Hello everyone this is your resident Hive Tyrant Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson wanting to give you all some feedback on what my experiences have been like with the big nasty Forge World monster the Dimachaeron! Check out the Tactics Corner for more great reviews.
The Good
The Dimachaeron comes in as the best close combat option Tyranids have. He has high WS at 8, he has high I with 6 and his attack profile(s) are designed to be bad news bears for anyone. Either he is putting out a lot of strength 7+ ap2 attacks with the ability to possibly consume another model for some 4+ FNP token(s) or he is throwing out 3~4+ instant death wounds that render things like a Wraith Knight almost completely useless. This makes him a meat grinder for troops AND an assassin for those high priority targets.
As a close combat choice there are few better. With adrenal glands and the +1 str from the grasping talons attack he can even be swinging at strength 8 on the charge which gives him double out power on tough 4. Funny enough, with his “rampage” which gives him D3 attacks when outnumbered I often found the worst part about his grasping talons attack is that he often kills everything he comes in contact with and the consume attack strikes at initiative 1 so he sometimes just flat doesn’t get it because he did too good of a job killing stuff!
The way I have eventually learned to use him is as a big scary stick that you wave around menacingly. He has his weaknesses which I will get to but for the most part he is a damn intimidating model. Volume of attacks and access to a lot of instant death options makes him scary for non Imperial Knight units. Have him escort the bulk of your army and couple him with a Malanthrope or two. He will devour drop pod marines, ward off Wraith Knights entirely and is a very real threat to just about anything else outside of high initiative ID attacks or Imperial Knights.
Perhaps his best quality is he is only 200 points. In almost all of my games (thanks Seer Council) he has killed 2x/3x his cost.
The Bad
Not everything is gum drops and rainbows with this big nasty.
He is slow. In a world where a lot of the really strong CC units move very quickly with either the ability to access teleportation, transports (pods, ravens, rhinos etc) or just being fast like the Wraith Knight’s 12′ movement you have the Dimachaeron.. an actual FAST ATTACK choice slogging it up at 6′! But wait! HE CAN LEAP! This sounds vaguely like the old Hormagaunt rule which added 3′ or something along those lines right? No. He can just flat move 6′ or charge a flat 6′. This makes him nice for 6 inch charges or less but he already comes with fleet from adrenaline so the odds of you failing a 6′ charge are very very low. The good news about this is his speed basically means you need to keep him with the rest of your army and that is frankly, where he belongs. I will get more into that on the “ugly” side of things below.
The Dima’s devour attack is a bit odd. It SEEMS really great. 4+ FNP after eating a guy for an extra attack? Str 10 ap1 auto-hit ID attack is the bees knees.. but why initiative 1? This means those things that wanted to hit you and can are going to. So, either he is slogged by a bunch of gibblies in which case this is the best scenario you can hope for. There is a good chance they do no damage and you will get that 4+ FNP token OR you are facing terminators, powerfists or other initiative 1 attacks that are almost guaranteed to do some serious damage. The best defense the Dima has is it’s high WS which can thin the field. Couple this with paroxysm and you are maybe getting those weapons to hit on a 5 and of course wound on anything but a 1. I also try and give him “catalyst” if you have that available as another defensive buff. This isn’t the end of the world but I would have liked to have seen this attack come in with a faster initiative so it can reliably buff up the Dima AND prevent it from taking more damage.
Overall him being slow has not been as big of a deal as it sounds. He should be running each turn with re-rolls due to adrenaline and this means he is moving at roughly 9~10/11 inches a turn. He can’t charge after that of course but with the flat 6′ “leap” as long as you have defended him correctly with the Malanthrope / other targets etc.. he will get into that CC mostly intact and he will wreck face.
The Ugly
He isn’t fearless. This.. this HAS to be a mistake. All the Tyranid MCs are fearless. Not just from Synapse but literally from the model itself. Basically what this means is if he loses synapse he can be ran down. A big, giant, bad ass assassin can literally turn tail, run and then be destroyed. Wat. There is no reason in the fluff that I could possibly think this makes any sense at all. He is even derived from the Hive Tyrant genetic design.. this is Chaos Space Marine level bad, guys. The frown being turned upside down here is that is OK(ish). He needs to be with the Malanthrope anyways for protection and thankfully that brain bug gives synapse. We Tyranid players are used to the algorithm: Synapse+Tyranid=Happy // Tyranid – Synapse =Dead. Therefor this guy forces us back from our dream state and into a harsh world where Orks kill themselves, Cultist champions demand 1 on 1 time with Marnius Calgar and Chaos Space Marines that have been around for 1000’s of years turn and run.
