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T9A has a group of lawyers behind that made clear what needed to change to be save

the game is now so far away from Warhammer that the only connection left is made up by the players who want to keep the Warhammer background (and by the advertising as it is easier to get new players in)

A big thing is people want consistency. The major appeal of 40k was that it was pretty universal. You could go to any game store or club and get a game. That starts to break when you introduce house rules because now not every place is playing by the same rules, even if the house rules attempt to fix the issues. People want to use "official" rules and not have Bob's 40k and Jim's 40k and Steve's 40k.

Second, look at ITC for an example of what even minor changes do. ITC fundamentally changes how 40k gets played compared to non-ITC and they don't change that much anymore. It's just enough that ITC formats get different lists built and performing than events that use Eternal War or Maelstrom or some other format of mission. So house rules have a major impact in how the game gets played, so inconsistencies crop up again.

 vict0988 wrote:
How about 9th age? That got some traction as Age of Sigmar was born. It seems to have developed a universe of its own, but it's still largely a copy of WHFB.

I'm not familiar with it, but GW definitely seems a bit more hands off these days than they were ten years ago.

tneva82 wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
Its very difficult to keep balance in a game with over 20 factions and a staggering amount of models - not even counting weapon and upgrade choices. Play testing alone is going to be a nightmare.

Which is why community should do it. They are better qualified and top of that community has interest in balanced rules. Gw's interest lies in unbalanced. Gw doesn't want balance

Thought about this quite a bit today...

What about if players of a faction got together and created a community project for the purpose of being an on-line hub for clubs, events and even GW itself? So basically there would be a project for each faction, such as the "Craftworld faction project".

So, if a local club is having a conflict between official and house rules, they could refer to the online resource of the project for guidence. Projects could then communitcate with each other regarding the most common issues when players find imbalances when playing certain armies. For example, if experienced Tyranid players are constantly losing games against Tau of low skill level, the two projects can work together to find a better balance, and then communicate with other faction projects if the changes agreed upon between the Tyranid and Tau projects hold up with the others.

Maybe every six months each project could send GW(Warhammer community?) a pdf containing the project's current house rules, issues, concerns and recommendations.

I had other ideas, but this was the only one I could think of that the 40K community could do itself...

Oh, and merry christmas tneva82!

I mean if enough people gave it traction it would work. See ITC for the biggest example of house rules that are accepted in large areas. But getting people to agree on certain things? Getting GW to pay attention? That's the trick. Everyone has different ideas of what their faction needs, and you have to filter out the "Durr my faction should have 10s across the board and cost 2 points each" sort of obvious nonsense.

I don't MIND this approach, note. I really think that ITC ought to just fix the game themselves since GW isn't doing a good job of it, and that way at least you have a fairly standard tournament ruleset.

I would gladly support a community project to reform the game. In whatever way I could be of help.

Agreeing is not important here. Tournaments DICTATE rules. People will show up for local tournament despite what ruleset club would impose (unless it is even worse of course).

Agreeing with your opponents are easy. You say that you want to play with different rules and your opponent agrees. Everyone should strive to find people with whom they play routinely rather than complete strangers. It is not difficult to develop or adapt to certain ruleset with people you meet from time to time to play W40k. Even if you have a dick who doesn't want to change rules, because he finds fun abusing nonsensical mechanics, there is always someone else who will be fine with it.


The real issue is official support. Creating and playtesting an entire system is very exhaustive work. Then there is release of those rules, making them in readable format, etc. I want to have fun after work and not to go to a second work for which I do not get paid for. It is lack of official support that kills most rulesets.

 Ernestas wrote:
Agreeing is not important here. Tournaments DICTATE rules. People will show up for local tournament despite what ruleset club would impose (unless it is even worse of course).

Not entirely true. If you hate the ruleset they're going with, you don't show up. If a ruleset is unpopular enough, people don't show. Tournaments are to bring people together, so the organizers go with what they think people would prefer to play.

Like many things, they're sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

A.T. wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
For a fandex? Which? If you mean copy-pasting GW pts then sure, but AFAIK GW will not stop you from creating a list of your desired costs and sharing it for free.

I guess the highest profile incident would be the wave of cease and desists that GW sent out in 2009. It was pretty broad - rules summaries, army builders, etc.
Dakka link - https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/264704.page

Of course that was 10 years ago, just sticks out to me as that was when I was writing my own rules.

