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My playgroup has been messing around with various editions of Middlehammer (mostly 4th and 7th/HH1) recently, and we've been talking about trying to mess around with the rules a bit and see what happens. In theory this is in service of a set of rules using the bones of 7th, adjusted for ease and speed of play, with an eye towards maximizing compatibility with as wide a range of minis as possible. Some ideas we've been tossing around:

-Line of Sight/terrain height: I actually kind of like the 2d line of sight implementation in 10e, but I kind of want to pull in terrain/unit height to allow for a little more granularity in positioning. The idea would be that all units and terrain have a height (generally 1 for infantry, 2 for most vehicles/monsters, say), and then terrain adds its height to the height of things standing on it (a one-level ruin might be height 2, so it'd let an infantry unit see/be seen over most vehicles). You then draw LoS in 2 dimensions and it's blocked by anything that's equal to or taller than both the firing model and the target. Units would block LoS (both friendly and enemy), to let you hide valuable units behind expendable units like how old-school Target Priority worked but without having a whole extra dice roll step when attacking. Height might also factor into vertical melee distance so you don't need whole extra special rules to determine that a Knight can melee an upper level of a ruin from where it's standing on the ground.

-Unit coherency and blasts: Actually playing 7e involves a lot of spreading infantry units out into a maximum-coherency grid; I think removing "partial hits" from blast templates may have been an overcorrection to the addition of the 32mm base. That said having an extra dice roll step isn't necessarily something that I want to hold onto, but it might be interesting to make a partial hit from a blast/template deterministically worth 50% of a hit (rounding up at the end as normal for things you halve). It might also be interesting to take some of the more spammable blast weapons and then just give them a number of shots the way HH2-3 did; I do like blast templates, but I don't like them so much I want to go back to resolving 10-20 small blasts from a Grave Warden squad like you did in HH1. With fewer/less dramatic blast weapons it might then be interesting to constrain unit coherency to some radius as well as the connected 2" graph; I don't know if conga-lining units is an actual issue that needs solving, but if you made people keep all models partially within a 6" radius of a model you pick as the center when moving the unit you can still fit 19 models in a three-layer hexagon at maximum coherency for anything up to and including 50mm bases, so it's not a horrible constraint for most things?

-Weapon types: I'm genuinely not sure how interesting the charge restriction on Rapid Fire/Heavy weapons is, with the 7e mini set. There are so few units that want to fire a Rapid Fire weapon and then charge, so many units that are just already Relentless and don't care. Pulling out that restriction gives you a much shorter, simpler list of ranged weapon types: Assault X (move and fire at full range, includes Pistols since the 'counts as CCW' rule could just be stuck on without having to be a full type), Heavy X (fire only if you stood still), Rapid Fire X/Y (Assault X at half range, Heavy Y at full range), and Ordnance X (fire X shots if standing still, with extra restrictions for vehicles). In theory you could then port forward the old concept of Suspensors and make a lot of infantry heavy weapons Rapid Fire X/X, so instead of having a worse to-hit roll when moving you have worse range when moving. The main thing this would buff is mixed-weapon SM infantry, but I don't think it'd be out of line to buff a unit that was so underwhelming in 7e GW had to dangle 550pts of free Razorbacks in front of players to persuade them to use it.

-Aircraft: One of our design goals is to make a version of Warhammer that can use as many different models as possible, which means we need to address the Flyer type. In theory the fast solution would just be to revert to 5e's "really fast skimmer" version; I still think the main issue with Flyers in 6e-7e was the undersupply of actual AA weapons. My instinct for solving that problem is to add "Flakk Missiles"-style profiles to more weapons without adding to their cost; e.g. if a Tau Missile Pod were also an AA weapon that just throws an AA option into a much wider range of list builds for them.

-Vehicle damage: I don't mind Hull Points in theory, but if both glances and pens rolled on the table and only pens took hull points off then lighter weapons would be better at stunlocking vehicles and heavier weapons would be better at actually killing them, which makes a lot more sense than the other way around? Also makes Necron Gauss stuff a little less strange.

Anyway. Some thoughts for now. Opinions welcome.

For blasts there is always the 3e approach where most direct fire blast weapons just rolled to hit rather than scatter.
No hit, no template, no time wasting.


With coherency the problem was that there was no benefit to not spreading out and uncapped benefits to blast weapons on grouped up targets.

Best way to reduce coherency delays is to make shoulder to shoulder the better option outside of flamers, heavy artillery when caught out of cover, etc. Closest the game had was one of the old guard doctrines.


No charge on rapid fire was legacy but two shots were often better than one shot and one extra cc attack of pistols/chainswords.
Though I suppose by 7e it was an increasingly less important distinction when you were getting stepped on by knights.

Running thoughts as I read:

-Line of Sight/terrain height: I actually kind of like the 2d line of sight implementation in 10e, but I kind of want to pull in terrain/unit height to allow for a little more granularity in positioning. The idea would be that all units and terrain have a height (generally 1 for infantry, 2 for most vehicles/monsters, say), and then terrain adds its height to the height of things standing on it (a one-level ruin might be height 2, so it'd let an infantry unit see/be seen over most vehicles). You then draw LoS in 2 dimensions and it's blocked by anything that's equal to or taller than both the firing model and the target. Units would block LoS (both friendly and enemy), to let you hide valuable units behind expendable units like how old-school Target Priority worked but without having a whole extra dice roll step when attacking. Height might also factor into vertical melee distance so you don't need whole extra special rules to determine that a Knight can melee an upper level of a ruin from where it's standing on the ground.

Seems like a good approach. My only nitpick is that you probably end up with some weird situations where a model doesn't have actual real world line of sight to a target but can shoot at them anyway due to the height rules. Ex: A grot standing behind a Height 1 piece of terrain being allowed to shoot at something standing on a ruin because it's height 3 even though the height 1 terrain is literally blocking its LoS. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something.

Unit coherency and blasts: Actually playing 7e involves a lot of spreading infantry units out into a maximum-coherency grid; I think removing "partial hits" from blast templates may have been an overcorrection to the addition of the 32mm base. That said having an extra dice roll step isn't necessarily something that I want to hold onto, but it might be interesting to make a partial hit from a blast/template deterministically worth 50% of a hit (rounding up at the end as normal for things you halve). It might also be interesting to take some of the more spammable blast weapons and then just give them a number of shots the way HH2-3 did; I do like blast templates, but I don't like them so much I want to go back to resolving 10-20 small blasts from a Grave Warden squad like you did in HH1.

While I do remember the visceral satisfaction that came form landing a good blast hit, I'm just not sure that satisfaction is worth the frustration of punishing horde or melee armies from clumping up. Getting 10 hits on a squad of ork boyz the turn after they successfully charge something just kind of feels like punishing orks for being orks. So utilizing blast templates in general is kind of a hard sell for me even without getting into the annoying ambiguity of scatter dice.

Small blasts barely worked even when being partially over a base was a hit. Switching them to just a set number of shots probably makes sense.

With fewer/less dramatic blast weapons it might then be interesting to constrain unit coherency to some radius as well as the connected 2" graph; I don't know if conga-lining units is an actual issue that needs solving, but if you made people keep all models partially within a 6" radius of a model you pick as the center when moving the unit you can still fit 19 models in a three-layer hexagon at maximum coherency for anything up to and including 50mm bases, so it's not a horrible constraint for most things?

I never found conga lines to actually be an issue, tbh.

My concern with the 6" radius approach is that some squads are just massive. Termagants can come in units of what? 20? 30? You can probably fit 19 gants in a 6" bubble without too much fuss in a vacuum, but when a chunk of that area is occupied by terrain, enemy models, etc., it might get trickier. I suspect it also might become physically more challenging to move the models around when you have to keep them all contained within that little circle of space vs traditional approaches where models could kind of sprawl out to take on a more comfortable, casual shape.

