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House Rules

2K views 15 replies 10 participants last post by  uberschveinen 
#1 ·
I was just wondering their seems to be a lot of gamers out there(of which i'm one), that aren't entirely happy with just the Basic rules, so what House Rules do people play with???

For Example some of the House Rules we have in our group are: Overwatch(Rapid Fire Only), Range modifiers for the Different weapon types, Close assault (You can only hit what your in base to base with(none of this 2" rule))Initiative Turn Base..to name a few.
 
#2 ·
Haha, our house-rules don't change the game that drastically. Mostly they clear up disputes in the rules, like you can use a shield drone to take a lascannon hit, or you may infiltrate up to 12" as long as no squad that can see you is within 18".

Just small stuff.
 
#3 ·
I've never thought of a 40k house rule but for fantasy me and my friend play you can have any unit from a different army book as a rare choice. I find its quite good you find yourself fighting a empire army with a large unit of questing knights.
 
#4 ·
house rules...well we had a few like if u have a plasmagun in base to base contact with another guy and it overheats..well the other man will be so close to the explosion so we figured that he would have to take a save too
if that makes sense
and when i play with my friends we estimate points cost of an army list none of this bs "your 1 point over" we dont care if they are 100 pts over because if ur good enough u could beat them anyway,but we try to estimate very closely to make it fair
 
#5 ·
Badkarma, let me put this simply. Your house rules have effectively destroyed any capacity close-combat-based armies have of winning a previously fair fight. Not only is it extremely difficult to get into combat without taking massive causalties with overwatch (only Rapid Fire doesn't help. The average squad has Rapid Fire.), but when you get there you can hardly do a thing. Your CC rule makes no sense, since it implies that everyone stands perfectly still during brutal melee assault. The closest thing we have to 40K melee is WW2 trench fighting, so ask a veteran how that works. You will probably feel stupid afterwards. Given that a swirling melee generally involves a lot of movement, I'd say it's safe to assume you can hit something about your height away from you by the time the buzzing of the chainswords stops.

I hope you have something to make this fair to your Close Combat players, or you'll probably have quite some explaining to do when they realise that they simply aren't doing as well as anyone else.


Sinkoran, while that may make intuitive sense in some situations, I hope people are expected to come up with a logical explanation as to why the Knights of Brettonia have a giant scorpion with them, and the like. I'd also expect that there's some limitations for units that can change the way an army operates.


Smiley, that plasma rule is a bit odd. The gun is not exploding, just venting estructive gas. Besides, that makes the gun far more powerful when it doesn't work than when it does. Your points notes are common, but I do hope you do more than rough guess estimation, since it's fairly easy to hide a few hundred points. Besides, if you're such a good general compared to your opponent that it makes no difference, it really wasn't a fair matchup anyway. In any case, taking more points than allowed, even by one, is, by the very definition of the word, cheating. Your opponent and anyone else watching the game is quite allowed to point this out, and you are quite wrong to complain that they do not play an illegal army, even if it is only just.

Also, could you please try to use correct grammar? Most of your mistakes are not genuine mistakes so much as sheer laziness. Even then, it's a poor attempt at saving effort, since the twenty or so extra keypresses it would have taken to make that sentence grammatically correct, at a speed of a quarter of a second each, would have taken far less time than thinking of a witty response to someone pointing this out.

This is an english-speaking board, and those in it are expected to speak english. That is not english.
 
#6 ·
my house rules are this:

at the start of each turn roll a dice, on a roll of a:
1: a marine falls from a spaceship and lands in the battlefield.
place a model in the centre of the board and then scatter it using 3d6. if it lands on an infantry model the model takes a strength 3 hit, model must pass save. if landed on the tank, nothing happens.

2:a walker drops from the sky and lands on the battlefield.
place a small blast marker in the centre of the battlefield, and scatter it 3d6. if it lands on an infantry model, it instantly takes a wound. if it lands on a vehicle, the vehicle takes a glancing hit.

