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Inspired by this thread and various other conversations I've had on this site before I've started working on what I hope will be an easier and more rewarding system to use for 40k. It's one that uses its core rules as much as possible and avoids turning these core rules into a game of top trumps. And by that I mean it avoids that whole "one rule beats another rule" that is too prevalent in the current system. Things like ignores cover and fearless undoing cover saves and morale in their entirety are examples of what I think is wrong with 40k these days (among other things).

I'm also taking inspiration from Age Of Sigmar, Bolt Action and Flames of War. These games aren't perfect but they work a hell of a lot better than 40k does at present. I'm especially looking at AoS for inspiration for two reasons. Number one, I really like it. And two, it is 40k's sister game and so I feel like they should share a few basic mechanics. That's just my own opinion of course.

So with that in mind, two things I'll be "borrowing" from AoS are it's initiative system and it's system for casting magic. Oh, and it's stats too. In this new system everything has these four characteristics:

Movement, Wounds, Save, Bravery

And every weapon has these four characteristics:

Range, Attacks, Rend, Damage

I'm also going to take this opportunity to try and make the game more interesting where it counts by introducing a proper pinning mechanism. Here's an example of what I mean because it's all WIP:

Shooting Sequence:

1. Declare target
2. Attacker measures range
3. Attacker rolls to hit
4. Target takes saves
5. Target allocates damage and takes casualties
6. Target checks morale

I'll explain the other steps in a later post but this morale section works like this. The player who's unit was shot at rolls a D6, adding 1 to the result for each casualty they took. Some weapons (ones that used to cause pinning for example) will also add to this result. This is the shock value. Compare the shock value to the units Bravery stat. For each point that the former beats the latter, the unit gains a pin marker. Units with pin markers are suppressed and will be hindered throughout the game until they get rid of them, which they do by rallying. It's possible to put pin markers onto a unit without actually killing anyone too, so morale will play a big part of this new system.

Here's how rolling to hit with shooting will work in this system:

Roll a D6 for each attack. Add the following modifiers:

- 1 if the attacker moved or went to ground that turn.
- 1 if the attacker is suppressed.
- 1 if the target is at long range. (this is more than half of the weapons range)

If the score is 4+, a hit is scored. Some units will have extra bonuses on top of this for things like marker lights etc whilst others will be harder to hit. Rolls of a 1 always fail but if the result goes to 7+ then you cannot hit the target.

Then it's straight onto saves. I'm going down the AoS route and having being in cover and going to ground simply increase the units standard save rather than being a separate save. I'm also going with the system of ap reducing the save rather than cancelling it out or not affecting it all together. Hence an AoS style rend characteristic.

So yeah, it's all over the place at the moment but how is this AoS Bolt Action Flames Of War combo system looking so far?