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My Wife and I had our first game of the system at 2k Points. Death Guard(me) vs Adepta Sororitas. Wife has only played 9e and 10e, but she said it was the most fun she has had playing Warhammer. We played with just straight alternating activation, but are going to play with tokens in our second game. We did Take and Hold and purely played based on the mission VP, but over the course of the game (and looking through some indexes), some questions did arise.

1) How is capturing, contesting, and holding objectives handled? I understand Standard/Troops all get Objective Secured unless a rule states otherwise (Poxwalkers for example), but I did not seem to find any specific rules involving objectives in the English Core rules nor the Mission supplement.

2) Charging - How we played it is the unit moved it's distance (Eg. 6"/12"), made any shooting attacks with applicable weapons, then made a 6" Pile-in move if they were in range to do so. Is this correct?
2a) If a unit charges a unit who has already activated ((eg. Move & Shoot), does the previously activated unit get to fight in melee? We played it as a previously activated unit could not fight back for the couple of times it happened.

3) In indexes there are some weapons that have STR: U while others have STR: T. I assume that the STR: T is a leftover from translation?
3a) Poxwalkers in the Death Guard codex have an untranslated weapon. Not a huge deal but I figured I would point it out.

4) World Eaters - A few units have the Berserker keyword, but I cannot find anywhere where Berserker is defined.

5) Any plans for the Daemon Primarchs or a template to make one in the Lord of War section?
5a) Any plans for a Telemon Dreadnought for Custodes?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, and if we missed something while going through the rules. I want to say as a older school player sitting down at the table and building a list with a calculator and a piece of paper brought me back to my highschool days. Everything about the game flowed very well, and it was nice not having to worry about 17 different auras and rerolls and command points etc. I really appreciate everything you have created here and I look forward to playing more with my wife and trying to bring back some old friends of mine to try it out as well.

I'm glad to hear that you and your wife both enjoyed the first game!

Onto your questions:
1) You are correct that this part is never explained explicitly anywhere (anymore). I guess we never noticed it, as how it works was always explained during the introduction games. I added a paragraph about it under the "Victory Points" section in the "Missions" document. Basically you have to be within 3" of the mission objective while no enemy is within the same distance to the objective you want to capture or hold. As soon as one enemy model is within 3" of the same objective, it counts as being contested. This is regardless of things like the enemy's unit size. Only if a rule states that a unit could not contest (f.e. Drop Pods) or the unit in question got two Battleshock tokens (=> counts as fleeing) would it not interfer with you holding the objective. If you move outside of that radius with any non Troops unit, the control is lost.

2) Yes, that is correct. Before you do your 6" pile-in, though, the chosen target for the charge is allowed to use a Defensive reaction (=> Defensive fire) if they have not been activated in this round, yet. The target of your charge does not have to be the same unit as the one that you shot at.

2a) If an activated unit has not fought in melee for this battle round yet, it may still do so if it gets charged after its own activation. It can only do this once, though. Note that the unit counts as having fought in melee regardless of how the melee was resolved. In some funny (albeit weird) situations a psyker with a higher initiative may roast his own brains before your lower initiative models could strike back, ending the melee prematurely. I added a FAQ at the end of the core rules section to cover this situation.

3) Yes, that is a mistake on my part. U = user, which translates to T = Träger in German. I corrected entries I could find for Death Guard.

3a) Corrected!

4) That is supposed to be "Berserk(5+)". I corrected all entries I could find for World Eaters.

5) At some point they will be added as "generic" entries, similar to the "Dynasty Phaeron" for Necrons. Though in all honesty I'm not sure when I will get around to do them, as LoW are not my highest priority. Currently I'm working to make psychic powers more interesting and balanced between each other.

5a) Just added it!


Thank you very much for all of your feedback! Let me know if anything else is unclear or if new things come up in your future games. I hope your friends will enjoy it as well!

