Battlefortress Driver with Krusha Wheel
|
Disclaimer:
Obviously, what I’m about to tell you comes from my own rules so there might be biased towards what is simple, fun and works. In addition, because I’m a loner, these rules were only tested by me playing games against myself over and over and over and over and over and over. Finally, my tests are only extremely small scale as I’ve only had Orks vs Marines, Orks vs Orks and Marines vs Marines battles so far.
Overall goal of this post:
I’m not going to give you an entire PDF or run through of every data sheet, rule change or try to force you to play the game my way (mostly because I don’t believe this is the definitive way to play the game and I haven’t finished with the rules yet). Additionally, this is in no way a professionally written rule set or a great alternative to 40k. It’s more of an example of the different ideas floating round and a illustration that 40k can have many alternative way to play in the future, rather than just the IGYG we have done for almost 30 years now.
Objective:
Attempt to make a simplistic enough game that requires skill- about a checkers game skill level -, stops playing being tabled in one turn, allows people to use smaller armies as well as larger armies and makes your guys feel a little tougher. In addition, I tried to play into the goals GW seems to be going towards by focusing on options and the likes.
Biggest rule changes:
• My version of Alternative activation (with each unit only given two actions when activated).
• AP is gone (With Strength on weapons adjusted to compensate).
• Points are gone (with a power level system in place).
• Multiple wound weapons reduced a lot. (For example, a D6 lascannon is reduced to d3).
• Wounds lowered on many models (with toughness adjusted to compensate).
Alternative Activation explained:
Actions:
I wanted a more tactical game where a player didn’t just win turn one by shooting and charging. However, I didn’t want a boring game of chess where you move, they move you shoot they shoot. Therefore, I took inspiration from my DnD games and game up with a method where each unit gets 2 actions when you activate them. These actions are basically what you might get in a normal 40k game: Move, advance, shoot, charge, pile in, cc attacks… Nevertheless, by only having two actions available to me I sometimes did unexpected things to be more tactical. For example, an Ork player I would often blindly charge forward shooting a blazing then throw myself into a grinder. Yet, with my Orks I couldn’t move forward, shoot and charge… I had to sacrifice a movement or shooting to charge and attack. Thus, many times I would move forward, shoot and then just move onto another unit, then come back to that unit when I could activate them, so I could charge then cc attack. You could, in addition, decide to just use one of your actions. I thought about adding a bonus for only using one action, but I didn’t go to much into that.
Activation:
Only getting two actions resulted in me founding it very boring to wait like 5 activations to pull of a move I thought about 10 minuets ago. To compensate, therefore, I designed a rule where you could activate any unit you want if it wasn’t the last unit you just activated. For instance, I activate my grots and move them forward and shoot so I can’t activate them again. Furthermore, I activate a unit of boyz move them, charge but then after that I can go straight back to the grots. To an extent, this means you could just sit there with two units the whole game if you want and waste your other units… but it’s your choice in how you use your assets. There is, obviously, the special rule that if you only have one unit left you can activate them how many times you like. (all other rules like movement distance, overwatch, etc… all stayed the same).
Characters:
I found characters to be a little useless because why would I activate a single marine LT if I could activate a whole squad of marines? Therefore, I made the rule that a single character within 3” of an activated unit also activates with the same action. For example, if you move up, your character moves up… Moreover, I also changed the rule so any character (10 wounds or less) within 3” of a unit and isn’t the closest unit can’t be targeted. Therefore, this tries to keep characters close to units, like they should be, and doesn’t mean a character in front of an entire army can’t be targeted.
Restrictions and flaws:
Doing this requires a full rewrite of many things like the warlord… the whole advancing and charging, for example… so a lot of rewriting is needed if this rule was to be used in normal games. In addition, I sometimes messed up and charged my orks into a unit after I moved and then lost the ability to attack. This didn’t feel too right but that might be because I wanted my Orks to do well. XD
AP is gone:
It’s as simple as it sounds, I just removed AP from the game. In return any high AP weapons were made to be high Strength weapons that would wounds T8 on a 2 and also put out a little more fire (increase number of dice a little). This was, by far, my favourite change. My terminators and marine, for example, did feel invincible but at the same time were vulnerable to high strength and high-volume attacks. An example would be my 30 boyz vs 5 terminators (note I did double the terminators CC attacks to make up for a lack of AP. In addition, I made the terminators T6 and S6). In the games where 30 boyz charged into the 5 terminators, in standard 8th edition, terminators would just be bogged down and would just slowly chip away at the boyz until the Nobz finally put an end to that or volume of fire killed them. However, in the games I tested the terminators held their own and really did a number to the boys (who could only wound a terminator on a 6). However, the Nobz will still valuable, wounding the terminators on a 3 with big choppa or 2 with PK, and the volume of fire was still deadly if you rolled poorly (in one test I got 8 wounds with choppas and rolled 5 1s).
Additionally, I increased the shots and attacks on many weapons and units to make up for this difference.
Restrictions and flaws:
Again, a whole rewrite of many weapons would be needed. And, terminators power levels would have to be adjusted as they would always have a 5 up save. In addition, mortal wounds just become OP. A lot of the marine stuff would go up a lot but they would feel more like an elite army then so it would work for what I would want out of 40k (however, this would go against what GW is obviously aiming towards and what a lot of players want).
Points are gone:
I followed in the footsteps of GW and decided to just remove points. Each unit would have a basic power level and a few options to pick from. A great example would be the Nobz or Sgt with weapons that gave them different advantages.
PK/PF: would have a limited number of attacks and have -1 to hit. However, they would most likely wound on a 2 so if you’re up against 1 big target they’re great.
Big Choppa/ Power Axe: Would wound tough elite units on a 3 with about the same about of attacks as the PK/PF but don’t have the -1 to hit. Works better with more tougher units.
Choppa/Chainsword: gives you a lot more attacks but basic user strength so good for if you fight a lot of infantry.
Restrictions and flaws:
Obviously, this isn’t a full list of all the weapons but just an example. Lots of ranged weapons would need tweaking with and there are so many weapons that are, right now, an obvious choice so would need entire rewrites to work in this system. I’m always of the philosophy that you give and take… every weapon should have a bonus but a disadvantage.
Wounds:
Weapons:
I’ve gone a little backwards from 8th to where weapons mostly only do 1 wound. Only the strongest weapons, moreover, that would be described as blowing up tanks in 1 hit should be multiple wound weapons. This might favour volume of fire more, but I believe this is adjusted by cheap units wounding mostly everything, apart from each other, on a 5 or 6.
Wounds:
I’ve made stuff like terminators 1 wound again, dreadnoughts like 4 wounds and tanks like 8 wounds. However, in return I increased the toughness of everything that should be strong, so marines are T5, terminators T6, Dreadnoughts T7/8 and big armoured tanks T8/9. The idea is that they can really take a beating but if one or two lucky shots go through then their effectiveness goes down a lot.
Restrictions and flaws:
Game might rely on luck a bit too much… you could have the most expensive unit in the game with 2+ but just fail all those saves with 1s while your opponent rolls more 6s than you thought was possible. However, I don’t see how that’s any different from the current game other than now it’s harder for weaker units to damage tough things but it’s not impossible like it was in 7th.
Conclusion:
Overall, my games were pretty fun. However, I did make the rules, so I am going to be biased here. With the alternative activation and changes to wounds/toughness I found it hard for cheap units like Gretchin to do anything at all to any tanks. Yet, I would expect that from a 90pts unit hitting a 300pts unit. However, once in a blue moon they did get a lucky 6 with the tank rolling an unlucky 1 and it really did damage so gretchin were certainly a viable choice.
Anyway, I won’t be going to far with this I just wanted to prove that there are so many alternatives we need to explore. I’d love you to post suggestions below, do some maths to show I’m an idiot for even attempting to think outside the box, do your own tests and tell me how they went and, finally, tell me about your own rules ideas.
|
