RocketShip Games

The links below are a recent interview with Alessio Cavatore about designing the new Kings of War miniatures game from Mantic Games. Before leaving Games Workshop, Cavatore wrote the current 5th edition of 40k, in addition to a number of the 40k and Warhammer Fantasy army books.  In general he’s well regarded as a successful miniatures rules writer—5e 40k is widely credited with greatly improving and rejuvenating the game—so it’s sort of interesting to see what he’s thinking about as he writes a new ruleset from scratch.

The interview’s long, but does not require a lot of 40k/WH Fantasy or even general miniatures experience to be interesting.  They also don’t really do anything you actually need to see, so you can safely put this on and then go do something else while listening.

I’ve never really watched the Beasts of War videocast crew before, but the interviewer here does a good job once you get past their ridiculous opening graphics.

• Part 1: General Approach
• Part 2: Units and Movement
• Part 3: Shooting and Combat

Results from the 40k ‘Ard Boyz preliminary round at Redcap’s Corner:

Turnout was a little disappointing but workable.  Most people from PAGE were unavailable this weekend.  In general I think although moving the schedule up a couple months may improve attendance at the later rounds, it crippled attendance at the preliminary.  In mid-May there’s just too much going on with schools, sports, etc., I think June and July are much more open for this sort of all day gaming affair.

However, we had a great time.  The group was pretty well balanced.  Despite the decent spread of points above, it was actually a fairly close bunch in terms of ability.  For example, Colin and I both played Andrew and both thought him a super tough opponent despite winding up on the bottom of the stack.  The sheer firepower his Tau were putting out was almost unbelievable, as attested by the number of Victory Points he racked up.

Quickly, I think the missions were mostly reasonable and probably more mainstream than last year.  The third scenario and its heavy penalties on fast units and vehicles was a little weird, but not crippling.  I don’t think anyone except Colin optimized against it in our group, but even for him there’s a good chance he would have brought the same no-vehicles list anyway and has done so in the past.

I had mixed feelings about the lack of Dawn of War setups.  That’s a hard start for non-mechanized forces, so it makes some sense in terms of the apparent general agenda to boost foot armies.  But it is an interesting tactical problem so I sort of missed it.

What I really did miss though were more missions based around objectives.  The second and third scenarios were effectively both variants on Annihilation.  That’s fine, but I think objective based missions are in many ways more interesting, and more of what people are playing at this point.

The emphasis on Victory Points for both mission (e.g., second scenario goals) and tournament parameters (e.g., the bonus point in the 3rd scenario for killing 3000 points throughout the tournament) was also interesting.  I do think they’re more balanced than standard Kill Points—there’s just no way a Rhino should yield up anything near the same value as wiping out a group of Plague Marines…  But, they are definitely just enough of a hassle to calculate that they’re problematic.  Among friends it’s no big deal, but in a schedule crunched tournament every couple minutes is crucial.  More importantly, I think they lead to creating more mistakes in accounting when people slip up in their math and so on.  Really it would be best to have some sort of modified Kill Points scheme that had the quickness of standard Kill Points but the balance of Victory Points.  I’ll have to think about what that might be, it’s not totally obvious.  For example, you can’t really just give rules like “Dedicated Transports are 1 Kill Point” since several armies have Landraiders in that slot, which should again clearly give up more value than Rhinos and Chimeras.

In any event, my battle report(s) are to come, but below are some photos.  More are available in my flickr gallery.

One of Colin's Plague Marines. Killing even a single model of these guys should basically yield up a Kill Point, given how much firepower it takes...

One of Rob's Devilfish bites the dust, wounded Fire Warriors flying everywhere...

Andrew's fleet of Crisis Suits begins the long march across the table.

Paint scheme on one of Andrew's Devilfish.

Anthony apparently constructed his solid army by leafing through the Tyranid codex and bringing at least one of everything that said "Monstrous Creature."

Andrew and Colin wage war on the frozen tundra.

Anthony and Sam discuss the finer points of how many Boyz a Tyrannofex can blast to oblivion at once...

Rob is slightly stunned at actually coming across a Tau opponent.

Kingbreakers get the drop on those damn Plague Marines, caught worshipping one of their dark idols...

Tyranid vs Tau---a study in completely different game plans.

I thought I actually had a shot to win the third round against Colin; then I realized he had as many Termies in reserve as I did, but his are actually badass...

I just posted the 4th mission scenario for our Combat Patrol tournament.  As always, I’m not completely sure on how this one will work out, but I’m pretty happy with it so I thought I’d talk about it a little.

Structure

I think one neat aspect of the tournament is that it is indeed a tournament, but it also has a fairly strong campaign element, in a loose, fixed narrative sort of way.  It’s structured somewhat like Space Hulk, where players aren’t making real campaign choices and the outcomes only affect the story in limited ways, but there is indeed a distinct narrative in play.  From the start I’ve had a pretty clear conception of an abstract story I wanted the tournament to follow, and I hope that’s done a lot to tie the missions together, give them a more compelling background context, and make them more interesting via unique objectives and parameters.

How this works out is that each of the 5 rounds/6 scenarios is set within a generic campaign setting.  There are no names or anything concrete, but there is an unmistakeable notion of an Attacker invading a settlement, city, or colony in the quest to obtain something, and a Defender hard pressed to stop their onslaught.  A little flavor is injected into it by just a little bit of fluff in each writeup.  To highlight the generic, inclusive nature of the campaign though, this is always done from the Defender’s perspective, but with different factions involved.  So far we’ve had Guardsmen attacked by (Dark) Eldar, Orks escaping Tau, Marines swarmed by Tyranids, Imperials sieging Chaos Marines, and Dark Angels assaulting Imperials.  Each mission also has a brief summary of the current plot point, and the Attacker and Defender roles.  Most of the missions are asymmetric, with players swapping those two roles, further accentuating the narrative.  On the other end, Jason has also been writing up little story blurbs to go with the results on the web, providing little vignettes of the campaign from the perspective of his Blood Angels.

Real campaign choices have or will show up in two places: The 3rd round had two missions that had similar goals (Annihilation), but very different setups.  Which one we played was determined by how many games the Attackers and Defenders had respectively won in the first two rounds.  Similarly, some parameters of the final mission, and of course the result of the campaign as a whole, will be determined by how the abstract Attackers and Defenders are doing.

Background

It doesn’t affect anything, but we do actually have a campaign map we’re following along, providing some imagery and geometric anchoring to the story:

The campaign map for the tournament.

First the Attacker smashed the outer defenses (Mission 1: Listening Post).  Then the Defender tried to escape back to warn the others of the attack (Mission 2: Flight).  In our case, they were not successful and the invasion swarmed the inner defenses (Mission 3a: Blood Melee), while in other universes the Defender was warned and the Attacker forced to attempt opening a new breach (Mission 3b: Gunline).  Right now (Mission 4: Population), the Attacker has been largely halted, but a small raiding party has slipped into the settlement to pillage for some sort of artifact, knowledge, or person required for the next mission.

