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Howdy all, long time lurker, first time poster.  I've been playing 40k for about 15 years, and like most of you, I've seen the game go through quite a few (albeit usually slow) changes.  Over the past few years, the rules presented have left my particular group of players disgruntled.  So, instead of packing all my 40k away, I decided to take some action and attempt to bring some balance back to our games.

Let me preface this by saying that this is only intended to help my group.  I only thought I'd share in case anyone else was in a similar situation, and also to get some feedback.  These rule changes are not intended to balance general play.  For a little background, my group only has the following armies:  Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Tyranids, Necrons, and the occassional Eldar and Tau. 

Our tyranids player likes to play 'zilla nids, backed up typically by shooty warriors and maybe a unit of 'stealers, depending on the point size.  For some reason, and I'm sure it's us as players and the composition of our armies, cannot beat him.  The games between all the other armies are really close and exciting.  The games against him are incredibly one-sided and frustrating.  Since he is one of our most active players, it's important to us that we enjoy playing with him.  So instead of changing our armies and the way we like to play, we all agreed that we should tweak the game to allow for more flexible tactics.  So without further ado, here it is:

<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Revised Warhammer 40k Rules [/b]

3/8/07

 

• Vehicles now have Structural Integrity points, which are relative to the base cost of the vehicle (excluding weapons and wargear).  The Structural Integrity (SI) chart is as follows:

• 1-100 points – 1 SI
• 101-200 points – 2 SI
• 200+ points – 3 SI

These Structural Integrity points act as initial defense for a vehicle, similar to wounds.  Each time a vehicle would be forced to roll on the vehicle damage chart, the damage is reduced as follows:

 

• Each SI reduces the number rolled on the vehicle damage chart by one, after this is rolled; the SI points are reduced by one.  Once all SI are removed, damage is rolled as normal.    

·        All vehicles except ones carrying ordinance weapons may move and fire all weapons, reducing their BS by 1 for each 6” moved.

 

o       Ordinance may not move and fire in the same turn.

 

·        Units may split their fire among multiple targets.  This may only be done after passing a leadership test.  If the leadership test fails, the unit must fire on the closest target. 

o       This leadership test does not apply to vehicles and monstrous creatures

o       Units wishing to fire upon vehicles and monstrous creatures do not need to make a leadership test.

 

• Units may fire into close combat.  Each miss rolled hits a friendly target.  Wounds are resolved as normal.

• Units with rapid fire weapons may move their full movement and fire twice at 24”.  This incurs a -2 ballistic skill penalty.

• Assault weapons do not incur this penalty.
• Heavy weapons may not move and fire in the same turn.

• Weapons can now cause multiple wounds, as follows:   For every 2 points the strength of the weapon exceeds the toughness of the target, an additional wound is caused
  • Each wound is saved individually
  • Grenades may now be used instead of shooting.  Grenades stats are as follows:
    • 6” range S3 AP6 2” Blast
    • Grenades are only usable when assaulting or being assaulted by an enemy unit.

• Individual models that are part of a squad may not be picked out by either ranged or close combat attacks.  Independent characters may still be picked out as normal in close combat, but not shooting. 

Sorry about the length of the post.  Feedback is most welcome!

Prax

(edited for clarity)

This rapes monstrous creatures. Almost every heavy weapon denies it's target an armor save anyway, so this is just giving free wounds to already powerful weapons. This would allow 2 lascannon shots to kill a Carnifex or Tyrant.

Actually, looking over this, it seems like you're massively overbalancing shooting. Squads splitting fire, vehicles moving full and shooting everything, shooting into melee, rapid fire weapons moving full and shooting full range... you play a marine army don't you? There's no balance here. It screws several armies and make some even more uber. Nope, I don't like it.

I'm going to agree with hotflungwok on this one. I know you say this isn't intended for general balance of play, but I can't see how this would be fun for your Nid player to play with.

