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What are some ideas that you have that change the core rules of Warhammer 40,000 current edition? These are rules that would affect every army instead of ideas like a new unit or new stratagem. Here are some of mine:

* D2 weapons. Roll a D6. Rolls of 1,2, or 3 count as 1. Rolls of 4+ count as 2. Or you could flip a coin. Similar principle to D3. Notably, this has an average value of 1.5, allowing for decimal approximation. D3 on the other hand has the same expected value as 2.

* D6 - X Weapons. An attack can have 3D6 - 2 Strength (Expected Value of 8.5) or it could have 9-D6 Attacks (Expected Value of 5.5).

* Jackpot. A mechanic I made for a fandex army. Each roll of 6 counts as a roll of 7 instead. Helpful for Advance Rolls, Charge Rolls, Psychic & DTW tests (9th Edition), and bad for Battleshock tests.

* Roll 3D6 and drop lowest. A way to boost Charge Rolls and other 2D6 rolls. Increases expected value from 7 to 8.45. For roll 2d6 and drop lowest, increases expected value from 3.5 to 4.47.

I have some more non-dice related ideas, but I'll save those for other threads.

Edit: Ideas I had for 9th Edition that no longer really apply were weapons that applied negative Strength modifiers (e.g. -4) or weapons that divided the user's strength instead of multiplying it (e.g. ÷ 2). Another way to use the Strength formula and maybe balance some more esoteric weapons. Pointless nowadays though since each weapon has a set strength value and attack value.

I'm surprised that GW doesn't use D2s more often. But my favorite is using D66 for name generation

Fix Psychic Powers.

Make them less of a KEYWORD, and more of an ability.

Right now, 99% of Psychic Powers are essentially ranged or melee attacks with a PSYCHIC Keyword.

You don't need a whole Psychic Phase, but you can use your Psychic in the phase where it affects what your unit is doing.

ie. Grey Knights can Teleport around in their movement phase and Hammerhand in Assault.

But make them pass a LD test to succeed, balanced by the fact that battle shocked Psykers can only use 1 psychic power a turn.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Fix Psychic Powers.

Make them less of a KEYWORD, and more of an ability.

Right now, 99% of Psychic Powers are essentially ranged or melee attacks with a PSYCHIC Keyword.

You don't need a whole Psychic Phase, but you can use your Psychic in the phase where it affects what your unit is doing.

ie. Grey Knights can Teleport around in their movement phase and Hammerhand in Assault.

But make them pass a LD test to succeed, balanced by the fact that battle shocked Psykers can only use 1 psychic power a turn.

To be honest, I wish they just brought 9th Edition Psychic Phase back. That was one of the most interesting and flavorful aspect of the game. Your psyker could either shape the battlefield or destroy themselves, and your opponent could cancel out their voodoo with a stronger roll. The issue of course was that almost half of the armies in the game don't even have psychic units. And some armies like the T'au (despite flavor-fully adopting mercenaries) have neither psychic units nor anti-psyker units e.g. Canoptek Spyders. To get rid of it and replace it with what are essentially unit abilities and basic weapons; but worse due to anti-psychic keywords, was just a slap in the face.

If they won't bring the phase back, then the next best thing is to have psychic abilities and weapons be powerful, but require a Leadership Test before it can be used. If the test fails, there's an additional roll to see if the Psyker takes damage. Certain anti-psyker units would also either be resistant against psychic weapons or reduce the Leadership Test exclusively for psychic rolls.

Calbear wrote:What are some ideas that you have that change the core rules of Warhammer 40,000 current edition? These are rules that would affect every army instead of ideas like a new unit or new stratagem.

Current edition and thus not requiring an overhaul?

* Change plunging fire. Standing on a tall building now lets you use true line of sight when firing through ruins that are shorter than the terrain you're standing on. Generally standing on tall terrain is a bad idea (especially for squishy units) because it's harder to hide or reposition. This would give you a reason to take that trade-off and would help the classic devastator type units camp out in your deployment zone again (while also generally not letting you go full gunline because you probably only have so many pieces of tall terrain to work with.)

* Let to-hit mods stack again. Now that we don't have army-wide -1s all over the place, it would be a much more tame mechanic.

* Creeping into overhaul territory, but generally I think a lot of to-hit modifier rules could probably be replaced with effects that play around with max range. So a stealthy unit might be survivable not because a to-hit penalty but because it can only be targeted by units within 12" while its wholly within a terrain feature. So your opponent can't point their entire army at it until it's dead. I could see there being a universal "Hide" action that puts a range limit like that in place, so you could creep your army forward without doing other actions or shooting or advancing, but you'd be able to get closer more safely by leapfrogging from terrain to terrain.

* Give some weapons minimum distances. Get close to snipers or artillery pieces? Now they're less good at hitting you.

* Get rid of Big Guns Never Tire. It is silly in several ways. Instead, just let monsters/vehicles shoot/charge after falling back *unless* they were within engagement range of an enemy monster/vehicle.

* Get rid of Tank Shock. Instead, give vehicles melee weapons that hit harder on the charge.

* Change fights first so that fights first units that charged swing before fights first units that held still. The current version is counter-intuitive.

* Charge rolls switch to being a flat distance. Add the option to attempt a longer charge (which can be a 2d6 roll as now or a d6 roll consulting a chart or whatever), possibly with some sort of drawback. This still allows for charges out of reserves but gets rid of the feels bad of failing a 3" charge by rolling badly.

* Similarly, advance rolls can be replaced with a flat increase to your movement.

* Get rid of the Overwatch strat. Whenever it gets used, it's either being used by a unit that's not particularly good at overwatch (and is thus typically a lot of rolling for not much effect) or else it's being used on a unit with a million torrent weapons that can just kind of hold whole sections of the board hostage. Overwatch is probably fine as an action (ala Boarding Actions) or as a special rule that gets applied to certain weapons. So maybe all flamers in your army can overwatch when you're charged, for instance, but you don't slow the game down by *also* fishing for 6s with your bolters.

