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Originally just some changes to the classic battlebible, I've now decided to make a 2.5 edition.

Goals and changes:

Retain much of the detail and depth of the mechanics, while simplifying where possible.
Integrate initiative into the game more, to be used as opposing to BS for hit rolls (now BS10 actually matters)
Allow for quicker melee, while still having the weapon options and modifiers
Reduce cards, while still keeping content
Psychic rules removed card deck, while keeping (more or less) the same mechanics.
Reduce dice to D3s and D6s
Reduce asm modifiers
Reduce damage and also armour penetration to make less complex
Retain vehicle damage tables, but make them 'wound' tables that you creep up with successful penetration (no rolling 1s every turn to do nothing)

Optional Alternating activations
Optional Duels (if you want that 1v1 from the original)

Looking at:

Vehicle movement, ramming, turning, speed, to retain and simplify
Similarly for buildings
reducing virus grenades effectiveness without removing them entirely
reducing 'stays in play' lengths. Conceptually good, but keeping 5 plasma grenades around for 3 turns is probably too long.



This is currently just the core rules component, I'll do the units and weapons separately.

The Battle Bible I have has a large section of optional rules that I chopped to make a smaller, more focused version of the game as it was played.

I think the "complete" version of the game just uses the existing armies as written and streamlines some of the more madly detailed and time-consuming rules. At that point it moves beyond the squad scale into something where you can feasibly field a platoon without taking all day to play it.

That was always my plan.

I had thought that 2nd ed was a good base for a while and it just needed some tweaks.

I've always wanted BS to be an opposed roll as well as WS, and Initiative was never used enough in the game for anything, so this ups its use quite a bit.

Vehicle penetration was crazy so it just needed to be simplified.

And there were too many ASM around, and too much damage for weapons (considering very few things had more than 3 wounds, it was pretty much only used against vehicles).

Straighten that out, without changing the detail of modifiers etc, and you get the capacity to play larger games easier.


This is basically my 2.5 edition, in the vein of 3,4,5 editions all being versions of each other.

Ok so it's not entirely complete, the tau aren't in it...

So I've thought about what they would look like in 2nd ed and drafted up some ideas.


Also been thinking about the ASM and Strength relationship and wondering whether maybe it should extend further into positives to armour as well.

Thus, low strength weapons increase your chance of saving against them.

ie S4 ASM 0, S5 ASM -1.

What if S3 ASM +1 (marines save on 2+ vs lasguns), and S2 ASM +2 (carapace is a 2+ against grots).


The effect would be noticeable - guard/orks would get 5+ saves against each other







Automatically Appended Next Post:
On second thought, I think I'll treat the crisis suits as wraithguard, with an AV instead of toughness, and leave the vehicle profile to the larger suits.

something like:


Crisis suit squadron 3-5 (50 points per model)
M5 WS3 BS4 S5 T AV12 W2 I3 A2 LD8

damage table
level 1 - knocked to ground
level 2 - loses a wound
level 3 - destroyed

My fixes are already out there, and linked.

As for the Tau, I don't like them. Their sunny optimism is entirely at odds with the 40k mentality and their look and feel is right out (as the English say).

They lack the eldritch/steampunk aesthetic that typified the game and were a naked appeal to the manga/Battle Tech crowd.

I get that people like them, but when they came out, it was really jarring and there was a lot of heartburn over it. By that I mean that you can graft them into 2nd ed., but they really don't belong, either thematically or in terms of game balance. The Eldar were the high-tech/hover-tank army. Their design space was already spoken for, and I believe that GW's attempt to create ever more factions led to many of the subsequent design problems as they strove to differentiate duplicative armies

You're welcome to that opinion, but I don't see any of that.

And I think you over inflate the imperium's aesthetic as far more representative than it was.

2nd ed guard were as generic as they come, and the Eldar were just super colourful and as anti imperium as you could get visually.

The idea that the imperium's aesthetic permeates the entire galaxy so that all alien races are similarly bleak and backward is a flanderisation of the setting as a whole

 Hellebore wrote:
You're welcome to that opinion, but I don't see any of that.

And I think you over inflate the imperium's aesthetic as far more representative than it was.

I'm not speaking of the Imperium which ranged from rather conventional space-troopers (Cadians) to Rambo, Arabs and Prussians. But there was nothing sleek or futuristic, their vehicles looked like it was designed in the 1930s.

The Orks were more contemporary, but again, the antitheses of sleek, graceful Tau stuff.

And the Chaos, with the chains and things...not like Tau at all.

