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This is aimed at reducing 2 issues:

Issue 1: It has been well established that 2+ save models are not durable enough to reflect their supposed durability in this edition
Issue 2: Since vehicles have lost their armour facings, it has rendered almost all manoeuvring unnecessary. if out of range, move forwards.

Possible Solution:

Bring back armour values and facings on Vehicles, as a replacement for Toughness. Keep wounds and saves as is. This means that we have 2 different "to wound" systems, both of which are quite simple to use; the normal S vs T chart, and the S+D6 vs AV.

The key difference in these 2 systems is that in the normal system, everything can hurt everything. In the armour value system, there is a limit on what can hurt the vehicle. I propose that glancing hits (equalling the AV) always do a single damage, no matter what the damage stat of the weapon. Penetrating hits (Exceeding AV) would do normal damage. A roll of a 1, provided it is enough to equal or exceed the AV, will always only glance.

With this mechanic, you can give certain units which lack their supposed durability an AV vs shooting instead of a T. For Example, give Terminators AV9 against shooting. This makes them more durable against small arms, which they need, without making them monsters which can't be stopped - they would still have a toughness in CC, and lascannons etc will be a little more effective against them, as a hit will always result in potential damage (if they don't save). As a lascannon should.

By making anti-tank more effective at anti-tank than anti-infantry, we can split things into 2 classes. Then, move specialist units (termies, meganobs) into the "needs anti-tank" bracket.

Thoughts?

I'm not against it inherently, but I do want to make sure everyone still has a chance to do damage. It's no fun setting up, only to see that virtually nothing you have can actually damage the enemy.

I'd recommend taking a look at the Army Lists subforum, and making sure that every list can still meaningfully impact every other list with this change.

Also, note on this: I'm talking from a casual point of view. Obviously tournament lists nowadays are designed to take down Knights and won't struggle with this rule, but this rule ain't gonna be used at tournaments. It'll be used casually.

If termies get this, then I want it for my MegaNobz, as well.

Y'know what I do NOT miss? Being unable to break a vehicle's armour and wasting my time lugging my army down to the store. "Oh, you brought a Land Raider? I guess I will just start packing my army up, in that case." Someone dropped a Monolith on me when my army had nothing more than a pair of lascannons for anti-tank. Real fething sporting of yah.

Facings is just another "detail" to add more things to "fuss" over during play that does add a "tactical" consideration.

If the number of models become less, where if the game leans toward a more skirmish play, then I could see using facings.
Bolt Action is a very close rule-set to 40k and it does consider facings, BUT the game is MUCH smaller than 40k games.

Adding to smaller models (not Dreadnaughts) start getting into a weird "grey-zone" of how you determine EXACTLY is rear arc.
It would also beg the question that these guys are part of a squad, resolving this could get very... irritating.

Vehicles would be no big deal to go back to some of those rules.
How far do you want to go?
We then had weapons arcs as well, extra movement when rotating... it does present a few "me too" considerations by this one "simple" request.

A lot of issues with LoS and armour facings could be mitigated by playing on a grid with shaped bases. Likely hexes. Imagine if 40k were played on a hex map?

I miss BattleTech.

 General Malarky wrote:
A lot of issues with LoS and armour facings could be mitigated by playing on a grid with shaped bases. Likely hexes. Imagine if 40k were played on a hex map?
I miss BattleTech.

Haha, THAT is actually a "board game", the tabletop version has a similar "problem" but continuing to use the hex base removes the issue we have with round bases.
If GW changed the bases, that would make it "obvious" for facings.
I do not miss Battletech, I still play.

Heh, I never bothered playing it not on the hex maps because of the malarkey I had encountered with LoS and movement while playing 40k and WarmaHordes.

Make terminators save a 3+ on 2d6

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Make terminators save a 3+ on 2d6

My 6-model Aggressor squad just shot your Terminators 120 times and got 55 wounds on approximately average rolls. Please roll 55 individual saves on 2d6 looking for the double 1s.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Make terminators save a 3+ on 2d6

My 6-model Aggressor squad just shot your Terminators 120 times and got 55 wounds on approximately average rolls. Please roll 55 individual saves on 2d6 looking for the double 1s.

