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I’m a bit of a tank head, always have love military vehicles.

I’d like to put together a toolkit for running some 40K games that focuses on tank vs. tank (along the lines of Bolt Action Tank War and Battlefront’s Tanks, But in 28mm).

Some ideas

- Limit it to use of Monsters and Vehicles (Dreadnoughts, Transports, Tanks, Superheavy Tanks, Helverins, Knights, Carnifexes, Exocrines, Tyrannofexes and the like)
- Alternating activation phases (Move, Psychic, Shoot, Melee)
- Damage isn’t applied until the End Phase
- Need a method to implement critical hits (replaces degrading stats); possibly on a natural “6” when wounding
- Static CP generation based on points ( 1 CP per turn / 500 points? )
- Enhance terrain rules (difficult terrain slowing movement, better cover rules, handling “breakthrough” cover

Critical hits suggestions (either a 2d6 roll, consult chart or a deck of cards)
- reduce movement 1d3”
- weapon damaged (can’t shoot weapon; at the end of the shoot phase, roll a D6. on a 5+, the weapon is repaired)
- driver disabled (can’t move; at the end of the movement phase, roll a D6. On a 5+, this critical is negated)
- take a -1 penalty to hit (Max -2)
- motive drive damaged (can’t advance; at the end of the movement phase, roll a D6. On a 5+, this critical is negated)
- direct hit; model suffers 1D3 mortal wounds
-


Special stratagems
- First Strike (1 CP): Play immediately after a Main Weapon hits an enemy. Apply damage to the target immediately (including critical effects) instead of during the end phase

Sounds like a lot of fun.

for Critical hits you could make it weapon dependent like test of honor since high rate of fire weapons have an advantage for getting more crits. also makes less sense for a heavy bolter to shoot front armor and some how get a super explosion crit but does make sense for them to cause a lot of shaken or extra pins.

Ah, good catch!

What do you think would be better - a toughness minimum for cries (model dependent for the value, possibly based on toughness - such as for a Leman Russ the attacking weapon needing to be STR 6+). In this regard you can ensure only dedicated anti-tank weapons can do a crit (though you could have crits that reduce toughness, making the vehicle/monster more susceptible to lower-strength weapons).

... or when rolling to wound for a weapon use one odd colored die and if that die comes up as a natural “6” a critical occurs? Thus, while a punisher cannon might throw out 20 shots/hits only one of the wound rolls determines if the entirety of the hit is a critical.

... or using both?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
...or weapons might have an adjustment to the critical effect (a minus on the 2d6 roll or can’t inflict certain critical)

Personally, I think using #1 (min STR) And #2, only one die can inflict a critical) would be the best.

Just spit balling here but you could also list a crit threshold number. meaning say you roll 20 dice for a punisher, to get a crit you need to get say 4 6s or some number to get a crit effect.

it can be adjusted by probability too so say a vanquisher cannon shoots 1s. the crit threshold could require only 1 dice at 5+

its a round about way to make a lot of different in game with only one set of dice rolls.



alternatively you could go back to the hold AP system where the AP adds to a crit table. so zero crit basically could never do anything besides shaken or stunned but a melta or plasma could potentially hit that explosion.

edit wait no this does nothing to answer your question. honestly i think it depends on if you are going to do true facings and 100% cant hurt effects instead of 6s always wound.

personally i like the idea of front armor glancing off most attacks but you could make it so even if you shoot something that cant hurt it can still get a general crit effect which could be as benign as a a shaken -1 penalty to shooting or a pin against moral.

Well, I’ve seen cases of even German Panthers getting hulled from the front, and 40K tends to go with cinematic effects, so I don’t think I’d want to utterly prevent crits from particular facings, even if I were to use such.

Overall, I would like to incorporate this with the least amount of going through individual data sheets - using the AP modifier + D6 (or 2D6) and consult a table might be the easiest to implement.

Conceptually cool, but I feel like you'd have to redesign or significantly recost a lot of things for this format. Transports, for instance, are generally paying for the ability to get troops into position, but a chimera or rhino is going to be pretty unimpressive in a straight up fight against enemy tanks. Similarly, any tank that is equipped for anti-infantry is going to feel very odd trying to chip away at a bunch of enemy vehicles.

This gets extra weird if you give all guns roughly the same chance of critting. A rhino with bolter shots will wound other vehicles slightly better than my venom fishing for 6s, but I'll have so many more shots that I'll end up outshooting the rhino with splinter weapons of all things by sheer weight of dice.

In fact, that venom with its 12 shots is more likely to generate crits than a lascannon if it's just a question of rolling 6's to wound. A lascannon that hits 2/3rds of the time will have a 2/3rds * 1/6th chance of getting a crit. A splinter cannon with 6 shots hitting 2/3rds of the time will have 6 times as good a chance of critting. Which feels weird.

So my big question is, "How do you handle options that SHOULD be bad at killing enemy vehicles?"

In general, however, I like the high concept. Some random thoughts:

* Presumably this game would have a relatively low model count. Maybe take a Kill Team approach to CP generation? Designate a "command tank" to be your leader. Gain 1CP every turn plus 1 if the command tank is alive, and then maybe reward more CP if certain criteria are met (like standing on a specific objective or killing the enemy command tank).

