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Throughout the game, every army has its own uniquely-flavoured vehicles. Necron vehicles, for instance, have a very cohesive look (with the exception of the monolith), and the Living Metal rule ties them all together. The same can be said of Eldar vehicles with things like Spirit Stones and Star Engines being instantly recognisable as belonging solely to that race. Even other Imperial factions have a more distinctive flavour, even if it's just from their names; if you'd never heard of a Wyvern before, you'd still be able to guess which army it belongs to.

The exception is Space Marines. Years and years of vanity projects by Rules Writers and Miniature Designers have left the Space Marine vehicle range in a right mess. Names come from a dozen different sources, you get endless variations on the basic Rhino chassis which seem to share nothing as far as rules are concerned, and you frequently get several vehicles doing to same job but for different prices.

The solution? As far as I'm concerned the whole range needs trimming down and refining, and something needs to be done to make it more cohesive. This is also an excellent opportunity to finally answer the question of why Space Marine vehicles are so apparently inferior to Imperial Guard ones.

1. Shunt profiles together from Forge World. The models have been integrated into the core range and we have constant adverts for Forge World units in GW's own publications already; there's no reason why the rules couldn't just be folded in to the core range. The Predator, for example, could easily have a clause added to its army list entry saying something like 'One Predator per army may replace its Autocannon with an Executioner Plasma Cannon at a cost of 30pts'. This should reduce the number of books you draw from when building your army, and allow issues of balance to be finally addressed.

2. State once-and-for-all the core profiles of the Rhino chassis. Rhinos and Razorbacks use the 11-11-10 'Transport' profile, Whirlwinds and Stalkers use a reformed 12-11-10 'Artillery' profile and Predators and Vidnicators get a 13-12-11 'Battle Tank' profile. Incidentally, you can probably stand to lose the Hunter altogether; we only need one AA gun, and frankly that could be covered by a Whirlwind Hyperios upgrade.

3. Space Marine vehicles are supposed to be hyper-advanced. I understand the unwillingness to mess with their core profiles (although that's exactly what I've just done), so this could be done by rolling out the Power of the Machine Spirit rule, but changing it slightly. Here's my idea:

Power of the Machine Spirit: Space Marine vehicles incorporate highly advanced and ill-understood systems which can take partial control of the vehicle when required. These are not the savage war-spirits of the Titan Legions, but cold and aloof personalities which intervene judiciously in the way that the vehicle needs most at a given time. The legends of some such Spirits are millennia long, and they are considered as much a part of the Chapter as any Battle-Brother.

Once per turn, a vehicle's Machine Spirit may perform one of the following tasks:

Fire one of the vehicle's weapons at BS 4, regardless of any crew effects it may be subject to.

Move the vehicle at Combat Speed, regardless of any crew effects it may be subject to.

Attempt a repair of either a weapon which had previously been destroyed, or an immobilised result, or a single Hull Point of damage suffered earlier in the battle. The effect is repaired on a 5+.

Obviously points costs can be adjusted to account for the relative increases in power, but I'd like to know what Dakka thinks.

TL,DR: I wish Whirlwinds were still cool.

I'm pretty much behind each of your points.

(1) Allows 'special' variants to be used in various formations - Infernus Razorbacks in Battle Companies, Executioner Preds in Armoured Task Forces etc. without any hassle. I can't see it happening though, GW seems to have worked out that spreading rules everywhere is making them a tidy sum in book sales.

(2) Absolutely behind this one. Most vehicles are stuck with the same armour profile they got given in 3rd edition, and Preds / Vindi's having paper-thin side armour irks me on many levels.

(3) Needs clarifying: Presumably doesn't apply to Dreads?
With regard to the third ability - The game defines "turn" as "player turn" except where specifically called a game turn, so potentially 2 hull points per game turn from this strictly-better-than-IWND. Slightly invalidates Techmarines too, as why bother when each of your vehicles can do it for free (albeit not as good).

Also agreed on your fourth point - I wish Whirlwinds had at least some competition with Wyverns and Thunderfire Cannons (particularly as I play DA and don't get access to TFC's).

