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I am preparing for the bay area open and so am looking for some big loopholes I need to watch out for and dont look like an idiot when arguing it.

The most well known ones:

Mephiston can use 3 of his powers per turn, even if they were already attmepted.

GK Shunt scout move allows them to move and assault again.

Wound Allocation (plasma wounds disappear when all shots are fired) http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2010/08/40k-editorial-wound-allocation-cheating.html

True LOS

Have your errata and FAQ printed out.

Shunting in a scout move (regardless if it's legal or not) isn't much better than a regular 12" jump. Regardless if it's a shunt or regular jump scout moves can never move the scouting unit within 12" of the enemy. In most scenarios the armies start 24" apart, and a regular jump move will close the distance 12". Every unit that has a shunt has a 18" threat radius for a charge, and if it's 12" away because of a scout move the math is real easy.

There is also loopholes and technicalities. Smoke for example is when a unit finishes it's move, so if another player strictly enforces the rules it's rather easy to forget to pop smoke at the proper time.

schadenfreude wrote:Have your errata and FAQ printed out.

Shunting in a scout move (regardless if it's legal or not) isn't much better than a regular 12" jump. Regardless if it's a shunt or regular jump scout moves can never move the scouting unit within 12" of the enemy. In most scenarios the armies start 24" apart, and a regular jump move will close the distance 12". Every unit that has a shunt has a 18" threat radius for a charge, and if it's 12" away because of a scout move the math is real easy.

Except shunts "ignore intervening units". This can be interpreted as permission to move within 12" of an enemy unit as long as you end your move outside 12"...

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:Have your errata and FAQ printed out.

S

Except shunts "ignore intervening units". This can be interpreted as permission to move within 12" of an enemy unit as long as you end your move outside 12"...

READ THE LAST SENTENCE OF PARAGRAPH 1 OF SCOUTS. "This is done exactly as in their movement phase, except that during this move scouts MUST REMAIN MORE THAN 12" AWAY FROM ANY ENEMY.

If you're looking to have the proper arguments in place, then the best way to deal with scout-shunt is this:

You can't shunt during your scout move. You may make normal moves during the scout phase. That includes combat speed, cruising speed, flat out, 6" infantry moves, 12" jump infantry moves, or 24" jetbike flat out moves, which are all includes by description within normal movement. Shunting explicitly tells you that it is *not* a normal move, and takes the place of movement.

On that bell article: i wouldn't put much faith on bell articles when it comes to rules. GW fully intended the wound allocation rules to work the way they do, they even gave examples on how to minimize losses. If players want to argue about making wounds disappear, tell them to either suck it up, or go home. Same goes with TLOS (something else bell has whined about IIRC), 5th has been around for a while now, its not a mystery.

When you say Mephiston can use any 3 powers per turn, what are you talking about exactly? I thought he just had access to the 3 in the codex (Sword, Wings and Unleash Rage)...?

(Of course, he can use all 3 of the above in a turn.)

I can't help but think Snikrot showing Ghazkull the opposing army's back door is a loophole.

don't forget the pivot rule for transports.. lots of people use that trick (and it is a good one!)

-P

notabot187 wrote:On that bell article: i wouldn't put much faith on bell articles when it comes to rules. GW fully intended the wound allocation rules to work the way they do, they even gave examples on how to minimize losses. If players want to argue about making wounds disappear, tell them to either suck it up, or go home. Same goes with TLOS (something else bell has whined about IIRC), 5th has been around for a while now, its not a mystery.

I completely disagree. GW realised how it was being used and decided to give examples since it was already a rule in place. It's not like they can say "oops we fethed up we're goona take that back" after everybody has bought the big expensive rulebook. I would bet extremely good odds that they will heavily redo it because, it is quite frankly a load of stinking monkey dung the way it works now, and the only reason it is seen as acceptable is that everyone knows about it and would be stupid not to use it.

It simply makes no sense. It is a rules loophole. It is a legal rule, that is used because legally it can be - regardless of whether it is at all in the spirit of the game. It is not about stupidly overpowered or undercosted units like some things that also make the game imbalanced, it is about taking advantage of a rule for a defensive bonus that has nothing to do with the wargear chosen. If that isn't a poster child for an exploitable loophole I don't know what is. I really really doubt that they intended the addition of a bolt pistol to save the lives of two models, but that's how people started using the rule to their extremely large advantage. If you do and can't acknowledge that it is ridiculous, then you can just "suck it up, or go home" because it is, and most people I know who use it still know it's ridiculous. They only use it because they can and everybody else that can uses it so they would be foolish not to.


