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Kilkrazy wrote:If you want to go by strict RAW you divide the tank into quadrants with imaginary lines between the corners. You see which quadrant your figure is in. That is the side that the shot hits.

Most real life tanks have fairly thin floor armour.

I thought they make the bottom most sturdy due to land mines always around?

or arnt they like cars? the bottom seem to be the most sturdy as well isnt it?

As far as under armor being weak on our world's tanks well it would depend and very from tank to tank, some would have a thick floor plate to protect from mines, some don't. As hitting the under armor in the realm of 40k has not been addressed by GW we are only left to guess, trying to draw a comparison between our real world tanks verying floor thickness and tanks in 40k aint gonna work, you would have to start allocating different armor rating for different vehicles. Would an ork trukk have a thick bottom plate? Probably not but you never know (they have a habit of adding more metal), the bottom plate on a landraider? I would ASSUME* it would be more protected and deserving of a higher rating of a trukk but who knows? The underside of a land raider could be made of wood.

Leaving you with one option, a unified under armor house rule, I choose to use rear armor because if you are getting hit on your underside you deserve the worst of whats gonna happen. But anybody else's opinion is equally as valid.

Unless this is supposed to be in the Proposed Rules forum, then there is no such thing as bottom or top armor for a vehicle.

If a model happens to be directly above or directly below a vehicle and somehow manages to simultaneously be in all four facings of the vehicle, I suppose the model would get to choose which facing to count as being in. But it's entirely possible for a model to be directly beneath a vehicle and STILL be in only one of the defined facings, and use the facing that it was in according to the rules.

If you're making stuff up, I really want to hear the argument over what the bottom armor of a dreadnought is, and whether that uses the mechanic as a regular vehicle.

If you go and look up the armour values of various different tanks you will get the facts.

Tiger 1 had 25mm on the roof and floor, the various sides were between 60mm and 120mm.

Early Pz III had 15mm sides, 10mm top and 5mm bottom.

Etc.

Despite mines the bottom armour is usually the thinnest because it is the surface least likely to be attacked.

I'd say rear... and then HOW did that happen :O?!

Solkan you are absolutely right, I however am making up a house rule for this situation as I enjoy using them and from the op description he was too trying to instill a house rule. In a tourny setting (which I rarely find myself in) I would probably play it as you say. As for the dread argument I would find it hard or nearly impossible to hit the under side of a dread as you would have to be shooting at the bottom of it's base so said dread would basically have to be floating. But if it ever came up I guess I would decide on a house rule that fit the situation at the time, In a tourney I would have to abide by Raw and use the facing I was closest to or choose what facing if I were directly under it (agian how is this happening? All of this is for a very rare thing to happen in this game)

Kilkrazy wrote:

Despite mines the bottom armour is usually the thinnest because it is the surface least likely to be attacked.

It was the reason that mines were employed; because its the softest part of the beast.


Even today any vehicles underside is its weakest point. Anti-mine armor is also very different from armor on the rest of the vehicle which is designed with projectile threats in mind. The big difference between the two is this; deflection vs reflection. Anti-mine armor is much thinner than projectile armor, because it is built with the intent to deflect the blast of the mine away from under the vehicle. Where anti-projectile is designed with the intent to stop the round or make it "bounce back." Sure you'll get deflection off the front, side and top armor, but I can bounce a bullet off water at the right angle that doesn't mean it was designed to stop them ((Though the harder/faster the round is going, the less likely it is to penetrate water, that stuff is fun)).


In this situation it should be treated as rear-armor; also because if I recall top armor is also treated as rear, and with so much sh*t flying around in the 40k universe these days ((yeah even Dreadnaughts!)) I find it hard to believe that the bottom armor will be stronger than the top. Specially when I look for the mine rules in the Apoc book and its basically just dangerous terrain and not a roll against armor.

Space marine scout mines hit rear amour, this is how I would play it.

EagleArk wrote:Space marine scout mines hit rear amour, this is how I would play it.

yeah they say they strike rear to represent the "weaker bottom", so i would do that too. (glad i actually read this thread else i would have posted the same thing )

LunaHound wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:If you want to go by strict RAW you divide the tank into quadrants with imaginary lines between the corners. You see which quadrant your figure is in. That is the side that the shot hits.

Most real life tanks have fairly thin floor armour.

I thought they make the bottom most sturdy due to land mines always around?

or arnt they like cars? the bottom seem to be the most sturdy as well isnt it?

Bottom of a car isn't strong at all. Having seen lots of crashed rally cars over the years (from inside and outside) I can tell you that when a car rolls over a rock or tree stump and it impacts the bottom - the bottom collapses. A young navigator was killed a few years back in my championship when this happened to him, the deformation of the floor pan actually pushed the top of his seat out of the window.

The bottom of a car is only strong from the sides.

EagleArk wrote:Space marine scout mines hit rear amour, this is how I would play it.

QFT- Seems like a reasonable rule to base the house rule off of.

Scott-S6 wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:If you want to go by strict RAW you divide the tank into quadrants with imaginary lines between the corners. You see which quadrant your figure is in. That is the side that the shot hits.

Most real life tanks have fairly thin floor armour.

I thought they make the bottom most sturdy due to land mines always around?

or arnt they like cars? the bottom seem to be the most sturdy as well isnt it?

Bottom of a car isn't strong at all. Having seen lots of crashed rally cars over the years (from inside and outside) I can tell you that when a car rolls over a rock or tree stump and it impacts the bottom - the bottom collapses. A young navigator was killed a few years back in my championship when this happened to him, the deformation of the floor pan actually pushed the top of his seat out of the window.

The bottom of a car is only strong from the sides.

Ah understood :3

Maybe this was in the last ed of the rules, but somebody was able to lay booby traps or a minefield and the rules said any vehicle moving into it took hits against the rear armor value representing the vulnerable bellies

The mawloc rules say to use rear armor

All H2H attacks on vehicles use the rear armour.

The OP is about a situation in which a tank gets on top of a building or something, so that a guy with a gun is directly underneath.

upon further review I found that the booby traps in the catachan codex hit rear armour, this should help in the decision making(i hope)