Post by tomb on Jun 18, 2022 17:52:16 GMT
From Goon hammer
www.goonhammer.com/chapter-approved-war-zone-nephilim-the-goonhammer-review/
Tyranids
Wings: There is actually one significant change here, surprising given how recent the book is, but welcome (at least for Tyranid players) given the set in the book was pretty weak. Cranial Feasting gets the critical boost that each CHARACTER you destroy with melee attacks now awards 3VP rather than 1VP, and the rest of it stays the same. If you’re a melee-heavy army, that switches this from being hard work to being “better Assassinate” a lot of the time, and should see very heavy usage. Synaptic Insight also gets a small boost in that it no longer excludes Dedicated Transports, but is still capped at 12, and still bafflingly terrible overall. Finally, Spore Nodes doesn’t change from the FAQed version, but does at least put the updated (and better) version into the printed rules, so it’s doable for some Troops-heavy armies. Not much else to say here – having a Purge option that is now pretty good is a decent boost to the Hive Mind.
Genestealer Cults
Wings: Speaking of boosts to the Hive Mind – let’s go. All three Cult Secondaries get big improvements. The smallest change, but still potentially important is Sabotage Critical Location. This benefits from the general change that starting the Action now only requires you to control the objective rather than the opponent not being within 3” of it, so it is actually doable now. Does this make it viable over Retrieve Nephilim Data? Hard to say for sure – on the one hand, you do still have to push pretty far into the opponent’s half of the board to pull it off, but on the other there are definitely going to be games where you can tick off both of them on turn 3 for a locked-in 14VP. Technically, the restriction on not doing this turn 1 has also been removed, but given there’s nothing in the scoring chart for that, it’s probably just a typo.
Next up, Broodswarm gets a fairly spicy change, with a fourth condition added to the list – have more models on the Battlefield than the opponent. While the GSC hordes of 8th are no more, this is still going to be extremely easy in some games, and while having four conditions technically makes the point for satisfying all conditions harder to get, it seems extremely unlikely that you would successfully pull off the existing three without landing the new one, and this change means you can very easily pick up 3VP for this in early turns, and can quite plausibly finish the whole thing by turn 4, helping claw a victory from the opponent if you get tabled.
Finally, Ambush also gets a fairly substantial improvement – both the Exposed condition and the condition for destroying an enemy unit with one of yours that arrived from Ambush or Underground now provide 2VP instead of 1VP (and a cap per turn of 4VP is added). This is extremely good news – you’re no longer capped at 13VP even when you play a perfect game, and can now aim to max this out by spiking some high scoring turns with Kelermorphs. Given that Grind is dire for Cults, and No Prisoners very situational, expect to see this taken quite a lot, because it’s fundamentally going to give you a pretty solid score just for playing the game you already wanted to.
Good stuff for Cults, and if they pick up some point drops too, this should help them overcome their current challenges.
www.goonhammer.com/chapter-approved-war-zone-nephilim-the-goonhammer-review/
Tyranids
Wings: There is actually one significant change here, surprising given how recent the book is, but welcome (at least for Tyranid players) given the set in the book was pretty weak. Cranial Feasting gets the critical boost that each CHARACTER you destroy with melee attacks now awards 3VP rather than 1VP, and the rest of it stays the same. If you’re a melee-heavy army, that switches this from being hard work to being “better Assassinate” a lot of the time, and should see very heavy usage. Synaptic Insight also gets a small boost in that it no longer excludes Dedicated Transports, but is still capped at 12, and still bafflingly terrible overall. Finally, Spore Nodes doesn’t change from the FAQed version, but does at least put the updated (and better) version into the printed rules, so it’s doable for some Troops-heavy armies. Not much else to say here – having a Purge option that is now pretty good is a decent boost to the Hive Mind.
Genestealer Cults
Wings: Speaking of boosts to the Hive Mind – let’s go. All three Cult Secondaries get big improvements. The smallest change, but still potentially important is Sabotage Critical Location. This benefits from the general change that starting the Action now only requires you to control the objective rather than the opponent not being within 3” of it, so it is actually doable now. Does this make it viable over Retrieve Nephilim Data? Hard to say for sure – on the one hand, you do still have to push pretty far into the opponent’s half of the board to pull it off, but on the other there are definitely going to be games where you can tick off both of them on turn 3 for a locked-in 14VP. Technically, the restriction on not doing this turn 1 has also been removed, but given there’s nothing in the scoring chart for that, it’s probably just a typo.
Next up, Broodswarm gets a fairly spicy change, with a fourth condition added to the list – have more models on the Battlefield than the opponent. While the GSC hordes of 8th are no more, this is still going to be extremely easy in some games, and while having four conditions technically makes the point for satisfying all conditions harder to get, it seems extremely unlikely that you would successfully pull off the existing three without landing the new one, and this change means you can very easily pick up 3VP for this in early turns, and can quite plausibly finish the whole thing by turn 4, helping claw a victory from the opponent if you get tabled.
Finally, Ambush also gets a fairly substantial improvement – both the Exposed condition and the condition for destroying an enemy unit with one of yours that arrived from Ambush or Underground now provide 2VP instead of 1VP (and a cap per turn of 4VP is added). This is extremely good news – you’re no longer capped at 13VP even when you play a perfect game, and can now aim to max this out by spiking some high scoring turns with Kelermorphs. Given that Grind is dire for Cults, and No Prisoners very situational, expect to see this taken quite a lot, because it’s fundamentally going to give you a pretty solid score just for playing the game you already wanted to.
Good stuff for Cults, and if they pick up some point drops too, this should help them overcome their current challenges.