Ok roll 55 dice, re roll ones, if it's a one take a wound

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Make terminators save a 3+ on 2d6

My 6-model Aggressor squad just shot your Terminators 120 times and got 55 wounds on approximately average rolls. Please roll 55 individual saves on 2d6 looking for the double 1s.

Ok roll 55 dice, re roll ones, if it's a one take a wound

So you want to bring back rerollable 2+ saves? Remember how much fun Screamerstars were last edition?

 some bloke wrote:
This is aimed at reducing 2 issues:

Issue 1: It has been well established that 2+ save models are not durable enough to reflect their supposed durability in this edition
Issue 2: Since vehicles have lost their armour facings, it has rendered almost all manoeuvring unnecessary. if out of range, move forwards.

Possible Solution:

Bring back armour values and facings on Vehicles, as a replacement for Toughness. Keep wounds and saves as is. This means that we have 2 different "to wound" systems, both of which are quite simple to use; the normal S vs T chart, and the S+D6 vs AV.

The key difference in these 2 systems is that in the normal system, everything can hurt everything. In the armour value system, there is a limit on what can hurt the vehicle. I propose that glancing hits (equalling the AV) always do a single damage, no matter what the damage stat of the weapon. Penetrating hits (Exceeding AV) would do normal damage. A roll of a 1, provided it is enough to equal or exceed the AV, will always only glance.

With this mechanic, you can give certain units which lack their supposed durability an AV vs shooting instead of a T. For Example, give Terminators AV9 against shooting. This makes them more durable against small arms, which they need, without making them monsters which can't be stopped - they would still have a toughness in CC, and lascannons etc will be a little more effective against them, as a hit will always result in potential damage (if they don't save). As a lascannon should.

By making anti-tank more effective at anti-tank than anti-infantry, we can split things into 2 classes. Then, move specialist units (termies, meganobs) into the "needs anti-tank" bracket.

Thoughts?

So a few things here. For starters, I question the assumption that bringing back armor facing (in a form similar to previous editions) would actually increase the need for maneuvering in a desirable way. Most vehicles in previous editions had the same front and side armor with only the rear armor being lower. IG vehicles were often exceptions to this, and I think maybe Tau tanks, but most marine, eldar, dark eldar, harlequin, and necron vehicles, iirc, were generally the same armor on the front and the sides. It felt good to land some rear armor shots, but that rear armor stat tended to be far more important for units in melee because a few lucky rolls could potentially glance a vehicle into uselessness or take out the 3 or 4 hull points a vehicle had. So basically, armor facing didn't usually have a huge impact on where I wanted to position; it was more like an excuse to give vehicles a weakness that marines and orks could punch because unharmable parking lots were a pain.

Second, figuring out where your armor facings actually are can be a pain if you don't happen to play a species that builds their tanks exclusively in the shape of rectangles (humans). Does a wave serpent measure its facings from the back sides of the wings? From the back sides of the troop carrying area? How about on a devil fish? How about on that heavily converted ork transport with an a-symmetrical silhouette?

Third, making vehicles immune to most small arms fire in the game was formerly somewhat balanced out by the low number of wounds (hull points) or chance of one-shotting vehicles. So sure, every bolter and lasgun in your army might be incapable of harming the front and sides of a rhino, but at least it only took a handful of strength 5+ shots or one good lascannon or meltagun to kill the rhino entirely. If you made everything strength 4 or less incapable of harming most vehicles again but also kept the current number of wounds on vehicles, you'd make them that much more durable.

Fourth, because many weapons/units are incapable of harming AV 11+, it means you can look at your opponents army and say, "Okay, here are the things that I have to kill before I become invulnerable." This encourages armor spam which encourages anti-tank spam which reduces overall list diversity in the meta. Kind of like how everyone has spent the last year ignoring chunks of their codex because they need tools to survive/kill imperial knights. I remember 5th edition when my vanilla craftworld army had a couple squads of fire dragons, a couple bright lances, and not much else that could reliably hurt a vehicle. So when an imperial guard player brought more tanks than I had meltaguns, I knew I wasn't likely to win that game.

