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Yeah....the razorbacks got really silly, particularly with the GK books and 5pt psyammo on assault cannons and insanely min/maxable cheap troops to unlock those Razorbacks, coupled with wound allocation gimmicking deathstar paladins got real silly

If they make vehicles super survivable in 8th Gladius is gunna become ungodly stupid with free razorbacks everywhere...

 Xerics wrote:
If they make vehicles super survivable in 8th Gladius is gunna become ungodly stupid with free razorbacks everywhere...

I'm already losing to Gladius, so why would I care?

Generally speaking, I don't think it's as much a problem of resilience as it is mobility. Half of the advantage of vehicles in general is the speed they can put on as the situation demands.

Walkers had a lot of love back in 4th edition, where fewer people took mechanised troops as standard, and then the extra firepower or CC punch was really appreciated. Now they tend to get left behind by the rest of the army, which is all well and good for a Contemptor Mortis with Lascannons, but terrible for a ol'-fashioned Dreadnought with a Power Fist because it'll just never get to use it.

Drop Pods can help immensely, but they still mean that your walker has to sit around for a full turn picking its nose while the enemy level every available gun at it. This is why the overall tougher Forge World Dreadnoughts are more popular than the MKV ones (which is a shame, because I really like my boxy, ugly, stubby Dreads).

Basically, Walkers need a talent; something to make them the superior choice in certain situations. Move Through Cover as standard would be one, while nerfing the Monstrous Creature rule would lessen the gap a bit (Riptides don't need Smash or Fear, for instance).

But, frannkly, if you want to take walkers then nothing should stop you. People at my club are gradually becoming more comfortable with the idea that you can take an army that's a mid-point between powerful, fun and balanced, so I have been seeing more walkers recently. It's just a matter of attitude.

well dreadnuaghts i feel should be more badass, being salty old warriors with tons of experience, maybe some special rules for hand to hand or shooting depending on the faction,
the invulnerable save like a contempt or would be nice to

sentinals on the other hand should be easy to kill but maybe they should move a little faster, or gain some ambush, tank hunter special rules

I actually found another walker that is actually pretty decent. Soul Grinders from CSM perform as long range heavy weapons platforms and anti air platforms. If you really want to make him melee you can give him a warpsword for S6 AP3 5 attacks at I4 stock or use his powerfist for S10 AP2 5 attacks at I1. 6 attacks on the charge with 4 HP, ignores shaken and stun results on a 2+ and 13 front armor will make most units cry. He isn't a character tho so you can't call out that plucky sergent with the powerfist...

It would almost make sense to pile walkers and monstrous creatures in together - lets face it a carnifex is basically just a biological dreadnought with lots of teeth!

 Xerics wrote:
I actually found another walker that is actually pretty decent. Soul Grinders from CSM perform as long range heavy weapons platforms and anti air platforms. If you really want to make him melee you can give him a warpsword for S6 AP3 5 attacks at I4 stock or use his powerfist for S10 AP2 5 attacks at I1. 6 attacks on the charge with 4 HP, ignores shaken and stun results on a 2+ and 13 front armor will make most units cry. He isn't a character tho so you can't call out that plucky sergent with the powerfist...

Eh, as an anti-air platform he works, but his BS is meh (3), he only gets three shots, and it's S7 AP4. He's basically a worse Quad Gun. I really only like him as faster walker, as Slaanesh will give him +3" to his run move and fleet. Long range is also iffy, as that BS3 hurts his Large Blast and it's Ordnance, meaning he's snap shots on anything else.

Why don't walkers have saves actually? Could represent them moving to get a better angle to take the incoming shot, or doing what tanks can't do and sort of side stepping out of the way. Granted it can't be great due to their toughness, but there's a lot of room to get walkers functioning better instead of simply keeping them the same edition after edition as the game changes without them.

 jreilly89 wrote:

 Xerics wrote:
I actually found another walker that is actually pretty decent. Soul Grinders from CSM perform as long range heavy weapons platforms and anti air platforms. If you really want to make him melee you can give him a warpsword for S6 AP3 5 attacks at I4 stock or use his powerfist for S10 AP2 5 attacks at I1. 6 attacks on the charge with 4 HP, ignores shaken and stun results on a 2+ and 13 front armor will make most units cry. He isn't a character tho so you can't call out that plucky sergent with the powerfist...

