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I've become more and more convinced lately that the fundamental issue with 40k today is that GW set out to write a game based on an ill-considered formula for converting 7e stats into 8e stats ("blast" = d3 shots, "template" = d6 auto-hits, "AP 4" = "AP -1", etc.), and the assumptions they made when writing their formula produce degenerate relationships. High-volume mid-power weapons were introduced in 5e and 6e to control the proliferation of light vehicles and in 8e have rendered light vehicles and heavy infantry close to obsolete as the tables shift to make them efficient tools for killing all possible targets, uniform-damage blasts have gotten stronger every edition since I've been playing as obstacles to firing them get removed but their targets haven't gotten any tougher, and the proliferation of skew builds and looser detachments continues to punish armies with weak/expensive mandatory choices and forces all-comers army builds to take the weapons to handle unit-type skew to a degree that punishes armies with an even distribution of unit types.

I don't know how far I'm going to get with this overhaul, but the number of basic assumptions that I'm going to need to throw out to address the problems I have with the system are such that I suspect this will piss off people who regard things like the ability to build all-Knight armies or the ability to damage Land Raiders with lasguns as basic rights. I'm trying to preserve my image of the essence of the setting without getting attached to specific mechanical concepts; I'm going to proceed without regard for what unit statlines currently exist or how Codexes are currently divided, so specific army builds may not be relevant. I'd like to make sure any models that currently exist remain but I have no particular attachment to special characters and as I dislike GW's implementation of special characters they are going to be de-emphasized.

With the introduction out of the way some concepts:

1. Detachments and Allies. 8e Matched Play has chosen to write the army-building rules as "take as many detachments as you like from whatever book you like"; I regard the ability to splash the Loyal 32 (a minimum Battalion of Guard) into arbitrary Imperial lists and the ability to build an army consisting entirely of one unit type as undesireable, unbalancing, and restrictive. In an army with expensive units if an all-comers army has to be prepared for both an army of Knights and an army of all Guardsmen overly-efficient generalist weapons are almost enforced, since any specialized anti-armour weapons put on the table against an army with no armour are wasted, as are anti-infantry weapons against an army of all armour. List-building and weapon choices are made less interesting by the unrestricted nature of the whole thing. I'd like to move to a one-detachment model with heavily restricted allies; rather than "take another arbitrary detachment from another book" allies should be "you can take things off this limited list of things" after the manner of the 3e Inquisition Codexes.

2. Unit stats. 8e's to-wound table, AP-as-modifier system, and damage/wounds relationships have created a system wherein there are two classes of target: "hard" targets are vehicles of all stripes and heavy infantry, "soft" targets are light infantry. Weapons useful against light infantry have a single consideration: rate of fire per cost, which makes them a race-to-the-bottom weapon where cheap cost and low stats are the most important things, while weapons used against "hard" targets are most efficient when they've got intermediate damage and high rates of fire rather than high damage and a low rate of fire, leaving little to no niche for heavy single-target weapons and rendering a high percentage of the weapon options that exist irrelevant. I'd like to reexamine relationships between stats on a broad scale in an attempt to create more categories of target rather than making the weapons useful against a Monolith, a Space Marine, and a Venom have fundamentally similar properties.

3. Psykers and mortal wounds. Ever since the introduction of the "psychic phase" in 6e GW has been pushing to make individual psychic powers have ever greater impact and making them more random to make up for it; 8e's unbalanced powers and the Rule of 1 makes the game unnecessarily random and the denial mechanics put the game in an uncomfortable prisoners'-dilemma sort of state where armies are punished for taking a large number of psykers and punished for taking fewer psykers than their opponent. I'd like to go back to a mechanism where individual psychic powers are less significant and more reliable, in particular I'd like to remove mortal wounds from the picture. Mortal wounds are useful in certain contexts (to represent headshots on sniper rifles, for instance) but their use for things like Smite and vehicle explosions creates a bizarre situation where cheap light infantry are less vulnerable to being clustered around an exploding vehicle than armoured infantry.

***

Basic notes on army/detachment structure: The problems with outright deleting Allies are armies that don't function on their own (from cripplingly limited options, no sane Troops options, or both), and sane lore-friendly builds that happen to cross armies. To summarize the cross-current-book relationships that should exist:

Imperial Auxiliaries: Certain Imperial armies (Assassins, GK, Custodians...) make way more sense as limited deployments in supplement to another army rather than a full army of their own. In the tradition of the 3e Inquisition list I'm thinking the implementation here is to allow a short list of units from minor Imperial factions to be used in a detachment with one of the core standalone ones (Guard, Marines, AdMech). This may also cover cross-book auxiliaries between the major factions; a Space Marine army might take some Guard units in the guise of Chapter serfs, who don't have all the in-book support abilities they might have normally, for instance.

Inquisitorial Armies: The Chambers Militant have been growing apart from the Inquisition proper in recent editions, and the Inquisitors have lost their Stormtroopers. To my mind either I resurrect the idea of "Inquisitorial" versions of certain units that have some kind of special effect, or the Inquisitors themselves should carry some kind of broad army buff to represent information or assets they're providing troops under their command. I'd prefer the second since it means less copy-pasting of unit entries.

Knights: I really dislike the idea of Knights as a standalone book; I know GW has written all this lore about how Knight Households are these big standalone entities but I'm going to keep them as limited auxiliaries available to other Imperial books.

Chaos: The fact that there's a whole Guard army with a proper Codex while Traitor Guard are a FW thing that doesn't deserve proper updates, except for one chaff unit stuffed in the CSM book, and that the Dark Mechanicum doesn't actually exist, kind of bug me. I'm going to be looking at ways to bring them both more into line with the loyalist versions; Knights and Daemons are going to work similarly to Imperial auxiliaries.

Eldar: I don't know why DE/Craftworld allies are necessary, and the whole Ynnari thing is too heavily dependent on special characters and screws with fundamental assumptions about the action economy of the game beyond what I'm comfortable with. Harlequins are likely to remain auxiliary units for both DE and Craftworlds.

Tyranids: The relationship between Guard and GSC is easily rectified by just giving GSC their own versions of the vehicles. I'm unsure as to the basis for fielding GSC units alongside proper Hive Fleet units is (I was always under the impression that when the Hive Fleet actually arrived the cults got eaten and used for more biomass to make more Tyranids, not kept intact and fighting).

Orks, Necrons, and Tau are all single standalone books with no possible allies anyway; making more Kroot units may be beyond the scope of this project, so for now Kroot will stay directly integrated into the Tau book.

I will say the wounding system could be better, but the AP system is exactly what the game needed.

The blast/template weapon translation was definitely a bit wonky and needs work, but I feel it's in the right direction.

As far as the core mechanics go, I personally like everything except unlimited overwatch & fall back. The main issue is the point cost - we've seen this issue since day 1 of 8th ed. Point cost system should be a logarithmic relation between offensive and defensive potential - currently, point cost is linear, if not exponential relationship.

Terrain needs more concrete rules, and not just abstract set of rules like "50% obscured"

Fall Back is okay-ish. The issue is too many units do it and still have a ton of dudes left.

Fly is the primary issue there. I would say they can still shoot but at a -1 penalty.

LoS and Cover needs to be retinkered slightly. Whole units with 50% obscuration should get cover.

What I would do with templates would be to make them select a point within LOS, every UNIT within a certain range would then resolve as if they where shot by the weapons profile (this would have to come with a retool of certain weapons)

I'm with Slayer in respect to fall back. Fall back was actually an upgrade from previous editions IMO, but there are just too many units that are only vulnerable in close combat.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/750334.page

 Lance845 wrote:
So this was originaly part of the Beyond the Gate of 40k project (Located here https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/733472.page ). I have had a few games that have utilized this recently and it works great so it should also work well in normal 40k. A lot of this is ripped from Beyond the Gates of Antares and then adapted to fit within the context of 8th 40k.