Fifth, it seems odd to me that a low-strength multi-damage weapon might only be capable of doing a single point of damage to a vehicle because it would only be capable of doing a glancing hit. Surely something like a starcannon (eldar plasma weapon) should be able to do more than one point of damage to a devilfish. Ditto krak grenades which are literally intended for tank hunting.

Sixth, giving armor facing to a squad gets weird. I know, it was doable in the past, but think about it. You have a squad of terminators that you place carelessly or even deploy in a circle formation because it looks cool. Now you've got five guys facing five different directions. You'd have to resolve your attacks against them piecemeal as the number needed to wound (penetrate) them changes after each casualty.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Make terminators save a 3+ on 2d6

My 6-model Aggressor squad just shot your Terminators 120 times and got 55 wounds on approximately average rolls. Please roll 55 individual saves on 2d6 looking for the double 1s.

Ok roll 55 dice, re roll ones, if it's a one take a wound

So you want to bring back rerollable 2+ saves? Remember how much fun Screamerstars were last edition?

I agree that bringing back rerollable 3+ and 2+ saves isn't the way to go, but to play daemon's advocate, this would be less effective with armor saves in an edition where AP can reduce the armor value.

 General Malarky wrote:
If termies get this, then I want it for my MegaNobz, as well.

Y'know what I do NOT miss? Being unable to break a vehicle's armour and wasting my time lugging my army down to the store. "Oh, you brought a Land Raider? I guess I will just start packing my army up, in that case." Someone dropped a Monolith on me when my army had nothing more than a pair of lascannons for anti-tank. Real fething sporting of yah.

Real ing sporting of you to waste your opponent's time by showing up with a list that only had two lascannons for anti-tank. If your list couldn't deal with a tank in a game where tanks exist then that is your fault for bringing a terrible list, you have no right to complain about your opponent taking a perfectly legal option.

 Peregrine wrote:

 General Malarky wrote:
If termies get this, then I want it for my MegaNobz, as well.

Y'know what I do NOT miss? Being unable to break a vehicle's armour and wasting my time lugging my army down to the store. "Oh, you brought a Land Raider? I guess I will just start packing my army up, in that case." Someone dropped a Monolith on me when my army had nothing more than a pair of lascannons for anti-tank. Real fething sporting of yah.

Real ing sporting of you to waste your opponent's time by showing up with a list that only had two lascannons for anti-tank. If your list couldn't deal with a tank in a game where tanks exist then that is your fault for bringing a terrible list, you have no right to complain about your opponent taking a perfectly legal option.

Im with this guy. Even then, you can try to win with VPs.

Would love to screw it back into 7e a little bit: Less multi damage weapons, armor fronts

 Peregrine wrote:

 General Malarky wrote:
If termies get this, then I want it for my MegaNobz, as well.

Y'know what I do NOT miss? Being unable to break a vehicle's armour and wasting my time lugging my army down to the store. "Oh, you brought a Land Raider? I guess I will just start packing my army up, in that case." Someone dropped a Monolith on me when my army had nothing more than a pair of lascannons for anti-tank. Real fething sporting of yah.

Real ing sporting of you to waste your opponent's time by showing up with a list that only had two lascannons for anti-tank. If your list couldn't deal with a tank in a game where tanks exist then that is your fault for bringing a terrible list, you have no right to complain about your opponent taking a perfectly legal option.

I think you're both pointing out the flaws with Armor Value from different sides of the situation. Armor Value makes it so that many weapons/units simply can't harm a sufficiently armored vehicle. So if one player fields a parking lot or even just a handful of very durable vehicles (monoliths, knights, whatever is in vogue at the time) because he likes the fluff of such an army or likes the models or simply likes the mechanics of it, his opponent has basically wasted any points spent on low strength offense.

Face a parking lot often enough in your local meta, and you'll start ignoring big chunks of your codex. Did you like the look of striking scorpions or the idea of including kroot in your friendly league night Tau army? Well too bad. From now on, any gun in your army that isn't strong enough to threaten a parking lot or a bunch of monoliths is basically wasted points that you should have spent on anti-tank so that your opponent can enjoy his tank spam army.