* Let swarms move through walls of ruins like infantry and beasts. Feels like a weird oversight.

* Anti-infantry could probably just be anti-infantry/anti-beast/anti-mounted/anti-swarm. Most of the things that have this rule are some sort of poison or psychic power that seem like they should work just as well against those targets. It's awkward wounding a fenrisian wolf on 5s (6s?) with a splinter rifle.

* Change the blast rule. Instead of +1 attacks per 5 models, make it +X per 5 models. This just gives you a little more room to have weapons scale up against hordes at various rates. So a single blast weapon on a tank could put out a solid number of shots versus a horde unit without needing to have a million shots baseline. Do the same thing with Torret.

* D2 weapons. Roll a D6. Rolls of 1,2, or 3 count as 1. Rolls of 4+ count as 2. Or you could flip a coin. Similar principle to D3. Notably, this has an average value of 1.5, allowing for decimal approximation. D3 on the other hand has the same expected value as 2.

Not sure there's really a scenario in the game where you need that level of granularity. In the same way that being Dd3 instead of D2 makes some weapons just less reliable at killing W2 models like marines, this would essentially just add an extra bit of rolling for a probably unnecessary amount of damage. If you want a weapon that sometimes crits and does a bit more damage, you could probably just make it an effect that triggers on critical wound rolls or something.

* D6 - X Weapons. An attack can have 3D6 - 2 Strength (Expected Value of 8.5) or it could have 9-D6 Attacks (Expected Value of 5.5).

This is essentially the same as Dx + Y weapons, except it feels worse. My d6+3 attack night spinner feels good because the numbers go up as I add them up in my head. Yum! Happy brain juices! But an A9-d6 weapon? The numbers are going down! Boo! Unhappy brain juices!

* Jackpot. A mechanic I made for a fandex army. Each roll of 6 counts as a roll of 7 instead. Helpful for Advance Rolls, Charge Rolls, Psychic & DTW tests (9th Edition), and bad for Battleshock tests.

This could be neat in the right places. It messes up the math of charge rolls and Ld-based rolls in ways that I don't like, but occassionally getting an extra in on an advance roll or what have you could be a nice little happy brain juice moment.

* Roll 3D6 and drop lowest. A way to boost Charge Rolls and other 2D6 rolls. Increases expected value from 7 to 8.45. For roll 2d6 and drop lowest, increases expected value from 3.5 to 4.47.

Again, messes with the math in ways that I don't like. Seems like maybe you really enjoy reliably making charges out of deepstrike without giving your opponent much opportunity to counter it.

Calbear wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Fix Psychic Powers.

Make them less of a KEYWORD, and more of an ability.

Right now, 99% of Psychic Powers are essentially ranged or melee attacks with a PSYCHIC Keyword.

You don't need a whole Psychic Phase, but you can use your Psychic in the phase where it affects what your unit is doing.

ie. Grey Knights can Teleport around in their movement phase and Hammerhand in Assault.

But make them pass a LD test to succeed, balanced by the fact that battle shocked Psykers can only use 1 psychic power a turn.

To be honest, I wish they just brought 9th Edition Psychic Phase back. That was one of the most interesting and flavorful aspect of the game. Your psyker could either shape the battlefield or destroy themselves, and your opponent could cancel out their voodoo with a stronger roll. The issue of course was that almost half of the armies in the game don't even have psychic units. And some armies like the T'au (despite flavor-fully adopting mercenaries) have neither psychic units nor anti-psyker units e.g. Canoptek Spyders. To get rid of it and replace it with what are essentially unit abilities and basic weapons; but worse due to anti-psychic keywords, was just a slap in the face.

If they won't bring the phase back, then the next best thing is to have psychic abilities and weapons be powerful, but require a Leadership Test before it can be used. If the test fails, there's an additional roll to see if the Psyker takes damage. Certain anti-psyker units would also either be resistant against psychic weapons or reduce the Leadership Test exclusively for psychic rolls.

Strongly disagree with pretty much all of that. Psychic tests were unfluffy and mechanically unsatisfying. Failing a clutch power creates random sucks-to-suck moments. In terms of fluff, it's kind of bizarre for a librarian or Ahriman or a farseer to just suddenly not be able to use their powers. Some alternatives I've pitched elsewhere:

A.) Psychic powers go off automatically, but you can roll to push a power. Pushing a power means you get a better version of the power (more range, more targets, better psychic weapon profile, etc.), but failing the roll means you perils and suffer some sort of drawback. (Probably just damage to the psyker.)

B.) Psychic powers go off automatically, but using powers causes the psyker to accumulate stress. At the end of the turn, you roll against the current stress of your psyker. If you roll too high, bad stuff happens. Probably just damage to the psyker. Maybe the psyker becomes unable to cast during the next turn. Whatever. As with suggestion A, this opens up the possibility to "push" powers for greater effect at the cost of more stress.

Either of those is more consistent with the fluff and eliminates the feels bad sucks-to-suck moments of a randomly failed psychic test.

Deny the Witch can suck eggs. At least as a thing all psykers do by default. Super unfluffy for random astropath Bob to somehow stop Ahriman or Magnus from using their powers, and it's basically just an extra opportunity to create those sucks-to-suck moments. DtW basically wasn't a thing for a long time, then it sort of crept in as limited wargear/abilities in 5th, then 6th/7th made it a widespread thing because the designers were excited about the little minigame they'd turned the psychic phase into, then 8th/9th kept it because people just felt entitled to it at that point. (And because the psychic powers were frequently poorly balanced in 6th-9th, so they used the extra failure points as a way to make the OP things happen less often.) So in terms of fluff, DtW doesn't really fit the setting, and mechanically it was generally just a bandaid for poorly balanced powers or a way to keep your opponent engaged while you played a gimmicky minigame.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Calbear wrote:What are some ideas that you have that change the core rules of Warhammer 40,000 current edition? These are rules that would affect every army instead of ideas like a new unit or new stratagem.

