Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I keep reading about people getting fed up with GW being a model company which has been slowly moving away from clear cut tournament rules.

But as a new player who has been investing money when I can...I'm saddened that the tournament scene seems to have to lean to whatever factions have decent rules Vs the rest.

What I'm wondering is why online communities like this one haven't made rules pulling from several editions to streamline and balance play for tournaments. If GW won't do it, why not go the way of Pathfinder Vs D&D?

Because it's a huge load of work with literally no real reward.

People will always find ways to break the system or misinterpret things on purpose for their own douchenozzle needs. And why would you even invest the time into it for nothing in return?

 Psienesis wrote:
Because it's a huge load of work with literally no real reward.

Do Tourney's charge for entry?

If so, there's money in it there.

Also Pathfinder outsold D&D for years! There's absolutely a market for secondary rules systems that supplant a fan base in need.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:
People will always find ways to break the system or misinterpret things on purpose for their own douchenozzle needs. And why would you even invest the time into it for nothing in return?

See above, it's not about doing it once, it's about having something that starts out community based which will address issues as they come up.

Also again, I reiterate, Pathfinder definitively proved that secondary markets for rules systems can even outsell the mainstream brandname products.

Tournaments do. DakkaDakka is a web-forum, one of many, not a tournament organization committee. This, then, brings up another point: If 100 DakkaDakka users create a tournament ruleset, who gets paid? The users or DakkaDakka? If it's shared between them, what's the split?

Pathfinder is using an open-source system that was also used by Dungeons & Dragons. They are not the first, nor likely the last, to borrow the D20 system. It also doesn't really out-sell D&D. It may currently outsell 3/3.5E, but those are games now a decade-plus old. The game mechanics of 40k are definitely not "open source".

What would be gained by making a small playerbase even smaller? I'm a beginner with no thought of competitive play so the majority of complaints high level players have do not apply... Even still my local gaming stores have issues bringing 10 people together for a "tournament" once a week, and I bet the numbers would be worse for a WH41k event. Nevermind that the "Mini" Rule Book is 200 pages, and you still have all of the additional Supplements and Codexes.

Pathfinder was also differant in that the main selling point of d&d was the rules. and Pathfinder only REALLY caught on when WOTC literally slit their wrists, figurativly speaking, with 4th edition. the closest comparison would be if someone had done up a alternate WFB style ruleset right as AOS rolled out

Herecomesyourman wrote:
I keep reading about people getting fed up with GW being a model company which has been slowly moving away from clear cut tournament rules.

But as a new player who has been investing money when I can...I'm saddened that the tournament scene seems to have to lean to whatever factions have decent rules Vs the rest.

What I'm wondering is why online communities like this one haven't made rules pulling from several editions to streamline and balance play for tournaments. If GW won't do it, why not go the way of Pathfinder Vs D&D?

The answer is that there's no reward for doing it on a large scale like that, and thus nobody will do it. For your local community? Sure - it makes sense because you get the immediate benefit. On the other hand: I don't know anyone who plays enough and has enough additional time on top of that to form a cohesive set of rules that are better than the current set of rules. So even on a small scale, my bet is on nobody having the time and/or enough motivation to do it. Therefore, it happening on a large scale is essentially impossible.

The closest we're going to get is people fixing the codeces the know the most about (e.g. an Ork player proposing fixes for the Ork codex), minor fixes/changes to the rules that amend the current BRB rather than replace it, and the occasional new codex for relatively minor factions.

Herecomesyourman wrote:

Do Tourney's charge for entry?

If so, there's money in it there.

Charging for entry does not mean that they're actually making any money... TOs don't run tournies with any real expectation of making money.

insaniak wrote:Charging for entry does not mean that they're actually making any money... TOs don't run tournies with any real expectation of making money.

The funds are usually spent on prizes, tournament materiel, etc?

Pretty much. From what I've seen over the years, TOs who pocket entry money rather than churning it into prizes tend to be poorly favoured.

