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A slight change to how vehicles are attached in CC.

The base line for all vehicles without WS should be if stationary they count as WS 1 and are hit on there rear armour.

If the vehical has moved 6" or more the WS is increase by 1 for every full 3" moved and they are only hit on their side armour (to represent actually having to catch it in the first place)

Bikes and Jump infantry (using their packs in the assault phase) still hit on the rear armour.

Skimmers always count as having moved +6" for assault purposes so have a basic of WS 3 + side armour if they remain stationary but would be WS 5 if they actually moved 6".

I mostly like this idea, overall. It makes vehicles with AV10 rear much less vulnerable to being assaulted by Boyz, Space Marines, Necron Warriors and other sorts of S4 infantry, while leaving folks some useful options. Shining Spears, Ravenwing Black Knights, biker Command Squads, Vanguard Vets, etc would still have some serious potential, even without thunder hammers and melta bombs.

I'd remove the restriction on jump infantry needing to have used their jump packs in the assault phase, though - jump infantry is already somewhat too weak relative to a bike. I'd probably also extend that same benefit to jet pack infantry, though I suspect that won't come up very often, because Tau suits and Necron Destroyers don't often want to assault at all, and Drones are uselessly weak.

The issue I see is having to track exactly how far each vehicle moved turn to turn. 4e had a system where the vehicle was auto-hit if stationary, hit on 4+ if it had moved, and hit on 6+ if it had flat-outed, would that fit your goals here?

The Flat disc roll would be ok, but it doesn't really help with showing the attackers skill. A Shinning Spear should be better at hitting a target then a Grot. Maybe a fixed WS, so stationary WS1, moved WS3 and Flat Out WS5/6. Skimmers at +1/2 to that.

With Jump infantry, if the rules changed so that they could use their packs in both phases (which would probably be a good thing all round) then they should be fine to have the same full advantage

Maybe set the Weapon Skills as you propose, with +1 for a Fast vehicle, +1 for a Skimmer, -1 for Heavy, and make those stack. (So, say +2 for a Land Speeder or a Falcon, -1 for a Leman Russ, +1 for a Baal Predator or Devilfish, +0 for a Monolith)

The WS bonus thing sounds fine to me.

My complaint is that I think hitting vehicles on rear armour in CC is there for a reason.
Without it, most vehicles become completely immune to S4 CC troops, and having units completely untouchable by others is just bad design. There should always be some way for any two units to interact.

It's already something of a problem, and one of the reasons you rarely see tyranid horde armies. Just put your guys in rhinos and you can drive through that sea of S3 hormagaunts all day, completely unharmed. This would extend that to untouchability to just about all basic troops.

I agree that vehicles have problems, I just don't think this is the answer.

Arson Fire wrote:
The WS bonus thing sounds fine to me.

My complaint is that I think hitting vehicles on rear armour in CC is there for a reason.
Without it, most vehicles become completely immune to S4 CC troops, and having units completely untouchable by others is just bad design. There should always be some way for any two units to interact.

It's already something of a problem, and one of the reasons you rarely see tyranid horde armies. Just put your guys in rhinos and you can drive through that sea of S3 hormagaunts all day, completely unharmed. This would extend that to untouchability to just about all basic troops.

I agree that vehicles have problems, I just don't think this is the answer.

So what? Vehicles are already untouchable to a lot of units.

Yes, that's part of what I said. This would make them completely untouchable to many more. I think that's bad design.

Arson Fire wrote:
Yes, that's part of what I said. This would make them completely untouchable to many more. I think that's bad design.

You think it's bad design that I can't punch through a tank? That doesn't seem bad to me.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The issue I see is having to track exactly how far each vehicle moved turn to turn. 4e had a system where the vehicle was auto-hit if stationary, hit on 4+ if it had moved, and hit on 6+ if it had flat-outed, would that fit your goals here?

This was my first thoughts as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ScarVet101 wrote:
The Flat disc roll would be ok, but it doesn't really help with showing the attackers skill. A Shinning Spear should be better at hitting a target then a Grot. Maybe a fixed WS, so stationary WS1, moved WS3 and Flat Out WS5/6. Skimmers at +1/2 to that.

With Jump infantry, if the rules changed so that they could use their packs in both phases (which would probably be a good thing all round) then they should be fine to have the same full advantage

How about doing AnonamanderRake's suggestion, but grant a bonus to units of a certain type? So bikes/jetbikes/jump infantry/chariots/beasts/jet packs(?)/cavalry would all get a +1 to hit against a vehicle representing their speed allowing them to keep pace with the vehicle better than regular infantry. Rather than calculating WS and whatnot, you just have a flat value that you modify by +1 if you're using a "fast" unit to assault it. This also avoid weird situations where a high WS infantry unit is still hitting speeding tanks roughly as well as bikes, jump packers, etc. by virtue of just being really good with a sword.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

pm713 wrote:

Arson Fire wrote:
Yes, that's part of what I said. This would make them completely untouchable to many more. I think that's bad design.

You think it's bad design that I can't punch through a tank? That doesn't seem bad to me.

Not being able to punch through a tank is kind of bad design when tanks cost 35 points, and the guys trying to attack them cost considerably more. Making a unit completely immune to the attacks of large swaths of the enemy army is bad because it removes player choice (you can no longer choose to try and swarm the vehicle with low-quality/high-quantity attacks), removes interaction, and encourages players to build less diverse lists. Gaunts being a rare sight in tyranid lists because they can't scratch vehicles very well and can't survive the walk across the table very well is a good example of this.

And let's be fair. Strength 4 attacks killing a tank doesn't represent someone punching through a solid wall of metal and ripping the engine out. It represents a bunch of frantic attacks picking away at weak points until something finally gives way.

The frequency with which vehicles have rear armor 10 seems to be intended to allow S4 (or S3 with furious charge) models to be able to have at least a chance of killing the vehicle in melee, and I would disagree with making melee combatants hit something other than rear armor for this reason. It's similar to how a barrage weapon isn't literally coming at a vehicle from the side even though it targets side armor; it's just that side armor reflects the shot striking the vehicle in such a way as to circumvent the heavier armor that commonly protects the front without scoring a critical hit against an exposed area (which would be represented by striking the rear armor).

I'm actually pretty conflicted about this. My orks lose out on some rhino-killing abilities with this, but at the same time, my trukks suddenly become extremely more safe, as they're usually going 24'' first turn, anyway. Same goes for Battlewagons, in fact.

The big issue is this makes skimmers even more survivable, especially with the proposed "always WS 3 and side armor." I'd remove the side-armor part of it. Just having a higher weapon skill is better. Besides, the BRB states that hitting the rear armor in assault represents the attackers picking at weak points in the vehicle.