How to play WARHAMMER 40K

whether you've just discovered Warhammer 40K or played a previous version we're going to help you quickly get a hang of the 10th edition of arguably the most popular tabletop miniature game in the world you're watching midwinter minis my name's Guy and in this video we're going to teach you the basics of playing 40K rather than just show you all of the random rules and explain their effect we're going to play a little demo game and show you how the game actually works and explain things as and when the rules become relevant also if you just want to check out a specific rule or game mechanic there'll be a list of chapters in the video description in this demo game I'll be commanding a small army of chaos Space Marines incredibly powerful Genetically Enhanced Warriors who have fallen to The Lure of the warp they're strong tough and decent combatants both up close and at range facing off against me will be my good friend ant hi everyone for this game I'm going to be using my favorite Army the tyranids think of the Xenomorphs from Aliens but absolutely jacked up on steroids they're fast Ultra vicious and have loads of awesome monsters to choose from the chaos Space Marines and the tyranids are just two of the armies you'll find in Warhammer 40K there's dozens of others from Super high-tech aliens to regular human infantry giant war machines the size of buildings to Nuns with guns powered armored space monks to whatever the heck this is 40k is got it all if you're brand new to the Hobby and are wondering what to choose I would recommend going for what we call the rule of cool if you think it's awesome chances are you'll probably have loads of fun building and painting them and you'll be inspired to play some games a big misconception about Warhammer is that you need to have a huge army with hundreds of models to play your first game and you might get to that stage soon enough but it's much better to start out with just one or two boxes of models this will help you get your head around the rules and stats bit by bit without biting off more than you can chew right at the start as you get more experience you can start adding things at a pace that you feel comfortable with because of this we're going to ignore the rules for mustering your army and building what's called a list for now for a starter Army it's hard to go wrong with a squad of basic models from that Army and a character that can act as their leader but honestly for your first game choose whatever you like the look of aside from the models there's a couple of other things you'll need to play your first game you'll need a few six-sided dice a measuring tape that shows inches a surface to play on a dining table is perfect and some stuff to use as your in-game terrain to give your model some cover and maybe block line of sight this can obviously be proper kits you've bought like this or stuff you've made yourself like these if you want to get started right now though you can use any old stuff you have lying around books boxes and Bottles make great starter terrain a bit of imagination can go a long way let's take a closer look at the armies we chose for this demo game shall we this is my small chaos Space Marine War band leading them is the master of possession a warp infused chaotic superhuman encased in ancient power armor and bristling with psychic energy under his command are five chaos Space Marine legionaries massive powerful heavily armored super soldiers equipped with bul guns and bolt pistols brutal anti-infantry weapons that fire Explosive Rounds the champion of the squad has a Plasma Pistol and an accursed weapon plasma weapons are much stronger than bolt guns and are perfect for taking on more heavily armored targets but they're a little bit more dangerous for the person who fires them too also joining the fry is a mob of 10 chaos cultists these are basically just humans armed with weapons and armor that we'd be familiar with today so should give you a good idea of how 21st century armies might fare in the Grim darkness of the 41st millennium this gnarly cultist Champion has a bolt pistol and a brutal assault weapon four have Auto pistols and brutal assault weapons so they're mostly focused on close- Range fighting and there's four models with cultist Firearms longer range weapons and because there's a unit of 10 one is allowed to have a special weapon and because they'll be facing swarms of horrible little space bugs I've gone for a flamer I've also chosen to give all of them the keyword chaos undivided which will make their attacks a bit more potent when I choose to activate their army ability none of that is going to matter though because this lot are going to get eaten alive say hello to my little tyranid swarm keeping things simple I'm going to be using just two types of model first the leader the tyranid winged Hive Tyrant she is one hungry girl and she's got a taste for chaos Space Marines she's incredibly tough strong and a fierce combatant she's carrying a monstrous bone sword and A Lash whip to mince things up in melee following her into battle at 20 mindless space bugs called ter against and they're equipped with horrible little guns called flesh borers they're not strong they're not tough but there are bloody load of them so like guy has chosen I've chosen a separate keyword and I've got endless swarm what this allows me to do in my command phase is actually to bring back some of those termagants that I've potentially lost throughout the battle nice now all of these models have statistics that tell you what they're able to do in the game and they're found in things called data sheets yeah I know this can look a bit confusing if you're not used to tabletop war games yet but it's honestly pretty simple let's start from the top comparing the chaos cultists for example with the tyranid winged Hive Tyrant m stands for movement this is how far these models can move measured in inches the cultists have a movement of 6 Ines which is standard for humans in the game the tyrant's massive winged agile body lets it move 12 in t stands for toughness which is used to determine how easily models get wounded the cultists and most humans in the game have a toughness of three the Tyrant has a toughness of nine so is much much harder to hurt SV stands for Save the defensive quality of the model's armor the number shows what you have to roll on a single dice to save any incoming wounds now the cultist flimsy armor will only save them on rolls of a six or higher but the impenetrable kiten of the Tyrant will deflect any wounds on a roll of two or higher so only rols of one will wound speaking of wounds that's what w stands for how many wounds a model can sustain before it dies sustaining just one wound will kill a cultist but the Tyrant has to take 10 wounds before it will die LD is for leadership How brave or disciplined that model is the lower the number the better and we'll see why shortly finally OC stands for objective control basically how good a particular model is at scoring and holding important objectives the Tyrant has the best score here three but there's only one of her even though the cultists only have a score of one there are 10 models in the squad so if it was at full strength that's an objective control value of 10 versus the tyrants 3 the cultists have an advantage here first time for everything don't worry if that was a lot to take in we'll learn about how each stat works in the game as we go the data sheets also contain stats for the weapons your models are equipped with too as well as some special rules that are specific to those units in particular let's take a look at the weapons my