The time has finally come. Hours of careful maneuvering and intentional strategic sacrifices have led to a moment where you might be able to snatch victory from the slavering jaws of defeat. All you need to do is send your elite melee infantry across 20 inches of table and charge them into your enemy’s backline objective, where they will slaughter his weak defenders and secure you a victory. Yes, 20 inches is a long way, but you prepared. They are cooling their heels in a state-of-the-art transport, whose staggering movement and subsequent deployment range will put them needing to pull off a measly 5 inch charge. With a spare command point in your back pocket for a possible reroll, your victory is all but assured.
Your transport makes its move, sweeping towards the weakly guarded objective. You see fear flash in your opponent’s eyes as he calls out. “Overwatch!” That’s fine, that is what the transport is for. A hail of small arms fire and flamethrowers that would have shredded your infantry patters harmlessly off of the transport’s side. The transport arrives, 8 inches from your foe. It disgorges your warriors, putting them a mere 5 inches away. You forgo shooting, avoiding killing the nearest of your targets for fear of increasing your charge. It matters not, it is not the kill that will win you the game but securing that sweet objective. The charge phase comes along, and you grin with maddened glee as you announce your intention.
For some reason, your opponent does not wail, neither do they gnash their teeth and weep with dismay. They just look at you with a bemused expression. “Yeah, you can’t charge after disembarking from a moved transport.” And so, the day is lost.
Most of us have probably experienced a scenario like this before. Transports is a common, but surprisingly fiddly category of units that can make or break a game based solely on one’s understanding of how to use them. While I am sure that many are intimately familiar with the ins and outs of our beloved party buses, experience has suggested that some pointers might not hurt.
The first thing that is important to understand about transports is movement. This is the most common reason that players take a transport in the first place. The combination of increased movement and protection means that many transports are used as a delivery system for short ranged or melee troops. The natural assumption, in this case, is to use the transport as described above, shooting across the battlefield towards a juicy target and dropping its proverbial payload of to deal maximum damage. For ranged units, this works more or less as intended. A unit kitted out with shotguns or flamers with a sparse 12 inch range can use the added movements to arrive at their target, hop out within 3 inches, and fire away.
Melee units, on the other hand, enjoy no such luck. A unit that hops out of a transport that has moved counts as having made a move itself, but more importantly is unable to make a charge. (Unless you are a land-raider. Space Marines get all the good toys!) For a melee unit, a little more planning is required. Ideally you want to get the transport to a spot that you want your embarked melee unit to be at on the following turn. This does, of course, allow a savvy opponent to guess at your intent, but it does not lock you into anything.
On the following turn, before moving the transport, the embarked unit is free to disembark, move, shoot, charge, or whatever else they would normally be able to do. (Weird side note, a unit that disembarks cannot “remain stationary.” It doesn’t mean you have to move further, but it does rule out things like “Heavy”.) This allows your melee unit to move and hopefully still pull off their charge. More importantly, it frees up your transport to do other things.
In my personal experience players tend to treat a transport like a disposable unit. It moves, it drops off its guys, then just whatever. This misuse of a potentially great tool is sacrilege! Transports are still units in their own rights, perfectly capable of doing actions and performing secondary missions. Not only that, but as vehicles (usually. Talking to you, Tyranids.) they can happily charge in alongside your melee unit and tank shock any target, possibly getting in a few mortal wounds to guarantee the death of your foe.
These general tips can certainly help sway a battle in your favor, but I would be remiss if I did not mention a personal passion project of mine. The Party Bus. If you were looking for general tips, that part of the article has ended, please feel free to comment and tell me how much of an idiot I am. If you wish to stay and engage with me on the concept of the Party Bus, we need to talk about firing deck.
Ok, firing deck is weird. Essentially, some transports have a rule called “firing deck x”. X can be any number, up to the transport capacity of the vehicle. The Transport my select ONE weapon from X number of models embarked within it and that weapon transfers to the transport for the shooting phase. While this rule simulates troops within the transport firing their weapons out of port holes or over railings, it has some weird rules interactions.
For all intents and purposes the transport is now equipped with those weapons, until the end of the shooting phase. The first thing that this means is that any special rule that the embarked unit has, like rerolling hits or wound rolls, does not apply. Secondly, any leader bonuses, like lethal hits given to a unit, do not apply. Thirdly, those weapons are no longer being fired by infantry, but by a vehicle. The weapons retain any special rules that the weapon itself possesses, such as pistol or heavy or assault, etc, etc.
This means that the weapons in question can make use of the big guns never tire rule, allowing them to fire while the vehicle is in combat at a -1 to hit penalty. It also means that any benefit that applies to the vehicle itself applies to those weapons. This is where the idea of the Party Bus comes in. How many benefits can I stack on one transport sporting a ton of weapons and how well does it work? In practice so far, not great. I remain unperturbed in my experimentation.
For example. An Ork Mek who ends a move within 3 inches of an ork vehicle can repair it for d3 wounds. When he does this, the vehicle also gains +1 to hit with all attacks until the start of your next movement phase. So, if we take an Ork Battlewagon, which has transport 22 and firing deck 11, that +1 bonus to hit is essentially being added to 11 more weapons than the battlewagon usually sports. For example, if 10 Flashgitz were embarked on the Battlewagon, they would be adding 30 str6 -1ap 2d shots with a 24 inch range, and sustained hits 1. Normally these shots would be hitting on 5s (Orks), but the Mek makes them hit on 4s.
Another cheeky combination exists in my four-armed lad’s repertoire. Genestealer Cults Goliath Trucks have transport 12 and firing deck 6. If a 10 man unit of neophyte hybrids led by a Benefictus is embarked then the truck gets a mining laser, seismic cannon, grenade launcher, flamer(or webber) and the Benefictus’ psychic attack. (plus 1 autogun…ok, they can’t all be winners.) The Cartographic Data-Leech enhancement on the Benefictus makes all of the weapons +1 to hit (2+ for psychic, 3+for medium weapons and 4+ for heavy.) and a 1CP strat (Close-Range shootout) gives all of the weapons Lethal Hits (within 18 inches.)
No discussion of Party Busses is complete, however, without talking about the Astra Militarum’s Stormlord. With Transport 40 and Firing deck 24, this super-heavy monster can sport an absolutely hilarious amount of firepower. Embarking 3 heavy weapon squads gives the behemoth 9 extra lascannons. 6 ogryns loaded up gives you 6 ripper guns (heavy bolters with rapid fire 3), and you could still load up a couple of characters with solid weapons (like a primaris psyker) to add to the fray. The biggest issue here is that you are going to end up with something like half of your points tied up in a silly idea that will be fun to roll but probably not help you win the game. Also, as a titanic unit the stormlord does not benefit from a lot of other bonuses, like the detachment lethal hits ability and it cannot be ordered.
So there are three of my sillier ideas from 3 of the armies I have run. Obviously, I don’t know every army, so let me know what other silly stackable bonuses are out there.
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