Now that that's out of my system:

Just adding to the list:
I think the swooping hawk yo-yo trick is a loophole too. It's not as advantagous as 2 wounds with lots of wargear options to save lives. They hop in on the movement phase, drop grenades as they deepstrike, then have the option of skyleaping out into reserves, also in its movement phase.. creating a unit that can hit and never be attacked in return, as they are never actually on the table other than during their own movement phase. This isn't a very good tactic as the attack is kind of weak, the chance of a bad deep strike is there, as is the chance of a failed reserves roll to bring them back in, and that they cost too much anyway. Still, it annoys the hell out of people.

Another one from the Eldar tricky donkey-cave list is that Phoenix Lords are only prohibited from joining aspect squads that are not their own, not from any other Eldar squads. This means Maugan-Ra can hang back with a minimum squad of Harlequins under a Veil of Tears and fire high strength, long range, high rate of fire, rending, pinning shots all over the table, while nobody outside of 14" away has a decent chance of being able to see them to shoot back instead of losing their shot entirely. Again, it's an exploitation of something unintended, but again (as with many things Eldar) the points cost is rather much for the real effectiveness, so while it is an extremely annoying thing to do to people, just like the hawks, it is too expensive in points to be worth it.

One last entry for now is Terrain. Some players follow the 25% table terrain rule very specifically. It is much more helpful for some armies to have LOS blocking terrain than for others, so the guy who has assault oriented army with the LOS blocking terrain set as his home turf is at a big advantage for not being shot as he advances, while the guy with lots of rubble, light trees, low walls, and so on as his home terrain with his IG lascannon salute army is also at an advantage on his home turf. 25% terrain could be 25% solid buildings, leaving green tides virtually unshootable by IG gunlines until they are almost on top of them. It could also mean 25% craters, leaving a lot of IG gunlines hosing down a lot of orks before the orks even get close to doing what they do best.

Guitardian wrote:

notabot187 wrote:On that bell article: i wouldn't put much faith on bell articles when it comes to rules. GW fully intended the wound allocation rules to work the way they do, they even gave examples on how to minimize losses. If players want to argue about making wounds disappear, tell them to either suck it up, or go home. Same goes with TLOS (something else bell has whined about IIRC), 5th has been around for a while now, its not a mystery.

I completely disagree. GW realised how it was being used and decided to give examples since it was already a rule in place. It's not like they can say "oops we fethed up we're goona take that back" after everybody has bought the big expensive rulebook. I would bet extremely good odds that they will heavily redo it because, it is quite frankly a load of stinking monkey dung the way it works now, and the only reason it is seen as acceptable is that everyone knows about it and would be stupid not to use it.

Unless you're talking about these things coming up during playtest the examples mentioned are IN the big expensive rulebook. They didn't run around gluing extra pages into everyones book after they'd sold it to them, so the examples can't have been a response to people misinterpreting the rules.

Guitardian: I disagree that free wound allocation should not be able to be done at all, actually I find the "whole model removed, before next is wounded" is rather counter-intuitive, but speeds up the game. What really is wrong about it, is people(me including) spending points on random equipment you'll even forget lot of times, simply to archive 100% distinctiveness. Nobz, TWC and Paladins (and similar units) should simply get a Special Rule to allow them to distribute wounds freely, to remove the "I tricked the rules"-taste of wound allocation. The other way would be to remove the allocation part completely, though that could cause problems for non-individualized multi-wound units like warriors with one carrying a special weapon.

Guitardian wrote:One last entry for now is Terrain. Some players follow the 25% table terrain rule very specifically. It is much more helpful for some armies to have LOS blocking terrain than for others, so the guy who has assault oriented army with the LOS blocking terrain set as his home turf is at a big advantage for not being shot as he advances, while the guy with lots of rubble, light trees, low walls, and so on as his home terrain with his IG lascannon salute army is also at an advantage on his home turf. 25% terrain could be 25% solid buildings, leaving green tides virtually unshootable by IG gunlines until they are almost on top of them. It could also mean 25% craters, leaving a lot of IG gunlines hosing down a lot of orks before the orks even get close to doing what they do best.

This is so true. I have four different locations where I play, and each forces me to adapt my tactics depending because of the terrain, though none of them are chose based on the host's army.

