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Has anyone just tried to update most vehicles toughness in their games to be more accurate to their armor yet?


Example would be a Land raider. It used to be AV14 all around, which meant a str10 weapon had to roll a 4 to hurt it, or a Melta had to roll a 6 on 2 dice (due to armorbane).

In the current edition this would equate to having toughness 10. Not sure why they made the LR T8 as it is now, pretty big nerf.

Lemon russ's had armor 13 on the front, 12 on the sides, and 10/11 in the rear depending on the version. its currently T 8 which is an average based on the old stuff.



The biggest reason for the drop in Toughness compared to armor is likely due to loosing the armorbane UR. They could easily bring this back though and raise the Toughness on some vehicles in 9th.



I suggest bumping up the Toughness stat on most vehicles and adding armorbane to all the weapons that used to be AP1. Armorbane would be +3 strength againgst vehicles in 9th.

Toughness changes would be the following:
AV14 on 3 sides goes to T10
AV13 on 3 sides goes to T9
AV12 on 3 sides goes to T8
AV 11 on 3 sides stats T7
AV 10 on 3 sides is T6

I think the reason was that previously a lascannon needed a 5 to glance or a 6 to penetrate a landraider, but there was a chance that 6 would outright destroy it.

Now a lascannon wounds a landraider on a 3, but cannot destroy it in one shot.

I would prefer to facilitate an increase in high toughness durability by removing the "double" and "half" approach to toughness and instead go with a flat "2 higher" or "2 lower". S6 wounding T4 on a 2, S4 wounding T6 on a 6. Then you won't need the inevitable stat explosion for T10 models needing S20 guns to wound on a 2+. but then if something else is tougher, we need T11, and then S22 to wound it on a 2... whereas we can make them T10 and S9 will wound on a 5, S8 on a 6, S10 on a 4. it would match the old AV better.

I'd prefer to go back to a system where armor is realistically represented by a series of non-penetrating, glancing, and penetrating hits. A tank that gets its armor penetrated should be in for a bad time, but the weapons able to punch through the front armor of a tank should also be relatively heavy and expensive.

I think vehicles work very well in the current state of 40k. However with some infantries getting more wounds and some anti tank weapons getting more damage vehicles should also get some buffs, either in increasing T, W or both.

What if you added a simple ruling which, for the sake of it, I shall call "Iron Behemoth":

Iron Behemoth: VEHICLE units can only be wounded by weapons with a strength characteristic exceeding half of the vehicles toughness. IE Toughness 8 cannot be wounded by Strength 4 or less.

Exclusively for Vehicles and Monsters (who might have, I don't know, fleshy behemoth?) who should be shrugging off the small arms. Light vehicles like land speeders will be almost entirely unaffected as the only S2 in the game is gretchin, I believe.

Unstoppable Leviathan (generic rule for monsters): MONSTER units can only be wounded by weapons with a strength characteristic of half their toughness or more.

This makes sense to me as a tank should shrug off more incoming fire than a monster.

we'd be backstepping alot if we said you had to be at least half strength or couldnt wound though.

It'd almost feel better to just give anything with T8 a FNP against weapons with str4 or less that deal 1 damage.

A bolter shot should not take a knight down, but it could potentially hit a wire or coolant tube and reduce efficiency of the vehicle overall.

I feel like most of these suggestions have some of the same issues that most of the "bring back armor facings" posts do. If you make most low strength weapon only able to wound vehicles on a 6+ or make them unable to wound vehicles entirely, then you're saying that huge chunks of units/weapons in the game basically can't interact with vehicles. Which means that vehicle-heavy lists become even more of a skew and the meta is forced to skew towards anti-tank options in response.

Currently...
* Lasguns are bad against most vehicles in the game, cheap enough to fire enough shots to maybe help a little bit in a pinch, and okay at threatening T5 vehicles.

* Bolters and shuriken catapults are inefficient against vehicles, but they can do enough damage to contribute meaningfully. T8 vehicles only get wounded half as often by these weapons as less durable vehicles meaning there's a tangible difference in durability between your "really tough" and "just pretty tough" vehicles.

* Pulse weapons are inefficient against most vehicles but can do enough damage to contribute meaningfully. Their higher strength means that they're better at wounding "really tough" vehicles and "light" T5 vehicles.

* Strength 5-6 weapons are better against light vehicles than small arms fire but still bad against heavier vehicles.

* Strength 7 weapons are pretty good against light and medium vehicles. They are less good against T8+ vehicles, but they usually have good enough AP and Damage to still do much better against T8 vehicles than lower strength weapons.

* Strength 8+ weapons are pretty good at wounding even heavier vehicles, though they usually have a low enough rate of fire (or high enough points cost) to make them compete heavily with the last two categories of weapons.

So with the exception of that last item, that sounds pretty good to me. Do we really feel that small arms fire is too good against vehicles?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eihnlazer wrote:
we'd be backstepping alot if we said you had to be at least half strength or couldnt wound though.

