Hey there, you’re watching Midwinter Minis, I’m Guy, and this is Ant.
Hi guys! And in this video, we’re going to show youhow to play Warhammer 40, 000 8th edition.
Whether you’re totally new to the hobby, or used to play a previous version, you’ll find pretty much everything you need to knowabout the basic rules in this video.
Let’s cut the small talk, and jump straightin.
So, just to play the basic version of thegame, you're just going to need a few things.
Chances are you might already have these lyingaround! So first off, you'll need a few 6-sided dice.
A measuring tape that shows inches.
Some models to play with.
And, to make the battlefield a bit more interesting, some stuff to use as terrain pieces, or just to block that line of site, and to providea bit of cover, really.
Now, if you’re just getting started, youmight be a bit intimidated by the huge armies and dramatic terrain you see people playingwith in gaming stores and in battle report videos, but don’t worry, you can get startedwith just a few models and some cardboard boxes for terrain! For this demo, Ant is going to taking commandof this squad of Cadian Shock Troops from the Imperial Guard.
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about as close to 21stcentury humans as you can get in the universe of Warhammer 40, 000.
Facing off against them, I’m going to betaking control of this mob of Ork Boyz, one of the many types of ferocious aliens you’llfind in 40k.
Now, all of these models have statistics thattell you what they’re able to do in the game.
This is called a Datasheet.
Don’t worry, it might look pretty complicatedat first glance, but it’s actually very simple.
We’ll learn about each stat as we go throughduring this video.
Some models also have special rules that willhelp them out during them game, and we’ll bring these up as we use them, too.
If you’re wondering where to find theseDatasheets, they’re printed in the rule books, or codices, that each army has.
So, to find the Cadian Shock Troops, you’llwant to pick up the Astra Militarum, Imperial Guard codex, for the Ork Boyz, you’ll findit in the Ork codex, and so on.
They’re full of cool art, backstory, andobviously the armies’ specific rules, but if you’re just looking for the stats soyou can start playing, we’d recommend you use Battlescribe.
It’s a cool, free app that lets you buildarmy lists for multiple game systems, and Warhammer 40, 000 is one of them.
Once you’ve built your list based on themodels that you have, you can hit the view button, and it’ll show you all the rulesand stats you need to play.
If you don’t have the codex, you might wantto print this out for easy reference later.
You can also grab the battle primer PDF forfree from the official Games Workshop website.
Before we jump in, let’s talk about themost important rule.
HAVE FUN! However you play 40k, or interpret the rules, remember that you’re playing a game, and that games are meant to be fun! So, with the golden rule out of the way, let’splay! We’re going to place our squads down sothey’re 20” away from each other, that way, we’ll be able to show you the differentdynamics of the game, both at longer range, and up close.
Just a quick note on terminology for the rules:individual fighters within a squad are referred to as models, while the squads are referredto as units.
When placing and moving your models, if they’rein squads like these Shock Troops and Orks, you need to keep the models in what’s called“unit coherency”, which is just a fancy way of saying that the models need to be within2” of each other.
Now, just so you know, we always measure distancesfrom the edges of their bases, not any weird sticky out bits of the models themselves.
Okay, the models are set up, and are readyto face off.
To decide who goes first, we roll off! Ant rolled higher than I did, so he gets todecide whether he wants to go first, or wait.
Going first, or going second both have advantages, which you’ll see soon.
With that, I chose to go first, and so nowwe're going to start turn 1.
Each turn consists of a few different phases, these are.
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MOVEMENT, PSYCHIC, SHOOTING, CHARGE, FIGHT, … and then lastly, MORALE.
And we'll work through each of these in order.
In the movement phase, Ant can move his modelsif he wants to.
We can find out how far they can move by lookingat the Datasheet.
The “M” is for movement, and we can seethat the Shock Troops are able to move 6 inches.
As the Orks facing them are fierce close combatfighters, Ant chooses to keep his distance, and instead moves back a few inches.
The psychic phase is next, and this is wherepowerful warp-infused psykers can use their powers, but none of these models possess psychicabilities, so we’ll skip this stage for now, but we’ll cover it later on.
On to the shooting phase! Ant’s Shock Troops will now get to targetthe Orks.
These infantrymen have a selection of differentweapons.
The leader has a small laser gun, known asa laspistol.
The troops have larger laser rifles, knownas lasguns, and one lucky trooper has been given a special flamer weapon.
By looking at the datasheets, we can see whichweapons are in range.
As the Orks are about 23” away from thefurthest Shock Troop, we can see that the only type of weapon that will reach the opponentare the lasguns.
