The Doom of Mlan'tai custom rules for 8th and 9th ed

[hiveprime]

Howdy all, made some cool custom rules for the doom anyone can make use of, hope you all enjoy advice and tactic ideas would be appreciated

The Doom of Malan'tai
BS 4+
WS 3+ SYNAPSE
S X SHADOW IN THE WARP
T 5 CHARACTER
W 4 200 PTS
A 3
LD 10
SV 4+

Spirit Leech Tendrils: At the beginning of every shooting phase, even the enemy's, every unit that is not a vehicle within 6" must roll a 3d6 and compare it to thier unit's highest leadership, the difference between the two is how many mortal wounds the unit suffers. Friendly Tyranids units are unable to lose more than 3 wounds to this rule per unit

Psychic Strength: The Doom of Mlan'tai's strength is always the same as it's wounds remaining.

Absorb Life: The Doom of Mlan'tai gains one wound, up to a maximum of 9 for every unsaved wound it inflicts.

Warp Fiend: The Doom of Mlan'tai has a +2 to all psychic cast and deny tests.

Potent Warp Field: this model has a 2+ invulnerable save

Mental Shear: This model suffers perils of the Warp if any doubles are rolled in a psychic test

The Doom of Mlan'tai can cast 3 psychic powers a turn and can deny 3

Special Psychic powers:

Cataclysm:
Warp charge 7

Choose a unit within 24" if this power is cast that unit suffers d6+2 mortal wounds

If this is cast, before the absorb life rule is resolved, The Doom of Mlan'tai suffers d6 mortal wounds

[infornography]

Something to note, with only 4 wounds, it could be focused down with MW pretty quickly.

I am unsure what the purpose of the variable S stat is for this unit since it has no melee weapon. It would be hitting with 3 A at AP -

The Spirit Leech ability triggers during the shooting phase and has a range of 6"

The result is, if you start with Doomy on board, it likely won't be able to make it within range of any enemy models (By the way, unless I am overlooking it, there is no move stat, but I am assuming it is no faster than a Zoanthrope). You can use a few other powers before cataclysm to try to get those wounds up, but if they fail or are successfully denied, or you just don't do substantial damage with them, then that d6 may do in Doomy all on its own. It seems like it has at least one enforced turn of fragility before it can get rolling and it is a high priority for MW targeting.

One possible fix would be to move Spirit Leech to the Fight Phase so it has time to charge into melee, which is ideally where it wants to be. Otherwise, you could give it the ability to advance and charge as well as making it faster than a Zoey. It wouldn't be able to cataclysm the first turn safely, but I think that is fair.

[hiveprime]

okay, so an update, I changed the wounds to 6, it's move will be 7, can advance and charge, and I've given it a weapon profile :

psionically charged Fangs:
Strength user AP - 3 D2

spirit leech now occurs at the beginning of the fight phase

[infornography]

At this point I worry that it might be too good.
Strong melee and incredibly strong psionic phases in addition to extremely threatening other abilities.

I think removing the melee weapon and the variable strength may be a good move.
Instead maybe look at keying how well Spirit Leech and Cataclysm work to the number of wounds may be more in keeping with the original design.

Something like
Spirit Leech Tendrils: At the beginning of every Fight phase, every unit that is not a vehicle within 6" must roll 1d6 plus the current wounds of the Doom and compare it to their unit's highest leadership, the difference between the two is how many mortal wounds the unit suffers. Friendly Tyranids units are unable to lose more than 3 wounds to this rule per unit

This would allow it to start threatening with a range of 7 to 12 and quickly get downright dangerous with a range of 10 to 15.

Cataclysm:
Warp charge 7
Choose a unit within 24" if this power is cast that unit suffers mortal wounds equal to the current wounds of the Doom divided by 2 rounded up +2.
If this is cast, before the absorb life rule is resolved, The Doom of Mlan'tai suffers d6 mortal wounds regardless of if it is successful.

That would give it a range of 3 to 7 MW depending on how well it is doing.


I still worry that it may be too powerful for the points and reducing the number of abilities it can cast per turn to 2 may be a good plan. That way you can smite or something else either before you cataclysm so you can build up your wounds first or after you cataclysm to heal back up if something goes wrong, but not both.

Balance can be a tricky thing.

[purestrain]

Nah, we dont have stuff thats uber broken, and even this isnt that bad. hell that aoe spell is what I want the maleceptor to have, so at least it can be good at something it does.

[infornography]

Mostly I am looking at the sheer quantity of mortal wounds this thing would be pumping out. It would basically be single handedly wiping out a squad of Custodes every turn for example. Or taking a HUGE chunk out of any non-vehicle titans. And it wouldn't even have to choose targets for spirit leech, it would be hitting every unit within range with that pain.

It might be that it would just be a high priority glass cannon that receives 100% of MW output of the enemy army the first turn and that is it. Which would be in keeping with the original really...

[purestrain]

Apr 21, 2021 20:29:22 GMT infornography said:

Mostly I am looking at the sheer quantity of mortal wounds this thing would be pumping out. It would basically be single handedly wiping out a squad of Custodes every turn for example. Or taking a HUGE chunk out of any non-vehicle titans. And it wouldn't even have to choose targets for spirit leech, it would be hitting every unit within range with that pain.

It might be that it would just be a high priority glass cannon that receives 100% of MW output of the enemy army the first turn and that is it. Which would be in keeping with the original really...

Yeah and only within 6" means its super nasty but you just dont get close to it, its a high punishment device similar to those blade guard everyones afraid of but its stats roll it into one model with some almost obscene power.

[dranzyl]

From a design perspective a 2++ save isnt something gw seems to want in the game so you might want to reconsider if you want to be in line with the current design philosophy.

Perhaps let its smite target everything within 6' (range increased based on wounds?),instead of the old style ability. I would also give him a strong single target damaging power and significally reduce its mellee.