40K Rules Blooper Reel

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail. Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

TL;DR: Oops.

GW has a history of rules that fail to work, whether intentional or otherwise. This page is meant to compile all the classic examples of...unintended hilarity of GW ruleswriting throughout 40k. The worst offenses, of course, became tactics like Screamerstar or Fish of Fury. Recommended listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sruEnQ9HkU

2nd Edition

• Derp From Above: Ramming rules for vehicles were the 2nd ed predecessor to Tank Shock. Units in the vehicle's direct path had to take Initiative tests to avoid being damaged, before being displaced the shortest possible distance. When a vehicle Rammed another vehicle, it came to a halt. The real comedy was dealing with the Lifta Droppa or D-Cannons, which could lift or teleport enemy units respectively. 2nd ed had no resolution for what happened after one vehicle rammed another vehicle below it. While some players would displace the smaller vehicle as though it were a non-vehicle, others might keep the two vehicles joined together like an improvised Voltron.
• Virus Outbreak: A stratagem card from the Dark Millennium box that was... interesting, to say the least. Basically you threw down a 2" pie anywhere on the table, with anything beneath it not explicitly stated to be immune dying on a 3+. That was already pretty good, but worse when a model was killed, every other model not immune that was within d6 inches would have to test, dying on a 4+ and recursively requiring every other model within d6 inches to test not to die on a 4+. Guess it sucks to play Imperial Guard or Orks? (Hint: it sucked so hard the writers went so far as to recommend players tear up their Virus Outbreak cards since they hadn't intended on it being so grossly overpowered. Interestingly, Tyranids were not affected by Virus Outbreak.)

3rd Edition

"That cursed Homunculus grafted me glass bones and paper skin. Every morning I break my legs, and every afternoon I break my arms. At night, I lay in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep."

– An excerpt from the recovered memoirs of Solarite Mezadros.

• "Can I borrow your car?": A pretty simple one. 3rd Edition 40k got rid of the "Support" category, and instead allowed certain units to buy vehicles as Dedicated Transports; said vehicles did not take a separate slot on the Force Organization Chart, but throughout the editions would have deployment restrictions, with the Transport only allowing the unit it was bought for to deploy embarked inside it. There was no general rule that a Dedicated Transport had to actually transport the unit it was bought for, meaning any such restrictions had to be explicitly printed for each unit that had the option for taking a Transport. This led to interesting situations when GW forgot to place such restrictions, such as taking a Razorback to transport a Bike Command Squad or a Wolf Guard unit of zero models, or taking a tiny Wartrukk for a Mob of 30 Orks.
• Scourges Don't Lift: Back then Scourges were Jump Pack Infantry with no ability to move and shoot their Heavy Weapons (unless they took Splinter Cannons, which were decent but not stellar). To add insult to injury GW gave them a warrior statline (they were literally BS3 Imperial Guardsmen stat-wise), and ridiculously expensive weapons that don't come standard. They were also among the more fiddly of the metal models to assemble as well with casts that rarely came out right (Right up there with the metal Wraithlord, metal Daemon Prince, and Finecast in terms of outright defective models that you had to fix yourself with Green Stuff). Accordingly, they were seen as a joke unit in an already difficult to pilot army.
• Sat on da Banna Wava again...: In 3rd edition the Orks could, under the Bosspole wargear rules, give a Grot the Bosspole. Unfortunately you could not buy the Grot needed to carry it, presumably because he'd been sat on again. Thankfully this was FAQ'd rather quickly.

4th Edition

"Trust me, boss. As long da Trukk stays on me back, da humies'll never hear a sound from it."

– Boss Snikrot, prior to the great trukk ambush of Armageddon.

• Squad Broken!: Units stopped scoring if they were below half strength. While this made little difference on 10 or 20-man infantry units, it made quite a bit of difference if you were taking vehicle squads. Players would deliberately take odd-numbered squad sizes to increase the threshold for half.
• Chonky Broodlords: The ability to Run/Advance did not exist as a default ability in 4th Edition. Rather, a unit composed entirely of models with Fleet could move an extra D6" in the shooting phase, and still charge. This ability was critical for units like Genestealers which did not want to be caught in the open. The problem? A Broodlord was required to stay in a unit of Genestealers, but did not have Fleet, thus slowing down its unit to die to Bolter fire.
• Snikrot Shuffle: Boss Snikrot was made a unit upgrade for Kommandos, giving his unit the ability to appear from any table edge through "Behind Enemy Lines." However, due to the way Behind Enemy Lines was worded, Snikrot was granting the unit the ability, rather than the unit itself being upgraded to have the ability. Thus, although arguably unintentional, it became legal to use Snikrot to "smuggle" decidedly unsneaky Ork Characters alongside him; one must imagine they were carrying the Boss's Bike Fred Flintstone-style.
• Shokk Attack Slingshot: The 4th edition Ork Codex reintroduced the Shokk Attack Gun from 2nd edition. The weapon would fire a Strength 2d6 large blast, with a variety of special effects should a double or 11 be rolled for the Strength. A roll of double fives would accidentally shoot the Big Mek out of his own gun, instantly locking him in close combat with the enemy unit he meant to target. This was not a blooper but a feature. The real issue however was that the rules for 40k stated that an Independent Character could only join or leave a unit during the Movement Phase and the Shokk Attack Gun was fired in the Shooting Phase. Thus, his unit would technically be locked in close combat with the same unit that the Big Mek teleported into, even if they were on the opposite side of the map. A rulelawyering player could theoretically exploit this, locking the Big Mek in combat to both give the Ork unit additional pile-in moves, as well as make it immune to being shot at.
• Tau Piñata: The Tau Orca was billed as being a super-heavy transport flyer, one capable of carrying and deploying several squads in one turn thanks to a unique special rule that allowed it to disembark multiple squads at any point during its move (drop some off, move to the next point, repeat). The problem was that it had only one access point (its rear ramp) so if the units it carried were at their maximum size, they were too large to be deployed normally since all the models could not all be placed within 2" of the access point. This in turn meant the only way for the Tau player to get their troops on the board was to hope the enemy player blew up the Orca in midair, and hope the troops inside survived the landing and didn't burst on the ground like the blueberries they were. Given the armour value of the vehicle (Rhino armour) and how easy it was to destroy, this ended up happening more often than not. This also started the trend of the Orca being a useless piece of shit that was a flying deathtrap to anyone inside of it, and this issue remained unfixed all the way through 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th edition.

5th Edition

• Musical Wounds: 5th edition wound allocation stated that you had to distribute wounds as evenly as possible between all models in a unit before it rolled for saves. In theory this meant that if you did a lot of wounds at once, you could force your opponent to risk losing Sergeants or hidden Special Weapons. In practice, Musical Wounds combined with multi-wound units led to a phenomenon where players would give each model a unique loadout, so that you effectively had to deal the model's unit worth of unsaved wounds before said unit removed any casualties. The two most notable example units that abused this mechanic were Nob Bikers and Grey Knight Paladins, though Thunderwolves and even Dark Eldar Grotesques could join in the fun.
• You won't need Eyes When You're Raging: 5th Edition introduced True Line of Sight, with the stipulation that infantry models had to measure Line of Sight "from the eyes." Tyrant Guard had a special rule that they would suffer from Rage if the Hive Tyrant they were protecting died. Unfortunately, Rage as written stated you had to move towards the closest "visible" enemy unit, which RAW was impossible for Tyrant Guard since they don't actually have eyes.
• Crouching Wraithlord, Leaping Ork Boy: Since True Line of Sight also did not come with any real restrictions against "modelling for advantage," players initially sought to exploit this by heavily modding or basing figures. Comedically, Canis Wolfborn gained an extra attack for each model in base-to-base with him, and the rules stated "if you're thinking of modelling Canis on a really large base to take advantage of this, don't." This wasn't a formal restriction against basing however. In the meantime, legs were snipped to give upright poses and models raised high overhead to give the best lines of fire. The Eldar Wraithlord became one of the most notable offenders, being popularly modded into a crouching or "prone" position to lower its height and make it easier to acquire 50% cover (It did deliver some pretty boss looking conversions, though, so it wasn't all bad).
  • A related point of contention was the fact that when units chose to Go to Ground, the rules stated to turn the models on their sides, leading to concerns about paint chipping, whether flipping models was really part of True Line of Sight, and a general tendency to ignore that rule outright.
• Bring (everything else but) It Down: The 5th edition Imperial Guard Codex introduced the ability to issue Orders to Guard squads, with Officers and Senior Officers offering abilities such as Get Back In The Fight or Fire On My Target. The 5th ed version of Bring It Down gave an infantry unit's weapons Twin-Linked ability when resolving their attacks against an enemy vehicle or Monstrous Creature, and although this was neat for providing some additional reliability, an unintended side effect was how Twin-Linked worked with blast and template weapons. Since template weapons did not roll to hit or scatter, twin-linking them granted them the ability to reroll wounds and so more enterprising players would look for any enemy infantry squad near a Monstrous Creature (such as a Tervigon) or Vehicle (such as any Transport), and fire their flamers at the big target to 'clip' the smaller target, thus getting to reroll to wound in the process. A similar trick could be done with Frag Missiles or even Demo Charges, to reroll scatters to miss where you wanted them to go. 6th ed replaced this Order with granting Tank&Monster Hunters, meaning only attacks that actually hit an enemy Monstrous Creature or Vehicle would benefit from this Order.
• Lictor Febreze Trail: Lictors in 5th Edition simply did not work as written. They had a special rule called Pheromone Trail, which granted +1 to Reserve Rolls provided they started the turn on the board. Unfortunately, Lictors in 5th edition always had to start the game in Reserves and thus could not benefit themselves or their allies on the turn you started rolling Reserves. This was in contrast to the previous edition, where Pheromone Trail worked even if the Lictors were not on the board.
• Bugs Bunny Trygons: 5th ed also introduced Trygons to standard 40k games. A Trygon could pop up in the middle of the map, and leave a Marker for Tyranid Infantry to emerge through in subsequent turns. The problem was there was no ability to "hold back" Reserves, so if a Trygon and a unit of Warriors both arrived from Reserves on turn 2, the Warriors had to arrive from the table edge.
• Selective Warp Field: This one was a formatting goof, but when Codex Tyranids came out, the rules for Warp Fields stated that "A Zoanthrope with a Warp Field has a 3+ Invulnerable Save." The Doom of Malan'tai had a Warp Field but was not explicitly stated to be a Zoanthrope (this is one area where Keywords would have helped). Thus, until GW actually FAQ'd it, people could argue that the Doom didn't actually get an Invulnerable Save (and INAT ruled as such until the GW FAQ overturned it).
• Co-Axial Splinter Pistols: The 5th Edition Dark Eldar Codex introduced Splinter Racks as an optional upgrade for Raiders. "Models with splinter rifles or splinter pistols that fire while embarked upon the vehicle may reroll their to-hit rolls...", but the rule did not specify that the models had to fire Splinter Weapons. Thus, keeping a Splinter Pistol sidearm let an Archon reroll to hit with a Blaster, or a Haemonculus 360° no-scope with a Hexrifle. Derp.

