It is an exciting day for us! Our fourth Codex of eighteen (once you consolidate many of them) is live! Find it by clicking here or visit our rules page. We have worked incredibly hard to deliver this for everyone, and I would like to call attention to Alex for playing many frustrating games with them as we worked out the problems and shortcomings of integrating the highly skilled bodyguards into a tiny d6 system.
Also a huge shoutout to those who played many games on the receiving end. We greatly appreciate your feedback and support. Jordan and my dad Charles have both been great sports, taking their beatings and returning them in kind!
For those who have recently started following our project, Final Draft status means that it is considered to be safely competitive with the other Final Drafts, but may need to be worked on with slight changes. New things we just introduced to the Codex are Shield Hosts to further customize your play style as well as Imperial Fortifications to further control the battlefield or flush out a roster weakness.
A further explanation on what we have done differently with Shield Hosts. Previous Codexes have the equivalent in the form of Imperial Guard Regiments, Necron Dynasties, or Tyranid Hive Fleets so far. They offer special abilities that come in trade off with special penalties to even things back out. The base units themselves cost to much to inflate their cost even further and maintain a good balance. Shield Hosts simply added a gratuity cost to each model, so even the Average Shield Host gains something! As expensive and elite as these models are, handicaps just did not work with the army feel or performance.
We are nearing the end of rough testing with Space Marines and Alex is working on fine tuning that Codex as we turn to the next stage. Their Chapters are going to model in a similar fashion with a lower point gratuity in bonuses, and some still experience some penalty rules to allow for stronger bonuses to be applied. They are very much a rough work in progress, but we look forward to seeing the results in the near future as we slowly work our way through far too many Chapters and Unique Characters than I care to count!
We also have finally adopted a rule for Psykout Grenades. With a new Core Rule Book ability called Psychic Disruption, these grenades do very little damage and instead are used to cancel ongoing Spells. If multiple Spells are in effect, the Defender gets to choose which one is cancelled. This partnered with the Space Marines slowly nearing Final Draft stage will set the Grey Knights up nicely as a hard counter to lingering Spells and make them a force to be reckoned with!
Thanks to the help of old Imperial Guard veterans, the Praetor Launcher now has the option to be armed with the Pilum Salvo, giving it some series anti air support that will bring heavily armed aircraft to their knees. While poorly suited for anything else, it does fill a need of the army rather nicely with one of their many super heavy tanks. As always, if you know of older models or upgrade kits that need to be included please give us a shout out so we can add it!
We just hit 2700 man hours invested into this project! It has been quite the journey but well worth it! Have questions? Reach out!
As always we appreciate your constructive feedback and support. With so many Rough Draft work out of the way now, it feels like the work is surging forward compared to what it was! I cannot wait to share this adventure with you all! Happy wargaming!
Alternate 40k Rules 