40k Army special rules...

[blantyr]

I played at a store where the dominant clique of players learned the game on their living room floor.  They would start out 10 feet apart with light terrain.  They favored shooting armies, of course.  When they moved to the game store they played a lot of long table stuff to the  point where players who started out with melee armies stopped coming to the store.

40K is balanced towards armies starting 2 feet apart.  A greater distance, and unless you put in a heck of a lot of terrain, the shooters have the edge.  Apocalypse starts people off 1 foot apart.  Unless one is playing on a large table where you have room to give ground, the assault forces have the edge.

After learning the game playing a lot of long table, moving to wide table groups gave me suspension of disbelief problems.  How is it that the shooting army let the guys with swords creep up right close without opening fire?  Knowing how badly assault armies do if you don't chivalrously allow them to walk up right next to you, the whole game becomes silly.

But, hey, if I didn't want to be silly, I'd be playing historical games...  except the historical games aren't much fun...  and you have trouble finding opponents.

For variety's sake, I'd like to experiment with different formats, play the occasional long table game, but one would have to find the right amount of terrain to make it work, and the right amount of terrain for one pair of players might not be the same as for the next pair.

But it would be fun for shooty armies and fast armies.  An infantry based assault army would be stuck moving forward 6, running, then getting shot up some.  That would no more be fun than it is for me to play Apocalypse with one of my shooting armies and no room to give ground.  Different scenarios and table sizes give the advantage to different armies.  Someone who gets an advantage out of a particular style of table or scenario has more fun.  A clique of players that prefers a particular style of play will sometimes bend selected scenarios, table set ups and rules to favor their armies in the name of having more fun.

At Battlegrounds, the trend is to objective based victory conditions and short distances between armies.  The dominant clique leans that way.  Anything else isn't considered fun.  As a player who likes speed, range and maneuver, I sometimes feel discouraged.

So I'd say sure, experiment, do different stuff.  Don't stick with the same pre-canned situation over and over.  Yes, the pre canned situations attempt to be fair, while a lot of experiments won't be.  However, if you are experimenting, let the player who lost badly on the prior experiment propose ways of making it more even next time around.  Also, don't expect every player to be enthusiastic about every experiment.  Some experiments will obviously screw some armies.

[jesterofthedark]

Battlegrounds doesn't tend to anything.  The games are objective based because as you said to base the game on carnage level would favor one army, and the favor lies in the table set-up.  With Objectives gun lines can bunker down and close combat can run across the board to take ground. 

In Apocalypse with the one feet no man's land, well the comes on a table that is six feet long.  Which I think, I was never a math major just keep in mind, but I think that gives a non-melee army about two and half feet of table on their side to do what they will.  Now far be it from me to judge the shooty guy from setting up at the line and hoping to get as much rapid fire in before the lines break. 

Though in my opinion any player that favors a fast maneuverable force should be able to do well with that much space to fall back too.  Of course I have heard quite the gruff about how cover is so rampant in this edition that gun lines are no longer as effective.  I dunno they seem to do fine from what I've seen though.  I guess it all comes down to how a player handles pressure from his opponent.  Melee falls to pieces if they can take the losses when they run across the field, and some gun line players just throw in the dice once they see the enemy reach assault range.

To each his own I guess.

[blantyr]

Hmm...  You claim to have no trend, then nicely describe your trend and why you believe it is cool.  Me, I think a scoring system where you have to storm a particular point favors armies that are good at storming particular points.

While there is a lot I like about V5, I believe the variety of objective styles were better in V4.  The V5 kill point system favors armies with more expensive units, thus fewer units, thus fewer points the opponent can score.  The worst case might be 4000 points and 40 units of Imperial Guard fighting an Emperor Titan.  The Guard could only score one kill point, which the Emperor could do with a yawn.  I'd agree kill point scoring doesn't work well at all, so a preference for objectives isn't totally irrational.