But if you expand the area to, say, 9", suddenly the area is so *big* that you may as well not bother requiring people to worry about that constraint in the first place.

-Weapon types: I'm genuinely not sure how interesting the charge restriction on Rapid Fire/Heavy weapons is, with the 7e mini set. There are so few units that want to fire a Rapid Fire weapon and then charge, so many units that are just already Relentless and don't care. Pulling out that restriction gives you a much shorter, simpler list of ranged weapon types: Assault X (move and fire at full range, includes Pistols since the 'counts as CCW' rule could just be stuck on without having to be a full type), Heavy X (fire only if you stood still), Rapid Fire X/Y (Assault X at half range, Heavy Y at full range), and Ordnance X (fire X shots if standing still, with extra restrictions for vehicles). In theory you could then port forward the old concept of Suspensors and make a lot of infantry heavy weapons Rapid Fire X/X, so instead of having a worse to-hit roll when moving you have worse range when moving. The main thing this would buff is mixed-weapon SM infantry, but I don't think it'd be out of line to buff a unit that was so underwhelming in 7e GW had to dangle 550pts of free Razorbacks in front of players to persuade them to use it.

Rapid fire was definitely always the odd duck. I think it has always just been a little less clear what this rule is trying to represent compared to other weapons. Like, assault weapons are basically just weapons that you can comfortably shoot on the move. Heavy weapons are the opposite. Pistols are just guns you can waive around up-close in one hand.

But rapid fire is a little weird. The extra-shots-up-close thing captures the vibe that you're technically allowed to shoot with it at a distance, but you'll be much more accurate/effective up close. Except that you can (in some editions) still shoot at a distance even when moving, so it feels like you should be regaining some of that lethality if you don't move. The no charging if you shoot rapid fire makes it feel like you're going all in on shooting to the point that you won't reach for a melee weapon the way someone with an assault weapon would, but then it makes it feel like the difference between an RF and assault weapon is that the latter is easier to holster in a hurry?

Basically, RF is weird, and I think each new edition has to ask itself what RF is even meant to represent. But the no-charging-after-shooting thing never "felt right" to me. You can charge in and start punching cultists, but only if you holster your bolter and draw your pistol first?Okay...

Not charging after shooting heavy weapons works for me. It reinforces the idea that you've had to settle in and brace the big, chonky weapons. On a squad like devastators, it makes a heavy bolter feel like it has weight.

-Aircraft: One of our design goals is to make a version of Warhammer that can use as many different models as possible, which means we need to address the Flyer type. In theory the fast solution would just be to revert to 5e's "really fast skimmer" version; I still think the main issue with Flyers in 6e-7e was the undersupply of actual AA weapons. My instinct for solving that problem is to add "Flakk Missiles"-style profiles to more weapons without adding to their cost; e.g. if a Tau Missile Pod were also an AA weapon that just throws an AA option into a much wider range of list builds for them.

Idk, man. That still wouldn't address a lot of the weirdness with flyers. Like how they spend the whole fight doing donuts over a single city block and have to alter their flight paths so their bases don't land on those of the enemy.

I also don't know if making AA more prevalent really solves the core issue that was present with old AA. That is, you're still forced to take certain units/options just in case a flyer shows up because the enemy is super non-interactive without it. You can make my eldar missile launchers anti-air for free, but then you're just sort of telling me that all my serpents and war walkers need to be sporting missile launchers instead of any other weapon. And you can give my dark reapers anti-air/skyfire/whatever, but that doesn't help me if I don't happen to be in the mood to field reapers.

I know we accept a certain amount of expectation that people bring guns for handling little things and guns for handling big things, but adding an extra "tax" for big things to the equation can really weigh on how much freedom you have when designing a list.

Which is why, if you *must* have flyers in your 40k, it's probably easier/better to just make it so the baseline flyer rules leave them interactive with the rest of the game rather than depending on a handful of options per army being so hyper-efficient against them that they're effectively a non-issue.

Basically, "Here's a category of units that break the game, but it's okay if you just always include the un-break-the-game options in your list," isn't a great approach in my opinion.

-Vehicle damage: I don't mind Hull Points in theory, but if both glances and pens rolled on the table and only pens took hull points off then lighter weapons would be better at stunlocking vehicles and heavier weapons would be better at actually killing them, which makes a lot more sense than the other way around? Also makes Necron Gauss stuff a little less strange.

Seems reasonable to me. Possible alternative: just give vehicles more hull points. The benefit(?) there being that S6-ish weapons are still capable of killing vehicles off without having to immobilize/weapon destroy them a bunch first, but it's a slower/less efficient way of killing an enemy vehicle than just pointing a few lascannons/bright lances at them.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

-Aircraft: One of our design goals is to make a version of Warhammer that can use as many different models as possible, which means we need to address the Flyer type. In theory the fast solution would just be to revert to 5e's "really fast skimmer" version; I still think the main issue with Flyers in 6e-7e was the undersupply of actual AA weapons. My instinct for solving that problem is to add "Flakk Missiles"-style profiles to more weapons without adding to their cost; e.g. if a Tau Missile Pod were also an AA weapon that just throws an AA option into a much wider range of list builds for them.

Idk, man. That still wouldn't address a lot of the weirdness with flyers. Like how they spend the whole fight doing donuts over a single city block and have to alter their flight paths so their bases don't land on those of the enemy.

I also don't know if making AA more prevalent really solves the core issue that was present with old AA. That is, you're still forced to take certain units/options just in case a flyer shows up because the enemy is super non-interactive without it. You can make my eldar missile launchers anti-air for free, but then you're just sort of telling me that all my serpents and war walkers need to be sporting missile launchers instead of any other weapon. And you can give my dark reapers anti-air/skyfire/whatever, but that doesn't help me if I don't happen to be in the mood to field reapers.

I know we accept a certain amount of expectation that people bring guns for handling little things and guns for handling big things, but adding an extra "tax" for big things to the equation can really weigh on how much freedom you have when designing a list.

Which is why, if you *must* have flyers in your 40k, it's probably easier/better to just make it so the baseline flyer rules leave them interactive with the rest of the game rather than depending on a handful of options per army being so hyper-efficient against them that they're effectively a non-issue.

Basically, "Here's a category of units that break the game, but it's okay if you just always include the un-break-the-game options in your list," isn't a great approach in my opinion...

True. In concept the aircraft that make the most sense at the table scale of 40k are the hover-mode transports that kind of fill the function of helicopters; a Valkyrie or a Stormraven dropping troops feels like it's a dramatic sci-fi moment that adds something cool to the game (more so than air superiority fighters flying around in tight circles potshotting tanks while being immune to return fire do, anyway). In that situation, though, the question then arises of whether a Valkyrie or a Stormraven or whatever is really that different narratively from a Falcon, or a Raider, or the FW Ork transport helicopter, or whatever, which suggests 5e's approach of "flyers" being "very fast skimmers" instead of a distinct unit type with distinct rules. At that point maybe all they need for durability against shooting is the jink save, and instead of "you cannot charge this" you bring back 4e's rule where your roll to hit in melee was a lot worse against vehicles that were moving really fast?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Maybe even let the air superiority fighters stick around in the rules on the assumption that if they're going to stick around on the table instead of doing one attack and then flying away to re-arm they are in some way kicking on their VTOL thrusters and moving around as skimmers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Further observations:

-Challenges: In most editions of Warhammer where they exist challenges aren't that interesting to me as a game mechanic; in 6th-7th the way stats were distributed they were too often just a foregone conclusion. The HH3 challenge minigame is cool, but it takes a really long time to actually resolve. I kind of want to do a test of an alternate challenge minigame that just lifts melee resolution straight out of KT2024. Instead of just doing all your attacks in Initiative order both characters roll to hit, and then you take turns (starting with the character with Initiative) resolving one hit at a time, where each hit can either do damage to the target or cancel one of the other character's hits. I don't know if it'd be interesting, I haven't done a lot of math on it or tried it on the table at all, but I like the idea.

