image courtesy of http://www.thiel-a-vision.com/
Brother C is back after a long hiatus. I was changing jobs
and completely rearranging my life. Now I am back and better than ever.
We (5 of us from the Lancashire Club) participated in the
Battle For Salvation GT. Some reviews and battle summaries are going to follow
but for now, I wanted to post something that I noticed at the tournament and
was wondering about previously. If 6th edition would be the death of the ground
transport.
There has been much hate on the interwebz leading up to BFS
about the use of ground transports. And after the win by Tony Kopach at the
Nova, it seemed a no brainer, why would anyone take ground transports again?
Here are some thoughts I have had on the subjects as well as some tactics as to
how these still may be a viable option for your army.
1.
25% obscured target. No longer do you need 50+%
to get that cover save. It is very very easy to get a cover save on say a truck
or rhino that have very small frontages. Heck, I could put one terminator in
front and it would have the save. Don't forget ruins give you a 4+ save, same
as it was. Does this make them more
survivable? No, not really, but it means you don't need to rely on smoke
launchers as heavily either. Take dual storm bolter rhinos and its like 4 extra
tacts at 24".
2.
Flat Out - Moving an additional 6" in the
shooting phase. This is HUGE. First, it means you can get across the board
faster and to the heart of where the action needs to happen. Having 10
tacticals or those plasma guns from vets where you need them or meganobz
getting into that area terrain for the cover, is huge. It can also move to
block your troops inside from opponent's fire in the next turn. I have used
this to great effect. Move 6" get all 10 tacticals out of the rhino, rapid
fire, and then move the rhino to shield them during the next phase. Yeah, you
may lose that transport in your opponents phase, but then you are free to rapid
fire again, or assault in your next phase. Blocking los to your juicy targets
this way is very advantageous, I can see tau, GKs, etc. using this to great
effect. I also use this sometimes if my thunder fire is on the ground. Move during
the movement so it can see its target, fire, than move that rhino or land
raider back to block from return fire. Creating bottle necks is the third
reason that I love the 6" move in the shooting phase. Don’t want that warboss
in base to base with your IC? Create a bottleneck for them to run through. Try to
trick them into a multi assault, make them lose their bonus attack for charging.
In many circumstances, the rhino is a welcome trade off for that route.
3.
Combat squadding when disembarking is also huge.
Want to hold off an enemy assault from your objective late game? Keep one
combat squad in the rhino and one gets out and assaults the opponent, or lures
them away from the goal. There are many reasons why your would want this
ability to adapt to the situation. Do you want 10 guys, or just 5?
4.
The vehicle damage chart is very friendly now. Glances
won't slow you down marching across that field to get where you need to go. If you
lose the transport when you get there, who cares. If can't score anyways, and
once your men are in the position and location you want, its done its job.
5.
Only 1 difficult terrain test per movement
phase. So if you want, take that dozer blade and throw your transport across as
many terrain tests as you want. Got a battle wagon? That thing is gonna go
cross country all over you. Those boyz or nobs inside are gonna get to where
they want.
6.
The top of the vehicle does not count as a
facing. So it is VERY easy to get cover from flyers.
7.
Passenger inside the vehicle can overwatch as
long as it has firepoints. Very nice. Can you say…. Burnawagon?
8.
Your transport can move up to 12" in the
movement phase and still fire all of its weapons as snapfires. Not bad. Not great.
But hey, better than nothing.
Some cautions to be aware of as well with
these ground transports.
1.
You cannot assault out of a transport unless it
is an assault vehicle if you move and disembark. If your ride gets blown up in
your opponents turn, that unit cannot assault in the subsequent turn if it is
not an assault vehicle.
2.
LOS is not from the haul, meaning.. if you do
not have firing points that grant LOS access, you will not be firing off
psychics powers from those transports. I have had people attempting to cast
invis or something similar from their librarian in a land raider, which has no
firing points. Be careful of this.
3.
Vehicles in assault go down very very fast now. Be
careful you don't waste these transports. They have a duty, make sure they
perform it, then their life is forfeit.
4.
Unit embarked in transports do not count as
scoring for controlling or denying objectives. Be very aware of this.
That is all for now. Anyways, from my experience at Battle
for Salvation, people seemed to be scared of transports, but from those few of
us that had them, they did seem to last. People seemed to lean towards the anti-infantry
shooting more than anti-vehicle. Plus, from all the flamers from the Chaos
Demons codex floating around now, the ground transports makes a nice viable
option to protect yourself from that devastating first round drop of shooting.
How are you using your ground transports? Or have you throw
in the towel as well and are simply foot sloggin your way across the board?
