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Post by coredump on Jan 19, 2015 15:49:34 GMT
Well last night I tried having lots of our multi-wound T4 large creatures and it was pretty dire. DL 2 Lictors 3 Snooty Warriors 3 Shrikes 3 Biovores I like that your warriors are elitest snobs.....
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Post by natelicious on Jan 19, 2015 21:19:41 GMT
Well looking at HQ Old One Eye is an interesting choice. His 4 base Armourbane S10 attacks and D3 S10 HoW are no joke and certainly cause target priority issues for your opponent. Yes, he is costly, and he doesn't have access to fleet, but Berserk Rampage can be a thing against Knights and heavy vehicles. Carnifex-heavy lists might consider him? I still think there's a place for the Pyrovore, whether it's foot-slogging or podding is in need of play-testing, but whether it's lighting up annoying Sniper Scouts in cover, Pathfinders and Fire Warriors in ruins, Necron Warriors or whatever, or just plain old No Escape burning Trukks or DE Venoms and the like. They project an intimidating bubble for those types of units! Sky-Slashers? Used in a similar fashion to Rippers? 12" movement instead of Deep Strike for less points, maybe add AG for anti-vehicle or TS for anti-MC? Ruture Cannon T-Fex. Stop laughing for a second and hear me out. Str10 long range can quite easily penetrate light to medium armour. Against Wyverns, Leman Russ S8 Battle Cannons, a penetrate result negates a round of shooting. Expensive, yes. But worth considering? I'd say yes. Would love to hear people's ideas on this. Don't laugh and dismiss, be constructive and let's get something out of these ideas. Even if they're bad, we might learn something. I would say OOE is way too slow to catch a landraider without getting destroyed itself. Pyrovore might be playable in pods and only if you are not playing more than one Malanthrope. The problem with Ropture Cannon Tfex is not only the AP which means we dont blow up anything that is not open topped its that is BS3 platform and only 2Shots which is maybe one hit a turn and in many cases you dont hit at all. I love them but Acid Spray is the best option. I wish the above mentioned units worked. Sadly they are only useful in friendly games and "I dont care if I win. Me neither" enviroments. For our Tournament playing mayority in the hive they just cant cut it. Maybe so but these units have been shelved for the same reason that we all dismiss them. We assume that they aren't competitive; logic that should've been outed with the Lictor Shame list. The Lictor Shame list showed us that there is mileage in certain units when they have a role to play. If we define these roles, we can explore them further. I'd be interested in what people think to the Sky-Slashers. Are they a useable unit in the competitive meta? Any thoughts to the usefulness of penetrating hits with the Rupture Cannon? I grit my teeth as I say that because I too have lost hope with it but it should be explored with an open mind. Old One Eye? Any thoughts on his usefulness against a Knight? I would love to play in more tournaments to use these ideas but alas I leave these ideas to the discretion of those vastly more experienced than I.
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Post by gigasnail on Jan 19, 2015 21:48:33 GMT
the lictor list was made specifically to take full advantage of the rules and meta it was playing in ("go ahead, shoot your 375 points of firepower at a 50 point model.").
find a competitive environment that OOE and rupture cannon fexes thrive in. i wish you luck; i can't think of one and these units aren't just niche, they're over-costed and terrible.
sky slashers i've thought about, but compared to rippers, there are issues. rippers, you only care that they're small, score, and don't need synapse. you don't want them in combat. sky slashers are fragile assault jump infantry with a lot of attacks, but, they're T3/swarms. running that at an enemy is just asking for it. use gargoyles instead if you want jump assault gribblies. if you were wanting to use them to score, i guess you could do the same thing as rippers (DS them in) as they're only 6 points more per unit of 3 compared to a DS ripper brood, and have the advantage of a 12"/ignore terrain move.
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Post by Yautja on Jan 19, 2015 23:59:30 GMT
the lictor list was made specifically to take full advantage of the rules and meta it was playing in ("go ahead, shoot your 375 points of firepower at a 50 point model."). find a competitive environment that OOE and rupture cannon fexes thrive in. i wish you luck; i can't think of one and these units aren't just niche, they're over-costed and terrible. sky slashers i've thought about, but compared to rippers, there are issues. rippers, you only care that they're small, score, and don't need synapse. you don't want them in combat. sky slashers are fragile assault jump infantry with a lot of attacks, but, they're T3/swarms. running that at an enemy is just asking for it. use gargoyles instead if you want jump assault gribblies. if you were wanting to use them to score, i guess you could do the same thing as rippers (DS them in) as they're only 6 points more per unit of 3 compared to a DS ripper brood, and have the advantage of a 12"/ignore terrain move. I've always struggled with understanding the point of Skyslashers myself. As you say, Gargoyles are better (in my opinion) as jumpers and the troops version has OS and can DS down anyway....or is it burrowing up technically?