Mission 4: Population

In the current round, the Attacker is searching the area for a key required for the next mission and the ultimate conclusion of the campaign.  Whether the key is a code, possessed psyker, ancient relic, or whatever, it doesn’t really matter.  The Defender, of course, has to stop this.  Although the terrain isn’t really specified and doesn’t matter too much, the mission is envisioned to be a battle in a city, village, base, or other developed area, representing the two brawling it out throughout the settlement.  Both sides setup on opposite sides and then charge in to claim the objectives:

Mission 4: Population

One note here is that the mission is symmetric.  The primary reason for this is that we’re running the last two tournament rounds in one evening and there won’t be enough time to run two games for each one. I do really like the asymmetric missions so I almost kept that going into the last round, but I also really want people to play more than one person that night.  Given that the club’s venue time is limited, I setup the mission so that it could work well with the match played as one game or two, the latter for us or other groups using it in the future.

Goals

The objectives are where Mission 4 starts to get interesting; at least, I think so.  Each objective represents property or people that the Attacker is searching through, and the Defender trying to keep away from them.  How this plays out in game terms is two-fold:

• Either player may shoot or assault the objective, treated as a very weak model, in order to destroy it.  This yields 1 Ransack Point.
• Either player may hold an objective for an entire turn to claim it. This yields 2 Protection Points.

This represents the Attacker hacking computers, rifling files, stealing artifacts, torturing people, whatever.  It also represents the Defender doing basically the same.
At the end of the game, victory is determined by the higher of a player’s Ransack or Protection Points.  In other words, if you have 2 Ransack Points and 4 Protection Points, you would score 4 points to be compared to the other player.

Morality

The beauty of this is that it both fits within the symmetric setup, giving both players the same rules, and enables them to conceptually fill different roles.  Further, it brings in an element of role playing.  Are you going to kill and destroy all the objectives, or are you going to try and protect or claim them?  This is accentuated a bit by one of the Bonus Points being for having Ransack or Protection Points, but not both.

I like this because it plays within the amorality of the 40k universe. Sure, the Attackers are probably bad guys.  But maybe not.  Maybe they’re just trying to stop something you’re too low down on the chain to know about.  Similarly, the Defenders may not be good guys, even if they might have the more traditionally sympathetic role.  There are a lot of factions in 40k that could easily decide it’s not worth risking people or material falling into enemy hands, and start preemptively slaughtering and destroying them.  With these mission goals, each player has that choice as well, and needs to fit that into their strategic picture.

On top of that, the Bonus Point highlights just a little the harsh, dualistic push of much of 40k—you might not be purely good, or purely bad, but it’ll cost you just a little to compromise.

Tournament Stuff

Another reason for the symmetric setup is that I wanted to keep things very balanced and straightforward in the last rounds to ensure fairness across the board.  It’s very easy for slight biases to creep in without notice, and while I think I’ve been vigilant about that in writing these missions, there have definitely been rounds that favored armies with lots of anti-vehicle for bunker busting, others that favored cheap transports for quick mobility, and so on.  The previous missions certainly didn’t go over the top, but I wanted to take extra care to keep in-game effects simple in the last rounds.  For example, I had originally been planning a set of stratagems for this mission in keeping with the City Fight theme, but in the end decided to keep it simpler.  We’ll see how it works out this Sunday!

Recently, Pangloss and Equinox have been having a pretty good discussion about Combat Patrol in 5th Edition:

• Realms of Equinox: Tournament Tuesdays: Overhauling the Combat Patrol Rules
• Pangloss’ 40k: Thinking About Combat Patrol
• Pangloss’ 40k: More Thinking About Combat Patrol

In an earlier post I talked a bit about some of the reasons I like Combat Patrol, namely accessibility, faster games, and reduced rock-paper-scissors effects, which can be dramatic in low points games.  I’ve also talked a bit in the past about general issues in small 40k games.  I thought I’d add on to my earlier points with some more thoughts on revising the rules to better accommodate the current codexes and rules.

The Zoanthrope says: "You best get good at rolling Leadership Tests!"

As a case in point for why revisions are necessary, consider the new Tyranid codex.  Due to the restrictions to 2 Wounds and 4+ Invulnerable saves, there are no Synapse Creatures permitted in Combat Patrol under the new book.  For those unaware, without coverage from Synapse, almost every Tyranid unit has to pass a Leadership check.  Otherwise it either storms toward the enemy or hides.  That severely hampers playing the new book in Combat Patrol, unless you field purely hordes of Genestealers, who are not subject to Synapse, but have no ranged weapons.  That also gets a little boring after a while.  This essentially eliminates a very popular army from playing, a substantial problem.

Points Limits

I agree that 750pts is pushing the upper bound for Combat Patrol; beyond that it’s too constricting and should generally be played as a standard game.  But I think a good set of rules could work well over ~250–750 pts, and create a game atmosphere that feels different from standard 40k but is similar enough to just sit down and go.  Like Equinox said, that’s an important goal.

A major determinant in what points levels work depends on what armies are used.  A friend and I regularly play 250pts.  That’s probably the lower bound without true skirmish rules, but we have fun though pushing models around at lunchtime. It works because he’s running Chaos Marines and I run Space Marines, and that’s just enough points to both have some choices and field some variety.  Other armies really struggle at even 400pts; Necrons are the classic example, Grey Knights are another.  Viable points levels depends a lot on who’s playing.

I think the set points clearly depends on what people what to get out of it, and there isn’t a need to be too strict about what is “Combat Patrol” and what’s not.  For example, one reason we’re running 750pts in our tournament is because it allows a good number of units, which in turn enables more varied mission scenarios.  At 400pts a lot of armies basically field only two units, so it’d be hard to have objectives and other special scenario goals.  Asymmetric scenarios, played with alternating roles, were also something we liked the sound of.  But, we also wanted people to be able to play after work.  The 750pt limit supports those competing goals, while also being a slightly longer match than 400pts.  We have, however, applied the Combat Patrol rules rather than just limiting the points, largely in order to prevent rock-paper-scissors list making issues.  Similarly, 400pts is very fast to play, very accessible, and a lot of fun in its own right.  There’s clearly a place for both.

HQs

A great number of HQ units definitely seem potentially unbalanced at these point levels, or not in the spirit of the missions if you care about that sort of thing.  I think you can keep out “crazy” HQs by keeping some sort of restriction against uniques, but let in the “regular” HQs by drifting the allowable wounds up to 3.  That enables IG Company Commanders, Tyranid Warriors, Space Marine Captains, etc., all of which are reasonable to me, but cuts out Abaddon, Marneus, etc., whom I think present problems.  More on “Uniques” later.

