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The more that I read and hear about the Heresy rules, the more that I like them. And, even with recent changes to 40K rules, rather than follow GW down the rose-petal path of debugging-for-profit that is 9th (the same path that led me to purchase the infamous hardcover Imperial Agents book at the end of 7th and to hesitate on Shadow War Armeggedon, mistakenly expecting 8th to go that direction...) I would prefer that GW port Heresy rules directly into 40K, instead.

Here, a simple poll asking this question and encouraging discussion on the potential - Bad idea?
Looking forward to results.

I think the game would profit from a reimplementation of:
Armorfacings and firing arks.
Templates.
USR's.

I disagree on the ammount of USR's though especially in the context of 30k having quite a few rules for rending PA to differentiate the units and make PA on PA not such a slug, those wouldn't be needed.
I also prefer the new AP system due to its not all or nothing nature.

I actually prefer heresy-style AP. We've seen how the new system, combined with the uprating of firepower make decent armour much less meaningful, hence all the special rules and tweaks and wound increases to try and increase survivability of marines et al - as well as the widespread dearth of tanks without an invun.

Thematically the new system makes more sense, but crunchwise the old system made better armour more worthwhile - and tank facing mattering too is nice.

I like the heresy to wound chart and the comparison of weapon skill in melee, these feel more thematic for me

 arkhanist wrote:
I actually prefer heresy-style AP. We've seen how the new system, combined with the uprating of firepower make decent armour much less meaningful, hence all the special rules and tweaks and wound increases to try and increase survivability of marines et al - as well as the widespread dearth of tanks without an invun.

Thematically the new system makes more sense, but crunchwise the old system made better armour more worthwhile - and tank facing mattering too is nice.

Did it do that really though, i find the inverted is the case, the old system forced players into the magic AP3 / Ap2 slot, where such weapons were dominating picks and made other weaponry often obsolete due to the player population being marine dominated.
With the new system i often feel like my CSM atleast get a decent saveroll, unlike with the old one.
However i agree about the tanks but that is tied to the Armor value removal and replacement of them being in essence oversensitive monstrous creatures.

Yes, yes and yes again. Bring back weapon skill comparison, bring back an ap system where high armor saves actually matter. Also bring back initiative to 40k for the love of the Emperor and bin the garbage fight first/last we have now. The new reactions seem extremely fun, but most faction specific ones are once per game so you can't spam them like stratagems.

I personally like almost everything about the new heresy rules more than current 40k.

I like the old 3rd-7th rules system for the same reasons that others have mentioned, but what really gets me are the faction rules. Specifically, my faction: Night Lords. Like, why can't the 40k rules team write 8th Legion rules like those? The 30k team absolutely nailed the 8th Legion, IMO.

Oh, and real morale mechanics! Pinning, forced fallback, and sweeping advances! Oh my!

I'd like Heresy Mechanicum be ported to 40K instead, so no. HH rules are based on 40K's worst rules system, 7th edition.
Yes, I'm aware that Forgeworld team has done a lot of work to cut down on the worst offenders of that system, but it's still an aweful basis due to:
- Ap system
- WS system (they added some refinement to not make these totally useless like in 7th, right?)
- unit types (good thing they finally introduced movement values)
- vehicle rules + hull points
- psychic phase
- Close combat aka: we just roll until one side is dead and there's nothing else to do

What would I like?
- 30Ks morale system in 40K
- reaction system instead of stratagems
- some reasonable USRs

These are the only things where HH is superior.
40K's problems lie solely/ mainly in the mission structure and lethality of waepon profiles, while 7th edition is bloated to its core.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
I like the old 3rd-7th rules system for the same reasons that others have mentioned, but what really gets me are the faction rules. Specifically, my faction: Night Lords. Like, why can't the 40k rules team write 8th Legion rules like those? The 30k team absolutely nailed the 8th Legion, IMO.

Oh, and real morale mechanics! Pinning, forced fallback, and sweeping advances! Oh my!