Eh, as an anti-air platform he works, but his BS is meh (3), he only gets three shots, and it's S7 AP4. He's basically a worse Quad Gun. I really only like him as faster walker, as Slaanesh will give him +3" to his run move and fleet. Long range is also iffy, as that BS3 hurts his Large Blast and it's Ordnance, meaning he's snap shots on anything else.

It's also from Chaos Daemons, not CSM.

CSM have the Defiler which is more expensive and worse.

 EnTyme wrote:

 Xerics wrote:
Make only penetrations remove a hull point and let glances roll on pen chart -3.

Just wanted to point out that this would effectively make Necron Triarch Stalkers immune to glances. Not that my Necrons would mind, but I don't really need another reason for people to complain about me being OP . I've always advocated for a rule stating that vehicles may only be destroyed by a penetrating hit, but vehicles reduced to 0 HP have AV of all sides reduced by -1 (Or maybe treat them as open-topped instead. +1 to damage chart or +2 if the vehicle was already open-topped).

You need some sort of cumulative damage. Hull points became nessisary because there were certain vehicles(holo skimmers particular) that just wouldnt die. There were dumb rules that made all hits glancing if they moved, and even without, without some nice luck you could through 30 Krak missiles(made to kill light vehicles) at a Rhino and not get an explodes or wrecked result.

Something like where after losing all hull points vehicles get a extra damage counter. For each extra damage counter you add 1 to the pen table.
Glance a rhino 6 times, it still runs, but pen it and add 4 to the damage table.
Glance a LR 4 times, it still runs but pen it and add 1 to the damage table.

 Exergy wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:

 Xerics wrote:
Make only penetrations remove a hull point and let glances roll on pen chart -3.

Just wanted to point out that this would effectively make Necron Triarch Stalkers immune to glances. Not that my Necrons would mind, but I don't really need another reason for people to complain about me being OP . I've always advocated for a rule stating that vehicles may only be destroyed by a penetrating hit, but vehicles reduced to 0 HP have AV of all sides reduced by -1 (Or maybe treat them as open-topped instead. +1 to damage chart or +2 if the vehicle was already open-topped).

You need some sort of cumulative damage. Hull points became nessisary because there were certain vehicles(holo skimmers particular) that just wouldnt die. There were dumb rules that made all hits glancing if they moved, and even without, without some nice luck you could through 30 Krak missiles(made to kill light vehicles) at a Rhino and not get an explodes or wrecked result.

Something like where after losing all hull points vehicles get a extra damage counter. For each extra damage counter you add 1 to the pen table.
Glance a rhino 6 times, it still runs, but pen it and add 4 to the damage table.
Glance a LR 4 times, it still runs but pen it and add 1 to the damage table.

Just use Bolt Actions vehicle damage rules.

 Exergy wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:

 Xerics wrote:
Make only penetrations remove a hull point and let glances roll on pen chart -3.

Just wanted to point out that this would effectively make Necron Triarch Stalkers immune to glances. Not that my Necrons would mind, but I don't really need another reason for people to complain about me being OP . I've always advocated for a rule stating that vehicles may only be destroyed by a penetrating hit, but vehicles reduced to 0 HP have AV of all sides reduced by -1 (Or maybe treat them as open-topped instead. +1 to damage chart or +2 if the vehicle was already open-topped).

You need some sort of cumulative damage. Hull points became nessisary because there were certain vehicles(holo skimmers particular) that just wouldnt die. There were dumb rules that made all hits glancing if they moved, and even without, without some nice luck you could through 30 Krak missiles(made to kill light vehicles) at a Rhino and not get an explodes or wrecked result.

That was in 4th edition. In 5th skimmers were no different from other vehicles.
5th edition vehicle rules would have been fine if it wasn't for silly cheap Dedicated Transports in 5th edition Codeci.

Walkers do not need a fix. What is needed it overall vehicle fix combined with remotely sensible Codex design without gross weapons and units like HYMPs and unkillable MC's. Unfortunately, this is much more laborous way to fix things so good bet is it won't be done.

Walkers being so mobile and actually responsive to their attackers should have added reflex dodges to their profile as a USR. Something like 4++ because they're able to side step raise an arms shield, tilt and what have you. They should also be able to fire all their weapons without restriction, including things like Artillery or Ordinance if equip with them. they're specialized units that currently fit no meta where as they're rules are terribly thought out and newer rules were forged specifically to sell newer models while making them as a generic Type, useless.