Which is nuts. They should get something for the time and effort (and in some cases fairly substantial cash outlay) that goes into running events. Unfortunately, though, a lot of gamers get more caught up in worrying about how much stuff they might win, rather than appreciating a well run event.

All of which is somewhat beside the point, which was simply that TOs aren't automatically in a position to pay for rules development, just because they charge for their events.

For something like what has been suggested here to happen, it would have to be a bunch of enthusiasts or TOs doing it entirely of their own back... And as we've seen in the past with community FAQs, that doesn't sit well with a lot of players, who for some bizarre reason take it as people getting full of themselves and trying to tell us all how to play...

 insaniak wrote:
Pretty much. From what I've seen over the years, TOs who pocket entry money rather than churning it into prizes tend to be poorly favoured.

Which is nuts. They should get something for the time and effort (and in some cases fairly substantial cash outlay) that goes into running events. Unfortunately, though, a lot of gamers get more caught up in worrying about how much stuff they might win, rather than appreciating a well run event.

All of which is somewhat beside the point, which was simply that TOs aren't automatically in a position to pay for rules development, just because they charge for their events.

For something like what has been suggested here to happen, it would have to be a bunch of enthusiasts or TOs doing it entirely of their own back... And as we've seen in the past with community FAQs, that doesn't sit well with a lot of players, who for some bizarre reason take it as people getting full of themselves and trying to tell us all how to play...

That's a damn shame...especially since there are probably people who have analyzed the game in such a manner that they could easily adjust point values slightly to make the game more fair for say Chaos Space Marines or Orks (just examples.)

But I don't get people being upset about community FAQ's Either!? That just seems insanely petty when you can play this game any which way you want to really.

I don't know...I've been analyzing the detachments for various armies...part of me thinks a good starting point is making a low point CAD game, and from there getting into what should be adjusted. I like the objective based game play that's currently being used over kill point games, but every time I do the math for detachments with special rules, it feels like I'm getting away from outfitting squads and units in a tactical manner, and merely min-maxing to get a high body count on the table.

I'm not saying it has to be perfectly balanced right from the get-go, but it really feels like some play testing and consensus from there could easily help shape some reasonable rule changes/writing where it's needed most.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 IllumiNini wrote:

Herecomesyourman wrote:
I keep reading about people getting fed up with GW being a model company which has been slowly moving away from clear cut tournament rules.

But as a new player who has been investing money when I can...I'm saddened that the tournament scene seems to have to lean to whatever factions have decent rules Vs the rest.

What I'm wondering is why online communities like this one haven't made rules pulling from several editions to streamline and balance play for tournaments. If GW won't do it, why not go the way of Pathfinder Vs D&D?

The answer is that there's no reward for doing it on a large scale like that, and thus nobody will do it. For your local community? Sure - it makes sense because you get the immediate benefit. On the other hand: I don't know anyone who plays enough and has enough additional time on top of that to form a cohesive set of rules that are better than the current set of rules. So even on a small scale, my bet is on nobody having the time and/or enough motivation to do it. Therefore, it happening on a large scale is essentially impossible.

The closest we're going to get is people fixing the codeces the know the most about (e.g. an Ork player proposing fixes for the Ork codex), minor fixes/changes to the rules that amend the current BRB rather than replace it, and the occasional new codex for relatively minor factions.

I think it's got to be a community of players who know the armies well enough to create a cohesive set of basic rules which make sense.

But I also think detachments in general are part of the problem. Instead of adding variety, it seems to glut the model count over making people think about lists. I've been at this for a few months now while painting up my new collection, and working out some practice games...but when I look online, I see some armies without any real support (Sisters of Battle, Orks, Tyranids, Chaos Space Marines, Blood Angels, etc.) And part of the problem are slight point adjustments from what I'm reading, and the power creep of detachments and new units being released annually.

I get that something new needs to be good enough to try, but it has to be hurting game play.

