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BrotherAlpharius
09-02-2009, 05:40 AM
I don't have access to my Codex/Rulebook at the moment so sorry if this is just me being dozy. At a recent tournament I saw the following:

A player moved his Land Raider in the movement phase; fired in the shooting phase; then his terminators assaulted directly out of the land raider - i.e. they disembarked in the Assault Phase and moved straight into contact with the enemy. His opponent seemed fine with this but I was surprised.

My understanding was that the Assault Vehicle rule allowed you to assault even if you had disembarked from the vehicle that turn, however, I thought that you still had to make the disembarkation move during the movement phase, it could be after the vehicle had moved but would have to be before shooting. I didn't think you could actually wait until the assault phase and then just check that the target unit was within 6" of an access point and then place the models in combat.

This matters because by doing it this way the marine player was able to fire his Hurricane Bolters without a squad of hulking terminators giving the target a cover save and able to thin the target unit's numbers with a thunderfire cannon shot without risking scattering onto his own squad.

Any clarification much appreciated.

Jwolf
09-02-2009, 05:54 AM
This was not a legal maneuver.

BrotherAlpharius
09-02-2009, 06:51 AM
Thought not. Thanks JWolf

ggg
09-02-2009, 06:53 AM
You are spot on. It can be quite difficult to get the shots off from a LRC's hurricane bolters due to the position of the sponsons when you have a squad depolying within 2" of the front assault ramp.

Dbrinson
09-02-2009, 08:07 AM
so from assault ramp vehicle you can assault out from inside the vehicle in the assault phase. does this apply to open topped transports or just assault ramp vehicles?... I see a huge advantage in waiting till the assault phase to get your terms out to assault.

Culven
09-02-2009, 08:09 AM
The problem with this tactic is that there are no rules allowing the unit to Disembark except during the Movement Phase. Disembarking during the Assault Phase, without the Disembark being forced by the destruction of the Transport, is not possible.

DarkLink
09-02-2009, 01:05 PM
The problem with this tactic is that there are no rules allowing the unit to Disembark except during the Movement Phase. Disembarking during the Assault Phase, without the Disembark being forced by the destruction of the Transport, is not possible.

Right. In order to assault, you must have already dismebarked in the movement phase. The assault ramp rule simply allows you to do so after the vehicle has moved, as this is normally disallowed.

Edit: the assault ramp allows you to assault after the vehicle moves and you have disembarked. You can normally disembark after the vehicle has moved, unless going flat out.

EmperorEternalXIX
09-02-2009, 01:12 PM
Actually worth noting: The ramp being vital to the assault is gone, I believe. It is now simply an "assault vehicle" and in fifth, you can disembark from the side doors and assault. I may be wrong on this, but I believe this is correct nowadays.

Culven
09-02-2009, 02:07 PM
I don't think that the front ramp was ever key to the ability. I have never heard of anyone claiming that only the models within 2" of it gained the ability to assault after Disembark. I think it is just a modification to the terminology to prevent people from trying to claim that this was the case.

Aside: Is GW actually starting to think through the potential repercussions of their terminology choices?

Jwolf
09-02-2009, 03:38 PM
Aside: Is GW actually starting to think through the potential repercussions of their terminology choices?

Stranger things have certainly happened. Haven't they? ;)

EmperorEternalXIX
09-02-2009, 04:06 PM
I might be mistaken, but I remember it being tied into the ramp only by way of the assault ramp being the thing that had the rules for assaulting after disembarkation, rather than the land raider itself.

I think it was an odd rule under 4th ed somewhere. Again though, I may be mistaken; I'm by no means infallible especially with old rules, and at the time I joined the game I got a lot of rules very, very wrong (in fact two years into 4th ed I made a rant about how ATSKNF wasn't all that powerful only to find I'd been using it wrong the whole time, heh).