This is part of why imperial knights were so unpleasant to face in 7th edition; a vanilla army wasn't really trading blows with knights; it was praying that it got lucky on the alpha strike or else was simply diving onto objectives and hoping the knights rolled badly. It stopped being a game where armies damaged each other and became a one-sided beating where the guy losing teeth "won" by standing in the right spot long enough. To a lesser degree, that's still the problem with durable things like knights today. Sure, even a humble gretching or guardsman can theoretically kill the knight, but you're damaging it so inefficiently that anything fishing for 6's feels like wasted offense.

Two lascannons was an unusually light amount of anti-tank, but the monolith was an unusually durable model, immune to the melta special rule, the lance special rule, and any weapon of strength 7 or less. The problem with AV is that it made the anti-tank-light army basically incompatible for play with an army that took a perfectly legal monolith. As opposed to the current system which renders small arms fire inefficient against a monolith but at least doesn't make the monolith completely immune to most of General Malarky's army.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 General Malarky wrote:
If termies get this, then I want it for my MegaNobz, as well.

Y'know what I do NOT miss? Being unable to break a vehicle's armour and wasting my time lugging my army down to the store. "Oh, you brought a Land Raider? I guess I will just start packing my army up, in that case." Someone dropped a Monolith on me when my army had nothing more than a pair of lascannons for anti-tank. Real fething sporting of yah.

Real ing sporting of you to waste your opponent's time by showing up with a list that only had two lascannons for anti-tank. If your list couldn't deal with a tank in a game where tanks exist then that is your fault for bringing a terrible list, you have no right to complain about your opponent taking a perfectly legal option.

I think you're both pointing out the flaws with Armor Value from different sides of the situation. Armor Value makes it so that many weapons/units simply can't harm a sufficiently armored vehicle. So if one player fields a parking lot or even just a handful of very durable vehicles (monoliths, knights, whatever is in vogue at the time) because he likes the fluff of such an army or likes the models or simply likes the mechanics of it, his opponent has basically wasted any points spent on low strength offense.

Face a parking lot often enough in your local meta, and you'll start ignoring big chunks of your codex. Did you like the look of striking scorpions or the idea of including kroot in your friendly league night Tau army? Well too bad. From now on, any gun in your army that isn't strong enough to threaten a parking lot or a bunch of monoliths is basically wasted points that you should have spent on anti-tank so that your opponent can enjoy his tank spam army.

This is part of why imperial knights were so unpleasant to face in 7th edition; a vanilla army wasn't really trading blows with knights; it was praying that it got lucky on the alpha strike or else was simply diving onto objectives and hoping the knights rolled badly. It stopped being a game where armies damaged each other and became a one-sided beating where the guy losing teeth "won" by standing in the right spot long enough. To a lesser degree, that's still the problem with durable things like knights today. Sure, even a humble gretching or guardsman can theoretically kill the knight, but you're damaging it so inefficiently that anything fishing for 6's feels like wasted offense.

Two lascannons was an unusually light amount of anti-tank, but the monolith was an unusually durable model, immune to the melta special rule, the lance special rule, and any weapon of strength 7 or less. The problem with AV is that it made the anti-tank-light army basically incompatible for play with an army that took a perfectly legal monolith. As opposed to the current system which renders small arms fire inefficient against a monolith but at least doesn't make the monolith completely immune to most of General Malarky's army.

You look at two units disregarding almost everything.
Troops generate cp, screen, capture objectives, deny ds and even deal damage while costing almost nothing in comparison to a vehicle, if he only brings tanks and you only infantry its your fault by bringin such a list.
You can win by presence though, capture and tieing them up in melee, not really good for fly units but those units cost A LOT, you can still tie them up by surrounding him and leaving no place to fall back, if you really want to spam 2k points of infantry. On the other side the tanks cant deal much damage to the infantry as they payed for a lot of durability, and maybe even strong weapons that wont make a difference, almost instant losing.

