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Hi everyone

I was thinking about vehicles and how they could make more impact on the table. What if they had square bases? This would be a cool modeling opportunity like smashing trees aside and it could make it easier to determine what armour side the opponent is hitting. Iv heard people didn’t like different armor faces because it caused arguments but isn’t that more a lack of clear rules. Different side and rear armor values opens up the design space and brings more value to deployment options. Also it would somewhat fix the Rogel dorn hole problem. What do you think??

As you can tell from my signature, I'm not a fan of armor value/facings.

Iv heard people didn’t like different armor faces because it caused arguments but isn’t that more a lack of clear rules.

Depends on what you mean by "rules." The point of confusion was where exactly one side of a vehicle ended and the next began. It's usually pretty easy to figure out with imperial vheicles because they're mostly just rectangles with treads. But figuring out the intended rear/side armor of a wave serpent or devilfish is trickier. Reasonable people can come to different conclusions about where the rear armor "should" be.

Putting vehicles on rectangular bases would resolve a lot of that ambiguity, albeit at the cost of making everywhere rebase their vehicles.

Theoretically, if you gave vehicles rectangular bases and brought back Front/Side/Rear armor (represented as Toughness values presumably), then you'd still have a little weirdness to deal with.

For starters, the current to-wound chart means that lowering the Toughness of a side by, for example, 1 wouldn't actually make a difference for a lot of weapons. For instance, making a vehicle's side armor T8 instead of T9 wouldn't matter for any weapons with a strength value of 5-7. Compare this to the old system where Armor Penetration rolls were 1d6 + Strength vs ArmorValue, meaning that every point of AV mattered for any weapon that could possibly hurt the vehicle (except something like a hammerhead railgun shooting at something like a dark eldar raider).

So you might be tempted to lower Toughness by 2 points at a time, but then you might be opening yourself up to being more vulnerable to lower strength weapons than you intended.

Another thing with armor facings was that, in practice, they mostly didn't matter. At least, not against shooting. Most vehicles you saw on the table had the same Front and Side armor. So positioning only really mattered if you got directly behind the target. And the thing with that is that you could usually just point your tank's butt towards some impassible terrain or the board edge to ensure this never happened.

So really, you were only getting rear AV if you:
* Deepstruck (Deepstriked?)
* Were in melee (this was basically a way to give counterplay against potentially unkillable vehicles)
* Maaaaybe if the vehicle in question was a transport that had just dropped off a squad.

In theory, vehicles were encouraged to leave their weaker armor more exposed by their weapons' firing arcs requiring them to reposition. But this didn't make a huge difference in my experience, and reintroducing weapon arcs has its own complications.

I actually like the *idea* of vehicles having weak points, but it's probably better suited for something closer to Combat Patrol's size (smaller game = more space for complexity with individual units) or for a game with a smaller scale that focuses specifically on vehicle fights and/or units rather than dealing with individual models.

I also long for vehicle facings but understand the difficulties with the varied shapes of xenos craft. A more thorough designer would have included a top-down schematic on each datasheet.
A simple alternative is to just designate rear armor as the 90° arc opposite the front. And symmetrical vehicles like the monolith don't have a rear.

If I were to houserule it in, I would have attacking the rear grant a pip of AP on the save throw instead of messing with the wound roll.

Having side armor brings a lot more tactical thought to the game. I can't imagine playing a game where there is no value to taking a rear shot on a tank.

One way to resolve it vs T is to give +1 S to flank shots and +2 S to rear.

Put vehicles on basis with clearly marked arcs on it and then we can do facings in a way that eliminates argumentation.

What's that?

You think vehicles on bases look gross?

OK, no solid game mechanics for you.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Having side armor brings a lot more tactical thought to the game. I can't imagine playing a game where there is no value to taking a rear shot on a tank.

One way to resolve it vs T is to give +1 S to flank shots and +2 S to rear.

What about melee?

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Having side armor brings a lot more tactical thought to the game.

Do you feel it brought a lot of tactical thought in previous editions of 40k? In my experience, rear armor shots were a thing that happened when someone landed a good deepstrike or when your transport got close to the enemy lines. In either case, it wasn't exactly a matter of clever tactics. Deepstriking to go after rear armor was a calculated risk (that could be represented as a strat or ability in 10th), and walking a couple inches forward to shoot the enemy rhino in the butt was a no-brainer.

One way to resolve it vs T is to give +1 S to flank shots and +2 S to rear.