Line of Sight Rules

You can trace Line of Sight from any part of your model to any part of the target unit. For the purpose of targeting I recommend using 7ths targeting rules (I.E. wings, antennae, banners) do not count as a part of the model, meaning you cannot draw los from or too these bits. That is just my personal preference, do what you want.

Targeting Occupied Terrain Occupied Terrain is any terrain that has a unit within the terrain feature. Units that occupy a Terrain feature can see and be seen through it. Units that Occupy Terrain gain Cover from the terrain. A unit is considered to be occupying the terrain if all of it's models bases are at least partially within the terrain or meet it's other requirements. Models that do not have a base must be at least 50% within the terrain to be considered to Occupy it.

Intervening Terrain Intervening terrain is any terrain that sits between you and the target unit but is not occupied by the target unit. You can trace LoS over a single piece of Light terrain. A second piece of Light terrain and/or Dense terrain will block LoS normally. Targeting a unit over intervening Terrain confers a -1 to hit penalty.

High Ground If your unit is on a piece of raised terrain they may have high ground. A unit with high ground can ignore all terrain and los blocking terrain features when targeting units on a lower level so long as they can still actually trace line of sight to the unit. To repeat, you still need to be able to trace line of sight, but the target unit would gain no benefit from any intervening terrain. I personally use a lot of the Mantic Battlezones. So each layer up in my terrain is 3". So we use that 3" marker to determine height. Again, do what you want.

Intervening Units If you cannot trace LoS to your target unit without tracing a line through an enemy unit the intervening unit counts as Light Terrain. That means if your target unit is behind both an enemy unit and a piece of Light terrain that unit is untargetable because your LoS is blocked (just like 2 pieces of light terrain). For this you are counting the entire unit and the spaces between models as 1 object. You cannot trace LoS between models in the same unit to get around this. You would need to actually be able to trace LoS around the entire unit to not be effected by the unit.

Monsters, Vehicles, and Titanic When targeting any unit with the MONSTER or VEHICLE Keyword you ignore any intervening units when tracing Line of Sight treating them as Open Ground. When targeting any unit with the TITANIC keyword you ignore all intervening units and Light Terrain treating them as Open Ground. In addition treat all Dense Terrain as Light Terrain for the purpose of tracing LoS on TITANIC units.

Flier Units with the Flier battlefield role can be targeted freely treating all terrain and intervening units as Open Ground so long as you can still trace Line of Sight. Do the same for any LoW with the FLY Keyword.

Terrain

All terrain has 3 features.

1) Line of Sight
2) Cover
3) Difficulty

1] Line of Sight

There are 3 degrees of effect terrain has on LoS.

-Open Ground: No effect on LoS. This terrain piece can be shot over as though it was not there. Example: A water pool or river.

-Light: Blocks LoS to some extent. You can draw Line of Sight over a single piece of light terrain. A unit cannot draw LoS over 2 pieces of light terrain. Barricades, grassy hills, light copse of trees, smaller ruins/

-Dense: Dense Terrain blocks LoS entirely. Dense cops of trees, ruined whole buildings.

2) Cover

All terrain has a cover value that is a bonus to your Sv roll (Ex. +1). This bonus is granted to any unit entirely within or meets the requirements of the terrain feature.

3) Difficulty

All terrain has a difficulty value. This value is a penalty to the Movement Value of any unit that enters or attempts to move through the terrain. It is possible the Difficulty of the terrain is a 0 meaning it does not impact movement at all. They may also have special considerations such as "Impassible to VEHICLES".


So for example, the baricades that make of a Aegis Defense Line and thus AGLs themselves would be

LoS: Light
Cover: +1 - The unit must be within 1" or within 1" of a model from their unit that is within 1" of the terrain to occupy the terrain. This unit only gains the benefit of cover from units targeting them from the opposite side of the terrain.
Difficulty: 1

Thus tracing LoS over these baracades would impose a -1 to hit to any unit that is not occupying it. Provides a +1 Sv bonus to any unit that is occupying it, and eat up 1" of Movement to cross over it.

Ruined Building could be.

LoS: Dense
Cover: +1
Difficulty: 1 non-INFANTRY

You could not target units on the other side of the building even if you could trace LoS. Units that occupy the terrain gain a +1 SV bonus and any noninfantry would loose 1" of movement by entering or trying to pass through the terrain. Driving some bikes over the rough surface of the ruins is hard on them and the ruins make navigating the landscape difficult for anything that is too big and/or lacking the dexterity that Infantry have.

In addition. I propose that Character Targeting is changed to make it so a character cannot be targeted with shooting if the character is not the closest visible unit and within 3" of another friendly unit. This way they need to maintain a semi unit coherency to keep their protection AND a closer unit behind some LoS blocking terrain won't save them.

Any unit with Sniper Weapon/rules will also ignore intervening units when tracing LoS.

I actually really love that idea for terrain simply because it's easy to use and could easily fit into the design philosophy of the game. I approve.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'd like to move to a one-detachment model with heavily restricted allies; rather than "take another arbitrary detachment from another book" allies should be "you can take things off this limited list of things" after the manner of the 3e Inquisition Codexes.

I'd be curious to see what that would look like. If you're just banning "good" units from being taken as allies, then you're effectively just saying "no allies." If you're banning "rare" units from an allied faction, then you're not necessarily addressing a mechanical issue. As a bad example, the Loyal 32 represent some of the most vanilla units in the 'guard codex. I get that your system probably wouldn't allow them to be CP batteries, but they're a common set of units that are very powerful. Meanwhile things like striking scorpions and terminators might be up for the ban hammer if rarity is the cut-off. Either way, you're potentially shutting down fluffy armies that may or may not be more powerful than the average bear.

Obviously this is all pure speculation based on a vague concept. I'd be willing to consider a more restrictive allies system.

... while weapons used against "hard" targets are most efficient when they've got intermediate damage and high rates of fire rather than high damage and a low rate of fire, leaving little to no niche for heavy single-target weapons and rendering a high percentage of the weapon options that exist irrelevant. I'd like to reexamine relationships between stats on a broad scale in an attempt to create more categories of target rather than making the weapons useful against a Monolith, a Space Marine, and a Venom have fundamentally similar properties.

Perhaps simply upping the damage output of mono-shot weapons would be a decent way to go? Let a railhead or a D-Cannon deal 2d6 damage or 1d6 + 3 damage or something. They'll still be terrible against hordes, but they'll be much better than a mid-strength gun against hard targets.

Alternatively, maybe include some sort of "stagger" mechanic? If certain weapons deal at least X damage with a single shot, the target unit suffers a -1 to hit until the start of your next turn. Again, a horde won't care about this, but it makes that railhead shot have a chance of being much more impactful against an enemy russ or knight.

3. Psykers and mortal wounds. Ever since the introduction of the "psychic phase" in 6e GW has been pushing to make individual psychic powers have ever greater impact and making them more random to make up for it; 8e's unbalanced powers and the Rule of 1 makes the game unnecessarily random and the denial mechanics put the game in an uncomfortable prisoners'-dilemma sort of state where armies are punished for taking a large number of psykers and punished for taking fewer psykers than their opponent. I'd like to go back to a mechanism where individual psychic powers are less significant and more reliable, in particular I'd like to remove mortal wounds from the picture. Mortal wounds are useful in certain contexts (to represent headshots on sniper rifles, for instance) but their use for things like Smite and vehicle explosions creates a bizarre situation where cheap light infantry are less vulnerable to being clustered around an exploding vehicle than armoured infantry.

I do miss my always-on powers like old school warlock abilities and veil of tears. Psykers should feel powerful, but having my whole battle plan hinge on whether or not a Quicken goes off is annoying. As for mortal wounds, I think they make sense in some contexts. There's nothing wrong with having a power that is specifically good at getting around invul saves, high toughness, or heavy armor. But I wouldn't mind seeing some powers go back to a 7th edition style witchfire profile. How about a power that does 1d6 or 2d6 wounds but has an AP of 0? Or having explosions do wounds with an AP0 when they explode? Granted, this slows down the game just slightly as you add a step of rolling saves, but eh.

