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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pti4dZZY88j7rggbfjxoonTHDSNyAa1B6g-w31rTwdQ/edit?usp=sharing

Welcome to warhammer 9e My Head Hurts Edition.

TLDR:

during army construction, players are limited to the selection of ONE rule to affect the primary subfaction of their army. This may be a "Chapter tactic" rule, this may be a "Doctrine" rule, or this may be an "Army of Renown", but that is all you get. Allies are unlimited, but you dont get to choose a second rule for your allies.

Additionally, armies get ONE relic and ONE warlord trait, and may choose THREE faction-specific stratagems.1-3CP is gained at the top of the battle round and do not carry over to subsequent battle rounds.

each battle round players take turns resolving their Command Phase, then take it in turn to nominate unactivated units to take their movement, psychic, shooting, charge, and fight phases. <9W characters may be activated alongside friendly units within 3".

The core stratagem list has been reworked and significantly buffed to primarily focus on allowing a player to partially activate units out-of-sequence that have not yet been activated in the round. For example: Fire Overwatch allows you to shoot all your ranged weapons at a -1 to hit penalty at an enemy unit that declares a charge or ranged attack targeting you - but that unit is then marked as having been activated, and will NOT take a movement, charge, fight, etc phase this round. Counter-Offensive allows you to make melee attacks simultaneously with a unit that charges into you - or even before them, if a "fight first" or "fight last" effect is in play.

Lots of good ideas here, but also lots of problems. I'm not sure this works very well without a lot of additional changes.

Each player may choose 1 Army Trait for one subfaction (subfaction is any faction keyword chosen with <brackets> listed in datasheets) to apply to their army.

Drukhari get punted in the nards by this one. Currently, PFP going away if you take allies means that you basically just don't take allies with drukhari (except maybe for kabalites) because it penalizes most non-kabal units too heavily. So your changes would basically translate to, "Drukhari don't get a subfaction bonus unless they're willing to lose some of the rules that are critical to half their units functioning."

Also not a huge fan of this from a fluff angle as it takes away my ability to mechanically represent some fluffy teamups, but maybe that's a niche complaint. This would also break with subfaction rules that reference eachother. Ex: there's a sister order whose chapter tactic equivalent references Sacred Rites. Pretty sure Kabal of the Black Heart references PFP, etc.

I'm in favor of reducing the number of "layers" of faction rules in general though.

Allies: Detachments with models from other factions may be included freely in a player’s army

Mildly concerned that you've removed the main incentives to NOT soup your army. If I'm not taking a subfaction bonus like Doctrines that require the entire army to share certain keywords, and if I'm not suffering a CP penalty, then every imperial army is back to sprinkling in knights or smash captains or whatever the most cost effective unit not reliant on a subfaction bonus is. Maybe I missed something?

Beginning with the player with the Initiative Advantage, each player performs any actions or abilities that should take place in the Command Phase. Additionally, each player may choose to perform the Psychic phase with any PSYKER keyword units in their army, but after doing so those units must be marked as if they had been fully activated and may not be activated later in the battle round.

That's a pretty big nerf to some psykers, isn't it? My warlocks are primarily buffing characters, but they're paying points for extra attacks and a wychblade. Plus, those buff powers might be really important. So if I put conceal on a unit of shining spears to keep them from getting nuked by my opponent's first unit activation, my warlock has to stand still (thus losing character protection later in the turn) to do so? Or consider Thousand Sons exalted sorcerers that might be paying a lot of points for melee capabilities, special guns, or extra movement. Do such sorcerers have to choose between casting their defensive buff powers in time to matter and being allowed to use their offensive powers and stats?

Maybe Blessings don't cause the psyker to be considered as activated when used in the command phase?

Also, a little worried that calling out all your commands at once potentially leads to your buffed units getting wiped out before they can benefit from the buff? Ex: My necron overlord throws MWBD onto one of my three anhilation barges. Guess which one my tau opponent will be pointing his railgun at with the first activation of the turn.

Replace the list of core stratagems in the main rules with the list below. Players may use these stratagems in addition to the 3 stratagems chosen in army construction.