It'd almost feel better to just give anything with T8 a FNP against weapons with str4 or less that deal 1 damage.

A bolter shot should not take a knight down, but it could potentially hit a wire or coolant tube and reduce efficiency of the vehicle overall.

That would be a neat mechanic. Is it really needed though? Will a 5+ or 6+ FNP vs lasguns change the math in such a way that the game is improved? What is the current damage output of a lasgun versus a land raider, and what do you feel it should be?

Lasguns shouldnt feasibly hurt a knight or even a heirodule (tyranid titan) unless you were able to unload a whole energy pack into the exact same spot with every shot (and even then would only cause scarring).


Bolters are a bit better since even if they cant penetrate the armor, they still explode on the surface and the vibrations can shake things loose or chip away armor.

Anything str5 or 6 has a small chance at causing some real damage, but not enough to completely destroy it, only cripple.

Str 7 and above weapons are actually designed with damaging big stuff in mind however.



Thats how i've always invisioned the 40k weaponry.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
Lasguns shouldnt feasibly hurt a knight or even a heirodule (tyranid titan) unless you were able to unload a whole energy pack into the exact same spot with every shot (and even then would only cause scarring).

We might have to agree to disagree on that one. I hear it a lot, but I'm not sure what makes people say it. Looking at my knight model, there are a lot of exposed cables and wires, some guns (the stubbers/melta) that are probably only about as durable as their counterparts on an infantry model, a ton of joints, even what I'm pretty sure are little fuel tanks. If we're okay with the idea of lasguns eventually chipping away at power armor and killing a marine, I'm not sure why the same wouldn't be true of a knight or vehicle.

Plus, lasguns aren't killing knights on their own on the tabletop. They're maybe chipping in some damage, maybe even managing to deal the killing blow. But I picture that as them shooting at areas that have already been damaged by bigger guns or igniting exposed fuel lines and so forth.

Bolters are a bit better since even if they cant penetrate the armor, they still explode on the surface and the vibrations can shake things loose or chip away armor.

Anything str5 or 6 has a small chance at causing some real damage, but not enough to completely destroy it, only cripple.

So with that in mind, are you saying you like the idea of bolters (and most of the most common weapons in the game ) not being allowed to kill vehicles? If I show up with a mechanized eldar list, are you okay with none of your troops being allowed to kill my wave serpents, night spinners, etc?

Str 7 and above weapons are actually designed with damaging big stuff in mind however.

Thats how i've always invisioned the 40k weaponry.

Do you feel that strength 7+ weapons are not good enough at hurting vehicles compared to lasguns and bolters?

Hope this isn't coming across as antagonistic. Just trying to nail down what your design goals are here. To my mind, small arms aren't very good against vehicles, but they're not so bad that my bolters and catapults aren't allowed to interact with mechanized lists. I kind of like it that way. What about the current situation are you trying to change, and how do those changes improve the game? Especially for players who aren't packing a lot of anti-tank.

What about if we brought back hullpoints, in some sense?

Most vehicles have a degrading profile these days. what if a vehicle had the same degrading profile but also had hullpoints which need to be destroyed to slay the model.

Hullpoints are removed by any attack which successfully inflicts 3 damage or more, as well as removing wounds.

Vehicles start with 4 HP as standard. Larger ones (battlewagons, landraiders) have 6, titanics (baneblades, knights) have 8.

Degrading profiles all have a hullpoints tag attached to them which means the vehicle cannot be dropped below said band if it has that many hullpoints left. EG if a trukk starts with 3HP, it cannot go below its first bracket until it has 2 or less HP. The wounds are simply ignored unti lsomething its it with a damage 3 ( or higher) weapon.

A vehicle must have all its Hull Points removed to lose its last wound.


This way vehicles can be chipped away by small guns, but have to take big hits to be actually put out of action.

I definitely think vehicles in 40k could be tougher to represent their abilities, but, IDK, are people willing to roll with the consequences of that? More expensive vehicles, whatever new balancing is involved, etc.?

Wyldhunt wrote:
I feel like most of these suggestions have some of the same issues that most of the "bring back armor facings" posts do. If you make most low strength weapon only able to wound vehicles on a 6+ or make them unable to wound vehicles entirely, then you're saying that huge chunks of units/weapons in the game basically can't interact with vehicles.

You do realize that's exactly the niche a vehicle like a Land Raider should be filling, right? If your opponent doesn't bother bringing and protecting, which also brings back into play target priority for shooting any unit beyond the closest one, anti-tank weapons they'll need to win without killing your tank. What about Titans? They should take flyers and pre-measuring and go back to the apocalypse where they belong, have them send back templates and scatter dice and we might have a game again.

As much fun as it is to be good at guessing ranges, that and templates are all rather clunky mechanics that bog down the game. I'd much rather lose because someone was able to properly gauge threat range than win because I anal-retentively optimized model spacing (which I used to) or was better than my opponent at gauging lobbed weapon shots.