 Xerics wrote:
I actually found another walker that is actually pretty decent. Soul Grinders from CSM perform as long range heavy weapons platforms and anti air platforms. If you really want to make him melee you can give him a warpsword for S6 AP3 5 attacks at I4 stock or use his powerfist for S10 AP2 5 attacks at I1. 6 attacks on the charge with 4 HP, ignores shaken and stun results on a 2+ and 13 front armor will make most units cry. He isn't a character tho so you can't call out that plucky sergent with the powerfist...

The Soul Grinder would go at I3, not I1, since walkers ignore unwieldy (unless this is an ITC errata?). But that's almost the same as I1 anyway in most cases, but you would still get a chance to knock the block off of the sergeant anyway.

The issue with giving walkers saves is what do you do with ones that have saves now? Improve the save? Give a different rules? Lower their cost?

pm713 wrote:
The issue with giving walkers saves is what do you do with ones that have saves now? Improve the save? Give a different rules? Lower their cost?

Relatively few have saves, and those typically are invul saves that could probably overlap with armor just fine without much adjustment.

That said, I think it'd be better to go back to a 5E damage table with 7E damage results (e.g. being Stunned still allows snapshots, vehicle passengers must test against Ld if their transport is shaken) for vehicles all around, walkers included. This would render the silly "death by a thousand cuts" issue that vehicles have now, while retaining a meaningful kill system that emphasis heavy anti-tank guns over multi-shot spam weaponry, without having to worry too much about saves. The bigger issue I think is that firepower in general has also exploded to the point where even this may not work the way it once did

IMO, 6th edition vehicle rules would have been fine if all vehicles had 1 more HP.

In 5th edition Walkers were durable, but there MC's rolled 2d6 armour penetration for every attack, so Dreads were usually dead meat vs monstrous creatures.

 Exergy wrote:
You need some sort of cumulative damage. Hull points became nessisary because there were certain vehicles(holo skimmers particular) that just wouldnt die. There were dumb rules that made all hits glancing if they moved, and even without, without some nice luck you could through 30 Krak missiles(made to kill light vehicles) at a Rhino and not get an explodes or wrecked result.

Something like where after losing all hull points vehicles get a extra damage counter. For each extra damage counter you add 1 to the pen table.
Glance a rhino 6 times, it still runs, but pen it and add 4 to the damage table.
Glance a LR 4 times, it still runs but pen it and add 1 to the damage table.

Before we switched to 2nd ed we were playing around with rough system where HP's were doubled, pens cause 2HP's. Also some tweaks here and there(especially boosted vanquisher cannon) and some vechile by vechile tweaking of HP's +-1 after doubling.

Worked all right for us. Vechiles weren't glanced to death quite as bad. Orks had bit trouble with russes though.

Then we simply decided that why patch 7th when 2nd ed is much better from the get go and with smaller patches than 7th ed needed we can get it even better!

We need to drop HP's and go back to the good old 5th edition damage charts. These days autocannons are better tank killers than lascannons in most cases and this stupidity - And I quote Vaktathi here "Death by a thousand cuts" system is really not working as is plain for all to see. Sadly, thanks to the stupidity that was the Rhino in 5th edition, people are still scared away by the 'unkillable tanks' fright when in reality it was just the Rhino and the usual Eldar skimmer dickery that really broke the game then.

So we trade one bad system for another?

And the Chimera, which was worse than the Rhino. But it was bad on any low AV vehicle. Oh, and war walkers! The horror.

pm713 wrote:So we trade one bad system for another?

Actually, unless you where an idiot and refused to bring any dedicated AT weapons, the system was rather balanced. But no, whining "l33t" players and Timmies would bring little or no AT and then scream when they where unable to counter a Leman Russ (not insinuating or accusing - I actually had this happen to me. Little Timmy brought no ranged AT beyond a solitary ML in a Tactical squad and then screamed and raged about how I was 'cheating' and 'not playing right' and 'being unfair' and 'bullying' when my solitary Leman Russ massacred his units as they tried to charge across open ground towards me).

Martel732 wrote:And the Chimera, which was worse than the Rhino. But it was bad on any low AV vehicle. Oh, and war walkers! The horror.

War walkers, sure. But the Chimera? As I recall it was not able to remobilise itself after being immobilised and its side armour was so pathetic (as it is now) that it just folded and died to any flank shots. Hell, small arms fire would cripple it.

