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I'm dipping my toes into the hobby again after a big brake of about 10 years. So I went to my local GW today and bought the Deathwatch codex and another small book to help me get started with the rules. Now being honest I've forgotten how to play a game. I started playing 40k when I was 8 or 9, right up to the age of 16, there was times when I wouldn't have a game for like a year or more. I suppose I went through stages of playing, painting and collecting. Since it was so long ago I don't remember learning the ropes.

What's shooting me through a bit is having to figure out what you need to roll to hit/wound\save etc by comparing your models stats to your opponents. I've been getting into Tabletop tactics battle reports on YouTube and when the dice are rolled, there's no uming and arghing. It's pretty straightforward for them, with them knowing what's needed for a successful roll.

That's what's flying around my head atm. Cheers for any input.

30 min of core rules when I had never played it before, first game by the end I understood core rules then I moved onto full, that took 2 games and the really obscure choice things I sometimes dip into.

I learned in 5th, but it took about 2 games.

8e took me maybe ten minutes to read the rules to confirm what I knew and what changed, and go.

For me I caught on really quick. I also dove rather hard into the game when I first started lol

For me what I did was watched some "slower" battle reports (ie ones that don't focus on competitive aspects and ones for pure fun.) and had my rule book handy. When I saw them do something I didn't understood I paused the video and looked through the rule book (codex or BRB) and found the answer. I learned pretty quick like that.

The hit/wound/save is pretty easy this edition. To hit says on their data sheet. Wounding is based on strength vs toughness and has a simple little chart(?) in the BRB. Granted modifiers are a bit tricky to wrap your head around at first.

First things first is grab your relevant codex and the rule book.

Once you have some models and units grab a buddy and play some random small games. Just focus on the core rules, moving, shooting, etc and play on a smaller board with some terrain.

When you have played long enough you will know the stats of other armies and generally don't need to ask what you need to wound.

I play against Imperial Guard regularly and we can finish most games within an hour or two even larger points since we both know each others armies well.

Learn enough to play? Like, a few hours. But I was already familiar with tabletop games from things like Battletech and DnD.

Learn enough to play well and not constantly look up rules? I mean, I guess I'm still not quite there after two decades

Didn't take long, but then I was keeping up to date with the announcements on Warhammer Community before the game came out, and they did a pretty good job of explaining how things worked in a nutshell.

Edit: you can find a summary of all these articles on WHC here:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/06/11/warhammer-40000-recapgw-homepage-post-4/

My suggestion is to have a couple of small intro games with someone who knows what they're doing. Keep it as simple as possible: use Power Levels to determine the game size (try for around 25PL per side), leave out things like warlord traits, stratagems and detachments, and use the basic Open Play mission in the core rules.

These intro games don't have to be perfectly balanced, they just need to demonstrate how all the core mechanics work.

Back in 7th when I started it took me about 6 months to get to the point where I didn't need to constantly refer back to the rules for everything, but that was a horribly bloated, convaluted mess of an edition rules wise.

In 8th, about as long as it took me to read the 8 pages of core rules, the core of it is generally pretty simple.

In 2nd ed it took me about 3 games.
In 3rd ed I guess it was about 2 games
In 8th it was about 1 game.

Since I only play abut once a month I still need to look up my units stats and I occasionally forget little things like Perils of the Warp and rerolls

i'll let you know when I learn them.

Headlss wrote:
i'll let you know when I learn them.

This!!

I'm going to take a stab at a 500 point game tomorrow and see if I can move/shoot/fight in the right order. =D

For each edition I've played

5th- Two games to get the hang of it.
6th- About the same, though there were still some errors a few games in for my group.
7th- Took a bit, had a bit of rust from taking a break and 7th had a lot of rules and silly interactions

8th-Core rules were easy, still working on trying to forget so much of the above and also keep track of rapid changes. 8th is by far an edition that does not resemble the start at all.

You should have been around when 2nd ed trainwrecked into 3rd. That was an abrubt change.

Models went from WS 10 and T 8 down to WS 6 and like T5 and then wounds dropped from 10 down to 4.

It just put a lot of players off. Their uber tough monsters seemed like kindertoys. A lot of them never gave it a chance.

