Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

A lot of people on this forums have complained that they dislike how the current 40k plays. I also see a lot of people suggesting alternative game modes or ways to play 40k. These alternative ways to play range from taking turns to activate units (rather that doing full turns) and limiting units or outright remaking them. My big question is then:
1.has anybody actually tested any alternative way to play?
2.how did you change the game?
3.how fun was it to play/how well did it work?

1) Yes. Ive gone through about 6 different projects (Mine and others) testing different mechanics over the last few years from variations to 7th and variations on 8th.

2) Mostly it's different systems for balancing alternating unit activation to create a more active game experience with less downtime and more tactical game play.

3) They were all more fun by the very merit of having less downtime. The worst of them were clearly untenable and required more tweaks to be actual functional games. The best of them are fully functional games right now that you can just play. They work well and are the most enjoyable experience in 40k I have had.

1) yes bolt hammer, using alternative turns called bolt hammer because it's using the boot action rules written by the same.guy who wrote Warhammer rules. It's a seemless integration.
2)cuts back on alpha strike makes the game more tactical
3)plays out pretty well, just need to flubiage a few things, and inscreases the game time as well.

Not yet, but about to - and will report back. My friends and I do a revised version of 2nd edition 40K, so we're taking that activation system we use and placing it into 8th --- will have to work out some kinks.

I feel that question 3 inherently will have a lot of bias.
Everyone has their own ideas for how to balance the game, therefore using a system that they create/alter will obviously be fun for them.

The only way to objectively gauge how well a home-brew system works is to have players test it for you. Preferably players that had zero input in the creation process and don't share the same biases towards balance as the creator.

-

I play solely "ourhammer" 7th rework for year and a half now and don't plan to revert to "official 40k" ever again. Had more than a hundred games with it (in different stages of "wandering off of official ruleset") and still don't see any reason to abandon it.

Contrary to what Galef postulates above, I think that when going "custom" there is little to no need at all for anyone else (let alone entire community) to "objectively gauge" your system except from players who do play with you (and they tend to naturally contribute/co-edit the rules with you). Let's be real here - no "alternative ed" 40K have ever been widely adapted and never will be. And if you're starting homebrewing more than simple alterations then you'll inevitabely be working on a project that suit your local group's particular needs - smaller the group, more defined those needs are. My started because "stock" 7th ed matches of Eldar vs Tyranids were simply disfunctional and then we grew up from there. Furthermore - when doing homebrew, your "local meta" will be drastically different from both "official" and "major tournament" metas, because of factions played in local group, particular model collections, player attitudes/characters, local "environmental conditions" (like terrain style/availability), etc... Because of that, large but local homebrews are better/more fun for authors/players not because they are biased, but because the are tailor made. Many of parts of homebrew I play go straight against what many people here on dakka would like to see/advocate for. For some of dakkanauts even basing a hombrew on 5th-7th core rules is "wasting time on an inherently inferior system". And many 7th ed reworks that I discussed here go directly against my needs or visions. That is the very nature of going "unofficial".

Do people mind posting links to pdfs of these custom games?

I've been working on one for some time, there's no working copy posted right now but there are design notes linked to in my signature and that's where a working copy will show up when it's ready.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/733472.page

Im currently compiling it into a much easier to read pdf. It will be a bit till thats done.

I think it would be really interesting to have something setup with a hex-grid - something that you can stash away between games or leave in a shop for large scale tournaments. Then move specific battlegroups around. Have each hex represent a gaming table. Anything that has an attack range of > 48 and is in an adjacent square could make offboard attacks at -1 or -2 or something. Possibly anything with a speed greater than X could come in as support - or any sort of misc rules.

This way you could have a strategic game via the hex map/tokens and a tactical battle with miniatures. By it's nature, the battles would be unbalanced. You could end up with 3 Super-Heavies vs 2 squads of infantry and the infantry would just get crushed - but if ended up with 3 super-heavies vs some fast attack, the fast attack could just retreat or zoom past the heavies to the next grid - which contains some undefended artillery units.

Miniature version of Total War i guess.