Current edition and thus not requiring an overhaul?

* Change plunging fire. Standing on a tall building now lets you use true line of sight when firing through ruins that are shorter than the terrain you're standing on. Generally standing on tall terrain is a bad idea (especially for squishy units) because it's harder to hide or reposition. This would give you a reason to take that trade-off and would help the classic devastator type units camp out in your deployment zone again (while also generally not letting you go full gunline because you probably only have so many pieces of tall terrain to work with.)

* Let to-hit mods stack again. Now that we don't have army-wide -1s all over the place, it would be a much more tame mechanic.

* Creeping into overhaul territory, but generally I think a lot of to-hit modifier rules could probably be replaced with effects that play around with max range. So a stealthy unit might be survivable not because a to-hit penalty but because it can only be targeted by units within 12" while its wholly within a terrain feature. So your opponent can't point their entire army at it until it's dead. I could see there being a universal "Hide" action that puts a range limit like that in place, so you could creep your army forward without doing other actions or shooting or advancing, but you'd be able to get closer more safely by leapfrogging from terrain to terrain.

* Give some weapons minimum distances. Get close to snipers or artillery pieces? Now they're less good at hitting you.

* Get rid of Big Guns Never Tire. It is silly in several ways. Instead, just let monsters/vehicles shoot/charge after falling back *unless* they were within engagement range of an enemy monster/vehicle.

* Get rid of Tank Shock. Instead, give vehicles melee weapons that hit harder on the charge.

* Change fights first so that fights first units that charged swing before fights first units that held still. The current version is counter-intuitive.

* Charge rolls switch to being a flat distance. Add the option to attempt a longer charge (which can be a 2d6 roll as now or a d6 roll consulting a chart or whatever), possibly with some sort of drawback. This still allows for charges out of reserves but gets rid of the feels bad of failing a 3" charge by rolling badly.

* Similarly, advance rolls can be replaced with a flat increase to your movement.

* Get rid of the Overwatch strat. Whenever it gets used, it's either being used by a unit that's not particularly good at overwatch (and is thus typically a lot of rolling for not much effect) or else it's being used on a unit with a million torrent weapons that can just kind of hold whole sections of the board hostage. Overwatch is probably fine as an action (ala Boarding Actions) or as a special rule that gets applied to certain weapons. So maybe all flamers in your army can overwatch when you're charged, for instance, but you don't slow the game down by *also* fishing for 6s with your bolters.

* Let swarms move through walls of ruins like infantry and beasts. Feels like a weird oversight.

* Anti-infantry could probably just be anti-infantry/anti-beast/anti-mounted/anti-swarm. Most of the things that have this rule are some sort of poison or psychic power that seem like they should work just as well against those targets. It's awkward wounding a fenrisian wolf on 5s (6s?) with a splinter rifle.

* Change the blast rule. Instead of +1 attacks per 5 models, make it +X per 5 models. This just gives you a little more room to have weapons scale up against hordes at various rates. So a single blast weapon on a tank could put out a solid number of shots versus a horde unit without needing to have a million shots baseline. Do the same thing with Torret.

* D2 weapons. Roll a D6. Rolls of 1,2, or 3 count as 1. Rolls of 4+ count as 2. Or you could flip a coin. Similar principle to D3. Notably, this has an average value of 1.5, allowing for decimal approximation. D3 on the other hand has the same expected value as 2.

Not sure there's really a scenario in the game where you need that level of granularity. In the same way that being Dd3 instead of D2 makes some weapons just less reliable at killing W2 models like marines, this would essentially just add an extra bit of rolling for a probably unnecessary amount of damage. If you want a weapon that sometimes crits and does a bit more damage, you could probably just make it an effect that triggers on critical wound rolls or something.

* D6 - X Weapons. An attack can have 3D6 - 2 Strength (Expected Value of 8.5) or it could have 9-D6 Attacks (Expected Value of 5.5).

This is essentially the same as Dx + Y weapons, except it feels worse. My d6+3 attack night spinner feels good because the numbers go up as I add them up in my head. Yum! Happy brain juices! But an A9-d6 weapon? The numbers are going down! Boo! Unhappy brain juices!

* Jackpot. A mechanic I made for a fandex army. Each roll of 6 counts as a roll of 7 instead. Helpful for Advance Rolls, Charge Rolls, Psychic & DTW tests (9th Edition), and bad for Battleshock tests.

This could be neat in the right places. It messes up the math of charge rolls and Ld-based rolls in ways that I don't like, but occassionally getting an extra in on an advance roll or what have you could be a nice little happy brain juice moment.

* Roll 3D6 and drop lowest. A way to boost Charge Rolls and other 2D6 rolls. Increases expected value from 7 to 8.45. For roll 2d6 and drop lowest, increases expected value from 3.5 to 4.47.

Again, messes with the math in ways that I don't like. Seems like maybe you really enjoy reliably making charges out of deepstrike without giving your opponent much opportunity to counter it.

Calbear wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Fix Psychic Powers.

Make them less of a KEYWORD, and more of an ability.

Right now, 99% of Psychic Powers are essentially ranged or melee attacks with a PSYCHIC Keyword.

You don't need a whole Psychic Phase, but you can use your Psychic in the phase where it affects what your unit is doing.

ie. Grey Knights can Teleport around in their movement phase and Hammerhand in Assault.

But make them pass a LD test to succeed, balanced by the fact that battle shocked Psykers can only use 1 psychic power a turn.