Exactly.
Current discussion reflects my thinking, but almost half of respondents feel otherwise.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd like Heresy Mechanicum be ported to 40K instead, so no. HH rules are based on 40K's worst rules system, 7th edition.
Yes, I'm aware that Forgeworld team has done a lot of work to cut down on the worst offenders of that system, but it's still an aweful basis due to:
- Ap system
- WS system (they added some refinement to not make these totally useless like in 7th, right?)
- unit types (good thing they finally introduced movement values)
- vehicle rules + hull points
- psychic phase

What would I like?
- 30Ks morale system in 40K
- reaction system instead of stratagems
- some reasonable USRs

These are the only things where HH is superior.
40K's problems lie solely/ mainly in the mission structure and lethality of waepon profiles, while 7th edition is bloated to its core.

Cortez posted just as I was editing my last post, I was slow...
Thank you for representing that view. But Cortez, what does 7th have to do with anything? 40K originally had movement values, iirc. Maybe vehicles and hull points seem clunky, but imho we are just a short time past the Tiananmen grot in the evolution of the current game, and anything beats starship troopers wrecking a Land raider with small arms. Meanwhile, sneaking up to that same heavy tank with a las-cannon and luckily getting a good shot under the gap of the turret to cripple that same heavy tank makes more sense, to me. I have yet to see such dynamics demonstrated in a game so I am not sure how these sorts of intereactions will play out, but I think that Heresy differs enough from 7th to call it a new thing, no?

(sorry for all the edits...)

 jeff white wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd like Heresy Mechanicum be ported to 40K instead, so no. HH rules are based on 40K's worst rules system, 7th edition.
Yes, I'm aware that Forgeworld team has done a lot of work to cut down on the worst offenders of that system, but it's still an aweful basis due to:
- Ap system
- WS system (they added some refinement to not make these totally useless like in 7th, right?)
- unit types (good thing they finally introduced movement values)
- vehicle rules + hull points
- psychic phase

What would I like?
- 30Ks morale system in 40K
- reaction system instead of stratagems
- some reasonable USRs

These are the only things where HH is superior.
40K's problems lie solely/ mainly in the mission structure and lethality of waepon profiles, while 7th edition is bloated to its core.

Cortez posted just as I was editing my last post, I was slow...
Thank you for representing that view. But Cortez, what does 7th have to do with anything? 40K originally had movement values, iirc. Maybe vehicles and hull points seem clunky, but imho we are just a short time past the Tiananmen grot in the evolution of the current game, and anything beats starship troopers wrecking a Land raider with small arms. Meanwhile, sneaking up to that same heavy tank with a las-cannon and luckily getting a good shot under the gap of the turret to cripple that same heavy tank makes more sense, to me. I have yet to see such dynamics demonstrated in a game so I am not sure how these sorts of intereactions will play out, but I think that Heresy differs enough from 7th to call it a new thing, no?

(sorry for all the edits...)

I will admit that I haven't read the main rulebook of HH, yet but go from what I've observed about HH during the last years and also what I gathered from reviews, leaks and previews about the new edition. I've yet to see a comprehensive list about what has been changed between HH and 7th.
And I must say I've seen fewer tanks die to small arms since 8th than I saw in 7th (let alone 6th were the vehicle damage table was even worse), where a single plague marine sometimes was more durable than a Rhino-tank. Or a Dreadnought. The whole vehicle rules system broke down because of hull points. HH's solution? They handed out upgrades that ignored several vehicle/ weapons rules (melta, for example) or you just went for superheavies which worked because they also ignore most of the vehicle rules. New edition made walkers not vehicles anymore because of the split between monsters and vehicles. So if vehicle rules just make your vehicles worse they're bad.

Some aspects of the game that were very clunky pre 8th just found an elegant solution, WS for example, despite having 10 different values they meant you always hit on 3s or 4s, very rarely on 5s (okay, with Tau it wasn't that rare), in 8th this got simplified and yet we have more diverse to hit values, ranging from 2+ to 6+. (I know new HH somehow changed the WS problem a bit.)
Tank shock, oh my. 8th just lets a tank assault, problem solved. It's still not very useful to charge with a tank, but at least I don't have to reread 3 pages every time it happens to realize that in the end nothing happens.
Ap system? You just always took AP 2 weapons because every other value didn't matter or only mattered against models whose saves where bad in the first place.
CC? It probably got the best improvement with 8th because now you actually have something to think about as a player, you have to do careful movement, you can react as the defender and as an Ork you aren't screwed because some idiot thought it was somehow a good idea to give Initiative 2 to a squishy CC faction.
Wound allocation - is HH still using the stupid remove models from the front rule? Because when our group read the wound allocation from 8th everybody was like: it took them 20 years to do the most obvious and straightforward thing.

