Apostasy 40k

Hey I sent you an email. I can play test and number cranch can help with lore where I can.

>Is that not clear?
Purple prose, guy.

Something like this would be better:
A Warhammer 40,000 rulebook for players, by players.

Does anyone have the "leaked" 6th edition rulebook saved?
It's the one with a revamped phase system, to-hit modifiers for shooting, armour save modifiers, and such.

To get this kicked off. Has anyone read the Space Odin ork codex it's pretty good for balancing and adds a lot of the fun back to the codex. I think it would be a decent point to start for orkz rather then the mess that is the Canon codex.

>I need dedicated, passionate, fair-minded people with a knack for game design, number-crunching, fluff writing, or whatever other relevant skills you think you can bring to the table.

Not gonna find any of those here.

Plus if GW has proven anything, you need a degree in european history to make 40k games.

I think there is enough euro in Veeky Forums it could work and there haver been plenty of fan systems pumped out, most of them at least playable and often pretty good. "Veeky Forums gets shit done" was a catchphrase for years.

A word on rules design. The simpler something is, the less likely it is to be bent. Remember wound allocation in 3rd? The defending player rolled saves and pulled whatever models he liked. They had to write a rule for mixed armour save units but that's fine.
Combat took a little longer to resolve as model fought model, so you'd generally roll desperately against his specialists/sarge and collectively against scrubs.

City fight allowed you to treat combat wounds as shooting wounds which gave a great sense of units fighting units-characters becoming invincible until their unit died.

4th ed added torrent of fire/ blows which was fine, but removed the skirmish element of combat, giving us 'hidden powerfists' that could murder characters without retaliation .

5th added wound shenanigans and 6th tried to fix this with the current 'remove the closest' system, adding look out sir as a patch to keep Sarge from biting the dust in record time.

Decide whether you want unit on unit close combat or model on model, but don't settle for the hybrid we have now. Likewise with shooting, it's either unit on unit or 1500 pt kill team, not today's nonsense.

Personally,I would like to see the psychic phase get rolled back into the shooting phase. Make players have to chose weather to shoot or use powers. If not that,then at least reign in the psychic bs in this game.

And get rid of the random psychic power tables. That was one of the worst aspects of Warhammer Fantasy and it pissed me off to no end when they added it to 40k.

And while we're talking about shit that should have stayed in the Warhammer World, get rid of challenges.

Speaking of taking away random tables would warlord traits make sense to just pick 1 (or two in some cases) allowso more personalization and can specialize your strategy. Don't know if unbalanced

So what is this ?

Basically a player who wants to make a community ruleset that addresses many of the imbalances and inefficiencies of the current brb.

So basically a dozen "idea guys" who offer very little yet demand everyone follow their input, maybe three people who can churn out usable rules who will disappear after two weeks, and a 30% chance that the people who say they're going to playtest it will actually playtest it?

Well as with all projects Yeah this is kind of expected. I am kind of hoping for a Chapter Master scenario where we actually get something going. Maybe even dredge up something as good as 9th age. That's all I would need to make me happy.

If you want to succeed using community input you're going to have to make a list of what you feel needs to be addressed, separate them into categories of importance, and focus on them one at a time. Then you're going to need to closely examine the responses given and test the solutions before putting out your results and getting feedback.

Yeah I don't know what Azazeal has in mind and it sounds like he wants a decent overhaul of the system so it will probably start with basic rules then spread to codexes. At least that's how I would do it.

He's going to need some units, even just theoretical ones, in order to test the rules.

Well I mean then best place to start is the core troops of each codex. He mentioned using marines as a base but I think guardsmen would be easier. Since they are much more of an average then marines.
Speaking of AZ, where is he? He said 3-4 hours 4.5 hours ago.

most people who pay for models are too stupid to play at a fast enough pace for it to be fun. expect 8th edition to be app heavy supported to do all the math for you. even AOS is too complicated for some "enthusiast grade"

Alright, I'm home, give me a few moments to get situated and I'll start responding to messages.

