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 Vaktathi wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Melee units only hit rear armor for 5E-7E, before that it was always whatever facing they made contact with. That system also resulted in vehicles being laughably easy to kill in CC.

AV usually meant Imperial gun tanks sat in back like pillboxes instead of being breakthrough units, while most transports and Xenos vehicles had identical front and side armor making such flanking largely pointless. Wave Serpents, Whirlwinds, Ravagers, Immolators, Fire Prisms, Looted Wagons, Dreadnoughts, Devilfish, Ghost Arks, Razorbacks, Falcons, Doomsday Arks, Rhinos, Raiders, Trukks, etc.

It was pretty much only non-Eldar/Necron battle tanks (Predators, Leman Russ, Hammherhead, Battlewagon) and Chimera chassis vehicles that cared most of the time about side vs front for the most part.

"Laughably easy" is an exaggeration, considering just bumping the vehicle mean half the attacks missed

That was only 5th, and you didn't need that many hits when touching rear armor, particularly with stuff like MC's where they got their full complement of attacks with 2d6 armor pen basically meaning they almosy couldn't fail to penetrate. If they didnt move they got autohit. 6E and 7E tanks got hit on WS1, and HP's meant it was trivial to kill most tanks in CC when they basically were all WS1 T6 W3 Sv- models.

Regardless, facing didn't really matter, as 95% of vehicles had rear AV10 and it just acted as an alternate T value as opposed to having anything to do with manuever or actual facing, you just needed to make base contact *somewhere*.

and Imperial vehicles being up armored artillery pieces has not changed at all in 8th except now assaulting a vehicle is pointless.

How so? It's another vector to do damage and prevent the tank from shooting for a turn.

The unwillingness for players to push their metal boxes forward is purely psychological, not the fault of rules.

No, it was a fault of the rules because anything getting into CC meant the tank was done for, especially once HP's came about, at least in previous editions. Didnt have anything to do with facings or crossfiring into different AV's, the game actively discouraged it.

I wrote up a big reply about how assault was not this guaranteed death that bullied vehicles in editions past others hold as a truism, then I remember that's not the point.

As an ork player I had to deal with leveraging str 7 and 8 weapons ranged with no special rules that helped with armor pen. So I had to *know* how to deal with armor facings, otherwise I was wasting a turn scrapping away a unit's giant abrasive wound in assault and getting double tapped as reward. It still had an effect on the game. Nor am I going to defend 6th/7th edition's lousy HP system.

Ice_can wrote:

 Eihnlazer wrote:
Definitely not gonna change the top 1-3 positions much, but it will change each individual factions W-L rate to a more accurate representation of their actual balance as we will see more pure lists at tournaments.

Well it will do once people stop miss representing their factions when submitting lists/results.

Shouldn't the faction descriptor be determined by TOs after the list has been reviewed for legality?

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

If the issue was a marine swinging a powerfist, well that's a fine time for a vehicle to feel vulnerable if you ask me.

A Powefist being a threat to a vehicle was fine, nobody had an issue with that. But when a unit with free krak grenades basically autokilled any tank on an average roll just for making it into base contact, and with no threat of the tank fighting back and crushing or grinind things beneath tracks or the like, it got a wee bit silly.

The word isn't "silly", the word is "awesome". Ten Tactical marines getting to a Leman Russ, planting grenades and blowing it to hell was part of a golden era for the usefulness of a basic marine. True elite generalists.

I'm not sure how many troops got Krak grenades as standard, either. It wasn't many iirc.

Edit: Remember Battlecannons evaporated marines out of cover back then, too. Exploding the tank was a nice reward after getting past that firepower. Imo the relationship felt pretty good.

"True elite generalists. "

Evidently that usage of grenades was always unintended.

Marines have been poor since 3rd, imo.

Martel732 wrote:
"True elite generalists. "

Evidently that usage of grenades was always unintended.

Marines have been poor since 3rd, imo.

Evidence that it was unintended? If you mean the FAQ ruling in 7th. . . that's a far cry from earlier editions.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"True elite generalists. "

Evidently that usage of grenades was always unintended.

Marines have been poor since 3rd, imo.

Evidence that it was unintended? If you mean the FAQ ruling in 7th. . . that's a far cry from earlier editions.

Yes, that's my evidence. Is it a far cry? Maybe it was just wishful thinking all along...

Martel732 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"True elite generalists. "

Evidently that usage of grenades was always unintended.