Connected to that, I'm skeptical of Instant Death the way it used to work. In 3e-7e as written there just weren't that many multi-wound units that weren't also T6+, so it just ended up being a secret hidden vulnerability if you pointed a demolisher cannon at an Ogryn unit, or an extra layer of "I win!" in character fights where one of the two has a power fist. While there is probably more design space for 2W infantry within the middlehammer system than 40k ever really explored, demonstrated by HH1's 2W specialist Terminators and HH2's 2W Veterans, I wonder if making the "overkill" bonus double damage instead of instant death might open up a little more design space to use it for things without going all the way to adding a Damage stat.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

True. In concept the aircraft that make the most sense at the table scale of 40k are the hover-mode transports that kind of fill the function of helicopters; a Valkyrie or a Stormraven dropping troops feels like it's a dramatic sci-fi moment that adds something cool to the game (more so than air superiority fighters flying around in tight circles potshotting tanks while being immune to return fire do, anyway). In that situation, though, the question then arises of whether a Valkyrie or a Stormraven or whatever is really that different narratively from a Falcon, or a Raider, or the FW Ork transport helicopter, or whatever, which suggests 5e's approach of "flyers" being "very fast skimmers" instead of a distinct unit type with distinct rules. At that point maybe all they need for durability against shooting is the jink save, and instead of "you cannot charge this" you bring back 4e's rule where your roll to hit in melee was a lot worse against vehicles that were moving really fast?

I think that's a pretty good way to handle them. "Helicoptors not airplanes" feels like a comfortably 40k-scaled application of flyers. The only thing there is that there are some flyers that are absolutely not designed to hover (any of the eldar flyers for instance). There's also potentially a little weirdness with people consistently figuring out how to jump forty feet into the air to punch helicoptor equivalents, but you can probably chalk that up to the pilots getting sloppy or having to fly low to use cover to avoid being shot down.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Maybe even let the air superiority fighters stick around in the rules on the assumption that if they're going to stick around on the table instead of doing one attack and then flying away to re-arm they are in some way kicking on their VTOL thrusters and moving around as skimmers.

Ehhhhh. I'm not convinced. Jet fighters are cool, but they just really don't fit on the tabletop. Would love them in something epic scaled.

-Challenges: In most editions of Warhammer where they exist challenges aren't that interesting to me as a game mechanic; in 6th-7th the way stats were distributed they were too often just a foregone conclusion.

Agreed.

The HH3 challenge minigame is cool, but it takes a really long time to actually resolve. I kind of want to do a test of an alternate challenge minigame that just lifts melee resolution straight out of KT2024. Instead of just doing all your attacks in Initiative order both characters roll to hit, and then you take turns (starting with the character with Initiative) resolving one hit at a time, where each hit can either do damage to the target or cancel one of the other character's hits. I don't know if it'd be interesting, I haven't done a lot of math on it or tried it on the table at all, but I like the idea.

Hrmm. The system sounds cool, but I'm not sure it would translate great to 40k. First of all, it still sounds pretty slow. Second, even with insta-death changed to 2 points of damage, this still sounds kind of dire in a lot of matchups.

I'm picturing one of my exarchs facing something like an ork nob with a power klaw. The ork gets to swing no matter what, and he only needs to get a single hit through to kill my exarch. Most exarchs don't have an invuln save. The klaw ignores armor. I only have 2 wounds. The klaw wounds on a 2+. So basically, for every successful to-hit roll the nob makes, he has a 5/6ths chance of killing my exarch. So in order to survive a challenge, my exarch would need to successfully cancel all the nob's hits, and then I'd need to also succesfully hit the nob with my leftover attacks, and then wound, and then only take out 1 of the nob's 2(?) wounds. Same issue going into something like a marine sergeant/aspiring champion with a power fist.

And even if you found a way to speed challenges up and also make them dramatic/not broken, I'd still be a little worried that 40k might just be a bit too big for challenges.

Idea I’ve seen before for Instant Death:

It ignores FNP and forces a number of save rolls equal to the model’s maximum wounds.

An alternative initiative option I've thought about is gaining an extra attack for each pt your I is over your opponent's, but resolving all attacks simultaneously.

You can use critical hits of 6 as parries/blocks or dodges to negate opposing attacks. or you can give up attacks before you roll them as blocks to negate enemy attacks, but never to 0. As all attacks are resolved simultaneously, you determine how many blocks you have and subtract them from hits and roll the remaining to wound.


Or, if your I is higher, you resolve 1 attack first and the rest simultaneously. if it's double or more you resolve all your attacks first. or some variation thereof.


The point being that the problem with initiative isn't that one side has an advantage, it's just how MUCH of an advantage they have. Balancing the advantage ensures Initiative retains its utility without being a binary advantage/disadvantage.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Idea I’ve seen before for Instant Death:

It ignores FNP and forces a number of save rolls equal to the model’s maximum wounds.

That would still insta-gib any model that doesn't have FNP and/or an invuln save, right? So you'd still be one-shotting a carnifex with a force sword.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Idea I’ve seen before for Instant Death:

It ignores FNP and forces a number of save rolls equal to the model’s maximum wounds.

That would still insta-gib any model that doesn't have FNP and/or an invuln save, right? So you'd still be one-shotting a carnifex with a force sword.

Yeah. It's better if you have an Invuln (or especially an Armor Save good enough to beat the AP of the weapon) but if you don't have a save, it's truly instant death.

 Hellebore wrote:
An alternative initiative option I've thought about is gaining an extra attack for each pt your I is over your opponent's, but resolving all attacks simultaneously.

You can use critical hits of 6 as parries/blocks or dodges to negate opposing attacks. or you can give up attacks before you roll them as blocks to negate enemy attacks, but never to 0. As all attacks are resolved simultaneously, you determine how many blocks you have and subtract them from hits and roll the remaining to wound.


Or, if your I is higher, you resolve 1 attack first and the rest simultaneously. if it's double or more you resolve all your attacks first. or some variation thereof.


The point being that the problem with initiative isn't that one side has an advantage, it's just how MUCH of an advantage they have. Balancing the advantage ensures Initiative retains its utility without being a binary advantage/disadvantage.

I don't know about tying it to an initiative stat (eldar getting like 3 extra attacks vs ork boyz feels pretty brutal), but the option to negate enemy attacks with to-hit rolls of 6 sounds pretty interesting. It's like a comfortably compact version of the Kill Team/Shadow War/2nd edition melee system. You could do neat things with rules that modify that mechanic too. Shields that let you parry on 5+, etc.

Making 1 attack first is also interesting. I've half-heartedly pitched a half-baked version of the idea in the past where some number of the charger's attacks get resolved first and then the rest strike simultaneously, but limiting it to a set number (like 1) make it a lot more wieldy. Of course, units with a low number of high-quality attacks can obviously pack a greater % of their offense into that first attack, so it may need to be fiddled with a bit... A unit like harlequins would have really high initiative, but they wouldn't accomplish that much with their "alpha strike" because having a million attacks is part of their shtick. So hypothetically, they charge a squad of ork boyz, get to swing 1 attack per model, kill a handful of boyz, and then both units proceed to murder eachother as the remaining orks still have plenty of attacks with which to finish off the clowns.

