Switch Theme:

Discussion: The worst 40k rule ever?  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Author Message
Advert


Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
  • No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
  • Times and dates in your local timezone.
  • Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
  • Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
  • Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.




Made in us
Archmagos Veneratus Extremis




On the Internet

 Grimtuff wrote:
 Kanluwen wrote:
 Kaiyanwang wrote:

Ward almost single-handedly destroyed WHFB.

Sorry, that goes to Alessio Cavatore. The damage he caused to the game festered for yeaaaaaaars.


You have an odd way of spelling Mat Ward.

Let's leave the WFB stuff aside. That horse is dead and buried anyways.
   
Made in ch
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





Removal of templates.

2 reasons, A: conga lines are stupid as is a parking lot and stacking of so many units on such a small scale.

B: it just is really, and I mean really immersion breaking and makes me wish back for artillery strikes.
Just to punish it.
It's also leading to auras beeing way to strong.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page
A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units."
Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?"
Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?"
GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!"
Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.  
   
Made in us
Inspiring SDF-1 Bridge Officer





Mississippi

Some of the unit/faction drawbacks over the years get a groan at least for me:

“We’ll Be Back” - Your entire Necron force gets tabled if at any time your down to less than 25% Warriors.

“It’s Dark in Der” - Morale checks for Ogryns to get in transports...

“Spirit Vision” - Eldar wraith constructs that aren’t within 6” of a Spiritseer have a 50% chance to stare off into space and do nothing.

Y’know, the sort of rules folks complained about for the legacy factions that came out with AoS - but taken seriously by the gaming community for years...

It never ends well 
   
Made in us
Powerful Phoenix Lord





Re-rolls.
   
Made in us
Stealthy Warhound Titan Princeps






Recently, how +1 to hit or +1 to wound or whatever effect too much.

Like, if you have "gets hot" on a 1, it should be unmodified. If you have an extra hit on a 6, it should be unmodified. Stacking +3 to hit, then getting extra hits on a 3+ instead of a 6+ or something, is just stupid. Same with -2 to hit, so now you overheat on a 1,2, or 3. Really hate how modifiers interact with the game in the current edition.
   
Made in gb
Stalwart Tribune





Soul Blaze - 7th Ed. totally pointless.

Praise the Omnissiah

About 4k of .

Imperial Knights (Valiant, Warden & Armigers)

Some Misc. Imperium units etc. Assassins...

About 2k of  
   
Made in gb
Norn Queen






 Stormonu wrote:
“We’ll Be Back” - Your entire Necron force gets tabled if at any time your down to less than 25% Warriors.
That was Phase Out, not WBB. WBB is now Reanimation Protocols. And Phase Out existed to compensate for the fact that Necrons were really tanky.
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka







Let's kick it old-school, shall we?

2nd edition.

Virus Outbreak (with an honorary mention to Virus grenades).

The one Strategy card that was routinely destroyed, given it could destroy a non-power armour army before the first turn started...

2021-4 Plog - Here we go again... - my fifth attempt at a Dakka PLOG

My Pile of Potential - updates ongoing...

Gamgee on Tau Players wrote:we all kill cats and sell our own families to the devil and eat live puppies.


 Kanluwen wrote:
This is, emphatically, why I will continue suggesting nuking Guard and starting over again. It's a legacy army that needs to be rebooted with a new focal point.

Confirmation of why no-one should listen to Kanluwen when it comes to the IG - he doesn't want the IG, he want's Kan's New Model Army...

tneva82 wrote:
You aren't even trying ty pretend for honest arqument. Open bad faith trolling.
- No reason to keep this here, unless people want to use it for something... 
   
Made in us
Inspiring SDF-1 Bridge Officer





Mississippi

 Dysartes wrote:
Let's kick it old-school, shall we?

2nd edition.

Virus Outbreak (with an honorary mention to Virus grenades).

The one Strategy card that was routinely destroyed, given it could destroy a non-power armour army before the first turn started...


Gads, I literally was witness to such an occurrence - it was used on an Ork horde. Left two Ork models in the game within the span of a single turn.

Didn’t GW at one point actually advise taking that Strategy card out (and tearing it up) in one of their White Dwarf articles?

It never ends well 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut




Fear was one of the dumbest rules because everyone built their lists to ignore Morale, ergo ignoring Fear by default.