Imperial Auxiliaries: Certain Imperial armies (Assassins, GK, Custodians...) make way more sense as limited deployments in supplement to another army rather than a full army of their own. In the tradition of the 3e Inquisition list I'm thinking the implementation here is to allow a short list of units from minor Imperial factions to be used in a detachment with one of the core standalone ones (Guard, Marines, AdMech). This may also cover cross-book auxiliaries between the major factions; a Space Marine army might take some Guard units in the guise of Chapter serfs, who don't have all the in-book support abilities they might have normally, for instance.

This seems reasonable. On the other hand, it is perfectly fluffy for guardsmen to be receiving orders and showing off the preferred fighting styles of their homeworlds even while space marines are present. Plus mixing flavorful regiment/chapter traits in a single army can allow for some cool theming. I may or may not have plans to run "Alpha Legion" forces using Death Watch/Raven Guard, Assassins, and Tallarn all in one list.

Inquisitorial Armies: The Chambers Militant have been growing apart from the Inquisition proper in recent editions, and the Inquisitors have lost their Stormtroopers. To my mind either I resurrect the idea of "Inquisitorial" versions of certain units that have some kind of special effect, or the Inquisitors themselves should carry some kind of broad army buff to represent information or assets they're providing troops under their command. I'd prefer the second since it means less copy-pasting of unit entries.

Definitely the latter if you can come up with some reasonable buffs. Perhaps give the Inquisitor access to really good warlord traits or relics or something so that you're encouraged to make them your warlords?

Knights: I really dislike the idea of Knights as a standalone book; I know GW has written all this lore about how Knight Households are these big standalone entities but I'm going to keep them as limited auxiliaries available to other Imperial books.

Personally, I don't find the main issues with knights to be related to whether or not they have allies. A CP battery or countercharging smash captain is great and all, but I think the core problem with knights is that they're largely non-interactive with large chunks of the game and effectively invalidate many options. Small arms fire trades so poorly with a knight that you may as well not take it/spend time rolling against the knight unless your big guns can nearly kill it on their own. If you try to get into melee with it, it will generally either murder your unit or simply walk away from them on its own turn. If you bring lots of anti-tank guns, it will spend a few CP to make them significantly less effective while it kills units thus lowering your offensive output faster than you lower its own.

I don't begrudge anyone for thinking knights are cool (I have one myself), but 40k with knights is basically a different game than 40k without knights. And it's a game with fewer pieces too.

Eldar: I don't know why DE/Craftworld allies are necessary, and the whole Ynnari thing is too heavily dependent on special characters and screws with fundamental assumptions about the action economy of the game beyond what I'm comfortable with. Harlequins are likely to remain auxiliary units for both DE and Craftworlds.

Kind of sounds like you probably don't play any aeldari armies. DE and Craftworlders no longer being able to ally wouldn't be the worst thing ever (though it would shut down some perfectly fluffy lists including Ynnari). Harlequins as auxiliary units for other space elves has, historically, basically meant that harlequins become a bad choice that you only take in casual games. I just did a rant about harlies in the harlequin codex thread. I won't rewrite it here. Suffice to say, having their own book has done good things for harlies.

As for Ynnari, their action economy shenanigans aren't actually all that different from, say, chaos. Of all the actions you can take as part of a soulburst, a couple of them are pretty situational. If you want to charge something, you can probably just charge it in the charge phase. You're usually only using it if you've just killed a thing in the fight phase and need a place to hide. The psychic power one is basically a 1CP stratagem, and it basically translates to, "whichever power you cared about least in your psychic phase, go ahead and use it now." RAW, you can't even get additional smites out of it if the psyker has already smitten something. Smited? Smote?

Shooting twice is obviously very powerful on many units. The Slaaneshi equivalent of this is a 2CP stratagem. Fighting twice is also good and usually a 3CP strat. Moving twice doesn't have a comparable strat that I"m aware of, but chaos (and eldar) can do it with psychic powers. Granted, doing some of those actions out of order can be powerful, like when shining spears use movement to gtfo after killing something.

So with all that in mind, my current preferred pitch for Strength From Death as a whole is to simply turn all soulburst actions into stratagems that can only be used in the corresponding phase on your own turn, and to have units with Strength From Death generate bonus CP when something dies within 7" of them. These bonus CP ("Whisper Points, I call them) can only be spent on Soulburst stratagems. So then you end up with...

Move in the Movement phase - 2 CP
Extra Psychic power in the psychic phase - 1CP
Shoot again in the shooting phase - 2CP
Charge again in the charge phase if you're not within 1" of an enemy - 1CP (basically a second attempt at charging)
Fight again in the fight phase - 3CP

Doesn't really change any assumptions about action economy that chaos isn't already assuming.

Tyranids: The relationship between Guard and GSC is easily rectified by just giving GSC their own versions of the vehicles. I'm unsure as to the basis for fielding GSC units alongside proper Hive Fleet units is (I was always under the impression that when the Hive Fleet actually arrived the cults got eaten and used for more biomass to make more Tyranids, not kept intact and fighting).

Fluff says that they fight together until the enemy is broken. Then they start herding/butchering the GSC units whose enthrallment is probably starting to become strained at that point. But yeah. Just giving them all the guard options probably works just fine. The only problem here is that you'd basicallyl be reprinting the entirety of the guard options while also adding in GSC-specific stuff. I can't really think of any guard units that GSC wouldn't also have access to.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'd like to move to a one-detachment model with heavily restricted allies; rather than "take another arbitrary detachment from another book" allies should be "you can take things off this limited list of things" after the manner of the 3e Inquisition Codexes.

I'd be curious to see what that would look like. If you're just banning "good" units from being taken as allies, then you're effectively just saying "no allies." If you're banning "rare" units from an allied faction, then you're not necessarily addressing a mechanical issue. As a bad example, the Loyal 32 represent some of the most vanilla units in the 'guard codex. I get that your system probably wouldn't allow them to be CP batteries, but they're a common set of units that are very powerful. Meanwhile things like striking scorpions and terminators might be up for the ban hammer if rarity is the cut-off. Either way, you're potentially shutting down fluffy armies that may or may not be more powerful than the average bear.

Obviously this is all pure speculation based on a vague concept. I'd be willing to consider a more restrictive allies system.

Clarification: More towards the "rarity" end than the "good" end; the logical problem I have with the Loyal 32 is that two commanders who should be commanding their own companies or battalions are slumming it in this tiny little niche auxiliary force and bringing along all the command points and synergistic abilities they would have if commanding their own armies. They particularly are more about maintaining a logically consistent structure for an "army" and some kind of consistent value for what a "command point" is and does. More broadly the problem of cherry-picking the best units from each book exists alongside the narrative problem of sticking senior command staff, rare/elite units, and the like unsupported into someone else's command structure, my thought process here is that if I clamp down on the irrational allied units the mechanical problems may fade and can be addressed separately if they don't.

Eldar: I don't know why DE/Craftworld allies are necessary, and the whole Ynnari thing is too heavily dependent on special characters and screws with fundamental assumptions about the action economy of the game beyond what I'm comfortable with. Harlequins are likely to remain auxiliary units for both DE and Craftworlds.

Kind of sounds like you probably don't play any aeldari armies. DE and Craftworlders no longer being able to ally wouldn't be the worst thing ever (though it would shut down some perfectly fluffy lists including Ynnari). Harlequins as auxiliary units for other space elves has, historically, basically meant that harlequins become a bad choice that you only take in casual games. I just did a rant about harlies in the harlequin codex thread. I won't rewrite it here. Suffice to say, having their own book has done good things for harlies.

As for Ynnari, their action economy shenanigans aren't actually all that different from, say, chaos. Of all the actions you can take as part of a soulburst, a couple of them are pretty situational. If you want to charge something, you can probably just charge it in the charge phase. You're usually only using it if you've just killed a thing in the fight phase and need a place to hide. The psychic power one is basically a 1CP stratagem, and it basically translates to, "whichever power you cared about least in your psychic phase, go ahead and use it now." RAW, you can't even get additional smites out of it if the psyker has already smitten something. Smited? Smote?