The game continues to be finetuned and expanded, so here are the highlights since my last post:

- Re-work of all existing psychic powers. They are more in line with each other now across factions and generic psychic disciplines offer a more interesting alternative to army specific ones.
- Charging units may now select +1 Initiative instead of +1 Attack as their charge bonus; likewise charged units that are eligible to a "Defensive Reaction" may select to either use "Defensive Fire" or "Hold your ground" (to negate any potential charge bonus). This opens up the possibility for low(er) Initiative units to reach or beat the ever so important "4" in Initiative.
- Chaos Demons were finally championed (heh..) and taken for a few more invasions on the mortal realm. They turned out a bit too strong despite only bringing (demon)knives to a gunfight. Their special rule "Demonic instability" has been re-evaluated consequently, which led to smaller Demons going slightly up in points across the board.
- Tau are a very strong army in the hands of an experienced player. Some of their stronger Sept features and Commander/Crisis weapons have seen a slight toning down to accomodate.
- A few couple more wargear options for Dark Eldar, Inquisition, Necrons and Space Marines.

We started having some games via Tabletop Simulator on Steam as well. If anybody is interested to get an introduction game, feel free to PM me!

Hello, I came across your custom rules by chance. I lie the mix bewteen old rules with a bit of fresh air
Is there a discord to make it easier to give feedback?

Hey there!

Sorry for the late reply, I've been away from my PC for some time due to personal reasons.

You can find me on Discord under the handle "atypicalhero". If you want to I can invite you to our local server afterwards.

So far, I like this, it has many ideas I was thinking about for making my own "custom 40k" , some things are slightly different, but different people come up with different ideas, I'll keep studying the rules and missions and whatnot

Thank you!

Let me know your feedback after reading through everything. If you want to, we can have an introduction game via Tabletop Simulator as well.

Just because I'm not posting regularely here does not mean the game isn't getting updates.

The highlights since the last post:
- Tank Shock is now in the game.
- "Hold your ground" and "Take cover" were added as additional Defensive reactions (alongside "Overwatch")
- Space Marine Honor Guard and CSM Chosen are now able to pick a specialisation like Sanguine Guard.
- Emperor's Children have been added to the game.

^ After seeing the small amount of new kits as well as the preview for DG, TS and WE, I decided to roll the cult legions back into the regular CSM codex. It works similar to 3.5 edition and gives those players much more model options to play around with. EC are the first legion to come back into the fold, while others will soon follow.

I post all of the (smaller) adjustments on Discord if anybody is interested.

This is a good set of rules and I enjoyed reading them. The new vehicle chart is interesting, like a blend of classic and modern. I've felt that the classic method throughout the sets was too absolute on the damages so I like this more gradual damaging. The orders system seem also very interesting, not my style as I like instant activation, not preordained, but I think refined, can be a fun method of activation for Warhammer and other game systems. I could imagine the short-term strategic elements could make great guessing games as players speculate how their opponent will use their action. I've haven't went super deep but actions that reveal face down orders can be really neat.

Fyi, on the ally charts, LoV is yellow towards Eldar but Eldar is red towards LoV. Also I would use acronyms and short forms for the headers/army names, the full names don't warp properly with the table and I don't think you want to change the margins. If you are afraid that people won't know what the acronyms and short forms are, just have a legends on top of the table with the full name.

Thank you for your feedback!

The system would work well enough if you just activate a unit without locking it into a specific order first. You lose out a bit on the tactical gambling in some situations, but the overall balance and feel should stay about the same.

So if you don't like that specific aspect, just change it to your liking and give it a try!

Acronyms sound like a good idea for the chart, I'll update the table accordingly soonish.

 a_typical_hero wrote:
Thank you for your feedback!

The system would work well enough if you just activate a unit without locking it into a specific order first. You lose out a bit on the tactical gambling in some situations, but the overall balance and feel should stay about the same.

So if you don't like that specific aspect, just change it to your liking and give it a try!

Acronyms sound like a good idea for the chart, I'll update the table accordingly soonish.

Definitely will try to give it a try. I'm gonna read more over it and try some games.

Awesome System.
I have played this System for quite a while now and love the changes! Espacially the new Rules for vehicles feel very good and oldschool - I hate the fact , that you can destroy Tanks with everything in the current Edition.

I played mostly Sororitas and the "Act of Faith" System makes this Faction quite flexible and a blast to play.



