The worst rule ever.

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**Waaaghpower**

The way re-rolls and modifiers work in 8th is maybe not the WORST rule, but it's incredibly counter-intuitive and leads to a lot of nonsense of the battlefield. Just for the most obvious example, a Chapter Master using a Power Fist-type weapon is going to be less accurate than a random trainee Scout standing next to him with a Chainsword, because the CM can't use his own re-rolls half the time.

**Vitali Advenil**

DrNo172000 wrote:
The previous editions' rules of cover giving you a different save rather than applying a modifier. That is just poor design right there as it makes cover useless in certain situations. It's also not intuitive.

I honestly don't like this edition's cover either. It should be a modifier to hit, not to the save.

Worst rule I can think of is Glory Hogs from 6th ed of orks. I never played this edition but apparently tankbustas were forced to shoot at and/or assault the nearest vehicle, meaning your opponent essentially had more control over who you were shooting.

**xeen**

Azuza001 wrote:
xeen wrote:
If anyone here has ever played 2nd edition, you will know it contained some of the worst rules ever created. Thinking back on it, the only games of 2nd I ever enjoyed were really small games with only a few units. Examples of terrible 2nd edition rules include:

1. The close combat was god awful. You would roll and add WS to to the roll and the difference was the number of hits. But only to that model. Close combat took FOREVER and was very lobe-sided when characters attacked non-characters.

2. The pop up attack. There was a rule that allowed skimmers to "pop up" from behind cover, shoot, then go back down. Only over-watch could hit them, but you needed to give up shooting in the shooting phase to go on over-watch. It was stupid, and made playing Eldar not fun in any way.

3. The sustained fire dice. So for machine guns they had special dice which were basically a D3, but had a jam icon. If you rolled a jam icon you couldn't shoot that round or next. It made things like heavy bolters so inconsistent that they were not worth bringing.

4. Super complicated Vehicle rules. For any person who thinks 8th edition's vehicle rules are overly simple, I invite you to go back an play a game of 2nd with a handful of vehicles on each side. The armor pen was complicated (melta used a D20), each part of the vehicle had its own armor value, treads, turret, etc. but you could not target them, you had to roll to see what you hit. Then roll to pen. Then look up that part of the vehicle's own special damage table. Then roll. then apply the result, and make sure you keep track of all the different effects on all the different parts of the vehicle.

but if you want what is the single worst rule ever, not just in 40k, but ever I submit to you the 2nd edition wave serpent......

So, before there was forge world, there was another company called Armor-something that made epic style vehicles for 2nd edition. One of those was the wave serpent (BTW Eldar had no vehicles other than bikes, walkers and dreads in its codex). My friend who played Eldar bought one for like $60 at a game convention. It came with a giant pink cutout template that was the shield. The shield was probably about 12 inches high in the middle and went down to about six inches on each end. It formed a 90 degree triangle in front of the wave serpent. Now here is the thing. It blocked vision of anything behind it just like terrain. And you could literally hide half or more of an eldar army behind it with the right angling. Also it could not be penetrated by any weapon. Not like you had to roll 6 6s in a row, but complete invincible. So the wave serpent was invincible from the front. And if that was not bad enough, it could shoot the shield as well. And that was ever stupider. So you would fire the shield, and what you did was move the shield template on a straight line to the end of the battle field. That was the range, to the end of the battle field. it hit every model it passed by for like a St 4 or 5 hit. Additionally the rules stated that any model hit would have to be moved out of the way to the edge of the shield. So after seeing what survived, all the models were then clumped together on either edge of the shield path. So in perfect order to get template weapon attacked. Oh and finally after shooting the shield it was no longer in front of the serpent, well until the end of the eldar players turn, when it came back up. So even after shooting with it, it was still in place during my next shooting phase. oh and by the way, it was like the same price as a lemon russ or predator. It was soooooooooooo broken.
One time my buddy was playing his orks against the eldar player we had, on a kitchen table. Now the table was a bit to narrow for the game, but we were in highschool so we needed to make due. The whole eldar army was behind the shield and so my buddy moved his orks around to try to get to the side. Then on his first turn, the eldar player moved he wave serpent with its very good movement to such an angle that when he fired the shield he hit EVERY MODEL in the ork army. All of them. It killed like 60-70% of them, and the remaining were all bunched together and then were completely annihilated. It was over after the first turn. After than we no longer let him use it, and he became all but hurt about it because he spend $60 on it. So then we just let him use the model without the shield.

