Signals from the Frontline: Big Nasty B from LatCS joins us! News, Rumors, Eldar, Glitter!
Show Notes
5-10-13
Podcast at the bottom of the post!
News
- Vegas, baby, Vegas! We’re just about committed to this epic festival of epicness! Get ready to kick the tires and light the fires, because this event is going to be epic!
- Eldar, Eldar, Eldar!! May 24th is the rumored pre-order date! They’re tall, they’re skinny, they’re stylish! Get ready because all indicators point to the pointy eared, rainbow ray shooting space elves coming out in June. That means 25% off pre-order awesomeness!
- New Micro Art Studios Infinity Terrain, looks fantastic: http://microartstudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20431#p25587 http://www.microartstudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20473
- The new Heavy Gear video game sounds legit. It will be called Heavy Gear Assault, and the concept is you play as a arena gear pilot and rise up through the ranks, fighting duels, upgrading your gear, and becoming a boss. It will be multi-player, too, so you can bet on other players’ games and win prestige. Your gear will be totally customizable, too. Download Gear Up 6 for free by following the link: http://www.rpgnow.com/product/113116/Gear-Up-Issue-6
- Heavy Gear is really stepping up their game. The new models released for the Southern Forces look markedly better than the older sculpts and the paint jobs are WAY better. The new faction books are better, too. Check out some of the very cool minis! https://www.facebook.com/DreamPod9/photos_stream
- Mecha Front a game we saw at Adepticon is starting to release some 3D WIP pics of his work. This game looks intriguing, I must admit: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/511518.page#5348960
- New Warhammer Forge Squig Gobba! http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/New_Stuff/NIGHT_GOBLIN_SQUIG_GOBBA.html
- Dream Forge Games is behind schedule with the Wave 2 and 3 release of their models due to manufacturer delays.
- Warzone Resurrection releases 3D renderings of new models for Mishima and Bahaus. They look pretty sweet. http://warzonegame.com/
- Adam from over at www.thediceabide.com has created a forum for organized play in San Francisco. http://z13.invisionfree.com/thediceabide/index.php?
Rumors
- Eldar to go up for pre-order May 24th, released the first week of June
- “To be fair, the flyers and wraithknight are the new shiny things, so they’re going to be what grab the most attention.
- You are getting new wraithguard – it’s a double pack that also do a close combat version. Both types will also have weapon options.
- The Finecast that I’ve seen are a spiritseer and a ranger, and your new battleforce replaces the warwalker with a viper.”
- Stats for the Eldar “Knight” main gun: “Pulsar Lance” Primary fire mode:
36″ S:8 AP2 Heavy 2, Lance Overcharge mode (weapon may not fire next turn)
48″ S:10 AP1 Heavy 1, Blast, Lance
- -Universal Fleet including the Avatar. The Wraith stuff though won’t have fleet.
- -Old independent character special rules moved to Warlord Traits
- -Jet Bikes moved back to Fast Attack (IC to unlock to troops)
- -Eldar psychic powers nerfed: some powers disappearing, random table, focus on witchfire
- -Warlocks can only use Eldar specific psychic powers
- -Runes of Warding Nerfed: No longer board wide
- -Farseer 2 wounds
- -Eldrad Mastery Level 4, Staff of Ulthamar similar to Ahirman staff
- -Almost all Phoenix Lords lose Eternal Warrior have cost reductions
- -Exarch’s must be included in all Aspects units. (Sergeant Character)
- -Don’t expect many changes with the Aspect warriors just cleaning up old rules and such
- -Dark Reapers, Swooping Hawks, and Banshees see the biggest cost drops and anti-flyer additions
- -Guardians 7 points a piece
- -Vehicles will have either no cost reduction of very minor reduction (5pts) with Vypers benefiting the most
- -Vehicles come stock with shuriken cannons vehicle savings come with cheaper weapon upgrades and wargear
- -Eldar Flyers first to get Vector Dancer (minus Forge World of course)
- -Don’t be surprised to see Giant Wraithlord with T8 and Will not Die
- The Eldar codex in essences won’t reinvent the wheel this is update to bring them in line with 6th edition units costs and such and with Phil Kelly supposedly once again at the helm expect the changes to be more like Chaos Space Marine codex and less like the Chaos Daemons codex.
- Don’t expect to see any new Aspect molds with maybe Swooping Hawks getting an update.
Rant Session
- To Da Boyz, if you’re listening, I will buy you dinner as we agreed to at the next Adepticon.
- Keno’s Vampire LARP character is legendary!
List Review
This is a tyranid army that is heavy deep strike… designed to get around Hammer and Anvil deployment and have a huge alpha strike.