* Don't reduce movement by a random amount; that adds bookkeeping, has the potential to have basically no impact (1" is unlikely to be critical to what you're doing on a given turn), and punishes different vehicles asymmetrically (3" off of rhino movement is a greater percentage of its movement than 3" off of a venom, for instance.)

Instead, consider reducing the movement by halves or thirds and/or having the mobility damage upgrade from repeating critical damage. So for instance, rolling a mobility result on the crit chart might reduce a vehicle's movement by 1/2 the first time, prevent it from moving for a turn the second time, and permanently immobilize the vehicle the third time.

Something like that. It's easier to keep track of than a series of d3" rolls, and each result is more likely to be significant.

* I like the first strike strat.

Alternatively you could add in small curated list of infantry so that it doesn't seem like some options are horribly wasted.

like a kill teams version of tanks.

Taking some of the ideas from above and putting it a more concrete form. I do agree that a 1/2 CP per turn is probably a good level to sit at.

Overall, I wouldn't expect someone to bring something like a rhino to this unless it were somehow tied to getting it to take an objective or complete a mission goal ("let's play a game where I've got to get three rhinos off the long edge of your board, representing delivering fresh troops to a nearby battlefield, or evacuating wounded to a nearby hospital").

Proposed rules, please let me know if these are too unbalanced, finicky or otherwise have outstanding issues:



TURN ORDER

---Movement Phase---
Starting with the player that has initiative, each player alternates selecting a unit and moving it or advancing it. If one player has more activations remaining than the other, they may choose to pass to the other player. A player cannot choose to
pass twice in a row, regardless of how many activations they have remaining.

A unit that Advances, and moves at least its full movement rate or more inflicts a -1 penalty to be hit by enemy models Ranged attacks

---Manifest---
Starting with the player that has initiative, each player alternates selecting a psychic unit/model and manifesting psychic powers. A player CANNOT choose to pass during this phase. Non-damaging effects are applied to the target immediately. To Hit, To Wounds and Saves are taken now. Any damage the manifester or target recieves is recorded now, but not applied until the End Phase

---Shoot---

Starting with the player that has initiative, each player alternates selecting a unit/model and attacking with it. To Hit, To Wounds and Saves are taken now. Note damage the unit/model recieves, but do not apply the damage to the target until the end phase.

When a model attacks and hits with a weapon, choose one of the dice rolled To Wound before making a roll (it is best to replace this die with one of a different color). If the chosen dice rolls a natural "6", not only does this inflict it's normal damage, it also inflicts a critical effect. An individual weapon can never inflict more than one critical result, regardless of the number of attacks or shots it makes. See below for detailed information on resolving criticals.

Attackers shooting at unit/models that Advanced take a -1 penalty to hit if the target is at half weapon range or greater.

Rough Terrain: When setting up the board, players may agree to desginate areas as "rough terrain", to cover places such as piles of rubble, low bushes, (alien) crops and the like. Passing through rough terrain costs an additional +1" per normal inch moved.

Obstructions: Buildings, walls or other terrain peices that intersect 25% or more of line of sight from attacker to target incur a +1 bonus to Armor to the target (Cover). A model within 1" of an object and obscured from the attacker by 50% or more inflicts a -1 penalty to the Attacker's chance "To Wound".

---Melee---

Starting with the player that has initiative, each player alternates selecting a unit/model and performing any charge moves. After charge moves are complete, players alternate performing melee attacks with their units/models as per the melee rules - Resolving chargers first. Charge attacks and damage (and criticals) are applied immediately. Other To Hit, To Wounds and Saves are taken after charges are resolved. Note that non-charge damage the unit/model recieves is not applied to the target until the end phase.

When a model attacks and hits with a weapon, choose one of the dice rolled To Wound before making a roll (it is best to replace this die with one of a different color). If the chosen dice rolls a natural "6", not only does this inflict it's normal damage, it also inflicts a critical effect. An individual weapon can never inflict more than one critical result, regardless of the number of attacks or shots it makes. See below for detailed information on resolving criticals.

---End Phase---
Starting with the player that DOES NOT have initiative, each player alternates applying Damage and critical effects to their models. Mortal wounds are applied first, then critical effects, then normal wounds.

CRITICALS

When the Crit die from an attack scores a natural "6" (see Shooting & Melee above), the attack inflicts a critical effect in addition to the normal damage it does. Roll a D6 and add the weapon's AP modifier (as a positive value) to the result and consult the chart below. Multiple criticals stack, and checks to repair them are tested seperately.

D6 Roll-Result
-----------------
1-3-----No effect
4-------Motive Impairment: The target model reduces its movement rate by 1/4. Starting the turn after this one, during the End Phase, this damage can be repaired on a D6 roll of 5+.
5-------Targeting Damage: The target suffers a -1 penalty To Hit when Shooting or making a Weapon attack (Max -2). Starting the turn after this one, during the End Phase, this damage can be repaired on a D6 roll of 5+
6-------Secondary Weapon Disabled: The attacker chooses the weakest functional weapon visible to the attacking model, and this weapon cannot be used. If there is no visible functional weapon, treat this as +1 Wound. Starting the turn after this one, during the End Phase, this weapon (but not damage) can be repaired on a D6 roll of 5+
7-------Primary Weapon Disabled: The target's highest remaining functional STR weapon cannot be used. If there is no visible functional weapon, treat this as +1D3 Wounds. Starting the turn after this one, during the End Phase, this weapon (but not wounds) can be repaired on a D6 roll of 5+
8-------Detonation: The model suffers 1 Mortal wound
9-------Crippling Detonation: The target's suffers 1D3 Mortal wounds
10+-----Massive Detonation: The model suffers 1D3 Mortal wounds and all other models within 3" suffer 1 Mortal wound

How would this work for the Monolith?

I'm not sure I understand the question?

First off, looks cool, like the idea of a critical hit table.

Second, I have some concerns (as always) about alternating phases, specifically the effect it has on CC.

take, for an example CC carnifexen chasing tanks all over the board. the tanks will inevitably win, as they simply have to move away from the carnifexen each time they move close.

My suggestion to fix this, which would shake things up a bit, would be to:

1: perform charge moves in the movement phase, in addition to move & advance. EG a carnifex declares a charge on a tank, and then moves his move +2D6 towards them.
2: Resolve the CC immediately after the charge. The opponent then has the choice to:
A: Fight back, or;
B: fall back, and not shoot this turn (you've already done overwatch, after all)

This would make positioning much more critical as you need to make sure you're not charged next turn, as opposed to this turn.

I would then combine this with bidding for initiative. Bids would have to be something you would otherwise use - I recommend CP. Thus someone who doesn't care if they go first would bid 0, but someone who needs-to-move-away-from-that-carnifex-right-freaking-now would bid higher. Thus you can cause opponents to spend CP just by threatening them.

I would favour this for initiative:

At the start of the turn, each player takes a dice and places it under their hand, displaying how many CP they wish to bid for initiative. Once all the players have done so, they reveal their dice, and then roll another. they add these 2 results together, and the player with the highest value wins the initiative. All players lose CP as per their bid.

You can "Bluff" and not place a dice to bid 0.

Thus you gamble tactical advantages of going first to the tactical advantages of stratagems.

 Blndmage wrote:
How would this work for the Monolith?

I’m not sure I’m missing something specific, but here’s an extended example using a Leman Russ (Player 1; P1) and a Monolith (Player 2; P2)


Movement Phase:

(P1) Moves the Leman Russ to nearby cover behind ruins. The distance is 3”, but part of it’s movement passes over 2” of rubble; the tank travels the 3” of distance, but it requires 5” of the Russes movement (which will allow it to still fire with twice with Grinding Advance).

(P2) Moves the Monolith 6” towards the Leman Russ. As part of its movement, the Monolith passes over a rubble-clogged ruin (difficult terrain). However, since the Monolith has Fly, it takes no penalty to movement. Also, though the Monolith moved the full 6”, because it did not Advance there is no penalty to hit it due to movement.

Psychic Phase:

Neither unit is psychic, so this is skipped.

Shooting Phase:

(P1): The Leman Russ fires it Battle Cannon first; it will make two attacks at D6 each (assume 3 & 4 are rolled for the shots). Attack rolls are made, and of the 7 shots, 3 connect. Since this is one weapon, despite it attacking twice, only one die is used to determine if a critical occurs when making To Wound rolls. At STR 8 vs. T8, a 4+ is needed to wound. Of the 3 hits, one die scores a 4 and the die being rolled for the critical comes up a 6 - a critical hit!. The Monolith makes its 3+ save against the non-critical hit, but fails it’s armor against the critical. The Russ player rolls a D6 and adds the Battle Cannon’s AP of -2; the die roll is a 3, +2 = 5; in the End Phase the Monolith will lose one of its Gauss Flux Arcs That is visible to the Leman Russ, as well as take D3 Wounds. The Russ also fires its sponson Weapons and the pintle stubbier, but we’ll skip those attacks for this example (note however, the Russ will only roll one Critical die for each weapon that scores a successful hit, regardless of the number of dice the weapon throws for wounding or attacks it makes)

(P2): The Monolith retaliates with it four Gauss Flayer Arcs; Each throws 3 dice to hit at 3+ to hit. One hit is scored apiece from three of the weapons, and the fourth scores two hits. The Monolith rolls five To Wound dice, four of which are Critical die (Max one per separate weapon). The Gauss Arcs are STR 5 vs. T8; Normally, this is a 5+ To Wound, but because the Leman Russ is within 1” of the Ruins and is 50% obstructed, the Monolith takes a -1 to Wound and now only Wounds on a 6+. Dice are rolled, and only one of the dice comes up a 6; a Critical die at that. However, the Leman Russ makes its Armor save, so it suffers no Critical and takes no damage. The Monolith also attacks with the Particle Whip, but we’ll skip that (though if it hits, only one of the dice is rolled as a Critical die).

Melee Phase

Neither vehicle conducts melee this turn

End Phase

(P2)At this time, starting with the Monolith, damage effects are applied. The Monolith loses the use of one of its Gauss Flux Arcs, And loses 2 Wounds from the Battle cannon shot. In future turns, during the End Phase, the Monolith will roll a D6, and on a 5+, it regains the use of its damaged Gauss Flux Arc.

