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The title says it all. What are some rules that either have so little impact as to be useless, or that just never get used, that you expect (or hope) to see dropped in 8th edition. This isn't for bad rules, or rules that you think are broken, just ones that don't ever end up coming up in a regular game of 40k.

For a few that I've thought of: Rules for moving through water and Mysterious Objectives both get used about as often as Flash Gitz at my LGS.

Soul Blaze.

Soulblaze, so under-powered that I have not met anyone that even bothers to use it. if it was buffed it might be somewhat worthwhile, but at its current state it is quite possibly the most useless I know of.

I once had a model lose a wound to Soul Blaze.

Once.

It's not so much soul blaze that is an issue, but that you pay for it. And it's pretty much never ever worth it, so nobody takes the stuff that has it. At the very least it would have to stack.

I'd say precision strikes/shots is the most useless rule in the game. I can't even think of unit that has the rule....assasins?

Fear. A lot of armies are flat out immune to it. After that the rest of the armies are either such high Ld or Morale manipulation that they almost always pass their fear tests (Eldar, Necrons) or were so bad in CC that them failing their fear check doesn't do anything (Tau and IG). The only army that Fear actually affects is the Orkz

And Tyranids. As much as it is ideal to always have full synapse coverage, the reality is that it is difficult to maintain.

 Roknar wrote:
I'd say precision strikes/shots is the most useless rule in the game. I can't even think of unit that has the rule....assasins?

Actually it's on weapons with the Sniper special rule too. Imperial Assassins, however, make Precision Shots/Strikes work well, considering they get it every single shot/attack and they give a middle finger to LOS.

Crusader, fear, cover.

zealot is literally two other rules in one.

 Roknar wrote:
It's not so much soul blaze that is an issue, but that you pay for it. And it's pretty much never ever worth it, so nobody takes the stuff that has it. At the very least it would have to stack.

I'd say precision strikes/shots is the most useless rule in the game. I can't even think of unit that has the rule....assasins?

Actually, the named Canoness for Sisters, Veridyan, has a 12" bubble of Precision Shots for all Sororitas units...I love sniping stuff with my Exorcists.

Oberron wrote:
zealot is literally two other rules in one.

One of those rules doesn't roll over to the entire unit though.

Fearless rolls over... And Hatred rolls over...

So come again?

Hatred does not carry over. Check the wording in the BRB.

Many tyranid monstrous creatures coming with an AP6 close combat weapon is kinda amusing. Particularly on those that are unable to replace it, or take a second one.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Oberron wrote:
zealot is literally two other rules in one.

One of those rules doesn't roll over to the entire unit though.

Either way, you don't need a third rule to give a model two existing rules. There are plenty of USR's guilty of this.

 phantombap wrote:
Soulblaze, so under-powered that I have not met anyone that even bothers to use it. if it was buffed it might be somewhat worthwhile, but at its current state it is quite possibly the most useless I know of.

The other issue with Soul Blaze is the book keeping - marking units affected, and then remembering to do something about that each turn.

The other USRs I don't think are worth it are Preferred Enemy and Hatred. Similar enough they could be one rule, but the reasons I dislike them is their specificity - here's a special rule giving you re-rolls (because the game needs more re-rolls!) but you can only use it if you happen to be facing Army X. Against anything else it's a rule you can't use (but you still pay points for in the unit's base points cost).

They are quite fluffy rules, but that way madness lies! Making fluffy rules leads to movie marines.

Preferred Enemy (Everything) or, as it's more commonly known, Preferred Enemy is pretty dang useful.

Same with hatred (Everything).

Daemonic Possession on FW chaos superheavy tanks.
You have to pay points for it.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Preferred Enemy (Everything) or, as it's more commonly known, Preferred Enemy is pretty dang useful.

Preferred enemy (Everything) sounds stupid, though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Strikedown. Slows someone down in mellee. And only if this model suffered a wound and didn't die. And usually only GMC or other big units have it.

I'd have to go for 'soul blaze' and 'Fear' or any 'Fear' based gear (such as what dark eldar have) tends to be worthless.

Oh hey you have phantasm grenades or the supposed fear bomb. I have space marines (ATSKNF), high leadership models all around (even with riptides and stormsurge), fearless or just plain don't care.

The sad bit is the fear bomb would be ok vs lots of small units or against monsters except monsters are too high leadership and the good ones have invulnerable saves and FnP anyway. This isn't even taking into the fact those are probably all fearless as well (except riptides).

I'd still say soul blaze is pretty useless though. It just doesn't do enough.

 koooaei wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Preferred Enemy (Everything) or, as it's more commonly known, Preferred Enemy is pretty dang useful.

Preferred enemy (Everything) sounds stupid, though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Strikedown. Slows someone down in mellee. And only if this model suffered a wound and didn't die. And usually only GMC or other big units have it.

Speaking of which, Concussive - It's almost exclusively on weapons that are going to kill most targets in one hit anyways. I usually forget that it even exists when I'm facing high initiative, durable enemies anyways.

As for the Hatred/PE thing... I don't mind either of those rules, but it does seem like there is a huge proliferation of ways to get re-rolls to hit, and it could probably use some streamlining. (Also, it's dumb that some forms of re-rolling doesn't help Template weapons, but other forms do.)

Heavy Chainsword.

That piece of wargear existed in the basic rulebook since the beginning of 6th edition in 2012, but I have yet to see any codex including it.

STRIKEDOWN
Half the time its useless, as its Close Combat.
And the other half you forget about it entirely

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:
Heavy Chainsword.

That piece of wargear existed in the basic rulebook since the beginning of 6th edition in 2012, but I have yet to see any codex including it.

The Heresy has them.

Repel Boarders (or something to that effect). Go on, I'll wait while you check the rulebook to ensure I'm not making it up.

It's assault vehicle for buildings and I can't think of anything that uses it, or why Assault Vehicle couldn't have applied to buildings. Other culprits include Missile Lock for rarely used rules.

I agree things like Hatred and Preferred Enemy could be used interchangeably. Rage and Furious Charge represent very similar things too. They may be mechanically different but when you have two rules trying to represent the same thing you can probably get rid of one.

Whatever combo of rules (don't play right now, think its fleshbane and poison 2+) the Eversor has on his CCWs. So you have a 1/36 chance of failing to wound? Why not make it auto wound instead of having the needless potential you might need to re-roll some dice now and again.

Also some SM rules (IIRC) that are just other USRs put together.

Slipspace wrote:
Repel Boarders (or something to that effect). Go on, I'll wait while you check the rulebook to ensure I'm not making it up.

It's assault vehicle for buildings and I can't think of anything that uses it, or why Assault Vehicle couldn't have applied to buildings. Other culprits include Missile Lock for rarely used rules.

I agree things like Hatred and Preferred Enemy could be used interchangeably. Rage and Furious Charge represent very similar things too. They may be mechanically different but when you have two rules trying to represent the same thing you can probably get rid of one.

That's just a rule for all buildings iirc. Means you can disembark and charge. Yep, it's kinda like an assault vehicle but for buildings. Just to avoid the oddity of calling buildings vehicles i guess.

Supersonic, Strafing Run, Strikedown, Soul Blaze, Zealot, Repel the Enemy, Sentry Defence System, Precision Strike, Missile Lock, Mighty Bulwark, Hatred, Crusader.

These special rules are never part of my games. Maybe soul blaze but it does nothing anyway.

Strikedown. Very few things have it and even less players remember using it at all. Even Soul Blaze gets more use/reminder.

 Blackie wrote:
Strafing Run, Zealot, Repel the Enemy, Hatred, Crusader.

Thse rules show up quite a lot in my games. All useful!