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Hi All,

I'm working on making a more mobile guard army, and mechanized infantry are the route that I'm headed in. This got me thinking about the up-gunned transport and its role on the battlefield and how best to use it and its associated squad.

The problem: You pay points (or don't) for a lightly armored up-gunned transport. Unlike a rhino, you need to choose between moving 6 and shooting your guns, or moving 12 and wasting those points you spent on the guns. Also, because you can't shoot with the squad inside, you are going to be slower for a small change in firepower (sisters/marines/dire avengers) because you are shooting the gun rather than running with the unit. I suppose it's insurance against alpha strikes and the option to go 18" if you really need to get across the board.

The solution:
1) Play gladius strike force and just don't care about efficiency since it's all free.
2) Use the transports as heavy weapons platforms moving 6" per turn while the squad hoofs it across the board/camps an objective.
3) Barrel up the board turn 1 and sacrifice all of your shooting so that your infantry has more options in the mid/late game.
4) Move 6", shoot your guns, let the squad out so they can shoot their guns.
5) Hide in super cover shooting until turn 4 when you pop smoke and go for broke.

Some of these options seem better than others for a given squad. For example, a guard platoon wants to shoot its weapons, so bunkering or going 18" turn 1 are better than move-and-shoot options. For melta/plasma vets, marines, or sisters, moving 6 and shooting or moving 6/bail are better since you can make the most of your powerful short/mid range shooting.

What are your thoughts on mech on the table (versus in list construction)?

what rules do you play by? if you move 6, your heavies can still snapfire. while it isn't terribly effective fire, it still allows your heavies to fire. Also, the Chimera justifies its cost in the number that you can field - 1 is going to get blown away FAST, but 10?

Early on, I look at my opponent's deployment versus my transports' capability to degrade their scoring. As Eldar, my choice is easy - burn 12" toward whatever I'm interested and light up my target of choice. Anyone else, though, I weigh the options between moving 6", moving 12" and snap-firing or going flat out (or moving and popping smoke, for Imperials).

It's particularly thorny as Dark Eldar (Necrons have the same issue, but I don't play Necrons and they're a lot more abuse-resistant than DE), since moving 12" deprives me not only of (almost) all my Raider/Venom's firepower, but also of the guys inside.

That said, unless virtually all the objectives are on my side, I'm most likely to blitz up turn 1, and avoid hoofing it at all costs. Metal boxes (and paper boats) save lives.

I think the real strength in these transports is the flexibility. Sure, in every game you're not going to use every aspect of the transport, but it's about having the right tool for the job that it counts. When I played "loyalist" marines (as a Chaos player at heart, I ended up playing Relictors, which we all know are dirty heretics anyway), I used to have a couple of Razorbacks. Some games you'd be racing along not shooting to get onto an objective or to get the squad into a good position. Other games when the enemy would come to me, it would be used as a heavy weapons platform and/or mobile cover. The real strength (in my mind) is using them as a counter-charge unit - sit back shooting heavy weapons until you know where you need the squad, then sacrifice a turn of fast moving to get that squad into position. You can do the same with a Rhino, but then the unit is just sitting around waiting to be committed, whereas the Razorback is able to contribute to the firepower until it needs to taxi the squad to an objective. It's also worth remembering the "objective secured" rule on a lot of these transports - park a gunny transport on or near an objective the enemy wants and force them to "waste" firepower removing it or suffer the firepower as they move to take said objective. If they're shooting at an empty transport and not a unit that is of more use to me, then I'm a happy chap.

Don't forget when shooting heavy weapons whether it counts as moving is done on a per model, not per unit, basis.

This means if you keep your heavy weapon(s) stationary you can move the rest of your models forwards (sideways, or whatever), provided you leave a string of troops leading to the heavies to maintain coherency.

In 'unoptimised' lists this often results in things like a space marine missile launcher standing on an objective, while the squad projects a finger of troops forward so the bolters can rapid fire or the melta/krak grenade can try to pop a vehicle, depending on the situation.

The problems I had with Mechdar were:
1) In the 6e codex, Serpents were OP
2) Mechdar lists tended to be Armor lists, not mechanized infantry lists, no matter how they were built. CWE transports usually cost quite a bit more than their contents. It can be difficult to have a lot of units that can make good use of the mechanization. With Serpents, spending another 130+ points to get 10 DA or Guardians into place doesn't really do it. The Serpent costs more than the unit, and the battles would revolve around them as tanks, not the guys inside. So its more about the tanks than the guys getting taxied about.

The Falcon I love a lot more, but you're limited to 5-6. And a HS slot. So no Guardians (and why would you use a transport for Rangers?). No WG either. So you've got units of 5-6 DAs, and maybe a Fire Dragon squad. But you're limited to 3 HS, so if you don't want to Squadron, your army consists of 3 small squads (or add multiple CADs). 5 DAs + IC won't keep that IC alive long. 6 won't hold an objective against even moderate firepower. So Falcons, outside of gimmicky squadrons, can't really do MechDar either.
3) What to transport?
Sure Fire Dragons are amazing tank hunters, DAs aren't bad, and Guardians have their points. A Wraith list can do good things with transports. Butnif I'm not running a Wraith list, its really just the FD who get amazing assistance from the transports.

This is not to say CWE isn't broken in many ways. Unjust mean Mechdar, where the troops actually matter, isn't that feasible (compared to mech'ed SM in Rhinos, or Arks for Necrons, or Chimeras for IG).

Chimeras and tauroxes(because you said you were playing guard):
1) both have fire points so your infantry can shoot from within(well, some).
2) moving up to 6" just counts as moving. Moving 6-12" the unit snapfires.
3) Chimera lasgun arrays help alleviate some of that "wasted infantry" feeling. Just remember that the arrays are still fired by the chimera and only required transported models that don't use the firepoint to fire.
4) I do not like the Taurox for the points(15 points less for 1 less front armor and barely any weapons. 2 fire points on each side of the hull only benefits when you can get an enemy unit within los of more than 2 of them; otherwise the 2-model top hatch does the exact same thing. Only benefit is the access point on each side, which is still not that useful .

Chimeras are the way to go, put at least 8 models in each with no more than 2 heavy/special weapons. If you are going for a heavy weapon make sure it has at least 2 shots and no blast or template(remember: a hwt is just 1 model in the rules so it plus a special, or 2 hwt, may fire from the hatch). The chimera can be used as both an actual transport and as a mobile bunker system. If you plan on mobility throughout the game, take the hull heavy flamer(never ditch the multilaser). For the mobile bunker(run up to an objective, park, defend) the hull heavy bolter is best with a heavy stubber for backup.