Today, I'll be going over some of the basic rules, and flow of the game. I had mentioned last week that I was going to be doing an "After action report" however the game I was scheduled to play never happened, so I don't have anything to go off of. I SHOULD get a game in this coming weekend, which will allow me to have a report NEXT week. Plus, this week gives me the chance to explain some basics of the game so that for the coming after action report, things will make a bit more sense!
So without further ado, lets get into it!
Warhammer 40k (and most table top war games), use three main components, rulers/tape measures, dice, and miniatures.
As for the basic flow of the game, there are five phases in Warhmmer 40k, Movement, Psychic, Shooting, Combat, Moral, but you can really break it down into the main three (Movement, Shooting, Combat). Additionally, 40k exclusively uses six sided dice (see above picture), though the game sometimes calls for a "D3" or "three sided die" which as I'm sure most of you know, doesn't exist. So what you do for a "three sided die" is simply roll a six sided die, and divide the result by two (or easier to remember, a 1-2 = a 1, 3-4 = 2, 5-6 = 3).
Now the main other thing I'll mention here before diving into the more specifics, is that all ranges and everything are measured in inches. For those who do not commonly use imperial units, one inch = 25mm (technically it's something like 25.4mm, but details).
One final thing I almost forgot, a very common terminology in 40k (and war gaming in general), is saying something needs a "*number* Up". For example, in 40k with six sided dice, you would say I need a 4+ (or four up), to do X Y or Z, so when you roll the dice, you only count the 4's, 5's, and 6's as successes.
Movement:
This one is pretty straight forward, you get to move all your guys! Now while it is simple, this is one of the most important phases from a tactics stand point, since positioning is a pretty big deal. Plus, a lot of units will have the difficult choice of either moving and limiting their firepower in the shooting phase, or not moving and having their full potential in the shooting phase. I won't go into to much detail about the specific rules and interactions of the movement phase, besides explaining "Advancing". So when you move a unit, you can choose to declare it will "Advance" in which case you roll a die, and add the result to the units movement.
Psychic
Next up is the psychic phase! Aaaaaannnnnndddd I'll be skipping that today!
Ok, maybe not completely skipping it, but I won't be using it in my up coming game (and neither will my opponent), so it's not that important. Just so everyone knows WHAT it is though, it's where psykers (space wizards) get to use their psychic abilities (space magic).
Shooting:
This is THE main phase of the game in the current edition. This is where armies live or die (mostly die). As you would assume, in this phase, all of your units that have guns (or some space-fantasy equivalent), gets to shoot, as long as they haven't, A) done something in the movement phase that prevents them from shooting, B) are currently engaged in close combat, or C) don't have line of sight to anything. That's right, Warhammer 40k uses a rule known as "True line of sight" meaning if you look from your miniatures perspective and if they can't see an enemy, they cant shoot at that enemy! There are a few exceptions (which is normal in 40k, you'll have a rule and then every so often something somewhere gets to break that rule), mostly special weapons that are "guided" or artillery that can just shoot over terrain etc.
Now I want to go over the basics of combat, not the combat phase, but more generally how units attack and kill each other (the same basic formula applies for both shooting and close combat).
First off you choose which unit is doing the attacking, and which enemy unit will be on the receiving end. Then you roll to hit, by taking a number of dice equal to the weapon or models attacks (range weapons in the shooting phase have specified numbers of attacks, while in close combat you use the actual models number of attacks). Then you roll your dice, and separate them into "hits" and "misses". Then you roll again to "wound" the target, and lastly the target may get to make a "saving throw" which is normally an "armor save".
Combat:
For the combat phase, you start off by declaring any charges. You pick a unit, say it wants to charge an enemy unit, and then roll two dice. If the number you rolled is equal to or greater then the distance between the closest model in your unit to the closest model in the unit they are charging, you successfully charge! You move your models into melee range and then move on to the next charging unit. Once you've made (or failed) all your charges, you start the fighting! Units that charged into combat always attack first, then the unit they charged gets to attack back (assuming there's anything left...). Once that's done, all other units that were already engaged in close combat get to fight each other.
Now like I already mentioned, the formula for combat is the same here as in the shooting phase, you roll to hit, roll to wound, then the opponent rolls their armor saves, then you apply the damage. In regards to damage, some weapons (usually anti monster/tank weapons), can do more then just one damage for every shot they have. This is represented by rolling a dice and doing damage equal to the result (this doesn't matter against most infantry that only have a single hit point, but most monsters and tanks have lots of hit points).
As a demonstration, this Lord Commissar will fight these three guardsmen in close combat:
The Commissar has three attacks, so he rolls. He's a very skilled model so he'll be hitting on a 2+, so he'd have to roll a 1 to miss.
And look at that he does!
Once you've rolled to hit, you then roll to wound. This time you compare the strength of the attacks (ranged weapons have their own strength, close combat you use the attacking models strength), to the targets toughness. Now continuing on with our above example, our Commissar is strength three, and the guardsmen are all toughness three (in 40k the standard for regular humans is strength 3, toughness 3). In this event, the Commissar needed 4+ to wound.
With a wound made, the opponent would now roll their "Armor saves", which for guardsmen is a 5+, so then the guardsmen would roll, and if they got a 5 or 6, that wound would be negated. However, in this case, the Commissar has a special melee weapon that negates the guardsmen's armor, so the guardsman just takes the damage, and since he only has one hit point, he'll be killed!
Lastly, we have the morale phase! It's pretty straight forward. You figure out which of your units (and the opponents units) have taken causalities. You then roll a die and add the result to the number of causalities taken that turn. If the result is higher then the units leadership, that unit loses additional models equal to the difference. For example, my guardsmen have a leadership of seven (while their sergeant is alive anyway), so if a squad of ten guys took three causalities in a turn, they would roll a die and add three to it. Say I rolled a four, four plus three equals seven, which is what the squads leadership is, so they are fine. But if I rolled a five, well fire plus three equals eight, so I would lose one more guy to morale (the idea is the soldiers are running away, not that they just up and die cause they got so scared. Then again that would also kind of make sense in some situations...). Either way, morale is pretty straight forward, and is something that my army can have issues with, though I do have a lot of ways to lessen the effects.
So, I hope that gives everyone a basic understanding of the flow of the game! Check back next week for (hopefully) and after action report!
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