To be honest, I wish they just brought 9th Edition Psychic Phase back. That was one of the most interesting and flavorful aspect of the game. Your psyker could either shape the battlefield or destroy themselves, and your opponent could cancel out their voodoo with a stronger roll. The issue of course was that almost half of the armies in the game don't even have psychic units. And some armies like the T'au (despite flavor-fully adopting mercenaries) have neither psychic units nor anti-psyker units e.g. Canoptek Spyders. To get rid of it and replace it with what are essentially unit abilities and basic weapons; but worse due to anti-psychic keywords, was just a slap in the face.

If they won't bring the phase back, then the next best thing is to have psychic abilities and weapons be powerful, but require a Leadership Test before it can be used. If the test fails, there's an additional roll to see if the Psyker takes damage. Certain anti-psyker units would also either be resistant against psychic weapons or reduce the Leadership Test exclusively for psychic rolls.

Strongly disagree with pretty much all of that. Psychic tests were unfluffy and mechanically unsatisfying. Failing a clutch power creates random sucks-to-suck moments. In terms of fluff, it's kind of bizarre for a librarian or Ahriman or a farseer to just suddenly not be able to use their powers. Some alternatives I've pitched elsewhere:

A.) Psychic powers go off automatically, but you can roll to push a power. Pushing a power means you get a better version of the power (more range, more targets, better psychic weapon profile, etc.), but failing the roll means you perils and suffer some sort of drawback. (Probably just damage to the psyker.)

B.) Psychic powers go off automatically, but using powers causes the psyker to accumulate stress. At the end of the turn, you roll against the current stress of your psyker. If you roll too high, bad stuff happens. Probably just damage to the psyker. Maybe the psyker becomes unable to cast during the next turn. Whatever. As with suggestion A, this opens up the possibility to "push" powers for greater effect at the cost of more stress.

Either of those is more consistent with the fluff and eliminates the feels bad sucks-to-suck moments of a randomly failed psychic test.

Deny the Witch can suck eggs. At least as a thing all psykers do by default. Super unfluffy for random astropath Bob to somehow stop Ahriman or Magnus from using their powers, and it's basically just an extra opportunity to create those sucks-to-suck moments. DtW basically wasn't a thing for a long time, then it sort of crept in as limited wargear/abilities in 5th, then 6th/7th made it a widespread thing because the designers were excited about the little minigame they'd turned the psychic phase into, then 8th/9th kept it because people just felt entitled to it at that point. (And because the psychic powers were frequently poorly balanced in 6th-9th, so they used the extra failure points as a way to make the OP things happen less often.) So in terms of fluff, DtW doesn't really fit the setting, and mechanically it was generally just a bandaid for poorly balanced powers or a way to keep your opponent engaged while you played a gimmicky minigame.

Great post. I also miss Crush Them from 9th Edition. Although I disagree with Overwatch and Deny the Witch.

You may see it as "gimmicky" or "unneeded rolling", but they added interactivity to a mostly non-interactive game. Someone else on here said it best. Playing a 40k game is often like watching a stop-motion movie. During your opponent's turn, all you do is stand by & watch your opponent move their models & destroy your army. All you can normally do while this is happening is make armor saves and hope you roll well. If you have surviving units in Engagement Range, then you get to hit back, but that often isn't a given. Many times, I almost want to just play with my phone after my turn is up and ask my opponent what saves I need to make.

What Overwatch & DtW did was give you opportunities to actually affect the game when it isn't your turn. To make watching your opponent's turn feel engaging rather than like a chore. To add strategy by the active player considering what happens if their charge or power is countered. It also adds new "knobs" to affect gameplay by making certain units unable to be countered/overwatched or having enhancements that improve countering/overwatch.

Instead of deleting Overwatch, I would split it into three Stratagems that cost 2CP each. Fire Overwatch now only works against charges. Return Fire allows a unit to shoot at an enemy unit that just shot at it (but only hit on 6s). Counter-Ambush allows a unit to shoot at an enemy that just deployed within 12" of it, but only hit on 6s (This was an Adeptus Mechanicus Stratagem). This way, you have to be wary of an opponent with a lot of CP. You can't just perform your gameplan and expect your opponent to sit there and watch their units die. It gives you a potential reason to not shoot at an enemy or not charge an enemy or not deploy your unit right at their flanks.

Calbear wrote:

Great post.

Cheers.

You may see it as "gimmicky" or "unneeded rolling", but they added interactivity to a mostly non-interactive game. Someone else on here said it best. Playing a 40k game is often like watching a stop-motion movie. During your opponent's turn, all you do is stand by & watch your opponent move their models & destroy your army. All you can normally do while this is happening is make armor saves and hope you roll well. If you have surviving units in Engagement Range, then you get to hit back, but that often isn't a given. Many times, I almost want to just play with my phone after my turn is up and ask my opponent what saves I need to make.

What Overwatch & DtW did was give you opportunities to actually affect the game when it isn't your turn. To make watching your opponent's turn feel strategic rather than like a chore. To add strategy by the active player considering what happens if their charge or power is countered. It also adds new "knobs" to affect gameplay by making certain units unable to be countered/overwatched or having enhancements that improve countering/overwatch.

See, and I say this with all due respect and no attention to attack anyone, I don't think they actually "add strategy" to the opponent's turn. What they actually did/do is create some obvious correct and incorrect choices regarding when to use them, and a lot of people end up feeling very proud of themselves for making the obvious correct choices instead of the obviously bad choices.

Deny the Witch created choices like:
* "Do you want my power to go off and do bad things to you, or would you like to use your free chance to stop the bad things from happening?"
* "Do you want to try to stop this less important power that won't do much, or would you rather save your Deny for the big power that actually matters?"

Or the slightly more interesting choice:
* "Do you want to gamble your Deny on this important power that I rolled well on so you only have like a 20% chance of stopping it, or do you want to let it go and hope I roll badly enough on my next power that you have a reasonable chance of denying it?"