Marines have been poor since 3rd, imo.

Evidence that it was unintended? If you mean the FAQ ruling in 7th. . . that's a far cry from earlier editions.

Yes, that's my evidence. Is it a far cry? Maybe it was just wishful thinking all along...

Wording from earlier editions was quite different and having lots of models in a unit planting grenades on a vehicle was not "wishful thinking".

Tanks should be very vulnerable to close assault by infantry.

Grenades, charges, magnetic mines, molotov cocktails, etc. are all serious threats, since up close they can be thrown into vulnerable areas on the engine, gun, tracks, and hatches disabling the vehicle. That's why infantry protection for tanks is important; an unprotected tank becomes an easy target for enemy close assault or infantry antitank teams.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Tanks should be very vulnerable to close assault by infantry.

Grenades, charges, magnetic mines, molotov cocktails, etc. are all serious threats, since up close they can be thrown into vulnerable areas on the engine, gun, tracks, and hatches disabling the vehicle. That's why infantry protection for tanks is important; an unprotected tank becomes an easy target for enemy close assault or infantry antitank teams.

Speaking of which, you know what could be handy? A rule similar to "heroic intervention" except in regards to infantry and tanks. If an enemy is assaulting a tank you could try to move a friendly squad in between them.

There's a little cognitive dissonance there, as infantry are usually hiding behind a tank. But the current paradigm of an infantry man stopping a battle tank from firing at the moment is also somewhat dissonant.

Martel732 wrote:
"True elite generalists. "

Evidently that usage of grenades was always unintended.

Marines have been poor since 3rd, imo.

Never played 3rd so they have basically always been bad.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"True elite generalists. "

Evidently that usage of grenades was always unintended.

Marines have been poor since 3rd, imo.

Never played 3rd so they have basically always been bad.

you two should form a club.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

I wrote up a big reply about how assault was not this guaranteed death that bullied vehicles in editions past others hold as a truism, then I remember that's not the point.

As an ork player I had to deal with leveraging str 7 and 8 weapons ranged with no special rules that helped with armor pen. So I had to *know* how to deal with armor facings, otherwise I was wasting a turn scrapping away a unit's giant abrasive wound in assault and getting double tapped as reward. It still had an effect on the game. Nor am I going to defend 6th/7th edition's lousy HP system.

AV facings certainly had an effect, they could be exploited, it's just most of the time they didn't, at least in my experience, either because the only angles you'd ever see were identical (simply because most commonly used vehicles had identical front/side AV and rear armor shots were relatively rare) or because of you got into CC the facing didn't actually matter as you hit rear automatically regardless of angle of attack. Alternatively, it often wouldnt matter because dumping a grip of meltaguns in double pen range didn't find too much practical difference between something like front AV12 and side AV10 or 11.

Ork AT was in a bit of different spot from most armies, but even among their own vehicles, pretty much only the Battlewagon cared about its own facing. IG were seemingly the only army to worry a whole lot about it on any consistent basis due to having so many side AV10 units, as opposed to say Eldar or Necrons or Marines or DE where most of their vehicles all have identical front/side AV.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

If the issue was a marine swinging a powerfist, well that's a fine time for a vehicle to feel vulnerable if you ask me.

A Powefist being a threat to a vehicle was fine, nobody had an issue with that. But when a unit with free krak grenades basically autokilled any tank on an average roll just for making it into base contact, and with no threat of the tank fighting back and crushing or grinind things beneath tracks or the like, it got a wee bit silly.

The word isn't "silly", the word is "awesome". Ten Tactical marines getting to a Leman Russ, planting grenades and blowing it to hell was part of a golden era for the usefulness of a basic marine. True elite generalists.

I'm not sure how many troops got Krak grenades as standard, either. It wasn't many iirc.

Edit: Remember Battlecannons evaporated marines out of cover back then, too. Exploding the tank was a nice reward after getting past that firepower. Imo the relationship felt pretty good.

the main issue was that it wasnt much harder to kill a heavy battle tank than a squad of putz guardsmen at that point (particularly if the guardsmen had any Ld support), and due to almost everything being rear AV10 regardess of it it was a Trukk, Chimera, Raider, Predator, Battlewagon, Devilfish, Ravager, Rhino, Hammerhead or Russ(with only 3 Russ variants being rear AV11), battle tanks werent any more resilient than paper transports.

