http://www.3plusplus.net/2013/01/vehicles-in-6th-transports-in-combat/Back to discussing one of the major paradigm changes from 5th to 6th – vehicles of course! This article will focus on their role in assault with a specific focus on how that impacts passengers.
Previously, running a transport forward was a pretty good way to advance with minimal repercussions from assaults. This was one of the many reasons why purely assault based armies had (and still have) issues for if you could not drop said vehicle(s) with shooting, your opponent had gained a significant advantage as it was highly unlikely assault units could destroy the vehicle in combat. Thusly, the passengers were safe. Further to this, most transports have rear door exits so it’s much harder to stop passengers from getting out by blocking up the exits.
6th edition changes all of this with several mechanics. First, destroying a tank in combat is a LOT easier. Even mass S4 attacks are much better than they were before in this regard (assuming rear AV10) as vehicles are now at best, WS1 (i.e. most stuff hits you on a 3+). Second, random charge length means vehicles could completely avoid combat or could be suddenly surrounded by morons. Third, you cannot charge what you cannot see. Fourth, you cannot charge if you were in a vehicle at the start of your turn or if you were forcibly disembarked from one the previous turn (i.e. it is destroyed from underneath you). Fifth, there’s new vehicle movement and disembarkation rules including things like Flat Out.
So, what does this mean? Well the most obvious answer is – don’t bloody leeroy your damn transports with guys into the enemy. It will give them ample opportunity to smack the tank around and take out the unit inside in one fell swoop. That is not what you want and the completely wrong way to use transport vehicles. If you do this, you deserve to be smacked around.
Instead what you have to do is change how you go about this. Pushing the vehicle up is fine – most transports are cheap and this is one of their roles as a sacrificial blocker. As long as you control the distance of the enemy’s opposing charge the death of this vehicle can be very useful. You do this in two ways – making the charge distance extremely large and therefore unlikely to happen but if it does, a unit has been overextended or by making the charge distance so tiny the extra distance from charging is basically negated and the enemy is bottled up (aka blocked).
Further to this, what you do with the contents of transports (assuming there any) also changes. Previously, as mentioned above, you could push transports forward with minimal fear of the passengers being significantly hurt. You can still do this, though you are going to require more than one vehicle to do so to keep transport exits safer, but you’re more likely to expose them to danger (which is increased from 5th edition). Importantly though, how your units can turn around and poke the enemy has changed significantly.
In 5th edition it mattered little how the vehicle with contents was destroyed if shooting couldn’t do it – the passengers were pretty darned safe for a turn and were up in the opponent’s grill. This meant they could hop out and start hacking and slashing at things nearly 15” away. This has all changed, even if your transport is removed by the opponent – if you were in it, the proximity to your opponent matters not. For some units, like IDK Grey Hunters!, this isn’t going to be a problem but for 99% of units out there, giving up the initiative like this is more often than not, not something you want to be doing consistently.
Rather, and remember some of the points we pointed out above, depending upon the placement of enemy units in relation to the transport, a unit is often better getting out the turn the vehicle actually pushes forward. This does several things. First, the unit gets to fire its full complement of weapons if needed. Second, if they disembark before the vehicle moves, the vehicle can use a Flat Out move to protect the unit further. Third, if the transport gets surrounded and destroyed, the unit is safe outside of the transport, is harder to charge due to the metal bawks in the way and can counter attack with both shooting and combat options. Much better than only having one option and regardless of what you do – you’d likely have been charged next turn regardless. Using transports and their units inside like this gives you more options in how to engage the enemy.
Put simply, the old plans don’t work. The changes are obvious in some ways and subtle in others but not the point that vehicles have lost their value. As we’ve said countless times, they are not useless in 6th but they are not the “Now I’ll start with 10 of these…” either. The way they work and INTERACT with the armies on the table is now a lot more diverse and varied which is ultimately, a good thing. So in regards to combat, vehicles suck there now. All you need is 27 S4 attacks against a moving vehicle and it’s gone and if you had guys inside that and it was surrounded, they are gone now, too. But vehicles are still more likely to leave wrecks over explosions. They still block Line of Sight and movement. They are faster than they were before. They are still offering protection to the foot units at an often cheap price (35 points for Rhinos, 55 points for Chimeras, 85 points for Devilfish, etc.). Use this.
