40k Variants?

[ElectricPaladin]

One of the things that keeps me coming back to Warhammer 40k is its variants. 40k is a big lovely mess of a game, and it supports so many kinds of play. Games that are technically better designed can't often do this, because they are so strongly about something.

Thus, I wanted to start a thread about 40k variants. Which ones have you played and which ones are you curious about? Which do you like the idea of, but think are broken, and how would you fix them. Let's go to town.

Personally, I have only played Cities of Death and Kill Team, but I am deeply curious about Planestrike and Spearhead. I'd also love to try Zone Mortalis. I'll write more later, but I don't want this to be a "listen to EP opine" thread, so I'll wait.

[Kaptain Badrukk]

I have 3 sets of spacehulk tiles, and LOVE playing the boarding missions from IA. They totally change the meta and make the player really think.
Some of the stuff in Battle missions is pretty cool too.

[Bob821]

We play a lot of daft games ie I'm playing on Thursday a 2000 pt, 4 named character, no flyers, no FOC Blood Angel’s vs Space Wolf battle. I love madness like that.

Zulu is another popular one of ours. Waves of Ork boys attacking a ring of defences made from 2 agies defence lines with a small building in the middle. Big force of basic guardsman with a few heavy bolters in the middle and see how long you can survive. Then you play it the other way around and the overall winner is the player who keeps his guardsman alive the longest! The only real rule is the ork commander has to shout 'Zulu' every time one of his squads of orks re-spawns!

Varity is the spice of life and if you enjoy the hobby as I do then the more random the better!

[ElectricPaladin]

Zulu is another popular one of ours...

I ran a D&D fight like this once, except that it was the characters trying to rescue hostages, and the orks were coming off one side of the board, rather than all around. I imagine that you could do this with almost any army defending - Eldar, Sisters of Battle, Space Marines - and a couple of others attacking. Tyranids would work well as attackers, too.

[Mr Mystery]

Years ago, when Warseer was still Portent, bunch of us came up with sub-aquatic rules.

Will see if I can remember owt about them.

[Denzark]

I love apocalypse, I fancy trying Planetstrike and Spearhead, and city fight. I played an awesome game the other day where both armies had to go all infantry, for a massed wave style attack like the old heresy artwork - 2 extended lines advancing on each other firing.

Played 3 x 500 point games at our club the other night - that was a nice change.

I think a change can be sometimes as good as a rest - the variety of the battle missions book was good.

[Bob821]

I ran a D&D fight like this once, except that it was the characters trying to rescue hostages, and the orks were coming off one side of the board, rather than all around. I imagine that you could do this with almost any army defending - Eldar, Sisters of Battle, Space Marines - and a couple of others attacking. Tyranids would work well as attackers, too.

It works well with all sorts! One of the best is Stern Guard defenders and Howling banshees attacking. You need a lots of Eldar to get there but one 'Your in' its game over pretty fast!

I'd love to do it with nids but don’t have the models. A nids vs guard would be really cinematic!

[magickbk]

A long time ago GW put out this little packet called Boarding Actions, or something like that. It was like mini kill team. The board was incredibly small, and there were various rules for oddities that can only happen while fighting on a ship. It was fast and fun.

[doublek666]

PLANET STRIKE is fun. You need to get into a different mindset. I think you could abandon the main game altogether for a while and just play PLANETSRIKE battles. You need a Fortress of Redemption some bastions and some Aegis defense lines. It is great if you already have about 3-5,000 points at least, to choose different armies to be attacker or defender. You should choose the missions then finds out who does what. You'd have two different armies to choose from, as each side has a different FOC to use. Just need to buy and paint the terrain. Or make it. You also have Strategic points to use for traps and various special advantages to chose from. The opportunity to create a dedicated army just for initial wave of Planetary Assault, used as part of an APOCALYPTIC campaign with CITIES OF DEATH. SPEARHEAD is different. It changes things quite a bit as well. Instead of the long edge of the table you deploy from the short edges. players can use standard FOC and include SPEARHEAD formations, basically more units. Mainly more vehicles but other units are included as well. The variations are fun. You could have years worth of fun finishing painting armies, never buying mores rules or units as no need to keep up with 'competitive' meta. These variations are more narrative driven, then the MAGIC TEH GATHERING approach many seem to want to be equally matched and that winning has anything to do with pure skill. It can also be just fun for the sake of fun, in the end much better suited for this then simple points match. That's what chess is for.

[Lord-Boofhead]

A long time ago GW put out this little packet called Boarding Actions, or something like that. It was like mini kill team. The board was incredibly small, and there were various rules for oddities that can only happen while fighting on a ship. It was fast and fun.

Do you still have this wizardry? Preferably in PDF?

[Mr Mystery]

Sounds akin to Zone Mortalis, which is fun.

Dim rememberance from the Aquatic battles were reduced weapon strengths, but significantly higher counts of rending, to reflect that even a glancing hit can render a warrior out of action!

[magickbk]

Do you still have this wizardry? Preferably in PDF?

I most certainly have it in print form in my archives. I imagine any sort of PDF version would be dicey from a legal standpoint, I don't think posting it would be allowed.

[Morgrim]

I haven't tried this with 6th ed rules, but a few years ago a group of us had fun with a modified semi-Cities of Death campaign called 'The Ground is Lava'. Lots of buildings and other terrain, a few open corridors, and a rule that if any non-skimmers/fliers ended a turn touching the ground they were automatically killed. Great fun with armies that have lots of skimmers/jump infantry/fliers, not fun at all for those that don't. We tested it with orks, that was a bit of a flop, but BA vs DE was great. I think it would have been fun to try with a gargoyle heavy 'nids list.

[Arkhan Land]

i know it was while while back but i always really dug the Tangle of Tanks battle rules from WD cool to be able to bust out heavy armor for a skirmish paced game thats not in epic format.

[Archon]

Anno City Fight 2nd Book I played a lot of it. We had even a local turnament or to with CF. Nowadays, we got enough terrain, but we rarley play CF. Mainly because we got rules for ruins, buildings etc. in the mainbook.

Planetstrike is big fun an can be nasty. As it came out I and a friend had a test game and begun a campaign straigth after that. About two weeks we give it another try and stumbled over some issues. Why had GW not faqed this supplement? It will go with 6th ed, but there many tricky situations since 6th.

There was a WD only (later as pdf) supplement called tank-storm or something. We played this one too, and it was a funny thing, but unfortunatly we don´t make more of it - I think it should work with 6th ed. rules as well.