Likewise, tank assaults should be dangerous things, such events in real life are often considered some of the most suicidal attacks for the infantry, and 40k unfortunately had no mechanism for infantry support aside from physical body blocking which isn't really how that should work. At least in 8E tanks can attempt to crush or grind stuff with their tracks and there's a difference between hitting a battletank and a scout vehicle or transport. IIRC Krak grenades came free or were 1ppm on every Imperial troop unit in that era, while many others had enough S4 attacks to glance stuff to death with ease once HP's came into play.

And yeah, while a battlecannon could evaporate marines out of cover, between scatter and coherency spread they weren't actually all that scary most of the time, and shooting the battlecannon meant other weapons either were not firing or were firing snapshots depending on the edition.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

If the issue was a marine swinging a powerfist, well that's a fine time for a vehicle to feel vulnerable if you ask me.

A Powefist being a threat to a vehicle was fine, nobody had an issue with that. But when a unit with free krak grenades basically autokilled any tank on an average roll just for making it into base contact, and with no threat of the tank fighting back and crushing or grinind things beneath tracks or the like, it got a wee bit silly.

The word isn't "silly", the word is "awesome". Ten Tactical marines getting to a Leman Russ, planting grenades and blowing it to hell was part of a golden era for the usefulness of a basic marine. True elite generalists.

I'm not sure how many troops got Krak grenades as standard, either. It wasn't many iirc.

Edit: Remember Battlecannons evaporated marines out of cover back then, too. Exploding the tank was a nice reward after getting past that firepower. Imo the relationship felt pretty good.

the main issue was that it wasnt much harder to kill a heavy battle tank than a squad of putz guardsmen at that point (particularly if the guardsmen had any Ld support), and due to almost everything being rear AV10 regardess of it it was a Trukk, Chimera, Raider, Predator, Battlewagon, Devilfish, Ravager, Rhino, Hammerhead or Russ(with only 3 Russ variants being rear AV11), battle tanks werent any more resilient than paper transports.

Likewise, tank assaults should be dangerous things, such events in real life are often considered some of the most suicidal attacks for the infantry, and 40k unfortunately had no mechanism for infantry support aside from physical body blocking which isn't really how that should work. At least in 8E tanks can attempt to crush or grind stuff with their tracks and there's a difference between hitting a battletank and a scout vehicle or transport. IIRC Krak grenades came free or were 1ppm on every Imperial troop unit in that era, while many others had enough S4 attacks to glance stuff to death with ease once HP's came into play.

And yeah, while a battlecannon could evaporate marines out of cover, between scatter and coherency spread they weren't actually all that scary most of the time, and shooting the battlecannon meant other weapons either were not firing or were firing snapshots depending on the edition.

I think it depended greatly from edition to edition how easy tanks were to kill. In 4th edition you hit the side you charged from iirc, and skimmers were only hit on 6s, or something like that. So Ork Trucks, Leman Russes, and Devilfish wound up being quite different targets. In later editions speed had more of an effect.

As for tank assaults being dangerous. . . ehh, I chalk that one up to simplified mechanics. Also if we're taking about effective infantry, we're talking about marines and aspect warriors, in which case "real world" winds up counting for less. If you charged with Guard, it was hard to hurt a vehicle in the first place, so it just doesn't matter so much. (in at least one edition Frag could be used as S4 against a tank, so Guard would hurt a tank on a 6 to get at least some effect.)

As a marine player Battlecannons were terrifying. Certainly missing was an option, but a good hit was painful. I'm sure as a Guard player they didn't feel as effective as you'd like, but I think this mostly a matter of which faction's perspective you're coming from.

In my mind 4th edition was the last edition where it was primarily an infantry based game. Some combination of things happened in 5th that made many deployments look more like parking lots.

Fish of fury? Anyone remember that.

 Insectum7 wrote:


I think it depended greatly from edition to edition how easy tanks were to kill. In 4th edition you hit the side you charged from iirc, and skimmers were only hit on 6s, or something like that. So Ork Trucks, Leman Russes, and Devilfish wound up being quite different targets. In later editions speed had more of an effect.

absolutely, 3E and 4E were entirely different cans of worms in that respect to 5E-7E, and Skimmers were absurdly overpowered in that era in general, and dont even try to kill a 4E falcon with a powetfist, it wont happen

As a marine player Battlecannons were terrifying. Certainly missing was an option, but a good hit was painful. I'm sure as a Guard player they didn't feel as effective as you'd like, but I think this mostly a matter of which faction's perspective you're coming from.

