Goatboy’s 40K Oldhammer: Vehicles Rules Were Really Crazy
Goatboy here and today I want look back into the past at how crazy vehicles rules were in old 40K editions.
I remember multiple editions of vehicles just feeling wrong when playing them. They just never felt like they were worth the price and time to get them ready for the tabletop. The only ones that ended up being good basically broke a few rules in order to fix their issues. Let’s look at some of the dumb rules we had to deal with in a game.
vehicle weapon arcs – 5th Edition
Vehicle Firing Arcs
Back in the day a vehicle would only be able to shoot from the barrel of the weapon they were shooting from. There was not a magic box area that a vehicle can fire from any point. They had to be very specifically set up shoot from whatever firing arc the weapon was attached too. Is it on a turret? Well you had a 360 degree firing arc. Is this slapped to the side of your tank? Well it could only shoot from the angle of what the gun was actually able to move. Is it locked on the front of the tank – well it can only shoot in a 90 degree arch from the front.
It was a wild time and you had games where you immobilized a vehicle and could “hide” in the front from its sponsons with your troop as they bunched the tank with a hammer. Every weapon with a Turret is a considered a king because you can never hide from its ire. The old Heldrake showed up with a pure Turret for its Baleflamer that got a new Torrent rule that allowed it to shoot 12″ off of the vehicle and cover you in hellflame. There were man games where my Heldrake would shoot out of its a$$ and wreck your Eldar models with the burning ire of Goatboy.
vehicle movement – 5th Edition
Vehicle Movement Sucked!
There were so many issues moving these boxes. The biggest pain was the fact that rolling over any kind of terrain piece would cause you to roll a difficult terrain test. If you rolled a 1 the vehicle was stuck, got the immobilized result, and just hung out wherever it got stuck. This was the worst thing and caused those armies that had access to dozer blades (Black Templar Land Raiders) to utilize vehicles more than others as it would let you reroll the test.
Beyond just getting stuck you had to deal with moving caused you to shoot a lot less. If you didn’t move you could shoot all its guns. If you moved you would get to shoot less – depending on if you moved Combat speed or full speed. Combat speed was a max of 6″ and lets you shoot most weapons unless they were ordnance or bigger guns. If you moved between 7-12″ you could only fire your defensive weapons which were normally your weaker options. It was a very weird time to play vehicles. You could have Machine Spirit options that let you shoot another gun or other rules that broke this but it was still an annoying time to be a vehicle.
vehicle damage table – 3rd Edition
Vehicle Damage – Was Super Swingy
Vehicles had a damage table that was based on rolling a 6 would cause it to explode. To get to the table you had to penetrate the vehicle with your damage roll by taking your weapons strength plus a d6 and checking versus the vehicle’s armor value. There were some vehicles that gave you a bonus to the roll like a Melta gun but if you couldn’t roll over a 4+ most of the time you almost did nothing to the vehicle.
There were no vehicle hit points until the Knights came out. That brought Hull Points to the front and the initial seeds of the current Wound world we live in now. We’ll talk about Knights in the future will just talk about how vehicles had an instant die roll of a 5 or 6 or you were immobilized and had all your weapons get ripped off. This was the origin for having your vehicles with all their weapons magnetized so you could “showcase” how much damage they had taken.
Heck for a while if you blue up a vehicle you created a terrain piece. This ended creating an interesting side business where companies would make “blown” up terrain area to help fill the table with exploded Rhinos and other troop transports. It is one of the things I kinda miss from the old days as there were a lot of cool things made to help make the tabletop look like a ton of craters and blown up vehicles.
vehicle Tank Shock – 3rd Edition
Old-school Tank Shock / Death or Glory
Oh boy this was a wild one. You would drive your vehicle over the enemy, cause a leadership check, and if they passed they could Death Or Glory your drive by. This would let the enemy decide to move away or stand right in the way and get a single close combat hit. If they had a Melta bomb it was a pretty rough way to watch your tank explode. If they caused a damage to the vehicle – which could stop it with a stun or kill it – they wouldn’t die. If they didn’t kill it they got run over and removed. It was a wild time and every leader had a Meltabomb to make sure the enemy didn’t just run you over all the time.
These rules all lived in the 3rd to 5th edition days. It is wild to see how the changover of vehicles to use wounds in 8th Edition has really helped the game as well as the idea that vehicles should be more punchy. I love that Dangerous terrain is gone as rolling a 1 felt so bad when playing the game.
How many of you still have old vehicle blown up templates in a box somewhere?