NY little term against to caring so you can get your head around the weapon stats the ranged weapons the flesh borers here have a range of 18 in each time they shoot they make one attack that's essentially how many dice are rolled per shot so if 20 sermans shoot I'll be rolling 20 dice if it had two attacks then I'd be rolling 40 dice instead in Warhammer 40K BS doesn't mean it means ballistic skill that's the number you need to roll or get higher than to successfully hit your target when shooting a ballistic skill of four plus means each dice roll of a four five or six will hit the target but ones twos and threes will miss s is simply the strength for the weapon which when compared with the toughness of whatever model you're shooting at will determine what you need to roll to actually wound them an hold that thought I reckon we should just quickly cover how this works while we're on the topic when the weapon's strength and the target's toughness are equal you need to roll fours to wound so half a chance you'll be successful when the strength is higher than the toughness you only need to roll threes so a bit more likely to happen when the target strength is double or more the toughness like strength eight versus toughness 4 you only need to roll twos so it's really likely to be successful on the other hand when strength is lower than the toughness you're going to need to roll fives so success is less likely and you can probably see where this is going when the strength is half the toughness or less like strength three against toughness six for example you're going to need sixes to be successful so not impossible but pretty hard to achieve okay back to the stats AP stands for armor penetration some weapons are designed to penetrate melt or otherwise bypass armor so have negative values which apply to the target's armor save to make it worse for them so for example an AP of minus one like these weapons will mean that it makes the save roll more difficult by one point if your armor save was on a four or more you'd need to roll fives if it was AP minus 3 instead you'd have to make the save three points more difficult which would make it an impossible roll of seven which as you know you can't can't get on a six-sided dice finally the last stat of the weapons is D which means damage this is the number of wounds that are inflicted if the opponent fails their armor save even a lowly damage of one as we've learned is enough to outright kill a cultist or actually even one of those term against too the key n among you might also have noticed that these weapons have types like assault on the flesh boarders and we'll bring these up as we use them in the game too all data sheets also include things like particular special rules or abilities which you can use in the game as well as keywords like infantry battle line endless multitude which will help you know which units you can and can't Target with certain abilities don't worry about that too much right now though it will make more sense when you see how it works in the game also on the data cards you can find information on the loadouts for the models useful to check out when deciding what weapons your armies will have when you're building your models it also shows how many models should be in the squad and if it's a leader what kind of unit it can attach itself to and Lead while this video will teach you all the Core Concepts and basics of how to play there are a few useful free resources that you might want to have handy too there's the Warhammer 40K quick start guide which covers the really basic stuff and then there's also the core rule set which is more comprehensive about how the game actually works there's an official app too which also has the core rules and an Army Builder right now at the time this video was made all the rules and data cards are accessible apart from armies that have had their 10th edition codex released to access those armies you need to enter a code found in the book to see the data if you prefer having a book the official core rules for the game is filled with loads of backstory cool art little stories and of course the full rules covering everything you need to know for the actual game itself the rules for all the characters squads and vehicles are available in the app to download as PDFs or viable printed index cards historically each Army has its own rule book known as a codex that has all the statistics for all of the models in the Army and the army-wide special rules but 10th edition saw a total rules reset for all the factions in the game at the time of recording only the tyranids have a 10th edition codex available I'm sure that soon enough the Codex for your army of choice will get its release and it will be a great resource but for now the free index cards and fresh rules for all factions make it a great time to get into Warhammer 40K in terms of list building and creating your army there are some basic steps to follow but don't be too concerned with that for learning the basics of playing the game that will come later when you're more comfortable with the rules one thing we're going to do though is choose what's called a warlord for each of our armies as we've only got one character each it's an obvious choice for the armies we've picked here mywing Tyrant and guys master of possession that's pretty much everything you need to know before you get moving models and rolling dice but the very first and most important rule of them all is have fun remember that you're playing a game games are meant to be fun it's a pretty complicated game and you'll often find yourself in a sticky point where you're not quite sure how a particular game mechanic works if you're ever unsure of a rule just make a note of it so you can figure out later come to an agreement with your opponent on how to proceed and just carry on with your game here's our little Battlefield setup with some terrain for this demo an and I are going to play three battle rounds in each battle round each player has a turn so that's three turns each regular larger games of 40K last longer usually five rounds some Mission types you'll find in the rule book and various supplements might feature things called objectives these are areas of importance on the map and you'll often want to hold them for certain tactical reasons they are represented by 40 mm markers prob beginner tip if you don't have any markers the right side you can use Oreos they're exactly 40 mm just don't eat them before you finish the game to show you how the objective mechanic works in the game for this demo we're going to place four objectives on the board these can be held during the game to score victory points the winner for this Mission will be Whoever has the most victory points or whoever totally destroys their opponent Army this makes games of 40K a bit more interesting than just shooting and chopping each other into bits there are lots of other types of missions you can play with different Victory conditions and challenges to try out ant and I set up the board together making it look cool with a mix of terrain bits stuff that we've either bought or built ourselves and at this point we don't know who is going to be setting up where so we try to keep it fair cover and line of slight blocking elements quite evenly spaced now we're going to Mark out what's called deployment zones we note where the center of the board is and leave a 24in no man's land in the in the middle by marking out a line using dice 12 in from the center on each side just to remind us where the imaginary line is and once we've deployed our armies we can remove the dice and get them out the way 10th edition uses the