Warhammer 40,000 6th Edition Combat Patrols

[Renka]

Many moons ago, back in 4th Edition Warhammer 40,000, there was another mode of play called Combat Patrols, or 40k in 40 Minutes. Since then I haven't managed to find an updated rules-set for similarly small-scale games, so I figured with the release of 6th Edition I'd give it a go myself. Back in those days the point size for Combat Patrols was set at 400, but I felt that 500 may be a better size in this latest version of the game. With that in mind, I read through the rulebook and came up with the following changes to the main rules to better fit this small format:
Rolling To Wound, page 14
In Combat Patrol games, a to Wound-roll of a natural 6 will always cause a wound, regardless of the Toughness of the target.
Charging Through Cover, page 22
If all the targets of a charge are either Pinned or have Gone To Ground the chargers fight at their regular Initiative.
Consolidation, page 27
A unit that performed a Consolidation move in the previous player turn can only be fired at using Snap Fire.
Regrouping, page 31
All units can test to Regroup normally, even if they are under 25% of their original squad size.
Assaulting Zooming Flyers, page 81
Flyers can be assaulted by Flying Monstrous Creatures, Jump Units and Jet Pack Units as if it was a land-based vehicle. This means said units can move into base-contact with a Flyer, ignoring the rules on page 81.
Zooming Flyers counts as having WS10 in assaults.

The changes are made to promote the use of infantry (by giving them the possibility to wound any monstrous creature, preventing unkillable model cheese, and allowing them to Regroup even after taking a few causalities) and to make Assault troops a bit more durable. The last change is, obviously, to help combat the fact that no army has any real anti-air defense at this point in time.

With those changes to the main rules, it's time to take a look at army selection:
Forge Organization Chart
A Combat Patrol army must have 1 HQ and 1 Troops choice. After these quotas have been met, it may have 1 Fast Attack, 1 Elites, 1 Heavy Support and/or 1 additional Troop slots.
Unit Selections
There are some additional rules for unit selection in Combat Patrol games. First off, no unit or vehicle may cost more than 150 points. This means you can only spend 150 points on any HQ, Troops, Elites, Fast Attack or Heavy Support selection, including Dedicated Transports. A Combat Patrol army may not contain any Special Characters, Fortifications or Allies.

Additionally, any non-Troops squad taken for your army may ignore the minimum Squad Size in its Codex Entry. However, any unit taken at a size less than its original minimum can’t take any optional wargear or upgrades, including compulsory upgrades like squad leaders.
Example: A Space Marine player wants to have a squad of 3 Assault Marines in his Combat Patrol. This is legal, but the unit would not be led by a Space Marine Sergeant and can’t take any optional wargear. If the player added 2 more Marines to the squad the 5th member would automatically be upgraded to a Space Marine Sergeant and the unit is free to take any optional equipment.

The last step is designing some scenarios to play using the rules, but before I go any deeper I'd like to get some input from the Warseer community. Do the changes make sense? Does this sound like a good idea?

[Ambience 327]

I like what I am seeing so far. All of your minor rules modifications make sense, and do - as you suggest - encourage the use of regular Infantry rather than vehicles and monsters.

I especially like the last bit about non-troops units being allowed to ignore minimum squad sizes. It fixes one of the biggest problems with the "Kill Team" battle mission and similar things, and allows your 150 points per unit limit to work without completely restricting certain unit types. (Some things, like Land Raiders, still can't be taken, but they don't belong in this small of a game anyway!)

One question I have though - when a unit selects a dedicated transport, would that cost be added to the unit's costs for the purposes of staying under the 150 points, or would it be considered its own unit, and so the unit could be up to 150 points, and its transport could also be up to 150 points?

I also have a suggestion which would help to further emphasize Infantry over vehicles, taking a cue from the old Imperial Guard Armoured Company rules and allowing for Infantry units firing en-mass to have a chance of damaging vehicles. Something like this:

Small arms generally have no chance of harming most vehicles, but with a heavy enough weight of fire, sometimes a lucky shot may find its way into a vision slit or otherwise cause some damage to the vulnerable bits of the vehicle.

Each unit may fire at a vehicle with as many weapons as it wishes. Total up the number of hits caused by any weapons which do not normally have any possibility of causing a Glancing Hit on the vehicle (i.e. rolling a 6 for armour penetration won't do, and it doesn't have any special rules like Rending, Gauss or Haywire which would still allow it to cause a Glancing Hit). Divide the number of hits of this nature by 5 (rounding up) and add this to a D6 roll. If the total is 6 or more, the vehicle suffers a single Glancing Hit in addition to any damage it may suffer from those weapons actually capable of harming it normally.