The initiative=extra attacks would be balanced through other means, say you get +1 attack for charging or having higher I, but not both, or charging counts as having higher initiative regardless of whether you actually do for the attack resolution. Or general reduction in attacks.

But if you start from simultaneous attack resolution, then you balance out from there. Fragile elites like eldar would need to have ways to avoid being hit or hitting first, marines would be able to tank/kill first etc. Orks tank, guard crumble, nids endure.

It allows you to define how a faction approaches melee and what methods they use to win it.

Did a first-draft test run today, 7e Codexes with mostly just core-rules tweaks (specifically: line of sight as described above, Heavy weapons on infantry can move and fire at half range, glances roll on the vehicle damage table but don't remove a hull point, deterministic partial hits on blasts, blast weapons roll to hit as in 4e, and the base target number for psychic denial is 5+, not 6+).

Armies were 1k of Guard (two platoons, one Russ, one Hellhound, one company command squad) vs. 1k of Craftworlds (Farseer, two Guardian squads, Striking Scorpions, Warp Spiders, one Falcon, two War Walkers). Mission was a variant on 4e scoring (five objectives, each worth 50vp to be standing on at turn 2 and 4, then 100vp to be standing on at turn 6, plus kill points) with long-edge deployment using 4e alternating deployment. Final score was 1,037 to the Eldar vs. 607 to the Guard.

Didn't get to really test any melee, since the Striking Scorpions kept rolling ass on their Move Through Cover and weren't able to manage a charge all game. Might need to rethink the LoS system a bit; we had some autocannons sitting on roofs in the Guard deployment zone that were essentially able to see the whole table, so either you have to make sure there's terrain in the middle taller than any terrain in either deployment, or we might need to make having an obstacle taller than either the firer or the defender block LoS instead of needing to make it taller than both. War Walkers took a surprising amount of shooting to drop, even at 2 hull points the fact that you needed to pen to take hull points off meant that while they didn't get to shoot much they did absorb fire for a couple of turns. Russ and Falcon mostly danced in circles around each other and didn't end up getting any shots on each other.

Overall I liked it and am going to keep tinkering.

the base target number for psychic denial is 5+, not 6+

FWIW, psychic denial is bad and I hate it. Generally speaking, I'm not a huge fan of rules that just cause other rules to randomly not work. There's a big difference between feeling like you missed a shot with a weapon or your opponent's armor protecting from that shot vs your farseer just randomly not being able to do the single thing their expensive butt is there to do.

Are you using the 7e psychic system? Because I feel like that was kind of the worst one 40k has ever had. (YMMV.)

Scorpions kept rolling ass on their Move Through Cover and weren't able to manage a charge all game.

How do you find difficult terrain in general in your system? It's one of those rules that I was kind of glad to see go. It rarely ever noticably improved my games, but it was certainly responsible for a lot of feelsbad moments. The one possibly nice thing I could say for it is that it slowed down the pace of the game a bit, but that could be a bad thing in its own right if it slowed down the pace of melee armies *too much.* Have you considered dropping dt?

or we might need to make having an obstacle taller than either the firer or the defender block LoS instead of needing to make it taller than both.

This seems like a good idea and is actually how I (mis)read the rule originally. If there's a height 3 apartment building between me and an enemy on a different height 3 apartment building, I wouldn't expect them to be able to shoot at me. Unless I myself am like, height 4.

War Walkers took a surprising amount of shooting to drop, even at 2 hull points the fact that you needed to pen to take hull points off meant that while they didn't get to shoot much they did absorb fire for a couple of turns.

Presumably penetrating hits are as deadly to them as ever. So the glances-don't-subtract-HP thing is mostly for things like bolter shots and S4 melee attacks. How did you feel about the amount of punishment they were able to tank?

Overall I liked it and am going to keep tinkering.

Awesome!

 Wyldhunt wrote:

the base target number for psychic denial is 5+, not 6+

FWIW, psychic denial is bad and I hate it. Generally speaking, I'm not a huge fan of rules that just cause other rules to randomly not work. There's a big difference between feeling like you missed a shot with a weapon or your opponent's armor protecting from that shot vs your farseer just randomly not being able to do the single thing their expensive butt is there to do.

Are you using the 7e psychic system? Because I feel like that was kind of the worst one 40k has ever had. (YMMV.)

...I do like the convoluted janky minigame a lot better in theory than in practice, this is true. Final version is likely going to end up with something closer to the HH2/HH3 psychic system (a "psychic discipline" is some combination of weapons and always on passives, with the ability to take a psychic test to improve them), with "psychic denial" coming as a penalty to enemy psychic tests a la Old World's Magic Resistance rather than an active roll.

Scorpions kept rolling ass on their Move Through Cover and weren't able to manage a charge all game.

How do you find difficult terrain in general in your system? It's one of those rules that I was kind of glad to see go. It rarely ever noticably improved my games, but it was certainly responsible for a lot of feelsbad moments. The one possibly nice thing I could say for it is that it slowed down the pace of the game a bit, but that could be a bad thing in its own right if it slowed down the pace of melee armies *too much.* Have you considered dropping dt?

I think difficult terrain is an essential include in any wargame. I don't know if I like the exact implementation in middlehammer, "2d6 take higher" as a base distance is a strange number to have settled on, but if terrain doesn't slow melee units down then you end up with a game where ranged units/armies need to be able to kill melee units faster, since it's harder to avoid them. It also means that terrain offers upsides and downsides to shooting units/armies but is pure upside for melee units/armies, so if there's no DT you end up with a situation where the terrain setup can have a much more dramatic effect on who wins the game than I'd like.

We do have players with World Eaters, Space Wolves, Orks, Custodes, and Tyranids in the playgroup, so we should have plenty of exposure to the melee army experience.

War Walkers took a surprising amount of shooting to drop, even at 2 hull points the fact that you needed to pen to take hull points off meant that while they didn't get to shoot much they did absorb fire for a couple of turns.

Presumably penetrating hits are as deadly to them as ever. So the glances-don't-subtract-HP thing is mostly for things like bolter shots and S4 melee attacks. How did you feel about the amount of punishment they were able to tank?

I think the main reason to make this change is the middle ground (S6/S7 vs. AV 11-12), since that's where you see a lot of long-range high-volume fire that made life very awkward for a lot of vehicles in 6e/7e. In this specific game I think both my War Walkers and my opponent's Hellhound got too stunlocked, once they got hit the first time they had no way to avoid getting hit again. The LoS implementation is part of it (my War Walkers just didn't have anywhere they could go the autocannons couldn't see them), and the Hellhound was getting bullied by a Falcon that could move a lot, but I think I want to reexamine the damage table results here.

In other news: I'm poking into the list of subfactions for each main faction, and it occurred to me that some factions have about five "classic" subfactions focusing on different selections of units (e.g. Biel-Tan, Alaitoc, Saim-Hann, Iyanden, and Ulthwé), so it occurred to me that it might be interesting to take a leaf out of 10e's "detachments" and write five force types for each faction that don't correspond 1:1 with their narrative subfaction, and then I realized I was doing Chronicles of Darkness but for Warhammer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I've started looking at army books, and am having some broad thoughts about the statline:

Weapon Skill. The classic WS to-hit table (hit on 3+ if yours is higher, 4+ if the same or lower, 5+ if you're below half of the target's) is fine, but the below half basically never happens within the unit set (that's a WS4 unit fighting a Bloodthirster, a WS3 unit fighting a greater daemon or a high-end named character fighting alone without a squad, or a WS2 unit fighting Khorne Berzerkers...). Since the inflection point is then just higher/not higher you end up with a fairly constrained range of WS stats that matter outside of niche duel scenarios. HH3 uses the 8e to-wound chart for its WS chart (double = 2+, higher = 3+, equal = 4+, lower = 5+, half = 6+), which is...fine, but I don't like using double/half as the bar because the granularity of higher stats becomes much less and you end up encouraging stat creep simply because making one character one-up another character doesn't affect the rest of the game that much. I'm thinking of doing a linear scale where the to-hit changes every two points instead of every point; so if your WS is 3 or more points higher you hit on 2+, 1-2 points higher you hit on 3+, equal or 1 point lower you hit on 4+, 2-3 points lower you hit on 5+, and 4 or more points lower you hit on 6+. It keeps lower WS units in the melee game for a little longer, and allows higher WS to be a defense but only if it's a lot higher, so the normal middle-WS range of 3-5 works pretty much the same as it did in middlehammer but the outliers reward having very high WS a little more.

