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I made a draft set of rules using the kill team rules to interweave turns in regular 40k. I also tried to fix detachments, CP regens, soup, terrain, leadership. and everything else I don't like about 8th edition. Note that this doesn't include some faction rules that would change some more things.

Let me know what you think!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1shm-n6MxXVEwz8i2kI8VX8gjyUVwT1-e_jiyDnjKybg/edit?usp=sharing

I caution against letting units stay in reserve until the last turn. It lets players drop on objectives in turn 5 and similar shenanigans. However, I see matched pay is still end of turn 3.

Pistols appear to be even more useless, now having to wait a full battle round in combat before being used.

Staying out off the opponent's deployment zone does little to counter the 1st turn deep strike/alpha strike issue. I suggest making it 12+" from enemy models on turn 1. 9+" thereafter.

Good to see command point recover limited, though I'd prefer complete removal.
Decisive move and shoot are cool.


In general it looks like things will survive much longer - minuses to hit and halving the number of fight phases. I'm concerned that assault armies are useless. They've only got one phase of combat per round and charge is instead of moving, not in addition to.

Thanks for the feedback!

I agree about the pistols, and I didn't want to change the rule too much drom the killteam rules. Do you think we should allow shooting pistols if you are charged and if you charge? It would vastly improve pistol uses if so. Maybe make them -1 to hit, to not become better chainswords...

I think it's fine to have cp regen if armies all have an opportunity to get a standard amount of cp and if adding allies costs so many. Adding a blood angel sup command to loyal32 costs 6 of your 20 cp. I don't think anyone was complaining about cp regen before degenerate stacking became a problem.

I think that possible turn 1 charges are good for the game and force people to take more chaff units and deploy intelligently. But, if you don't have to to worry around deep strikes to the side or behind, it makes chaffing easier. Also, don't forget that charges can't be warptimed amd the deep striking units are not shooting if they charge. Also, I fixed the cp reroll that you have reroll the whole charge roll (not 1 die). Charged units can also retreat 3" giving up their shooting.

In practice in regular 40k, assault armies only get fights in their turn as they either mulch a unit in 1 combat or the opponent falls back. With the back and forth movement phase, if the opponent gets initiative, and just falls back, they can be charged again, so units can only fall back if the charging unit gets initiative. If a 2nd unit is charged in, the defending unit cant fall back. In fact, I worry that I buffed close combat too much if anything.

The long range penalty should either be changed or removed. As it is, it overly punishes short range guns without really bothering long range guns. It sort of works in Kill Team, but things like Tau breachers are way too difficult to use already. Transferring that to 8th would make them even more useless.
Instead, long range could be defined as 24"+ or 30"+ or whatever, and then just let certain weapons ignore it like snipers do in kill team.

That said I would personally just remove it and implement the 8th cover system alongside the obscurement penalty:
- So if you are within a terrain feature you get +1 to saves, this would be in addition to obscurement.
- Example: a guardsmen in a ruin or directly behind a barricade would be -1 to hit with +1 armor save.
The -1 represents being hard to see, and the +1 sv represents being dug in.

Dandelion wrote:
The long range penalty should either be changed or removed. As it is, it overly punishes short range guns without really bothering long range guns. It sort of works in Kill Team, but things like Tau breachers are way too difficult to use already. Transferring that to 8th would make them even more useless.
Instead, long range could be defined as 24"+ or 30"+ or whatever, and then just let certain weapons ignore it like snipers do in kill team.

That said I would personally just remove it and implement the 8th cover system alongside the obscurement penalty:
- So if you are within a terrain feature you get +1 to saves, this would be in addition to obscurement.
- Example: a guardsmen in a ruin or directly behind a barricade would be -1 to hit with +1 armor save.
The -1 represents being hard to see, and the +1 sv represents being dug in.

I agree with the Tau Breachers. Perhaps, I could make it so anything under 12" is "short range" no matter what.

Having both cover systems may be too much.

Oh, you misunderstand me, just have the -1 for obscurement and the +1 for cover. Ditch the long range penalty completely if you go that route. At least, that's what I plan to do for my games.