That's all I'm saying - it's just different. Whether that's good or bad, is up to personal taste, but they are objectively at odds with the rest of the game. Even their tagline about the "greater good." What nonsense is that? No other faction thinks about good, it's all obedience to the Hierarchy. Even the anarchic orks want a strongman to rule them.

Sleek, graceful… like the Eldar?

I like tau and think aesthetics are an iffy reason to not include a faction, but tau *did* kind of encroach on the eldar niche. What with their hover tech, mobility, and emphasis on tactics that would preserve lives.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I like tau and think aesthetics are an iffy reason to not include a faction, but tau *did* kind of encroach on the eldar niche. What with their hover tech, mobility, and emphasis on tactics that would preserve lives.

While I like the eldar, the concept of encroachment seems only to appear for non marine armies. There are over a dozen factions that are basically the same that don't cause that issue.

And as I said to the commissar, 40k is far too big a place to make the idea that only one faction gets to have X work. If that were true there'd only be one imperial faction.


I have no problem at all with the concept of more than one species that looks after its people and uses advanced technology.

 Hellebore wrote:
While I like the eldar, the concept of encroachment seems only to appear for non marine armies. There are over a dozen factions that are basically the same that don't cause that issue.

If you go back to 2nd, the several Space Marine variants (two of which shared a codex) were about giving players ideas of how flexible they were. Space Marine was the anchor of the 40k universe, and they still are.

That being said, you can buy one Space Marine army and use it as a successor chapter to whomever you want in 2nd. Which was part of the appeal.

And as I said to the commissar, 40k is far too big a place to make the idea that only one faction gets to have X work. If that were true there'd only be one imperial faction.


I have no problem at all with the concept of more than one species that looks after its people and uses advanced technology.

The fluff isn't the issue; design space is. The four flavors of Space Marines were interesting and GW was clearly staking out that is their iconic idea.

But the other factions were very different from one another, and in the context of the 2nd ed. construct, Tau feel very much like carbon-copy Eldar with an 80s Macross vibe.

To put it another way: the four flavors of marines were basically sub-factions and many of the additional marines (loyal and traitors) fall into this category. They therefore don't encroach on each other, because they're all parts of the same whole.

The Eldar/Tau situation is one where disparate factions mimic each other. That's the issue.

the point is your argument is based on arbitrary decisions that you're using to justify later restrictions.

Just because GW chose to stake out iconic ideas with marines, in no way means eldar HAD to be exclusive. They could have been as equally 'staked out'. So I don't see a problem because all of this is arbitrary fiat with a bias towards one thing and a restriction on something else with no in-universe reasoning for it.

The marines all encroached on the game because they took up space that something else could have filled.

If they were all part of the same whole, then they would have all been in one book.


And I really don't see much design space overlap between eldar and tau. The tau have horrible melee and initiative, eldar have great melee and initiative.

The tau have a range of heavy monstrous creature style ranged units, the eldar don't have any (2nd ed wraithguard were as strong as a living eldar... and war walkers fit into the dreadnought category).

The eldar have massive psychic capability, the tau have none.

The only overlap in design is the use of anti grav vehicles, but space marines use those, and imperial guard used to have land speeders, and the custodes use those, and necrons use those and so on and so on.


I cannot see how the rules design of eldar or tau are mimicked in any real way, nor their background.

Any similarities are entirely superficial and yet again evidence for the double standard in 40k - you can literally paint the same model 6 different ways and get a whole army list and background book for each one, but two alien races having passing similarity between each other? not on my watch.

Exarchs and farseers, aspect warriors and hover platforms, jetbikes and vypers. Completely different to tau units.

 Hellebore wrote:

While I like the eldar, the concept of encroachment seems only to appear for non marine armies. There are over a dozen factions that are basically the same that don't cause that issue.

100% this. Yes.

Good Marines of various flavor, bad Marines of various flavor, silver Marines, and then gold Super Marines.

But Tau and Eldar both have hover tanks. . . *yawn*, sure.

 Hellebore wrote:
the point is your argument is based on arbitrary decisions that you're using to justify later restrictions.

Just because GW chose to stake out iconic ideas with marines, in no way means eldar HAD to be exclusive. They could have been as equally 'staked out'. So I don't see a problem because all of this is arbitrary fiat with a bias towards one thing and a restriction on something else with no in-universe reasoning for it.

The marines all encroached on the game because they took up space that something else could have filled.

If they were all part of the same whole, then they would have all been in one book.

