Design Ideas: What do you want in your 28mm Wargame?

[General Strike]

When you think about 40k, Horus Heresy, and all the wargames you love. What do you want in the rules and miniatures? What system attracts you the most, and what changes would you make?

[Trench]

If I could change one thing about the game, I would make everything a lot more survivable or less deadly, we put all that time in to building, painting, setting up our models on the table and then often remove them half a dozen at a time.

 

I would love it if 40k scenarios and the game in general was built more around tactical movement, pinning down your enemy with clever gunfire and using the heavy amount of terrain to your advantage to achieve your objective.

 

I like current 40k too but would prefer a game in which every casualty caused felt like a big deal.

 

Edit: I guess that is the domain of skirmish games now though like Kill Team(I have not played this yet) as would be hard to do in a game with so many vehicles, walkers and monsters in each army.

[Trevak Dal]

I'm curious as to how a infinity d20 style system (or at least d10 variance) would work and make space Marines feel stronger, to maybe use and push for digital dice rollers/apps. I'm a real throw stuff against the wall to see what sticks kind of guy so not really an authority on anything.

[Claws and Effect]

I'd just like it to be more balanced. I don't mean cookie cutter balance where everything is virtually identical.

 

Balanced enough so that any faction can beat any other faction based on player skill, rather than some factions mudstomping others because they're just that much better.

 

I know it's a pipe dream, but it would be nice.

[Vykes]

My ideal 28mm game (not faction tinkering, that's a wildly different conversation) isn't radically different from the 40K we're seeing right now.  It's just tweaked.  It would keep a lot of the core 40K mechanics, but fuse the alternating activation system that we've seen in Apocalypse for platoon level formations.  Likewise, there would be a little bit more reliance on cover, terrain, and positioning, and I would like a little bit more cohesive system for damage and degrading profiles on multi wound units.  Venturing into the D12 or D20 save/moral system might be something I'd call 'potentially intriguing' but isn't a must.  

 

But more than that, I'd love to see larger narrative style gaming for objectives, something more than purely VP or kill points.  Looking to something like FFG's Imperial Assault style stuff for some technical objectives and some non-combat stats would be ideal and could be great seeing those less killy non-coms still palling around on the field.  ideally I'd like to see more 'non lethal' style upgrades, like vox-casters and banners, vehicle escape hatches, psychic adjutants, and biomorphs enhance units to the same effect.  Even stuff like deploying smokescreens, ECM screamers/scramblers, or the old defoliant grenades from RT and 2E would be great if it could affect warzones (much like the Kill Team style stuff or Zone Mortalis from 30K).  

 

And finally, scrap the super-heavies and the like in 28mm 'standard' and keep them confined to apocalypse with primarchs (but please do keep those heroic sorts around).  If you want a one-off narrative 'Battle the Behemoth' style mission, rockin', but fighting knight households and the like really is meh for me. The scale here kinda doesn't do them justice with the existing ruleset as far as I'm concerned. 

 

Basically, I like what GW seems to be doing by making Kill Team squad scale, 40K (standard 28mm?) platoon/company scale, and Apocalypse company/battalion scale.  So far as I've seen the refinements to KT and Apoc have been pretty great for someone like me, 40K just feels a bit like a legacy system still. 

[Interrogator Stobz]

I'm a spacial and intuitive type guy more than calculating dice maths guy (although I have an A+ pass in my university statistics course i don't do math for fun) and so I love cinematic battles.

Totally agree that the movement phase needs to be more important.

 

So for me in the 40k scale game bring back templates, make characters attach to squads again so they can die once that squad tax has been killed.

 

Work hard on balance, a close game is a good game, a thrashing is no fun win or lose.

 

Get rid of the cards, strats and variables need to go; simplification of rules to allow tactics to be more important than list building is important to me too.

 

Now for a disclaimer:

I know this is the internet, but these are my opinions and preferences and are not put here for debate. They're mine, please feel free to have your own, do not tell me mine are wrong or bad. Thanks.

 

+++That goes for this thread in general, stay constructive as per the BnC rules.+++

[Panzer]

I don't have an ideal anything since I believe different things can be awesome for different reasons. So that goes for wargames as well.