S, T, and the to-wound table: I think the middlehammer to-wound table is fine; it makes it easier to translate from a weapon's function to its stats and vice versa than it often is in later editions. I don't think breaking the 1-10 range is a terrible idea, but if that's going to show up in this project it's going to be a replacement for the "Destroyer" keyword/table, to make it a little more granular. I don't think anything in the game should be completely immune to lascannons, though, which does put a soft cap of T12/AV15 into play, even for superheavies.

Wounds: I've been tossing around the idea of bringing the "2W Veterans" concept from HH2 into play; I played a lot of Deathwing using power-armored 2W dudes in HH2 and 2W Aspect Warriors in the Liber Panopticon peoples' Eldar rules, and had a good time with them. They feel like they're more impactful in small squads, while the threat of ID from artillery means they're not so fancy and elite they can't just be deleted by a big enough weapon. It does reduce the distinctiveness of 2W Ork Nobz, but I'm also concerned about opening the door to 8e-style all-2W armies and whether making Terminators 2W will punish armies without strong ranged AP2 too much. In theory if they're appropriately priced it won't be awful, but...I don't know. It's a thing I probably need to see on the table. The really wacky implication of 2W Veterans would be Stormtroopers...

Initiative: Always a fraught topic, in any edition. The way it was implemented in middlehammer it was too often "army A hits before army B all the time" and then didn't really form a meaningful element of gameplay, you couldn't really make choices that affected it, and the proliferation of Eternal Warrior and good Invulnerable saves in later editions pushed us into a space where everyone was just hitting simultaneously with power fists anyway. HH and Old World have done more interesting things with it, and in that light I think I'd like to try and keep everyone's Initiative stats a little closer together so something like a bonus for charging could make a difference to play. I'd also like to do more Initiative mods other than just "set to 1". Related to this, "frag grenades"/charging into cover definitely needs an overhaul; the only place it ever really mattered was the very specific edge case of non-PF Terminators, outside of HH where they can just get grenade harnesses and not care, and assuming you didn't attach a non-Terminator character to them or put them in a LR with frag launchers...

Attacks: In general I'm thinking instead of having a bunch of variants and exceptions to "fighting with two weapons" I might just stick "+1A" into the Pistol weapon keyword and then just move on. There isn't a trade-off for taking a two-handed weapon that way, sure, but there just aren't that many spots where a model can choose to take a two-handed weapon or a one-handed weapon.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Initiative: Always a fraught topic, in any edition. The way it was implemented in middlehammer it was too often "army A hits before army B all the time" and then didn't really form a meaningful element of gameplay, you couldn't really make choices that affected it.

Something I played around with in the past was a combat advantage choice - after charging or winning combat the advantaged player could choose either +1 attack OR strikes first.

Units with higher init could have their cake and eat it on the offense, while on defense they had more limited protection with the opposition losing output to counter speed.

And various things negated it including unwieldy weapons (which always struck last) and protective devices such as defensive grenades, cloud of flies, aura of acquiescence, banshee masks on the first round, etc.


Mainly to get away from the oldhammer problem of init 5+ power weapon units that were essentially unassaultable by 'normal' units without negating high init entirely.

I am a huge fan of initiative, I'll admit.

It gives a leg up to units like Howling Banshees (low T, low S) that would otherwise struggle for their relative level of eliteness.

It was also one of very few advantages the likes of Hormagaunts had against Slugga Boyz that otherwise dominated their statline.

Model/statline thoughts r.e. Space Marines: The Primaris/Firstborn thing is an obvious headache; if the goal is to let people use as many models as possible, though, I do need to spend some time thinking about stats for Primaris units/what Primaris units count as what. If you say Gravis = Terminator, PA Primaris = PA Firstborn, jump packs = jump packs, and Phobos = Recon armor that turns most of the units into weapon loadout problems rather than distinct units, with a few outliers.

My next thought is that "veterans"/"bladeguard" present an awkward profile bloat problem when considering that you might need separate statlines for regular, veteran, and Command Squad variants of power-armor guys on foot, Assault squads, bikes, Scouts/Recon guys, Devastators, jetbikes, and Terminators, particularly if trying to incorporate HH units into the same force list. I'm thinking it might be possible to standardize unit profiles to the degree that I could just write "Veterans: take a (whatever), except everyone is a Sergeant" in one place and cover veteran everything in a streamlined fashion.

Specialists: Space Marines have a lot of different specialist support dudes. Techmarines, Apothecaries, Librarians, banner dudes, Champions, and Chaplains have been in the 40k rules for a long time, and HH has a lot more specialist officers, and in various iterations of the rules they're all available in a bunch of ways: as a Captain-statline character, as a Lieutenant-statline character, as an even lower statline multiple-guys-for-one-slot auxiliary character, and as an upgrade within another unit entry. No more. I'm putting flags in the armory as an equipment option, and the rest of the officers will only exist as HH Consul-style upgrades for the base Captain/Lieutenant profiles.

With all this in mind the org chart looks something like this:

HQ: Officers (Captain, LT statlines plus Bike, Terminator, Jump, Jetbike options). Consul upgrades (Techmarine, Chaplain, Champion, Librarian, Apothecary, Vigilator). Dreadnaught Ancient (between Bjorn and the HH rules I think there are four named Dreadnaught HQs at this point, why not make a generic version?)

Elites:
Veterans (any variation) move here.
Terminators: Covers Aggressors, Terminators, Assault Terminators, some Legion-specific Terminators.
Light Dreadnaught: Castaferrum, Contemptor Dreads. Waffling a bit on whether these stay separate profiles or get smooshed together.
Invictor Warsuit: I still think it's silly, but if I'm trying to let you use anything...
Assault Centurions

Troops
Tactical Squad: Through options this also covers Intercessors, Assault Intercessors/Despoilers, Grey Hunters, and Breachers.
Assault Squad: I think the design space of ranged jump pack units is underexplored, so I may spend some time futzing with their loadouts to allow for it.
Recon Squad: Scouts and Phobos units. The Eliminator heavy sniper/las-sniper becomes a Recon heavy weapon option, with the ability to take a squad of all Eliminators as a "veteran Recon squad".

Fast Attack
Bikes: Bikes. Anything on bikes.
Attack Bikes: Fold in the Invader ATV here, it's basically the same concept.
Jetbikes: The HH jetbikes.
Land Speeder: Classic LS variants
Stormspeeder: Primaris big land speeder
Inceptors: I can't think of anything they reasonably proxy as
Cavalry: Thunderwolves, but also possibly throw open the design to let you make, like, Dark Angels riding lions, or Salamanders riding giant lizards, or whatever you feel like.