If memory serves the 7th ed Monolith was a big investment in points that was slow as a wet week and had the equivalent of four or five melta guns.
I just remember having a weird three turn face off with a guy's Necrons where a single wound Monolith was all that was left but couldn't do enough to take the match but I couldn't do anything at all to the Monolith having lost my anti-tank units.
We wound up on a draw.
Frustrating but not exactly disappointing.

 0XFallen wrote:


You look at two units disregarding almost everything.
Troops generate cp, screen, capture objectives, deny ds and even deal damage while costing almost nothing in comparison to a vehicle, if he only brings tanks and you only infantry its your fault by bringin such a list.
You can win by presence though, capture and tieing them up in melee, not really good for fly units but those units cost A LOT, you can still tie them up by surrounding him and leaving no place to fall back, if you really want to spam 2k points of infantry. On the other side the tanks cant deal much damage to the infantry as they payed for a lot of durability, and maybe even strong weapons that wont make a difference, almost instant losing.

I feel like you're focusing on hyperbolic edgecases and overlooking the point. Obviously spamming only vehicles or only infantry will be sub-optimal for most armies, and yes, you can still win a game even if one or more enemy units are invulnerable to attack. What I'm saying is that it can be frustrating to have large chunks of your opponent's army be immune to the attacks of large chunks of your own army. Say 8 of the 20 units in my army pose a meaningful threat to vehicles and your army tends to include a lot of points-efficient vehicles (and a few non-vehicles). If you can kill my 8 anti-tank units before they take out most of your vehicles, then the rest of the game would devolve into me diving for objectives or trying to tarpit you while you wail on me.

Maybe my tarpitting and objective diving could still win me the game, but the nature of the game experience would be dramatically different from a "normal" game of 40k. 40k as advertised is about our units attacking each other. Reducing one another's offense through a series of interesting decisions, and telling stories about superpowered soldiers going at it. In the above scenario, it's instead a game about your stuff attacking my stuff, and me trying to die slowly enough to win.

Instead of a boxing match, it becomes, "Hey, let's have this guy punch you over and over, and if you don't pass out for five minutes, you can declare victory!"

Wyldhunt wrote:

 0XFallen wrote:


You look at two units disregarding almost everything.
Troops generate cp, screen, capture objectives, deny ds and even deal damage while costing almost nothing in comparison to a vehicle, if he only brings tanks and you only infantry its your fault by bringin such a list.
You can win by presence though, capture and tieing them up in melee, not really good for fly units but those units cost A LOT, you can still tie them up by surrounding him and leaving no place to fall back, if you really want to spam 2k points of infantry. On the other side the tanks cant deal much damage to the infantry as they payed for a lot of durability, and maybe even strong weapons that wont make a difference, almost instant losing.

I feel like you're focusing on hyperbolic edgecases and overlooking the point. Obviously spamming only vehicles or only infantry will be sub-optimal for most armies, and yes, you can still win a game even if one or more enemy units are invulnerable to attack. What I'm saying is that it can be frustrating to have large chunks of your opponent's army be immune to the attacks of large chunks of your own army. Say 8 of the 20 units in my army pose a meaningful threat to vehicles and your army tends to include a lot of points-efficient vehicles (and a few non-vehicles). If you can kill my 8 anti-tank units before they take out most of your vehicles, then the rest of the game would devolve into me diving for objectives or trying to tarpit you while you wail on me.

Maybe my tarpitting and objective diving could still win me the game, but the nature of the game experience would be dramatically different from a "normal" game of 40k. 40k as advertised is about our units attacking each other. Reducing one another's offense through a series of interesting decisions, and telling stories about superpowered soldiers going at it. In the above scenario, it's instead a game about your stuff attacking my stuff, and me trying to die slowly enough to win.

Instead of a boxing match, it becomes, "Hey, let's have this guy punch you over and over, and if you don't pass out for five minutes, you can declare victory!"

Not having much AT is as much as having none, 8 out of 30 are fine though, if you are able to hide them, they also tend to have much range, and anti infantery weapons ate most likely 36" or less, hiding out of range and out of los shouldnt be hard against most armies.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Make terminators save a 3+ on 2d6

My 6-model Aggressor squad just shot your Terminators 120 times and got 55 wounds on approximately average rolls. Please roll 55 individual saves on 2d6 looking for the double 1s.