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Post by britishbill on Jan 21, 2015 3:32:45 GMT
OK, I am going to make just about the worst suggestion here. I looked through the Levethian book and was so disappointed that I could not think of a way of making the Neural Node work. Biggest issue for me was the Malaceptor which is just way too over priced. So I asked how I would do it.
Suppose at about 1850 points you went with the Levethian detachment or allied with yourself. What I am trying to get to is to have three Flyrants on the table, the associated troops in deep striking rippers and then two large blocks of Zoanthropes (5 or 6) with a Toxicrene running behind each of them. There is probably a place for Lictors in this list to sit on objectives in cover as well but rippers are so good at that. You may also decide you want to be dropping some mines into the mix as well.
The point about this is the Hive Tyrants are now acting as batteries for the Zoanthropes who are guaranteed to get Warp blast. That is ten psychic phase dice before you even rolled for dice in the psychic phase and so you are just about guaranteed to get warp blast off from the Zoans each turn, and that's all of them. Because their shooting takes place in the psychic phase you can run forward or back in the shooting phase making them just a little more maneuverable. The Toxicrene behind them is going to get a 3 up cover save in the open. He is your bet against assaults while they are your weapon against vehicles and knights. I realize the knight can move quickly and could purposely put their shields against your zoans, but then your flyrants should be to the side or the back of them and they can't switch the facing of their shields in your psychic phase and then again in your shooting phase.
I still need some Flyrants, but now you are going to use them to take out little guys with bolters and things to avoid your zoans going down to a hail of small arms fire.
I have Zoans 10 to 12 on order (in metal) and am going to try this at some point, but I was wondering what anybody thought.
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Post by mattblowers on Jan 21, 2015 12:13:00 GMT
I have Zoans 10 to 12 on order (in metal) and am going to try this at some point, but I was wondering what anybody thought. Let us know how it works. I only have six and I've not even played all of those since the new rules came out.
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Post by Yautja on Jan 21, 2015 17:56:25 GMT
With the Flyrant's mobility it will more likely have the best shooting positions to let off Scream/Paroxysm/WB etc so the Zoanthropes may just end up as batteries for the HTs.
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Post by FTGT-BeeCee on Jan 21, 2015 18:45:38 GMT
the big problem i see with this is there is no reason for the knights to have to get within warp lance range for a while. One of the most common knight failures I see is the knight player just walking a knight into the teeth of the enemy.
A knight could just sit back for a turn or two throwing battlecannon shots on your zope blobs, unless you are sitting in ruins with spore cloud to get you a 2+ cover save, you will be failing saves and losing zopes every turn.
I'm not saying this will never work but relying on foot zopes with an 18" lance range will be frustrating for you if your opponent plays it smart and doesn't expose their knights/armor to them needlessly.
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Post by britishbill on Jan 22, 2015 1:34:07 GMT
I am not suggesting this is easy, nothing is against Imperial knights, but we are looking at non main stream combinations here and not every army is using the Knight formation. If they hold everything back to avoid their 1200 point knight formation being shot by my 600 points of Zoans then my flyrants should have made a mess of the rest of his army. To get to objectives he then has to split the knights which makes them vulnerable.
Most games are objective based and killing the Knights is not what is necessary to win, containing them is enough.
The other point mentioned is that the Zoans will find it hard to get into range to fire Warp Blast, but 2 turns should get them in range to fire the small template and 3 allows them to fire the lance. The point is if some survive, they will have more effect than a single lance shot from a tyrant. All this assumes that your opponent is not trying to take board control and in so doing come to you.
I have no idea if this will work, I will try it (and let the hive know) but I thought it at least worth a mention in this thread.
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Post by gigasnail on Jan 22, 2015 2:01:26 GMT
the issue is it's 600 points of your army and isn't honestly likely to do a lot.
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Post by britishbill on Jan 22, 2015 3:35:58 GMT
OK, perhaps we should say that we can't break out of the main stream units that we use, and doing two lots of the Zoans and Toxicrene block is over 900 points, but that was not the point of this thread.