6th Edition

• Bruhtherhood of Psykers: Introduced as a then unique rule for Grey Knights in 5th Edition, Brotherhood of Psykers which would go on to became a special rule for 6th and 7th edition. Brotherhood of Psykers stated that a unit with at least one model possessing that rule was considered a Psyker Unit. Naturally, this rule did not account for the possibility that an Independent Character Psyker might actually join that unit. Despite numerous FAQs stating that the 'same power could not be cast from the same unit', there were no FAQs on how to handle the powers of multiple casters with different mastery levels, or whether Blessings that targeted 'the Psyker' affected an Independent Character alongside the rest of the unit. This issue carried over into 7th ed, where became especially egregious with the Psykana Division Formation which let Sanctioned Psykers know the same powers of the Formation's Primaris Psyker, leading to all sorts of Skub over Biomancy buffs.
• Blinded by the Flashlights: 6th edition made Flyers and Flying Monstrous creatures into distinct types. This made units like the Nightscythe and Flyrant considerably more powerful than they were in 5th edition, but the rules were such that when a Flying Monstrous Creature was *hit* by an enemy attack, it had to roll a 3+ on a single d6, or crash to the ground taking a Strength 10 hit ignoring armor save. Thus, it was possible for Flyrants, Daemon Princes, etc, to continually 'splat' to the ground as Conscripts or Orks pelted them with attacks which otherwise would stand little chance of doing damage.
  • 7th ed changed the rule so that Grounding Tests occurred on an unsaved wound, meaning the attack had to actually damage the Flying Monstrous Creature first...
• Grumblegrumble Stupid Chariot: The 6th edition Burning Chariot of Tzeentch was introduced as a Skimmer Chariot, fast and fragile and meant to act akin to a Daemon Land Speeder of a sort. Unfortunately, the actual ranged weapons were on the Exalted Flamer atop the whole Chariot, which was not Relentless. Thus, the Chariot had to move or shoot, which was a death sentence for such a fragile ride (7th made them Relentless but the daemons still had to put up with entire edition of this bullshit).
• Macross Missile Dronestrike: The 6th Edition Tau Codex introduced Missile Drones as a new drone that "any" character could take. In contrast to the normal Gun Drone, it had a Missile Pod, leading to frantic scrambles to convert armies of missile drones aplenty. Games Workshop released a FAQ less than a week later, stating that only Broadside Shas'vres could take Missile Pods; why they were in the "common" Wargear list is anyone's guess, especially since the Shielded Missile Drone was written directly for the Riptide unit entry, while the Grav-Inhibitor, Recon, and Pulse Accelerator Drones were explicitly on the Pathfinder unit entry. This was also fixed in 8th, so that Missile Drones were an option in the Broadside unit entry.
• Dude, Where's My Bomb?: The 6th ed Sunshark Bomber had a Pulse Bomb Generator: Whenever the Sunshark successfully makes a Bombing Run, you could roll a D6, and on a 2+, you got a bomb back. Unfortunately, the Sunshark as written didn't actually start with a Pulse Bomb.This issue remained unfixed in the 7th edition reprint until being FAQed.
• Interceptor Drones Don't: Adding further insult to injury, the Sunshark Bomber came with two Interceptor Drones, that had Skyfire and the Interceptor rule. However, the way Intercept was worded, it only worked if the weapon itself had Intercept; there was no wording for the model itself having Intercept. The Early Warning Override was specifically worded that "all weapons on a model with an Early Warning Override have the Intercept special rule" to avoid this, so any Crisis Suit could be upgraded to intercept, but an Interceptor Drone RAW could not Intercept. This was un-FAQed throughout both 6th and 7th.
• Shred this Worthless Supplement: The Farsight Enclaves Supplement has the Warlord Trait Through Surety, Destruction. Once per game, the Warlord's unit gains Shred for a single Shooting Phase. Sounds good right? Who doesn't like rerolling to wound? Unfortunately, as worded, Shred only works in close combat unless applied specifically to the weapon, meaning this Warlord Trait as written does nothing whatsoever. GW did not patch this rule when they updated the Farsight rules for 7th.
• Thermonuclear Pyrovores: The Pyrovore in 5th-7th was memetically known as a super-useless unit, but the 6th edition Tyranid Codex was known for a hilariously misworded Volatile rule: Whenever a Pyrovore died to Instant Death, "Every unit suffers a S3 hit for each model (excluding other Pyrovores) within d6 inches of the Pyrovore." Read that rule, and comprehend what "every unit" means.
• Lookout, Wez Ork Snipers!: 6th edition introduced "Character" as a subtype for models; Characters could accept and issue Challenges to other Characters, and benefit from "Look Out Sir," which let other models take wounds on their behalf; furthermore, Characters in 6th ed had the Precision Shot rule, meaning that on 6s to hit, the attacker could allocate hits instead of the defender. When the 6th ed FAQs first rolled out, Ork Nobs were indexed to be Characters. However, the index didn't distinguish between Nobs leading Boys or units of Nobs; not only could Nobz play Musical Wound Games where they could pawn off wounds to each other on a 4+, but that a unit of Nob Bikerz (each Biker fires 3 shots, hitting on 5s and rerolling misses, and choosing the model affected on a 6) was generally better at sniping out troublesome targets than many dedicated snipers. GW did eventually FAQ their FAQ to state that only one Nob in each unit of Nobz/Meganobz got the Character distinction, while 7th ed made Precision Shot a USR that Characters did not innately receive.
• Legion of the Dammit: Codex Legion of the Damned was touted as a standalone supplement that was meant to let players field them as a standalone force. The rules required the Legion of the Damned to start with their entire army in Reserves. Unfortunately in 6th, you automatically lost if you didn't actually have any units on the table. GW would later apologize in an FAQ for the standalone touting and confirmed the rules were intended for Legion of the Damned to support another army rather than act on their own.
• Asses of Fire: Heldrakes' Baleflamer during its inception counted as being turret-mounted, allowing the Hellturkey to Vector Strike and then hose the same unit with hellfire from its, errm... eye of terror. It was quickly errata'd, but, while not exactly game-breaking, it still lead to horrifying implications, given the damn things were everywhere back then.
• Yarrick Senioritis: The 6th ed Imperial Guard codex introduced a rule called Chain of Command which stated that a Commissar could not be Warlord if the army's primary detachment included a model with the Senior Officer Rule; said rule allowed a model to issue up to two Orders per turn. Commissar Yarrick had Draconian Disciplinarian as his Warlord Trait, but since he had both the Senior Officer and Chain of Command rules, he could not actually be your army's Warlord. This was FAQ'd in 7th so that Yarrick could be Warlord if he was the only model in the entire army that had Senior Officer.

7th Edition

"Those Gue'la loving Shas'la think they can steal my Ta'lissera from me, just because they've got better "gains"? We'll see who's laughing soon enough..."

– Earth Caste weapons scientist Fio'o Bork'an Ishu'ron, upon designing the Stormsurge.

