The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)

[DrDaniel5]

I'll take a look at it. In the meantime, could you provide some more specifics about the situations where it's become a problem? If it's more of a general issue of point-efficiency, a cost change could easily work, although if there's an issue with something in particular (e.g. you mention its targeting with respect to gunnery) that could be a more appropriate fix.

my group's been talking about it and we're coming to the thought that it's a general issue of the some of the Tyranid options being really too cheap for what you get. I'll try and wrangle up some more specifics for you soon. Again thanks for all the work.

[AJCHVY]

One of the issues I've seen with the Nid stuff is it is drastically under-priced when compared to other fleets.

For example, compare their upgrades to orks. Orks have to pay 25 points for Super Boosters, which gives them the 4d6 all ahead full, and +5cm spd. Nids only pay 10 points for the +5cm speed. I doubt the cost of the 4th die on AAF costs 15 points.
Same goes for extra turrets, orks pay 20, and nids pay 10. Its the same for nearly every upgrade, nids pay way less for roughly the same bonus.

A nid charybdis battleship can after lots of various upgrades and weapons, cost around 300 pts, and have a similar amount of weapons as another fleets 400+ battleship.

Tyranids might need a full re-pointing for everything, as their entire fleet seems cheaper per ship and upgrade than almost anyone else.

I'm fine with Nids being a nasty close range fleet, but when the entire force gets to double boarding values, add auto fire crits to weapons, ignore shields with lances, use the crazy strong rules for feeder tendrils, and AAF right at you and still fire full effectiveness with cheaper ships, I as an Ork player am better off using my ork models but using Nid rules, as they are a better and cheaper version of my fleet.

Another different matter. One thing I noticed for Orks. The 2 battleships that do not come with Sooper Boosters do not have the option to buy them. And the cost of the Kustom force fields on the kroozers should probably be only 10, not 15, when compared to the battleships 20 point version.

tl;dr Nids are under-priced and a few things about ork upgrades cost and ship options.

Edit: I had never used on and did not realize that the Ork Freebooter Kaptin was the same cost as the other commanders. The +1 leadership is nice, but compared to the Warboss and the Big Mek, he does not do enough. I suggest either giving him another ability in addition to the +1ld or perhaps making him cost less. Maybe +1 ld is fine but other factions get to buy sub-commanders that basically do the same thing for less points, and orks always have less Ld so this ability is not as powerful.

[AJCHVY]

Another thought I had regarding Orks and the points of some of their upgrades.

I know we went over the various clans and their bonuses, and for the most part we have figured out decent rules for them. Going over them again, I like the Goffs rules, but all the others seem to be missing something. Either 20 points for a clan is too much, or the clan bonuses need to be changed. Not sure how many people are checking this thread, as it seems my last question was not answered but here are my ideas.

Either make all the clan bonuses 10 points or;
Goffs: leave as is
Evil Suns: +5Spd and +1d6 AAF
Bad Moons: possibly a free left column shift instead of the free re-roll, the re-roll boss upgrade only costs 10 points so why take bad moons over that.
Deathskullz: I almost like the deathskullz bonus, but it needs to be clear whether or not escorts can take looted torpedoes and if they receive the same +1/-1 crit rule. This would allow them to only take a hit and run crit on a 5+ with no bonus.
Blood Axes: I do like the +1 Ld bonus, but I think it should be 10 points for blood axes. Only affecting 1 ship unless you take an 60-80 point boss is not enough of a bonus, especially as orks are always at -1 to their Ld anyway.
Snakebites are free so they are fine as well.

I'm really liking the changes to the ork fleet, they feel like a competitive fleet now except for when I'm facing nids 

[Green_Squad_Leader]

The current clan rules are a decent compromise and in a good place overall. That is a good point for the Deathskullz, thr answers are yes and yes though.

[Xca|iber]

Hey everybody. I'm still keeping up with the thread - have no fear. Things have been busy on the other side of the keyboard, however, and I don't have as much time to work on the project as before. But progress marches on nonetheless!

Okay, so questions:

One thing I noticed regarding the ork fleet. It says that with a looted vessel, you change all lances to zzap guns, attack craft, and nova cannons to killcannons.

Do you change torpedoes? This will only matter with Tau torpedoes, as they have unique rules.

I thought it would be cool if the orks got access to the special tau torpedoes, but only get 1 shot then back to normal torps.

I apologize for not answering this one earlier, it slipped by me.

