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.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

How do you write this as a rule where you don't need to reference a diagram for each wonky vehicle?

you don't. You add a diagram for every vehicle. Theres plenty of room for it under the unit picture

The other option would be to mark bases with the arcs but then comes the problem with unbased vehicles

Yeah, I always wondered why they didn't just do a little silhouette diagram with each vehicle. Could put them on the army cards too.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

How do you write this as a rule where you don't need to reference a diagram for each wonky vehicle?

you don't. You add a diagram for every vehicle. Theres plenty of room for it under the unit picture

The other option would be to mark bases with the arcs but then comes the problem with unbased vehicles

Yeah, I always wondered why they didn't just do a little silhouette diagram with each vehicle. Could put them on the army cards too.

*twitch*

*twitch*

⁸flashback*

Yeah people greatly overestimate how important armor facings were. Most people looked for ways to just ignore it entirely.

ERJAK wrote:
. . .

And people still didn't bother. Vehicle flanking wasn't really a thing in old 40k. You either dropped deepstrikers behind tanks for a slightly easier die roll or you blew them up from the front. Didn't really make much of a difference which.

Flanking vehicles was totally a thing and I did it all the friggin time. If you didn't that's fine, but I've used it as a viable tactic in every edition until it suddenly vanished. And "slightly better" doesn't ring true when you're converting a 6+ to Pen to a 4+ to Pen against the flank, a 200% increase in effectiveness. Nor does it ring true where weapons with 0 chance to effect the target can suddenly Glance/Pen. This was especially true for Eldar weapons, many of which were S6. AV 13+ was immune, but AV 11 on the side meant those fast moving skimmers with Scatter Lasers or Starcannons could get good hits in.

Plus you had the CC bonuses against vehicles in combat, meaning you're hitting the rear armor.

There was mad value in those rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Yeah people greatly overestimate how important armor facings were. Most people looked for ways to just ignore it entirely.

Which meant that they were still thinking about it, and therefore it mattered.

The very fact that one takes a unit in one's list for the sole purpose of flanking vehicles to destroy them proves that vehicle facings were a "thing".
That's a tactical consideration. That's like saying cover isn't a thing in the new xcom game because of explosives and flanking.

 Insectum7 wrote:
This was especially true for Eldar weapons, many of which were S6. AV 13+ was immune, but AV 11 on the side meant those fast moving skimmers with Scatter Lasers or Starcannons could get good hits in.

In the hundreds of games I played against eldar while facings still existed, they either used lances, d-scythes or melta to go through the front armor like it was side armor or used flanking/scout/deep strike to put stuff in my rear arc. It was probably the army which cared the least about maneuvering, they either ignored facings or had the freedom to be wherever they are.

"maneuvering" to hit the side arc only ever happened when a deep striker scattered and someone started to argue that the guy with the special weapon was still in the side arc.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
This was especially true for Eldar weapons, many of which were S6. AV 13+ was immune, but AV 11 on the side meant those fast moving skimmers with Scatter Lasers or Starcannons could get good hits in.

In the hundreds of games I played against eldar while facings still existed, they either used lances, d-scythes or melta to go through the front armor like it was side armor or used flanking/scout/deep strike to put stuff in my rear arc. It was probably the army which cared the least about maneuvering, they either ignored facings or had the freedom to be wherever they are.

"maneuvering" to hit the side arc only ever happened when a deep striker scattered and someone started to argue that the guy with the special weapon was still in the side arc.

"flanking/deep striking/scouting" are all still maneuvering in addition to just a traditional move-unit-here. Your army is using tools available to it to get side/rear armor shots for advantage. Remember when Eldar would run 6+ Wave Serpents and spread them around the board? Those WSs would fire their S7 Wave attack from across the board, and if they're firing at AV 11 instead of 13-14, that's a big deal.

Also in 4E there were ways to make vehicles immune to lance and melta, so it wasn't really as reliable to just load up on those as just learning to flank with maneuver.

I would LOVE to play my 4th edition armored company list against someone who expects to just sit back and go through my front armor. A lesson in why the Imperial Guard excels at "Front Towards Enemy" warfare.

