(Rules Project) Design your own Space Marine chapter/faction

[Kaede45]

The prompt for this is that I’m thinking of pivoting from using Grey Knights as my faction to generic Space Marines (or possibly Dark Angels) seeing as how GK are horribly limited in their units/models, however each faction has certain things I like & certain limitations I don’t. My thought was: “What if players could make their own SM faction by taking units, arsenals, abilities, etc. from other factions?” It would be nice to be able to field the Thunderwolf Cavalry I bought without having to commit fully to playing Space Wolves as I would like to use certain sword & shield units that the Dark Angels have as well. Now this could have the unintended side-effect of making an army too omnicapable, so to that end I though “What if there was a point system, where gaining access to external units, abilities, etc. also demanded that the players must give up access to other generic units, abilities, etc.?”

 

The main purpose of this exercise would be to come up with a point based system, wherein generic SM chapters can “draft” these things by spending an amount of “build points” while also having to take on certain disadvantages to balance things out. Not all of these advantages or disadvantages would be equal so each would have a differing point value with the main stipulation being that when your chapter is complete, you must have no less than 0 build points left.

 

This topic might fit better under the “Homegrown Rules” section, but I decided to put it here in “Special Projects” as I have yet to play an actual Warhammer game (tabletop specifically, I’ve played many video games based in the 40K universe) & have a limited understanding of the tabletop rules, so maybe some of y’all might offer some insights, opinions, etc. to see if & how well this could be implemented. In any event, I sincerely hope to see what everyone has to say about this & see what others might come up with to make this possibly viable. Thank you all for your time & as always, God bless!

[Brother Tyler]

I've moved this over to Homegrown Rules as the Special Projects forum based on what it is (posting of rules for unique units) and the fact that the Special Projects forum is likely to disappear (since we have Blogs and Clubs for projects now).

[Kaede45]

4 hours ago, Brother Tyler said:

I've moved this over to Homegrown Rules as the Special Projects forum based on what it is (posting of rules for unique units) and the fact that the Special Projects forum is likely to disappear (since we have Blogs and Clubs for projects now).

Makes sense. Maybe this way it might get more traffic as well…

[a_typical_hero]

It is not exactly what you are looking for, based on your description, but it might give you some ideas:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16Ri3G9Jx1NAzguMbTKtxsL8uaOq6hik3h7NVuU85mZA/edit?gid=1608721974#gid=1608721974&range=A114:O115

[Kaede45]

So I finally played a game of Warhammer 40000… combat patrol. I now have a pretty simplistic grasp of the rules, though not really enough to really make too many calls on how to make this rule feasible. I have, however, been mulling over a couple of rules to include:

 

1. Custom armies cannot have any named characters, only generic characters. You can name your characters if you like, but you can’t include say Lion El’Johnson in a custom generic SM chapter, even if you’re using certain Dark Angels units or Dark Angels as a base. Named characters could be used as proxies for generic characters, such as using Grimaldus to represent a generic Chaplain, but you cannot use him as Grimaldus.

 

2. Drafting units from other chapters would require a “equivalent exchange” deal. I.e. for every unit you wish to make a part of your army, you must give up the use of a unit of similar disposition. This may require looking at what benefits & disadvantages each unit has to get a good idea of what units are equivalents, but perhaps something as simple as using Thunderwolf Cavalry means not using some mounted unit that consists of 3 models.

 

Anyway, that’s what I have for now. I appreciate any & all ideas, suggestions &/or constructive criticisms anyone has on this matter as it will greatly help me out in putting this thing together! Thank you all & as always, God bless!