Ok roll 55 dice, re roll ones, if it's a one take a wound

So you want to bring back rerollable 2+ saves? Remember how much fun Screamerstars were last edition?

I agree that bringing back rerollable 3+ and 2+ saves isn't the way to go, but to play daemon's advocate, this would be less effective with armor saves in an edition where AP can reduce the armor value.

That attitude is why Fireblades and FRF/SRF exist. Responding to power creep with more power creep puts more and more holes in the game, for instance "why do my no-AP weapons exist if they don't do anything?", that require more power creep, in this case "why not make them shoot four times a model?" to correct.

OK, so I can see the issue here is that people don't want to be punished for bringing massed anti-infantry when the enemy has massed tanks; in previous editions, the tanks were easier to kill using anti-tank, but impossible to kill without it, so it became a gamble - bring all tanks, and if the opponent has decent anti-tank, you've lost, if they don't you've won.

The aim of this was to increase the need to move. So, what if the vehicles have AV front and side, but T on the rear?

This way, everything can hurt a tank from behind. but not everything can take them head-on. in CC you would go against toughness.

If you give a universal front & side armour to each vehicle (IE the front and side armour is the same for each vehicle, not different to one another) the arcs become a bit less worrisome, and most awkward vehicles have pointy fronts and square-ish rears. Simply draw a line across the back of your tank - if the attacker is behind you, they target your toughness, if they are in front, they target your armour. keeps it much simpler to work out, whatever shape your tank is.

I would love to see firing arcs come back as well, I think it's ludicrous that a leman russ can fire every gun out of it's right hand rear track guard, around a corner. it wasn't complicated before. I never heard anyone complain about it. but they got rid of it anyway.

As for the facings on a terminator, I wouldn't have any "facings", I'd simply state that against shooting they are AV9. Glancing hits cause 1 wound, as per vehicles. so a lasdcannon hits a termy and rolls a 1, if it isn't saved then it only does 1 damage. Against CC, they are T4 as normal.

The problem with fire arcs was that I almost always had at least one gun that did nothing and it seemed really stupid that one gunner is just having a drink watching the scenery rather than shooting.

 some bloke wrote:
OK, so I can see the issue here is that people don't want to be punished for bringing massed anti-infantry when the enemy has massed tanks; in previous editions, the tanks were easier to kill using anti-tank, but impossible to kill without it, so it became a gamble - bring all tanks, and if the opponent has decent anti-tank, you've lost, if they don't you've won...

Which was a problem introduced in 6e with "Bring as many detachments as you like!" Back when you only ever got one FOC worth of units you were forced to have a range of targets on the table rather than building an army composed entirely of hard targets. You couldn't mass tanks the way you can now because your 1,500pt army could have three Leman Russes in it, period, end of discussion, no squadrons, no commmand tanks, no Russes-in-other-FOC-slots loopholes...

pm713 wrote:
The problem with fire arcs was that I almost always had at least one gun that did nothing and it seemed really stupid that one gunner is just having a drink watching the scenery rather than shooting.

Easily remedied by allowing the tanks to split fire.

 some bloke wrote:

pm713 wrote:
The problem with fire arcs was that I almost always had at least one gun that did nothing and it seemed really stupid that one gunner is just having a drink watching the scenery rather than shooting.

Easily remedied by allowing the tanks to split fire.

Only kind of. Splitting fire definitely helps, but you still get into weird situations where a leman russ doesn't fire a sponson because there simply aren't any enemies in range on the side you had to turn said sponson towards due to terrain, lining up shots with the other gun, etc. And ravagers have a weird time trying to line up all of their shots on the same target unless it's dead ahead and sufficiently long. Plus, you discourage cool conversions because repositioning the weapons could be considered modeling for advantage. And you'll add a certain amount of time to your games as you fidget with the exact positioning of your guns trying to line up the shots you want while also trying to hide rear armor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
OK, so I can see the issue here is that people don't want to be punished for bringing massed anti-infantry when the enemy has massed tanks; in previous editions, the tanks were easier to kill using anti-tank, but impossible to kill without it, so it became a gamble - bring all tanks, and if the opponent has decent anti-tank, you've lost, if they don't you've won...

