Vehicle variants

Until now it has been common to represent different vehicle variants in Epic with the same set of characteristics. For example, all of the different Ork battlewagons are represented by the same set of characteristics. This has been something of a bone of contention between the old school ‘Net Epic’ and Space Marine players who love the detail of the old system (where such vehicles were different, and the new breed of Epic 40,000 who love the playability and greater tactical depth of the new game. Now, it will come as no surprise to hear that I place myself firmly with the later group. However, both myself and fellow Epic 40,000 designer Andy Chambers have come to feel that we can allow for some variation between different types of broadly similar vehicles, just as long as we’re careful not to end up disrupting the smooth Epic game system as we do so.

The answer we feel is to apply the principles of the ‘Specialists’ and ‘Special Ability’ rules to variant vehicle designs, in much the same way that they apply to infantry units. For example, an Imperial Guard Heavy Weapon squad is shown in the Guard list by the notation ‘As Imperial Guard +Heavy Weapons’. It seemed to us that we could apply just the same principle to vehicles as well, representing, for example, the old DeathRolla by the notion ‘As Battlewagon +Assault’.

Unfortunately just using the existing Specialist rules didn’t always work, so we’ve come up with the following list of ‘Vehicle Variant’ special rules. In this issue of EpicMag we make use to these new rules and principles in the articles about the Leman Russ Tank variants and in the new 3^rd edition Ork Detachment rules. We also expect to use these rules in future articles about other tank variants.

Tank variants

Sometimes models of a common vehicle will be modified to carry out certain specialised tasks. Just like specialist infantry, the vehicles are modified to become better in assaults, fire at longer ranges, act as transport vehicles, and so on. For example, the Leman Russ Conqueror is a variant of the Leman Russ with a lighter gun that allows it to shoot more easily on the move, allowing it to move more quickly around the battlefield. The effect of these different vehicle variants on the Epic rules are listed below in this section.

Important: Sometimes the ‘vehicle variant’ rules may apply to a unit which is ‘technically’ an infantry unit under the Epic rules (a variant artillery piece, for example); this makes no difference to the way that the rules in this section are applied.

In addition the rules in this section can be applied to flyers; once again this makes no difference, except that modifications that would reduce the flyers speed instead reduce both the flyer’s assault values by 1 each per 5cm of movement reduction.