• Commissar-Approved Heresy: 7th Edition introduced Maelific Daemonology, which allowed all sorts of powers including summoning Daemons, warpfire, or being Possessed by a Greater Daemon. The Imperial Guard Primaris Psyker had a special rule called It's For Your Own Good which meant that if the Psyker was in the same unit as a Commissar and suffered Perils, said Commissar would remove the Psyker as a casualty...after the power resolved. The problem? Possession removed the Psyker as a casualty as part of its resolution, and so should the Psyker suffer Perils of the Warp when attempting to be Possessed, the Psyker would be replaced with a Daemon first, and then the Commissar would allow the Greater Daemon to live, since they were no longer in the same unit.
• Profit (not Prophet) of the Waaagh: 7th Edition also changed the rules for selecting a Warlord from 6th. Where in 6th, your Warlord had to be the HQ model with the highest Leadership (barring special rules that overrode this), 7th edition changed it so that ANY Character could be your Warlord. Aside from leading to comical situations like Nork Deddog gaining Creed's Tactical Genius, this led to a particularly stupid exploit with Codex: Orks and the Waaagh! Ghazghkull Supplement. See, Ghazghkull 's Council of Waaagh stated that Ghazgkull would gain two rolls the Ghazghkull Warlord table in addition to his standard trait, rerolling duplicates. This bonus did not actually require Ghazghkull Thraka to be your Warlord, perhaps assuming that he would be due to having the highest Leadership among Orks. Thus, you could actually have ANOTHER Ork (perhaps one from the base codex wearing a Finkin' Cap to get two Strategic Rolls) serve as your Warlord, while still benefitting from a Waaagh and buffed up super-Ghaz.
• Missile Lock: Missile Lock was a Universal Special Rule introduced in 6th Edition, which stated that 'blast weapons' with that rule only rolled 1d6 for scatter. The only weapon with this rule was the Dark Angel Blacksword Missile, which was not a blast weapon. 7th amended this rule so that non-blast weapons could reroll to-hit with them, but removed the rule from the Blacksword Missile, leading to Missile Lock being a USR that was not used by anything for half of 7th edition. The 7th edition version of Dark Angels gave Missile Lock back to the Blacksword Missile, making it a USR that was used by one weapon on one unit on one codex.
• Hard to Hit is not Hard to Hit: The rules for Flyers and Flying Monstrous Creatures were such that both units had a rule called "Hard to Hit." This meant that unless a unit shooting at them possessed Skyfire, then units 'targeting' them could only be resolved as Snap Shots. However, although both types of units possessed a rule called "Hard to Hit", the Flyer version of the rule also said they could not be affected by blasts, templates, or attacks which did not roll to hit. The Flying Monstrous Creature version did not have this clause, which could lead to lively debates over whether a Vindicator's shots could 'scatter onto' an airborne Hive Tyrant.
• Nobz In A 'Naut: This may have arguably just been insidious GW marketing instead of them failing to understand their own game, but Gorkanauts/Morkanauts were touted as "nearly indestructible" and reliably able to transport Nobz or other elite units into the fray, despite the fact that they were not Superheavy Vehicles. While you could one-shot them with a lucky Melta or Lascannon shot, a more common outcome was for one to be Immobilized by a Grav Cannon rolling a 6. As for serving as an assault transport, GW forgot to give the 'Nauts the Assault Ramp rule, and thus you couldn't actually assault from one. To add insult to injury, these vehicles cost more than a Land Raider while moving slower.
• Splinter Racks 2.0: Someone at GW must have noticed the error with the first iteration of Splinter Racks, so the rule was changed. Unfortunately, the rewrite was an even bigger RAW screwup. "Whilst a model is embarked on a vehicle with splinter racks, all splinter weapons have the Twin-linked special rule." Though this meant that a model could no longer take a Splinter Pistol to get an extra-accurate Blaster or Haywire Grenades, this rule RAW meant that every Splinter Weapon in the game was twin-linked, so as long as one model was embarked on a vehicle with Splinter Racks.
• Knight Rider Chronus: In 7th edition, Ultramarines could purchase Chronus as an upgrade to Tanks. Unlike Longstrike or Pask, Chronus was an Infantry Character, that would turn the tank he was riding into a Character, only to emerge from said Tank like a passenger should it be destroyed. However, RAW, Chronus was a Character and so was the Tank that Chronus was riding in, but neither were the same Character. Thus, you could either make Chronus your Warlord and wait before his tank was destroyed before you could use his Warlord Trait (assuming it required being on-table), or make his Tank your Warlord. Thus, it's more funny to imagine Chronus's tank as KITT from Knight Rider. (As an amusing bonus, he also had a Servo-Arm but not Blessing of the Omnissiah, so he could punch stuff but couldn't fix it).
• Khornedogs of Slaanesh: Daemons in Khorne Daemonkin had Fearless instead of Daemonic Instability. Thus, Battle Brothers from Chaos Space Marines could join Daemon units from Khorne Daemonkin. Although an Independent Character with a Mark could not join a unit with a different Mark, having the Mark of a Chaos God and being a Daemon of a Chaos God were two different things. Thus, Daemonkin meant you could have a Sorcerer of Slaanesh use Flesh Hounds of Khorne as bodyguards.
• Dastardly DJ Roombas: The Drone-Net VX1-0 Formation required you to take at least four units of Drones, and granted them several bonuses: First of all, they got Collective Targeting Data which granted all Drones (including Drones that were not part of the Formation) +1 Ballistic Skill "In the Shooting Phase" as long as at least two Drones "from this Formation" were on the Battlefield. It was never FAQed whether "from this Formation" allowed for the bonus to stack if you took multiple copies of the Formation, nor whether you applied it before or after a Drone Controller. Additionally, the Formation had the bonus Enhanced Tactical Responses: All Drones in the Formation had Jink, Split Fire, Precision Shots, and Interceptor. Similar to the Sunshark's Drones, Interceptor as worded would be useless for the Gun Drones RAW, while GW had to FAQ that Gun Drones could not both Jink and Go to Ground like sneaky DJ Roombas.
• Ordo Xenos or Ordo Xerox?: Codex Deathwatch had generally sloppy rules, copypaste formations ("Reroll to-wound vs X"), and odd examples of GW being arbitrarily restrictive in unit loadouts (notably, Deathwatch couldn't take Rifleman Dreads or Strontos Razorbacks). However the most amusing example of this was how the Bane Bolts relic had a profile for being used by a Stalker Boltgun, despite Deathwatch HQs not having the option for a Stalker Boltgun.
• Siphon Magic, Period: Siphon Magic may easily be the worst-written power of 7th edition. "Siphon Magic is a Blessing that targets the Psyker. For the rest of the phase, each time a friendly model successfully manifests a psychic power within 18" of them, place a dice next to this model. Any dice accrued in this manner can be used by the Psyker as bonus Warp Charge points." This power itself was problematic for several reasons: Does "a friendly model" include the Psyker that cast Siphon Magic? Did casting Siphon Magic actually grant the Psyker an immediate bonus die? It was noted that Deny the Witch did not turn a Success into a Failure, but simply cancelled the power's effect, and so Siphon Magic still granted a bonus die. However, the real RAW kerfluffle was the fact that since Siphon Magic did not grant bonus Warp Charge, but "dice that could be spent as additional Warp Charge," you could argue that it was possible to store dice from Siphon Magic across turns. You could even state that this was "intentional," since the Tyranid Neurothrope had a similar ability that let it gain additional Warp Charge that could only be used by its unit. Hilariously though, Siphon Magic was otherwise useless for ML 1 Psykers since if it was the only power that could be cast that turn, then it would mean storing up dice that could not be used. Oops.
• Zombie-Free Death Guard: Typhus let you nominate any Chaos Cultists as Plague Zombies at army creation, giving them Fearless, Feel No Pain, and Slow and Purposeful. They however could not purchase any other options besides increasing their unit size. When Traitor Legions came out, it added rules for different Legion Tactics; notably, Death Guard detachments required all units with the option to purchase the Mark of Nurgle. Due to ambiguous order of operations, it was entirely possible that the Cultists having to purchase the Mark of Nurgle precluded Typhus being able to nominate said Cultists as Zombies. However, Typhus let you nominate any Cultists in your army, and not necessarily the Detachment he was in, so if you took an allied Alpha Legion detachment, you could have Infiltrating ninja-zombies. Let that image sink in.
• Faceless Commanderp: The Alpha Legion Warlord Trait Faceless Commander let the Warlord 'trade positions' with another Character 'of the same type.' This led to fun debates over whether Characters and Independent Characters were the same subtype, as well as what happens when one of the characters is engaged in combat or inside a transport. More entertaining would be the question about what happens when two Alpha Legion Demon Princes swap, especially if one of them was airborne.
• Hydra-faced Cultists: Traitor Legions again. The "Lost and Damned" Formation had a special rule that if any unit of Cultists was destroyed, then the Chaos player would get a 'replacement' of that unit which would emerge next turn from Ongoing Reserves. The Alpha Legion's super-detachment had the same rule under a different name. Considering that the Lost and the Damned was the only Cultist formation available to Alpha Legion, this immediately led to debates over how the two bonuses interacted with each other, with some players saying you only got 'one' roll, some players saying you got to reroll, and some players saying you could roll twice and get two units of Cultists. GW eventually FAQ'd this, so Alpha Legion only got 'one' roll, but it was on a 3+.
• "Looks like we missed our flight": Courtesy of Codex: Imperial Agents, an Imperial Navy detachment could grant additional Valkyries and an Officer of the Fleet. The only problem? the Valkyrie had the Imperial Navy Faction and thus could not start the game transporting any unit. This required a FAQ to say that "Transports from this Faction can transport Astra Militarum, Militarum Tempestus and Inquisition units as if they were all of the same Faction".
• Soul Pain: The Ynnari Psychic Power Unbind Souls targeted an enemy unit, and made a number of Strength 4 attacks equal to the number of models in the target unit. It was supposed to be used to cut large hordes down to size. However, the rulewriter forgot that only models in range and line of sight could be removed as casualties, and Unbind Souls only had 12 inches of range. The result would be a few unlucky Orks or Tyranids being struck down with extreme overkill, to the confusion of the rest of the unit.
• Revenge is Sweet: In what may be the best bit of poetic irony of 7th Edition, the Avatar of Khaine was completely immune to Guilliman, since all of Guilliman's close combat attacks had Soul Blaze. Feels good to be immune after being used as a punching bag in all of Matt Ward's old fluff...
• Stormsurge Fell and Can't Get Up!: When the Stormsurge battlesuit came out, it had a nice little rule that allowed it to fire twice at the expense of not being able to move. The problem? If it was tank shocked by anything (and this was confirmed in the FAQ) it would instantly die if its anchors were deployed, presumably because it would be tipped over and without arms (and thanks to being a super-heavy) it would be impossible to stand back up again. So, surprisingly enough, this is less a case of shitty rules and more one of the rules implementing the consequences of a shitty design ignored elsewhere.
• Da Boss's Tools: Da Fixer Upperz is a Gift of Gork and Mork available to Big Meks and supposedly Meks, unfortunately as written Meks can't take Gifts of Gork and Mork.