CaptainStabby wrote:
If Tyberos falls and needs to catch himself it's because the ground needed killing.

 jy2 wrote:
BTW, I can't wait to run Double-D-thirsters! Man, just thinking about it gets me Khorney.

 vipoid wrote:
Indeed - what sort of bastard would want to use their codex?

 MarsNZ wrote:
ITT: SoB players upset that they're receiving the same condescending treatment that they've doled out in every CSM thread ever.
 
   
Made in us
Committed Chaos Cult Marine





Turn Radius Ratio. Or any of those other rules that delved far too deep in mechanics trying to replicate reality with very little/nothing to show for the amount of time and effort put in. I am so glad more of the cumbersome 'ultra-realistic' rule sets of the 1990s and earlier are gone.
   
Made in us
Imperial Guard Landspeeder Pilot




On moon miranda.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
The introduction of vehicle hull points from 5th to 6th
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^1000%

"Lets turn vehicles into 2-3 wound models with no save...AND keep the damage table kill mechanic!"

Also, 5th edition introducing Kill Points (points awarded per individual unit destroyed, allowing an empty drop pod or Grot Squad to count as much as a tank or legendary character or titan) versus Victory Points (the direct points costs of units destroyed, 1/2 points for vehicle damage or reducing a unit below half strength).

The Jink mechanic from 6E/7E (skimmers/bikes get a 4+ on-demand save that still allowed shooting on 6's, non-skimmers using Smoke, if they had it, had to pre-emptively choose to use them a turn ahead and couldn't benefit going 2nd on turn 1 and totally gave up firing for a one-time 5+)

Invisibility, D weapons, Formations, and 2++'s in 6E/7E.

IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.

New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights!
The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.  
   
Made in au
[MOD]
Making Stuff






Under the couch

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
The introduction of vehicle hull points from 5th to 6th

Hull Points were a good idea in themselves. The problem was simply that they weren't accompanied by the addition of armour saves for vehicles.




 Dysartes wrote:
Let's kick it old-school, shall we?

2nd edition.

Virus Outbreak (with an honorary mention to Virus grenades).

The one Strategy card that was routinely destroyed, given it could destroy a non-power armour army before the first turn started...

Yup, this is the very clear winner. If it at least affected everybody, it would have just been bad. But the fact that it could wipe out entire armies from most factions while doing absolutely nothing against Marines just puts it firmly into the 'What were they thinking?' camp.

To be fair, GW themselves told people to remove the card from their decks once the issue was pointed out to them...

 
   
Made in ca
Junior Officer with Laspistol





London, Ontario

I would say that Invisibility was my strongest reason to hate 7th. Even more than formations. Even more than Scatterbikes. Even more than (effectively) removing any functional mobility from the IG in the 6th ed codex... for me, even more than 2++ rerollable saves.

I hated Invisibility.

There are many other rules in the history of 40k I thought were dumb, harmful, poorly thought out and unfun... fishing for Invisibility and then flailing uselessly at a Wraithknight or Two for the rest of the game if your opponent caught it was worse than...

Rolling to see who goes first / wins the game in 8th edition.
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





True Line of Sight is an awful, unworkable mess. It's impossible to implement correctly and, played strictly, makes most terrain either pointless or unusable. 4th Edition was much better.

Madness is however an affliction which in war carries with it the advantage of surprise - Winston Churchill 
   
Made in au
Trustworthy Shas'vre






My pet peeve was the warp storm table for daemons in 6th/7th ed 40k.

Roll 2D6 and get a random effect. Rolling a 10 buffed all your invulnerables by 1: rolling a 4 nerfed them by 1.
But worst was rolling a 3 - every unit in your army takes a Ld test and if failed, take that many wounds. Rolling a 12 on the ld meant your unit just disappeared.
I had many games swing from certain wins to certain losses based on that damn table.
   
Made in us
Grim Dark Angels Interrogator-Chaplain






A Protoss colony world

One thing I hate is from the current edition, and that is the fact that you are effectively punished for doing cool poses and/or heraldry on models. Because any part of a model can be targeted, if your model is holding a banner/spear/gun or something over its head, it is harder to hide. Why couldn't they just make it so that you could only target something if you could see its body. A tank could be destroyed if it has an antenna that sticks up, and that's just stupid. And, silly me, I built a bunch of Tactical squads with back banners on the Sergeants, so now I'll get punished if I ever run those guys again.