Kill team up to medium skirmish games.

These rules will probably not be appropriate for overbloated things like Apocalypse.

It's appreciated, although that's one of the areas of my personal expertise a second eye is always helpful.

I'll check e-mails shortly, thanks.

I know the one you mean, I can (and probably will) dig it up at some point, but not until after we get some basics established.

I haven't gotten around to it yet, but I invited space odin to be our Ork representative since he seems at a glance to know what he's talking about.

Pessimists will be executed to preserve morale.

This, this is a very good post. I hope you sent me an e-mail. This is the sort of thing I want to discuss in-depth, and people who have been around for many editions of 40k history are the sort I'm primarily looking for.

Psychic powers will be addressed on an individual basis, but I like having a discrete psychic phase.

Random tables will definitely be a point of discussion. No promises one way or the other yet.

BLAM

This will be the first order of business once I've established my inner circle.

Correct.

True, once it comes time to start testing we'll need to do a shortlist of initial units to test small games (likely something like, one basic infantry squad, one specialized infantry squad, one light vehicle such as a dreadnought, the sort of stuff you'd see in a 2-player starter set like Dark Vengeance).

Those people are welcome to use official GW rules. This ruleset will not be catering to the lowest common denominator in order to sell models, it will be catering to the people dissatisfied with the official material that is already available.

Okay, anyone have questions or input? I'm going to go check my inbox now and see where we stand.

>inner circle.
>I like having a discrete psychic phase.
>Random tables will definitely be a point of discussion. No promises one way or the other yet.
DEAD ON ARRIVAL
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By inner circle I mean other designers whose opinions I trust. What would make this dead on arrival is trying to do the whole thing as a totally open public project on Veeky Forums with everyone and their dog throwing their shit into the pot.

Please elaborate your issues with the Psychic Phase and why you think it's bad for the game.

>black templar rulebook cover
>probably a templar/imperial player himself from the opening dialogue
>obviously biased
i'll pass

Newfriend, it's the cover from the core rulebook of 3rd edition.

I play almost all races to some extent, but primarily Tyranids. Calling me an Imperial player is hilarious.

Furthermore, the point of assembling a whole team here is to find a representative for each Faction to make sure they are all treated equally and balanced appropriately.

its rather later but as i am somewhat interested and have thought about it already, without ever having enough motivation for pulling it off myself.

A) You will want a serious development model, to differentiate your attempt from those that failed before you

For that I suggest a 3-stage model, where every set of changes is judged against the stages in the order presented. Furthermore changes in a higher stage, demand a new judgement of all rules of all stages below.

STAGE ONE: Clarify what you want to attempt. May sound idiotic at first but helps to get your goals straight without loosing sight of it.

Examples from me:
I want a quick to use ruleset.
That means all rules have to be used without much calculation involved or with paying detailed attention to the model placement. Furthermore it *limits* the amount of possible modifiers and state of the models for the players to keep in mind.

A good system limits force multipliers
Force multipliers enable units to do more then they should and become a major balancing problem as it makes all-powerful units thus neglecting every other army composition or playstyle. I suggest only a single active buff at a time. (Synergizes with keeping track of less)

Every unit should have exploitable drawbacks, no allround super units. High point cost is not a drawback per se. An example SMs artificer armor captain on bike has the best armor save and the best mobility making it better then termi or normal powerarmored captains with minimal drawbacks.

STAGE TWO
Work on the general rules, not looking at the individual codices.

Examples from me:

Force Composition
Keep in mind you can alter the game drastically by choosing way more terrain or different scenarios rather then the standard 2 armies meet on a 25% covered battlefield.
Therefore I suggest different templates for different army tasks and scenarios, like breakthrough or recon or hold the line. The armies should then be chosen/adapted to the scenario and terrain

Please send me an e-mail so we can continue to correspond, this is the sort of input I am looking for. Thanks.

