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Post by Eric formerly Eric on Jun 3, 2017 15:51:39 GMT -6
Alright, so by now we've seen the leaks and have been building our lists. How are people feeling about their armies? Personally, I'm pumped for my genestealers, and I plan on bringing an exocrine/haruspex, carnifexes and a trygon tunnel to most games. One of my main concerns has been Instinctive behavior. Having more specialized weaponry like the exocrine plasma certainly makes target priority an issue. Since synapse is now only 8", I'm pretty worried that opponents will be able to tarpit shots with non-ideal targets (ie. Hordes against my plasma). Are you guys worried about that? I'd love to run a line of charging carnifexes lead by old one eye, but they need a synapse babysitter. Same with our ranged guns like hive guard or exocrines.
One way I may go is to bunch up some of my main guns around synapse hubs while using min-genestealer squads to flank or tackle some of the far away objectives. Also having a trygon prime tunnel up in the opposing deployment zone will help spread synapse.
Am I overthinking this? Will we be able to get better targeting outside of synapse simply through maneuverability?
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Post by Joelercoaster on Jun 3, 2017 22:27:29 GMT -6
I'm planning to try my general tactics from fourth or so, and you hit on it with hubs. Basically I would take a synaptic unit and run it with an appropriate swarm/support, and use these'formations' to do dirty things.
Right now I'm looking at probably warriors with biovores and hive guard as a shooty base, shrikes leading gargs/horms as a quick response/aggressive wing, stealer goodness wherever I need it, and terms coming in with the trygon as a hard reserves punch.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2017 23:16:22 GMT -6
The sporocyst is an interesting method of boosting synapse range as well.
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Post by Joelercoaster on Jun 4, 2017 7:24:07 GMT -6
That's actually how I thought it should have worked originally, extending the synapse range through itself.
Overall I think Synapse is in a good place. Niddlies definitely want/need babysitting, but we have a lot of good options to provide it. Warriors are a fair bit cheaper (we'll see if they're worth hitting the table, but I have some small glimmer of hope at least). Yes, they're down to 8", but you're taking them in broods anyway so as a whole they'll still have a big bubble. Same with Zoanthropes.
Tervigons you'll notice the difference, but they're more a durable anchor for a large brood of termagants with some support units (venomthropes?) nearby. Walking Tyrants seem very viable, and they're still bringing the 12" range - I plan to use one as the focal point for the swarm.
Time will tell, but having played through a lot of incarnations of Nids I'll say from my point of view this one looks promising.
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Post by Eric formerly Eric on Jun 4, 2017 8:02:42 GMT -6
You gonna run trygon or Trygon prime? I guess synapse may not be as necessary right away because you can place him closest to the unit you want to target anyway. Too bad the trygon gun is still mediocre. Looks like an absolute beast in combat though.
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Post by Eric formerly Eric on Jun 4, 2017 8:10:51 GMT -6
I'm pretty disappointed by the mawloc though. Seems pretty ineffective with these rules. Obviously this is just theorizing, but it only does 0-3 mortal wounds per unit. Thus you want to maximize the number of units it hits. But it has to be further than 1" but closer than 2" from a unit to hit. That seems pretty hard to maneuver well to hit multiple units.
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doubleback
novice
I rock harder than most, yet less hard than some.
Posts: 1,262
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Post by doubleback on Jun 4, 2017 9:05:24 GMT -6
That burrowing son of a bitch deserves to die.
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Post by Joelercoaster on Jun 4, 2017 9:06:53 GMT -6
I'm liking Biovores for mortal-wound shooting. They're heavy now, but even if you miss you still place the spores. They and the Hive Guard (aka, my heavy guns) will form the central core near-ish warriors to pump out support for the swarm. Venomthropes would be great there, but I only have 2 so can't play them anymore xD
Right now just looking at the Trygon - and yeah, the idea is to pop them up near what I want to throw down with (right now thinking the termagants in with him, to just unload a ton of S4 shooting). I should be able to maneuver Shrikes to handle controlling them, or maybe the Broodlord.
Oddly enough, I actually think the Massive Talons are a bit of a disappointment. While the idea of rolling a 6 for damage is tasty, paying a *lot* more points to have a solid (1/3) chance of doing *less* damage than the basic monstrous talons is pretty lame. I don't think it scales well from a design perspective... IMHO these talons should simply be better. D3+2 dmg would have been nice. At least, on average, you can expect to be putting out more pain.
I'm kind of thinking of replacing the Trygon with a gunbeast... maybe an Exocrine to sit near the warriors and add a monster to the "we're in the middle" group. But right now the Trygon is my only reserves, and I really like that flexibility... a Tervigon to replenish that horde of terma's and keep them at 20+ for bonuses would also be nice, but it's a *lot* of points for said bonus... although it also comes with a Psy power.