There you have it, the absolute worst rule ever created

I played a bit of 2nd and that rule sounds both incredibly bad but also in line for what I remember of 2nd. 2nd was a game of squads and individual models where 3rd became a game of chapters and platoons. Each has its own advantage. But would you consider that a bad GW rule if it was written up by a 3rd party company?

It was GW approved. At least they used GW logo on it. With the way they did copy right I bet it was approved

**Bookwrack**

Just Tony wrote:
Bookwrack wrote:
Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Bookwrack wrote:

Virus Bombs haven't been brought up yet?

Virus outbreak has but not the grenade.

I played Marines at the time so it didn't bug me

How about the Eldar Ranger disruption table? (okay, that was third edition, but still... )

Pretty much Codex: Craftworld Eldar in its entirety. There was a moment when you could see what balances they were aiming for slip through the cracks. Mutable genus was the start, which begot Doctrines, which begot Chaos Space Marines 3.5, and somewhere in there you had Templars falling forward, Craftworld Eldar, eventually customizable Space Marine chapters with a ridiculously overpowered trait system. True Grit didn't seem like much early on, but ANY benefit that broke turn events creating out of sequence gameplay at no points was completely borked. There was a TON of good stuff from 3rd, it's the edition I chose to stick with. However, there were quite a few broken things. Had those been fixed, it may very well had been a perfect edition, with new content being the only necessity.

I remember back in ye olde days when every 3rd thread in the tactics forum seemed to be 'how do I beat Iron Warriors?' and 'I'm getting whupped by multi-monolith necrons. Help!'

Also, how back then the majority of CSM armies were IW.

**adamsouza**

Not moving on a failed charge.

I get that the charge distance is random, and you may not had enough momentum to get to the enemy, but why the hell do you stand still ? It just makes more sense to run up and fall short of your target, and get stuck standing out in the open.

**Ensis Ferrae**

Personally, the way smite works. . . . Now, I don't have problem necessarily with mortal wounds, as in from snipers or exploding vehicles, but when you can literally assassinate a character simply because you rolled a 10 or higher on your power, and then cause enough wounds to insta-kill a character with absolutely no recourse, I have issues with that.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I personally think even something like old fantasy had, or previous editions' handling of power weapons would balance a tiny bit of Smite's shenanigans (as in, if you have an invul. save, you may take it, but no other saves allowed)

**adamsouza**

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Personally, the way smite works. . . . Now, I don't have problem necessarily with mortal wounds, as in from snipers or exploding vehicles, but when you can literally assassinate a character simply because you rolled a 10 or higher on your power, and then cause enough wounds to insta-kill a character with absolutely no recourse, I have issues with that.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I personally think even something like old fantasy had, or previous editions' handling of power weapons would balance a tiny bit of Smite's shenanigans (as in, if you have an invul. save, you may take it, but no other saves allowed)

You smite the closest target, so if they let their character be the closest target, they had it coming. Also, Invul saves would reduce Smite to meaningless.

**Martel732**

Vitali Advenil wrote:
DrNo172000 wrote:
The previous editions' rules of cover giving you a different save rather than applying a modifier. That is just poor design right there as it makes cover useless in certain situations. It's also not intuitive.

I honestly don't like this edition's cover either. It should be a modifier to hit, not to the save.

Worst rule I can think of is Glory Hogs from 6th ed of orks. I never played this edition but apparently tankbustas were forced to shoot at and/or assault the nearest vehicle, meaning your opponent essentially had more control over who you were shooting.

I disagree. A shrub shouldn't make a lascannon miss entirely.

**Arkaine**

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Personally, the way smite works. . . . Now, I don't have problem necessarily with mortal wounds, as in from snipers or exploding vehicles, but when you can literally assassinate a character simply because you rolled a 10 or higher on your power, and then cause enough wounds to insta-kill a character with absolutely no recourse, I have issues with that.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I personally think even something like old fantasy had, or previous editions' handling of power weapons would balance a tiny bit of Smite's shenanigans (as in, if you have an invul. save, you may take it, but no other saves allowed)

So you don't have a problem with mortal wounds but hate the magic power... okay. I recommend taking the Decimators then. They get two 24" guns that shoot 2d3 mortal wounds each.

Screw Smite. It's weak.

**MagicJuggler**

From 7th Edition Codex: Traitor Legions.

All models that had the option to take the Mark of Nurgle had to do so.

Typhus could turn Cultists into Plague Zombies, but prevents them from taking any other options (other than to take additional models).

This led to the comedic rule interaction that Death Guard armies couldn't actually field Plague Zombies. Oops.

However, since Typhus's ability was not restricted to his own Detachment, you could in fact run a small Death Guard Detachment with him to support Alpha Legion or Word Bearers, giving you access to sneaky ninja zombies, or fanatical religious zombies.

