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Simply put, how do people feel about playing against other players using fandexs? This would be strictly for non-tournament play and is mostly in regards to armies that no longer have codexes, such as R&H or Elysians?

Nope, I expect us to take it to GW to make them do their jobs.

Otherwise, if this forum and others are anything to go by, y'all do about as bad a job as GW. I'll pass.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Nope, I expect us to take it to GW to make them do their jobs.

Otherwise, if this forum and others are anything to go by, y'all do about as bad a job as GW. I'll pass.

Not sure what you mean

I'll take a look, but almost every fandex is either a dysfunctional mess, a fanwank that would put Matt Ward's codices to shame or not meant to be taken seriously to begin with (for example angry marines).

If you are one of those rare unicorns which can both write functional rules and actually have codex which looks like it has a properly tuned power level, yeah, I'll play you, just for the experience.

I have yet to see such a unicorn though.

 Jidmah wrote:
I'll take a look, but I have yet to see a fandex that wasn't either a dysfunctional mess, a fanwank that would put Matt Ward's codices to shame or not meant to be taken seriously to begin with (for example angry marines).

If you are one of those rare unicorns which can both write functional rules and actually have codex which looks like it has a properly tuned power level, yeah, I'll play you, just for the experience.

I have yet to see such a unicorn though.

Not me personally. The Elysian community got together and made a fandex and I wanted to see how receptive people would be

 Jidmah wrote:
I'll take a look, but almost every fandex is either a dysfunctional mess, a fanwank that would put Matt Ward's codices to shame or not meant to be taken seriously to begin with (for example angry marines).

If you are one of those rare unicorns which can both write functional rules and actually have codex which looks like it has a properly tuned power level, yeah, I'll play you, just for the experience.

I have yet to see such a unicorn though.

Same. My experience with houserules (in wargames or RPGs) is pretty much universally 'Me, me, me, me. What do you mean its overpowered? You're just closed-minded.'

Maybe/maybe not. I'd have to read it well before the game & then we'd discuss it.

An elysian fandex, eh? I loved the Kastorell Novem book.

Assuming you just got the the previous army ready for 9th and you actually have the models, the chances are extremely high that I'd play you unless there is some obvious BS or flaws in the codex.

Same for pretty much any of the axed FW armies.

From personal experience, solid no.
GW might make gakky rules sometimes but homebrew Codexes are always worse. One of our group did it back when we first started out, and like the good friends we were it was allowed at our games. They took the best units from Grey Knights, Marines, Blood Angels, and some other made-up stuff and proceeded to win every single game. They made up different armour upgrades for their Marines such as (and I do not joke here) Shiny Armour which required a Blind test every time a unit shot or attacked said Marines. This was supposed to be a renegade Imperial faction that also somehow had characters like Dante and custom characters like Bob the Scout (who btw was made from a Scout, a Kroot Rifle, and Fire Warrior legs). They also made their own Primarch, which then spread to the rest of the group until it was decided enough was enough and we shut down all homebrew stuff.
The only good bit was that they also tried to get it used at our local GW and they were promptly told: "Absolutely not".

I'll try just about anything once. Unless it involves poop.

Home brew rules are best made by the group wanting to use them, so it’s a collaborative effort to avoid the issues Jidmah pointed out.

If it was made by a community rather than an individual the chances of it being decently written go up exponentially.

Depends on the game, 30k/HH 100% yes bc GW can be efth to make xenos armies and the community already allows it for the most part.

If it is an updated version of an army that was lagging behind heavily and just takes from other equal armies, then I'll let them play it as long as its not obviously over tuned if it is going to keep the person playing and having a good time. I'd rather they play a fandex for 6 months than to lose a friend and never play again.

I actually love playing against homebrew rules. Not only does it give me something new to face off against, but it I get to vibe off of the enthusiasm that drove my opponent to write (or at least learn) the homebrew rules in the first place. I'm also hoping I'll be able to dupe someone into letting me run my own Exodite Fandex rules at some point in the future.

Honestly, I love tweaking games in general. So if they're willing to hear honest and constructive feedback, I can really enjoy sitting down to analyze a new set of rules. That's why I haunt the Proposed Rules section so often.

