I'd like to be more helpful than negative. If a sub-goal was to get the current rules with official modifications together, I would help. I won't if it goes directly to changes from that. That's not "take my ball and go home", but I wouldn't be much help if it was a goal I didn't have.

In the meantime, I've completely got excited about the rules again. My wife and I were going to try a game with just war engines (to remind me about them) recently, but weren't able to. Maybe this afternoon or evening.

andy

Ravensburg,
I really like the way you extended the Space Marine abilities! I know a lot of attack bikes verse assault bikes seemed to be just the designers going "Ok, we have an assault version and now we need a firing version" and leaving it at that.

Hi, where can I download these new stats?

_________________
Little legions, my blog http://stevenkelly1.blogspot.com/

yorkie read through Ravensberg's post on the previous page and look for the clickable word "here" in the How paragraph this leads you to the new stats.

_________________
Vanguard Miniatures

Link, http://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/

Stockist of:

Vanguard Miniatures
BattleGroup Helios
Onslaught Miniatures
Pyrkol Gaming Markers
Gregster's Lab
Microworld Games
Troublemaker Games

Hey guys,

Sorry for not posting this week end as i promise. I live in Paris and with the recent events it was complicated.

So,

I told you that I had something to suggest regarding the Assault phase which I think is the most problematic sequence in E40K.

Let's start by identifying the main griefs players had about this phase:
- The resolution order of an assault. It is the result of the battle that determine the casualties and not the casualties who determine the results of a battle. I must admit it's not very intuitive and leads to strange situations where a detachment who suffer more casualties during a close combat may win.

- The firefight. Many seems to think that the impact of a firefight is not strong enough, knowing that in most case you only remove 1 casualties.

- I would add this strange rule that doesn't allow detachment in assault to go away from the closest enemy detachment. I will explain later why this rule may cause broken situations.

And now, the suggested solutions:

The resolution order:

What i suggest is a big change for this phase. I'm not sure it's the best way to improve the "resolution order" as I tested this modification only once. (But there was no obvious problem during the test)

- During an assault, just as before, you keep adding all the assault value of all your units that are engage in close combat and 1 for each unit at 15cm of an enemy.

My goal with this change is to keep as mush feature of the game as i could.

- Once this is done you check the firepower table, The attacker roll a number of dices corresponding of the first column and the defender roll a number of dice corresponding of the second column.

I think it's a good thing to give an advantage to the assaulting player as it's currently really harder to get at close range rather than camping with a detachment on lock-on order in a cover.

- Then, both players may allocate damage to enemy unit engage in close combat. Each dice allocated must of course match the armor of the target. (Don't remove the casualties right now)

Many players think it's strange that units no longer benefits from their armor during assault, this solve the problem.

- The remaining hits may be allocated by both players to enemy units in a 5 cm range of a surviving engaged units.

This representing units in close combat performing a break-thought in enemy line. This also prevent players from packing units in a detachment in order to protect important units by making them not accessible from the attacker.

- Remove casualties from both side.

- After this, each players roll a die and add the bonuses of this modified close combat table:
. Enemy has 5 or more BM: +1
. Enemy has more BM: +1
. Own side has more surviving psyker: +1
. More casualties on the opponent side: +1
. Twice More casualties on the opponent side: +2
. Triple More casualties on the opponent side: +3
. Quadruple More casualties on the opponent side: +4

I really think we should keep this table. Also, one downside of this modified system is that psyker are less effective as they can be destroy before the final resolution.

- The higher score win the assault, place BM on the enemy, the enemy is broken and must flee at more than 15 cm of enemy units.

Well, that's it for this alternative assault phase resolution. There's must be some small tweaks to do if we decide to follow this modification. For example, an ability like Rampage doesn't work anymore.
This modification implies that most swarms units with low armor will suffer a huge disadvantage during assault as their losses will directly impact the battle result. I tried to counter balance this by giving the attacker the benefits of using the first column on the firepower table.

The firefights:

As I said many players seems to think that firefight should have more impact regarding casualties they inflicts. I think that firefight should remain something that push enemy away from a position and not a way to annihilate detachment. Main reason for this is that units with high firepower get enough benefits of it during the shooting phase. This being said, I admit that one casualties max is very low and may be sometimes frustrating and not very realistic.

