Personal Reflection on the new dex.

[drakiskier]

I don't know if i should post this or not, but i feel i need to speak somewhere about how i feel about this new codex.

First and foremost, the new models are gorgeous, absolutely beautiful.

That being said, it feels to me that GW has acted like a hurt child who has decided to take their ball and go home. From what i can see, Chapter House and the various other bits producers that popped up to fill the gap when GW didn't produce have resulted in GW taking steps to make it so nobody needs to convert anything. Ymgarls, Dooms, Parasites, and Spores all suffered from this decision, getting tossed from the codex completely.

In addition, as i see it, GW has taken the wrong approach to how to fix the tyranids. They looked at the tournament lists that did well, and saw that we were monobuild. Instead of looking to see what was wrong with the codex in general and bring it up to par, they looked at what our strengths were, and brought them down to be even with the rest of the codex. The points cuts do help, but then they turn around and slap extra points on things that were already expensive. (Tyranid prime is the first example that comes to mind) In the long run even with the points cuts to some models, we lose out on things because of the price hikes in other departments. I took the strongest list i enjoyed playing in 5th edition and tried to rebuild it in the new codex, and actually ended up having more points overall for nearly the exact same list. (old list had a 184 point ymgarl squad, new list only had 135 points left when buying everything aside from the ymgarls)

Then we have the rules changes... oh man.
I can understand that after the eldar and tau got so powerful they could not allow other races to get as potently powerful, but they have trimmed out so much of what made us unique. Since 4th edition, synapse has become more and more of a 'preventative' measure than than a buff... If you are in synapse you get to play normally, but if you step outside, then you get penalized. The warlord traits that we have been given are abysmal at best, with only one maybe two options being of any practical use. The bio-artifacts, while an interesting idea, was poorly implemented, underpopulated, and grossly overpriced.

I dont know what else to say aside from the fact that this codex has saddened me deeply, seeing my beloved tyranids reduced to worthless all around.
I will still collect them, i will still do my best to play with them, but i fear i will have to go back to my tau once more to win games, and even with my tau i have to limit myself heavilly to not feel like im cheesing things and playing a fair list. (i run list with less than 3 markerlights)

TL;DR -> Sigh.

[Squire]

I think I'm beginning to see some of the positives and coming to terms with the things that disappointed the most. That being said, some of the changes are just bizarre and difficult to justify. Why did they see fit to raise the price of the prime while lowering the price of biovores? Who could have predicted either of those? And what was so overpowered about scything talons? I think the scything talon rules were spot on.

They were far too heavy handed in nerfing the tervigon. I think I could take everything they did to it if they only allowed it to pass buffs onto nearby termagant units. As things stand counter attack doesn't seem like good enough incentive to keep termagants close to a tervigon. If I have a unit of termagants, hormagaunts, warriors and a tervigon, the termagants will be with the warriors and hormagaunts with the tervigon, which obviously isn't how it's supposed to be.

Otherwise I like a lot of the other changes. I'd have preferred better psychic powers but the iron arm spell just seems too powerful to let hive tyrants and tervigons use it. I think +1 strength and toughness with eternal warrior would have been better, and I would have liked to see a spell like that in our psychic powers table. The trygon needed to take a slight hit too I feel. Without the scything talons I would have left it at 6 attacks, but so be it. The fex, mawloc and T-fex all became significantly cheaper which is great, and the hive tyrant isn't paying as much for wings- another good reduction given the grounding rule as it is. Mixed weapons in units is good, and a slight boost to warriors a temagants, though I'd have taken a few points off the base cost of warriors too

As far as Eldar and Tau go, I was under the impression a lot of their success is due to people playing without enough terrain- in particular LOS blocking terrain. As a Tau player yourself, what do you think? When you play (Tau or nids) do you think there's enough terrain on the board, and if not, would it be changing the results of games if there were more?

[Inquisitor Stingray]

I really like the idea of Apex Biomorphs. One of a kind upgrades that allows you to make a semi-Special Character. Unfortunately, and I'm hardly breaking any new ground here, the actual Biomorphs are dreadful, overpriced and kind of unimaginative. Same goes for the Psychic Powers and Warlord Traits. With so many brokenly bad codex entries a strong codex framework is all the more important, and I just don't feel like we have that. Still, I like how we now have a Monster in every FOC, potentially allowing you to go Nidzilla like never before. You'd have to bring the Frogex with you sure, but still.

And the Prime's base cost bothers me to no end. He was my go-to HQ choice in games below 1500 pts and now he's only a tad cheaper than a Tyrant. Not only did his statline not change, but they even released a model for him (arguably the only incentive one would have to buy the new Warriors). Whaddafuk GW?