The lasguns have a TYPE of rapid fire 1, whichmeans they shoot once, but at half range of 12”, they can shoot twice.
The squad has 8 lasguns in total, so Ant cantake 8 shots at this range.
He picks up 8 dice, 1 to represent each shot.
Now we need to determine if these shots areaccurate, and actually hit their target.
This is known as rolling to hit.
To figure this out, we look at the Shock Troopsdatasheet again, but this time we’re looking for their BS, not “bullshit” in this case, it's their ballistic skill.
Basically how good they are at shooting.
We can see it says “4+”, so for each dicewe roll that lands on a 4, or higher, that shot hits its mark.
We’d call this roll requirement a “4-up” Let’s do it.
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3 of the dice landed on a 4-up.
Let’s remove the 5 that failed, and thenwe can roll to see if any of those accurate shots wound the Orks.
That's called rolling to wound.
To figure out what we need to roll, we comparethe strength – S – of the lasguns, against the toughness – T – of the Ork boyz.
The lasguns are strength 3, while the Orksare toughness 4.
Because the target’s toughness is higherthan the attacking weapon’s strength, they are less likely to wound, and will only doso on a roll of 5 or more.
Let’s roll… Ant managed to roll 1 5 and 2 6s, so 3 ofthose dice actually cause wounds, which is more than you’d expect on average.
Now, there’s a chance that the Ork’s makeshiftarmour might deflect the incoming laser fire.
For each successful wound, the Ork player, that’s me, gets to roll 1 dice.
So, three dice in hand, but what do I needto roll? Let’s take a look at the Ork’s datasheetagain.
You can see the save value at the end says6+.
This means I need to roll a 6 for their armourto deflect a shot.
Let’s give it a go… Oh dear! No sixes for me, that means all 3 wounds gothrough.
The lasgun shots cause 1 damage each if theywound – that’s the D on the weapon profile … and each Ork boy has just 1 wound, theW in the Ork’s profile.
This means that each wound kills an Ork.
Now, I have to remove 3 Orks from play.
See ya boys! As none of the other weapons are in range, that means it’s now the end of the shooting phase.
Pretty successful for the imperial guard! Now, we move on with the charge phase.
For a unit to be able to charge, they needto be a maximum of 12” away from an enemy.
This is because the charge distance is determinedby rolling 2 dice and combining the results.
We’re still quite far away, so there’sno way the Shock Troops can charge the Orks.
Let’s move on to the fight phase.
But as we know, no units successfully charged, and there are no ongoing fights, so we can skip straight to the morale phase.
This happens at the end of each player’sturn.
Units that lost models now have to see ifany of their squad mates are scared off by the carnage happening around them.
To do this, you roll 1 dice, and add the numberof models lost from a unit this turn.
We rolled a 4, now we add the 3 for the modelswe lost, to make 7.
Now we compare this total to the Leadershipvalue, Ld, of the Ork Boyz.
The Boss Nob is still alive in the squad, and he has a leadership of 7.
Exerting his influence, he’s able to inspirethe Boyz to stay in the fight.
If we had rolled a 6, and our total was 9, that’s 2 higher than the Ork’s leadership of 7, so they would have lost 2 more Boyz.
Again, the player who controls the squad choosesthe casualties, but there were none of them this time, let’s move on to Orks turn 1.
So first up, in the movement phase.
The Orks are actually pretty ferocious whenit comes to close combat fighting, but they’re quite a long way from the Shock troops sothey're going to need to get up as close as possible, so they're going to want to closethat gap.
They move their M value from their datasheet, which is 5 inches, and Guy's then going choose to make an additional move called an Advance.
Guy gets to roll 1 dice, and move then movethat distance in inches in addition to their normal movement.
So that's another 6 inches for the Boyz.
Doing this means they won’t be quite aseffective for shooting, but that’s not really their strong point anyway They just want to get up, and chop some stuff.
So now we move on to the psychic phase, andagain, in this game, there are no psykers in play, so let’s skip this stage for now.
Time for the Orks to unleash some dakka inthe shooting phase.
So if you choose to advance a unit, you canonly use weapons that have the type of ASSAULT, and after advancing you also fire with a -1modifier to hit.
The only weapon that Guy's got in range isthe Kustom Shoota the Boss Nob is carrying.
It puts out a lot of shots though, which youcan see by the number on the weapon type.
ASSAULT 4 in this case, so we're going toneed to roll 4 dice to see if they hit The Orks are wildly inaccurate with theirshooting, meaning their ballistic skill is a 5+, so it only hit on 5s and 6s.
But remember, we've got to apply that -1 modifierfor advancing that unit, so we’re only going to be hitting on 6s! Which is great for me, but not so good forGuy.