That said, I do expect to be allowed to read through the fandex in advance, and I'll turn down the game (or at least request certain options not be used) if something is clearly over the top.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If it was made by a community rather than an individual the chances of it being decently written go up exponentially.

I'd say that a community ups the odds that it gets abandoned out of frustration as one or more people dig their heels in and refuse to budge on their 'vision.'

Voss wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If it was made by a community rather than an individual the chances of it being decently written go up exponentially.

I'd say that a community ups the odds that it gets abandoned out of frustration as one or more people dig their heels in and refuse to budge on their 'vision.'

That's a better outcome than someone decided to Kelly it

Since we've heavily modified the rules for own play we've also needed to alter each codex used, so you could say all my games use a 'fandex'. But each codex is subject to review by any in the group, so if anything is out of line it gets edited.

It's definitely a "maybe" from me. It depends on the person, TBH. If they seem willing to actually listen to feedback and the rules seem reasonable I'm happy to help them test and develop their rules. In my experience a lot of people who write their own rules are terrible at it and lack perspective. In that situation I'd decline to play them and offer some advice on how to improve their fandex.

I would give it a shot, but my experience with fandexes/fan rules is one of brutal extremes.

Even ones that have been balanced are usually so because the creator builds one super OP idea and then "balances it" with one super awful flaw (like all attacks that hit automatically wound, but all all attacks lose any AP value they have or something).

While balanced in theory, these extremes tend to have an incredibly warping effect on the game in weird and unpredictable ways.


With that said, GW does the same thing so why not?

Depends if they're painted or not.

Tried it once. Will never do it again.

 oni wrote:
Tried it once. Will never do it again.

The Pan Fo were reviled (sic) too much!

Depends on the context to be honest.

Probably never would play it within 9th edition, given its focus on competitive play and quickly releases.

But I would need a fandex to ever play HH or the older editions.

Depends who wrote it.

Letting a fan of a given army write it is…not a great idea, as it’s hard to include objectivity.

If it’s been put together by a group of Players of The Army, People Not That Interested In the Army and some in between? You’ve a better shot at getting some kind of balance, because you’re more likely to have internal discussion and restraint.

However the devil isn’t in the detail, but the points.

To sum up the overall danger?

Dear GW.

Rock is overpowered. Paper is fine. Regards, Scissors.

I'm not against it, I mean, I've even did some work-shopping of my own. (namely giving some extra options to the 9th ed inquisition. Rhino's, Chimeras, Stormtroopers, etc.).

Though I will echo others in that they very much fall into extremes without some sort of back-up group, which is true of most publications.

In end result they wouldn't be more overpowered then the books GW wrote overpowered on its own. But they are not official so they get a strong no.

And books being writen or co writen by someone uninterested or disliking a faction will end up the same way, GW official books end up when they are writen for the design team to get over with aka bad.

No problem for me, we're using our own profiles all the time and with the mess GW is creating with their no models no rules policy they even force us to do so.
I'm even considering writing one on my own for 30K Mechanicum in 40K.

Karol wrote:
In end result they wouldn't be more overpowered then the books GW wrote overpowered on its own.

You clearly haven't ever seen a fandex.

I just recently had a guy presented me with his version of an ork codex that would have crushed both 8.5 iron hands and unnerfed drukhari and unnerfed nids in a 3vs1 where each of the four armies was 2000 points.

 Jidmah wrote:

Karol wrote:
In end result they wouldn't be more overpowered then the books GW wrote overpowered on its own.

You clearly haven't ever seen a fandex.

I just recently had a guy presented me with his version of an ork codex that would have crushed both 8.5 iron hands and unnerfed drukhari and unnerfed nids in a 3vs1 where each of the four armies was 2000 points.

I can belive it. a lot of the problem with those cases is people cherry picking from novels what they think represents a faction when most people know it's an outlier. So if a novel describes an Imperial Guard Commissar out dueling a company of chaos Marines before beating Ghaz in an arm wrestling contest you'll see some guy claiming "COMMISSARS SHOULD ALL HAVE WS 2+ AND STRENGTH 8!"

This one had the boyz statline at 2W/T5/4+ FNP (nobz at 4W/T6) and all mobs automatically respawned as if they had used the green tide stratagem.