So, I got to try the Malanththrope in a few games and can say without hesitation that it is easily one of the best support units available to not only Nids, but any army.
For a paltry points investment, you get a unit that makes the test of your army infinitely more resilient and that provided synapse and that fights fairly well, too. Mine have helped to finish off units in fights and then gone on to give everyone in 12″ Preferred Enemy due to prey adaptation! Nice! With their high strength and posion attacks, they can take on vehicles and infantry.
Being resilient, they are able to run solo, too, allowing you to spread out your shrouded bubble more so than with Venomethropes, and then advance up the field with your assault forces.
In both games I played, they were all star units and I can already say that I won’t write a list without at least one, probably two of them.
Did they change the rule on prey adaptation in the new book? The old one days they get preferred enemy against that enemy infantry type like infantry or jump infantry etc. did they change it to give preferred enemy codex instead?
That’s it. Win a combat with a Malanthrope involved and they plus their synapse bubble gain PE of the faction they killed. They cannot consolidate or sweep though.
That’s it. Win a combat with a Malanthrope involved and they plus their synapse bubble gain PE of the faction they killed. They cannot consolidate or sweep though.
Yes that’s soooo much better!
And most importantly, an excellent model!
Very true!
Most importantly, Imperial Armour is not allowed in my local tournaments. Dammit!
I’m just waiting to place my order. I want to pick up the Dimachaeron too.
Yeah, I have not tried the Dimachaeron yet, but, it looks like a total beat-stick.
They actually can consolidate, they just can’t sweep if they killed a unit. It usually won’t come up. And yes, they are an amazing unit. Point-for-point I think they’re the best unit we currently have actually, only the Flyrant is close.
Yeah I think running them independently and probably only having 2 is the sweet sauce. Shooting strength 10 at them AND ignoring their cover is going to be rare/hard but with regen small arms fire seems pointless so I can see them getting ignored in a LOT of games. That means you have a decent assault mobile synapse shrouding model moving up the field getting your assault units into combat BEASTLY. I plan on running 1-2 of them with some stone crushers/dimachaerons. Cannot wait 🙂
I’m with you on the stone crushers man, they are just too cool. But the fact that they are so slow… It concerns me if they’ll ever get there!
I’ll have to run them out a few times and see how it goes :]
I think if you have target saturation, you will be OK.
I didn’t say forgeworld was imbalanced and bad, but possibly this unit is. Auto include units of any kind are bad game design, as it indicates the points are too low or the rules are too good. Most forgeworld stuff is underpowered or over pointed, but which units do you think people are going to complain about and give forgeworld bad press that might make the inexperienced disinterested in giving it a shot?
A lot of the units you listed were negatively impacted by 7th ed and are less auto include than before. Heldrake with its turret and vector strike nerf, farseers with the general psychic and battle brother changes, etc. These are positive changes in my view. It is ok for something to be good, but is it too good for its points?
Does the Malanthrope give the 6″ shrouding bubble too?
Yup!
I actually ran 1 against Spam Adam and actually assaulted 1 of his riptides with it. I was laughing hard inside while the riptide spent 5-6 combat phases just flailing at it helplessly….when all it should have taken was 1 successful Smash attack which my opponent didn’t even think to do. 😉
Lol, silly Spam Adams!
Auto include units generally imply they aren’t balanced or aren’t pointed correctly. Doesn’t it seem that forgeworld didn’t write the rules very well if this unit is already auto-include over all the standard choices from the codex? This is why forgeworld is taking so long to gain universal acceptance. A few overpowered or undercosted units ruin it for the rest. You even point out how many abilities it has for a paltry points investment. Do you think it is balanced?
Riptides, wraith knights, heldrakes, storm shield / hammer terminators, chapter masters, flyrants, nobz with klaws, farseers, buffmander, flying princes, destroyer lords with mind shackle, wave serpents, yarrick etc etc.. I could list more but I got tired of listing non forge world auto takes in this game. This game is full of units that are auto takes for the reason of them being amazing.. saying forgeworld is imbalanced and bad is simply inaccurate. They just broke down the stats of the BAO and forgeworld barely made appearances in the top armies.
