The Crafting Cave 40K House Rules
A few years back, I found myself mentoring a whole new group of players as they got started playing 40K. 6th edition was current at the time, which as most people can probably remember was a hot mess. I came up with a set of house rules to blunt the worst excesses of the game at the time, while encouraging thematic armies that actually looked representative of their factions when on the table. The rules worked, and gave us a much more balanced playing environment than straight 6th edition rules would have provided. Over time, the group has become comfortable enough with the game to drop a lot of them, but we still retain a few.
1: No Allies: Other than for the occasional unit with just a dataslate and no army of its own to call home, we play one-source lists. That eliminates the unintended, broken synergies Games Workshop opened the game up to when they included Allies rules.
2: 40% Troops minimum. It states right in the main rules that Troops are a faction's most numerous fighting units. Therefore, lists ought to reflect this. Plus, a big chunk of mandatory Troops tones down the overall power of an army list, because it leaves less points to spend on higher-powered units. Plus, it makes players actually incorporate their Troops into their overall list strength and equip them to actually participate in the battle, instead of being a couple tax units that sit on objectives and hope not to attract attention.
We haven't had players abusing either FOC swaps or Windrider Jetbikes, but if they became an issue, we'd include an addendum stating that such units can be taken as Troops, but may not be the compulsory 40% Troops.
Also, we're just beginning to explore a variation of the 40% Troops rule, where we can use other units to satisfy the 40% requirement, but they can't be units we would otherwise field ordinarily. For instance, I use Ravenwing Knights in practically all my lists. so I couldn't use those to cover my 40%. On the other hand, I haven't used a Dreadnought in a dog's age, so I could use one of those. I could not, however, spend more on non-Troops than on Troops for my 40%.
3: Psykers can only use their own power dice, and those generated by the Harness The Warp roll at the beginning of the psychic phase. This tones down the overpowered shenanigans the current Psychic Phase rules make possible.