"HH is a rubbish ruleset because it's the same as 7th."
"Have you read the new rules?"
"No."

Wholesale move to heresy ruleset would be silly IMO.

There are aspects that could be ported over (like weapon skill) that would be nice. . .

What 40k really needs is less extra rules (million stratagems) and for them to better utilize the rules structure that's actually in place (Toughness and weapon strength, for example).

I would appreciate the introduction of USRs and the replacement of Stratagems with Reactions. I think some other things would be neat - such as the Heresy change to Plasma Guns.

30k seems to have far reasonable morale (in that morale actually matters) - so bringing over that would be cool.

I've never liked templates and independent vehicle damage rules, while more realistic, create painful and irritating imbalance situations imo. I would prefer those remain in the Heresy.

 Gert wrote:
"HH is a rubbish ruleset because it's the same as 7th."
"Have you read the new rules?"
"No."

Lol. The new rules address almost all of the complaints and it is funny.

arkhanist wrote:I actually prefer heresy-style AP. We've seen how the new system, combined with the uprating of firepower make decent armour much less meaningful, hence all the special rules and tweaks and wound increases to try and increase survivability of marines et al - as well as the widespread dearth of tanks without an invun.

Thematically the new system makes more sense, but crunchwise the old system made better armour more worthwhile - and tank facing mattering too is nice.

Not Online!!! wrote:Did it do that really though, i find the inverted is the case, the old system forced players into the magic AP3 / Ap2 slot, where such weapons were dominating picks and made other weaponry often obsolete due to the player population being marine dominated.

In the past I've been a big proponent of the current AP system (but not how GW has made it silly), and HH1.0 being a Marine-fest highlighted the weaknesses of the old system- everyone's got 3+ or 2+ armor, so AP2 and AP3 are the magic breakpoints and anything less needs high volume of fire to be useful. I don't think the Lightning Guns on my Thallaxi (one shot at S7, and I think AP4) have ever accomplished much of anything.

However, HH2.0 is iterating slightly, with more rules that affect saves. Eg plasma guns are AP4 so no longer flatly ignore power armor all the time, but if you roll a 4+ to wound they ignore armor. Power swords are AP3, but Rending, so chop up power armor but still have some relevance against Terminators. It's more to keep track of- and you could fairly call it bloat- but it does make armor degrade more gracefully, while avoiding some of the issues of a flat modifier. GW's also giving more utility to weapons that previously suffered for lack of AP, like rotor cannons getting Pinning, and chainswords getting Shred (re-roll wounds). So I'm cautiously optimistic to see how it all works out in practice.

There are a lot of examples of things like that in the HH2.0 ruleset. WS matters more now. Reactions allow for player agency within a IGOUGO structure. Little improvements to the core structure, addressing some of the things that were bad about 7th and carried forward to HH1.0- although even then, HH1.0 already addressed what I've seen to be the biggest criticisms of 7th, like Invisibility. It really could use some good player aids, though.

I think it'd be really presumptive to say right now that I'd like 40K on the HH2.0 engine, but it has a lot of promise.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Lol. The new rules address almost all of the complaints and it is funny.

It's been five years since the AoD Rulebook came out and changed HH from a port from 40k into its own thing. Formations don't exist in HH, the Psychic Powers table was changed to remove the worst problems, summoning is all but non-existent and the balance between the armies is much better due to it being a game based around 6 armies with subfaction variations rather than 20 odd armies with subfaction variations. The biggest problem was the Psychic Phase which was utterly dominated by Tsons and the lack of centralised rules (Custodes being spread over 2 books, generic Legion units being stretched over every book, etc.).

I've found that people who are most opposed to HH being its own thing and not just a port of 9th are the people who haven't actually played the AoD ruleset or even the original ported system, they just assume the worst because it's roughly based the last version of 40k before 8th. There are, of course, people who do want it to go to the 9th style and they are welcome to their opinion, however wrong they may be .

The only thing I'd want to see from HH into 40k is the Reaction system. Could probably replace quite a few stratagems, plus generic army rules are nice.

