Walkers in Close Combat... How Many Attacks?

The fourth post of the week from The Hogs of War. Title of the post says it all really...

When fighting a Dreadnought or Walker in hand to hand how many attacks do you lose for - losing an arm, being shaken, being stunned, or being immobilized? When do you determine when you lose attacks? This comes up every so often in our games and it is always something that we have to look up or we do it wrong.

From the Warhammer 40k Rule Book page 73 -

• Immobilised and/or stunned walkers fight in close combat with one less attack than usual (to a minimum of 1), but otherwise attack normally, no matter how many immobilised and stunned results they suffered.
• Shaken damage results do not affect the way a walker fights in close combat.
• If a walker is armed with two or more close combat weapons, it gains one bonus attack for each additional weapon over the first.
• If one of its additional weapons is destroyed, one bonus attack is lost.

So heres the deal - 

• If you are stunned or immobilized (or both) you lose one close combat attack. Since it doesn't say you check for this at the start of combat (like it does with attacking with grenades vs. a stunned or immobilised walker) if you manage to stun or immobilize the walker before it gets to swing it will lose one attack [Note - as per the first point above].
• Shaken doesn't do anything to a walker in hand to hand [Note - as per the second point above].
• Here's the tricky part. If you blow off a walkers close combat arm, and it was the only one they were armed with, they don't lose an attack [Note - only the bonus attacks from the ADDITIONAL weapons can be lost as per the fourth point above]. They do however loose the doubling of strength and no longer ignore armor saves [Note - this refers to Dreadnought Close Combat Weapons which is in the box on page 73 of the Big Red Rulebook].
• If you blow off a walkers close combat arm and they were armed with more than one, they lose the bonus attack granted by that arm. Again, since it doesn't say to check for number of attacks at the start of combat, if your opponent manages to blow an arm off before you get to swing you will lose the bonus attack.

I hope this helps! I know I even learned a few things from going over all of this that I have missed in the past. Let me know if I missed anything or if I have interpreted anything wrong!

- Big D in Dreadnoughts and Walkers in Close Combat - How Many Attacks?

And while we are on the topic of Dreadnoughts. Head over to the Work in Progress (WiP) sub-forum of The Bolter and Chainsword to look at Pizzasemmel's stunning Black Templar Dreadnought conversion. It is made of pure win.