[eeknight]

I'm not a tourney player and I can make this work in my local environment, but I'm still quite disappointed. The way 6th is written, with bugs denied allies and fortifications, I was expecting something truly inspired in this codex in the way of new army-wide powers. It doesn't have to be complex, just something like "bug splatter" where any time a unit has been in CC with a Tyranid and caused a wound, for the rest of the game any Nid unit gets Rage in CC against it -- hardly a gamebreaker but cool and very close to what happens with ants in real life. Or, since we don't get fortifications, some ability to alter the game table to trap/slow down our enemies and give our gribbies cover, something like the Hypertrophic Growth rule in Planetstrike. Blobs of vegetation could be purchased and deployed like spore mines. Or something to help you tailor your Hive Fleet like the Marine codexes, maybe one army-wide power you could choose if you wanted to play CC, another if you were more of a sneaky surprise-attack vanguard guy, a firepower one, etc...

I just don't understand a lot of what was done in this lazy, uninspired codex. It's not like everyone was bitchin' that we won too many tournaments.

[eeknight]

Jan 11, 2014 17:15:02 GMT Inquisitor Stingray said:

And the Prime's base cost bothers me to no end. He was my go-to HQ choice in games below 1500 pts and now he's only a tad cheaper than a Tyrant. Not only did his statline not change, but they even released a model for him (arguably the only incentive one would have to buy the new Warriors). Whaddafuk GW?

I'm with you, brother arthropod. The Prime has been my HQ for small-point games forever and my first scratch-built model.

[slug]

Jan 11, 2014 21:12:44 GMT eeknight said:

Or, since we don't get fortifications, some ability to alter the game table to trap/slow down our enemies and give our gribbies cover,

I might have missed something, but I've been hiding Termagants behind an Aegis Defence line since the 6th Ed BRB came out.

[Davor]

Jan 11, 2014 21:12:44 GMT eeknight said:

I'm not a tourney player and I can make this work in my local environment, but I'm still quite disappointed. The way 6th is written, with bugs denied allies and fortifications,

Still waiting for my codex. Where does it say Tyranids can't use fortifications now? Once the 6th edition codex came out, the 5th edition Tyranid codex FAQ becomes null and void. So as of right now, I thought we can use Fortifications. Also can we still use emplaced weapons? Is there anywhere in the 6th edition Tyranid codex say we can't use them?

[Doughhunter]

Fortifications and emplacements look fine to me. There's nowhere in the codex saying they can't fire emplaced weapons, and since the FAQ is for the old version of the codex it looks like we can use them (for now).

[mobugs]

We can use fortifications, we just can't use any of the weapons that go with them. I mean nothing is stopping your bugs from hiding behind buildings or defense lines left on the battle field from a prior battle. Doesn't really help us all that much and is really counter to the nid fluff of being a swarmy army... but you can do it.

[daboarder]

MObugs, its a NEW edition. you take the good with the bad, the good is that we can NOW fire fortification weapons like everyone else, the bad is that we got this book

[commandersasha]

It just seems a shame that our army doesn't seem to be that "unique". As the only one denied allies, transports, and to a lesser extent fortifications etc (we can hide, but we can't play with the guns), coupled with the fluff over recent years being all about "The Time Of Ending", we should have been the only combat-viable army in a shooting edition, or something like that.

I haven't used my Skavenids for 6 months (distracted by Dark Eldar); over the past week I went from planning a blind codex purchase, to wariness, to rage-quitting. My buddies have convinced me not to, so I will tweak my favourite 5th/early 6th list (1 Flyrant, I Terv, 1x10 Genies, 1x3 Hive Guard 1x3 Biovores), adjusting for common sense, and maybe trying a new monster.
If a few games go well (ie are fun, I don't mind losing, but hate being frustrated by impotence), I'll buy the codex and try to summon enthusiasm. I was hoping that the enthusiasm would come naturally!

(Edit: CAN we play with the guns now??!!)

[Davor]

Jan 11, 2014 22:24:32 GMT mobugs said:

We can use fortifications, we just can't use any of the weapons that go with them. I mean nothing is stopping your bugs from hiding behind buildings or defense lines left on the battle field from a prior battle. Doesn't really help us all that much and is really counter to the nid fluff of being a swarmy army... but you can do it.

Where does it say we can't use any of the weapons that go in them? If it's not in the codex, is it in the BRB? What page?

[daboarder]

Yes sasha we can finally play with the guns

[Doughhunter]

Don't go rushing out to buy emplacements *yet* though. We haven't had an official FAQ yet, so we don't know if the old rule will pass on.

[mobugs]

Jan 11, 2014 22:34:27 GMT Davor said:

Jan 11, 2014 22:24:32 GMT mobugs said:

We can use fortifications, we just can't use any of the weapons that go with them. I mean nothing is stopping your bugs from hiding behind buildings or defense lines left on the battle field from a prior battle. Doesn't really help us all that much and is really counter to the nid fluff of being a swarmy army... but you can do it.

Where does it say we can't use any of the weapons that go in them? If it's not in the codex, is it in the BRB? What page?

I still for the life of me haven't been able to figure out what BRB specifically stands for..... anyways, I've looked through the Stronghold book and can't find anywhere that says we can't use the fortifications AND weapons... honestly I personally think it's stupid that we can and have to in order to be competitive. The idea of the bugs manning spess mehrine weapons on the ramparts seems silly.