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Have you ever had such a disastrous first turn that it seemed like the only eventual outcome would be certain defeat? Did you test your generalship and battle on or throw in the towel? How did it turn out in the end? Were you annihilated as expected? Did you put up a valiant fight? Or did you even manage to pull off an improbable victory against overwhelming odds? To get things started I shall regale you with a tale of woe that happened to me in a game the other day.

I was playing a Daemonic Incursion army with a Tallyband and Tetrad; a fairly strong list. I was going first which suited me so that I could get psychic buffs up on the princes etc. My opponent failed to seize so I advanced all my princes and proceeded to the psychic phase. The first action was to cast Cursed Earth with my Tzeentch DP warlord, he had the Impossible Robes artefact so this would set him up nicely with a rerollable 2++ near the centre of the board. 3 dice, and two of them come up sixes. I wasn't too concerned until I rolled a 1 on the perils table. Still, it wasn't the end of the world as I had reasonably good odds of passing the leadership test but in the back of my mind I had a feeling that this could be trouble. Cue an 11 on the leadership test and Fateweaver nowhere to be seen.

So that was that. No way to get out of it, my Tzeentch DP removed by perils straight away, giving up Warlord kill and First Blood. Needless to say I was a bit dispirited by this but decided to view it as a challenge. So on to the Nurgle DP, not in range of anything yet so I went to cast Endurance with him. Unfortunately another two sixes came up and this was when I really started to get a sinking feeling. My nightmares became reality when I rolled yet another 1 on the perils table followed by a 10 on my leadership test. How could this be happening again straight away? Once was bad enough but having to remove a second DP from the table in short succession was hard to take.

So barely 10 minutes into the game I had lost 2 DPs, putting myself at a roughly 700pt handicap and severely crippling my formation bonuses, as well as giving up Warlord kill and First Blood, and all before my opponent had even rolled any dice.

Although disaster had certainly struck, I didn't want to just roll over and concede, as things surely couldn't get any worse. In the end, thanks to increased favour from the dice gods, and my opponents reserve heavy force coming in piecemeal, I managed to scrape a draw, although had the game continued much longer I would almost certainly have lost. Overall it was an unforgettable game though due to the incredible bad luck on that first turn.

I've had a game with mostly footslogging orks with a wierdboy vs a libconclave ravenwing tourney list. They got invis, endurance and stole ini. 1st turn scouted the whole army across the board slaughtering everything and got lucky maelstorm leading like 7-0 from the get go. My turn, i failed a 6" charge 3 times and almost got wiped out 2-d turn. Conceded and we played the 2-d game.

Once again he got invis and endurance but i got 1-st turn and was lucky with maelstorm. I actually managed to lead till 6-th turn but than he overhelmed me with a deathstar once again - didn't loose a single model from there across the whole game. But if the game was over turn 5 orks would have won by 1 point. Also, if kommando nob managed to hit the landspeeder on a 3+ even once out of 4 times, it'd be a draw but wasn't lucky enough.

I've run my Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun a mere handful of times. On two of those occasions, Turn one shot one I rolled the result that zorches you right into assault with the target unit. One of those times I lost my Warlord instantly because he got into an unexpected fight with Terminators he'd targeted from afar, the other game I targeted a Vindicator, charged it and through absurd luck wrecked it for First Blood. So maybe a mixed bag there. I also once played a game where five out of six Guard models with Plasma Guns killed themselves by overheat on the first turn.

My worst first turn ever was a friendly game, my friend and I played a small themed game in which his Eldar fought my Unbound CSM list consisting of a Warpsmith, Forge Fiend, pack of Helbrutes and a couple of big squads of Cultists- a raid on a Daemon Forge basically. He seized, killed the Fiend immediately, murdered nearly every last Cultist and stripped a few HP off one or two Helbrutes. It was an unmitigated disaster- I had one unit with any range on the table to his half dozen and had been unlucky enough to roll the have to charge Frenzied result so lost my shooting on a couple of the brutes to make it even worse. Just awful.

Tournament game. I was running old waveserpent spam with a WK VS a Scars bike army. Hadnt really played VS bikes that much and didnt have a clue about Grav. I let him take the first turn to see how he'd deploy and try and counter.
Boom: scout + move + grav shootyness. Byebye WK turn one.
Ok I think , I've got the firepower to hit back. Completely whiffed most of my shooting rolls barely wiping out a single bike unit. T2 he was in combat/close range with my entire army. Tabled turn 3 or 4 iirc.
Dislike :(

My worst first turn, my very first game:

Cue in me asking for a friendly game (I knew the rules but had no hands-on experience). Look my very inneficient list of blacklegion (powerweapon chosen, hellbrute, etc.)

He brings an unbound list: 1st and 10th company taskforces (read: snipers and stern-grav) a grav star and tigurius leading this.

He got 1st turn.

I managed to kill 1 model before being tabled.