• Silver Tower of REEE: When Black Crusade: Traitor's Hate campaign book hit the shelves, it introduced a few toys, that were reskinned from codex supplement Angels of Death. One of them was Geomortis discipline, with a very neat power Worldwrith. What it did is allow you to pick up a piece of terrain and move it around. If units fit on it, they were also moved. But this is only the beginning. As fortifications were also considered a piece of terrain, you could use this discipline on buildings that you deployed yourself, like Imperial Bastion, or Fortress of Redemption. But now we get to the stupid part. All fortifications were allowed to buy upgrades, like guns, barricades or emergency access point. What it did was place a token within 6" of fortification, that allowed you to enter and leave the building no matter if it was surrounded... or half a board away, as no rules stated that it had to remain within 6" to work. This allowed for truly silly tactic of planting one sorcerer on top of the tower to cast Worldwrith and the other sorcerer in your deployment to cast summoning from Malefic Daemonology. Those daemons can then enter the fortification through what I assume was a warp portal access point, and man the guns, or even charge out of it in subsequent turns. The possibilities were endless. BS5 Bloodletters manning the guns? Sure! Squad of Horrors casting even more bullshit from the top? No problem!

8th Edition

"Correct, young acolyte. The canticle of the bedtime story is entirely necessary for the proper maintenance of the sacred Plasma weaponry."

– Unknown Magos of Forge World Ryza

Strap yourself in, son, this is gonna be a long one. This edition saw a major rules overhaul, stopgap rules brought in before full codices were released, and of course, the most recent fuckups tend to be easier to remember than the ones that happened twenty years ago.

• Keyword Issues: 8th edition got rid of Universal Special Rules, instead opting for units having their own bespoke special rules and having assorted Keywords associated with them. For example, Rhinos cannot transport models with the Terminator Keyword, while Land Raiders treat models with the Terminator Keyword as taking two transport slots. It would not be until a halfway through the edition that GW learned to distinguish keywords for models, versus the entire unit sharing collective keywords. This led to several earlygame bloopers.
  • Terminator Rune of Yoga: Space Wolves have a distinct ability to 'mix-and-match' Terminator Wolf Guard into units of Power Armored units. In early 8th edition, giving a Wolf Guard model Terminator Armor did not actually grant the Terminator Keyword, letting said Wolf Guard Terminator cram itself into a transport. Since this was before Games Workshop decided to do 'model-level' Keywords, they instead had to FAQ this to state that "the Wolf Guard is treated as though it has the Terminator Keyword".
  • Deathwatch Weightwatchers: Deathwatch had the opposite problem; a Kill Team could attach a Vanguard Veteran, Terminator, or Biker to their unit, and collectively gain all the Keywords at the unit-level. The issue with this was that adding one Terminator to the unit meant each and every model now took up two spaces inside a Land Raider. This also required a similar FAQ, stating that although the entire unit had the Terminator Keyword, only the Terminator counted as having the Terminator Keyword for purposes of transport.
  • All is Atomized Dust: The rules for Psykers in 8th are copied from Age of Sigmar: Roll 2d6 against the Psychic Power's difficulty, suffering Perils if you roll double 1s or double 6s. Perils means you suffer D3 Mortal Wounds, and inflict another D3 Mortal Wounds to all units within 6" should the Psyker be slain as a result. Unfortunately, the Aspiring Sorcerer in a unit of Rubric Marines...has 1 wound, while having a weaker version of Smite. Because Mortal Wounds spillover, this means you lose 2d3 models to Perils, the Sorcerer among them. Don't even think about trying to cast powers against Hive Fleet Kronos, lest your expensive Rubric Marines go up in a blaze of Chaos is Fickle!. Keep in mind, although the entire unit is a PSYKER, the rules for Perils state that the psyker (not keyworded) suffers the Mortal wounds, and the Rubric Marine datasheet mentions that the Aspiring Sorcerer is the model doing the casting, so he has to be the first one removed from the unit no matter what you roll.
  • Honorary title: When the SM 8.5 codex dropped, chaplains were given the new litanies of battle mechanic which allowed them to give buffs to units by reciting litanies (rolling a 3+). To get litanies a model needed the <Priest> keyword, which all chaplains were given. But only chaplains were given this keyword, and they all already had the <Chaplain> keyword, meaning GW added another keyword to chaplains to give them this rule, when attaching the rule to the <Chaplain> keyword would have had the same result without adding a redundant keyword to chaplains.
• And They Shall Know Fear: As written, 40k uses a system where you roll dice (d3s, d6s, 2d6s, etc.) and add modifiers to the roll to get the result. If you have any ability to re-roll, those are applied before any modifiers. Space Marines have And They Shall Know No Fear which lets them re-roll failed Morale Tests. However, a Morale Test is resolved by rolling a D6 and adding the number of casualties the unit has suffered to obtain the result, before comparing against the unit's base leadership. Differring arguments exist as to whether adding a number to get a result is considered a modifier, vs a modifier being for a basic roll otherwise, but the end result would be that through a literal interpretation, Marines by default could never reroll morale, since they would compare the d6 against their highest Ld (8 for the Sergeant), then modify the roll with the casualties. Ironically, this means abilities that lower the Marine unit's Ld would make it more likely for the Marines to actually use ATSKNF. You can argue if this is intentional or not too, stating "ATSKNF only kicks in when facing true fear."
• I'm Celestine! No, I'm Celestine!: When a new edition is released there's bound to be one or two things that GW forgets to mention or include, in this case GW forgot to make Saint Celestine unique when they released her rules, which opened the way for Imperium players to field 5 (or more) of her. This might not be all that bad on its own, if it wasn't for the fact that each Celestine boosted the Shield of Faith rule that the Sisters of Battle possessed. Normally it gave them a 6+ invulnerable save and for every Celestine on the tabletop this increased by +1, meaning that it was very easy to give your entire army a 2+ Invulnerable save and steamroll the opposing army, while remaining entirely tournament legal (although don't expect any TO to allow you to use this technically-legal list).
• Holy Artillery: Compounding the Celestine shenanigans, thanks to how it was written the Sisters of Battle could use Acts of Faith on any unit in their army of the same order, even if they didn't have Acts of Faith. This was done by using an Imagifier or Celestine to grant the act on either a 4+ or automatically, which led to players using them to fire Exorcists twice per turn and just erase most armoured units/vehicles/monsters from the tabletop. This was later errata'd so that you can only use this power on units that can actually use Acts of Faith.
• Were we hunting somebody?: Another thing GW forgot at the start of 8th was double-checking army restrictions, specifically who could be allowed to fight beside who. This led to shenanigans like Fallen and Dark Angels fighting alongside each other without issue because they both had the Imperium keyword.
• Schroëdinger's Airplane: 8th also re-reverted aircraft rules so that units could not occupy the same space. However, there was no "clause" that airborne models did not block movement. This meant that while you could theoretically kill an aircraft by flooding the board with Conscripts so there was no legal move, this also meant that units could be prevented from legally moving past the aircraft, while not being allowed to Assault them. The 2nd-place winner at LVO 2019 exploited this rule by taking 6 Eldar Flyers and using them to "wall in" the enemy's infantry and Castellan, leading to GW finally FAQ'ing Airborne to work similar to early 7th.
  • However, even the fix had its own problems. The FAQ stated that rather than 'blocking' enemy movement, an airborne flyer would not block movement...provided the enemy unit was fast enough to move 1" past the flyer's base. Unfortunately, a 40k flyer base is a 120mm x 92mm oval, translating to 4.7" in length. Most infantry units can move 6" in their movement phase. Assuming the flyer is 1" away from an enemy infantry unit, the enemy unit would need to move at least 6.7" forward in order to clear the distance from the flyer, and thus the FAQ effectively changed nothing for infantry.
• Dakkadakka Wolf Guard: 8th removed Twin-Linked as a special rule; formerly twin-linked weapons now had twice the attacks instead of rerolling to hit. Storm Bolters were made the equivalent of two Bolters for this same reason. 8th also streamlined shooting by stating that a model could fire all of its non-pistol weapons, or all its pistol weapons. Wolf Guard in the Index could take two Storm Bolters each, as well as a Bike with twin-linked Bolter, leading to Space Viking Bikers throwing down 12 shots per model. One wonders why the White Scars never tried that.
• Technically Correct: The Best Kind of Correct: The big FAQ introduced new suggested rules for Tournament play to prevent spam by introducing a hard limit to the same Datasheet to 3 per army in a 2k point game. On Paper this means you will see at most 3 Flyrants, 3 Units of Dark Reapers, 3 Fire Raptors etc. Sounds good on paper and limits MSU and Spam, right? Well they forgot about the Daemon Prince and the Leman Russ. First off, the Daemon Prince! You can still bring a Battalion of Chaos Marines, Battalion of Daemons, and then a Supreme Command Detachment of Thousand Sons or Death Guard because it is a separate Datasheet for each army (FAQ has since rendered this variant of the cheese irrelevant). Second, the Leman Russ is limited to 3 Squads of Leman Russ tanks, so you can bring 3 Squads of 3 in a Spearhead and 3 Tank Commanders in a Supreme Command if you want, then have the 12 Leman Russ Tanks all break unit during the game, giving you 12. 13 if you also take Pask. And then you could keep going with all the forge world variants... This works with anything that can Combat Squad or has similar abilities as well.
  • The second variant of this actually became the basis for a tournament build involving 9 Hellhounds and 9 Artemia-Pattern Hellhounds, as a "meta counter" to Custodes Bike-Captains or hitmods.
  • Even better with Forge World and the Russes. The Death Korps Mars Alpha Russ is a separate datasheet, as is the Conqueror, Stygies Vanquisher and the Annihilator. So you can have 48 units of Russes when there is meant to be a cap of three. This would cost far more than 2000 points, though.
  • With the new Knights codex, there are new type of mini-knight called Armigers, which are split into 2 datasheets and can be taken in 3 man squads like the Russes. So have fun with 18 Lords of War when the limit should be 3.
• What Role Am I Anyway?: The rules to the aforementioned hard limit says "this rule does not apply to units with the Troops or Dedicated Transport Battlefield Role." However, this does not account for the fact that the same Datasheet can be taken for multiple Battlefield Roles. For example, Khorne Berzerkers are Troops in a World Eaters Detachment and Elites otherwise. Depending on your interpretation, this can either mean "ignore Troops and Dedicated Transports when determining your total," that units cannot be exempt unless they can only ever be taken as Troops or Dedicated Transports, or they can so long as the potential to take them as Troops exists.
  • The reasonable interpretation would be that, using Berzerkers as an example, you can have unlimited Troops Berzerker datasheets and a cap on Elites Berzerker datasheets. Why GW couldn't make this clearer is anyone's guess.
• Elysian Demolitions: In the Forgeworld Imperial Armour Index, Elysian Drop Troopers had a special Order called Fire And Advance which let a unit shoot while treating all of its weapons as Assault. By itself, this was underwhelming and even caused Lasguns to shoot less than if they fired without an order. However, this also gave Elysian frag and krak grenades the Assault profile, letting a unit of Elysians throw more grenades than even the Grenadier Stratagem. Occasionally, lively debates occur over whether or not chainswords or other melee weapons get the assault rule.
• Does anyone actually playtest this anymore? FAQ again! So the character targeting rules changed to prevent cheese. before you could only target a character with less than 10 wounds if they were the closest visible unit. This leads to cheese like surrounding squads with their own tanks and transports, leaving a small hole so a unit could only see a character, or attempting to snipe characters with Mortars and Basilisks. Instead of fixing this by saying something like "You can see through friendly units for the purposes of targeting (and only targeting) but cannot shoot through them", GW tried to patch this out. Now you can't target the character if there is a unit between the shooter and character even if that closer unit isn't in LoS. This has lead to characters like Archons and Smashfucker becoming the best objective holders and deep strike denial units in the entire game. Now imagine what a Reaper Launcher Autarch with Mark of the Incomparable Hunter can do with this...

