Who Says I Have To Play That Way? Warhammer 40,000 Battle Report

One of the things that you'll notice with my Battletech Battle Reports, is that we play Battletech very differently from how other minis games are done. Even in Classic Battletech, "normal" play would consist of playing lance vs. lance in a 1v1 setting, with a couple of different tables around with various matches going on. Instead, we tend to throw all our mechs down on one table (two if there are a lot of people that day) and just make teams and/or scenarios and go to town. It's a very casual & social way of playing, and we've been able to get a lot of new players into the game this way as well. There is just less pressure on newcomers when you've got a team of people on your side that can help coach you through your first couple of games.

Meanwhile, the Warhammer 40k gaming in our store had almost died off - at least in regular play. Each month, there is a "Rogue Trader Tournament" (RTT), where a bunch people will show up to play competitively against each other all day. Outside of those RTTs, there were very little 40k games going on. Years ago, people would just show up on Saturday nights and get paired off/join leagues to play against each other. Now, people don't really show up to the store to play a 40k game unless they've precoordinated a game over discord first. Every now and then someone would throw together a fun event for people to play in, but it was not a regular thing, like the RTTs are done.

Also, the RTTs are not exactly the best scenario for a newcomer to get into playing Warhammer 40k. For starters, you need to have 2,000 points of minis ready to go, and that alone can be $400+ to purchase and months of putting together/painting minis. Secondly, timed matches are not exactly the best time to be learning the rules of the game. They are great for refining your understanding of the game, building up confidence and skill levels, but not for someone starting from scratch.

I'm an agent of Chaos, no not *that* type of Chaos

I'm not a competitive player. In early 2024 I tried, participating in some local tournaments and traveling to my first "GT" (Grand Tournament) and playing in that and it burnt me out very fast. I can sit through a 12 hour casual mega battle with friends with no problem, but spending that time playing timed 2,000 point round games will drain me by the end of that day. I even dropped day 2 of the one GT I played it because I was so wiped after day 1. Plus, I prefer the type of "goofy" games that we would come up with in years past. I took over planning our yearly "TANKSgiving"* game because it was the most fun I had in tabletop gaming in years.

*NOTE: TANKSgiving is an event we host every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Everyone shows up with a bunch of big vehicles and tries to raid a "store" in the center of the table for a turkey and get it back to their side of the board. Cue the hilarity/pandemonium.

After our TANKSgiving game in November 2024, which I did not play in but just ran for everyone, I decided I wanted to get back to that level of casual goofiness in 40k. So in December, I started a series of 500 point "pick-up" games during our former 40k timeslot. I took a page out of our Battletech playbook and planned to have everyone throw down their armies on the same table in a big casual megabattle, organizing teams based on who showed up to play each week.

Why 500 points? From experience, 1,000 points in a mega battle can be a long ordeal depending on the number of players, so 500 points seemed just right for the style of game I wanted to do. Plus, I wanted to foster an atmosphere of people just trying stuff out on the table, whether or not it was "good" at the time. I warned people if they tried to bring meta lists, I would have everyone shoot them off the table first. I wanted it to be a place where people could play with that super cool new mini that they just got and finished painting, even if it just got nerfed 3 weeks ago and isn't really used anymore.

First times the charm

The timing ended up being perfect, because we had our first game right after the December dataslate came out. So everyone was excited to try out all the new adjustments and abilities that got added to their armies. Based on people I talked to beforehand, I was expecting about 4-5 people to show up for the first game. However we ended up having like 11 players! Outside of a tournament, that was the most 40k that had been in the store in awhile. Some of the players who showed up were people who hadn't played 40k in awhile, mainly because they got tired of playing large point games.

For me, personally, I got to try out the changes to Sternguard Veterans, which ended up being really good! I was not expecting that at all, but their new ability seemed cool and I wanted to see how well it worked in play. With the limit cap of 500 points, someone still decided to bring a single Imperial Knight to the game, but they quickly learned that was a bad idea. Almost everyone on the opposing team targetted the Knight straight away and it was gone by the end of Round 2. When that is the grand total of minis that you have brought, it means you are out of the game really fast, which I'm sure was disappointing.

We also learned that 11 players on one 6'x4' mat was probably too much and we should have split off into 2 separate games. In the beginning it was very congested on the board until units started dying and leaving the game. On the other hand, even with 11 players we managed to get through an entire game in about 2 hours or so, which was pretty impressive for me. Overall, it was a success, and I started planning out the next week's game.

Hey now, you're an All Star

Decided to try the first of many goofy games, the following week for our 500 points I restricted list building to "Character" models only. Dubbed by many as "Herohammer", this meant everyone got to bring all the people with the super cool abilities and have them duke it out. This time, I shrunk the battlefield down to half the size of the previous game, since characters only meant that figures would have to walk all the way across the board instead of riding in on vehicles.

By this point, we were close to Christmas, so we only had 5 people show up to that game. So, I improvised a game type that we'd used many times in Battletech: a Star battle. Imagine 5 players placed around a table in a star formation. The player that is to your left and your right are considered your "allies". The other two players across from your are your "enemies". So each person has the same number of allies/enemies, but they are different from all the other players at the table. This keeps it fun for everyone without having to worry about uneven teams or everyone ganging up on one person in a free for all. Since Command Points (CP) are based around a 1v1 environment (even if its one team vs. another), I house ruled it so that you would earn CP on your turn and when your "enemies" went. This way, you at least had a CP each time you could be targeted by a person, instead of having to choose which of your enemies to spend CP defending from.

The star format was weird enough that it took people a bit to understand what was going on. To help, when each person started their turn I called out who's turn it was to get CP so that people could follow along easily enough. By the time we went around the table once, everyone had figured it out and was onboard. There was even scheming afoot, as the star format only allows for 1 winner: the first person to have both of their "enemies" eliminated. So even if one of your enemies was in a better place to target, people might change and focus on their other enemy to not give the game away to someone else.

A Dark Knight

Week 3 got real crazy. After a break from Christmas/New Year's, I decided that the next big fight would be a "Knight Fight". A bunch of people showed off getting new Knight models for the holidays, so that week's rules was 500 points, titanic only. Although technically there are other factions that have titanic models that fit the bill, only Imperial Knights were brought to this game. Even still, of the 6 people that showed up, half of them brough Canis Rex! So we split up into 2 teams and went at it. Thirty minutes later, one team was already wiped from the board.

Not wanting the game Knight (hehe) to be over quite yet, we set up for a 6 way free for all battle. This time, we added a bunch of new house rules to keep the game going. Knowing that Knights would be killed very quickly, we established that if you were killed you respawned at the Command Phase of your next turn. Even better, we had everyone deploy and respawn by rolling a D6 and spawning at a designated place to randomize where everyone was each time. The goal of the game was to keep track of how many kills you got and see who could get the most. As to detachment rules, we said that if you killed another Knight, you became "Honored" and got all the benefits, but once you died you lost that distinction. A lot of chaos ensued. A person would die only to respawn at the next point over and come back looking for revenge. Someone would go on a kill streak to then suddenly be left alone because everyone else was at the other end of the table.

Conclusions

1. Everyone has been having a blast with these games! People will ask me on discord what the next week's theme is and suggesting new ideas for us to try.

2. We've even had a couple of newcomers into the game. The 500 point limit works great because they can get a chance to play even if they don't have a full army yet. Plus, they get to see how individual units work without having to worry about how those units work in a larger list.

3. I'm getting back to a place where I'm enjoying Warhammer 40k again. No, I'm not going to be playing in any tournaments any time soon, but itsnice to enjoy the game on my own terms.

Notes/Disclaimers: I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon.