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Post by chompz on Nov 21, 2014 18:58:05 GMT
If they made facing an issue, then at least 2 of the sporcyst's weapons would be largely useless, as they'd be facing the back field all game.
I picture these things as giant floating whirrlygigs, barfing out goop indiscriminately on whatever walks by.
My army list for three games this weekend has 2 carnifex coming in via pods. The pods have death spitters (in case I roll master of ambush, at which point I infiltrate the fexes and toss some lighter fare inside pods).
Fyi..the pods really add up, especially if you take a comms relay to ensure proper arrival.
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Post by coredump on Nov 21, 2014 19:15:16 GMT
Shooting blast templates at BS2 at closest unit means lots of friendly fire. I tried this with our old pods last edition and quickly went back to deathspitters. Only exception would be a unit you inted to drop on far objectives. This, seriously. Guys no one did this last edition when you only had one cannon. Five is just hilariously bad idea. No one took them *because* there was only 1 cannon, at its greatest potential, it *might* be an annoyance to the enemy. *AND* they were hilariously expensive. It was 20pts for ONE VC... now for 25pts you get five VCs.... With 5 cannons, the Pod becomes an offensive threat by itself. It moves beyond being 'just' a DS transport, and can actually be tasked with taking out an enemy unit. You are now dropping *two* killy units instead of one, you can now drop and address two different units with one Drop. OF course you can't just drop it blindly now... it takes some consideration of what you will be targeting, and where your vulnerable units may be. But it now its 'greatest potential' is a whole lot more than an annoyance. You don't take them arbitrarily. Running Endless Swarm and dropping devilgaunts.... don't take the cannons. BUt if you are dropping a Tfex, a Devilfex, and a Dima..... who cares if you get 1-2 blasts sccattering onto a model. And lets be real, unless you have multiple units right next to your target unit (and not in CC) the chances of a scatter hitting one of them is pretty small.
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Post by coredump on Nov 21, 2014 19:27:46 GMT
i'd be shocked if we got an faq that addressed anything at this point. been a minute. Well, Chaos Daemons and Dark Angels just got updated. Time to grab a fork and find an outlet, I reckon Is either a 'real' FAQ, or just another "We answered two questions that no on was asking"-type FAQ.
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Post by coredump on Nov 21, 2014 19:33:16 GMT
If I had to guess, I would say the wanted to rule to be measuring range and LoS from each gun individually; as it would from a vehicle.
Unfortunately, with GW... I *do* have to guess. And while I am glad they finally put out two more "FAQs".... since they are so incomplete, I see absolutely no reason to assume any particular issue will every be addressed, even if a Nid FAQ ever does come out again.
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Post by gigasnail on Nov 21, 2014 19:38:04 GMT
I agree the cannons are a threat. The question is to who, and are they worth the cost. Go run them and see how they do.
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Post by hiveminded on Nov 23, 2014 19:40:14 GMT
Fyi..the pods really add up, especially if you take a comms relay to ensure proper arrival. This is one of the reasons why I prefer the Sporocyst. Multiple Tyrannocytes are expensive and lead to a lot of points sitting in reserve, which I dislike. Also, you aren't assured your deepstrikers will arrive at the same time.
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Post by WestRider on Nov 24, 2014 4:55:39 GMT
I gave a couple of pods a try this afternoon. I made some screw-ups (most notably forgetting about Collars of Khorne), and was trying too much new stuff at once (also tried the SkyTyrant Swarm with too many Gargs and an over-tooled Combat Flyrant, and DeathLeaper's Assassin Brood), so I lost pretty badly, but the Tärvigon and Haruspex in Pods both did pretty well for me.
I'll have to try again against an Army that's more firepower-based, but dropping the Tärv was great against the Daemons because I was able to get it right up in his face, while spawning Gaunts as a Charge Screen to hold the Daemonettes off. The Spex tore up a Soul Grinder more easily than anything else I've thrown at one, but did get beat up in the process and then finished off with Poisoned Witchfires. It's much better with a delivery system, but still pretty badly overpriced.