Let’s roll to hit, and see what happens.
So Guy scores 1 6, so that shot made its mark, before we roll to wound though, rolling that 6 actually triggered a special rule for theOrks… The rule is called “dakka dakka dakka” whichmeans that “to hit” rolls of a 6 let you roll an additional dice, reflecting theirfrenzied, trigger-happy nature.
Does the additional dice hit? No, so never mind actually.
Now let’s roll to see if that hit wounds.
The attacking weapon’s strength is higherthan the target’s toughness, strength 4 vs toughness 3 in this case, so it’s morelikely to actually do damage, and Guy only needs 3 or above to actually cause a wound.
Good for Guy, that shot wounded one of theshock troops, now let’s see if the Shock Troops armour saves his life.
The Shock Troops have slightly better armourthan the Orks, which deflects shots on a 5 or more.
Unfortunately, the armour didn’t save thesoldier this time, and one model is removed as a casualty.
So that's the shooting phase done, now onto the charge, and even though the Orks would love to get stuck in, they advanced in theirmovement phase, which actually means they can't attempt a charge.
Not so good for them! No charging means no fighting either, so sorryBoyz, you're just going to have to wait.
So straight on to the morale phase.
The Shock Troops lost 1 model, but their highestleadership in the squad is 7 for the sergeant and this means that even if I rolled a 6, the total would still not exceed their leadership, so I'm pretty comfortable that actually noone's going to run away, so.
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keep stuck in there, boys! Turn 1 over and done with, now it's time togo on to round 2, which will be my turn 2.
Now the shock troops can strategically moveforward to get their rapid fire weapons within half range.
Getting within 12” will also let the sergeantfire his small laspistol too.
Moving forward, they’re now 9” away fromthe Ork Boyz.
Movement phase over, skipping the psychicphase, on to shooting.
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The only weapon unable to shoot is the flamer, as it has to be within 8 inches.
7 lasguns will be firing at half range, meaningthey get to shoot twice, so that’s 14 shots.
The sergeant will also get 1 shot from hislaspistol.
Apart from the range and type, it has thesame profile as the lasgun, so to keep things simple, we can just add his dice into thepile with the rest of the shots.
15 shots incoming, hitting on 4s.
Not bad, 8 made their mark.
Now let’s roll to wound.
Strength 3 of the Lasguns vs toughness 4 ofthe Orks, so needing 5s to wound.
3 wounds! Let’s see if the wounds actually kill anyof the Ork Boyz.
I make 1 6+ saving throw, but fail with theother 2, so another 2 Boyz are removed from the unit.
Now, on to the charge phase.
The Orks are brutal at close range, so theshock troops know that charging them would probably be suicide, even though they mightbe able to pull it off.
No, not this time, the shock troops chooseto skip the charge phase.
Again, no charge phase means straight ontothe morale phase.
With only 2 loss, and a leadership of 7, weknow we can’t trigger any more losses unless we roll a 6.
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They’re safe this time.
Moving on to Orks turn 2.
So first up for Guy;s turn 2 The Orks don’t want to take any chancesnow, so the shock troops are almost within touching distance.
They can almost smell the sweat coming offof them.
So that means their standard movement of 5”will bring them them just 6” away from their enemies.
Which will actually be really good for thelater charge phase.
And again, we're going to skip the psychicphase this time, and just go on to shooting.
The Nob's firing his kustom shoota, and 3boyz will be shooting their sluggas, which have a 12” range, and because he’s withinrange, the last boy is going to be choosing to actually throw a grenade instead of firinghis pistol.
Ork Boyz have “stikkbombs”, so 1 of the boyzis going to be chucking that and it’s within 6”, which is the range of the weapon onits profile sheet.
So let's go in with the kustom shoota firstand 3 sluggas together, now, as they have the same strength and cause the same damage, Guy's going to be rolling them all together.
7 shots in total, and Guy's going to be usingthe normal ballistic skill of the Orks which is a 5+ because they moved normally, and didn’tadvance this turn.
So that's 3 hits So just like before, strength 4 against toughness3 of the shock troops, these will wound on a 3.
Great.
They all wound! Woo.
Now, let’s see if the shock troop’s armourcan save them.
3 saving rolls are made, and 2 are successful.
We know there's going to be 1 casualty already, but before we start removing models, we also need to finish this unit’s shooting whichincludes the grenade.
The grenade does a random number of attacks, determined by the roll of a dice, which is why you’ll see Grenade D6 in its weaponprofile.
So, we roll a dice, or a D6 as its known, and Guy score a 4.