Modern 40k was quite frustrating (Alpha Strike, strange Listbuilding, your Tanks getting destroyed by the emperors torchlight) and i switched completly to Custom40k.

Since my last post, a few people have reached out to me on Discord to talk about the game. A recurring topic has been how new players often start with smaller point sizes and focus mainly on simply defeating the opponent.

While it makes sense to leave out some of the "extra rules" when first learning a new system, it's important to note that the game isn’t well-balanced at lower point levels (1000–1500 points, i.e. Skirmish) if you're using the full army roster with all options. Similarly, perceptions of balance between factions can easily become distorted when playing without a mission—for example, when a melee-focused army runs into a gunline.

To address this, the Mission Supplement includes guidelines for smaller games and tailored missions for various point sizes. I strongly recommend using it—it’s a key component in maintaining balance within the game.

On the rules front, all Chaos Cult armies have now been fully integrated into the main Chaos Space Marines codex.

Also, the international community Discord server is now live!

EatYourVeggies wrote:
Awesome System.
I have played this System for quite a while now and love the changes! Espacially the new Rules for vehicles feel very good and oldschool - I hate the fact , that you can destroy Tanks with everything in the current Edition.

I played mostly Sororitas and the "Act of Faith" System makes this Faction quite flexible and a blast to play.

Modern 40k was quite frustrating (Alpha Strike, strange Listbuilding, your Tanks getting destroyed by the emperors torchlight) and i switched completly to Custom40k.

Thank you for your feedback! I'm glad to read that you are enjoying the game so much!

As requested, "Kill Team Veterans" were added as a unit to the Space Marine roster. They are mainly meant to be used as the Firstborn Kill Teams, but are able to cosplay Primaris to some extent thanks to access to the armory.

The Primaris Kill Teams are quite honestly a bit disfunctional in the current environment. Unless GW starts to release proper Primaris Death Watch Marines with actual DW weapon upgrades, there is not really any incentive to mix them.

On another note "Open" vehicles now allow their passengers to disembark and charge after moving and a couple of secondary objectives have been added to make games more interesting to the last round.

On another another note: A whole bunch of bigger and minor changes like new wargear, Archetypes and units for several factions. A more detailed change log is available on Discord.

The Horus Heresy Space Marine supplement has been translated into English.

Additionally, the core Space Marine codex received some Space Wolves related wargear as well as new entries for Blood Claws and Grey Hunters.

Both units support their legacy and current model iterations.

Everyone's favourite murder clowns have been added to the game. The link to the Harlequin codex can be found in the opening post!

They ride their Starweavers along some smaller changes to AdMech, Custodes, Necrons, Orks, Marines and Tau. Details can be found in Discord.

The next Custom40k online event via Tabletop Simulator will take place on Sunday, August 17th at 2:00 PM (UTC+2). We will stream a Skirmish game of Tyranids versus Guard. Feel free to join and watch.

I'm excited to share that our Discord community has grown to over 100 members this week! Having so many people playing and playtesting together is incredibly valuable. It helps us find blind spots in the rules and refine the wording for better clarity. Some members have even used the points calculator to add more units and options to the game.


Since the monthly update post on Discord is a bit too large to share here, let me highlight the key news:

- Customisation and trait re-work completed: Every army now has a fully updated system that lets you truly shape how your force is organised and how it fights. It’s cleaner, easier to understand, better balanced, and more expandable than the old version.
- New content added: Tons of new options and units have been introduced across all kinds of armies.

If you’d like to join in, you can find the Discord link in the very first post. I’m always happy to run introduction games via Tabletop Simulator on Steam!

Tyranids just got an updated, more "modern" leaning codex. Everybody who was not quite happy with their previous iteration should give it a go.

They received the full package of customsation with 3 Archetypes, 5 Legacies and 22 Biomorphs to customise their army with.

Link is in the first post as well as in the core rules.

I had a question, how are you balancing points? Are you doing "what feels balanced"? or do you have a formula that you have developed?

I use a points calculator that I created myself.