That means players will have to agree on a scenario-type other then Standard-GW beforehand if they do not have a broader selection of models at hand.

FOC with Ally system further uses
Use a normal FOC similar to 6th edition, with allies enabled, however no formations.
Going with the idea above the allied force could be a different kind of force, like a small unit of Sisters guarding an object with an IG detachment coming to reinforce. That also means the smaller force should draw their HQ from different codex entries to avoid stuff like chapter master Azrael and his DA force of 5 marines in a Razorback.
Good examples are secondary leader units like techpriests hospitaller veteran seargents.These also immediatly set a story if desired.

Squad leaders should lead the squads.
Currently all the do is giving one more body with slightly advanced stats and a different wargear. What I want is something they actually exist for, an minimal set of IG-like orders, for their own squad, giving it among others the ability to fire at two different targets with different weapons as many weapons are useless against say a vehicle.

Simplified damage system for vehicles
I honestly like the AoS approach, where wounded big-things get worse in combat. 40ks current vehicle system is doing that, but very cumbersome to use and makes them worse then MCs. What I suggest for normal vehicles and monstrous creatures is simply worse stats when below 50% hullpoints/wounds. That penalizes both but making it easy to track.
For Superheavy-Gargantuan I want something more in line with current vehicle rules. They have so much more impact that seeing them falling apart slowly by continued damage is more important than a landspeeder. (IIRC the vehicle system comes from a time where smaller armies and only a few vehicles were the norm, giving them a status similar to current superheavies)

Just wanting to get some of it out here for opinions. Its almost morning here in europe.

sorry its unstructured etc. I never made an approach and have it only on my mind.

That's fine, the point of this thread isn't to hammer out all the fine details, it's to recruit the people to form the team who are going to do that moving forward.

[email protected]

STAGE THREE

--Before anything else, check the point systems, gw is very inconsistent both with pricing similar equipment and especially with exchanging weapons. For example adding a TL lascannon costs usually 25pts, but exchanging the dread mulimelta with one also costs 25 even though the MM is already paid for.--

Playstyle explained.
Ofc different armies should play differently, but I like to give certain themes to armies on whic h they should be oriented. Like light armored fast troopers.

[What I forgot in StageII GW currently lacks anything to model defenses for lightly armored agile units, making a guardian as durable as a clumsy guardsman)

Basic Troops
I know this wil be met with the most resistance but troops should be basic, not bikes or termis, except in special scenarios to have even a change at getting similar stuff. I open for different opinions, ofc.

Weapon Loadout
Many units, especially basic units have a SM-style non-standard weapon allowance, i.e. one special and one heavy. However unlike SM they cannot split making them rather useless to take a heavy weapon as it keeps them from advancing. This needs to change, a good idea is to allow a CSM style double special weapons instead and a seperate formation for more heavies.

Ease of adaption
Because of GWs writing all gamers have an existing stock of models with certain loadouts while alternative weapons lie useless in bitzboxes. While I agree to make these alternative weapons useful, current GW-Style armies should be useable without tearing them of and exchanging them. Furthermore I am in favor of an available weapon loadout that is completly doable with current GW kits, so no invention of new guns. However GWs current the-weapon-is-not-in-the-box-so-they-cannot-equip-it is similarly bad, so if you need the scourges box to get your DE venom blade for the archon, it should be ok.
All currently barely useful wargear should be listed so we have a list of stuff with which to fill gaps.

Guardians do actually have defenses over gaurdsman, with battle focus.

What I also like is to reshuffle the alliance matrix

For example CSM should be either codex CSM for the guy who have spent considerable time in the warp and codex SM for new-traitors with organisation and equipment similar to loyalists. But they can ally with each other.

