Hey Everyone, Danny from TFG Radio here, (I know, you’re sick of me), to go over more how these new changes shake out for the mighty Hive Fleets! As always, go check out Frontline’s Tactics Corner for all the cool stuff that I did not write.
So changes are afoot, and again, I am going to stay positive and look at how we are going to consume so much more biomass with all of these changes. You can of course check out the rest of the series here and here.
This isn’t too big of an issue for us, at least half of us. Yay big monsters. Single models pretty much ignore the Morale phase, so we don’t have to worry, and our only unit of Monstrous Creatures, Carnifexes, would need to be nerfed down to LD 4 or so for us to consistently lose models to Morale.
We’ll see about little ones but synapse should handle such. I am hopeful that Synapse will at least let us use that model’s Leadership, if not flat out reduce our casualties from Morale.
The new wound chart is a bit of give and take, but it definitely means it is time to bust out those Endless Swarm boxes. On one hand, it is not so good that our big T6 monsters (assuming they stay T6, but by the math, it is unlikely they will jump to T8 to make any real difference, so even T7 doesn’t do a whole lot), can now be wounded on a 5+ by bolters rather than a 6+, but it also nice that Lascannons and Missile Launchers only wound us on a 3+. At the end, I’d much rather have 16% less wounds from the big weapons than 16% less wounds from the little weapons, especially since most little weapons won’t modify our standard 3+ armor save. All in all, the new wound chart is actually a benefit for us, even the biggies. We also know that our big monsters are getting more wounds, and they say “over 12” wounds for our biggest kits, so here’s hoping we see just about a doubling for all of our 6W monsters like Trygons and Tyrannofexes.
Of course, Devil-Gants will be amazingly awesome in this new form, especially if they stay S4 with 3 shots each. That is a lot of firepower from one horde unit, and while it takes 36 shots on average for S4 to put a wound on a T8+ 3+ save target, a full unit of 30 is definitely going to strip a few wounds off. Even our little Hormagaunts are going to get some love as if they keep 3 attacks on the charge, that’s a lot of S3 swings (that hurt anything) for a small points investment.
No more characters hiding in units. We never really had this, and if characters under 10 wounds cannot be shot unless the closest target, it will be interesting to see how that applies to things like Hive Tyrants. The Walking Tyrant (and Swarmlord and Old One Eye) may finally come on back! I’d love to see just our wounds doubled (or so) in general, so Swarmlord and Hive Tyrants with 9 wounds would be great since we can use Gant screens to protect them. It will also be interesting to see how Tyrant Guard make the transition.
The only IC we’ve ever had is the Tyranid Prime, so no big loss for us, and hopefully the Prime becomes more useful to us, but the big, super ultra amazing news is that Deathstars are dead. We really lacked the ability to handle them, and we could at best avoid them and win via mission, but with them gone, we are on much more equal footing with the rest of the armies out there. The Hive Mind has provided, fellow biomass.
New Detachments and no Formations
This is actually pretty great for us since we can easily fill out troop choices, and we really only have one ally anyway. We can still run plenty of spam (5 heavy supports slots you say?), but we can also really build interesting, combined arms style armies, and this is great for us as combined arms is actually something we do well. We can have a few tyrants, maybe a tervigon, a bunch of little bugs, and still have plenty of rooms for elites and big hitters. That sounds awesome to me, and judging by how the game seems to be shaping up, combined arms armies are going to be damn good, so yay for us.
Formations doesn’t hurt us much either as well, we didn’t have any top tier ones anyway. Skytyrant was interesting and an anti-meta build, but that’s about it. We are actually really good at filling out your basic force-org, so this all seems great. I mean, we can get 9 command points for just 90 points in Troops (and all the other stuff), so hey, let it roll, baby, let it roll.
Ok, so this week has been good to us, and clearly, I’m excited. I see so much army building potential, and really, I think this is finally the edition where we can have really competitive, strong armies that reward high-skill plays that is a nice mix of little and big bugs. Catch you all next week, and be sure to check out TFG Radio as we near our 100th episode extravaganza (win cool prizes).
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Great read dude.
I collected nids 16 years ago, when I was 14 and due to the new edition, re-reading the codex I had from then and your articles I’ve made the plunge back into them.
Super pumped to give them a whirl again.
hope tyr would get some dedicated transp or i dont see so easy get them into CaC, with still heavy fire around.
We do have Tyrannocytes still, and the just spoiled Trygon rule really lets us get some units to the enemy right quick. I may finally need to use Warriors with bone swords.
Of all my armies, this is the one I’m excited to play again the most. Yes, I say play again, because I haven’t played them from almost 2 years.
I think the only thing that may affect our damage output from devourers is the cover changes. Marines getting a 2+ against devourers is rough. But presumably deathspitters will be rend -1 so its overall a good internal balance change. We of course benefit from cover changes as well, especially our heavy infantry which will enjoy some solid protection from non rend weapons.
yes but if devourer remain like now, twin linked, a flyrant will fire 24 shoots not just 12 so is fair i guess
I would love for their to be a return of mixing the abilities of Tyranid melee weapons like it was in 5th. I loved coupling scything talons with rending claws. I was really bummed to find out that the new Bonesword instant death rule couldn’t be coupled with rending claws in the current codex. Picking a single weapon to use in combat is fine when you only have 2 arms but Tyranids have 4!