Hey, I'd rather be making hard decisions than knowing a bunch of the units are worthless!
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Post by Eric formerly Eric on Jun 4, 2017 10:09:03 GMT -6
Yeah I have 2 venomthropes and 2 Zoanthropes. So I'm kinda screwed.
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Post by Joelercoaster on Jun 4, 2017 10:30:52 GMT -6
I at least have 3 Zoan's, but of course you need 4+ for them to be fully effective xD I'm wondering if Veno's would be worth investing in - the 3" range is pretty limiting with them only having a 5" movement... they can't keep up with any other units very well. They're great for a central "I'm not gonna move much" shooty-blob though... all depends on your build.
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Post by Eric formerly Eric on Jun 4, 2017 11:19:24 GMT -6
I at least have 3 Zoan's, but of course you need 4+ for them to be fully effective xD I'm wondering if Veno's would be worth investing in - the 3" range is pretty limiting with them only having a 5" movement... they can't keep up with any other units very well. They're great for a central "I'm not gonna move much" shooty-blob though... all depends on your build. My Venomthrope strategy has always been to string out a long line of gaunts to stay in range. It's pretty easy to do with 20-30 man units.
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Post by Joelercoaster on Jun 4, 2017 11:21:54 GMT -6
True, I guess I'm thinking more warriors/bio's/etc that the -1 to hit would really improve durability... but then those units don't horribly outpace the Venomthropes... mmm. Warriors, Termagants, Biovores, and Hive Guard as a nice core with some venomthropes making them hard to hit. I like.
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Post by Joelercoaster on Jun 5, 2017 11:38:12 GMT -6
Growing the topic (because apparently I just hijack things) the question of "how do Nids deal with armor" is popping up again (as it always tends to do).
Without having any games under my belt yet (ie; caveat), I'm theory-hammering some possibilities.
Shooting - HVC's and Impalers will likely be doing fairly consistent damage to most vehicles, being S8/9 and at least having a -1 AP. The closest we come to a lascannon is bio-plasma (Fex spit or Exocrine) for -3 AP (great) but S7 (decent). I forget what T7 equates to, but that would probably be fine for transports, if a little iffy on heavy tanks? Oddly enough (maybe), Biovores are kind of the stand-out, doing mortal wounds stock. Only single damage, so it'll take them all game to chip away a Knight, but having access to a long-ranged mortal-wound gun is really amazing.
Combat - I'm a little disappointed, TBH, with how most of our MC's handle slashing tanks. The real winner here, IMHO, is the Haruspex. A weapon to deal with hordes, and a weapon to deal with heavy things... 7" move is light for a combat unit, but we also have psy-powers to help movement (and can reliably get them now). This guy is expensive as all get-out for a (basically) combat-only beast, but beast really is the right term.
Now that I've splooged over the Haruspex a bit, I can call out my "why did this happen" piece of wargear - crushing claws. I don't mind that they became a Cumbersome weapon (-1 to hit), but when you can only put them on things that hit on a 4+ at best that really slows down what the unit is capable of putting out. Fexen/Tervigons don't have a mad slew of attacks, so you're probably only expecting 1 hit from these units. It's a solid hit, to be sure, but it's kind of falling into the age-old "lascannons do it better from 48" away" problem. Crushing Claws are only marginally more expensive than the stock talons, but then are only marginally better at damaging vehicles. I guess my wish is that we had a solidly more expensive, yet more effective, option for things like Fexen, Tervigon, and Trygon.
Maybe I'm expecting too much? Vehicles clocking at T6-7 will be pretty easy to handle with our shooting/combat bugs, and I guess Rhino-types will fit into this range? Big vehicles are also way more expensive (paying for that durability).
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Post by Eric formerly Eric on Jun 5, 2017 12:00:32 GMT -6
So rhino-chassis is T7, as well as predators, stormraven, dreadnoughts, etc. Plenty of things are even T5/6. So the Exocrine taking 12 plasma shots should be able to take those down fairly easily. I'm thinking that most of our anti-tank is coming from combat. Trygons, haruspex, fexes, and even tyrants. And because of the low S, a lot of it is gonna come through sheer number of attacks. It is kinda annoying that fex strength got nerfed down to 6. Otherwise, he'd be a beast even with just talons.
I'm playing a test game wednesday against necrons, and I'm bringing a haruspex, trygon, and some carnifexes. I'll let you know how that goes.
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Post by Nick P on Jun 5, 2017 19:37:23 GMT -6
I also think GW really really wanted us to take rupture cannons. And to be fair, a t-fex with a rupture cannon is better than it's ever been now - but I still don't think it's worth the points overall for 4 shots at bs3.
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