Definitely go for a Comms Relay or something. I initially deployed to get aggressive, but then realized that over half my Army was in Reserves, and I needed to scramble a bit to not end up too exposed before everything showed up. Actually, in this case I wanted a Comms Relay to re-roll some of the successful Reserves Rolls, because it would have been rather better for my Stealers and a couple of the Lictors to show up later, but it would be all too easy to end up with a big chunk of your Army stuck in Reserves too long with even just a couple of Pods.
Quick notes on the other things I tried: - DeathLeaper's Assassin Brood was great. Even without adding Lictors from the CAD, that's a lot of really annoying Units that are capable of providing a nice little edge in tight Combats. Also, when you've got that many Lictors, even just one Mawloc can get downright terrifying. For the three Turns until it finally died on the Mishap, I had no shortage of auto-hit targets, just due to how many Lictors I had scattered all over the place. - SkyTyrant Swarm is not a DeathStar. I do think it's got potential, but you need to keep it relatively cheap. I way over-invested in it, and then got the stuffing beaten out by about half its Points in Khorne Dogs because it's majority WS and T 3.
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Post by Yautja on Nov 24, 2014 11:20:20 GMT
I gave a couple of pods a try this afternoon. I made some screw-ups (most notably forgetting about Collars of Khorne), and was trying too much new stuff at once (also tried the SkyTyrant Swarm with too many Gargs and an over-tooled Combat Flyrant, and DeathLeaper's Assassin Brood), so I lost pretty badly, but the Tärvigon and Haruspex in Pods both did pretty well for me. I'll have to try again against an Army that's more firepower-based, but dropping the Tärv was great against the Daemons because I was able to get it right up in his face, while spawning Gaunts as a Charge Screen to hold the Daemonettes off. The Spex tore up a Soul Grinder more easily than anything else I've thrown at one, but did get beat up in the process and then finished off with Poisoned Witchfires. It's much better with a delivery system, but still pretty badly overpriced. Definitely go for a Comms Relay or something. I initially deployed to get aggressive, but then realized that over half my Army was in Reserves, and I needed to scramble a bit to not end up too exposed before everything showed up. Actually, in this case I wanted a Comms Relay to re-roll some of the successful Reserves Rolls, because it would have been rather better for my Stealers and a couple of the Lictors to show up later, but it would be all too easy to end up with a big chunk of your Army stuck in Reserves too long with even just a couple of Pods. Quick notes on the other things I tried: - DeathLeaper's Assassin Brood was great. Even without adding Lictors from the CAD, that's a lot of really annoying Units that are capable of providing a nice little edge in tight Combats. Also, when you've got that many Lictors, even just one Mawloc can get downright terrifying. For the three Turns until it finally died on the Mishap, I had no shortage of auto-hit targets, just due to how many Lictors I had scattered all over the place. - SkyTyrant Swarm is not a DeathStar. I do think it's got potential, but you need to keep it relatively cheap. I way over-invested in it, and then got the stuffing beaten out by about half its Points in Khorne Dogs because it's majority WS and T 3. Skytyrant formation: what loadout did the HT have? How many Gargoyles?
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Post by WestRider on Nov 24, 2014 11:59:45 GMT
Hive Tyrant had way too much garbage. Reaper, Ymgarl, Maw Claw, Adrenals, Regen. Ludicrously expensive, would have been better 70-80 Points cheaper. That said, I did actually get use out of everything except the Maw Claw, and if I'd been more on the ball, I would have used that, too.
37 Gargoyles. A Brood of 10 with no upgrades that went out front, and then a Brood of 27 with Adrenal Glands. The mix actually worked out as planned, with the 10 basic ones getting killed off before I made my one Charge with it. The Unit was too big and awkward and spread out, tho. It got in my way, and even with a decent Charge roll, a bunch of them were left out of that first round. Having that many also made it more vulnerable to getting multi-charged, resulting in a ton of Wounds getting dumped into the Gargs while the Flyrant was busy trying to deal with one of the three Units attacking it.
Next time I try it, I'm going to go with something more like 25 Gargoyles, and give the Flyrant just the Reaper, Maw Claw (because getting Preferred Enemy for all those Gargs would be really tasty), and maybe Adrenals. That'll free up almost enough Points for an extra Dakka Flyrant.
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Post by Yautja on Nov 24, 2014 13:06:54 GMT
Hahaha oh my goodness that was a very expensive HT indeed! Blimey, 75p more expensive than my setup!