I have 2 suggestions regarding firefights:
1) A simple solution could be to keep rules as they are except regarding the casualties removal. I suggest the following modification:
- If a player win a firefight by 1 or 2 points of difference, the opponent get 1 hit and 1 BM
- If a player win a firefight by 3 or 4 points of difference, the opponent get 2 hit and 2 BM
- If a player win a firefight by 5 points of difference or more, the opponent get 3 hit and 3 BM

2) Another solution which I prefer would be to keep the rules as they are but allow the defeated player to pass a leadership test after taking a hit and a blast marker. If the defeated player manage to pass this test, another round of firefight start immediately.

I prefer the second option because it's very simple and it add some tension by giving the player the choice to make another round of firefight. Also, it give more importance to leadership test which is a good thing.


That's all for today, please let me know what you think about all this.

Ravensburg

Ravensburg,
Let me say that I really like the second rule for firefights. A one line change can add a lot, it seems.

I, personally, prefer the old system of one dice roll with modifiers but I'll try your version out sometime this week. I think the attacker should get a bonus for the assault but I think a column shift is too much or at least if the defender is on Overwatch there should be no shift to the right.

In terms of organization, what I've seen other forums do is make individual topics for each mechanic. So if you want to move the project forward, you can do that to get specific feedback on what people would like changed and what works?

@ Ravensberg, personally I feel the changes you suggest for the CC phase are not neccesary and will over complicate the phase especially with your suggestion of multiple FF too. Using the firepower table was another thing that players didn't like about the game so introducing using it for CC resolution as well will not fix that particular problem. I much preferred the changes made by myself and yorkie that kept the phase as close to the original as possible and looked to speed it up by deleting the seperate FF phase altogether.

The CC phase is supposed to represent an entire game of 40k and should be decisive and casualty heavy with the loosing detachment pretty much out of the fight.

Anyway as I said i'm not convinced your suggested modifications are really needed but that's just my personal view of course.

Over to you.

_________________
Vanguard Miniatures

Link, http://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/

Stockist of:

Vanguard Miniatures
BattleGroup Helios
Onslaught Miniatures
Pyrkol Gaming Markers
Gregster's Lab
Microworld Games
Troublemaker Games

Thanks for the feebacks guys, I must admit your right about mixing the firefight and the close combat.

During my last game we came to ridiculous situations regarding the firefight with the classic rules. And my suggestion about allowing multiple rounds of FF is not sufficient to fix the problem.

Anyway, i highly recommend testing those rules:

- Players add the assault value of all units engage in close combat with the firepower of all units at 15 cm of an enemy unit with a line of sight on it and have at least 1 firepower
- Assaulting player compare the total with the first column on the firepower table if he got an assault order. If not he then compare the total with the second column
- Defending player compare the total with the second column on the firepower table
- Players roll to hit dice and allocate hits to engaged units first
- Players may then allocate remaining hits to enemy units at 15 cm of a surviving unit.
- After this, each players roll a die and add the bonuses of this modified close combat table:
. Enemy has 5 or more BM: +1
. Enemy has more BM: +1
. Own side has more surviving psyker: +1
. More casualties on the opponent side: +1
. Twice More casualties on the opponent side: +2
. Triple More casualties on the opponent side: +3
. Quadruple More casualties on the opponent side: +4

Also:
- Imperial guard/Grotz/Termagants/Cultist get the swarm attribute. You must destroy 2 units with the swarm attribute in order to count it as a casualties during an assault.
- Remove the close combat attribute.

Beside this you will find "HERE" the Updated Imperium list I'm working on with a lot of new units to fit more with the current fluff and add more flavors than the existing official lists.

You will find a first draft of an updated list for Orks "HERE" that follow the same logic.

PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL ALTERATIONS OF THE STATS BY ATTRIBUTES ARE DIRECTLY MODIFY IN THE STATS OF THE UNITS.

When you see a unit who have an armor of X.X the first digit is the armor rating and the second is the damage capacity.

Also, THIS is the current rules ammendements recaps we're playing with.

All of this is of course WIP, there's no work on graphic presentation, just concept for now.

All feedbacks will be welcome.

Thanks guys.

PS: And yes maybe you are right Kevin, I should make a specific post for each rule modification. But I have to make deeper tests of all those new mechanics in order to be sure that what I suggest is solid enough.

After having read through the rules I am quite interested in this version of epic.

As a player looking to get into this version (Epic3) for the first time the thing that I most want to see, and the thing that most people in this thread have said should be done first is compile the official rules and amendments into one document.