Final Thoughts and Grading
Bottom line: Is this guy a auto-take? Absolutely not. He is relatively cheap for what he gives at only 200 points and he will almost always earn you those points in spades. That said he is a close combat specialist in a world where Tyranids are no longer geared towards running up the field and devouring their prey at close range. Look, I wish that wasn’t true. I ran the Swarm Lord as much as I could. I got into this game because the Carnifex reminded me of a Ultralisk from Broodwar. That said the Nids soft underbelly is ironically their inability to deal with assault specialists. We can slog you down with gibblies, we can lean on you with a big model that has lots of wounds and semi high strength ap2 attacks. With smash going down to 1 attack, no access to biomancy or other spell trees and with the crippling inability to field genestealers with a straight face we Nids aren’t close combat fellas anymore.. we are short range shooty guys with Flyrants. That said the Dima gives us some more wind in those sails. I run him because I love having assault options and he brings that.
So far every list that can include a Dimachaeron DOES. That may just be me, that may just be for now. If I had to give him a grade I would call him a solid B+ in terms of balance and usefulness. He isn’t a auto-take but he is damn close. If he had a 12′ movement at 200 points he would be a Wraith Knight for Nids.
Outside of game function he is my favorite Nid model. I love WH40k models.. I think they are the best. With that being said my Dimachaeron sits next to me at my desk because I can’t get my eyes off of him. The Frontlinegaming crew did a fantastic job painting him up and for some reason he isn’t very photogenic. All the pics online of him doesn’t do him justice. See one for yourself!
In closing…
Thanks for reading! I hope you find this useful. If you are interested in checking out more things about what I do you can follow me on twitter at EGiNcontroL and I stream mostly high level SC2 games on Twitch.tv/iNcontroLTV — until next time!
FOR THE SWARM!
Good review! Thanks In control.
Good read. He reminds me of the Ctan from the necron book. He’s really good when you can get him where he needs to go, but not great for his points because it’s really hard to get him there. However; if he only moved 12″ a turn he would really be an awesome unit.
If he could move 12″, you’re going to see triple-dimas just as you see triple-wraithknights in an Eldar army.
This is not a bad thing in my book.
Auto includes are generally not good for a codex.
If they would have made the Trygon move 12 inchs, like his smaller Ravener buddies, I would have a lot less to be dismayed about with the nids. The Dimachaeron seems like he could be fun though for certain games.
Trygons should move 12″. That was the only change they needed to make to put that unit back in the game.
I want that bad boy racing maulerfiends around the table!
I’ve had 1 marvelous game with the dima. In that game, he chewed through 4 TWC Wolf Lords. That’s about 900-pts of space wolves that he killed all by himself!
However, in all my other games with him, he just died before getting to do anything. But to be fair, all my other games with him were against Tau, who seem to be deathly afraid of him for some strange reason. 😉
BTW, I agree. This guy does look better in person than the pics show. The amount of detail in that model is stunning.
Pretty good summary iNcontroL. About the same consenses we came to on the Hive.
I try to build fairly diversified lists and limit spaming so it becomes a good choice for something different.
I had some badass games against the new nids in the Anphellion Project. This guy is a beast and if it wasn’t for Belakor going first i would of lost. the Malenthropes are what have made this beast terrifying.
Yeah so far in all my games save for the 1 vs Eldar seer council he has killed at least 2x his worth.. Just gotta baby sit him with a Malanthrope and time the charge right
Nice review iNcontrol. I definitely agree with the bit about Dimas taken care of drop pod marines.
One thing I’m not sure about, why does the Dima only get a 6 inch charge? If you leap in the assault phase doesn’t that just give you +1 to HoW and strikedown?
nono. He CAN “leap” for a mere 6 inch charge but it’s automatic.. cannot fail. He can still charge for 2d6 you just don’t get the leap. (which also gives you +1 str on the HoW)
I must be blind I don’t see that :/
That’s not how I (or The Hive) have read it. He can use Leaping on the charge, in which case he can jump over stuff. Range is 2D6″ with reroll from Fleet, as normal.
I said he can use leaping on the charge. It’s just 6′ though. He can also charge 2d6 (normal). You could argue he uses the leap for 1d6 of the 2d6.
Thanks for the report.
Please check that rule again. There is nothing in there about a 6″ charge.
You get the same 2D6 charge, except can go over models/terrain, and get +1S HoW
I think you’re reading that wrong, Geoff, take another look. But great review regardless! Can’t wait to get my hands on this model.
