Old Hammer 40K – The Most Ridiculous Rules that Cost Me Games!
Goatboy here to think back on some of the craziest old 40K rules that lost me countless numbers of games.
Goatboy here remembering old games, courtesy of my 40K time machine. This time around I want to talk about some of the old ridiculous rules that cost me so many, many games. Those old edition matches were full of strange interactions, bad decisions, and dice rolls failing me in the end.
7th Edition – My Chaos Knights Doomed by St. Celestine!
Let’s talk about Warhammer 40K 7th Edition and how Imperial Knights warped the meta. It was a wild time where you could mix and match armies and create insane nonsense. It was also a crazy time of Stomps removing entire units from the game when you happened to roll a few sixes with your tiny blast marker. This time around saw me match up to a player at the ATC with my combo Chaos Knight army and piles of Flesh Hounds of Khorne. The match up favored me as my Chaos Knights could remove death stars and his army was built to be one of the worst.
It utilized a ton of Marine characters, Saint Celestine to give hit & run, and finally an Inquisitor to make it immune to other nonsense. This was also the time where you could randomly roll a warlord trait and ATC allowed these special ones for Lords of War. It shifted my stomp and removed my “6” roll to remove models out of a unit with a stomp. A game that went to my favor becomes a complete mismatch with a roll of a 4 on a d6. OOOF!
5th Edition – My Space Wolves Betrayed By MY OWN Rhino!
The first FLG event I played at was a Bay Area Open. I think it was the 2nd one they had run way back in 5th Edition and I rolled up to the very end of the event fighting for first place. This time around it was 5th edition and I was playing my Space Wolves/Space Goats. This last round I was fighting for every point and in the final turn I decided to move my Grey Hunter out of an exploded Rhino.
This time around the rule was that any unit that moved out of a blown up vehicle had to roll a d6 with a roll of a 1 “removing” that model from play. I had one single Grey Hunter and lost the game by one unit kill. DRAT, YOU DARNED MEDDLING RHINO!
6th Edition – Stupid Variable Game Length!!!
A few editions back in 6th (hello 2012) we used to have to roll at the end of turn 5 to see if the game ended. This was always a pain as you had to plan for the possibility the game could end on turn 5 – but that would sometimes expose you too much. If you planned on turn 6 you could end up losing with that random roll of a 1-2 after round 5. Heck, the game could even drag onto turn 7 sometimes! This was also the time frame where the game was decided by either how many units you killed at the end or how many “objectives” you held at the final turn.
This was a game of all or nothing at the end and having it “finish” off round 5 instead of when you had the full control at the end of turn 6 was such a frustration when you were trying to play a competitive game. I know the random card drawing right now could be an issue but watching your opponent roll that game to end round 5 while you were poised to remove everything from the table was just annoying – and more than once, it caught me with my 40K pants down!
6th Edition – Doomed By Seize the Initiative
The final rule that always frustrated me was Seize the Initiative which allowed players to “take” the first turn even if you had won the roll to go first. You would set up your entire army to move into position and then watch as your opponent took your turn, removed all your models, and you were left to figure it out. I also won a lot of games when I seized and wrecked the opponent with pure aggression.
What rules do you remember hating when they lost you the game? How many dumb things have happened to wreck your plan in the end? Rolling 6’s is a skill don’t you know!