Once that is done optional rules such as the ones proposed above and faq's could be added to the document (like the "optional rule" text boxes in NetEpic Gold), but I believe that the first step should be compiling things together, even if there is general consensus that something needs fixing. Changes to the core rules should come later. Resources (i.e. people's time) should first be devoted to getting the rules compiled.

I am willing to help if anyone wants to delegate some tasks to me.

_________________
.'.
http://ragged-they-kill.blogspot.com.au/

Nevermind.

1) Did a game yesterday with the assault rules I suggested earlier and it didn't worked very well...

Those rules gave me the feeling to play another shooting phase during the assault phase... Too mush casualties, and they don't give me the specific feeling of playing a 40K game as they said it was their intention in the rule book. It was not horrible, but it was clearly not a clean and elegant rule set.

2) I did another game 4 days ago. Using the official firefight rules. As I said it was ridiculous. I manage to engage in firefight a huge 500 pts space marine detachment with a huge 650 pts Orks kult of speed detachment. It was very long and tedious to move all those units in position. I took a lots of BM but manage to move during the assault by playing a fate card to automatically pass a leadership test. It was visually quite impressive. Then come the resolution, I lost the FF... took 1 hit and 1 BM then flee away with tons of units. I miss English vocabulary to explain how it was frustrating in terms of gameplay and disappointing visually speaking. It didn't reflect at all the situation, not even by far, even with an unimaginable amount of abstraction acceptance. It feel so broken it's even worse than playing 40K with the current edition.

3) We tried to make a game with the rules tweaked by moredakka and Yorkie, but sadly there might be a thing or 2 we didn't understand that prevent us from making a game with those rules. Let me explain:
- You remove the FF.
- You don't allow unit to move closer than 15 cm to other units except during the assault phase.
- During assault all units that are not engage just bring +1 FP support.
So, what is the point of having all those Eldar infantry with 2 FP at 15 cm or a wraithguard with AT at 15cm? Other units from Chaos and Tyranids suffer the same problem.

Second problem:
- It seems that every units in each detachment may bring their support during an assault.
This lead to strange unrealistic situation where a unit at 60 cm (90 cm for infiltrators) from the assault may still bring their support.

4) Finally there's those EA rules for assault that are not bad, but it would requires so many change to adapt them to E40K that the risk of denaturing the game is too damn high.

I'm quite embarrassed with those assault rules...


Thanks Matty for proposing your help. There's already an existing document that tried to compile all the Erratas and rules called the E40K battlebible that can be found at the following address: https://fr.scribd.com/doc/7027472/Epic- ... ttle-Bible

The good news is that it contains all the rewriting work, the bad one is that it seems the latest amendments, FAQs and Erratas are not include.

Ravensburg

Awesome mate. Thanks for that. I hadn't seen that link before. It may not have all the updates in it but it's a start!

_________________
.'.
http://ragged-they-kill.blogspot.com.au/

I think we have to ask what the original firefighting was supposed to accomplish and what we want it to accomplish. I think that it was originally to create low-intensity conflict and a way to keep action fluid + benefit smaller units.

Thinking more on this, I think it was definitely a way to keep the enemy from getting too comfortable behind entrenchments and allow for some kind of action without it being too decisive. I've noticed that games of Epic 40k aren't static, they move around the board and soon devolve into mobs of units beating up each other. I think this contributes.

You could fold it into the assault phase and let players use the roll-off method of the assault mechanic.

Hi!

I just got my account activated, and I just wanted to say that I'm very interested in this project. Personally I think that the starter point should be a recopilation of all the official stuff in one easier to use repository before delving into more complicated (and easier to have disagreements over) endeavours like rules changes.

I've started to compile all the units from all the official sources I have access to, which are the core ruleset, the 4 Firepower magazine pdfs, the Orks third wave pdf and the Vehicle Variants documents. I've also tried to add to the profiles the modifications coming from special rules:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

A work in progress, of course ^_^

Hey Albertorius,

Nice to get some back up here.

Regarding "third wave" and "vehicles variants", watch out, those rules are not official.

You can find the list of what is official and what is not at the following link: http://www.taccmd.tacticalwargames.net/ ... hp?id=6808

Also, rules in third wave are brokens. For example, trukks counting as buggy with transport (2) cost 9 points. Now guess the cost of a buggy without transport (2)... 11 points... lol

Finally I've tested the rules for mobbing up orks in pack of 3, I've found it heavily overpowered.