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Post by nurglitch on May 27, 2015 16:03:05 GMT
I'm sorry, but the whole notion of "Well, it looks good on paper, but in reality..." is a personal bug-bear of mine. It just irks me when I read that.
On an unrelated note, where are you getting the notion that a character can't challenge unless they're within 2" of a character model locked in combat before pile-in moves happen? Because I can't find that in the rules on challenges.
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Post by WestRider on May 27, 2015 16:33:42 GMT
They don't have to be within 2" of another Character, but they do have to be able to fight in the Combat (i.e. Engaged) to Issue or Accept Challenges. It's the last sentence of both the Issuing a Challenge and Accepting a Challenge sections on Pg.101.
So if you've got the SkyTyrant Swarm spread out across a 24" front, and your Opponent Charges it from the extreme flank, it's going to be a full Game Turn before your Tyrant even gets in range to try to do something, and the whole mess is going to be clogging up your front the whole time.
As for the whole "looks good on paper" thing, not all of us have your super powers of being able to see all the implications of something at first glance.
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Post by mattblowers on May 27, 2015 17:15:44 GMT
They don't have to be within 2" of another Character, but they do have to be able to fight in the Combat (i.e. Engaged) to Issue or Accept Challenges. What he said. A character has to be engaged (that's where the 2" comes from) to accept a challenge. I see people do this all the time, actually there is a ton of confusion about challenges that carry over from the 6th. Wounds spill into and out of combat just fine now, they didn't use to, so a challenge isn't a good place to hide a character anymore.
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Post by nurglitch on May 27, 2015 17:17:18 GMT
Due diligence isn't a super-power. All it takes is avoiding sweeping over-generalizations, and a willingness to go back to re-think how you think about the game; not some "super-power." I obviously don't have a super-power if I didn't remember the clause that the challenger has to be engaged.
As for spreading a Skytyrant swarm out, you do that on the turn you're ready to charge, using that 12" jump movement. Moving up with board in a 24" wide mass is both a recipe for disaster, and a hassle. I mean, why would you do that?
However, given that they're supposed to lock the enemy in combat, since it's a cannon-fodder unit, then being charged first is just gravy. Because no unit locked in combat with them from a previous turn gets to inflict the difficult terrain Initiative penalty on a unit charging them.
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Post by nurglitch on May 27, 2015 17:26:48 GMT
Regarding challenges, remember the challenger just has to be engaged. Any character in the combat can accept the challenge, so long as they're also engaged, so if they're the only character in the challenge they then need to determine whether they can refuse and leave the character out of the combat, or allow your Tyrant a stupidly longer challenge-move. Or at least that's the way I'm reading the challenge rules. Apparently my super-power is being cancelled out by exposed to silicon!
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Post by gauntlet on May 27, 2015 18:14:05 GMT
I think I saw the intention of the Formation without paying much attention to the actual rules.
I thought cool, instead of Swooping, now I can Glide my close combat Tyrant around the board with impunity from ranged weapons and only when all the Gargoyles have been shot away, then I can assault without having to wait a turn to drop out of Swoop mode.
It's an excellent idea to add a different method of operation for the Tyrant and is fluffy. But in a game, I would rather stick my Tyrant behind the cover of a separate Gargoyle unit. One counter against the Formation would be, not to shoot the Gargoyles and ignore it, whilst baiting the squishy unit to enter combat.
That is, I guess, the intended concept, whether it works in practice, is ... down to doing some practice. Anyone tried it yet?
Interesting to see others opinions of the intended way this Formation was designed to function?
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Post by nurglitch on May 27, 2015 19:39:15 GMT
I tried it (Hive Tyrant with Adrenal Gland, one set of Devourers, Shreddershard Thorax Swarm, 2x 15 Gargoyles with Adrenal Glands), and won "Best General" at a small Maelstrom tournament. Mind you, what I had going on was a mass of Genestealers to infiltrate and kick-start my scoring, and some other stuff lying around (Tervigon, Warriors, Lictors, etc). I won by basically feeding my army into my opponents while making sure that every unit on an objective would be replaced once they were inevitably destroyed.
