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This is something I came up with back when I was running 4th edition Orks in 6th and 7th, for a modelling project for an ork superheavy vehicle.

The premise is that the vehicle has a massive shokk-attack gun, which is used to launch assaults across the apocalypse-sized gaming table.

The entire vehicle would be a single, front-facing gun with tracks. it would looks suitably dangerous and orky!

Rulestorming for 8th edition, I was thinking:




I'm worried it's a little too in-depth, but the general gist is to fire your own army at the enemy - either they make It and start hitting things, or they are sent inside the enemy and blow them apart - so the actual shots from the gun are inversely linked to the number of models which make it.

I have no idea how to price it, but it's purely for fluffy reasons (because I want to build one!)

thoughts?

It definitly sounds very orky. I'm not playing them but personally I think I would have fun facing this unit

Fun idea! I like that it makes both losing models and keeping them both desirable results. It does seem like it could stand to be simplified and polished though. At a glance...

If a unit embarks on the Mega-Shokk attack wagon in the preceding movement phase, this weapon must be fired in the shooting phase.

What happens if you embark but don't have any targets in line of sight? What if you start the game with units embarked but don't embark any on turn 1? I'd probably just reword this to say, "This weapon may only fire while at least one unit is embarked."

Once this weapon has fired, if the target unit was not destroyed, immediately place any surviving embarked units such that at least one of their models is in base contact with the target unit. If the target unit was destroyed, place any surviving embarked units within 6" of where the target unit used to be. These units count as having declared a charge in the Fight phase, and may not shoot in the shooting phase.

There's a lot of complication going on there. For starters, I'm not sure delivering a unit all the way into combat with this rule is a great idea. Automatically getting into combat right away is kind of taboo at the moment. Units have been nerfed severely for doing so. Some armies pay a hefty 3CP just to deepstrike a few inches closer to the enemy, and then they still have a significant chance of failing a charge roll. People spend points on units and gimmicks that make it more difficult to get into combat after deepstriking or zooming across the table. You could tear apart entire castle lists with a single squad of boyz and this model. Creating a unit that can automatically deliver units into melee from across the table might be impossible to put a solid points cost on. You potentially autowin the game against any list that can be shut down by having one of its key shooting units tied up in melee each turn. So you either make this thing so expensive that the ork player autoloses by taking it, or you make it cheap enough that the ork player can potentially autowin by fielding a couple decent units alongside it.

Setting balance aside, this ability could be hard to resolve. You can potentially fit enough models into this thing to make it rather difficult to place them all within a 6" area of the enemy's last location. Sure, 12" diameter is a decent amount of space, but what if you shot my rhino with a tac marine squad standing on either side of it? It would be very easy for there to simply not be enough space for the surviving embarked units to be placed.

If the target survives, I don't have to be wholly within a certain area, and you don't specify that I have to stay away from enemy units. So as you've written it, I could shoot this thing at, for instance, a Leman Russ, fail to kill it, and then daisy chain a bunch of models such that I tie up every tank in the guard player's army.

My suggestion is to change it so that you resolve any deepstriking first, handle it as normal 9" deepstriking, and then have the gun's shots resolve against the unit closest to the deepstrikers and within LoS of the wagon. You might consider changing your rules such that only a single unit can deepstrike in this fashion each turn.

Basically, it's an extra shokk attack gun that doubles as an extra Da Jump that can be performed on the same turn as Da Jump. If this thing is cheap enough, people will take 3 of them and use them to deepstrike their entire offense on turn 1. The vehicle itself is tougher than a battle wagon but nowhere near as durable as a knight. People can plan around maxing out the number of models embarked on a given turn meaning it's going to average 10 shots each time it fires. Shokk Attack Guns are what? Heavy d6 for an average of 3.5 shots?

As a starting point for this thing's cost, I'd take the cost of a battle wagon or gorkanaught (whichever is closer to this thing in terms of wounds). I'd add the cost of 3 shokk attack guns to it (because 3.5 X 3 is close to 10). I'd toss the cost of a wyrd boy on there as a loosey goosey approximation of the cost of Da Jump each turn. Then I'd take that total cost and add 50% to it because of the extra benefits it has (extra wounds compared to the base vehicle, much smaller chance of failing to fire than of a wyrd boy failing Da Jump, etc.). You'd have to test it out a lot from there. You'll really need to adjust the "launched into melee" thing though. Automatically delivering even the humble gretchin into melee can be an autowin against certain matchups, let alone auto-deliverin gmeganobz or tank bustas.

That's a fair point, and not one easily solved...

My other thought with this was to have this sort of thing:

Shokk Assault - place a single model as a marker anywhere outside of 9" range of enemy units and within LOS of the gun. Both players roll 2D6, and whoever rolls highest must move the marker model exactly that number of inches in a straight line in any direction. Models must then be deployed as close as possible to the marker model, but not within 1" of enemy models. If any models cannot be placed due to terrain, they are destroyed. If any models cannot be placed due to an enemy unit, they are destroyed and the enemy unit takes 1 Mortal wound for each model which is destroyed in this way.
Models deployed in this way roll 3D6 and select the lowest 2 dice if they attempt to charge this turn. (they are disoriented).

This would make it a way of firing gretchin (which are bigger than the snotlings fired by the SAG) to try and hit the enemy, but you might instead just tellyport them if you don't roll high enough or the enemy moves you away. a perfect hit would get a unit of 30 boys landing on a knight and probably outright killing it, and themselves. The deploying close as possible (in rings, I can elaborate if I ever write the rules properly) will prevent daisy-chaining to get more wounds.

The other-other option was to have 2 firing methods - one which tellyports them, and one which fires them as ammo. If you roll a 1-2 after choosing, you fire the other profile instead - the mekboys heard you wrong. so you might load your 10-man MANz squad in to be tellyported, and instead be used to blow up a knight (10 MANz = 30 wounds = 30 shots).

I did wonder about having some sneakiness options (going all-fluff and out of the competitive & balanced options) for a smaller mek-gun sized shokk-sneaka, used to fire single models (Grots) in an effort to loot vehicles on the fly.

aim at a vehicle, autohit. roll 2D6 On a 2-3, the shokk-sneaka is destroyed. On a 4-6, nothing happens (except the paint gets a little redder). On a 7+, the target vehicle halves it's movement and suffers -1 to hit next turn, as the crew kills the grot. in addition, on an 11+, the ork player may fire one of the target vehicles weapons at any target it chooses, at BS4+.

Just a bit of silly fun, but would make for a more interesting set of mek guns than just the endless tirade of -damage output- weapons in 40k these days!