"Outflanked again, Sgt Jericho? This never would have happened if Captain Angholan had been permitted to join the patrol!"

In any case though, I don’t think HQs should be required.  Too many are glass jaws to force them at this point level.  For example, a Space Marine Captain is actually a tough sell.  I wouldn’t say that they really bring in their 100+ pts on average; ditto Librarians—sometimes they come up huge, but a lot of times they don’t.  Chaplains also essentially force a unit to lose Combat Tactics, which is unfortunate.  All are solid selections in a full list with other units to synergize with and many other models on the table, but I wouldn’t want to be forced to take one with so few points available.  Conversely, I wouldn’t want them disallowed either.  For this week’s tournament mission, I would have strongly considered a Captain and Command Squad—the first time I’ve ever seriously thought of the latter—but the Captain is out due to the traditional 2 wounds restriction.

Heavy Supports

In my opinion, Armor Value restrictions keep out sufficient HS.  I wouldn’t ban HS completely and eliminate Devastators or Havocs, they don’t seem out of line for the feel of the game.

I also don’t see the traditional restriction against Ordnance as being necessary.  If someone wants to field a Basilisk, Predator, Whirlwind, or something, I’d be ok with it, and think it’s reasonably fluffy—a lone vehicle making its way to a new position with its escort or some such.  Especially on a smaller table, they’ll be prone to assault or concentrated attack, and the armor value on this units is not particularly higher than the transports; I don’t think they’d be dominating choices.

At 750pts I’d actually lift the armor restriction a bit, maybe to 34 total points rather than 33.  In that size army you can field enough options to have some reasonable anti-vehicle plan, and could work to take down more heavily armored vehicles.  I would probably not say this at 400pts though; the environment is just very different.  In particular, my experience has been that Dreadnoughts are devastating and frequently unstoppable at that point level.

Either way, even at 750pts I’d hesitate to let in a Land Raider, Monolith, or similar vehicle.  It’s true that they would be a huge points risk that might be taken out relatively easily—I’ve had Sternguard take out even an entire Baneblade by themselves in the first round of shooting, and Landspeeders can regularly do the same for Land Raiders.  But I think these are just too much of a rock-paper-scissors risk at these point levels for my taste.  Those also have accessibility issues for newer players trying to compete.

One idea that came up in our group is to have a total limit for the army.  Something like you can field any vehicles, but the combined armor across all of them must be less than 100 (or something).  That would let you use one or two big vehicles, or a couple smaller vehicles, or a mix.  It might be just as easy though to say “One vehicle with armor up to 34 (or 35, etc) and any number with armor up to 33.”

Elites and Fast Attack

Tight limits on FA and Elites are also problematic.  I think a squad of Sternguard and a couple Landspeeders is fairly fluffy for combat patrol.  Landspeeders, Rough Riders, and Sentinels all also provide for all-FA lists very much in keeping with the spirit of Combat Patrol.  Appropriate mission rules probably counter any problems here.  In our tournament, you could bring a ton of Elites, FA, etc., but many of the missions have objectives, so it behooves you to bring Troops, just like standard 40k.

General Unit Restrictions

Like Pangloss said, I also think Equinox’s proposed 200pt maximum per unit restriction is too tough, although the intent is good.  As noted, a squad of Marines is 170pts.  Add a Rhino or a Powerfist and a Plasmagun and they’re over that limit.  The problem with saying they can just take five man squads is then they don’t have access to heavy and special weapons.  Cheap weapons are one of the primary advantages for Space Marines compared to many races, and their main anti-horde and anti-vehicle counter abilities, so robbing them of that would really hinder them unfairly.

These Termagants haven't realized yet that they're supposed to be Lurking...

Lifting the permitted wounds to 3 is essentially required, if only to enable Tyranids a few viable Synapse Creatures.  It also permits the generic Space Marine Captains and Chapter Masters (and consequently Command Squads), IG Company Commanders, and many other units that don’t seem unreasonable.

Not discussed so far is if the traditional Combat Patrol restriction to no better than 3+/4+ saves should be relaxed.  I am torn on this.  One argument I see for relaxing it are Zoanthropes, an important Synapse Creature option for Tyranids.  However, if permitted wounds are bumped up—basically a requirement, I think—Tyranid players can cover Synapse via at least Warriors.  I also don’t see a reason to cut out Techmarines.  However, I have mixed feelings about Terminators.  They’re admittedly super hard to take down and could cleave through another army, but even at 750pts they would be a significant fraction of a list to invest in just a few models.  They also don’t generally score, so the mission scenarios will enforce some sort of natural balance.  Including them would also enable Dark Angels players to use their preferred codex and existing units.  One plausible option might be to allow 2+ armor saves, or 3+ invulnerables, but not both.  This would permit Zoanthropes, Captains in Artificier Armor, Honor Guards, Techmarines, etc., but not Terminators.

Similar to Equinox, I also don’t have issues with upgrade characters like Telion or Harker.  They just don’t seem that unbalancing; they’re useful, but they’re a bunch of points as well.  The key here is the wording, enabling these guys but keeping out crazy HQs.  Toward that end, I think the wording should be “No Unique Independent Characters, Unique Monstrous Creatures, or Special Characters.”  The rationale behind this specific wording is based on:

• Space Marines: Telion does not technically say Unique (he has a special rule limiting him to 1 squad), but Chronus does; neither are Independent Characters.  The fancy HQ characters are of course all Unique Independent Characters.
• Chaos Marines: All named characters are Unique Independent Characters.
• Orks: Snikrot and Zagstruk are not Independent Character, nor technically Unique, and hence would be allowed.  The few named HQs are Unique Independent Characters.
• Tau: Aun’va, Farsight, and Shadowsun use the old terminology and are listed as Special Characters, not as Uniques.
• IG: Yarrick is a Unique Independent Character; all the company commander characters and other upgrades are Unique, but not Independent Characters.  Marbo is also Unique Infantry and would be allowed.
• Chaos Demons: All the named demons are Unique Monstrous Creatures, not Independent Characters.  Interestingly, Fateweaver is a Unique Monstrous Creature with only 3 wounds so it would not otherwise be covered by the rules without this wording.
• Tyranid: Most of the named characters are Unique Monstrous Creatures, though Parasite of Mortex is Unique Jump Infantry and Deathleaper is Unique Infantry and would be allowed.

I think that wording strikes a reasonable balance, permitting these manageable, colorful upgrade characters and a few solos, but disallowing the real heavies.

