I believe rules need to take competive players in mind

[lanrak]

Hi Egaeus.
Yes the rules set for 40k is over complicated , because the core rules just cover standard infantry.ALL other units have seperate or additional rules.(Which is what I meant to say.)

If the rules were written INCLUSIVLEY , eg ALL units used the SAME rules for movement, damage resolution etc.
The game play could be achvied in a more direct way.You know how most other rule sets are written...
(And other games seem to cope with far more variety than found in the game of 40k !)

And special abilities could be covered by, dice modifier, dice re-roll OR ignore ONE condition.

EG
Sharp shooter, +1 to hit on units ranged weapons.
Frenzied , re roll 1s , on any roll to hit in assualt.
Amphibious, ignores penalties for water based terrain.

Rather than adding too or contradicting core game resolution/mechanics.

[AndrewGPaul]

(And other games seem to cope with far more variety than found in the game of 40k !)

Do they? I'm not sure that's the case, but I concede I may be thinking about this differently to you.

[sakura_ninja]

Black powder has far more variety than 40k could even dream of having in a million years.

Every single last unit can behave different, every single officer can have different traits, every single battlefield is different, every single battle is different.

In 40k its basically my blue marines vs your red marines on 3 bits of terrain and oh look your red marines win AGAIN

[Konovalev]

In 40k its basically my blue marines vs your red marines on 3 bits of terrain and oh look your red marines win AGAIN

Perhaps this game is not for you then as this is certainly a minority opinion.

[ColShaw]

Black powder has far more variety than 40k could even dream of having in a million years.

Every single last unit can behave different, every single officer can have different traits, every single battlefield is different, every single battle is different.

In 40k its basically my blue marines vs your red marines on 3 bits of terrain and oh look your red marines win AGAIN

Strangely, every single game of 40K I've ever played had been on a different battlefield, with distinct and different armies, and with units that behave differently.

Why did you post this? Regardless of your intention, I think it comes across as a little troll-ish.

[Egaeus]

If the rules were written INCLUSIVLEY , eg ALL units used the SAME rules for movement, damage resolution etc.
The game play could be achvied in a more direct way.You know how most other rule sets are written...
(And other games seem to cope with far more variety than found in the game of 40k !)

I still argue that this is more of an issue with the presentation of the rules rather than their complexity. For example, the movement section could cover movement for all types of units rather than just Infantry, but we would still have all the "exceptions" included for units like Bikes and Jump Packs. Heck, just modify the chart from the Quick Reference Sheet to include Move Distance and maybe a column for special rules (Turbo Boost) and print it in the Movement section and that covers the majority of movement issues (unless I am missing something which I may well be).

And special abilities could be covered by, dice modifier, dice re-roll OR ignore ONE condition.

Rather than adding too or contradicting core game resolution/mechanics.

I started playing in 3rd Edition and even then it felt like the idea was that every basic rule can be ignored by something and that was what makes some armies special. My main issue now is that it they are putting multiple special rules on nearly everything, and in many cases these rules are very close to current USRs or other Special Rules to the point that they either need to create a new batch of USRs or step back a bit and stop trying to make everything "special".

Although I also have mentioned in the past that I think most of the "Universal Special Rules" could be rolled into their respective sections rather than have their own section. So for example things like Move Through Cover and Skilled Rider would be presented in the Movement section. Although some USRs probably need to stay in their own section otherwise they would have to be repeated through multiple sections...ones like Rage, Slow and Purposeful and Turbo Boosters. But then this creates the confusion that some USRs are sprinkled throughout the book and some are in the USR section (and I wouldn't want to relist USRs since we're trying to make the rules more streamlined).

And while special abilities could be covered as you say I think that eventually you would run out of abilities. I've always thought that one of the issues of special rules is that there is only so much you can do with a d6 system so GW tries to add more depth by using whatever "tricks" (multiple dice, re-rolls, modifiers, etc.) they can. So to try to be different things get more and more convoluted.

In this post I've really been primarily discussing a formatting issue with the rules rather then their actual merits/flaws...and I suspect if one did try to simplify the rules it might not be all that easy and that GW's presentation, while exasperating at times, is really not all that terrible.

I also wanted to mention that I came into 40K from a primarily RPG background so the rules don't seem all that "complex" to me...although you have a lot more units to keep track of than the typical single character the units still tend to have less detail per unit than a character in some role playing game systems. But also that the mechanics of hit-damage-save are similar to some RPG combat rules so don't seem overly complicated, despite a lot more dice being involved.

