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I'm just thinking this seems like something that should be implemented. Even if it is just for heavier units with a certain amount of wounds or just lords of war. I understand this could be difficult, but it seems ridiculous a behemoth like a Baneblade could be stopped by simply having some basic infantry surrounding it.

To clarify, are you suggesting that certain units (vehicles, titanics, and presumably monsters) be allowed to move over enemy models as though they had the fly keyword? "Running down" makes me think of splatter kills, but that's already covered by vehicles being allowed to make melee attacks.

I'm not opposed to vehicles being allowed to move over non-vehicle models provided they don't end their movement within 1" of enemy models. It makes sense that infantry and so forth would generally have to get out of the way of a tank. It is a bit of a nerf for melee armies, but a small and fluffy one.

A related suggestion I've seen and liked is to allow vehicles to fire low strength, non-heavy "defensive" weapons after falling back. It gives you a reason to keep the small guns on a vehicle for something other than the saved points.

No I meant they should simply be able to move through smaller units while automatically causing damage. If something is standing in front of a tank while it's moving, there shouldn't have to be a melee attack.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
No I meant they should simply be able to move through smaller units while automatically causing damage. If something is standing in front of a tank while it's moving, there shouldn't have to be a melee attack.

Oh. Well, I don't think most units in 40k are likely to just stand still while a tank drives at them. They'd dash and jump out of the way, fly over the tank, bludgeon it away with the ridiculous kinetic power of their thunderhammers, backflip over it with their alien agility, etc. Thus the attack roll. Things that do hold still have some variation on the immobile rule and do, in fact, get hit automatically.

I guess we could make tanks hit harder/more easily, but do you really want an IG tank regiment to be both excellent melee combatants and a gun castle?

I feel like vehicles' ability to just run over enemies has generally been kept toned down in 40k because it's pretty easy to make all those cool infantry models irrelevant if tanks are blasting them to smitherines from across the table and crunching them into the dust up close. "Tanks aren't good at melee" is on the list of conceipts right next to, "energy swords totally matter on a battlefield full of guns."

What specifically are you proposing?

In 2nd ed rhinos were pretty much only used to run people over...

A unit would have to be immobilised to be automatically hit by a tank running over them.

6+ to hit reflects more the target getting out of the way than the ability of the vehicle to hit them.

Wyldhunt wrote:

I guess we could make tanks hit harder/more easily, but do you really want an IG tank regiment to be both excellent melee combatants and a gun castle?

Sounds like it.

feel like vehicles' ability to just run over enemies has generally been kept toned down in 40k because it's pretty easy to make all those cool infantry models irrelevant if tanks are blasting them to smitherines from across the table and crunching them into the dust up close.

Exactly.

LOWs should have an option to move through infantry as if they aren't there, but they don't need to deal damage too. We don't need impossible to pin down, wreck your day in melee gun batteries. See the Ork buggies - if you want a better melee output, your ranged output will suffer. Its normally a bad trade to make.

I would be happy with having tank shock back. It does seem ludicrous that vehicles now ask the gretchin politely if they wouldn't mind just moving out of the way so they can squeeze through.

I'd say remove vehicles ability to fight in combat normally - instead, they can move through units, and resolve an attack phase against any units moved through immediately in the movement phase. if they would end on a unit, the units owner moves the models out of the way, but remaining within 1" (so they can attack the tank in the fight phase).

All units can move away from tanks as if they weren't engaged, not need to fall back.

Then make Daemonic Possession allow the tank to fight again in the fight phase.

Allow a unit to death or glory again (it was a fun rule!)

Make tanks ram each other - +1 to Strength for the model with the highest Wounds characteristic (it's heavier!). Give some vehicles (notably Orks) rams which mean they always count as having the highest wound characteristic. Vehicles cannot be moved, except by superheavies. Superheavies can never be moved.

Walkers fall under the same category as monsters & infantry, and get moved out of the way.

*flashbacks to eldar ramming vypers into you and other such cheap gak

NO NONONONONONONONO NO.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard Pass.

Hey Knight Players! Tired of loosing games? Not being able to kill everything in the Movement phase? Well, have no fear! Because now just because you paid to win, bought a single model, you can end matches before the shooting phase, with MOVEMENT MORTALS! Just move over a unit, and it dies!

 some bloke wrote:
I would be happy with having tank shock back. It does seem ludicrous that vehicles now ask the gretchin politely if they wouldn't mind just moving out of the way so they can squeeze through.

I'd say remove vehicles ability to fight in combat normally - instead, they can move through units, and resolve an attack phase against any units moved through immediately in the movement phase. if they would end on a unit, the units owner moves the models out of the way, but remaining within 1" (so they can attack the tank in the fight phase).

All units can move away from tanks as if they weren't engaged, not need to fall back.

Then make Daemonic Possession allow the tank to fight again in the fight phase.

Allow a unit to death or glory again (it was a fun rule!)

Make tanks ram each other - +1 to Strength for the model with the highest Wounds characteristic (it's heavier!). Give some vehicles (notably Orks) rams which mean they always count as having the highest wound characteristic. Vehicles cannot be moved, except by superheavies. Superheavies can never be moved.

Walkers fall under the same category as monsters & infantry, and get moved out of the way.

That adds a lot of extra rules to the game for not a lot of gain though.

Bringing back the ability to move your opponent's models means you have to spend time working out the minimum distance and repositioning two units (or more) instead of one. Plus, you'd have to bring back all those rules for how to handle hedge cases for when an enemy unit couldn't really move. In the past, tank shocking was always a confusing mess that usually didn't actually accomplish much beyond maybe pushing a unit off an objective or occassionally managing to remove models from the shocked unit (which generally felt more like a feelsbad glitch than a valid tactic).

Death or Glory was usually just a question of, "Am I likely to kill that tank if I auto-hit it once?" If the answer was no, then you simply didn't death or glory. If the answer was yes, you probably shouldn't have tank shocked. Part of the reason it was kind of fun when it happened was that many models had a decent chance of winning the death or glory by getting an immobilized, wrecked, or explodes result on the damage chart. In 8th edition, you'd have to remove enough wounds from the vehicle to finish it off. Which means the answer to the question above is going to be "No" a lot more often.

Having a whole subsystem for determining whether or not a vehicle gets +1 strength in an edition where that 1 point of strength frequently won't matter feels a bit odd too. And complicating the rules around vehicles getting to make attacks when most tanks aren't actually very good in melee is also a case of extra complication for not a lot of impact.

If the goal is to prevent vehicles from getting bogged down in combat, then letting them move over non-vehicle/monster/titanic models in the movement phase is probably reasonable. If you want them to be able to charge through screening units (thus devaluing screening units somewhat), then letting them move over those models in the charge phase is also probably reasonable. If you want to kill things with the raw heft of vehicles, then the easiest ways to do that would probably be to just improve vehicles' melee profiles (improving their WS would go a long way) or introduce more stratagems like the ork one ("Ramming Speed?") that lets them do mortal wounds on the charge.