Well, a couple of things there:

* Would this apply to vehicles that historically had the same Front and Side armor? This was most vehicles in the game, for context.
* This would mean that S5 weapons like scatter lasers and heavy bolters would not benefit from this rule at all against most vehicles.
* Lasguns and bolters on the other hand would now be seeing 50% or 100% increases in the number of successful wounds they put out. So this rule potentially diminishes the effectiveness of dedicated anti-tank relative to small arms fire.
* Something like plasma which typically has greater range than melta would more easily be able to get at least a +1 further damaging melta's limited 10th edition niche.
* As JNA pointed out, what about melee? Are all attacks in melee going against rear armor? Strength 5 hormagaunts?
* In the past, people would just point their butts towards table edges or BLOS terrain. What would prevent that from being the case here?

Instead of bringing back armor facings, I think we might get more bang for our buck out of a good crossfire mechanic. That would encourage tactical positioning with all units; not just with tanks and tank hunters. It would (theoretically) capture that notion that the tank was flanked and thus couldn't protect itself by pointing its butt away from the attackers. Crossfire also has a lot of potential to interact with interesting unit abilities, wargear, etc.

Just give certain models a three-piece T stat, I.E. under the T in their profile it would read 7/7/5 to signify different toughnesses by facing (front/side/rear). If theres only one number, its the same Toughness all around.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Instead of bringing back armor facings, I think we might get more bang for our buck out of a good crossfire mechanic. That would encourage tactical positioning with all units; not just with tanks and tank hunters. It would (theoretically) capture that notion that the tank was flanked and thus couldn't protect itself by pointing its butt away from the attackers. Crossfire also has a lot of potential to interact with interesting unit abilities, wargear, etc.

On one hand, this means flanking a tank alone would have no benefit. On the other, it would completely bypass any need to determine or measure facings.

I heard 40k has or had a crossfire ability or rule, for Genestealer Cults? How does it actually work?
If it involves getting two of your units on either side of an enemy in a single turn, I don't think it would work in an alternating activation system like Apocalypse since my activated unit or detachment needs to stay in coherency.

 Dominar_Jameson_V wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Instead of bringing back armor facings, I think we might get more bang for our buck out of a good crossfire mechanic. That would encourage tactical positioning with all units; not just with tanks and tank hunters. It would (theoretically) capture that notion that the tank was flanked and thus couldn't protect itself by pointing its butt away from the attackers. Crossfire also has a lot of potential to interact with interesting unit abilities, wargear, etc.

On one hand, this means flanking a tank alone would have no benefit. On the other, it would completely bypass any need to determine or measure facings.

I heard 40k has or had a crossfire ability or rule, for Genestealer Cults? How does it actually work?
If it involves getting two of your units on either side of an enemy in a single turn, I don't think it would work in an alternating activation system like Apocalypse...

It was in 9th Edition-no longer exists in 10th.

in the interests of simplicity, you can go with 2 arcs, front and everything else.

draw a line across the front of the vehicle like this:

===== | draw fire from this side of the line is front
===== |

Any other direction is rear.

Get +1S to rear shots.

 Hellebore wrote:
in the interests of simplicity, you can go with 2 arcs, front and everything else.

That's fine.

The notion is that almost all armored vehicles are more vulnerable from the rear - and yes, this applies to melee attacks. Hit a tank on the glacis with a hammer and not much will happen. Hit it in the exhaust or vent covers, and it's more profitable.

Vehicles with all-round armor just get an indication to that effect.

It's both realistic and reflects the tactical reality that flank shots are highly desireable.

Messing around with AP is probably better than Strength modifiers.

 Tyran wrote:
Messing around with AP is probably better than Strength modifiers.

Not even going to argue with that. I don't play 10th, don't know the mechanics, just trying to support the OP in principle.

However that is accomplished, I'm fine with it.

 Tyran wrote:
Messing around with AP is probably better than Strength modifiers.

Seconded. Each point of AP will always be useful until the save is impossible to make or you run into an invuln save. Boosting strength will have a bunch of scenarios where the extra Strength does nothing. +1 to wound would also be universally useful, but there might be too many weird scenarios where guns are suddenly punching above their weight classes. +1 to-hit would be nearly universal (doesn't help BS2+ attacks), but is less intuitive/evocative.

The game is going to require a big redesign to make vehicles good again, or even just feel right. But going back to armor would be a step in the right direction. Yes, it would require bases on vehicles and/or a template.

Honestly, the games design has gone downhill since 5th. A few good additions were made, but they keep messing up the good parts.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The game is going to require a big redesign to make vehicles good again, or even just feel right. But going back to armor would be a step in the right direction. Yes, it would require bases on vehicles and/or a template.

Honestly, the games design has gone downhill since 5th. A few good additions were made, but they keep messing up the good parts.

Note that returning to Armor Values (rather than just Toughness values with rules for flanking) is its own distinct topic with its own distinct problems.

I'm guessing everyone is pretty tired of hearing me ramble about why AV lowering interactivity between units and promoting skew lists is bad, right?