--This will make IG everybodies bitches, yes---
Especially the IG can be tau-aligned; genestealer-aligned etc, so I suggest splitting it in two, a core for PDF or real guard and a special guard-only section for the rare stuff that require a real guard army.

all allies are set to AoC to prevent ally sheaningans like boarding transports or repairing stuff that aint theirs. No SM chapter would allow a mere IG-techpriest to lay hand on the landraider.This also eases balancing by limiting the amount of options

There is some other stuff like integrating an app for mission generation, rules for being in a house, and a makin a website(with accounts!) for users to rate the changes, but i am too tired to think straight.

I'm in. I can co-op with people in making Orks; I can also proofread & cross-reference, having no small experience in academia.

Good to hear. There seems to be no shortage of people offering to help manage Orks. Not that I can blame you folks you certainly have reason.

I do need reps for the other Factions, though. Interested parties step up.

(And Odin don't forget to drop me an email).

Brevity is crucial in rules texts. Even the front cover, for instance, could be improved by slight alteration. For example, the subtitle under 'The Rules' could be shortened to, "Alternate Rules for Warhammer 40,000."

Although you lose the fluffy flavour, remember that this is still the front-cover: you want quick information. In addition, despite the font being cool, it is quite difficult to read, especially at its current size.

If you used "Alternate Rules for Warhammer 40,000," you could just outright remove the 'The Rules' text altogether.

>Kill team up to medium skirmish games.

So up to 20 maybe 30 models ?

Because if you want something that deals with multiple squads like the game right now you'll need completely different mechanics that concentrate on said squads instead of single fighters.

I sent you an email, I've been developing my own miniatures game for a number of years I intend to publish so I consider myself reasonably well versed in the genre

>Every unit should have exploitable drawbacks, no allround super units. High point cost is not a drawback per se. An example SMs artificer armor captain on bike has the best armor save and the best mobility making it better then termi or normal powerarmored captains with minimal drawbacks.

That just means that model pricing is complete horseshit. Cost of the model should be more or less proportional to its (Attack + Mobility)*(Defense). So a marine on a bike should cost much more than terminator if it has same defensive capabilities, similar offensive capabilities and moves a lot faster.

High point cost is most definitely a drawback. A single unit that costs 3-400 points, but gets bogged down by a unit costing 1/4th as much for 2-3 turns is a huge hit to your army.

The problem with super units isn't that they're super, it's that you get more than your points worth out of them

Players of certain high tier armies are going to have a hard time adopting a rule set which may see them on a level playing field with currently low tier lists. Even more so, players of these armies may accuse the creators of said rule set of being too heavy handed with their codex, and site that as a reason that no one else should adopt it.

How do we mitigate this? Is there some formula that can be shown to display that these rules and codices were modified with fairness in mind?

>A single unit that costs 3-400 points, but gets bogged down by a unit costing 1/4th as much for 2-3 turns is a huge hit to your army.
This shouldn't happen in the first place because there shouldn't be units that cost that much in the first place.

Remember when a Landraider was the most expensive vehicle in the game at 250 points?

why shouldn't it happen? what about a unit costing a lot makes it gamebreaking?

People should be able to play units with fun or awesome rules, or units that are damn near unkillable. The problem isn't that these units exist, its that you get too much bang for your points.

Shit like the riptide is fine, it just needs to have a cost that reflects how good it is. 180 is way too cost effective for a unit that can tank as many shots, and deal as much damage as it can.

Same with Smashfucker. A unit can never be "too good" only "too good for its cost."

I mean, I'm the type of guy that thinks superheavies and flyers shouldn't be in the game at all, so

That's fine. I can respect your opinion, but there are plenty who like them.

It would be fine to have a list system that prohibits SH/GC under a certain size (1500-1750).

That said, it's not impossible to price said units so that they aren't game breaking.

Imagine if a WraithKnight cost 500 points? Sure, it would still be a beast of a unit, but a player would lose 1/3 of his army in a 1500 point game if someone killed it.

Same with flyers. A 300 point Stormtalon starts to look like a liability when you don't have enough viable targets for it.