Shooting twice is obviously very powerful on many units. The Slaaneshi equivalent of this is a 2CP stratagem. Fighting twice is also good and usually a 3CP strat. Moving twice doesn't have a comparable strat that I"m aware of, but chaos (and eldar) can do it with psychic powers. Granted, doing some of those actions out of order can be powerful, like when shining spears use movement to gtfo after killing something.

So with all that in mind, my current preferred pitch for Strength From Death as a whole is to simply turn all soulburst actions into stratagems that can only be used in the corresponding phase on your own turn, and to have units with Strength From Death generate bonus CP when something dies within 7" of them. These bonus CP ("Whisper Points, I call them) can only be spent on Soulburst stratagems. So then you end up with...

Move in the Movement phase - 2 CP
Extra Psychic power in the psychic phase - 1CP
Shoot again in the shooting phase - 2CP
Charge again in the charge phase if you're not within 1" of an enemy - 1CP (basically a second attempt at charging)
Fight again in the fight phase - 3CP

Doesn't really change any assumptions about action economy that chaos isn't already assuming.

I do, in fact, have a Craftworld army and a Corsair army, but I learned the game back in an era (4e/5e) where the Eldar and Dark Eldar weren't really talking to each other, let alone sending random single liason officers to back up each others' armies with a timely Doom. I don't find the idea that the Eldar and the Dark Eldar are suddenly on speaking terms hugely objectionable, but where Imperial and Chaos inter-faction Allies are troops from within the same command structure that happen to be deployed in the same place putting a random Farseer into a Dark Eldar army or a random Razorwing into a Craftworld army implies that they're on much better terms than makes sense to me. Allying Harlequins into Eldar/Dark Eldar makes some sense on the logic that the Harlequin troupe may not exist in any kind of structure larger than that of the unit on the table and the Harlequins are very explicitly a go-between for the bits of Eldar civilization that don't talk to each other and are trusted, but Eldar/Dark Eldar Allies feel like a tactical implementation of a strategic mechanic, where the idea that these two broad factions might cooperate if they found themselves in the same place translates to operations completely integrated just above the squad level.

In the current game I dislike Ynnari because they're a) tied wholly to the existence of special characters, b) have a set of mechanics that are sort of tangential to how the rules for the rest of the game work, c) dramatically alter the impact of a given unit depending on which version of the army it's being used in, thereby making it harder to balance the whole thing (a unit of Ynnari Dark Reapers has a dramatically different value than a unit of Craftworld Dark Reapers because of the possibility of shooting twice), and d) I have some lingering resentment over the "Malekith come home we love you now" all-elves-are-the-same resolution to WHFB that makes me cringe at the lore (but that's my problem, not the Ynnari's). I would much rather try and make their mechanics mesh better with the system than get rid of them. One of the core issues with Soulburst, also with how psychic powers are implemented, is that there isn't a small enough "unit" of buff in GW's thinking so they have to make the individual effects massive; the logical comparison with Soulburst in particular is souls in Warmachine, where an individual soul is a relatively small resource and things that cost many souls exist. I like your suggestion here about generating CP that can be used on out-of-sequence actions, and I wonder if it might be more interesting to try implementing more CP-generation mechanics on a global scale.

Tyranids: The relationship between Guard and GSC is easily rectified by just giving GSC their own versions of the vehicles. I'm unsure as to the basis for fielding GSC units alongside proper Hive Fleet units is (I was always under the impression that when the Hive Fleet actually arrived the cults got eaten and used for more biomass to make more Tyranids, not kept intact and fighting).

Fluff says that they fight together until the enemy is broken. Then they start herding/butchering the GSC units whose enthrallment is probably starting to become strained at that point. But yeah. Just giving them all the guard options probably works just fine. The only problem here is that you'd basicallyl be reprinting the entirety of the guard options while also adding in GSC-specific stuff. I can't really think of any guard units that GSC wouldn't also have access to.

Some other games I have played, notably Freeblades, split up the IGOUGO system pretty effectively. What GW really needs to do is condense the player turns into a single turn.

Something like this.
Turn Starts.

Movement
- Player 1
- Player 2
Psychic
- Player 1
- Player 2
Shooting
- Resolved Simultaneous (or alternating as Melee is now)
Charging
-Player 1
-Player 2
Melee
- Alternating as per now.

That way both players are involved in all aspects of the turn and the issue of a turn one alpha strike is limited because your opponent has the same ability to do it to you. Even if they don't, they still have a movement phase and a psychic phase to protect themselves from your shooting when it comes!

 akaean wrote:
Some other games I have played, notably Freeblades, split up the IGOUGO system pretty effectively. What GW really needs to do is condense the player turns into a single turn.

Something like this.
Turn Starts.

Movement
- Player 1
- Player 2
Psychic
- Player 1
- Player 2
Shooting
- Resolved Simultaneous (or alternating as Melee is now)
Charging
-Player 1
-Player 2
Melee
- Alternating as per now.

That way both players are involved in all aspects of the turn and the issue of a turn one alpha strike is limited because your opponent has the same ability to do it to you. Even if they don't, they still have a movement phase and a psychic phase to protect themselves from your shooting when it comes!

No. Terrible idea. Worse than igougo.

Think it through.

Im tau. Your orks. I go second.

You move forward and get as close as possible to charge. I can see everything you set up. I move and i step back to make all your charges as difficult as possible. You psychic, and da jump a unit back into position.

You shoot, but mostly your not in range. I backed up remember. I shoot. I focus fire on the unit you da jumped forward and most of the units still close enough to maybe charge and just cripple every threat you have presented to me. You try to charge and its laughable while i overwatch whatever survived my shooting and if by some miracle anything makes it into melee it will have lost so many models that it wont even be a threat.


You cannot alternate phases without greatly benefitting longer range shooting going second.

Not many posts on this thread have been direct replies to my earlier thoughts, but the notes and ideas about falling back, turn structure, and terrain do definitely point at things that need to be looked into.

Some notes while I flip through the core rulebook:

1) Unit types. Right now "keywords" only exist to be referenced by other rules, but there are a huge number of counterintuitive and purely bizarre situations and interactions that tying a few more rules to keywords/unit types would clear up quite neatly. One of the most obvious ones here is the "Steel Behemoth" rule preventing things that used to be Super-Heavy Vehicles from being locked in combat; there are so many versions of the rule with the same name with slight variations on whether you can just shoot out of combat or whether you can shoot people you're in combat with, whether it has no-move-and-fire built in, so many vehicles that seem like they should behave that way that don't, etc., that there's a point at which I should just write a bunch of that into a "Tank" type and put it in a central location.

2) Turn order. The ordering Akaean describes above (alternating phases) is used in GW's Middle-Earth SBG, but with a couple of notable differences: charging happens in the movement phase rather than being its own phase, and units don't get "locked in combat" from turn to turn. Units that move second and were charged at the start of the turn don't get to move away, but units that move first can run away all they like, and if the other unit can't catch them they're home free. This isn't something that needs to be ported wholesale to 40k since it works in LotR because the priority roll (who is "player one" can change from turn to turn) and Heroic Actions make priority much more fluid, and as we've seen in AoS using the priority roll in a game in which shooting isn't heavily constrained can be insane and destructive, but it's giving me some interesting ideas.

2A) Trying to think up a structure for this that wouldn't be overly complex. Loosely: Charge distances are Move + 6". A unit that hasn't activated yet in the same Movement phase and isn't already in combat and prevented from moving may attempt to withdraw when charged, to do so roll d6+Move against the charging unit's d6+Move. If the charger wins the withdrawing unit doesn't move and they move into combat, if the withdrawing unit moves they move back half their speed and the charging unit moves as far as they can towards the withdrawing unit without entering combat or exceeding their charge distance. A unit that's already in combat may attempt to fall back by making a d6+Move roll against a d6+Move roll from any units engaging them; if the unit falling back wins they move up to half speed out of combat and the other unit stays put, otherwise they move back up to half speed, then the unit engaging them moves back into combat. Units can't pursue if they're engaged by other units, and units can't fall back unless they can legally move out of combat (i.e. no moving over other models).

