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With the 8th edition, units disembarking from a vehicle can now charge. With that, what was lost was the ability to disembark after the vehicle has moved. While this addressed some of the issues associated with transports and assault oriented units embarked in it, it took away one of the advantages that came with purchasing an expensive model such as land raider, namely the Assault Vehicle rule.

What if we were to bring it back to differentiate between "normal" transports and "assault oriented" vehicles?

To facilitate this, the following rule can be implemented for certain vehicles that used to have the Assault Vehicle rule:

Assault Vehicle: Units embarked in this transport may disembark after the vehicle has moved. Units disembarked in this manner cannot move in the turn they disembarked, and must subtract 1 from their hit roll in subsequent shooting phase in addition to any normal shooting rules. Furthermore, units disembarked in this manner can only roll d6 to determine their charge distance.

The first clause allows the set up of the vehicle to deliver its contents directly into the fray.
The second clause of the rule is to prevent the abuse in using the vehicle as a special weapons delivery - such as delivering a melta squad into melta range or plasma into double tap range. A heavy weapon will be shooting on -2 (-1 from Assault vehicle, -1 from moving penalty) while all other weapons shoot at -1.
The third clause is to represent the 3" of movement associated with disembarking as a part of its charge move - units charging out of an assault vehicle effectively has a d6+3" charge range.

Thoughts?

Given that the most prominent "assault vehicle" is the Land Raider, and cutting out the Movement phase/dropping d6" of charge distance reduces a unit's (with 6" move) average charge threat by around 10.5" compared to the 10" of move the Land Raider offers, I'd have to say this sounds kind of pointless? You're adding an extra special rule to enable a unit that gets out of a Land Raider to get into combat with things .5" closer to them than they would be able to if they just disembarked before moving like normal?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Given that the most prominent "assault vehicle" is the Land Raider, and cutting out the Movement phase/dropping d6" of charge distance reduces a unit's (with 6" move) average charge threat by around 10.5" compared to the 10" of move the Land Raider offers, I'd have to say this sounds kind of pointless? You're adding an extra special rule to enable a unit that gets out of a Land Raider to get into combat with things .5" closer to them than they would be able to if they just disembarked before moving like normal?

To facilitate this, we'll compare 3 cases: 1. footslogging termies 2. deepstriking termies 3. assaulting out of assault vehicle termies, where they're attempting to get into assault.

Case 1: footslogging termies charging into combat
Base move: 5"
Base Charge: 2"~12"; avg 7"
Threat range: 7"~17"; avg 12"

Case 2: depstriking termies charging into combat
Base move: 0"; already at 9" away from enemy from deep striking
Base Charge: 2"~12"; avg 7"
Threat range: 2"~12"; avg 7"

Case 3: termies inside a LR, charging out of disembarking
Base move (LR, full W): 10"
Disembark move: 3"
Base Charge: 1"~6"; avg 3"
Threat range: 14"~19"; avg 16"

I think you forgot the disembarking rule where it allows you to disembark max 3" away from the vehicle. Can you explain how you arrived at the 10.5" move?

If you think about how assaulting out of transport works, all it is doing is adding 3" to your threat range. Currently, there are only 2 ways to get guaranteed charges out of transports:
-get the transports up to 5"+[M of embarked units]-[M of target unit]
-ram the transport into combat

I feel like there's enough room for improvements for close combat in such ranged weapon dominant game without necessarily breaking it, especially with reintroduction of old rules into the game.

EDIT:

Ah I see what you mean. "normally" disembarking and charging vs. "charging out of assault vehicle":

"Normally" assaulting out of LR would leave you threat range of 10"~20", with expected average of 15" (3" disembark, 5" move, 2"~12" charge; avg 7")
Charging out of "assault" vehicle give you a more stable threat range from 14"~19", with expected average of 16".

 skchsan wrote:
...EDIT:

Ah I see what you mean. "normally" disembarking and charging vs. "charging out of assault vehicle":

"Normally" assaulting out of LR would leave you threat range of 10"~20", with expected average of 15" (3" disembark, 5" move, 2"~12" charge; avg 7")
Charging out of "assault" vehicle give you a more stable threat range from 14"~19", with expected average of 16".

At which point you could produce a pretty similar effect by making all charges 6+d6" (normal disembark 3", 5" move, 7-12" charge, for a range of 15"-20" with an average of 17.5") without needing to go back and futz with more of the vehicle mechanics/introduce the shooting penalty to make it less good of a gun-threat extender/add an "Assault Vehicle" keyword/do something about vehicles you can already hop out of after they move (just the Valkyrie, to my knowledge, but there may be more I don't know off the top of my head).

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
...EDIT:

Ah I see what you mean. "normally" disembarking and charging vs. "charging out of assault vehicle":

"Normally" assaulting out of LR would leave you threat range of 10"~20", with expected average of 15" (3" disembark, 5" move, 2"~12" charge; avg 7")
Charging out of "assault" vehicle give you a more stable threat range from 14"~19", with expected average of 16".

At which point you could produce a pretty similar effect by making all charges 6+d6" (normal disembark 3", 5" move, 7-12" charge, for a range of 15"-20" with an average of 17.5") without needing to go back and futz with more of the vehicle mechanics/introduce the shooting penalty to make it less good of a gun-threat extender/add an "Assault Vehicle" keyword/do something about vehicles you can already hop out of after they move (just the Valkyrie, to my knowledge, but there may be more I don't know off the top of my head).

I'm not sure if a game wide change is better than ability updates for few units in the game. If we're going to touch on charging game-wide, I'd like to see d6+[fixed distance per unit type]". I don't think it's fair that faster units have same charge range as slower units.

EDIT:
If we start comparing it to what valks can do - slain on a roll of 1 on a d6 per model is a very small price to pay for double tap plasma CMS drop.

Case in point, similar abilities that allow you to disembark after/during move already exist. It will not be any new mechanics. I don't see why such ability is exclusive to AM's only. The proposal is taking into consideration such cheese drop as explained above. It has fair compromises with marginal over the top benefit. You're really only allowing a more reliable assault unit delivery on a vehicle that was meant to be an assault unit delivery vehicle.

Your entire proposal seems to me like an overcomplicated way to do something that would have negligible impact on the game. You want to make "assault transports" better by letting people get out after they move, but then you add a couple of extra clauses to make sure units don't actually get any extra movement distance out of it, and then another one to make sure it isn't abused by shooty units; all to make charging after getting out of a Land Raider slightly more reliable and still less effective than being a Black Templar with Deep Strike?

 skchsan wrote:


Thoughts?

I'd love that.

In fact anything that favors assault oriented armies and transports over footsloggers has my vote