concept of attackers and Defenders either follow the mission's map to see which deployment zone is which or decide for yourself if you're just playing a casual learning game like this and then both players roll off the winner of the dice roll me in this case will deploy in the attacker Zone that's going to be on the left on our map the loser is the defender and will be set up in the defender Zone on the right the attacker starts placing models first one unit at a time just a quick note on terminology for the rules before we begin so individual Fighters within a squad are referred to as models while the squads are referred to as units when placing and moving your models if they're in units like these cultists legionaries and termagants are you need to keep the model in what is called Unit coherence which is basically a fancy way of saying that models have to be within 2 in of each other and within 5 in vertically if some models are on top of terrain also if you have a unit with seven or more models in it you can't string it out like this each model has to be in coherency with two other models so this would be fine this gu is within 2 in of two models so it's this one and this one and so on also in Warhammer 40K we all always measure distances from the edges of the bases not any weird sticky out bits on the models themselves while ant is deploying the Tyrant and his termagant separately the data card for my master of possession says it can be attached to my squad of legionaries so I plac them down together for the rest of the game they will be treated as one unit of leader and bodyguard this also means that this will afford him a bit of protection during the game as The Bodyguard take damage before the leader does and he'll also be buffing the chaos Space Marines he's leading each player's turn in a battle round consists of a few different phases these are command movement shooting charge and fight let's work through them in order and we'll see who goes first by Rolling off one more time nice I scored higher so I get to go first the command phase is where you score victory points generating command points and where some units will be able to use certain abilities both players get one command Point here not just the player whose turn it is command points are used to power special abilities called strategems that we'll demonstrate later in the battle we don't start scoring objectives until battle round two but my cultists do have a special rule I can use here for the dark Gods it makes this objective they're close to stay in my control until it's held by my opponent let's do it now we can head into the next phase in the movement phase I can move my models if I want to remember we can find out how far they can move by looking at the data sheet as we said M is for movement the cultists have a movement of 6 in and so do the legionaries but the master of possession has a movement of eight I'll move the legionaries and their leader up just a little bit not their full 6-in movement just to make sure their weapons are in range of the enemy now that the cultists have used their ability on this objective I know it's safe and if I leave it it still counts as mine so let's start moving them up tactically these guys are pretty cheap and Expendable I want to move them up as far as I can so I'm going to do a thing called advancing where they'll be sacrificing shooting or charging to move even further to determine how many extra inches the unit moves we roll a dice and add that number to its move characteristic only a two not brilliant but that two added to the six of their movement means they can move 8 in I think I'm going to head for that other objective marker rather than straight at the Enemy by the way when moving models measure from the same point so say the front of the bases to where the front of the base will go like this don't give yourself extra Movement by having that model totally clear their movement range from the front of the base to the back of the base all of my models have moved now you can keep your model still if you want but once you're happy it's time to move onto the shooting phase I can now choose to fire at ants tyranids from any unit that can see them and that has weapons in range so now let's take a look at the data sheets for our weapons we can ignore the cultist for now as we Advanced so wouldn't be able to shoot any of their weapons unless their guns had the assault keyword which none of them do so let's look at the legionaries they're all now within 24 in of the termagant so we can see that their bolt guns are now in range the master of possession can also perform a ranged psychic attack in the shooting phase but uh ah it only has a range of 18 in so won't be able to Target anything maybe next round now I'll let ant know my intentions to keep things clear for both players ant I'm going to be firing four bolt guns into your termans okay show me what they can do to find out how many shots we get to make we look at the weapons a stat this means attacks Bol guns have two attacks each and I have four of them so I'll need eight dice one for each attack now we need to find out if these shots are going to be accurate and actually hit their target this is known as rolling to hit the weapon profile has a stat called BS which stands for ballistic skill in other words how accurate the weapon is we can see it says three plus meaning that every dice we roll that shows a three or above will hit the target okay half of them hit now we'll need to see if these hits wound their target to figure out what we need to roll we need to compare the strength s of the bolt guns against the toughness T of the termagant bolt guns are pretty powerful and have a strength of four termagants only have a toughness of three because the strength of the attack is greater than the toughness of the target the shots will wound on a three plus so now we roll all of the dice that previously hit excellent only one failed meaning I've got three potential wounds going through now there's a chance that the termagant kitous armor plates will save them from those wounds for each successful wound I just rolled the victim of the attacks ant has to roll one dice okay so I've got three wounds I need to save against let's just quickly check the term against data sheet to see what it save is 5 plus okay cool that means if I roll a five or higher on any of these dice their natural armor will protect them and they don't lose that wound ah they all failed that means I have to now allocate three wounds to my termagant and as we can see by looking at their profile each model only has one wound to lose and the bolt guns have a d a damage stat of one so that means three of them are dead good job I've still got another 17 to go the persons whose unit received the casualties chooses Which models to allocate wounds to and then removes them by the way the dice I'm using are the Games Workshop tyranid Dice and they've got a funky little tyranid symbol where the six would be on ordinary diece so if you see that symbol that means it's a six normally good news now as I don't have any other units with weapons in range or that are available to shoot that means it's now the end of the shooting phase just a quick extra note here you'll often find your unit partially in range during the shooting phase maybe the front few models have their weapons in range but the ones at the back don't in these instances you don't just say well the whole unit is within range so everyone can shoot you have to determine on a per model basis Which models are in range and only they can attempt their attacks okay let's get back to the game and now we move on to the charge