My long time gaming buddy brought his kids over to my house the other day. They are familiar with 40k and saw all my Titans and wanted to play some E40K. So, I busted out my rules and notes from when we used to play back in the day to get together some house rules. I’m trying to play up the advantages that E40K has over the other Epic games which to me are: quick playing rules and bizarre flexible detachments.

Finally, these house rules assume no other rules changes from the books except for those listed as Errata from Firepower #1 (pg 14/15).

Antitank Firepower
I’m changing Anti-tank from a super heavy weapon into just another form of firepower. This means that anti-tank “shots” will be added up and adjusted through the firepower table and then their hits will be distributed at the same time regular firepower is. I use white dice for regular firepower and red dice for AT firepower. When allocating hits, a unit that already has an AT hit don’t need another regular hit. Also, if you run out of regular firepower hits (or never had any) you can decide to skip over infantry to hit vehicles but, if you do so, you have to apply hits to all vehicles not just some of them.

I realize that this will greatly nerf anti-tank shots and I may adjust some of the titan weapons that provide a random number to just give them a higher amount.

Use Column Shifts
In certain situation, I will use columns shits to adjust the firepower roll. All situations that call for re-rolls will be replaced with a column shift to the left. The most significant of these is Overwatch. Regardless of the number of left shifts, a detachment never rolls more dice than firepower.

Blast Markers
Rather than have blast markers reduce firepower or cancel super heavy weapons one-at-a-time I will replace all those rules with the following:

If a detachment has more blast markers than ½ of its units (or DC), then the detachment is considered to be Suppressed and they get a one column shift to the right. If a detachment has more blast markers than total units (or DC), it is Disrupted and gets a two column shift.

In addition, a Suppressed detachment gets a -1 penalty to Assault and Firefight die rolls. Disrupted detachments get a -2 penalty. Note that I’m using negative numbers on purpose to make battles between two damaged detachments less lethal. These penalties replace the ones already on the Assault/Firefight charts.

No Morale
I’m toying with removing breaking and Leadership tests entirely. This is mostly because they don’t scale well with detachment sizes and because there are enough penalties from blast markers already. Detachments still have to retreat from lost assaults and firefights but aren’t broken. Detachments that are Stubborn can reroll the die to remove blast makers in the rally phase (or maybe roll 2d6 and take the highest, I’m not sure yet).

Allocate Dice, not Hits
This is something I do for my smaller games as it spreads the damage a little better. It also results in fewer casualties.

Instead of allocating hits, allocate as many dice as listed on the Firepower table. Then after all the dice are allocated, roll each die for each miniature (you can do groups of identical units together). This way units in the front don’t always have to die first.


Aaron

Some interesting ideas there, especially the extra column-shifts (like BFG).

I'm not sure about the AT shots though. The drawback to their power is the fact that they are easy to suppress if you max out on them in a detachment. In your version, you have to resolve through the table twice, and because (presumably) AT shots are likely to be greater than 1, are harder to suppress. I think a rule that controls what AT can be fired at may be a better prospect. Also, if you add to your BM mechanic that special weapons are calculated in accordance with BMs, that would help too.

For example, if there are at least half as many BMs as models left, then the total number of AT shots that can be fired is halved from those available. If the total number of BMs is greater than the number of models left in a unit, all AT shots are prevented from firing. It is a bit of an all-or-nothing approach, but outside of Eldar Scorpion and SM Land Raider detachments, it won't really be a drastic change.

Actually, it is Land Raiders that are causing me all the problems. Not only are they an iconic unit but they came in both the SM and E40K box sets so I've got loads of them. Right now, a detachment of 10 Land Raiders will, on average, kill 10 Land Raiders in a single shot. Changing how you allocate AT shots really won't have much of an effect on destruction of that magnitude. My way drops that down to 5 kills (still too high but I can live with it). BMs will reduce that down to 4 for a suppressed unit and 2.5 for a disrupted one.

Just for reference, in SM/Titan Legion 10 Land Raiders will kill 3.3 LRs in one shot and in Epic:Armagedon they'll kill 2.5 (but that's mostly due to the fact the target Land Raiders get an additional save in that game).

Well, what about in WH40k?

Each Land Raider has two twin-linked Lascannons, and has a good chance of taking out another Land Raider in one go. So if in WH40k, ten Land Raiders can take out ten enemy Land Raiders in one salvo, then the equivalent in E40k seems fine to me.
I haven't crunched the numbers, but I reckon it is pretty close, and E40k is supposed to have a certain level of abstraction anyway.

The problem is rather that who ever shots first annihaltes the other formation, without (significant) comeback.
If both formations would fire at the same time the kill ratio wouldn't be any problem. However, that is what the assault/firefight is doing.

I have no solution for this issue. In our games we try to avoid such situations, as they pose a great risk to both players.

I have often thought that it would be a good idea to allow Armour detachments the ability to use a special order that allows them to lay smoke.

Such an order would reduce the accuracy/effectiveness of Death Rays and Anti-Tank shots targeting the ordered detachment by either subjecting the weapon dice rolls to a modifier, or by allowing the obscured vehicles to have an extra save of some sort. Perhaps the special weapon shots can all be added up and washed through the Firepower Table to find out how many shots you get?

As a penalty for the benefit of reducing the effect of enemy armour-piercing fire, a detachment using this order can only move normally and fires at half firepower (as the smoke/obscurants also affect them to a reasonable extent).

Would that work do you think?

There are other factors in 40k. Firstly, because of the fire arcs a Land Raider will usually only be able to fire one lascannon pair at any target. Then there is a roll to hit, a roll to penetrate and an effect roll after that. All those chances to screw up add up.