I'm starting to look for casual games with good people, but it was a lot of work to play test something I feel decently impressed with, that isn't just a Gladius Strike Force with Min-Maxed squads to start.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrianDavion wrote:
Pathfinder was also differant in that the main selling point of d&d was the rules. and Pathfinder only REALLY caught on when WOTC literally slit their wrists, figurativly speaking, with 4th edition. the closest comparison would be if someone had done up a alternate WFB style ruleset right as AOS rolled out

But ultimately, it outsold D&D for years. If it came down to it...I'm pretty sure a new dice system could be created.

I saw a post on here when I started a few months ago, where someone was touting a possible D10 system they were working on as being a lot more fair and interesting for example.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

vyse.04 wrote:
What would be gained by making a small playerbase even smaller? I'm a beginner with no thought of competitive play so the majority of complaints high level players have do not apply... Even still my local gaming stores have issues bringing 10 people together for a "tournament" once a week, and I bet the numbers would be worse for a WsH41k event. Nevermind that the "Mini" Rule Book is 200 pages, and you still have all of the additional Supplements and Codexes.

Actually I think streamlining things is the way to go.

IF I put together a small tournament for 1,500-1850 point games...and made the only two restrictions that you could field a single CAD, and no army could take Allies...that cuts out a ton of rules that bog games down right off the bat.

I'm not saying this should hamper non-competitive play, but there should be a streamlined rule set for basic competitive play. Something that makes things easier on new players like the two of us.

I've had to study this game like a college course for months, and I'm really digging it, but it's making it hard to appeal to close gamer friends to take that leap and play this game with me, and this is just where my thoughts led me in turn.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Psienesis wrote:
Tournaments do. DakkaDakka is a web-forum, one of many, not a tournament organization committee. This, then, brings up another point: If 100 DakkaDakka users create a tournament ruleset, who gets paid? The users or DakkaDakka? If it's shared between them, what's the split?

Pathfinder is using an open-source system that was also used by Dungeons & Dragons. They are not the first, nor likely the last, to borrow the D20 system. It also doesn't really out-sell D&D. It may currently outsell 3/3.5E, but those are games now a decade-plus old. The game mechanics of 40k are definitely not "open source".

Actually it outsold D&D up until the recent 5th edition for two editions in a row.

As for the split, I guess you'd round up people on this board and others who have the knowledge...see who's butting heads. Hold skype/G-Chat rooms to talk things out...etc.

Filing a small LLC or something...maybe even starting a kickstarter wouldn't be out of the question if you found the right group who get on well. It should be organized people who can delegate, but also pull their own weight. So you cast a wide net, and then sift for a bit to find the folks who can do it right. Those are the people who should be paid, and I would say you make a fair equity split in an LLC until it becomes something that either gets bought out, or at least makes a little cash.

because throughout most of the whining, very few people could do better without a massive amount of work. the TOs who do usually get shouted down the first time they screw up, or make a poor decision. If said TO charges 5 dollars for entry, people complain that he's trying to pull a profit. if he doesn't charge, longer standing players complain as tournaments get larger numbers of low skill players.

As many people have pointed out (over time): once you take the game out of a competitive setting, it becomes much more 'playable' so to speak. Most of the hard core cheese that piss people off (general eldar dickery, ally abuse, bending grammar issues in rules to play something in ways obviously beyond what was intended or is obvious, certain Tau shenanigans, etc.) are a result of the community AND the rules. Does this apply to all issues? No. Could the system be leagues better? Yes. Will making the perfect system solve these issues? No. people will abuse what they will if they really value winning that highly. Will we acknowledge that it's a mix of the rules AND the players who make the game 'worse' in this aspect? Not without a multi page argument.


EDIT: I arguably thing that it shouldn't be players to make this thing either. They should be involved, but not as the core force. Look at ITC's apparent Tau hate as a reason why player based rules making has problems: groups have biases, and the group is not homogeneous in said biases.

 Brennonjw wrote:
because throughout most of the whining, very few people could do better without a massive amount of work. the TOs who do usually get shouted down the first time they screw up, or make a poor decision. If said TO charges 5 dollars for entry, people complain that he's trying to pull a profit. if he doesn't charge, longer standing players complain as tournaments get larger numbers of low skill players.

As many people have pointed out (over time): once you take the game out of a competitive setting, it becomes much more 'playable' so to speak. Most of the hard core cheese that piss people off (general eldar dickery, ally abuse, bending grammar issues in rules to play something in ways obviously beyond what was intended or is obvious, certain Tau shenanigans, etc.) are a result of the community AND the rules. Does this apply to all issues? No. Could the system be leagues better? Yes. Will making the perfect system solve these issues? No. people will abuse what they will if they really value winning that highly. Will we acknowledge that it's a mix of the rules AND the players who make the game 'worse' in this aspect? Not without a multi page argument.

I don't think it's an argument man. There are shifty and gakky people in all gaming communities, but I see so much potential for this game if there was an evolving tournament rule set that wasn't shackled to additions to the ruled which only serve to min-max everything all the time. 30K seems a ton more appealing even juse at a glance.

Filing a small LLC or something...maybe even starting a kickstarter wouldn't be out of the question if you found the right group who get on well. It should be organized people who can delegate, but also pull their own weight. So you cast a wide net, and then sift for a bit to find the folks who can do it right. Those are the people who should be paid, and I would say you make a fair equity split in an LLC until it becomes something that either gets bought out, or at least makes a little cash.

Attempting to profit off the IP owned by Games Workshop will (not might, will) get you sued well into the 45th millennium... and, do keep in mind, this is only the 3rd millennium.

 Psienesis wrote:

Filing a small LLC or something...maybe even starting a kickstarter wouldn't be out of the question if you found the right group who get on well. It should be organized people who can delegate, but also pull their own weight. So you cast a wide net, and then sift for a bit to find the folks who can do it right. Those are the people who should be paid, and I would say you make a fair equity split in an LLC until it becomes something that either gets bought out, or at least makes a little cash.

Attempting to profit off the IP owned by Games Workshop will (not might, will) get you sued well into the 45th millennium... and, do keep in mind, this is only the 3rd millennium.

If you used an LLC and used the money strictly for events (non-profit, but good accommodations) I think you would be fine. The main thing would be to codify more balanced rules people can download for free.

When I think compensation, I think more in terms of rewarding experiences. If already established tournament clubs were doing this I'd get really Gung ho, but I'm finding myself frustrated with certain things and that's never a good sign. While Pathfinder was a for profit deal, it was also an open source dice system.

People brough up compensation, but the reward here would probably not be $.

I don't think you understand how litiginous GW is as a company. 40K is their cash-cow, really the only product they have keeping the lights on. If you're not signing up to pay them for the rights to the IP (as with video games and such), then GW is generally not interested in allowing violations of their copyright to go unanswered.

Having all of the rules of the game in a freely-available book (that is, one that doesn't require you to buy a BRB or any number of codices) is not going to go over well, and is a violation of Fair Use laws. You're not allowed to take someone's published material, change a few words around, and then slap your name on it, even with "based on" or "originally by" on the label.

I really hope that the new edition of Warpath gets some alternate army lists like Kings of War did. That would allow it to fulfill this role.

 Psienesis wrote:
I don't think you understand how litiginous GW is as a company. 40K is their cash-cow, really the only product they have keeping the lights on. If you're not signing up to pay them for the rights to the IP (as with video games and such), then GW is generally not interested in allowing violations of their copyright to go unanswered.

Having all of the rules of the game in a freely-available book (that is, one that doesn't require you to buy a BRB or any number of codices) is not going to go over well, and is a violation of Fair Use laws. You're not allowed to take someone's published material, change a few words around, and then slap your name on it, even with "based on" or "originally by" on the label.

How about just publishing them as tournament rules?