Rules Suggestions

That makes my current thinking on revised Combat Patrol rules something like:

• Missions should set army lists at no more than 250–750 points.
• Armies must include 1 Troop unit and may have up to 2 HQ, 6 Troop, 2 Elite, 2 Fast Attack, and 2 Heavy Support units.
• No Unique Independent Characters, Unique Monstrous Creatures, or Special Characters are permitted.
• No model may have more than 3 wounds.
• Any model with a 2+ Armor Save may not have an Invulnerable save.
• Any model with a 3+ Armor Save may not have better than a 4+ Invulnerable Save.
• In a 500pt or below game, no vehicle may have total armor value (Front+Side+Rear) greater than 33.
• In a 501–750pt game, no vehicle may have total armor value (Front+Side+Rear) greater than 34.
• Units which don’t occupy Force Organization slots, such as Dedicated Transports and Retinues, are permitted caveat the other rules.
• Before deployment, each player must declare one model in their army to be their Patrol Leader. There must not be a model in the army with a higher Leadership value. Note that this implies the Patrol Leader is not a vehicle.
• Missions should be played on 4′x4′ tables.

The Patrol Leader isn’t important for standard mission setups, but I think it’s a handy designation to have in writing custom scenarios given that there’s not necessarily an HQ in each list.  For example, in our tournament preserving or killing Patrol Leaders has been worth Bonus Points on several occasions.

Glancing through the codexes I have and the main rulebook, these rules seem to disallow the following for 750pt games; in general, no named characters are permitted except as discussed above regarding “Uniques”:

• Orks: No Battlewagons.
• Chaos Marines: No Terminators, Oblits, Daemon Princes, Greater Demons, or Land Raider variants.
• Chaos Demons: No Bloodthirsters, or Soul Grinders.
• Daemonhunters: No Grand Masters, Brother Captains, Terminators, or Land Raider variants.
• Tau: Broadsides, Crisis Shas’O Commander, Hammerheads, or Sky Rays.
• Black Templars: No Emperor’s Champions, Terminators, Land Raider variants.
• Space Marines: No Drop Pods, Terminators, or Land Raider variants.
• Necrons: No Wraiths, or Monoliths.
• Imperial Guard: No Leman Russ variants.
• Tyranids: No Swarmlord, Hive Tyrants, Tervigons, Zoanthropes (3+ Inv), Doom of Malantai, Carnifexes, Old One Eye, Trygons, Mawlocs, or Tyrannofexes

Dropping the permitted vehicle armor values to 33 at 500pts further eliminates:

• Orks: No Deff Dreads.
• Chaos Marines: No Predators, Vindicators, Defilers, or Dreadnoughts.
• Space Marines and other Imperials: No Dreadnoughts, Predators, Vindicators, or Dreadnoughts.
• Imperial Guard: No Hellhound variants, Death Strikes, Valkyries or Vendettas,

Those rules also eliminate some wargear and combinations, such as Storm Shields combined with Artificer Armor.  Interestingly, Mycetic Spores have only 3 wounds and a 4+ save, so Tyranids would always have their Drop Pod.  For Synapse they would be able to choose from Tyranid Primes, the Parasite of Mortex, and Zoanthropes.

Conclusion

I had sort of thought the forthcoming 40k Missions Book from GW would have material along these lines, including revised Kill Team or Combat Patrol rules and missions.  The part of me that refuses to accept that they don’t playtest or think about a lot of their design products nearly as much as the community does was actually hoping for that.  However, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Of the suggested rules above, I feel pretty comfortable with the vehicle restrictions.  The armor and invulnerable save restrictions however might be too permissive however.  I’ll have to think about them more.  As always, comments are welcome!

Robin and I played our match for Round 2 of the PAGE/Redcap’s Combat Patrol tournament.  He elected to continue using the 4th Edition Tyranid book for the moment.  The new book changes a lot of things, making many units unavailable in Combat Patrol, so several of our players are for the moment sticking with the old book until they can figure out some new 5e Tyranid small-games lists.

Match Rules

The second scenario is a simple breakout mission.  The campaign defender is trying to escape the encirclement and alert primary defenses, while the campaign attacker is trying to prevent that.  The writeup is available on the tournament page, but the key point is that the defender is trying to exit half his units off the attacker’s table edge.  The campaign attacker absolutely needs to prevent that; their units are more or less expendable toward that goal…

Armies

I believe Robin brought:

• 28 Gaunts, split into 3 squads, all with Flesh Hooks and Without Number.
• 6 Warriors with a variety of weapons, split into 2 squads
• 2 Lictors

For my Kingbreakers I brought:

• 5xSternguard w/ 2 Combi-Flamers with Razorback
• 10xMarines w/ Powerfist, Flamer, Missile Launcher with Rhino
• 10xMarines w/ Chainsword, Flamer, Missile Launcher, with Razorback
• 2xLandspeeders with 2xHeavy Flamers each

Game 1

Sergeant Scolirus hung slightly out of the exit hatch of his Rhino, holding on by the tips of his Powerfist.  He gazed into the distance, watching the tops of the trees sway and crash to the ground as the horde of massive beasts made their way toward his position.  After a long moment he looked down at Captain Angholan and stretched out his hand.  The captain’s exquisitely crafted armor glittered in the sun as he reached out and clasped his arm to Scolirus’ forearm.  “No matter what, get the warning through,” Angholan said quietly, then paused and in a deeper voice closer to his battle speech added “Till tomorrow or the Emperor.”  Scolirus shook his friend’s arm tighly, then swung back into his vehicle.  The captain pivoted on his heels and leaped into the hatchway of his own Rhino, his dark blue robes fluttering in the breeze.  Scolirus could hear his battle brother already issuing orders at rapid pace.  A flight of Landspeeders thundered by just meters overhead as the captain’s Razorback throttled into high gear and jumped after them, the battle begun before the captain had even secured himself in his transport.  Scolirus’ Rhino roared to life and dove into place in the column behind Angholan and the Landspeeders, ready to follow the linebreakers through to whatever may come beyond…

We placed a fair amount of terrain, a mix of craters, forests, rocks, and a large ruin that really choked up the board.  I rolled to choose and opted to deploy and go second.  Robin spread his forces out to cover both basic approaches, and I tried to stay in the center to not reveal too much about what direction I would take.  Sternguard, Tac 1, and Tac 2 all climbed into their transports.  Tac 2’s Combat Squad with the Missile Launcher deployed just to the left to give some cover fire.  The Landspeeders nestled in behind the transports, hoping for some coer if anything should manage to get a shot off at them in Turn 1.

To recap the game quickly by major thrusts: Landspeeders dispatched left and right to try and tie up both opposing forces.  All of the transports shifted left and drove pretty hard to try and concentrate force on a single point of the enemy line.  The Landspeeders devastated the Gaunt squads, and tore up the Warriors as well.  Sgt Harbinger’s Razorback got hung up on difficult terrain, as did a Landspeeder, but his Sternguard simply piled out and provided cover fire to finish taking down the Warriors on the left side and the Lictors that arrived alongside the exit route.  Scolirus and Titus revved their transports, flying them over the debri and escaping to sound the alarm, driving at full tilt amidst groups of fleeing Gaunts scattering into the forests.