(P1) If the Leman Russ had suffered any damage from the Particle Whip, those wounds would be applied now.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, moving charges to the Movement Phase seems like a good idea.

As for the out-of-order activations, how about a stratagem:

(1 CP): If you do not have the initiative, you may use this stratagem at the start of the Phase to go first this Phase. Either player may use this stratagem once per phase after activating a unit/model to activate another model before passing activation to their opponent.

 Desubot wrote:
Alternatively you could add in small curated list of infantry so that it doesn't seem like some options are horribly wasted.

like a kill teams version of tanks.

In Bolt Action you need to take a junior officer and 2+ infantry squads per tank in a normal game, but the minimum tank platoon requirements for Tank Wars are 1 command tank/2 tanks before you can take any infantry. A tank-wars version of 40k would probably require players to use the Spearhead Detachment and require compulsory slots to be filled by vehicles for a similar effect.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wyldhunt wrote:
...This gets extra weird if you give all guns roughly the same chance of critting. A rhino with bolter shots will wound other vehicles slightly better than my venom fishing for 6s, but I'll have so many more shots that I'll end up outshooting the rhino with splinter weapons of all things by sheer weight of dice.

In fact, that venom with its 12 shots is more likely to generate crits than a lascannon if it's just a question of rolling 6's to wound. A lascannon that hits 2/3rds of the time will have a 2/3rds * 1/6th chance of getting a crit. A splinter cannon with 6 shots hitting 2/3rds of the time will have 6 times as good a chance of critting. Which feels weird.

So my big question is, "How do you handle options that SHOULD be bad at killing enemy vehicles?"...

Hypothetically: Consider the armour rules from 6e-7e for the moment. Instead of all targets being to-hit/to-wound/save attacking vehicles you rolled to hit and then to penetrate armour, which was d6+Str v. AV where if your result equalled the target's AV it was a "glancing hit" and removed hull points but didn't roll on the critical table, but if your result equalled the target's AV it was a "penetrating hit" and removed hull points and rolled on the critical table. This had the added effect of making small arms actually incapable of damaging vehicles (S3 plus the result of a d6 capped out at 9, and vehicle AV ranged from 10-14).

To create a similar effect you might require the weapon beat it's required to-wound score by a certain amount; for instance if you wanted to make crits frequent you might write that a weapon has to beat its required to-wound value by 1 to crit (so a 2+ to wound would need a 3+ to crit, 3+ would need a 4+, etc.), but if you wanted to make crits harder you might require the roll beat the target by 2 (2+/4+, 3+/5+, 4+/6+) or even 3 (probably not 3, since that means S8 can't crit T8 and some armies (Eldar/Dark Eldar) don't have common S9).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 some bloke wrote:
...take, for an example CC carnifexen chasing tanks all over the board. the tanks will inevitably win, as they simply have to move away from the carnifexen each time they move close...

Kill Team has an extra rule preventing you from withdrawing from combat if you were charged this turn.

I'd done some messing around with the Kill Team turn order for an AoS-rewrite project; thought I might put some of the rules down here for consideration because they do seem applicable.

1. Roll priority. Players roll off, the higher roll chooses whether to have priority for the turn.

2. Movement phase. Player with priority moves all models, then player without priority moves all models. When chosen to move a unit that isn't engaged in melee may either Aim (gain a Readied marker), Move (move normally), or Run (move further, then gain a Readied marker if they end the move engaged in melee or an Exhausted marker if they didn't). When chosen to move a unit that is engaged in melee may only do nothing or Disengage (move normally, then gain an Exhausted marker).

3. Combat phase. Readied sub-phase: Players alternate activating models with Readied markers to attack. Standard sub-phase: Players alternate activating models without Readied markers to attack. Additional attacks sub-phase: Players alternate activating models specifically allowed to attack while Exhausted by a special rule.

Other rules key off the Readied/Exhausted mechanic; Overwatch, for instance, is covered by allowing Readied units to make ranged attacks in melee at a penalty, and Assault weapons allow the users to attack while Exhausted. You might introduce exceptions to the "melee or shooting, not both" bit of the rules but that'd be special-case mechanics more along the lines of how some units in Warmachine have Dual Attack but most don't.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Alternatively you could add in small curated list of infantry so that it doesn't seem like some options are horribly wasted.

like a kill teams version of tanks.

In Bolt Action you need to take a junior officer and 2+ infantry squads per tank in a normal game, but the minimum tank platoon requirements for Tank Wars are 1 command tank/2 tanks before you can take any infantry. A tank-wars version of 40k would probably require players to use the Spearhead Detachment and require compulsory slots to be filled by vehicles for a similar effect.

How about just making passengers into a weapon that assumes you're taking certain types of passengers. Rather than creating the potential to include every unit in 40k, you just assume that crafworld passengers in the tank game are always fire dragons, passengers for drukhari are always kabalites, passengers for marines are always either meltagun tacticals or terminators (shorter range, harder hitting, costs more points). Don't make rules for attacking passengers. Just treat them as another gun on the tank, and assume that it represents dudes hopping out, attacking, and then reboarding their transport.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wyldhunt wrote:
...This gets extra weird if you give all guns roughly the same chance of critting. A rhino with bolter shots will wound other vehicles slightly better than my venom fishing for 6s, but I'll have so many more shots that I'll end up outshooting the rhino with splinter weapons of all things by sheer weight of dice.

