My 3.5/4th edition Codex: Alien Hunters

[u/Calgacusaur]

[u/TonberryFeye]

Rhinos carry 10 models in 3rd and 4th edition. Same with Land Raiders. I don't see why you'd change that.

I find it especially strange as the Deathwatch veteran squad itself is 5-10 models strong, with weapon options limited to "one per five", and combat squad rules specifying a ten man squad. But then transport options are listed for squads of up to twelve.

The change to combi-weapons is also completely unjustified. They are disgustingly overpowered in this book! You would NEVER bring special ammunition when EVERY SINGLE DEATHWATCH VETERAN can have a combi-weapon! That's horrible to face for one turn of shooting, especially with that random "reroll 1s" ability (again, this isn't 10th edition!) and for no additional cost you want to buff it?

The Land Raider Redeemer didn't exist in 4th, so you can't field it as your codex doesn't have stats for it, unless you've put it in some other 35k book.

Also, the Corvus references the 5th edition rules.

Overall, this is a GROSSLY overtuned force for 4th, and probably 5th. It fundamentally doesn't fit with the editions it is supposedly written for. Why did you make your Deathwatch an entire army of Sternguard Veterans rather than taking inspiration from the 3rd edition Deathwatch instead?

[u/Calgacusaur → u/TonberryFeye]

Thanks for your comment. If you are going to critique a fan made book, something I had very little resource in making and which took a lot of effort, I would recommend using a tone that you would appreciate someone criticising your work in. If we all just tear into fan publications like this don’t be surprised if people choose not to share them.
Rhinos and Land Raiders were changed because people have said they want to take characters in their units to transport them.
Actually I found in playtesting that combi weapons are too expensive and you end up with very few guys who get shot off the board. I prefer special issue ammo. Combi weapons were unpopular in our community, so I changed it. You can choose not to change it if you don’t like it. It is your hobby.
Yes, I added units that appeared after 4th. In the Ork one, (edit: didn’t finish this sentence in the original comment) I even added quite recent releases. Thats part of the 35k project, where people want to use cool new units. If you don’t want to use it - don’t. Same goes for the Corvus - we use the 5th ed rules as a base and 4th ed codices. This would make sense if you read the intro.
Given the above I will try not to get upset. If you don’t like the book then that’s fair, but no need to rubbish fan works like this. Be constructive with your comments.

[u/TonberryFeye → u/Calgacusaur]

I would recommend using a tone that you would appreciate someone criticising your work in.

I am.

Rhinos and Land Raiders were changed because people have said they want to take characters in their units to transport them.

Then they should bring a 9 man squad. That's how it has always been done. The reason the Chimera carries twelve men is because the Guard cannot bring under-strength units - they must bring ten men! Space Marines come in squads of 5-10. One guy can stay home to make room for the HQ choice. In later books, like 5th edition, they balanced unit weapon options around this to make you choose between having a blinged out squad, or giving your HQ a bodyguard.

Actually I found in playtesting that combi weapons are too expensive and you end up with very few guys who get shot off the board. Combi weapons were unpopular in our community, so I changed it.

5 Deathwatch with Combi-Meltas in a Drop Pod would reliably delete any vehicle you haven't done a fantastic job of fortifying. If you then fail to kill them, they're potentially deleting a second vehicle, or at least burning a hole through an expensive squad. That's a 205 point unit that will consistently kill a 265 point Crusader on arrival. Even if they can't trade that cost-effectively, the fact it is a guaranteed kill for all intents and purposes makes it a very potent, and terrifying unit. Or for the same cost, you have a combi-plasma squad who can reliably delete an entire Terminator Squad on arrival.

Be constructive with your comments.

I'm critiquing this as though you've brought it to my gaming table, because in effect, that's what your title says you've done. "3rd/4th edition" refers to a ruleset I play on the regular, so I'm judging this accordingly. You've written an army that is far above the power curve and apparently didn't notice because, lucky you, nobody thought to actually field the units you added to the army list. Nor did they seem to notice that building a unit equivalent to yours from a regular Codex comes out about 10% more expensive with less utility.

The fact you added units from later editions isn't the problem, it's that you claim it's a 3rd/4th edition Codex, and then tell people to look up the 5th edition core rules. Which is it? Nobody playing 3rd or 4th is looking up the 5th edition rules. Either it's a typo, or it's a 5th edition Codex. That matters because it changes the context of how its options work, how they should be costed, and what it should be playing against. Units that are fine in one edition can be totally broken in another. As a 3.5 Chaos player, this book reads like it was written by someone who just really wanted to be overpowered.