They could have, and maybe should have, but that would have denied GW book sales. I consider myself to have all the 2nd ed. armies, but I have only one marine army. I've built it in such a way that it can be whatever I want - DA, BA, SW or Ultras. It's really just a paint job that separates them; they all use the same armor and equipment.

And I really don't see much design space overlap between eldar and tau. The tau have horrible melee and initiative, eldar have great melee and initiative.

No, most Eldar units have terrible melee quality, some are good at it. GW decided to try to make the Tau unique by denying them melee troops, but it feels forced.

The tau have a range of heavy monstrous creature style ranged units, the eldar don't have any (2nd ed wraithguard were as strong as a living eldar... and war walkers fit into the dreadnought category).

Wraithguard are much, much stronger than living Eldar. Digging them out of urban terrain is a nightmare. They are semi-monstrous, to be sure.

Plus there's the Avatar. Very monster-ish.

The eldar have massive psychic capability, the tau have none.

If you don't use the psychic phase its a distinction without a difference. Even when 2nd was current, I could only find two players (both eldar - I give you a point for that!) who wanted to even use them. Everyone else regarded them as a distraction - dealing and playing cards as opposed to actual fighting. Plus, half the time the power was nullified or failed. As much as I love 2nd, the psychic phase did not work well.

I think part of this was a reaction against 5th ed. Fantasy, aka Herohammer. People playing 40k wanted a break from army-annihilating spells/powers. Or maybe my town was odd.

Anyway, I freely admit I am not an expert on the Tau. When they popped up, I wrote them off as sleeker, boxier Eldar and very much a product of 3rd's rules and concepts.

I dont see all that much overlap with T'au and Eldar either.

What exemplifies T'au armies in my mind? Drones of various sorts and Mecha. Xenos mercs from other races. Eldari dont really have any of these.. Eldari have Aspect warriors and Harlequins. Antigrav tech is available to almost every faction in 40K, so I'm not even going to go there

Sorry but I'm just not seeing this overlap. Furthermore, the (misguided) "goody two shoes" nature of T'au actually contrasts nicely with the grimdark in my opinion, makes the setting feel less one dimensional.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

No, most Eldar units have terrible melee quality, some are good at it. GW decided to try to make the Tau unique by denying them melee troops, but it feels forced.

Aspect Warriors were all WS 4 and I5 iirc, giving them all a slight advantage in skill over Marines. Tau was like, WS3 I2? That Initiative characteristic was key in those editions too, and they could get units, even Guardians, armed for the task. They were even more capable in 2nd, I think, because their wargear was better. And Exarchs were super dangerous.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Aspect Warriors were all WS 4 and I5 iirc, giving them all a slight advantage in skill over Marines. Tau was like, WS3 I2? That Initiative characteristic was key in those editions too, and they could get units, even Guardians, armed for the task. They were even more capable in 2nd, I think, because their wargear was better. And Exarchs were super dangerous.

Aspect Warriors aren't the baseline, though, Guardians are and in melee, they're not much.

As for hover technology, Eldar were the only one with hovertanks - until Tau. So what was unique to them as an ancient race was now something even galactic noobs could get.

I agree that the Tau optimism is grossly inappropriate. It's a like a piano key that's a quarter-step out of tune - immediately recognizable.

It's a pretty simple concept: the fewer the factions, the stronger the differentiation, particularly within stat lines. The more factions you crowd in, the more special rules have to be introduced to make them feel different.

I'm very much a minimalist when it comes to game design. I liked it when WHFB had a Chaos list and an Undead list rather than splintering them into multiple factions (all of which required more special rules to make them different).

I prefer a design where feel and flavor are found within force selection rather than additional factions.

Unfortunately that paint job separation was used to take massive chunks of support away from other factions, and preclude variety by building 3 whole books around them.

In 2nd ed aspects were WS4 I6, or I5, or for the heavies I4. Exarchs were WS6 I8 and with their aspect gear and exarch powers would often be able to take on marine captains with ease.

That was streamlined to I5 for all aspects in 3rd ed.

You could in 2nd ed, if you wanted to, give guardians chainswords and powerfists, making them hit very hard in combat, albeit with a relatively crappy profile. That's a whole squad of guardians at S8.... A2 with a parry.


Being able to take one daemon vs a whole army of jump pack ogryns in power armour armed to the teeth is not really the same thing.


And whether the psychic phase was burdensome or not, that is a major aspect of game play the eldar possess that the tau do not and this was a discussion about whether the tau and eldar are similar or not yes?

And whether the tau should have a list in a 2.5 edition.

