Rules Debates, Dwarf Corrections, and End3r’s Combat Patrol Win
We had one of those very Warhammer days where a post-game rules check turned into a full hobby conversation: part battle autopsy, part design debate, part league celebration. And honestly, that’s exactly the kind of thing we love most — not just rolling dice, but going back through the game afterwards, spotting mistakes, learning weird interactions, and then immediately jumping to completely different systems to brag about a tournament result.
The Old World post-game: every point of combat resolution matters
The day started with a proper Warhammer: The Old World debrief. Michał caught an important detail from the previous game: the Quarrellers should have had +1 combat resolution for high ground. It wouldn’t have changed the final result — they still would have lost by 3 — but in The Old World that kind of correction is still gold, because one point of CR can absolutely swing future games.
Then came the follow-up corrections, and there were a lot of them in that glorious post-battle way where every message starts with “actually…”
End3r pointed out that Stubborn only applied to the Thane and the Engineer, not to the Quarrellers themselves, so the unit had to flee off the board as normal. Which, sadly for the Dawi gunline dream, led to the extremely scientific conclusion that the tactical concept of “stand and shoot” still does not, in fact, solve everything.
There was also a catch with Magic Resistance (1) on the Dwarfs, which should have imposed -1 to the casting roll for the Fireballs. On top of that, we double-checked the Stand & Shoot interaction and confirmed that you can’t Stand & Shoot against a redirected charge.
In other words: a classic The Old World review. Tiny details, huge consequences, and at least one unit doing something embarrassing near a table edge.
Expeditionary Force, list changes, and the danger of the board edge
The conversation quickly moved from “what happened” to “what now?” Michał suggested looking harder at the Expeditionary Force if End3r wanted to keep pushing the all-shooting Dwarf concept. End3r clarified that the list was already built around it, but the game still prompted some changes: out went the Thane, in came Warriors, and next time the plan is to be a bit less committed to standing on the very edge of the battlefield and hoping for the best.
Stas added a very real warning for smaller formats: on compact boards, a 2D6 flee move can suddenly become a massive problem. Even if Dwarfs are a bit safer thanks to Resolute, getting trapped by your own deployment choices is still very much a thing.
That whole exchange felt like the most relatable kind of army development: not a dramatic rebuild, just a series of increasingly practical conclusions like maybe we should have some actual bodies and maybe we should not deploy like the table ends don’t exist.
More Skaven and Dwarf corrections than we expected
And because one rules correction is never enough, the autopsy continued.
Michał noticed that with the poisoned wind/globe-style rule, rolling a 1 in that specific context didn’t mean rerolling — it meant the Warlock should have simply lost a wound. Then there was the realization that the Doom Flayer now has Swiftstride, which opened up the possibility that it might actually have reached the Thunderers after the Quarrellers fled, while also ending up hidden from the Gyrocopter behind a hill.
We also revisited the Skaven wording around Expendable and the old “life is cheap” style interactions.
That naturally led us into one of the oldest arguments in fantasy wargaming:
Why can’t we shoot into combat?
This became the big discussion of the day.
Stas argued that, from a setting and immersion perspective, it can feel weird that the rules simply say “no, you cannot shoot into melee”. In a universe where fanatics smash through friendly troops, shamans miscast onto their own lads, artillery goes wildly off-course, and expendable troops are very much a thing, the hard prohibition can feel more artificial than believable.
End3r backed up the point by noting that in Kill Team and Necromunda you also generally can’t shoot models that are engaged, though those systems handle movement and disengaging differently.
Stas’s preferred version would be something like: yes, you can shoot into combat, but with severe penalties and a serious risk of hitting your own troops. That way the player makes the decision, rather than the rulebook forbidding it outright.
Then came the counterpoint from Michał, and honestly it was a strong one. He argued that not being able to shoot into combat is part of Warhammer’s DNA, and that removing that restriction would break a lot more than it fixes. In The Old World especially, where units can get locked in melee without easy disengage options, allowing normal shooting into combat would create ugly gameplay fast.