The idea there is to give speedier units more control over melee positioning, shunt the random aspects of charging into a more predictable and more manageable state than the current "crap I failed a 4" charge roll and now have to stand in the open right under an entire enemy gunline for another turn" random mess that is 8e. I also complain frequently that 8e makes it too easy to get all your attacks at full efficiency every turn (thereby making the game more an exercise in list-building than one in tactics/gameplay), putting charges back into movement and making you decide whether you're going to shoot something or attack it in melee has potential to be a trade-off that requires some actual decision-making on the part of the players.

Further thoughts to follow.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lance845 wrote:
...No. Terrible idea. Worse than igougo.

Think it through.

Im tau. Your orks. I go second.

You move forward and get as close as possible to charge. I can see everything you set up. I move and i step back to make all your charges as difficult as possible. You psychic, and da jump a unit back into position.

You shoot, but mostly your not in range. I backed up remember. I shoot. I focus fire on the unit you da jumped forward and most of the units still close enough to maybe charge and just cripple every threat you have presented to me. You try to charge and its laughable while i overwatch whatever survived my shooting and if by some miracle anything makes it into melee it will have lost so many models that it wont even be a threat.


You cannot alternate phases without greatly benefitting longer range shooting going second.

Addendum: Alternating phases works best when two arbitrary armies have roughly equal presence in each phase, in the same way that alternating activations works best when two arbitrary armies have roughly equal numbers of units. The fact that we've got armies that ignore multiple phases of the game is a pretty big problem in this context, and if I were to try alternating phases the Tau in particular would need a pretty massive rethink.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Clarification: More towards the "rarity" end than the "good" end; the logical problem I have with the Loyal 32 is that two commanders who should be commanding their own companies or battalions are slumming it in this tiny little niche auxiliary force and bringing along all the command points and synergistic abilities they would have if commanding their own armies. They particularly are more about maintaining a logically consistent structure for an "army" and some kind of consistent value for what a "command point" is and does. More broadly the problem of cherry-picking the best units from each book exists alongside the narrative problem of sticking senior command staff, rare/elite units, and the like unsupported into someone else's command structure, my thought process here is that if I clamp down on the irrational allied units the mechanical problems may fade and can be addressed separately if they don't.

Hmm. I see what you're going for there. I think you'd run into a lot of weird fluff incongruities. It is a little strange that multiple company commanders are hanging out near each other, but do we just arbitrarily say that they're a 0-1 option while multiple farseers or wyrd boyz or 'cron overlords are okay? And rarity and power don't necessarily go hand in hand. Terminators are "rare," but including them in your army usually doesn't do you in favors. Ravagers aren't really rare at all, but they're a solid contributor to any army I put them in. Plus, there's the issue of people using the rules for a given unit to represent something else entirely. It might be a little weird for multiple autarchs to be hanging out next to each other, but it's less weird if one of them is a shrineless banshee exarch or something.

I'm open to tighter, fluffier restrictions on allies and HQs, but I'm not sure they'd actually be very beneficial from a mechanical perspective. I can think of plenty of examples of powerful allies whose usefulness isn't really tied to their rarity. You say your plan is to fix the fluff, hope it fixes the crunch, and then tweak the crunch that still needs fixed. I feel like there are plenty of fluff problems this would create without meaningfully targeting the crunch problems, so you may as well skip the first step and jump straight to the part where you take a more focused approach to resolving the crunch issues.

I'm all for divorcing CP from the number of units of a given battlefield role you take though. Some troops are genuinely useful. Some less so. Some HQs are must-haves. Some are a tax. Better to find a system that doesn't try to use such things as a balancing factor, says I.

I do, in fact, have a Craftworld army and a Corsair army, but I learned the game back in an era (4e/5e) where the Eldar and Dark Eldar weren't really talking to each other, let alone sending random single liason officers to back up each others' armies with a timely Doom. I don't find the idea that the Eldar and the Dark Eldar are suddenly on speaking terms hugely objectionable, but where Imperial and Chaos inter-faction Allies are troops from within the same command structure that happen to be deployed in the same place putting a random Farseer into a Dark Eldar army or a random Razorwing into a Craftworld army implies that they're on much better terms than makes sense to me. Allying Harlequins into Eldar/Dark Eldar makes some sense on the logic that the Harlequin troupe may not exist in any kind of structure larger than that of the unit on the table and the Harlequins are very explicitly a go-between for the bits of Eldar civilization that don't talk to each other and are trusted, but Eldar/Dark Eldar Allies feel like a tactical implementation of a strategic mechanic, where the idea that these two broad factions might cooperate if they found themselves in the same place translates to operations completely integrated just above the squad level.

I see where you're coming from. I've wanted to run craftworlders and true kin together since 5th edition, but I'd understand if they stopped allowing them to ally directly outside of ynnari armies. Maybe let harlequin and ynnari detachments act like a "bridge" between other aeldari the same way GSC serve as a bridge for IG and 'nids?

In the current game I dislike Ynnari because they're a) tied wholly to the existence of special characters, b) have a set of mechanics that are sort of tangential to how the rules for the rest of the game work, c) dramatically alter the impact of a given unit depending on which version of the army it's being used in, thereby making it harder to balance the whole thing (a unit of Ynnari Dark Reapers has a dramatically different value than a unit of Craftworld Dark Reapers because of the possibility of shooting twice), and d) I have some lingering resentment over the "Malekith come home we love you now" all-elves-are-the-same resolution to WHFB that makes me cringe at the lore (but that's my problem, not the Ynnari's). I would much rather try and make their mechanics mesh better with the system than get rid of them. One of the core issues with Soulburst, also with how psychic powers are implemented, is that there isn't a small enough "unit" of buff in GW's thinking so they have to make the individual effects massive; the logical comparison with Soulburst in particular is souls in Warmachine, where an individual soul is a relatively small resource and things that cost many souls exist. I like your suggestion here about generating CP that can be used on out-of-sequence actions, and I wonder if it might be more interesting to try implementing more CP-generation mechanics on a global scale.

a.) I don't disagree there. I like Yvraine and the Visarch just fine, but we could really do with some generic ynnari HQs. Or simply allowing a detachment to go ynnari without taking one of three specific models. Surely Milleniel or whatever his name is can hold an army together for a while without any crone swords at hand.

b.) Eh. I'm not sure I completely agree here. As mentioned in my previous post, there are plenty of stratagems that let you take bonus actions, and there are mechancis that let you generate CP when things die. Ynnari just bring those concepts front and center instead of making them stratagems and warlord traits.

c.) Mostly agree here, but the concept isn't alien to other books. Double-tapping slaaneshi units are a thing, for instance. Unless you want to make the argument that fight again and shoot again stratagems are a problem in general. (Which reasonable people could indeed argue.) If they can make it work for noise marines, oblits, and havocs, they can probably figure it out for reapers.

d.) We're all allowed to like or dislike fluff. Personally, it fits extremely well with the fluff I had pre-Ynnari, and most of my elf factions have jumped onboard the Ynnead bandwagon. I find the whole, "We all hate Slaanesh, and she'll eat us eventually if we don't do something about her," thing to be a reaonable rallying cry for a faction. If, like me, you find it more fun to fight in grim darkness that has enough hope to give a point to the fighting, then the ynnari appeal.

Organizationally it might make more sense to write one "Guard" book with some options locked to IG/Traitors/GSC and different army special rules for the three versions.

I'd dig that. You'd probably run into pushback from the same crowd who dislike the idea of putting various space marines into a single book though.

Ynari just need their own codex. That literally solves every problem there.

Free Fallback (both flyer and non flyer) gotta be tuned down in general, ive allways suggested a roll off between players like 2d6 vs 2d6 to see if you can fallback.

I want the movement phase to be a "Who Blinks First" method

alternate activation to move models ... but any player can instead cast a psyker power or shoot a gun .. anything that has not moved at that point does not get to move.

then deep strikers arrive and the phase carries on to the next.

Stratagems like SFTS etc. and scouts would ignore the above sequence and move as normal without counting as an activation .. making them much more valuable and tactical.

Reanimation_Protocol wrote:
I want the movement phase to be a "Who Blinks First" method

alternate activation to move models ... but any player can instead cast a psyker power or shoot a gun .. anything that has not moved at that point does not get to move.

then deep strikers arrive and the phase carries on to the next.

Stratagems like SFTS etc. and scouts would ignore the above sequence and move as normal without counting as an activation .. making them much more valuable and tactical.

I play Nurgle Daemons.
You play, say, IG, or Tau.

I get first turn, and move my Plague Drones up. You shoot, and I get to move literally nothing else, whereas most of your army has range on most of mine.

See the issue there?

Who Blinks First:
That sounds interesting and fun, until you realize how much more dependent some armies are on movement than others. Gunlines would own. Not a fan, as written.

Higher Ground:
LoS as TLoS gives them appropriate advantages in visibility - it's harder to get cover against them, but easier to for them to get cover vs shooting targets, based solely on geometry.

I'd like to see this additional rule for Higher Ground:
"When determining range for shooting attacks, measure to the target model or directly above them."
A unit in a fortification 6" off the ground now have a decently longer threat range for rapid fire than the unit approaching their position on the ground - while not giving them too much of an advatage.

Fliers:
Replace hard to hit with the following rule:
"Add 9" to all ranges measured to and from this model".
It's now much more properly protected - will almost never be in range for rapid fire, grenades, etc. But Alaitoc flyers aren't suddenly immune to Orkz and such. It also reduces the area denial the unit has.

Golden BB:
"Any natural 6 to hit automatically hits."
Nice -4 to hit you've stacked there. Well, at least I can hit you on a 6!
A measured nerf to --to-hit-stacking. Alaitoc Rangers on the other side of the board with Lightning Quick Reflexes and Conceal are still really hard for that SM Captain or Pred to shoot. But he can get lucky. And so can an Ork Boy.

Unit Stats: (This is a *large* change)
Now here's a bigger change, if you want to undo what 8th ed has done:
-Revert the Wound table to +1/-1 per difference in S, but keep the 6s-always-wound.
-Drop AP-1 from almost every weapon that has it (a few are appropriate)
-Drop AP-2 from most weapons that have it, reduce most others to AP-1
-A couple AP-3 and worse should also be reduced (Bladestorm: AP-2 instead of -3, for instance)

Suddenly, T4 over T3 means quite a bit more. And good armor saves are good vs non-dedicated weapons. Ideally, we'd go further and address all the Plasma issues too (not just IoM Plas), but this is a big change as-is.

List Construction: (*Huge* change on it's own)
Pay CP for detatchments.
You get 1 CP for every N points you're playing at (tailor as appropriate.
You pay CP for each detatchement. Not many for a Brigade or Battalion (probably 1) but a lot for a Vanguard or High Command. This disincentivises allies without rendering them ineffective - 'Loyal 32' costs 1 CP instead of giving you a bucket of them! But it's a major rewrite of core rules, so isn't just a small tweak.

Paraphrasing bits and pieces here:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
2A) Trying to think up a structure for this that wouldn't be overly complex. Loosely: Charge distances are Move + 6".

I think this can work well if we maintain the 12" range for declaring charges - this way, faster units will typically have excess distance allowed for them to wrap around the target of charge. For example, a unit with 10" move will charge between 10"+d6", which it can declare charges against units that are <12" away. Against a unit that is exactly 12" away, on a roll of 6 on a d6, the charging unit is allowed 16" of total movement during it's charge, allowing it that extra 4" for its models to sweep the rear of target unit, essentially "locking" it in combat. This will give more reason for us to take fast units, mainly jump pack deepstrike units, and use their maneuverability to counter-balance gunline armies.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A unit that hasn't activated yet in the same Movement phase and isn't already in combat and prevented from moving may attempt to withdraw when charged, to do so roll d6+Move against the charging unit's d6+Move. If the charger wins the withdrawing unit doesn't move and they move into combat, if the withdrawing unit moves they move back half their speed and the charging unit moves as far as they can towards the withdrawing unit without entering combat or exceeding their charge distance.

Unfortunately, I feel like this could get wonky in a IGOUGO as defensive/out of turn moving has so much potentials to be abused. This would mean that a unit with 5" move will NEVER be able to charge a unit with 11" or move M characteristic. While this feels right but it would give disproportionate weight to the value of M characteristic.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
A unit that's already in combat may attempt to fall back by making a d6+Move roll against a d6+Move roll from any units engaging them; if the unit falling back wins they move up to half speed out of combat and the other unit stays put, otherwise they move back up to half speed, then the unit engaging them moves back into combat. Units can't pursue if they're engaged by other units, and units can't fall back unless they can legally move out of combat (i.e. no moving over other models).

Same point as above.

Unit Stats: (This is a *large* change)
Now here's a bigger change, if you want to undo what 8th ed has done:
-Revert the Wound table to +1/-1 per difference in S, but keep the 6s-always-wound.
-Drop AP-1 from almost every weapon that has it (a few are appropriate)
-Drop AP-2 from most weapons that have it, reduce most others to AP-1
-A couple AP-3 and worse should also be reduced (Bladestorm: AP-2 instead of -3, for instance)

Not a fan of this, i'd rather see more AP-1 on stuff that is more common, (bolters, pulse rifles) except on the really most basic guns like shotguns, lasguns and autoguns. As is i feel like most AP-1 is justified imo, krak nades come to mind, etc.

I however would be very VERY much in favour of a change to how cover works, mostly back into favour of older editions.

Krak would be an example of a weapon that should keep it's AP-1.

Imagine that you *did* make AP-1 more common: bolt weapons and pulse weapons for starters. What does that do to the game?
-Tac Marines go from subpar to outright trash
-Termies go from trash to worse trash
-Sv4+ goes from decent to meh
-Sv5+ goes from meh to slightly more meh

Basically, Tac Marines then have a 4+ vs most armies in the game. And Guardsmen, Kabs, and Guardians going from a 5+ to a 6+ doesn't nearly compensate.

Bharring wrote:
Krak would be an example of a weapon that should keep it's AP-1.

Imagine that you *did* make AP-1 more common: bolt weapons and pulse weapons for starters. What does that do to the game?
-Tac Marines go from subpar to outright trash
-Termies go from trash to worse trash
-Sv4+ goes from decent to meh
-Sv5+ goes from meh to slightly more meh

Basically, Tac Marines then have a 4+ vs most armies in the game. And Guardsmen, Kabs, and Guardians going from a 5+ to a 6+ doesn't nearly compensate.

Disagree: Tac marines would end up more on the 4+ save more often yes, but as is that could justify a bigger pricedrop, which they need more instead of overpriced durability, because let's be frank, if they pay premium for premium stats you don't need they will never be picked espcially if CP is more relevant then stats in many cases. If they atleast now get a boltgun that has to be taken somewhat seriously that is a double plus in my eyes.

Secondly: Don't start on terminators, that is again not a problem of durability but more on their dmg output. With -1ap they atleast can now deal a bit better with guardsmen and co.kg.

But this is not a marine thread, so therefore as to cut this short, cut the price for Terminators and CSM/Tac marines by 25% (2-3 pts on average) and call it a day.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Krak would be an example of a weapon that should keep it's AP-1.

Imagine that you *did* make AP-1 more common: bolt weapons and pulse weapons for starters. What does that do to the game?
-Tac Marines go from subpar to outright trash
-Termies go from trash to worse trash
-Sv4+ goes from decent to meh
-Sv5+ goes from meh to slightly more meh

Basically, Tac Marines then have a 4+ vs most armies in the game. And Guardsmen, Kabs, and Guardians going from a 5+ to a 6+ doesn't nearly compensate.

