Has anyone used these ground warfare rules? On reading they seem to be ham-fisted, poorly written and badly laid out. Though most of the rules concerning voidships are a lot better I'm happy to say. How has anyone represented the battlefield they've used and the distances involved? The book makes the absurd suggestion that you can use a conversion rate of one inch/tile per kilometre… considering the typical infantry formation moves at 20km, mechanised infantry at 240km and aircraft at 2400km per turn, things could get, 'expansive'. I have a feeling they just lifted the conversion rate from earlier games and didn't really give it any thought.

What would be a better rate to use do you think? It just seems that the differences between units is so vast, clearly if your trying to wage an planet wide war then next to armoured ground forces infantry are basically static units. Whilst realistic it throws up problems that weren't really addressed (along with a whole host of other things) much of which is simply left up to the discretion of the GM.

Maybe I'll just invest in Epic Armageddon heh.

Oh and any examples for stats for Chaos Slaves suitable for human waves?

DW

I've just been using modified horde rules from deathwatch for large scale battles. It seems to mesh better with rogue trader.

Modified in what way? If you don't mind. Are they the same horde rules that come with Black Crusade?

DW

I used a watered down version of the rules in a Black Crusade game I ran. I effectively just asked the PCs to give me a broad idea of how they were planning on using their troops to attack and gave modifiers that I thought were appropriate at the time rather than having to comb through the book and reading up the action, for example once they said they wanted to send in some slave troops they had acquired (light feral infantry conscripts) in the front to shield their troops so I just decided to have the slave troops take half of any damage directed at the guys behind them on top of the damage they were taking but the troops behind them took a penalty to damage the enemy since they couldn't all get clear shots while availing of their human shields (-5 I think). This was Black Crusade remember so the players really didn't mind using human shields but some Rogue Traders will be just as bad.

As for slave troop stats I made them light infantry conscripts with an appropriate tech level to their gear. If you are talking about what stats to use for them on an individual level I'd suggest the Dreg stats from Dark Heresy p338.

The rules are terrible and considering how much detail went into them I’m surprised they are so poor and fundamentally flawed. In particular it scales poorly; distances don’t work by their measurements and unit strenghts are wildly inconsistent with everything else.

For my game – which is basically nothing but giant battles – I’ve scraped everything but the core concepts (the basic unit stats and damage rolls) and created a whole new system for making units (universal base unit, with add-on modules to reflect attached units or specialisations), movement (grid based now) and engagements (again, uses the grids to create realistic control areas based on unit sizes). Also missing from the original rules was good ways to tactically deploy troops, so I created simple transport and drop rules too. And, for fun, rules to land certain small void ships so they can be used as garrisons and landing fields. I mean… why not?

To be honest, it was pretty easy to patch these rules together and, as a GM, if my game was not exclusively about big battles I’d probably not bother with the rules anyway. Role a few Command checks from your characters, modify based on how good their plan is, and then just wing it based on degrees of success, or opposed degrees of success if you want to get complex.

But… with regards to distances, specifically, I revised all the ranges. I’ve set my grids to 1=100km and changed out the ranges and movement based on that logic. Most “modern” (Imperial Guard type) forces can move 200km per round (4 hours – meaning 31mph, which seems fine for whatever trucks or transports they are using – at this scale we can assume they’d have SOME transport even if it’s not armoured) and can engage any adjacent grid square (they would not all be clustered in a little tiny area – a regiment would spread it’s companies out to cover a wide area, so the engagement range represents a lot of smaller fights occurring across their operational zone).

Yeah, I'm planning to use these rules in a BC campaign as a way of representing the warbands growing military goals, starting with hurling hordes of slaves at each other on the proving grounds of feral war worlds in the Screaming Vortex and eventually culminating into full scale war in the Koronus Expanse. Since I've never been happy to solely rely on abstracts when it comes to conflict I need to have a system. As suggested I've already started working on my own version of the rules using tiles representing 50x50 km and predefined 'units' no different to an individual creature really. Though I like the idea of adding/purchasing traits and abilities, kind of like creating a character or a ship. For now I'm going to leave Aeronautica and Orbital Bombardment out of it though, just until the basics work. Stiff perplexed by FFG's offering though… I wonder if any of them use it?

DW

Claw would you mind posting your full rules?

