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The tendency of the last few editions is towards streamlined, consistent rules, but in the past, some units had very unique rules or mechanics. What are the most noteworthy ones? (Not necessarily the best rules; it can be something overly complex or cumbersome.)

According to 1d4chan, Solitaires used to have a rule that gave them +1 attack for every inch of Movement they did not use when charging.

Also, I seem to remember that when I started playing 40k, Mandrakes had an infiltration rule that involved putting 3 tokens on the table and secretly writing down which token represented the unit's actual position. Am I remembering correctly?

In Warhammer Fantasy, Skaven had a cannon whose number of shots was determined by rolling any number of D6's one after the other; but if you get a double, the gun blows up, so don't get greedy! This sounds like the sort of thing Orks would have.

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Not sure how accurate these are since it's been so long but here goes a few.

-The secret deployment for lictors where you could use a flamer to try and flush them out.
-Orks mobbing up after falling back and the trucks careening when they die.
-tank shock and death or glory.

How about the Callidus Assassin's ability to force a 6" redeploy on a single enemy model?

My favorite exploit for this was to take an enemy Land Raider that had deployed behind cover instead deployed on top of it.

Tau Suit JSJ? Something that I wouldn't be horribly disappointed to see return.

Another example of those interesting rules is one we have universally now, and that's when certain models were allowed to allocate how many attacks they wanted to make with each melee weapon they had. It was absurdly rare. It also didn't make sense on certain models where there was no point to actually split said attacks.

From back in the RT days: The Imperial Robot programing/action flow chart.
Using a robot was this clunky system of A) programing it first, B) running through the flow chart everytime you did something with it.
It was probably even worse than this sounds & I'm just not remembering as no one I've ever played with used a robot and it's been years & years since I last looked the robot rules over.

The Warp storm table for Daemons in 6th/7th. Every turn you rolled a D66 and applied the result, some games were decided by a good / bad roll on that table alone. Towards the end of 7th they implemented a way to make it work less devastating for the Daemon player. I actually liked it after that change. It was surely better than the CSM boon of Chaos table, which still exists, but is less swingy and totally optional now.

Teleport homers. Deep Striking used to be risky (unless you shortcutted the process with a Drop Pod), but you could park a unit with teleport homers out on the field to land them accurately without scattering. It gave you ways to predict and inhibit your opponent's Deep Strikers rather than just having them show up and blow you off the table. with no chance of failure.

Armour facings/vehicle fire arcs. This didn't always hold up due to poor stat-assignment decisions (GW increasingly made units with the same front/side armour or the same armour all round towards the end), and it could be awkward with non-rectangular vehicles, but it also made the game feel alive to me in a way today's abstract balls of numbers can't match.

Everything about the 30k Ruinstorm Daemons list. From the demonic alignment giving the daemons a different primary objective (Khorne wants units to die, Tzeentch wants more psychic powers cast, Nurgle wants to cover the table, Slaanesh wants people to fail morale tests), to the flexibility of the unit builds, to the rank-and-file flying monster so you're not weirdly top-heavy with HQ FMCs, to the deployment via warp rift...

Apocalypse formations. Before 6th/7th decided to ruin the concept with massive free buffs for breaking the force org chart these were fluffy and interesting bonuses for bringing specific combinations of units that came with a points cost to help balance the buffs (something they went back to for formations in Sigmar).

Random Reserves. You used to get your Reserves on a random turn, usually between 2 and 4, and the best you could to for making it more reliable was getting half your Valkyries (Elysians) or Drop Pods (SM) automatically on turn one. Putting a unit in Reserves was a risk, not a free invincible extra deployment zone. Random outflank, similarly.

-1T in melee vs GK, locking models out in melee with special grenades, +1str to bolters and psycanons, ingoring invunerable saves. vehicles being psykers. GK termintors being able to take storm shields and hammers. servo skulls as cheap units you could buy. opponent having to roll each time they want to shot at your models, to check if they actualy can see you.

Tank shocks/rams, and armour facings.
They made vehicles feel distinctly different.

Furioso Dreadnoughts with bloodtalons used to get an additional, free, attack for every unsaved wound they inflicted. It never ended either, so as long as you kept rolling wounds you could keep killing things.
At the start of the battle all Blood Angels units had to roll to see if they succumbed to the Red Thirst and/or Black Rage, your Death Company squad was a compulsory unit comprised of any models that 'failed' their roll.

I really liked the way deployment worked by Force Org slot in 3rd edition. You had to deploy your Heavy support first as these were supposedly the least mobile and flexible of your units, then there was a specific order that ended with deploying Fast Attack, theoretically allowing your more mobile units to get even more use out of their speed.

