Ten Issues with 40K Rules
Like all of you, I have problems with the rules. Since we’re gearing up for BoLSCon, having problems takes on a whole different character – I have to figure out how we’ll deal with these things. Here are 10 issues that I struggle with, in no particular order:
1) How does the Doom of Malan’Tai interact with units in vehicles? On the pro side, it seems clear that the basic rulebook RaW lines up with the Doom hitting things in vehicles. On the anti side, the Parasite explains how it interacts with units in vehicles; if the Doom was supposed to, why don’t we have an explanation of how? For now, the INAT answer of “The Doom affects units in vehicles, but they get a 4+ cover save” seems about as good a compromise as Solomon would have come up with (and it’s almost certainly not “right,” but it’s as good as we can get on our own, I think.
2) An Imperial Guard Command Squad in a Chimera kills 2 members of their own Squad with Plasma overheats. Do they take a morale check? And if they fail, what happens? It seems to me that they would have to take the check – nothing in the rules says otherwise. But I see no guidance as to what they do if they fail the check.
3) A unit embarks into a transport, then enters via Reserve. Which enters the game – the unit, the transport, or both? There are implications, most notably in the Imperial Guard and Blood Angels books if the unit is somehow part of the Reserve roll. I think for simplicity’s sake that the best answer is the vehicle is rolled for, just use whatever rules govern the vehicle, but there is too much room in the RaW for my comfort.
4) Can we please have consistent language for all insta-killing options? Eternal Warrior getting sniped by Jaws of the World Wolf is nuts, and there are other crazy things like Gift of Chaos and Inquisitorial Force Weapons that make me a little crazy.
5) Some effects remove models from play; other effects come into play if the model “dies”. How do the special abilities of Celestine and Yarrick interact with things that don’t “kill” them, but really do “kill them”? I’m thinking of the Squig that dies and comes back as Celestine – or does she lose the ability once Squigged? Or would she come back as a Squig? Similarly, is Yarrick still Iron-Willed as a Chaos Spawn? Or would he get knocked down and shake out of his Spawning? And suppose that the Chaos player has no Spawn model to turn Yarrick into – is he just dead for purposes of his rule?
6) In the Assault Phase, I can ignore the 1” Rule. If I end up with models within 1” of your unit, somehow, what happens in your following Movement Phase, since you can never move to within 1” of my models? There are a lot of little exploity things that can be done with the interaction of ignoring the distance in the Assault Phase and there not being a requirement to end up more than 1” from a unit not engaged in the combat.
7) Can we please have a picture of a Stormraven? Pretty please? Most of the scratch builds I have seen seem reasonable, but only most of them.
8) When defenders react in Assault, Independent Characters have to move first. If the Independent Character cannot react (for example, it is ringed after a Deep Strike entry) does it try to move into base contact after each model moves or does it only try to move into base contact before any other models move? This matters because some models (Lord Commissars, for example) would really like to be stuck not in combat some times, so there are exploitive ways of consolidating and deploying that are available to beardy players.
9) A unit with two attached Independent Characters loses combat by 5, and is subject to No Retreat! Wounds. If the unit was wiped out and neither of the Independent Characters was in base contact, do they take wounds or not? This is an extreme example, but I’ve actually had this come up a few times. Technically the unit is destroyed and no models that are left were engaged in the combat.
10) When a vehicle moves Flat Out and Rams another vehicle and destroys itself in the process, what happens to the passengers of the vehicle? They cannot disembark voluntarily. One reading of this would call them dead, another allows me to get out of a Trukk that rammed 18”, careened another 12”, and assault. I’m not sure I like either one.
~So there is some insight into the questions that drive me a bit crazy. Since I’m in the middle of sorting these out for BoLSCon, I’d love to hear your thoughts on these and any other thorny questions that leave you scratching your head as well.
