Grand Tournament 2020 Leak

[kazetanade]

I've done Behemoth GS for competition before. Your average distance with SL is about 20-23" movement. If we're on the line, it will be enough, but due to the new start rules (50% either starts), you REALLY dont want to start GS on the line in plain view.

It comes down to, can the GS survive while they're on the board? If they can, Behemoth GS are great since the +1 spell has been instrumental to a lot of success for me (wounding centurions on a 4+ and rending on a 5+, yes please. It helped me chew through everything other than a Knight equivalent where I rolled 70+A of bloody 3+ and 4+ to wounds). This also synergizes immensely with our best scalpel, the SuperFlyrant, which if you can find a way to include him and still have points, will be really instrumental in applying pressure on the Vehicle heavy meta. IMO though, GS really need a reroll to wound somewhere in their kit or options to be the consistent blender we need them to be - but I digress.

I'm not keen on Kraken for them at all. Kraken's triple Advance roll is great, and so is fallback and charge, but in all honesty I dont see this as game changing anymore. We needed it before to cross nearly 40" of no man's land due to ridiculously partial to shooting LOS rules, and Fallback/charge allowed us to work odd distances and funny little tricks into our rotation - now that No Man's Land is less perilous to stand near, holding a near central position makes Behemoth Genestealers extremely viable IMO, and if given the chance/choice, will be my preferred type of Genestealer build. No Fallback/charge is sadness, but since they're now less likely to kick the bucket in OW and will be more alive at the end of an enemy turn (or pretty much deleted if we (please do not swear) it up by accident), I think we could work around the no fallback/charge. What would be even funnier, is use the fact that they're trapped in combat, to pull a Devout Push shenanigan - basically we FIGHT to kill whatever it is we wrapped, kill the thing, use Overrun into the real target that's 11" away, and Adrenaline Rush to FIGHT AGAIN into them, thereby getting past the Charging attack restrictions. Guarantee you no one is expecting this at all (and honestly, I think we could do this all of 8th ed, but it never occured to me until Devout Push came into the picture.)

[gigasnail]

As long as terrain stays BREACHABLE and there are some LoS blockers, hopefully should get some mileage out of them.

I dont see all the terrain that people made with the 1st floor blocking LoS going away.

I dont know, I am trying not to have an opinion on this really. I'd like to see how it works out on the table. There have been big shifts and there will continue to be big shifts as new codexes come out.

[mattblowers]

Jul 18, 2020 19:58:51 GMT gigasnail said:

Time will tell but it's not a strategy I'd count on being able to pull off consistently. The coherencency rules are going to put an end to moving models all strung out and vulnerable to being caught in a tripoint at all.

Especially with the end to speculative charging. 7 is average on 2 dice so I'm not going to be declaring many charges over 4-5 inches, it's just too risky that you have to make the longest charge or they all fail. Tripointing is essentially over except in rare circumstances. It will win games here and there but it won't be a go to strategy like it was for Kraken stealers/horms.

[mattblowers]

Jul 20, 2020 12:15:15 GMT iniquity said:

So the tldr

The genestealer sling shot still works if:

You need to trade a 300 point genestealer unit into something probably less than 300 points.

You want to use half of your cp to make that trade

Your opponent is a root vegetable who will let you wrap multiple units.

You know your opponents punch back won’t slap all of your genestealers

Seems legit.

I think msu genestealer units will be a thing again. I think we'll run out of troops slots.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Jul 20, 2020 19:50:59 GMT mattblowers said:

Jul 20, 2020 12:15:15 GMT iniquity said:

So the tldr

The genestealer sling shot still works if:

You need to trade a 300 point genestealer unit into something probably less than 300 points.

You want to use half of your cp to make that trade

Your opponent is a root vegetable who will let you wrap multiple units.

You know your opponents punch back won’t slap all of your genestealers

Seems legit.

I think msu genestealer units will be a thing again. I think we'll run out of troops slots.

Running out of troop/HQ slots has been an issue for my list building. Cult is also problematic as a brood coven + one other HQ requires either a brigade or two detachments.

[kazetanade]

MSU Genestealers golden standard:

CAN YOU KILL 5 MAN INTERCESSOR SQUAD

10 Behemoth GS: 40A, 26H, 17W, half rend so 9D, another half 4D, so between 12-14D on average.

YOU PASS.

If you dont use the spell on them, you get 13W only, with only 1/3 rending, so 4D and another 4-5D. It's pretty legit as long as you can throw some additional fire power their way first to soften them up. This whole plan goes up in smoke if we're looking at T5 scrummers with invuls though. Also assuming the GS can survive on the table without getting targeted - a 5 man GS squad is a nuisance at best, ineffective at worst.

iniquity GS Sling works if:

1. The enemy is a mostly shooting army with some noticeably dangerous elements you can skirt around instead of engaging near or into
2. The enemy's melee dangerous unit is something GS can kill, for some reason, and you can access them (because they've moved out or because the front cover was deleted).
3. You are willing to spend half your cp - that part hasnt changed sadly.
4. Genestealers survive on the table without getting shot at before they get to move.
5. There isnt a TFC on the other side, because TFC and Eldar are the only armies that still have easy book access to half charge/advance/move distance. GSC's is so close range that anything that advance+charge doesnt care too much.
6. Your opponent army isnt T5/T8 or 4++/3++ driven, because both really gimp our output.