**Talamare**

xeen wrote:
1. The close combat was god awful. You would roll and add WS to to the roll and the difference was the number of hits. But only to that model. Close combat took FOREVER and was very lobe-sided when characters attacked non-characters.

Sounds like a pretty good rule for a board game

**MagicJuggler**

Talamare wrote:
xeen wrote:
1. The close combat was god awful. You would roll and add WS to to the roll and the difference was the number of hits. But only to that model. Close combat took FOREVER and was very lobe-sided when characters attacked non-characters.

Sounds like a pretty good rule for a board game

There was a minor caveat, that consecutive close combats in a row would give continual +1 bonuses. Thus, fighting the first militia conscript was treated as it was WS 2, fighting the second one was treated as WS 3, etc, etc. The issue of course being it was still excessive in time to resolve.

**techsoldaten**

5th edition, Chaos Spawn had the Mindless rule. Always move towards the closest enemy unit.

Spawn were beasts in that edition, moving 12 inches plus advancing another 6. They would chew up anything until they ran into a tank. Which meant you needed something to come in with a melta bomb and wipe out the tank, since the spawn could never withdraw from combat.

They would have been a lot better but for that rule. Worse than eye of the gods.

**Unit1126PLL**

MagicJuggler wrote:
Talamare wrote:
xeen wrote:
1. The close combat was god awful. You would roll and add WS to to the roll and the difference was the number of hits. But only to that model. Close combat took FOREVER and was very lobe-sided when characters attacked non-characters.

Sounds like a pretty good rule for a board game

There was a minor caveat, that consecutive close combats in a row would give continual +1 bonuses. Thus, fighting the first militia conscript was treated as it was WS 2, fighting the second one was treated as WS 3, etc, etc. The issue of course being it was still excessive in time to resolve.

Man, I remember piling Guardsmen into Abbadon like this. They were like WS +7 by the end and still lost.

**Formosa**

rhinosaur wrote:
ok i'll bite...

I have played orks since 2nd edition. I hated the old choppa rule from the 3rd ed codex. "no model gets a save greater than 4+ when wounded by a choppa". Anti-tank krak missiles would bounce off a terminator all day but take a lump of rusty metal, attach it to a stick and give it to an ork horde (4 attacks each on the charge back then) and just watch the heavy armoured troops melt away.

When people complained? They gave terminators a 5++ inv save to make up for it....................!!?

Nah you got it wrong, the 5++ was because everything killed them without any saves before they could even strike, so the 5++ fixed them and they didn't need ANY changes for at least 5 editions.... I hate gw sometimes

**Just Tony**

Actually, it was because people stopped buying Terminators due to everything Power Weapon or AP2 or better chewing them up. The sheer volume of Star Cannon fire discouraged anyone from running them, especially since there were more viable options. I actually liked that addition to the Termie rules. My brother, a Deathwing player, thought it was OP.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bookwrack wrote:
Just Tony wrote:
Bookwrack wrote:
Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Bookwrack wrote:

Virus Bombs haven't been brought up yet?

Virus outbreak has but not the grenade.

I played Marines at the time so it didn't bug me

How about the Eldar Ranger disruption table? (okay, that was third edition, but still... )

Pretty much Codex: Craftworld Eldar in its entirety. There was a moment when you could see what balances they were aiming for slip through the cracks. Mutable genus was the start, which begot Doctrines, which begot Chaos Space Marines 3.5, and somewhere in there you had Templars falling forward, Craftworld Eldar, eventually customizable Space Marine chapters with a ridiculously overpowered trait system. True Grit didn't seem like much early on, but ANY benefit that broke turn events creating out of sequence gameplay at no points was completely borked. There was a TON of good stuff from 3rd, it's the edition I chose to stick with. However, there were quite a few broken things. Had those been fixed, it may very well had been a perfect edition, with new content being the only necessity.

I remember back in ye olde days when every 3rd thread in the tactics forum seemed to be 'how do I beat Iron Warriors?' and 'I'm getting whupped by multi-monolith necrons. Help!'

Also, how back then the majority of CSM armies were IW.

Oh, when it seemed like Veruca Salt was the resident Chaos player during development?

"I want Vindicators in my Chaos army, Dahdeeee!"

"I'll get them in the codex in a few month, Veruca."

"I WANT VINDICATORS NOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!"

"Tell you what, Veruca, I will not only give them to you, but give you a Legion rule that allows you to run FOUR."

And here's where I envision that spoiled smile of victory on Veruca's face.