>The problem with super units isn't that they're super, it's that you get more than your points worth out of them

That means you priced them wrong or opposing player sucks relatively to you at playing the game.

Let's take abstract example:

-Guardsman 1 Offense, 1 Defense and 1 Mobility so his cost will be (1+1)*1 = 2
-Marine 2 Offense, 2 Defense and 2 Mobility = 8

-Assault flyer 4 Offense, 4 Defense and 10 Mobility = 56
-AA-gun truck 5 Offense, 2 Defense and 4 Mobility = 18

Assault flyer can easily destroy AA-gun truck if it can make a jump on it. But for the points it costs you can have 2 anti-air guns and still have some spare change for other units. And considering that AA guns can have some penalties against land units it may be even cheaper.

On the other hand your Assault Flyer can easily attack anywhere on the battlefield giving you advantage when needed which AA-gun just can't deliver.

Well OP you've got my interest. Here are some design questions for the thread at large:

How do you make close combat not suck?
How do you make footslogging infantry not suck?
How do you get the game to shy away from big scary mega-units and back to a more interesting scale?
How do you make Chaos marines and Spess marines feel sufficiently different while keeping them balanced?
How do you make unit pricing more standardized?

that's more or less what I'm saying.

A unit can't really be too good, it can only be too cost effective.

>How do you make close combat not suck?
Change overwatch, allow melee based units better charge range, allow some units to charge when deep striking.
>How do you make footslogging infantry not suck?
allow certain units to "run" in the assault phase as well as the shooting phase. Give units that run in the shooting or assault phases a cover save similar to jinking (SERPENTINE!)
>How do you get the game to shy away from big scary mega-units and back to a more interesting scale?
Better pricing of certain units and upgrades, as well as streamlining rules to prevent certain rule interactions.
>How do you make Chaos marines and Spess marines feel sufficiently different while keeping them balanced?
Pricing. Also balancing melee so its equally as effective as shooting.
>How do you make unit pricing more standardized?
Testing/Math. Everything should be priced based on a scale, and then playtested to see if the numbers add up.

>Change overwatch, allow melee based units better charge range, allow some units to charge when deep striking.
>allow certain units to "run" in the assault phase as well as the shooting phase. Give units that run in the shooting or assault phases a cover save similar to jinking (SERPENTINE!)

It all looks like placebo. Trying to make something shitty work with special rules even though you can see that there is problems on the basic level.

Why changes to Overwatch when you know that base problem is the whole turn structure that allows one player to use all of his range units in concert to cripple enemy army ?

Why adding special rules when you want to have different movement ranges for models instead of adding movement stat ?

what would you do user?

Changes to turn sctructure is a first thing that needs to be done. Either simple alternate activations or some variant of initiative control where players make bids/roll to see who acts first with more chances to win if they use smaller part of their army.

And movement definitely needs a movement stat. So that there is no so many different special rules for speed. Save special movement rules for different movement modes like foot/wheels/flying/etc.

I'm in favor of the turn structure changing.

Not sure how a movement stat would work.

Maybe don't call your edition after the worst time in Imperial history besides the Horus Heresy itself? A time that ended up with the apostate getting his head cut off and his name cursed for all eternity?

Same way other stats work.

Example:

Guardsman 4" / foot
Marines 6" / foot
Eldar Banshee 7" / foot

>Marines 5"
This is the problem with Veeky Forums. Maringe wank.

Also if you don't know how insane 2 extra inches is you better check yourself.

Just do it old style.

Squats 3"
Human/Marines/Orks/everything 4"
Eldar 5"

how does running work then?
just a flat movement in the shooting phase? or is it still a dice roll?

I rather like the way Infinity does it's movement.

X-Y

You move X with your first move, Y with your second move. So a guy in heavy armour moves 4-2 because he's not really that much slower at a walk but he's going to not be able to sprint as fast. While the scout moves 4-4 or even in some rare cases 6-4.

