VEHICLE DESIGN RULES - THE SOUPED-UP VERSION! - December 2000

Oct 7, 2026

Follow-up vehicle design rules address typos, loopholes, and balance concerns from the original VDR. The document emphasizes the mandatory “Most Important Rule” requiring a painted WYSIWYG model and clarifies how to avoid confusing opponents. It revises open-topped versus fully armoured vehicle handling, including points modifications based on total armour, and updates weapon costs by replacing flawed weapon charts, restricting weapon selection by race and providing guidelines for upgrades.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryComic

FormatPDF

Pages9

Reading Time3 min

AccessFree to download

THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE – AGAIN!

PAINTED WYSIWYG MODEL REQUIREMENT

AVOID CONFUSING OPPONENTS

OPEN-TOPPED & FULLY ARMOURED VEHICLES

Pick if Open-Topped or Fully Armoured

Points modification rules

REVISED WEAPON COSTS

Weapon charts replacement

Race-limited weapon selection and upgrades

VEHICLE DESIGN RULES – THE SOUPED-UP VERSION! -December 2000 Ever since the Vehicle Design Rules (VDR from now on) came out in WD 251 I’ve had people bending my ear about them.“Well Jervis,” they say.“Your rules have caused quite a furore – it’s all anybody seems to want to talk about on the net these days.”Fortunately, although quite a lot of the stuff that has come up has either been rules queries or dull questions about game balance, just as much has been really very exciting stuff about vehicle variants, scratch-built models and cool things that the VDR allow people to do in their Warhammer 40,000 games. As the VDR were written to stir up interest in this sadly neglected aspect of the hobby, I’m more than pleased with the response so far, and am quite happy to weather the occasional brick-bat from players who worry that the rules may unbalance the game. This isn’t to say that the rules are perfect. Far from it; the article has more than its fair share of typos and gaffs. Fortunately all these things are easily sorted out, which is the purpose of this follow-up article. Hopefully we’ll be able to look at some of the cool new vehicles I’ve been hearing about in more detail in White Dwarf in the coming months. For the time being though, this article has been written to answer the questions that have arisen, and to close a couple minor loopholes in the VDR that, erm, creative players round the world have considered exploiting. Here goes… THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE – AGAIN! Before I get down to nitty-gritty revisions and Q&A, I must point out very strongly that it is VITAL that people using the VDR obey ‘The Most Important Rule’, which is that in order to use a vehicle created with the VDR it MUST be represented by a PAINTED WYSIWYG MODEL. There are NO exceptions to this rule: if you don’t have a painted wysiwyg (‘what you see is what you get’) model then you can’t use it. Almost all of the arguments I’ve seen for unlikely ‘game-winning’ vehicles fall down on the fact that the author is clearly never going to be able to produce a painted wysiwyg model, and that if he did it would take so long to make and cost so much money that, tobe honest, the player would deserve the slight gaming advantage it might give. A classic example of this kind of thing was the ‘lumbering war machine with 100 bolters’, which while a scary prospect to be sure, is much scarier as a modelling project than it is as atabletop opponent! The other thing that many players seem to forget is that a vital part of the ‘wysiwyg’approach is that the resulting model should not be in any way confusing to an opponent. As noted in the article ‘Basically, if you think to yourself“Will this confuse another player?” and the answer is “Yes” then you shouldn’t do it!’ . A lot of the stuff I’ve seen about changing the characteristics of existing models to suit the player’s own tastes fall foul of this. For example, if you decide you want an armoured Sentinel, you must come up with a wysiwyg model that no opponent can mistake for a normal Sentinel sporting the standard ‘extra armour’ upgrade. If they looked at your model and could be confused by it then you’re breaking the wysiwyg rule and can’t use it. There is more about designing variants on existing vehicles below, but for the time being, just bear in mind that using the VDR to field a normal model but with a new set of stats is breaking the rules and you won’t go too far wrong! OPEN-TOPPED & FULLY ARMOURED VEHICLES Probably the biggest problem with the VDR that appeared in WD251 is that I had failed to appreciate that they allowed players to create ‘fully armoured’ versions of what would be usually ‘open-topped’ vehicles in the Codex army lists. The best example of this is the armoured Sentinel model mentioned above, which is exactly the same as a normal Sentinel but not open-topped, and which comes in considerably cheaper under the VDR than it should do. Fully-armoured versions ofOrk buggies have also sh

FAQs

What is the Most Important Rule for using vehicles designed with the VDR?

A vehicle must be represented by a painted WYSIWYG model. If you don’t have a painted WYSIWYG model, you can’t use that VDR vehicle.

How should you decide between open-topped and fully armoured vehicles under the revised rules?

When designing a vehicle you must choose whether it is open-topped or fully armoured. Points are then modified using the total armour of all four facings from the provided table.

What changes are made to weapon charts and weapon selection in the follow-up article?

The document replaces the WD251 weapon charts and fixes mistakes by adding guidelines. Weapons are limited to those belonging to one race on a vehicle, and vehicle weapons must match the race of the army the vehicle is being made for, with stated exceptions.

Oct 7, 2026

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