Thinking Outside the Box
There is a fair amount of advice out there for how to win a game of 40k. You can find a lot of it here on this site, in fact. This advice is available to everyone, and the better players understand it very well and expect to see it. However, sometimes it can be much more effective to change your thinking and your army, so that you have an unexpected way of working or even winning.

You can do What?
An example of this from another game (Centurion: Hovertank combat) is when I combined two things from the rules into something unexpected. The first was that Lasers, unlike other weapons, have unlimited range. The second was that a unit Flying High has line of sight to everywhere on the board and takes all hits to the Undercarriage. I combined the two into a hovertank that flew high and used laser weaponry and put all it's armor on the undercarriage. I could see and hit enemy tanks from anywhere on the board. Totally blew my opponent's mind!

Protect the little guys with the big guys?
Another example from my own history (this time from 40k) is from when I started playing Tyranids. At the time the typical Tyranid army consisted of first wave of Termagants, followed by Hormagaunts, followed by Genestealers, Warriors and Monstrous Creatures. The line of sight rules at the time allowed the Termagants to block LOS for the Hormagaunts/Genestealers and Warriors. In turn, the Warriors would block LOS for the Monstrous Creatures. Thus, nothing would get hit except the cheap Termagants. It worked okay until people started blowing holes in your Termagant line. After looking at it a bit, I realized that a Carnifex would provide more line of sight-blocking protection for fewer points than a bunch of Termagants and Hormagaunts. I essentially turned the swarm around. I put the Monstrous Creatures up front and hid the Genestealers behind them. 2 Carnifi with 4 T6 Wounds each, plus 2 Tyrants with the same (that couldn't be targeted until the Carnifi were gone due to Independent Character rules of the time) provided a great screen for the Genestealers. No Gaunts necessary. It's not just me that comes up with weird armies and plans, though. A number of others have been responsible for turning conventional wisdom on it's head in a variety of ways. I'll cover a few more examples, then explain how to start thinking outside the box for yourself.

Godzilla Tyranids
The standard Tyranid method of winning games of 40k was generally by your army eating the enemy army. While a few units could sit on objectives (in that sort of game) almost all units were needed in the effort to tear up the enemy army in close combat. While that certainly worked, certain individuals starting looking at other ways they might win. In a Victory Point game, if you have some of your army left and the opponent has none, you will pretty much always win. They realized that you don't have to kill all or even most of the enemy army, just make sure that your army is very well protected. Other armies had used this strategy before, but Tyranids weren't really set up for it very well until they could take Elite Carnifi. This lead to the Godzilla army: most of your points were tied up in some very heavily protected Monstrous Creatures that were hard to get Victory Points from. If the enemy couldn't do much damage to you, you could play very conservatively and pull out a win. Basically, the people that pioneered this style of army changed the way Tyranid players _think_ about winning.

24 Inches of Boo
In 4th edition, there was a psychic power available to Space Marine Librarians that forced all enemy units within 12" to make a morale test at -2 to their leadership or fall back. The character Tigurius of the Ultramarines doubled the range of this power. While armies with high leadership or rules that modified leadership effects could mostly ignore this, those that couldn't would be devastated. Even nastier, Tigurius could deploy by drop pod, ensuring that his 24" range would effect most of the enemy army. Against those armies, this could be nearly an auto-win, since half or more of their army would run off the board, if they weren't prepared well ahead of time.

very well painted, not very well photographed

There are No Easter Eggs in the rules
As I've seen quoted online: There are no easter eggs in the rules. If a rule requires you to read it in a certain way, it almost certainly doesn't work the way you want it to. As an example from Magic: The Gathering, apparently some people tried to use a card that said "Opponent loses next turn," to mean that the game would end on the next turn and (the opponent) would lose, rather than preventing the opponent from doing anything on the next turn. That said, there are some rules that can be used to your benefit if you are smart about them, without requiring a weird reading of them. Biker Nobz are very hard to kill because they can make very good use of the Wound Distribution rules. If they didn't have multiple Wounds, it wouldn't matter. If they didn't have a lot of different (and still effective) wargear available, it wouldn't matter. Since they do, they can often take 1 Wound on each model in the unit before a single model actually dies. It doesn't require a special reading of the rule, just good knowledge of it and the right characteristics in a unit. This rule isn't nearly as effective for Tyranid Warriors (another multi-wound unit) because the Warriors aren't as tough as Nobz and because the Warriors don't have as much access to effective wargear. Giving them all different weapons would prevent them from being effective in the game. Basically, you aren't looking for ways to cheat or break the rules, you are looking for ways to use the rules more effectively and use your army more effectively.

What Am I Looking For?
Almost all of these situations or ideas came up because of an unusual interaction between rules. Generally, that means you need two separate rules that can apply to the same situation. In the Godzilla army, it was the interaction of the Victory Points rule with the rule that allowed the Tyranid army to take more than 3 Carnifi. Since the bulk of the army's points were tied up in very heavily protected units, it worked very well. The Tigurius Boo used a combination of the special rules for a character and the Morale rules (and the Drop Pod rules) to make a very nasty combination against certain armies. Basically, you are looking for the intersection of two separate rules as they apply to a certain situation. You won't generally encounter shooting rules and assault rules applying to the same situation (since they are in different parts of the turn) but you may find movement rules and assault rules applying to the same situation. However, you are much more likely to find strange interactions when you apply army- or character-specific rules.

Doompa Loompa belonging to Matt Birdoff.
Used without permission.

Okay, so where do I look?
First, look in the places that are most likely to effect winning a game. Start with a good understanding of the actual rules for winning the game. Victory Conditions. Read through the rules for claiming objectives and for kill points. Next, look at how you damage the enemy. Read carefully through the rules for Wound Distribution. Also take a good look at Morale. If you have a way to run the enemy off the board or make them even briefly uncontrollable, you can turn that into a gold mine. Finally, understand how movement works. Many assaults have been foiled because the enemy couldn't pass through a narrow gap between a vehicle and some impassible Terrain. Once you are familiar with the main rules, it's time to go hunting.

Today's Special
Most Codexes have special rules only given to that army. This is probably the first place to look for interesting interactions between rules. Look at each rule in turn, and think of what part of the game turn it could be applied in. Next, start looking at any special character rules available to your army. The rules that you are looking for are where they have some sort of special exception to the standard rules of the game. An example might be taking Belial so that you can have Terminator Squads as Troops, or taking a Space Marine Captain on a Bike, allowing you to take Bike squads as Troops. While these two are fairly innocuous, it gives you the idea.

Not Earth-Shattering, but a good shake
Keep in mind that (aside from the Tigurius Boo) most of these aren't massive exploits of the rules, or automatic wins, they are either making a conventional win easier (Biker Nobz) or they are changing the way an army works. When you change the way an army works, people don't know what to expect. If you change it so that their standard tactics won't work, then it takes them a while to figure out. Meanwhile, you are getting busy winning the game. Matt Birdoff took his Thousand Squats to a Grand Tournament (playing them as Thousand Sons) and people didn't know what to make of them. The army in front of them didn't play like they expected it to, so they didn't know what to do against it. Especially at higher levels of play, where players can be expected to know all the various armies and their best tactics, that kind of surprise can be the most effective of all. If they are ready to shoot my Gaunts, but I don't bring Gaunts, they'll have to change what they are doing on the fly. If I have Gaunts, but they don't matter for my strategy to win, they will end up shooting the Gaunts while I win by other means.

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