Result: Major victory for me by getting half my units (round down) off the board, and both bonus points (enemy Patrol Leader dead, my Patrol Reader ok).

Game 2

I rolled to choose and opted to go first.  I wanted to go second so I could deploy in response to Robin’s positioning, but chose first so I could move aggressively and try to push the conflict as far forward on the table as I could.  I hoped that even if I couldn’t stop everything, hopefully I could slow it down far enough back on the board that they wouldn’t make it off the table in time.  Tac 1 went to the far left to cover the paths along the edge.  The Stenguard’s Razorback also went left, but they settled down among some rubble on the right to better cover the more open approach.  Titus’ Razorback and Tac 2’s Missile Launcher Combat Squad also settled down on that side.

Robin responded by puting two thirds of his Gaunts in a cluster around his Warriors in the center of the board, obscured by the ruins.  The other Gaunts and Warriors deployed left somewhat, as a combo diversionary and flanking maneuver.

Recapping: My vehicles advanced quickly, hoping to push the line forward.  The Landspeeders, emboldened by their survivability in the first game, moved aggressively into enemy territory.  The Sternguard and Tac 2’s Combat Squad, meanwhile, sniped away at the bigger monsters on the left.

Unfortunately, the Landspeeders did not hold up nearly as well this game.  Both were effectively mission killed early in the game by massed Gaunt fire rolling just enough hits to take out weapons and shake or stun the crew.  This enabled the Tyranid clusters to move up safely without being harrassed and with relatively little regard for bunching up.  The flanking Marines eventually whittled these down, but not quickly enough.  The central Warriors jumped onto the ruins and put some heavy casualties on Tac 2’s Combat Squad.  Literally every Kingbreaker unit on the board fired at them, hoping to take them down while in that exposed position.  It was not to be, however, as one Warrior made it through the hail of fire with one wound intact, and slipped down into the rubble.

Meanwhile, the Lictors popped up deep in my backfield and quickly simply ran off the table to alert the Hivemind and meet the mission objectives.  On the left side, the Warriors there also survived just enough to make it through and tie down Harbinger’s Sternguard in close combat.  Between that, the Landspeeders being out, and spending too much time slaughtering gaunts with the other units, that left no unit in position to stop the central Warrior, which burst from the rubble a turn later and quickly left the board in pursuit of the Lictors.

Result: By getting three units off the board, Robin took a Major Victory.  We both got a bonus point for keeping our Patrol Leaders alive—Robin’s was the sneaky Warrior that slipped through the rubble and snuck through to freedom.

Lessons

These were actually a couple pretty good games.  I was very happy with the first one, less because of the result, and more because I came in with a plan—take second, concentrate force on one point and drive through to break the line—that worked pretty well.  The second game I made a few mistakes and it came down to a couple different die rolls that really could have changed the outcome, so it was a good time.

• Flamer List: This list seemed to do pretty well against the ‘Nids, and I assume will hold up well to the 5e upgrade.  There’s no real way to take Vulkan at these point levels even if special characters were allowed in Combat Patrol, but otherwise he’d be a clear choice.  Faced with a mostly power armor based target environment I don’t use flamers much, but here I pretty obviously had to go with it, and it largely paid off.
• ‘Speeders: These guys did awesome in the first game.  In the second they really took too much firepower and became too crippled too fast to really do a ton.  Normally I’d be all about units soaking up firepower like that, but in this case my other units were expendable—the mission objectives put very little priority on campaign attacker units surviving—and I really needed the super mobile flamers on the Landspeeders to chase down any escaping bugs.  All in all I’ve been pretty happy with my Landspeeders, and tonight was no exception.
• Sternguard: These guys have always been one of my MVPs, and they continued to carry that line tonight.  One interesting point is that I used the special ammo a lot more than I have previously.  In almost all previous games I’ve mostly only had occassion to use Hellfire rounds; maybe occassionally a Kraken or Dragonfire shot, but the Hellfire has been far and away the most useful.  Here I used all three of those alot—to snipe from a distance, to work around the large amounts of cover, and to pummel units caught exposed in the open.  This was really neat, although it almost felt like cheating—of course, of course they’ve got an ammo type that just happens to be perfect for this situation!  No, that’s not written in my book in pencil!  Good stuff though.  I liked them abandoning the Razorback that blew tracks on the rocks, running alongside the remainder of the convoy and sniping away at the Warriors on the roof above them and in the rocks ahead, helping the Landspeeders to clear a path.
• Luck: Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.  In the second game once the Warriors jumped up on top of the ruins, I poured in literally all my firepower.  If something’s worth shooting, it’s worth shooting a lot.  I was really hoping to basically end the game there by taking away the only Synapse creatures in position, crippling the movement of the remaining Gaunts, and stopping the fastest units on the board (they had wings).  It wasn’t to be, however,  That one last guy just shook it off, dancing through the cover.  There was a very thematic moment of him roaring in rage on the rooftop, shots pouring in from all over, and then diving into the ruins for cover, the escape basically complete at that point.
• Position: That said, I should have been able to cover for that.  I waited too long to bring back my forward Rhino and Razorback.  They were hanging out devastating the Gaunts, but really they should have moved back earlier once the aggressive line broke a little, and been in place to cover the Warrior escaping through the central ruins.
• Position II: Similarly, not protecting the rear crater was a huge mistake.  I didn’t put a unit into it originally because it had no line of sight so it would have been basically wasting a unit.  When I deployed I also wasn’t thinking about the Lictors coming down and just running off the board.  I was much more concerned about them coming down immediately on the sides of my lines and taking them on.  Sadly, I had spent some time on the way over to the game thinking about exactly this kind of move.  However, I had been thinking about it only in terms of whether or not I should have written the mission scenario to eliminate it (I decided not).  I never really thought about it in player terms, and that game back to cost me a good number of points.
• Deployment: I probably should have also taken second turn again in the second game.  I didn’t because I really wanted to push the line forward before the bugs got to move, but those extra inches weren’t worth it.  Much better would have been to go second and see where Robin deployed, just like in the first game.  In this case it would have let me see he really wasn’t going to go down the left side, and I could have pulled at least the far flanking Rhino and Tac Squad and put them somewhere more useful, buffing up the right flank or covering the rear crater and center path.
• Vehicle killing: Without their big units, old Tyranids really struggle at combating vehicles under Combat Patrol rules.  Not having really seen it, the new book nonetheless sounds a lot more balanced between assault, shooting, and psychic abilities.  I could believe there are many more options for managing vehicles; hopefully some are available in Combat Patrol.
• Tarpitting: In the second game I was stuck in the usual Tyranid mindset of hanging out in vehicles and avoiding close combat.  That was silly; survival of my units had very little to do with meeting the mission objectives.  Everybody should have move forward then dumped and spread out, doing a better job at physically impeding the bugs’ progress.  Even if a few units got chewed up, it really wouldn’t have mattered as long as they’d been slowed down enough.  Vehicles just can’t bog down units and impede there progress like infantry can, even if the latter are going to die…  I let my fear and standard tactics get the best of me, and didn’t think well enough about the particular mission objectives in play.
• Dozer blades: On the way over I was seriously considering dropping the combi-flamers or something in order to buy dozer blades for the Razorbacks and Rhino.  Given the directions to place more terrain than usual, and the mission requirement to basically hustle across as fast as possible, this seemed like a good chance to actually use them.  In the end I didn’t because I don’t have any modeled on and wasn’t convinced it’d be worth it.  That decision was more or less reasonable, though it could go either way.  I did hang up the Razorbacks on terrain a couple times, but mobility of my tanks seemed mostly ok.  My Landspeeders on the other hand were repeatedly immobilized landing on difficult or impassible terrain.  Robin’s winged warriers also took a lot of wounds from jumping into cover.  If only there were some upgrade to help the speeders with that; it would probably be more worthwhile than dozer blades for tanks…