In fact, that venom with its 12 shots is more likely to generate crits than a lascannon if it's just a question of rolling 6's to wound. A lascannon that hits 2/3rds of the time will have a 2/3rds * 1/6th chance of getting a crit. A splinter cannon with 6 shots hitting 2/3rds of the time will have 6 times as good a chance of critting. Which feels weird.

So my big question is, "How do you handle options that SHOULD be bad at killing enemy vehicles?"...

Hypothetically: Consider the armour rules from 6e-7e for the moment. Instead of all targets being to-hit/to-wound/save attacking vehicles you rolled to hit and then to penetrate armour, which was d6+Str v. AV where if your result equalled the target's AV it was a "glancing hit" and removed hull points but didn't roll on the critical table, but if your result equalled the target's AV it was a "penetrating hit" and removed hull points and rolled on the critical table. This had the added effect of making small arms actually incapable of damaging vehicles (S3 plus the result of a d6 capped out at 9, and vehicle AV ranged from 10-14).

To create a similar effect you might require the weapon beat it's required to-wound score by a certain amount; for instance if you wanted to make crits frequent you might write that a weapon has to beat its required to-wound value by 1 to crit (so a 2+ to wound would need a 3+ to crit, 3+ would need a 4+, etc.), but if you wanted to make crits harder you might require the roll beat the target by 2 (2+/4+, 3+/5+, 4+/6+) or even 3 (probably not 3, since that means S8 can't crit T8 and some armies (Eldar/Dark Eldar) don't have common S9).

That seems like a good way to do it. I don't mind the proposed "pick one of your dice to be a crit die," approach, but your method has the advantage of making higher strength weapons straight up better at critting than, say, a storm bolter. Which feels right.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Stormonou: That seems like a pretty reasonable baseline to me. I think there's room to polish it up a bit, but I think you could try a test game with those rules.

I'd strongly consider trying out Anomander's changes to crits and add rules to prevent falling back on the same turn you're charged, but it generally looks good to me.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Alternatively you could add in small curated list of infantry so that it doesn't seem like some options are horribly wasted.

like a kill teams version of tanks.

In Bolt Action you need to take a junior officer and 2+ infantry squads per tank in a normal game, but the minimum tank platoon requirements for Tank Wars are 1 command tank/2 tanks before you can take any infantry. A tank-wars version of 40k would probably require players to use the Spearhead Detachment and require compulsory slots to be filled by vehicles for a similar effect.

How about just making passengers into a weapon that assumes you're taking certain types of passengers. Rather than creating the potential to include every unit in 40k, you just assume that crafworld passengers in the tank game are always fire dragons, passengers for drukhari are always kabalites, passengers for marines are always either meltagun tacticals or terminators (shorter range, harder hitting, costs more points). Don't make rules for attacking passengers. Just treat them as another gun on the tank, and assume that it represents dudes hopping out, attacking, and then reboarding their transport.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wyldhunt wrote:
...This gets extra weird if you give all guns roughly the same chance of critting. A rhino with bolter shots will wound other vehicles slightly better than my venom fishing for 6s, but I'll have so many more shots that I'll end up outshooting the rhino with splinter weapons of all things by sheer weight of dice.

In fact, that venom with its 12 shots is more likely to generate crits than a lascannon if it's just a question of rolling 6's to wound. A lascannon that hits 2/3rds of the time will have a 2/3rds * 1/6th chance of getting a crit. A splinter cannon with 6 shots hitting 2/3rds of the time will have 6 times as good a chance of critting. Which feels weird.

So my big question is, "How do you handle options that SHOULD be bad at killing enemy vehicles?"...

Hypothetically: Consider the armour rules from 6e-7e for the moment. Instead of all targets being to-hit/to-wound/save attacking vehicles you rolled to hit and then to penetrate armour, which was d6+Str v. AV where if your result equalled the target's AV it was a "glancing hit" and removed hull points but didn't roll on the critical table, but if your result equalled the target's AV it was a "penetrating hit" and removed hull points and rolled on the critical table. This had the added effect of making small arms actually incapable of damaging vehicles (S3 plus the result of a d6 capped out at 9, and vehicle AV ranged from 10-14).

To create a similar effect you might require the weapon beat it's required to-wound score by a certain amount; for instance if you wanted to make crits frequent you might write that a weapon has to beat its required to-wound value by 1 to crit (so a 2+ to wound would need a 3+ to crit, 3+ would need a 4+, etc.), but if you wanted to make crits harder you might require the roll beat the target by 2 (2+/4+, 3+/5+, 4+/6+) or even 3 (probably not 3, since that means S8 can't crit T8 and some armies (Eldar/Dark Eldar) don't have common S9).

That seems like a good way to do it. I don't mind the proposed "pick one of your dice to be a crit die," approach, but your method has the advantage of making higher strength weapons straight up better at critting than, say, a storm bolter. Which feels right.

It could be interesting in a way if there was a way to kill the passengers. its a bit more book keeping but makes sense for shooting anti infantry at open tops.

It could be interesting in a way if there was a way to kill the passengers. its a bit more book keeping but makes sense for shooting anti infantry at open tops.

