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I had a game with a friend today and what happened was insane.

To set the stage we were playing the open war mission. The deployment was Dawn of War but all the way up to half way. The mission was to capture two objectives and the twist was that the range of all shooting attacks was at 12” that could increase (it did not).
My opponent played Orks. I played a combination Ad Mech and Space Marines at 1750 points. She had in her army two battlewagons and a Morkanaut my army included two Kastelan Robots, a Redemptor Dreadnought and an Onager Dunecrawler. And in the center of the board there was a large open space.

Everything happened in the first battle round.

She had the first turn. She did a lot of damage but not a lot of kills. My turn was similar; I did a lot of damage to her big things in the shooting phase but killed none of them. In the charge phase my Redemptor charged her Morkanaut, the shooting from earlier and the overwatch reduced it to 1 wound. Also my Kastelans charged one of the Battlewagons and was reduced to three wounds from the overwatch. My Kastelans fought first and managed to kill the battlewagon, the wagon exploded killing my Kastelan (it did not blow) and killing my Redemptor. My Redemptor then blew up missing her Tankbustas that got out of the wagon but damaging some Intercessors and bringing a Primaris Captain to three wounds but also killing the Morkanaut, which then exploded. This explosion killed my other Kastelan which did not explode, killed 6 of her Tankbustas, destroyed my onager dunecrawler which did not explode and killed my captain as well as doing damage to a ton of other things in the area.

It was amazing.

Joyously 2nd-edition style 'splosion fest! Hope you enjoyed it!

Explosions are fun and i wish they happened more reliably. Might have to house rule them to blow on a 4 or 5 up.

Best explosion ive seen was my knight exploding to a wraithknight in cc. Explosion did 6 mortal wounds each to the wraithknight, 2 squads of wraith lords and a falcon. It was an epic explosion.

Giantwalkingchair wrote:
Explosions are fun and i wish they happened more reliably.

You should play DG. They have a stratagem to force an explosion.

9/12 of my vehicles exploded in a single game before, killing 14/25 of my own guys, i called the game.

Some times dice are the worst donkey-caves.

I'd had a Tantalus Explode once also... ever since then i dont let anything besides DS blockers around that thing... it did over 30 MW's to mine and his army lol.

Giantwalkingchair wrote:
Explosions are fun and i wish they happened more reliably. Might have to house rule them to blow on a 4 or 5 up.

These insane cascading explosions are hilarious exactly because they are improbable enough to be rare, but still likely enough to go off once in a while.

If the above scenario happened every other game it would be hugely annoying.

Current vehicle explosions are just cool enough to remind me of the bonkers hilarity of 2nd edition (chain of event explosions/destructions could be really violent).

Explosions are not fun when it results in your opponent killing off half your army because you play space marines. 6+ and you bring any characters I have in range to half wounds or worse, cut my marine squads in half, ugh it just left a horrid taste in my mouth. I lost the game from a leman russ exploding, but I had to be in range because I was using melta, and I couldn't run the risk of leaving it up to one squad if I whiffed.

I don't have many explosion stories from 8th yet, but I remember a Apocalypse-game from way back when Apo was first released. That christmas, I got a Baneblade that I immediately had to use in a Apo game. It did a lot of damage, but was cut off from my other army and subsequently charged by (I think) a Chaos dread, a unit of chaos terminators, a couple orks (nob had a claw) and I think the warboss and a chaos sorcerer.
I had no illusion, my Bane was as good as dead. It was a friendly game, so no big deal.
Nob finally took its last structure point (the wound-equivalent of super-heavies back then, don't know wether or not that's the right word in english). And I scored a 6 on the vehicle damage chart.
I am not sure what happened exactly, as in what the results did (this was a couple years back, mind you). I just know that after the resulting reactor meltdown, only a couple boyz and the sorcerer were left standing. Everybody else was just... gone.

Blew up a Stompa with two melta guns back in older apoc, the explosion killed the two Grenadier that fired at it, felt properly Kriegan

Not quite as lucky onw I read about. Not me but it was the power of dice.

Fire a hunter killer at ork super heavy. Needs 6 to damage. Scores, scores 6 on damage. Super heavy rolls bad and explodes thanks to single 10 point missile striking almost up the thermal exhaust port of deathstar momment..

Explosion also effects ork army. One missile. Hundreds and hundreds of points killed.

Some times the dice gods are powerful.

It's not an "Explosion" per say, but I've had Ahriman on one life fly over to a necron lord to be closest to him, attempt smite and fumble badly. Blew himself up, the lord, a cryptek, half an immortal squad, half a warrior squad and one destroyer.