As someone who is pretty good at it, I don't think that abstract spatial awareness is necessary for interesting strategy.

I do agree that titans and flyers don't really fit 40k's scale well, despite any visual appeal in the models.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I feel like most of these suggestions have some of the same issues that most of the "bring back armor facings" posts do. If you make most low strength weapon only able to wound vehicles on a 6+ or make them unable to wound vehicles entirely, then you're saying that huge chunks of units/weapons in the game basically can't interact with vehicles.

You do realize that's exactly the niche a vehicle like a Land Raider should be filling, right?

Sure, but I'd argue that the land raider currently fills that role without needing to be literally immune to small arms fire. Right now, 72 lasgun shots from BS 4+ guardsmen result in 36 hits results in 6 wounds results in a single unsaved wound for the land raider. The landraider is not very scared of lasguns, nor is it all that afraid of shurikens and bolters even though they have better AP. But there's a big difference between making the land raider highly resistant to such weapons and making it literally immune to them. I do not miss the days where a knight army literally couldn't be damaged by any bolters in a marine player's army.

If your opponent doesn't bother bringing and protecting, which also brings back into play target priority for shooting any unit beyond the closest one, anti-tank weapons they'll need to win without killing your tank. What about Titans? They should take flyers and pre-measuring and go back to the apocalypse where they belong, have them send back templates and scatter dice and we might have a game again.

If you have to bring back priority tests and drop measuring to justify a rule proposal, I feel that's evidence that the proposed rule doesn't fit into modern 40k very well. If you want to discuss those changes in general, they probably warrant their own thread. Agreed about dropping flyers and superheavies though. GW never really managed to fit them into standard 40k very well. I wouldn't mind a combined Aeronautica/Titanicus type game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 some bloke wrote:
What about if we brought back hullpoints, in some sense?

Most vehicles have a degrading profile these days. what if a vehicle had the same degrading profile but also had hullpoints which need to be destroyed to slay the model.

Hullpoints are removed by any attack which successfully inflicts 3 damage or more, as well as removing wounds.

Vehicles start with 4 HP as standard. Larger ones (battlewagons, landraiders) have 6, titanics (baneblades, knights) have 8.

Degrading profiles all have a hullpoints tag attached to them which means the vehicle cannot be dropped below said band if it has that many hullpoints left. EG if a trukk starts with 3HP, it cannot go below its first bracket until it has 2 or less HP. The wounds are simply ignored unti lsomething its it with a damage 3 ( or higher) weapon.

A vehicle must have all its Hull Points removed to lose its last wound.


This way vehicles can be chipped away by small guns, but have to take big hits to be actually put out of action.

Neat idea. If we were to do something along those lines, I'd probably prefer to flip it around though. Let all weapons contribute to killing a tank, but reward high damage weapons by letting them do "critical hits" that cause something like the oldschool vehicle damage results. If you can only make a vehicle drop below a wound band with damage 3+, then you're going to end up in a lot of situations where half-dead vehicles are invulnerable in the late game because your opponent made sure they killed your anti-tank first.

Also, I'd worry about how easy it is to actually do 3 damage reliably for some armies. Craftworld dark reapers can pull it off pretty easily (flat 3 damage), but drukhari only have 4 guns that do more than 2 damage, and one of them is a pistol. The rest are all d6 damage which means that they'll fail to push a vehicle past a wound band 1/3rd of the time. And that's when the vehicle is already sitting within 3 wounds of that wound band at the time your roll damage. With weapons that have a single shot and a bad reputation for missing or failing to wound. (The only drukkhari wound rerolls on those guns are tied to a faction-specific relic.)

Picture yourself trying to kill a repulsor with tyranids. Hard mode: imagine you don't feel like shelling out $120 for 6 hiveguard.

Also, it would make Mortal Wounds (the most grievous and deadly of injuries) never be able to kill a vehicle.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Also, it would make Mortal Wounds (the most grievous and deadly of injuries) never be able to kill a vehicle.

Oooh. Could we bin the whole "mortal wounds" mechanic and give psychic powers weapon statlines again so they could still interact with vehicles?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Also, it would make Mortal Wounds (the most grievous and deadly of injuries) never be able to kill a vehicle.

Oooh. Could we bin the whole "mortal wounds" mechanic and give psychic powers weapon statlines again so they could still interact with vehicles?

Honestly, wouldn't mind that. Mortal wounds were worth considering when they were first introduced, but I don't think they've added much to the game over the 7th edition psychic powers. I wouldn't mind gaining back Eldritch Storm and letting my farseer clear hordes again. Or giving tzeentch armies more variety in their damage powers rather than making them all some variation on mortal wound generation.

There would probably still be a handful of situations where a mortal wound esque mechanic would make sense, but you could just write out "saves may not be taken against these wounds," in those cases.

Also for more recent editions - vehicles did not get armour saves against weapons - which rightly they do now.

I would however be in favour of tougher vehicles getting a T bonus as their is no reason everything is stuck at 7 and 8 for pretty much anything that is enclosed.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I feel like most of these suggestions have some of the same issues that most of the "bring back armor facings" posts do. If you make most low strength weapon only able to wound vehicles on a 6+ or make them unable to wound vehicles entirely, then you're saying that huge chunks of units/weapons in the game basically can't interact with vehicles.

You do realize that's exactly the niche a vehicle like a Land Raider should be filling, right?

Sure, but I'd argue that the land raider currently fills that role without needing to be literally immune to small arms fire. Right now, 72 lasgun shots from BS 4+ guardsmen result in 36 hits results in 6 wounds results in a single unsaved wound for the land raider. The landraider is not very scared of lasguns, nor is it all that afraid of shurikens and bolters even though they have better AP. But there's a big difference between making the land raider highly resistant to such weapons and making it literally immune to them. I do not miss the days where a knight army literally couldn't be damaged by any bolters in a marine player's army.

It's not lasguns I care about though, it's Heavy Bolters, Assault Cannons, Autocannons. Land Raiders used to be immune to any weapon that wasn't at least strength 8 and that gave them an actual use.

If you have to bring back priority tests and drop measuring to justify a rule proposal, I feel that's evidence that the proposed rule doesn't fit into modern 40k very well.

Modern 40k has shed so many interesting rules that it's boiled itself down to nothing more than bringing OP models and throwing dice.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

It's not lasguns I care about though, it's Heavy Bolters, Assault Cannons, Autocannons. Land Raiders used to be immune to any weapon that wasn't at least strength 8 and that gave them an actual use.

True, S3 and S4 weapons have really zero impact against T8 vehicles. Mid strength weapons instead have become efficient against those tanks but vehicles used to have 3-4 HP with the chance of being instant killed by a single shot, and no save. One 10 man trukk boyz or a unit of warbikers could blow up a tank thanks to the nob's power klaw alone, now the same units scratch it despite attacking at S10 instead of S8-9. 3 Meganobz could even overkill a land raider, now they strip half its wounds at most. Since 8th vehicles have way more wounds (even considering that some anti tank is multidamage) and a save. A unit of trukk boyz even without a power klaw could have killed a tank with AV10 in the back thanks to 3 glancing hits with choppas; the same unit should strip 1-2 out of 8-10 wounds against the same targets now.

Overall high armored models are quite resilient compared to older editions. Vehicles that were AV10 were as tough as ork boyz, now trukks or rhinos can soak a considerable amount of firepower. I remember lists with 8 trukks, and 4-5 wrecked in turn 1 due to some firepower that wasn't even relying on the numbers, let alone buffs or re-rolls, of tipycal 8-9th lists.

IMHO the real "fix" to vehicles worth discussing is a fix that affects every unit, not only them: firepower should simply be reduced. Remove re-rolls, fire twice mechanics and buffs to S, AP, D with some extremely rare exceptions. If anything more than a land raider, which I think is already durable enough, I'd like to see units of 30 cheap dudes survive average firepower.

 Blackie wrote:
True, S3 and S4 weapons have really zero impact against T8 vehicles. Mid strength weapons instead have become efficient against those tanks but vehicles used to have 3-4 HP with the chance of being instant killed by a single shot, and no save.

It wasn't that hard to get a vehicle a cover save in some editions, but also that's how vehicles should work if we wish to maintain a sense of verisimilitude because that's how vehicles function in reality. The most efficient solution to an Abrams isn't massed 20-30mm fire hosing it down, it's a dedicated anti-tank weapon or a massive heap of explosives buried into an IED. Literally no military in the world would build a tank that takes meaningful damage from lighter arms even if it somehow let them survive an anti-tank weapon or two.

One 10 man trukk boyz or a unit of warbikers could blow up a tank thanks to the nob's power klaw alone, now the same units scratch it despite attacking at S10 instead of S8-9. 3 Meganobz could even overkill a land raider, now they strip half its wounds at most.

Ask any Ork player if they think this has improved their play experience. I doubt their answer to the death of the hidden klaw will surprise you.

Since 8th vehicles have way more wounds (even considering that some anti tank is multidamage) and a save. A unit of trukk boyz even without a power klaw could have killed a tank with AV10 in the back thanks to 3 glancing hits with choppas; the same unit should strip 1-2 out of 8-10 wounds against the same targets now.

That's also realistic as one of the ways tanks get killed is by being mobbed by infantry who are able to target weak points and disable the tank. Also those same Boyz were weak to being clumped up via a tank shock and torched by flamers, one of which could be fired from the Rhino's firing port.

Overall high armored models are quite resilient compared to older editions.

Are they really when a group of guys with plasma can bring down a titan scale model in a turn?

Vehicles that were AV10 were as tough as ork boyz, now trukks or rhinos can soak a considerable amount of firepower.

Lighter vehicles did gain a fair bit of benefit as they didn't suddenly gain a new weakness to mid-strength high ROF weapons as they always died to those.

I remember lists with 8 trukks, and 4-5 wrecked in turn 1 due to some firepower that wasn't even relying on the numbers, let alone buffs or re-rolls, of tipycal 8-9th lists.

Which is what should happen when you drive a lightly armored vehicle into a group of enemies with decent firepower. We can literally look at the war in Syria to see the escalation of armor on technicals just to get them close enough to explode on an enemy force, let alone to disembark soldiers and stick around long enough to be meaningful.

Also, the word you want is typical, not tipycal. The rest of your writing is so good that it's odd to see that one typo coming through constantly.

Canadian 5th wrote:
It's not lasguns I care about though, it's Heavy Bolters, Assault Cannons, Autocannons. Land Raiders used to be immune to any weapon that wasn't at least strength 8 and that gave them an actual use.

When land raiders were immune to strength values lower than 8, they were also at risk of dying to a single lucky shot. I remember many an exhasperated marine player bemoaning land raiders that died to my first lance shot of the game. Of course, making it possible to "crit" them like that was part of how GW attempted to balance out a landraider being able to ignore most of the opposing army's offense. I'm rambling, but my point is that making tanks immune to small arms but more susceptible to anti-tank to make up for it wasn't a perfect situation either. And we can probably agree that making them immune to small arms and highly resistant to most other weapons in the game would come with its own design challenges.

Also, I'd argue that land raiders are pretty durable at the moment. One of their biggest problems last edition was that you could tag them in melee and keep them from ever shooting again. They aren't shaping up to be top tier in 9th, but they're tough, shooty, and will transport troops across the table about as safely as they ever have.

If you have to bring back priority tests and drop measuring to justify a rule proposal, I feel that's evidence that the proposed rule doesn't fit into modern 40k very well.

Modern 40k has shed so many interesting rules that it's boiled itself down to nothing more than bringing OP models and throwing dice.

That may be, but my point was that ditching a big chunk of units from the game and bringing back priority tests are both such big changes that it's hard to discuss them as just a tweak to facilitate another change. That's like me saying, "I think all bikes should be able to advance after charging, and to facilitate this we would just have to make all guns snap shoot when firing beyond 12". " XD Probably a bad analogy. I just mean that priority tests would be a huge shakeup in their own right with enough rammifications that trying to discuss them in the context of this thread is difficult.

Blackie wrote:
IMHO the real "fix" to vehicles worth discussing is a fix that affects every unit, not only them: firepower should simply be reduced. Remove re-rolls, fire twice mechanics and buffs to S, AP, D with some extremely rare exceptions. If anything more than a land raider, which I think is already durable enough, I'd like to see units of 30 cheap dudes survive average firepower.

I'm inclined to agree with this. Again, this probably warrants a separate thread, but I don't feel it would be all that difficult to limit most of the more powerful force multipliers in the game. Model auras after targeted rules like MWBD. Ditch most of the raw power boosting strats in favor of options that emphasize mobility and changes to playstyle.


Increasing vehicle toughness is a tricky thing, because just how useless do you want small arms to be against a mechanized list? If my mechanized list kills most of your anti-tank by the end of turn 2, how comfortable are you accepting that you won't be allowed to kill most of my remaining army? For any given buff to vehicle durability, ask yourself how much you'd enjoy playing with those changes if your main army was tyranids or daemons.

Wyldhunt wrote:
When land raiders were immune to strength values lower than 8, they were also at risk of dying to a single lucky shot. I remember many an exhasperated marine player bemoaning land raiders that died to my first lance shot of the game. Of course, making it possible to "crit" them like that was part of how GW attempted to balance out a landraider being able to ignore most of the opposing army's offense. I'm rambling, but my point is that making tanks immune to small arms but more susceptible to anti-tank to make up for it wasn't a perfect situation either. And we can probably agree that making them immune to small arms and highly resistant to most other weapons in the game would come with its own design challenges.

I did most of my playing from 3rd to 5th, I know exactly how things used to go. The same LR could also potentially shrug off lascannons all game if the rolls went right and it would become immune if you held it back out of sight until something else tied up the enemy big guns in melee.

Also, I'd argue that land raiders are pretty durable at the moment. One of their biggest problems last edition was that you could tag them in melee and keep them from ever shooting again. They aren't shaping up to be top tier in 9th, but they're tough, shooty, and will transport troops across the table about as safely as they ever have.

When every halfway competitive list needs to worry about killing Knights the humble Land Raider just looks like free points.

That may be, but my point was that ditching a big chunk of units from the game and bringing back priority tests are both such big changes that it's hard to discuss them as just a tweak to facilitate another change. That's like me saying, "I think all bikes should be able to advance after charging, and to facilitate this we would just have to make all guns snap shoot when firing beyond 12". " XD Probably a bad analogy. I just mean that priority tests would be a huge shakeup in their own right with enough rammifications that trying to discuss them in the context of this thread is difficult.

Unlike your poor example, I'm not inventing something new. I'm pointing out that some of the old systems ditched to make 8th and now 9th simpler were elegant solutions to problems.

Increasing vehicle toughness is a tricky thing, because just how useless do you want small arms to be against a mechanized list? If my mechanized list kills most of your anti-tank by the end of turn 2, how comfortable are you accepting that you won't be allowed to kill most of my remaining army? For any given buff to vehicle durability, ask yourself how much you'd enjoy playing with those changes if your main army was tyranids or daemons.

You could always bring the Carnifex back to its old strength value and give certain melee options damage bonuses to counter how difficult it can be to get them base-to-base with their targets. The same goes for daemons, though outside of mono Khorne lists they will have mortal wounds to help.

I preferred the old AV system, but I don't think the currrent Toughness values are an issue*. The loss of vehicle facings is my bugbear.

*That said I dislike that the heavier guard tanks, namely the Russ and the Baneblade, have only 3+ save. It was more fun when guard tanks were distinguished by their durability.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

I did most of my playing from 3rd to 5th, I know exactly how things used to go. The same LR could also potentially shrug off lascannons all game if the rolls went right and it would become immune if you held it back out of sight until something else tied up the enemy big guns in melee.

See, I get the impression you feel like that was a good thing. To my mind, it's preferable to be able to steadily damage vehicles with a wide range of weapons rather than hoping that a handful of anti tank guns can do the job. (And then ending up never taking anything but the anti-tank options in your codex for fear of not having enough anti-tank.) We just have a difference in preferences here, I suppose. I feel like tanks being nigh impossible to harm by the majority of the enemy army makes for a better simulation but a worse game. And I don't shoot my space elves at fungus monsters for the realism.

Also, I'd argue that land raiders are pretty durable at the moment. One of their biggest problems last edition was that you could tag them in melee and keep them from ever shooting again. They aren't shaping up to be top tier in 9th, but they're tough, shooty, and will transport troops across the table about as safely as they ever have.

When every halfway competitive list needs to worry about killing Knights the humble Land Raider just looks like free points.

At the risk of taking us down a tangent, are top tier lists all that worried about Knights at the moment? Last edition, sure, but I was under the impression that knights were a much smaller part of the meta in 9th. I may be wrong.

Unlike your poor example, I'm not inventing something new. I'm pointing out that some of the old systems ditched to make 8th and now 9th simpler were elegant solutions to problems.

I'm all for hearing a pitch advocating the return of priority tests. But that kind of change alone would have a huge impact on the game. Enough of an impact that I feel it would be difficult to discuss without focusing on that change rather than focusing purely on how it would interact with a boost to vehicle toughness.

Increasing vehicle toughness is a tricky thing, because just how useless do you want small arms to be against a mechanized list? If my mechanized list kills most of your anti-tank by the end of turn 2, how comfortable are you accepting that you won't be allowed to kill most of my remaining army? For any given buff to vehicle durability, ask yourself how much you'd enjoy playing with those changes if your main army was tyranids or daemons.

You could always bring the Carnifex back to its old strength value and give certain melee options damage bonuses to counter how difficult it can be to get them base-to-base with their targets.

Sure, but now we're talking about having to make a lot of changes to weapons to accommodate the changes to vehicles. It could be done, but there would be a lot of sprawl. Now, sprawl might be acceptable if the end results are worthwhile. Is it worth it to you (or anyone else reading) to do that much revision to make vehicles more durable? And if so, I look forward to reading your revised tyranid and chaos codices.

The same goes for daemons, though outside of mono Khorne lists they will have mortal wounds to help.

I haven't been keeping up on competitive lists lately. How many mortal wounds does the average daemon list put out in a given turn? And how many of those can reach past screens?

Wyldhunt wrote:
[See, I get the impression you feel like that was a good thing. To my mind, it's preferable to be able to steadily damage vehicles with a wide range of weapons rather than hoping that a handful of anti tank guns can do the job. (And then ending up never taking anything but the anti-tank options in your codex for fear of not having enough anti-tank.) We just have a difference in preferences here, I suppose. I feel like tanks being nigh impossible to harm by the majority of the enemy army makes for a better simulation but a worse game. And I don't shoot my space elves at fungus monsters for the realism.

If you bring too many heavy guns to kill tanks you then lose to hordes. Do you stress out about not having enough anti-horde weaponry as well or are vehicles special in how they beat you if you fail to account for them?

At the risk of taking us down a tangent, are top tier lists all that worried about Knights at the moment? Last edition, sure, but I was under the impression that knights were a much smaller part of the meta in 9th. I may be wrong.

They aren't a meta threat at present, at least based on the limited data we have, but if enough heavy weapons get cut Knights come right back into the meta. Also, you still need to worry about facing a Knight at a lower table early in the event and if you can't deal with them you're not going to score well enough to make the top tables.

I'm all for hearing a pitch advocating the return of priority tests. But that kind of change alone would have a huge impact on the game. Enough of an impact that I feel it would be difficult to discuss without focusing on that change rather than focusing purely on how it would interact with a boost to vehicle toughness.

If you were to make tanks immune to damage from small and medium arms the way armor facings did, you'd need target priority to keep those weapons alive.

Sure, but now we're talking about having to make a lot of changes to weapons to accommodate the changes to vehicles. It could be done, but there would be a lot of sprawl. Now, sprawl might be acceptable if the end results are worthwhile. Is it worth it to you (or anyone else reading) to do that much revision to make vehicles more durable? And if so, I look forward to reading your revised tyranid and chaos codices.

My suggestions basically boil down to roll the game back to 5e, boot out Fliers and Super Heavies, and balance the game from there. It shouldn't be hard to add 'new' [read: current] units into that system given how little model and weapon stats have changed over the years.

I haven't been keeping up on competitive lists lately. How many mortal wounds does the average daemon list put out in a given turn? And how many of those can reach past screens?

We'd have to see what the meta would look like after making vehicle changes to know how to fix potential issues. It may be that screens aren't a thing because everybody who can be is in transports or held in reserve and thus smites can get through with relative ease. It could be a parking lot with screens and thus we'd need to tweak armies lacking the ability to deal with that.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
[See, I get the impression you feel like that was a good thing. To my mind, it's preferable to be able to steadily damage vehicles with a wide range of weapons rather than hoping that a handful of anti tank guns can do the job. (And then ending up never taking anything but the anti-tank options in your codex for fear of not having enough anti-tank.) We just have a difference in preferences here, I suppose. I feel like tanks being nigh impossible to harm by the majority of the enemy army makes for a better simulation but a worse game. And I don't shoot my space elves at fungus monsters for the realism.

If you bring too many heavy guns to kill tanks you then lose to hordes. Do you stress out about not having enough anti-horde weaponry as well or are vehicles special in how they beat you if you fail to account for them?

The difference is, an anti-tank weapon can hurt a horde. Not efficiently, but it can.

Under your proposal, an anti-horde weapon CANNOT hurt a tank.

 JNAProductions wrote:
The difference is, an anti-tank weapon can hurt a horde. Not efficiently, but it can.

Under your proposal, an anti-horde weapon CANNOT hurt a tank.

Yes, but hurting a horde doesn't stop the horde from holding ground and winning the game.

Also, most vehicles that you can't hurt with anything less than S8 are costly and can't secure objectives the way a horde can. So yeah, it's annoying to have a model your army can't hurt on the table but having a horde you can't kill is likely worse for your chances of winning the game.

JNAProductions wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
[See, I get the impression you feel like that was a good thing. To my mind, it's preferable to be able to steadily damage vehicles with a wide range of weapons rather than hoping that a handful of anti tank guns can do the job. (And then ending up never taking anything but the anti-tank options in your codex for fear of not having enough anti-tank.) We just have a difference in preferences here, I suppose. I feel like tanks being nigh impossible to harm by the majority of the enemy army makes for a better simulation but a worse game. And I don't shoot my space elves at fungus monsters for the realism.

If you bring too many heavy guns to kill tanks you then lose to hordes. Do you stress out about not having enough anti-horde weaponry as well or are vehicles special in how they beat you if you fail to account for them?

The difference is, an anti-tank weapon can hurt a horde. Not efficiently, but it can.

Under your proposal, an anti-horde weapon CANNOT hurt a tank.

This. Also, it's pretty easy to end up with a fair bit of small arms fire without trying. If I'm running a batallion of marines or eldar, there are going to be some bolters or shuriken catapults in there. If I'm playing drukhari, I probably have some splinter fire and maybe some disintegrators or wyches. I might not have enough to contend with a dedicated horde army that tries to stat check how many shots I can generate, but I'll have enough offense to make a game of it against most lists. And a lot of that "accidental anti-horde" offense I have is going to be on units that aren't necessarily high priorities for my opponent. Conversely, an armor spam list is going to target my anti-vehicle threats asap and make a point of neutering my offense.

They aren't a meta threat at present, at least based on the limited data we have, but if enough heavy weapons get cut Knights come right back into the meta. Also, you still need to worry about facing a Knight at a lower table early in the event and if you can't deal with them you're not going to score well enough to make the top tables.

Well, your point as I understand it is that a landraider is bad because it's less tough than a knight and a knight can get killed by most tournament lists. You also seem to be saying that lists are currently packing so much anti-tank that knights are unpopular competitively. Are you saying that you think the game would be improved by making knights and land raiders so tough that the current level of anti-tank firepower (enough to make knights unpopular) should be insufficient to threaten them? Not trying to put words in your mouth here. I've just sort of lost track of what you're trying to say.