I'm googling around and seeing other tournaments, I'm not sure you couldn't make in depth rules going further non-profit. These would be to simplify and balance what already exists.

However, even what you describe might not be the case. If you eschew fluff, and only use a math system, maybe labeled differently, I'm not sure what could be done. Fantasy was shut down but new rule sets for those models were published by another company. And that WAS for profit.

Those other companies publishing rules for WHF may be paying a licensing fee to GW for the rights to attach a WHF logo to the book. I'm not familiar enough with WHF, or these alternate rulesets you're talking about, to say for certain.

The charts, tables, etc and such found in the BRB or Codices published by GW are, likewise, copyright works. You can't, for example, freely re-publish the Vehicle Damage Table or Perils of the Warp table without running afoul of copyright laws. Incidentally, this is why posters here on Dakka cannot post full unit statlines or the like, because that's a GW copyright. We cannot be a replacement for a rule-book or a codex.

 Psienesis wrote:
Because it's a huge load of work with literally no real reward.

I do not agree. 5th edition transport rules, 6th edition monster rules and some tweaks to the blatant anti melee bias plus rework on sD weapons and stomps, a couple of rules restricting deathstar builds is all it really takes.

shiwan8 wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Because it's a huge load of work with literally no real reward.

I do not agree. 5th edition transport rules, 6th edition monster rules and some tweaks to the blatant anti melee bias plus rework on sD weapons and stomps, a couple of rules restricting deathstar builds is all it really takes.

The Rulebook rules aren't the problem. The problem is all of the terrible balance between codexs. That will take a lot of work

shiwan8 wrote:
-is all it really takes.

Which is a pretty clear indication you don't have any understanding of 'what it really takes.'

You just rattled off a random list of things you liked from various editions, but you can't answer the question, 'how do they all work together?' How do those changes interact and effect each other, and what further work do you have to invest to work it all out.

People have been trying to make their own 'perfect' rules sets for 40K since Rogue Trader, and 1: It's easier said than done, 2: you have to get enough people to buy into your work to get it widely adopted.

The reason why Pathfinder worked was it was based on an open source version of the rules for a very popular, well known system that many people liked. So when D&D moved into 4th edition, Pathfinder filled the very viable niche of a system that still followed the steps of 3rd edition that a lot of people were interested in.

There's no such foundation for someone going for their own 'perfect' 40K ruleset.

 Bookwrack wrote:

shiwan8 wrote:
-is all it really takes.

Which is a pretty clear indication you don't have any understanding of 'what it really takes.'

You just rattled off a random list of things you liked from various editions, but you can't answer the question, 'how do they all work together?' How do those changes interact and effect each other, and what further work do you have to invest to work it all out.

People have been trying to make their own 'perfect' rules sets for 40K since Rogue Trader, and 1: It's easier said than done, 2: you have to get enough people to buy into your work to get it widely adopted.

The reason why Pathfinder worked was it was based on an open source version of the rules for a very popular, well known system that many people liked. So when D&D moved into 4th edition, Pathfinder filled the very viable niche of a system that still followed the steps of 3rd edition that a lot of people were interested in.

There's no such foundation for someone going for their own 'perfect' 40K ruleset.

It's a clear indication of me not agreeing with the general hopelessness. Nothing more. What would happen is:

- 5th edition transport rules would fix various problems in the games bias against meleeish codices. It would also make things like rhinos viable again. All of this would make things harder for eldar and tau and open up new ways to play for SM and it's ilk.
- 6th edition monster rules would result to monsters being able to go against vehicles and flying monsters being ablo to do something else than just fly and shoot.
- Weapons have to be treated equal to knives. If you can for example disembark or stand in a rubble of the just exploded transport and shoot accurately you can run and kick the enemy in the teeth.
- Allowing only one IC per unit and allowing ICs to join only units of their own detachment solves pretty much all deathstars except tiggyturions and screamer star. Those in turn are fixed by banning the Grimoire and allowing only one reroll per unit per turn.
-sD weapons should still be forced roll for wounding and armor penetration. If successful in either in stead of doing one wound/HP damage it would do d3. FNP or reanimation would not work against sD. A wound or AP roll of 6 would ignore saves.
- Stomp would make one automatic wound of appropriate strength or one automatically penetrating hit with ap1. Otherwise just a hit with stompers strength and no ap but +1 to the damage table roll if there is a penetrating hit. Stomps can only be placed to base contact with the stomper.