Culven
09-02-2009, 04:36 PM
The older rule was referred to as "Assault Ramp", and I believe that it did mention something about the unit disembarking via the ramp. I don't recall whether this was part of the fluff or the actual rules, but I don't think I even met a player who interpreted it as the entire unit needing to use the ramp for Disembarking. Fortunately, the change to "Assault Vehicle" should eliminate any such potential arguments.

jeffersonian000
09-04-2009, 04:57 AM
I remember when the MkII and MkIII Land Raider designs first came out (MkII was Epic during 2nd Ed, followed by the 40k scale MkIII in 3rd Ed). Back then, the assault ramp was a new concept with assaulting after movement being tied into use of the ramp; models that used the side hatches could not assault that turn if the 'Raider moved. However, this complexity quickly went away with the introduction of 4th edition, where the 3rd Ed rules were superseded by the assault vehicle rule in that edition's main rulebook. 5th edition kept the same rules, except they dropped those rules for the current BRB (if you notice, 3rd and 4th Ed codecii with Land Raiders lack the assault vehicle rule; i.e., Black Templars, Daemonhunters, and Witch Hunters).

Of course, that's reaching back a bit, even for me.

SJ

RogueGarou
09-05-2009, 01:10 PM
GW has been working to streamline a lot of their rules for about ten years, since 3rd Ed released. I honestly have never understood why it has taken them so long to release material. At least with the rumors of Robin Cruddace writing two Codicii in one year it seems to be changing for the better. The Assault Ramp rule is one of the things that I think was streamlined to help game design, rules familiarity, and to accommodate future changes in miniature design and development.

For instance, with the old wording only the front ramp of the Land Raider was usable as an Assault Ramp. Older Terminator models were on a 25mm slotta base. Only part of the base had to be within 2" of the entrance/exit point. The Land Raiders carried fewer models at the time. They have since increased the transport capacity, increased the size of the base but not the 2" disembarkation area. They have also created a rule which only affected the Land Raider, not other vehicles with ramps like the Chimera or Rhino. It is decided to make an Ork vehicle that fulfills the same role with the same rule then that new model is now restricted to either having a designated Assault Ramp and/or having another special rule created for the vehicle. With the change/clarification of the rule to Assault Vehicle those considerations are not so important. A new vehicle can be designed without the model builder having to place a big ramp onto the front of the hull. For instance, a hypothetical new Eldar transport is designed. The designer envisions a solid wraithbone structure with no seams or doors and describes a very sleek appearance but the transport needs to have the ability to allow units to disembark and charge in the same turn. The designer imagines the troops disembark by means of a very short warp jump, maybe it transports Warp Spiders, so their will be no hatches on the exterior of the vehicle. Instead of making a special rule that everyone will need to learn and also need to be looked at for interaction will all of the other rules in the game, the designer just says, "It's an assault vehicle." The designer tells the sculptor to make it slick, sleek and with no exterior doors. A few months or weeks later, a new and svelte transport vehicle shows up at Games Day Somewhere and we all go oooh and ahhh. Or maybe it is a new Necron unit that benefits from this streamlining. Or a whole series of vehicles and armies. And everyone only has to know the one rule to enjoy using or fighting these new vehicles. The change in the rule can open up a lot of new opportunities.

It is a lot better than the old days when every vehicle had its own Datafax that could be difficult to obtain. And oftentimes each vehicle would have rules that were specific to that one vehicle. If another vehicle had the same ability, the Datafax had to waste space describing the same ability or change the wording which could change how the rule worked. More confusion and more time arguing the rules was often the result. The same applied to Wargear and other things in the game. For instance, the Terminator armor save argument went on until 3rd Ed was released. Some people argued that the save was 2 but you got two chances to roll it. Others argued that the save was 2 but you added the two dice together to get the save. Against a boltgun it wasn't that much of a big deal but against a plasma weapon or a lascannon with big negative modifiers, it made the difference between getting a save at all or just removing a couple of hundred points off the table. Just my opinion and everyone has their own.