Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The current system is vastly superior to the old armor facing and firing arcs rules.

That said, I would like to see some mechanic that makes tanks and similar less susceptible to high-volume, low-damage firepower. Maybe something like a 4+++ against weapons with AP 0. Or Assault, Rapid Fire and Pistol weapons have their AP reduced to 0 against them? These are just some off the cuff ideas. I didn't really think them through, but maybe they could work.

I prefer the toughness/armour paradigm as it lets you fit more in and in a more granular fashion.

What I'd like to see is a cross-fire rule like in Epic Armageddon where there's a -1 to saving throws based on targets being between two friendly units.

 catbarf wrote:
I like that everything uses the same system now. And while tanks generally being either fine or very dead is realistic, it made for a weird contrast to slowly-degrading monstrous creatures, and wasn't fitting for 40K IMO.

However, I have two complaints with the current system:

-A 3+ save makes vehicles more vulnerable to low-damage, high-volume weapons than to dedicated anti-tank guns. I'd much rather see 2+ be the default for tanks (with fewer wounds to compensate), with lighter transports keeping the 3+.

-Lack of flanking mechanics in the game as a whole means there is no longer incentive to get around the sides of tanks. I'd be happy with something basic, like giving every unit 180 degree front and rear arcs, and counting their save as 1 point worse if hit in the rear arc.

So really I don't think the issue is with the toughness/wounds system, but rather some of the details of implementation.

Another factor is that S and AP are largely redundant to one another as far as mechanics go, but that's neither here nor there.

I think this about covers it. I prefer wounds, but I wouldn't mind a little tweaking. Since invulnerable saves are abundant I would probably spring for +1 to wound when shooting the rear rather than an armor save adjustment...might be too strong though.

Nurglitch wrote:
I prefer the toughness/armour paradigm as it lets you fit more in and in a more granular fashion.

What I'd like to see is a cross-fire rule like in Epic Armageddon where there's a -1 to saving throws based on targets being between two friendly units.

This is so important, and even a boost for close combat unit. At the moment what matters for shooting units is staying the longest linear distance away that’s still in range. If they have to get cross fire to be effective, then close combat units can actually have targets coming to them, in a terrifying game of chicken. This buff to shooting is probably the #1 fix for close combat.

 p5freak wrote:
I really liked the old system, hitting a vehicle from the rear, where its armor is weaker, simply makes more sense. Also vehicle facings mattered for shooting. It had more tactical depth. I dont see any problems combining both systems. If you hit a vehicle from the rear you would improve the weapons AP by 1, or add one more damage, or something similiar.

Yeah and this, once more, is this amazing answer that makes it slightly less important how much fire power you bought, and more important how well both players play. +1 or +2 damage would be fine, just for having any LoS to the back.

I prefer the wounds system and the degrading profile with two caveats. I’d prefer it to be variable or something based on facing simply to add some depth and also, though this is more a byproduct of the streamlined wounding chart is simply some weapons should not be able to hurt certain things. A lasgun should have ZERO chance of harming any tank in the game, let alone a Land Raider.

It makes the game more tactical and speeds it up. No more need to roll a literal bucketful of dice in the hope you’ll remove a couple of wounds from that Russ.

I am glad armor facings are gone, it just makes for a bunch of extra arguments and really doesn’t add enough depth to the game to be worth it. It’s the same reason I am glad blast markers are gone, they jut slowed the game down horribly because players never agreed about where they landed or how many models were covered.

Same with the old damage table, it’s silly that a las cannon can 1 shot a tank but the MC next to it is perfectly fine it just lost a couple wounds.

By far the wounds system. At least it makes everyone equal, none of the broken nonsense "this Tau battlesuit clearly is a walker with open cockpit controlled by multiple operators with slow keyboards and should be vulnerable to a single grenade kill, but it gets MC rules to make it more OP, while SM dreadnoughts controlled like second body with mind are immobile walkers because frak you". Either everything should be a vehicle, or nothing.