I had tried to make it clear in the original post that this was intended to hurt the 'nid player.  Also note that these revisions were a collaboration that included the 'nid player.  We all play relatively balanced armies here, and the armies we play are listed in the original post.  We aren't competitive, and we don't play for anything but fun.  In response to the lascannon comment, you may laugh, but I don't even have any lascannons in my army.  I play Space Wolves with a decent mix of troops and vehicles.  I would also point out that this revision helps any shooty army, such as our Necron and Tau players.  Basically, it lets our nid player maintain his army of steroid addicted monstrous creatures, while allowing us to play with the army composition that we enjoy.

Prax

Posted By Praxus on 03/08/2007 5:00 PM

I had tried to make it clear in the original post that this was intended to hurt the 'nid player.  Also note that these revisions were a collaboration that included the 'nid player.  We all play relatively balanced armies here, and the armies we play are listed in the original post.  We aren't competitive, and we don't play for anything but fun.  In response to the lascannon comment, you may laugh, but I don't even have any lascannons in my army.  I play Space Wolves with a decent mix of troops and vehicles.  I would also point out that this revision helps any shooty army, such as our Necron and Tau players.  Basically, it lets our nid player maintain his army of steroid addicted monstrous creatures, while allowing us to play with the army composition that we enjoy.

Prax

Why not just give the non-Tyranid players 100 or 200 extra points in there armies when they play him? Kind of like a golf handicap.

I too, don't like the one-sided nature of most of these rules. Although I must say I like much of the Structural Integrity rules. They are kind of a more simple way of enacting a vehicle 'wounds' system (that I would prefer) without changing the whole system.

One rule I particularly hate is your grenade rules. Having a unit of 10 or 20 men all firing blast weapons (which you have to resolve seperately one at a time by the rules) is just a giant pain.

That's a really good point.  That's one of the reasons I posted it here, was so that people could provide me with input that we may not have thought about.  We haven't even tried these out yet, so I wanted to get any obvious problems worked out in advance. 

My main points when trying to come up with some revisions were that vehicles in the game are currently way too fragile for my liking, which makes no sense in my opinion.  Also, we found that shooting was nowhere near as prevalent as any of us thought it should be.  The nids player can split fire and shoot into melee as well, so I don't think those rules are too bad.  The multiple wounds for powerful weapons isn't bad for us because noone here min/maxs heavy weapons, so they aren't nearly as prevalent as they might be in a competitive setting.

So, any suggestions about grenades being used as an actual weapon?  Maybe instead of a blast it could just be an an automatic, low strength, no AP attack on every model that is assaulting or being assaulted by the unit?  or maybe D6 hits on the unit?

Prax 

There are two main ways (IMO) to make grenades into a ranged attack without making them a headache:


1) Make them into a basic assault weapon (with no blast marker). So you could make Frag Grenades something like:

Range: 6", Strength: 3, AP: 6, Assault 2, ignores cover saves, causes pinning.

You could increase the number of 'shots' the grenade makes if you find that they aren't powerful enough for your liking.


2) In order to actually represent that enemy units clumped together take more damage from grenades, the grenade unit places only a single large ordnance marker within 6" of one of it's models over the target unit.

Any enemy models touched or covered by the blast are potentially hit, but the 'to hit' roll is based on the number of models in the attacking unit (something like 1-5 models in the unit: 5+ to hit, 6-10 models: 4+ to hit, 11+ models: 3+ to hit). You can also make the strength and AP of the grenade scale up the more models in the attacking unit (but I don't personally care for that).

You can also have the blast potentially scatter before resolving damage if you want to have some randomness added in.

This looks like a jump back to 2nd Edition with the to hit modifiers and throwable grenades.  I think the problem with a lot of the old 2nd Ed rules was that they added too many steps and the details piled up too quickly (I remember having my Ork Warboss blinded, halucinating, on fire, and driving around on a wheeled cybork body - those were the days)  But seriously, reintroducing to hit modifiers and damage rolls for regular models just adds more steps that clog up the progression of the game.  Also, if vehicles can't fire Ordinance on the move they become total crap.  These changes would destroy some armies (IG, NIDs) and beef up marines even more. 

