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It is simple enough to cover the 75%+ needed to get a 3+ coversave on a DC dread sitting them behind bullgryns. With the bullgryns cover buff this becomes a 2+. This makes it far more feasible to walk your death co dreads upto the opponents gunline.
But in a 5 man bullgryn unit, you may have t5 and a 3+ armour save, but its still just 15 wounds. Whats stopping your opponent from killing your bullgryns then destroying your dreads? Answer - corbulo. Attached and tanking.
Weak to demolisher cannon (and similar) blasts. Weak to high strength ignore cover weapons. Could be a nasty surprise for some opponents though. Will work better against other advancing or mid range armies such as nids, orks, chaos, GKs, crons or other BA.

How do you get a 3+ cover save from intervening models? The save is a flat 5+ for intervening models no matter how much of the model is covered, the only exception is that if an enemy is shooting at a tank from a certain facing but can only see another facing, ie standing in front of a tank but only seeing the side, then you get +1 something that's hardly feasible with infantry models. So you get a 4+ cover save with the bullgryns, which do help but still doesn't make walking dreadnoughts worth the points, especially with wave serpents and tau ignoring cover.

Vehicle cover saves are based on how much of the model can be seen not what that cover provides for normal infantry models. Intervening models count for providing cover saves. Cover saves work differently for vehicles. We use true LOS. I have that right based from the BRB right? That's how we have always played it. Are we playing it incorrect then?

And I wasnt basing this idea on traditional tau/guard/eldar gunlines but more midrange or assault armies.

If the vehicle has cover it gets a 5+

Bullgryns give a 4+ as base if memory serves. People were getting excited for them, envisioning them as mobile ADLs.

Then they saw the price tags.

Poly Ranger wrote:
It is simple enough to cover the 75%+ needed to get a 3+ coversave on a DC dread sitting them behind bullgryns. With the bullgryns cover buff this becomes a 2+. This makes it far more feasible to walk your death co dreads upto the opponents gunline.
But in a 5 man bullgryn unit, you may have t5 and a 3+ armour save, but its still just 15 wounds. Whats stopping your opponent from killing your bullgryns then destroying your dreads? Answer - corbulo. Attached and tanking.
Weak to demolisher cannon (and similar) blasts. Weak to high strength ignore cover weapons. Could be a nasty surprise for some opponents though. Will work better against other advancing or mid range armies such as nids, orks, chaos, GKs, crons or other BA.

You know I was thinking how much cooler Venerable Dreads would be with mobile cover saves... No one seems to make them venerable here on the west coast that much.

Except that you've spent well over 200 points to give a dreadnought a 4+ cover save, and put a unit in its way that will keep it from getting into assault.

And you haven't done anything about walkers still being kind of bad in combat, and the ease of negating cover with high Strength shooting.

 Jancoran wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
It is simple enough to cover the 75%+ needed to get a 3+ coversave on a DC dread sitting them behind bullgryns. With the bullgryns cover buff this becomes a 2+. This makes it far more feasible to walk your death co dreads upto the opponents gunline.
But in a 5 man bullgryn unit, you may have t5 and a 3+ armour save, but its still just 15 wounds. Whats stopping your opponent from killing your bullgryns then destroying your dreads? Answer - corbulo. Attached and tanking.
Weak to demolisher cannon (and similar) blasts. Weak to high strength ignore cover weapons. Could be a nasty surprise for some opponents though. Will work better against other advancing or mid range armies such as nids, orks, chaos, GKs, crons or other BA.

You know I was thinking how much cooler Venerable Dreads would be with mobile cover saves... No one seems to make them venerable here on the west coast that much.

The advent of hull pointing things to death made the venerable upgrade kind of a waste. Most commonly spammed dreadnought weapons are twinlinked anyway so the BS5 isn't that big a deal, and WS5 doesn't really do much.

A dead dreadnoughti sless useful than a live one,. so hull points or no, the Venerable upgrade has usefulness. if it forces an enemy to spent ANOTHER 200-300 points of his army than he planned killing it... Win!

 Jancoran wrote:
A dead dreadnoughti sless useful than a live one,. so hull points or no, the Venerable upgrade has usefulness. if it forces an enemy to spent ANOTHER 200-300 points of his army than he planned killing it... Win!

To my Necrons it's still a low HP vehicle to be gauss'd to death like a chump.

And it still dies like a weenie to krak grenades or a dakkafex (especially in melee). Emperor forbid they have haywire.