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Note that returning to Armor Values (rather than just Toughness values with rules for flanking) is its own distinct topic with its own distinct problems.

I'm guessing everyone is pretty tired of hearing me ramble about why AV lowering interactivity between units and promoting skew lists is bad, right?

There is no inherent relationship between using AV and skew lists. That it happens is due to GW's poor army composition rules, not AV.

Depends on which iteration of AV, its associated rules changed a lot from edition to edition.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm guessing everyone is pretty tired of hearing me ramble about why AV lowering interactivity between units and promoting skew lists is bad, right?

No need, your signature covers it! Although you might need to add your line about "making tanks immune to lasguns means most of my army can't interact with it" to it.

As much as the granularity and simulated realism of vehicle facings looks good on paper, it's better to abstract it so we don't argue over miniatures and protractors. If you can surround an enemy, that means SOMEBODY has a view of its weak spot. If you can draw a line from friendly to friendly and through an enemy, he's surrounded and maybe just one of your friendlies gets that bonus AP.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Note that returning to Armor Values (rather than just Toughness values with rules for flanking) is its own distinct topic with its own distinct problems.

I'm guessing everyone is pretty tired of hearing me ramble about why AV lowering interactivity between units and promoting skew lists is bad, right?

There is no inherent relationship between using AV and skew lists. That it happens is due to GW's poor army composition rules, not AV.

Unless your army comp is such that an army cannot be run vehicle-heavy, every version of AV I've seen used by GW would make it skew.

Sure, a tank company of IG might have some supporting squads, maybe an Enginseer or two... But when 1,700 of 2,000 points are in tanks, it's not fun to be told "You only have three units in your entire force that can interact with the majority of the enemy. Good luck!"

Dominar_Jameson_V wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm guessing everyone is pretty tired of hearing me ramble about why AV lowering interactivity between units and promoting skew lists is bad, right?

No need, your signature covers it! Although you might need to add your line about "making tanks immune to lasguns means most of my army can't interact with it" to it.

As much as the granularity and simulated realism of vehicle facings looks good on paper, it's better to abstract it so we don't argue over miniatures and protractors. If you can surround an enemy, that means SOMEBODY has a view of its weak spot. If you can draw a line from friendly to friendly and through an enemy, he's surrounded and maybe just one of your friendlies gets that bonus AP.

Well, I do need to update it now that troops are no longer a thing and "Doctrines" aren't what they once were. [

JNAProductions wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Note that returning to Armor Values (rather than just Toughness values with rules for flanking) is its own distinct topic with its own distinct problems.

I'm guessing everyone is pretty tired of hearing me ramble about why AV lowering interactivity between units and promoting skew lists is bad, right?

There is no inherent relationship between using AV and skew lists. That it happens is due to GW's poor army composition rules, not AV.

Unless your army comp is such that an army cannot be run vehicle-heavy, every version of AV I've seen used by GW would make it skew.

Sure, a tank company of IG might have some supporting squads, maybe an Enginseer or two... But when 1,700 of 2,000 points are in tanks, it's not fun to be told "You only have three units in your entire force that can interact with the majority of the enemy. Good luck!"

This. It's possible to have a ruleset with AV that doesn't also promote skew, but you'd be talking about some kind of army composition overhaul at that point. Which would mean we'd be looking at three pretty major changes:

* Overhauling army composition.
* Overhauling vehicle durability (switching from Toughness to AV which probably means overhauling strength values on weapons again)
* Reintroducing armor facings (sort of under the umbrella of AV, but sorta-kinda-possibly its own thing.)

Which seems like a lot of work for the design goals of:
* Taking bolter damage vs vehicles from very little to absolutely none.
* Rewarding flanking. (Which again could probably be done with a crossfire mechanic that would also be applicable to non-vehicles.)

Realistically, a column of tanks chugging towards a battlefield would be spotted and the commander would scramble a counter-offensive of air, artillery, or an opposing tank company.
So if a tank squadron ambushes a FLGS, a commander there needs to request support from allies with anti-tank resources. Then we can have a big old battle of the bulge.

 Dominar_Jameson_V wrote:
Realistically, a column of tanks chugging towards a battlefield would be spotted and the commander would scramble a counter-offensive of air, artillery, or an opposing tank company.
So if a tank squadron ambushes a FLGS, a commander there needs to request support from allies with anti-tank resources. Then we can have a big old battle of the bulge.

So sideboards then?

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Dominar_Jameson_V wrote:
Realistically, a column of tanks chugging towards a battlefield would be spotted and the commander would scramble a counter-offensive of air, artillery, or an opposing tank company.
So if a tank squadron ambushes a FLGS, a commander there needs to request support from allies with anti-tank resources. Then we can have a big old battle of the bulge.

So sideboards then?

Doesn't work for everyone.