What we need to think about in this thread is what combination of units do we have that do work together and what are their Achilles heel. I think there is some synergy between Zoans and Toxicrenes but maybe they can't deal with all situations. If Knights are the problem, maybe we need 60 gargoyles in the list to bog them down and only have 1 block of Zoans and 1 Toxicrene. There is a counter to virtually all of our units, and often more than 1 counter, but the challenge is to find a combination that is complimentary.
The Toxicrene is relatively slow and susceptible to getting wounded out in the open. The Zoans give it cover but are weak in hand to hand combat. Hence the combination.
We have a few new units to play with now, what other combinations exist. Nobody rated the Lictor - Mawloc combination until three months ago, until it worked. As the OP asked, are there any other combinations of 2 or maybe 3 units that really work well together.
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Post by gigasnail on Jan 22, 2015 3:45:43 GMT
...what synergy is there with zoanthropes and toxicrenes?
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Post by FTGT-BeeCee on Jan 22, 2015 7:50:59 GMT
I am not suggesting this is easy, nothing is against Imperial knights, but we are looking at non main stream combinations here and not every army is using the Knight formation. If they hold everything back to avoid their 1200 point knight formation being shot by my 600 points of Zoans then my flyrants should have made a mess of the rest of his army. To get to objectives he then has to split the knights which makes them vulnerable. Most games are objective based and killing the Knights is not what is necessary to win, containing them is enough. The other point mentioned is that the Zoans will find it hard to get into range to fire Warp Blast, but 2 turns should get them in range to fire the small template and 3 allows them to fire the lance. The point is if some survive, they will have more effect than a single lance shot from a tyrant. All this assumes that your opponent is not trying to take board control and in so doing come to you. I have no idea if this will work, I will try it (and let the hive know) but I thought it at least worth a mention in this thread. I am not trying to beat you up over this at all but you have to realize what you are trying to accomplish. You aren't effectively containing knights with a couple of zope units. 2 turns of knight fire from an Ad Lance is going to be 8 str 8 ap 3 large blasts and 2 str 9 ap 1 large blasts. Unless your dice are super hot, you are not going to be able to maintain critical mass of zopes to do anything. There is no reason the knights need to even get close to zoanthropes right away and if they stay back your tyrants are facing av 13 front armor. I know this is just an example of something you want to try and by all means try it. Only in playing games do we get better.
I am going to apologize in advance for this rant. It's almost 2am where I am and I've had a few beers and been painting all night....
I just wish we could get to the point where we stop looking for a diamond in the rough all the time and spend our time with more meaningful pursuits. Lictorshame is beautiful, Sean hit a homerun and cemented himself into the annuls of Tyranid godhood but for us mere mortals I propose a better use of our time.
Let's spend time and understand our lists, instead of looking to find a way to make genestealers work en mass, spend time understanding what your particular Tyranid list needs. Really spend the time to break things down here people. If you really want to get (please do not swear) good with bugs notice the little things like "hey when I take 13 gargoyles instead of 10, the units seems to live longer, not just because it has 3 more bodies but because it takes dedicated fire from 3 units instead of 2 to wipe it out" etc... play 5-10 games with your list before you make changes, take notes, understand that you are a human being and make mistakes before you shitcan a unit that may be underperforming because you are misusing it. Honestly some of the best 40k advice I have gotten is from Skari on theWarmaster.com with his army journey concept. He recommends the journey takes you through 20 games minimum with your army before you really understand what the heck you are doing. Kudos to you Skari!
When you make changes to your list, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Find your core army and build around it, completely changing your list to "Chase the Lictor" is only going to lead to a lot of frustration as you have to change playstyles to adjust to the random selections of units you are throwing in your lists to create some magic combo.
Take the time to understand odds and probability. Yes in the terms of one game, you can beat the odds and roll hot but you need to have an understanding of the odds in order to make sound decisions.
Understand the ramifications of your decisions on the battlefield. When you put fire on a Wave Serpent to force it to jink, don't be surprised that it targets one of your FMCs the next turn because it's snap shooting anyways etc...
Once again sorry for the rant and the soapbox, we all want to be better and win more games but like anything, you won't get better unless you put effort in to it.
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Post by gigasnail on Jan 22, 2015 8:43:10 GMT
^this.
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Post by russellr on Jan 22, 2015 16:58:45 GMT
Great post BeeCee.
I also like the original idea though. There's bound to be sneaky plans and clever tricks that haven't been discovered yet, simply because so many people assume that we know everything about the army
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