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I've decided it's time I combined my two great nerd-loves, tanks and 40k. So I've decided to create my own home-brewed rules for a game focusing on tank duels in the WH40k universe.

The objective is to keep it simple, realistic, and fun. The former two are largely contradictory to one another, but I think so far I'm making it work.
These rules are by and large a copy of Gale Force 9's "Flames of Tanks" rules. At least for the actual gameplay.
I'm more than happy to hear people's suggestions on rules to implement, tweak, or remove. As well as improvements or even overhauls to the wordings of current rules. It's surprisingly hard to write a rule clearly so that someone that doesn't know it can understand it.

Eventually I hope to have rules for every main 40k tank. And I welcome people's suggestions for more.
This is obviously version 0.0 right now. Currently there's just the rules for Predator Annihilators, which I think make a good "basic" tank.
Vehicles planned are: Predator Annihilator, Predator Destructor, Godhammer Landraider, Leman Russ BT, Leman Russ Vanquisher, Fire Prism, Vindicator, Battlewagons, Looted Wagons, Hammer Heads. Maybe some others.
If possible I would like all tanks to be roughly equal to one another without using points to balance it.

For those interested, the long term goal is to make this into a 15mm scale WWII game, just like Flames of Tanks itself. The main reason I'm starting with 40k is that I don't own any 15mm tanks yet.
When I do this, I also think I'll tone down the simplicity and add a little more realism. But that's another matter.

EDIT: File updated with some improvements.

Version 0.2 is finished, and added to the first post.

I played a few test games against myself, and I felt like I could use some improvements.
My biggest challenge definitely seems to be getting a good balance between getting shot should suck, but tanks should have a little longevity. So it's a fine balancing act between doing nothing, minor damage, and major damage.

The big change though is I moved the system over to d10. I just decided it was too hard to have sufficient variation on just a d6.

I've also now got datacards for 8 different vehicles. More will be added eventually, but we'll see how it plays.
The ideal is to have every tank being equal to every other, such that in a multiplayer game each player can play any one tank and be on even footing.
But certainly for the Landraider I'm not sure that's possible or practical.

Let me know what you think.

That looks awsome! The battlefield need a Jagdtiger and King Tiger, please do a Falchion and Fellblade datacard

 kirotheavenger wrote:

The ideal is to have every tank being equal to every other, such that in a multiplayer game each player can play any one tank and be on even footing.
But certainly for the Landraider I'm not sure that's possible or practical.

I've been thinking of something like this too, but one very important (IMO) mechanic I would add is spotting/identifying.
While an enemy tank may be visible, your gunner might not spot it that quickly. Even if another tank has identified it, the gunner sees the world through a narrow field of view scope. The tank commander might have a better chance at spotting nearby targets if he unbuttons (pops his head out the hatch), but that does come with some risk. Some races would be better at this than others - the advanced sensors of Space Marine tanks will somewhat make up for their lack of armour and firepower compared to the simple but sturdy Leman Russ.

Also, rather than 1v1 tank duels, it would be tank platoon (what GW calls squadrons) VS platoon. I would suggest something like that for your game too, it gives you a bit more leeway in terms of different tank power. A single Baneblade could be equal to a platoon of Leman Russ tanks.
Not more than maybe 4 tanks per side though, or it just bogs down and you're better off playing regular 40k.

I'd considered a spotting mechanic, but I don't really know how to implement it, and I feel like that's just something that has to be lost during the conversion from real life to table top.

As for platoons, this game is intended for 3-5 tanks per side.
My intention was also where tanks cannot be equal on a 1-1 basis, they would at least be equal on a 2-1, 3-1, etc basis.

Looks like a fun start! I'd totally try this out some time. A couple of things that jumped out at me after my first skim through:

* You might want to clarify exactly where the facings are on each vehicle. Some xenos vehicles kind of defy the conventional "use the corners" logic that works for rectangular human vehicles. For instance, a ravager has that pointy nose on the front giving it a roughly "triangular" shape. Does it just have enormous side and rear arcs and a tiny front arc? Similarly, does the fire prism determine its back "corners" by looking at the sides of the backs of its "wings", or does it go off of the very back chamber that would be the embarkation hatch on a falcon? This was a problem with armor facing in previous editions of 40k, but it's arguably even more important in a game like this!

* You're using the 45* arc thing for non-turret weapons as well as preventing vehicles from split-firing their weapons at multiple targets. This reintroduces some of the more frustrating elements from past editions of 40k. Units like my ravager or anything with melta side sponsons struggle to bring all of their guns to bare as it's extremely difficult (or even impossible) to get an enemy within the arc of all those weapons at once. It feels like we're "paying" for guns we will never actually be able to use compared to vehicles that happen to have their guns mounted on top and on turrets.

When you get around to doing orcs, this issue may become exhasperated by the orkish tendency to customize their vehicles and put guns in creative locations. A modeling decision made to make a battle wagon look cool suddenly becomes modeling for advantage.