Heavy Support:
Devastators: Also covers Hellblasters, the Primaris flamer dudes. Other sorts of special weapon squads.
Siege Terminators: Starts from a couple of unique units in HH, and then GW made a generic version in the HH3 Legacies version, for Terminators with a larger proportion of guns. Also covers Eradicators and Heavy Intercessors as gun-focused Gravis dudes.
Centurion Devastators.
Tanks: Predators, Whirlwinds, Vindicators, Repulsors, Land Raiders, Gladius, Sicaran, Kratos.
Rapiers.
Heavy Dreadnaughts: Brutalis, Ballistus, Redemptor, Leviathan, Deredeo, Saturnine. Same size as each other, same statline, but different weapon loadouts.

Transports: Rhino, Razorback, Impulsor, Drop Pods

Planes: Stormhawk (+Storm Talon, Nephilim), Stormraven (+Storm Eagle, Fire Raptor, Blackstar).

There are units this doesn't exactly cover (Blood Claws, Death Company, the Ravenwing Land Speeders, and Wulfen are the main examples that spring to mind), and you could definitely argue that this smooshes too many Chapter/Legion-specific units into too flat of a pancake, but as a skeleton I think it covers a very broad range of possible Space Marines in a relatively concise space.

Why not just count the invictor warsuit as a dreadnought?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Weapon Skill. The classic WS to-hit table (hit on 3+ if yours is higher, 4+ if the same or lower, 5+ if you're below half of the target's) is fine, but the below half basically never happens within the unit set (that's a WS4 unit fighting a Bloodthirster, a WS3 unit fighting a greater daemon or a high-end named character fighting alone without a squad, or a WS2 unit fighting Khorne Berzerkers...). Since the inflection point is then just higher/not higher you end up with a fairly constrained range of WS stats that matter outside of niche duel scenarios. HH3 uses the 8e to-wound chart for its WS chart (double = 2+, higher = 3+, equal = 4+, lower = 5+, half = 6+), which is...fine, but I don't like using double/half as the bar because the granularity of higher stats becomes much less and you end up encouraging stat creep simply because making one character one-up another character doesn't affect the rest of the game that much. I'm thinking of doing a linear scale where the to-hit changes every two points instead of every point; so if your WS is 3 or more points higher you hit on 2+, 1-2 points higher you hit on 3+, equal or 1 point lower you hit on 4+, 2-3 points lower you hit on 5+, and 4 or more points lower you hit on 6+. It keeps lower WS units in the melee game for a little longer, and allows higher WS to be a defense but only if it's a lot higher, so the normal middle-WS range of 3-5 works pretty much the same as it did in middlehammer but the outliers reward having very high WS a little more.

Initiative: Always a fraught topic, in any edition. The way it was implemented in middlehammer it was too often "army A hits before army B all the time" and then didn't really form a meaningful element of gameplay, you couldn't really make choices that affected it, and the proliferation of Eternal Warrior and good Invulnerable saves in later editions pushed us into a space where everyone was just hitting simultaneously with power fists anyway. HH and Old World have done more interesting things with it, and in that light I think I'd like to try and keep everyone's Initiative stats a little closer together so something like a bonus for charging could make a difference to play. I'd also like to do more Initiative mods other than just "set to 1". Related to this, "frag grenades"/charging into cover definitely needs an overhaul; the only place it ever really mattered was the very specific edge case of non-PF Terminators, outside of HH where they can just get grenade harnesses and not care, and assuming you didn't attach a non-Terminator character to them or put them in a LR with frag launchers...

-Aircraft: One of our design goals is to make a version of Warhammer that can use as many different models as possible, which means we need to address the Flyer type. In theory the fast solution would just be to revert to 5e's "really fast skimmer" version; I still think the main issue with Flyers in 6e-7e was the undersupply of actual AA weapons. My instinct for solving that problem is to add "Flakk Missiles"-style profiles to more weapons without adding to their cost; e.g. if a Tau Missile Pod were also an AA weapon that just throws an AA option into a much wider range of list builds for them.

I think it's pretty easy to avoid all Space Marines striking first and being resistant to melee by using the modern system with strikes first, strikes normally, strikes last and units normally not affecting how hard it is to hit them, exceptions providing a -1 to hit if they are meant to duel hordes or cannot be hit on better than a 4+ if they are meant to duel elites. Give Howling Banshees strikes last to enemies in melee with them and cannot be hit on better than 4+ and you get the advantages of the WS/I systems.

Aircraft are so cooked in 10th, I actually think I liked the early 8th edition of them being able to capture objectives. Look at what flyers can do, they can transport units, they can kill things with no way to hide from them, they can block movement, they are survivable against melee and sometimes most ranged attacks, they can sometimes capture objectives. Being fast enough to capture objectives anywhere on the board is the least of problems with them, movement blocking is not fluffy and is most easily solved by just making them skimmers. Just make things without flight hit them on 6s in melee maybe? I think -12" to ranged weapons not used by flying units is a neat way to make things work, 60" range is pretty useless with dense terrain coverage, so increasing the range of dedicated anti-air weaponry is relatively cheap in terms of impact against most things, but lets them effectively ignore the range penalty. More importantly it really feels fluffy in terms of what it does to the game and how, flamers and pistols are affected and it still leaves lots of counterplay for flyers. The pivot nonsense just doesn't work because at the end of the day, the model has to sit on the table and cannot have models or terrain underneath it, although how GW thought announcing which direction you are going to go was going to work in an edition where landing on ruins is illegal was going to work I have no clue, your opponent can literally park a model in the 2 landing spots you have on your route and force you off the table, super unfun, but even with the more sensible version of pivoting before it's hard to make work on the smaller tables.

 vict0988 wrote:
Why not just count the invictor warsuit as a dreadnought?

Unfortunately this is my project, and that means some of the rules are going to be informed by my neuroses, r.e. things like "why is your Dreadnaught open-topped?"

I think it's pretty easy to avoid all Space Marines striking first and being resistant to melee by using the modern system with strikes first, strikes normally, strikes last and units normally not affecting how hard it is to hit them, exceptions providing a -1 to hit if they are meant to duel hordes or cannot be hit on better than a 4+ if they are meant to duel elites. Give Howling Banshees strikes last to enemies in melee with them and cannot be hit on better than 4+ and you get the advantages of the WS/I systems.

The modern system, to me, is full of tacit admissions that blowing up the old system wasn't a great idea. Making WS a fixed to-hit value and then stacking the game with edge cases where this thing has a better to-hit and this thing caps your to-hit and whatnot ends up making the game take longer to play; instead of everyone just knowing what WS means and that working consistently across all models I have to hunt for a paragraph of text stuck into an inconsistent location on my datasheet across minis, or remember off the top of my head all the unique non-keywordized special rules on every mini, and the existence of stratagems, and what stacks with what, and ability timing, and whether my AP combined with your penalty to my AP would actually reduce your save below your Inv, and the game isn't any less complex than it was when these kinds of systems were handled on the statline, but it's been de-organized to a degree that makes it slow and exhausting to figure out how to resolve an attack. I know 10th is less nuts than 8th/9th were, but even in 10th every 2,000pt game I've played has lasted about four hours and by the end of it both players are exhausted and skipping over rules/resolution steps just to finish.

The design philosophy for the post-8e rules is to make the entry level as simple as possible, which isn't a bad decision, but by making the whole game work like the tutorial mode without actually deleting any of the complexity of the old days they've just made the full game harder to use.

I have a special distaste in my heart for the strikes first/strikes last/alternating activations replacement for the Initiative system; making combat resolution order for one unit depend on whether there's another unit on the other side of the table also engaged in combat is one of the most artificial and immersion-breaking things I've ever seen in a tabletop game.

Just make everyone WS and I 3. Space Marine Devastators having a higher initiative than 99% of the Necron roster is bad in my opinion. Then make exceptions to the rule, by increasing or decreasing WS of a select few units, simple rules, with even fewer exceptions. I don't agree that having strikes first or strikes last on a handful of units is somehow more complicated than the initiative system.

