Hey everyone, Danny from TFG Radio here, and today, I am just going to muse about the incoming Chapter Approved 2021 and what it could mean for my beloved bugs. Points make the whole world go round, so let’s hope GW decides that the Hive Fleets don’t need any new obstacles.
Well, we know one thing already, cheaper Genestealers. Coming in at 13ppm without upgrades is certainly better than before. Still, 260 for a full unit of 20 is a steep price tag, but definitely better than 300. The fundamental problem of Genestealers in this edition isn’t changed though: they are great mulching lighter infantry, but multiple wound infantry pose a greater challenge. Still, for 260, they could maybe make a comeback as a turn 1 threat to rocket forward with Swarmlord to not necessarily do a ton of damage but rather as a large mass of slightly resilient (a T4 body with a 5++ can go a long way, especially with Catalyst up) ObSec bodies can really hurt your opponent’s ability to control their own objectives for a turn.
With the way points have been, I doubt we’ll see Termagants or Hormagaunts get cheaper, but it’d be nice. For me, I’d love to see some Big Bugs get a drop. The Exocrine and Dimachaeron are pretty ubiquitous, so I don’t think they need love, but it would be nice to see the Tyrannofex and Haruspex get some love. The Haruspex especially as at T8 with 14 wounds, it is resilient, but it can also hide behind terrain, and it brings a nice mix of high volume, low quality attacks with some low volume, high quality hits. Still, the Dimachaeron, unless priced too high, will still be top of the pops because it gets to ignore the problems that Monsters inherently have, namely terrain.
Getting some of our medium sized infantry into the fight would be great. I love Warriors and Raveners, and I think the base point on Warriors is great, but once you start loading for bear, their points get prohibitive quick. It’d be nice to see the actual weapon options go down a bit, so you can effectively utilize Raveners as surprise shooting elements and have shooting warriors as a workable Troops choice. I love melee warriors as cheap Action batteries, but the shooting ones start to get less efficient.
I’d also like to see the base melee Carnifex go down in price as right now, paying triple digits is too much for a model that actually doesn’t have insane offensive output. I really love running a Carnifex Carnival style list with mostly melee carnifexes, but the cost adds up too quickly.
If anybody needs love, it is our flyers, the Harpy and Hive Crone. They just don’t have that much output for their price, so if they were cheaper, it’d be great to get them out there on the table. They could really work as mobile gun-boats that could also really annoying armies that make heavy use of Fly like Dark Eldar or some Admech lists, but right now, they are just too pricey for that.
Really, for our sake, I am hoping that our usual lynchpins don’t get hit too hard. Hive Guard are strong, but they really our are best shooting threat still, and Swarmlord works in just about any build. The Exocrine is a go-to gun beast, and well, the Dimachaeron is just the only melee monstrous creature that we have that actually gets to where it needs to be, so let’s hope that they aren’t suddenly our most expensive monster. Even with much cheaper melee monsters, the Dima is just so good at navigating the board and playing on our greatest strength, board control, so I hope they don’t try and take that away from us too much.
Well, we’ll see what happens, and either way, the Hive Fleets adapt! Thanks for reading, and you can be sure that once Chapter Approved is in my hands that I’ll be doing a deep dive on the changes, for good or ill. If you want to watch some quality Tyranid content as well as other stuff, check out TFG’s TL;DR battle reports on YouTube!
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This didn’t age well…