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 Vankraken wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
^Oh yeah, the fact that wrecks dont stick around anymore bugs me too.

One often overlooked feature of that is that knocked out vehicles became terrain that could give cover or disrupt movement/charges. Had quite a few games in 7th where destroyed vehicles played a major part in unit movement and allowed infantry to have some added protection in certain parts of the board. It's something that makes the game feel tactical and the board matters instead of just being a exercise in theory craft number crunching.

Absolutely. I definitely won a couple games by plowing my vehicles forward so I could use the wrecks as cover.

Also when your vehicles took different kind of damage, it forced you to improvise. Your tank lost main gun? Shucks, oh well I have to charge forward to employ secondary weapons, or tank shock, or claim objectives. In 8th, the vehicle stays same, just gets bit worse. Unless it's a small vehicle, then it stays same until it loses its last wound. Yawn.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:

Spoiler:

Ice_can wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:
I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.

That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.

You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.

They would still have high toughness, which means fewer of those hits would go through.

Not really. Mathematically speaking T6 and T8 are the same against S3.
Which is a problem, really.
T8 is certainly high tougness, but T6? That's a light vehicle.

Yeah, I think this game would be a lot different if GW had given vehicles wounds, but had kept the old wound chart at the same time. A Lasgun could hurt only up to T6, Bolter to T7. A Heavy Bolter would only wound T7 and 8 on a 6, also making it less effective of an Anti-Armor weapon. In reverse you'd also have Heavy Bolters wounding T3 on 2's, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Backfire wrote:
Also when your vehicles took different kind of damage, it forced you to improvise. Your tank lost main gun? Shucks, oh well I have to charge forward to employ secondary weapons, or tank shock, or claim objectives. In 8th, the vehicle stays same, just gets bit worse. Unless it's a small vehicle, then it stays same until it loses its last wound. Yawn.

Yeah, and since facing mattered if you immobilized something you sometimes had the opportunity of working around its firing arcs.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:
I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.

That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.

You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.

They would still have high toughness, which means fewer of those hits would go through.

Not really. Mathematically speaking T6 and T8 are the same against S3.
Which is a problem, really.
T8 is certainly high tougness, but T6? That's a light vehicle.

Yeah, but that's also as good as the system lets it get.

Vehicles?
Try playing Nid monsterous creatures. Now they are in a bad spot.

 Mmmpi wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:
I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.

That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.

You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.

They would still have high toughness, which means fewer of those hits would go through.

Not really. Mathematically speaking T6 and T8 are the same against S3.
Which is a problem, really.
T8 is certainly high tougness, but T6? That's a light vehicle.

Yeah, but that's also as good as the system lets it get.

Then change the system. They already changed it to something that doesn't work really well and is dumb, they could change it to something that actually works.
The old wound table was fine. If they really wanted to go the "Everything can hurt anything!" route (which is something I disagree with, but whatever), they could have just done 7+ rolls, which already have a precedent.

Backfire wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
I think if they were able to bring back the damage chart for vehicles it would make them far more interesting. Shaking and stunning a tank was a valid tactic to neuter a tank for a turn while you had other things to do.

It was also thematic as hell, an immobilised tank in the middle of a densely packed board, weapons getting destroyed as it gets whittled down, that was cool. Now tanks are just lifted from the table and don't become terrain if they get destroyed.

I like it as is.

The biggest problem was that the old system was that it did not apply to monsters like Tyranids, Wratih knights or most annoyingly fake ones like Riptides. Havinig the same system apply - you can just as easily blow weapon limbs or legs of a monster as damage tracks etc on a vehicle - may have helped 6th/7th a huge amount.

The old system work as long as the MC's had implicit limits, usually 3-4 wounds (sometimes 5) - sure it was somewhat illogical that a Lascannon could not one-shot a Carnifex, but the MC's were so vulnerable to number of other threats that it was not imbalacing as such. Problems began when Codex designers began to add units with 6 or more wounds, often with Inv saves - it broke the balance down. Why would anyone add a Hammerhead on their army when Riptide is so much tougher?

8th system is a bore. Vehicles are now generic abstracted piles of hp and once the hit points are expended, they disappear magically. Yawn. The system no longer feels like it is simulating a battle, it feels like a game.

Agreed on the vehicles sticking around but cover /terrain in 8th without H/R's using all the optional rules is weak

Riptides and Wraithnights with all the advantages of Monsters - able to get cover, armour and Invulnerable saves, movement, etc etc where just broken

I like the degrading stats, I like that finally vehicles have got armour saves again.

there are too many bad bad memories of 6th/7th ed and this is just one of them.

I do like the idea of using keywords more....

I kind of think the abandoning on the armour system for vehicles was a bit of a mistake, it was not handled so well. But I do think under the current rules that it was not the right way to change things.

