Tyranid Rumours. Jan 8 My last update.

[arnestig]

Yeah, okay.
I haven't seen the codex yet but I agree with you leeroy.
This release sucks, most of the codex sounds unchanged. Another 4 years in the gutters.

... or you could wait a few days and find out.

[chunk]

What a marvelous time to be a Tyranid player.

I started Tyranids with the 5th edition codex, so I never got to play with what we apparently had before. As such, I'm approaching this with what I'd call guarded optimism.

So far I haven't seen anything that makes me say "Welp, that's gonna make winning about forty times harder."

I have however seen a few things that I'm very thankful for, namely:

1. More Flying Monstrous Creatures, going from what we know (not what's rumoured or conjectured), we now have Str 8 Vector Strikes, Stranglethorn bombardments and/or Venom Cannons. FMCs are far, far more maneuverable than the vast majority of Flyers, and given the prices I've seen (the points drop on Hive Tyrants as well), we should be able to field some kind of ridiculous Tyranid Flying Circus.

2. Cheaper (by far!) Carnifeci. This change alone frees up a large chunk of my list for other stuff, plus now we can mix and match biomorphs within the brood. Also, Old One Eye as an HQ! 10-carnifex army lists, oh my yes.

3. Cheaper Tyrannofex. I never used him with a Rupture Cannon, though I did once proxy one of my Tervigons with his Acid Spray. He took an inordinate amount of fire to take down, and now he's at least 60pts cheaper. Seriously considering getting at least one of these.

4. Cheaper Termagants and Hormagaunts, this doesn't need to be explained, I shouldn't think.

5. Access to ap2 ranged weaponry outside of Zoanthropes. I never used Zoans, too fragile in my opinion. 2 wounds with a 3+ meant that bolter fire cut through them with surprising alacrity. It was also that I never felt comfortable making a mycetic spore for them to use, so if I ever did field one, it'd be footslogging. Add into that the relatively short range of Warp Lance/Blast, and they just weren't worth it. Now we have a large plasma blast without gets hot, on a platform which can take a round of bolter fire to the face and keep on going. The Exocrine is exactly what this army sorely needed, and it got it, barring some unknown factor, 2 of these dopey bad boys are going straight into my army.

Now that's just from what I saw in the WD that was leaked, so that's as close to real information we can get without having the book in our hands.

I'm also seeing a lot of this kind of back and forth (not necessarily on this site, but a lot of other places):

Pessimist: My Warriors' statline hasn't changed, and they're still instagibbed by missile launchers! That makes me sad.

Optimist: But look at this (other confirmed unit that looks really good)!

Pessimist: Bah, according to (unconfirmed rumour), they're going to be awful! Also, (in a specific situation in which the unit faces a direct counter), (new unit) dies!

Either believe all the rumours (good and bad), or don't believe any of them. Don't choose to ignore the good and only believe the bad, that'll just make you miserable.

[atilha]

And yet again, a batrep for a new codex in wich we do not win...

[druzandar]

As a long playing tyranids player i still look forward to the new codex. Ok the nids may not be the fastest army arround. Ok some armies are gonna outshoot the nids with ease. I just play the game that i love to play. Even when i lose i still like the game. Ok some units are getting a bit neglected (genestealers for instance) I just get the new things with lots of joy and gonna make me new nidzilla army. Rumours are always rumours untill i got hold of the codex in my hands to actualy say...damn this sucks or wow this is freaking awesome. These are my two cents in this all. Cant wait to get hold of the Haruspex and Exocrine model :3 i love these!

[Hive Fleet Ragnorok]

Figured I'd chime in on the "positive/negative" back and forth.

The vast majority of what we know has been good. Everything but the Tervigon and Swarmlord has either stayed the same or gone down in points - and we only know one specific Tervigon build.
We have a new flyer that, at least, has a S8 Vector Strike (promising).
We have access, at a seemingly reasonable cost, to a mid-ranged (supposedly) plasma-death bug (no word on Gets Hot! or not yet, kids... we haven't seen the actual profile, but Bio-Plasma doesn't now).

The "downsides" are the unknowns.
Genestealers, without a significant change to either biomorphs, Broodlord powers, or both, will still be useless.
Hormagaunts are still walking across the table, rather than ramming themselves down the enemy's throats, barring a speed-upgrade via Adrenal Glands (they were basically always reliant on their threat range... and they lost it in this book).
Warriors are fully dependent on what Biomorphs and weapons do as to whether or not they're fieldable. S8 may still negate them on the field.

GW may not have really changed the army list. Tervigons may still be the only viable troop choice. So far, we have no real information on this subject. All the new things are big bugs, which shows potential for a further push into Nidzilla as the only viable build... which some people love. I do not personally, I rather enjoy a tidal wave of gribblies backed up by mid-bugs and a few choice MC's... but that's just me. I would much prefer both to be viable.


The good is good. But it's not enough on its own to take the list I've played for years, the list that the 5th codex ruined (and here I just mean a variety of bugs, rather than 3-4 select choices), and make it worth fielding.
I very much hope that GW doesn't bugger up the bugs... but we haven't seen the fixes the army, at its core, needs.

[gauntlet]

All the proven rumours so far have been great news. Like new flyers and monstrous creatures.
All the key info which will affect existing armies, like Synapse/Eternel Warrior and deepstrike/movement is ominously missing. I suspect the leaks we have seen so far have been deliberate to promote pre-sales and the bad news is being kept highly secure. Why would you avoid discussing all key issues in the promotional magazine ? Not really a conspiracy, it's that the rules long standing players want and expect just don't exist.
My prediction, buy a new army and you will love the new codex.
Try to field your old models and you will cry.

