--- title: Simple Hammer subtitle: Core mechanics and special rules author: Seth publish_date: 2025-07-10 08:00 date: 2025-07-10 08:00 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: dice-on-wood.jpg show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: blog tag: [ gaming, meta ] --- There aren't any simple armies in the **Warhammer 40,000** game. Even if you field 4 units of the same one-trick soldiers, there are army rules and enhancements and detachments and stratagems to consider. Simply put, **Warhammer 40,000** isn't a game designed to provide options to the player and force difficult choices. The army you choose, and the list you build for deployment, influences what game you're going to play. Obviously you're playing **Warhammer 40,000** no matter what but the game play can change so significantly that a player who's only played one game might doubt their memory after playing a second game against a different army. The important thing to know is that even the difference in game play is itself _just an option_. You can play simple 40k that plays basically the same way every time, and slowly introduce variety as you get comfortable with the system. Here's how. ## The difference between core mechanic and special rules Like most games, **Warhammer 40,000** unfortunately does a poor job of separating what a game requires and what a game can contain. That leaves it up to you to distinguish core mechanics from special rules. Core mechanics are the steps contained in the algorithm of playing a game. When you learn a well-documented game (such as **Warhammer 40,000**), you learn a procedure. First you do this, then you do that, and finally you do something else. As long as you do all those steps, in that order, then it can be said that you are playing the game. If you don't do those steps, or you add more steps in, then you are not playing the game. Special rules, in theory at least, are separate subsystems you can integrate with the core mechanics in such a way that the game's algorithm changes such that you are still playing the game, but with extra options. **Warhammer 40,000** fails to achieve true modularity because its core mechanics require miniature profiles (number values for all the attributes of a miniature, such as Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Toughness, Wounds, and so on) but miniature profiles are not provided in the boxes of the miniature models. In other words, you can purchase a rulebook (or download an official PDF for $0) and then buy a box of miniatures, and you still can't play 40k because while you have the physical miniature, it has no numbers associated with it. For a miniature profile, you must purchase an appropriate army codex, or download the army index, or purchase a White Dwarf that happens to have the miniature profiles you need in it. Regardless of how you obtain the profiles, they come bundled with special rules, some for your army, some defining a detachment, and some as part of the miniature profile. ## How to play a simple game of Warhammer 40,000 To play a simple game of 40k, ignore all special rules. Run your army using only miniature profiles, and even those you might want to ignore most special abilities. Just use the numbers for the miniature itself, its ranged weapon, and its melee weapon. ## Making up your own numbers Truth is, once you're vaguely familiar with how **Warhammer 40,000** plays, you don't even need "official" numbers. They're just made up values, after all. You can probably assign numbers to miniatures about as well as anybody. I make up profiles for miniatures all the time, because I often want to play a scenario with miniatures that aren't actually part of the **Warhammer 40,000** universe, much less the game. I recently added some monsters from **Mansions of Madness** into a 40k game. Obviously those monsters didn't have official profiles from Games Workshop. I assigned some numbers to each creature and played. It was the path of least resistance to a quick game with the [unpleasant] surprise of some unique monsters that players normally don't encounter in a 40k game, and it worked great. An alternate method is to re-theme a miniature to just one or two profiles. I do this a lot with **Kill Team**, because I play out of the 2018 rulebook, which provides profiles for a lot of, but by no means all, miniatures. When I want to use an Adeptus Arbites squad in a **Kill Team** (2018) game, I flip through the book, find a profile that seems appropriate to how I envision the unit, and use that. ## Stir in special rules Running a game using just the numbers, either from your own head or from an "official" miniiature profile, works _really_ well. One would hope so, because that's the core game. Whether **Warhammer 40,000** broadcasts it or not, the rulebook plus the miniature profiles is the minimal viable product. If it doesn't work, or if it isn't fun, then the game is broken. But it's not! It works perfectly. I've played many games with a minimal rule set, usually against players who have literally never seen a wargame before. That was me, until just a few years ago, so I still remember how complex it is to remember how to measure movement, how to memorise the phases in a round, how to decide what to prioritise during a game, and then also, on top of all that, what number means what! Playing with a simplified rule set is complicated enough for new players, and it's still a blast. Some of my most memorable games have been simplified ones, not because the rules were simple, but because the simplified rules meant I could introduce a friend to the game and share the excitement of discovery and mutual [pretend] slaughter together. Eventually, you might want some variety in how your games play, and that's where special rules come in handy. Special rules are beautifully modular, and I think Games Workshop does themselves and its players a little disservice by failing to treat them that way. I wish special rules were delivered as a deck of cards, some generic and some specific to a certain model or a keyword or a specific detachment, so players could pick a few, or a dozen, or none, before a game. Maybe you've played a few games with the simplified rules, and you've come to feel that the little mage-looking miniature probably ought to be able to do something magical. You can select a special rule from the army's index, or from an army enhancement, or from a detachment, and implement this new rule. (To make it fair, your opponent's army would get a special rule for a miniature, as well.) A new special rule, of course, is something extra to remember while you play. Maybe the rule is triggered by something that happens on the battlefield, or maybe it's an ability you can use during a specific phase of your turn, or maybe it prevents something from happening, or boosts an existing number. Whatever it is, it's a thing that's not built into the core mechanics. It happens in addition to the game's normal algorithm. The more special rules you add, the more each miniature can do, which means you have more to keep track of as you play. You can add as many or as few special rules as you feel comfortable with, though, so there's no pressure. You can play a dozen games with the same single special rule until you've internalised it. Then you can add a new one, and play another dozen games. Or maybe you're a fast learner, and you're able to add 3 at a time, with just 2 games between. Or maybe you have a head for rules, and you just add all of them in at once. It's up to you to set the pace, and the good news is that it's never not fun.