1850 points
HQ
Hive Tyrant 310
2x Twin Linked Devourer with Brainleech Worms
Wings
Hive Commander
Old Adversary (force multiplier in heavy shooting list)
TROOPS
Tervigon 160
no upgrades
Termagants x 10 150
Devourers
Mycetic Spore
Cluster Spines
Termagants x 10 150
Devourers
Mycetic Spore
Cluster Spines
Termagants x 10 150
Devourers
Mycetic Spore
Cluster Spines
Termagants x 10 150
Devourers
Mycetic Spore
Cluster Spines
Termagants x 10 150
Devourers
Mycetic Spore
Cluster Spines
ELITES
Doom of Malantai 140
Mycetic Spore
Cluster Spines
HEAVY SUPPORT
Trygon Prime 250
Toxin Sacs
Trygon Prime 240
In an ideal scenario the hive tyrant and tervigon start on the board in cover or out of line of sight. On turn 2, the other 8 units arrive on a 2+, and the flyrant swoops forward to provide aura buffs to all of the shooting. The tervigon spawns scoring units and holds backfield objectives.
The heavy deep striking provides flexibility to put the majority of my army anywhere on the board. The pods can fire 2 weapons since they are monstrous creatures, and can also contest objectives.
Trygons are upgraded to prime for synapse coverage.
The major concern would be getting tabled on turn 1, but if I’m worried about that I can start 1 or 2 trygons on the board.
Holy crap!!!!!! The LARP section and how to counter Hammer and Anvil deployment had me laughing out loud. Fantastic podcast today. Thanks for the good laughs…
Glad you liked it!
Thanks for the shout out Reece!
No worries =)
Here’s the Nid list’s author with some counter points:
Thanks for the feedback!
To answer your question on the podcast, this list has been working fairly well. I’ve played three games. Two of them were against new players, who got crushed (including one Dark Eldar player playing venom/raider spam). I played one game against a really experienced tournament player running chaos marines (helldrake, 2 maulerfiends, 2 rhinos with chaos marines, khorne lord on juggernaut with spawn unit) with flying circus demon allies. We played to a tie, and I thought the list was really effective.
(Btw, pro tip, charge maulerfiends with termagants… they’re WS 3, so they hit on 4+, and they only get 3 attacks. They’ll be there all day).
I think un-priming the trygons would be more points-efficient, but that takes away all of the army’s synapse… all of those deep strikers would be supported by a single flyrant for synapse, that’s way too risky.
I ran the list by Paul Murphy, and his suggestion was to add a Mawloc. I really like this idea for a couple of reasons:
– As Paul pointed out, a lot of the IG forge world artillery has the “immobile” special rule, which makes the unit ignore forced movement. If you look at “Terror From the Deep”, any unit which can’t be moved out of the way of the blast marker is destroyed, so a mawloc auto-kills things like sabers and thud guns. Really nice tool to have.
– The Mawloc also gives you deployment/reserves flexibility. You can start with the mawloc and the tervigon on the table, and if you’re really not concerned about getting tabled on turn 1, you just burrow the Mawloc and leave the tervigon sitting there alone. If you’re worried about getting shot off the table, leave the Mawloc there to soak wounds until the rest of your army arrives, then he can join the party turn 3.
As for getting tabled, I really haven’t had any problems so far. Also, the way the tabling rule is written, I believe you need to have zero models on the board at the end of a *game* turn, so as long as you survive one turn of shooting, you’ll be fine. Even if you get blown off the board at the top of 2, your army will still come in. As long as you get any sort of cover save or feel no pain, it’s pretty hard to shoot two monstrous creatures that are hiding in the opposite corner off the board on turn 1. Just get one big line of sight blocker or a single ruin.
Also, I believe Hive Commander works while the Hive Tyrant is in reserve. The wording is “as long as the hive tyrant is alive”.
Pods… cluster spines is an amazing upgrade for mycetic spores. Since they’re monstrous creatures, they can fire two weapons, so they get to fire both their ripper tentacles and their cluster spines. The spines are a large blast, which really mitigates the low BS of the mycetic spores. Also, once you get 5-6 pods on the board (all with 18″ threat bubbles), it really starts to clog things up and make things hard for your opponent. 10 points! I would honestly pay 50 points for a mycetic spore with cluster spines if it didn’t have any transport capacity… I think they’re that useful.
Here is the list I’m thinking about now. It slims down the gaunts and drops one pod to fit in a mawloc, and loses a couple of upgrades. This list has 5 MC’s, but since you can reserve half of your units (rounded up), you can keep 3 off the board and start with just the tervigon and mawloc:
HQ
Hive Tyrant
Wings
2x Devourer with Brainleech Worms
Hive Commander
Old Adversary
Heavy Support
Trygon Prime
Trygon Prime
Mawloc
Elites
Doom of Malantai
Mycetic Spore
Cluster Spines
Troops
Tervigon
10 Devilgaunts
Mycetic Spore
Cluster Spines
10 Devilgaunts
Mycetic Spore
Cluster Spines
10 Devilgaunts
Mycetic Spore
Cluster Spines
10 Devilgaunts
Mycetic Spore
I think the old list would still be good too, just need to figure things out by the list submission deadline of Saturday.
I’ve got a local RTT on Sunday, I’ll take some pictures.