Note that as of the 2nd big FAQ this remains not only unchained, but now made into an official rule. If a character is in clear view and the only enemy units that are closer to your unit than them are completely out of Line of Sight, then you still cannot shoot that character. The FAQ also specified that you ignore other characters for the purposes of 'closest enemy unit', but only if they have less than 10 wounds.

Prior to being patched, this led to a notable "Superfriends" of assorted Imperial Characters (including Gulliman and Draigo and more), several Eversor Assassins, and at least four Culexus Assassins. The Culexus Assassins could only be hit on 6s, were immune to Smite, and had a 4+ Invulnerable, and were also the only unit the opponent could legally target.

• GRAMMAR IS FOR THE WEAK!: The Chaos Daemon Codex has the rule Daemonic Ritual: Instead of moving in their Movement Phase, any CHAOS CHARACTER may, at the end of their Movement Phase, attempt to summon a DAEMON unit with this ability by performing a Daemonic Ritual. The key is the "with this ability," since this can form an ambiguous lexical construct. "I found you with my flashlight" can either mean subject A found Predicate B in the possession of A's Flashlight, or that A used A's Flashlight to find B. Only by noticing that non-character Daemon Units have Daemonic Ritual will a player infer that having Daemonic Ritual does not let you perform a Daemonic Ritual, but lets any Chaos Character that doesn't necessarily have Daemonic Ritual perform a Daemonic Ritual, and the clause "By performing a Daemonic Ritual" is just flavor-text with no actual relevance to Daemonic Ritual. Feel free to attempt to summon a Heldrake on account of ambiguous ruling though.
• Lesser Keyword of Solomon: The Daemon Codex came with many Stratagems, which people immediately started thinking of ways to apply to Magnus and Mortarion. To curb this, GW released a FAQ stating that Daemon Stratagems and Relics only work on Faction Keyword Daemons. The problem? The Warhammer Designer Commentary FAQ (the same one preventing Sept<Craftworld<Wu'Tang Clan>>) states that once the battle is begun, there is no functional difference between a Keyword and a Faction Keyword, so the errata as written doesn't work.
• Plasma is Hotter At Night: When you Overcharge Plasma weaponry, it explodes on a 1. Not a "natural" one but a "modified one." This means any penalties to-hit also increase the odds of Plasma exploding. The Machine Spirits are afraid of the dark. Note that supercharged Plasma Guns "slay the bearer on a hit roll of 1". Everything in the book draws gear from one list. Yes, including vehicles. Yes, that 371pts Land Raider with 16 wounds just spontaneously evaporated itself with its own pintle-mounted combi-plasma. Don't press that, brother!
  • To add insult to injury, there is even a situation where you can make an Overcharged Plasma Cannon explode on any result to hit, thanks to GW giving -1 to hit effects to the Craftworld Eldar like it's going out of style. All you need to do is overcharge and shoot a Plasma Cannon at night (-1 to hit) after moving (-1 to hit) at some knife eared assholes painted blue (Alaitoc Attribute, -1 to hit at +12") with fancy armour (Warp Spider's Flickerjump ability, -1 to hit) who are pulling some Matrix shit (Lightning-Fast Reactions Stratagem, -1 to hit). So that's a total of -5 to hit, meaning any result you roll to hit will be modified down to a 1. I guess the Machine Spirits are also scared of Eldar too?
  • On a more positive note, you can (almost always) fire the gun on regular mode at no risk. As hilariously bad as this rule is, you at least don't need to commit suicide or do nothing.
  • Some models have special rules on their guns to "fix" this, mostly characters with big expensive minis and guns that only cause a mortal wound on a 1.
• Anti-Air Flamethrowers: Flamethrowers in 8th edition no longer use an AoE "teardrop" template, but instead inflict a random number of automatic hits on a unit. For example, a Hellhound's Inferno Cannon inflicts D6 automatic hits. Due to these changes, regular flamers are less important as a crowd control weapon, and more as an anti-hitmod (and anti-aircraft) weapon; this is especially true of weapons that have a multi-damage value like the aforementioned Inferno Cannon. Where it gets silly though is how Flamers interact with "ambush/deepstrike" abilities. See, regular flamers have an effective range of 8 inches, but most "strike from Reserve" powers require you to set up more than 9 inches away. This means that flamers are useless when you appear from Reserves, but it also means they're useless for defending against units Charging from Reserves, since the flamers are out of range and thus unable to actually lay down a Wall of Death like in 6th-7th Edition, or interrupt movement like in 2nd Edition.
  • 9th 'fixed' this for flamers by upping their range to 12", essentially granting them the ability to hit targets provided they started their charge within range of the flamer model in question. Of course, 9th also made Overwatch a Stratagem to the debatable benefit of everyone.
• Just Another Bugged Hunt: Genestealer Cults have a special rule called Brood Brothers: For each Genestealer Cult detachment in your army, you may take one Guard detachment, ignoring said Guard Detachment's Faction Keywords when determining if your army is Battle-Forged. The Guard Detachment cannot benefit from any Regiment-specific Stratagems, Doctrines, or Relics. However, a separate Forgeworld FAQ ruling states that Elysian and Krieg bonuses are not considered Regiment bonuses but their own "bespoke" rules. Combine with the fact that Brood Brothers has no restriction on being triggered by an Auxiliary Detachment, and you can have a Battalion of Tyranids fighting alongside a Battalion of Elysians, with a single Cult Acolyte in an Auxiliary Detachment making the list Battle-Forged.
• Unfocused Fire: Due to wonky RAW, the Tau Stratagem Focused Fire (hopefully to be FAQd) works best by splitting fire across the entire enemy army. Say the opponent has a unit. You shoot that unit, it fails its save, and you then activate Focus Fire. For the rest of that phase, any T'au Sept unit of yours that targets that unit gets +1 to wound. However, selecting targets and resolving shooting are separate steps; this means that RAW, a Hammerhead could allocate Smart Missiles against the unit that Focus Fire was activated against, allocate its Railgun against another unit, and get +1 to wound both units.
  • The Big FAQ errata'd Focus Fire so that you get +1 to wound with attacks that are made by T'au Sept units from your army that target the enemy unit. Although some will argue that "that target unit" refers to the attacks, even if that were the case, RAW units Choose Targets, and then after allocating weapons, you Resolve Attacks, and therefore this errata effectively changes nothing.
  • Sidenote: 8th renames Tau to T'au, while adding bonuses for Sept T'au. Thus, there was a joke due to the Faction and Sept having the same name. "All T'au are T'au, but some T'au are more T'au than others."
• Really Hot-Blooded: Normally, the shooting sequence is: Select a unit to shoot, Declare targets, allocate weapons, then resolve attacks. Certain Stratagems or abilities may allow a unit to "fire its weapons twice" or "shoot an additional time at the end of the Shooting Phase." However, the Vior'la Stratagem Hot-Blooded is worded that at the start of the Shooting Phase, you may pick an INFANTRY unit from your army, and it may be "chosen to shoot twice this phase." The key is that normally, the rules state that you may not select a unit to shoot if it Fell Back, Advanced, or is engaged, yet this Stratagem as written overrides those restrictions. Unlike other RAW screwups, it is unknown if this was intentional or just GW flubbing standardizing their rules.
• They can have TWO weapons?: After waiting months for a FAQ, the tau finally got an answer as to what counts as a "shot" in the cadre fireblade's volley fire ability. GW answered "It means the player can make one more hit roll for each model that is firing at a target within half range", which conflicts with the wording of the ability which says the model gets an extra shot for EACH WEAPON, meaning drones, which carried 2 pulse carbines, would not get an extra shot per pulse carbine. Many months later GW issued a FAQ of the FAQ, saying the model would get one extra shot for each weapon.
• Supreme Lack of Fire Discipline: The T'au Sept Sa'cea has the Tenet Calm Discipline, which at first looks similar to the Salamander Chapter Tactic Master Artisans, in that it lets each Sa'cea unit reroll a single to-hit roll. However, while the Salamanders Chapter Tactic is worded that you "you can reroll a single failed hit roll and a single failed wound roll made for a SALAMANDERS unit with this Tactic each time it shoots or fights," the Sa'caea Tenet is written that "In the Shooting phase you can re-roll a single failed hit roll when a unit with this tenet shoots." As written, the Tenet gives you one reroll to-hit for the entire shooting phase, and not one per unit.
• Ork Snipers are totally a thing: Again with GW forgetting that -1 to hit is actually powerful and handing it out everywhere, this initially meant that Orks are literally incapable of hitting anything with a -2 to hit, since there is no "6 always hits" rule (until the Orks' codex) the way there is a "1 always fails" rule.
  • GW thankfully realized this in time for the Ork Codex, not only giving them a special rule to always hit with shooting on unmodified 6s, but to gain extra attacks through it.
  • This can be exploited by a Tyranid list with Biovores. The Spore Mine Launcher, on a miss, allows you to put a Spore Mine on the table for free, even in Matched Play. Tired of to-hit penalty cheese making all your guns hit on a 6+ or 7+? Have your Biovores shoot at them and they can literally cover the table in Spore Mines, because they'll always miss.
• Thermonuclear Spore Mines: The wording of the Floating Death ability states that a Spore Mine explodes if it is within 3" of any enemy units at the end of any Charge phase; whenever it explodes, it inflicts Mortal Wounds on the "nearest" enemy unit except on a 1. The issue is that multiple Spore Mines in range of the same unit explode simultaneously, and thus their wounds must be sequentially resolved. Suppose I have three Spore Mines, each in range of a squad of 2 Space Marines. All three explode. The first one wipes out the Space Marine Squad, while the second and third one each inflict Mortal Wounds on the "next" nearest unit, even if on the opposite side of the game board and out of Line of Sight.
• Sonic the Genestealer: Tyranids have a Stratagem called Metabolic Overdrive that lets a unit move a second time in the Movement Phase in exchange for not being able to Charge that turn. Hive Fleet Kraken Tyranids roll 3d6 and pick the highest roll for determining their Advance move, while their Opportunistic Advance Stratagem lets them double their Advance distance for that movement phase. The initial issue was that RaW, Advance added to your Move Characteristic for that phase, instead of increasing your characteristic for that specific move. Thus, a unit of Kraken Genestealers could move not 8 + 12 + 8 + 12 inches in the Move Phase, but 8 + 12 + 8 + 12 + 12. Combine with a Swarmlord's Hive Commander ability for an effective top speed of 66", and a unit of Kraken Genestealers could outrun a supersonic aircraft on foot. Gotta go fast!
  • GW FAQed this not by stating that Advancing only applies to a specific move, but by stating that you can only advance once in a phase and it applies to all moves made that phase. This did make the initial Sonic the Genestealer option slower, with a top speed of only 54". However, GW also clarified that Opportunistic Advance could be used with Hive Commander, Overrun, Mind Eater, or any other ability that lets a unit "move as though it were the Movement Phase." Aside from giving a unit of Kraken Genestealers a theoretical top speed of 101" (8+12 from Move & Opportunistic Advance, 8+12 from Hive Commander and Opportunistic Advance, 12 from Charge, 3 from Piling In, 3 from Consolidate, 3 from Piling in and again with the Adrenaline Surge stratagem, 8 + 12 from Overrun (replacing Consolidate from the Adrenaline Surge) and Opportunistic Advance, and another 8 + 12 from Mind Eater and Advance), it sets a messy precedent for Dark Eldar due to GW not strictly defining what "as if in another phase" actually means.
• What Phase is It Anyway?: The Dark Eldar Wych Cult of Red Grief has the Stratagem No Method of Death Beneath our Grasp which can be used immediately upon destroying an enemy unit in the Shooting or Fight Phase. If you destroy an enemy unit in the Shooting Phase, you get a second round of shooting. If you destroy an enemy unit in the Fight Phase, you get to (after Consolidation) Fight a second time in the Fight Phase. By itself, this is remarkably innocent. However, GW forgot that Ynnari are capable of "out-of-phase" actions, and confirmed that Dark Eldar Ynnari still have access to Dark Eldar Stratagems. You can have a unit of Ynnari Red Grief Reavers destroy an enemy unit in the Fight Phase, use Soulburst to "shoot as if it were the Shooting Phase" to destroy another unit, pop the Stratagem, and then cause the game to break under at least three separate interpretations over what phase you are actually in. The fact there is no "Else" clause in the ability means that you can argue that if the Stratagem works as if in both phases, you can Consolidate, shoot and fight with this Stratagem.
  • The Big FAQ clarified that Soulburst takes place after you Consolidate despite triggering immediately, giving potential weight to the theory that you get both effects.
• The Howling Banshees got into the cookie-dough again: Howling Banshees get +3" to the distance they roll for charges, and are also supposed to be able to charge units 15" away. However due to how the rule is written, all it does is let them charge after advancing if a unit is 15" away, not that they get to ignore the 12" limit from the main Rulebook. I guess Jain Zar has some coupons for Ben and Jerry's or something?
• "We forgot the difference between Unit and Model" for 500, Alex: The rules for Advancing say that the unit may not be selected to shoot if it does so. The rules for Assault weapons say a model with an Assault weapon may shoot it if it advanced, but at -1 to hit. The problem is that you can never select the unit the model with an Assault weapon is in as a unit you want to shoot with, due to the rules for advancing. The same applies for Pistols with a unit within 1" of an enemy.
• Stop Betraying Yourself! Stop Betraying Yourself!: Khârn the Betrayer has the rule Kill! Maim! Burn! which lets him (any friendly World Eaters within 1", so really just himself) reroll all hits in the Fight Subphase, and he hits on a 2+. Sounds good so far, right? However, his rule The Betrayer means he cannot reroll 1s (so he cannot reroll any hits), each 1 hitting a friendly unit instead. You would think this would mean that you should run him solo, for "If there are no friendly models within 1 inch of Khârn, the hits are discarded." Unfortunately, a model is always treated as being in range of itself for auras or other special rules, meaning a bunch of 1s (or modified rolls) will result in Khârn hitting himself instead of the enemy.
• Dakkaskull of Dakka: The Admech Stratagem Scryerskull can for the measly cost of 1 Command Point be used "at any time" to do one of several things: Reveal D3 Hidden Setup Markers, reveal a Mysterious Objective, or shoot with an ADEPTUS MECHANICUS unit while ignoring penalties from Dawn Raid, Low Visibility or Cover of Darkness. The "At any time", a lack of a requirement that the mission being played is using special rules or a 'shooting phase only' limitation results in game-breaking issues.
  • Stratagems used before a battle are exempt from the once per phase rule. So feel free to use Scryerskull "at any time" during your deployment phase until you run out of CP or enemies to shoot. If you don't feel like winning the game during deployment, you can still use Scryerskull once in every phase for both players, means that RAW, you can use it once in every Movement, Psychic, Shooting, Charge, Fight and Morale phase, and then again in the next player's turn. Combine with Kastellans for almost enough dakka or a neutron laser Dunecrawler to wipe out every vehicle in the opposing army.
  • This Blooper has been fixed in the Admech FAQ.