phase for a unit to be able to charge they need to be a maximum of 12 in away from the enemy this is because the charge distance is determined by Rolling two dice and combining the results every one I have is more than 12 in away so I won't even be able to attempt any charges that means we can skip forward to the fight phase but yeah as you probably guessed no one successful charged and there are no ongoing fights so that's essentially my turn over with time for ant's turn in battle round one right tyranids turn one and I'm going to start with the command phase we both get another command point so now we both have two to play with one of the tyranids army rules is called shadow in the warp now it can be used in either player's command phase I could use it now but I think I might save it until another turn because it can only be used once per game game so now on to the movement phase right let's see how far those termagant can actually move I really want to move them up so they can get a little bit closer on that objective so I'm going to try and Advance them but they won't be able to shoot after advancing unless their flesh Bor weapons have the assault keyword let me check oh yeah here it is they do let's roll to see how far they Advance oh yeah here we go lad 6in move plus 6in Advance roll that's a massive 12 in that I can play with no giggling at the back up they go all over that objective you'll notice some of them cleared some Battlefield debris in their movement if the stuff is under 2 in in height it's ignored for the purposes of movement while we're on the subject of moving over terrain let me quickly show you all the basics of how that works as an has already said if stuff is under 2 in in height it can be ignored when moving but if it's over 2 in then you use your movement to scale fail the terrain up across and down so let's say these cultists wanted to hop up onto this crate using their normal 6-in movement they use 3 in to scale up and then can use the rest of their Movement 3 in in this case to move across the crate same goes for moving down you don't just jump down and ignore downward distance you have to measure the distance and include it in your movement back to ant's movement phase now how about my winged Hive Tyrant with its 12 in of movement there's a pretty good chance I can charge those pathetic little cultists over there and just carve them up into little tiny bits so I'm going to head straight for them instead of wasting part of their movement going up and down terrain features like regular infantry things with the fly keyword like ants flying Hive Tyrant can measure diagonally from point to point letting them cover ground much faster and scale terrain a bit more easily yeah hello I don't like the look at that monster flying towards me so I'm going to use one of my two command points to activate a strategy called OverWatch basically once per turn you can choose to have a go at shooting any enemy within 24 in of that unit that's shooting so long as it's still visible to them which that Tyrant definitely is now either at the start or end of a movement in their movement phase or as a charge is declared or completed in the charge phase well she just moved and now she dies the best part is that because she's within 12 in every single one of my weapons is now in range the only downside to firing OverWatch is that you don't use the regular ballistic skill of the weapons everything Only Hits on sixes to represent the Frantic firing at the enemy bearing down on them let's go one by one the champion has a bolt pistol so that has one attack and it's now hitting on a six ah close but no four of them have Auto pistols one attack each so four dice hitting on sixes ah again nothing H not looking good so far now four of them have cultist firearms which have a new keyword we haven't seen yet rapid fire one this means that if the target is within half the weapon range so that would be within 12 in for a weapon with 24 in range like this it gets an extra shot shown by the number after rapid fire so each of these guns is now firing Two Shots instead of just one four models two attacks each that's eight dice hitting on sixes yeah two that's better right let's see if those wound the fin arms have a strength of three and now we're going to compare that to the toughness of the Tyrant uh yeah guy the winged Hive Tyrant has a toughness of nine and because that's double the strength of your weapon three times the strength in fact you're going to be wounding on sixes so um good luck with that uh no nothing at all okay the last thing I can shoot with is the flamer this weapon has the torrent keyword which means that you don't roll to hit the hits automatically make the their Mark which is very useful for situations like OverWatch I just want to find out how many attacks it makes D6 that means we roll one dice a D6 to see how many shots it can make nice a five so that means five attacks automatically hit straight onto the wound rolls so it's strength four oh no that's still less than half the targets toughness of nine this thing is ridiculously tough only wounding on sixes again ha a six against all the odds I managed to hurt the Tyrant whoa whoa whoa whoa there guy actually you're forgetting about my armor save she's got an armor save of two plus so I just roll one dice and it's only a one that will fail well that's pretty typical um that's just one wound loss though bringing her down from 10 to 9 when you're losing wounds you might want to place a couple of dice next to each model so that you know how many wounds they have left now after that incredible display of Firepower from your cultist guy are you quite done yeah yeah that's all I've got for OverWatch not a brilliant use of a command points but at least I tried after I was rudely interrupted that's actually my movement phase done onto my shooting phase I equipped my winged Hive Tyrant with close combat weapons rather than any ranged weapons so she hasn't got anything to shoot but those termagant have 17 left all with flesh borers as I already said they're assault weapons so I can still shoot them even though I Advanced and they're all targeting the legionaries one attack each on the profile so here's 17 dice come in your way hitting the Target on fours and above oh that's a fair few hits I'm I'm all right with that now you might just think that because this swarm a cheap plentiful infantry their guns might be a bit rubbish but they're actually strength five which is more than your Legionnaire toughness right guy um yeah they're only toughness four that means that looking at the table the strength being higher than the toughness in this case I'll be wounding on threes and above here we go wow only one fail and seven wounds okay uh time for my armor save the debris in front of my legionaries will afford me some cover the benefit of cover means I increase my save by one point but annoyingly if you have a save value of 3 plus or 2 plus you don't get the benefit of cover against weapons with an AP of zero just so you know so still looking for threes or higher no that's five fails not what I wanted at all now let's see what we're dealing with here the flesh borers have a d That's damage of one my legionaries are superhuman tougher than the cultists and the termans and have a wound characteristic of two that means each model can take two wounds before it gets removed so it looks like my legionaries are going to have to lose five wounds remember that they're being led by the master of possession he has a special rule called demon kin which gives a couple of Buffs to that unit he's leading one of them is called feel no pain basically imagine