It wasn't a perfect system by any means, but it was thematic and another element to consider during army construction.

Similarly, I really miss the old Force Org Chart where everyone used the same one. It made armies look much more like armies and forced actual choices during army building. Of course, GW then went and broke it with special rules and exemptions, but the ideas was good.

As soon as I saw the name of this thread, I was going to mention the Mandrakes as it was my favorite old rule.

You took three Mandrake models and deployed them with the rest of your army. You moved them like any other unit. They could not shoot or attack, but they also could not be targeted by shooting or assault. Then you got to decide which one of those three models was the actual unit (you had to reveal them by turn three). You decided which of the three "decoys" was the actual unit and put your pieces down almost like a deep strike.

It was a very fluffy mechanic, it was good for sowing panic, and wasn't too complicated as far as rules go. I wish they would bring it back for Mandrakes (and only for Mandrakes). It really made them unique,

On a totally unrelated note, I liked how 2nd Edition Tyranids has a table for their opponents to roll on after deployment but before the first round. It was stuff like "They're all around us!" or reserve units getting delayed when it was time to deploy. This was back in the days when a Carnifex was their biggest model and they didn't have all the tanks and dreds their opponents did. The idea was similar to why Daemons got that Warpstorm table, but it wasn't as ridiculously random.

The 2nd edition Tyranid stuff that disrupted your opponent before the game started was a neat idea.

I liked the psychology rules for 2nd edition too, particularly the panic rule, and I really liked the pinning/go-to-ground rules back from 6th/7th edition.

Vehicles used to have unique charts that explained with a brief narrative what happened from a hit that penetrated their armour (and every gun had unique armour penetration dice, including using other polyhedrons).

Stuff like the controls getting jammed, ammo exploding or the tracks getting blown up would all result in different results, including going "out of control" and moving somewhat randomly.

2e also had strategy cards that could reveal secret conditions for the battlefield, the most ludicrous being stuff like Virus Bombs that meant models outside of sealed armour like power armour had to roll every turn to see if they succumbed to the virus.

Wargear cards gave weird and wonderful energy fields, like the Displacer Field that teleported you d6" in a random direction after each deflected hit, or the Refractor Field that produced bright flashes of light as the kinetic energy of projectiles was converted to light.

Vortex grenades are of course infamous, and many a veteran sergeant carried one into battle.

In 3e, you had different force org charts based on the mission you were playing. Standard Missions had mirrored charts (1-2 HQ, 2-6 Troops, 0-3 Elites, 0-3 Heavy Support and 0-3 Fast Attack) but the other missions had an attacker and defender, with different force orgs to represent their different missions. Defenders might get limited Fast Attack but more Heavy Support, whereas Attackers might get more Elites and so on. There were also special rules for stuff like Sentries and raising the alarm. The 3e missions were awesome, and are pretty transferable to a lot of modern games with very little work.

1st edition vehicle manual. Had cutaways of each vehicle and a transparent aiming grid - you placed the crosshairs over what you were trying to hit and rolled for deviation.

Black Templar zeal - any casualties inflict on them would give the unit a free move towards the nearest enemy unit.

5es wacky wound allocation, splitting dice into different colours and units into different 'types' - so the poor sergeant would get hit square in the face by all four lascannons and the rest of the squad would just take bolter fire.

3e witch hunters faith and the book of st. stubborn. The army rewarded you for getting your army strategically killed.

Grey Knights Redeemer Force. The formation required you to give control of your army to your chaos opponent in the event that you had tabled them. In the even you had actually managed to get it on the board in the first place.

 Da Boss wrote:
Stuff like the controls getting jammed, ammo exploding or the tracks getting blown up would all result in different results, including going "out of control" and moving somewhat randomly.

Once killed an ork warboss with a skorcha.
Not with the flamethrower mind you - a guard sergeant with a bolt pistol blew its front wheel off and it backflipped up the table, over a large LoS blocking bunker, and flattened the boss and his entire retinue.

Grotesques being immune to shooting unless it was instant death.

I recall that in a previous, fairly recent edition (6th maybe?) the usual penalty for a Tau Ethereal dying was pretty light, and the benefit was much greater than that penalty. It was something like "units within a certain distance must make a leadership test, but then all other units are fearless for the rest of the game".

That edition also had rules for falling off of structures, which was bizarre in that it had basically no rules for how you would actually force an opponent's models to fall off a structure.

this created a situation where the "meta move" for Tau players was to deploy an ethereal at the top of the tallest building and begin the battle with him inspiring the men by leaping off to his death.