Btw, I mailed Forgeworld and asked (among other things) why the Dima is only 6″ move and not Fearless. They replied:
“The idea for fast attack options doesn’t always mean having the longest movement rate, it also takes into account other abilities and how the entry falls withing a general list theme. You also need to remember that it is a monstrous creature and gets all the benefits of this, on top of its other rules.”
“The reason it was not given fearless, is it is not designed to be a mindless killing machine. The thought was it was a creature that would be willing to pull back, and then attack somewhere else. It is also Leadership 10, with instinctive behaviour”
Shocking levels of idiocy being displayed by Forgeworld.
THAT CAN BE RAN DOWN… WHYYYY
I had the same response as above. the not fearless thing is fucking retarded. Thankfully, it’ll be in synapse range most of the time as it tends to walk hand in tail with a Malanthrope.
Malanthropes aren’t actually invulnerable though…
Yeah. Seems like Forgeworld think that they gave it Hit and Run. Except, they forgot.
Leaping on the charge is a pretty big deal though, with rerollable 2d6″.
A hidden gem of your article: It allows us to define mathematically what Tyranids are.
Your article says: “Synapse+Tyranid=Happy // Tyranid – Synapse =Dead”
Mathematically spoken, that means:
Synapse = Happy – Tyranid AND Synapse = Tyranid – Dead
ergo:
Happy – Tyranid = Synapse = Tyranid – Dead
ergo:
Happy – Tyranid = Tyranid – Dead
ergo:
Tyranid = (Happy + Dead) /2
Finally, we know what a Tyranid really is: The half of Happy and Dead.
What are you smoking? lol
Played against three last weekend, was not prepared…..I made a lot of mistakes but after the first one I knew how to deal with them.
Still 18 WS 8 STR 7 ID 4+ attacks is not fun to eat to the face
3x would + 3 Maly’s would be mind blowing levels of awesome. Gonna have to proxy this in a game some time soom.
Wow… I must’ve been drunk, should read: “3x Dimas + 3x Malys would be…”
Yep, I haven’t tried one out because I think it probably plays like my old swarmlord did in 6th. Able to brutally instant death everything it catches, but unable to catch much that doesn’t come to it. The dima is cheaper, but also less survivable without support and brings less synergy & buffs.
There’s definitely some overlap in utility with the hierodule and the devourer + adrenal carnifexes in my list… stomps and strength 10 attacks give you a pretty good chance at instant death against most things that suffer it, and both those units also have some nasty, flexible shooting and a bigger threat bubble to bring to the game. They’re definitely better when it comes to clearing out vehicle spam and dreadnaught spam, which can be a problem for nids now smash is nerfed.
His much higher WS and Initiative makes him a very different beast in CC. Yes he won’t be running things down but he is a relatively staunch thing to shoot at that is USUALLY swinging first and swinging a lot.. so yeah there are things that laugh at him but a heirodule swings slow and doesn’t put out as much CC so he can tend to get mobbed down or beasted by say bel’akor. I’ve played 20 or so games with the Dima so far and I can tell you that in all of them save for 2 he has not only performed well but has killed 2 or 3x his cost. There are mu’s that are better than others but for 200 pts as a big scary stick he does wonders.
Yep, I wouldn’t say they’re the same, but a hierodule scares a lot of stuff out of your backfield, is much more mobile AND can reach out and touch a couple of units with S10 shots each turn. I think they’re in a similar role in my army though – tyranid CC boogieman, that scares most stuff away and lets you go where you want to go.
Both have hard counters. Hierodule stomps can kill blob squads, which will bog the dima down pretty well. The dima is better against demons, if it can catch them, but I did manage to instadeath liz foster’s fateweaver with hierodule shooting and some lucky rolling.
Mindshackle scarabs kill both of them fast, but at least the hierodule can knock quantum shielding off two barges/arks a turn! Here’s hoping a new necron codex loses those soon.
But the comparison isn’t Heirodule vs Dima;
it should be Heriodule vs. 3 Dimas (or pretty darn close anyway…)
True. Or hierodule vs dimachaeron AND 400 pts of other useful stuff.
Against crons, the hierodule is more versatile. That S10 shooting really lets you trash quantum shielded vehicles and finish them off with flyrants… Mindshackle lords will ruin the dimachaeron.
Against demons, I’d rather have 3 dimas to help try and clear out lots of units of screamers and greater demons.
Join The Hive Geoff!
With the addition of the Tyrannocyte (drop pod), I think we solved his speed problem.