This is epic! We need more stories like this.

Explosions are my favourite little rule in 40k. They create really nice little stories. My favourite one was using a stratagem to reroll a failed explosion on my predator into a successful one. This then did no damage to the many enemies surrounding but severely damaged by nearby intercessor squad.

My favorite explosion in 8th was SoB vs Ultramarines with me as the SoB player. My Dominions in Immolators had made a suicide run turn 1 to gun up some heavy support. My opponent chews up the Dominions with shooting and sets up to charge the Immolators with multiple bike mounted characters and a 5 man tactical squad to eat the overwatch. The 5 tactical Marines lose 3 to overwatch and fail the charge. The Apothecary goes next and takes a few wounds but makes the charge. The Captain and Librarian connect as well. The Immolator dies in short order and I don't roll a 6, but I decide to CP reroll it and get the explosion. The last 2 Tactical guys die, the Apothecary dies, the Librarian takes 3 wounds and the Captain takes 2.

It was payback for doing the same thing to me a few games before and it was glorious.

I had a fantastically silly game against my buddy back in 7th, putting my Brass Scorpion and assorted other bits up against his AM tank gunline, including a Shadowsword. It lasted 2 turns, if I remember rightly.

My infantry squads tried to hop from cover to cover to get in range of the tanks, but to no avail, and were largely dead by turn 2. Then the second shot from the Shadowsword killed my Scorpion. It went nuclear thanks to the Doomsday Reactor rule (+2 modifier on catastrophic damage table) and the ensuing blast killed my daemon prince that was using the scorpion as cover, plus the remnants of my Havoc squad in cover nearby. Game well and truly over. Don't think I even managed to damage, let alone kill, anything of his... But it was hilarious!

I had a Lord of Skulls go down to Arjac Rockfist and his goons that assaulted out of a severely damaged land raider crusader. (After it had terrorized his army the entire game.)

I fail the roll to explode and elected to spend my last command point to reroll it......BOOM. And if you are not aware the bigger vehicles do much more damage when they blow.

The explosion took out the land raider, Arjac, and 4 thunderhammer/stormshield wolfguard. It was an impressive amount of points in one explosion lol.

I had someone snipe a commissar out of his conscript herd because he was a little too close to my hellhound when it exploded. That got me to stop deploying those next to the rest of my units rather quickly, regardless of whether I think I'm going first.

 daedalus wrote:
I had someone snipe a commissar out of his conscript herd because he was a little too close to my hellhound when it exploded. That got me to stop deploying those next to the rest of my units rather quickly, regardless of whether I think I'm going first.

At least all of those poor civilians probably escaped with their lives though. Like as soon as the Commissar goes down, my Lasgun would go one way, and i'd go the other.

It was against Eldar, and I think I lost that one, so they're probably toast anyway.

I suppose I could daydream that they stole an Arvus or something and managed to make it off planet though.

One of the best games I played in 7th was a game I played with my one knight and Admech army vs my opponents four knights and some guard.

The game ended in a giant cluterfuck in the middle with four consecutive Titanic explosions that simultaneously tabled both players.

Nothing as exciting but i did have a situation where my plasma guys were getting charged. i decided to go ham and overcharge.

they died denying a charge my opponent really needed

we laughed,

You can always use a CP to reroll an explosion result if it will be devastating. I know I've burnt a few CP trying to get a 6 for a vehicle in the middle of a bunch of enemy units.

 deviantduck wrote:
You can always use a CP to reroll an explosion result if it will be devastating. I know I've burnt a few CP trying to get a 6 for a vehicle in the middle of a bunch of enemy units.

Your opponent rolls to see if his vehicle explodes, not you.

So he would probably get a 6 and then re-roll it.

I think he meant a 6 on his own vehicle surrounded by enemies. I do that a lot with my hellhounds: Get close to the enemy and dare them to blow them up.

 daedalus wrote:
I think he meant a 6 on his own vehicle surrounded by enemies. I do that a lot with my hellhounds: Get close to the enemy and dare them to blow them up.

Yep. I had RG punch an exorcist to death. It didn't explode so I burnt the CP to reroll the 6 and boom, dead RG.

 Giantwalkingchair wrote:
Explosions are fun and i wish they happened more reliably. Might have to house rule them to blow on a 4 or 5 up.

Best explosion ive seen was my knight exploding to a wraithknight in cc. Explosion did 6 mortal wounds each to the wraithknight, 2 squads of wraith lords and a falcon. It was an epic explosion.

Play death guard! Few of their vehicles blow up on a +4, and they have a stratagem to make sure the vehicle blows up. It is very satisfying!