this as a last ditch attempt to ignore any wounds that you've just suffered taken after any regular saving rols you'd have this bonus save is denoted by the number after feel no pain so six plus in this instance okay we've got Five Wounds to save let's give it a go nope no sixes this time oh well at least they're not all going to die though check this out as much as I'd like to say that five of them take a wound each and can carry on fighting it does not work like that you have to allocate wounds to one model until it's dead and then the next one and then so on so Five Wounds removed from this squad means two are dead and one is down to a single wound well lucky for you guy that's the end of my shooting phase now now it's on to my charge phase you're so dead well at least those termagants won't be able to charge me because they advanced in the movement phase so sacrific being able to make a charge this turn this Tyrant though she looks angry and she's got cultists on her mind Guy I'm going to declare a charge on your cultists so I need some roll to make a move of 8 in so I can make it to what's called engagement range that's when enemy models are within 1 in of each other to determine the charge distance you just roll two dice like this that is not an eight it's a seven I need her to make this charge so I'm going to use one of my two command points to use a strategy called command roll each strategy States when and how it can be used and what its effect is but you have to pick when to use them carefully as you can't use the same strategy twice in the same phase let's try that again shall we H that's much better in we go sucks to be him right now you must get into baseo base contact if able to which I was but I've got the charge movement to be able to whip round this side a little bit so I can be closer to those legionaries after all this is over guess where I'm heading next guy so that's the charge phas over with now let's fight the start of the fight phase my Tyrant can use one of its psychic abilities called paroxismo an enemy unit who's close by and hopefully reduce the number of attacks that they can make I choose the cultist obviously and now I need to roll a dice so if I roll a one it means I'm going to take some wounds but if it's a two or more that means that those cultists are going to do even worse at fighting than they can already Feud didn't roll a one otherwise I would have been wounded but now until the end of this phase the cultists have to reduce their attacks by one for each weapon now you can never reduce a stat like attacks to zero but that does mean that your pistol wielding close combat cultis sky are only throwing half the attacks they normally would in the fight phase the units who successfully charged attack first the only model to have charged was the hive Tyrant so she gets to attack now let's take a look at the profile we can see she has monstrous bone sword and lash whip as well as Tyrant Talons now you can't use both of these you have to choose which profile to use unless it has the keyword extra attacks like the Monstrous cing Talons do but she doesn't have those so it looks like the bone sword and whip will be more effective so let's use them let's look at the attacks six nice six dice in hand what do I need to roll we find out with the Ws that's weapon skill these weapons hit on a 2 plus so only only ones will fail okay that's just a single one not bad at all so five hit their target and this weapon strength is nine that's huge compared to the cultist toughness of uh just three because the strength is double over the value of the toughness I only need twos again Ah that's more ones than I want to see here now did you notice the weapon profile has the keyword twin linked this means that I could reroll the entire wound roll if I wanted to and with these ones here I think I might just do that right there we are everything wounds okay my cultists have a save characteristic of six plus so now I get to try and save those wounds oh you don't actually guy no no you definitely don't the bone sword and whip have an AP value that's armor penetration and it's minus two so that would reduce your save by two points points so a six to an eight and you can't roll an eight on a six-sided dice so you can't make the save those wounds go straight through and each successful wound does three damage each good stuff now even though those Five Wounds do three damage each each wound will still only kill one cultist they have one wound each but the damage doesn't spill over from the Five Wounds the other cultists don't die in sympathy for five of their friends receiving enough damage to kill them three times over if you know what I mean now as I can choose my casualties I'm going to remove the flamer and the four cultists that have the long range weapons as they have only basic close combat weapons and they won't be as useful if the Fight Continues on somehow now all the units that made a successful charge have finished fighting it's time for everyone else to have a go starting with the player who isn't currently taking their turn and that's me first I make what's called a pilin move up to 3 in to get as many models in engagement range as possible and now I've got five models with brutal assault weapons again unfortunately only making one attack instead of the two because of the Tyrant psychic ability so five dice in hand needing fours to hit only two I can see how this is going to go already strength three against toughness nine on the Tyrant needing sixes to wound nothing oh dear well now we're at the end of the fight phase my cultists almost needed to take what's called a battle shock test but I only went down to five models and that's not below half strength which would be four or less for a squad of 10 so no battles shock test yet chaos Space Marines turn two okay command phase now and I generate an additional command Point bringing me to two and I also score one Victory Point thanks to the cultist using their for the dark Gods ability on the objective in my deployment Zone hey guy do you remember how you didn't have to take a battle shock test uh where's this going well as it's somebody's command phase I'm going to choose my once per battle tyranid Army ability called shadow in the warp to force not just those cultists but all of your units to take a battles shock Test full strength half strength everyone it doesn't really matter okay well at least we'll get to show people how that mechanic works so to perform a battles shock test we need to roll two dice and to pass we need to hit or exceed the leadership characteristic on the data sheet this is why as I said earlier on low leadership scores are quite good the lower the leadership characteristic the better because it makes for easier passing of tests right let's start with the cultists first ah nine is over their leadership so they failed now let's do the legionaries and the master of possession they have the same leadership characteristic anyway so we're looking for a six or more nice pass but what does that mean for the failed cultists well their OC that subjective control stat gets reduced to zero and you can't Target them with any strategems until your next command phase so sucks to be them right now great well right then uh that's out the way onto the movement phase I don't have any options to move the cultists unless I fall back but because I failed a battles shock test with them they'd have to do a thing called desperate Escape where they might die if they try to run away so I think I'm just going to keep them in combat I'm going to Edge the legionaries and the master of possession forward very slightly just to