Edit:
Alternatively, have short/mid/long range values:
- Short range: 0-12" gives +1 to hit
- Mid range: 12-30" no bonus or penalty
- Long range: 30"+ gives -1 to hit

Then have specific interactions with weapons:
- Earthshaker cannon: cannot be fired at targets in short range and ignores long range penalty
- Transuranic arquebus: ignores long range penalty
etc...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Though I do like what you've done with morale. I personally just thought of merging 8th's with Kill Team's, so you fail morale like in 8th, but you are also shaken. So some peeps run, while the squad is pinned.

Dandelion wrote:
Oh, you misunderstand me, just have the -1 for obscurement and the +1 for cover. Ditch the long range penalty completely if you go that route. At least, that's what I plan to do for my games.

Edit:
Alternatively, have short/mid/long range values:
- Short range: 0-12" gives +1 to hit
- Mid range: 12-30" no bonus or penalty
- Long range: 30"+ gives -1 to hit

Then have specific interactions with weapons:
- Earthshaker cannon: cannot be fired at targets in short range and ignores long range penalty
- Transuranic arquebus: ignores long range penalty
etc...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Though I do like what you've done with morale. I personally just thought of merging 8th's with Kill Team's, so you fail morale like in 8th, but you are also shaken. So some peeps run, while the squad is pinned.

Having a double benefit for being in cover might stall the game out too much imo. Also, I wanted to give a difference to weapons with 48" range vs. 72" range. At the moment, there is no effective difference between them, because both cover a vast majority of the table and you are paying points for a range that you don't need. I think -1 to hit in cover is sufficient.

Why would -1 to hit and +1 cover stall the game more than -1 to hit and -1 to hit at long range?

Just some quick math to show the difference:
Guardsmen shooting at other guardsmen:
- With -1 to hit and +1 sv: 12 shots to kill one guardsman (12*1/3*1/2*1/2 =1)
- With -2 to hit: 18 shots to kill one guardsman (18*1/6*1/2*2/3=1)

Or marines shooting other marines:
- With -1 to hit and +1 cover: 24 shots to kill 1 marine (24*1/2*1/2*1/6=1)
- With -2 to hit: 18 shots to kill 1 marine (18*1/3*1/2*1/3=1)

So it looks like it depends I guess.
Ultimately though, I'm not a fan of too many minuses to hit since there's only 6 numbers on a die to work with, spreading the bonus between hits and saves gives you 2 dice and 12 numbers to work with.

Plus at a certain point there's no penalty for moving with a heavy weapon, or advancing with assault weapons, or for degrading profiles to matter. If a Tau broadside is shooting an obscured target over long range, it can move and have the same hit rate (since 6s always hit). But, if you use the obscurement and cover, the broadside is still penalized for moving AND the target gets a better save.

As for the range difference, I don't really think it matters all that much since GW doesn't use math to point things so I doubt you're actually paying much for that extra range, if you are at all.

But, it's your rules so do what makes you happy.

Dandelion wrote:
Why would -1 to hit and +1 cover stall the game more than -1 to hit and -1 to hit at long range?

Just some quick math to show the difference:
Guardsmen shooting at other guardsmen:
- With -1 to hit and +1 sv: 12 shots to kill one guardsman (12*1/3*1/2*1/2 =1)
- With -2 to hit: 18 shots to kill one guardsman (18*1/6*1/2*2/3=1)

Or marines shooting other marines:
- With -1 to hit and +1 cover: 24 shots to kill 1 marine (24*1/2*1/2*1/6=1)
- With -2 to hit: 18 shots to kill 1 marine (18*1/3*1/2*1/3=1)

So it looks like it depends I guess.
Ultimately though, I'm not a fan of too many minuses to hit since there's only 6 numbers on a die to work with, spreading the bonus between hits and saves gives you 2 dice and 12 numbers to work with.

Plus at a certain point there's no penalty for moving with a heavy weapon, or advancing with assault weapons, or for degrading profiles to matter. If a Tau broadside is shooting an obscured target over long range, it can move and have the same hit rate (since 6s always hit). But, if you use the obscurement and cover, the broadside is still penalized for moving AND the target gets a better save.

As for the range difference, I don't really think it matters all that much since GW doesn't use math to point things so I doubt you're actually paying much for that extra range, if you are at all.

But, it's your rules so do what makes you happy.

Oh for stall I didn't mean that it does more or less damage. I meant that players are too rewarded for sticking models in cover, so no one will want to move onto the field. Long range negatives promote more dynamic gameplay. Games where 2 tau players are just rolling dice at eachother from across the board are hella boring.