I don't consider myself a "competitive" player at all (I actually haven't played a game in quite a while) but when I think of people wanting the rules to be geared towards such players my thought is that they want clear rules so you don't spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about interpretation or feeling cheated because you lost a roll-off due to poor wording and "creative" interpreation (because if you're arguing, you know your're right ), and a better sense of balance to me just means that variable builds should be deemed worthy, that there isn't a single dominating build in a Codex while the majority of it goes unused (I fully understand that "full balance" isn't likely, but as I said when a Codex potentially has only a few units that are deemed "worthy of use" or units that should be used but just aren't then there is something fundamentally wrong).

Well I've rambled on enough for now...

[RandomThoughts]

A lot of wargames have rules that could be considered simple and straightforward. They rely on solid design to give the intended gameplay experience. Had there been more consistent design philosophy through the life cycle of the past two editions of WH40K we would probably have had fewer eyebrow raising experiences. No doubt that some of the gnarlier USR abuses have helped GW move plenty of model kits too.

Exactly what I have been talking about! Thank you.

[Rated_lexxx]

Black powder has far more variety than 40k could even dream of having in a million years.

Every single last unit can behave different, every single officer can have different traits, every single battlefield is different, every single battle is different.

In 40k its basically my blue marines vs your red marines on 3 bits of terrain and oh look your red marines win AGAIN

I am sorry you have played such bad games.

With the terrain that is not a problem with the game, but a problem with the people you play with it. The rule book suggest that a quarter of the table be covered in terrain. If you are playing with someone who doesn't want to do this..there isn't much that can be done.

As for army selection once again that is not a problem with the game but maybe the people you play with. The rules can't force someone to play a different army

[sakura_ninja]

Strangely, every single game of 40K I've ever played had been on a different battlefield, with distinct and different armies, and with units that behave differently.

Why did you post this? Regardless of your intention, I think it comes across as a little troll-ish.

If that's how you want to translate it, my point is that each individual unit in black powder has 2500 different combinations of sizes and rules and with the base unit types of infantry, cavalry and cannons you have 7500 possible units to create for 1 army, this increases to about 10,000 for the French, 10,000 combinations of units for 1 army.
Officers have about 162 combinations, no wargear but that's not what commanders are for in reality

In essence 40k and fantasy have nothing on this for each army.

[lanrak]

@ Egaeus.
I agree that better presentasion and editing would improve clarity.

But there would be less to write,(confuse and misrepresent,) if the game mechanics and resolution methods were focused on the end game play of 40k, rather than WHFB!

This is my main objection to the current 40k rules.(Look at the rules for Epic Armageddon to see how rules for the 40k game play could be written.138 pages to cover all interaction including fully intergrated supresion, air missions, AND ALL the army lists TOO!)

Now look at how many pages of rules 40k has including City Fight, Planet strike , and spread through out the codexes...

[sakura_ninja]

But 40k gamers are so lazy that cities if death, planetstrike, battle missions and WD rules are never used anyway

[Jim Bowen]

I think Wargames rules could be better layed out and with clearer diffinitions but for the most part I think GW have got it covered the odd typo aside, some of the smaller manufacturers have excellent games hampered by poor proof reading and or translation. What a lot of posts suggest is totally changing the rules after twenty five plus years I think its a bit late to do that look what happened when Coke change their recipe, falling sales and a rapid return to classic coke. If so many things are wrong with the rules then perhaphs these are no longer the rules you are looking for and its time to find a new game, Warmachine is a great tourniment system and Infinity has a more realistic shooting system to name a couple.

[Vipoid]

But 40k gamers are so lazy that cities if death, planetstrike, battle missions and WD rules are never used anyway

Well, perhaps if those were included in the main rulebook, or as an online supplement, people would be more willing to use them.

As it stands, to get the rules for those 3 would cost you about the same as a second rulebook, and you could probably just make up better rules yourself.

[althathir]

But 40k gamers are so lazy that cities if death, planetstrike, battle missions and WD rules are never used anyway

Most of those systems were used for stretches, me and my friends still use the battle mission book quite a bit to be honest. Cities of death is a bit harder because you need a lot of terrain, and to be honest until recently WD wasn't really the best read, and they aren't cheap. Planet strike is something that I actually want to get and give a try.

[sakura_ninja]

Terrain for cities if death is damn cheap, just buy other companies stuff, not GW's

[althathir]

Terrain for cities if death is damn cheap, just buy other companies stuff, not GW's

I was talking about WD not being cheap (and they weren't very useful either, it basically felt like paying 9 dollars to look at ads), terrain is fairly cheap because we build our own that said storage is an issue.