When I set about designing anything homebrew for the 40k tabletop, I tend to stay on the cautious side of design. While I appreciate the overly ambitious projects that many gamers try, I have found that less is more. I always try to design something that has a unique flair of its own, but can easily have its rules and wargear summarized on one or two pages. This makes it much easier for an opponent to consider playing against.While I never expect anyone from outside of my immediate gaming group to play against my fan-dex, I have been pretty successful getting to use the Soul Reapers outside of the group. I honestly believe this is because of the minimalist style I have chosen for my work. Although our goal here at The Codex Project we are trying to make it easier to play with Fan-dexes outside of your local group/club.Before the creation of TCP I found it easier to do a Mini-dex styled project; only adding a few changes to an existing Codex. Now if I had gone the overambitious route by adding all the units to the project that the group and I had initially wanted to from the get go; I highly doubt I would have ever had the opportunity to every playtest this outside of the group. In stead I added two plus a unit upgrade and it seem to have worked well. I added a couple of units with each update and it made the units much easier for people to accept.
When starting out you need to have a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve, but you must be open to feedback and making the proper adjustments to the list. After all what is the point of creating a fan-dex if you are never going to get to use it?
Creating a Fan-dex is a lot of work, so requires a lot of dedication. It also requires a thick skin, as you will take a lot of criticism. Just remember not a lot of other gamers are going to ‘get it’ as they are happily entrenched in the ‘GW Matrix.’
First off designing a Mini-dex off of an existing codex is the best route to get your ‘feet wet’ in the fan-dex realm. They tend to be the easiest projects to balance if you keep your goals reasonable. I am of the honest opinion that creating a fan-dex that is not an offshoot needs to be done by a group not an individual. This is because they are the hardest thing to playtest and balance.
Here are a couple of tips for those just starting out.
Points values can be a real pain in the rear to come up with as it seems GW do not a have a clear formula anymore; as they have an arbitrary final cost in their codices. So I always try to find something comparable to what I am creating and work from there, often adding a point or two initially for balance sake. Sometimes the extra points stay in the final product, but often they do get dropped. Again this is on the cautious side of design, but it is what I have found to work well.
I would also try to emulate the current GW design of the 5th ed codex style. Which has changed greatly since 4th ed. Like the wargear and unit entries are much more comprehensive now.
When creating special characters I almost always add 20 points to the Character type automatically before considering wargear or Special Rules. Stat increases to WS/BS are worth 1 point, S/I/A/LD worth 5 points, T/W are worth 10 points each.
Now all of these ideas are far from perfect, but design needs to begin somewhere.
Always aim for balance throughout the entire design process. This will involve dedicated playtesting, and I do mean a lot of playtesting.
Next time I will go over methods of playtesting that I have used..