Bump due to people talking about AA again.

Breachers seem like an easy fix. If you’re doing range bands anyway, then every gun in the game should have an extra 6” of range, at least. It’s still a net nerf for long range shooting, especially for guns that would almost always have been in range anyway.

Range bands are great, shooting units should have all kinds of reasons to maneuver. Crossfire bonuses I think should be one.


As for AA and kill team you know there aren’t a lot of vehicles in kill team. I think generally vehicles should have one turn structure and infantry should have a different one. E.g. vehicles can be IGOUGO, player A moves and shoots all their vehicles, then both players do some form of AA with infantry, then player B moves and shoots all vehicles and both players’ infantry do AA again. Vehicles have a kind of alpha strike ability, in addition to moving fast and having big guns, but infantry can react better.

I like that you have gotten rid of the I go you go of the current edition. I think it is currently one of the things majorly holding back 40k. It would mean people are involved througout the turn and prevent half your army getting shot off the board before you can even fire back etc. (I am exaggerating here incase anyone says play with more cover.)

I can see melee based armies would be struggling with the addition of charge into movement.

It's kinda a problem as you are essentially shortening their threat range by roughly 6-8 inches. Which matter a lot when your melee units can't get into CC before the shooting army decimates you.

Also, Reserves would be in a weird spot, cause you can't really say at the end of the movement phase, cause then it'll be like 5th edition all over again. CC units would just get wiped off the table if that was the case.

At the beginning of the phase would also be weird, as you could do some shenanigans with decisive move and all. (make the unit go in and charge before other units have a chance to do anything)


As for solutions, this is where it gets tricky.

GW have kinda had a shot at this, with orks getting re-rolls for charges and Harlequins getting 3d6 (both are quite melee centrist armies) with mixed results. Harlequins with their flip belts usually get into combat in a single turn, while orks usually take 2 turns to get into the fighting. But this can usually work because KT has the injury roll as a third buffer to destroying a unit, so a melee unit has a third layer of protection before they actually get into CC. In 40k it's not as simple.

Considering the fact that a lot of armies are based around melee or shooting, and very few actually cover both aspects. This would have to be well addressed.

The suggestions i am putting out aren't perfect, but at least something of a baseline could be established.

1> Using M + 2d6 for charge.
now i can see this being a problem as people would just try and go for the fastest things to use as their melee unit, even if the squad isn't made to melee. This in turn would be used by shooting armies to tie up opponents battle lines for them to apply more precise firepower to the few units that aren't in melee. While melee it would be a staple to have fast units tie up the enemy for the rest of the army to come in and smash.

2> Using 3d6 as the charge

This is an interesting thought, and it might not work as intended. But having an extra D6 on the roll would allow people to launch a charge earlier, for the bigger battlefields where the enemy is at the far end, this would mean one turn less of being a pinata for the enemy to take pot shots at. But on the closer field formats, this might be a problem. Or maybe not.

Deep strike would be probably changed to 11" away, which would mean that you would be at the very edge of 24" rapid fire, which would somewhat fix mass unit double tapping as only a single line would be firing at double shots.

This is what i have thought of soo far. But like i said, there is room for improvement

mchammadad wrote:
I can see melee based armies would be struggling with the addition of charge into movement.

It's kinda a problem as you are essentially shortening their threat range by roughly 6-8 inches. Which matter a lot when your melee units can't get into CC before the shooting army decimates you.

My thought for this is that an assault unit effectively uses the previous movement phase as their movement for the turn to balance the nerf to shooting. (-2 to hit on most units most of the time)

I've playtested this and it works pretty well, but all melee armies that footslog do have trouble. So, I would suggest as a solution having an extra movement phase before the first battle round that units can not deepstrike in. This would also make transports very useful!

Added the following:

Maneuver Phase
Before the first battle round, there is a special Movement phase. Roll Initiative to determine who will act first and perform a Movement phase. Units that were deployed off the battlefield may not be deployed and no damage of any kind can be done.

mchammadad wrote:


Also, Reserves would be in a weird spot, cause you can't really say at the end of the movement phase, cause then it'll be like 5th edition all over again. CC units would just get wiped off the table if that was the case.

At the beginning of the phase would also be weird, as you could do some shenanigans with decisive move and all. (make the unit go in and charge before other units have a chance to do anything)

Units are allowed to make 1 movement action after they deep strike in.