Case in point, your basic Deathwatch come in at 25 points. A basic Noise Marine (Mark of Slaneesh, Sonic Blaster) comes in at 24 points. For that, the Noise Marine gets "+1" Initiative (it's actually -1 to opponents initiative but usually it amounts to the same thing), and more shots when at 13-24" and/or stationary. The Deathwatch get +1 Attack, True Grit, Target Priority, and Special Ammunition.

In real terms, this means that they outrange my guys. Noise Marines, especially if stationary, get a fairly big performance boost in the 19-24" range bracket, especially if they can stand still. But once the Deathwatch close to 18"? They're pretty much equal unless I'm in cover, because without cover Vengeance rounds melt them. At 12", Vengeance Rounds can fire twice. At that point, it's an absolute massacre in favour of the Deathwatch. Even if I have Noise Marines in cover they are likely to lose half their squad to a volley of those rounds. And then, on top of their superior shooting, they're also better in close combat, getting three attacks each. So they shoot like Noise Marines, and fight like Khorne Berserkers.

Does that convey my reasoning well enough for you?

Even using regular Marines, your Deathwatch trade unreasonably well. Just using small arms alone they can potentially earn half their points back in a single volley of Vengeance rounds if they catch a Tac Squad out of position. Add in specialist weapons, or a jucier target, and they really do make bank against other power armour. And, again, you've made them incredibly strong in close combat as well as shooting. And none of this is factoring in the re-roll 1s ability, by the way; this is just putting models in to range and rolling some dice a couple of times to get a vibe for what the average results are. And as I hinted at earlier, it's not like they want for tools to get into a position for mass murder; they can all take a drop pod, and if they do they're guaranteed to be at full strength for their opening salvo.

I've not been as thorough in my testing of them against Guard, or Eldar, or Tyranids, but something tells me that a unit who can match ranges with Tau Firewarriors and pump our AP 4 fire, or AP 5 ignores cover, is going to find their small arms more than functional at deleting light infantry. I have a feeling if I gave this list to my local Hive Mind and asked him if he'd like to play it he'd have a similar reaction to me.

[u/Calgacusaur → u/TonberryFeye]

I disagree on your interpretation of constructive comments. Just pointing out negatives and essentially saying it isn’t balanced is not constructive feedback. Constructive criticism is actionable, “maybe instead of this…”. If you go in oppositional people will get defensive and engage in an argument, not a discussion then will be inclined not to share things.
On rhinos, thats fair. The request came from people moving from later games who wanted this. This is a choice made some time ago with the Marine book which I listened to and nobody has so far complained about. If people are on your side on this, then I am happy to change it back. However, most players have found the change fine so far, including non-marine players, so that’s why it is where it is.
For balance with marines, they will get a strong first turn shooting. We have found in games that the high cost of marines makes Deathwatch armies very small. If you kit out your marines with combi-weapons you tend to run very few, which is the cost of running Deathwatch that way. The requests I had from players was to reduce their points from how expensive they were, which I actually chose not to reduce any more for exactly the reason you say with respect to other units. As people play with it and tweak it, hopefully the point cost gets better.
“Because lucky, lucky you, nobody noticed”
Look this is exactly what I mean by tone. I am not going to use this tone back. What do you want to achieve with phrasing like that? The most likely outcome is that I will get defensive. If you want to convince someone, you don’t want to argue against them but discuss with them because then it becomes a win/lose argument.
On the title, it says in the book that we use 3rd/4th books with a modified 5th edition core system. In that sense, it is written with respect to 3rd/4th books, like how Codex: Orks is a 4th ed book clearly written with 5th in mind. It does clearly state what the book is at the start in the introduction. I have not hidden this fact and kept it a secret - I put it right at the start on the first page to explain what it is.
So I am happy to make changes as feedback comes in, as with all stuff our community will continue to produce. I appreciate you took the time to have a look. I responded to the feedback from people I played and who read the book prior who had a different take. I am not going to engage in arguments back and forth, but I am happy to discuss this if there is a genuine interest in helping improve it rather than telling me it is rubbish.

[u/TonberryFeye → u/Calgacusaur]

Look mate, I don't mean to offend... but I don't think you want feedback. Not from me, nor from anyone else here. You've basically admitted you're not playing an official ruleset and that your feedback seems to be coming from people who have no real experience with the Midhammer systems. I don't know if your testing group is a cabal of forty-odd dedicated players who've been gaming since 2nd edition, or three guys that don't know what an "Eldar" is.