Have you considered allowing tanks to simply shoot different guns at different targets? Generally, each gun on a 40k vehicle is implied to have its own gunner. Surely they could each pick their own target rather than having the side sponson guy sitting around doing nothing when he could be shooting the enemy right next to him.

* Maybe this is early-morning math speaking, but it seems pretty easy to make yourself nearly impossible to hit unless the other guy is aiming. If you get your overall modifiers for a to-hit roll down to a -2 or worse, then even a d6 roll of 6 will result in a 4 or less (i.e. a miss.)

So as I understand it, being in cover makes you impossible to hit by enemies that don't aim (i.e. enemies that don't need to move to have a shot at you.) My ravager also appears to be immune to shooting unless you aim due to its night shields.

I feel like I'm missing something here, yes?

* Cover seems to strongly favor some models over others. I can hide pretty much my whole fire prism behind a building while leaving just its gun poking out to count as being in cover. Meanwhile, my ravager with its forward-mounted nose gun has to expose somewhat more of itself to line up a shot.

*I'm usually not a fan of using percentages to determine how "in-cover" a target is. Everyone can generally agree whether when a vehicle is totally exposed or or only 20% in cover, but it gets more iffy and more meaningful when they're either 45% or 55% in cover. Similarly, is that vehicle with its wing sticking out 9% exposed (i.e. untargetable), or is it 11% exposed (giving me a chance to shoot it and win the game.)

*How does my ravager's raiding party rule interact with to-hit penalties? Do I ignore the penalty because it's a "free" action? Do I just always suffer a -2 to hit if I don't hold totally still thus making it impossible for me to hit targets in cover? Do I stack penalties and take a -4 to hit if I move twice and then shoot?

I'm not familiar with Flames of Tanks or with vehicular combat games in general, so take all of this with a grain of salt. However, at a glance, it seems like the dominant strategy is to park your turret-equipped vehicle (preferably with no other guns) in cover so that you're invulnerable, and then spend every turn doing an aim+shoot combo. That said, I think this is a solid start, and I look forward to seeing what you do with other xenos vehicles down the road. Do you plan on including Tyranid rules for things like Mawlocs?

I realised that there's a few typos in there. Initially this was a d6 system game, but I converted it into a d10 system to give me a bit more granularity in terms of the armour values.
So any reference to d6 is supposed to be a d10, I'll have the updated version up probably this afternoon after exams.
So that fixes the shooting thing.

In terms of armour arcs, I agree with this one, but I'm not sure how to address it. Perhaps on the data cards instead of having a cool picture of the tank, instead have a top down view with the arcs coming out?
The alternative is obviously just going from the centre. But that's not perfect either.

I believe the reason I initially prevented you firing different weapons at different targets because I was still trying to balance the land raider in line with the others. And allowing it to fire at only one target at least limited it's firepower. But I agree it's not a great rule. It's also no longer needed so I'll change it to firing different guns at different targets.

As for the firing arcs, for that I've just decided that this is never going to be a competitive game - so modelling for advantage isn't a big deal.

In terms of cover % I'm not sure how I could do it any way other than with %. Perhaps I could add a note about how when in doubt, assume the more covered position. IE, 51/49? Assume 51, 11/9? Assume 11.
But cover in general is certainly something that I'm not entirely happy with. Because certain tanks are obviously much better set up for it than others. A hammerhead with just it's turret protruding is probably more than 90% obscured. But a Predator trying to emerge from behind a building will never get cover.
One possibility is obviously if any part of the vehicle is obscured, it's in cover. But that just feels really meh to me if the vehicle gets cover because there's a leaf in the way.

I doubt I'll do Mawlocs, but they might work with the burrowing thing. I'm certainly tempted to do the one with that big gun. That would atleast play more or less conventionally.
I also plan to do looted Wagons.
I'm not sure how Orks would work with hitting though, perhaps just assume Orks shoot more so by spray and pray they hit on 5s anyways.

I also see what you mean about the Dark Eldar Raiding Party. I'll reword the rules for moving slightly to clarify that sort of thing.

In regards to Flames of Tanks and TANKS, I've not actually played them either, but both rulesets are available for free online, totally legitimately.
The reason I started this project is actually because I wanted to get into a tank game, but I felt like neither of those two really satisfied my need for at least a veneer of realism. But both contained solid concepts. So I started working on my own.
And since I didn't have any WW2 vehicles on hand to play, I decided to go with 40k and later port the system over to WW2.

Will Tyranids be able to get into this action? As much as I love tanks myself, they always seem to get left out. Rampaging around with a Tyrannofex attempting to pop the enemy's Leman Russes seems like a reasonable addition to this game.

Yes, I do plan to add the Tyrannofex with a Rupture Cannon into the game.
Most armies will probably only have a single tank represented, as MBTs set up for anti-tank work aren't that common in 40k.

Alright, version 1.0 is finished and editted into the original post.
Apologies it took so long.

I've now finished all the data cards I can think to do right now. Every faction has 1-2 tanks at least I believe.

I've also added 7 missions plus a bonus free-for-all mission.