To answer your question: Looted Tau ships keep their existing torpedoes. Fluff-wise, one can imagine the Orks very much like combining Torpedoes and Dakka together into missile salvos, and will work hard to keep that system working exactly as before. 

Another thought I had regarding Orks and the points of some of their upgrades.

I know we went over the various clans and their bonuses, and for the most part we have figured out decent rules for them. Going over them again, I like the Goffs rules, but all the others seem to be missing something. Either 20 points for a clan is too much, or the clan bonuses need to be changed. Not sure how many people are checking this thread, as it seems my last question was not answered but here are my ideas.

Either make all the clan bonuses 10 points or;
Goffs: leave as is
Evil Suns: +5Spd and +1d6 AAF
Bad Moons: possibly a free left column shift instead of the free re-roll, the re-roll boss upgrade only costs 10 points so why take bad moons over that.
Deathskullz: I almost like the deathskullz bonus, but it needs to be clear whether or not escorts can take looted torpedoes and if they receive the same +1/-1 crit rule. This would allow them to only take a hit and run crit on a 5+ with no bonus.
Blood Axes: I do like the +1 Ld bonus, but I think it should be 10 points for blood axes. Only affecting 1 ship unless you take an 60-80 point boss is not enough of a bonus, especially as orks are always at -1 to their Ld anyway.
Snakebites are free so they are fine as well.

I'm really liking the changes to the ork fleet, they feel like a competitive fleet now except for when I'm facing nids 

I can see where you're coming from. As it stands I'm not looking to make too many text-changes to how the bonuses work at the moment, but I've re-evaluated the points. The next release of the Ork book should have the following:

-Evil Suns, Bad Moons, and Blood Axes support upgrades are 10 points instead of 20 points.
-Deathskulls bonus is clarified (They may add +1 or -1 to any critical hit or hit-and-run result they suffer, and may have looted torpedoes for +10 points each).
-Freebooter Kaptins are 20 points (from 40)
-Nobz are 15 points (from 20, and to bring them in line with other similar secondary commanders).

+++++++++++++++++++++

I'm going to need some time to evaluate Tyranids and re-point everything.

Also, @Green_Squad_Leader, I'm going to have to put campaign stuff on the back-burner for the time being until I'm caught up on the Scenario stuff and any other faction fixes that need to go out.

Lastly, per the thread on Dark Eldar functionality, I'm considering possible changes to some of their mechanics to reduce the efficiency of "Ding-Dong-Ditch" gameplay (i.e. kill 1 ship and disengage). More to come on that front some-time later (when I can get around to it).

That's all for now. Thanks everyone for continued participation in this project!

[Green_Squad_Leader]

I have some ideas for the next tyranid release.  A problem with the current rules is the overlapping natures of the names. Having multiple ships of different classes share the same name is pretty confusing, so my recommendations are that we make the following changes:

Hiveships

·Proteus Hive Ship -> Protean Class Hive Ship (Protean is the adjective form of Proteus.  Proteus as a shape changing sea god who was able to transform into various monsters which were protean in their nature.)
·Chrybdis Hive Ship -> no change
·Scyllax Class Hive Ship ->  No change.

While this gets down purely to naming conventions i would also recommend that we swap the terms Chyrbdis amd Protean such that the Chyrbdis Class Hive Ship is the larger of the two. The reason is that the names would be more descriptive. Chyrbdis is a creature so massive it swallows the sea to kill its prey, while Protean beasts come in all shapes and sizes but share the same nature.  The 20 hit point hive ship better fits the name Chyrbdis while the extremely customizable 10 hit point one better fits the term Protean.  This also creates a play on the classic saying "between Scylla and Chyribdis" as the Protean class would be the class between the other two extremes.

Cruisers
·Kraken Predator -> Grendel Class Bioship (monster with unbreakable skin, rensing claws and a hunger for human flesh)
·Leviathan Prowler -> Gorgon Class Bioship (Its sight equals death)
·Emergent Drone -> Myrmeke Class Bioship (Myrmekes are Greek Mythological beasts that take the form of giant ants that guard hills rich with gold and kill anyone who comes too close.)

Escorts
· Kraken Predator -> Kraken Droneship
·Leviathan Vanguard Drone -> Vanguard Droneship
·Escort Drone -> Guardian Droneship

I have rules suggestions for nids as well but those names are annoying hence my posting about them first.

