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hello dakka,

first, let me clearly state that I am a 40k noob I'm mostly in it for the painting and have yet to play my first game. that said, I've read (and own) the BRB and C:SM, watched lots of battle reports, read a lot of the recent posts in this forum, etc.

anyway, I'm putting together a salamanders army (I guess that'd be vanilla C:SM?) and I'm unclear on how best to use rhinos and razorbacks. vehicles, in general, seem pretty fragile what with glances removing hull points and so many anti-armor weapons on the board. are rhinos good for anything beyond moving as far up the board as possible on turn 1 and dumping their payload? razborbacks confuse me even more... do you keep them empty in the back field and treat them as a devastator on tracks or do you load them up with a 5-man squad of something and treat them like a rhino? are they even worth taking instead of rhinos? are they a viable transport for a command squad + HQ or are they too fragile for that?

cheers and happy friday,

v

IMHO Razorbacks act more as mobile devastators. Rhinos are yes fly as far as possible and if they survive beyond turn 2 well YA!

Drop Pods seem to be much more effective with the current game for taking mid field and setting up that much needed mid field fire base, or for getting behind that pesky unit in cover, at least in my experience. Remember that units cannot assault if they disembark from the Rhino. Until next turn that is anyways.

That includes if it is blown up on the enemies shooting phase just keep that in mind when playing.

Drop pods have the same assault constraints, right? Can they be shot down by any skyfire/interceptor stuff before they have a chance to deploy embarked units or do I only have to worry about mishaps?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Crap. Exalted my own post by accident. iPhone + bus = bad!

no they can't be shot down per se..., Interceptors I think just make it harder for a unit to land by drop pod & such

Interceptor says that at the end of the movement phase any unit that arrived from reserve that turn may be shot at by the unit with interceptor.

So they land safely, and then get shot.

I would use razorbacks as mobile fire support and rhinos as transports for more shooty units as well as cover. Assault units need to have bikes/jumppacks/land raiders

I've found my razorback still quite useful for dropping off a Sternguard squad then giving general AT/Anti-termie fire support (LC and TL Plasma). Yes even in 6th (so far).

The troops in the drop pod can be targeted by the interceptor gun, they are usually a better target than a drop pod.

You've asked a really good question.
I always find it strange that there are discussions about units and general strategy but not much about individual moves on the battlefield.

Rhinos do lots. I try list some of the more unusual ones:
1)road block. You can easily space rhinos 1'' apart as to stop models getting through.
2)Blocking Line of sight, take that silly warboss I am shooting your tasty orks behind and from the front not the ones you choose.
3)Blocking objectives, they can not denial objectives but they can force an opponent to move around, or in fact not get close enough.
4)Tank shock. This is more for if you get bored. Actually it can be very useful now to squash units and move them into line of sight or away from blocking cover.
Also you can push units off the board now.
5)Driving up to pick up any one left behind. It happens that you may need to move a possible scoring or denial unit, which you hadn't planned for.
6)Cover saves, it is more possible to give a cover save whilst not blocking line of sight.
7)mobile bunker to shoot from, I am talking about heavy weapons, firing special weapons from it is a bit obvious.

That sort of thing.
If anything I am still coming to terms with new combat tactics. It seems it is best to leave 5 men in the rhino in range of an objective then have 5 outside on the objective, if the rhino is blown you have another scoring unit.

Razorbacks are mostly cheap preds which happen to house infantry, you want scoring models in them ideally.