Another fun rule that is my favorite comes from the sacred cow edition from the generation of grogs that were around when I started playing in 5th, 2nd edition. Nowadays the grogs have mostly shifted to viewing fifth as 'the good old days', but back then it was 2nd.

one of the standard to-hit modifiers in 2nd edition was if a model was "Bigger than an elephant." So the BaconCatBugs of 2nd edition presumably had to keep a properly scaled Regulation Model Elephant to measure against to determine if their models got +1 to hit (Or, I suppose, they could argue Um Ackshually The Rules Do Not Specify A "Model" Elephant So This Rule Would Only Apply If Your Model Is Bigger Than A Real Elephant)

Necrons:

-Gauss would automatically glance vehicles on a wound roll of 6 regardless of armor value unless it could penetrate, and Warriors had an upgrade that gave them Gauss in Melee. Not that you wanted them there

-Monoliths ignored Melta. Which was huge because it had some of the highest AV in the game. Almost unkillable.

-Warscythes totally ignored all saves.

Failed moral made a unit run away to the nearest board edge. If a unit ran from melee then the opponent could run them down and wipe the whole remaining unit out.

Going to ground/Pinning. Unit counted as being in cover iirc, but could not move the next turn.

Grenades had different classes/types.

For a while Hormagaunts were actually better outside of synapse.

Deepstriking could kill your unit as it could drift away from your intended landing area.

the_scotsman wrote:
That edition also had rules for falling off of structures, which was bizarre in that it had basically no rules for how you would actually force an opponent's models to fall off a structure. this created a situation where the "meta move" for Tau players was to deploy an ethereal at the top of the tallest building and begin the battle with him inspiring the men by leaping off to his death.

4e tau with the 6e rules. Army wide reroll 1s to hit and to wound for 50 points.
Easiest way was to leap him off arm in arm with a friend into a space only large enough for one of them, otherwise he'd have to climb back up and throw himself to his death a second time IIRC.

There were a few interesting kamikaze tactics in earlier editions. Dark eldar had a trick of turbo-boosting their transports into tanks and buildings as there were no restrictions on assaulting out of a smoking crater.

I remember a lot of unnecessary rules from 3rd, like how if you stunned/shook a skimmer vehicle, it would drift a random number inches in a random direction (and could kill it's self by going off the board).

I also have memories/nightmares about my buddies Altioc eldar army, which could (with the disruption table), cause your army to start the game in a combination of pinned, or off the table. Really, really annoying.

3rd was really the wild west of 40k, lots of random army lists in a variety of white dwarf issues/supplements/ expansions, and a lot of just absolutely bonkers.

I also played one of those lists, Kroot Mercenaries, and I'd be able to start the game with my whole army basically within like 8" of my opponents army T1 every game, with a bunch of kroot, and some armed with Eviserators.

Chaos Marine Dreadnoughts in 2nd edition used to suffer from various psychology rules including Stupidity. Each turn you had to roll, and if the dread failed his roll, there was a chance he would frenzy and open fire with all ranged weapons on the closest unit, friendly or enemy, or charge into melee with said nearest unit, among other results.

I love this thread

 kirotheavenger wrote:

At the start of the battle all Blood Angels units had to roll to see if they succumbed to the Red Thirst and/or Black Rage, your Death Company squad was a compulsory unit comprised of any models that 'failed' their roll.

Hah, I played BAs at that time. It was the main reason you took the sergeant upgrade in all your squads, because if that squad delivered a black ranger, they got a free power weapon

I think the most 9verly complicated rule that was based on some kind 9f realistic thing was the early vehicle targeting rules where you had to hit, then put a transparent overlay on a picture of the part of the vehicle you wanted to try and hit then roll.scatter on the diagram... you could proceed to miss the thing you had just hit, bit it Lso let you do pinpoint strikes against specific components. Nice idea for those who like super detailed resolution, but dear lord it was time consuming.and has no place in a game with more than 1 vehicle per side.

Inquisitor wargear that shut down every plasma weapon around it. What was it called, plasma syphon?

Also, I'm sure that we all remember how the old necron mind scarabs worked.

Oh and my favorite thing from 6E/7E. Who needs a reaper chainsword on a knight when your feets insta delete anything in small template on a roll of 6?

Ork Madboys in Rogue Trader (lesser extent 2ed) were completely daft.

Deploy on the battlefield. Then roll a D10 for there mood. Then check the corresponding chart which also has 10 options. You do this every time something from a list of about ten things happens to the mob.

You rolled a 3 and got Phobiak, roll another D10. You got a 5 ~ Oi, where's da pinz gone? The mob is convinced they lost all there grenade pins and will explode soon, hurl all grenades in random directions.

As DA player I miss having Rad grenades as an option on my black knights. Being able to lower toughness by 1 and then have the remaining plasma shots count as over double toughness was just mean.