[DrDaniel5]

we've boiled down our issues to basically just be the volume of feeder tendril hit and run attacks that you can make. with the multitude of escorts the nid fleets have you can basically ruin most of an enemy fleet's offensive power by breaking every weapon several times. There's no reason for the nid escorts to not spend the whole game braced as that doesn't stop Feeder tendrils from working. At least in XR the escorts are more expensive but I feel that the amount of feeder tendrils is extremely difficult to deal with. 

worry about cosmetic stuff like ship names once we sort out the important balance issues.

[Green_Squad_Leader]

There is a simple solution to the feeder tendril problem, and that is to make feeder tendrils weaker for escorts than they are for capital ships.

The easiest way to make that work is to give them a different effect from a normal hit and run attack (Nids have so many other ways to inflict those anyways).  How about this:

Feeder Tendrils: The first time this ship's base contacts the base of an enemy ship roll a D6. On a 5+ that enemy has been ensnared by the feeder tendrils, roll D6+1 and inflict the corresponding result on the critical damage table.  Escorts armed with Feeder Tendrils only successfully score a hit on a 6+.

If the target ship is an escort a successful hit from a feeder tendril suffers a hit and run attack.

That maintains the same net effect but makes feeder tendrils less of a guarantee. In fact the damage potential is greater this way and successful hits circumvent the anti hit and run special rules (space marines).

I would also recommend changing Massive Claws to work differently from their current form. Should I even bother making that recommendation or will everyone stone me to death by implying that clunky and easily abused rules are clunky and easily abused?

[DrDaniel5]

There is a simple solution to the feeder tendril problem, and that is to make feeder tendrils weaker for escorts than they are for capital ships.

The easiest way to make that work is to give them a different effect from a normal hit and run attack (Nids have so many other ways to inflict those anyways).  How about this:

Feeder Tendrils: The first time this ship's base contacts the base of an enemy ship roll a D6. On a 5+ that enemy has been ensnared by the feeder tendrils, roll D6+1 and inflict the corresponding result on the critical damage table.  Escorts armed with Feeder Tendrils only successfully score a hit on a 6+.

If the target ship is an escort a successful hit from a feeder tendril suffers a hit and run attack.

That maintains the same net effect but makes feeder tendrils less of a guarantee. In fact the damage potential is greater this way and successful hits circumvent the anti hit and run special rules (space marines).

I would also recommend changing Massive Claws to work differently from their current form. Should I even bother making that recommendation or will everyone stone me to death by implying that clunky and easily abused rules are clunky and easily abused?

That is the complete opposite  direction I think everyone wants to go with feeder tendrils. I would say there should be less rolls involved, and making them able to do more damage is not helping.

[Green_Squad_Leader]

The problem as i understamd it currently is that they are too much of a guarantee and that they cam simply shut down an opposing fleet with critical hits without the tyranid player needing to put forth much effort at all.

This is why I was reticent to even bother suggesting any changes for Tyranids, the current rules are "sacred cows" for that faction to a far greater extent than they were for Orks.
  The rage and despair that came out when i suggested altering the mechanics of "Mechanical Klaws" was surprising and disheartening.

I am striving to make a similar proposal to what I suggested be done regarding Heavy Gunz. These weapons have an end state in mind for what each is supposed to achieve. They rules which strive to achieve these effects but the current version of the rules does not work in a way that meshes well with the rest of the game.  As such I am simply making proposals which preserve the intended endstate of each weapon system while changing the mechanism of achieving it.

Feeder Tendrils were intended in the original design as a means of weakening and damaging enemy ships without doing much real damage.  They also provided a then unique ability for Tyranid Escorts to perform hit and run attacks, which was cool.  On the whole they do not seem overpowered at all when used by tyranid capital ships, the poor maneuverability and speed of which make it hard to successfully contact enemy ships.

The problem is that the feeder tendril is too good when taken on an escort ship. There are a few obvious fixes but these don't work very well in practice.

Easy fix 1: Add a penalty to the hit and run attacks from escorts. This can work and helps solve the problem for attacking enemy escorts, but vs enemy capital ships it really doesn't solve the problem. The hit and run attacks would still cause an extremely high number of the same exact critical hit results disabling a ship's weapons for most of the game.  So this in and of itself really doesn't fix much.

Easy fix 2: Restrict availability of feeder tendrils to capital ships only.  This should be the absolute last resort option.

Easy fix 3: Increase the cost of feeder tendrils.  This is a rabbit hole of unintended consequences that quite likely wont leave anyone happy. Again i wohld strongly recommend avoiding it.

The mechanism I am suggesting is no more complicated than lance weapons or weapons batteries or any of the hundreds of complicated rules we have in this game. It is a simple "See of the attack hits, then see what its effect is." Mechanic.

