The Urban Warfare project

I posted about this in Cavash's Kill Team thread, but this probably requires a topic in and of itself.

We love Kill Team over here. It's quick, fun, and conveys 40k feel very well while being very beginner friendly. But the standard mission wasn't enough for our commune, and so we tried running an even of Kill Team campaign using Necromunda leveling rules. This was incredibly fun, every battle felt exciting, the models really grew into absolute murder machines and each and every permanent death really stung (looking at that roster I used still hurts, my dear murderous Kalivex ). However, there were problems here and there, some rule incompatibility issues (because really, Necromunda isn't exactly 40k 6e), so a friend of mine decided to compile all the rules we used into a separate ruleset.

You can find his project thread over here - http://z4.invisionfree.com/Boot_Camp/index.php?showtopic=15515 - it is still a work in progress and regularly updated. The aim is to create a working ruleset to then further modify as needed, while also keeping things as balanced as possible. There are some restrictions, for instance, no 3 wound models at the start or 2+/3++ units (which can be purchased later, though). I urge you all to take a look and try it out, then leave feedback here. I'll then further it on to my friend for updates. I'll also keep you guys posted on the updates.

Bookmarked!

Read through the rules last night via Cavash's post, already planning my first list (lead by a Helliarch and his pet Khymerae). Half hour limit to games may actually mean I can convince some of my regular (non 40k) board gaming friends to shuffle a session or two in. Very much looking forward to following this as it develops.

I think Mush would be excited by this.

The project has currently entered the playable beta stage. The skill tables are in place, so now it's the boring, hard part - balancing. If any of you guys have played a few matches, please, feel free to comment on what works, what doesn't - every bit of feedback is appreciated.

Here's a Mediafire link - http://www.mediafire.com/download/rmsa9yqc2e1q241/UW0.6.pdf

Ok, I've been playing around with a bit of list building for this, and I've got a couple of comments.

First off, I like the balancing of the gang to 50% troops, 25% Elites, 25% Fast (although with 9 man gangs I think the percentages need a little wiggle room..). But it would be really nice to have a clause that states that if a unit type can be taken as troops (via character powers or whatever) in a normal army, it counts as troops for the purposes of the skirmish force. I don't think it's unreasonable fluff wise, and could be balanced by paying a fraction (1/5 for arguments sake) of the cost of the character the larger army would have had to take.

Basically what I'm getting at, is that I'd really like to make up a coven gang, with wracks for troops. So in this case, I would pay 10 points per Wrack, plus a one time cost of 1/5 the cost of a Heamonculus.

I'm pretty sure I could swing this with anyone I cared to play with, but it'd be nice to have the option set down in black and white.


Second point; Walkers.

Torquemada wrote:

Only allowed Vehicles are Walkers with the total armor value of 34 or less, and no more than a single walker per gang is allowed.

So, seeing as these can only be selected from Elites, troops or fast (and bearing in mind that I don't have every codex available to me) doesn't that pretty much mean that only guard and marines are getting vehicles? Seems a little unfair... Eldar walkers are Heavy, so are Orks.. And we don't even have one.

The solution I'd propose would either be to say no to all vehicles, or to just specify the max armor value and that they cannot be heavy support or HQ.

I was briefly confused by the wording explaining the limit of one sergeant per force, but I think that was down to my misreading rather than anything in the actual text. Revisiting it it's pretty clear.

Hope the above is helpful, will try and get some actual gameplay feedback at some point.

I agree with the idea of making units troops with an upgrade that costs a fraction of the HQ. It would probably work the same with, say, a price of a Sorcerer and Mark of Tzeentch if one wanted lots of Thousand Sons, for example. Also, upon list building, we agreed that it should go as follows - 50% of models have to be troops, while elites and fast attack can divide a little, as long as together they made those 50% and they themselves were divided equally. For example, if I have six models, three of them are troops, one elite and two fast attack.

About walkers, yeah, that does pretty much include only Guard and Marines. An exception for walkers from Heavy Support could probably be placed in. But honestly, with them eating up so much points, getting only half the experience and not getting any upgrades, I don't see myself ever putting one in, when I could just get more bodies on the table. In any case, this should be considered.

Thanks for the feedback and do continue looking out for dodgy wording - english isn't our native language, so occasionally we might get something wrong.

Glad the suggestions were useful. The percentages seem pretty solid if its to the nearest model as you've said. I don't think I'd ever really go for walkers myself either, they seem a bit of a trap, but traps can be good. Perhaps walkers (or the odd light vehicle) would work better as something a reasonably advanced gang could buy rather than starting gear - sort of like an expansion to the base game. Didn't Space Crusade do that?

As for the language, the majority of it's absolutely fine, but I'll have a look over it again and note down anything that stands out to me. Frankly I admire anyone with any vague multilingual capability, us English are notoriously lazy when it comes to learning anything else..