So, two interesting games.  Early feedback from Jason and Steve was that the campaign defender’s objective of crashing through the line and exiting the board was crazy hard and couldn’t be done.  If nothing else, I think tonight’s action showed the mission is reasonably balanced, all else being equal, and whether or not it’s doable in each match will depend on what all else is not equal—other armies, play styles, etc.  They also left me looking forward to seeing what’s different in the new Tyranid codex; should be a challenge!

Herding bugs---what a lot of us are going to be spending a fair bit of time doing for some while to come... Pic from Sunday's game with Robin and Charles. More here.

As announced earlier, I am currently running a multi-week 40k Combat Patrol tournament here in Philadelphia.  We just finished Round 1, and things are going fairly well.  Sixteen people have joined the party, and there’s a decent mix of armies.  The only really surprising omission is the lack of Imperial Guard, but it sounds like several of the guys with new IG armies haven’t graduated them to their tournament faction yet.  Last week we had a really good group session with twelve people playing at Redcap’s Corner in West Philadelphia.  This coincided with their grand reopening after expanding the store, and it was a great time.  The new space is awesome and many good games were played.

One of the plans I have for the tournament is to take the campaign oriented mission writeups, package them up with my notes on running the tournament, and post them up afterward for other groups to use in running similar events with minimal work.  Toward that end, I’m going to record some of my design notes and observations here as we go along.

Combat Patrol

Perhaps most fundamentally, there are some mixed reactions to the Combat Patrol rules.  Our restrictions follow fairly faithfully from those in the 4th Edition rulebook but at 750 points, and feelings are positive but a few issues have come up.

On the positive side, this setup has four big advantages going for it:

• The tournament is more accessible.  Running at a low points scale and with mostly only core units allowed, more players will be able to jump in.  As a bonus, it also means more players will have fully painted armies, a nice side effect.  I will note though that this has had only mixed success; we did not pull in quite the crowd of new people I was hoping to.
• Games only require 4×4 tables, which means you can fit a good number of matches into a small space.  We have a lot of room at Redcap’s and PAGE, but 4×6 tables are a limited supply at the latter and the former is contested by card players (mostly Magic).  Physically fitting more games just makes things easier at a lot of venues.
• Small games like these can be played in 90–120 minutes.  I’ve taken advantage of that to set up asymmetric missions where a match consists of two games with players alternating rounds.  At 750 points that can easily be done in three hours, and therefore still works well for people to get together and play after work.
• Perhaps most importantly though, and most conflicted, the restrictions generally keep crazy and specialized units out of the game.  This also helps accessibility, leveling the playing field a great deal: You know you won’t go up against someone who’s invested in a handful of Landraiders or has every model on hand to pick and choose from for an optimal list.  I don’t have a problem with that at all, but it can be discouraging to new people.
  What also happens is that the restrictions take some of the tactics out of list construction and puts them back onto the table.  Since everyone’s forced to focus on core, common units, it’s a lot more predictable what people will have, and the forces are a lot more similar.  I certainly don’t have a problem at all with good list construction, and really enjoy that as a key aspect of the game.  However, at these low point levels it’s very susceptible to rock, paper, scissors effects, where a game’s outcome is dominated by good, bad, or unexpected list selections.  Given that small games have advantages otherwise, reducing that effect is a good thing.

However, the restrictions also raise some problems.  Some people are turned off by the lack of crazy units, and don’t see big gains in board tactics focus or value in reducing the rock, paper, scissors effect.  That’s basically a style choice; I think the former is just different, not better, but the latter is important for games of this size.

Worse though is that the Combat Patrol rules aren’t holding up well under the 5th Edition codexes.  Just like we bumped the points to 750 to better suit codexes with expensive units, such as Necrons, with the additional restrictions there are just so many units barred from play that it’s a little overkill.  I was really, really sad to realize my Drop Pods would not be legal, and neither would my Captain.  I don’t see either of those as unstoppable at this point level, but the loss of the Drop Pods especially has really changed my play style, and forced me to scrounge together some Rhinos—in complete contrast to the goal of enabling people to play with anything they have on hand.  Similarly, I don’t see huge problems in allowing in an IG Company Commander.  Tyranid players also seem really cramped by the rules, with very few permitted unit choices in the new book.  The newer books seem to trend toward having more wounds, armor, and so on floating around, frequently making previously available units forbidden in Combat Patrol.

I can see some value in keeping out Landraiders, Terminators, special characters, Chaos Sorcerors, etc. at this point level and game style.  But, I think in the future I would relax the restrictions, probably allowing 3 wounds, 36 armor, and possibly 2+ saves.  I would definitely even consider letting anything go; at 750 points these kinds of balance issues are less of a problem than at the standard Combat Patrol 400 points, and a lot of it is self balancing.  Yes, a Landraider could be hugely dominating.  But a couple Sternguard could also drop it in Turn 1 and wipe out a third of your points…  I certainly foresee spending a good bit of time revisiting this issue for future events.

New Codexes

I expected the new Tyranid codex to drop in the middle of the tournament and wanted to afford players some flexibility.  People might not be able to get it quickly, it might invalidate their models, and so on.  I therefore put this in the tournament rules:

Current codexes must be used. However, players of armies with codexes released during the tournament may opt to use either the latest or previous codex, declared before a match begins.

However, what I really should have said was:

Current codexes must be used.  However, players of armies with codexes released during or up to two weeks before the tournament begins may opt to use either the latest or previous codex.  They must inform their opponents which book they are using when arranging a match, and once they upgrade to the newer book they must not switch back to the older book for their remaining matches..