I also think that fixing them would be a bit more than just returning to a similar system :(

I haven't played Apocalypse at all, but from what I can tell, there's an "infantry" vs "everything larger" classification, and weapons have different chances to wound infantry vs larger models. It's like they went in the opposite direction from 40k 8th edition: instead of making the tanks use the same rules as infantry, they made the monsters use the same rules as tanks!

I'm feeling like maybe I want to play Apocalypse...

Pointed Stick wrote:
I haven't played Apocalypse at all, but from what I can tell, there's an "infantry" vs "everything larger" classification, and weapons have different chances to wound infantry vs larger models. It's like they went in the opposite direction from 40k 8th edition: instead of making the tanks use the same rules as infantry, they made the monsters use the same rules as tanks!

I'm feeling like maybe I want to play Apocalypse...

Apoc does not make a distinction between number of shots and damage for different weapons, S, shots and D are all combined into a single wound roll, it's not really as different as it appears to be. A lascannon can only kill a single guardsman in 40k, in Apoc it can kill 5 but it just has a smaller chance of doing it, while a bolter has the same top damage of a lascannon against a tank, but just has a smaller chance of doing that much damage. Since they got rid of AP there is no difference between a great unclean one and a tank, it's just a big thing, no high T, low Sv vs low T high Sv. I'd argue that Sv is something that is missing from Apoc, but I still haven't managed to play a game yet, maybe I'll set one up in the coming week and see what I think. I'd love to sponsor a competitive league for Apoc and see what's broken, the problem is how few people can play it more than once every 6 months even with the shorter game-span it's still a lot of models that might have to be transported and a lot of space required to play. I've been considering contacting Skarri from SkarredCast since he's a tournament organizer and he seems to like auxiliary games, but I'll wait and see if I like the game myself first.

 vict0988 wrote:

Pointed Stick wrote:
I haven't played Apocalypse at all, but from what I can tell, there's an "infantry" vs "everything larger" classification, and weapons have different chances to wound infantry vs larger models. It's like they went in the opposite direction from 40k 8th edition: instead of making the tanks use the same rules as infantry, they made the monsters use the same rules as tanks!

I'm feeling like maybe I want to play Apocalypse...

Apoc does not make a distinction between number of shots and damage for different weapons, S, shots and D are all combined into a single wound roll, it's not really as different as it appears to be. A lascannon can only kill a single guardsman in 40k, in Apoc it can kill 5 but it just has a smaller chance of doing it, while a bolter has the same top damage of a lascannon against a tank, but just has a smaller chance of doing that much damage. Since they got rid of AP there is no difference between a great unclean one and a tank, it's just a big thing, no high T, low Sv vs low T high Sv. I'd argue that Sv is something that is missing from Apoc, but I still haven't managed to play a game yet, maybe I'll set one up in the coming week and see what I think. I'd love to sponsor a competitive league for Apoc and see what's broken, the problem is how few people can play it more than once every 6 months even with the shorter game-span it's still a lot of models that might have to be transported and a lot of space required to play. I've been considering contacting Skarri from SkarredCast since he's a tournament organizer and he seems to like auxiliary games, but I'll wait and see if I like the game myself first.

I think there is a misconception based on past versions of the game that the new Apocalypse requires massive armies and large tables. I've found that the new rules work very well with each side fielding an army in the 100-150 point range, which is comparable to a 40k game with each side fielding about 1500-2000 points, on a standard 6' x 4' table.

As noted, each weapon has a strength against personnel (SAP - light infantry and characters) and a strength against tanks (SAT - heavy tanks, knights, monstrous creatures, huge characters, etc.). Weapons like multi-meltas and lascannons have a great SAT, but poor SAP. Bolter weapons have a good SAP, and not so great SAT. Plasma cannons and missile launchers have good SAP and SAT. Hit rolls are made just like in 40k with the same WS and BS skills, but much fewer attacks are made per unit/weapon. Wound rolls are made using a weapon's SAP or SAT depending on target, rolling a D12 per hit. Hits that cause a wound result in a small blast marker being placed on the target. Some of the more massive/dangerous weapons are classified as "Destroyer" weapons and cause two blast markers per hit. Every two blast markers on a unit are converted to a large blast marker.

Finally, after all sides have made their actions (move, shooting, and/or fighting per unit depending on their order; alternating between players per detachment), the damage phase is when the blast markers are turned into actual damage/wounds with the save rolls. This is neat, because (1) all models get at least one turn to perform an action, and; (2) each player does not know until the end of the turn whether they have placed enough damage markers on a target to destroy it, and there are some command assets (cards) that can be played that let you remove blast markers (ex. Rotate Ion Shields for Knights), sometimes surprising an opponent who thinks they have dealt enough damage to destroy a unit. So if you want to ensure that a unit is destroyed, you really have put several blast markers on it.

There is only one save attribute per unit (no invulnerable saves), though some units do have FNP. For example Terminators, Land Raiders, and Knights all have a 4+ save. A D12 is rolled to save for every normal/small blast marker, and a D6 is rolled for every large blast marker on a unit, with many units not being able to save at all against a large blast marker if they have a 7+ save stat. Each failed save per blast marker equals one damage counter In addition, any unit with a blast marker also has to make a morale check, with additional negative modifiers for additional blast markers, and if failed, that unit takes another damage counter. Leadership/morale actually matters in this game. Once the number of damage markers on a unit equals the amount of wounds for that unit, that unit is destroyed/removed. Super-heavies can explode, causing damage to nearby units.

While a few of the weapon profiles and datasheets need some adjustments in my opinion, overall the system works great and quite fast, with much fewer dice rolls needed and very few opportunities for rerolls. Units like Terminators and Land Raiders actually feel really tough, as they should, and many units that have been overpowered at times in 40k, like Knights, feel much more balanced in play. I haven't even mentioned the terrain rules which make a lot more sense and work quite well. The biggest shock for me was how weak characters are in comparison to their super-hero status in normal 40k, being able to be targeted and destroyed much more easily. But once I got used to that, I found the game to be more realistic and tactical than standard 40k (for a sci-fi tabletop war game with little plastic army men).

 Gnarlly wrote:
The biggest shock for me was how weak characters are in comparison to their super-hero status in normal 40k, being able to be targeted and destroyed much more easily.

Haha this is something I've always hated about regular 40k, so it sounds like a big improvement to me!

Thanks for the synopsis. It sounds like a very interesting, well-thought-out ruleset. I think I'll check it out.

Besides a couple of tournament games where i experimented with Bone Breakers I have not used Vehicles at all this edition. Ork vehicles are in the category of sucking and that is about it. We have some vehicles which are fine in friendly play and are on the cusp of being competitive but that is it. Those vehicles are the aforementioned Bonebreakers, Gorkanaut......you could argue that is it though.

Every ork vehicle suffers from 2 massive flaws. 1: They are flimsy, they die really really quick, our knight equivalent (Gork/morkanaut) doesn't have a invuln save unless you buy one for the Mork. And our Super heavy (Stompa) doesn't even have a 2+ save let alone an invuln. And #2: They lack damage potential. Every ork vehicle lacks true damage on average. Yeah, for the majority, there is a potential for a lot of damage, but when you are hitting on 5s and have short ranged weapons on a platform which can't stand up to sustained anti-armor weapons...well you don't put out much damage do you?

Yeah, GW seems to have trouble understanding that just because something CAN deal a lot of damage, doesn't mean it WILL. So they overprice units with a lot of damage potential, even though it will never reach that potential as it relies on rolling hot. They should price units according to their lowest or average performance, not their highest.

I think every unit's lowest damage potential is zero. Is there anything that automatically does damage?

I think there's value in having a high, if unlikely, damage potential. Average damage is more important, but sometimes those high swings can really upset a battle.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I think every unit's lowest damage potential is zero. Is there anything that automatically does damage?

I think there's value in having a high, if unlikely, damage potential. Average damage is more important, but sometimes those high swings can really upset a battle.

ohh agreed, and those high and low swings can often make for the most amusing stories. I know, parituclarly back in 6th/7th there was a lot of blow back agaisnt randomness, but I'd be sad if they removed too much random from the game, it can make things amusing.

The back-blow against randomness in 6th/7th was to do with random psychic powers and warlord traits (and Daemon wargear); the point was the difficulty of actually building a list when you didn't know what you were actually taking.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The back-blow against randomness in 6th/7th was to do with random psychic powers and warlord traits (and Daemon wargear); the point was the difficulty of actually building a list when you didn't know what you were actually taking.

yeah and on that I 100% agree. that was dumb. especially as you had events literally being decided by who got lucky and rolled invisability

Still getting to grips with 8th Ed, but vehicles feel a lot more entertaining now.

Sure, I can still get knacked first turn - but it's taking multiple shots to do so, so I still feel like I'm getting something for my points.

Compare to when I last regularly played, and the first shot of the first turn could see a Landraider blown to kingdom come. And quite often did.

Whilst not quite perfect (why the -1 to hit when moving for tanks?) it's hard to sort what's a personal bugbear, and what's a clearer issue with the game itself. Perhaps that'll come with ever more experience (I'm going vehicle heavy for my nascent Iron Hands, who I chose because they're a doddle to paint, not because I'm beardy. I am beardy. But it's a proper face fungus beard, not a metaphorical)

I'm a big fan of depreciating damage, have been since AoS first introduced it. Just feels satisfying, without the risk of something expensive being crippled first turn, and left in a bad position because I really thought I had it out of LoS.