Totally agree, but at what ratio of tanks-to-dudes are you basically just playing 40k with a couple of vehicle heavy lists? I guess the goal would be to make passengers feel sort of like bombers from Battle Fleet Gothic?

Wyldhunt wrote:

It could be interesting in a way if there was a way to kill the passengers. its a bit more book keeping but makes sense for shooting anti infantry at open tops.

Totally agree, but at what ratio of tanks-to-dudes are you basically just playing 40k with a couple of vehicle heavy lists? I guess the goal would be to make passengers feel sort of like bombers from Battle Fleet Gothic?

Ya know alternatively if you designed basically a whole new game rather than try to staple on an expansion, you could make it so infantry transport type models just get better "CQC" abilities (like the BFG Bombers? not sure never played) and the ability to objective secured.

everything would need to be priced accordingly and such.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Alternatively you could add in small curated list of infantry so that it doesn't seem like some options are horribly wasted.

like a kill teams version of tanks.

In Bolt Action you need to take a junior officer and 2+ infantry squads per tank in a normal game, but the minimum tank platoon requirements for Tank Wars are 1 command tank/2 tanks before you can take any infantry. A tank-wars version of 40k would probably require players to use the Spearhead Detachment and require compulsory slots to be filled by vehicles for a similar effect.

How about just making passengers into a weapon that assumes you're taking certain types of passengers. Rather than creating the potential to include every unit in 40k, you just assume that crafworld passengers in the tank game are always fire dragons, passengers for drukhari are always kabalites, passengers for marines are always either meltagun tacticals or terminators (shorter range, harder hitting, costs more points). Don't make rules for attacking passengers. Just treat them as another gun on the tank, and assume that it represents dudes hopping out, attacking, and then reboarding their transport.

That's an interesting thought. Back in 3e you used to be able to open the Rhino's top hatch and shoot out of it as if it were open-topped but it was treated as open-topped for the turn, you might do something like that where when you make an attack with passengers you mark the transport as having "passengers deployed" and then they can be attacked?

dang, I wrote a long response to this but I seem to have not posted it! I shall start again;

What about ramming? If you're focussing on big things throwing their weight around, I think the current combat mechanics don't do it justice. I would like to see an additional section be added along these lines:

Ramming. When a model completes a charge into another model, this is a ram, and is immediately resolved.

Both players roll 2D6, add their starting wound count and apply the following modifiers:
+D6 if you charged
+1 for each point of toughness you have over the other model
+1 if you are over half your starting wounds

The model which has charged inflicts D3 mortal wounds. In addition, the model which rolls highest inflicts D3 mortal wounds. If a model rolls double or more that of the opponent, they instead inflict D6 mortal wounds.


This is to combat the way in which tanks slowly roll into one another and then try to scratch each others paintwork with their decorative spikes. Ramming will also make it worth forgoing shooting to do so in certain situations. I think that adding ramming will be the key difference between tank-combat and regular 40k.

As for monsters, they will likely take some damage from being rammed by a tank - as expected, really - but they will do a darn-sight more than a tank when the fight phase comes around!

some items (EG dozer blade, ram, deff rolla) can add 1 or 2 to ram rolls.

What do you think?

If you want to look into an existing game, I tried "what a tanker" at a game convention, and it worked great for an armoured skirmish game.

Otherwise great idea although I think small arms like hb's should not be able to cause crits unless against light armour. Maybe a class system where weapons have dmg and crit values vs heavy, medium, light armour facings, similar to the apoc wound system?

Perhaps have the critical hit system involving a comparison between the S & T.

So, rather than one per weapon, instead one dice for each point of strength over target toughness, and if this dice is a success then it causes a critical hit (not if it rolls a 6).

EG if a S8 battlecannon shoots a T6 vehicle, 2 of the "to hit" rolls are using critical dice. If it only rolls 1 shot, then that's just bad luck.

The reasoning is that it balances out with high-strength low-dice as you're more likely to get a crit with the single dice.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Alternatively you could add in small curated list of infantry so that it doesn't seem like some options are horribly wasted.

like a kill teams version of tanks.

In Bolt Action you need to take a junior officer and 2+ infantry squads per tank in a normal game, but the minimum tank platoon requirements for Tank Wars are 1 command tank/2 tanks before you can take any infantry. A tank-wars version of 40k would probably require players to use the Spearhead Detachment and require compulsory slots to be filled by vehicles for a similar effect.

How about just making passengers into a weapon that assumes you're taking certain types of passengers. Rather than creating the potential to include every unit in 40k, you just assume that crafworld passengers in the tank game are always fire dragons, passengers for drukhari are always kabalites, passengers for marines are always either meltagun tacticals or terminators (shorter range, harder hitting, costs more points). Don't make rules for attacking passengers. Just treat them as another gun on the tank, and assume that it represents dudes hopping out, attacking, and then reboarding their transport.

What about vehicles that have no crew?

 Blndmage wrote:
...What about vehicles that have no crew?