Which was a problem introduced in 6e with "Bring as many detachments as you like!" Back when you only ever got one FOC worth of units you were forced to have a range of targets on the table rather than building an army composed entirely of hard targets. You couldn't mass tanks the way you can now because your 1,500pt army could have three Leman Russes in it, period, end of discussion, no squadrons, no commmand tanks, no Russes-in-other-FOC-slots loopholes...

That wasn't really my experience. I started playing in 5th and have not-so-fond memories of imperial guard armies that were just rows and rows of tanks. If they had more tanks than I had meltaguns, my chances of doing anything but diving onto objectives at the end of the game were pretty slim. Marines were either stuffed into rhinos or else hidden in drop pods, and they had meltaguns everywhere they could to contend with the sheer number of tanks they'd have to kill. If you wanted to play a competitive eldar list, you were basically just filling up falcons with dire aveners so that your hyper durable tanks could count as scoring thanks to your Dire Avengers Vehicle Upgrade. It was an edition where heroes and super soldiers were secondary to the metal boxes they rode around in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 some bloke wrote:
OK, so I can see the issue here is that people don't want to be punished for bringing massed anti-infantry when the enemy has massed tanks; in previous editions, the tanks were easier to kill using anti-tank, but impossible to kill without it, so it became a gamble - bring all tanks, and if the opponent has decent anti-tank, you've lost, if they don't you've won.

Yep! That's a good summary of my concerns.

The aim of this was to increase the need to move. So, what if the vehicles have AV front and side, but T on the rear?

This way, everything can hurt a tank from behind. but not everything can take them head-on. in CC you would go against toughness.

Well, at that point, movement would only factor in if you could reach rear armor. Which is generally pretty difficult unless you're deep striking. So getting hits on rear armor wouldn't generally be something you could accomplish through tactical movement. It would be a bonus that occassionally occurred due to weird terrain or possibly due to firing arcs.

Plus, you still have issues with the changes to vehicle durability. Currently, I can throw a ton of heavy bolter shots at the front of a chimera and potentially shave some wounds off of it. If the chimera went back to AV12, those heavy bolters would be unable to harm it. And instead of needing to club 3 hull points off of AV 10 in melee, melee units would have to contend with 10+ wounds and any saves on most vehicles.

If you give a universal front & side armour to each vehicle (IE the front and side armour is the same for each vehicle, not different to one another) the arcs become a bit less worrisome, and most awkward vehicles have pointy fronts and square-ish rears. Simply draw a line across the back of your tank - if the attacker is behind you, they target your toughness, if they are in front, they target your armour. keeps it much simpler to work out, whatever shape your tank is.

Still gets weird. Put a vehicle in the center of the table. Draw a line across its back the way you're proposing. Now stick a model 1" behind it and as far left or right as the table allows. You could potentially be 20" off to the side, able to see the entire side of the tank, none of the "back" of the tank, but still count as being in the rear arc.

As for the facings on a terminator, I wouldn't have any "facings", I'd simply state that against shooting they are AV9. Glancing hits cause 1 wound, as per vehicles. so a lasdcannon hits a termy and rolls a 1, if it isn't saved then it only does 1 damage. Against CC, they are T4 as normal.

I feel like specifically trying to help out heavy infantry is a semi-distinct problem/discussion from adding AV back to vehicles because of the far-reaching rammifications of such a change.

Wyldhunt wrote:
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 AnomanderRake wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
OK, so I can see the issue here is that people don't want to be punished for bringing massed anti-infantry when the enemy has massed tanks; in previous editions, the tanks were easier to kill using anti-tank, but impossible to kill without it, so it became a gamble - bring all tanks, and if the opponent has decent anti-tank, you've lost, if they don't you've won...

Which was a problem introduced in 6e with "Bring as many detachments as you like!" Back when you only ever got one FOC worth of units you were forced to have a range of targets on the table rather than building an army composed entirely of hard targets. You couldn't mass tanks the way you can now because your 1,500pt army could have three Leman Russes in it, period, end of discussion, no squadrons, no commmand tanks, no Russes-in-other-FOC-slots loopholes...

