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Maybe it's because Fury Road is in the back of my head, or maybe it's because two of the Genestealer Cult formations practically scream "WITNESS ME!" but something that's been bothering me for awhile is how Chariots/Open-Topped Vehicles currently work in 40k.

Currently, only three armies in the game have "Chariots" per se: Necrons, Daemons, and Santa-Wolves. They're currently fluffed up either as being pulled into war by draft beasts, or being...pedaled by robots? And yet, Vypers/Venoms which are described as being akin to old sky-chariots are just open-topped transports, not to mention the Ork Trukks, Genestealer Cult Goliaths, or whatever else is out there.

This is very much an "early" idea, which would need a lot of fine-tuning, but the idea is to replace the "Chariot" rule with the "War Rig" rule, and make it expandable to open-topped vehicles in general:

"War Rig" is a sub-type of open-topped vehicle. Instead of having Access Points and Firing Points, a War Rig has "Fighting Points." Fighting Points may either correspond to a particular AV arc of the vehicle, or they may be Universal. At the start of deployment, and in each subsequent player phase, you must assign transported passengers to these "Fighting Points" that either all Fighting Points are assigned, or there are no unassigned Passengers in the transport; ideally, you should show this on the transport somehow, Gorkamorka-style.
Shooting at a War Rig: Shooting at a War Rig is similar to shooting at a Chariot. As long as there is at least one passenger in a Fighting Point of the arc the vehicle is being fired at, the defending player may decide whether allocated shots are going towards the passengers in the Fighting Points of that arc, or the vehicle itself.

Replace the "No Escape" rule for firing Templates at open-topped vehicles with "models on a Fighting Point that are touched by a Blast or Flame weapon are hit as well as their mount."

War Rigs and Close Combat: This is the part where I'm pondering the rules more and contemplating how the rules should work. A War Rig that still has at least one Passenger in a Fighting Point and did not Flat-Out during this turn may make a charge. When it moves towards the enemy, it must move in a way that an Arc that still has a model in a Fighting Point is in base-to-base with the enemy. Resolve the close combat as normal, going down Initiative Steps and resolving attacks, with the exception that the War Rig does not make Pile-In moves. Models in Fighting Points of a vehicle Arc that is in base-to-base with the enemy may make attacks at their appropriate Initiative Step. The enemy may choose whether to allocate attacks to the War Rig, or the passengers in the Fighting Points of the appropriate vehicle Arc. All attacks are resolved against the highest Weapon Skill of any of the passengers in Fighting Mounts of that Vehicle Arc, or WS 1 if there are no passengers. If making attacks against the War Rig, resolve them against its Front Armor if any of the Fighting Mounts of the Vehicle's Arc are still alive; this represents them warding off attempts to attack weak points of the vehicle. Otherwise, resolve the attacks against the Rear Armor.

The War Rig automatically disengages at the end of the Assault. Nominate a direction, and move the vehicle 2d6" in that direction. It may not move within 1" of any enemy models that were not previously engaged in the fight.

I am not so sure that the fighting points idea has a lot of merit. But the idea that chariots are so little used is interesting. There has to be a easier way to represent them in the game besides giving them their own unit type.

Its good food for thought.

I am interested to see what others thoughts are on this. I will mull it over myself.

I've been hacking on Ash Wastes and a pile of unused mechanics for a Gorkamorka-esque game for my skirmish game project; I don't know how well any of the ideas would translate into full 40k scale but the emphasis there is on assaulting vehicles as a boarding action rather than trying to punch the vehicle itself. Vehicles get 'zones' (not very many; a Rhino, for instance, gets a main cabin, cockpit, and standing-on-top zones), models are assigned to the zones. When an enemy attempts to board the vehicle he has a test to get on, after which he gets to fight a model in the zone he's gone for one on one, with the loser getting tossed off the vehicle if he doesn't die (in outside zones only).

This is all tentative and designed for small-scale fights, but it might be interesting to treat assaulting vehicles like fighting combats between sections of a multi-section building with occupying and smashing up the vehicle/killing the pilots a possible consequence.