Later that evening Michał came back with something even more interesting: a summary of design discussions from Kings of War, where they had apparently tested mechanics for shooting into engaged units and found three major problems:
- Tarpitting and abuse — cheap units could pin elite enemies in place while the owning player blasted both units, happily sacrificing chaff to erase something much more valuable.
- Game flow — resolving shots into combat slowed the game down badly, because every volley became a mess of separate hit, wound, save, and friendly-fire sequences.
- Reduced tactical depth — if shooting is always available, one of the meaningful choices around charges, screening, and blocking lines of fire starts to disappear.
That doesn’t fully settle the lore argument, but as a gameplay argument it’s pretty convincing. We still like imagining house rules, but this was one of those discussions where the “boring” official answer started to make a lot more sense after we poked at it for a while.
Rallying shattered units is brutal
As if there weren’t enough rules pain already, Stas also dropped in another reading from the book about rallying fleeing units.
The key reminder: once a unit has been heavily reduced, rallying gets much harder. If it’s below half strength, it suffers a penalty; if it’s down to under 25%, then rallying becomes the sort of desperate long shot that makes you stare at the dice before rolling. Very The Old World, very cruel, very appropriate.
Meanwhile in the far future: End3r wins a Combat Patrol league
And then the conversation took a hard left turn from fantasy rules lawyering into a very satisfying Warhammer 40k success story.
End3r wrapped up his third Combat Patrol league at 2d6 and this time came away with 1st place.
That result feels even better with the full arc behind it. In the first two leagues, he was playing Votann, still learning the format, and got absolutely battered: first 7th out of 9 with a 1-0-3 record and 32 small points, then 8th out of 10 with another 1-0-3 and 30 small points. This time there were only six players, sure — but the comeback was real. He spent the league chasing the player who beat him in round one, drew level in the final stretch, and then overtook him on wins with a 4-0-1 record versus 3-1-1, while both ended on 67 small points.
That is the good stuff. Not a lucky one-off, but an actual progression story.
The winning army? Salamanders, and by the sound of it they just clicked immediately. End3r liked the list enough that he’s now taking the exact same force concept into a full-size Warhammer 40k event, King of the Colosseum, this time on “big 40k” rules rather than Combat Patrol.
Even better, the prize voucher already has a destiny: it’s going toward expanding the Necromunda gang. Which feels like the most correct possible use of hobby winnings.
One very crispy final game
We also got a look at the end of the last match, where the Salamanders did very Salamanders things to World Eaters.
By the end, flamers had done their work, one lonely model was left standing in the middle, and a battered little remnant was hanging onto an objective somewhere off-camera. Even better, this win came against a player who regularly gives End3r a hard time in Kill Team, so there was a bit of extra satisfaction in that one.
And because every league win deserves a proper graph, there was also a lovely visual summary of the whole comeback arc.
Michał, naturally, immediately suggested that this proves the real issue was Dwarfs rather than player skill. We’ll let the next games decide that one.
Toadie gets a backend
In the middle of all this, Stas also quietly dropped a genuinely useful project update: he added a small backend to Toadie, so now we don’t have to pass replay JSON files around manually anymore.
That’s exactly the kind of small community tool improvement that makes our local hobby ecosystem nicer to use, and we are always here for it.
One day, many systems, very us
So that was the day:
- The Old World post-game corrections about CR, Stubborn, Magic Resistance, fleeing, and redirected charges,
- a long and surprisingly thoughtful debate about whether shooting into combat should ever be allowed,
- a reminder that rallying wrecked units is absolutely brutal,
- a Combat Patrol league victory for End3r and his Salamanders,
- and a handy update to our replay tool.
Honestly, this is one of our favorite versions of the hobby. A bit of rules archaeology, a bit of list tinkering, a bit of game design philosophy, and then someone casually goes and wins a league.
Pretty good day in the Mortal Realms / Old World / underhive / grim darkness / whatever table we happen to be standing around this week.