LAN and biovores

[mattblowers]

Two weeks ago my 3x unit of biovores in a LAN were allstars. This week without the LAN, they didn't cause a single unsaved wound except for assaulting. I had so many misses, I had spore pods all over the table. I love them in LAN, outside of that, I have found them midling. Anyone else?

[chompz]

I usually don't mind too much if they miss. Unlike other artillery, our misses can still be dangerous with the spore mines floating about.

I've seen games where they didn't do much, but that was usually a symptom of the army played against rather than a deficiency in the biovores. Case in point: my last match was against a tau Farsight enclave. All suits and a couple marker drones. Biovores were fairly useless (could only get 2, maybe 3 targets even with a direct hit, and everything got saves). In the end, I waddled those little buggers to sit on an objective in my DZ, while firing at whatever was closest to an objective the enemy tried to hold and did my best to always scatter off target. Wrapped the objectives in spore mines. He ended up wasting shots just to get through the things instead of pointing those guns down range. The biovores certainly didn't "make their points back" or whatever, but they definitely came in handy.

[mattblowers]

I always park them on an objective. Without the rerolls though I find them < awesome.

[macdaddyt]

If you are going to run Biovores (especially a unit of 3) just take an LAN. Otherwise only take 1-2 as they will miss quite often. The spore mines dropping are "useful" as they can cause some distraction if used well but you only get D3 no matter how many bios are in the unit (something I think is lame)

I never take Biovores or an Exo wothout my LAN. To me that formation is just too good on the units that make it up. Re-rolling the scatter die is a great buff especially for the bios barrage weapon. I find my bios and Exo to underperform of they don't have the LAN buff.

[coredump]

They are still pretty good outside of LAN. Just remember they are only a 120pt unit, you can't expect something game changing. The biggest problem IME is the LAN has just plain spoiled me. The TLinked Biovores *can* be game changing... It makes anything less seem so... bleh...

[mattblowers]

Oct 21, 2014 1:04:54 GMT coredump said:

They are still pretty good outside of LAN. Just remember they are only a 120pt unit, you can't expect something game changing. The biggest problem IME is the LAN has just plain spoiled me. The TLinked Biovores *can* be game changing... It makes anything less seem so... bleh...

After wyverns, even LAN ones have lost their shine for me, I caused 48 wounds on a unit of cron warriors yesterday with a squadron of only 2. They couldn't have playtested the things.

[coredump]

Oh, they were play tested....a LOT. They used to be FW ( or something very similar.... Nickname Thud guns). Funny thing is Thud guns used to be one of the poster units to show that FW units were broken. So GW figured they would be a great addition to the AM codex..... Yay......

[gigasnail]

Thudd guns are still in.

[luke1705]

In fairness, AM is still incredibly bad in the competitive scene. IIRC, they ranked dead last in tournament win percentage (though I can't recall what sample pool that statistic drew from)

[luke1705]

So we can begrudge them one good unit, much like us and our Flyrants

[mattblowers]

Oct 21, 2014 22:25:13 GMT luke1705 said:

In fairness, AM is still incredibly bad in the competitive scene. IIRC, they ranked dead last in tournament win percentage (though I can't recall what sample pool that statistic drew from)

I don't think that's close to true. I play IG as well (I'm not giving in to AM yet). I have a much higher winning percentage with them and they are much easier to play. They have far more playable options than we do as well. With access to all the good psychic trees, cheap effective psykers, and the best vehicles in the game, not to mention incredible orders, they are excellent. Any poor showing is more related to a new codex than a poor power level.

[luke1705]

Check torrent of fire. It's actually not so pretty for IG. The only way they have a winning record is with Space Wolf allies, and that's not by much. They have a sub-40% win rate since 7th dropped as a stand-alone codex; however I don't doubt that this could be because of the relatively new book

[gigasnail]

Yeah but how much of that is because top players just moved to easier to play, solid SM and eldar?

[luke1705]

Fair point

[gigasnail]

Honestly I dunno that there's a way to tell. The codex looks decent and has some seemingly good builds right out of the gate. I never cared for straight up IG and have looked at the new book more than casually.