First turn I lost a Land Raider filled with Inquisitorial Acolytes (about 450pts lost), to an Imperial Knight in one shot (the one with the Melta Cannon).

I had to fight on from turn 1 having lost my centre-piece and managed to eke out a draw.

Losing 3 knights in turn 1 to a drop smurf skyhammer army in a 5k game is the most recent and quite possibly the worst ever.

I managed to kill 1 model before being tabled.

We have a winner.

Anyone ever played a game where they killed absolutely nothing and lost? Or won?

 Ratius wrote:

I managed to kill 1 model before being tabled.

We have a winner.

Yep that sounds pretty rough. Imagine if he'd asked for a competitive game haha.

 Ratius wrote:

I managed to kill 1 model before being tabled.

We have a winner.

Anyone ever played a game where they killed absolutely nothing and lost? Or won?

I've had a game where i killed 5 marker pathfinders, lost like 120 orks and won. Also, a game vs knights where i didn't kill anything at all but outscored them.

 Ratius wrote:

I managed to kill 1 model before being tabled.

We have a winner.

Anyone ever played a game where they killed absolutely nothing and lost? Or won?

Spore mine army versus DKOK Siege regiment (1kpts).
I killed 1 lone guardsman and lost over 1300pts worth of models (sporefields + sporocysts brought me over the cap).

I still managed to get a draw

my worst was with my dark eldar at 1000pts (last codex) i had all the advantages night fighting was on flickers at max a gaurd army in front of me just couple of morter tanks.. then he steals and drops a load of ignore cover shots that see all my raiders/venoms dead 3/4 of my troops killed in the booms, then ignore cover orders on weapon teams. Well at the end of the turn what i had left was pinned and out of range. I called it.

For my opponant i was useing nids(stealers lead by deathleaper) he had dark angles. He deployed half then scouted them forward via the stratigic trait saving his termies for t2 and walked right into my blender there were no survivers.

I was running 3k gladius vs a 3k deamonic incursion army with 3 fmc and 5 daemon princes on foot plus like 50 pink horros. I had to basically fill my deployment zone to fit my army in there. He rolled amazing physic powers and seized the initiative. Several phychic beam attacks killed at least 10 razorbacks - leaving me with nothing but a bunch of tactical marines and predators to fight a wave of souped up daemons...Yeah - t2 gladius tabling. That was a bad game.

The entirety of 6e. I played Mechdar, never got first turn, and always got tabled the turn I didn't have jink saves on any vehicles.

Loosing an entire Corpsthiefe Claw to a pair of teleporting Dreadknights with Force off, which then proceed to pass all but 1 of their 5+ invuln saves. Was not a good game for me.

First game against Tau. It was like, my 3rd game at all. I had the DA half of the DV set, plus a Rhino. Guess what happened.

I didn't kill a single model.

Those 11 and 12's on turn one moral test are always fun...

...Oh god.
Turn 1, Guard artillery removed my Warlord and his marker drone blob. No scatter, all wounds, all dead. My Pathfinders and a squad of marker suits also died, leaving me completely without markerlights for the entire game. The worst part is that it was completely my fault for deploying like an idiot. Splat.
To add insult to injury, a Leman Russ ate my Y'vahra with a tank shock later in the game.

 oldzoggy wrote:
Those 11 and 12's on turn one moral test are always fun...

Indeed. I'm noticing a couple of different types of stories here. As expected there's a fair amount of people having a bad time due to codex imbalance, broken agreements of friendly games/lists etc. In another category of annoyance/frustration/despair are those situations like mine where you have a list that on paper is fairly competitive and should do well, but due to sheer bad luck just completely falls apart on Turn 1.

All this happened in the same game:

unit of 3 war walkers with dual scatter lasers did not hit more than 5 of 24 shots in a single turn.

Eldrad pooped himself into a Herald due to deamon codex warpstorm rolls turn 1.

Storm Guardians shot and charged a unit of pink horrors, failing to kill a single one, then were swept when one of them died in the counter hits.

3/4 tanks immobilized themselves on top of buildings. The 4th tank was immobilized after going flat out and killed everyone inside.

A unit of overwatching wraithguard with D-Scythes failed to deliver a single wound.

A unit of striking scorpions tossed a grenade after infiltrating, scattered back onto themselves, killed 25% of the squad then failed their leadership test.

Of 4 warlocks, 3 periled to death without casting a single spell.

No weapon above str 4 ever successfully hit and dealt a wound to any unit of the opposing army.

It was back in 2nd, so I don't know if anyone will even understand. Actually, there was a game in 2nd where I didn't even get a turn. I'm assuming you don't mean that. This was a different game in 2nd.

 Ratius wrote:

I managed to kill 1 model before being tabled.

We have a winner.

Anyone ever played a game where they killed absolutely nothing and lost? Or won?

1 model? Try no model. Idiot(me) tried to take down screamer star. Bloody thing simply refused to lose any models.

