WARNING!! Some of my understanding might stil be wrong as I only read the rules a couple of times so far. If I talk nonsense, please feel free to correct me in the comments section. I want this article to be as accurate as possible in the end. Thank you!
Your Commander (p. 25)
This is where the rules get interesting. Maybe not the rules themselves but interpretations and implementations of the rules for sure. At first glance, this seems like only a slightly different wording for what we know about Warrior Teams from FoW. Do not be fooled however, these changes go far beyond that.
First of all, 2iCs are gone. If you have more than one HQ Team in your HQ Unit, you can select any of non-transport Teams to be your Commander. The Commander, along with any other Teams from the HQ Unit operate together on the battlefield, following rules for regular platoons (in this case, HQ transports are not an Attachment and will suffer out of command penalties if they wander too far away from the Commander).
The funny part specific to TY is that when you decide to Join a Unit with your Commander, the whole HQ joins it as well. This can easily be used to bolster the survivability of fragile platoons such as AA Units or ITVs with more than one extra body.
Furthermore, the Commander can join ANY Unit of his Formation or supporting it. This has big consequences, described a few paragraphs below.
In order to Join a Unit, the Commander must be within 6" AND in line of sight of the Unit's Leader. So if you want to make sure that a Commander cannot Join a unit (to soak in some shots for example), all you have to do is to drop a small smoke barrier between himself and the Unit's Leader.
What is a small smoke barrier, you ask? :) Well, this is where we approach the madness section of the command rules. TY rulebook says that if your tank Commander gets killed or bogged down, he can jump to another Tank Team. We have 2 main cases here:
1. If he is killed, he can jump to another HQ Tank Team within 6". If there are no other HQ Tank Teams available, you roll a 3+. If successful, he jumps to another Tank Team from the same Formation. If you fail the roll, he dies.
2. If he bogs down, you do the same procedure like for point 1 with the exception that he does not need to go to a HQ Tank Unit.
The implications of this are massive. You can intentionally bog your Commander down right next to an Artillery Unit and then take over one of its Teams. This way, you can split your artillery into two separate Units, gaining an additional Smoke Bombardment option (or extra Bomblets for example). What is also possible with the current rules is that you can now join this artillery Commander tank to an Aircraft Unit. If this happens, you can potentially have a situation where you fire your template rockets with Aircraft and at the same time have your Commander deliver his. How to resolve such a situation is not described in the rules.
Other nonsense plays include the Commander taking over observer tanks and anti-aircraft Teams.
Also, it is nowhere described what happens if he takes over a Unit Leader Team. Does that mean a new one is nominated immediately or does he have to do it, following the rules on page 49? If he has to do it, does the Unit loose its 'In Good Spirits' status because it has no Leader?
All in all this section needs a big improvement in my opinion. Hope this gets resolved by a FAQ at some point.
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