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In another thread,
one commenter suggested ways to take
list-building and the win-button gotcha CCG combo attitude
out of the game experience equation.

That suggestion effectively changes the motivation driving the assembly of "lists"
by adding layers of mission parameter
that change the way that the list plays in the mission,
e.g. a card that says "All fast attack units are unavailable [for reasons]" or
"All heavy support units are unavailable [for other reasons]".

Another possibility might be this:

1) Players array their "lists" (say, 2000 points of models) on side tables.
2) Missions are selected.
3) Deployment begins with highest dice. This player may deploy one unit.
4) Second player deploys one unit.
5) Player one deploys a unit.
6) Player two deploys a unit, and rolls a dice.
HERE, things can happen. For instance,
On a 6, deployment stops.
OR
7) Repeat 5 and 6. On any second result of a 6, deployment stops.
8) If 2 sixes are not rolled after any two phases of player 2 deployment,
then the complete armies are deployed as listed in the full "list".


Other ideas?

All of these suggestions are just going to make it more unfair, aren't they? What if my army is, say, a dark eldar wych coven full of jetbikes and skyboards, and you pull the "soz mate no fast attack" card?

Otherwise, regarding layers of missions and so on - isn't that exactly what maelstrom is?

You could ditch cps and strategems altogether. Maybe special characters and relics too.

I'm sure there are some armies that would gimp though.

Crispy78 wrote:
All of these suggestions are just going to make it more unfair, aren't they? What if my army is, say, a dark eldar wych coven full of jetbikes and skyboards, and you pull the "soz mate no fast attack" card?

Otherwise, regarding layers of missions and so on - isn't that exactly what maelstrom is?

In bold, this is the idea I think - Those armies have (and should have) options
from other areas
and with allies, soup and so on,
these limitations might be overcome.

Thing is, both sides are constrained by these rules -
so the idea was to encourage people to bring more balanced armies.
Given that we aren't sure what might not come on,
we need to hedge our bets.
Not so many eggs in single baskets.

I do like this idea, but also this needs supported by rules like
no named characters
unless characters/hq are also on the list of things that stay off the table.

Good luck convincing people to play by your weird house rules.

Randomly removing parts of my army does not seem fun. What if you say no fast attack, and it just so happens all my fast attack had my anti-tank? Now my opponents heavy support just automatically wins.

It doesn't encourage balanced listbuilding, it encourages spamming troops choices and HQ units that you know cannot be removed from the game. A Guard player, for example, would simply take as many Tank Commanders as possible, then all Scions and Infantry, so they don't risk losing their units to weird rules. Orks would have a big advantage, just spam warbosses, weirdboyz, big meks, and boyz.

Your idea with deployment "stopping" just encourages the largest possible units to be deployed, or to game the deployment system to get fewer drops. For example, I take a Chimera with my Guard army, so I can deploy it and 6 characters inside it at once, so I'm sure my command structure can be deployed.

you can make house rules all you want, but they will more often than not make the game less balanced, not more, and are only going to be "fun" if your army isn't getting dicked over by them.

I love how threads pop up like this where the OP suggests something in a sort of "hey, lets brainstorm some ideas, how about these as a starting point?" and people will eagerly dog pile on them to tell them why they're wrong and their ideas are stupid.

I'm not against the idea of messing with how lists are built but I feel like outright banning certain sections of an army book is against the Your Dudes style 40k goes for. A better idea might be to impose a CP penalty on certain sections. Like you can take one Heavy choice for nothing, a second for 1cp, a third for 2cp etc. But then you run into problems with armies like Imperial Guard who can take squadrons of tanks as one choice so maybe rather than doing it by unit you do it per model. So you say each model with the keywords [Vehicle] from the heavy section of the army.

There's likely problems with that too though that I'm not thinking of.

Or you could modify it and instead of banning certain troop types, players are rewarded IF they can manage without them. So like "2d6 victory points, if you manage without fast attack" and the like. This way you could still play your way and include your FAs, but in some cases the challenge of a different list might be more interesting. But thats also just an idea thown in the ring, if you like

I don't like the idea of side boards in general and I really don't like the idea of being able to delete who FO categories before the game starts since a lot of factions rely on some more than others.