You dont need your opponent to be a root vegetable to get multiple unit wraps when their deployment zone is a lot smaller. and it IS noticeably a lot smaller. Likewise, since overwatch isnt as big a thing now, if you can get into position to multicharge, you can make that a really painful multicharge. In 8th if you charged too many things, you'd end up losing 1/3 of your squad before hitting combat, which affects your ability to actually clear what you charged.

An Intercessor charging into you in the backline = 5x3+1 = 16A, 10-11H, 5W, 3-4D, you've got 75% of the squad left. That means if you COMBO trade into a Blast tank, he has to throw 3 Intercessor squads at you to take you below threat level. Intercessors are now 20pts each I think? That's 300 points he's gonna send back to help the tank, which you will otherwise maul and be ready to havoc in his turn. If you ended up playing Kraken GS instead of Behemoth, you dont even need to maul it - just fallback and charge an easier target.

I think we're in a better position that initial readings say. Even GSC might have more play than we initially thought, and MSU Genestealers is actually really good if we're talking about the enemy playing a Transport+ObSec strategy which I think a lot of armies will adopt. Just break the Transports, send Genestealers onto the Objective Holders, ask which objective does he want to deny you by escaping Tripoint.

[purestrain]

Never forget we have probably one of the best (sans BA 3d6 keep charge) ways of making those multicharges with two strats that give us additional dice to go for it with.

Not saying its a viable thing, but we can push it a bit farther than most others can and keep the safety margin toward success over failure.

[pkripper]

Instead of sling shotting genestealers im going to try the toxicrene. Move 8 inches cast onslaught on him cast the new Kraken psychic power on the unit I want to charge then move and advance him with swarmy in the shooting phases. If he doesn’t kill the unit pop the strat so they can’t fall back. If he kills the unit pop savage distraction. I’ll have my sporocyst spawning spore mines on an objective and several monsters coming up the board. Hormagaunts on objectives also. Saturated with targets who do you shoot.

[N.I.B.]

How were our fortifications affected by the rule changes again? No synapse, no Hive Fleet adaptations?

[pkripper]

Jul 21, 2020 9:10:37 GMT N.I.B. said:

How were our fortifications affected by the rule changes again? No synapse, no Hive Fleet adaptations?

It still has psychic resonator which means if it’s in synapse range it has 12 inch synapse aura itself. It also has instinctive behavior. When playing Kraken hive traits are useless on it anyway

[TheDeepestShadow]

Jul 21, 2020 11:42:16 GMT pkripper said:

Jul 21, 2020 9:10:37 GMT N.I.B. said:

How were our fortifications affected by the rule changes again? No synapse, no Hive Fleet adaptations?

It still has psychic resonator which means if it’s in synapse range it has 12 inch synapse aura itself. It also has instinctive behavior. When playing Kraken hive traits are useless on it anyway

It mainly sucks for Jorm/Kronos since Sporocysts actually benefited from those traits. Also the lost of the Bio-Fortress ability made it so it can't shoot any unit even if it was engaged in CC, and with 2/3 weapon choices becoming Blast it loses much of it's flexibility, poor BS nonwithstanding. Can't score objectives either, so as much as I love the Big Daddy Spore Factory, I don't see it being worth the points :/

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Jul 21, 2020 9:10:37 GMT N.I.B. said:

How were our fortifications affected by the rule changes again? No synapse, no Hive Fleet adaptations?

No detachment bonuses so you can't gain the jormungandr bonus on your sporocysts for example. Synapse is an aura ability and will still affect them.

I might play around with two sporocysts, but I dont know how I'll play them. I'm tempted to bring venom cannons or stranglers but they then can be bad touched. I'm tempted to drop them close to objectives to help screen them our so my opponent has to go around the sporocysts to reach my objective secured troops. My other alternative is to drop them in (or close to) my deployment zone in a place with good line of sight and start generating mines to help screen out sections of the board while shooting downrange to help thin out the enemy.

[N.I.B.]

So no Kronos reroll 1's for Sporocysts? But they should still be able to pull the Kronos strat that mess with psykers, since that only need to tick the [HIVE FLEET] box.

But what's this about not a scoring unit?

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Jul 21, 2020 17:58:59 GMT N.I.B. said:

So no Kronos reroll 1's for Sporocysts? But they should still be able to pull the Kronos strat that mess with psykers, since that only need to tick the [HIVE FLEET] box.

But what's this about not a scoring unit?

Fortifications can never control objectives now. I get the feeling that they forgot that our fortifications were living creatures when they wrote these rules.

[N.I.B.]

Jul 21, 2020 18:14:38 GMT hivefleetkerrigan said:

Jul 21, 2020 17:58:59 GMT N.I.B. said:

So no Kronos reroll 1's for Sporocysts? But they should still be able to pull the Kronos strat that mess with psykers, since that only need to tick the [HIVE FLEET] box.

But what's this about not a scoring unit?

Fortifications can never control objectives now. I get the feeling that they forgot that our fortifications were living creatures when they wrote these rules.

Le sigh * deletes the army list I spend half an hour on today *

It wouldn't surprise me, sounds like the usual Tyranid deal. 'Whoops, these overall changes killed a couple of Tyranid units, didn't think about that'.