make sure they're within 8 in and you'll see why in a minute not so fast there my friend I'm going to use a command point to fire OverWatch at those legionaries I want to take out as many of those guys as possible before they start firing on me so 17 termagants are left all making one attack with their flesh borers but remember OverWatch only hitting on sixes is so that's just one hit that's the danger of trying to get sixes I suppose strength five for that weapon against that very measly toughness of four of the legionaries so I just need a three to wound at least it wounded now it's over to gu to try and save his wound needing a three plus oh come on ah I need that to be a pass otherwise I'm going to lose another legionary I'm going to use a command Point roll to try and roll that into a 3 plus save ah there we go now it's time to wreck up some termans in the shooting phase so I've lost two legionaries so far but I think I've still got enough Firepower to whittle those termagants down an I'm targeting your termagants with the legionaries and the master of possession before we start I'm going to use my last command point to use the grenade strategy because the legionaries have the grenades keyword before they start shooting I can Target an enemy Within 8 in of my unit and throw a grenade to do this I roll six Dice and for each result of a four plus it inflicts what's called a mortal wound which is basically a wound that you can't make an armor save or an invulnerable save against 1 2 3 4 5 nice so that means five termagants a dead straight away now we can carry on with the shooting as normal I've got two legionaries with bolt guns left and the squad also has a champion with the Plasma Pistol now if we take a look at the unit composition for the legionaries you'll see that they are armed by default with a bolt gun and a bolt pistol but for weapons with the pistol keyword like the bolt pistol you have to choose on a per model basis whether you want to use the pistol or any other type of ranged weapon as we can see the bolt gun will be doing two shots with basically the same stats so is much more useful in this scenario we'll choose to use these and not the bolt pistol however the champion has swapped his bolt gun and bolt pistol for a Plasma Pistol and an ours Ed weapon so he'll be using his only ranged option that's the Plasma Pistol remember you choose which weapon type to use for each model not for the whole unit two bolt guns two attacks each hitting on threes all of them excellent now let's wound strength four against toughness three because the strength is higher we be wounding on threes all of them again four wounds to save there ant so the termagants there are holy within that crater so they get the benefit of cover so it means that they're going to get a plus one to their saving throw normally a five now it's going to be a four ooh only one saved that's three more dead termagant okay now let's give the champion a turn with this Plasma Pistol this gun actually has two profiles one standard and one supercharged The Supercharged is obviously stronger it has better better armor penetration and does more damage but uh look at this it has the Hazardous keyword which means that after we use the Plasma Pistol using this profile we have to take a hazardous test by rolling one dice if we roll one that model would be destroyed pretty harush now a Plasma Pistol is already overkill for these termagant so let's just fire the standard profile W you chickening out a bit there guy good why don't you overcharge it uh no standard shot needing threes to hit no he missed after all that now finally for this squad the master of possession he's equipped with a bolt pistol and the right of possession psychic power which also has the pistol keyword which means that because they both have the same keyword we don't have to choose which one to fire we can use both so let's try the bolt pistol first hitting on threes nice and now wounding on threes again because the strength of the bolt pistol is higher than the toughness of the termans nice that's another wound there an another four plus save to make with your benefit of cover it's not a four which means another dead term again and finally for this squad I'm going to use the master of possessions right of possession power again this has two profiles one of which is hazardous now the difference here is actually worthwhile because the standard profile has a strength of four so will wound the termagant on threes however the focused version has a strength of six which is double the target's toughness of three so will wound on twos so let's give that a go this has two attacks hitting on threes nice both hit and as I said wounding on twos perfect and this powerful psychic attack has minus three armor penetration meaning that the termagants can't save against this even with the benefit of cover they'd need an impossible roll of a seven so two more termagants die before you speeding away don't forget to take your hazard test too I thought you'd forgotten about that okay so I roll one dice needing anything except one okay well I took the chance and now I have to deal with the consequences fortunately the way the Hazardous rule works is slightly different for characters instead of just being removed they suffer three mortal wounds instead which as I've said already are wounds you can't take a save against he is more Hardy than your average chaos Space Marine and has four wounds on his profile and that means that he's now down to just one wound which is a bit scary now you might think that the shooting phase is over now because my cultists are engaged in combat with the flying Hive Tyrant but you can actually use pistol keyword weapons when you're engaged so the remaining four cultists equipped with auto pistols and the champion equipped with the bolt pistol can shoot let's do that bolt pistol first one attack hitting on fours a Miss great now one attack from each of the four Auto pistols hitting on fours two hit strength three against toughness nine I'm going to need sixes yeah yeah that's none super the cultists are so mismatched against the winged Hive Tyrant this really shows how terrifying most enemies are for pretty much regular humans like the cultists are in Warhammer 40K now I've only got six termagants left in that Squad definitely under half strength so I'll need to take a battles shock test but I do that in the next command phase by the way sometimes you might find yourself in a position where you'd like one of your units to fire at multiple enemy units and you absolutely can this is called split fire and you just need to decide in advance who is shooting at who so say these two models at this unit and the remaining models at this unit this is often a good way to Target heavily armored units with a powerful special weapon while your other troops with regular weapons Target infantry for example right back to it that's my shooting phase over now it's time for the charge phase I really really want those termagants out of action and I think the legionaries have got what it takes and I'm charging so as much as I'd like to OverWatch I just can't I've already done it this turn and you can only use the strategy once per turn so come at me bro just under 8 in away so I'm going to need a 7 in roll to be within 1 in a nine that'll do it I move all my models up to get into baseo Bas contact wherever possible and now we can move on to the fight phase charged units go first when that unit's selected to fight you can do what's called a pin move moving each model up to 3 in getting things in baseo base contact wherever possible and now as I said I really really want these