You can find it here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Uf4VAslQVk1L_zTdieFyMGabS-QY50k/edit?gid=1418759473#gid=1418759473

I started out by taking the Imperial standard weapons (Lasguns, Boltguns, Heavy Bolters, Autocannons, Missile Launcher, Lascannon) and priced their individual components (Range, Strength, AP, Damage) so they would all come out at a ~33% effectiveness against their "ideal" target which I defined as being a model that gets wounded on a 3+ and starts out with a 3+ armor save before AP modifiers.

This got tuned here and there over time to make heavy weapons (Strength 7 and up) a bit less efficient against infantry and light weapons a bit more efficient.

All profiles get calculated in this way. Bespoke special rules are basically guesswork and get more or less expensive, depending on how the unit performs. General special rules have a set value that - again - was guesswork in the beginning and have been tuned here and there over time.

Sweet! Thanks for sharing. I wanted to double check, it looks like you add points for the movement speed, BS, WS, S, T, I, A for units/models, then multiply by the amount of wounds, and multiply by the armor save, and multiply by the invulnerable save?

No issue, and you are nearly correct.

You add points for the following profile values:
- Strength
- Toughness
- Initiative
- Attacks
- Leadership
- Movement
- Ability to fly (basically ignore cover while moving)

Then you multiply it by Wounds.
Then you multiply it by the chance of a successfull armor save. So for a 3+ you would calculate it by *4/6.
Then you multiply it by the value of an invul save (which can be taken together with your armor save in this system). so a 4++ would mean a multiplication by 1,5 as you have a 50% chance to survive each damage.

That is your base profile. Note that you have not factored in WS or BS, yet. You add the point costs for each weapon the model has based on the points for the WS or BS value. This is again just the total value of the weapon multiplied by the chance of hitting. A theoretical weapon that costs 10 points would only cost 5 points (*3/6) for a model with BS 4+, as it hits only half of the time.

Special rules sometimes are a flat value like knowing one psychic power (5pts) and sometimes it scales with your Wounds, as more powerful models get more value out of it. As an example Furious Charge costs 1pt per Wound.

For ranged weapons, are you making any points differences between "Assault" "Pistol" "Rapid Fire" or "Heavy" weapons? or do you just let the attributes change the points values?

The type itself does not matter for the most part, but there are some things I consider for ranged weapons:

- Grenades that a model starts with cost 0,5pts per grenade type (Frag, Krak), while extra grenades cost 5pts from the armory (Melta bombs, Psyk-out). Only one model per squad is able to use its grenades in this system; Grenades can be used against tanks and monsters in range and melee.
- Pistols are free if the model has no way of using it in addition to its normal weapon. A Tactical Marine got a Bolt gun and a Bolt pistol. The pistol is free, as it is less expensive than the Bolt gun and can only be used instead of the Bolt gun, but never together.
- Otherwise, pistols are calculatuted with a manual 50% discount, as their use is kinda limited and most often it will suffer a -1 to hit penalty (from being used on a charge).
- Assault, Rapid Fire and Heavy weapons do not get any special treatment.

Templates are handled differently than in older editions.

Flamer weapons cause automatic hits, the standard amount is 4. -> Flamers are calculated like shooting 4 times with the cost being the inverted value for the BS of the model. A Marine Captain with 2+ BS gets less use from a weapon that hits automatically, so he pays like a BS 5+ model.
Some special weapons might get more or less shots as needed. The Hellhound for example gets 6 hits with the default weapon.

Explosive and Barrage weapons do not use pie plates, instead they roll to hit as normal. If they hit on the initial roll, explosive causes up to 4 hits, barrage causes up to 6. Each model in the target unit can only be hit once. So if a barrage weapons hits a unit with only 2 models, it only causes 2 hits, not 6.

If an Explosive or Barrage weapon does not hit on the initial roll, it may roll again once and now will hit up to 2 and 3 models, respectively. This is supposed to present a pie plate scattering a bit but still hitting the unit. Because of this unique mechanic Explosive weapons select "2,7425" in the table for "Shots" and Barrage select "3,8395" per actual shot that they are allowed to resolve. Those are values I came up with many moons ago trying to calculate the average effectiveness of these weapons.