That wasn't really my experience. I started playing in 5th and have not-so-fond memories of imperial guard armies that were just rows and rows of tanks. If they had more tanks than I had meltaguns, my chances of doing anything but diving onto objectives at the end of the game were pretty slim. Marines were either stuffed into rhinos or else hidden in drop pods, and they had meltaguns everywhere they could to contend with the sheer number of tanks they'd have to kill. If you wanted to play a competitive eldar list, you were basically just filling up falcons with dire aveners so that your hyper durable tanks could count as scoring thanks to your Dire Avengers Vehicle Upgrade. It was an edition where heroes and super soldiers were secondary to the metal boxes they rode around in.

Checked my archive of old books, and Russ squadrons were indeed brought in for 5th, so we jumped from being allowed three Russes in an army to being allowed nine with that Codex. Also not sure that the super-soldiers were secondary to the metal boxes; Rhino-spam was definitely a thing in 5th (glances can't destroy vehicles + dropping Rhinos from 50pts to 35pts + taking away the forced disembark from any penetrating hit) but it was a thing because it let you really reliably get the troops inside up close and personal without taking any damage at all. The super-soldiers did the actual killing.


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Wyldhunt wrote:

As for the facings on a terminator, I wouldn't have any "facings", I'd simply state that against shooting they are AV9. Glancing hits cause 1 wound, as per vehicles. so a lasdcannon hits a termy and rolls a 1, if it isn't saved then it only does 1 damage. Against CC, they are T4 as normal.

I feel like specifically trying to help out heavy infantry is a semi-distinct problem/discussion from adding AV back to vehicles because of the far-reaching rammifications of such a change.

Have been throwing ideas at the wall over in the alternating activations/Antares thread; in Antares everything has AV rather than using to-wound/save rolls, armour pen auto-passes on a 10 (on d10s), and multiple ranged attacks are a privelege, not a right (most units shoot one shot most of the time).

Checked my archive of old books, and Russ squadrons were indeed brought in for 5th, so we jumped from being allowed three Russes in an army to being allowed nine with that Codex. Also not sure that the super-soldiers were secondary to the metal boxes; Rhino-spam was definitely a thing in 5th (glances can't destroy vehicles + dropping Rhinos from 50pts to 35pts + taking away the forced disembark from any penetrating hit) but it was a thing because it let you really reliably get the troops inside up close and personal without taking any damage at all. The super-soldiers did the actual killing.

I belive it was more the effect off a skew list that suddenly got made possible.
Basically the same situation IK created at their introduction.
Vice versa hordes are also skew and both relly on a specific durability type and the inherent scalling of benefits, forcing to use more of a specific weapon type or unit type that typically can only deal with either armor or horde bodies.

The old FOC did certainly overall limit this however don't forget that IG also had platoon structure so they now could field both type of hordes.

Not Online!!! wrote:
...Vice versa hordes are also skew and both relly on a specific durability type and the inherent scalling of benefits, forcing to use more of a specific weapon type or unit type that typically can only deal with either armor or horde bodies.

The old FOC did certainly overall limit this however don't forget that IG also had platoon structure so they now could field both type of hordes.

Sort of. Anti-horde weapons tended to be cheaper and easier to get than anti-armour weapons (the small arms you were required to use, for instance), and morale/sweeping made a lot of units into effective anti-horde weapons.

I wasn't proposing this idea just to have something to stick on terminators, it just happened that it allowed a different scale of damage resistance which Terminators would benefit from.

I agree that having high wounds and save on vehicles, whilst also making them immune to small arms, would probably be too much.

Perhaps an overhaul of the wounds characteristics of all the vehicles would be in order. Bear in mind, though, that the main anti-tank weapons of this edition are all D6 damage, so if we assume an average roll of 3.5 and remember when vehicles had 3HP, we get 10-11 wounds. 12 would be a good basis, I think, as it is the boundary for being 2-shotted by a lascannon. light vehicles must have below 12 wounds, heavy vehicles should have over 12 wounds.

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