3: a tank drops from the sky and lands on the battlefield.
place a large blast template in the centre..... the same as before except only cover saves can be made, if in cover, plus tanks take a penetrating hit.

4: ba super heavy tank falls from the sky...same as before and covers a sector instead.
no cover saves and takes take a penetrating hit.

5: a titan falls from the sky.... the same as last time.

6: a battlecruiser falls from the sky. everything on the board is wiped out.

its a very fun system.
 
#9 ·
my house rules are whats written in the rulebook. if you try to modify the game on things you think should happen, then it is inevitable that the mods will become stupid or unfair. the way i see it is this; someone is paid to think about plasma guns overheating and how combat would work, so we play the rules the way they think. if something seems wrong then that may just mean you havnt read it right or dont agree with it. i like the idea that the lone marine can fall from the spaceship, ill have to play it sometime. and smiley, nice comeback. uberschvienens right.
 
#12 ·
with my friends we estimate points cost of an army list none of this bs "your 1 point over" we dont care if they are 100 pts over because if ur good enough u could beat them anyway,but we try to estimate very closely to make it fair
Yeah, that is pretty much the only 'house rule' we have. We also like to play games with the Hazardous Environment rules that GW put out a few years back. Yes, they are supremely unbalancing and no, we don't care because they are fun as all hell :D
 
#13 ·
Wow, I thought I was the only one who got a kick out of the very unbalanced yet very characterful Hazardous Environment rules! I love writing scenarios which emphasize the character of armies, even if they tend to unbalance certain units. I played my Sons of Horus army against a Space Wolves army in zero-g, and that was a completely insane game since both armies were absolutely kitted out for melee.

I'm working on a resource-driven campaign (i.e. you replace losses by spending victory points, and capturing locations and whatnot add to your victory points total to spend until the story ends with one side the victor). I'll have to post that sometime, since there might actually be some interest in the format here.
 
#14 ·
Actually yeah, that does sound cool....


I can't remember exactly which one it was but two of us had a wildly fun game with one of those environments that either had explosions erupting randomly from the board, or maybe meteors falling from the sky, can't remember. Man, that game went back and forth so much it was sick lol. The absolute highlight of the game for me, even though it was completely NOT in my favour was when a series of meteors (I'll go with meteors) came flying in and nailed all but 1 of my units. Destroyed or Immobilized every vehicle I owned, and cost me a ton of models and literally turned a Victorious Slaughter on my part into the most brutal, knuckledragging gaming I have yet seen.

That is acutally what I like the most about those rules: they comepletely level the playing field through sheer randomness :twisted:
 
#15 ·
Hi uberschveinen Hope you had a Good New Year (That goes for everyone)

My Original question was who had house rules and what are they NOT who has house rules and why shouldn't they be played. To answer your question we have a very complicated way of Playing 40k, like i said our house rules are massive, (we even include armour deflection) we like it this way, most of my group have been playing wargames more than some people have lived on this forum (No slight intended just a Fact(Yes i'm 35 :( ))We've been playing 40k for over 10 years and if we want to change the rules we will, weather people like it or not. We still call it 40k because we like the universe it's set in, and the backgrounds of the races. I just wanted to know what other people had as a rule and maybe add it or a least try it out, I'm open to most ideas.
 
#16 ·
I'm not opposed to house rules, just so long as they're properly tried and tested, and are not just there for the hell of it. I don't particularly use house rules, since it's hard to get them right.

Campaign rules, on the other hand, are completely different. Since they're usually going to be one-offs it doesn't particularly matter if there's minor imbalances, and I'm usually observant enough to spot anything drastic. I've got campaigns written up in advance, ranging from the one-day to the truly epic confrontations, each with some complex additional rules.

The best part about campaign rules is, though, that as they aren't for fixing the game but making it more enjoyable, you have a great deal more freedom in what you can do before it's all too much.
 
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