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I know I've seen a few threads like this before, but I searched the last 12 pages and couldn't find one with failure or fail in the title, so I figured I'd make a thread about it.

It's happened to you. It's happened to all of you. Your daemon weapon rebelled against your Chaos lord and killed him before he could strike. Your melta gun rolled snake eyes on the game-deciding shot. Somehow, someway, your gretchin are on fire and you don't know how it even happened. Let's face it: something ridiculous, unlucky, and altogether disappointing has happened in a game of yours. This thread is for sharing said stories.

This comes up after a particularly egregious moment in a game today; my first game using my Tau. It was a small 800ish point game, and I set up a hell of a maneuver. My opponent had his Marines bunched up around a crater on the left flank. My big squad of Kroot just outflanked right nearby, and are ready to assault. My Fire Warriors pile out of their Devilfish, I mark the Marines with a markerlight, and my Devilfish and gun drones are ready to unload. I mark them with some markerlights, then my Fire Warriors open fire. I whiff almost every single shot, and kill one Marine. My gun drones fail to hit. The Devilfish doesn't cause any wounds. To top it all off, my Kroot are out of assault range. Let's just say that by the end of next turn there was nothing left in that quarter except a bunch of Marines with some fresh trophies.

Going further back, I played a game with my IG. It was Dawn of War, and my Leman Russ squadron rolled on to the table. They rolled on into cover and, wouldn't you know it, I rolled a 1 and one of them immobilized. The fun thing is, in vehicle squadrons "immobilized" results become wrecks! Goodbye 185 points of expensive tank, in my own movement phase.

Finally, I had my Iron Warriors fighting against some Chaos Daemons. I had just disgorged a squad of Marines in the open, ready to gun down some gribbly thing. I'm about to lob a Vindicator shell when my opponent declares the Changeling is going to attempt to take control of the shot. I need to make a leadership test, or else he gets to shoot with that unit. I figure LD10 for being a vehicle is pretty hard to screw up and up comes boxcars. Cue a dramatic splatting sound and what I can only imagine looked like ground beef confetti. Come to think of it, my Chaos Marines fail a lot of LD tests for all having Chaos Glory and LD10...

Anyway, post your experiences with botched tactics, bad luck, and half-thought out strategies that ended with equally horrible and hilarious results!

THIS: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/387976.page#3171397

Also, I once lost a 1200pt Deathstar (out of a 2000pt army list) to a Vortex Missile Launcher... because the lied about which missile launcher had the vortex missile.

My friend will be along here recounting when my 10 Slugga Boyz killed his Tyrant.

When I charged some LC Chaplain combo unit, I lost all 30 Orks.

I changed a lone SM Captain (with artificer armor mind you) into a 10 man Guard infantry squad.

Killed only 2 of them.
they only got three wounds on my Captain... so the only way i would die is if i rolled triple ones...
guess what i rolled...

ZOMBIE CAT wrote:I changed a lone SM Captain (with artificer armor mind you) into a 10 man Guard infantry squad.

Killed only 2 of them.
they only got three wounds on my Captain... so the only way i would die is if i rolled triple ones...
guess what i rolled...

The more points I spend on a captain the more likely this is to happen!

Having over half my guys dying from a Rhino blowing up

forruner_mercy wrote:Having over half my guys dying from a Rhino blowing up

Some of us could be so lucky! Sounds like you didn't play 4th edition

Brother SRM wrote:

forruner_mercy wrote:Having over half my guys dying from a Rhino blowing up

Some of us could be so lucky! Sounds like you didn't play 4th edition

Well, I have not played enough games for supa' crazy things to happen. That is just the worst so far.
Actually, the worst may have been forgetting to roll for drugs

A shot from a Leman Russ scattered onto a chimera. The chimera then exploded, killing most of the inhabitants, then the S4 explosion hit 3 squads that were in a ruin. Thankfully managed to save most of THOSE ones.

Joey wrote:A shot from a Leman Russ scattered onto a chimera. The chimera then exploded, killing most of the inhabitants, then the S4 explosion hit 3 squads that were in a ruin. Thankfully managed to save most of THOSE ones.

That's more like it! I love games where ordnance kills more of your own men than the enemy.