 

However what I'd like to change about 40k would be to make the shooting phase much less potent while focussing more on the movement phase. That includes to a large degree to reduce the range of weapons so that most units can't just shuffle a little bit forwards and be in range to blast something away turn 1.

18" is a good range for weapons where movement and positioning becomes important in 40k, anything above that should be considered long ranged already and anything above 30" mostly removes the need to move at all which is just not good for a game with an "I go, you go" turn structure so that should be reserved for some few really long ranged units like snipers and artillery and such, not your general anti-infantry weapon like Heavy Bolters etc (it actually sometimes almost feels like GW is going that direction with shorter ranged Havoc chainguns and Inceptor assault bolter, but then we also get 30" Bolt rifles and such so eh).

 

This is of course less of a mechanical approach and more of a balancing approach. Mechanical-wise I'd like to move away from the 1d6 since it's WAY too limiting with the huge range of different units in the 40k universe. Also alternating unit activations like we have in the fight phase would be an interesting idea that I'd love to see get tested at least.

I'd like to see true line of sight gone as well. I really don't mind the abstraction there and GW obviously struggles to write easy rules for cover and such while using true line of sight.

[MegaVolt87]

Getting in early with the plastic thunderhawk and stormbird request no one ever makes. 

[Marshal Rohr]

Move the game from a squad based game to a platoon based game, where army lists are build by pre-formatted selections of multiple units. Make armor impervious to small arms to emphasize the importance of anti-tank weaponry while making anti-tank weaponry effectively pointless to waste on infantry. Make the baseline of the game a Guardsman instead of space marines. Bring back unit choices are not represented by models again to encourage conversion and creativity. Silo off the Xenos races into specific war zones to cut down on things like Tau popping up in places that they should never actually be. Introduce guardsmen level units for all factions that don’t have them to emphasize the wars of 40k are only fought with the armies we see the most in extremely rare circumstances. Do away with special characters outside of narrative games. Re-write missions to become operations, where one side has a pre-determined set of goals per turn that shift the game’s dynamics (must destroy this bunker by turn 2, must make it into enemy deployment zone by turn 4, must eliminate enemy heavy support by turn six) to better reflect real military objectives instead of ‘stand next to shrine by end of game’. Introduce asymmetric engagements. Organize army list building and unlock certain units by tiering the game into types of operation, ie marines can only ever be used to play strike missions, terminators can only ever come out in zone mortalis and apocalypse. That kind of thing.

[MARK0SIAN]

I’d like it to have:

 

1) Balance!

 

2) The armies play in a similar way to their lore/backgrounds

 

3) For tough units to feel tough (currently it feels like everything just dies instantly)

 

4) More restrictions on list building or some other way to make troops the major core of each army

 

5) removal of stratagems and CP

 

6) Bring back templates

 

7) Remove the “everything can wound everything” mechanic, it’s a daft mechanic anyway but even if the principle was sound, a D6 system just cannot represent how unlikely it would be for a laspistol to wound a warlord Titan, it’s certainly not a 1 in 6 chance.

 

8) Remove the “no model = no rules” philosophy.

 

9) A LOT less rerolls!

[Captain Idaho]

Breaking the 10 stat limit.

 

GW made this claim before 8th was released that the game removed the limit on stats, yet apart from wounds and some high end strength stats, it is completely neglected aspect of the game.

 

If you consider the following without rules changes:

 

- Humans with S3 and T3 and S4 Lasguns.

- Orks with S5 and T5

- Marines with S6 and T6.

- Dreadnoughts with T12.

 

Etc etc.

 

Now you could make more differences between units and races without the massive amount of special rules. There's even scope for a Terminator to have T8, with Cataphractii armour being T9 and armour marks of Marines having a genuine difference:

 

- Iron Armour - +1 Toughness.

- Maximus armour (MK4) - 2+ armour save.

 

Etc etc.

 

Lastly, it would mean Primaris and Classic Marines could both have 2 wounds yet Primaris could have higher toughness as standard without the game being broken or whatever.