termagants gone because my cultists have no chance against that Tyrant and I need to help them out out I'm going to use the chaos Space Marine Special Army ability called Dark pacts this means I can choose for that unit's weapons to have either the lethal hits keyword or the sustained hits one keyword lethal hits would mean that when I roll to hit any rolls of a six known as critical hits would automatically wound the target so bypass the wound roll and go straight to the save roll on the other hand sustained hits one means that for any hit rolls of a six again Critical Hits they would generate an extra hit meaning I would get more chances of wounding there's a lot of these buggers still left so I kind of like the sound of the extra attacks so I think I'll choose sustained hits one to apply to all of my attacks until the end of the phase my legionaries in the master of possession charged they get to fight first let's do the two legionaries who have bolt guns but just close combat weapons they still get three attacks each showing just what impressive superhuman combatants these legionaries are two models three attacks each so six dice with a weapon skill of three plus yes every single one hit and that six means I get an extra hit because of dark packs strength four against toughness three I'm going to need threes to wound now that is fantastic only one failed that means six wound hey everyone editing guy here when I was putting this video together I actually noticed I missed a little rule here my chaos legionaries have got an ability called Veterans of the long War which lets them reroll wound rols of one in the fight phase rather than fudge it or gloss over it and pretend it didn't happen I just wanted to be honest and say whoops I forgot this rule when you're playing a game that's this rule dense and granular you're going to miss lots of little things like this it's a game after all it's supposed to be fun and even some top level tournament Players forget stuff like this sometimes so go easy on yourself right back to it now these basic attacks don't have any AP armor penetration so ant that means you get to take your full five plus save wow that's three saves but two fails that does mean another two dead ter against now it's time for these special weapons first the legionary champion with the accursed weapon four attacks just from that hitting on threes uh just one great thank goodness for my chaos undivided extra rule huh remember my dark Packa is still happening let's roll those ones needing threes excuse me this is the most ridiculously unlucky rolling I've ever seen still just one hit so this single attack is now strength five against toughness three so higher than but unfortunately not double the toughness so just needing threes okay at least I made that one fortunately it also has an AP of minus two which will cancel out the save of the termagant so that's another one dead finally time for the must of possession he's also going to be affected by the dark packs rule for them this turn the staff of possession has four attacks hitting on threes now let's just roll that one still a miss so much for this chaos undivided bonus okay so one miss but one six and that six means I'll get an extra hit so that's still four hits now this weapon is strength six double the termagant toughness so I only need twos here ah not a great roll one failed but there's only three termagants left so this still might kill them all these attacks have minus one AP so ant's now looking to save on sixes instead of fives this is not looking good come on sixes none cool well even though each of these unsaved wounds would do D3 damage they only have one wound each so they're definitely just all dead in every single way by the way just in case you are wondering when you see something with D3 it means you roll a D6 and essentially half the value rounding up so a result of one or two would be one three or four would be two and a result of five or six would be three just so you know do you remember that dark packs rule I used to buff their attacks well it has a downside I need to take a leadership test now their fight action is over and if I fail it I suffer D3 mortal wounds needing a six or more and obviously I fail h so how many wounds do I take D3 let's try okay cool just one wound but we do get to try and save that thanks to the demon kin feel no pain buff from the master of possession needing a six and no cool does mean that that one legionary that just has a single wound remaining dies now that particular combat has ended I can make a consolidation move up to three inches to get into engagement range of another enemy unit if that's not possible I can aim towards an objective and yeah I'm going to do that so now all the units that have charged and got to fight first are done it's time for the player whose turn it isn't to choose a unit to fight with in this case that's me a big nasty space bug Pikachu I Choose You you know the score now same again using the Monstrous bone sword and lash whip that's six attacks that are going to be hitting on two that's every single one of them these are strength nine against the toughness three that means I'm wounding on twos hey guy it would fail on a one but can you see any ones there my eyesight isn't as good as it used to be no and with ap minus 2 it means you also don't get a save safe to say that those cultists are out of here now just like gu did I get the chance to consolidate but even with a 3-in move I wouldn't be able to get an engagement range or hold an objective so there's nothing I can really do for now with the cultist and termagant now dead there's no one to fight back and there's no one to take a battle shock test oh and hey would you look at that it's tyranid turn two in my command phase we both get another command point I don't score any victory points because my ter against lost that objective sadly so I know that guy already has a victory point and we'll probably score another one with his Legion stuck on that other objective unless I can kill enough of them to stop him from doing that maybe killing him entirely is my only option for victory seems a pretty fit in tactic for those all consuming tyranids okay movement phase now 12 in straight towards those legionaries again thanks to the Flying rule that Tyrant can easily close the distance measuring diagonally up to the edge of the building in the way moving over it and then measuring diagonally down to the floor again my hive Tyrant doesn't have any ranged weapon so I'll skip the shooting phase completely and we'll go straight into the charge phase so that Hive Tyrant only needs a f 5 in charge to get into engagement range and start fighting those legionnaires come to Mommy you little chaos Space Marines in the fight phase the units that charge first get to fight first remember but before we do that let's not forget to cast paroxysm We Roll 1 D6 looking for a two or more now all of the legionaries and the master of possession will be making one few attacks with each of their melee weapons monstrous bone sword and Lash whip time six attacks coming up hitting on twos wow that's all of them hitting the Mark again strength nine of the hive tyrants weapons against toughness four of the chaos Space Marines I still only need twos to wound because the strength is double or more of the toughness of the target wo okay so it's not every single one there was one fail and I could reroll the whole thing because of the twin link weapon type but I think I'll just leave it as it is this should be enough to give them a good Pummel in guy what are you going to do do about that I'm going to make loads of armor saves that's what