This won’t actually be an issue for us because we have a good group with the right attitude, but it addresses a couple potential issues:

• More leeway is needed for when the book comes out; it being released the day before the tournament starts versus the day after doesn’t really change the core issues such as book availability and reworking models or lists, but in the original wording everyone would technically be forced to upgrade.
• The original intent was definitely that opponents could plan around which book would be used but the original wording didn’t actually quite say that, so it is spelled out better in the second version.  Not that I think it’s a huge issue at this point level and with these restrictions, but it’s definitely the more sporting approach so it may as well be formalized.
• Similarly, allowing people to switch back and forth between books in some attempt to tune to the mission or opponent seems very gamey and unsporting.  The second wording encodes that intent and eliminates that problem.

Starting & Registration

The tournament is being run in a multi-week format with only a fixed date for the climactic, dramatic final round(s).  In the interim, players schedule their matches as they please to fit their schedule.  This is working out well so far in enabling people flexibility to participate, but it has made the start a little awkward.  For example, I still don’t have contact information for some people who were registered by their friends.  It’s working—they’re making their matches and so on—but it’s a little cumbersome.  In the future I would definitely consider having a mandatory session for the first round as well so that I can physically collect all the contact information, registration fees, etc., and then roll from there rather than trying to play catchup with people for a couple days or weeks.

The campaign map for the tournament.

In any event, so far so good, and I’m looking forward to a bunch of fun, tough matches in the next couple weeks.  More details on games and notes on the tournament and campaign to come!

The other week at PAGE we played a quick round of our Obscurus Descendent micro-campaign in progress.  It was actually a great night—there were space conflicts at our usual venue, so instead all ten of us met at my house!  Fortunately I was in the process of moving, so I had one house pretty much empty of furniture such that we could set up a whole bunch of gaming tables.  It did involve several long nights though doing some simple construction to make free standing supports for my boards so that we would have enough tables!

Biggest issues on the campaign were:

• There was some confusion about army construction.  We had put out two sets of army composition rules, and everybody was supposed to bring one for each.  That worked reasonably enough, but several people assumed that those armies would be combined in the final round, rather than being free standing in their own right.  Lesson: Campaign managers need to give their players a solid set of expectations, such that they can construct effective armies.  The campaign writeup in turn should help the managers do that, i.e., tell them what to say.
• Boards are everything.  The final round is sort of a micro-apocalypse, all-in team gaming pitting good versus evil.  We used an excellently done Mordheim board a friend had constructed.  It was very thematic, with a ruined manor front leading into a temple crypt behind, but much too clogged with terrain for 40k.  The board was very small and had plentiful difficult terrain, so much so that many of the good guys simply could not get into the rule thick of the action.  Lesson: There is such a thing as too much terrain, and boards made for one system may not work well for others.

That said, it was a fine time, and we all had a hoot crowding around one board.  I think there were three really standout moments in the game:

• After the evil team deployed, it was like one of those goofy scenes from cheesy spy movies where they wish to show you how powerful the bad guy is by panning out on a wide open plateau of soldiers and such covering every available inch of it.  In this case, we faced something like 50 guardsman covering the icon at the center of the crypt.  They were literally wall-to-wall, loosely spread out in a grid in there.
• On the first turn, Kingbreakers Sternguard entered the board through the graveyard in front of the manor.  Silently rushing through the trees, they vault over the low wall and drop to their knees in the road before the manor, taking careful but instantaneous aim through the many chinks and holes in its facade.  Meanwhile, Librarian Rorschach lingers in the graveyard, fighting a desperate mental battle with the C’Tan lurking within the ruins, punching through its defenses precisely as the Sternguard let loose with a stupendous volley of fire.  Its psychic armor negated and its body pierced by round after round of poisoned bolts, the Nightbringer howled in rage as his physical form came unbound all around him.
• Space Wolves Terminators leverage their hard-won knowledge of the dark leaders’ lair to infiltrate directly into the crypt.  They slay corrupted guardsmen left and right, hacking their way through the wall of flesh toward the ruinous icon set in the half-light glow of the ritual pit.  But just as they break through and their wolf priest braces to cleave it in two at the last possible moment, they realize the trap that has been laid!  Dozens and dozens of guardsmen rush to the scene, pouring in volleys of fire as their officers and commissars bellow them onward, feeding their Warp tainted rage with boxes and boxes of extra ammunition placed in the crypt earlier with a mind to precisely such desperate times…

Long story short, the forces of good did not manage to stop the ritual in time.  Intelligence is unclear given the lack of survivors reporting back from the climactic final moments, but all signs indicate that the rebellious undercurrents that had been sweeping the Obscurus Segmentum were indeed successful preparations for a dark menace to breach through from the Warp.  Inquisitors dispatched to investigate are overdue to report back…

Jason and I have been working on some micro-campaign rules for 40k.  Among these are some alternative force organization charts, missions, and rules.  Critical to the design of these has been discussion about how many points different HQs may cost.  I thought I’d share the results of the “research” so far (research meaning flipping through the codexes I have or know about):

• Daemonhunters: Characters ~150–200, generics ~50–200
• Space Marines: Characters ~125–250 (most ~200), generics ~100–175 tricked out
• IG: Characters ~ 150–200 (most ~150), generics ~50–100 tricked out
• Black Templars: Characters ~175–200, generics ~ 100–200
• Chaos Marines: Characters ~ 160–275, generics ~ 90–150 tricked out
• Tau: Characters ~ 170–225, generics ~ 50–150 tricked out
• Necron: Characters ~ 200–360, generics ~100–200 tricked out

Somewhat surprisingly, there’s less spread there than I expected, though most of them are fairly similar.  Big questions are Chaos Demons and Eldar lists, though I expect they’re probably not too different.

I play a fair number of 40k games at low point values—250 to 750 points.  Around 750 the game still behaves fairly normally.  Below that, things can get pretty different.  These are some of my thoughts and notes on small games of Warhammer 40,000.  I’d be thrilled to hear other suggestions and new ideas.

[ Advantages ]

It’s worth first recapping why I’m interested at all in small games when so much attention and emphasis in 40k is seemingly moving toward Apocalypse and ever larger, more sprawling matches.  There are three obvious advantages to playing low point value games:

• Matches play faster, so they can be packed into a shorter period of time.
• Less space is required for matches, making it easier to throw down anywhere.
• Building an army is an expensive and time consuming process, so new players are bound to tend toward smaller games for some time.

A few less obvious reasons small games have really appealed to me include:

• Shorter individual matches means potentially playing out a campaign in a shorter period.  Being able to get in two games in a night can really get things moving, and a whole campaign could possibly be packed into a long day or weekend.
• It’s much easier and cheaper to play around with new armies at low point values.  I play Space Marines but am interested in moving into playing and painting/modeling Tau, Chaos Marines, and IG.  I could get together 750 point or smaller armies of those much more readily than a full blown force and start getting them out on the table without investing too much time or cash.
• Faster games means more games, which permits more strategy experimentation and faster rules learning.  Going through matches faster will permit more chances to try, fail, and improve major game elements like deployment, learning how Deep Striking plays out on the table, etc.
• Smaller armies may be much more readily transported.  I routinely play at lunch or right after work, and usually walk or bike to campus.  Throwing a small army into my backpack is much more appealing than lugging around a full army list.
• Team and multiplayer games are a lot of fun in 40k and often overlooked.  Small armies are great for combining with other players or having a free for all and still fitting the match into a reasonable total points value and resulting timeframe.