Brother SRM wrote:

Joey wrote:A shot from a Leman Russ scattered onto a chimera. The chimera then exploded, killing most of the inhabitants, then the S4 explosion hit 3 squads that were in a ruin. Thankfully managed to save most of THOSE ones.

That's more like it! I love games where ordnance kills more of your own men than the enemy.

If you're Imperial Guard, it's pretty likely. I remember one game my Blood Angels ally was flabbergasted when I wanted my Leman Russ to shoot at an enemy squad not 5 inches from his Death Company. Unfortunately it didn't scatter, but still.

One time when i had just started playing, first turn I got somewhere around 600 of my 1000 points of orks completely obliterated. Combo of bad rolls and plain dumbassidy of myself

Jollydevil wrote:One time when i had just started playing, first turn I got somewhere around 600 of my 1000 points of orks completely obliterated. Combo of bad rolls and plain dumbassidy of myself

This pretty much demands an explanation! I have an Ork related story.

It was my first, maybe second game using Space Wolves in their old codex. I had a decked out Wolf Lord and a badass group of Wolf Guard with him in my backfield. Turn 1, Shokk attack gun fires and gets a direct hit on the squad. Boxcars. Whole squad is gone, save one Wolf Guard named Baldur. Since then, he's been pretty disappointing.

Brother SRM wrote:

Jollydevil wrote:One time when i had just started playing, first turn I got somewhere around 600 of my 1000 points of orks completely obliterated. Combo of bad rolls and plain dumbassidy of myself

This pretty much demands an explanation! I have an Ork related story.

It was my first, maybe second game using Space Wolves in their old codex. I had a decked out Wolf Lord and a badass group of Wolf Guard with him in my backfield. Turn 1, Shokk attack gun fires and gets a direct hit on the squad. Boxcars. Whole squad is gone, save one Wolf Guard named Baldur. Since then, he's been pretty disappointing.

Was playing Tau, and I ran my boyz sqauds straight into the line of fire, and he basically got lucky rolls, and tabled both sqauds My Nobz and warboss truck got blown to bits, and my Looted Wagon got busted up with a gun destroyed result (pretty much useless now XD)

There's nothing like charging a gunline on open ground to make a body feel alive!

Oh I've got a few more stories to tell...

I've got a Carnifex standing about 4" away from a Chaos Dread, and 2 Zoanthropes nearby and a Chaos Sorcerer near the Carnifex. I figure "eh I'll try to shoot the Dread with the Zoanthropes - if it succeeds, I'll assault the Sorcerer, if not then I'll charge that". Of course, the Dread explodes, catches the Fex in the blast, scores the 6 to wound it and then I failed my 3+ armour save... I calculated the odds afterwards, and it was a less than 2% chance of that happening...

Another classic was when I fought at Guard army - I loaded up a Wolf Lord/Terminator deathstar in my Land Raider Crusader and blasted off towards the Guard gunline. In their turn they blew up the Land Raider, so I roll my pinning check - no big deal... except that I rolled an 11, so they were pinned... right in front of 50 Guardsmen. Suffice to say, all my Terminators died, but the Wolf Lord lived long enough to wipe out a single squad before getting shot up.

Tournament game. Playing against my friend's chaos army (4th edition, about 2 months before 5th hit the shelves).

I shoot around 1400 points of necrons at one squad of daemonettes, most of which was in rapid-fire range.

Two survive. They proceed to assault a squad of warriors in cover, take zero wounds from my pro-CC, and rend twice.

I promptly box-cars my leadership test for losing close combat and get swept.

20 Warriors and an attached 200 point lord get swept by two daemonettes who survived being rapid fired by 30 necron warriors, 20 immortals, and a monolith's particle whip. I watched my opponent make 15 out of 17 5+ invuln saves in one roll when there were only 4 of them left...

I was just numb after that. I mean...I had paid money to get something done to me, that I can only describe as being "far and away, beyond an ass-kicking".

The whole game lasted less than 3 rounds. It goes without saying that I phased out fairly hard.

I was playing with someone else's chaos warrior minis at the Toronto Gamesday and I charged Skulltaker with my huge expensive lord like a newb.

Ahem...

killing blow killing blow killing blow

My very first game was my SM vs the guys Tyranids.