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Post by WestRider on Nov 24, 2014 15:06:27 GMT
Yeah, I got kind of carried away. Also I was running out of room in my case and didn't want to repack to fit in another Brood of Stealers or something, so I just slapped more gear on the Tyrant because I was lazy
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Post by N.I.B. on Nov 24, 2014 15:23:27 GMT
I tried out the Skyrant formation with a minsized unit of 20 Gargoyles, and even that felt clumsy.
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Post by chompz on Nov 24, 2014 19:25:56 GMT
Back on topic, I ran 2 cytes in a local tournament this weekend. Not going to post my army list unless people are curious as it had little bearing on the review. Had a total of 13 out of 21 units deep striking, comms relay, and opted to keep the carnifexes in the pods all three games. The cytes had deathspitters.
Game one was against Black Legion, so I knew the guy was kinda soft. The cytes made great blockers against his vehicles moving to much. They wrecked a rhino, caused a couple casualties and provided mobile cover for some advancing warriors. Blocked LoS to a lictor on an objective, too.
Game two was against my buddy running my dark eldar list. Was purge the alien, so got pretty meaty by the end (both had 20+ points to give up). The spores took out a raider, a venom, a squad of medusae and took an unholy amount of fire to bring down. Nothing overly special except bring another cheap unit on the board that could weather tons of fire. Side note: mawlock ate his warlord with Terror from the Deep, and blew up a venom, which then managed to wreck the venom next to it from the explosion. Statistically unlikely, but satisfying as hell. I lost by 2 points but moral victory.
Game three was imperial knights with iron hand allies in a storm raven. The cytes provided excellent blockage for the advancing knights. The cytes couldn't hurt the damn things by shooting, so I was even more pleased I hadn't taken blast templates....They still have to fire and could have bounced back. In another installment of "WTF just happened?"he assaulted a pod in a choke point. After doing several wounds, my pod gets to attack back. Using smash, the pod hits, penetrates, and gets an exploded readily, finishing the knight. The resulting detonation kills the pod, but SFW, pod destroyed a knight. Suck it, emperor. Tyranids win 5-4. Another moral victory: almost dead tyrant takes a hail Mary shot at the storm talon with warp blast. Toss 5 dice into it. Roll 4 6s, so perils like a boss. Takes a wound, fails grounding check, hits ground, dies. Power still goes off, so I decide to play it out. Hits the raven, penetrates and gets wrecked zooming flyer. 10 marines inside are turned into a power armored smear and the captain survives a mile away from anything relevant on the board. Lictors tear down 3hp from his warlord knight in melee.
Overall, the pods did exactly what I wanted then to do. They got the fexes almost exactly where I wanted them without fuss, and provided excellent targets to deal with. If you haven't used one on the gaming table, you can't adequately see just how much space they take up. That's a big deal in objective based games. Template weapons would have been a disaster, as targets were often only a few inches from the pod at most.
Two big thumbs up from me!
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Post by luke1705 on Nov 24, 2014 22:33:42 GMT
You shouldn't be able to block LOS to anything with a pod, unless the target is on the second level of a ruin/otherwise elevated. Alternatively, it can work if the shooter is in an elevated position, but both of these scenarios are incredibly dependent on position in all three dimensions and difficult to achieve.
I mention it because this leads me to think that you probably have modeled your cyte without the tentacles and have the body sitting on the ground floor. That's fine and dandy (I almost modeled it that was myself) but you should be aware that that is modeling for advantage. It's not very sportsmanlike to alter a model and claim benefits from the altered modeling that you wouldn't have been able to claim if the model was constructed normally. Just food for thought.
As for the content of the report, I'm glad to hear it went well! I really need to pick up some more Lictors haha! The only question is....how many???
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Post by chompz on Nov 24, 2014 23:18:04 GMT
The LoS block was from a unit up in some ruins, so it's all good. I did model one cyte without the tentacles, but that was purely an aesthetics and practicality choice. The balance on the standard model is not great, even with widely dispersed weights. It's a matter of time til it breaks. If someone complains, I can swap out the lowered one for elevated to check true los.
Lictors are fun, but fragile. Been using them for several editions, but I really dig the assassin brood. Such great flavor. And not that it comes up too much, but them lowering leadership for nearby models occasionally comes in handy.
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