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Here's how it works; after rolling for warlord traits, each player rolls on the Sabotage table, then chooses one unit from his opponent's army list. That unit and all other units chosen from the same army list entry in the same force (all Space Marine Tactical Squads, or all Chaos Space Marine Helldrakes, for example) are affected by the results of the Sabotage roll. Warlords are immune to Sabotage (they can not be chosen as the target and are not affected if they share the same army list entry as the target). Dedicated transports are not affected by Sabotage which affects their unit, but can be targeted themselves and are affected if they share an army list entry with the target unit (so sabotage affecting Ork Battlewagons affects both those chosen as Dedicated Transports and Heavy Support choices). Each unit affected by sabotage is affected for one turn; the player who rolled the sabotage result can declare it's effects at the start of any phase and the effects last until the start of the next player turn. If multiple units are affected, declare when they are affected individually.

Sabotage Table

1 - Critical Vulnerability
The target unit must re-roll successful Saving Throws and any Armour Penetration roll against the unit which fails to get at least a Glancing Hit may be re-rolled.

2 - Heretical Suspicions
The target unit treats all friendly units (except for it's own dedicated transport or a unit it is a dedicated transport to) as Desperate Allies.

3 - Energy Drain
All the target unit's attacks are AP -.

4 - Marked for Destruction
Enemy units may declare charges against the affected unit even if they entered play from reserves, ran or disembarked from a vehicle this turn.

5 - Targeting Error
The unit may only fire Snap Shots.

6 - Lethal Feedback
All the unit's shooting attacks have the Gets Hot rule. In addition, any shooting attack which would normally have the Gets Hot rule may not re-roll To Hit rolls of 1.

Too much. We should just fix what is broken, not slap on something like this that is a situational fix at best and a crippling gamechanger at worst.

So if someone ran Guard blobs you would force them to re-roll all saving throws, let reserves charge them or force them to fire snap-shots. This would completely break the game and make it unfair for everyone.

In addition, snap-shots on flamer Heldrakes? So they wouldn't be able to fire at all? Unnecessary. Re-writing unit entries or having House Rules should easily fix this.

 BrotherOfBone wrote:
So if someone ran Guard blobs you would force them to re-roll all saving throws, let reserves charge them or force them to fire snap-shots.

Yes. In return, they get to do the same thing to the most powerful unit(s) in their opponent's army. Which armies are less vulnerable to this than guard infantry hordes?

 BrotherOfBone wrote:
This would completely break the game and make it unfair for everyone.

How can something be unfair to everyone?

 BrotherOfBone wrote:
In addition, snap-shots on flamer Heldrakes? So they wouldn't be able to fire at all?

On a lucky roll, for one turn, yes. They still have a good chance of getting at least one turn of shooting before being destroyed and they still get their vector strikes.

 BrotherOfBone wrote:
Re-writing unit entries or having House Rules should easily fix this.

Re-writing unit entries requires everyone to agree on exactly what needs fixing and a new set of house rules every time a new codex comes out. By addressing easily abused rules and patterns of list building, we change the game in a much more elegant way.

But this isn't fixing anything. This is adding more randomness to an already inherently random game. Along with that, oh cool you made their riptide spam/wave serpent spam worthless... but they just made your units worse as well. It also would Dev estate themed armies.

How does this prevent seerstar or screamerstar? Silly list. Last thing we need is more randomness in 40k. Half the time this list could be played around. Half the time it will burn you worse than the TauDar creep you're facing.

Sorry I don't see this helping at all. Quite the opposite.

This would outright break the game. I'd rather see the units that are OP fixed.

So, the consensus seems to be that it's a bad idea.

Is it totally unworkable? Would re-writing it to be less severe help? Would making it a set of strategems you could choose from (possibly at some points cost) be any better? How about not allowing the sabotage to target Troops selections?

Could it be possible to come up with a universal rule which significantly rebalances overpowered units in general without breaking the game, or is the only possible method to address each unbalanced codex entry individually?

No. It is better to just fix the culprit units than to apply a band-aid fix like this.

Just ban Screamerstars, Heldrake spam and the Eldar/Dark Eldar thingy (what's it even called?) if it's too much of a bother to play versus really.

It's what I'd do if I was to host a tournament of some kind.

Well, i see what your intention is. Make more different units apear on the table.

1. This nerfs are too unballanced. The only roll can allready make a game.
2. There are many lists that are not unballanced or annoying but rely on a spam-unit. Like horde lists.
3. A number of codexes don't have an option of running non-spam lists. Orks and SoB for example. Nerfing them even harder?

Now you could add some sabotage thing with much less crippling restrictions and vs just one unit. And not instead of warlord traits. Just an extra table. Though, it's gona be very hard to ballance it out. Even warlord traits are sometimes game-changing.

Thus, i think that you could experiment with some minor random debuffs like:

roll d6
1. Defamed. Some unpleasant and annoying gossip spread amongst the comrades like they're a bit dumb, or too bloodthirsty...or not too bloodthirsty - depending on the morale standards of the army.
Every model in the squad has -1 ld. Does not apply to independent characters that have joined it.
2. Delayed. They've met some problems with coordinates accuracy or it's just hard to march in such enviroment.
The squad gets a -1 modifier on reserves roll.
3. Low quality ammunition. The quality of ammunition is not really great. But war is war. Better have at least anything.
Every time you declare a shooting attack with this unit - roll d6. On a roll of 1 or 2 all the shots have Gets Hot special rule.
4. Exhausted. Warriors did not manage to start the fight at full strength either from a previous skirmish or a long march. They don't move or react (if driving) as quick as they could.
Affected models move 1' less for every 6' they'd normally move. For example, regular infantry can move up to 5'. Bikers and beasts can move up to 10'. Run and toorboboost moves are also affected.
5. Paranoid. They've seen the horrors of war and know that every so-called "friend" or "allie" can hit you in the back. Only the ones u've fought shoulder-to-shoulder can be trusted.
The squad treats everyone else as desperate allies. Though, can still be joined by independant characters from it's own detachment.
6. Choose one of the 1-5 results.

Something like this. Instead of the Warlord traits, i find that every result is somewhat effective, though not too gamebreaking. Maybe there are some situations where leadership doesn't matter. Or reduced speed if everyone's in transports. But you could affect this very transport, don't u?

Perfect Organism wrote:
Could it be possible to come up with a universal rule which significantly rebalances overpowered units in general without breaking the game, or is the only possible method to address each unbalanced codex entry individually?

It isn't possible, for two reasons:

1) If unit A is overpowered and better than unit B then nerfing both of them means that A is still way better than B but they're both weaker. So you still have a balance problem, except you've probably created other balance problems with your rule. For example, if you nerf Wave Serpents by nerfing transport vehicles in general then you've completely changed the metagame for mech armies in general, and anyone who used a lot of Rhinos just got nerfed for no good reason as collateral damage.

2) Units are overpowered for different reasons. Vendettas are too cheap, primarily because their point costs were set as skimmers in 5th and 6th upgraded them to flyers without changing the point cost. Riptides are overpowered because of the generous allies rules that let you ally Tau with Tau-with-red-paint and bring more than three Riptides, and avoid having to choose between the IC Riptide and the buff commander when making your death star. And re-rollable 2++ saves and D-weapons are just bad rules that shouldn't be in the game at all. There's no way you're going to make a single general rule that fixes all of those problems, at least without creating way more problems than you fix.

So, if you think that unit A is overpowered then you fix unit A directly instead of making up blanket rules so that you can pretend that you're being "fair" and not picking on someone's favorite unit.