The Newman wrote:
You could ditch cps and strategems altogether. Maybe special characters and relics too.

I'm sure there are some armies that would gimp though.

Sister of battle don't function at all without saint Celestine. The entire book is about abusing the 4++ bubble. We also rely heavily on our relics.

I am working on a side project that is basically writing a game that uses modern military tactics for my 40k models. List building will be minor and CCG styled gamey game mechanics will not exist.

 jeff white wrote:
In another thread,
one commenter suggested ways to take
list-building and the win-button gotcha CCG combo attitude
out of the game experience equation.

That suggestion effectively changes the motivation driving the assembly of "lists"
by adding layers of mission parameter
that change the way that the list plays in the mission,
e.g. a card that says "All fast attack units are unavailable [for reasons]" or
"All heavy support units are unavailable [for other reasons]".

Another possibility might be this:

1) Players array their "lists" (say, 2000 points of models) on side tables.
2) Missions are selected.
3) Deployment begins with highest dice. This player may deploy one unit.
4) Second player deploys one unit.
5) Player one deploys a unit.
6) Player two deploys a unit, and rolls a dice.
HERE, things can happen. For instance,
On a 6, deployment stops.
OR
7) Repeat 5 and 6. On any second result of a 6, deployment stops.
8) If 2 sixes are not rolled after any two phases of player 2 deployment,
then the complete armies are deployed as listed in the full "list".


Other ideas?

These are terrible random nonsense and far worse than the systems that are already in place.

It HEAVILY encourages the 'CCG Combo' thing because you'd always design your list around your first 6 deployments being what you win with. It pushes you towards overlapping buff deathstars and skew lists.

Also, what happens if I have 5 deployments (knights) and you have 15 and roll a 6 immediately? More than half you list could be gone while I still have all 2000pts.

Finally, if it doesn't do either of those things, it will do nothing at all. Why? Because if stopping deployment early isn't likely enough to severely skew list building, than it will be an utterly ignored waste of time because it won't change anything.


I say this all the time but man am I glad ya'll ain't game designers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
I am working on a side project that is basically writing a game that uses modern military tactics for my 40k models. List building will be minor and CCG styled gamey game mechanics will not exist.

Cool story bro.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:
I love how threads pop up like this where the OP suggests something in a sort of "hey, lets brainstorm some ideas, how about these as a starting point?" and people will eagerly dog pile on them to tell them why they're wrong and their ideas are stupid.

That's not what's happening here. By starting out the thread with 'win-button gotcha CCG combo attitude' in your opening paragraph, your thesis, whether you intended it to be or not, becomes 'the game is bad, these ideas are better'. The 'other ideas' part becomes ancillary.

If he actually had vested interest is brainstorming he should have started the thread less combatively. 'Sometimes I feel like the game focuses too much on unit combos, here are some of my ideas on how to make combos less important, what about you?' There's a lot of power in how you phrase things.

One of the other games I play is Bolt Action (WW 2) by Warlord games which has a very interesting turn sequence mechanism. Every unit on each side gets a die or token put into a bag. Each turn you pull one out and the side whose token was drawn can activate one unit (you place the die/token next to the unit). In Bolt action it would be "Fire", "Advance" "Down" or so forth so in 40K it would be "Move and Fire", "Move an Advance", "Charge", "Psychic Power" and the like. This makes for some very challenging decisions on which unit to activate, which activation to give, etc. You can also use this method for force deployment at the beginning of the game.

When a unit is destroyed that token is removed permanently from the game so as you lose more and more units things greatly shift in your opponent's favor. HQ units have an ability called "Snap To!" where they can activate not only themselves but additional units within a certain radius. You pull additional die/tokens out of the bag for the units you want to activate and they do their thing. This is great when you really want to wipe out a unit in shooting or close combat BUT this does mean it's pretty likely your opponent will get the next several pulls from the bag so it better work!

