Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: We Need More Exciting Army Rules
Goatboy here again with some idea for new army rules to keep the 40K fresh.
I want to think about some ideas that could show up as rules in the future. Now I think we have to figure out if these might be too powerful but it is something that could be unique enough to work. I am sure there is a lot of interesting ideas that could pop up and work – or they could just be too hard to balance. But enough of that – let’s ponder some rule ideas.
CORE Tricks
The first one I always wonder about is some army having a way to make something CORE during a game. This could be just for a phase, player turn, or just the rest of the game if you spend the command points to activate. Of course it is really dependent on how good CORE is for the army – but it is something I thought might be unique enough to be good. It allows you to boost a unit up in a unique way dependent on how the army itself works. It might get re-rolls that it didn’t have before or other neat stacks. It could all of a sudden gain an ability to use a Stratagem it didn’t have too. Would it be too powerful? For armies like AdMech that have a lot of CORE interaction it probably would be but for Necrons it might not nearly be as good. I just think it is an interesting rule that has felt kind of lackluster as we don’t understand the basics for making certain units CORE while others are not.
Keyword Tricks
The next idea chains off of this CORE idea and what if we had an army that somehow “stole” keywords to benefit off of the army they are playing. You all of a sudden have a unit that “steals” the orders and utilizes their leaders reroll or other fun options. I know they lock a lot of things now into Brotherhoods, Cults, and Legions but what if it took all the other keywords and you get to use them. I think this is less likely as turns are pretty locked into doing specific stuff so while you have their abilities it might not work out too well. It would just be an interesting option.
Mission Tricks
The other idea that I thought would be cool would be some kind of canceling option on their chosen secondaries. Like you can turn off their ability to score for a turn if you disrupt a unit or something they try to do. How cool could it be for GSC to sabotage your armies scoring for a turn beyond just razing an objective. What if they somehow truly got into your mine? Would it generate unfair games or interactions that are just not nearly as interesting as the idea of the threat of turning of some points might be?
Psychic Tricks
We have Deny the Witch being a form of counter spell but what if we had some way redirect a spell – steal it to give a different unit a bonus that you wanted? I know we had stealing units for a bit but what if we stole psychic spells or other things. Or what if you had psykers that could “steal” a spell and replace all the target wording with their own armies wording. You could “steal” Eldar psychics to update your cool Marines. Just like a weird way to shift a spell to update how you play between rounds with different armies.
“Bad” Exploding Sixes
The last one would be an interesting one that instead of Exploding 6’s you had Devouring 6’s. For every roll of a 6 you remove the six and another hit. This could be a crazy way to build some kind of interesting protection to a unit that isn’t just make it tough, make it only take x wounds a turn, or have a plethora of save rolls. I want to make things tough but I also don’t want to make it feel too tough. It is the dance we have dealt with for every edition in trying to create rocks that are hard to crush.
What other kind of things could be done to make 40k more unique but within the structure of the game that is already there? What neat little tweaks could be done to rules to change things up a bit? And why aren’t their better primary mission objectives?
