Wouldnt it be easier

[Reliant121]

Wouldnt it be easier, if playing a 40K version of the game with the normal units, just to let people create their own army but have a limit as to how many of each squad/unit you have? like max of 2 troop choices, 1 heavy support, 1 fast attack, 1 elite and 1 HQ choice or something like that? just make it more simple for those of us who arent familiar with the 40k Point system.

[Mikey]

That's pretty much what the point system forces you to do, but also allows you to customize you rarmy more to your own tastes. It also allows for special weapons for individual troops, etc.. If I wanted to turn a "generic" Space Marine unit into the Salamanders, for example, I'd end up with a smaller army because I'd want to have lots of meltaguns and flamers.

[Jabber Swarky]

The WH rules arent set in stone, and (with the old editon, at least) they encouraged you to interpret them in your own way so you can build a narrative more easily. I remember a while back GW had a competetion to see who could come up with the coolest idea for a 'new' space marine chapter (Because there are actually thousands of chapters, and only a few are ever mentioned in the official cannon.) Participants were encouraged to come up with a nice detailed backstory, as well as give their new chapter special rules and occasionally elite special units unique to that chapter. The forces still had to be fair and balanced, though - for example, a special rule on normal marines might mean they cost more points than usual, or the Unique Units would replace a normal type of unit and make them unavaliable to that army. (Like, the chapter might replace Scouts with Cadets, who cost more but have better stats). Or, they might give them crippling special rules as well as super beneficial ones - the Space Wolves have True Grit, which lets them Dual Weild bolters, but they also have Fear of Teleporters and Hatred towards the Inquisition and the Thousand Son's.

Oh, and in the end, the winning chapter was the Blood Ravens, who became the stars of Dawn Of War =p

But, what i mean after that ramble is that theres no reason you cant fiddle with the rules so long as you keep it fair, for any race or army. Same for creating Narrative Scenarios where you have troop limits and objectives (like, Imperial Forces have to rescue and escort some scientists pinned down in a building and escort them back to their deployment zone while Orks try and kill them) rather than just "Shoot all the other guys", or whatever you want. Warhammer is a very flexible game, i feel.

Oh, and, heads up guys, the new edition of the 40K rules is comming out this month. They changed it a lot, i hear, to make it more common sense and easier to have narrative battles, so maybe there'll be more elbow room for compopsition changes

EDIT: Ohh, and i just remembered, you should check the Games Workshop site or read White Dwarf to get more ideas for Scenario's and army list. Theres a lot of alternative army lists and Scenarios there, like the Space Wolves 13th Leigon (Think werewolf space marines - AWSOME) and the Lost and the Dammned IG regiments, who are chaos corrupted Gaurdsmen.

[sunnyside]

Actually there alerady are restrictions like you mentioned in 40k.

Your force must/can have

1-2 HQ choices
0-3 Elite choices
2-6 troop choices.
0-3 fast attack
0-3 heavy.

Though I suppose a smaller way to step up would be with a 750 point force consisting of
1 HQ
1 Elite
2 troop
1 fast
1 heavy

[Jabber Swarky]

Weeeel, that restriction actually varies from force to force and even chapter to chapter, but i assume thats the Space Marine set, though.

I wouldnt know, i play WH fantasy, and a Skaven army of all things, and those are NASTY forces to organise. "There must be one unit of clanrats (troops) for every Special, Rare and Heroic/Character in your army..."

..But, yeah, other than the fluff and whats i reads in White Dwarf im pretty clueless about the actual gaming side of 40K.

[sunnyside]

Actually I think these days that's the structure everybody uses for everything. Other armies now shuffle what counts as a "troop" choice and things like that. But yes if you go back far enough there were different FOCs for different missions and different armies.

The one exception being combat patrol which is a slew of special rules to make 400 point games viable.

[Jabber Swarky]

Hrmm. I could have sworn that people like ncrons and Orks, who are heavily specilised in the hordey/specialist area, have different numbers of minimum troop/special/rare requirements.

And the new Daemons force. Whoanow. Hehe, im sure that they have an odd number of units type there. But like i said, i dont know too much about the 40K system, what with me being a fantasy player

[sunnyside]

I guess I haven't seen the newset chaos book.

But necrons aren't all that hoardy. Orks are though.

Part of that comes into how many troops you can put in a unit.

In fantasy I think after about 5 guys the sky is the limit. A 100 dude formation? Fine.

In 40K squad sizes tend to be a range. Like 5-10 guys for example. Hoardy armies can field units that are maybe 10-30 or something.

Also hoardly lists tend to have multi model units in their other choice areas. For example an Eldar Fast Attack choice might be a single vyper (a small vehicle), whereas with Orks it might be ten guys in a fast moving vehicle to get them into combat.

[Jabber Swarky]

But necrons aren't all that hoardy. Orks are though.

Yeah, i know. Heh. I meant that they were the other end of the spectrum, with a lot of rare etc choices.

In fantasy I think after about 5 guys the sky is the limit. A 100 dude formation? Fine.

Yeah, thats true, but its also really dumb. If a substantial amount of that unit gets taken out, or something that causes terror pops up in front of them, they'll run away no matter how many of them there are and you could end up loosing 2/3rds of your army to a pair of Rat-Ogres.

I've seen that happen once xD This guy thought he was being sooo clever putting all 80 of his goblins into one unit to intimidate his opponent, only to have them leg it in the 3rd turn and run off the edge of the board...

But, yeah, thats what i mean. In fantasy, Horde armies have different command structures to Balanced and Specialist armies so that they can exploit their hordeyness/specialism/allroundykilleyness... I just assumed 40K would be similar.

But if you really dont like the regular command structure, why not tryout a Specialist game? They tend to be smaller, usually just one or two squads skirmishing, but the command structure is much looser... and, besides, i can see them being easily adapted for smething like Star Trek. All you'd ave to do is tweak the Necromunda rules a little and you could easily have a squad of redshirts facing off against a bunch of Klingons. And, the rules are free now on the GamesWorkshop Specialist Games site... though if you buy the actual book you get lots of lovley backstory. Heh

[sunnyside]

It'd be a different scale. But free rules could be good stuff. If you wanna try and get people using them.