Game Breaker/Tabletop Games/Warhammer 40,000

Game Breakers in Warhammer 40,000.

-


 * The first edition of Warhammer 40000 (called "Rogue Trader") wasn't meant to be a competitive, tournament game, but more like a skirmish game with RPG elements. So it's not really surprising that it was possible to create hideously unbalanced units. Perhaps the most notorious example is a squad of Imperial Guardsmen (essentially the cannon fodder of the game) armed with grenade launchers firing Vortex Grenades. Sure, the grenades were expensive, but that one squad could basically lay down a set of ten templates that would instantly destroy any enemy they touched. To make it worse, in the first edition (unlike now) a squad was allowed to split its fire between several targets...
 * The 5th edition Ork codex in Warhammer 40,000 was widely considered one of the most overpowered codexes Games Workshop has ever produced. Many of the units were under-costed for what they do (a standard Ork Boy is essentially a mini-Khorne Berzerker for the cost of a Guardsman, one of the weakest units in the game). The worst offender is the now infamous Nob Biker army, an army that uses Warbosses to count Nobs as troops, place them on bikes, and gives each model different equipment for the sole purposes of exploiting the new wound allocation rules. This gives Ork players a loophole by which they can place wounds on individual models to prevent casualties from being inflicted (you're normally supposed to place wounds to inflict casualties first). The result is one of the most horrifying power gaming army lists ever developed. On top of that, Nob Bikers have 2 wounds each being on bikers an extra toughness point, always count as being in cover (which gives them a save they can always take), and odds are you're going to give them cybork bodies (another save) and a pain boy (yet another save).
 * Except that it was only 'widely considered' this by a small group of people who were used to being able to roll over Orks from the previous Codex and even then only for a very short while because the Ork Codex was one of the first 5th Edition Codices and as soon as the other armies got theirs and people got more familiar with the new Edition rules, the Ork Codex turned out to be downright tame by comparison.
 * The 5th edition Imperial Guard codex has a psyker battle squad with an ability that can be used to drop the leadership of one enemy unit by the number of psykers in the squad (to a minimum of 2). This already is nasty enough, but combined with a Callidus Assassin from the Inquisition codexes (which can be taken as allies) is becomes a real Game Breaker. The Callidus has an template weapon that deals damage based on leadership, so by combining the two you get a flamethrower that wounds on 2+ and instakills anything without a special rule that makes it immune to instant death. Oh, and the assassin will automatically appear near an enemy squad so it'll always get at least one shot in. On the plus side, this is probably the best way to deal with the aforementioned Nob Bikers.
 * Perhaps even more game breaking are "Meltavets", veteran squads (which were made troops in 5th edition) in a chimera and armed with 3 meltaguns, allowing them to fire 3 meltagun shots from a chimera. If you were one to prefer a faster firing option, for 125 points you can field the same squad except with 3 plasma guns and a plasma pistol instead of 3 meltaguns, allowing you 7 shots that can chew through marines, terminators, and light vehicles with ease. Forgot to mention that a chimera has five firing ports allowing one to fire up to five infantry weapons from the safety of the vehicle.
 * Daemonhunters have several abilities designed to combat daemons. One of them is Sanctuary, which creates a bubble around the caster that no daemon can shoot, move, or see through. While the caster of the ability can't shot or assault, nothing prevents other units inside from doing so. Back when daemons were a unit type in Chaos Space Marine army this wasn't a major problem, as the marines could still get through the Sanctuary. However after daemons were made into their own army, dropping Sancturay on objectives or on some psycannon-toting purgation squad makes the game unwinnable for the daemon army. Furthermore, as Daemonhunters can be allied with any Imperial force, any Imperial army can take a cheap Daemonhunter Inquisitor to completely screw over any daemon armies thay face.

With the elimination of allied forces and the release of the Grey Knights codex, this issue has effectively been solved - you'll only have to worry about Sanctuary if you're facing the Grey Knights, not any Imperium army. However, Sanctuary now affects any army it's used on, though its effect is different (it makes an area around the caster both difficult and dangerous terrain, meaning you could lose guys just by walking through it). Daemons are still at a huge disadvantage against Grey Knights though, given that most of their weapons are extra effective when used against Daemons.
 * The Ork special character Ghazghkull Thraka personified this trope throughout the editions, currently its because of his two-turn buff that makes all ork infantry very mobile, and grants him the hardest defence to beat in the game (Rolling a 1 on a six sided dice, four times in a row), but only for two turns. The problem is that the average game is six turns. However, given the specific wording on the French codex, it was likely errata'd to only work on two "player turns", yours and your enemy's - which means only one "full turn".