I'm a little overwhelmed by what stratagems have become too, but this change is going to result in a lot of flavorful stuff basically being deleted from the game. There are a lot of "cute" stratagems that I occassionally use despite them being suboptimal or which I only use in the niche situations that they're actually useful. If I have to choose 3 strats during army creation, then I'm NEVER going to select any of the niche or cute stratagems if it means I have to give up one of the stratagems that are key to my army functioning. And some of those cute stratagems are really fluffy or iconic.

If you want to implement this change, you should probably go through and convert a lot of stratagems back into datasheet rules and wargear options first.

Each player may additionally choose 1 Relic and 1 Warlord Trait for any model in their army, and may choose 3 faction-specific stratagems from factions included in their army. Stratagems intended to be used during army construction (such as those that grant additional relics) may not be chosen.

Similar to the last one, this potentially removes a lot of flavor from some armies. My drukhari have had almost all of their character customization shifted from wargear into warlord traits and relics. My codex would be a lot more bland with these changes.

Stratagems that affect deployment may be selected, but must use the Command Points the player gains in the first battle round.

That's going to kill a lot of the cheeky (usually suboptimal) reserve list stuff I like to do. I enjoy putting my space elves in the webway, but it's harder to justify if I have to choose between that and having access to Fire and Fade or Lightning Fast Reactions. Then again, my webway stratagem probably didn't make the 3 stratagem cut, so maybe my for funsies deployment plans were already dead in the water before this particular point.

The alternating activations stuff seems pretty solid.

Well, ultimately, 40k is a game between exactly 2 people - if you want to use my AA mechanic and literally nothing else, or simply modify what I wrote to suit you - 5 stratagems, 2 army traits, multiple relics...whatever, do so. That said, I do play Drukhari pretty heavily, and did consider them when writing the rules...and I'm still pretty confident my drukhari army would outperform most opposing armies regardless of restriction. If I have an army setup that simply can't live without PFP...then I'll keep it.

I dont actually think PFP is AS critical to the function of drukhari as it used to be. As of now, a whole lot of the armies I play actually don't really gain much benefit from the T1 buff at all, the T2 buff is nice but not a deal-breaker, and the T3 buff tends to just be overkill honestly - wyches shred just fine on 3s to hit. But it would depend on the list I wanted to take. A unified, pan-drukhari list, I'd take PFP as my buff. A mono-cult or mono-coven, I'd probably take an army trait like Cursed Blade or Artists of Flesh.

The limitation on allies is simply that they usually don't benefit from your one army bonus. Given how loathe so many are to give up even doctrines from space marines, bringing a smash captain with no doctrine, no subfaction bonus, no relics, no trait doesn't seem particularly scary.

Did you miss that the ability to use a psychic phase prior to the turn beginning is optional? You can if you simply MUST have a buff on a particular unit before your opponent can target them, choose to take a pychic phase with your psykers effectively in the command phase - or, you could simply activate the squad your warlock is going to buff and activate him along side them for free, and use his full turn.

as for your opponent maybe being able to respond to things you do in the command phase during the battle round....isnt that the point of alternating activations, generally speaking? That you want to be able to respond rather than your opponent simply getting to enact their whole army's grand strategy for the turn with no recourse?

I know that a lot of the suboptimal stratagems and relics will be unfortunate casualties of the layer of simplification. For me, that's fine - I'm tired of the Yu-Gi-Oh trap card aspect of the game, and for me 3 is a sweet spot where I generally have 1-2 staple stratagems I never want to leave home without and 1-2 where I bake the use of them into the list by putting in a big old unit whose job is going to be using that stratagem.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Well, ultimately, 40k is a game between exactly 2 people - if you want to use my AA mechanic and literally nothing else, or simply modify what I wrote to suit you - 5 stratagems, 2 army traits, multiple relics...whatever, do so.

Absolutely fair.

I dont actually think PFP is AS critical to the function of drukhari as it used to be. As of now, a whole lot of the armies I play actually don't really gain much benefit from the T1 buff at all, the T2 buff is nice but not a deal-breaker, and the T3 buff tends to just be overkill honestly - wyches shred just fine on 3s to hit. But it would depend on the list I wanted to take. A unified, pan-drukhari list, I'd take PFP as my buff. A mono-cult or mono-coven, I'd probably take an army trait like Cursed Blade or Artists of Flesh.

