New rules for 40k - or rules for a brand new skirmish game

I've been reading the 40k rules in an effort to learn the game (and justify getting those Tau stashed in my shed up to gaming standard), and immediately was struck with some of the oddness of the rules. The all-or-nothing nature of saving throws particularly irked me.

Anyway, I've been dreaming up a new system based on custom dice, and so I'll keep a log of my thought processes here, amongst a select few, including several of you I consider tactical gurus, and Duce, a long-time competitive 40K player.

C&C is much appreciated, just post it in thread.

More to follow...

Cover saves play a huge rolw in 40k now, especially if you're being hit by things which are low enough AP to stop your armour save, and invunerable saves also handy if you can get them. I'm curently working through Grey knights to see if they could be my army for the ETc event in August. Currently was going to be using codex marines but they didn't have the hitting power vs nid stealer shock, so rethinking my army/list.

Saves come in many forms, its getting the best one you can is the task.

In 40k, shooting and melee is determined with 3 dice rolls - to hit, to wound, to save.

My plan would be to combine at least 2 of these rolls into one, using custom dice. I've also introduced a Glance result, which does not wound, but incapacitates (same as a knock-down in BB).

For example:
A 'combat' die has 6 faces - Miss, Miss/Glance, Glance, Glance/Hit, Hit, Hit/Miss

Number of shots is determined by number of dice thrown.

Skill and difficulty (cover, movement, flying target etc) are determined by either:
a) rolling more or fewer dice and choosing the best (attacker has advantage) or choosing the worst (defender has advantage).
b) rerolling dice (choice dependant on attacker or defender advantage) - this works better for when a whole unit shoots.

Different weapons can affect the result on the combination results - e.g. An Explosive weapon Hits on a Miss/Hit, Armour Piercing Hits on Glance/Hit, Concussive weapons Glance on a Miss/Glance. Different weapons can have more than one of these attributes.

Different armours also have an affect - Flak Jacket Glances on Glance/Hit, Stabilising System Misses on a Miss/Glance (representing the extra difficulty in stunning the bearer), Heavy armour Misses on a Miss/Hit. Different armours can have more than one of these attributes.

Not sure what to do on a combination result if a) neither weapon or armour affects the result or b) both do.

Cool, Google Docs does ok for making charts. This is for existing 40K rules - Duce, please check! The BINOMDIST function saved me massive amounts of work.



I placed an 'As fraction' column in Sheet 2 - this shows the probability of a kill as a fraction. It shows that for resolving infantry shooting in 40k, the three dice rolls for Hit/Wound/Save could be replaced with a single D18 roll. D18s are not all that common, mind...