If we brought back armor values, and facing, wouldn't that also require us to bring back directional shooting arcs? Because if you park your Demolisher tank facing the squad of marines 24" in front of it, it CANNOT then shoot at the unit of marines 6" behind it. This is where 8th made it simpler and harder, they removed the concept of facing, but in part ruined the ability to balance vehicles.

Perhaps, but just like with armour facings, firing arcs should come in bespoke diagrams for every vehicle.

I don't want another "are the tesla spheres in the Necron obelisk hull mounted or turreted?" nonsense.

You don't really need to bring back armor values to bring back facings. Honestly, the armor value resolution system sucks - not in and of itself but in conjunction with the wounding system used by every other model in the game. In practice there is a disjoint created in the value of weapons in terms of their utility vs other models resulting from the armor value mechanism scaling differently from the wounding mechanism. For the sake of solid game design methodology and streamlined gameplay, its better to just stick with the established to-wound system (though that doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit from tweaks) and introduce the concept of "toughness facings"

Necromunda Ash Wastes is demonstrating what this looks like:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/04/29/ash-wastes-rules-breakdown-heres-whats-changing-when-necromunda-hits-the-road/



And yeah, either there needs to be an armor diagram for each vehicle (ew) or the arc layout needs to be standardized to 90 degree arcs (yes, this is better) and players need to learn to accept the idea that the increased weight of a real world vehicles frontal armor doesn't magically end at the edges and corners of the vehicles front profile, but does in fact wrap around to encompass the leading edges of the sides.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
If we brought back armor values, and facing, wouldn't that also require us to bring back directional shooting arcs? Because if you park your Demolisher tank facing the squad of marines 24" in front of it, it CANNOT then shoot at the unit of marines 6" behind it. This is where 8th made it simpler and harder, they removed the concept of facing, but in part ruined the ability to balance vehicles.

I don't think armor facings necessarily require the reintroduction of firing arcs on vehicles. I'd prefer it personally. But not required.

/shrug. I think toughness and getting rid of armor facings was still one of the best things they ever did for the game. you can disagree and that is fine. Life would be boring if we all agreed on everything but I support the decision.

I would support a rule added to vehicles similar to the armor of contempt rule where weapons count as -1 AP and -1 damage to a minimum of 1 unless the firing unit is in the rear vehicle arc.

Getting rid of Armor Values and simplifying vehicles rules to use the same ones as everyone else was one of the best things they did for the game.

But armor facings can work with the T/Sv+ system as shown above. In fact they could be expanded to also work for other large models like monsters.

For me the real potential is the combination of T/Sv facings with degrading profiles.

Going the Toughness/Save route I'd definitely redo the Wounding chart again though. Possibly just revert it and rearrange toughness values.

Yeah, thats the principal "minor improvement" I would want. There needs to be a threshold at which a weapon can no longer wound a target - and with that I would argue that toughnesses on certain things (principally vehicles and monstrous creatures) should increase and wound counts decrease to keep pace with that change - conversely some weapons may need to have their strengths increase but on the whole I like the idea that AT weapons would mostly be wounding on 5s/6s.

I would also go so far as to say the wound chart should include the ability to auto-wound after a certain point when weapon strength is so much higher than target toughness.

The problem with +1 save rules and minus damage rules under the current system is the only effect they have is making Anti-Tank guns less efficient while still allowing assault rifles to be as efficient as ever.

Like really? The Dreadnought reduces the effect of Fire Prism Focused fire fairly significantly, but lasguns just ignore all it's defensive systems?

The real problem is that lasguns are autowounding on 6s.

But outside of IG, good luck killing a T8 Sv2+ Tyranid monster with bolters.

+1 to some amount of auto-wounding. -1 to the current Dreadnought weirdness.

 Tyran wrote:
The real problem is that lasguns are autowounding on 6s.

The real problem is that Lasguns are wounding at all.

Bring back the double = no wound part of the S/T comparison chart.

You are aware you would need to redesign the entire game for that, right? or are you fancying fighting current nidzilla with the old wound chart?

 Tyran wrote:
You are aware you would need to redesign the entire game for that, right? or are you fancying fighting current nidzilla with the old wound chart?

