The crews of the war machines described over the following pages all fight in the same way, so rather than repeat ourselves several times over, the rules have been collated for ease of reference. Note that some of the war machines described in the Warhammer Armies books have their own special rules and those will be included with the appropriate army lists.

When shooting at a war machine, shots are worked out against the entire model (both crew and machine) and any hits scored are randomised between the crew and war machine.

When shooting at a war machine, the shooter does not receive any bonus or penalty to his to hit score, unless a war machine is a large target. In which case the normal bonus of +1 to hit for large targets applies. This will be clearly indicated in the army list entry of each war machine.

Once hits have been established, randomise where they strike by rolling a D6. If 1-4 is the result, roll to 'wound' the machine. If the result is a 5 or 6, roll to wound a crewman.

Once all crew are slain, if they flee, or once the machine is destroyed, further hits do not need to be randomised but will strike a crewman or the machine as appropriate.

Any shots from stone throwers, or weapons that use a template, are worked out as follows. If a crewman lies under the template, he is hit. If the machine lies under the template, it is hit.

Usually a machine's crew are identical, so it is not necessary to determine which is hit, but if a machine includes a character he may be hit by shots directed at the machine. In this case, randomise any crew hits to determine whether the character is hit. For example where there are two crew and a character roll a D6: 1-2=crewman A, 3-4=crewman B, 5-6=character.

If charged, a war machine's crew can either hold or flee but cannot stand R shoot as the machine is too cumbersome to allow this.

In close combat, the crew will defend their machines. Models are moved so that they are interposed between their machine and the chargers in order to fight the enemy that comes into contact with the machine.

Enemy models can divide attacks between crew, characters or the machine that they are touching. The machine itself does not fight.

If a machine's crew flees from a charge then the charters can either continue to charge past the machine in order to destroy its crew or, if the player prefers, they can stop when they reach the machine and attack it. The machine itself does not flee as such, but is abandoned by its crew and any associated characters.

If crew flee from close combat, their machine is abandoned. The victors must ignore it in order to pursue unless the player elects to restrain pursuit and passes the required Leadership test to do so.

Note that once they are separated from their war machines, crewmen become a fleeing unit. Consequently, the number of crewmen fleeing is used as the basis for any Panic tests on friendly troops nearby. For the purposes of rallying, the original number of crewmen is considered to be the original size of the unit.

A war machine that is attacked in close combat is assumed to have a WS of 0 and is therefore hit automatically.

An enemy that is attacking an abandoned war machine is not considered to be engaged in combat. No combat results are worked out and the attackers are free to move away from the war machine as they wish.

An abandoned machine can be re-crewed by crew members from any other war machine from the same side if their own machine has been destroyed or if they abandon their machine, The entire crew may deliberately abandon a war machine in order to crew another. Crew models will not fight away from a machine and, if they are charged whilst not serving as crew, they will always flee.

In games where Victory points are awarded for fleeing or destroyed units, a war machine is considered to be destroyed for the purposes of calculating Victory points if either the machine has been destroyed or its entire crew has abandoned the machine (whether they have fled, been killed or moved away).