RocketShip Games

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!