Giving everyone a mandatory unique ability doesn't really have anything to do with this, I am not a fan either. If GW identifies a rule that is unfun or OP they shouldn't have to replace it with something else, they should just remove it. If 200 units across the game have the same unique ability it should become generic. Rules being generic should not prevent their effects from being listed on the datasheet either.

If you are going to complain about the ordering of attacks mattering shouldn't you also have to declare shooting before rolling for any of it, how can your Valkyrie wait until the rest of the army has shot to decide whether to finish off a Vindicator or a Predator that weren't even damaged by the time it should have begun shooting? That would also lower lethality a little.

Weapon Skill. The classic WS to-hit table (hit on 3+ if yours is higher, 4+ if the same or lower, 5+ if you're below half of the target's) is fine, but the below half basically never happens within the unit set (that's a WS4 unit fighting a Bloodthirster, a WS3 unit fighting a greater daemon or a high-end named character fighting alone without a squad, or a WS2 unit fighting Khorne Berzerkers...). Since the inflection point is then just higher/not higher you end up with a fairly constrained range of WS stats that matter outside of niche duel scenarios. HH3 uses the 8e to-wound chart for its WS chart (double = 2+, higher = 3+, equal = 4+, lower = 5+, half = 6+), which is...fine, but I don't like using double/half as the bar because the granularity of higher stats becomes much less and you end up encouraging stat creep simply because making one character one-up another character doesn't affect the rest of the game that much. I'm thinking of doing a linear scale where the to-hit changes every two points instead of every point; so if your WS is 3 or more points higher you hit on 2+, 1-2 points higher you hit on 3+, equal or 1 point lower you hit on 4+, 2-3 points lower you hit on 5+, and 4 or more points lower you hit on 6+. It keeps lower WS units in the melee game for a little longer, and allows higher WS to be a defense but only if it's a lot higher, so the normal middle-WS range of 3-5 works pretty much the same as it did in middlehammer but the outliers reward having very high WS a little more.

This sounds like a reasonable approach. But for your consideration: what about just giving some units a USR that imposes a to-hit penalty in melee and then having flat to-hit values for WS? So maybe marines hit on 3s by default, but then things like harlequins or vanguard vets or whatever have Duelist(-1) that imposes a -1 to-hit penalty against them in melee? And then really good melee combatants like Lelith or Lucius can have Duelist(-2).

The intended result is that you don't have to remember a chart (some people seem to struggle with these for whatever reason), units are allowed to be better or worse at hitting things baseline, but also your really talented melee units and/or your defensive melee specialists can be relatively survivable in melee.

So Lelith might start out hitting an enemy on 2+ baseline, but against a squad of harlequins she might have to work a little harder, and against a Solitaire (Duelist -2), she'd have an actual challenge.

It just seems to me that for all the different WS approaches we've seen implemented and pitched, all we're really trying to do is make it so that some units are harder to hit than guardsmen.

I am a huge fan of initiative, I'll admit.

It gives a leg up to units like Howling Banshees (low T, low S) that would otherwise struggle for their relative level of eliteness.

It was also one of very few advantages the likes of Hormagaunts had against Slugga Boyz that otherwise dominated their statline.

It was just one of those mechanics that felt really good for some situations and really bad for eithers. Striking scorpions and even kabalite warriors being able to take out a couple of enemies before being hit felt pretty fluffy and reasonable in most situations, but things like meganobz not being able to charge into an enemy power weapon squad without losing some number of bodies before finally getting to swing probably felt pretty bad.

I feel like melee *should* reflect both sides coming away with black eyes. If harlequins and meganobz get in a fight, I want both units to have casualties afterwards. Initiative probably did this better than the current system, but part of that was the existence of sweeping advance meaning that both units could be a lot less lethal in general. Units could be designed around simply doing more wounds than the other guy rather than needing to put out so many attacks with so much lethality that you wiped the unit off the table.

I think that was kind of the secret sauce of initiative when it was working relatively well. One side almost always got to swing before the other, but lethality was low enough that both sides *did* get to swing. Like sure, a squad of ork boyz were probably going to lose a few bodies at the start of every assault/fight phase, but they'd also probably have enough boyz (and a gnarly nob) leftover to feel like they got their own shots in. Plus mechanics like Furious Charge would reward them for being the ones doing the charging. They'd still have to pay the low-initiative tax in the form of some dead boyz before swinging, but the remaining boyz all basically had +1 to-wound because of the old to-wound chart.

I use a fixed WS to hit value for Custom40k and Initiative for units and it works well.

Some wargear/units/abilities grant or have "Parry" which reduce enemy to hit values by -1.

Every unit has the choice between +1 Attack or +1 Initiative, when charging an enemy.

Targets of a charge are allowed a Defensive Reaction if they haven't acted yet this turn (I'm using alternate activation). They are either allowed to shoot all their weapons with a -1 penalty or "brace for combat" to negate the charge bonus of the attacker.

Units in cover always get to negate in addition to their reaction.

Some weapons like lances on Rough Riders grant +1 Initiative when used during a charge.

This allows for a system with some tactical depth, as most Initiative in the game is centered around 4 (+-1).

 Wyldhunt wrote:
things like meganobz not being able to charge into an enemy power weapon squad without losing some number of bodies before finally getting to swing probably felt pretty bad.

I don't really see the problem with this. They still had two wounds per model at T4, making them tankier than Terminators into basic power weapons (despite not having a 5++ inbuilt).

Large units with power weapons and a meaningful number of attacks at a good WS are not common in older editions of Warhammer, and I'd argue them being a soft counter to power fist units is perfectly fine. Need to fight Howling Banshees? Send in Slugga Boyz instead, their S3 power swords are completely wasted into your T4 6+ unit.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
things like meganobz not being able to charge into an enemy power weapon squad without losing some number of bodies before finally getting to swing probably felt pretty bad.

I don't really see the problem with this. They still had two wounds per model at T4, making them tankier than Terminators into basic power weapons (despite not having a 5++ inbuilt).

Large units with power weapons and a meaningful number of attacks at a good WS are not common in older editions of Warhammer, and I'd argue them being a soft counter to power fist units is perfectly fine. Need to fight Howling Banshees? Send in Slugga Boyz instead, their S3 power swords are completely wasted into your T4 6+ unit.

Meganobz were balanced around this they have Initiative 1, it's a special case, my problem is with faction-wide low WS and I. Make Devastator Squads WS 3 and Bullgryn WS 5 and you get most of the result I wanted, although you are missing out on the duelist vs anti-horde defense I suggested (which also isn't really a long list of exceptions or extra rules to make it work). If I suggested that Space Marines army ability for 11th should be changed to strikes first and -1 to hit in melee I'd be torn apart for good reason. Strength and attacks is enough to sell the fantasy that Space Marines are deadly in melee, they don't all need strikes first and -1 to hit as well. I am also coloured by 6th edition where if you did not get everyone in, you could get extra screwed by low Initiative since the enemy might remove the only models able to attack and force a leadership test and then sweep the entire unit.

I think looking up rules and tables is what takes time, if the rules are on the datasheet/army list and you don't need 5-50 pages plastered on the walls to reference you are going to have a faster game (something to consider for the layout of your datasheets and codex). I am not a fan of every unit having a unique ability, if 200 units share an ability it should become universal and share the same name. It does give some much needed design space to differentiate the bloated rosters of GW's favourites like Necrons and Space Marines.

In most older 40k editions, you needed more than double the attacker's WS to be hit on a 5+. Devastators being WS4 is a complete non issue, the unit melts to anything slugga boy or stronger which is fine.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
things like meganobz not being able to charge into an enemy power weapon squad without losing some number of bodies before finally getting to swing probably felt pretty bad.

