Vehicles got better in 6th edition?

Alright, most of us know the changes to 6^th edition by now and a lot of people are wondering if vehicles got better or worse.

My answer to that is that we will not really know until a few months from now. If they are bad we will see a meta shift away from them, and if they are good you will see a move to even more of them.  

Now if I had to take a guess, I would say that vehicles got better and here is why:

It is much harder to kill vehicles now with one shot.

I know what you’re saying…what about hull points killing them in the long term? Yes it is harder to kill tanks in the short term, but easier to kill them in the long term. What this means though is:

  A) You have to allocate a lot more resources to kill them. In 5^th edition if you glanced a vehicle you could stun lock it making it not fire the next round. You could stop shooting at it at that point because the threat of it shooting was neutralized for a turn, and you could move on to the next tank. Now in 6^th edition what you have to do is keep shooting at it if you want it not to shoot next turn. Same goes when you hit a vehicle with a penetrating shot because in 5^th edition you had a good chance of wrecking it, and if you did that you did not have to allocate any more shooting at it for the rest of the game. Now because they are harder to kill you are only knocking off hull points so you have to keep shooting, and shooting, and shooting at it to wreck it. That is a lot of shooting over several turns that you did not have to do in 5^th.

  B) A vehicle with 1 hull point left is just as big of a threat as a vehicle with 3 hull points left. Here is another thought for you…all game you are shooting at vehicles and they are getting whittled down so that they are almost dead. For the most part now they are firing back still at full firing capacity (minus any weapon destroyed results of course). So for an example if you look at a comparison between a vehicle (predator) and an infantry squad (tac marines), the predator will still be firing and blazing away until it is dead in the later turns. If you allocate the same amount of shooting to tac marines over several turns they will take damage each turn and more and more marines will drop lowering their combat and shooting effectiveness. So each turn marines are taking damage their damage output is constantly diminishing from casualties, but the predators damage output stays nearly the same until it is dead. 

Cover saves!

Now you only have to cover 25% of the vehicle. There are many times when you try to get a 50% cover save you could not fire all of your weapons due to the way that terrain was configured. The downside is that it is now only a 5+ cover save, but the upside is that you are going to be getting it more often. 

Shooting and scooting
Now vehicles can shoot better on the move. Sure, you are only taking snap shots with the other guns after the first at 6", and if you are moving 12" you are snap shooting everything, it is still better than what you had before.  


The vehicle losers

I will tell you one group of vehicles that did get worse though, and we might be seeing less of…vehicles with no armor and 2 hull points. Yes, I am looking at you storm talon, venom, land speeder, sentinel, piranha, vyper, war buggys, and killa kans. With only 2 hull points you might survive the first shot, but the second will kill you. Add to this that you have no armor, almost everything is going to glance/pen you.

Also vehicles have to be a bit more weary of assaults. They are hit easier, but on the whole I think the gains out weight the losses.