40k: Fun or Functional

Greeting everyone. After a long time thinking on the matter, I have started to at a lot of things about the game that have changed over the years. While a lot of the changes have been great, there's one that makes me sad.

While rules have been added, changed, or even removed, some of the more interesting and fun aspects of the game have gone missing. I look at the ork codex as my large example of some of these more... fun rules. From Shock Attack guns to mine field clearing grots... the codex was and is full of some fun moments. Now of course this codex is designed to be somewhat humerus, it wasn't always the only one to have some unique rules come up.

Codex Necrons has a fun little rule/ability. The Nightbringer has a fun ability to throw units away from him so long as they are S3 or less. He also has a very... very specific rule. If he is hit with a C'Tan Phase Blade... he doesn't take any wounds, and the bearer looses their weapon. Now this only really effects the Caladis Assassin (even though she's been newly redone recently). Of course the rule isn't really "good" but it's funny when it happens. In all the years I've played, I've only ever seen that happen once, and tremendous laughs were had. Either way, his rules allow for some unique moments to occur, and while the rule which applies to only the Caladis Assassin is limited, the S3 push away is something that many players may not see coming.

Lets look over to Daemons. While the codex is kind of a joke as it is (no offense to those who play it) there are some moments in it as well. Fateweaver, apart from his meta, has a funny rule. If he takes a wound and fails his leadership... he runs back to the warp in fear. Now, this makes me laugh a lot as I can easily see any mage running at the first sight of danger... and it's replicated with Fateweaver's cowardice here. Maybe this was put in more as a balance to his powerful re-roll ability, but even if so, it's a fun way to make the model balanced while doing it in a funny and entertaining manner.




Another fun little rule, while not huge, is in the Eldar codex. Prince Yriel has a pseudo daemon weapon that likes to see him squirm. At the end of the game... if he's still kickin, the blade tries like hell to make him stop. It's not huge, but it makes for a funny moment if he does die.

In the end, I feel like the game has shifted from trying to be entertaining to simply being about competitiveness. The new rules which accompany the models and units of fifth edition seem to encourage players to use the more powerful options over others. While in some of the older editions the options were funny vs powerful... fifth has almost no fun choices inherently and pretty much leaves you choosing between powerful or less powerful options. Maybe I'm just missing some of the old days where the game was more about fun than winning... but I sure would like to see some more entertaining moments pop up.