See, and my experience has been that advance + charge is really critical to things like hellions and reavers, especially if I'm trying to use Eviscerating Flyby. And a (late-game) 5+ invul save makes a big difference too. I think this is one of several things in your proposal that seem like solid ideas; just not ideas that I'd be in favor of without some additional changes to support them.

The limitation on allies is simply that they usually don't benefit from your one army bonus. Given how loathe so many are to give up even doctrines from space marines, bringing a smash captain with no doctrine, no subfaction bonus, no relics, no trait doesn't seem particularly scary.

But see, under your proposal people will already be choosing between their doctrines and their chapter tactics, and I suspect they're going to lean towards the latter. So at that point, the only question is whether New Hotness X is more cost-efficient than In-Codex Unit Y (with a chapter tactic buff). So let's say, for discussion's sake, that dreadknights are just really powerful when splashed into other armies even without the Aegis or Tides of the Warp. Now we have dreadknights popping up in every list where previously the CP cost of extra detachments (and the loss of a doctrine-level rule) might have prevented that. If I play Salamanders and an imperial knight is more powerful than my doctrine, I'm going to be tempted to field a knight.

Did you miss that the ability to use a psychic phase prior to the turn beginning is optional? You can if you simply MUST have a buff on a particular unit before your opponent can target them, choose to take a pychic phase with your psykers effectively in the command phase

No, I got that. It just seems weird and artificial that my warlock suddenly has to stop moving, shooting, or swinging his sword to do his main thing. It doesn't really match the fluff, and it's mechanically awkward. If anything, it seems like defensive powers should just always be on; at least at the start of turn 1. And if psychic ability is only half the points cost of my exalted sorcerer, then getting his buffs off in advance means he's not utilizing his full points value.

- or, you could simply activate the squad your warlock is going to buff and activate him along side them for free, and use his full turn.

Except that, if my opponent is going first, I won't get to activate my warlock before my opponent has unloaded a storm of anti-shining spears guns into my pricey unit. And if I was counting on multiple psychic powers to protect them (say, Conceal from warlock A, Protect from warlock B, and Fortune from a farseer), then I'm still stuck choosing between not using my full defensive buffs or leaving my units' support psykers out of position.

It might be a way to intentionally reduce the power of psykers (which means you could reprice them accordingly), but it still seems weird narratively. Surely the warlock riding alongside my shining spears is keeping pace with and fighting alongside them while still focusing on keeping up his psychic protection. It's weird for him to hit the brakes and isolate himself while they speed ahead because he can't cast and drive at the same time. And even if you disagree with that last point, you can see how it disproportionately nerfs psykers that are good at non-psyker things over psykers who only cast.

as for your opponent maybe being able to respond to things you do in the command phase during the battle round....isnt that the point of alternating activations, generally speaking? That you want to be able to respond rather than your opponent simply getting to enact their whole army's grand strategy for the turn with no recourse?

I like being able to respond to my opponent's decisions. I just also want to feel like I get to use my own buffs too. I'm not sure the enemy having such perfect information about my overlord's commands that he instantly destroys my buffed doomsday ark is preferable to to both commanders getting full use of their commands. But I don't feel very strongly about this particular point. Maybe it would be better to simply ditch the command phase with this system and let commanders issue commands as they become relevant? So your commander is actively responding to the situation rather than having his orders directly countered. Could go either way on this one.

I know that a lot of the suboptimal stratagems and relics will be unfortunate casualties of the layer of simplification. For me, that's fine - I'm tired of the Yu-Gi-Oh trap card aspect of the game, and for me 3 is a sweet spot where I generally have 1-2 staple stratagems I never want to leave home without and 1-2 where I bake the use of them into the list by putting in a big old unit whose job is going to be using that stratagem.

Totally feel you on the trap card thing, and your hilarious signature illustrates that sentiment nicely. But you'd lose so much army personality from that change that I'd be tempted to play a previous edition rather than use your presented rules. Both would let me get away from the trap card mechanics and general overcomplexity, but I'd also be able to do fly-by attacks with my reavers and attack things with haywire grenades.

This is definitely a thing I'd be more okay with if you went through and converted some stratagems back into abilities/wargear. I'm all for having fewer "special moves" floating around in the game, and the stratagems you choose could even add more personality to your army. I just don't love the idea of saying goodbye to some really interesting abilities because "-1 to hit for the rest of the shooting phase" and "move after shooting" are too useful to give up.