 * In the Third Edition Chaos Codex, the Iron Warriors could take nine Obliterators and four Heavy Support choices (one of which could be a Basilisk). Take an already tough army, and back them up with nine plasma cannons, an Earthshaker cannon, and three battle cannons? Or if you used all of your Heavy Support slots on Havocs, thats...let's see...twenty five plasma cannons plus as many as you can fit into your Troops squads with leftover points. Space Marines, you had better start running.
 * The Third Edition Chaos Codex also allowed the notorious Siren Prince/Lord. It was a Daemon Prince or Chaos Lord with a jump pack/wings/bike (anything to make him faster) who had the "minor" psychic power "Siren". That power made the enemy unable to attack him for one turn. The Prince/Lord would then procceed to zoom forward and summon a horde of Daemons/Chaos Terminators right in the middle of the enemy army. The only catches were that the power was one of six results you could roll up when you paid the points for a minor psychic power (though the risk could be reduced by paying for several rolls on the table) and that it could be countered by some enemy characters (but not all armies had characters who could do this).
 * The Third Edition Eldar Codex: Craftworlds was not quite as bad, but it was up there. The Biel-Tan list allowed you to take any infantry Aspect Warriors as Troops choices. Not scared yet? When thirty Dark Reapers are ramming their sixty Strength 5 AP 3 missiles with 48" range and a two in three chance of hitting down your troops' throats, you will be.
 * Second Edition had its share, some of which were errata'd out in White Dwarf. For example, Wolf Guard Terminators were said to be able to take any combination of weapons and could be built from stock parts with an Assault Cannon and Cyclone Missile Launcher [back in the days when you could essentially alpha strike with every rocket in the launcher; White Dwarf said if such a deadly squad actually existed it would have been included in the fluff text], the Imperial Assassin could in theory be disguised as a Gretchin while wearing Terminator Armour and riding a bike [removed when the Polymorphine Wargear was made specific to Callidus Assassins] and the Strategy Card 'Virus Outbreak' could cripple an entire Ork or Imperial Guard army before a battle even started [the official line was that players should destroy their copy of the card].
 * A lot of Second Edition special characters were also so powerful the game would end up revolving around them; many of the Third Edition changes were designed specifically to play down the monstrously complex special rules and wargear posessed by such characters.
 * One of the most overpowered units in Second Edition was the Eldar Guardian (basically Space Elf militia). While their stats were actually rather poor, they were also quite cheap and could carry Shuriken Catapults as standard weapons. So what's so bad about that? Well, before it was toned town in the next edition, the Shuriken Catapult was just insanely powerful for its price (even the Power Armour of the Space Marines offered little protection against it). So a single Guardian with a Shuriken Catapult wasn't that big a deal. But they were so cheap an Eldar player could spam huge numbers of them and slaughter his enemy's infantry by the dozens.
 * Second Edition Tyranids didn't use the strategy card system and instead got a ludicrously overpowered replacement; the Tyranid player could roll for every squad, character and vehicle in the opposing army and inflict annoying or game-screwing effects on a large portion of the enemy army before the battle even started. Results included a squad member randomly becoming a Barbed Strangler blast, and a "Lurker" creature being placed inside an enemy vehicle that would attack the crew if it moved. They also got two special mission cards that instantly nullified their opponent's mission, and one ("Tyranid Attack") also gave them infinite reinforcements and two extra turns.
 * There was also a chronically unbalanced Nid psychic power called "Psychic Scream" which allowed them to attack every enemy Psyker at once and forced them to roll 2D6; if they rolled over their toughness (likely) they wouldn't be able to do anything that Psychic Phase, and if they rolled over their Leadership they instantly died. It seldom took that long for the Nids to kill every enemy Psyker this way.
 * The Battle Missions expansion features a special ork scenario which combined with the Apocalypse rules for force selection, take Ghazghkull and a few warpheadz you could have an ongoing Ghazghkull Waaagh!!! from turn 2 to the end of the game! It is countered by the point that Apoc level lets you take Titans or Baneblades.
 * Memetic Mutation holds that Lucas The Trickster can punch-out Emperor class Titans. In practice, it's a result of a stasis bomb rigged to explode on his death which removes all models, friendly or otherwise, in base contact including colossal continent crushing mecha. This can even extend to him taking out two titans, provided the controlling player is stupid enough to move them so close. The upper limit with what Lucas can kamikaze is limited only by the size of his base.
 * Burna-Wagon: 1 Battlewagon, 1 Big Mek with Kustom Forcefield and Burna, 15 Burna boyz. With the forcefield counterbalancing the speed limit required to fire, Exploiting the open-topped transport rules allowed the squad to stack 16 flame templates on top of each other, eg: If 2 space marines are under the flame template, then the squad receives 32 hits (2 x 16), or for example 8 Gaunts from a squad of 32, results in 128 hits (16 x 8), which should remove the existence of any squad, barring certain bizarre circumstances brought on by the Random Number God.