8th has a lot of power creep back in with characters having 4, 6 or 10+ wounds now. Weapons are still not as tough. For instance a Lascannon does d6 now. It was 2d6 in 2nd. and 3rd it was either 1 or outright kill.

The way you build your armies now is still closer to 3rd than anything else.

8th is the best of all the editions but it still misses a lot. It is fast play but you lose character and the cool factor as so many things are represented by a buff or a reroll.

Why cant a lascanon be cool on its own with out a stratagem. Why cant a Captain be tricked out with Tanglefoot Grenades or give a Graviton Gun to that Tech Priest. Something that makes that guy special. Nothing like marching a Medic out in the middle of the battlefield with a PowerField and have him soaking up loads of fire while healing the wounded.

That is flavor and fun.

Initially? I started in the closing year of RT. A couple of hours/1 game for the basics. If that. And around two - three weeks to fully digest the RT rulebook & the other books* that comprised the edition at that time.
I never did read the two ork books of the day when they were relevant (I added them to the collection many years later) - because I didn't play orks & didn't care.
Nobody, at least none of the 40k players, at the shop was using either of the Realm of Chaos books. The WHFB group did sometimes. So I'm not counting them at all.

But I already had more than a decade of gaming XP in general thanks to D&D + other RPGs. And I was already fluent in Battle-Tech, & WHFB 3e. So RT wasn't that hard, just time consuming to read 6 books in 2-3 weeks + what I had to read/write/etc for college.

2e - 5e? An hour or two to read the book. 15 minutes to actually know the rules. 6e? About 15m as I just skipped the fluff.
8e? About 15 minutes for the rules - after I'd tracked down CA17, the indices, the codices, & all the FAQs/Erratta/etc....


*Chapter Approved - Book of the Astronomican, the Warhammer 40,000 Compendium, the Warhammer 40,000 Compilation, The Battle Manual, and the Vehicle Manual.

It took a couple games, I guess. i wasn't able to play often at first, though, so my games could be weeks apart.

Started in 1996, still not quite there.

The very basic rules only take a few games, but you will never stop learning because the rules constantly change with new beta rules, errata, FAQs, etc.

You guys must have eidetic memory or something. I play over a year, and I still don't know all the rules for all the armies. But I guess a month or two of doing nothing else, but reading the rules and then playing them over and over again should be enough. Unless a FAQ or CA or new book drops durning that month you should know all the rules.

Cheers for the input everyone.

I'm not as worried now after reading your comments. It's annoying for me tho because the game involves math, there's no getting around that. I'm the type of guy who prefers to use notes not loose change when buying something in person. Regarding the game, it's ment to be fun, so I'll always try to remember that and not focus on the next math problem I'm going to have to solve. When I next have some decent time spare I'm going to pop into GW and ask to play a game.

8th edition is much more streamlined than previous editions.

It involves more looking up unit datasheets, which you will eventually become familiar with as you play your army.

Eventually things like Strength vs Toughness become fairly rote (it's much simpler this edition) and you'll be able to just focus on tactics and strategy rather than the game mechanics.

Enjoy!

I started in 2nd when I was pretty young, so it took quite a while to learn everything (even then I probably still got stuff wrong). The current edition was very simple to learn, thanks to playing previous editions. The rules are pretty simple but there's no substitute for actually putting models on the table and playing the game so I think you're on the right track. Watching battle reports can be useful too, especially the longer ones that show all the dice rolls so you can follow along with each moment of the game.

Also, you don't need to know the rules for every army in the game. You just need to know the core rules and the rules for your own army. You'll eventually start to pick up bits and pieces about other armies but that's not really that important when you're starting out.

The key thing is to let your opponent know their rules, and just know your rules. Learning the "comparing stats" thing is easy, because if you know your strength, you can ask your opponent thier toughness, and just quickly go


"OK, my strength is half, I need 6. My strength is less, I need 5. My strength is equal, I need 4. My strength is more, I need 3. My strength is double, I need 2."

This gets really quick and easy the more you go about doing it.

Started in 3rd, took few games to get basics. Then it was just case of learning what each unit did by using them/having them being used vs me

I've been playing nearly twenty years and still don't fully know the rules.