Location 1 has lots of impassible terrain, few area terrain and ruins. Skimmers are great here, assault armies have enough sight-blocking while advancing, but any stationary shooty units are struggling to find area terrain to hide in. Any deep strikers are doomed.
Location 2 has few, but gigantic terrain pieces, imagine five pieces make up 25%. As long as put one of those in the middle of the board, you're fine. Otherwise you have a shooting gallery.
Location 3 has lots of flat terrain and everything is area terrain. While infantry is relatively save, vehicles and MCs will never, ever get a cover save on this board, and deep strikes will never mishap due to terrain.
Location 4 is a GW store and has all the GW terrain, fantasy and 40k mixed, with many ruins. Any infantry able to be deployed in ruins to stay and shoot from there, will do so, making it very anoying for assault armies having to climb 4-6 ruins every game. Also everything will have cover all the time.

Defeatmyarmy wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:Have your errata and FAQ printed out.

Except shunts "ignore intervening units". This can be interpreted as permission to move within 12" of an enemy unit as long as you end your move outside 12"...

READ THE LAST SENTENCE OF PARAGRAPH 1 OF SCOUTS. "This is done exactly as in their movement phase, except that during this move scouts MUST REMAIN MORE THAN 12" AWAY FROM ANY ENEMY.

Caps isn't cruise control for cool, and if you had bothered to read my quote you'd know that I specifically mentioned how one could possibly work around that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dashofpepper wrote:If you're looking to have the proper arguments in place, then the best way to deal with scout-shunt is this:

You can't shunt during your scout move. You may make normal moves during the scout phase. That includes combat speed, cruising speed, flat out, 6" infantry moves, 12" jump infantry moves, or 24" jetbike flat out moves, which are all includes by description within normal movement. Shunting explicitly tells you that it is *not* a normal move, and takes the place of movement.

"Normal" as opposed to a "fall-back" or "consolidation" move, which both ignore area terrain. We've had this can of worms before and yet you choose to ignore a completely valid interpretation?

How about JOTWW killing Ghazzie and others with EW. I don't know if that is officially true, but most people agree it can. The words 'remove from the table' do not equal kill, according to some. Then I argue that you wouldn't get the kill point, since it wasn't a 'kill'.

Some GK players were arguing the same with their force weapons.

The psychic hood working inside a vehicle is a loophole that GW FAQed for some odd reason.

"Removes from play" is not a loophole.

If you fall into a big hole in the ground it doesn't matter what sort of extraordinary warrior you are who can take a lascannon salvo to the face and come out of it twirling your still-present mustache.

The fluff of the hole in the ground can be easily explained away by cinematic heroics, like when Indiana Jones goes over the cliff with a tank in Last Crusade, or falls from the bridge into the crocodile rapids in Temple of doom, but miraculously clings to the edge and pulls himself up, kind of rationalle. Yeah, he's that good.

So that's not a reason to explain it.

It would be nice if an errata made it so that an EW would take a wound instead of being removed from play, but as it is, its a legal way for a cheap psyker to easily kill a lot of very expensive powerful enemies who's presence (as part of the points cost) is otherwise assured against instantly being wiped out.

Dead is dead for the purposes of playing through a game, whether it was wounded to death, ran off a table, removed from the game, it is still not affecting the game any more. Characters with EW are assumed to have that built in to their points cost, and JotWW makes characters who should be very hard to kill suddenly more vulnerable than they were intended to be. Its legal, and very easy to abuse against a very specific game situation.

I am not sure if it is a loophole though. It may have been intended as an equalizer for the SW. It is obvious that SW were intended to be overwhelming with unique mighty heros as their force org allows two of them per HQ slot, as well as special non-HQ types intended for individuality like lone wolves and wolf guard, squad boosting characters Lukas and Arjac. Too bad nobody plays them like that that I have seen or heard of, but that's another issue entirely.

The origional idea I got was kind of like the Beowulf saga, or Song of Roland, or Round Table stuff when I started reading the Codex; A fellowship of powerful heros who's heroic exploits compete against the efforts of whole armies. Heroic saga type stuff. What good is it to have an army of legendary heros sung of in the sagas if the badguys have heros too? Maybe JoTWW is intended as an assurance that the SW can out-hero their enemies.

Unfortunately, nobody bothers to arm their wolf guard uniquely if they need the spam for competativeness, despite the fluff encouraging them to all be proud of their uniqueness. Come to think of it, for some convenient reason, the ONLY SW I see where any care is put into arrming them uniquely as the fluff encourages are the TWC. I wonder why that could be.