Passengers, not crew. The idea is to give a Wave Serpent "payload of fire dragons" as a weapon (or Rhinos "payload of Space Marines", or Immolators "payload of Dominions", etc.), not to make crewed/uncrewed vehicles a variable.

 some bloke wrote:
dang, I wrote a long response to this but I seem to have not posted it! I shall start again;

What about ramming? If you're focussing on big things throwing their weight around, I think the current combat mechanics don't do it justice. I would like to see an additional section be added along these lines:

Ramming. When a model completes a charge into another model, this is a ram, and is immediately resolved.

Both players roll 2D6, add their starting wound count and apply the following modifiers:
+D6 if you charged
+1 for each point of toughness you have over the other model
+1 if you are over half your starting wounds

The model which has charged inflicts D3 mortal wounds. In addition, the model which rolls highest inflicts D3 mortal wounds. If a model rolls double or more that of the opponent, they instead inflict D6 mortal wounds.


This is to combat the way in which tanks slowly roll into one another and then try to scratch each others paintwork with their decorative spikes. Ramming will also make it worth forgoing shooting to do so in certain situations. I think that adding ramming will be the key difference between tank-combat and regular 40k.

As for monsters, they will likely take some damage from being rammed by a tank - as expected, really - but they will do a darn-sight more than a tank when the fight phase comes around!

some items (EG dozer blade, ram, deff rolla) can add 1 or 2 to ram rolls.

What do you think?

Not so sure about this, most vehicles already have things like Adamantium Tracks and the like to handle close combat/rams. And this scale will still have walkers and the like who can do true hand-To-hand combat (remember the old pictures of the carnifex ripping a rhino in half on the old Tyranid codex?).

I did put into the proposed rules that Charges did damage immediately, so without having to throw in a whole extra set of attacks, there would still be an incentive to getting a “ram” in.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
...What about vehicles that have no crew?

Passengers, not crew. The idea is to give a Wave Serpent "payload of fire dragons" as a weapon (or Rhinos "payload of Space Marines", or Immolators "payload of Dominions", etc.), not to make crewed/uncrewed vehicles a variable.

Hmm, I wonder how that would work with the Molonith's portal shenanigans.

 Blndmage wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
...What about vehicles that have no crew?

Passengers, not crew. The idea is to give a Wave Serpent "payload of fire dragons" as a weapon (or Rhinos "payload of Space Marines", or Immolators "payload of Dominions", etc.), not to make crewed/uncrewed vehicles a variable.

Hmm, I wonder how that would work with the Molonith's portal shenanigans.

non diminishing crew? assuming things like fire or small arms hurt crew some how.

 Desubot wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
...What about vehicles that have no crew?

Passengers, not crew. The idea is to give a Wave Serpent "payload of fire dragons" as a weapon (or Rhinos "payload of Space Marines", or Immolators "payload of Dominions", etc.), not to make crewed/uncrewed vehicles a variable.

Hmm, I wonder how that would work with the Molonith's portal shenanigans.

non diminishing crew? assuming things like fire or small arms hurt crew some how.

I'm not a huge fan of what I'm about to suggest because I worry it takes some of the focus away from the vehicles, but...

What if passengers could be set down on the battlefield as "infantry tokens" or whatever. Infantry tokens would have their own weapons and would be able to attack targets within those weapons' ranges. Basically, you'd place a single infantry model, and then abstract that model as representing an entire squad. Generally, you'd be able to re-embark a passenger token on an empty vehicle in the movement phase.

This would give anti-infantry guns a purpose, but combined with the OP's proposed rules, you're getting kind of close to normal 40k.

Regarding ramming, strongly favoring the person making the charge roll feels a bit odd. If my land speeder and your land speeder both spend turn 1 moving straight towards each other and then you win the initiative roll off on turn 2, that game of bumper cars as you charge me should really be hurting both of us. I almost feel like a game that emphasizes vehicles, possibly to the exclusion of non-vehicles, should bring back some kind of momentum and maneuverability rules. Sort of like Gangs of Commorragh's dog fighting style maneuvers, though that's probably too in-depth for your purposes.

On a related note, has anyone played the Speed Freakz game? How viable would it be to simply convert rules for non-ork vehicles and put them into that game?

Armour values have to vary on sides, front and back(and probably top and bottom if you got planes and mines) of the vehicle like 7th if you are making a game about vehicular combat.

For strength and AP, I'd sorta flip the 7th edition.
Strength is the punch of the weapon, its ability to cause damage, and by extension critical damage
AP in my mind is the weapon's abilty to punch trough armour.

Therefore AP should be rolled first, to see if the round actually does anything more than stunning crew or immobilizing and perhaps knocking out a weapon. If the armour of a vehicle is strong enough to resist that weapon it has 0 chance to penetrate and therefore does not get a AP roll.


A high strength weapon (if it punctures) has a higher chance to critical or disable ( internal parts) of the vehicle (or just blow it to bits). If it does not penetrate/can not penetrate and its strength is close or higher than the target's armour it can stun crew, immobilize or damage a primary weapon.


To make some vehicles more useful (looking at you demolisher) you could also add different ammo types and effects.

