Apparently all the forces of Chaos forget to bring their Dreadclaws to battles and those who turn renegade become allergic to Drop Pods...
Methinks tis time to change all that.
Dedicated Transport - Dreadclaw - 45 points
F 12, S 12, R 12
Composition - 1 Drop Pod, Unit Type - Vehicle
Fire Points - None
Access Points - A unit may embark or disembark as long as the whole unit is within 2" of the base of the Dreadclaw. All normal transport rules apply.
Transport Capacity - 12 Models or 1 Dreadnought. Models in Terminator armour may be transported but count as 2 models.
Special Rules
- Dreadclaw Assault *
- Soul of the Machine **
- Assault Boat ***
*Dreadclaw Assault - Dreadclaws always enter play by Deep Strike. At the beginning of your first turn you must choose half of your Dreadclaws (rounding up) to make a 'Dreadclaw Assault'. Units making a 'Dreadclaw Assault' arrive on the players first turn. The arrival of the remaining Dreadclaws is rolled for as normal. However if the army contains 3 or less Dreadclaws all may be nominated to arrive on the first turn. A unit that arrives via Dreadclaw may not assault on the turn it arrives.
** Soul of the Machine - When interfaced with the array of navigational augurs and logic engines, the machine spirit of the Dreadclaw began to manifest a surprising degree of self-awareness - Should a Dreadclaw scatter on top of impassable terrain or another model then reduce the scatter distance by the minimum required in order to avoid the obstacle. In addition, when arriving from Deep Strike the Dreadclaw rolls 3 dice for scatter and must discard one (this need not be the highest) a 'hit' is obviously still a 'hit'.
Editors Note - The following rule is a bit of an experiment based on feedback. If anybody can think of a better way of doing it I'm open to suggestions ;-)
*** Assault Boat - Once landed the Dreadclaw counts in all respects as a Vehicle that has suffered an immobilised damage result for the purposes of movement and vehicle damage table results. However, any turn after the one in which it has landed the Dreadclaw can attempt to redeploy to another location in the following manner - As long as there is a unit embarked in the Dreadclaw you may roll a die in the movement phase. If the result is a 1-5 the Dreadclaw is removed from the table and put into reserve together with the embarked unit and is rolled for from reserves as normal. If a 6 is rolled then something has gone wrong and the Dreadclaw may not be moved for the rest of the game. All normal rulebook rules for reserves apply so if your Dreadclaw is in reserve after turn 5, it and the embarked unit counts as destroyed for the purposes of both Kill Points and Victory points.
Options
May be fitted with a Dirge Caster **** for 5 points
**** Dirge Caster - Emits a terrifying mix of Screams, Wails, Scrapcode and unholy prayers to the Chaos Powers - Any enemy unit within 6" suffers a leadership modifier of -1, Any friendly unit within 6" becomes 'Stubborn'
That should do it. Unfortunately, much as I would have liked to there is no basis in the background for giving the Dreadclaw a ranged weapon. Also, I always thought it a bit daft that a force only using a small amount of Drop Pods would still choose to launch them piecemeal so I fixed that.
There was of course lurking in the back of my mind the option of making the Dreadclaw damage whatever it lands on rather than avoiding it like Drop Pods do, If people like that option better I'll have a think about it.
Thoughts?
Id allow you to remove the dread claw the turn after its landed and redeploy via DS on the next turn so you can use it for squad redeploying if you embark in it. Prob wont get used much but in keeping with its background and make it further apart from its imperial counterpart.
ReplyDelete@Boomstick - I've added an experimental rule for redeploying the Dreadclaw. To work however it does require the Dreadclaw to be treated more like a standard transport for the purposes of embarking and disembarking. Let me know what you think.
ReplyDelete