The first two scenarios have clear correct answers, so the choice is just an illussion. The third scenario is a bit moreinteresting on the surface. However, either the big power is so impactful that the correct answer is ultimately to just try to deny it anyway... or it isn't. So either there's a correct decision, or else it's too close to call and it's ultimately just a literal roll of the dice to see how badly things go for you.

I think the only time I ever felt like I made an interesting decision with DtW was in 9th where I specifically held off on using my drukhari Helm of Spite relic until a wounded psyker decided to cast so that I could kill him off by forcing perils with a successful deny. So a single time out of all the editions that DtW was a thing, and it was only intresting because of an extra rule (forced perils on succesful denies) that came with the relic.

Overwatch creates the choices of:
* "Did you want to waste 1CP on overwatch that statistically probably isn't worth it?"
* "Did you want to use 1CP on overwatch that is statistically definitely worth it?"

There aren't a ton of scenarios where deciding whether or not to overwatch is genuinely a hard call.

Instead of deleting Overwatch, I would split it into three Stratagems that cost 2CP each. Fire Overwatch now only works against charges. Return Fire allows a unit to shoot at an enemy unit that just shot at it (but only hit on 6s). Counter-Ambush allows a unit to shoot at an enemy that just deployed within 12" of it, but only hit on 6s (This was an Adeptus Mechanicus Stratagem). This way, you have to be wary of an opponent with a lot of CP. You can't just perform your gameplan and expect your opponent to sit there and watch their units die. It gives you a potential reason to not shoot at an enemy or not charge an enemy or not deploy your unit right at their flanks.

That would help somewhat (mostly by removing the ability to punish units for moving), but I think it mostly just moves the problem around and potentially creates new ones. Regardless of which of those strats you use, you're just kind of doubling down on overwatch being a trap if you use it on units that aren't statistically likely to do a decent amount of damage with it. And then you're just shrinking the number of units on whom its worthwhile. So maybe you've made squads with 4 flamers not worth overwatching with, but squads with 10 flamers will still do it every chance they get.

And if my Thousand Sons happen to be sitting on a pile of CP, now I can potentially shoot my flamer brick 4 times a battle round instead of just 2. Letting gladius with full rerolls or a flamer unit shoot back at the unit trying to help chip it down in shooting seems like it could possibly create new problems too.

That said, making them 2CP each does at least make overwatch more of an investment. I think it just ultimately runs into that problem of either being cheap enough to be an auto-use, or being too expensive and instantly becoming a never-use. And it's pretty much always going to feel bad when an opponent uses it when the price is right.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Calbear wrote:

Great post.

Cheers.

You may see it as "gimmicky" or "unneeded rolling", but they added interactivity to a mostly non-interactive game. Someone else on here said it best. Playing a 40k game is often like watching a stop-motion movie. During your opponent's turn, all you do is stand by & watch your opponent move their models & destroy your army. All you can normally do while this is happening is make armor saves and hope you roll well. If you have surviving units in Engagement Range, then you get to hit back, but that often isn't a given. Many times, I almost want to just play with my phone after my turn is up and ask my opponent what saves I need to make.

What Overwatch & DtW did was give you opportunities to actually affect the game when it isn't your turn. To make watching your opponent's turn feel strategic rather than like a chore. To add strategy by the active player considering what happens if their charge or power is countered. It also adds new "knobs" to affect gameplay by making certain units unable to be countered/overwatched or having enhancements that improve countering/overwatch.

See, and I say this with all due respect and no attention to attack anyone, I don't think they actually "add strategy" to the opponent's turn. What they actually did/do is create some obvious correct and incorrect choices regarding when to use them, and a lot of people end up feeling very proud of themselves for making the obvious correct choices instead of the obviously bad choices.

Deny the Witch created choices like:
* "Do you want my power to go off and do bad things to you, or would you like to use your free chance to stop the bad things from happening?"
* "Do you want to try to stop this less important power that won't do much, or would you rather save your Deny for the big power that actually matters?"

Or the slightly more interesting choice:
* "Do you want to gamble your Deny on this important power that I rolled well on so you only have like a 20% chance of stopping it, or do you want to let it go and hope I roll badly enough on my next power that you have a reasonable chance of denying it?"

The first two scenarios have clear correct answers, so the choice is just an illussion. The third scenario is a bit moreinteresting on the surface. However, either the big power is so impactful that the correct answer is ultimately to just try to deny it anyway... or it isn't. So either there's a correct decision, or else it's too close to call and it's ultimately just a literal roll of the dice to see how badly things go for you.

I think the only time I ever felt like I made an interesting decision with DtW was in 9th where I specifically held off on using my drukhari Helm of Spite relic until a wounded psyker decided to cast so that I could kill him off by forcing perils with a successful deny. So a single time out of all the editions that DtW was a thing, and it was only intresting because of an extra rule (forced perils on succesful denies) that came with the relic.

Overwatch creates the choices of:
* "Did you want to waste 1CP on overwatch that statistically probably isn't worth it?"
* "Did you want to use 1CP on overwatch that is statistically definitely worth it?"

There aren't a ton of scenarios where deciding whether or not to overwatch is genuinely a hard call.

Instead of deleting Overwatch, I would split it into three Stratagems that cost 2CP each. Fire Overwatch now only works against charges. Return Fire allows a unit to shoot at an enemy unit that just shot at it (but only hit on 6s). Counter-Ambush allows a unit to shoot at an enemy that just deployed within 12" of it, but only hit on 6s (This was an Adeptus Mechanicus Stratagem). This way, you have to be wary of an opponent with a lot of CP. You can't just perform your gameplan and expect your opponent to sit there and watch their units die. It gives you a potential reason to not shoot at an enemy or not charge an enemy or not deploy your unit right at their flanks.