 Vankraken wrote:
It's actually quite possible that a single hit could take out a tank. Take a HEAT round into the ammo storage rack and you have a "oh bugger the tank is on fire" situation very quickly. Depending on where and how a shot hits you could see a tank taken out by an AT gun in 1 hit or that it takes dozens of hits. Now how good a mechanic that was for a game like 40k is hard to say.

That used to be a thing 30 years ago, but today, when tanks all have instant gas extinguishers and the bullets are stored in armored cages with blow out panels directing all explosion force outward with little damage to tank it's no longer true. And that's pretty basic stuff, 40K vehicles should be way more advanced in this. Conversely, why you can't shoot a Carnifex in heart or brain, but even a colossal artillery shell will only ever deal 1 wound?

As for the original question I personally prefer the AV system as it gave a certain feel of being bullet proof against low strength weapons and forced the need for heavy hitter weapons or flanking to the weaker side/rear armor.

Unless you had Tank Hunters, then these exact 'weak' guns suddenly magically could kill it somehow

I still remember how that one Forge World chapter was always 'gotcha' middle finger moment to opponents when their SM with pure bolter loadouts suddenly started cleaning table from "immune" vehicles better than if they had lascannons...

 p5freak wrote:
I really liked the old system, hitting a vehicle from the rear, where its armor is weaker, simply makes more sense.

It makes zero sense if you think about it for even a nanosecond. Why aren't missiles always hitting rear armour? Why SM jump pack model with melta can't target weakest top armour? Why Land Raider with exposed engine is AV 14 in the rear, but Leman Russ is 10 despite thick sloped armour in the back? Why Tau get broken rules that allow them to always hit rear, even with unguided projectiles from the front, despite rear being out of sight, out or range, and in a frakking cave blocking all shots? And why this bullet teleporting gak suddenly fails when targeting Land Raiders? Why flyers have facings when you should only really see bottom of it? Why meltagun or lascannon can blow up a tank but merely scratches a carnifex, when if anything it's body organs, not redundant machinery in a tank that should be more vulnerable to have hole blown in it? Why predator is vastly more resistant to fire than a Rhino, despite looking the same, and why you can't add this magical invisible armor to Rhinos? Why is Karamazov an MC despite clearly riding in a dreadnought, completely exposed, and with vastly inferior control system than a real dread? Etc, etc...

Also vehicle facings mattered for shooting. It had more tactical depth.

It had no depth, besides That Guys arguing you're 0.1 degree off firing zone, so you can't shoot, claiming Knights and Land Raiders can't hit anything in front of them, and half of the guns on your vehicle always being useless because they couldn't target the same thing due to hull blockages and dumb firing arcs. This especially made no sense because each game turn is several minutes, and 8th edition got it exactly right - it's all abstract. Nothing stops tank from rotating in place to fire a gun, then rotating back to fire the other, if anything, what was dumb was the fact the turn was treated like a six second snapshot for vehicles only when MCs got to fire all their guns from their behind if they so wished, even a Tyrannofex

I felt like fire arcs made the game more cinematic, more visually interesting, and more tactical. The current system feels worse for casual, narrative, and competitive play to me.

I loved facings. I miss them.

 Irbis wrote:
By far the wounds system. At least it makes everyone equal, none of the broken nonsense "this Tau battlesuit clearly is a walker with open cockpit controlled by multiple operators with slow keyboards and should be vulnerable to a single grenade kill, but it gets MC rules to make it more OP, while SM dreadnoughts controlled like second body with mind are immobile walkers because frak you". Either everything should be a vehicle, or nothing.

I'd much rather have given arcs/facings to monsters than turned vehicles into the same overly-abstracted all-round squidgy balls of numbers that monsters were.

As for the original question I personally prefer the AV system as it gave a certain feel of being bullet proof against low strength weapons and forced the need for heavy hitter weapons or flanking to the weaker side/rear armor.

Unless you had Tank Hunters, then these exact 'weak' guns suddenly magically could kill it somehow

I still remember how that one Forge World chapter was always 'gotcha' middle finger moment to opponents when their SM with pure bolter loadouts suddenly started cleaning table from "immune" vehicles better than if they had lascannons...