From 7th edition, a lot of people complain about Formations, but I don't think they were as bad an idea as people think. They were implemented poorly and some of them were just plain broken good, but that's because back then GW wasn't releasing FAQs and errata and doing things to keep the game balanced. Deathstars and Superfriends lists were the real cancer in 7th. Just absolutely unfun to play against when pretty much nothing in the game could interact with them.

My armies (re-counted and updated on 11/1/23, including modeled wargear options):
Dark Angels: ~15000 Astra Militarum: ~1200 | Adeptus Custodes: ~1900 | Imperial Knights: ~2000 | Sisters of Battle: ~3500 | Leagues of Votann: ~1200 | Tyranids: ~2600 | Stormcast Eternals: ~5000
Check out my P&M Blogs: ZergSmasher's P&M Blog | Imperial Knights blog | Board Games blog | Total models painted in 2023: 40 | Total models painted in 2024: 7 | Current main painting project: Dark Angels
 Mr_Rose wrote:
Who doesn’t love crazy mutant squawk-puppies? Eh? Nobody, that’s who.
 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





I don't know that I'd call it a "worst rule ever", but a couple of honerable mentions from 3rd ed:

Victory points for destroying a unit being based on full 100 point blocks. It created really weird min/maxing priorities when a 199 point unit gave up half the VPs of a 200 point unit.

Necrons preventing equipmeny from working if they were within X inches, coupled with fast scarab swarms. You had two turns at the outside before all your guns and power weapons stopped working and you were left trying to fight off the scarab swarms with your base melee stats while the warriors got into ideal shoot-and-charge range.

   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




 ZergSmasher wrote:
One thing I hate is from the current edition, and that is the fact that you are effectively punished for doing cool poses and/or heraldry on models. Because any part of a model can be targeted, if your model is holding a banner/spear/gun or something over its head, it is harder to hide. Why couldn't they just make it so that you could only target something if you could see its body. A tank could be destroyed if it has an antenna that sticks up, and that's just stupid. And, silly me, I built a bunch of Tactical squads with back banners on the Sergeants, so now I'll get punished if I ever run those guys again.

From 7th edition, a lot of people complain about Formations, but I don't think they were as bad an idea as people think. They were implemented poorly and some of them were just plain broken good, but that's because back then GW wasn't releasing FAQs and errata and doing things to keep the game balanced. Deathstars and Superfriends lists were the real cancer in 7th. Just absolutely unfun to play against when pretty much nothing in the game could interact with them.


LOS in 8th is a screwy mechanic for a lot of reasons. GW changing from the eyes of the model to my foot can see your banner isn't great and vehicles get even more odd. The corner of my predator can see the corner of your wave serpent so I can bring full fire power to bear.
   
Made in us
Monster-Slaying Daemonhunter





 insaniak wrote:
 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
The introduction of vehicle hull points from 5th to 6th

Hull Points were a good idea in themselves. The problem was simply that they weren't accompanied by the addition of armour saves for vehicles.


I disagree with the entire concept. They A: added a HP mechanic to tanks, and B: made them much more vulnerable. Nothing has hitpoints, much less a tank. The damage table was a adequate representation of a tank's destruction.

Guardsmen, hear me! Cadia may lie in ruin, but her proud people do not! For each brother and sister who gave their lives to Him as martyrs, we will reap a vengeance fiftyfold! Cadia may be no more, but will never be forgotten; our foes shall tremble in fear at the name, for their doom shall come from the barrels of Cadian guns, fired by Cadian hands! Forward, for vengeance and retribution, in His name and the names of our fallen comrades! 
   
Made in se
Growlin' Guntrukk Driver with Killacannon





Sweden

Wound allocation in 5th. annoying having 2 similar units. But one is twice as durable because they have mixed weapon choiches. That or challenges in 6th...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/12 05:36:45


Brutal, but kunning!  
   