[brassangel]

Well, GW has never purposely made something suck, and then hid it to keep people from finding out; nor did they just decide to never try a unit out and didn't discover it was terrible until right before release, so they kept it from everybody.

That's an absurd notion.

First of all, White Dwarf battle reports have NEVER been an accurate gauge of what's competitive, or how an army will fare overall. Most people don't play like the studio guys either. From the looks of things, they used someone's private army and not a studio army, so it's possible they were using only the models he had painted up. It was also a very unconventional game (3,000+ points), with weird objectives for the Tyranids that were seemingly impossible to kill.

What we do know is that virtually everything got cheaper for us, we gained access to more options and more firepower, and the ability to field deadly MC's in virtually every slot of the force organization chart. How those things translate into: "Our book got worse!" or, "Another 4 years in the gutter!" is beyond me.

Expressing opinions is one thing, but sitting on an extreme end with no more information to go off of than anyone else is just plain silly.

[biomassbob]

Well I guess I'll throw my 2 1/2 cents in on the positive/negative debate with the dex and rumours. As everyone I'm sure hopes, I do hope the dex will make most units viable to use so that we have nidzilla builds, builds with swarms of small gribblies (and not only from tervigon lists) with mid-sized and a couple MCs supporting, and that nids can handle objectives in some way other than having tervigons - meaning an adjustment to the troops (eg warriors being viable) and/or adding other rules (eg any nid unit can hold an objective - not just troops since so most of our troop choices are expendable, not meant to survive and many aren't meant to sit on an objective - wont happen, just a thought), etc.

Some rumours are certainly positive, but some understandably give us pause. As others have said there is too much we don't know to really understand if all our units will be viable, so we have to wait. And while waiting discussions on what has come out so far (and what hasn't) is natural with both positive and negative aspects.

I will keep my expectations low as I have been burned too many times by GW. Having a few new models is nice (if they have a place/need in the army) but I want all the other models I have (and wish to use) to work (in the actual dex and not need to buy a supplement of some type to give them proper rules to function).

So yes, the dex may be fine (or not). We don't know. As Coredump and others have mentioned there are serious issues with our army that need to be addressed and we just don't know from the rumours if they will be addressed. I do hope so and am fine with people wishing to be optimistic - all the power to you. My optimism will be guarded (by an army of the models I want to use).

[biomassbob]

Agree that WD battle reports mean nothing as to how good or bad the dex is. And yes the rumours point to most things getting cheaper which is certainly good. Only a week or so to find out! Good luck to us all!

[gloomfang]

Lets look at the heart of the problem and that is what are Tyranids? They started off being one of the 2 best CC armies, but the general theme has been adaptability.

Now CC is suffering in 6th, but it did fix the mech problem. The addition of 4 MCs will help a lot with that. The big price drop on some MCs will help even more with taking out mech and fortifications.

So I am hoping that the codex adapts more to the new meta. There are some things that make me think they are pushing Nidzilla, but bigger bugs are more survivable. Some units always got a bad rep (my stealers are always worth thier points dispite people saying that they suck). Theoryhammer is fine, but things always play diffrent on the table. I know there are already things I dislike about the codex that I know are going to be in there (rolling for powers for example), but I will just adjust and move on.

[pencilbend]

Jan 1, 2014 6:10:47 GMT WestRider said:

EDIT: Here's the thing: What is KNOWN provides nothing yet that fixes any of the actual problems with the Nid Dex. It all hinges on unknowns. But people are getting all worked up and ready for something awesome based on speculation, when the confirmed facts don't actually give us any basis for that.

Huh, what? Point costs were a huge problem and they have been addressed. Guess what, Warriors still ID to strength 8. They should!

[biomassbob]

pencil - point costs were a problem for some units and since it looks like they dropped some point costs that is good in general but it must be in context of all the rules for the unit (that applies to both positive and negative arguments). If lictors go down 5 points in cost but operate the same will they get any play time? Doubt it. And practically nobody wants EW back on warriors but something must be done to make them viable in the current state of the game.

Leaving warriors T4 so that they are still instagibbed to S8 (and die easily to regular shooting as well) is fine if the base points cost and biomorph costs are reduced appropriately. But if the warrior, as our only other troop choice that could have a function as an objective holder with at least the ability to provide ranged fire support or not die easily/fold when out of synapse, does not change but gets a few points knocked off a couple biomorphs or only goes down 5 points in base cost - well that may not bring them back to the table.

As both some optimists and pessimists of this dex have said we don't have the full picture and until we do we cannot be sure which units will work well this time around. But the rumours we have seen don't address many of the issues raised in this thread - they might be dealt with by various means in the new dex, but we don't know. We can only hope.

[webebuggin]

Jan 1, 2014 14:02:46 GMT atilha said:

And yet again, a batrep for a new codex in wich we do not win...

Yeah well taking a 520+ point gargantuan that is literally as easy to kill as a 250 point wraith knight is not exactly building competitively. All our gargantuan are sooooo over priced. Sure he has an amazing amount of attacks and a disgusting ap3 hellstorm template but that is not good enough to justify his costs.

[hungryhungryripper]

I for one and excited. I have seen good and bad codices and played plenty of great games with all of them. I am hopeful it will be fun and competitive. Thats really all we can ask for. I am not really interested in having the newest seer council or wave serpent spam or far sight enclave.

We will have a fun new dex to explore and I am pretty darn excited about it.

[pencilbend]

Yeah, wouldn't it be ridiculous to have like 6 str 8 vector striking fmc's? No one wants that stuff.

To fix like 90% of people gripes all GW needs to do is have a huge sale on line of sight blocking terrain. That is the equalizer in this edition. If you can't afford it,make it. It's easy. I swear you will all be AMAZED at how well your armies will perform.