[Dan]

You are correct, it’s in one of the North Africa books for the desert warfare.

[Dan]

I’d dig bringing HE back to dice-roll number of hits, but with a maximum number of hits equal to the number of models in a unit (templates are more ambiguous, but dice-roll hits mean that HE is often better than AT at taking down an armored vehicle.)

[Dan]

I feel like @Nat ‘s ruling would work, but why not just make it the same as an injury roll (3+ for inexperienced, 4+ for regular, 5+ for veteran)? It keeps the percentages similar but feels like less of an edge-case rule. One less thing to remember.

That and make transports give the pin to the guys inside of they’re inexperienced, 4+ to pin regular passengers, and no pin for veteran passengers.

[Dan]

-Adjust a bunch of point values of course. Mainly trying to bring machine guns more in-line with the rest of guns (Assault Rifle, Automatic Rifle, upgrading an lmg to 5 shots instead of 4 are all 5 points for 1 shot, but adding an LMG adds 2 shots for 20 points. Something to bring that more in-line.)
-Adjust Sniper in some way (I’d personally do d2 pins and +1 to wound, with a 6 or 7 to wound being automatic extraordinary damage without a second roll required)
-Give infantry machine guns suppressing fire (from K-47)
-Maybe add reactions from K-47, but I could go either way. There is something to be said for keeping complexity down.
-Change Fire and Maneuver to give all United States rifles the Assault keyword.
-Allow spotters to spot for any indirect fire weapon (though only spotting for 1 weapon per turn). Possibly allow Forward Observers to become spotters after they use their ability.
-Change the 1 result on Air Strike to “Your plane was shot down on the way, help will not arrive.” (Sometimes it feels like you’re spending 75 points for the enemy to get an airstrike. Once as the US I had two airstrikes resolve in Blue on Blue in the same game and I can say that really soured me.) Maybe a “Change the target to a random target within 12″ of the target” if you still want the chance of mishap, but your opponent choosing the target anywhere on the board is just a bummer.
-Consolidate all current data into their respective army books (you should be able to play everything in your army with just the core book and an army book.)
-Consolidate all terrain into the main rulebook.
-Full organizational rearrangement of the core rulebook. Separate the rules from the narrative bits and even repeat bits if they are relevant rather than, “See the rules for X on page Y.”
-Remove negative faction traits and make all faction traits scalable. Traits shouldn’t be more or less powerful depending on the points value of the army.
-Also make faction traits always usable. (Looking specifically at Italy and their biggest bonus being only in attack/defend game mode and only if they are defenders. Also looking at bonuses to preliminary bombardment when not a ton of basic missions call for preliminary bombardment.)
-Standardize costs across the board (a lot of these can be backwards-engineered but there are some weird irregulars that cost different points in different places.)
-Put a limit on HE hits equal to the number of models in target unit (an edge-case, but it’s weird that a heavy howitzer targeting a unit in a building hits 10 infantry in one hit or the sniper and spotter 5 times each.)
-Most controversial take I’d guess: My group has just put a solid 2, 4, 7, 11 hits on HE instead of 1″, 2″, 3″, 4″ and it has greatly increased game speed since there’s no ambiguity on who gets hit and we don’t spend the extra minute per action just spreading out our models to minimize blast hits. We don’t use the template and only roll for hits to see if the building goes down. If I could add any houserule to the main game this would be my second vote (after suppressing fire).
-Firing Down: Treat small arms fire from a second story down on an open-topped vehicle sorta like an assault without AT grenades. Normal hit rolls, experience level to wound, then count up wounds and roll to damage with that much PEN, but only allowing it to do superficial damage.

Also really like the takes above of:
-Give Shaped Chrges a 1″HE.
-Let pistols shoot at charges from within 6″.
-Give higher officers bonus dice to put in the bag that you can choose to discard when drawn to add more tactical bonuses of higher officers…
OR
…let higher officers take the Lieutenant spot.
-Give non-fanatics a -1 to hit medics.

But even all that said I’d buy a new book if 3e was exactly the same as 2e but they had actual organization to the rules. Maybe up the Cheat Sheet to 9 pages and make it denser for a lot more help at the table when someone makes an airstrike or brings bikers and you need to look up how those work. I’d also love just little individual packets for, “Here’s all the crunch of playing in a random desert scenario. Here’s all the crunch of playing in a random snow scenario, etc.” A clear separation of fluff/history and crunch in the rulebook would be a lifesaver though.

[Author]

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