I edited/created something similar, because for me BFK Ground Warfare was also found lacking in many aspects. Mind you, it isn't perfect, but I've tested it and found it to be useful. Except when you get into units Brigade size or bigger, but what is the sense in that?? Anyhoot, without further adieu, here is the specific link.

docs.google.com/document/d/1UixYlF1Y9INf7Yp-BZ9gpYvxGc_X2J2Gfd_3Ga37YXQ/edit

Happy gaming people.

You're welcome to look at what I wrote. It's here on my game forum: http://rttbe.freeforums.org/

Version two is in the House Rules folder. Version one, slightly more complex, is in the Old House Rules folder.

However… I honestly would not recommend this method of play anymore. It completely detracts from the role playing part of a role playing game. When you reach this stage you may as well be playing a strategy game. Personally, I'm more of a fan of the abstract or flashpoint method of play.

Sweet.

Nameless2all thx as well although honestly I'd already seen your stuff posted elsewhere.

Gming is hard <.<

Cultadium said:

Np. Made my week that is was (at the least) caroused through.

Obviously it still has certain areas that need to be fixed and edited. Feedback from anyone on where I've screwed up would be most helpful.

Nameless2all said:

Hi, I am currently adding your rules into my w40k framework, but I have an issue with this:

Nameless2all said:

I cannot duplicate these rules onto your own example. The same is for acquisition

e.g.

Professional Heavy Modern Armour Regiment

You find an attack value of: 10d10+36 and acq. mod of -50

but according to your own rules I arrive at 10d10+14 (12 power + 200str/100=2) and -60 acquisition

So where do I (or you) go wrong . I know the 12 power is correct as you have the same armour value (24=2x12) and you also derived a strength of 200. Its possible you meant army SIZE /100 OR strength/10 then you get at 20, which STILL does not add up to 36 but to (12+20=) 32

I would argue that the proposed movement rates in these house rules are rather ambitious .

Actual movement would be much less in many circumstances.

Allow me to elaborate (using arguments from a WWII war game) on movement:

There is tactical movement which represents reasonably careful cross-country movement with the unit spread out and ready for combat. In motorized/mechanized forces, the average speed is 2.5 miles per hour which may not seem very fast but remember that each man or vehicle is only moving half the time due to overwatch or leap-frog tactics, inevitable delays in coordinating the movement of diverse units, waiting for patrols to check something and then report back etc. And even when the vehicles are moving, they are doing it very slowly and carefully. When the consequences of haste are your own life, uncertainty makes most people very cautious. Troops will usually only travel about 10 hours a day as combat is exhausting and vehicles need hours of daily maintenance. At the same time, broken down or combat damaged vehicles must be collected and repaired (or sent to second line repair units), supplies need to be replenished and units reorganized again. Only in the most pressing circumstances will troops speed onwards and that is if they are either motivated to do so (for example relieve a siege) or if there has been a complete collapse of enemy morale (as seen in the German blitzkrieg in 1940 in France).

Strategic movement represents non-combat movement with the unit concentrated in one column to make maximum advantage of roads and available vehicles and usually achieves an average speed of 10 miles per hour. Again, this may sound slow but roads are usually poor, there will be many bottlenecks and the vehicles will need regular stops for maintenance. A typical example of the old army game of 'hurry up and wait'. Strategic movement also has the major disadvantage of being extremely vulnerable to ambush by enemy forces so it is only used when feasible.

Even if the commander wants his troops to move fast, the actual troops will do what they think best because their lives are at stake, whatever the screaming voice on the vox is saying!

100 km per 4 hours is therefore simply ridiculous. Theoretically possible under blue sky test situations but hardly feasible under combat conditions.

ranoncles said:

I've taken the liberty of converting all your values into equivilent measurements, for a comparison that makes any sense.

@ranoncles

You are absolutely right, but overall it doesn't really matter. changing the movement rate would effectively only require a different grid to work upon. so is a square is not 10km or even 1, it would become less and the movement/grid would remain the same. Potentially the relative movement would change. But even then im looking for a ruleset for a playable game where there is some balance. Eg the players most likely have an air ship floating around and tbh there is nothing on ground save a planetary defense force that could do something about that and the ship would simply fly around and pick them off one by one. Compare it to eg stratego where the rules don't resemble real life but do become a game with both luck and strategy which is fun to play.

Now the BFK rules are not balanced and im looking for more balancing rules. I like the rules of nameless, but they too require some shaving and it appears that im not quite following them, hence my earlier question for clarification.