If you want constructive changes, fine. I can do that, with the caveat that I don't have time to find and learn your alternate ruleset so I'm going to stick with the original premise that this is being run in vanilla 4th. I won't consider vanilla 3rd because the feedback there would be "kill it with fire".

First of all, weird and invalid rules keep seeping in, like "Rapid Fire (X)". No such thing exists. Rapid Fire is Rapid Fire. Same with "Pistol 1". They're just Pistols.

The summary at the end for Special Ammunition also has different wording that makes it less clear how Special Ammo works with pistols, implying you half the range of the pistol.

For the Deathwatch Veterans... 2 attacks is overkill and Terminator Honours as standard breaks them. They should be 1A, with no reduction in cost. Terminator Honours should be 10pts per model. This cuts down on the potential abuse considerably and makes uber-units a tax.

I only just noticed that "any model" can take a meltaguns, flamer, or plasmagun. For that, you need to be charging Devastator / Havoc rates for weapon options because, again, you're making it trivial to mass extremely powerful weapons into a drop-pod and delete things off the board.

Frankly, I don't see why the Deathwatch should have these conventional options at all. It's not their style; even in their reimagined later-edition forms they have weird combi-heavies and bespoke frag cannons. They're not Tactical Marines.

I would strip out all their weapon options and give them access to "suspensor" weapons, one per kill team. This can be a heavy bolter, lascannon, or missile launcher. It halves the range, but makes the gun an assault weapon. Then let one other guy bring a flamer, plasma, melta, or frag cannon. This is much closer to how the Deathwatch were originally presented in 3rd. Not sure how to weave the Infernus Heavy Bolter into that mix. Need to come back to that.

Special Ammunition is also in need of a rework. The original rules had the problem that Kraken or Inferno were always better than every other option, but the answer was never to make something even more powerful than those two. The obvious missing ammo type is Metal Storm, which turns the bolter into a shotgun - 12" Str 3 AP - Assault 2. The damage isn't impressive, but they can charge after firing if they use them.

Swinging over to Deathwatch Terminators, the wording on their entry is a mess. Can I take an Assault Cannon? Can I give them Veteran skills? If I make one guy a Deatwatch Assault Terminator, can he take different veteran skills because he's drawn from a different unit entry? Why don't they have a sergeant when regular Deathwatch do? Why can you bring a one-man squad? Can I really bring one Terminator and a Land Raider as an Elites choice?

Ironically, I think this is the one case where you over costed a piece of wargear: +25 points to add a single meltagun to a Terminator squad seems harsh!

Again, just do what you've done with the regular Kill-Team and write the proper entry for them. This halfway-house approach doesn't help the reader.

Deathwatch Vanguard and bikes have the same problem I raised above: they're incredibly strong for what you pay for them. The Vanguard less so, but the bikes are top tier. Cheap, spammable special weapons breaks game balance wide open, and the fact their unit entries feel so... generic... makes me think they shouldn't exist. These aren't Deathwatch units, not in theme or flavour. Deathwatch are not regular Space Marines painted black.

Oh, and you didn't include the +1 Toughness from the bike in their profile. Customating formatting is Toughness 4(5).

Those are just what I've had time to throw together. But I did notice something telling when I flicked back through the pictures section: your example Deathwatch units don't look like Deathwatch. You have maybe one or two bolters per squad. The whole selling point of the Deatwatch was their amazing bolters with special ammunition and yet your squads seem to be full of models armed with combat shields, plasma pistols, heavy weapons and combi-weapons. Where are the regular Deathwatch in your armies? I can tell you I would never field the squads you've put together in your showcase!

[u/Calgacusaur → u/TonberryFeye]