Did I miss something or is the game pretty much fixed if you do not count the extremely bad units?

Herecomesyourman wrote:
I keep reading about people getting fed up with GW being a model company which has been slowly moving away from clear cut tournament rules.

But as a new player who has been investing money when I can...I'm saddened that the tournament scene seems to have to lean to whatever factions have decent rules Vs the rest.

What I'm wondering is why online communities like this one haven't made rules pulling from several editions to streamline and balance play for tournaments. If GW won't do it, why not go the way of Pathfinder Vs D&D?

Only way that'll ever happen is if GW pulls an "age of sigmar" on 40k.

Take a look at what happened there. GW had to LITERALLY KILL THE GAME to get the community to seriously consider a new ruleset for Fantasy, which from my understanding was even worse than 40k is now. Not "broken but has elements that are fun", not " well the rules are meh but the codexes aren't balanced." They had to physically kill 8th edition and leave those players with a new system nothing like the old one. Even then, the community is very fractured between Kings of War (pretty muh the pathfinder equivalent) WHFB "9th age", a 100% fan made edition, and people attempting to modify age of sigmar to turn it into a semblance of a wargame.

The fact that people still play 40k in droves is proof enough of this. If Superheavies, GMC's, Decurions, formations, and insanely ridiculous combos couldn't drive the community to try a new ruleset, it's pretty clear 40k won't go through a change either until GW " Sigmars" it. This is also ignoring who makes the system, who gets paid (if at all) who hosts the rules? Do you try to modify the formula the game has now or start fresh? Do you go back to its roots, cutting down the amount of models on the table, risking annoying newer players with their knights and riptides, or do you do your best with what you have? Do you keep a semblance of formations in or drop them entirely? Protip, no matter what combination of choices you make there, people would be mad.

The only fan made set of rules I ever saw that were any good was "One Page 40k" which did a surprisingly good job of keeping the flavor of 40k in a more skirmish flavor while still keeping the feel of each army, with a ruleset that was 2-3 pages and a page for your codex. I've tried to get people to play it several times but again, people are creatures of habit. Doesn't matter how flawed the original is, they'll keep using it until something forces them to switch.

shiwan8 wrote:

 Bookwrack wrote:

shiwan8 wrote:
-is all it really takes.

Which is a pretty clear indication you don't have any understanding of 'what it really takes.'

You just rattled off a random list of things you liked from various editions, but you can't answer the question, 'how do they all work together?' How do those changes interact and effect each other, and what further work do you have to invest to work it all out.

People have been trying to make their own 'perfect' rules sets for 40K since Rogue Trader, and 1: It's easier said than done, 2: you have to get enough people to buy into your work to get it widely adopted.

The reason why Pathfinder worked was it was based on an open source version of the rules for a very popular, well known system that many people liked. So when D&D moved into 4th edition, Pathfinder filled the very viable niche of a system that still followed the steps of 3rd edition that a lot of people were interested in.

There's no such foundation for someone going for their own 'perfect' 40K ruleset.