To be fair, not sure how well this would translate to 40K. Bolt Action doesn't have phases so, in the example above, if a character used s Psychic Power they couldn't do anything else that turn. This would be a problem if the psycher is part of a unit ("WHY AREN'T YOU MOVEING?!?!?!" "I CAN'T, I'M CONCENTRATING!!!!!) so there would be issues to iron out but I'm considering giving this a try with my group.

Additionally - you're going to struggle trying to get people to talk positively about house rules on here or any internet forum. You're better off coming up with a ruleset of your own and then pitching it to your playgroup.

People that like the busted-nature of 40k are not going to want it to stop being busted. They likely bought their army exactly because its hyper optimal, so making it no longer optimal will not be something a lot of people that go that route will be positive about.

 auticus wrote:
I am working on a side project that is basically writing a game that uses modern military tactics for my 40k models. List building will be minor and CCG styled gamey game mechanics will not exist.

Awesome.
Basically adapt what is given, beginning with an older edition, or... BA?
Why can't 40k be played this way, as in GW makes a rules set with optional add ons in appendices.
So, like the free 8th rules,
then -
add-on for realism,
add -ons for tourney gamey play,
for apoc,
for kill team squad level
for quick lay
for narrative and compaign play...

velocitydog wrote:
One of the other games I play is Bolt Action (WW 2) by Warlord games which has a very interesting turn sequence mechanism. Every unit on each side gets a die or token put into a bag. Each turn you pull one out and the side whose token was drawn can activate one unit (you place the die/token next to the unit). In Bolt action it would be "Fire", "Advance" "Down" or so forth so in 40K it would be "Move and Fire", "Move an Advance", "Charge", "Psychic Power" and the like. This makes for some very challenging decisions on which unit to activate, which activation to give, etc. You can also use this method for force deployment at the beginning of the game.

When a unit is destroyed that token is removed permanently from the game so as you lose more and more units things greatly shift in your opponent's favor. HQ units have an ability called "Snap To!" where they can activate not only themselves but additional units within a certain radius. You pull additional die/tokens out of the bag for the units you want to activate and they do their thing. This is great when you really want to wipe out a unit in shooting or close combat BUT this does mean it's pretty likely your opponent will get the next several pulls from the bag so it better work!

To be fair, not sure how well this would translate to 40K. Bolt Action doesn't have phases so, in the example above, if a character used s Psychic Power they couldn't do anything else that turn. This would be a problem if the psycher is part of a unit ("WHY AREN'T YOU MOVEING?!?!?!" "I CAN'T, I'M CONCENTRATING!!!!!) so there would be issues to iron out but I'm considering giving this a try with my group.

Jeff, pay no attention to the pathetic douches on here that take advantage of someone's vulnerability when making a suggestion, and use it as an opportunity to be insulting. They're all cowards, and I doubt would be so bold if speaking face to face.

Good on you for trying to improve the game, it definitely needs it.

I'd humbly suggest taking a look at the rules of AT-43, which are free online as PDF. I used to play it when it came out, and for a version 1.0 I thought it was amazing. The company went under because they made poor business decisions, but the game itself was brilliant. It's the same scale and sci fi. It might give you some fun ideas!

Nah, I'd tell you to your face that disallowing chunks of my army to not play arbitrarily is a bad idea.

Just play Apocalypse.

Here is an idea on new rules to play the game. Just quit wh40k and play a different game.

Basically adapt what is given, beginning with an older edition, or... BA?

I get told a lot to just gtfo and play a different game if I don't like 40k so much. Problem is I have a sizable 40k collection, I like the models, and I like the story. I just hate the game.

Fortunately I also live somewhere where there are a great number of people who are the same. They love the model and the setting, hate the game.

The project I am currently writing is a completely different beast, inspired by things like advanced squad leader, epic, and gates of antares plus my own experiences that I have had while serving in the army in a combat MOS (19k - tanks).

 auticus wrote:

Basically adapt what is given, beginning with an older edition, or... BA?

I get told a lot to just gtfo and play a different game if I don't like 40k so much. Problem is I have a sizable 40k collection, I like the models, and I like the story. I just hate the game.