Tank Hunters was +1. Your bolters could scratch AV11 instead of AV10. Not sure how that suddenly turned them into lascannons.

 p5freak wrote:
I really liked the old system, hitting a vehicle from the rear, where its armor is weaker, simply makes more sense.

It makes zero sense if you think about it for even a nanosecond. Why aren't missiles always hitting rear armour?

Turning radius. Missiles usually proceed along the shortest path from the firer to the target in order to get the most range possible out of their fuel and to get there as quickly as possible to stop anti-missile defenses, they don't go along swirly paths all over the place.

Why SM jump pack model with melta can't target weakest top armour?

What's the altitude they're actually jumping to? How close to the tank are they? Maybe this is represented by their ability to move over the tank and get to its back arc more quickly than infantry?

Why Land Raider with exposed engine is AV 14 in the rear, but Leman Russ is 10 despite thick sloped armour in the back?

Maybe the exhaust pipes don't represent an 'exposed engine'?

Why Tau get broken rules that allow them to always hit rear, even with unguided projectiles from the front, despite rear being out of sight, out or range, and in a frakking cave blocking all shots?

...They don't?

Why flyers have facings when you should only really see bottom of it?

Think about the angles for a moment. If you could only ever see the bottom why are the guns pointing forwards instead of down?

Why meltagun or lascannon can blow up a tank but merely scratches a carnifex, when if anything it's body organs, not redundant machinery in a tank that should be more vulnerable to have hole blown in it?

Using the vehicle rules for monsters is as good an answer to this as using monster rules for vehicles.

Why predator is vastly more resistant to fire than a Rhino, despite looking the same, and why you can't add this magical invisible armor to Rhinos?

Transport capacity. The Rhino is structurally weaker and carries fewer guns because it's trying to have the maximum transport bay, the Predator has massively thicker front armour from the inside, not added onto the outside. Fluff-ways, anyway.

Also vehicle facings mattered for shooting. It had more tactical depth.

It had no depth, besides That Guys arguing you're 0.1 degree off firing zone, so you can't shoot, claiming Knights and Land Raiders can't hit anything in front of them, and half of the guns on your vehicle always being useless because they couldn't target the same thing due to hull blockages and dumb firing arcs. This especially made no sense because each game turn is several minutes, and 8th edition got it exactly right - it's all abstract. Nothing stops tank from rotating in place to fire a gun, then rotating back to fire the other, if anything, what was dumb was the fact the turn was treated like a six second snapshot for vehicles only when MCs got to fire all their guns from their behind if they so wished, even a Tyrannofex

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I felt like fire arcs made the game more cinematic, more visually interesting, and more tactical.

I didn't get that at all. It was always, "which corner can I shove this tank into". Experiences vary, I suppose.

Maybe shooting the rear arc causes +2 to the explosion roll. That could be cinematic on its own.

Facings are a great idea until you run into vehicles that aren't quad shape. Suddenly you have to debate what side you're actually hitting at particular angles.

Now if GW actually took time to show what facing is what, sure that is fine.

For now, the current system works perfectly. People can complain "but muh Lasguns kill Baneblades" until they actually do any sort of math and see how absurdly long it is to do that.

I wish firing arcs had remained in the game, but been applied to ALL units, not just a handful of tanks. However, I like the degrading profiles better than the damage table.

I think it should be possible to one-shot the larger stuff, but it should be a rare, lucky thing to occur - and better suited to AA games. For 40Ks IGOUGO, letting vehicles tank multiple hits is vitally necessary just so you get the chance to do something before being blown off the table.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:


For now, the current system works perfectly. People can complain "but muh Lasguns kill Baneblades" until they actually do any sort of math and see how absurdly long it is to do that.

Yes and no. It used to be outside the realm of possibility (which was basically the argument at the launch of 8th). That said, Nu-Marine Centurions, Ultramarine Aggressors, etc.. do bolter Knights off the table in a round. The constant lethality-creep of 2 years of 8th has brought to game into the realm of that previously mostly theoretical math example.