It's a clear indication of me not agreeing with the general hopelessness. Nothing more. What would happen is:

- 5th edition transport rules would fix various problems in the games bias against meleeish codices. It would also make things like rhinos viable again. All of this would make things harder for eldar and tau and open up new ways to play for SM and it's ilk.
- 6th edition monster rules would result to monsters being able to go against vehicles and flying monsters being ablo to do something else than just fly and shoot.
- Weapons have to be treated equal to knives. If you can for example disembark or stand in a rubble of the just exploded transport and shoot accurately you can run and kick the enemy in the teeth.
- Allowing only one IC per unit and allowing ICs to join only units of their own detachment solves pretty much all deathstars except tiggyturions and screamer star. Those in turn are fixed by banning the Grimoire and allowing only one reroll per unit per turn.
-sD weapons should still be forced roll for wounding and armor penetration. If successful in either in stead of doing one wound/HP damage it would do d3. FNP or reanimation would not work against sD. A wound or AP roll of 6 would ignore saves.
- Stomp would make one automatic wound of appropriate strength or one automatically penetrating hit with ap1. Otherwise just a hit with stompers strength and no ap but +1 to the damage table roll if there is a penetrating hit. Stomps can only be placed to base contact with the stomper.

Did I miss something or is the game pretty much fixed if you do not count the extremely bad units?

I really like the direction of this post! I don't own 5th or 6th Ed rule books (maybe I could get them on Ebay?)

But even then I'd rather have players like yourself with gaming experience during those editions check listing obvious balance issues like this.

Any chance you could type of a quick synopsis of the 5th and 6th edition rules on Google Docs? If you PM me I'll shoot you an email address. I just like the idea of starting something small that can add people to it as it grows, so people can post small notes anywhere and everywhere. That way a general consensus can be had.

Even if all this becomes is an informal set of rules people can try, I'm all for making a more fair and balanced game of it.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Herecomesyourman wrote:
I keep reading about people getting fed up with GW being a model company which has been slowly moving away from clear cut tournament rules.

But as a new player who has been investing money when I can...I'm saddened that the tournament scene seems to have to lean to whatever factions have decent rules Vs the rest.

What I'm wondering is why online communities like this one haven't made rules pulling from several editions to streamline and balance play for tournaments. If GW won't do it, why not go the way of Pathfinder Vs D&D?

Only way that'll ever happen is if GW pulls an "age of sigmar" on 40k.

Take a look at what happened there. GW had to LITERALLY KILL THE GAME to get the community to seriously consider a new ruleset for Fantasy, which from my understanding was even worse than 40k is now. Not "broken but has elements that are fun", not " well the rules are meh but the codexes aren't balanced." They had to physically kill 8th edition and leave those players with a new system nothing like the old one. Even then, the community is very fractured between Kings of War (pretty muh the pathfinder equivalent) WHFB "9th age", a 100% fan made edition, and people attempting to modify age of sigmar to turn it into a semblance of a wargame.

The fact that people still play 40k in droves is proof enough of this. If Superheavies, GMC's, Decurions, formations, and insanely ridiculous combos couldn't drive the community to try a new ruleset, it's pretty clear 40k won't go through a change either until GW " Sigmars" it. This is also ignoring who makes the system, who gets paid (if at all) who hosts the rules? Do you try to modify the formula the game has now or start fresh? Do you go back to its roots, cutting down the amount of models on the table, risking annoying newer players with their knights and riptides, or do you do your best with what you have? Do you keep a semblance of formations in or drop them entirely? Protip, no matter what combination of choices you make there, people would be mad.

The only fan made set of rules I ever saw that were any good was "One Page 40k" which did a surprisingly good job of keeping the flavor of 40k in a more skirmish flavor while still keeping the feel of each army, with a ruleset that was 2-3 pages and a page for your codex. I've tried to get people to play it several times but again, people are creatures of habit. Doesn't matter how flawed the original is, they'll keep using it until something forces them to switch.

I can totally see your points here being valid, but I do have some ways to accommodate your concerns:

01. You make tiers after you re-balance basic rules slightly from a slowly play tested set of changes which leave the majority of current rules in tact. That keeps things manageable for new players like myself to have a touchstone, and this way they can try things both ways without much bias to see what they like playing better.