 Gert wrote:


I've found that people who are most opposed to HH being its own thing ~

It's not that I'm opposed to it, I've just never been sold on why I'd need a whole separate game to play (mostly) Marine vs Marine games.
OK, maybe a 30k specific Codex. But a whole different GAME?

 Gert wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Lol. The new rules address almost all of the complaints and it is funny.

It's been five years since the AoD Rulebook came out and changed HH from a port from 40k into its own thing. Formations don't exist in HH, the Psychic Powers table was changed to remove the worst problems, summoning is all but non-existent and the balance between the armies is much better due to it being a game based around 6 armies with subfaction variations rather than 20 odd armies with subfaction variations. The biggest problem was the Psychic Phase which was utterly dominated by Tsons and the lack of centralised rules (Custodes being spread over 2 books, generic Legion units being stretched over every book, etc.).

I've found that people who are most opposed to HH being its own thing and not just a port of 9th are the people who haven't actually played the AoD ruleset or even the original ported system, they just assume the worst because it's roughly based the last version of 40k before 8th. There are, of course, people who do want it to go to the 9th style and they are welcome to their opinion, however wrong they may be .

You realize that nothing you state about what was being fixed by HH is actually something that I made out as a problem of the rules? 7th wasn't bad because of formations, invisibility, summoning or many books, these were just the worst offenders of a system that was bloated to its core and I've yet to read how HH fixed problems in the base rules. HH is an awesome total conversion mod that is held back by an outdated engine .

Edit:
So after heaving read the goonhammer review of HH I'll say two of my gripes with the system seem to have been solved (WS system and psychic phase) which is good. Wound allocation seems to make more sense than before, I'd say it's probably on par with 9th now. Similar to movement/ unit types, though goonhammer didn't really go deep into that. CC still seems inferior, vehicle rules... will be important to see in practice. It looks like they tried to make vehicles feel more durable, I'm still sceptical about combining hull points with armour values, but obviousely a lot thought has been put in these to make tanks useful in HH.
I never was opposed to templates, the system usually broke down when you had units shooting multiple templates though (say, quadcannons, for example), I'm not sure if that has been fixed, too.
Another gripe might be the lack of split fire.
Ap system seems to be unchanged. too (but I know they tweaked weapons so that weapons without Ap2/1 may have a use now).
So I'll say it looks like a much needed patch, but I'm hesitant to decide whether it's really on par with 9th base rules (I'm pretty sure if we go down to army rules and balance HH will be superior, but that was always 40Ks problem because GW thinks they need to sell us a new book every 3 years for every army)

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
HH is an awesome total conversion mod that is held back by an outdated engine .

A conclusion you come to without actually playing it, or even so much as opening the readme to learn exactly what it changed, apparently.

 catbarf wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
HH is an awesome total conversion mod that is held back by an outdated engine .

A conclusion you come to without actually playing it, or even so much as opening the readme to learn exactly what it changed, apparently.

Read my edit above. The game is not even out so it's hardly possible to make a final conclusion, yet.

ccs wrote:
It's not that I'm opposed to it, I've just never been sold on why I'd need a whole separate game to play (mostly) Marine vs Marine games.
OK, maybe a 30k specific Codex. But a whole different GAME?

I mean it started out as a supplementary ruleset but as 40k progressed to 8th, the system that was already in place worked really well for HH.
The same thing could realistically be said for the Old World. Why does it need to be square bases and rank'n'file when it could just be a campaign book or supplement for AoS?

Having a wider spread of systems to choose from where it's not all the exact same set of rules might be inconvenient but at the same time it won't get monotonous and from personal experience switching between games can really help with fatigue. Heck I did it with HH when I got sick of playing the same thing week after week, so I swapped to 40k to give myself a break.

100% no questions asked the HH system would be better for 40k. The rending, Command point, and new wounding system was an interesting, but ultimately failed experiment. It did not solve the problems that were in the game in some cases like the rending AP system, only exacerbated them further.

Other than going back to templates and the weirdness of dreads vs other vehicles (which feels like a weird lack of commitment to either system), I definitely like what I've seen of HH more than 8th/9th.

Never particularly been a fan of exception based rules design, and the focus on 'bespoke' is irritating, as it misses the point of having a game system. Even though GW's concept of 'bespoke' is often 'same thing with a different name,' rather than 'specially crafted to fit.'