The Chimera was relatively easy to neutralize. Its infantry didnt want to get out if they could at all help it, and it usually wanted to shoot itself, so any glance or pen would largely silence it at least for one turn unless the infantry chose to expose themselves. The big thing with the Chimera was being able to just get a huge number of individually-weak hulls on thr field to overwhelm an opponents AT to keep the fun stuff alive.

 master of ordinance wrote:
We need to drop HP's and go back to the good old 5th edition damage charts. These days autocannons are better tank killers than lascannons in most cases and this stupidity - And I quote Vaktathi here "Death by a thousand cuts" system is really not working as is plain for all to see. Sadly, thanks to the stupidity that was the Rhino in 5th edition, people are still scared away by the 'unkillable tanks' fright when in reality it was just the Rhino and the usual Eldar skimmer dickery that really broke the game then.

Eldar skimmers weren't so powerful in 5th (Wave Serpent was good but not broken). Dark Eldar skimmer spam was quite powerful however.
If we went back to 5th edition Vehicle damage rules and added 10-15 points to cost of every Dedicated Transport costing under 80 points, it would be fine.

 master of ordinance wrote:

pm713 wrote:So we trade one bad system for another?

Actually, unless you where an idiot and refused to bring any dedicated AT weapons, the system was rather balanced. But no, whining "l33t" players and Timmies would bring little or no AT and then scream when they where unable to counter a Leman Russ (not insinuating or accusing - I actually had this happen to me. Little Timmy brought no ranged AT beyond a solitary ML in a Tactical squad and then screamed and raged about how I was 'cheating' and 'not playing right' and 'being unfair' and 'bullying' when my solitary Leman Russ massacred his units as they tried to charge across open ground towards me).

Martel732 wrote:And the Chimera, which was worse than the Rhino. But it was bad on any low AV vehicle. Oh, and war walkers! The horror.

War walkers, sure. But the Chimera? As I recall it was not able to remobilise itself after being immobilised and its side armour was so pathetic (as it is now) that it just folded and died to any flank shots. Hell, small arms fire would cripple it.

I saw IG lists table people and a lot of that was heavy weapon fire from Chimeras. You couldn't get on their sides because there was a wall of them. And you weren't crippling anything in 5th with glancing hits.

Remember, no snapshots in 5E, so glance the chimera once and it was either silent for the next turn, lost a weapon, or immobilized.

The big thing with Rhinos was that they didnt care about shooting, so unlezz you immobilized or killed them, they still did their job.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Remember, no snapshots in 5E, so glance the chimera once and it was either silent for the next turn, lost a weapon, or immobilized.

The big thing with Rhinos was that they didnt care about shooting, so unlezz you immobilized or killed them, they still did their job.

It was damn near impossible to suppress the number of Chimeras I saw in 5th. One game, there were 18 I think.

Martel732 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Remember, no snapshots in 5E, so glance the chimera once and it was either silent for the next turn, lost a weapon, or immobilized.

The big thing with Rhinos was that they didnt care about shooting, so unlezz you immobilized or killed them, they still did their job.

It was damn near impossible to suppress the number of Chimeras I saw in 5th. One game, there were 18 I think.

yes, I ran lists like that sometimes, but then you relied on numbers with no particulary powerful or capable units, your whole army would be a CCS or two, and four infantry platoons in chimeras. Lots of *stuff*, but in terms of long range firepower it was barely matching the MEQ killing output of two 10man Scatterbike squads of today across the entire army (assuming nobody moved and they all had LoS). The whole gunline might kill a squad and a half of marines in an "alpha strike". The bigger thing was the infantry carried special weapons of the command squads, and if you could target and burn those down, then the rest of the army was fairly easy to deal with.

The big kick in the balls was the Vendetta. Scouting up, dropping infantry in melta doublepen turn 1, and hitting another target with the triple lascannons and then having a Russ toss a battlecannon at whatever popped out. *That* was the true cheese of that army.

pm713 wrote:
The issue with giving walkers saves is what do you do with ones that have saves now? Improve the save? Give a different rules? Lower their cost?

Honestly, yeah, just improve it. Why not? MCs get to effectively act like giant Can Openers to Vehicles, Walkers should get some protection from MCs. If that means Soul grinders have 3++ and Dreads have a 4++ naturally so be it. MCs generally soak up higher dmg from more potent weapons with higher str than any Vehicles could... Walkers should be given a "Metabolic Boost" so to speak and be given defensive prowess.