 Shuma-Gorath wrote:
Ork Madboys in Rogue Trader (lesser extent 2ed) were completely daft.

Deploy on the battlefield. Then roll a D10 for there mood. Then check the corresponding chart which also has 10 options. You do this every time something from a list of about ten things happens to the mob.

You rolled a 3 and got Phobiak, roll another D10. You got a 5 ~ Oi, where's da pinz gone? The mob is convinced they lost all there grenade pins and will explode soon, hurl all grenades in random directions.

I miss these kinds of rules for orks. IMO 2nd edition split the difference between the various random results - it could either go horribly wrong, or amazingly awesome in equal amounts. In later editions(7th I think was a big culprit of this... also it was the first orks codex after the 4th? ed one), the tables were more like 6 is a great result for the orks, 1-5 is various levels of awful results. There was no in-between.

BomBomHotdog wrote:


Grenades had different classes/types..

Oh it was much better than that... frag, Krak, blind, melta, anti-plant, smoke, choke, hallucinogenic, haywire, knock-out, photon, plasma, psyk-out, rad, scare, stasis, stumm, tanglefoot, toxin, virus and vortex. These could also all be made into mines and most into missiles.

Half of them also stayed on the board after you used them leading to a hugely complicated end phase where you tried to work out whether a unit would be broiled alive by roaming plasma balls, or just flat out removed by a rogue warp vortex

I miss the scatter mechanic - it was so stupidly lethal by the end (except for drop pods, natch) that it had to go, but I miss that random element. I miss the old flamer template and pie plates too.

Jump-shoot-jump is still a critical piece of Tau kit that the whole army pays to have... and currently doesn't get.

Tank shock was so mediocre and confusingly worded that it affected my local meta.

I started playing in 5th, and back then there were no HP mechanics on vehicles, they got shot, took the hit, you rolled for armour penetration with penalties if it didn't successfully pierce the armour, and the result would either destroy a weapon, immobilize the vehicle, disable it, or blow it up - in theory a vehicle's armour facing and number of weapons would collectively contribute to how tough it could potentially be - in practice it meant that your opponent had taking anti-tank considerations and the metal box would explode under one round of shooting, or had not and would last the entire game - probably immobilized on some rock.

You also couldn't pre-measure when I started playing 40k - generally it meant players started shooting a little closer than they actually had to, but every once in a while someone would try a long shot and realize they were out of range and the shot was wasted.

The old Witch Hunters codex allowed you to take Land Raiders but because that version of the stat block predated the assault ramp special rule Sisters of Battle and Grey Knights units weren't allowed to charge out of it when I played it in 5th edition .

The Witch Hunters codex also had a piece of wargear called bionics (which was an imperial staple back in 3rd edition) that let a character get back up with one wound on a d6 - there a better, more game-y versions in the current ruleset but I'll never forget the time my canoness got pummeled to death by terminators, got up, carved through a predator like a christmas turkey, got clobbered by the terminators again, got up again, carved up a rhino, before finally dying for good.

The original 2nd ed Ork Warbuggy had a rule where it could transport as many orks as you could physically place models on the actual wagon. So, theoretically, you could transport your whole army, BUT any models that fall off while you're moving it were judged to have actually fallen off the buggy and took falling damage and would be out of coherency later in the phase. Good times.

2nd ed also allowed you to shoot into combat. Not "Shoot into combat" the way we understand it in 9th, but truly shooting into combat. So your 5 marines have been charged by 40 grots? Just have another squad fire into the combat with weapons that can't hurt the marines but CAN hurt the grots.

Off the top of my head:

- The Nanoscarab Casket from 8th.

- The entire Corsairs book from 7th edition. It had so many wonderful rules.
- Reckless Abandon let units move 2d6" if they shot an enemy within 12", encouraging you to get close, fire pistols and then dart away again. In addition to being fun and fluffy, it made the army feel very fast and agile.
- Every single infantry unit could take a Jet Pack. So if you wanted, you could have a fast army with 0 vehicles.
- The First Prince rule let you pick a specialisation for your Corsair Prince, and you'd then usually have the option of applying a lesser version of it to each other character in your army (cost dependant on the ability).
- The Coterie system, wherein your FoC was made up by several tiny ones, all from rival subfactions. It was a little like the current DE detachment system, except that it was written by someone actually competent.

- In 5th, DE Hellions used to be able to 'kidnap' a character when they fell back from combat using Hit & Run.

- The 7th edition DE formation that let a Hamonculus, Talos and Cronos all join together as a single unit.

- The way the Necron Royal Court worked in 5th edition, where they could be a unit on their own or else individual Lords/Crypteks could split off and join other units as pseudo-sergeants.