I'd rather buy a contemptor which has AV13 and an actual built in save.

Poly Ranger wrote:
Vehicle cover saves are based on how much of the model can be seen not what that cover provides for normal infantry models. Intervening models count for providing cover saves. Cover saves work differently for vehicles. We use true LOS. I have that right based from the BRB right? That's how we have always played it. Are we playing it incorrect then?

And I wasnt basing this idea on traditional tau/guard/eldar gunlines but more midrange or assault armies.

A vehicle (or any model for that matter) either has a cover save, or it does not. If it gets cover or not is determined by LoS (in the case of vehicles, 25% blocking is required). The quality of the save is determined by the TYPE of cover granting the save, not the amount of LoS blocking it has. If the vehicle has cover behind a wall, its got a 4+ save. Behind a fence, a 5+ save. Behind a unit of ogryns, a 5+ save. It doesnt matter if 90% of the vehicle is hidden behind a forest, it still only gets the same save as if 25% was hidden.

 McGibs wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
Vehicle cover saves are based on how much of the model can be seen not what that cover provides for normal infantry models. Intervening models count for providing cover saves. Cover saves work differently for vehicles. We use true LOS. I have that right based from the BRB right? That's how we have always played it. Are we playing it incorrect then?

And I wasnt basing this idea on traditional tau/guard/eldar gunlines but more midrange or assault armies.

A vehicle (or any model for that matter) either has a cover save, or it does not. If it gets cover or not is determined by LoS (in the case of vehicles, 25% blocking is required). The quality of the save is determined by the TYPE of cover granting the save, not the amount of LoS blocking it has. If the vehicle has cover behind a wall, its got a 4+ save. Behind a fence, a 5+ save. Behind a unit of ogryns, a 5+ save. It doesnt matter if 90% of the vehicle is hidden behind a forest, it still only gets the same save as if 25% was hidden.

Thank you for that. I am very glad I made this post, as we have been playing this wrong for a long time. My usual opponents and I play together at each others places. The few times I have gone to the local gaming club or gamesworkshop it has never come up. I will have to let them know.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DaddyWarcrimes wrote:
Except that you've spent well over 200 points to give a dreadnought a 4+ cover save, and put a unit in its way that will keep it from getting into assault.

And you haven't done anything about walkers still being kind of bad in combat, and the ease of negating cover with high Strength shooting.

I dont get the last paragraph. Death co dreads and furiosos are great in combat with talons. And strength doesn't negate cover.
I get the 4+ cover bit now though. Me and the half dozen mates who play have been playing this incorrectly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
May I just ask people which edition is this a hangover from. Cos I know for a fact we have been playing it from somewhere!

Poly Ranger wrote:

DaddyWarcrimes wrote:
Except that you've spent well over 200 points to give a dreadnought a 4+ cover save, and put a unit in its way that will keep it from getting into assault.

And you haven't done anything about walkers still being kind of bad in combat, and the ease of negating cover with high Strength shooting.

I dont get the last paragraph. Death co dreads and furiosos are great in combat with talons. And strength doesn't negate cover.
I get the 4+ cover bit now though. Me and the half dozen mates who play have been playing this incorrectly.

Death company dreads and furiosos are no longer considered "great" in combat. A few krak grenades is all it takes no. Similarly now that meltabombs can be used against dreads they are even more vulnerable. And how anything with haywire grenades will kill them before they strike.

Strength does not negate cover, but there are a lot of weapons out there in Tau and Eldar codexes that are both high strength and ignore cover. It use to be that mostly weapons that got ignores cover, were low strength with bad AP, to give orks and small nids a problem. But in 6th, there are lots of str7 and 8 with ignores cover, and they will make short work of a dread, behind ogryns or not.

Ah thanks yeh I know about the high st ignores cover tau and eldar shooting, got 2 regular eldar and 1 tau opponent and my av13 suffers (darn serps lol). Misread the meaning. Any idea which edition I have the cover based on % obscured we got this from (vehicles only)? I played second, third, and then forth for a short while. Stopped and got back into it at the advent of sixth.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I want to get to the root of the problem lol.

Fragile wrote:
If the vehicle has cover it gets a 5+

A vehicles cover save depends on whatever cover is obscuring it. So an Aegis is a 4+ standard, while forests or intervening models are 5+

A Helbrute can get a 3+ cover save from cheap cultists and is still crap.