Wait, because there's an army list you can't beat, you have to give all other armies huge unbalancing rules boosts? You want to be able to play with the army lists you want, but also expect to be able to take any other list? How's that again? This doesn't make any sense at all. I can make all kinds of 'fun' or 'fluffy' Tyranid lists, but I have no reason to expect any of them to win. And I really dont have any reason to expect to be able to change the rules so they can win. Not all armies are winners. Yes, Nidzilla is tough, but refusing to adapt and expecting your 'fun' army to win regardless is just silly.

Remember, it's just a game. We should try to be a little supportive of something intended to make it more fun for his group, and give suggestions like Yak did.

That being said, the changes are a bit extreme for my tastes, especially the shoot into combat.

As mentioned above, a point handicap is one way to deal with the problem that's really simple.

Another thing I thought would bring MC's more inline with regular tanks would be to have them get shaken or stunned if they take a wound.

You could also make regular tanks better. Maybe bring back full obscured like in 3rd ed, and for 10 points, let tanks get an upgrade to ignore shaken on a 4+ or something.

edit:  In short, start with some simple changes, then tweak from there, instead of huge changes then trying to reign things back in.

A modification of the "extra wound" rule might be, rather than an automatic extra wound, to give a chance to cause it. Take the excess points of strength, and subtract it from 7 to get the number you have to beat to achieve the extra wound. So, a T6 critter takes a lascannon hit; the initial wound is, of course, on a 2+, and the secondary would be on a 4+ (7-[9-6]). That way, it makes it possible, but not guaranteed.

I like the SI rule; the grenade rule makes me cringe.

Posted By Samwise158 on 03/09/2007 8:12 AMBut seriously, reintroducing to hit modifiers and damage rolls for regular models just adds more steps that clog up the progression of the game.  Also, if vehicles can't fire Ordinance on the move they become total crap.  These changes would destroy some armies (IG, NIDs) and beef up marines even more. 

Modifiers & damage rolls would not clog up the system any more than the mixed armor rules, instant kill (particularly casualty removal in multi-wound units), cover saves, armor penetration, glancing hits only on fast vehicles, and all of the other exceptions to exceptions rules required to provided the same granularity simple modifiers and damage did.

This said, I dislike the idea of resurrecting grenades as throwable objects (for all the reasons Samwise158 mentions and then some). Much more elegant, IMHO, is how Tyranid Hunters can use Krak grenades in close combat, getting a single attack at S6 that hits on a 6+ (or 3+ if vs. a Preferred Enemy) and ignores armor saves, though I would prefer the to hit to be resolved just like any other close combat attack (ie WS vs WS). Frag grenades could be done similarly, being S4 AP6 and Assault 2 to account for it's blast pattern. Both could ignore cover saves and cause pinning too (as Yak suggests).

The current vehicle shooting rules are, IMHO, fine as is. Barrage Ordnance (Indirect firing Basilisk, Whirlwind, Medusa, etc...) should be move or fire, while regular Ordnance (Leman Russ, Vindicator, etc...) should definitely be able to scoot n' shoot while limiting what other weapons they can also fire. This was one of the few quality improvements v4 brought to 40k as in v3 any vehicle that had more than one gun on it (or any ordnance) was nigh immobile and made for a lot of boring games.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I really appreciate it.  I think there are some good things from 2nd edition that can be salvaged and reintroduced, although maybe my group is just old-school. 

I think we're going to have to try a number of different options for grenades to make them work, but I'd like to see them have a lot more functionality than the current rules allow. 

On the ordinance issue, I agree with most of you that not being able to move and direct fire is a bad idea, so I dropped that line.  I think we only have one player with a single ordinance-equipped vehicle anyway.  Again, I appreciate the comments, so keep em comin'.  Feel free to suggest stuff we may not have thought of over here as well.

Prax