The 'secret sauce' I think is to consider it cannon-fodder rather than as a Winged Tyrant Guard. The Tyrant makes it just dangerous enough to shoot at, and the Gargoyles give the Tyrant a nice big footprint. What it does is attract fire and lock stuff in combat so that other units, like Genestealers, can act effectively.
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Post by blackswarm on May 27, 2015 19:47:30 GMT
I've used it a few times now. Flyrant armed with scything talons and maw-claws it works well. I normally use it to act as a barrier in a nid shooting list ( shooty nids are funny, your opponent never expects it lol ). I charge a large unit that will take me a couple of turns to kill so that he has to move round a blob that he can't shoot to get to your other units. The other way I use it, I deploy all my units behind it and give my unit a base 5+ cover save to be boosted by malanthrope/venomthropes
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Post by mattblowers on May 27, 2015 20:01:50 GMT
The 'secret sauce' I think is to consider it cannon-fodder rather than as a Winged Tyrant Guard. The Tyrant makes it just dangerous enough to shoot at, and the Gargoyles give the Tyrant a nice big footprint. What it does is attract fire and lock stuff in combat so that other units, like Genestealers, can act effectively. LOL, you do it to make genestealers good? That's your plan? A 400 point distraction target. I think I'll pass. Too many people play Wyverns around me. That's about 2 turns for a 195 unit to take out (or at least whittle down to a point where it won't distract anything) a 400 point minimum one. I don't get "distraction" strategies. I get disruption units, kamakazee ones, etc, but if you are just gonna be a distraction, why not just take a VSG?
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Post by jaysic on May 27, 2015 21:08:02 GMT
I've used it a few times now. Flyrant armed with scything talons and maw-claws it works well. I normally use it to act as a barrier in a nid shooting list ( shooty nids are funny, your opponent never expects it lol ). I charge a large unit that will take me a couple of turns to kill so that he has to move round a blob that he can't shoot to get to your other units. The other way I use it, I deploy all my units behind it and give my unit a base 5+ cover save to be boosted by malanthrope/venomthropes Short of my regular opponents, I see the opposite. Everyone is shocked to see CC nids. I haven't found use for this formation in my CC lists and found it very impractical in practice. I'm glad it's working for nurglich though. Shine on and share your experiences in making it work, haters be damned.
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Post by dcoy on May 28, 2015 0:05:49 GMT
the flyrant can jink. the formation can't. Eh, I guess I missed the part where only the jink models get the cover save.
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Post by nikh on May 28, 2015 0:20:09 GMT
My main issue with the formation is that once you start rolling 1s on LoS!, you'll get pretty frustrated. Your Tyrant will get wounded far easily than usual. So really, only take it if you're willing to deal with that. I took it once, it was fun to have a nice fluffy formation and I really enjoyed playing it, but definitely don't bring it to a tourney table.
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Post by WestRider on May 28, 2015 3:13:45 GMT
As for spreading a Skytyrant swarm out, you do that on the turn you're ready to charge, using that 12" jump movement. Moving up with board in a 24" wide mass is both a recipe for disaster, and a hassle. I mean, why would you do that? To avoid getting shredded by Wyverns, TFC, Whirlwinds, Eradicators, Ion Blasts, Night Spinners, Shadow Weavers, Lobbas, or whatever. You let any of those catch you not spread out, and you've basically just shelled out extra Points to turn your Tyrant T3.
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Post by nurglitch on May 28, 2015 12:59:43 GMT
Yeah, and look at how much firepower that big blob of cannon-fodder managed to attract, despite wearing a big sign saying "Please shoot me instead of anything more useful!"
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Post by tylertt on May 28, 2015 13:17:50 GMT
I think this formation comes down to what your local scene looks like. If Wyverns and the like are as common as D weapons in the Eldar codex, then your going to be fighting an uphill battle. I do understand the distraction game plan, but I just can't give up a Tyrant as being simply a distraction.
I want to try this formation, but I personally can't see it working out in most of my lists. Will certainly give it a whirl though before I completely dismiss it.
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