That would help somewhat (mostly by removing the ability to punish units for moving), but I think it mostly just moves the problem around and potentially creates new ones. Regardless of which of those strats you use, you're just kind of doubling down on overwatch being a trap if you use it on units that aren't statistically likely to do a decent amount of damage with it. And then you're just shrinking the number of units on whom its worthwhile. So maybe you've made squads with 4 flamers not worth overwatching with, but squads with 10 flamers will still do it every chance they get.

And if my Thousand Sons happen to be sitting on a pile of CP, now I can potentially shoot my flamer brick 4 times a battle round instead of just 2. Letting gladius with full rerolls or a flamer unit shoot back at the unit trying to help chip it down in shooting seems like it could possibly create new problems too.

That said, making them 2CP each does at least make overwatch more of an investment. I think it just ultimately runs into that problem of either being cheap enough to be an auto-use, or being too expensive and instantly becoming a never-use. And it's pretty much always going to feel bad when an opponent uses it when the price is right.

You are correct that most of the time, choosing what unit to Overwatch or choosing what powers to deny are a no-brainer once you're informed about your opponent and good at the game. But at least that's still a choice! It is one more thing both you and your opponent have to keep in mind when playing, rather than the active player almost playing on auto-pilot as they move their units around and shoot/charge stuff.

Also strategy & tactics not only matter during a match, but before a match. Considering how well your army us at denying psychic powers or how well your army is when it comes to firing Overwatch is an important characteristic to judge units by. If you're going into a tournament where you know players will be bringing Thousands Sons and Grey Knights or any other Psychic army, you should retool your army with psykers/deniers of your own to better handle that situation. If you're a gunline army that wants to win a tournament featuring World Eaters and Orks and other melee armies, it makes sense to retool your army and bring more flamers and close-range weapons. Without Deny The Witch test, the only counter on your end to dealing with a psychic army is just kill the Characters first and maybe sub in Sisters of Silence if possible. Without Overwatch, the only counter on your end for a melee-focused army (assuming your army isn't melee focused as well) is just to space your units apart to make subsequent charges harder (and bring pistols).

More things you can do during a match also leads to greater and more strategic army adjustments.

Working within the current rules paradigm, I think they should move further into abstracting the mechanics, like toughness. Change it to defence and allow it to represent a range of factors.

You can also change strength to 'attack', and just change the attack stat to Dice.

So you make an attack against the target's Defence.

You can give something like a genestealer higher Defence (Def 6) to represent their reflexes, but put a keyword like 'Reflexes' in their profile which interacts with some weapons.

For example, the Torrent or Blast rule gives its attack +1 to the roll against a unit with the Reflex keyword.

You can then reframe all the various special types of defence as keywords that interact with attacks differently.

You can still use a Save as the opponent's roll to prevent death, but the mechanics focus on reflecting the abstract defensiveness of units by these keyword and rule interactions.

Calbear wrote:

You are correct that most of the time, choosing what unit to Overwatch or choosing what powers to deny are a no-brainer once you're informed about your opponent and good at the game. But at least that's still a choice! It is one more thing both you and your opponent have to keep in mind when playing, rather than the active player almost playing on auto-pilot as they move their units around and shoot/charge stuff.

Your mileage may vary. Personally, I don't think that's a good thing overall. For newer players, the bad choices just become feelsbad traps that they might fall into until they get better at the game. And for experienced players, it's basically busy work that makes the time until their own turn even longer. If the goal is to reduce downtime between the end of your turn and the next time you get to make an interesting decision, I think there are better ways to do that than to give them fake decisions to sign off on.

Also strategy & tactics not only matter during a match, but before a match. Considering how well your army us at denying psychic powers or how well your army is when it comes to firing Overwatch is an important characteristic to judge units by. If you're going into a tournament where you know players will be bringing Thousands Sons and Grey Knights or any other Psychic army, you should retool your army with psykers/deniers of your own to better handle that situation. If you're a gunline army that wants to win a tournament featuring World Eaters and Orks and other melee armies, it makes sense to retool your army and bring more flamers and close-range weapons. Without Deny The Witch test, the only counter on your end to dealing with a psychic army is just kill the Characters first and maybe sub in Sisters of Silence if possible.

I view what you're describing as more of a bug than a feature. I don't know how long you've been playing, but there was this phenomenon with 6th/7th edition where you were generally forced to either take a *ton* of psykers, or none at all. Because taking a single psyker meant that you were basically guaranteed to never successfully cast a power when facing an army with lots of psykers. 8th/9th toned this down a lot, but you still ran into this scenario where one player would be playing Thousand Sons or daemons or what have you, and he was basically just able to smite spam his opponent into oblivion. And on the flip side, his opponent's single psyker was perpetually in range of a few different psyker units just poised to have an X% chance of making his powers not work.

There's also the "skews the meta so hard it reduces list variety" problem. That is, in editions where vehicle spam is dominant, you basically never take a flamer where you can take a meltagun and never take howling banshees where you can take fire dragons because the presence of tank spam or imperial knights or whatever in the meta means that you're screwed if you don't field a hard counter for those things. But admittedly that only really comes up in more extreme scenarios.

Without Overwatch, the only counter on your end for a melee-focused army (assuming your army isn't melee focused as well) is just to space your units apart to make subsequent charges harder (and bring pistols).

Infiltrating speed bumps. Weapons that reduce movement. Strats and abilities that let you redeploy units. Indirect fire. Splashing in *some* melee of your own even if your army isn't "melee focused." Definitely not the end of the world if we take away OW and face melee armies. (NOTE: I feel like that might read as sarcastic/dickish without the context of tone. Please be aware that I am not attempting to be a jerk here.)



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:
Working within the current rules paradigm, I think they should move further into abstracting the mechanics, like toughness. Change it to defence and allow it to represent a range of factors.

You can also change strength to 'attack', and just change the attack stat to Dice.

So you make an attack against the target's Defence.

You can give something like a genestealer higher Defence (Def 6) to represent their reflexes, but put a keyword like 'Reflexes' in their profile which interacts with some weapons.