One of the worst defeats in 1st turn was when lone stinking splatta kannon basically wiped my all-infantry IG army. How hard it is to roll single misfire? Damn chainball seemed to have some sort of homing system the way it kept sweeping through my army splatting almost entire army. With one stinking shot by 60 point weapon

Well we had time to come up with new scenario and play it at least.

Virus wargear card VS Greenskins?

 Ratius wrote:
Virus wargear card VS Greenskins?

No, CSM shot my BA off the table turn 1. CSM were BALLERS in 2nd. Orks had the vaccine squig! Which they always brought.

deathmagiks wrote:
All this happened in the same game:

unit of 3 war walkers with dual scatter lasers did not hit more than 5 of 24 shots in a single turn.

Eldrad pooped himself into a Herald due to deamon codex warpstorm rolls turn 1.

Storm Guardians shot and charged a unit of pink horrors, failing to kill a single one, then were swept when one of them died in the counter hits.

3/4 tanks immobilized themselves on top of buildings. The 4th tank was immobilized after going flat out and killed everyone inside.

A unit of overwatching wraithguard with D-Scythes failed to deliver a single wound.

A unit of striking scorpions tossed a grenade after infiltrating, scattered back onto themselves, killed 25% of the squad then failed their leadership test.

Of 4 warlocks, 3 periled to death without casting a single spell.

No weapon above str 4 ever successfully hit and dealt a wound to any unit of the opposing army.

This definitely falls into the extremely bad luck category. Being a Chaos player though, I couldn't help a chuckle at the Eldrad incident.

 Tonberry7 wrote:

deathmagiks wrote:
All this happened in the same game:

unit of 3 war walkers with dual scatter lasers did not hit more than 5 of 24 shots in a single turn.

Eldrad pooped himself into a Herald due to deamon codex warpstorm rolls turn 1.

Storm Guardians shot and charged a unit of pink horrors, failing to kill a single one, then were swept when one of them died in the counter hits.

3/4 tanks immobilized themselves on top of buildings. The 4th tank was immobilized after going flat out and killed everyone inside.

A unit of overwatching wraithguard with D-Scythes failed to deliver a single wound.

A unit of striking scorpions tossed a grenade after infiltrating, scattered back onto themselves, killed 25% of the squad then failed their leadership test.

Of 4 warlocks, 3 periled to death without casting a single spell.

No weapon above str 4 ever successfully hit and dealt a wound to any unit of the opposing army.

This definitely falls into the extremely bad luck category. Being a Chaos player though, I couldn't help a chuckle at the Eldrad incident.

Worst part? Game took like 4+ hours. I was playing with a buddy and I genuinely enjoyed the game, but man that's a long time to keep coming up Milhouse...

OK, NOT 40K, but Warhammer Fantasy (Version 7?). My lovingly crafted Goblin army vs unpainted Elves.

On first turn, his Lord on Griffon lands on my right flank. I take a compulsory Terror test when my turn BEGINS. Failed. Unit runs into the next unit to it's left. This causes that "running" unit to hopscotch across my entire ranked up army, and off the table. Causing a Panic test for every other unit in the army, in order of contact. Causes a Panic avalanche that tables my entire army.

40K? Nothing memorable. I do remember a league game back in 4th Edition, between THE two mortal adversaries for Top Dog in our Local Cluster. Reputations, bragging rights, and self-worth on the line One wins the go-first die roll. The other immediately concedes. They regroup and "play" a second game. The other wins the initiative roll, the first immediately concedes. This repeats until they both rack up enough "forfeits" to eliminate both from winning the league. They would still be at it, if not finally shamed out of the game room by the on-looking howling crowd.

Orks - just after the codex before last was released.

First shooting phase, the shokk attack gun spectacularly misfired, dragging itself and a killa kan into the warp.

then, the wierdboy simultaneously eadbanged and perils, killing himself and going up like a plasma cannon round in the middle of the ardboyz.

Finally, Badrukk's flash gitz opened fire and about 1/4 of them promptly exploded.

"Does my army technically need to be here?" My opponent asked at this point.

Just had another.

500pts, turn 1 drop-pod with a sergeant w/ combi-melta one-shots my Vengeance Weapon Battery! :(

It wasn't essentially due to my own fault. but.

With Armored IG with the best attempt to bubble wrap and spread out I could vs ALL drop pod Blood Angels.
I knew exactly what was going to happen before the game even started and knew there would be nothing I could do about it, but I wanted a game, the guy was nice (and I think he was new to the store so I obliged).


Turn 1. Drop pod, Drop Pod, Drop pod, Drop pod, Drop pod.... melta.... melta... melta... melta... Dreadnought melee.


I was surprised that I was still alive and not tabled after all of it. With tanks still standing even. I fought back best I could. ran over the dreadnought with a tank (ramming attack, the dread exploded) and a few blood angels gunned down. But it wasn't enough.

I wasn't tabled but there was no way I could have won. The guy was nice about it though.

One of those times where you just have to say "Oh Well" and move on.