I was just thinking, if someone wanted to make like.. a custom faction using your points calculator. If you make one weapon that is 48" Strength 5 AP-2 4 shots and assault, and another weapon that is exactly the same except it is heavy instead of assault, the assault weapon would be more useful. So, granted, if you are not trying to power-game the system when you are making/designing units, it wouldn't be a problem, but from my perspective it seems like there is more utility in an assault weapon compared to a heavy weapon in the ability to move and shoot, despite the idea that heavy weapons should be stronger/deadlier, in practice you could design stronger/deadlier assault weapons too.

I get what you mean. Yeah, there is no "fail safe" in the formula preventing you from creating profiles that would be unbalanced against the rest.

If I end up in a situation where a model has access to weapon A and B, where both are identical save for one extra ability, I usually slap +5 points onto it to make it a choice again.

If you want to homebrew stuff you should probably look at the power level of other armies and their equipment to get a feeling for certain weapons. There is an internal logic that holds true for all factions, like bikes giving +1 wound and at least a 5+ armor save. Axes giving +2 Strength and having AP -2, "spear like" weapons giving +1 Initiative and so on.

People can game the points calculator, but I don't add community made content to the armies without looking at it first and I'll adapt where I feel it is needed.

If you are interested in porting an idea over into the system, feel free to PM me here or on Discord. I'm happy to help getting started!

2025 was a big year for the project. A lot changed, a lot was refined, and (a bit to my own surprise) a real community started to grow around it!

Rules Development

- Over the course of the year, the ruleset went through constant iteration. Many updates focused on cleaning up unclear interactions, tightening balance, and making the game smoother to play overall.
- Core mechanics such as psychic powers, reactions, morale, initiative, and special abilities were clarified and reworked where needed. FAQs were added, wording was improved. Having somebody going in "blind" without being guided really shows how well/badly some things are written.
- Vehicles and larger engagements received increasing attention as well. Tank Shock, vehicle reactions, damage interactions, and Escalation missions were refined step by step.
- Almost every faction saw meaningful updates throughout the year. Units were rebalanced, profiles adjusted, new wargear and archetypes added, and missing or outdated options brought in.
- Army Customisation became a central part of the system, giving players more freedom without sacrificing structure or balance.
- Several major content updates throughout the year, including new and expanded codices, Horus Heresy support, playtest material for Tyranids, and many, many units across multiple factions.

The Community

One of the highlights of the year was the launch of the Discord server. What began as a small place to share updates and discuss rules quickly turned into an active hub for feedback, testing, and ideas.

Reaching 150 members was a huge milestone and a great sign of how much interest there is for the project. The discussions, suggestions, and shared passion from the community played a big role in shaping many of the changes during the year.

Looking Forward to 2026

With this much stuff done, there is still so much planned:
- An expansion focused on dedicated tank battles.
- Adding support for newly released Games Workshop units.
- Converting Horus Heresy armies into the system.

Thanks to everyone who played, tested, discussed, and contributed during 2025!

The latest major update introduces a revised system for vehicle damage. Its main goal is to streamline gameplay by speeding up resolution times, while also reducing the frequency of “one-shot” destructions in favor of more gradual vehicle degradation.


With that in place, I'm excited to kick off our first online league for Custom40k, played via Tabletop Simulator on Steam. If you’re interested in joining, all you need is Tabletop Simulator (often available for around €5 during sales or on key sites), everything else is completely free.


I'm happy to guide you through both the software and the rules, so no prior experience is needed. Just hop onto our Discord!

Since someone recently joined the Discord server specifically to ask this question, I wanted to share the information here as well:

Custom40k will continue to support all new models and options introduced in the 11th Edition of Warhammer 40k. The rules are and will remain compatible with all Games Workshop kits released since the beginning of 3rd Edition.

Anyone who would like to check it out but doesn’t currently have anyone to play with is very welcome to join us for a trial game via Tabletop Simulator.

I’m very pleased to announce that there is now a fully functional Army Builder web application for Custom40k.

The application was independently developed and put together by a member of our community named "Rigzar".

If you encounter any bugs or issues, they can be reported directly through the interface in English.


Here is the link: https://custom40k-builder.vercel.app/