Heck, the only thing I can think of right now to add is some kind of 'if you're assaulting a tank and roll a 1 to hit, guess who just got run over' type stuff. But only because it appeals cinematically!

 Insectum7 wrote:
I think every unit's lowest damage potential is zero. Is there anything that automatically does damage?

I think there's value in having a high, if unlikely, damage potential. Average damage is more important, but sometimes those high swings can really upset a battle.

The problem is that GW prices a lot of weapons/vehicles, specifically for me, all my ork weapons and vehicles as if the high end damage was the most likely outcome. Look at the Stompa as a great example by itself. Theoretically a Stompa can gun down a pair of knights without breaking stride, in reality, it struggles to kill a Rhino on average.

 Gnarlly wrote:
After playing the new Apocalypse at approximately 2000 points per side (a fairly standard-sized 40k game these days), I'm sold on a mix of D6 and D12 for different types of actions/rolls. I'm also sold on anti-tank weapons working much better against tanks, anti-personnel weapons working much better against personnel, no AP modifiers, no invulnerable saves, no first-turn alpha strikes, alternating activations, less down time, less dice needed, less CP and stratagem combo shenanigans, more strategy when choosing which units to activate and when, and actual damage unknown and not determined until after both sides have completed all of their actions. The new Apocalpyse rules do away with the vast majority of issues I have with 40k and I honestly wish they would become the major basis for a new 9th edition.

But I would add with fixed profiles. really why are my chimera as tough as Leman Russ..


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Not really. Mathematically speaking T6 and T8 are the same against S3.
Which is a problem, really.
T8 is certainly high tougness, but T6? That's a light vehicle.

Yes I am all for weapons that are less than half (so S3 vs T7+) not wounding, and conversely more than half (so S7 vs T3) auto wounding.

Yeah, weapons always having a chance to fail at wounding is an odd quirk of the system, even in the old wounding table. If a lascannon just so much as grazes a person, that poor guy is still going down because of the sheer heat. I'm talking like 3rd degree burns just from being close to it. It probably won't kill him, but its going to be so painful that he'll be incapacitated, which is what being removed as a casualty is supposed to represent.

I really don't think the game needs to be more deadly.
I also never had the issue of S3 killing T7 vehicles or S4 killing T8 vehicles. Sure, they plonk off a wound or two, but they never actually kill those vehicles.

 Jidmah wrote:
I really don't think the game needs to be more deadly.
I also never had the issue of S3 killing T7 vehicles or S4 killing T8 vehicles. Sure, they plonk off a wound or two, but they never actually kill those vehicles.

unless wounding modifiers show up ...

That's kind of the point of those, right?

 Jidmah wrote:
I really don't think the game needs to be more deadly.
I also never had the issue of S3 killing T7 vehicles or S4 killing T8 vehicles. Sure, they plonk off a wound or two, but they never actually kill those vehicles.

Which means shooting at vehicles with weapons like these is a pointless waste of time that just slows down the game. Allowing Lasguns and Grot Blastas and Guardians throwing punches to put wounds on vehicles almost never actually accomplishes anything, and armies with S3 models and guns have plenty of anti-tank weapons these days. I don't think it would hurt the game to make S3 attacks never have any chance of wounding T7 and above, but it would speed up play and clarify target priority.

Smite also just plonks of a wound or two, as do heavy bolters and assault cannons. Let's just make vehicles immune to everything, because just dealing two damage is a wast of time, right?

If all those S3 attacks would not have re-rolls, additional attacks and whatnot on everything, that would actually save time. 30 grot blastas (how did they get in range?) are not slowing down your game any more than you moving a single infantry unit.

 Jidmah wrote:
I really don't think the game needs to be more deadly.
I also never had the issue of S3 killing T7 vehicles or S4 killing T8 vehicles. Sure, they plonk off a wound or two, but they never actually kill those vehicles.

Yeah, exactly, they remove a wound or 2. That's 2 less wounds your other weapons have to remove to kill the vehicle. Every bit of damage counts.
You're probably more likely to remove more wounds with small arms than with variable damage weapons anyway, due to sheer volume and how unreliable the D6 damage system is.

 Jidmah wrote:
That's kind of the point of those, right?

Not very good point, then.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I really don't think the game needs to be more deadly.
I also never had the issue of S3 killing T7 vehicles or S4 killing T8 vehicles. Sure, they plonk off a wound or two, but they never actually kill those vehicles.

Yeah, exactly, they remove a wound or 2. That's 2 less wounds your other weapons have to remove to kill the vehicle. Every bit of damage counts.
You're probably more likely to remove more wounds with small arms than with variable damage weapons anyway, due to sheer volume and how unreliable the D6 damage system is.

Not all anti-tank weapons are d6.