V4 had table quarters, where one tried for large tracts of territory rather than small objectives.  They had the small objectives as well.  The victory point missions were weighted by the value of the unit.  It was tedious to add up the score at the end, but it wasn't nearly as biased.  There is a lot positive to be said for the new V5 deployment system and scenario set, but I don't know that it is better in all ways than V4.  I wouldn't mind going back and playing some V4 scenarios from time to time.

And, yes, maybe the V5 cover does a bit much.  I think the idea was that the tough 4 save on 3+ armies were doing a bit too well, were too popular.  I don't know that they found the right fix.

The Apocalypse default scenario could work on a largish table, assuming the deployment zones are more or less comparable.  On several of my 8x6 foot games with shooty armies,  I ended up in shallow deploy zones, which was just dumb dice.  I'd prefer games were both sides have equal room to deploy.  Playing on a 4x6 wide table, one hasn't that much ground to give, and the flank marchers tend to get you.  I think there is room for more variety and experimentation.

On the other hand, Saturday I saw Tyranids trying to fight Necron on an absolutely bare no cover table.  Talk about a massacre.  There is something to be said for having some cover.

And I'm also frustrated with some codex changes.  My old Chaos force was 50% shooting, 50% fast assault.  Depending on the opponent, I would sometimes push forward, and sometimes hang back.  I liked having an army that could play either style, that didn't have a single strategy that was the only thing it could do.  Then the new Chaos Marine codex came out, and I lost my fast demons.  With marines now having guns, pistols and swords, the advantages of maneuvering to assault shooters while shooting assault troops are no longer there against the all too common marine opponents.

My guard is the old fashioned lots and lots of infantry style.  I have a feeling that I ought to be building Chimera, Hellhounds and Valkyries, but...  gasp, horror of horrors, I've run out of bleached bone spray paint.  (Yes.  I know.  One must adapt and adjust...)

This year's mega battle is long table, and should be interesting.  We'll see how it goes.  I suspect I should put away my ladies and go with Eldar for a while as my week to week force.

End of ramble...

[StrategicCommand]

Ok no more rambles please... this topic got a little off track.. Thanks for everyone who gave their opinions on this... More to come in the future with updates and revamps of course.

[blantyr]

Getting back to the original thread...

The general gist of the examples suggest that if something bad happens, something else bad happens.  in the case of the Necron and Eldar, the trigger is very high casualties and the result is game over.  In the case of the Orcs and Marines, if you lose the HQ you might lose the retinue.  In common, there are things that might happen which cause some or all of one's army do lose discipline, to work to a goal other than victory.  If the scheme is intended to be 'fair', the 'how often does this happen' has to balance with the 'how badly does this mess up my army.'

On the other hand, I'm not sure we're being fair here.  I think this sort of thing might best be done in play for fun among friends.  The intent might be to throw a curve ball, so just as one thinks one knows what is going on, the game changes.

I'm not sure it ought to be one fixed scenario per codex.  It might be preferred if each player came up with a customized scheme that fits his own army.

For my Eldar, once it becomes likely that the game is lost, it  becomes stupid to throw away lives needlessly.  I could see the entire force switching into fighting retreat mode, trying to get itself off the back table edge.

For my Guard, against some opponents, I could see units surrendering if asked to do something extremely courageous that is unlikely to pay off, or if left hanging in a situation where they are clearly outgunned.  This wouldn't work against some opponents.  They'd be more likely to surrender to Tau, try to run from Tyranid.  Armies that aren't totally lost in hatred might be required to accept the surrender, which means some models must be attached to the prisoners to escort them off the field.

For my Chaos Marines or Chaos Demons, there might be a chance of a huge Perils of the Warp.  My female chaos marines and demons are fairly orderly and sane, and have earned the enmity of assorted male demons.  There might be a chance of someone like Angeroth showing up, and rolling to see which army he decides to kill first. 

People might want to develop a library of such possibilities, and roll dice from time to time to see if a game needs some wrinkles.

[StrategicCommand]

Ok so I have been working on the original optional extra rules from above, but I still don't know anything about Dark Eldar, or Chaos that would make then turn tail. if anyone who plays these armies have any Fluffy ideas that would make the Dark Eldar quit the field or have chaos leave to fight another day please let me know. 

Thanks.