We've come full circle to people wanting 40k to use Heresy rules, as though Heresy rules aren't just an older edition of 40k rules.

chaos0xomega wrote:
We've come full circle to people wanting 40k to use Heresy rules, as though Heresy rules aren't just an older edition of 40k rules.

anyone remember when people where claiming that the 40k rules (at the time 7th ed) where too complex and that "we needed to adopt rules more like AOS"

BrianDavion wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
We've come full circle to people wanting 40k to use Heresy rules, as though Heresy rules aren't just an older edition of 40k rules.

anyone remember when people where claiming that the 40k rules (at the time 7th ed) where too complex and that "we needed to adopt rules more like AOS"

The vast majority of rules in 7th were not complex. The biggest problems with complexity in 7th were the close combat rules, including challenges, initiative and grinding advance. Most of which I think 8th and 9th actually improved on overall.

USRs were never really a problem in themselves it was just how GW decided to convey them. If anything the current plethora of special rules and unit specific rules are far more complicated, it's just that they are easier to reference.

I'm not even going to get started on strategems, secondary objectives, cp, sub army special rules, warlord traits, and however many different pdfs, books, erratas, codexes, and whatever else it seems like you need to play with these days.

Also I really liked the 7th edition aircraft rules.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
We've come full circle to people wanting 40k to use Heresy rules, as though Heresy rules aren't just an older edition of 40k rules.

anyone remember when people where claiming that the 40k rules (at the time 7th ed) where too complex and that "we needed to adopt rules more like AOS"

The vast majority of rules in 7th were not complex. The biggest problems with complexity in 7th were the close combat rules, including challenges, initiative and grinding advance. Most of which I think 8th and 9th actually improved on overall.

USRs were never really a problem in themselves it was just how GW decided to convey them. If anything the current plethora of special rules and unit specific rules are far more complicated, it's just that they are easier to reference.

I'm not even going to get started on strategems, secondary objectives, cp, sub army special rules, warlord traits, and however many different pdfs, books, erratas, codexes, and whatever else it seems like you need to play with these days.

Also I really liked the 7th edition aircraft rules.

the worst part of 7E for me was the psykic phase, that was a total mess

BrianDavion wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
We've come full circle to people wanting 40k to use Heresy rules, as though Heresy rules aren't just an older edition of 40k rules.

anyone remember when people where claiming that the 40k rules (at the time 7th ed) where too complex and that "we needed to adopt rules more like AOS"

The vast majority of rules in 7th were not complex. The biggest problems with complexity in 7th were the close combat rules, including challenges, initiative and grinding advance. Most of which I think 8th and 9th actually improved on overall.

USRs were never really a problem in themselves it was just how GW decided to convey them. If anything the current plethora of special rules and unit specific rules are far more complicated, it's just that they are easier to reference.

I'm not even going to get started on strategems, secondary objectives, cp, sub army special rules, warlord traits, and however many different pdfs, books, erratas, codexes, and whatever else it seems like you need to play with these days.

Also I really liked the 7th edition aircraft rules.

the worst part of 7E for me was the psykic phase, that was a total mess

I agree there as well. The randomization of psychic powers, deny the witch ranges, and brokenness of certain spells (invisibility) were bad.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
We've come full circle to people wanting 40k to use Heresy rules, as though Heresy rules aren't just an older edition of 40k rules.

anyone remember when people where claiming that the 40k rules (at the time 7th ed) where too complex and that "we needed to adopt rules more like AOS"

The vast majority of rules in 7th were not complex. The biggest problems with complexity in 7th were the close combat rules, including challenges, initiative and grinding advance. Most of which I think 8th and 9th actually improved on overall.

USRs were never really a problem in themselves it was just how GW decided to convey them. If anything the current plethora of special rules and unit specific rules are far more complicated, it's just that they are easier to reference.

I'm not even going to get started on strategems, secondary objectives, cp, sub army special rules, warlord traits, and however many different pdfs, books, erratas, codexes, and whatever else it seems like you need to play with these days.

Also I really liked the 7th edition aircraft rules.

the worst part of 7E for me was the psykic phase, that was a total mess

I agree there as well. The randomization of psychic powers, deny the witch ranges, and brokenness of certain spells (invisibility) were bad.

and the dice power pool was just a mess. tHH 2.0 looks to be returning to the pre-7th edition rules ffor psykers which... yeah saner