[ LunchHammer ]

As an example combining these points, my friend Yeti and I regularly play 250 point “Lunchhammer” games.  Obviously they’re not normal games in any sense, but they’re a lot of fun and meet several objectives and constraints:

• I’ve only started playing 40k relatively recently (last summer), so this was a great way to jump in and start learning some rules right away as I started constructing an army.
• We aim to wrap up a game within an hour, including a lot of shooting the breeze.  Similarly, we play right in Yeti’s office on a small conference table, so there’s not much room.
• We use this as a time to experiment with different units and loadouts, testing what units can handle what units and how they handle in different situations.  It’s also a great chance to practice and get down the mechanics of new units or unfamiliar game features.

For these 250 point games we don’t apply force organization charts or any other restrictions.  Obviously the matches can be pretty unbalanced at times, but it works well for trying out new units mano-a-mano, practicing some rules, and getting in a real quick lunchtime game.

[ Small Point Games ]

I also frequently play 400–750 point games at two local clubs.  Despite all of the advantages noted above for small games, 750 points is right around the lower bounds of what 40k is really designed to handle.  How well these matches work can really depend on the armies involved, play styles, and terrain.

Most obviously, different armies may or may not work as well at low point values.  Arguably, the codexes are balanced around 1500 pts.  As you stray farther and farther from that up or down, some hold up better or worse.  Necrons, for example, don’t scale down well to low points values because their units are expensive and with only a few models on the board they run a significant risk of phasing out.  For many armies, simply adhering to standard force organization charts may be difficult, and for some nearly impossible.

At least as impactful as the points though are the table sizes.  In my gaming circles we frequently run on small tables—Lunchhammer on a ~ 2×2 table, 400 point games on 3×3s, 750 point games on 4×4s, etc.  Those reduced board dimensions change many things, including:

• Falling back changes dramatically, becoming much more lethal since units are inherently so much closer to their own table edges.  This makes low leadership units more risky and reduces the value of special abilities such as the Space Marines’ And They Shall Know No Fear and Combat Tactics.  That’s unfortunate as they pay a notable, built-in cost for those abilities, but they’re not helpful on smaller tables.  Dropping out of combat to shoot & counterattack is great, but not if you fall back off the table in doing so.
• Games tend to drift toward locking down into close combat.  Firepower is still important and with careful maneuvering a shooting army can be kept out of the fray, but if players don’t explicitly work against it, matches will tend toward close combat.  This makes close combat even more decisive and important than it already is, making shooting armies at best harder to play and at worst less effective.  More importantly, this can make for boring games.  If each side only has 3 or 4 units, it can be real easy for all of them to become locked in combat for the remainder of the match.  At that point the players are just rolling dice rather than making decisions and playing a game.

Objectives are another potential issue quickly apparent to anyone constructing a small army list.  With so few units, it can be very hard to effectively hold objectives, even if mostly troop units are chosen.

There is also a large rock-paper-scissors element to very low point value games.  With so few units and models, it is easy to wind up in a situation where a player simply can’t realistically fight an opposing unit.  Vehicles with high armor are the primary candidates for this problem.

[ Suggestions ]

To combat these issues, a number of rules modifications have been employed within my gaming circles, including the following:

• The most basic change is altering the Force Organization chart and imposing additional unit restrictions.  A good place to start are the standard 4th Edition Combat Patrol Rules: 400 points; no more than 2 wounds; no better than a 2+ save; 1 troop unit required; no total armor above 34.  It may also be useful to further restrict the non-troop unit types to at most two selections each.
• Place a larger collection of terrain than usual, including many areas of difficult terrain.  That will slow down movement a bit and reduce the tendency to quickly move into close combats for the remainder of the game.
• By the same token, cut down heavily on deployment zone dimensions.  Starting armies harder against their side of the table will increase the space between them, delaying the close combat lock down and providing more room to shooting armies to maneuver and get their shots in.  On a 3×4 table it may make sense to have the deployment zone be only 6 inches deep, or possibly less.
• Similarly, it may be worthwhile to reorient the board.  On a standard 6×4 table, players usually deploy on the long edges.  For matches on smaller boards, such as a 3×4, it may be better for players to deploy along the short edge to retain somewhat more distance between the players and provide more time for maneuver.
• To blunt the impact of falling back somewhat, it may be helpful to fall back toward the point on the deployment table edge at the center of the table, rather than the closest point on the table edge.  That will give flanking units somewhat more time to fall back before they are eliminated.
• More drastically, it may be worthwhile to reduce falling back to 1d6 or 1d6+1d3.  That’s a large change, but may be appropriate for small tables.  Particularly for units such as Space Marines which will definitely or are likely to recover from falling back, this restores an important part of their abilities, one which their point values include.
• Infiltrating and outflanking may be overpowered and need to be addressed.  For infiltrating, minimum range distances may need to be reduced in order to permit any sort of effective deployment, but at the same time balanced to not provide an immediate assault.  Outflanking may also need to be adjusted in some way as it can have huge impact on the game.  Similarly, reserves in general may not work as well in low point value games as the sudden appearance of a fresh unit has a much larger effect than it does in games with many more units.
• Additionally, and frequently overlooked, rules for objectives must be altered for the mission types based on them.  Given the reduced table dimensions and lower numbers of units, it probably makes sense to lessen the number of objectives placed.  With standard numbers of objectives and very few units on the table there will be much less contention over them.  They may also simply be difficult to place far enough apart.
• Finally, given the low number of units, it may make sense to change the rules for holding objectives.  Under the standard rules, players are forced to dedicate one or more of their very few units to simply camping on top of and holding objectives.  We commonly play that players hold the objectives they place by default until they are contested.  This frees the player the be more aggressive in their play, provided they can keep the enemy away from their objectives.  It may also make sense for objectives to be held by the last player to control it, completely freeing units to take objectives and then move on.  Similarly, more emphasis could be placed back on elite and other unit types by permitting them to hold objectives.  This might be balanced somewhat with 5th Edition’s emphasis on troops by requiring non-troops to be above 50% strength to hold an objective.

[ Conclusion ]

All in all, 40k isn’t quite designed for battles of small armies in small spaces.  However, it still holds up fairly well and can produce exciting, tense, strategic games.  The few issues that may crop up can typically be addressed through some of the minor tweaks discussed above combined with some common sense and good sporting play.

Please feel free to leave comments on any suggestions, ideas, and observations!  I’d love to continue developing and improving small points matches for all of the reasons at the top of this post.

Thx!