Fortunately I also live somewhere where there are a great number of people who are the same. They love the model and the setting, hate the game.

The project I am currently writing is a completely different beast, inspired by things like advanced squad leader, epic, and gates of antares plus my own experiences that I have had while serving in the army in a combat MOS (19k - tanks).

Try Apocalypse, it's a totally different beast

I have. Its still not really what I want out of a wargame.

velocitydog wrote:
One of the other games I play is Bolt Action (WW 2) by Warlord games which has a very interesting turn sequence mechanism. Every unit on each side gets a die or token put into a bag. Each turn you pull one out and the side whose token was drawn can activate one unit (you place the die/token next to the unit). In Bolt action it would be "Fire", "Advance" "Down" or so forth so in 40K it would be "Move and Fire", "Move an Advance", "Charge", "Psychic Power" and the like. This makes for some very challenging decisions on which unit to activate, which activation to give, etc. You can also use this method for force deployment at the beginning of the game.

When a unit is destroyed that token is removed permanently from the game so as you lose more and more units things greatly shift in your opponent's favor. HQ units have an ability called "Snap To!" where they can activate not only themselves but additional units within a certain radius. You pull additional die/tokens out of the bag for the units you want to activate and they do their thing. This is great when you really want to wipe out a unit in shooting or close combat BUT this does mean it's pretty likely your opponent will get the next several pulls from the bag so it better work!

To be fair, not sure how well this would translate to 40K. Bolt Action doesn't have phases so, in the example above, if a character used s Psychic Power they couldn't do anything else that turn. This would be a problem if the psycher is part of a unit ("WHY AREN'T YOU MOVEING?!?!?!" "I CAN'T, I'M CONCENTRATING!!!!!) so there would be issues to iron out but I'm considering giving this a try with my group.

Reasonably trivially, actually. I play 40k kind of like that: all sides get X dice in a bag (X being their number of units), there are no player turns but rounds, you draw dice until the colour changes and get to do a "mini turn" with as many units as you drew. You get all the phases though, do if you get, say, three chits, you can pick three units that move, psyche, shoot and fight, then the opponent gets some, you get some and so forth. Psychic buffs last until the end off the round and stratagems are phaselimited all the way through just like they normally are. This system has worked really well, even if some dynamics of course differ from the regular slogging.

I think I want to try this version when I get a chance.

Alternating unit activation in just about any form is a massive improvement.

I second the play apocalypse. It's official rules so easy to find opponents and a way better game then regular 40k. 100-150 PL for regular sized games.

 jeff white wrote:
In another thread,
one commenter suggested ways to take
list-building and the win-button gotcha CCG combo attitude
out of the game experience equation.

That suggestion effectively changes the motivation driving the assembly of "lists"
by adding layers of mission parameter
that change the way that the list plays in the mission,
e.g. a card that says "All fast attack units are unavailable [for reasons]" or
"All heavy support units are unavailable [for other reasons]".

We had a campaign run with a similar idea. You would draw missions out of envelopes, then pick a player to tackle the mission. The missions were a mix of odd deployments, random limitations and narrative rules (from the BRB). Some of those missions had "no units with FLY", some had "no VEHICLES or MONSTERS" and one was "no CHARACTERs"(though the mission provided us with Cypher and Belial as replacement).
Since we had 3-4 players per side, you could dodge the worst bullets (no units with FLY would have left the eldar player with 15 dire avengers and a farseer), but in general, players were not having fun leaving part of their army in their case - both because you were robbed of your anti-tank or anti-infantry, leaving you with an unwinnable game and because some armies are just hit much harder by those limitations than others. The dameons player rocked that "no vehicles or monsters" game because he lost a single daemon prince and was unaffected otherwise.

On a 6, deployment stops.

Yeah, facing a castellan or a daemon primarch with half your army is going to be fun... take that from someone frequently playing a daemon primarch.
If I drop Mortarion with a support psyker behind him and deployment stops afterwards, I have won that game, and it's not going to be fun for either of us.