I kinda remembered something about smoke and then checked and there are rules for Smoke in Firepower mag #3 & 4. Unfortunately, those are the two I don't have so I can't tell you how they worked. I'm mostly a WW2 gamer so I know how hard it is to effectively model smoke in a mini game. It seems to end up either worthless or waaaay to good.

Easy solution: change the core of the system into a simultanous move/fire system.

Can be done I reckon.

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Yes, this would work.
In our house rules we alternate the fire orders of the detachments. This is still not simultanous but it is a little bit closer.
I think it's a matter of taste but considering the amount of fire going on i estimate it would be too much administration to keep track of all soon to be causalities. At least compared to the benefit of .. well, simultanous fire.(which is nice, i admit)
We never tried, so i might be mistaken.
Still we have a simultanous fight during assaults, which we handle more like in A:E then in E40000.

We 'use' the alternating fire in our strategies, moving detachments into positon so that whoever shots first, the other player still has other detachments that can return fire. Still, shooting first is often a major advantage.

A couple more things ...

Overwatch
Units on Overwatch can fire in their opponent's movement phase without the re-roll (or column shift). This works just like the Preperatory Barrage and, essentially, replaces it. They can also make oportunity fire on a target whie it is moving if it is trying to dart from cover to cover. Just like the old "snap fire". This will use the "In Cover" row of the Firepower table.

Titan Fire Arcs
There are four arcs: front, right, rear and left. Each a 90 degree pie slice. Titan arms can fire on their side and to the front. This is mainly done to remove the fiddliness of having to have a titan point exactly at another titan to fire both arms. It also creates a dead zone in their rear which is more tatically interesting.

Combining Assault and Firefights
This is another one of those fiddly areas. I'd like to combine Assaults and Firefights into one die roll. Instead of having "support" from units not in contact with emenies, just add the firepower or assault of each unit depending on whether or not they are in base-to-base contact. After the die roll, when you roll once to hit for each assaulting unit, you'll also roll for each Firefighting unit. The number they need to hit is 2 worse than what they otherwise would depending on how well they did in the combat. So if an assaulting unit would need 4+ to hit it's enemy, a fire fighting one would need a 6. Hits are allocated to units in base conctact first (just like the RAW) and then to the closest unit not in base contact. I'm pretty sure I could phrase this better with a little work. [of course, this means that units with Close Support abilities will become just normal units]

Super Heroes
I'd like to desclare some units (Avatars, Chapter Masters) as Superheroes with a 2+ save. I'd really like to encourage leaders to lead from the front.

The rules for Titan Fire Arcs and Combining Assaults and FIrefights you mentioned are in use in our group, they work fine. Espacilly the Fire Arcs feel more right this way. And Firefights /Assaults are speed up.

One thing I never liked was how blast marker removal was fixed for all detachments (baring the +1 for extra units) which punished large detachments. So ...

Leadership
Each detachment will have a Leadership value ranging from 3 to 5. To make a Leadership test, roll a die and a roll equal to or less than the Leadership value is a success.

Removing Blast Markers
In the Rally Phase, make a Leadership test for each detachment. Any failed tests result in no blast markers removed. A successful test will remove a number of blast markers equal to the die roll. This way, a detachment with a higher leadership value will remove Blast Markers faster. Stubborn allows the reroll of Leadership tests whether or not they fail; you can reroll a 1 if you wish. For large detachments, make one Leadership test per 5 units in the detachment. Count the remaning damage points of warmachines as one unit each. For example, a detachment with 16 units will make three Leadership tests and remove a number of blast markers equal to the sum of all the dice that are successfull. Roll all the dice, remove the dice that are failures and total up the remaining dice.

Leader special rule
Some units will have the Leader special rules. These units provide a +1 bonus to the detachment's Leadership score if that unit is currently the HQ.

Are you going to catalogue all of these changes in a single document for any interested parties?

I wish I'd paid attention to this forum. This post has a lot of the same changes I've wanted to make. Some of these are the same changes I proposed back before Epic A.

I decided that I wanted an Epic 40K-ish game that didn't require measuring. When playtesting Epic A, I was struck by how often I worried about the position of a 6mm figure for how far it was from its friends, from the enemy, and from cover. I was positioning so they could see over there, but not be seen from that other place. Bleah. So for years now I've been going back in forth between hex-ifying Epic 40K and making my own similar game with hexes. Usually I settle on the latter.

My hexes are 4" wide, and a detachment can fill one, two, or maybe more of them. Infantry typically moves one hex on foot. The only time positioning within a hex matters is that I'm still applying dice from closest to farthest. Well, I think vehicles will be allowed on the edges of hexes with cover, and that may also have an effect about position within a hex. But I'm looking for barrage schemes that don't use a template, and don't intend to need a ruler for the game.

I'm also doing AT shots in same way as FP, with just the armor roll difference. I've wanted to do that for years. I might add an AP shot, where a 6 counts as two 4s on the armor roll.

I've wanted something different for Blast Markers for years. I wanted them to apply multiplicatively, rather than subractively. In other words, what I really wanted was a separate BM roll, where every dice has to be larger than the number of BMs the firing detachment had. But I didn't want 3 rolls (I moved the table to a roll), and I never did find a way to place BMs that satisfied me. Yours is good, but I wanted a little bit of trouble with 1 BM, going on up to shutdown by 6 BMs. And I didn't want a Death Ray, for example, to be shut down by 1 BM, only to be able to fire if other weapons could hit something somewhere else and soak up the BMs. I'm currently using BMs as penalties to the to-hit roll, which is sorta of like a column shift for you, and only a few make sense. I don't apply them as E40K did. (Currently you gain a BM for every 25% threshold you cross on kills, and disrupt weapons.)

A lot of your ideas are old friends. Fun to read.

andy