I'd maybe add to this that Land Raiders should be made more viable again. If GW are determined to keep them around the 250 point mark, then making them Super Heavies could help out quite a bit; eliminates the Explodes! result for a small amount of added durability, also ignoring shaken/stunned results, weapon destroyed and immobilised results, plus firing all weapons as stationary and at different targets. I mean, considering how big they are compared to things that are classified as Super Heavy I think it's fair enough, and they're priced well into Super Heavy pricing.


I generally agree on Rhinos, but I think that the Stalker and Hunter aren't going anywhere; I don't necessarily mind having redundancy in the list as long as each has a clear difference; for example the Hunter could be pure AA as it is now, we could get a Hyperios upgrade to the Whirlwind, but let it fire normally too, so it'd be a weaker AA option but more flexible, and finally do… something with the Stalker; maybe make it less good at AA but give it a profile that it can fire at other units, in particular this could make it hybrid anti-tank/AA vs the Whirlwind's hybrid anti-infantry with AA upgrade.

That said, the Stalker/Hunter could easily be axed, as it feels a lot like a Forge World specialist unit, an upgrade to the Whirlwind is all Codex: Space Marines ever needed, but of course that's from the perspective of the rules rather than selling shiny new tanks.

I really like the ideas you have here. In particular the Power Of The Machine Spirit one, which I have wanted for a while too. That rule just seems to be made for space marines. And it would really help out with their tanks. If you can't take the big guns we in the IG have, then at least yours can be better deployed and guided. And it helps to get around the fact that our techpriests can bestow POTS to our tanks but yours can't. Now you can say it's because they don't need to.

 Quanar wrote:
Needs clarifying: Presumably doesn't apply to Dreads?
With regard to the third ability - The game defines "turn" as "player turn" except where specifically called a game turn, so potentially 2 hull points per game turn from this strictly-better-than-IWND. Slightly invalidates Techmarines too, as why bother when each of your vehicles can do it for free (albeit not as good).

Yeah, obviously that's just a phrasing issue. Whenever I write homebrew rules, I tend to go through them meticulously and check the significance of each word, which is something a certain games company plainly doesn't do.

Also agreed on your fourth point - I wish Whirlwinds had at least some competition with Wyverns and Thunderfire Cannons (particularly as I play DA and don't get access to TFC's).

I am of the opinion that the Thunderfail could be totally replaced by the Whirlwind, with the Whirlwind launcher being reformed into a Heavy 4, Small Blast weapon with a variety of optional upgrade profiles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haravikk wrote:
I'd maybe add to this that Land Raiders should be made more viable again. If GW are determined to keep them around the 250 point mark, then making them Super Heavies could help out quite a bit; eliminates the Explodes! result for a small amount of added durability, also ignoring shaken/stunned results, weapon destroyed and immobilised results, plus firing all weapons as stationary and at different targets. I mean, considering how big they are compared to things that are classified as Super Heavy I think it's fair enough, and they're priced well into Super Heavy pricing.

I do think that Land Raiders are just short of being super-heavy. They're so big that I can see why that would be an attractive option, but they're so mainstream and spammable that it would just lead to issues. Also, the weapons they carry are a world apart from classical Super-Heavy Tanks.

I might instead recommend that they be called Heavy tanks, like the Leman Russ. This would make them slow, though, so perhaps Fast is also necessary. The trouble is that there isn't really a category that satisfies the nature of these tanks. Here's my idea:

Heavy Vehicles: These giants of the battlefield simply grind through incoming fire and obstacles as if they weren't their, their drilled crewmen spitting death in all directions. The arrival of even one such machine is often enough to swing a battle.

A Heavy Vehicle may never move faster than Combat Speed (unless it is also Fast), but may fire Ordnance weapons in a turn in which it has moved (and won't be forced to snap-fire its other weapons). Furthermore, Heavy Vehicles may fire each of their available weapons at a different target.

Heavy vehicles which are also Fast may move at cruising speed, though this will mean that they can only fire two weapons at their full Ballistic Skill. Other weapons may only snap-fire.