Considering how unevenly points can be spread across units and how some armies just naturally need more units than others, this is just randomly interfering with game balance.

Other ideas?

Things that did work and lead to fun games:
- This is my castle: Have the player going second set up the entire table and pick a deployment map and deploy first. Then the player going first deploys his army and gets the wrecker stratagem (2CP, destroy a piece of terrain). This can turn into some fun siege games, where you try to break the opponent's bastion. Requires a decent terrain collection.
- Speed Freak race: Both players deploy within a 6" of the right table edge, and up to 24" from their table edge. Along the middle of the board you have on objective every 24". At the end of each battle round, you determine who scores an objective and remove those which are scored. Then, all units, objectives and terrain are moved 6" to the right. Anything moved off the table this way is destroyed, terrain moved off the table is moved to the left side, if the objective furthest to the left is 24" from the left table edge, add a new one on the table edge.
- Other places: Have portals, teleporters or tunnels on the board where units can move to artillery platforms, underground force field generators or large warp portals. These are small battlefields (killteam board works well) with 3 objectives on them. Whoever controls most of those objectives gets the benefit from them (free orbital strike stratagem, 5++ for the entire army, +2 to cast/deny, free daemon summoning). You cannot move, measure or draw LOS to anything on a different battlefield, but you can deepstrike or re-deploy to there.
- Grand melee: Deployment zone of both players is everywhere, but you must stay 12" from enemy models. Works best if both armies are melee oriented.
- More explosions!: Models that have some sort of explode rule always explode. Models that don't now explode on a 4+: Models with 1-3 Wounds deal 1 MW within 1", models with 4-6 wounds deal d3 MW within 3" and models with 7+ wounds deal d6 MW within 6". And yes, chain-reactions are possible.

Some interesting ideas here, I think, but maybe not quite refined enough. I don't have too many solid, thought-out suggestions, but I think the biggest things the OP wants to achieve is some form of disruptive deployment procedure. Either preventing players deploying all units they want at the start of the game or preventing them deploying exactly where they want in all games. I'd support something like that. Anything that prevents a player just enacting "the plan" in every single game - knowing all your auras will always be in range of key units, that all your units will be available all the time, etc. Some form of alternating activation would also be a step in the right direction as it would force a more reactive, fluid style of play. You'd need to figure out some way of producing armies that are roughly similar in terms of number of activations though.

On top of that I've been thinking about stratagems a lot recently and over the last few months I've been toying with a couple of ideas. Firstly, get rid of the 3 stratagems from the rulebook. These all represent fallback "get out of jail free" style abilities that we can probably safely dispense with now every army has its own set of stratagems to draw from. As an added bonus it might make morale actually mean something. Secondly, there are quite a few stratagems that do things like allow units to fight twice or shoot twice or get bonuses to hit/wound and these are generally used either after the unit's attacked once in the case of the "do X twice" stratagems or when the unit is selected to activate in each phase. We've toyed with the idea of making these decisions take place at the start of the relevant phase instead, starting with the player whose turn it is. That way you have to take decisions without perfect information. At the moment you can fight a second time with a unit if you annoyingly leave one enemy model alive, so you're now free to move in your next turn, or you can shoot again in order to finish off that nearly dead model you should have killed in your first volley. Forcing that decision to be taken without such perfect information makes it a real decision rather than an obvious choice once one outcome is known.

Not saying any of these suggestions are magic bullets or that they instantly fix the game, but they do seem to make the game more interesting and provide more meaningful decisions for players to make.

Slipspace wrote:
On top of that I've been thinking about stratagems a lot recently and over the last few months I've been toying with a couple of ideas. Firstly, get rid of the 3 stratagems from the rulebook. These all represent fallback "get out of jail free" style abilities that we can probably safely dispense with now every army has its own set of stratagems to draw from. As an added bonus it might make morale actually mean something.

Yes for morale and re-roll, but hard no to counter-attack. The counter-attack stratagem is one of the things that makes the fight phase much more tactical, as you always need to consider what units can counter-attack which of your chargers. Once CPs have been used up, the fight phase loses a lot of its tactical depth.