That is just an example. Also if it is priced accordingly to benefits it is not a problem.

What shooting phase if turn structure changed to some non-phase and not IGOUGO variant ? There is no shooting phase.

So yes running/charging is just additional movement. You can even have split movement stat one for normal walking and one for running.

Example:

Guardsman 4" / 4" (Move / Run)
Marine 4" / 6"
Eldar 5" / 7"

stuff like that is why I made suggestions earlier. It simply does not scale, you should not have to move 50 or 100 miniatures twice or keeping in mind which of your 10+ units did what earlier. Also activation does not really work on the scale either.

You move them once. Why do you move them two times ? You choose to move them 4" or 8" depending on if you run or not.

Activation works if you activate whole squads and don't try to fiddle with TLoS.

There is not much difference between activating one model and activating 1 squad. It takes more time to move the squad but you will always have this problem cause there is more models.

I kinda like that. The two speeds but do them as 1 activation. Drop a "Run Token" next to that squad to show they're booking it and can't shoot if they get activated again in the same turn (if you let that even be a thing).
Kinda neat.

Not OP; still trying

>How do you make close combat not suck?
one idea I toyed around with is to change rapidfire back to its 5th edition or similar where you only shoot half as much when moved. Goes against not having to keep track of things, but this limits the incoming firepower.
Also charging out of vehicles should be allowed.

>How do you make footslogging infantry not suck?
Your picture implies Orks aka melee footslogging infantry. The big problem with melee footsloggers is actually that a shooting army can increase the distance by killing the guys infront first. Maybe a rule to be allowed to take casualities from the back.
Other than that, they are not protected like mechanised infantry, only by using cover. That means ignore cover hurts them more. This rule should not be handed out like candy.

>How do you get the game to shy away from big scary mega-units and back to a more interesting scale?
Maybe switching to a percentage system aka troops min 25% so your troop selection isnot covered by 2*5 dudes. Other than that, i am not against limiting stuff. However too much into that direction makes the game not really better.

>How do you make Chaos marines and Spess marines feel sufficiently different while keeping them balanced?
You don't. In the end both are marines and should play like marines.
>How do you make unit pricing more standardized?
I believe that a wealth of experience is already there, people know which units are too good or too bad. However rule changes might alter that, so its not a process that can easily be streamlined.

IMHO Infinity style multiple activations per turn don't work on 40K scale. Not from fluff or game point.

So one activation per unit only. That way you can make all actions in one go and be done with it. Drop a coloured dice or some other marker on a unit to not forget that you used it.

Problem with unit by unit is that these allow a far greater amount to disturb your opponent by using irrelevant units first and the important stuff later. Futhermore what about units in non-dedicated vehicles, or when you move an IC out of a unit?
Also the amount of units differs greatly. The only compromise between IGoYouGo and individual units I came up with is to split the army into two parts, first you move the first 900points then your opponent his first 900 or so then you your second half.

Furthermore you have the board covered in markers.

>Problem with unit by unit is that these allow a far greater amount to disturb your opponent by using irrelevant units first and the important stuff later.

Depends on if splitting fire/charges is allowed or not. If squads can split their fire trash units become much less attractive. They still will be used and it will be a viable tactic though. But I don't see how it is bad - walls of throwaway soldiers is a golden standard of 40K fluff.

You can also counter it by combining 1 activation per unit with bidding/orders. So lets say at the start of the turn each player declares how many orders they want to use (3-5 or some other number) and then roll to see who goes first.

Now you'll need to allocate finite number of activations on your turn to units and meat-grind worthy units become really bad for using orders on them.

But say you can do group activations where all units given order must do similar actions - trash units now can be moved in unison but will become unwieldy with parts of group constantly getting out in the open field due to movement or not being able to shoot cause there is no targets.

>Futhermore what about units in non-dedicated vehicles, or when you move an IC out of a unit?