 Hellebore wrote:
And whether the psychic phase was burdensome or not, that is a major aspect of game play the eldar possess that the tau do not and this was a discussion about whether the tau and eldar are similar or not yes?

And whether the tau should have a list in a 2.5 edition.

It would depend on how you port them over, because (as noted) the application of the stats changed in the switch from 2nd to 3rd, as did how combat was adjudicated.

In 2nd, it was a duel rather than a mosh pit. Shooting was generally stronger than melee, and a premium was placed on shooting lanes and cover. In 3rd, cover was less important that getting volleys off before contact was made, and vehicles were far less mobile.

As to the psychic phase, there's no comparison. Psykers in 3rd provided minor bumps here and there, but there was no imperative to take one if it wasn't part of your offensive armament. Contrast that with 2nd, where a defensive psyker was essential if the other player was taking one. Indeed, this was part of the etiquette of the time (at least 'round here).

"Let's do a game. Say 1,500 points."

"Are we using psykers?"

Thus, if you're using the full panoply of 2nd, the Tau are going to get killed by a psyker-heavy force. I've been very clear that I do not like the psychic rules, but if the core fluff of Tau is that they don't have any, Level 4 Librarian it is.

In that case, you then have to come up with some sort of "cope" for the Tau, which would require writing new rules outside the existing framework.

That's one reason why I don't think they fit in that well - you have to do too much game design to make them fit. If, like me, you don't use psykers, than their unique "we don't have any" isn't unique because it's irrelevant.

I supposed you could just use the psyker rules in the core rules, which I've been playing around with of late. They don't dominate the game, no cards, just roll and go, and in that context the Tau would still be at a disadvantage, but it would not be so overpowering.

However, at that point, I'd expect every opponent to take a psyker just because it's an obvious exploit.

You could add some sorrt of equipment for T'au which could give a chance to nullify psychic powers of enemy psykers. set up a points cost and figure out an adequate amount of psychic defence..

You could quite easily have either allied guevesa psykers, other alien auxiliary psykers or have proto gellar field drones that allow you to draw power cards but only use them to dispell.

Looking back over the rules, it says that you can still use nullify without a psyker to use it, it's just harder to succeed.

A tiny tweak to the rules that has the cards dealt to either side whether there's a psyker present or not, but you can only use daemonic attack or nullify would fix this.

For the tau, they should also have a bonus to nullifies because their connection to the warp is weak, so they are less affected by its power.

Tau psychic blunt
Whenever a nullify card is played, it is treated as cast by a a psyker of higher level than the caster, regardless of whether the tau force has any psykers.

I've now decided to make a 2.5 edition.

Goals and changes:

Retain much of the detail and depth of the mechanics, while simplifying where possible.
Integrate initiative into the game more, to be used as opposing to BS for hit rolls (now BS10 actually matters)
Allow for quicker melee, while still having the weapon options and modifiers
Reduce cards, while still keeping content
Psychic rules removed card deck, while keeping (more or less) the same mechanics.
Reduce dice to D3s and D6s
Reduce asm modifiers
Reduce damage and also armour penetration to make less complex
Retain vehicle damage tables, but make them 'wound' tables that you creep up with successful penetration (no rolling 1s every turn to do nothing)

Optional Alternating activations
Optional Duels (if you want that 1v1 from the original)

Looking at:

Vehicle movement, ramming, turning, speed, to retain and simplify
Similarly for buildings
reducing virus grenades effectiveness without removing them entirely
reducing 'stays in play' lengths. Conceptually good, but keeping 5 plasma grenades around for 3 turns is probably too long.

My only point of critique is the addition of opposing BS/I rolls. It sounds neat in theory, but doesn't that make shooting change a bit too much from its original form?

Lets take a low BS shooter as an example. To-Hit modifiers already lessen the chances to hit quite a lot for them, so if you then add I to the penalties, doesnt it effectively make it impossible for low BS models to hit higher I models if they are in cover etc?

You could make it work, it just needs very careful application, and being mindful of the edge cases..

 tauist wrote:
My only point of critique is the addition of opposing BS/I rolls. It sounds neat in theory, but doesn't that make shooting change a bit too much from its original form?

Lets take a low BS shooter as an example. To-Hit modifiers already lessen the chances to hit quite a lot for them, so if you then add I to the penalties, doesnt it effectively make it impossible for low BS models to hit higher I models if they are in cover etc?

You could make it work, it just needs very careful application, and being mindful of the edge cases..

Sure, you'll find the changes in the document attached above which take that into account.