If you were to make tanks immune to damage from small and medium arms the way armor facings did, you'd need target priority to keep those weapons alive.

Sure. Which would mean target priority would be a change needed to justify the initial change (upping tank durability) that would also impact a lot of other things in the game. Any unit that wants to reach out and touch specific targets rather than firing at the closest thing would become innately worse. Cheap screens that could force priority tests would become more valuable. That's a lot of fallout for the sake of making tanks immune to small arms, and I'm not convinced making tanks immune to small arms fire is itself a desirable goal.

My suggestions basically boil down to roll the game back to 5e, boot out Fliers and Super Heavies, and balance the game from there. It shouldn't be hard to add 'new' [read: current] units into that system given how little model and weapon stats have changed over the years.

Plenty to like about that suggestion. I guess I just feel that at that point we're having an entirely different discussion from fixing vehicles in 9th edition.

We'd have to see what the meta would look like after making vehicle changes to know how to fix potential issues. It may be that screens aren't a thing because everybody who can be is in transports or held in reserve and thus smites can get through with relative ease. It could be a parking lot with screens and thus we'd need to tweak armies lacking the ability to deal with that.

Sure. Any rules change that sees play is going to result in feedback and require some changes. But we can already see what some of those issues are, so it might be worth trying to come up with a solution for them in advance, right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Also, most vehicles that you can't hurt with anything less than S8 are costly and can't secure objectives the way a horde can. So yeah, it's annoying to have a model your army can't hurt on the table but having a horde you can't kill is likely worse for your chances of winning the game.

"The unkillable vehicles are annoying, but the unkillable hordes are even worse," isn't a sales pitch that makes me want to play that game. XD

Wyldhunt wrote:
This. Also, it's pretty easy to end up with a fair bit of small arms fire without trying. If I'm running a batallion of marines or eldar, there are going to be some bolters or shuriken catapults in there. If I'm playing drukhari, I probably have some splinter fire and maybe some disintegrators or wyches. I might not have enough to contend with a dedicated horde army that tries to stat check how many shots I can generate, but I'll have enough offense to make a game of it against most lists. And a lot of that "accidental anti-horde" offense I have is going to be on units that aren't necessarily high priorities for my opponent. Conversely, an armor spam list is going to target my anti-vehicle threats asap and make a point of neutering my offense.

That same armor spam list won't be able to hold ground that well allowing you to play the mission while they're stuck trying to table you.

Well, your point as I understand it is that a landraider is bad because it's less tough than a knight and a knight can get killed by most tournament lists. You also seem to be saying that lists are currently packing so much anti-tank that knights are unpopular competitively. Are you saying that you think the game would be improved by making knights and land raiders so tough that the current level of anti-tank firepower (enough to make knights unpopular) should be insufficient to threaten them? Not trying to put words in your mouth here. I've just sort of lost track of what you're trying to say.

The issue is that under current rules both can be brought down by massed medium arms fire with things like assault cannons and plasma being better anti-tank than most dedicated anti-tank weapons. So there isn't any way to make a Land Raider tough enough to be useful that wouldn't skew a Knight into either being too fragile for its points or unkillable. By bringing back armor facings you limit the number of shots taken at high AV vehicles and, if you must keep superheavies in your game, allow for differentiation via things like hull points or vid shields that can fall and come back as the game progresses.

Sure. Which would mean target priority would be a change needed to justify the initial change (upping tank durability) that would also impact a lot of other things in the game. Any unit that wants to reach out and touch specific targets rather than firing at the closest thing would become innately worse.

You can give specialist units special rules that allow them to break normal target priority. Snipers, for example, already do that.

Cheap screens that could force priority tests would become more valuable. That's a lot of fallout for the sake of making tanks immune to small arms, and I'm not convinced making tanks immune to small arms fire is itself a desirable goal.

Tanks being immune to small arms worked for 7 editions and was never the main complaint in any of them. So why is it suddenly going to be a huge issue now?

Plenty to like about that suggestion. I guess I just feel that at that point we're having an entirely different discussion from fixing vehicles in 9th edition.

You can't fix vehicles in 9th edition without major changes. The current trend of anything without a 4++ save being worthless doesn't fix it, nerfing damage output requires more work than my rollback suggestion, and just upping tank toughness values by a point each hardly changes which weapons are effective against them due to the new wounding chart.

Sure. Any rules change that sees play is going to result in feedback and require some changes. But we can already see what some of those issues are, so it might be worth trying to come up with a solution for them in advance, right?

Only we've already seen these rules and know that these issues you're bringing up weren't serious. You can literally look up 5e battle reports on this site and see how things were back then. You can even do so codex release by codex release to see which changes/additions caused the most issues.