Even ignoring logistical issues... I play Nurgle Daemons. What do I swap when the opponent brings lots of tanks?

Unless it comes in the form of off board artillery/missile fire. A few 9th edition stratagems reflected this. But they either sucked or felt really anti fun.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Dominar_Jameson_V wrote:
Realistically, a column of tanks chugging towards a battlefield would be spotted and the commander would scramble a counter-offensive of air, artillery, or an opposing tank company.
So if a tank squadron ambushes a FLGS, a commander there needs to request support from allies with anti-tank resources. Then we can have a big old battle of the bulge.

So sideboards then?

Doesn't work for everyone.

Even ignoring logistical issues... I play Nurgle Daemons. What do I swap when the opponent brings lots of tanks?

True. Although lack of unit/niche diversity is kind of a problem for daemons (especially mono-daemons and especially especially mono-Nurgle) in general. That's probably its own problem that needs solving.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Dominar_Jameson_V wrote:
Realistically, a column of tanks chugging towards a battlefield would be spotted and the commander would scramble a counter-offensive of air, artillery, or an opposing tank company.
So if a tank squadron ambushes a FLGS, a commander there needs to request support from allies with anti-tank resources. Then we can have a big old battle of the bulge.

So sideboards then?

Doesn't work for everyone.

Even ignoring logistical issues... I play Nurgle Daemons. What do I swap when the opponent brings lots of tanks?

True. Although lack of unit/niche diversity is kind of a problem for daemons (especially mono-daemons and especially especially mono-Nurgle) in general. That's probably its own problem that needs solving.

Agreed.
But, with the system as-is, you need to be mindful of not just Marines, but all the other armies too.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Dominar_Jameson_V wrote:
Realistically, a column of tanks chugging towards a battlefield would be spotted and the commander would scramble a counter-offensive of air, artillery, or an opposing tank company.
So if a tank squadron ambushes a FLGS, a commander there needs to request support from allies with anti-tank resources. Then we can have a big old battle of the bulge.

So sideboards then?

Doesn't work for everyone.

Even ignoring logistical issues... I play Nurgle Daemons. What do I swap when the opponent brings lots of tanks?

No, I meant asking other players to go 2v1 or 3v1 against the tank spammer, pooling your anti-tank forces to match the tank-heavy list.
What is a side board? (Honest question)

As an aside, but sort of on-topic, daemons should have a way to combat vehicles, no matter the mechanics of the edition. (Pun not intended, sorry). They aren't of this world and should have done tricks up their sleeves; no rocket launches required.

 Dominar_Jameson_V wrote:

No, I meant asking other players to go 2v1 or 3v1 against the tank spammer, pooling your anti-tank forces to match the tank-heavy list.

Sounds like a fun scenario. Figure out roughly how much of an advantage a skew list has against multiple lists without anti-vehicle weapons and do a hordes-vs-tank-columns thing. Not great for pickup games though.

What is a side board? (Honest question)

Like a side deck in card games. Basically, you'd show up to play, look at your opponent's main list and then choose from a pool of "side" units that you would add into your army last minute. So for instance, in a 2k game, you might build a 1500 main list, show up to find that your opponent is bringing lots of tanks, and then add up to 500 points of units from your side board that are good at handling tanks. It lets you tailor your list a little bit last minute, basically.

As an aside, but sort of on-topic, daemons should have a way to combat vehicles, no matter the mechanics of the edition. (Pun not intended, sorry). They aren't of this world and should have done tricks up their sleeves; no rocket launches required.

Yeah, it's not quite as bad as it used to be, but most daemons of a given god tend to do some variation on the same thing. Like, for the longest time Slaanesh was mostly just daemonettes, fiends, and seekers, which were all some variation on "moves fast, dies fast, crits on 6s." Khorne is just eight flavors of melee plus a cannon. Nurgle is 7 flavors of hard-to-kill + usually-poisonous. Tzeentch is maybe slightly better as they have a mix of shooty hordes (horrors), mobile horde killers (flamers), and mobile anti-vehicle (screamers). But really, all the monogod daemon factions have a CSM-shaped hole in their roster.

If I were to try and make Nurgle daemons a bit more robust as a faction, I'd probably give them some "corrossive" wargear options that might make them a bit less dangerous to non-vehicles but more dangerous against vehicles. Anti-Vehicle 4+ or something. Maybe a mechanic where the enemy acquires "infection tokens" as they spend time in your territory or in melee with your units, so even if they don't kill you right away, getting too close to them means you start taking passive damage over time. So rather than simply giving them some shooting, you end up with this scenario where playing against nurgle makes it tempting to cede No Man's Land to avoid infecting yourself early, but then doing that means that the Nurgle units are relatively safe in their territory and primed to go infecting the rest of the table later on.