I made the BRILLIANT decision to put my termies all the way over in the corner of the board and it took almost the whole match to move them into combat. I had 10 tac marines in a rhino. Rhino went down against Carnifex, tac marines went down, scouts went down.

Basically, I got destroyed haha. However, I managed to move my dread on top of a building before being immobilized and fired into his Carnifex's, and my termies TORE UP his genestealers. hahaha but I still lost haha

And I managed to have him trade me the Carnifex that destroyed my army a few years later. Mwuahahaha

EDIT: OH! And I decided once all my squads were dead it was a badass move to run my SM commander right up the middle into his Carnifex with a twin-linked venom cannon...

Playing against Tau in a tournament last year, the objective was to have more units in each table quarter than the enemy. Therefore late in the game my unharmed Terminator Lord went for a run into the next quarter. A squad of battlesuits scored three wounds on him with missile pods, and up came three ones.

Playing my Eldar against my friends space puppies and I hardly ever take my Avatar but thought maybe this time. He uses the Jaws of the Warwolf on him and I rolled, drum roll please, a 6. Bye bye Avatar. If I had taken my farseer, which is normal, then that might not have happened.

I played OLD Crons against guard/marine mix. It was marine troops and guard tanks. You know those ones with plasma cannons. Didnt kill one model of his. Got totally slaughtered. Although he technically could do that since he just took the best of both armies to fight a cron army in a non apocalypse game, the worst mistake i had was to allow him to play that way.

I bothered to get my Dark Angels out of the box against a min/max Eldar starcannon army in 3rd edition. Totally ludicrous 60-70 starcannon shots per turn.

I'll tell a fail one of my friends did as Imperial Guard:

Turn 7, and Kill Points are 1 KP in favour of his Grey Knights opponent. Grey Knights has a 5-man squad right in the open, in front of a Leman Russ Battle Tank. The tank opens fire on the squad, doesn't scatter and hits all of them. This is the game changing moment. My friend rolls .

Back when SS only worked in close combat I spent a hefty amount of points (I can't remember how many exactly, this was well over half a decade ago) on a ten man TH/SS squad. They teleport in and three of them go over the edge from scatter, they're also too far back now for my plan to work, so they get ripped to pieces by four plasma cannons in my 'best friend's' shooting phase. He didn't even have the decency to overheat once.

In my first game with new crons fighting against grey knights my friend went terminator heavy and long story short got killed in close combat.... by necrons....

It wasn't my failure, but my opponents. Marines vs Marines, but he tailored his list against my regular list and started bragging about "how hard he would cream me". From memory he had a 10 man Devastator squad with plasma cannons, 2 10 man assault squads each with chaplins and 2 tac squads in rhinos. Anyway, my first turn, my scouts routed his devastators, my vindicator atomised on entire assault squad, and my dreadnought immobilised the lead rhino, blocking the other rhino in between two buildings. His turn and the other rhino immobilises itself, his other assault squad jumps infron of my tact squads. My turn and I rapid fire everything at the chaplin, and charge by librarian in, killing EVERYTHING. At the end of the game, I lost 2 scouts, he lost everything.

Words cannot describe how smug I was.

Greater Daemon of Khorne dying to Scout Sniper fire.

Snake eyes with my lone survivor of a tac squad.
He was shooting his meltagun at the deff dread that finished the rest of the guys off.

I ending up taking it out with my last termy, winning me the game

Ah, I've got a few of these!

In the old Codex for Necrons, I had a Monolith prepped to deep strike in, and a pair of Warrior squads waiting to come through. My genius self thought 'Why I could deep strike in behind his whole army and shred him with gauss fire!' needless to say, I went WAY behind his army....like...off the table edge behind it. No monolith...No half my Troops.

Another time I attempted to gun down a charging Gaunt squad with twenty four warriors and five destroyers. I killed two. The following assault was....well...brutal.

Playing my Fiance's Demons, I left a squad of warriors just out of assault range of a unit of daemonettes...with Masque. I forgot about her Pavane....she dragged me closer, and charged...routed and ran down my warriors and butchered the Lord. The worst part? I killed one in return.

My BIGGEST 40k Failure....Back when i first started playing, I was young...I had amassed a fairly decent Space marines army...numerous tac marines, land raider, rhinos, two assault squads and a whole unit of termies......The mistake?.....Selling them.