For example, the Torrent or Blast rule gives its attack +1 to the roll against a unit with the Reflex keyword.

You can then reframe all the various special types of defence as keywords that interact with attacks differently.

You can still use a Save as the opponent's roll to prevent death, but the mechanics focus on reflecting the abstract defensiveness of units by these keyword and rule interactions.

That would definitely require a new edition, but I agree with the general thrust of the idea. I'd probably keep the to-hit roll though and instead combine the to-wound and save rolls together because they're generally representing more similar concepts and are generally impacted by more similar things. The distinction between Toughness vs Armor gets kind of wonky, for instance.

So you'd give some units the "Armored (X)" keyword that imposes a -X penalty to your opponent's to-wound rolls. And you'd give some weapons the "AP (Y)" rule that lets them reduce enemy Armored rules by Y points. So a marine might have Armored(2) while a vespid's gun might have AP(1). So the marine's Armored rule would only impose a -1 penalty (2-1 = 1) on your to-wound roll instead of a -2. You could still keep a Reflexes(X) rule on especially fast units and interact with that in the same way though.

And then you'd just give everything in the game more Wounds (which we should maybe rename Hit Points at some point) to compensate for removing a step from the attack resolution process.

I would then make the defence roll something your opponent does. I'm a proponent of Priestley's ethos that the last roll made for the unit is the owner trying to save them, rather than just being on the receiving end and waiting for your enemy to tell you how many models you lose.

So you roll to attack, and they roll to defend.

You can abstract out the hit as well, calling it 'experience or Skill' or something and you compare between attacker and target to determine the hit.

I am not a fan of the fixed hit stat, as it reduces the interchange between units and reduces considerations on how to use units. Two elite skilled warriors really shouldn't be wailing on each other like they're grots.


You can then have your keyword affects for both rolls, so the attacker might have the veteran keyword which gives them +1 to hit unless the target also has that keyword.

The target having reflexes keyword gets a bonus to the Defence roll unless the attack had one of those negating keywords and so on.

You'd probably want to avoid too much keyword interaction, so at most one would affect each roll but I don't see that being too hard.

I had an idea that would never work in today's tournament heavy environment.

You don't share what you are playing until you deploy it on the battlefield. This adds a "fog of war" to the game.

When you know your opponent has a squad of Terminators in Reserves for Deep Strike, you play different.


PLAYER 1: Is this your whole army?

PLAYER 2: I guess you'll have to find out.

PLAYER 1: ::leaps across the table in a feeble attempt to strangle his opponent::

Maybe on second thought...

Hellebore wrote:I would then make the defence roll something your opponent does. I'm a proponent of Priestley's ethos that the last roll made for the unit is the owner trying to save them, rather than just being on the receiving end and waiting for your enemy to tell you how many models you lose.

Sure. Either way. Under this system, dice rolling would be a slightly cooperative effort given that you'd need to make sure you were accounting for all bonuses/penalties. You'd need to make sure the defending player was remembeirng to set aside your devastating wounds or reroll failed rolls of 1 or whatever. So it puts a bit extra trust in the hands of the guy who's about to pick up models.

You'd probably want to avoid too much keyword interaction, so at most one would affect each roll but I don't see that being too hard.

Agreed. You'd need to cut down on the amount of buffs present on your typical attack resolution process. But honestly that could just be part of a push to reduce lethality in the game in general. Remember when eldar were pretty much the only faction that had access to to-hit rerolls?

Lathe Biosas wrote:I had an idea that would never work in today's tournament heavy environment.
You don't share what you are playing until you deploy it on the battlefield. This adds a "fog of war" to the game.

I've seen people pitch similar ideas unironically. Even just stuff like, "Don't tell your opponent which units are in which transports." There's a simulationist benefit to it, but 40k just doesn't have enough turns or information gathering mechanics to really make it interesting. It would essentially just turn into, "Nope! You guessed the wrong wave serpent. Now my fire dragons get to pop out and sucker punch you!"

Narratively, I'm not sure I like the idea of "mystery opponents" either. If your narrative is that this battle is part of an ongoing conflict, you should probably know what faction you're going to run into. You've probably sent out scouts or used tech to get some idea of what units you're going to face. Heck. As eldar, it would be fluffy (but frustrating for opponents) for me to get to know their list ahead of time so I can tailor to counter it.

Remove restrictions on where you can move units in melee, you just cannot end a charge, pile in or consolidate move further away. Simplifies the game and increases gameplay depth by allowing players to decide whether they want to move onto objectives.

Desperate escape is a 4+ to get away from being surrounded, 7+ if battle-shocked. Rewards surrounding enemy models in melee.

Change which models can fight to those within 1" of a model from their own unit that is within engagement range of the target, like in 8th. A bit easier to remember than switching between needing to be within 1" of targets and needing to be in base contact with the target and supporting attackers.

Remove Big Guns Never Tire, make vehicles bad in melee unless they have pistols or melee weapons, this encourages using infantry screens and rewards taking melee weapons instead of ranged weapons having basically no counter-play.

Units with FLY can fly across terrain as if it weren't there as long as they don't end there. Models can overhang while standing on top of terrain pieces. FLY is just a wet noodle of an ability right now and feels really bad and not being able to take positions on top of terrain pieces with flying vehicles is unfun. You can still be charged in melee this edition anyways, so they removed unfun impossible to charge situations.

Aircraft must move after arriving on the table. Make aircraft pivot before moving instead of after moving, decrease the minimum distance needed to move to 12". Make enemy ranged weapons, except those wielded by units with fly subtract 12" from their range when shooting at aircraft unless hovering. Allows aircraft to be on the table most of the game. Having to move after arriving from reinforcements creates a sense of speed and sets aircraft apart from any other shooty tank arriving from reinforcements.