Secondly, there are quite a few stratagems that do things like allow units to fight twice or shoot twice or get bonuses to hit/wound and these are generally used either after the unit's attacked once in the case of the "do X twice" stratagems or when the unit is selected to activate in each phase. We've toyed with the idea of making these decisions take place at the start of the relevant phase instead, starting with the player whose turn it is. That way you have to take decisions without perfect information. At the moment you can fight a second time with a unit if you annoyingly leave one enemy model alive, so you're now free to move in your next turn, or you can shoot again in order to finish off that nearly dead model you should have killed in your first volley. Forcing that decision to be taken without such perfect information makes it a real decision rather than an obvious choice once one outcome is known.

I think these stratagems all suffer from there just being way to many CP available for the first two turns. With Orks I easily blow through 10+ CP in just the first round. I just use all the best stratagems, with no need to chose. That would also generate "hidden" information, as you would not know whether your opponent will shoot twice, fight twice or use a stratagem to down your flyer instead of [x] all of the above.
If CP would be spread more evenly across the turns, there would be more decisions involved. Putting a real risk of failing on a 3CP stratagem like fighting twice would just change the obvious decision to "don't use it" and not add any real depth to the decision.

The command point system was an awesome idea, horribly implemented, littered with non-choices that make the decision for you.

 Jidmah wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
On top of that I've been thinking about stratagems a lot recently and over the last few months I've been toying with a couple of ideas. Firstly, get rid of the 3 stratagems from the rulebook. These all represent fallback "get out of jail free" style abilities that we can probably safely dispense with now every army has its own set of stratagems to draw from. As an added bonus it might make morale actually mean something.

Yes for morale and re-roll, but hard no to counter-attack. The counter-attack stratagem is one of the things that makes the fight phase much more tactical, as you always need to consider what units can counter-attack which of your chargers. Once CPs have been used up, the fight phase loses a lot of its tactical depth.

The counter-attack one is definitely borderline, but on the flipside I would argue removing it does remove the slightly weird situation where you get punished for charging because your opponent can now interrupt in an ongoing combat due to you being forced to activate your charging unit first.

 Jidmah wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
Secondly, there are quite a few stratagems that do things like allow units to fight twice or shoot twice or get bonuses to hit/wound and these are generally used either after the unit's attacked once in the case of the "do X twice" stratagems or when the unit is selected to activate in each phase. We've toyed with the idea of making these decisions take place at the start of the relevant phase instead, starting with the player whose turn it is. That way you have to take decisions without perfect information. At the moment you can fight a second time with a unit if you annoyingly leave one enemy model alive, so you're now free to move in your next turn, or you can shoot again in order to finish off that nearly dead model you should have killed in your first volley. Forcing that decision to be taken without such perfect information makes it a real decision rather than an obvious choice once one outcome is known.

I think these stratagems all suffer from there just being way to many CP available for the first two turns. With Orks I easily blow through 10+ CP in just the first round. I just use all the best stratagems, with no need to chose. That would also generate "hidden" information, as you would not know whether your opponent will shoot twice, fight twice or use a stratagem to down your flyer instead of [x] all of the above.
If CP would be spread more evenly across the turns, there would be more decisions involved. Putting a real risk of failing on a 3CP stratagem like fighting twice would just change the obvious decision to "don't use it" and not add any real depth to the decision.

Reducing CPs is definitely another valid option, or spreading them out in some way. I disagree about the hidden information though, because the information that should be hidden here isn't what your opponent knows about which stratagems you're going to use, since they can't do anything about that anyway, rather it's the information about whether you really need to activate one of those stratagems in the first place. Reducing CPs available turn-to-turn is probably an easier thing to implement than my suggestion though. Maybe as a starting point something as simple as dividing your total CPs by 4 or 5 to get your total CPs available per turn would be worth trying - most games tend to be winding down after turn 5 so probably not much point in dividing by more than that. Probably do the calculation after pre-battle CPs are spent too.

In my rewrite you get CPs for holding objectives and accomplishing secondary objectives.

You start with none.