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How do!

Subject is the title, and it’s something I feel is worth discussing.

See, non-Dreadnought/Automata armour just isn’t really up to the task in Heresy 2.0.

Sure, you need AP2 or AP1 to make vehicles go boom, and with a general change to how common AP1/AP2 is? Vehicles still feel super vulnerable in a game where I can kit entire squads out with Lascannon, Meltaguns and other “stupid tank, you go squish now” type weapons, despite said weapons being somewhat less common.

Dreadnoughts and Automata of course are renowned as being tough cookies. Not invulnerable, but definitely tricky, especially as unlike Tanks, I can’t plink them into obscurity.

We also have other issues with vehicles. Unless I’ve read the rules wrong? Unless my Sponson weapons are S7 or above? I can’t select them for Weapon Destroyed until my heavier guns have been smashed up. And so even the certain heavy tanks, like the Cerberus pretty much need Lascannon sponsons, lest the first Weapon Destroyed just knack that gorgeous big gun.

And so having an AV still feels like something of a liability.

40K previously addressed this with a pretty major overall change. Not just giving every T, W and Sv etc? But reintroducing weapons doing multiple wounds. Now I’m not saying “therefore it was a perfect system”, but it did address oddities in Monstrous Creatures being unfairly hard to kill compared to AV equipped equivalents. Like Dreadnoughts.

I did initially think “therefore Heresy would same the need significant change”. But…would it? I mentioned something earlier which got me thinking “actually, maybe not”. And that’s entire squads equipped with Tank Busting equipment. I’m now pondering whether, should the overall wounds dished out to Tanks, and not just making them all 2+ Sv, whether the far greater concentration of heavier and niftier weapons might be enough.

What do you reckon? Mostly about would T, W, Sv be welcome on all tanks, but also my pondering on us perhaps not needing multiple wound weapons.

I would rather see a damage chart for Monsters to take them down a peg, vehicles just need easier access to reactions and maybe to not be utterly forgotten by 90% of Legion traits.

A damage chart like Blackflang suggests would be superior to introducing the 8e and onward Wounds for everything. That lead to wounds bloat and a bloat of high damage weapons and Brutal is already enough of an issue among many people.

It's not an easy fix for sure especially in a system where narrative is king.

Dreadnoughts are vehicles but are often shown to be much more difficult to kill than most other vehicles because they're closer to mega-cyborgs. The same goes for Automata.

Giving vehicles wounds or toughness wouldn't fix the problems they have because having those things isn't just what makes a Dreadnought or Automata good.
Both are more generally influenced by Legion rules because they are the next step in "soldiers" above the likes of Terminators.

The World Eaters trait affects Dreadnoughts because they can be kitted out as CQC units while no vehicle can. It's not the fault of the Dreadnought or vehicle rules that's just how they are.

The answer to your question is NO.
Because this is HH2.0 (IE, some iteration of 3e-7e).

If you want your vehicles to have a T & W value? Go play 40k 8e+

Making vehicles into what are effectively just monsters was one of the worst changes that was made to WH40k, in my view. It removed something that added flavour to the game. While GW never quite got the balance between high T monsters and vehicles right, it is still important that vehicles behave differently. I would rather see some other tweaks - including perhaps making Dreads and similar units a bit less effective.

Vehicles absolutely do not need T/W/Sv. That nonsense can stay firmly in 40k.

It does speak to the larger issue regarding vehicles/dreads/etc. though, in that a few of the changes made to core rules have unbalanced a few things in ways that may or may not have been unintentional.

-Dreadnoughts/monstrous creatures have always been in an awkward spot and it's something that doesn't exactly have an easy fix. One is very much like the other, but have always had different rules and rules interactions that would have either benefited or made more sense for the other. In HH2.0 at least dreadnoughts being glorified monstrous creatures was a bold change and one that was well overtuned to the point of imbalance (and probably one of those things that was intentional, i'd say.) I won't rehash the whole "what'd fix dreadnoughts?" argument here, but the point is, as mentioned by Gert the wounds/toughness thing isn't what makes Dreads great. At least not wholly on their own, although they are a part of it. I'm not familiar enough with the Mechanicum rules to comment on how being MC affects their battle-bots for good or ill, but I'd guess most of the issues would probably be the same.

-The split between Dreadnought Talon and Vehicle Squadron rules is a glaring discrepancy and a big negative hit towards vehicles. Allowing vehicles to operate independently of squadron-mates after deployment like dreadnoughts can would go a long way to making them better overall. Not only because they'd be able to fire at different units and such, but it would mean that you can't cascade an entire squadron in a single volley of lascannon shots. Which segues me nicely into the next point.

-Heavy Support Squads with lascannons. They are a problem. Lascannons are just straight up too cheap and should be a 15pt upgrade at minimum rather then 10pts. They should have stayed at 20pts each like they were in HH1.0. The fact that a HSS of ten lascannons now costs 275pts (150pts less then in 1.0) is ridiculous. And when you can take them in squads of 10, there's little that they can't put down in a round of shooting, especially when buffed by a cognis-signum. Not to mention having an augury scanner when night fighting's in play.

-Battle/Defensive weapons. They idea behind battle/defensive weapon is one I kinda like, being that sponson/pintle weapons are defensive weapons meant to keep infantry from sneaking up on you and putting a anti-tank grenade in your tracks, while the main gun went and got gak done. And in that regard I'm all for a division of vehicle weapons based on their "intended function". However the game just doesn't play that way and said division only serves to hamper you more then it should. As you touched on Mad Doc, losing your main gun to a weapon destroyed result because it's the only gun with S7+ is stupid. There was nothing wrong with the old way of just choosing which weapon got destroyed. This is actually one of those game interactions which I think would be better served by its own USR. Something that either automatically forces the/a battle weapon to be destroyed or lets the opposing player choose which weapon goes pop. This would of course come with it's own problems of how such a USR would be doled out. Does it come on select weapons as standard? If so which weapons would make sense to have such a rule? Do you make another decurion that allows what ever tank he's mounted on use it?


I was going to waffle on about some other stuff too, but I realised it wasn't relevant to the topic at hand half way through typing.

I don't know if "specialized anti-armor tools are good at killing armor" is a good enough reason to get rid of AV.

 Snrub wrote:
...I won't rehash the whole "what'd fix dreadnoughts?" argument here, but the point is, as mentioned by Gert the wounds/toughness thing isn't what makes Dreads great. At least not wholly on their own, although they are a part of it. I'm not familiar enough with the Mechanicum rules to comment on how being MC affects their battle-bots for good or ill, but I'd guess most of the issues would probably be the same...

Having played some with both Cortex-bots and Armigers I think the fact that they're mostly 3+ armor rather than the 2+ of Contemptors makes them feel much fairer.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I don't know if "specialized anti-armor tools are good at killing armor" is a good enough reason to get rid of AV.

 Snrub wrote:
...I won't rehash the whole "what'd fix dreadnoughts?" argument here, but the point is, as mentioned by Gert the wounds/toughness thing isn't what makes Dreads great. At least not wholly on their own, although they are a part of it. I'm not familiar enough with the Mechanicum rules to comment on how being MC affects their battle-bots for good or ill, but I'd guess most of the issues would probably be the same...

Having played some with both Cortex-bots and Armigers I think the fact that they're mostly 3+ armor rather than the 2+ of Contemptors makes them feel much fairer.

Yeah, I think if most Dreads were a 3+ instead of a 2+ (the only one fore sure keeping the 2+, methinks, should be the Venerable you get in March of the Ancients) they'd be less fierce.

Nooooo.

The problem is the vehicle table, too cheap melta and more importantly lascannons and Dreads and automata beeing TOO tanky by points comparison.

There are a few "correctly priced" tanks around, the scorpious comes to mind and the vanquisher russes, but overall it'd be better if automata (too a lesser extent) and especially dreads would get more vulnerable instead, whilest either lascannons and meltas go up in pts or vehicles down OR you double up the hull points and make the table results beyond destroyed an option to take 2 hull points in damage instead of a weapon destroyed etc result.

The big issue is with the Contemptor Dreadnoughts statline. If it had a lower Toughness or a lower armour save it wouldn't be as big a problem.

In pre 8th edition 40k Tyranid Monstrous creatures were a joke due to being capped at Toughness 6, with most having 4 wounds and a 3+ save and no invulnerable save. If Contemptor Dreadnoughts were in the same statline department, but retained their invulnerable save they'd be less of an issue.

ccs wrote:
The answer to your question is NO.
Because this is HH2.0 (IE, some iteration of 3e-7e).

If you want your vehicles to have a T & W value? Go play 40k 8e+

Ding ding ding! A better cover save for vehicles would be nice, however.

A few tweaks to the rules are needed for sure, but not changing them to the 8th edition and beyond gak.

Firstly dump the squadron rules, let tanks work like dreadnought talons. i.e. you buy them in a group but field them individually.

Make some anti-tank weapons more expensive, i.e. the lascannon heavy support squad, which is far too common an option due to it being very effective for its points.

Nerf dreadnoughts a bit, they are just too good compared to pretty much anything else in the game at the moment. Why take a predator when you can take a dreadnought.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

ccs wrote:
The answer to your question is NO.
Because this is HH2.0 (IE, some iteration of 3e-7e).

If you want your vehicles to have a T & W value? Go play 40k 8e+

Ding ding ding! A better cover save for vehicles would be nice, however.

A better (e.g. generally increased cover save system benefeiting all types of infantry) cover system period as to make cover ignoring weaponry actually usefull whilest also making cover important not just from a horizontal but also vertical angle would increase usefullness of currently lacking unit types aswell.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

ccs wrote:
The answer to your question is NO.
Because this is HH2.0 (IE, some iteration of 3e-7e).

If you want your vehicles to have a T & W value? Go play 40k 8e+

Ding ding ding! A better cover save for vehicles would be nice, however.

A better (e.g. generally increased cover save system benefeiting all types of infantry) cover system period as to make cover ignoring weaponry actually usefull whilest also making cover important not just from a horizontal but also vertical angle would increase usefullness of currently lacking unit types aswell.

Fully agreed.

vehicles getting a few more hull points would be useful, Dreadnaughts being a 3+ save except Leviathans maybe also.

in effect vehicles are not bad, but anti-vehicle is also good anti-everything else making them too vulnerable for the points.

stuff needs to be reasonably easy to kill or the game gets silly, the issue is other stuff thats too hard to kill compared to vehicles

for me the solution is reasonably simple.

give Dreadnaughts an AV value and treat them as vehicles

I don’t think dreads need an AV nor do I think that’s the right call; they frankly make more sense as basically monstrous creatures.

I agree with a lot of the stuff about making dreads easier to kill though. Taking contemptors and box dreads to a 3+ would make them twice as vulnerable to chip damage as well as massively widen the pool of heavy weapons that can harm them, and would probably be sufficient. Leviathans are honestly probably fine as is, being tough as hell but also incredibly slow and very pricey once you slap on their upgrades. Maybe bump the cost of contemptors by 10-15 points too.

Otherwise, as always, I support a most robust cover system. 6+ being the benefit of most pieces of cover is pretty lackluster. I also think they could’ve done more work in terms of making moral more important and such, but overall I appreciate that AoD 2.0 made a ton of improvements.

cover that conceals being a -1 to hit and cover that protects being a -1 to wound (with both being possible) could be worth trying

both modifiers actually matter in many cases, while the -1 to wound means (or in effect +1 to AV for vehicles) means such protection really helps against stuff that was struggling to hurt you, but heavier stuff still largely blows right through it

the 6+ cover save is basically not worth the ink it occupies but a 5+ or better would probably be way too powerful

Meaningful terrain rules would also make the game more tactical. Raw unit stats become less decisive.

It'd be an insteresting mechanics experiment if every unit in the game had T/W/Sv, but doing so would also require rejigging all the weapon stats as well as perhaps revisiting the way weapon ranges, movement speed affect rolls and the quantity/quality of cover could be more meaningful rules-wise than what it is now

the problem with this is that it's all or nothing. Honestly, if the vehicle squadrons split off into their own units like dreads or thanatars then I think it would solve a few problems with durability. That way a lascannon squad isn't going to be popping an entire squad of sicarans or russes.

 Snord wrote:
Meaningful terrain rules would also make the game more tactical. Raw unit stats become less decisive.

thing is GW have a decent set of terrain rules, in terms of cover at least, in LotR - the "in the way" mechanic is good and would work well here

10 marines fire bolters at another 10 behind a wall, roll 20 dice to hit - as now, say 12 hits. now roll to see if the wall gets in the way, its a robust wall so say a 4+ to get past it - 6 shots get past the wall, 6 hit the wall. the six that get past are resolved as usual. normally the ones that hit the wall would be discarded - but you could note they also go through, at say -2 strength

likewise a squad hides in cover behind a rhino, some shots go past, those that don't are resolved against the rhino

LotR goes with "half speed movement in terrain" which could be a bit much here but some sort of movement penalty seems appropriate

the goal being to make the battlefield actually matter. requiring infantry to go around obstacles or go over them (say a 1" wall takes 2" of movement to cross, anything higher has to be climbed over or gone around). same with buildings, go through doorways or slightly slower through windows

and all vehicles should definitely split up the way dreadnaughts do after deployment