Are Actions Worth It?

[nidnewbie]

In matched play and crusade games I find devoting a model to carrying out an action to be a waste. To be honest, I have not tailored my lists yet to free up a unit that isn't needed elsewhere. I'm curious  to here what the hive has  to say.

[infornography]

Short answer: YES!

Long answer: plan out a few units you can afford to use for this. The reason Lictors are popular right now is they are ideally suited for the role. They are just hard enough to kill and such a tiny threat that they frequently go ignored, are cheap, and can get behind enemy lines easily and hide behind something.

Right now the only hope the Tyranid codex has of getting wins is to play to the mission. Go for victory points not kills. If you aren't doing everything you can to get victory points every round, you wasted the round.

[kazetanade]

Lictors do scramblers very well. If they were tougher, they could do Repair Teleport Homer instead.

The meta is moving to hyper efficient tanky elite units in general, so it's less likely to see horde unless vs Tyranid or Orks. Even Necrons can barely horde with 13pts Warriors.

The other actions like Raise the Banners has never worked out well for me. I think they could, esp if we can raise ALL of them at once.

Swarmlord is a hilarious candidate for Psychic Ritual. Move up, PR, move back.

Otherwise I don't think actions are that great.

[kurtangle2]

Oct 14, 2020 13:41:50 GMT infornography said:

Short answer: YES!

Long answer: plan out a few units you can afford to use for this. The reason Lictors are popular right now is they are ideally suited for the role. They are just hard enough to kill and such a tiny threat that they frequently go ignored, are cheap, and can get behind enemy lines easily and hide behind something.

Right now the only hope the Tyranid codex has of getting wins is to play to the mission. Go for victory points not kills. If you aren't doing everything you can to get victory points every round, you wasted the round.

Short and only answer: Only Deploy Scramblers, other action based secondaries are bad and need a fundamental rework/more VPs

[tylertt]

On a whole, actions are worth it if your list is built around it. Obviously as mentioned some options are better than others.

Also keeping in mind the requirements behind actions too. Rippers can't do scramblers, but quite a few mission secondary's allow them to. Now you can't plan for this, but having the rippers or another unit as a dual purpose couldn't hurt.

[zimko]

Oct 14, 2020 16:55:16 GMT tylertt said:

On a whole, actions are worth it if your list is built around it. Obviously as mentioned some options are better than others.

Also keeping in mind the requirements behind actions too. Rippers can do scramblers, but quite a few mission secondary's allow them to. Now you can't plan for this, but having the rippers or another unit as a dual purpose couldn't hurt.

Rippers can't do scramblers. They are not Infantry. That's why a Lictor is good is because it's 37 pts for a non-character Infantry that can deep strike.

[tylertt]

I meant to put can't.

Edited

[Hive Bahamut]

It is my humble opinion that actions are for armies that have one of the following: a bad matchup, an army that can't fight it's way out of a paper bag (looking at you GSC) Has a lot of expendable units (also GSC) or is forced to play cagey due to overwhelming firepower.

This is one of my favourite (salty) bits of 9th. Even if the rules are so imbalanced you have no chance, you can keep in the game with your own little agenda.

Ex. My last game saw me kill Pask and an infantry squad. Opponent ended game with roughly 1700 left on the table. Lost by 12 points, and had I done any damage with the (average) 22 Lasers I would have maxed Bring it down.

[brianb9999]

Oct 14, 2020 16:14:56 GMT kazetanade said:

Swarmlord is a hilarious candidate for Psychic Ritual. Move up, PR, move back.

Otherwise I don't think actions are that great.

This is great, both in actual gameplay, and for the mental image of The Swarmlord sneaking out, performing the ritual, then jumping back into the bushes to hide XD

[wormlord666]

Oct 14, 2020 13:14:09 GMT nidnewbie said:

In matched play and crusade games I find devoting a model to carrying out an action to be a waste. To be honest, I have not tailored my lists yet to free up a unit that isn't needed elsewhere. I'm curious  to here what the hive has  to say.

Is 10 easy Victory point worth it? Yes! We have what Marines do not: Cheap infantry that we can waste for points! Take 10 Gaunts: Stand in one tablequarter, deploy a scrambler, stand on an objective while the heavy part of your army threatens the opponent and drwas fire. 
Lictor and rippers (rippers can raise banners and some of the missionspecific actions) are great at the same thing. Scramblers, and engage on all fronts makes them get double pay for their effort. 

I do not see me building a list with Nids/GSC without planning for actionbased secondaries. 
I do not see what seconadaries you'd pick?

Psychic actions on the other hand seem realy bad. We have good spells. We want to use them. 

[dranzyl]

Since at least 6th nids have been an army that had to play to the mission to compete, not surprised that pursuing mission points seems a generaly good idea.

[murderfiesta]

I always rationalize it as these missions representing the "initial" phases of Tyranid invasions where the Tyranids are simply gaining ground and exhausting defender ammunition stores / other resources. Then the real invasion force drops in and does the massacre / clean up. How well you do in these missions represents how good of a foothold you've gotten for the rest of the invasion, which helps map the situation where you're mostly tabled by the end of turn 5 but have all these points from actions and holding objectives to some kind of narrative conceptualization of what it all means / what actually happened.

[xenith]

Oct 15, 2020 19:22:07 GMT murderfiesta said:

I always rationalize it as these missions representing the "initial" phases of Tyranid invasions where the Tyranids are simply gaining ground and exhausting defender ammunition stores / other resources. Then the real invasion force drops in and does the massacre / clean up. How well you do in these missions represents how good of a foothold you've gotten for the rest of the invasion, which helps map the situation where you're mostly tabled by the end of turn 5 but have all these points from actions and holding objectives to some kind of narrative conceptualization of what it all means / what actually happened.

Yea, the idea of Lictors popping up and sabotaging stuff, or performing actions to act as beacons for the swarm is very devastation of Baal, or rippers eating a vital data terminal or something. 

I think you'll have to have enough cheap units to perform the actions, with some threat that the opponent cannot ignore to go after your scoring.