Made in us
Death-Dealing Devastator




Chicago, IL

8th edition hasn't been perfect and there are a few rule that I have contention with, but nothing I would consider as the worst rule. Hell, after remembering all the terrible rules in 6/7th I do have new found appreciation for 8th. That said, my pick for worst rule doesn't come from 6/7th, even if I now consider it the worst rule set. No, as stated before, my pick for single worst rule would be Necron Phase Out. I joined in 5th edition and Necrons were my 2nd army. I knew going in that Necrons were a bit of a bottom tier army so I knew what I was getting into, but Phase Out was like being kicked when you were down.

What typically happened whenever Phase Out happened.

Me: Well guess you win.
My opponent: Wait your just going to give up.
Me: I'm not giving up, Necrons auto loss when the infantry takes 75% casualties. If anything my armies giving up.

I would typically play to the bitter end but being forced out early coupled with the amount of times I have had to explain to my opponent that I was't giving up was very frustrating.

To those that say there is no stupid questions I say, "Is this a stupid question?" 
   
Made in au
Dakka Veteran




Australia

Worst rule of 40k is Imperium armies getting all the attention
   
Made in us
Tzeentch Veteran Marine with Psychic Potential





Kildare, Ireland

 Venerable Ironclad wrote:
8th edition hasn't been perfect and there are a few rule that I have contention with, but nothing I would consider as the worst rule. Hell, after remembering all the terrible rules in 6/7th I do have new found appreciation for 8th. That said, my pick for worst rule doesn't come from 6/7th, even if I now consider it the worst rule set. No, as stated before, my pick for single worst rule would be Necron Phase Out. I joined in 5th edition and Necrons were my 2nd army. I knew going in that Necrons were a bit of a bottom tier army so I knew what I was getting into, but Phase Out was like being kicked when you were down.

What typically happened whenever Phase Out happened.

Me: Well guess you win.
My opponent: Wait your just going to give up.
Me: I'm not giving up, Necrons auto loss when the infantry takes 75% casualties. If anything my armies giving up.

I would typically play to the bitter end but being forced out early coupled with the amount of times I have had to explain to my opponent that I was't giving up was very frustrating.


Having played vs necrons in 3rd ed, they were extremely strong when that rule was introduced. They were effectively marines with a FNP save that worked after the assault phase- so if you wiped out a unit in shooting, they would stand up after you'd missed the opportunity to charge them.. The rule, combined with the strength of the units rewarded careful play- you could load up on warriors and keep them safe while rock hard, numerically small monoliths and jetbikes crippled the enemy's ability to get you to phaseout. a unit of warriors in cover with a res-orb lord nearby (and there always was) got a 4+ cover save and then 4+ WBB against battlecannons and demolisher cannons. Thats a 75% survival rate for basic infantry against wounds from the heaviest guns in the game- and if you tried to close to melee while the monolith was active, they could teleport away (and get ANOTHER chance at WBB)

With other armies you could kill heavy and special weapons and have your vehicles be reasonably safe. Not so with gauss weapons, which on a to hit roll of a 6, had a 50% chance of lasting damage (immobilised, weapon destroyed, wrecked). This made theoretical counters to the 'crons like dreadnoughts (crons had no unit leaders or powerfist access) impractical- as you'd have to somehow survive two turns of flaying.

For the opponent- you'd need to play aggressively to get them to phaseout while you still had units capable of culling warriors- also dealing with all the monolith pieplates and jetbike heavygauss. Most often a phaseout victory would come when your army had been severely mauled- you'd have to push hard to get it and risk getting slaughtered in the process.

Necrons were toned down by changes to the ruleset- not changes to the Necrons.

For me one of the worst rule changes was assault cannons gaining an extra shot and rending. This was the beginning of 40k ramping up firepower that lead to the current primaris doubletapping bolters at 30 inches.
Worse- the rending rule changed a reasonable anti personnel bullethose into an anti-everything weapon- with 4 shots and the potential to hit at S7-12 the weapon was more reliable at killing vehicles than dedicated antitank weapons. Rending worked on the hit roll, meaning that a twin assault cannon that was reduced to hitting on 6's (flyers, some other scenarios) was actually more likely to shred whatever vehicle it was pointed at.

Asscans weren't priced for this at all and this was likely one of the reasons 5 man Terminator squads were reduced to 1 heavy weapon per unit.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/12 08:01:32


 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





The terrain rules in 8th are really, really bad, even if you're just playing casually. I've have so many little micro arguments over what constitutes cover, where it's possible to place models, and how to abstract very tall 2nd floor ruins into usable space. Even if we always just house rule it on the spot, it always sours the mood a bit when things don't go your way.