If I might make one suggestion, I personally would take the 2d6 armor saves of terminators and make it into 1d12. It makes it faster to roll the armor saves, and flattens out the effect of AP on the armor saves. Just a suggestion. I can understand wanting to simplify down to 1d3 and 1d6, but my opinion is that some variation in dice rolls can be fun as long as it doesn't slow the game down. 2d6 for armor saves slows the game down, 1d12 does not.

BanjoJohn wrote:
If I might make one suggestion, I personally would take the 2d6 armor saves of terminators and make it into 1d12. It makes it faster to roll the armor saves, and flattens out the effect of AP on the armor saves. Just a suggestion. I can understand wanting to simplify down to 1d3 and 1d6, but my opinion is that some variation in dice rolls can be fun as long as it doesn't slow the game down. 2d6 for armor saves slows the game down, 1d12 does not.

I'm certainly not opposed to changing the 2nd ed terminator armour - the 2d6 does make speed rolling harder (you need pairs of different coloured dice to determine which save was which). But I'm not particularly a fan of the dice bloat of 2nd ed and re-adding non d6s.

The 2D6 save is also a weird one because any single dice you replace it with shifts probability. Although I'm genuinely unsure if GW actually considered the probability of 2 dice added together when they gave terminator armour its save or not....


To make things simpler, I could see modifying terminator armour to the following:

Terminator armour
comes with an integrated targeter. Saves on a 2+. Halves (rounding down) ASM of incoming attacks. IE ASM -5 becomes -2.

Apply to exo armour as well (saves on a 3+).

It won't provide identical probabilities, but it's similar as the ASMs were designed around getting up to a 12 on a save roll. Lascannon at -6 originally required a 9+ to save on 2D6 which is about 27%. -6 halved to -3 vs 2+ is a 5+, which is a 33% chance. Slightly higher survival rate, but not huge.

That's not a bad idea for trying to work on terminator armor and keep with your "nothing but d6/d3" rule.

I've been working on a similar progression of 2nd edition pretty much since 3rd edition came out, it looks like you have some good ideas and many similar to mine.

I strongly agree with revising down save modifiers, at the very least for many basic weapons. It was pretty wacky that even a lasgun had a -1 save mod. Current 40K's seemingly low save mods look conceptually interesting but I never had a problem with powerfists and lascannons completely negating power armour.

I strongly agree in making Initiative more important, but I dislike making BS vs I an opposed roll. I prefer WS vs I for close combat.
I really loved 2nd edition's close combat system and I clung onto it for the whole time I played 40K. In recent months I devised a close combat system that I was happy with, resolving fighting simultaneously, rolling to hit with attacks, comparing WS to I to determine the to-hit roll.
Happy to share what I came up with if you are interested but I fully understand if you want to keep the 2nd edition system.

I initially changed terminator armour to a 2+ on a D8 because I felt that gave simplicity and a better spread of probability, but I disliked using a die type other than D6/D3.
I ended up converting armour saves and save mods into armour and armour penetration stats that just interact in the same way as strength vs toughness which admittedly loses the character of rolling D6 saves but works out the same probability and in a cleaner mechanic that scales better. But, you could get much the same effect with positive save modifiers (I effectively give needle rifles a +1 save modifier), and a * denoting an armour save ignores X points of save modification. E.g. terminator armour is a 2+ on a D6 armour save that ignores the first 3 points of save modification.

 Hellebore wrote:

And I really don't see much design space overlap between eldar and tau. The tau have horrible melee and initiative, eldar have great melee and initiative.

The tau have a range of heavy monstrous creature style ranged units, the eldar don't have any (2nd ed wraithguard were as strong as a living eldar... and war walkers fit into the dreadnought category).

The eldar have massive psychic capability, the tau have none.

The only overlap in design is the use of anti grav vehicles, but space marines use those, and imperial guard used to have land speeders, and the custodes use those, and necrons use those and so on and so on.


I cannot see how the rules design of eldar or tau are mimicked in any real way, nor their background.

Any similarities are entirely superficial and yet again evidence for the double standard in 40k - you can literally paint the same model 6 different ways and get a whole army list and background book for each one, but two alien races having passing similarity between each other? not on my watch.

Exarchs and farseers, aspect warriors and hover platforms, jetbikes and vypers. Completely different to tau units.

I agree and this assertion has always baffled me. Okay yeah they both have floating tanks, while humans and orks have tanks with treads. Besides that the Eldar have more in common with Space Marines and the Tau have more in common with Imperial Guard than either has with each other. Both in terms of gameplay and lore.

What armies are going to be supported by this system?