits of what we like (which happens to be less and less). I doubt we will ever buy GW rules again of any kind.

My group plays a very slightly modified version of the rules. Some of it's just little things like discarding impossible maelstrom cards, other stuff is just for streamlining like random wound allocation (we just let the controlling player allocate wounds to save time), or agreeing not to roll to hit against flyers without asking "do you want to jink?" first to stop any confusion. Uh...running during the movement phase, but it has to be done at the end (ie, you move all the non-running models first, then you move the running ones, and you can't use psychic powers on a friendly unit that ran in the movement phase, so no using the extra inches to get within range of a psychic power!). Just little tweaks, usually to make the game go faster.

Nothing that stops us being familiar with the rules in a pick-up game against a stranger though.

I've got a platoon-sized version that blends 2nd Edition base mechanics with Chain of Command that I'm working on slowly but surely to play with my friends. It's based around infantry and small numbers of vehicles, it's terrain and maneuver-dependent, and it's not IGoUGo. Basically trying to eliminate a few things: AP creep, all or nothing armor saves, herohammer, giant robots, death stars, elite-spamming, assault imbalances, etc.

But I really only play with my friends and we don't own any ridiculously large models (except a heirodule my buddy won at Games Day years ago) or fliers, and nobody cares who wins.

Maybe if we ever get it polished out I'll pass it on for testing to other peeps. But I don't expect it to be hugely popular. It will play slower and more tactically than 40K.

The only change we've implied is that we reroll the objectives that can't be accomplished.

Other than that - we sometimes have to come to an aggreement about terrain interactions as the book is often not clear on a variety of moments.

Still playing 2nd edition, so lots of stuff has had to be written to incorporate models that have been released since 1998.

Every event (tournament, league, etc) I can possibly think of, at just about every level, uses house rules to some extent. I can't think of any that use the Maelstrom missions straight out of the book for instance.

For my local league right now we're using custom missions and limiting certain types of things people can bring at certain points levels (no superheavies in 1000pt games for instance).

House ruling? Yes, I allow and encourage house rules that make things more fun.
Overhauling major core components of the rules? Never tried it, though I would give someone elses rules a shot.

I think the only deviation from core rules I use is random terrain/objectives, which is far too much bookkeeping.

Everything else works pretty well as is. its kindof a shame that so many people haven't tried out the maelstrom missions, they are pretty good!

I'm a huge fan of the Maelstrom missions. Some of the game types require that you reroll unattainable objectives though. I wish that were addressed in the rules somewhere.

At my gaming store we homerule 2 thing IIRC.
1-Relic Mission are always play as Kill points + relic.
2-You can discard objective card that you can't achieve if it's not cause by your army selection. (ie. I can discard Kill a flyer if my opponent have no flyer, but I can't discard Manifest a Psychic Power if I didn't bring a psycher.)

I'm currently working on 'translating' the Regiments of Renown rules from WHFB to 40K, as a few of my friends are getting into 40K and would like to play 100 point skirmishes. I suppose that would be a custom ruleset, right?

Other than that, no house rules come to mind right now. Then again, I haven't played in a few weeks due to being away on vacation. And I still need to paint my boyz too!

I mostly use homebrew rules with friends. They are based on 7th, but we change the stuff we don't like and add things we do like.

Aside from that, we play a lot of Kill Team using the brilliant Heralds of Ruin rules and campaign system.

i use some custom rules for campaigns or special games, i sometimes use custom codices, but other than that, not really.

Only one member of our club actively plays 40k (outside the club usually) however, at least 4 of us have 40k armies that we are fond of. We started gaming with 40k (some of us back in 2nd edition) and even if we're sick of the GW rules/price/codex/edition runaround it's nice to get the old armies out and onto the table once in a while.

Thus, once or twice a year we'll get together and have a massive apocalypse'ish battle using Mantic's fast-playing Warpath 1.0 rules. The four army lists that were released can be used to cover most 40k units and we've written our own streamlined (to fit the character of Warpath) rules for superheavies and Titans. Warpath 1.0 is basically Kings of War in space and for us it's just an excuse to pack the table with unrealistic amounts of figures (kind of like normal 40k…) and duke it out. You can see our last AAR, a link to the 1.0 rules and and our superheavy/titan rules here: http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2014/12/its-my-birthday-and-ill-play-warpath-if.html

It's not necessarily a great option for those looking for a 40k ruleset to use every week (try the current 2.0 rules instead), but the rules capture the feel of 40k combat very well, albeit with much less complexity and depth. The best part is that it plays in less than half the time of a comparable 40k game and it's free!

Me and my son use house rules now. We both HATE 40K how it's played now with Your turn my turn.

So long story short, I used the rules in Lord of the Rings and put them for 40K. Added some objective rules and we had a blast.

So for a beginner game we had 3 objectives. One objective in the middle worth 2 points per turn if within 3". He places one objective in his zone. It's worth one point per turn for him or 2 points per turn for me. Same goes for me. I put an objective in my zone. 1 point per turn for me, 2 points per turn for him.

It really makes you go out of your zone and try to claim those 2 objectives so you get more points per turn.

As far as I can tell. NO ONE . not even the studio staff use the 7th ed 40k rules as written.
They all interpret the rules their own way, or change things slightly to get the game to work how they think it should.

The current 40k rule set is less a rules book, more of a starting point for game development, you use to develop the game you want to play.

You are paying GW for a rule set you are expected to fix yourself. GWs ' Fine-rules.'