That means that single grenade is going toturn into 4 shots.
Then we proceed as if it was a normal gun.
So that's 4 shots, hitting on 5s again, and2 actually hit.
Now, the stikkbomb is only strength 3, sowhen strength and toughness are equal, the wound roll is successful on a 4 or more.
1 wound, but let's see if it gets throughthe guard's armour.
Nope! Not this time.
So, now that’s the shooting phase over anddone with, now I get to choose which models to remove as casualties.
Now on to the charge phase, and I think there'sgoing to be some charges going off! And this really is what the Orks were madefor, they just want to get stuck in, and start chopping stuff up.
Guy's going to be declaring that his Ork Boyzare going to be charging the Shock Troops.
Now, they’re only 4 inches away, there'sa pretty good chance they're going to be making that distance, which we'll find out by rolling2 dice.
So before Guy rolls those 2 dice to see ifhe makes the charge, I get to fire something which is called OVERWATCH.
Now, this represents that my shock troopsare going to be charged, and they're going to be frantically firing at close range atwhichever models are going to be charging them.
They get to overwatch before the charge happens, so even if the Orks eventually fail the charge, I would have had the chance to fire overwatch.
Overwatch works a bit like shooting, but insteadof firing at your regular ballistic skill, shots will only hit on a dice roll of a 6.
So, let’s tally up… there are 6 lasgunsremaining, 1 sergeant with a laspistol, and a trooper with a flamer.
Because the Orks are within 12”, the rapidfire lasguns get to fire twice, so that's 12 shots.
So that’s 13 shots coming in, hitting ona 6.
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and nothing.
That is some pretty bad rolling.
But, let's remember there is a guard leftwith a flamer? So it's got quick a short range of only 8inches, but automatically hits when it fires.
Just like the grenade, you roll a dice tosee how many shots it makes.
5! I'll take that.
So that’s 5 shots coming in, automaticallyhitting, so now on to wound rolls… The flamer's strength is 4, which matchesthe Ork’s toughness of 4… so the dice will all wound on 4s.
So now the Orks can use their 6+ armour saveto protect them.
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1 makes it, let’s hope that that was worthit! NowI need to roll to see if my Orks actuallymake the charge.
I roll dice and combine their total to findtheir charge distance.
2 4s, so that's 8 inches in total.
Easily enough to close the gap.
Now it’s time for the fight phase! As this is a new fight, whoever made the chargegets to go first.
So that was the Orks, and they're just goingto want to get stuck in.
Before they get to fight, they can chooseto pile in up to 3 inches towards the closest model.
First, Guy's going to start off with the orkleader, the Boss Nob.
He’s packing a weapon called the Power Klaw, which can make short work of the armour, so it really shouldn't have any trouble withthese shock troops.
To find out how many times he can attack, we look at the A on his profile.
and he's got 3 attacks! Let’s roll to hit.
The WS, or weapon skill, in his profile showsyou how good at fighting in close combat that Boss Nob is.
He's got a weapon skill of 3+, which meanshe’s a brutal fighter, and he's going to be hitting on a 3 or more.
All well and good, but the hefty Power Klawhe’s using is so unwieldy, that it's got a negative modifier, which push it up to hittingon 4+.
This is explained in the Abilities sectionof the weapon datasheet.
So, that's 3 attacks hitting on 4s… Oo, and he made 2 of them.
Now, let’s see if they wound.
The strength of the power klaw is listed as“x2”, which will basically double the strength of whatever model is using it.
So the strength of the boss Nob is already5, so that makes the strength of these attacks a massive 10! As with before, the toughness of the shocktroops is only 3.
When the strength is double the toughness, or anything over like in this case, like 3 times the amount, you're going to be woundingon a 2 or more.
So, as you’d expect, both of wounds go through.
Now, let’s see if the shock troops can maketheir armour save.
Well, actually, we know they won’t! This is because the Power Klaw also has anAP value, you can find it on the datasheet.
AP means armour penetration, and this givesyou an idea of how piercing and powerful the weapon is against armour.
So the Power Klaw has an AP of -3, which meansthat it reduces armours effectiveness by 3 points.
The shock troops have an armour save of 5+, so an AP of -1 would bring that to a 6+, and an AP of -2 would mean it was an impossible7+, but because this is AP-3, this is going to mean that actually even heavily armouredtroops and tanks have practically no chance of resisting the attack.
So these 2 troops can’t possibly make thissave, there's no way you can get 8 on a dice roll of 6, so there’s 2 casualties already.
there, but the fighting's not over yet.
Let’s see what the Boyz are going to bedoing.