CSM's are my second largest army so I've been on both sides. I definitely feel the threat of them, they often had a big psychological impact, but in practice they never performed all that great consistently, particularly once cover came into play. Part of thay was also that they were typically garbage against monsters, other vehicles, and T5+ units due to the old blast weapon rules.

In my mind 4th edition was the last edition where it was primarily an infantry based game. Some combination of things happened in 5th that made many deployments look more like parking lots.

5E kinda saw an increase in scale across the board that hasnt yet slowed

I wouldn't mind bringing back tank-shock personally though.


Make it a strat for 1 CP that causes a morale check with a modifier based on the size of the vehicle and if they fail it they take D3 mortal wounds and models in the path of the vehicle have to move up to 6 inch's away (ignoring unit coherency).


This lets even transports useful as it allows them to break up and scatter large infantry units.

Modifier would be based on the vehicles max wounds characteristic. less than 10 gets -1, 10-12 gets -2, 13-16 gets -3, and 17+ gets -4 to the check.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
I wouldn't mind bringing back tank-shock personally though.


Make it a strat for 1 CP that causes a morale check with a modifier based on the size of the vehicle and if they fail it they take D3 mortal wounds and models in the path of the vehicle have to move up to 6 inch's away (ignoring unit coherency).


This lets even transports useful as it allows them to break up and scatter large infantry units.

Modifier would be based on the vehicles max wounds characteristic. less than 10 gets -1, 10-12 gets -2, 13-16 gets -3, and 17+ gets -4 to the check.

Vehicle wounds go way higher, I'd shift the scale more.
I don't think you should be forced to move models, but that after the vehicle has moved (can tank shock your movement distance), enemy models must be removed closest to the vehicle.

I feel,Ike tank shocking a 20 grot squad, vs a squad of 20 Necron Warriors, there should be more Grots squished.

Every time a Tank moved into or out of combat with any infantry unit, it should do an auto d6 wounds at -1 AP. That would make tanks feared by lightly armoured infantry while space marines are still ok.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Every time a Tank moved into or out of combat with any infantry unit, it should do an auto d6 wounds at -1 AP. That would make tanks feared by lightly armoured infantry while space marines are still ok.

Eh. If you've got models afraid of some AP -1, you've got chaff you can afford to lose and enough bodies to prevent the tank from falling back.

Besides, that kills nearly two Marines when they get into combat and when the vehicle leaves it. That's, what, 40-50 points lost every time a marine unit wants to charge. With Guardsmen, the point loss is half that.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Every time a Tank moved into or out of combat with any infantry unit, it should do an auto d6 wounds at -1 AP. That would make tanks feared by lightly armoured infantry while space marines are still ok.

I've played a custom game where we wanted to have a mad max vehicle battle, and we instituted a rule where any vehicle with WS5+ or WS6+ could always advance and charge, and if they did so they caused 2D6 S4 AP- autohits. Making them advance created a drawback to it because typically they would not get to fire many weapons.

 Insectum7 wrote:

I think it depended greatly from edition to edition how easy tanks were to kill. In 4th edition you hit the side you charged from iirc, and skimmers were only hit on 6s, or something like that. So Ork Trucks, Leman Russes, and Devilfish wound up being quite different targets. In later editions speed had more of an effect.

As for tank assaults being dangerous. . . ehh, I chalk that one up to simplified mechanics. Also if we're taking about effective infantry, we're talking about marines and aspect warriors, in which case "real world" winds up counting for less. If you charged with Guard, it was hard to hurt a vehicle in the first place, so it just doesn't matter so much. (in at least one edition Frag could be used as S4 against a tank, so Guard would hurt a tank on a 6 to get at least some effect.)

As a marine player Battlecannons were terrifying. Certainly missing was an option, but a good hit was painful. I'm sure as a Guard player they didn't feel as effective as you'd like, but I think this mostly a matter of which faction's perspective you're coming from.

In my mind 4th edition was the last edition where it was primarily an infantry based game. Some combination of things happened in 5th that made many deployments look more like parking lots.

As a Guard, Sisters, and Space Wolves player, I was never really afraid of other guard armies with their battle cannons. Battle cannons and Basilisks targeting line infantry are a non-problem; the only unit that they really scared were Long Fangs, but even then entrenching in cover and maintaining 2" dispersal was a fairly decent recourse.