Disagree: Tac marines would end up more on the 4+ save more often yes, but as is that could justify a bigger pricedrop, which they need more instead of overpriced durability, because let's be frank, if they pay premium for premium stats you don't need they will never be picked espcially if CP is more relevant then stats in many cases. If they atleast now get a boltgun that has to be taken somewhat seriously that is a double plus in my eyes.

Secondly: Don't start on terminators, that is again not a problem of durability but more on their dmg output. With -1ap they atleast can now deal a bit better with guardsmen and co.kg.

But this is not a marine thread, so therefore as to cut this short, cut the price for Terminators and CSM/Tac marines by 25% (2-3 pts on average) and call it a day.

Ranged offensive power needs to be toned down in the game overall, while AP gets boosted in melee. It's the only fair way of balancing melee vs. ranged. In fact, it's exactly how most, if not all, games are balanced around -

Melee has to get in melee range to do damage. Being within melee range comes at the cost of being counter attacked, being kited, etc, but when is it in melee range, it does a lot of damage.

Ranged fighters can deal damage at safe range. Typically ranged fighters are more frail than melees. The amount of damage it deals is roughly equal to the amount of damage melee fighters deal, including the downtime for getting in range - to explain, ranged fighters deal 1 damage per second over the course of 10 seconds, dealing 10 damage total; melee fighters spend 9 seconds getting into melee and deals 10 damage per second over the course of 1 second, dealing 10 damage total.

Currently, getting into combat range is quite difficult, and it only deals mere fractions worth damage compared to equal points worth ranged firepower.

A reduction of much of the mid-AP in the game decreases how overpriced their durability is. Along with the change to-wound.

Bharring wrote:
A reduction of much of the mid-AP in the game decreases how overpriced their durability is. Along with the change to-wound.

Still wont make them a unit that you would actually pick over Scouts or Cultists because it still would not solve their abbmissal price tag, still would not solve their CP generation issues.

Literally nothing that would substantially benefit said units. In the department were they actually suck, oppurtunity cost.

I also think a reversion back to the old cover and LOS system would be better, for exemple only allowing you to target units which you see their center not just a gun or horn, etc. That would help also melee armies more.

The hard part with any of this is trying not to make the rules dramatically more complicated than 8e already is; lower page-count isn't necessarily better, as we've seen with the 8-page 40k rules presenting a dramatic improvement over the 4-page AoS rules and the deletion of USRs just shunting page-load off into datasheets, so I'm going to be making an effort to keep page-count down.

The broad organization of units presents some issues; the closest-targeting rule from this edition and the Independent Character rules from 3rd-7th always seemed just another source of bloat to me. It might be interesting to require non-monster Characters attach to and stay attached to squads; there isn't really precedent for this and it'd require tweaking transport capacities in some cases (Rhinos, Raiders, and Ravagers particularly, but we've already got Drop Pods modeled with 10 crash harnesses carrying 12 models, so it doesn't seem much of a stretch), but it'd cut down on the mess of rules that are characters and get rid of things like the "what do you mean I can't target that Dreadnaught just because he's standing behind a few Guardsmen?" strange game-state mess.

Coherency is also kind of messy; the advantage of the daisy-chain mechanism over distance-from-squad-leader is that the squad itself stays in a coherent mass and the rule doesn't require adjustment to account for different squad sizes, but in a world of no blast templates it might make sense to reduce coherency to 1" the way it is in AoS to reduce the impact of thin screening lines that remove casualties from way outside the range of the attacker's weapons.

On cast/deny for psychic powers: The problem with the simple Ld test to cast/determine Perils out of 3e-5e is that it'd require more careful control over the number of psykers on the table and the effect of their powers, but the "deny" mechanic wasn't fundamentally necessary back then, so it may be worth looking into simply because it doesn't punish armies that don't take psykers. A particular resistance to psykers (deny attempts, things that would have Adamantium Will in earlier editions) could then be a FNP roll against psychic powers.

On turn order: I think alternating activations might require a different game to get the most out of; the sheer variety in units and armies in 40k right now is beyond what any alternating activation system I've ever seen has got to cope with, even with my proposed cuts to anything-goes army builds. My impression of alternating activations or alternating phases is that they work best when both sides have similar board presence and turn presence; when one army could be Custodians packing five melee units and the other could be Tau with thirty ranged units the balance is a bit too skewed. I'm going to stick to discrete I-go-you-go turns for the time being.

With that in mind a rough summary of the core rules to this General Overhaul:

1) Turn Order: Four phases: Movement, Shooting, Fights, End. A "round" consists of both players taking a complete "turn".

2) Units and Measuring: A "unit" is composed of one or more models; if the unit consists of multiple models the whole unit must set up and move as a group divided by no more than 1" horizontally and one floor of no more than 4" vertically of another model in the unit. When measuring distances measure to a model's base where possible, if a model has no base assume its "base" is the footprint of its main body or hull projected onto the ground.

3) Movement Phase: Make charges, then move other units. When moving a unit it moves in any direction, but must move along a discrete horizontal surface unimpeded by barriers more than 1" high or gaps more than 1" wide. Models may not move through other models or through solid walls, and may not move within 1" of any enemy models, except when charging. Note that you may wish to mark which units Charged, Advanced, or Withdrew for reference during later parts of the turn.
a) Charge moves: A unit may charge up to its Move stat +6". To charge pick any number of targets within charge distance, then move the charging unit such that it is within 1" of as many of them as possible.
i) Charge reactions: A unit may react to being charged by Withdrawing as long as it has not already reacted this phase and is not otherwise prevented from moving. To do so roll a d6 and add its Movement, then roll a d6 and add the Movement of the charging unit. If the charging unit's total is higher the reacting unit does not move and the charge proceeds as normal, if the reacting unit's total is higher or if there is a tie the reacting unit may move up to half its normal speed directly away from the chargers, then move the chargers up to their charge distance towards the reacting unit such that they end outside 1".
ii) Falling back: A unit that started its own Movement phase within 1" of an enemy unit may not move except to Fall Back. If the enemy unit is otherwise free to move (i.e. is not within 1" of another friendly unit) they may attempt to pursue, if so roll a d6 and add the retreating unit's Movement, then roll a d6 and add the pursuing unit's Movement. If the retreating unit's total is higher or if they are not pursued they may move up to half speed directly away from the combat, otherwise they must remain where they are.
b) Remaining moves: Move up to the unit's Movement in inches in any direction.
i) Advancing: A unit may choose to Advance, in which case its Movement is increased by d6".
c) Terrain: Terrain comes in many forms across the 41st Milennium so we have attempted to reduce it to a general set of properties here:
i) Terrain may be described as "area" or "scatter"; typically area terrain has a base and scatter terrain does not. Area terrain applies its effects to models wholly or partially within its base as well as when movement or line of fire crosses it, scatter terrain applies its effects when movement or line of fire crosses over it.
ii) Movement: A peice of terrain may impose a penalty on the Move value of units attempting to move within or over it. Penalties to move apply to any movement, but cannot reduce the distance a unit moves by more than half. Models with the Infantry type may move up vertically along a discrete surface within terrain, but this imposes an additional -2" penalty to their move on top of the penalty imposed by the terrain.
iii) Line of sight: Area terrain blocks line of sight to Infantry models not on its base. Line of sight that passes completely through (into and out of) two peices of area terrain is blocked entirely.
iv) Cover and Obscured: A piece of terrain that provides Cover adds +1 to the armour save of any unit gaining its benefits. A piece of terrain that Obscures imposes a -1 to-hit penalty on shooting attacks.
v) Permeability: It may be useful to define walls as permeable or impermeable to infantry movement; we recommend that walls containing windows or obvious doors are permeable to infantry and solid walls are impermeable.
vi): Representative terrain: Note that these are rough guidelines and not hard rules. Forest: -2", Obscures, Cover to Infantry only. Ruin: -2", Obscures, Cover. Wall or barricade: -1", Cover. Tank traps: Impassible to Vehicles and Monsters, Cover to infantry.