I'm going to do well because the AP the armor penetration on this weapon is minus two it means your power armor save of three gets reduced to a five okay well I'm going to need me some five UPS I saved three of them so only two fail and they're only one damage each right ant oh um no sorry about that each failed save inflicts three damage and your legionaries only have two wounds each right so two wounds going through will outright kill two legionaries straight I might as well use my single command point to roll one of those saves maybe to keep the champion with his our csed weapon no one's not going to do it now I still get to take my feel no pain of six plus but I have to roll against all the damage I received which is six nope even with a six saving one of those wounds that still means five go through which is still enough to kill both legionaries who took the wounds okay well that only leaves my master of possession behind and he's got only one wound left time for my master of possession to fight back four attacks no no no no it's three attacks remember I used paroxismo I would be wounding on fives but did you notice the special keyword the staff of possession has anti-yo 2+ that means that if it targets a unit that has the psyo keyword which the Tyrant does it wounds on a two plus which I really need right now awesome all three wound now the weapon profile has an AP of just minus one though and remember the Tyrant has an armor save of a ridiculous 2 plus so I just need to roll three saves of three or higher woo that's all of them saved ah so annoying those three shots had the potential to do D3 damage each and your Tyrant only has nine wounds left so it could have totally killed it outright yeah but it didn't and I saved it yeah you saved it anyway chaos Space Marines turn three right command phase we both generate another command point but even though I'm on that objective it's contested because the hive Tyrant is here too so in this instance we look at the OC stat of each model I have an OC of one and the winged Hive Tyrant has an OC of three so the tyranids have the highest score so I don't hold the objective and can't score it that objective in my deployment zone is still technically mine because of the cultist ability I used right at the start it still carries on even though they're dead now so at least I get one more Victory Point let me use that single command point right now on the skin shift strategy a special one that the chaos Space Marines have which lets a unit regain up to three lost wounds so now he's back up to to full strength again on four wounds now we're going to bypass the movement phase because I'm locked in combat I could choose to fall back if I wanted and use my normal movement stat to move out of combat but I would sacrifice being able to shoot or charge not a great tactical Choice here so I'll stay in the fight now into the shooting phase let's not forget I can shoot pistol keyword weapons at Point Blank Range so let's do that first up the bolt pistol one shot hitting on threes strength four against toughness nine so I'm needing sixes to wound yeah fat chance okay let's try the right of possession psychic power and you know what Death Or Glory let's use the focus version two attacks hitting on threes both hit now because of the anti-er two plus keyword we're looking to wound on twos and above because the Tyrant is a psycha yes both wound now the ap of this attack is minus three which will reduce the tyrant's armor save by three points from 2 plus to just 5 plus you're in trouble now Aunt yeah it's not quite as bad as you think though if we take a look at the Flying Hive tyrants profile you can see here that it has an invulnerable save of 4 plus which means that I can use that save if armor penetration reduces or removes my save as the enviral save is never Modified by armor penetration so I still need to make two four plus saves oh no guy how much damage is this going to do well because I use the focused version it's three damage each okay well that's two fails there which means the hive Tyrant is now down to just three wounds but guy don't you have to take a hazardous test now I sure do uh no ones please twice in a row man this guy can't catch a break now even though the master of possession just lost a few more wounds you'd think I would be able to use that feel no pain rule he has but if we take a look at the wording of the rule again right at at the start it states while this model is leading a unit this kind of wording is open to interpretation but as far as I understand it he isn't leading a unit anymore all the legionaries are dead so that bonus is removed no more feel no pain saves for you pal another three wounds taken down to just one okay well time to move on to the fight phase and hopefully time for Lady Luck to smile on me for once because it's my turn and no one charged this turn no one has the fight first keyword so it means that the player whose turn it isn't gets to choose who to fight with first oh yeah baby it's flying Hive Tyrant time so as before six attacks hitting on twos so just missed one there strength nine toughness four so needing twos to wound again so there's two fails there weapons have got the twin link keyword I'm going to roll that whole thing again we've converted from two fails to one fail I'm happy with that guy these have minus 2 a AP it takes your save from a 3 plus to a five plus so close but no cigar two wounds at three damage each that's six damage to allocate my master possession has one wound and I don't have any special rules or anything to negate the wounds and don't have any command points to try to roll one of those saves so yeah he's just dead the sweet smell of Victory so even though guy was ahead on victory points I completely destroyed his army me so I win this game you'll find totally destroying your opponent's Force much easier to do in smaller games but much more difficult in larger games so always try to keep on top of victory points and play strategically well that's about it for this little demo game and the video we hope you found this video useful and let help you form a rough outline of the basic mechanics of Warhammer 40,000 10th edition this is obviously no replacement for getting hold of the ru book but it should give you a good foundation to start to play games there's lots of other elements to explore like moving over terrain getting in and out of vehicles flyers and how big monstrous models interact with cover that sort of stuff but as you play more games read more rules and watch more battle reports you'll pick up on how these things work in no time remember that Warhammer 40,000 is almost constantly evolving with regular FAQs minor rule changes but it's all still based on the Core Concepts we've shown you in this video so good luck getting started if you're looking for easy to follow painting advice and Fast Fun battle reports subscribe to this channel if this video has helped you out and you're feeling super generous please consider buying us a coffee using our PayPal tip jar Linked In the description no exaggeration here midwinter minis exists entirely due to the generosity and support of our amazing fans on patreon so if you want to join the club and help us make videos like this you can join from just $2 a month thank you so much for watching please share this video with any newcomers to the game if you think they'd find it useful we'll catch you next time bye for now bye everyone

Channel: Midwinter Minis

Views: 242,724

Keywords: learn 40k, learn warhammer, how to play warhammer

Id: ErNFbqzGEeA

Length: 63min 57sec (3837 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2023