I've always liked tinkering with rules. A few months ago I ran a short greenskins v dwarfs campaign with Dr Bargle that included a number of scenario specific rule sets. For example, in one battle a column of wolf and boar chariots dragged a number of spear chukkas. These used the following bespoke rule set:
- Movement of the chariots is as normal and the spear chukkas are already loaded - the chukkas can be released in a turn of the controlling player's choice and MUST be released if the chariot is destroyed or enters close combat
- On the turn the war machines are released, roll on the artillery dice to determine direction for facing
- Now the loaded shot is fired due to the chukka crashing into the ground - resolve the shot using the BS of the crew with any normal modifiers.
Much incompetent-goblin-fuelled hilarity ensued. Recently, however, along with the members of my regular small gaming I've got to thinking about some more solid 'house rules' that we could use. The purpose of these rules will be simple: to help ensure an enjoyable and characterful game. None of us are interested in math-hammer, hero-hammer or mega-unit-hammer. We all adore pouring loads of narrative into all our gaming exploits - we are, at heart, roleplayers of the old school. And so, with more than a hint of trepidation (knowing what the internet can be like...) I've decided to chart the development of our house rules on this blog - I've included a separate page for just this purpose here.
Our first rules for play testing are as follows, and are an attempt to keep the scale of battles lower than 8th ed often encourages, and to allow for tactical diversity in objective-based play:
(i) Any unit with individual models with a basic points value greater than 5 pts cannot be larger than 25 models;
(ii) No unit may have more ranks than files - e.g. a unit with a width of 5 models can be no more than 5 models deep.
I will keep a record of how these influence our games and any amendments we make to them.
We'll need to think about how these limits might work for troops with very high points values - Chaos Warriors for example - but something along these lines should work for the Goblin - Human - Dwarf range.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the more we play scenario driven games, the less we need codify these house rules as 'rules' - they can just be guidelines to determining the composition of forces in a scenario.
Fully-painted warband game on a 4x4 table soon?
Maybe we will, although I wouldn't like to introduce to much of a handicap style system - not when the simple points value of the troops does that work for you (when you consider you've limited resources as a general). So my first reaction is that this wouldn't be something I'd be inclined to do. Also, Chaos Warriors are pretty tough, but not leagues above your best dwarf troops - their main advantages being WS5 and I5 at 15 points per model, rising to 16 with either an additional hand weapon or shield.
ReplyDeleteThe point for me would be to use scenarios that made each general really consider where to deploy and how to use the troops they've chosen. That and to keep the total PV of any game to about 1500-1750. This would make placement and tactics all the more important, and hence improve strategy play, particularly the use of multiple units in combat.
We shall see...
... and brings movement and manoeuvring back into play. There's no room for tactics if the metagame drives unit sizes so high (and total points values to high) that all armies can do is march towards each other.
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