Happy to redesign much more

The entire game? It's not that big a deal.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Yeah people greatly overestimate how important armor facings were. Most people looked for ways to just ignore it entirely.

Yeah, it depends on the armies they played. When your most armored vehicle, with AV14 in the front, can easily get wrecked by targeting its AV12 side or its AV10 rare then armor facings matters a lot. When all your vehicles have the same values or just a difference of one point (who says SM? ) then yeah, they don't think armor facings mattered that much.

And it also depends on what kind of anti tank weapons people got at hand. Orks, with S8 weapons at most that hit on 5s and no access to deepstrike anti tank weapons, couldn't possibly wreck tough vehicles from distance unless benefitting from an insane amount of luck. A marine squad with meltas in a drop pod could wreck everything with little effort.

 Insectum7 wrote:
"flanking/deep striking/scouting" are all still maneuvering in addition to just a traditional move-unit-here. Your army is using tools available to it to get side/rear armor shots for advantage.

Simply deploying a unit in a perfect spot to one-shot a vehicle requires about as much maneuvering as paying 2 CP for a stratagem for mortal wounds on 4+...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tyran wrote:
You are aware you would need to redesign the entire game for that, right? or are you fancying fighting current nidzilla with the old wound chart?

I don't agree with HBMC on a whole lot, but the wounding chart seems to be the one place which can easily be tweaked to scale down the insane lethality we have.

And while I was of a different opinion in the past, outside of some exotic relics and unit upgrades the need to actually shoot a weapon at something that doubles out its strength is rather low.

So what if nidzilla ends up too durable because of this? The one thing point changes do rather well is controlling how any wounds an army can put on the table.

Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
Armor facings only make sense as a game mechanic to potentially make the game more interesting (and that isn't always a bad thing), and because real tanks also tend to have variable thickness armor. So many historical games have it too. But like morale in other war games, it can feel like 40k designers are aping mechanics from other war games without really understanding why they exist in those games. And they are done so badly, I'd be happier with them not being there at all.

And the close-to-historical-presentation material we have for large portions of the vehicles in 40k confirm that there are variable thicknesses of armour on various facings - not to mention various materials used, as well.

Afraid I'm in team "flanking didn't really happen". The narrative idea of a guardsman with a melta spending 3 turns creeping up on a tank to get that auto-kill rear shot is good. The number of times it ever happened were minimal to none (not least because your opponent has 3 turns to do something about it). You either DSed to get the facing you wanted (and hoped not to scatter) - or you had things like Eldar Bikes that were far faster than the average unit, so could plausibly get into flank/rear arcs as the game went on. But this wasn't obviously tactical - you either could, or, like our humble guardsman, you couldn't.

Its like how assault=rear armour only came in 5th edition. Because actually getting round there with say a nob+power claw was very difficult.

In practice you can want 40k to be a much more positional/directional based game. But it makes very little sense to apply this to vehicles and nothing else. You can then be in favour of a very complex system of modifiers depending on facings, whether units are covered by other units etc etc. But really, I just don't think it works with I go-you go - because movement as said, is something you either can do, or can't. In practice you'd end up writing a whole new game. And if you are a committed treadhead maybe that's a good thing - but its not what I want anyway.

So you're saying that flanking didn't happen except for the things that people took for the purpose of flanking?

Of course people used faster elements of their force to flank opponents. That is literally what those kinds of units are for.

Slower units with heavy weapons weren't for flanking, they were for providing lanes of fire which threatened a vehicle so it had to present it's strong facing to that unit, which you then exploited to get on its flank with a different unit.

In WW2 you didn't lug a full anti-tank gun all over the battlefield to try and flank tanks, that is what lighter tanks (in open terrain) and infantry with portable anti-tank weapons (in more confined terrain) are for.

Tyel wrote:
Afraid I'm in team "flanking didn't really happen".

You either DSed to get the facing you wanted (and hoped not to scatter) - or you had things like Eldar Bikes that were far faster than the average unit, so could plausibly get into flank/rear arcs as the game went on. But this wasn't obviously tactical - you either could, or, like our humble guardsman, you couldn't.