Psykers get a number of powers per turn, they have to choose which ones they use, their power lies in their versatility compared to the one fixed ability of regular characters.

Overwatch is used instead of shooting and allows the unit to fire at full BS in the enemy turn. Some weapons get to fire at full BS when charged, mostly just flamers.

More weapons cause battle-shock and leadership penalties.

Infantry is just 30 mm bases and below 40+mm are now beasts.

 vict0988 wrote:
Remove restrictions on where you can move units in melee, you just cannot end a charge, pile in or consolidate move further away. Simplifies the game and increases gameplay depth by allowing players to decide whether they want to move onto objectives.

Not range restrictions though, right? Otherwise you'd be able to teleport to the opposite side of large units and basically use them to supercharge your movement. Uh. Moreso than now.

Desperate escape is a 4+ to get away from being surrounded, 7+ if battle-shocked. Rewards surrounding enemy models in melee.

I'd be okay with this, but my pet solution for having a drawback for falling back is that models who started the turn in engagement range can only be targeted from 12" (maybe 18"?) away, representing the fog of war/confusion around the swirling melee that's only just broken up. Mechanically, this means your melee unit will only have to face tank shots from enemies in the immediate area instead of the whole enemy army reaching out to blast them all at once.

Aircraft must move after arriving on the table. Make aircraft pivot before moving instead of after moving, decrease the minimum distance needed to move to 12". Make enemy ranged weapons, except those wielded by units with fly subtract 12" from their range when shooting at aircraft unless hovering. Allows aircraft to be on the table most of the game. Having to move after arriving from reinforcements creates a sense of speed and sets aircraft apart from any other shooty tank arriving from reinforcements.

This would be an improvement, but still leave us with jetplanes doing weird, slow-motion donuts around the block. I still think aircraft were probably just a mistake.

Psykers get a number of powers per turn, they have to choose which ones they use, their power lies in their versatility compared to the one fixed ability of regular characters.

Love this. Points would have to go up, but I think this is a great approach.

Overwatch is used instead of shooting and allows the unit to fire at full BS in the enemy turn. Some weapons get to fire at full BS when charged, mostly just flamers.

My only concern with it being at full BS is that you risk running into that oldschool problem of both armies just turtling up and waiting for the other guy to walk out into the open. I feel like a modest to-hit penalty or some other restriction might help here. Maybe even require overwatching units to overwatch whenever they have a target? Meaning opponents could send cheap fodder units out to absorb overwatch and clear the way for more valuable units.

More weapons cause battle-shock and leadership penalties.

Idk. I think we need to figure out what to do with battleshock in general first. I'm not sure the current system but with more checks is necessarily the most engaging way to go.

Infantry is just 30 mm bases and below 40+mm are now beasts.

What about 31-39mm? And I'm not sure what the goal is here. Just trying to represent larger bipedal models being too brutish to clamber through ruin windows or something?

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Remove restrictions on where you can move units in melee, you just cannot end a charge, pile in or consolidate move further away. Simplifies the game and increases gameplay depth by allowing players to decide whether they want to move onto objectives.

Not range restrictions though, right? Otherwise you'd be able to teleport to the opposite side of large units and basically use them to supercharge your movement. Uh. Moreso than now.

Just think 8th edition with the addition of being able to go from one side of a monster to the other if you are in base contact with it. I'm okay with models in base contact being locked in melee, but I think saying you get to move 3" and cannot end further away indicates that you're supposed to use this movement to go places and not necessarily just to get into base contact.

Desperate escape is a 4+ to get away from being surrounded, 7+ if battle-shocked. Rewards surrounding enemy models in melee.

I'd be okay with this, but my pet solution for having a drawback for falling back is that models who started the turn in engagement range can only be targeted from 12" (maybe 18"?) away, representing the fog of war/confusion around the swirling melee that's only just broken up. Mechanically, this means your melee unit will only have to face tank shots from enemies in the immediate area instead of the whole enemy army reaching out to blast them all at once.

I like that idea, I'd probably want both now that you mention it. Avoids the thing where suddenly an entire army points at one unit that went into melee, on the other hand maybe it's fair for a suicidal charge leading to death.

Aircraft must move after arriving on the table. Make aircraft pivot before moving instead of after moving, decrease the minimum distance needed to move to 12". Make enemy ranged weapons, except those wielded by units with fly subtract 12" from their range when shooting at aircraft unless hovering. Allows aircraft to be on the table most of the game. Having to move after arriving from reinforcements creates a sense of speed and sets aircraft apart from any other shooty tank arriving from reinforcements.

This would be an improvement, but still leave us with jetplanes doing weird, slow-motion donuts around the block. I still think aircraft were probably just a mistake.

With only 12" of movement you could zig-zag or do a snake.

Overwatch is used instead of shooting and allows the unit to fire at full BS in the enemy turn. Some weapons get to fire at full BS when charged, mostly just flamers.

My only concern with it being at full BS is that you risk running into that oldschool problem of both armies just turtling up and waiting for the other guy to walk out into the open. I feel like a modest to-hit penalty or some other restriction might help here. Maybe even require overwatching units to overwatch whenever they have a target? Meaning opponents could send cheap fodder units out to absorb overwatch and clear the way for more valuable units.

Overwatch would be one unit and never an army. If avoiding a unit's shooting then nothing changes except the overwatching party has to pay even if the opponent stays hidden. I think an anti-tank unit waiting to shoot until a tank comes out of hiding is valid gameplay. Shooting an additional time at lower efficacy but somehow boosted by various rules that have no link to overwatch is just weird. Like the discussion about what invuln saves should be good against and why, lethal hits and sustained hits improving overwatch is an unintended accident that I don't feel the authors intended or use on purpose

Infantry is just 30 mm bases and below 40+mm are now beasts.

What about 31-39mm? And I'm not sure what the goal is here. Just trying to represent larger bipedal models being too brutish to clamber through ruin windows or something?