People were distributing GW rules. They really should have seen that as a possibility.

If you're going to create your own modifications then you need to package those modifications and distribute them. What you can't do is include all of the stuff you haven't changed and distribute that as well. Even if it's free it's not yours to distribute.

 Charistoph wrote:

 Ernestas wrote:
Agreeing is not important here. Tournaments DICTATE rules. People will show up for local tournament despite what ruleset club would impose (unless it is even worse of course).

Not entirely true. If you hate the ruleset they're going with, you don't show up. If a ruleset is unpopular enough, people don't show. Tournaments are to bring people together, so the organizers go with what they think people would prefer to play.

Like many things, they're sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

Yes, but "hate" is a strong word. If you are a small community, you can far more easily agree on house rules you play with. If you are major tournament, you are inclined to go there because it is "big league". I was going to debating tournaments and in our region, Riga's debate club is organizing some very popular debating tournaments. I kinda dislike them, because of their very informal atmosphere, but I do not have any options. They are major players in the region, if I want to be judge, I go there. If I need experience, I go and send my club teams there, because of how cheap and accessible they are. It doesn't matter if I like there, I still have to go there to improve, because I was a professional debater who was becoming a judge. I do view hobby tournaments in a similar light too. I would have to absolutely hate something in order not to go where I could prove myself as a better player if that was my goal.

 spaceelf wrote:
40k is notoriously imbalanced. Despite this, over the past decade the tournament scene has greatly expanded. Large tournaments and rules groups like NOVA and ITC have created new missions / win conditions. These new rules can dramatically change the face of the game. However, I believe they are still far short of balancing it.

My question is, if GWs underlying system is salvagable, why don't groups attempt to balanace the game by making more drastic rules changes, such as changing points costs, or changing rules?

because nobody will be happy.

A small group can change agreed upon things- we have done this in our group for some social games by pulling the best rules from 3rd -7th edition (after a lengthy discussion) and putting them into 5th as the base rules.

things like snap fire, overwatch, grenade throwing, CCWs having an AP value etc... work really well in 5th edition. thus allowing you to use any codex from 3rd through 7th that you want to use that best fits the feel of your faction.

however for general play most people are going to expect the base game as it is currently. so major rules changes cannot really work. FLGs ITC system is nothing more than a fan made rules set. that has been adopted by a large segment of the community that wants 40K to be something other than what GW intended it to be.

 Ernestas wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 Ernestas wrote:
Agreeing is not important here. Tournaments DICTATE rules. People will show up for local tournament despite what ruleset club would impose (unless it is even worse of course).

Not entirely true. If you hate the ruleset they're going with, you don't show up. If a ruleset is unpopular enough, people don't show. Tournaments are to bring people together, so the organizers go with what they think people would prefer to play.

Like many things, they're sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

Yes, but "hate" is a strong word. If you are a small community, you can far more easily agree on house rules you play with. If you are major tournament, you are inclined to go there because it is "big league". I was going to debating tournaments and in our region, Riga's debate club is organizing some very popular debating tournaments. I kinda dislike them, because of their very informal atmosphere, but I do not have any options. They are major players in the region, if I want to be judge, I go there. If I need experience, I go and send my club teams there, because of how cheap and accessible they are. It doesn't matter if I like there, I still have to go there to improve, because I was a professional debater who was becoming a judge. I do view hobby tournaments in a similar light too. I would have to absolutely hate something in order not to go where I could prove myself as a better player if that was my goal.

The key point is, "if you want to be judged." It's not that you do not have any options, it is that there are two other options you do not want to entertain: 1) don't go and don't play their game. 2) Set up your own system and try to get people to play your game.

There is always a choice, even if it is simply saying no and walking away. It may not be a palatable choice, but the choice is there. Even if I like 40K's models and world-building, I don't much care for the sloppiness of the rules, so the only thing I have invested in is talk, not the game itself. For games, I'm invested in Warmachine, and looking at SW Legion when I have a budget I can work with again. As it is, I even if I do invest in Warhammer again, it would only be for the gaming environment not the game itself.

This gaming environment in reality is solely dependant on your one or few friends which regularly play with you. People talk a lot about greater ecosystem, but that is entirely dependant on individual club and even on club level people mostly prefer to find person whom they like to play with regularly and stick with them. Unpleasant people get isolated naturally and the only rules that matter are the ones which you agree with your friends.