Recently I’ve been digging into some buildings rules and noticed some tactics that I haven’t seen used before. Come see what dirty tricks you can use with buildings and fortifications!

I would guess that part of the reason why I haven’t seen it used before is because of how unclear or confusing the rules are.

Here are some of the rules that are important to this debate:

Buildings that you claim are a unit in your army. (BRB p.112 – Claiming Buildings) “ A claimed building is a unit in the controlling player’s army …”

Buildings can be affected by any special rule that can affect a vehicle. (BRB p.110 – Attacking Buildings) “When determining if a building can be… affected by a special rule, treat the building as a vehicle unless specifically stated otherwise. ”

Buildings have no faction (BRB p,118) – “Note that Fortifications are an exception in that, unless otherwise stated on their datasheet, they do not have a Faction.”

If you have it in your list, it’s friendly. (BRB p.14) “All models in the same side are friendly models.”

Using these above rules, I believe that it would imply that any special rule that you could use on your own vehicle, so long as the special rule doesn’t specify a faction that it can affect, can affect a building that you claim.

There are some really cool things that you can do with this ruling.

Use Protection

There are several units in the 40k universe that really like to share. Sometimes they share invulnerable saves, sometimes cover. Sometimes they even share it with the enemy. One such unit is the Ork Big Mek with Kustom Force Field. All models within 6” of the bearer get a 5+ invulnerable save from shooting. Putting a Big Mek, in, on, or near a Bastion could really make the building a lot more survivable, and thus protect your Lootas chilling out inside a whole lot better.

The Disappearing Building

Using the Necron Deceiver’s special Rule, Grand Illusion, you can redeploy your building and presumably everyone inside it. This can allow for a ton of flexibility in your army and will allow you to respond to any enemy deployment or scout moves. Imagine that you set up your Firestorm Redoubt in one corner only to have the enemy counter deploy all of their heavy weapons on the same side. You can instead pick it up, after they have committed their forces, and move it out of harms way. The long range guns will likely still be in range of any enemy flyers when they arrive.

The Great Escape

Piggy-backing on the previous entry, the Deceiver can use Grand Illusion to move a building after its escape hatch has already been placed. This can allow a smaller backfield force to have quick access to two objectives that are several feet apart, escape dangerous enemy forces that have destroyed the structure, or even to patrol your whole board edge with one 20 man block of warriors.

Sneaky Sneaky

Using the Eldar Warlord trait that Eldrad (the man) Ulthran comes with, An Eye on Distant Events, you can scout D3 units in your army. This could even be D3 buildings if you have multiple detachments that allow for a fortification. Being able to shunt forward a Bastion full of 10 wraithguard seems pretty solid. Imagine running 120 Guardian Defenders and using Eldrad to Scout a Shield Generator forward 12” to help protect them in mid-field. This ability opens up so many possibilities including a weaker version of the Great Escape, allowing you to effectively place the Escape Hatch 24” from your building’s final position.

With all of this in mind, what do you guys think? I feel that in all of the above instances, the way it plays fits the fluff. But alas, we are here to talk about the rules.

As far as I can tell, all of the above are legal, but are they intended? Planetfall does allow for deepstriking buildings. Is there a rule I missed that affects these combos? Do you think it’s too cheesy even if it’s legal? Should all players who try to scout a bastion be forced to model the building to look like a can of easy-cheese? Let me know what you guys think below.