Don't see a difference between dedicated/non-dedicated vahicles in activation play. You price embark/disembark in actions and enforce it. It can cost all movement for a vehicle or just it's "run" or any other action depending on vehicle.

Movement of IC should more depend on how you want them to feel - as part of an army or as a free roaming face smasher. In the second case if they are attached to a unit you get 2 activations for the price of one and what IC does is for player to decide.

Turn system revamp:

At the beginning of each turn, both players roll for initiative/seize as per current rules.
Player who wins rolls 1d6. This is the psychic warp charge pool for the turn.
Game turn has 2 phases.
Reserves: All units from reserves come in during this phase, as per current reserve deployment rules.
Battle: The player who won initiative activates a unit. Each unit has 3 mini-phases: Move, Shoot and assault.
In the movement phase, the player can only move his unit, up to the unit's movement stat.
In the shoot phase, the player can A. Have the models fire their weapons/Have psykers use their abilities or B. Sacrifice their shooting to move (up to their movement stat).
(A unit containing psykers can both shoot and use psychic abilities on a per model basis, a model can not both shoot and use psychic abilites. Denying the witch uses warp charges from the deniers warp charge pool)
Assault: Unless a unit arrived from deep strike that turn, it may A. assault, again, up to it's movement stat or B. Move up to its movement stat.

A unit being assaulted may choose to fire overwatch as per current rules. Any other units that are allowed to fire overwatch may also do so provided they have not already fired that turn. Any unit that fires overwatch loses it's ability to fire that turn.

A unit that enters close combat stays in close combat. When either player activates a unit currently in close combat, the combat is resolved using current rules, and both units end their turn.

Finally: in the event of one player possessing a larger number of units than the other player, once the player with the smaller number of units has activated and performed actions with all of his units for each additional unit that his opponent activates, he may perform a "reaction". he may make one movement with any model, up to it's movement stat. No other actions are allowed.

Thoughts?

Blah.

This is meant to be each player activates a unit, alternating back and forth.

The reaction move should be per unit,not model.

That sounds good to me apart from the reaction. Usually in alternating activations a player with less units than their opponent just has the option to pass while their opponent has more activations left than them

I figured it would give the person with fewer units left the ability to react to his opponent. Might give the losing player a foothold to stage a comeback.

Or it may not be necessary at all.

In a good balanced system it hopefully wouldn't be necessary. Also, would overwatch shots be taken as snap shots? The only thing I'm not sure about is that melee troops have to go through a lot of attacks before they get their attacks in such as their opponent's shooting, overwatch, and then even get to attack them in close combat as well

Wrath of Kings uses no orders simple alternate activations and to balance armies with highly different number of units uses simple rule - you can have only one more activation than your opponent per turn.

So if your opponent has 10 units and you 20 and he uses 10 activations to use them all you can do 11 activations. Or maybe player with 20 units has 2 big groups and uses only 2 activations on his turn than fist player will get only 3 activations.

Don't think it's a good idea to pile up so many things with overwatch and reaction moving. It's much better to hammer out turn sequence and action part of the rules so that they are not needed.

so I take only a few expensive units and the opponent cannot use half his army?

Thing that I think makes wrath of kings so different though is that it's a skirmish level game with individual activations of figures (I think you can activate 3 at a time at most) rather than squads of units. It might work for something like kill team but I don't think it would work for squads

No, because you can make a group activation. Depending on what restrictions you put on it (or don't put on it) you can activate whole army in single turn even if it will be not as effective as activating each unit one by one.

That one elite unit can fly forward killing someone and than get ganged up by multiple enemies from all sides.

It's also a good role for your HQ and subcommanders. Using them as centerpieces for group activations.

This is just silly. The little bit of text at the bottom of the cover is not rules text, it's akin to the "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war" blurb. Flavour is the entire point of this project. The lack of flavour is exactly why all other projects of this style feel hollow and ultimately fail.