[RandomMarine]

As is basically ,but with the kill team shooting and cover systems.

[MegaVolt87]

How new apoc is like a shared turn where everything happens for both players simultaneously, then dmg is worked out at the end at the same time for both players.  Better command point system, current one is too gamey/ shallow. 

[No Foes Remain]

I'm with Idaho, break the 10 stat limit and move beyond the d6, move it up to d10 or d12.

[Closet Skeleton]

I'd just like it to be more balanced. I don't mean cookie cutter balance where everything is virtually identical.

 

Balanced enough so that any faction can beat any other faction based on player skill, rather than some factions mudstomping others because they're just that much better.

 

I know it's a pipe dream, but it would be nice.

 

If factions are distinct rather than identical you're going to get rock paper scissor situations where two factions can be 'balanced' but one might still have a up hill struggle in a particular match up.

 

Any faction can beat any other faction if there's a serious skill gap, most of the disparity is caused by very open list building. Ideally list building would be straight forwards enough that the thematic armies would be the effective ones (which is kind of true with guard brigades while other factions are blocked out of making decent combined arms forces).

 

I'm a spacial and intuitive type guy more than calculating dice maths guy (although I have an A+ pass in my university statistics course i don't do math for fun) and so I love cinematic battles.

Totally agree that the movement phase needs to be more important.

 

The movement phase is incredibly important as you'll quickly find if you're bad at the movement phase and take a top tier list to a competitive tournament, the issue is that the more important you make movement the more valuable things like artillery that negate the movement phase become. 8th edition has a problem where the best movement phase strategy is to deny your opponent the ability to meaningfully maneuver. A really maneuver heavy game would have to remove some forms of equipment from the battlefield.

 

Re-write missions to become operations, where one side has a pre-determined set of goals per turn that shift the game’s dynamics (must destroy this bunker by turn 2, must make it into enemy deployment zone by turn 4, must eliminate enemy heavy support by turn six) to better reflect real military objectives instead of ‘stand next to shrine by end of game’. Introduce asymmetric engagements.

 

40k has always been in the lineage of 'tool box games', its always been better the more work the players put into scenarios. A more structured experience is also going to have to be less flexible.

[Kite Senet]

I'm actually quite happy with the way 40K is now. I would however prefer the game to be simpler and quicker to play.

 

I very much dislike the idea of throwing more constants and variables into the mix behind the scenes; if I need to record information about individual units or models on a separate piece of paper, or frequently indicate numerical quantities or states by dice or marker tokens, that's obnoxious and immersion-breaking to me. This was one of the main issues I had with Kill Team which pulled me away from that game, even though I was extremely keen on the idea originally; wounds, level-up bonuses, etc, etc, all compounded into a giant mass of background data, and I realized I missed 40K's WYSIWYG philosophy and how 1 wound = 1 model off the table (for my non-HQ T-Sons units) and so one could easily see the health of your army at a glance.

 

Also, I much prefer to stick to standard d6 dice. I wouldn't mind if they extended the dice flow by adding (potentially) multiple armor saves. I can sympathize with those who say a Guardsman's lasrifle shouldn't have a 1/6 chance of wounding a Knight, but this doesn't have to be resolved by requiring you stop your game to scrounge around for d12's or some other obtuse type of dice; if you really want a wound to go through about 1 in 20 times, it's much easier to just continue the dice flow and roll a 2+ save followed by a 3+ save (on the previous save's failed dice) than to expect anyone to dig out enough d20 dice to represent a half-dozen wounds from a Guardsman lasrifle volley. This is already basically a mechanic with Disgustingly Resilient; that it isn't already a standardized mechanic also used for certain heavily armored vehicles and tough monsters is silly to me.

 

I see a lot of interesting ideas played with in Apocalypse that makes me want to try it out even with small armies as simpler alternative to 40K--I really like the movement trays in particular--but its obsession with tokens and cards and d12 dice and a prohibitive price point have largely forced me to reconsider that.

[MegaVolt87]

I like the gates of antares ruleset from warlord games. I could see something like that working for 40k/30k, if GW ever wants to move away form a mainly D6 system/ 10 stat. 