Where is the LIKE button 🙂
Where is the BAO stat breakdown? I missed it
I didn’t say forgeworld was imbalanced and bad, but possibly this unit is. Auto include units of any kind are bad game design, as it indicates the points are too low or the rules are too good. Most forgeworld stuff is underpowered or over pointed, but which units do you think people are going to complain about and give forgeworld bad press that might make the inexperienced disinterested in giving it a shot?
A lot of the units you listed were negatively impacted by 7th ed and are less auto include than before. Heldrake with its turret and vector strike nerf, farseers with the general psychic and battle brother changes, etc. These are positive changes in my view. It is ok for something to be good, but is it too good for its points?
Sorry for the double post, but it didn’t reply to the correct post.
You singled out forgeworld and said their rules “must be bad” if they are that much better than standard codex rules.. which is a non sequitor at best. You also went on to talk about why people dislike forgeworld.. so yes on a pretty blatant level you did say forgeworld was imbalanced and bad albeit not explicitly said that was the dominant point you made.
You also explain that some of what I said got “less auto takey in 7th” ok? That was mitigating my point but we can agree each army has several non forgeworld auto take units so unless you were going to make the argument you think there are no auto take units you aren’t winning that point you are simply minimizing the scope.. which doesn’t defeat what I was saying.
Point is (something you ignored) in the BAO forgeworld did NOT have a negative impact and was missing for the most part from the top armies. We play forgeworld in our meta and love it. I gave examples of why the issue you raised is non-unique and already exists outside of forgeworld and your response was most unresponsive to those core points.
You are making a pretty sweeping generalization, I think. Most Forge World units are overcosted and under-powered. There are a few that are not, but in general terms. And FW may be taking a while to catch on in your are abut here it is common-place. We don’t even question it.
For this unit in particular, is it too good for its points? Yeah. But, in the context of the Tyranid codex which has so many weaknesses, it is fine. In fact, it helps to make the book playable in a competitive setting. They are like super Venomthropes which you saw in almost every Nid list because you HAD to have them to survive. These are the same thing but even better.
I am fine with introducing a few souped up units into a codex that really needs the help, it brings more overall balance to the game which is a good thing.
It could also mean the normal units in the Codex are so poor that the efficiency of the new unit makes it worth taking. Or it could be that the particular slot it highly underutilized in the particular codex.
That said, I don’t think the Malanthrope is an auto include in all ‘nid lists, but it certainly opens up a lot of playstyles that simply weren’t working before. And those are some of the lists I want to run- so I will be picking up one for sure.
Good point about it being in Elites, too, that is a slot that doesn’t get much love for bugs.
show me a list that isn’t improved by a malanthrope for 85 points 🙂
I cannot think of one, haha!
But hey, we needed it! These guys put Bugs up a notch on the tier system, IMO.
The big issue is dealing with Knights. I am not thinking about going back to a big unit or two of little, cheap bugs to simply tar-pit Knights as the only other viable solution I can think of is to use Harpies to lower their In and hope you can dog pile enough big bugs onto them to kill them before they swing. That only works for a single Knight at a time, not for multiple Knights, though.
Reecius, I just plan to only roll 6’s when I face knights, but do what you want.
Hmm, I was thinking closer to three zoanthropes than less than 2… But in full disclosure, I may have been wrong anyway- but thought process below-
I was thinking that if you have a longe range shooting list with some flyers and the Subterreanean Assault formation, you may be better off with just the Venomthrope with LOS blocking terrain, as you may not advance with your backfield support, and I’m not sure the Malanthope supports the flyers after 1st turn.
But I still have never run the SA formation… It seems like it would be fun, but I don’t own raveners and can’t fathom why I should.
And of course don’t forget Phil Kelley’s unbounded swarm! NM…. you can forget them…
still better with malanthrope 🙂