Firing arcs were fine, but vehicle facings were just something that was gamed. The current system is far less gamey (and is logical if you use the simple abstraction that vehicles and infantry/monsters are continuously moving around/rotating, etc. while in-game).

With the absurd direction 40K has gone, the "realism" or "tactical depth" (which never really existed, except on paper) has no place. 40K has almost never been a typical wargame and it's way the feth off the reservation now.

Armour facings, etc. wouldn't mesh with the other rules from 8th, and would feel disjointed and weird.

The last time I felt facings really worked were 2nd edition, where vehicle movement/rotation/turning was equally monitored/limited and the rules were far more crunchy and wargaming related.

It's a matter of scale and functionality.

Facings and firing arcs work in a skirmish game with deep rules and few models.

In a game like modern 40k, that can have several hundred models on the table, dozens of vehicles, no sense of scale, and relatively shallow but complex rules, wounds are by far the better option, particularly when the arcs and facings only applied to one unit type in the past (vehicles) but not others (like monsters or artillery or crew served heavy weapons).

Edit: GW never really got a separate AV system working well. Vehicles never worked quite right from 3rd-7th, there was (barring 5E) always an issue with "skimmers are better just because!", and balance on vehicles wobbled wildly. While an AV system could be made to work, GW's various iterations never really did.

On balance, I'll have to go with the new system.

I like the idea of having armour values in place of toughness/wounds, however, it was almost always executed atrociously.

- Armour facings rarely made much difference in my experience, since there tended to be little to no difference between front and side armour and tanks almost never advanced far enough for attacking their rear armour to be practical - even for fast races. Also, working out which facing you were shooting at could get really awkward with the non-box-shaped vehicles.

- The fact that armour was immune to certain weapons could make vehicle-heavy lists rather depressing to play against. This was made vastly worse with the inclusion of Knights, where every weapon with S6 or lower might as well not even exist.

- Vehicle damage tables (and later Hull Points) have tended to be rather hit or miss. Some editions it would take meltaguns to do anything more than gently caress a vehicle's hull, other times every vehicle might as well have been made from matchsticks and gunpowder.

- Also, in terms of fighting against vehicles, there were issues in that more and more vehicles started to ignore swathes of the damage table. As usual, Knights were by far the most egregious example as they were all but immune to every result bar 'explodes'.

- Then of course we had the issue that GW realised monsters were more durable than vehicles and so started to turn models that were clearly vehicles into monsters. The Dreadknight and Riptide were probably the worst examples of this. It also highlighted the ever-growing disparity between vehicles and monsters, the latter couldn't be immobilised, couldn't have their weapons destroyed, were a lot harder to one-shot etc..

 Overread wrote:
I think either system works in its own right. When you consider facings and armour on specific parts of vehicles I think that its a nice idea, but was always a tiny bit odd that it only applied to vehicles. Then you had things like huge Tyranids where it had no effect at all because they weren't a vehicle.

That said I think facings and fire arcs on vehicles does make them stand out as something different to the regular infantry models. A big beefy tank feels more like a tank when its got those fire arcs and when its got those different armour values and when the direction it faces matters.

A big beefy tank also feels much more like a tank when it can tank shock the hell out of units.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:


For now, the current system works perfectly. People can complain "but muh Lasguns kill Baneblades" until they actually do any sort of math and see how absurdly long it is to do that.

Yes and no. It used to be outside the realm of possibility (which was basically the argument at the launch of 8th). That said, Nu-Marine Centurions, Ultramarine Aggressors, etc.. do bolter Knights off the table in a round. The constant lethality-creep of 2 years of 8th has brought to game into the realm of that previously mostly theoretical math example.

They...really don't even under Doctrines. Have you actually mathed out how many of each it takes to bolt down a Knight?

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:


For now, the current system works perfectly. People can complain "but muh Lasguns kill Baneblades" until they actually do any sort of math and see how absurdly long it is to do that.