[Lexington]

I like games that can pick a scale, which is something 40K’s been bad at since at least 6th Ed.

[ERJAK]

I want super heavies, flyers and named characters to stay in the game because every reason I've ever heard for them to excluded is nonsense. I want to stay with a d6 system because switching to d10s or d12s would take an entirely different ruleset because even throwing HALF the number of dice you usually do, playing an army like Orkz would be impossible.

 

And I want the cover system to be better.

[ERJAK]

The movemement phase is by far the most important phase of the game, assuming your army isn't just random stuff you threw down on a table.

[Servant of Dante]

I want super heavies, flyers and named characters to stay in the game because every reason I've ever heard for them to excluded is nonsense. I want to stay with a d6 system because switching to d10s or d12s would take an entirely different ruleset because even throwing HALF the number of dice you usually do, playing an army like Orkz would be impossible.

 

And I want the cover system to be better.

If 40k switched to a d12 System, dice companies would start selling bulk d12s same as they sell bulk d6s now, because they’re suddenly be a demand. It’s certainly not impossible to roll large numbers of 12 sided dice.

 

I would also love to see the stat limit of 10 actually broken, and the dice moved to something with more sides since both would increase the granularity of stats and hopefully reduce the need for as many re-rolls and simplify some Abilities (or even roll some of them into base stats) making the game play cleaner (ideally) while having what would be I’d think a more rich core system.

[Kite Senet]

 

If 40k switched to a d12 System, dice companies would start selling bulk d12s same as they sell bulk d6s now, because they’re suddenly be a demand. It’s certainly not impossible to roll large numbers of 12 sided dice.

 

 

I think this is half misleading and half presumptuous.

 

First, presumptuous: I do not think it is by any means obvious that WH40K alone would be enough to motivate sufficient demand for the bulk production of d12s necessary to rebuild the game on that foundation; based on the number of disagreements I've seen against non-d6 dice, and the simple fact that GW would be implementing a major change--possibly a bigger change than any previous new edition--I suspect the game itself would shrink as well.

 

Second, misleading: non-d6 dice pose additional problems which would prevent this from being a simple change, "same as they sell bulk d6s now". Note that a dodecahedron with equal area faces (to make it equally readable to a d6) has ~3.39 times the volume, and hence we would estimate that a $10 Chessex brick of gaming-quality 36d6 would increase in cost to about $33.90 in 36d12 if we assume $10 handles the materials alone; this is not true, but I posit it is likely an *underestimate* of the 36d12 cost, considering the additional logistic problems their unusual geometry causes.

 

Keep in mind that d6's pack nicely (they tile 3-space and can easily be arranged to do so) but all other platonic solids do poorly under random packings. Even with the densest random packings, dodecahedrons only achieve packing efficiencies of 0.63. Since we can't use a tiling packing like with d6, and the complicated Bravais lattice packings (which are most efficient) would be insanely difficult to implement under manufacturing conditions, that 0.63 is the best packing efficiency we can practically achieve. As a result, in terms of simple shelf space, bulk d12s will in fact take up 5.381 times the space of comparable d6's. (The tiny chessex cube dice container expands to the size of an 12 fl oz soda can.)

 

This simple difference in volume has major consequences. From the manufacturer's perspective, it makes the logistics of selling the product much more difficult in the first place. But, if there's demand, this cost would simply be handed down to the consumer. Since $10 for 36 dice is with a logistically efficient d6 geometry, we may suspect it is likely that it would not be less expensive than the $33.90 estimate from before scaled up only by materials, since factoring in additional logistical inconveniences should only increase the price. Further, on the retailer's end, suddenly the dice they're selling takes up many times more shelf space. I doubt any of my LGS's would sacrifice more than one short shelf on their dice walls to d12's, if that, especially when 2 of 3 of them mostly sell d6's for Magic the Gathering players anyway. If my third LGS weren't wargaming focused I doubt they would even stock bulk d12's at all, and even there their most popular games aren't GW.

