Warhammer 40K: Five Crazy Things The Rules Let You Do In 10th Edition

Take a look at some absolutely crazy things the rules let you do in Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition.

10th Edition is well and truly here.  Right now people are out there playing and having fun with the game. However, it’s not perfect, nothing is. The game has some issues. Luckily GW is working to patch them, we’ve gotten one FAQ this week and will get another by the end of the month. Because of that, I wanted to take a look at some crazy and weird things the rules let you do right now. Maybe these need to be FAQ’d, or clarified, or maybe they are just fine. Anyway, fasten your seatbelts fellow denizens of the grimdark, and let’s take a look.

Hellblasters Can Shoot HOW Many Times!

Let’s start off with Hellblasters.  Start off with them in an  Impulsor.  In your shooting phase you use the Firing Deck rule to shoot the Hellblasters out of the back of the tank. However, the tank will have to take a hazardous test if you overcharged.  Now let’s say this test fails and kills the tank forcing them to disembark.  Now because technically it was the Impulsor that shot, the Hellblasters are still eligible to shoot. Meaning you can fire with them once again!  

Then we get to For the Chapter! If, on this second time firing the unit any fail hazardous tests, they have the chance of shooting again. This gives you to option to fire up to three times with each model in the unit in one phase. Pretty spicy!

It also works on the enemy’s turn. If you can find a way to allow the unit to Fire Overwatch (remember, units forced to disembark are battle-shocked and normally can’t be targeted by stratagems), you could shoot again. Then any models that die from hazardous can potentially shoot – at full BS since they are no longer firing overwatch. In addition, any models killed by shooting or in close combat (you have plasma pistols, right?) they have a chance at shooting. If you have Guilliman around and the right combo, you might even be able to overwatch twice. Maybe. It depends on some rulings.

In total, that means with the right set up, each model in a Hellblaster units have the potential to shoot five times in one round (once from the Impulsor, once after getting kicked out, potentially two overwatches, and once on death.). Of course it’s unlikely, but still theoretically a lot of shooting!

World Eater Hellbrutes Fight For Alpha-Dominance

World Eater Hellbrutes have a rule called Frenzy. It is shared by a few other units in the game, mostly angry Dreadnought units. In effect, every time you attack this model, with shooting or melee, it can attack you back. This can let you make a lot of attacks if the enemy keeps hitting you without killing you. But what happens if two World Eater Hellbrutes (or other units with this rule) fight? Well, unless one player chooses to stop (the utter coward) they will fight infinite times immediately until one is dead. Honestly, I kind of love this. It feels right that if two super angry dreadnoughts get into a fight, that they would fight until ones dies – like Siamese fighting Fish!

Hell Let Loose

So amusingly, this interaction also works between Hellblasters and World Eater Hellbrute.  The Hellblasters can shoot the Hellbrute. Then the Hellbrute can shoot back, then any dead Hellblasters can shoot back, which once again should trigger the Hellbrute, and so on. Now it’s possible this doesn’t work, because the Hellbrute Frenzy is triggered by a unit targeting them and the Hellblaster rule allows models to shoot. However, I think it does work – and it’s hilarious!

The Wrong One Dies

This is kind of an odd one, and might be considered an exploit. No matter what type of hazardous weapons are fired by a unit you roll one dice for each hazardous weapon and pick who fails any test. This means for instance if you hide a Primaris Psyker and have them join a Death Krops of Krieg unit you can use their psychic attack as its focused witchfire version, which is hazardous, and also fire some plasmas guns and pistols on overcharge. Then if you fail any hazardous tests you can just kill off the guardsmen, making the Primaris Psyker pretty much immune to killing himself. It’s even better using Krieg, as you can use your med pack to just bring the plasma gunners back.

Just Ignore Battleshock

Here’s another kind of interesting interaction. One of the big things that being battleshocked does is reduce your OC to 0. In fact, in many cases this might be the only thing it does, if the enemy isn’t playing an army that benefits from you being battleshocked and you aren’t planning on using a stratagem on the unit. However, it can actually be fairly easy to mostly ignore this. This is because of how modifiers work. Per the rules, the first thing you do when battleshocked is set your OC to 0. Then you add any modifiers.

So if a unit has one of the banner bearer units that a lot of armies have, you get to sit at OC 1, which might be your default anyway. Guard infantry with a banner and under the right order get to sit at OC 2 even when battleshocked! Playing and building your army right thus can kind of let you ignore one of the big downsides of battleshock.

Let us know what weird things you’ve found in 10th Edition, down in the comments! 

Author: Abe Apfel

Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers 40K tactics and lore, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe remains in mourning over the loss of WFB to this day.