4) Shooting Phase: Make shots. General procedure: Pick a unit to shoot, declare weapons, declare targets. Check line of sight, roll to hit, roll to wound, allocate wounds, roll saves.
a) Who can Shoot: Models may not shoot if they charged in the Movement phase. Models that Fell Back, Withdrew, or were charged while unengaged may make Closing Fire attacks, and models within 1" of an enemy that were not charged this turn or advanced may make attacks with a limited selection of weapons. Special cases are referenced after the general procedure.
b) Weapons and Targets: Models in a given unit may choose to attack with all Pistols, all Grenades, or all other weapons. Determine range and line of sight on a model-by-model basis; models may attack if any model in the target unit is in range and line of sight. Enemy units may not be targeted while within 1" of a friendly model. Models in a unit may spread their fire amongst any number of targets but must declare all their attacks at the same time. Each weapon fires a number of shots as indicated in the Shots attribute column; all attacks are considered to be resolved simultaneously. Please don't roll one shot at a time.
c) Roll to hit: The target number is given by the attacker's Ballistic Skill (BS). If the shot is given a bonus or penalty to hit apply that to the die roll. If the die roll is equal to or greater than the target number the attack passes and moves on to the next step, otherwise the attack has missed and the sequence ends.
i) Critical effects: A hit is a "critical hit" if the die roll is 2 or more points higher than the to-hit value (i.e. a shot hitting on a 4+ is a critical on a die roll of 6). Most weapons do nothing on a critical hit, but the "critical (effect)" keyword indicates any additional effects.
d) Roll to wound: The target number is based on the shot's Strength versus the target's Toughness, as follows: S >= 2*T 2+, S > T 3+, S = T 4+, S = T - 1 5+, S < T - 1 6+, S <= T/2 impossible. Note that the table is deliberately asymmetrical. If the to-wound roll passes the attack has wounded and continues, otherwise the attack stops.
e) Allocate wounds and roll saves: The defender chooses a model to allocate a wound to and rolls a save for that model; the target number is the model's Save value with the AP of the weapon applied as a penalty. If the save roll passes the attack has been stopped and the sequence ends, otherwise apply the weapon's damage to the model. If the model is entitled to any kind of post-save roll it once for each point of damage applied, any passed post-saves negate the damage. Damage from a single attack in excess of a model's wounds is lost. Repeat until either the whole unit is dead or all successful wound rolls have been saved.
i) Blast damage: Weapons with a wide area of effect have a chance to do additional damage, and are notable interruptions to the normal sequence. If a blast weapon kills a model in the target unit roll for additional hits as noted in the blast weapon's rules, up to a maximum of one additional hit per model currently in the target unit, then roll to wound and save against all the secondary damage before moving on to the next wound from the initial pool (e.g. a Devastator squad inflicts two frag missile (blast d6 S3 AP-) wounds on a Guard squad of 5 models; the first missile kills one model, rolls a 3 for additional hits and kills another model with the blast damage; the second missile kills one model, rolls a 4 for additional hits, but there are only two Guardsmen left in the unit and it therefore only takes two additional hits.).
ii) Invulnerable saves: Invulnerable saves are not modified by AP as normal, though they may be inhibited or denied in some manner by other attacks.
f) Special Cases: Models that Advance may only fire with Assault weapons, and take an additional -1 to hit when doing so. Closing Fire attacks are made in the enemy Shooting phase after all enemy models have shot, hit only on a roll of 6, and may only target a unit within 1" of the attacking unit. Models within 1" of an enemy unit may attack only the unit they are in combat with, and may only use pistols to do so.

5) Fight Phase: Unlike other phases models from both sides activate during the Fight phase. Starting with the active player trade off between units who Strike First (normally from charges, though some special rules grant this property), then trade off between other units, until each unit within 1" of any enemies has activated once.
a) When attacking with a unit make a Pile In move of 3" directly towards a unit they're in combat with; note that this is subject to terrain penalties but cannot be reduced below 2" in accordance with the normal rules. Models within 2" of a model in the enemy unit may then attack. Models make attacks equal to their Attacks stat but may distribute those attacks between any melee weapons they are armed with, effects from a given melee weapon apply only to attacks made with that weapon. The to-hit roll is based on the unit's Weapon Skill, roll to hit, wound, allocate wounds, and save in the same manner as attacking in the Shooting phase.

6) End Phase: Morale and any special rules that trigger in the End Phase happen now.
a) Morale: Any units that took casualties roll a d6 and add the number of models that died this turn, then subtract their Leadership. If the total is greater than 0 that many models flee from the unit and the rest gain the Shaken condition (imposing a -1 penalty to all attack rolls) for the duration of the next player turn.


This is a rough draft and I'm sure I missed some things; USRs, weapon types, etc. to follow.

We really don't need USR with how datasheets are made. I think strictly sticking to core rules and terrain is the best way to go about things.

Personally I don't have many gripes with the core rules outside maybe a new addition each to Fall Back and Fly. With Fall Back, I propose the falling back unit takes from the opposing squad hits on a 6+, similar to how Overwatch would work. It's simple, not over the top, and gives those melee units a slight edge. With Fly, any unit that falls back and wants to shoot must do so at a -1 to hit penalty, of course stacking with any other modifiers.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
We really don't need USR with how datasheets are made. I think strictly sticking to core rules and terrain is the best way to go about things.

Personally I don't have many gripes with the core rules outside maybe a new addition each to Fall Back and Fly. With Fall Back, I propose the falling back unit takes from the opposing squad hits on a 6+, similar to how Overwatch would work. It's simple, not over the top, and gives those melee units a slight edge. With Fly, any unit that falls back and wants to shoot must do so at a -1 to hit penalty, of course stacking with any other modifiers.

We definitely don't need USR of 7th ed and prior, but we do need some sort of keyword system to work in conjunction with the core rules... say "Universal Core Rules", or UCR for short, a system that governs what each keyword means.

For example,

FLY: this unit can move through units when it moves. It can shoot after falling back, but may not charge as normal on the turn it falls back. When determining charge distance against units
FEEL NO PAIN (+X): when resolving damage, models with this rule may make a feel no pain roll. if the roll is greater than the indicated number within the brrackets, (i.e. +5), the damage is negated. Roll 1 dice per damage inflicted.
AURA (X"): certain abilities are AURA. AURA abilities affect units within the specified range. A unit/model with the AURA ability are always within range of the aura.
BUBBLE (X"): certain abilities are BUBBLE. BUBBLE ability only affects models whose base are fully within the specified range. A unit/model with the BUBBLE ability are always within range of the aura.

And within the datasheet, you can shorten it to:
Disgustingly Resilient: FEEL NO PAIN (+5)
Icon of the Old Caliban: AURA (6") - subtract -1 from shooting attacks made against affected units.

Yadi yadi yaya

Except those are already discussed on the datasheets. I don't really see a point to adding anything like that.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except those are already discussed on the datasheets. I don't really see a point to adding anything like that.

The point of USRs as opposed to the datasheets is to a) avoid needing to write out masses of redundant text, b) avoid rules with the same name that work differently (e.g. Steel Behemoth) or with different names that work identically, and c) avoid trying to reinvent the wheel by writing multiple subtly different things that do fundamentally the same thing.

40k has, functionally, USRs already (Poison, FNP, Reroll 1s to Hit, PotMS, all the Flyer rules...); I'm not opposed to reminder text (writing out the USRs on datasheets if people want them) but there is going to be a central reference as an organizational aid.

Addendum: The problem with USRs in older editions wasn't the existence of USRs, it was feature creep. 4e had a page of USRs that were about a paragraph each, 7th had a chapter and some individual rules were multiple pages describing how they interact with each other.