 

Hidden Content

This isn't relevant to rebutting the claim about the ease with which a manufacturer's change to bulk d12 would be made, but it is worth noting:

 

From the player's perspective, this increase in volume means that the volume of dice "in the hand" is, again, multiplied by 5.381; or, more likely, using the average stable non-dense packing efficiency of 0.51 rather than the densest random packing which we assumed the manufacturer could get, multiplied by 6.647. 36d6 Chessex dice is already about the maximum volume that I, personally, can comfortably roll with two hands, and consequently for larger units (like large Cultist or Ork Boyz units), rolling enough comparable d12 to resolve an attack may require 5-6 times the dice rolling as today. Even rolling the 20 rapid fire bolter shots of a 10-man marine squad would likely require 2 or 3 handfuls of d12 dice.

 

All in all, the change from d6 to d12 dice would be far from trivial; the additional burden on the manufacturer and retailer is a significant enough problem, not to mention that the costs of production would likely skyrocket, causing a major increase in cost to consumer. The difference between d6 and d12 is far from negligible.

[Servant of Dante]

 

 

If 40k switched to a d12 System, dice companies would start selling bulk d12s same as they sell bulk d6s now, because they’re suddenly be a demand. It’s certainly not impossible to roll large numbers of 12 sided dice.

 

 

I think this is half misleading and half presumptuous.

 

First, presumptuous: I do not think it is by any means obvious that WH40K alone would be enough to motivate sufficient demand for the bulk production of d12s necessary to rebuild the game on that foundation; based on the number of disagreements I've seen against non-d6 dice, and the simple fact that GW would be implementing a major change--possibly a bigger change than any previous new edition--I suspect the game itself would shrink as well.

 

Second, misleading: non-d6 dice pose additional problems which would prevent this from being a simple change, "same as they sell bulk d6s now". Note that a dodecahedron with equal area faces (to make it equally readable to a d6) has ~3.39 times the volume, and hence we would estimate that a $10 Chessex brick of gaming-quality 36d6 would increase in cost to about $33.90 in 36d12 if we assume $10 handles the materials alone; this is not true, but I posit it is likely an *underestimate* of the 36d12 cost, considering the additional logistic problems their unusual geometry causes.

 

Keep in mind that d6's pack nicely (they tile 3-space and can easily be arranged to do so) but all other platonic solids do poorly under random packings. Even with the densest random packings, dodecahedrons only achieve packing efficiencies of 0.63. Since we can't use a tiling packing like with d6, and the complicated Bravais lattice packings (which are most efficient) would be insanely difficult to implement under manufacturing conditions, that 0.63 is the best packing efficiency we can practically achieve. As a result, in terms of simple shelf space, bulk d12s will in fact take up 5.381 times the space of comparable d6's. (The tiny chessex cube dice container expands to the size of an 12 fl oz soda can.)

 

This simple difference in volume has major consequences. From the manufacturer's perspective, it makes the logistics of selling the product much more difficult in the first place. But, if there's demand, this cost would simply be handed down to the consumer. Since $10 for 36 dice is with a logistically efficient d6 geometry, we may suspect it is likely that it would not be less expensive than the $33.90 estimate from before scaled up only by materials, since factoring in additional logistical inconveniences should only increase the price. Further, on the retailer's end, suddenly the dice they're selling takes up many times more shelf space. I doubt any of my LGS's would sacrifice more than one short shelf on their dice walls to d12's, if that, especially when 2 of 3 of them mostly sell d6's for Magic the Gathering players anyway. If my third LGS weren't wargaming focused I doubt they would even stock bulk d12's at all, and even there their most popular games aren't GW.

 

Hidden Content

This isn't relevant to rebutting the claim about the ease with which a manufacturer's change to bulk d12 would be made, but it is worth noting:

 

From the player's perspective, this increase in volume means that the volume of dice "in the hand" is, again, multiplied by 5.381; or, more likely, using the average stable non-dense packing efficiency of 0.51 rather than the densest random packing which we assumed the manufacturer could get, multiplied by 6.647. 36d6 Chessex dice is already about the maximum volume that I, personally, can comfortably roll with two hands, and consequently for larger units (like large Cultist or Ork Boyz units), rolling enough comparable d12 to resolve an attack may require 5-6 times the dice rolling as today. Even rolling the 20 rapid fire bolter shots of a 10-man marine squad would likely require 2 or 3 handfuls of d12 dice.