--- 
   
Made in nz
Longtime Dakkanaut





Auckland, NZ

Gitdakka wrote:
Wound allocation in 5th. annoying having 2 similar units. But one is twice as durable because they have mixed weapon choiches. That or challenges in 6th...

Oh yeah, both of those were really bad.
Varying equipment choices in a squad was a dumb as hell way of making wounds disappear. It was extremely exploitable.

Challenges were supposed to be a 'cinematic' way to have a pair of important characters fight separately from the other models, but in practice was mainly used to throw roadbumps in the way of melee characters.

The Swarmlord charges into a unit of guardsmen and is about to tear them apart! But wait, the sergeant has issued a challenge. The swarmlord now has no choice but to accept the sergeants challenge and spend his whole turn chewing on the guy, while the other guardsmen stand by and watch.
Next turn, 'oh here come two more guard squads'. "Pry open his jaws lads, we've got more sergeants to shovel down his throat!".
He then spends the next 3 turns locked in place being forcefed a single sergeant each turn, without any way to escape or do anything except open wide and suppress his gag reflex...

The only way around it was to have a chump character in the same unit to accept the challenge, freeing up the main character to get the work done. All well and good for armies who got a sergeant in each of their squads, but for some armies spare characters were hard to come by.
Allowing excess wounds from a challenge to spill over into the squad is one of the things 7th edition actually managed to fix.
Challenges were still a pretty flaky mechanic though, and I'm glad they've disappeared.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/12 08:16:03


 
   
Made in de
Battlefield Tourist






Nuremberg

There are lots of rules across various editions that I think are bad, but the worst parts of the game for me are definitely the changes to faction rules.

The first case of this I can remember is Grey Knights. A fluffy optional unit for narrative battles against demons gets turned into a full army. Ridiculous. The justifications for this highly specialised, extremely limited number of anti-daemon troops fighting anyone else were terrible and forced opponents to re-write their own narrative to suit the Grey Knight player. Any pretence that GW gives a crap about narrative games is laughable when the Grey Knight codex exists.

Now the force organisation chart is gone and armies are no longer really distinct unless they are Xenos armies. The Imperium is one huge blob with the vast majority of the options and the other factions are relegated to comic book villain "foils" for the Imperial protagonists. This was always a problem in 40K but the collapse of individual factions and the rise of soup has blown it wide open. This combines with the ever increasing number of power armoured factions added to the game to make for a very boring and limited game world where everyone is a space marine.

The addition of miniatures more suitable for one off special narrative scenarios like Knights and Flyers to a squad level combined arms game is the end point of this trend. The games story is utterly broken now and there is no sensible narrative to be had any more. These giant robots stomping around on tiny rectangles of ground make no sense at all outside of special scenarios where they are the focus, and fliers likewise do not make sense as permanent presences on battlefields at this scale. Leave that stuff for epic, where an average table gives the space for these things to work in a believable and satisfying way.

That to me is the worst thing about 40K - the lack of rules protecting the uniqueness of factions and the scale and narrative of the game itself.

   
Made in ca
Enigmatic Chaos Sorcerer





British Columbia

Leaving the Word Bearers trash rules as is when you know the insane never ending special snowflake Marine release is around the corner.

Extrapolate this backwards with countless horrendous decisions over the years. This thread is painful to read reliving this nonsense.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
A young business man named Tom Kirby, who was a pupil of mine until he turned greedy, helped the capitalists hunt down and destroy the wargamers. He betrayed and murdered Games Workshop.


 
   
Made in gb
Dakka Veteran



Dudley, UK

Random generation of psychic powers.

With an honourable mention to those awful vehicle targeting grids.
   
Made in gb
Sadistic Inquisitorial Excruciator




Grenades.

It's been eight editions now, and only in 2nd edition did a grenade act like a grenade.

We're sort of half way there now, but for some strange reason I have to be a very smart imperial guardsmen to throw more than one.

Do they make you go first? Do they make you attack less? Are they 1d6 lasgun shots? Do they reduce your charge distance?!? Who knows.

Disclaimer - I am a Games Workshop Shareholder. 
   
 
Forum Index » 40K General Discussion
Go to: