40K 6th- First Impressions- Vehicle Types

Arbites Target Identification

Hi all,

I covered vehicles in general in the last post- now it's time to dig in to specifics. Vehicle Types! Also known as What Tanks can Do!

Lets start with the most common one- Tanks. These are- exactly the same. They can tank Shock, they can Ram, and now that you can pre-measure these become easier to resolve. Other than that, they are standard vehicles.

Heavy vehicles are slow, lumbering things and so cannot move at cruising speed or Flat Out. However, they do always count as Stationary for shooting.



Fast Vehicles can move 12" Flat Out, and can fire all weapons with BS at Combat Speed, and 2 at Cruising Speed. To examine that briefly- Blood Angel Rhino chassis could move 18" in 5th and fire 1 weapon, 12" if they wanted to fire all guns. Now, they can move 12" and fire 2 weapons at BS, all others at Snap Fire, or they can move an additional 12" in the shooting phase. it's a little different, but it might be crucial. Especially to Blood Angel Las/Plas Razorbacks.

Skimmers ignore terrain when moving and get Jink. In trade, if they move Flat Out and get immobilised, they crash to the ground and get destroyed. Sounds fair. Oh yes, they can also move 18" at Flat Out if they are Fast Skimmers- so Land Speeders, Falcons etc get a total move of 30" if they want it!

Open-Topped vehicles are Assault Vehicles- so yes, Dark Eldar and Orks can still assault off the back of a Raider/Trukk. The whole vehicle counts as an access point, and passengers shooting is measured from any part of the hull. On that note, if a vehicle moves at combat speed, the unit onboard counts as moving. If it travels at cruising speed, they can only snap fire. If it moves Flat Out, they can't shoot- and if they shoot, it can't move Flat Out (don't be a douche, that ones obvious.)

Walkers are exactly the same as they were- just bear in mind that you can choose to flee from a unit that you cannot hurt (take the first hit on the Power Fist Serg., then flee the rest of the guys and save yourself the pain.)

That's it for vehicle types- oh, hold on a second, I forgot something.

Yes, Chariots! A new vehicle type makes its way into 40K These basically work the same way as the Necron Command Barge- riders can make a Sweep Attack, are Fearless and get an improved Hammer Of Wrath attack- d6 attacks at S6 AP-. However, the character cannot fight in a challenge.

So some nice little tweaks to vehicles, and a new type. I particularly like the feel of Fast Skimmers now- Jink, lots of movement, lots of shots, but fragile as all holy hell. Awesome :)

Comments, as always,

... can wait until I've mentioned Flyers :) Yes, Jervis and Ricks promise from 10 years ago has finally been broken, Flyers are in the Core rules. Is this a good thing?

Well, it's certainly cool. The ability to run a 40K Air Force is quite exciting. However, they need to release lots of units to deal with flyers for each Codex- fast. Nothing else in the ruleset has no counter so far- but Flyers are a special case. Tyranids can only deal with them with Vector Strikes, and then they are only S6 against armour 11 in many cases (12 for the StormRaven.) In the short-term, there is a risk of them dominating the game.

Flyers Zoom! That's how they move. They can make 1 turn of 90 degrees at the start of their move (and one at the end of they are Vector dancers) and must move between 18" and 36". They cannot be assaulted, and can only be shot at with Snap Fire unless the weapon has the Skyfire rule (in which case it fires normally.) They can fire up to 4 weapons, 2 of which can be Missiles and 1 of which can be a bombing run (this actually denies 1 weapon shot in the next phase, but is dropped in the Movement phase.) they can also elect to use all shots as Skyfire shots- meaning that they hit Flyers normally, but ground targets are hit using Snap Fire. If they need the saves, they can Evade, in which case they get Jink but can only fire using Snap Fire next tun. Finally, there are a few changes to the damage table- immobilised is replaced with Locked Velocity- meaning that it can no longer turn. Don't worry, when it leaves the board it goes back into reserve. Also, if it is destroyed, then a large blast marker's worth of S6 AP- hits the ground and all transported models take a S10 hit ignoring armour saves within 3" of the blast.

So Flyers are pretty cool models to bring to the table. they have to start in reserve, then they can start zooming around the battlefield indiscriminately. Currently, the best weapon to take out another Flyer is... a Flyer! So I can see most players investing in at least a few of them- the sooner the Harpy is released, the better! in the very short term they will likely have a high impact on games- but over the next 6 months, I expect that impact to be lessened with the release of various anti- Flyer units for each army. Time will tell.

For now, Comments as always are welcome.