 

All in all, the change from d6 to d12 dice would be far from trivial; the additional burden on the manufacturer and retailer is a significant enough problem, not to mention that the costs of production would likely skyrocket, causing a major increase in cost to consumer. The difference between d6 and d12 is far from negligible.

 

This is a very good point. I mean, I'd still be willing to spend a bit more on dice to use something a bit more interesting, but that's not to say I really disagree with anything here (well, except that I enjoy rolling (double) handfuls of 60+ dice at once ). You're probably right that it isn't feasible to keep the price to something reasonable with d12s, thanks for the thorough reply!

[Vykes]

 

 

D12s!

 

... the simple fact that GW would be implementing a major change--possibly a bigger change than any previous new edition--I suspect the game itself would shrink as well....

 

 

I'm having a big sense of deja vu that I've heard this said 6 times before

 

Honestly, the sheer amount of D10's and D12's that I got with battle of prospero/calth sets led me to giving away dozens of the things as wound markers for army vehicles and I still have a ton of them stashed away in their little plastic baggies.  D10's can already be bought in bulk in a lot of places as a lot of game systems already use them, the RPG marker is big enough that it's not hard to walk into stores or browse a website and snatch up a dozen D10's for cheap.  Likewise, while uncommon you can buy various sized dice of the 'D' series from 4's to 20, to the point that I've been specifically warned by a few of my mates that if I do buy that pack of 50 suuuuuper tiny D20's, he's going to throw the chrome 25mm D6's at me. 

 

There's a lot of dice in use anyway, with purchases in economics of scale like this I don't think it's a big problem.  The real problem is changing player attitudes. 

[Kite Senet]

 

This is a very good point. I mean, I'd still be willing to spend a bit more on dice to use something a bit more interesting, but that's not to say I really disagree with anything here (well, except that I enjoy rolling (double) handfuls of 60+ dice at once ). You're probably right that it isn't feasible to keep the price to something reasonable with d12s, thanks for the thorough reply!

 

 

That's fair, and I can see why one would like to have d12's to roll for a change, but I'd be personally concerned that we would also lose the personality that can be conveyed with the sheer variety of d6 dice available today. I'd be disappointed if I had to trade in the nice blue-and-yellow Chessex d6's I bought to match my Thousand Sons's color scheme for cheaper, bulk d12s like those you can find on Amazon currently, just because I'm not going to pay a small fortune for high quality d12 dice. Even now, the problems I mentioned are largely irrelevant if we're okay with those cheap d12 dice; you can of course buy them in bulk, and whether or not you're willing to deal with the extra burden of more rolling is entirely subjective. Many players, I'm sure, are more patient with such game elements than I am. I suspect rolling 5 or 6 handfuls of dice for each unit's shooting would get old quickly though.

 

I also just noticed that GW are themselves selling an Apocalypse dice set featuring 25d12 and 25d6 for $45. Considering the inclusion of d6 dice, I'm not sure whether my theoretically-derived estimate of $33.90 is above or below the actual cost there. The image does show you just how much larger a d12 dice actually is compared to a similar face-area d6.

 

I am certainly interested to see where Apocalypse goes with the d12 angle. I wouldn't be surprised if some people started using the Apocalypse ruleset with more moderately sized armies. If it takes off in some big way, maybe we might see some limited production of high-quality bulk d12 dice from Chessex and company to meet demand there, and once they're already on the store shelves and in players' hands, the concerns I mentioned previously are much less significant.

 

...you know, thinking about it further, considering Games Workshop's insistence on owning everything that's ever rubbed shoulders with the Warhammer hobby, I could almost see them swapping to d12's and then selling their own (overpriced) faction-themed d12 dice, knowing that competition could not practically enter the market while undercutting the GW markup. It'd be unpleasant, since I'm not a big fan of GW's dice, but I could almost see GW trying something like that...though that seems more Old GW than New GW.