 * One of the Tyranids' special formations in Apocalypse had a horribly broken rule called "Out of ammo, Sarge!" which was intended to reduce the effectiveness of shooting at it by discounting all shooting if more than six 6s are rolled. Its actual writing omitted the shooting part and used the word attacks meaning that in melee if more than six 6s were rolled the entire squad lost its ability to punch/slash/stab. This is horrible as most melee units will roll upwards of 20-30 dice. Considering this applies to a blob of 120 'Nids, it considerably unbalanced battles and GW took too long to correct the mistake which was glaringly obvious to any player who had experience with several codices.
 * Forge World's creations have been very overpowered in the past. The Elysian Drop Troops list in Imperial Armor volume 4 gave the Elysians the ability to take flying Valkyries as dedicated transports for every single squad. And flyers in this game are almost impossible to kill, as non-AA weapons only hit them on a 6 and all weapons have their range reduced by 12", and nobody in a normal-sized game has an AA weapon with a ghost of a chance of taking out a Valkyrie. Did we mention that they get Vultures (Valkyries that sacrifice transport capacity for more guns) as Heavy Support, and their flyers can mount three to five specialized heavy weapons each? No wonder these guys were so good at taking down Tyranids.
 * The Imperial Armored Company list (thankfully no longer allowed) had Leman Russ battle tanks (around the fourth toughest tank in the game after Monoliths, Land Raiders, and Falcons) or artillery for every slot in your army.
 * The "Grot line"; park a squad of Grots in a cordon around three squads of Lootas. If playing bases, there is almost no way for footslogging troops and non-skimmer vehicles to get past them in a decent amount of time.
 * In Codex: Eldar, a full complement of Wraithguard can be taken with a spiritseer as a troops choice. Equip them with Eldrad, sit them on an objective, and they are utter doom to anything that tries to get near. They also just won't die.
 * To be fair to this particular Troop choice, it costs upwards of 400 points (IE 150 points more than your average Land Raider) and has an effective range of 12 Inches, plus 6 for movement. It also can't take a transport and is woefully weak to Power Weapons and the like. Yeah 10 Wraithguard shooting at something is essentially going to kill it, but it's not THAT broken. Eldrad ups it's effective range a bit, but pushes the unit cost up to over 600 points!
 * For dickishness's sake, add Maugan Ra to a squad of harlequins with a shadowseer roughly 3-4 inches away. Nothing can hit the harlequins from over 24 inches away (average is 18" range), and Maugan Ra can pump out lots of powerful shots from 36" away. If say the harlequins do get into close combat, on a charge they generally go first, roll four dice each, and automatically wound on sixes. They're great if you want the opponent to stay away.
 * If it's a codex written by Matt Ward there will be many a gamebreaker involved. Most notably Deepstriking Land Raiders, Flying Librarian Dreadnoughts, Nemesis Deadknights and Lord Kaldor Draigo. The latter produced a minor meme stating the only reason he was created was because Games Workshop refused to allow Ward to bring back Roboute Guilliman.
 * The entire Grey Knights codex has been called this, due to insanely powerful units (champions that can automatically kill characters if they die too, deepstriking Dreadknights, the already controversial Stormraven, and the fact that elite units like the hard-to-kill Paladins or teleporting Interceptors, if fielded with a Grand Master, can become objeective claimers. The only real downside is how small a typical GK army is, but that really isn't much of a drawback. A common meme is that the new codex is little more than 'Codex: I Win At Everything Forever'.
 * The issue with Grey Knights (and arguably most of the recent broken codices) is that they ended up being very good at things which ought to be their weakness. Grey Knights ought to lack long range firepower, especially against vehicles, to counteract their strength in mid to close range fights. HOWEVER, they were given what have nicknamed 'Psyriflemen', Dreadnoughts with 2 Twin-linked autocannons with psybolt ammunition. This was infact the most reliable low-mid armour buster in the game, meaning the grey knights in fact had no real weaknesses. It wasn't helped by the fact that the current meta meant that large numbers of light tanks where in almost every army at the time.
 * Feel No Pain doubles the survivablity of any unit possessing it, assuming the shot didnt come from something that would invoke the Chunky Salsa Rule. In older editions, this rule usually is an expensive upgrade only available to certain units and characters (with Necrons being the only exception, having an improved version of it for their army's main rule). In later editions (4th and 5th) a horrifyingly large amount of units either have this, can buy it, or is a buff they can bestow upon others, and the cost usually isnt that high either.
 * During the 3rd and 4th edition, Eldar Falcons (basically anti-grav tanks that could also transport a small squad) were considered the cheesiest unit in the game, since they were almost impossible to destroy as long as they kept moving. As an illustration, a Lascannon (one of the most powerful anti-tank weapons in the game) shot had a 1.2% chance of destroying it. Yes, that's one point two, not twelve.