• Trash Can Lid of Faith: Seraphim have a 6++ save, and a rule forcing them (if it were optional this wouldn't be a problem) to re-roll failed results when using this save. Celestine gives a +1 modifier to those invulnerable saves. However, because of the totally fun and not at all stupid system where re-rolls must happen before modifiers, if a Seraphim rolls a 5 for their save, they are forced to re-roll it even though it would pass after modifiers.
• White Autarchs can't Jump: While it was fixed in the Codex for Warp Spiders (due to horrible wording in the Index, RAW said that Warp Spiders couldn't teleport out of combat in the Index), an Autarch using a Warp Spider Jump Pack can't use said Jump Pack to teleport out of Combat due to no current rules existing for the Autarch's version of it.
• Remote Serjery: Because the Painboy's healing ability works on models and not units, it's entirely possible for a Painboy to save an Ork in combat on the other end of the table if you conga-line a maxed out squad of Boys. While less of a blooper and more a silly rules interaction, there is something hilariously Orky about the Painboy being able to save something locked in combat several feet away just because it's in the same mob.
• High Speed Dirt: Deliberately crashing your own Flyers sounds dumb, right? Well if you read the rules for a lot of Kill Point missions (thankfully GW's No Quarter Given Objective is clear. Objectives written by Third Party groups are sometimes not so clear), or Tactical Objectives for Maelstrom Missions, deliberately crashing your own near-death flyer (by intentionally moving them for less than their minimum movement distance) means that your opponent doesn't get the kill credit as nobody actually destroyed it. This also leads to...
  • Kamikaze Kauyon: The 8th edition Tau Codex allowed a Commander to trigger declare a Mont'ka or Kauyon maneuver once per game at the start of the turn. If the Commander invoked Kauyon, then all friendly Tau units within 6" and of the same Sept could reroll misses but could not move for any reason. Flyers were not exempt from that restriction, leading to the potential for Razorsharks and Sunsharks to kamikaze before they got to benefit from Kauyon, and possibly killing your Commander with Mortal Wounds. Clearly the blueberries wanted to be even more weeaboo.
  • Ynnari did 9/11: While there are many strange Soulburst interactions, it's entirely possible to deliberately crash your own Flyers by intentionally not moving them their minimum movement distance, something clearly unintended. This can result in some ridiculous Rube Goldberg-esque chain reactions where a Soulbursting Warlock can Quicken a Flyer on 1-2 Wounds left and have them crash within 7" of a bunch of Dark Reapers that nuke something across the map for free, which in turn triggers a bunch of Howling Banshees to slice up a unit, which lets the Shining Spears charge in and murder the unit that caused the Warlock to Soulburst to begin with.
• Yvraine who thirsts: Ynnari again, and while this one makes sense RAW it's horribly unfluffy. Yvraine and The Visarch are healed on a 4+ by friendly Eldar exploding near them. Yvraine also benefits if it just happens to be a Psyker exploding, as it gives her more powers. Warlocks are very spammable. Put it together and it's not unheard of for Ynnari players to use a Command Point Re-roll to deliberately Perils of the Warp so that Yvraine gets a benefit from a Warlock being sucked into the Warp, likely taking even more Eldar with them if you get really unlucky. Yes, Eldar being introduced to Slaanesh's personal Bad Dragon collection actually heals and benefits the Ynnari, but they still swear it's entirely unrelated. Uh-huh...
• "Drive me closer, I wish to hit them with my Agonizer!": Ramming is always better for Dark Eldar Vehicles. Because of a hilariously badly worded FAQ: everything has a Close Combat Weapon, even units that can't physically carry one (like Vehicles). Before this Dark Eldar vehicles were forced to Ram their giant pirate ships into people at the same Strength of a Space Marine punching someone, because Bladevanes were the only weapon choice for Vehicles. Post FAQ they can declare they are using their Close Combat Weapon and attack at full strength.
• "We found a bigger boat, Archon!": Dark Eldar and terrible FAQs again! The FAQ for Index: Xenos 1 ruled that Scourges and Hellions can't fit into Raiders or Venoms after an oversight in the Index allowed them to ride them. Well they never bothered to apply this FAQ to the Tantalus, so yes, Scourges and Hellions can still fit in there with their massive wings and giant blades hoverboards while still having space for loot, slaves, medical supplies, spare ammo, spare slaves, and someone to fetch the drinks. What else could a self respecting Space Pirate Vampire Elf want? (Hilariously still not fixed as of the 16/04/2018 Forgeworld FAQ update)
• Cruddex in a Box?: Dark Eldar again, and White Dwarf April 2018 confirmed who is responsible for this shitshow of a decision. The Crucible of Malediction is available as both an overcosted stratagem, and Wargear option for the Haemonculus meaning there so no reason to ever use the Stratagem and the Dark Eldar have lost out on another Stratagem because of this...
  • Ironically enough, GW did FAQ this for the T'au Stimulant Injectors, stating " No. You cannot purchase Stimulant Injectors anymore and the rules for Stimulant Injectors as presented in Codex: T’au Empire (i.e. the Stratagem) take precedence." Sadly due to the bespoke nature of 8th edition, this applies only to Stimulant Injectors and nothing else.
• Abaddonify: More Eldar rules breaking something! Jain Zar can disarm models she is fighting in close combat, rendering them unable to use one of their weapons. Well things get strange if you disarm something carrying the basic Close Combat Weapon. RAW says that the unit can't use that weapon, but the Rulebook states that you are to always assume that they have that weapon. There hasn't been a clear FAQ on this either which makes things more complicated.
  • Even more, how do you disarm a Tyranid? Even Hormagaunts are bigger than a puny eldar, not mentioning the monstrous creatures.
• Space Elf Pirate Ninja?: Eldar yet again. This time the Corsairs. Because the Corsair Prince has vanished from the Index, it's impossible to field a legal army if you go pure Corsairs. It's also impossible to bring Corsairs along with you as an Eldar army without taking an Auxiliary Detachment and losing CP, or going Ynnari and having your opponent flip the table.
• Plague Zombie Cloning: If a Poxwalker kills a Necron and turns it into an additional Poxwalker model, you can still re-animate that Necron. The same goes for any model that can "die" and then return to the table in some fashion. Don't think about that one too hard, I don't think the person who wrote it did either. Amusingly, this means that one Pink Horror can turn into seven Poxwalker Zombies; a notable LVO list by a tournament-goer named Joshua Death ran a bunch of Horrors as a screen to "walk up" a bunch of Poxwalkers up the board like a Zombie Railgun, through the Cloud of Flies and Poxwalker Hive Stratagems.
  • Note that the Plague Zombie Cloning was supposedly fixed by the Curse of the Walking Pox ability being FAQ'd so that you have to pay Reinforcement Points to increase the unit beyond its starting size. However, the Poxwolker Hive Stratagem technically replaced Curse of the Walking Pox for the turn, while not being errata'd with the same Reinforcement Point clause.
• Scunthorpe Weapon Profiles: The Scunthorpe Problem is a classic problem with word-search algorithms that censored for filtered out "dirty" words. The problem lay in the fact that certain innocent words would yield "false positives"; the problem was named after users from the town of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire were unable to create AOL accounts, since "Scunthorpe" has the word "cunt" in it. How does this relate to 8th edition? In order to deal with the prior problem of weapon classification, many abilities and stratagems in 8th edition will state that a "X" weapon is defined as any weapon whose weapon profile has "Y" in its name (ex. blahblahblah). Aside from being a futureproofing timebomb waiting to happen, the rules for 8th edition have a messy definition for what exactly is a weapon profile: Is a weapon with multiple attack modes itself a weapon profile, or are the individual attack modes themselves profiles? This may seem like pedantic semantics, but either interpretation will result in bloopers.
  • Prometheium is Heresy: Chapter Approved 2017 introduced Cities of Death Stratagems, including Siphon Promethium. Siphon Promethium lets an infantry unit double the range of its flamer weapons, including Skorchas, Burnas, and any weapon profile with 'flame' in its name. This particular wording hurts Orks in particular, since depending on the interpretation, this prevents Kombi-Skorchas from benefitting and no Ork Infantry unit has the option to take a regular Skorcha. The real comedy however comes from the fact that Horrors of Tzeentch use 'Coruscating Flames', which can now shoot out to 36" on account of a false positive.
  • Holy Duality?: The Sisters of Battle beta codex had a stratagem Holy Trinity, which granted bonuses when a unit used a flamer, bolter, and meltagun on the same target. The definition for each component was for any weapon profile with 'bolt', 'melta', or 'flame' in its name, while explicitly treating Inferno Pistols as Melta weapons. If the interpretation that the weapon profile itself encompasses all the attack modes available, the end result would be Sisters using Combi-Flamers and Combi-Meltas to trigger the Stratagem at a distance, for superior dakka.
  • Weapons of the Derp Age: The Weapons of the Dark Age stratagem gives Dark Angel plasma weapons +1 damage, defining a plasma weapon as any weapon whose weapon profile includes plasma in its name. This means that it also accidentally applies to other weapons, like the bolter part of a combi-plasma, since it forgets to exclude them the same way the Beta Bolter rules exclude the non-bolter weapon profile of any combi-weapon.
  • "How do you fix this: Although it would take time to implement, the "ideal" fix would add rules for giving keywords to weapon profiles (similar to 7th edition). A weapon profile would inherit the keywords of the model wielding it. So rather than "INFANTRY firing flamer weapons. A flamer as defined as a ...", you have "firing INFANTRY FLAMER weapons". This would also allow for handling false positives, including ensuring that a Baleflamer is not a Flamer...ahem.
• I Like my Genestealers Scrambled: Genestealer Cultists have the Cult Ambush ability, where they set up ambush markers, and reveal themselves on the first turn, appearing within 1" of the marker as if arriving from Reinforcements. Enemy units cannot move within 9" of said markers. The problem is certain units can project a 12" aura preventing enemy units from arriving from Reinforcements. Thus, some Primaris Infiltrators could walk 9.1" away from Ambush Markers, and unless the GSC player used Stratagems to relocate/hide undercover...the units tied to those Ambush markers would automatically be destroyed. FAQed so GSC units using Cult Ambush Blips don't count as coming in from reserves.
• 46 shots, 1 kill: The current character targeting rules exist to stop people from cheese such as parking two Rhinos so your Devastator Squad with 4 Lascannons can only draw Line of Sight to your enemy's Warlord. As the Rules are written right now, you can't do this as they need to be both the closest unit, and closest visible unit. This is very important when it comes to "Mortar" and "Sniper" units, as they don't overwrite these requirements: a Mortar can't just declare it's shooting at the character behind a wall because they can't see it, even if it's the closest unit, and they can't shell the Character at the back even if they can somehow draw LoS if there is just one intervening model. Why mention this? The new Space Marine unit: Primaris Eliminators simply don't function if you go by RAW. The new weapon profile is functionally a Sniper and Mortar unit combined, but the Rules don't actually allow this: They need both LoS on a Character and the Character to be the closest unit to take the shot. If you fail to meet any of these qualifiers then you can't target the character. They can, however, target regular units as normal but at that point why not just take an allied Heavy Weapons Team?
  • This has been clarified in the Shadowspear errata. An eliminator with a bolt sniper rifle that is firing mortis rounds CAN target a Character that is not the closest enemy unit and not visible to the firing model.
• Superman Drop: Transport rules seem pretty straightforward, right? Except they weren't written with flying transports in mind, so nothing is preventing your marines from just jumping out of a strafing gunship. In fact, they can jump back in if they wanted to. Suck on this, Invasion Beams!
• Box-o'-Fuckoff: Transport rules again. Those were simplified like everything else in 8th, meaning each bloody unit now has a unique instance of it. Oh boy, how can THAT backfire on us? Well, remember there were units that took extra transport space like Jump Packers and Ogryns and stuff? Now each and every one of them must be written individually into every instance of the Transport rule for it to function. The writers thought themselves cheeky and limited the passengers by faction keyword, thus isolating each Codex and limiting the issue. Except there are unaligned Fortifications in the game that (still) have no such limit, so enjoy cramming Heavy Weapons Teams, Termies, Obliterators and all the other fuckhuge dudes into tiny bunkers. From which they can then shoot out. No, tying passenger size to a Size: X keyword was too clear-cut of a solution, why do you ask?
• Too Quick for my Gunz!: The flying, Titan-killing wedge of death that is the Tau Tigershark AX-1-0 had a hilariously obvious oversight when the rules were ported to the new edition. The flyers party piece - its two Heavy Railguns - had their stats brought into line with the new edition, including being classed as Macro weapons. At first glance it was appropriate - Macro weapons do additional damage to superheavy targets and structures. However: you must remain stationary to fire them. These were mounted on a Flyer. With a minimum movement and no hover capability... Thankfully the problem was obvious enough to be quickly FAQ'd.
• The Best of the Best: When Vigilus Defiant was released, it came with the Stratagem "Veteran Intercessors", which increased their attack characteristic by 1. Seems simple, so what went wrong? Well this was one of those Stratagems used before a battle begins, so there was no limit on how many times you could use it... or how many times you could use it on a single unit. GW eventually came out with a FAQ stating you could only use it once on each unit, so the days of seeing models go from 3 attacks each to 20+ are over.
• Zhufor the Scary: Zhufor the Impaler from the Chaos Space Marine range had an odd rule, in that when you took your Morale test near him you added 1 to the roll, making it easier to fail. The problem came about when he fought Daemons who had the Daemonic Icon rule, which caused them to regain models if they rolled a 1 for their Morale test. While they were in range of Zhufor this was impossible, so somehow this dude was so scary, literal Daemons would refuse to reinforce their brethren if it meant they had to fight him.
• Objective Unmanned: Buildings (and Fortifications) can control objectives in 8th. No further comment, just let that sink in.
• Mechanicus Understudy: The Mechanicus have a Stratagem called "Mechanicus Locum" that allows a character other than the Warlord to generate a Warlord trait. The problem is that, according to the FAQ, they're only considered the Warlord so they can use the trait they have, and it does not change which traits they can normally access. Since the traits they can normally access are none unless they're the Warlord, this Stratagem does nothing at all.
• Editorial oversight? Sounds like heresy: The Sisters of Battle 2019 codex states a Canoness can only take a rod of office if she takes a power sword and standard boltgun. The monopose Canoness miniature released the very same day in the box set is armed with a rod of office, a power sword... and a plasma pistol. Nobody checked if they were selling players illegal loadouts. This had to be fixed in an FAQ, the plasma pistol loadout is the legal one.

9th Edition

• "Look out!" "No, you look out!" The rules for Look out Sir! Were changed with the advent of 9th edition, here's the important bit: Models cannot target a unit that contains any Character models with a Wounds characteristic of 9 or less with a ranged weapon while that unit is within 3" of any other friendly Vehicle or Monster unit. you can probably see the issue, if two monster/vehicle characters with 9 wounds or less are near each other and they're not the closest unit, you cannot shoot either of them, regardless of how far the rest of their army is in relation to them. Fortunately this was FAQ'd out.
• "My armour is contempt, my shield is cheese." Another rule change that had some unintended consequences from the beginning of 9th edition. Stormshields were changed from giving the model a flat 3++ Invuln save to giving them a 4++ Invuln and adding +1 to their armour save value. This was most likely done to make the new Blade Guard unit more appealing compared to Terminators as they only had a 3+ save rather than a 2+ save, but this accidentally meant that models with a natural 2+ save with Storm Shields (Terminators and Custodian Guard) got an un-modifiable 2+ armour save (a 2++ Invuln). This was because how modifiers and armour piercing works in 8th and 9th as an armour piercing weapon would lower the armour save ROLL by its AP value; the roll, not the armour save itself. Since you can't lower a roll below 1, and the model had a 1+ Armour save, it would always pass its save unless it rolled a natural one 1 since those always fail. This wasn't just pulled out of some WAACfags ass either, Rend in AoS works the same way as AP in 8th and 9th and it was specified in an FAQ for AoS that if a unit got a 1+ armour save it ignored rend values and only rolls of natural 1 failed. To top it all off it was an armour save, so the tricks used to deal with Invuln saves like Death Hex and Null Zone didn't affect it so there was no way to get through apart from weight of fire and Mortal wounds. GW did pick up on this quite quickly however and FAQ'd Stormshields to add 1 to armour save rolls, not the armour save, ending the run of 2++ Terminators.
• "Oh this? I found it.": According to his new Legends profile, Malakim Phoros, the Lamenters Chapter Master, was given Lias Issodon's specialised stealth armour for some reason. GW got round to updating his legends profile and it was taken away from him again. One can just imagine a very angry Lias sneaking into Malakim's room and stealing his armour back. Although, considering it's Lamenters we're talking about, it's more likely the suit ended up in Malakim's closet by complete accident, he wasn't aware of it at all, and was still blamed and chastised for the unintended theft.
• Minions of spelling errors: In the Legends pdf, you can find the full rules for the Renegades and Heretics, aka the "human" army of Chaos. Like every army, they were given their own version of Objective Secured, but unfortunately the rule doesn't work because everyone in the army must have the keyword CHAOS AND RENEGADES. Literally nobody in the entire game has that keyword, and this particular army has the RENEGADES AND HERETICS keyword instead.
• Master of whatmancy?: As of the 2020 Dark Angels index, Ezekiel has the Master of Interromancy ability giving +1 to cast Interromancy powers. The problem is that the same index stated that everything in Dark Angels codex was unusable, including the Interromancy discipline.
• Demoted back to Reclusiarch: When Psychic Awakening: Faith and Fury, released during 8th Grimaldus was upgraded and made the Black Templars Master of Sanctity which gave him the <Master of Sanctity> keyword and access to special stratagems. With the 9th edition Black Templars index GW forgot they had promoted him and didn't give him the <Master of Sanctity> keyword again.
• Adeptus Mechanicus Party Pontoons: As of the release of the 9th Ad Mech Codex, the Skorpius Dunerider's Transport rule reads: "This model has a transport capacity of 12 Infantry or Forge-World Infantry models." Due to the presence of the lone "Infantry" keyword, this means that ANY unit with said keyword is eligible to ride. On top of this, the Dunerider lacks the usual Terminator/Jump Pack penalty, so it is possible to load the transport with multiple units of Space Marine Centurions, Bullgryn, Kataphrons, etc.
• Master of War with Clipped Wings: With the announcement of the 9E Eldar codex, a lot of people were reasonably excited when they saw that the new Autarch model was going to be far more customizable than the travesty 8E left us with, allowing not only new wargear but also new weapons that were all supposedly compatible with the old winged model. Even the codex cover proudly displayed a winged autarch firing a reaper cannon. Cue the codex dropping and the baffling statement that took away all of those custom options from the autarch if they chose to pick wings - They were stuck with the wings, mandiblasters, banshee blade and fusion pistol all as a package deal. A few weeks later GW themselves would realize how stupid this option was and released a free updated datasheet that included all the options, allowing the winged autarchs to pick whatever they wanted.
• Try Again. And Again. And Again. And Again... AKA Thermonuclear Frag Grenades: Try Again Bragg from Gaunt's squad has a special rule that lets him shoot again if his Autocannon gets no hits. Bragg can throw Frag Grenades in exchange for forfeiting Autocannon fire in that shooting phase. Except, not shooting the autocannon means he gets to throw a grenade as he got no Autocannon hits, and since he threw a grenade he got no autocannon hits and thus he gets to throw a grenade and so and so forth until anything from an entire mob of Ork Boyz up to Warlord Titans and Greater Daemons die to Bragg trying again and again and again and again...
  • I decided to do the math on how long this would take, just for shits and gigs. With void shields, we can effectively say that the Warlord has 144 wounds, at T9, with a 2+ save.
    • Frag Grenades: Each grenade would hit 1.16 times, wound 0.19 times, and be reduced to 0.032 after saves. That means it would take 4,500 frag grenades to kill a warlord titan, with 2 guaranteed dice rolls (amount of shots and hit rolls), as well as 2 rolls that are unlikely. For the sake of brevity, I've done this math with the assumption that each frag grenade would take 3 rolls, meaning there would be 13500 rolls made. If it takes 5 seconds to roll a D6, it would take around 18 hours and 45 minutes of rolling dice to blow up a Warlord Titan in this manner. This of course assumes your opponent doesn't forfeit given no matter how long you take, you'll eventually manage it and there's nothing he can do about it. Also that's about 450 kilograms of grenades, roughly a Grizzly Bear worth of hand grenade.
• The Armor of Slight Disapproval: In the new codex for Chaos Daemons, there is a khornate relic known as the Armor of Scorn which gives the bearer a 4+++ FNP to Mortal Wounds in the Psychic Phase and a +1 Save to any attacks that deal 1 damage. The problem is that daemons have a new form of save that cannot be modified for better or for worse. In other words: The +1 save you’d get from this relic doesn’t work.

10th Edition

• Primaris Boyz: While the fact that dying to their own Hazardous weapons lets Hellblasters shoot again on a 3+ is actually intended according to a designer's note, in true Geedubs fashion the designers haven't considered certain...other...rules interactions with Hellblasters. Specifically, this is the fact that the new Firing Deck X rule makes the transport fire the weapon in question and the Impulsor can carry Impulsors and has Firing Deck 6. So yes, your Hellblasters can nuke their own Trukk Impulsor and while it has 11 wounds and takes 3 from each failed Hazardous roll, if your opponent was smart they were probably already focus firing it and you'll only need 1 or 2 failed rolls to blow it up and force those 5 Hellblasters to disembark and roll a d6, on a 1 they die and get to shoot again on a 3+. But the cheddar topping on the dish is that, legally, the Hellblasters are now on the table in the shooting phase, so the survivors may all shoot again as usual (while a unit may not shoot twice, the Impulsor was the one that shot the guns the first time, not the Hellblasters). And, of course, any that die to Hazardous from doing so can shoot for a third time on a 3+. Truly, Rowboat has shown himself the true master of all forms of combat by incorporating these Ork-tier tactics into Primaris doctrine.
• The Entire Adeptus Mechanicus index: While every one took, to varying degrees, a wack with nerf bat this edition, the admech were less hit with it then stabbed 11 times on the ides of March. Honestly this might even be intentional after how monstrous the 9e codex release was but it's bad.

Horus Heresy

Models by Forge World, rules by Forge World.

• Ceremonial Daggers: In Forgeworld's Horus Heresy series, the vast majority of Horus Heresy Custodes came equipped with Misericordias, daggers that had use in the 40k incarnation of the Custodes. It didn't take long for people to notice that they had no rules at all in the Horus Heresy book, and given how different the rules were already for the two incarnations people were iffy on whether or not they should use the daggers as they are in the 40k book, or just as another close combat weapon. An entire year would go by before Forgeworld finally released a FAQ, where it was revealed that this whole time the daggers were just meant to be badges of office, had no effect whatsoever in game and were included in their wargear by mistake.
• You can't have these guns: Like many of the entries for Imperial Militia and Warp Cults, things are rather screwy. Grenadiers, in this case, may replace their lascarbines for a plethora of weaponry. The problem? They don't come with Lascarbines.
• Herald of Schizophrenia: The Herald upgrade for the Legion Consul has both Rite of Command and Support Officer. Which means that, if you take him, you get to use a Rite of War. Support Officer means that the model in question CANNOT be a compulsory HQ. What's the issue then? A model with Rite of Command HAS to be the army Warlord.
• Magnus Did Nothing Wrong: Despite the standard for Independent Characters to be divided into Loyalist and Traitor allegiances based on their fluff, Forge World forgot to do this for both Magnus and Leman Russ, allowing the latter to display his Khornate tendencies by allying with Horus and the former to truly do nothing wrong. (Tabletop Dornian Heresy, you say?)
• Closet Loyalist Possessed: In true Alpha Legion fashion, the XX Legion can choose to take one unique unit from any other Astartes legion. Despite Forge World ensuring you can't do the above by taking Special Characters as opposite faction Alpha Legion, they failed to also limit Gal Vorbak (Word Bearers unique Possessed) to Traitor Alpha Legion only. So yes, your Custodes can fight alongside the Neverborn.

This problem got more complicated in book 6. So long as you use the Rite of War: Orphans of Betrayal, your Word Bearers can turn their backs on the traitors and fight as if they were Loyalists (although it doesn't technically change their allegiance, so you're still technically Traitors). The book does try to take care of the obvious problem by saying you cannot take "traitors only" units, but none of the Word Bearers (including Erebus) are marked as traitor only units since the traitors only part was written to apply to the Legion itself and this RoW specifically bypasses that. As of book 8 this might have been intentional, or at least worked into the regular rules since Forge World have addressed the fact that Daemons can be given the Loyalist allegiance and fight along Custodes, and have allowed it into the game (representing radicals who choose to use the essence of the warp against itself). So long as you don't use unique characters you could have a case for this being almost lore-friendly, it's not like Loyalists in the Imperium didn't start using their own possessed anyway, and you could also use it to represent Chaos infighting.