Same with Chaos suddenly getting Choppas, Ordinance on a walker that fought VERY well in combat, and giving Berzerkers the BA charge perks. Chaos players back then not only got to have their cake, they got to eat everyone else's bakeries as well.

**Arandmoor**

Fhanados wrote:
True Line of Sight. It's terrible. I played a game where an opponent's defiler was able to fire it's battlecannon through the windows of 2 buildings and wipe out almost an entire unit of Chaos marines because they could see the torso of 1 model.

I've played so many games where TLoS has caused an argument that could have been avoided. Nowadays I don't even contest an opponent who claims dubious line of sight, I'm just so sick of arguing it.

IMO, this is exactly why GW almost completely got rid of it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

BaconCatBug wrote:
Special mention to sweeping advance, which could allow a single grot to wipe out an entire unit.

I have to second sweeping advance.

Be me.
Get into 40k just as 4th edition is released.
Pick out an army that looks and sounds cool.
Paint an army.
Bring army to store.
Play game with brand new NECRONS.
Get

ed by sweeping advance every. single. game.

Get familiar enough with the game to analyze the rules and basic structure.
Figure out that Sweeping Advance completely negates the major special ability your entire army is priced around, and that every. single. model in your army is now grossly overpriced.

Do research. Analyze release timeline.

...find out that Necrons were developed just before the sweeping advance chapter approved was released

The new fallback rules are so, so, so good. People who've spent the last 15 years playing space marines, or chaos, instead of any of the non-IG shooting armies just have no idea the pain sweeping advance put us through.

**MagicJuggler**

Iron Warriors were only allowed to field *one* Vindicator and *one* Basilisk btw. The real lolwat was Obliterators as Elites, with S5 and T5.

**Formosa**

Just Tony wrote:
Actually, it was because people stopped buying Terminators due to everything Power Weapon or AP2 or better chewing them up. The sheer volume of Star Cannon fire discouraged anyone from running them, especially since there were more viable options. I actually liked that addition to the Termie rules. My brother, a Deathwing player, thought it was OP.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bookwrack wrote:
Just Tony wrote:
Bookwrack wrote:
Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Bookwrack wrote:

Virus Bombs haven't been brought up yet?

Virus outbreak has but not the grenade.

I played Marines at the time so it didn't bug me

How about the Eldar Ranger disruption table? (okay, that was third edition, but still... )

Pretty much Codex: Craftworld Eldar in its entirety. There was a moment when you could see what balances they were aiming for slip through the cracks. Mutable genus was the start, which begot Doctrines, which begot Chaos Space Marines 3.5, and somewhere in there you had Templars falling forward, Craftworld Eldar, eventually customizable Space Marine chapters with a ridiculously overpowered trait system. True Grit didn't seem like much early on, but ANY benefit that broke turn events creating out of sequence gameplay at no points was completely borked. There was a TON of good stuff from 3rd, it's the edition I chose to stick with. However, there were quite a few broken things. Had those been fixed, it may very well had been a perfect edition, with new content being the only necessity.

I remember back in ye olde days when every 3rd thread in the tactics forum seemed to be 'how do I beat Iron Warriors?' and 'I'm getting whupped by multi-monolith necrons. Help!'

Also, how back then the majority of CSM armies were IW.

Oh, when it seemed like Veruca Salt was the resident Chaos player during development?

"I want Vindicators in my Chaos army, Dahdeeee!"

"I'll get them in the codex in a few month, Veruca."

"I WANT VINDICATORS NOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!"

"Tell you what, Veruca, I will not only give them to you, but give you a Legion rule that allows you to run FOUR."

And here's where I envision that spoiled smile of victory on Veruca's face.

Same with Chaos suddenly getting Choppas, Ordinance on a walker that fought VERY well in combat, and giving Berzerkers the BA charge perks. Chaos players back then not only got to have their cake, they got to eat everyone else's bakeries as well.

Don't "well actually" me boyo when you are agreeing with me!! It's confusing and scary!

**Just Tony**

MagicJuggler wrote:
Iron Warriors were only allowed to field *one* Vindicator and *one* Basilisk btw. The real lolwat was Obliterators as Elites, with S5 and T5.

Fairly sure that in the IA article it was 0-1 of each, but the Pete Haines codex had no such blockers.

**MagicJuggler**

Just Tony wrote:
MagicJuggler wrote:
Iron Warriors were only allowed to field *one* Vindicator and *one* Basilisk btw. The real lolwat was Obliterators as Elites, with S5 and T5.

Fairly sure that in the IA article it was 0-1 of each, but the Pete Haines codex had no such blockers.

Actually, it did.