I check my codex several times a game--every game--just to make sure I know an attack number, a weapon skill, a leadership value, and end up correcting myself at least once per game usually.

There have been points in the game at which I've done something so much that it's become rote. The tail end of 5th and 7th editions saw me with lists that I'd repeated so often that I knew them by heart and didn't have to look their stats up, but even during these times I still had to reference the main rules or the special rules for my units to see how they interacted with the opponent's rules during corner cases, and this was also an every game occurrence.

That being said, I haven't played a ton of 8th, and it seems a lot simpler, and it seems like it'd be easier to memorize everything. The only video batreps I've ever watched were during 6/7e, but my experience was that if they went the entire vid without having to check a rule, just dice throwing and mini moving, they were usually making a mistake. (Obviously other folks might have had other experiences.)

Bottom line: don't sweat it if you don't have things memorized yet. Make yourself cheat-sheets of rules or statblocks you find yourself commonly referencing, and you'll find that can help immensely.

First played Rogue Trader and 2nd ed. Then came back in 8th ed. Still getting rules wrong today...

Compared to other game systems 40k has a plethora of basic rules. Other systems may be more complex but they have far few things to remember...

"You guys must have eidetic memory or something. I play over a year, and I still don't know all the rules for all the armies. But I guess a month or two of doing nothing else, but reading the rules and then playing them over and over again should be enough. Unless a FAQ or CA or new book drops durning that month you should know all the rules."

Most of the people "know every rule" don't.

Everyone gets things wrong from time to time. Some people get them right more often than others.

Even amongst those who truly do know the rules well, there's disagreement. Look at BCB's posts/threads; that guy rarely ever misquotes, forgets, or mangles the text of the rules themselves, or his understanding of him. But he frequently disagrees with the RAW reading of the rules with others even when the text itself isn't in question.

So knowing 100% of the rules of 100% of the factions isn't the goal. Do you know the rules well enough where you don't bog down a game by constantly looking things up? That's the goal.

You'll get to know your book quickly. Your opponent will know their book. And there's a lot of parallelism between books, so knowing your book will generally tell you what to expect in other books. You'll get thrown for a loop from time to time, but it works. You don't need to know the rules of your opponent's army (unless you're playing a cheater). Or the dozens of armies that aren't in the game.

Learn the flow. Know how to apply the basic rules (the couple-page PDF, you needn't know anything else in the BRB). Learn the social conventions. Everything else is just the details - it'll change often, and isn't that important.

I think you will quickly find that 8th is by far the simplest version of warhammer to ever exsist.

The table and models barely even play a part! Such streamline!

You're going to need the W40K rule book. There's no getting around it. Picking up a codex and watching battle reports simply isn't enough.

You can download the W40K Core Rules from GW for free here:
https://whc-cdn.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Warhammer-40k-Battle-Primer-English-3.pdf

Read it and it will answer your questions.

 oni wrote:
You're going to need the W40K rule book. There's no getting around it. Picking up a codex and watching battle reports simply isn't enough.

You can download the W40K Core Rules from GW for free here:
https://whc-cdn.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Warhammer-40k-Battle-Primer-English-3.pdf

Read it and it will answer your questions.

Actually the 40k rulebook does not contain the current rules. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!

Karol wrote:
You guys must have eidetic memory or something. I play over a year, and I still don't know all the rules for all the armies. But I guess a month or two of doing nothing else, but reading the rules and then playing them over and over again should be enough. Unless a FAQ or CA or new book drops durning that month you should know all the rules.

I have a good memory, but I don't remember all the rules for all the armies.

I just remember mine, and even then pretty much just for the units I'm fielding.

Pancakey wrote:

 oni wrote:
You're going to need the W40K rule book. There's no getting around it. Picking up a codex and watching battle reports simply isn't enough.

You can download the W40K Core Rules from GW for free here:
https://whc-cdn.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Warhammer-40k-Battle-Primer-English-3.pdf

Read it and it will answer your questions.

Actually the 40k rulebook does not contain the current rules. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!

Huh? It looks like it does to me.

I think he's commenting on the fact that between CA 1.0 and 2.0 and all the various FAQs, designer commentaries, WDs, and beta rules, if you buy one of the paper books, your playing with a hopeless outdated version of the game.