Demolisher finds itself against a tank, loads High Exsplosive Squash Head which would have a special rule (something like for every point of strength the weapon has it ignores the same value in its target's armour) but can be countered by wargear
Or HEAT/Krak (whatever you want to call it) which approximately evens its AP to its (presumably usually packing High Exsplosive) strength, still short range but can be countered by wargear



Regarding raming I think the rammer should be favoured(unless your vehicle is weaker of course), I mean you're going to try to ram them to damage them and not yourself.
Perhaps the landspeeder rams the other, I don't think you'd steer it head on. Perhaps the other speeder could have an intercepting ram roll (with a penalty) that also has a chance for a no-win headbut

Against infantry and/or considerably weaker vehicles ramming is just running over and crushing, therefore you could have a much higher critical chance, a very brutal one that makes jam out of entire sections, because your smartest not to let a very heavy box with a lot of momentum, weight and torque charges you.
Against skimmers a tracked tank(the original and the best XD) should have somewhere around 50/50 of deflection and complete and brutal murder (becasue you are now driving on top of them)

OldMate wrote:
Armour values have to vary on sides, front and back(and probably top and bottom if you got planes and mines) of the vehicle like 7th if you are making a game about vehicular combat.

I'm not sure you really need to have 3 or 5 armor facings. In previous editions pretty much all vehicles except IG tanks and, like, predators(?) had the same armor on the sides as they did on the front. So if you consider that along with the wonkyness involved in defining where exactly the rear/side arcs on xenos vehicles that aren't conveniently rectangle shaped, you might reasonably conclude that we really just need rear armor (the weak spot) and not-rear-armor. This would open up some options for defining where the rear arc is without worrying about the weird silhouette issue. For instance, you could just place a standardized rectangular counter against the rearmost point of a vehicle (rearmost being a generally unambiguous concept) and then say that attackers are in the "rear arc" of the vehicle if they're between the infinite parallel lines drawn along the short edges of that marker or something.

For strength and AP, I'd sorta flip the 7th edition.
Strength is the punch of the weapon, its ability to cause damage, and by extension critical damage
AP in my mind is the weapon's abilty to punch trough armour.

Therefore AP should be rolled first, to see if the round actually does anything more than stunning crew or immobilizing and perhaps knocking out a weapon. If the armour of a vehicle is strong enough to resist that weapon it has 0 chance to penetrate and therefore does not get a AP roll.


A high strength weapon (if it punctures) has a higher chance to critical or disable ( internal parts) of the vehicle (or just blow it to bits). If it does not penetrate/can not penetrate and its strength is close or higher than the target's armour it can stun crew, immobilize or damage a primary weapon.

I may be missing something, but wouldn't that basically change nothing but slow down the game? It's basically the same argument that says we should roll armor saves before to-wound rolls right? Like, we're all smart enough to understand that a succesful armor save doesn't represent your carapace armor reaching into a gaping wound and healing the wearer up Wolverine style. It's an abstraction used in the series of rolls that represents the accuracy and lethality of the attackers compared to the durability of the attackees.

So making people roll to-pen (i.e. to-wound) rolls first just adds the small extra steps of communicating how many successes you rolled and then having them communicate their succesful saves back to you before you collect the number of dice they indicated. As opposed to just having the attacker say they needs 3's to hit, scooping up successes, saying they need 5's to wound, scooping up successes, and then prompting their opponent to collect dice for their own roll.

It's a minor thing, but those minor extra steps add up when you're going through that process 100+ times over the course of a couple hours. It becomes more noticable if the to-pen/to-wound roll also has to get broken down into glancing vs penetrating hits because then you'd have to track separate pools of dice when resolving things.

To make some vehicles more useful (looking at you demolisher) you could also add different ammo types and effects.

Demolisher finds itself against a tank, loads High Exsplosive Squash Head which would have a special rule (something like for every point of strength the weapon has it ignores the same value in its target's armour) but can be countered by wargear
Or HEAT/Krak (whatever you want to call it) which approximately evens its AP to its (presumably usually packing High Exsplosive) strength, still short range but can be countered by wargear

Sure. It's also probably valid to just acknowledge that some tanks might not be relevant in a game that's all about vehicular combat. If there's no mechanic for burnanating infantry, do we really need a hell hound whose whole job is burnanating infantry? You could add some subsystems to give venoms and hell hounds a role, but then you're sort of bending over backwards to fit something in that might just not belong. You could make infantry more relevant, but at some point you're just playing normal 40k. But there's probably some sort of happy middle ground.

Regarding raming I think the rammer should be favoured(unless your vehicle is weaker of course), I mean you're going to try to ram them to damage them and not yourself.

I mean, ramming should maybe favor the guy doing the ramming, but slamming two vehicles of similar size together should probably be a pretty mutually catastrophic event. If I'm going down the highway and opt to slam my car into oncoming traffic, I'm not going to be shocked when both our cars are wrecked. And if I ram a land raider with my car, I wouldn't expect the land raider to end up more damaged than my own vehicle.

Basically, I feel like ramming should be significantly harmful to all parties involved unless one of them has a huge advantage of some sort. Like a major weight class difference or some sort of ramming prow.

Good thoughts all around!

On ramming. Honestly if you think about it. its tanks on tanks (in general) most of the time it shouldnt be anything more than superficial or stunning. rammers should get a benifit against stuns as they are generally ready for it. IF i was to make a game 99% of the time ramming should only be used to corner, force mobility and turn facings for other people to do stuff. with the exception that vehicles with dedicated ramming equipment Should be able to do heavy damage.