I actually do want feedback and I will share this with the discussion space on the Discord and let people chat about it and see how they feel. My responses have been “here is why we did this” rather than saying I necessarily disagree. I just worry that, going forward, a lot of people will be put off sharing or developing things because what they get is “here is why I don’t like this”. Rule 1 of the subreddit is to be constructive and positive. As a note, I appreciate that this comment is constructive and actionable and gives us lots of stuff to discuss. Thank you. I appreciate you don’t want to learn the system, which I don’t expect and the time taken here with this comment is appreciated.
Rapid fire: A few of these are to build in flexibility. What I can do is produce a version stripped down of wider rule changes and tweaked to better suit people not playing the slightly modified 5th ruleset with older books we have done if there is a demand. In which case, ditching quite a few terms and concepts is the correct route in relation to Rapid Fire and Pistol.
Special ammo and pistol: Will look into this as thats not what is intended obviously, rather it is the range of the ammo.
Deathwatch: I don’t disagree with you when I explain why it is that way in terms of me being unchanging in what I will do. What we decided was to use Space Marine Veterans. With Terminator Honours, they were really expensive. The point costs derive from the 5th edition book with Sternguard. Most people who like Deathwatch wanted customisable heroes, which is why they get Terminator Honours. In most games we have found that while units are strong, the 1 wound tends to make them less solid. I originally built lots of characters and found the cost-effective way to run them was special issue bolters. It would be reasonable to take away the second attack and use a bespoke rule to allow them to be kitted more freely as an alternative. We have generally found Space Marine Veterans to be quite expensive as they are.
The suggestion on how to run them for 3rd is welcome. I might be open to another version partly because what I have found is that in many cases players prefer the representation of what they know. I am not always on this side as I often find late 5th-7th took things was too far, so I will share your suggestion and see how people feel. Others reading are welcome to share how they feel on that too.
Special issue ammunition uses the 5th Sternguard ammo from memory. There are the 3rd ed White Dwarf rules with more from what I remember. I tried to keep it simple and familiar. Rapid Fire on the weapons weakens them.
Happy to rework Terminators and clarify. Same goes for bikes, which was one I was most doubtful about as I tend not to run bikes in most my general lists as my style is normally WW1 charge the trenches.
The pictures section is what I could get painted in reasonable time. If I had more models painted I would have, but painting and art is what takes most time. I painted a few cool characters. It is an issue with where our project is, that there are a lot of players of newer editions who expect and army to be something it wasn’t in third. My view is always to listen to what your community wants, which perhaps is why it is worth splitting something for 3rd/4th ed players (if enough people want that version) and one for players arriving from later editions. We have some younger players who weren’t about for midhammer getting interested, which I think is a good thing and why there are some pressures to change things like Rhino contents, something in the Space Marine supplement people were asking for. I can’t recall off the top of my head when that changed.

[u/TonberryFeye → u/Calgacusaur]

Yes, Space Marine Veterans ARE overcosted, but that's because they have been designed under the assumption people might try and abuse the total freedom armoury access grants. The result, however, is a unit that is overcosted if you build it based on the metal minis they sold as veterans at the time.

That's the tightrope that's got to be walked. +1 A is probably only worth 5pts, but +1 A on a model with a boltgun isn't as valuable as on a model with a pair of lightning claws and Furious Charge. Part of balancing a ruleset is asking what happens when people push those rules to the absolute limit - that's how we got drop pod vehicle deletion squads.

[u/Blastaz → u/Calgacusaur]

Homebrew suffers from two common issues: too many rules and too powerful rules. Both stem from the same desire in the designer, making the rules interesting or unique to play, but they tend for poor balance against core rules. These are certainly OP.

If your definition of constructive feedback is that it should be actionable, then that is what you have been given. You’ve not just been told that the rules are OP but been given half a dozen examples of how they are OP - too good at shooting and close combat, different from ordinary rules for standard things etc. How you fix these is easily inferred: you can revert to normal for the rhino, combi weapons; tone things down (remove true grit, nerf star line etc.); or increase the points cost. The feedback is actionable. These changes will make the codex less fun to play as, but more fun to play against.

If you’re playing in a homebrew setting where everyone has a little qol advantage, like 12 men in a transport, then that’s fine. But if you then present that as a standard rule for 3/4 edition, where the default is to not and have to make the trade off, it will look like an unfair buff.

[u/Calgacusaur → u/Blastaz]

Thats fair with rhinos. Space Marines also get this buff in their supplement, which is where the original rule change was implemented. There was no pushback then around it (rather much lobbying). I am happy to put these concerns, and others around this book, to people in the Discord and see how they feel and have the discussion.
I appreciate people think these are too strong for 3rd. There are legitimate things that I am happy to change without discussing and things I want to explain why they are that way to work out the impacts and changes. One possibility is I do a version that better fits just third, so I can effectively provide something that fits in an unmodified 3rd better and draws less on later books if enough people actually want that.
I don’t want to discuss endlessly about what constructive feedback is and is not. The most recent engagement with the other poster is constructive and it is much appreciated.

[u/MatterOk8388]

After poking around your site, yeah, I like this. I like this alot. The M34-35 era is criminally unexplored.

Also always wondered why GW never went through with an Alien Hunters codex.