Impulsor

The Grav-Rhino is back with a vengeance! Except it can’t fly like in grav Rhino art.

Well it seems that /tg/'s complaints about the Primaris' lack of a proper transport have finally been answered. Behold, for GW has given us the Impulsor ... which is, for all intents and purposes, a floating Rhino. Seriously, we would not be surprised if the Impulsor was a literal hand-me-down of the Custodes and Sisters of Silence' mothballed Grav-Rhino.

Overview

Being smaller and cheaper than the floating deck of guns known as the Repulsor Tank, the Impulsor literally looks like the hull of a Rhino with a truck bed and some anti-grav plates bolted on.

It is armed with two Storm Bolter sponsons (which can alternately be armed with Fragstorm Grenade Launchers) and an optional pintle-mounted Ironhail Heavy Stubber. Unlike the sponsons of other Imperial vehicles, the mounts on the Impulsor are uniquely designed. They are far more compact and modular, reducing the physical vulnerability that most sponsons are known for while retaining additional firepower. However, despite having the aforementioned truck bed for marines to stand in, since it's being explicitly described by GW as “open BACKED,” it does not benefit from the open-topped rule.

That truck bed does, however, grant it the Assault Vehicle special rule, which means that as a transport it can uniquely deploy your models after moving— with the downside that your disembarked units then can't charge that turn. So while it still can't deliver the fabled Turn 1 charge, if you're using this ability to deploy something like a unit of Hellblasters in your opponent's face on turn 1, you probably never cared about that anyway. As a Squad Bus, it only carries 6 compared to the Repulsor's 10 and cannot transport units with Gravis armor (read: no Aggressors).

Finally, for added spice, you can equip it with either a 5++ Shield Dome for added durability, an Ironhail Skytalon Array to take potshots at stray flyers, a Bellicatus Missile Array to threaten light vehicles, infantry, and aircraft, or an Orbital Comms Array for calling in a once-per-vehicle-per-turn-per-game orbital strike that does d3 mortal wounds within d6 inches of a point you specify on a roll of 4+ (5+ for characters). A bare-bones Impulsor with no options is 30 points more than a Rhino, but considering its far greater capability it's still worth taking for any Primaris-heavy force.