Yes and no. It used to be outside the realm of possibility (which was basically the argument at the launch of 8th). That said, Nu-Marine Centurions, Ultramarine Aggressors, etc.. do bolter Knights off the table in a round. The constant lethality-creep of 2 years of 8th has brought to game into the realm of that previously mostly theoretical math example.

You're talking about a unit that costs about as much as a knight. It's still efficient, but certainly not cheap.

Realism makes the game more intuitive.
As it is now the wounds mechsnic zux... badly.
Facings forced difficult choices e.g. get the shot and be exposed or ... this was dramatic.
Now we see bolters firing through enemy units to kill tsnks with volume and rerolls and stacked master buffs ... garbage gamey removed - BrookM

I'm sure the old system could have been made to work, but it didn't. That sort of sums of 7th.

I mean I guess I can understand the dislike that nearly 400 points of buffed up intercessors can shoot a rhino to death - but it really doesn't feel like a problem with the game.

But then this sort of sums up the problem. 40k is essentially abstraction piled on abstraction (or, what we might call "a game"), but then with vehicles it was meant to embrace realism. Which perhaps unsurprisingly just made vehicles rubbish (or, in much earlier editions, crazy overpowered).

I think they need to just add in a rear facing rule, like shooting at rear armor increases the ap by 1 unless the vehicle has a keyword like "heavy" or something.

 Ketara wrote:
As the title says, which system do you prefer? The old armour facings on vehicles, or the new 'multi-wound/high toughness' combo?

From the most technical perspective, I prefer armor facings and damage effects governed by a critical hit table. It's more "realistic", and detail can be a lot of fun even though it wasn't really tactically significant.

However, from the gameplay perspective, I also believe that abstracting the defense of the vehicle has made a much smoother flowing game.

Wounds. It's easier to remember one number than it is to know 3. If they brought back armour facings I would probably stop playing.

I think vehicles in general should have better saves, to put more emphasis on high-AP weapons being used to counter them.

I really enjoy 8th editions take on vehicles They are way tougher than back in the hull point days, and I like that vehicle arcs aren't a thing anymore.

With todays mechanics it still take 3-4 lascannon shots to take out a predator, used to be in previous editions a single melta or lascannon could take down the same vehicle down in 1 shot.

Facings and armour values might have had a place up until 5th edition, in 6th and 7th where I got to know them they were totally useless as most vehicles died to plasma, CC or even bolters within 1 round anyway. It was a clumsy mechanic without any value but to make all vehicles useless. Superheavies were good because they ignored most vehicle rules, monsters even more.

The system right now works and is good enough for the scale 40K has become. I'd like more tanks to ignore the movement penalty on their heavy weapons, more assault rules like the flying Rhino has and maybe more ways to take vehicles out in CC again (that might be more a problem of the powerfist and losing meltabombs for me as a CSM player). Also, destroyerblades on Chaos tanks need a comeback, they're even in the kit!

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
As the title says, which system do you prefer? The old armour facings on vehicles, or the new 'multi-wound/high toughness' combo?

From the most technical perspective, I prefer armor facings and damage effects governed by a critical hit table. It's more "realistic", and detail can be a lot of fun even though it wasn't really tactically significant.

However, from the gameplay perspective, I also believe that abstracting the defense of the vehicle has made a much smoother flowing game.

The critical hit table wasn't used though, basically. You either had Grav, Haywire, simply relied on middling S7 shots to glance stuff to death, or 5+ Melta Shots hitting at once (which at that point is rolling terribly necessary).

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I felt like fire arcs made the game more cinematic, more visually interesting, and more tactical.

I didn't get that at all. It was always, "which corner can I shove this tank into". Experiences vary, I suppose.

Maybe shooting the rear arc causes +2 to the explosion roll. That could be cinematic on its own.

"Which corner can I shove this tank into" was a product of the damage/durability skew in 7th that made any vehicle without an Invulnerable save sort of pointless (high-ROF S7+ and Destroyer weapons vs. hull points). Try 30k (where AV is higher and there isn't as much spammable move-and-fire AT) or go back to 4e-5e (where AV wasn't higher but there was even less spammable move-and-fire AT).