**Just Tony**

I stand corrected, it could be only one. Could have sworn it was Chaos 3.5 that did away with the limit. Guessing it was 4.0 then.

**Ankhalagon**

Just Tony wrote:
I stand corrected, it could be only one. Could have sworn it was Chaos 3.5 that did away with the limit. Guessing it was 4.0 then.

4th Edition? There where no IWs. At all. Just boring standard-CSM in RH1N0s and generic deamons.....

**TangoTwoBravo**

Talamare wrote:
xeen wrote:
1. The close combat was god awful. You would roll and add WS to to the roll and the difference was the number of hits. But only to that model. Close combat took FOREVER and was very lobe-sided when characters attacked non-characters.

Sounds like a pretty good rule for a board game

2nd Edition was indeed wonderful. I liked the close combat rules, which seemed to fit the idea of two or three squads dueling it out. 3rd Ed brought in dice buckets. Lets just put 3rd Edition down as the worst rule ever.

**BaconCatBug**

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Talamare wrote:
xeen wrote:
1. The close combat was god awful. You would roll and add WS to to the roll and the difference was the number of hits. But only to that model. Close combat took FOREVER and was very lobe-sided when characters attacked non-characters.

Sounds like a pretty good rule for a board game

2nd Edition was indeed wonderful. I liked the close combat rules, which seemed to fit the idea of two or three squads dueling it out. 3rd Ed brought in dice buckets. Lets just put 3rd Edition down as the worst rule ever.

3rd was bland, but it was functional. 7th was not.

**TangoTwoBravo**

BaconCatBug wrote:
TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Talamare wrote:
xeen wrote:
1. The close combat was god awful. You would roll and add WS to to the roll and the difference was the number of hits. But only to that model. Close combat took FOREVER and was very lobe-sided when characters attacked non-characters.

Sounds like a pretty good rule for a board game

2nd Edition was indeed wonderful. I liked the close combat rules, which seemed to fit the idea of two or three squads dueling it out. 3rd Ed brought in dice buckets. Lets just put 3rd Edition down as the worst rule ever.
3rd was bland, but it was functional. 7th was not.

I can't argue with you, since I completely skipped 7th Ed!

I should admit that I still played lots of 3rd Ed and enjoyed it despite myself.

Cheers

**Dakka Wolf**

Talamare wrote:
Apocalypse units in normal games

Quoted for emphasis.

**Just Tony**

Ankhalagon wrote:
Just Tony wrote:
I stand corrected, it could be only one. Could have sworn it was Chaos 3.5 that did away with the limit. Guessing it was 4.0 then.

4th Edition? There where no IWs. At all. Just boring standard-CSM in RH1N0s and generic deamons.....

Okay, I was trying to remember when they took away 0-1 on Chaos Vindicators. It was whichever codex made them possible for every Chaos force. And yeah, the codex that took away Bloodletters that were essentially Incubi improved that could charge after deep strike. Yeah, I weep for the loss of THAT garbage. If generic daemons were the price to pay to tone down the Khorne nonsense, I'm glad we paid it. Granted it gave us Marines that were armed for max combat AND max shooting simultaneously, but they've never really been able to get Chaos balanced. And no, 3.5 was anything BUT balanced. Don't even try to say it was...

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Talamare wrote:
xeen wrote:
1. The close combat was god awful. You would roll and add WS to to the roll and the difference was the number of hits. But only to that model. Close combat took FOREVER and was very lobe-sided when characters attacked non-characters.

Sounds like a pretty good rule for a board game

2nd Edition was indeed wonderful. I liked the close combat rules, which seemed to fit the idea of two or three squads dueling it out. 3rd Ed brought in dice buckets. Lets just put 3rd Edition down as the worst rule ever.

I've always envisioned wonderful as a word to describe something that is so enjoyable as to sweep one's ability to speak away. Power Fist Librarians with a Displacer Field and Terminator Armor crossing the field while squads lob blind grenades and the usual 2E nonsense most assuredly didn't sweep away my ability to speak. 3rd brought structure, and a common sense slot system, and made transports viable again.

**alleus**

The way re-rolls and modifiers work now is probably my biggest issue with 8th edition. I also really hate random shot numbers (Heavy D6, Assault D3 etc). It makes blast weapons that I used to love unreliable and underwhelming most of the time.

Random charge distance has always been annoying as well, to the degree of me almost skipping melee armies all together. Much prefer shooting, it has always been more reliable than charging. Overwatch is a culprit of this as well, but I don't think it's too bad, since it makes sense.

**nareik**

The 'rule' that you can't ever play a game of fantasy/40k under 1500-2000 points.