• Not-so-ancient Relic: When the rules for an Iron Warriors character named Kyr Vhalen released, they stated he had a relic blade, despite this being the Horus Heresy and these blades wouldn't be considered relics for thousands of years. To make matters worse, 30k does not include rules for Relic Blades, and you cannot assume them to be the same as their 40k variant for the same reason as the Misericordia above. Eventually this turned out to be a misprint and he was given the Paragon Blade he was supposed to have the whole time.
• F in Engineering: Kyr Vhalen again. He is a Warsmith, and naturally like all Warsmiths he has a servo-arm, so what's the issue? Well when you buy a servo-arm you also get Battlesmith, the rule that allows you to repair shit. Unfortunately Vhalen does not have this rule, despite it being a paired upgrade, and it was never given to him (or even mentioned that he shouldn't have it) in a FAQ. He can still use it to hit people, but he can never use it for its designed purpose. No wonder Perturabo left him to guard some world nobody ever heard of or cared about.
• Unwieldy and Cumbersome Proofreading: When Eidolon was first given rules, it was stated that he had the ability to lose the Cumbersome rule from his Thunder Hammer in the turn he charged. The problem? Thunder Hammers don't have the Cumbersome rule. It took some time but eventually this was fixed to have him lose the Unwieldy rule instead.
• In the Company of Monsters: Back when the Mechanicum were first given rules, they had characters without the Independent Character rule, and this created an odd interaction with the squads of monstrous creatures the Mechanicum could field. RAW you attached a character to a squad who they would stay with and could never leave unless they had the Independent Character rule, and Independent Characters could never join squads of Monstrous Creatures. However, for those characters without IC, there was technically nothing stopping you from joining them to those squads, even though they clearly weren't supposed to be with them. This was such a confusing issue that when FW was emailed about it the answer was effectively "Fuck if we know, just do what feels right." It wasn't until the Mechanicum were given their own book that this issue was finally cleared up.
• Build a Land Raider: Again this happened back when the Mechanicum were first given rules. One of their unit choices was a Land Raider with every aspect of it being completely customizable, allowing you to go full heretek and make some variants that did not exist and/or never had STC's for their manufacture. Apparently even FW thought this was a little too far and removed them completely from the Mechanicum list later on.
• Guidance is for the weak! All drop pods in the game have a special rule called 'Inertial Guidance System,' except for the Dreadclaw. Even though the rule is described in the fluff panel regarding the Dreadclaw.
• Virtue of Time to Call a Judge-ment: The Blood Angels unique Moritat character Aster Crohne is clearly intended to allow Destroyers and Angel's Tears to gain buffs against certain units. However, this is the exact wording of the rule: Whenever Crohne or a Destroyers or Angel's Tears unit is used to make a Shooting attack against a unit marked with the Angel's Wrath, his hand flamer attacks are made with the Shred and Rending special rules. See a problem with that? Forge World clearly didn't.
• Hive World Biker Gangs: One of the Rites of War for the generic Space Marine list is designed for Zone Mortalis games, with certain benefits but also restrictions such as the inability to have vehicles or large squads. It lacks a restriction on taking bikers, though.
• Turn up the Heat: When the Blood Angels were first given rules, they were allowed to take hand flamers on characters. Seems fair enough, until you realize these could also be given to Moritats, the guys who keep firing until they miss. Since this was before they could only hit up to 12 times this meant that anyone within range of a Moritat with hand flamers would be hit an infinite amount of times. The only way to prevent yourself from dying was either to be a vehicle, or have a Toughness greater than 6, so even the less tough Primarchs would suddenly evaporate before these roaming bubbles of flaming death. Eventually Forge World changed it so that you cannot use the Moritat's Chain Fire rule on Hand Flamers, since auto-hitting a unit 12 times with a template weapon would also have been pretty bullshit.
• What You See Is Not What You Get: A minor one this time, but Forge World released a model for a Night Lords Praetor in Tartaros Armour. He's described as carrying a Chainglaive and a Volkite Serpenta. There's a slight problem however: models in Terminator Armour don't have access to Volkite Serpentas.
• Slow and Not So Purposeful: Inner Circle Knights Cenobium have guns that gain a bonus in Overwatch. Yet they wear Cataphractii Terminator Armour, which means they can't actually ever use that bonus. Their datasheet was later updated to state that the Knights Cenobium are skilled enough to make Overwatch attacks despite wearing Cataphractii Terminator Armour.
• Nothing new followed with Them: The Word Bearer's trademark Rite of War "The Dark Brethren" allows them to take an allied detachment of Daemons to represent their Chaos speciality. Thing is, after the Release of Demons of the Ruinstorm in Book 8, Daemons are Sworn Brothers with all traitors now that they're "Agents of the Warmaster", thus making the entire RoW redundant. The only advantage this RoW (meant to be a stopgag measure until Ruinstorm was released) now gives you is exploiting a loophole that allows demons to use your transports and reserve roll modifiers, which in turn contradicts the Ruinstorm Demon rules. This redundancy/contradiction also plagues all three of their diabolist special characters, who have a rule allowing to ally demons if chosen as the Warlord.
• Frag Assault Tank: In a grand example of Forge World's dedication to proof reading their books, the Malcador Heavy Tank can take Frag Assault Launchers, which allow units disembarking from the vehicle to gain Assault Grenades when they charge. Can you guess the issue? The Malcador Heavy Tank isn't a transport and never has been.
• Medusan Impracticals: Yet another example of proof reading. Medusan Immortals can take chainswords instead of their bolters, yet these do nothing as they can gain no extra attack benefit from close combat weapons due to being armed with breacher shields as well.
• Signs and Proofreading: The Horus Heresy is rife with spelling errors and misattributed rules, but no book is as bad as Book 7: Inferno. This was a book so terribly written that to go over all of its various mistakes would double the size of this page, so we'll keep it short. Suffice to say it was so egregious that they needed to release an entirely separate FAQ for the Custodes, renaming their gear and reprinting whole units so that they used weapons that actually existed (instead of gibberish or portmanteaus), before throwing up their hands and redoing them in the next book. This also affected the Thousand Sons in a few ways as well, such as allowing Sekhmet Terminators to swap their Force Weapon for a Power Fist with an attached Power Fist. Yes, this would've let them get the +1 Attack bonus and they would also retain their combi-weapon. Perhaps this is just a third arm granted through the Flesh Change, but that doesn't explain why they share a rule with the Word Bearers: Signs and Portents. The Word Bearers use it to get Preferred Enemy, either for or against one of their units (it's a coin flip) while for the Thousand Sons it causes everyone in the army to take a Pinning test any time anyone suffers Perils of the Warp. In all honesty it's likely Forge World didn't even bother checking to see if their chosen rule name was already being used by another faction.
• Understaffed Tour Bus: RAW a Dreadwing Interemptors squad of 10 can have a Land Raider Proteus as a Dedicated Transport, however the squad starts at five, and the DT option lacks the "10 or fewer" clause every other unit in the game has for their DT. This also means that if the squad has one more or one less Marine in it, they cannot take a Dedicated Transport outside of a Rite of War. They can however take the Land Raider if it has an Explorator Augury Web if they number 10 models, even though that lowers it to a Transport Capacity of eight, they just can't fit in the vehicle meant to transport them.
• Who Are We Forgetting?: The Dark Angels are unable to plan a holiday without leaving something important at home: Deathwing Terminator Companions can take a Land Raider Proteus so long as they do not number more than five. While this sounds reasonable for Terminator squads, Forgeworld forgot that Deathwing Companions can ONLY be deployed with their attached character who cannot leave them during the game, meaning that those Bulky Terminators don't leave enough room in the bus for the guy they need to protect! This wasn't an oversight either as Terminator Companions got their own Dedicated Transport option separately from the Artificer Companions.
• We Forgot Our Shields, Sir: In the fluff, the Stormwing is a boarding focused detachment that uses Breacher and Retaliator Squads (Assault Squads with Combat Shields instead of Jump Packs). Take a guess what they lack access to in their Rite of War? To add further salt into the injury, the Stormwing has been retconned into a no-speciality wing that forces you to take more combined Assault/Tactical than the total of all other units, meaing you can only choose 5 non-troop units (one of which must be the Praetor you took to get the Rite), and that is assuming you filled all 6 troop slots in the first place.
• Luther's Master Plan: Every unique Dark Angels Rite of War includes a provision that "No unit from the Detachment may be joined by Independent Characters not part of the Detachment" but ALSO includes the provision of No allied detachments, practically rendering itself redundant. Even though you can't take allies, you can still have Agents of the Emperor like Knights-Errant inside your detachment without restriction, or take a Shattered Legion list and go nuts with non-Dark Angels characters/units joining each other and vice versa. However, RAW, Lords of War are counted as their own detachment separate from the Primary Detachment, so poor old Lion cannot join any unit in his army if they are using a Dark Angels Rite of War.
• You must be this Tal to ride: Forgeworld did their bit for fans of The First Heretic by releasing a model of everyone's favourite posessed, Argel Tal. Many players' first thought was to include him in a Word Bearers army using the Last of the Serrated Sun Rite of War since he is literally the "Commander of the Serrated Sun". This Rite forces all infantry units to ride in a transport or teleport in, no biggie. Unfortunately Argel Tal was given the type jump infantry on account of his y'know... wings. Since jump infantry can't ride in any transport besides thunderhawks and stormbirds, unless you're fielding a super heavy flyer that 95% of the playerbase don't own, Argel Tal isn't a legal choice for such an army. It seems Forgeworld's rules writers were about as aware of the "no jump infantry in drop pods/storm eagles/land raiders" rules as most Heresy players. This might have something to do with it making no sense.

Horus Heresy 2.0

While the rules are officially written by Games Workshop proper now, this doesn't seem to have helped much.

• What's a "Deep Strike"?: The Kharybdis Assault claw comes with an Internal Guidance System, which helps during Deep Strike Assaults to stop it from scattering into terrain and keep it on course during the drop. The problem? The Kharybdis doesn't have Deep Strike. The Errata eventually fixed that, but this is an embarrassing rule to omit.
• Epic 2.0: A casualty of the Legacies PDF hastily (read: god awful) written rules is the Stormsword, which seems to have returned to Epic by mounting a Hellhammer Cannon again. While this could be explained away by the fact that the Stormsword in the fluff did mount one before being upgraded in later patterns, given the PDF authors seeming to have given absolutely zero shits it's probably too generous to give them a pass here. Regardless, this doesn't explain the fact that the model you're meant to use very obviously has Stormsword Cannon and not a Hellhammer Cannon anyway.
• Half power to weapons: Yet another casualty of the Legacies PDF, the Tarantula Sentry battery comes armed with two Heavy Bolters, which can be swapped out for two Lascannons. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact the model is counted as an Infantry unit and lacks the Firing Protocol rule, which means they can only fire one of their heavy bolters or Lascannons in each shooting phase.
  • Adding to the hilarity, they did eventually update the Legacies PDF so that the Legion Tarantulas got Firing Protocols (2)...only to forget that same rule for the Legacies PDF for the Mechanicum AND in the Liber Imperium. Some idiots just never learn...
• Half power to weapons...again: Much as seems to have happened with the Tarantula, the writers of the Legacies PDF forgot they weren't writing 9th Edition rules when giving the Malcador its weapons. While it starts with a Battle Cannon, it can swap it for two Lascannons instead of the Twin-Linked Lascannon that actually occupies the turret on the model. The fact the Malcador is a vehicle does mean it can fire both of these...except when moving at Cruising Speed because that apparently causes the Machine Spirit of one of the two Lascannons to throw a tantrum and refuse to fire anything other than Snap Shots until the crew slows down again.
  • It seems that the Legacies file got updated enough that the two lascannons got replaced with just a Gravis Lascannon. At least this time it actually shoots twice without panicking because of movement speed...
• One of these things is not like the others...: For some ungodly reason, the fucking Hammerfall Bunker was given rules in the Legacies PDF. Yes, the Primaris bunker that isn't actually a bunker and is just a shittier Deathstorm Drop Pod was given Horus Heresy rules. That should speak for itself on the supposed quality of the PDF.
• Only one hand of iron: The Medusan Immortals Squad of the Iron Hands are not a particularly good unit this edition. However, the guy who wrote their melee option should expiate his sins. The squad can swap their Bolters for Chainswords, but since they also have Boarding Shields, they cannot claim the bonus for two weapons, so merely gain Shred melee attacks. They also have the option for Bayonets, which they are not allowed to use, because models with Boarding Shields cannot make attacks with Two-Handed weapons...
• Unidentified Flying Marauder: in YET ANOTHER cock up in the Legacies pdf, you'd have thought that whoever wrote it would at LEAST have looked at the models they were making up rules for. But no. the rules for the Marauder Bomber have it equipped with Twin-Linked Autocannons in the nose. However the model that Forgeworld used to sell only ever had Lascannons in the nose slot. Effectively rendering anyone who ever bought that expensive resin model now has an invalid loadout.
• "Flanking"? Never heard of that: Thanks to one of his rules, "Lightning from Blue Skies", Jaghatai Khan and the unit he has joined do not need a Reserves roll to be brought into play from Reserves. It is also said that if he is part of a Flanking Assault, then this rule applied to all units that are part of that Assault. The problem? He cannot be part of a Flanking Assault.
• Too Spiteful to Excel: Perturabo came with the "Firing Protocols (2)" rule, which lets him shoot two separate guns each turn regardless of any restrictions otherwise. Seeing as his super-suit the Logos only came with one gun, this left him with the option of either shooting the Logos a second time (which was a bit hazy as to whether that was actually supposed to work) or use one of those turns of shooting to fix a tank - Which made him really handy for supporting a bunch of siege engines, even if he couldn't also fix his Iron Circle. Come an FAQ and the rule got errata'd out, removing that bit of utility from him and forcing him to either shoot once or focus his shooting phase on fixing a tank.
• Luther's Back-up Plan: While Luther's master plan above was defeated by the 2nd Edition...it was replaced by the fact that Cataphractii and Tartaros Deathwing Companions (which, surprise surprise, were in the Legacies PDF) can only be selected for a Master of the Legion with the same type of armour. As the Lion doesn't wear either type, they can't be chosen for him, so he has to slog it with the regular Artificer variant.
• Forbidden-er Archeo-tech: Anacharis Scoria is absolutely decked out in wargear, befitting for the guy who founded the Dark Mechanicum. He comes with a "Machina Protectiva", a piece of wargear so rare and secretive that it doesn't have rules. This was later FAQ'ed to be "Mechanicum Protectiva" which does have rules.
• Redundant Protocols: Scoria again. He is equipped with 2 Archeo-tech Pistols and a Photon Thruster, and to help fire all of them he has Firing Protocols (3). The problem is that Scoria has the Monstrous Sub-type, meaning he could already fire all his guns without the Firing Protocols rule.