I don't really see the problem with this. They still had two wounds per model at T4, making them tankier than Terminators into basic power weapons (despite not having a 5++ inbuilt).

Large units with power weapons and a meaningful number of attacks at a good WS are not common in older editions of Warhammer, and I'd argue them being a soft counter to power fist units is perfectly fine. Need to fight Howling Banshees? Send in Slugga Boyz instead, their S3 power swords are completely wasted into your T4 6+ unit.

Maybe a bad example on my part. I guess I'm just picturing scenarios where two dedicated melee units clash, but one unit is sufficiently killy and with sufficiently high initiative to wipe out the other unit unscathed. Something like 10 incubi versus 10 vanguard vets, for instance. The incubi would presumably be higher initiative and would also be good enough at killing marines to have a decent chance of wiping all the vanguard vets out before they rolled a single attack. Incubi are impressive, but it feels wrong for them to get into melee with an elite dedicated melee unit (like vanguard vets) and not take a single casualty in return.

For abstract-height terrain, you can kind of represent the advantage of elevation better with a rule something like the below;

The attacker can ignore terrain smaller than themselves if it is closer to them than the defender. This represents the fact that, when looking down, you can see over stuff closer to you a lot better than you can stuff further away.

A lot of hex and counter historical games can get really detailed. I've even seen some suggest pulling out grid paper to sketch the relative heights and obstructions and draw your angle. But that's a bit much I think.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
For abstract-height terrain, you can kind of represent the advantage of elevation better with a rule something like the below;

The attacker can ignore terrain smaller than themselves if it is closer to them than the defender. This represents the fact that, when looking down, you can see over stuff closer to you a lot better than you can stuff further away.

A lot of hex and counter historical games can get really detailed. I've even seen some suggest pulling out grid paper to sketch the relative heights and obstructions and draw your angle. But that's a bit much I think.

I'll have to draw out some diagrams and check, but I like the thought. The issue at the moment is that in my original formulation (terrain has to be equal to or higher than both attacker/defender to block LoS) it's too easy for elevated models in the deployment zone to see the whole table, but in the modified formulation (terrain equal to or higher than either attacker or defender blocks LoS) models on a roof can't see infantry past infantry.


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 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
things like meganobz not being able to charge into an enemy power weapon squad without losing some number of bodies before finally getting to swing probably felt pretty bad.

I don't really see the problem with this. They still had two wounds per model at T4, making them tankier than Terminators into basic power weapons (despite not having a 5++ inbuilt).

Large units with power weapons and a meaningful number of attacks at a good WS are not common in older editions of Warhammer, and I'd argue them being a soft counter to power fist units is perfectly fine. Need to fight Howling Banshees? Send in Slugga Boyz instead, their S3 power swords are completely wasted into your T4 6+ unit.

Maybe a bad example on my part. I guess I'm just picturing scenarios where two dedicated melee units clash, but one unit is sufficiently killy and with sufficiently high initiative to wipe out the other unit unscathed. Something like 10 incubi versus 10 vanguard vets, for instance. The incubi would presumably be higher initiative and would also be good enough at killing marines to have a decent chance of wiping all the vanguard vets out before they rolled a single attack. Incubi are impressive, but it feels wrong for them to get into melee with an elite dedicated melee unit (like vanguard vets) and not take a single casualty in return.

Old World does bonus I for charging, and you get enough of a bonus (+2 or +3, applied after "strikes last") that the charger is *usually* going first, outside of edge cases. I need to sit down with stats and do some math on how this impacts specific unit matchups.

In the particular case of elite melee units I'm still throwing around the idea of implementing HH2-style 2W veterans more broadly, which messes with the math somewhat, but it does mean that fancy melee units running into each other are more likely to take a lot of casualties on both sides regardless of who goes first.


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R.e. fixed WS: I don't know if I have a correct answer in my WS table, but I don't know if fixed to-hit is a good answer, either. It pulls a lot of granularity out of the game; characters v. goons as opposed to characters v. characters, if all characters are hitting all other characters on 2+ in melee it makes the question of who hits first way more important, and of course the eternal problem of putting "hits on 2+" onto a unit that you can deliberately just take a bunch of.

The question of whether the game really needs that level of granularity is, obviously, a fine and reasonable one. The question of how many units actually need to have high WS as a defense is, also, a fine and reasonable one. But in my head a table and a consistent numerical interaction gives me finer numerical control over how each unit behaves against each other unit in the space of one number, while breaking it into one to-hit value that's uniform across all targets and one defensive to-hit penalty that's, again, consistent across all attackers seems clunkier and harder to parse.

I do think whatever I come up with needs to be written down the way the newhammer S v. T chart is, with just five numbers, rather than writing out the whole table.


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 vict0988 wrote:

Meganobz were balanced around this they have Initiative 1, it's a special case, my problem is with faction-wide low WS and I. Make Devastator Squads WS 3 and Bullgryn WS 5 and you get most of the result I wanted, although you are missing out on the duelist vs anti-horde defense I suggested (which also isn't really a long list of exceptions or extra rules to make it work). If I suggested that Space Marines army ability for 11th should be changed to strikes first and -1 to hit in melee I'd be torn apart for good reason. Strength and attacks is enough to sell the fantasy that Space Marines are deadly in melee, they don't all need strikes first and -1 to hit as well. I am also coloured by 6th edition where if you did not get everyone in, you could get extra screwed by low Initiative since the enemy might remove the only models able to attack and force a leadership test and then sweep the entire unit...

I want to recognize that we've all got frustrations around how our armies were boned by GW not parsing how context changes interacted with their statlines; my own frustrations with uniform blast damage and the hull point system can definitely be traced back to my Ordo Malleus army and my Eldar vehicles. I want to stress that my futzing with the core rules here is the beginning of this project, not the end, and I will be taking an in-depth look at every army and every unit as I go.

Old World does bonus I for charging, and you get enough of a bonus (+2 or +3, applied after "strikes last") that the charger is *usually* going first, outside of edge cases. I need to sit down with stats and do some math on how this impacts specific unit matchups.

My concern there is that it potentially just ends up being a bandaid where you still have the problem of elite melee units getting wiped out without swinging back; it just happens less often.

If vanguard vets are i4 and incubi are i5 and both units are lethal enough to wipe the other if they swing first, then giving either unit +2 init on the charge just means it's a 10th edition situation where whomever charges wipes out the enemy while taking no hits in return.

R.e. fixed WS: I don't know if I have a correct answer in my WS table, but I don't know if fixed to-hit is a good answer, either. It pulls a lot of granularity out of the game; characters v. goons as opposed to characters v. characters, if all characters are hitting all other characters on 2+ in melee it makes the question of who hits first way more important, and of course the eternal problem of putting "hits on 2+" onto a unit that you can deliberately just take a bunch of.

Well, using the flat values with modifiers suggestion I made earlier...

Lelith and Jain Zar are both WS2+ and have Duelist(2) meaning melee attacks against them are at -2 to-hit. So they're hitting eachother on 4+ instead of 2+.

Captains are WS2+ Duelist(1). So a captain will hit Jain or Lelith on a 4+, but they'll only hit him on a 3+ because he's not a pushover.

Vanguard Vets are maybe WS3+ Duelist(1). So harder to kill in melee than most units, but not hitting as reliably as their captain.

Guardsmen are probably WS4+ and not Duelists. SO they're hitting Jain and Lelith on 6s, hitting Vanguard Vets on 5s, and getting hit on 2s and 3s by Lelith and vets respectively.

It's basically just a way of saying, "This unit is X good at hitting things and Y hard to hit back." And you don't have to worry about chart formulas getting fiddly or hard to remember.