Adding the potential for the attack to miss allows for its effects to retain their potency without upsetting balance. Making it an attack that misses most of the time allows for the cost of feeder tendrils to be kept down.  Now you could make the attack work based upon the armor of the target ship instead of based upon an arbitrary value, this actually would quite likely be the best solution overall.  It provides a simple effect with a simple mechanic.  So here is a revised version of my proposal:

Feeder Tendrils: The first time each turn that this ship's base overlaps an enemy ship's base it performs one Feeder Tendril attack for each feeder tendril it has equipped. Roll 1d6 per feeder tendril against the target's facing armor value. For each successful hit the enemy suffers one critical damage effect (subtract -4 from the result if this ship is an Escort).  Ships with 3 or fewer base hit points instead suffer a hit and run attack when hit by a feeder tendril (subtract -1 from the result if this ship is an Escort).

This does a few things.  First off it preserves the intended endstate of a feeder tendril (inflicting critical hits).  The second thing this rule does is it makes enemy armor values relevant, which means that at the very least feeder tendrils go from being a "works on a 2+" effect to a "works at best on a 4+" effect.  The third thing this does it it creates a meaningful disparity between the power levels of escorts and capital ships armed with feeder tendrils.

With this design an escort ship attacking an enemy capital ship with feeder tendrils has a 28% chance of not inflicting a critical hit even if it scores a successful hit, and the range of total damage results is reduced.  Against enemy escort ships it has a 50% chance of not destroying the enemy ship.

Even if struck on mass with feeder tendrils this change also sould have the effect of increasing the variety of critical damage effects inflicted, so the defender would be able to more effectively choose what to repair first.

Another effect that this would allow us to introduce would be to give feeder tendrils a str value, such that some ships feeder tendrils would have more chances to inflict hits on the enemy. In this way we could introduce more variety between various ship designs.

As for my recommendation regarding Massive Claws it is very similar an WAY simpler than the current rule iteration.


Massive Claws: The first time each turn that this ship's base overlaps an enemy ship's base it performs one Massive Claw attack for each Massive Claw it has equipped. Roll d6 equal to the combined STR values of the Massive Claws against the target's facing armor value.  For each hit inflicted the target suffers 1 hit point of damage (ignoring shields).  Roll for critical damage as normal, if any Massive Claw attacks cause critical damage than in addition to the critical damage inflicted the enemy ships is now caught in the massive claws. (at this point resume the current rule effects)

The advantage this design gives is that. All of the claw attacks can be rolled at the same time instead of in pairs. Linking the grappling effect with inflicting critical hits adds more of a fear element to claw attacks as it only takes a single hit to inflict it.  The math on whether it makes it more or less likely to occur is actually a bit weird and mostly depends on how many claw attacks are being made. Short answer is that from 2 claw attacks it is less likely to occur but with more attacks it becomes more likely.  Again this is a tidier solution vs the current system for the same reasons i already gave.

[horizon]

Not going in depth but how many different weapons and rules do tyranids have anyway? And Orks?

[Green_Squad_Leader]

Lol quite a few. Which is good so long as each adds something different and cool.

[AJCHVY]

I think feeder tendrils are fine as long as they are not spammable.

In my opinion if they were not an option for escorts that would balance them quite a bit.

My big issue with changing weapons is I'd rather not have complicated rules for the sake of having rules. Feeder tendrils work fine as is, the problem is being able to take like 18 of them and crippling an enemy cruiser or battleship for the rest of the game. I played a game with my orks, and turn 2 my battleship had so many crit effect I couldn't fire a single weapon and it was broken for the duration of the game. It was not fun to see a 400+ point battleship be crippled by 300 points of escorts and I could do nothing about it.

I'm not sure if massive claws need a change. They seem to work well enough without adding extra rules or rolls to hit. Also, the fact that a ship has more than 2 claws does not mean you have to roll them in pairs. All it says is if more than 1 hit, the enemy ship is now grappled. Maybe having them hit on a 5+ would be more fair, but I've never had any issues with them.

Our local nid players have agreed to try the list without feeder tendril escorts and playing against nids no longer feels like a negative play experience.

[horizon]

?
But if I use 10 Iconoclasts and get within the prow of a battleship I can cripple/destroy it in one go.

[AJCHVY]

?
But if I use 10 Iconoclasts and get within the prow of a battleship I can cripple/destroy it in one go.

What kind of battleship? Tyranid? Sure maybe, but getting all 10 in front and in range is a little difficult sometimes depending on the scenario being played.