Warmachine 40000 – Could you play 40k with WM rules? Part two

Two things to look at today, one is how melee weapons work and the other is worked out ranged combat.

We have developed some basic statlines for models from our previous post, and here they are.

Let’s keep these stats in mind when calculating relevant weapon strengths and special abilities as we want survivability to be comparable, and we want the weapons to “feel right”. Now they won’t translate over perfectly, but that’s ok, as long as they “feel right” it works for me.

Most close combat weapons in WM range from strength 2 for a small knife, through to strength 8 for a giant two handed magical axe of doom.  Strength 5-6 seems normal for a standard dedicated melee weapon.  It’s also worth noting that every nearly figure has a close combat weapon of some type, even if it’s a boot knife for a guardsman.

There are also a lot of “special abilities” we can use, like grievous wounds (ignores tough), Weapon master (additional damage), Armour piercing (halves armour), Critical brutal (extra damage on critical hits) and many others.

So, let’s throw together a table of sample melee weapons, we will ignore pistols for now and do them later.

Ok, some basic ideas there. A guard with a knife has a very small change of killing a marine without a charge, and no chance against a terminator. I’m fine with that. Weapon master for power weapons is probably a better way of representing how good they are, overgiving them pure “armour cracking”. It means they are great weapons, and very good at chopping up power armour infantry. But not quite as brutal against very heavily armoured targets.

Power fists and Thunder hammers need something to represent the “go last” rule in 40k. 

Cumbersome works, it takes away their pistol attack after the charge round, reducing overall attack power. But when they do hit, things go smoosh.  A regular marine has zero chance of surviving a direct power fist hit, but as most marine models already have 2 attacks in 40k, and have given one up in this system, so that sounds fair to me.

First of all, the big elephant in the room is range. Very few weapons in WM have a range of over 15”, most basic infantry weapons in 40k have 24” range.

My solution is to keep the 40k weapons at their current maximum ranges. A lascannon should be able to hit something across the table. The change will be in introducing range bands.

We will break most ranged weapons ranges into 3 bands, short, medium and long. At short range, there is no RAT penalty, at medium it becomes -2 and at long range it is -4. Standard guns like lasguns and Bolters will only have short and medium ranges, we will reserve long range for heavy support type weapons.

Now with higher defences and cover out there, you will be unlikely to snipe out a guardsman in cover at max range with your lascannon. But you will probably still hit a tank out in the open. Standing still and aiming will still give you the normal +2 to hit which will mitigate some of this.

Assuming a tank will be Def 10, a guardsmen aiming at long range with a lascannon will hit on 7+ on 2d6. About as often as they hit anything now. The same shot against a guardsman in the open would be 10+ and against a guard in cover, a natural 12.

The basic weapon strength will be 7+40k weapon strength. This will make the weapons slightly more deadly than 40k, but you are hitting less often so it should work out.

Pistol – Can be used in close combat and with other melee weapons, does not get charging bonus on damage.

Rapid fire – Can be fired twice in one activation, at -2 Rat for both shots. It becomes a tactical decision to fire twice rapidly, or once for accuracy. I quite like this idea.

Heavy – Cannot move and fire weapon, but can rotate on the spot (I dislike that rule in WM and I think a man portable lascannon should be able to turn and still be accurate)

Assault – Can use the “assault” rule and fire at its charge target before melee.

Standard –Functions like a normal gun in WM, some “assault” weapons in 40k would be broken in WM rules if you could charge with them. Flamers to be precise.

A handful of special rules added in, but not much.  Next up I’ll be looking at building hero characters and then doing a “bare bones” space marine list, without vehicles to start playtesting.