Crates

I’m currently building a large terrain piece for Fabes’ and my Warhammer 40,000 games – an Adeptus Mechanicus/Imperial Navy hanger building. The plan is to have battles around the hanger, but also inside the hanger, which will include fights in the main hanger space, involving lots of action movie style firefights between rows of crates.

Now 40k has a pretty simple rule about cover – units in cover get a 4+ save. This is well and good, but misses some of the strategy and fun of fighting in a warehouse environment full of barrels, crates and explosive gas canisters. So, Fabes and I have come up with the following rules to make crate rich environments a bit more exciting…

CRATE TYPES
Crates can be divided into four types. Large Metal Crates, Large Wooden Crates, Small Crates, and Barrels/Cannisters/Ammo Boxes. Each piece of Crate terrain should be designated as one of these types.

CRATE COVER
The four types of Crates provide cover saves for models behind them as follows…

Large Metal            4+
Large Wooden       5+
Small or Barrel/Cannister/Ammo Box      6+

Cover for a barricade of crates is calculated by taking the highest cover save of all the crates in the structure. A barricade containing a Large Metal Crate for instance starts with 4+, while one with no Large Metal but Large Wooden starts at 5+. Every additional crate in the structure adds +1 to the save, to a maximum of 2+.

ATTACKING CRATES
A unit may elect to fire on a crate, or a barricade as if it is another unit. The Armour Values of crates are as follows…

Large Metal           8
Large Wooden      6
Small or Barrel/Cannister/Ammo Box      4

When firing on a barricade the attacker may designate which succesful hits impact on which crate (all hits must be allocated before resolving them).

RESOLVING HITS
When a crate is hit, roll 2d6 on the Crate Impact Table. Each type of crate gets a modifier for this table as follows…

Large Metal           0
Large Wooden    +2
Small                    +2
Ammo Box/Barrel/Canister  +4

Using a flamer, melta or plasma weapon gives an additional +1

CRATE IMPACT TABLE (2d6)

2,3,4,5 – No Effect
6,7,8,9 – If a large crate, replace with a small crate, otherwise no effect
10,11,12 – Destroyed

If a natural double 1 or double 6 is rolled, the crate explodes with a Strength of 3, an AP of 5 and the standard blast template.

So yeah, there we go. Have fun kids!