This rule may be a bit wordy, and could do with some playtesting, but I think you get the point. This would cut down on issues where people spam vehicles and transports in order to make things like lasguns and bolters nearly useless for the majority of the game. In normal 40K, you typically have enough heavy firepower to at least attempt to counteract this tendency, but in a 500 point game, it is pretty hard to be able to bring enough anti-tank to prevent vehicle spam and still have enough shots to have any hope against a horde.

[Renka]

I like what I am seeing so far. All of your minor rules modifications make sense, and do - as you suggest - encourage the use of regular Infantry rather than vehicles and monsters.

I especially like the last bit about non-troops units being allowed to ignore minimum squad sizes. It fixes one of the biggest problems with the "Kill Team" battle mission and similar things, and allows your 150 points per unit limit to work without completely restricting certain unit types. (Some things, like Land Raiders, still can't be taken, but they don't belong in this small of a game anyway!)

One question I have though - when a unit selects a dedicated transport, would that cost be added to the unit's costs for the purposes of staying under the 150 points, or would it be considered its own unit, and so the unit could be up to 150 points, and its transport could also be up to 150 points?

I also have a suggestion which would help to further emphasize Infantry over vehicles, taking a cue from the old Imperial Guard Armoured Company rules and allowing for Infantry units firing en-mass to have a chance of damaging vehicles. Something like this:



This rule may be a bit wordy, and could do with some playtesting, but I think you get the point. This would cut down on issues where people spam vehicles and transports in order to make things like lasguns and bolters nearly useless for the majority of the game. In normal 40K, you typically have enough heavy firepower to at least attempt to counteract this tendency, but in a 500 point game, it is pretty hard to be able to bring enough anti-tank to prevent vehicle spam and still have enough shots to have any hope against a horde.

I like it! I came up with a draft for an implementation:
Suppressing Fire, new rule
When firing at a vehicle, for every two hits made at the same Strength and AP you may combine the attacks to increase the Strength by 1, to a maximum of 6, when rolling for Penetration. Only Glancing Hits can be made this way.
Example: A squad of seven Imperial Guardsmen with lasrifles and a Sergeant with a laspistol fires at an enemy Rhino transport. They score nine hits and use Suppressing Fire to instead roll once for Penetration using a combined strength of 6 (A base of 3 +1 for every two hits, capping at 6, the last three hits are “wasted”).

[Ambience 327]

Capping it at 6 limits them to only glancing Armour Value 12. If they are firing at anything with AV 13+ all round, they will still be unable to harm it. This may not be an issue as those vehicles may already be excluded by the 150 point rule, but I wanted to make sure you had thought of it.

Also, is there a limit to how many times you can do this? For example, what if a squad is shooting Bolters and gets 8 hits. Would they be able to boost two sets of hits up to S6 for two chances to get through the armour? (And if they get 12 hits, would they be able to do it three times? etc.)

[Renka]

Capping it at 6 limits them to only glancing Armour Value 12. If they are firing at anything with AV 13+ all round, they will still be unable to harm it. This may not be an issue as those vehicles may already be excluded by the 150 point rule, but I wanted to make sure you had thought of it.

Also, is there a limit to how many times you can do this? For example, what if a squad is shooting Bolters and gets 8 hits. Would they be able to boost two sets of hits up to S6 for two chances to get through the armour? (And if they get 12 hits, would they be able to do it three times? etc.)

Yes, that was intentional. I don't think there are a lot of vehicles with armor 13 or higher available in that points-range, but I think allowing them to be las-gunned to death is maybe a bit over the top, especially since most vehicles have lower armor values on the sides and rear anyway.
And it's once per weapons-set, otherwise it would replace regular anti-armor duties completely (since two or three glances will destroy any vehicle with the new Hull Points rules) I think.
An Imperial Guard detachment with, say, a heavy bolter could use Suppressive Fire for their S3 AP- las-weapons and their 3 S5 AP4 shots should they want to (should they score two or more hits with the heavy bolter).

EDIT: Upon further consideration a +1 Strength trade-off is probably more appropriate at a 3 hit basis (meaning you'd need six bolt-weapon hits or nine las-weapon hits to reach the maximum Strength of 6).

[Hedgehobbit]

The limit I use is 20% of the point limit as the max price of any single model. That would be 80 pts for a 400 point game or 100 for a 500 point game. 100 is good because that's the lowest price of a Space Marine HQ.

The only AV 13 vehicle in that price range is a plain jane Predator. But that thing is krak grenade bait with only two shots. I don't see the need for special rules given it's low firepower and vunerable rear armor. You can throw Krak grenades now so they need to avoid pretty much all infantry.