>Players of certain high tier armies are going to have a hard time adopting a rule set which may see them on a level playing field with currently low tier lists. Even more so, players of these armies may accuse the creators of said rule set of being too heavy handed with their codex, and site that as a reason that no one else should adopt it.
>How do we mitigate this? Is there some formula that can be shown to display that these rules and codices were modified with fairness in mind?
We make sure that, all balance changes aside, there are enough changes focussed on fun and interesting gameplay to keep them engaged.

>How do you make close combat not suck?
By giving melee units the proper tools to get stuck in. The restriction on no assault from Reserves/Deep Strike needs to go in an era where Overwatch exists.

>How do you make footslogging infantry not suck?
By adding appropriate weaknesses to bikes and letting infantry benefit better from cover.

>How do you get the game to shy away from big scary mega-units and back to a more interesting scale?
New model for list building requirements, limitations and restrictions. New objective capturing mechanics.

>How do you make Chaos marines and Spess marines feel sufficiently different while keeping them balanced?
That's a very long topic to address but I have a lot of ideas about that.

>How do you make unit pricing more standardized?
The nature of a points system in a game with this many different units is that it simply has to be done with a lot of care. There's no magic formula or algorithm to perfectly calculate the right amount of points for anything.

Oh, I agree with the general sentiment here.

Movement and alternate activation will both be the first things looked at.

It's not named after that particular Apostasy anymore than "40k Heretical Edition" is named after the specific Horus Heresy. It's just Apostatical in general.

>That means ignore cover hurts them more. This rule should not be handed out like candy.
Oh, yeah, this will definitely be addressed. The amount of nonsensical Ignores Cover in the game is absurd. Outside of things like template weapons, it should only be -1 modifiers to cover.

There are some good ideas here, but some I disagree with as well.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but reminder that the point of this thread is just to find the people who want to dedicate themselves to the project, so if you want to contribute after this thread is dead make sure you e-mail me.

I want to contribute to this project, though i don't know how much i could help; while i own and have played with many armies, i barely played 7th ed and have few opportunities to do so now.
I also lack any game design experience, though i could create a german translation if something ever comes out of this project.

>So basically Veeky Forums

Yes.

>modifiers
Oh but that's nearly math!

Impossible barrier for former 40k players.

Veeky Forums has a pretty low 'abandoned project' rate compared to both online forums, kickstarter and proffessional publishers though
Not everything needs to actially become a thing, not everyone will contribute evenly and Veeky Forums got lots done in the past

i rewrote that midway through without rereading
my bad

Veeky Forums gets lots 75% done, then splits the teams, revamps from the 20% mark and the project turns to tunnel-visioned solo efforts/directionless soggy stuff noone can be bothered critiquing let alone playing.

Or it might just be me, saturdays don't agree with me.

>t. Games Workshop Design Studio

In all seriousness, there will need to be in-depth discussion about exactly how crunchy we want the system to be and where we can trim the fat and streamline. But modifiers need to make a comeback, this all or nothing crap is way too prevalent.

It is for this reason that I am doing this project a bit differently than most Veeky Forums projects are handled, by setting up a group through e-mail and moving to a less ephemeral medium for long-term discussion.

Also, I know saying this is going to rub some people the wrong way, but while I will make every attempt to be as fair and openly accommodating to criticisms and debate as possible, I'm going to retain final say on everything that makes it into the end product, because not having a single lead designer with the ability to call those shots will stall a project in development hell forever.

Idd, just compulsively playing devils advocate.

I'm shit as far a original ideas or drive so I doubt I'm core team material, but I do solid work making separate chunks of crunch fit together snugly, as well a polish and clarification.

Good to hear, a solid framework to build on is important as fuck.

>by setting up a group through e-mail and moving to a less ephemeral medium for long-term discussion

And what medium will it be ? Skype/teamspeak or something similar ?

Damn mobile device ate my post.

I was planning to do it on a forum, rather than something like skype, as its easier for people to go back and read discussions they missed so that we don't need to worry about timezones or schedules.