This brings me to another loophole:



SAGAS: Sagas all come with oaths. Oh yeah... we forget about that. Why? It is only encouraged in a fluffy way that SW players try to fulfil the oaths of their sagas. This is just plain dumb. Did they really expect the SW players who play munchkin style to even give it a second thought?

The morale check inside of a transport loophole.

IG CCS fires 4x plasma guns and a plasma pistol out of Chimera. 2x Overheat, 2x die. 40% casualties in shooting phase.

At end of phase, unit takes morale check. Unit is in transport. Game implodes.

Unit1126PLL wrote:The morale check inside of a transport loophole.

IG CCS fires 4x plasma guns and a plasma pistol out of Chimera. 2x Overheat, 2x die. 40% casualties in shooting phase.

At end of phase, unit takes morale check. Unit is in transport. Game implodes.

That is not so much a loophole(a gap in the rules allowing one to do things that are normally forbidden) as it is a giant gaping maw of a black hole(there is no rules to explain how the situation is to be resolved) in the rules.

Doom of Malantai vs that Eldar HQ.

Doom makes the HQ roll three dice and sum them all.

the HQ roll three dice and remove the higher dice.

Does the HQ roll four dice, ditch the big one and sum the three?

Tavitin wrote:Doom of Malantai vs that Eldar HQ.

Doom makes the HQ roll three dice and sum them all.

the HQ roll three dice and remove the higher dice.

Does the HQ roll four dice, ditch the big one and sum the three?

Duly resolved in the FAQ, thus not an issue.

Tavitin wrote:Doom of Malantai vs that Eldar HQ.

Doom makes the HQ roll three dice and sum them all.

the HQ roll three dice and remove the higher dice.

Does the HQ roll four dice, ditch the big one and sum the three?

If you are talking about Spirit leech, the Runes do nothing; they take a Ld test on 3d6, not a Psychic Test.

If you are talking about Shadow in the Warp(which is not DoM only) then the Eldar follows all the rules: take the test on 3d6, Perils on any Double 1 or 6, then drops the highest result to see if he passed the Psychic test and the power goes off.

This is also not a rules loophole; just a Slightly ambiguous rule.

bucheonman wrote:How about JOTWW killing Ghazzie and others with EW. I don't know if that is officially true, but most people agree it can. The words 'remove from the table' do not equal kill, according to some. Then I argue that you wouldn't get the kill point, since it wasn't a 'kill'.

Yeah thats pretty well known, I wouldn't call that a loophole exactly. EW stops instant death, doesn't stop you from being removed from the table. Its like Gift of Chaos

I'm surprised how few loopholes have actually been found. It seems to mostly just be rules that people don't like or rules they were playing wrong lol

Kommissar Kel wrote:

Unit1126PLL wrote:The morale check inside of a transport loophole.

IG CCS fires 4x plasma guns and a plasma pistol out of Chimera. 2x Overheat, 2x die. 40% casualties in shooting phase.

At end of phase, unit takes morale check. Unit is in transport. Game implodes.

That is not so much a loophole(a gap in the rules allowing one to do things that are normally forbidden) as it is a giant gaping maw of a black hole(there is no rules to explain how the situation is to be resolved) in the rules.

True, I suppose I misinterpreted the term loophole.

How about a Uramethi Plasma Siphon from an inquisitor making a Titan's Plasma Annihilator BS 1.

omerakk wrote:I'm surprised how few loopholes have actually been found. It seems to mostly just be rules that people don't like or rules they were playing wrong lol

Yeah... pretty much.

The vehicle pivoting isn't a loop-hole. It can only really affect you once a game unless you are doing movement wrong.

There is a hole in the Tau codex that enables you to buy crisis suit wargear for free... I haven't actually posted the argument on the forums... but I'm pretty sure its RAW.

A Tomb Spyder with two Scarab Swarms is less survivable than one with only one, due to the majority toughness rule.

Orks never take a wound from rolling a '1' on their Waaagh move, since there's no such thing anymore, due to changes in how Fleet Of Boot works.

Warp Quake and Deep Strike Mishap.

Unit DS within 12in of Strike Squad and mishaps. Roll 3-4 on table, place unit within 12in of Strike Squad and mishap. Repeat until you get a Terrible Accident or Delayed.