So they've got 2 attacks each on their datasheet, but because' they're using choppas, an ability on this weapon means that they're going toget 1 extra attack.
So, 3 boys are going to be making 3 attackseach, and if my maths are right, that's 9 attacks in total.
Ouch! So a weapon skill of 3+, Guy rolls, let'ssee how they do.
So that's pretty good, 6 hits! Now, let’s roll to see if those hits causeany wounds.
So these boyz choppas have a strength of 4, and their weapons don’t have any other special effects, or any AP minus values, so strength4 versus toughness 3 of their opponent, and because the strength is higher, it means they'regoing to be wounding on a 3 or more.
So 5 wounds go through, and it's looking prettydicey for my little shock troops there.
So I manage to make 2 saving rolls on my 5up, and because the choppas have no minus AP value, nothing's going to change that.
But this still means that there are 3 morecasualties.
Add the 2 caused by the boss nob, and thesquad is reduced to just the sergeant, the flamer, and one other infantryman.
Now its time for the shock troops to fightback though.
The 2 regular troops get just 1 attack each, while the sergeant gets 2.
The sergeant is also carrying a chainswordclose combat weapon, which means he gets an additional attack, as detailed in the chainsword'sabilities.
That’s 5 attacks coming in, and hittingon the troops weapon skill of 4+.
So 2 make it, now let’s see if they wound.
Strength 3 against toughness 4 of the Orks, I'm going to need 5s to make any wounds go through.
1 goes through, and now let’s see if theOrks can make their armour save.
Unfortunately, that makeshift, ramshacklearmour that the Orks are wearing is not enough to repel an attack from a mighty chainsword, which means that one Ork goes.
So now on to the morale phase.
To determine if any of these shock troopsare actually scared away by their friends dying around them, and having these Ork greenskinsin front of them just chopping at them, we need to take a morale test.
So I do this by rolling a dice.
and I roll a 5, and then add the number ofcasualties that I suffered this turn, which was 6.
The 5 plus the 6 equals 11, Now this is 4higher than my maximum leadership for the sergeant of 7.
I need to remove 4 models, but I've only got3 left, so those 3 guys are going to be running away so I remove them from the squad.
So you can see that, even given the benefitof the doubt, some armies are much better at shooting, and some armies are much betterat fighting up close, and others have mixed, interesting tactics.
Before we finish the video, let’s quicklybring psykers into the mix.
Let’s pretend that, all the while, therewas another unit nearby, a human conduit of psychic energy, an imperial guard primarispsyker.
Let’s move on to imperial guard turn 3.
The psyker can keep their distance so longas their psychic ability is within range.
So Ant decides to move just slightly.
Now, on to the psychic phase.
The player who’s turn it is can now tryto summon one of their psyker's abilities.
This particular psyker knows a power calledpsychic maelstrom, which requires a warp charge of 7 to activate.
Ant rolls 2 dice, trying to get a 7 or higherso that that psychic power manifests.
and it does! If I also had a psyker nearby, I could attemptto counteract this, but as the Orks don’t have one of the field, I just have to sitback and let it happen.
Psykers denying each other's psychic abilitiesis called Deny The Witch, and generally you just have to roll higher than your opponentrolled to cancel out the ability.
So, for this particular psychic power, goingby the details you’ll find either in the codex or in battlescribe, we roll the dice, and on a 2+, it causes 1 mortal wound for the Orks.
Now, mortal wounds can’t be saved, so that6+ armour save can’t even be attempted.
Goodbye Ork number 1.
Now with psychic maelstrom, Ant can do thesame thing again, but this time to dice roll required goes up by 1… Goodbye Ork number 2! And again, but this time he needs a 4.
He still makes it! Now my boss nob has 2 wounds, so I use a dicejust to remind myself that now he's down to 1 wound.
And here we go again, and well, that bossnob is dead! So, that little demo gives you an idea ofhow powerful psykers can be in the game, and they’re quite a useful type of unit to takein most armies! We hope you’ve found this video useful, and that it’s helped you form a rough outline of the basic mechanics of the 8th editionof Warhammer 40, 000.
This is obviously no replacement for gettinghold of the rulebook and codices, but it should give you a good foundation for starting toplay some games.
Warhammer 40, 000 is constantly evolving, withFAQs, and yearly updates called Chapter Approved, but it’s all still based on the conceptsthat we've covered in this video.
So, good luck getting started! If you’re looking for easy to follow paintingadvice or fast, fun battle reports, subscribe to this channel! That’s sort of our speciality.
Thanks so much for watching, please like thevideo, leave a comment, and we’ll catch you in the next one.
Bye for now Bye!.