02. You keep things CAD focused for smaller point games (Sub 1,000), and have optional rules for detachments. If the game allows detachments for example, maybe you get one for every 500 points per Army, so there's clear cut building rules which make it scale with point value like a CAD can (as a new player, CAD's appeal to me a lot more since I can make a focused list which plays the same no matter the point level, this keeps things closer to that model in a way which isn't too confusing.)

03. Point values per codex should probably be assessed by veteran gamers who would know better than I, so that factions which clearly are being outclassed due to bad list pricing can get a fair shake.

04. Maybe limit super heavies and like with other optional rules; say 1 per every 1,000 points. Now they aren't banned, but you pay a heavy price to combo them.

05. I do think models should be cut down, and most low armor transports and the like need better rules. The Skyhammer Annihilation Task Force for example is the only example I can see for charging out of a drop pod to be legal (which makes very little sense to me.) I read all the time how "the assault is dead", but it seems to be simple changes with transports alone would make assault based lists much more viable, without really hurting shooty units in terms of game power by and large.

But if I'm off base here already, let me know. I'm new to all this and just spent a lot of free time recently trying to research as much as I can.

Also, are there any links to 1 page 40K still around?

Herecomesyourman wrote:

shiwan8 wrote:

- 5th edition transport rules would fix various problems in the games bias against meleeish codices. It would also make things like rhinos viable again. All of this would make things harder for eldar and tau and open up new ways to play for SM and it's ilk.
- 6th edition monster rules would result to monsters being able to go against vehicles and flying monsters being ablo to do something else than just fly and shoot.
- Weapons have to be treated equal to knives. If you can for example disembark or stand in a rubble of the just exploded transport and shoot accurately you can run and kick the enemy in the teeth.
- Allowing only one IC per unit and allowing ICs to join only units of their own detachment solves pretty much all deathstars except tiggyturions and screamer star. Those in turn are fixed by banning the Grimoire and allowing only one reroll per unit per turn.
-sD weapons should still be forced roll for wounding and armor penetration. If successful in either in stead of doing one wound/HP damage it would do d3. FNP or reanimation would not work against sD. A wound or AP roll of 6 would ignore saves.
- Stomp would make one automatic wound of appropriate strength or one automatically penetrating hit with ap1. Otherwise just a hit with stompers strength and no ap but +1 to the damage table roll if there is a penetrating hit. Stomps can only be placed to base contact with the stomper.

Did I miss something or is the game pretty much fixed if you do not count the extremely bad units?

5th edition transports allowed assault moves after disembatcation if the transport did not move that turn.
6th edition FMC could change flight mofe from swooping to gliding and assault during that turn.
6th edition smash halved the attack charasteristic found in the models profile and doubled the strength of the model. This was an alternate way to punch things. This way monsters could hurt landraiders and dreadnougths and now they realistically just can not.

I'd suggest the only way to make something like this stick would be to make a demonstrably better product than exists. One part of which would be to do what GW evidently refuses to do (because it doesn't sell models), and apply the skills of a statistician.

I made some interesting progress on this myself as a proof of concept for $work in the form of a distributed brute force calculation framework. To this I applied hits wounds and armour saves vs original point values by specifying every unit, wargear options and modifying condition I could think of, and then having it run through every combination automatically. This would eventually spit out a combat effectiveness value, which if you could find a baseline 'worthless' unit to act as 1 point ( grot?), you could construct a statistically balanced point assignment.

Having done *that* - providing a quantifiable even playing field for combat effectiveness + survivability in point values (however you do it), then it would be worthwhile to factor in the strategic options ( points bump for obsec, scout, infiltrate, being a flyer etc). if you were still breathing after balancing that out evenly, and could find anyone to play it now that spess mehreens are 20 point s a model without upgrades, you've won.

Since as everyone previously mentions, this is at least a months full time labor for a skilled worker, and by definition skilled workers have more rewarding things to do, it could only happen if there was a significant buy-in before hand to guarantee it would be worthwhile, even if everyone involved did it for free.