Swarmlord vs Walkrant

[parzaius]

4 shots on a 3+ to hit, 4+ to wound for 2 Devastating Wounds? So an average of 2.7 mortal wounds on a vehicle per turn, from a 200 pt monster? And its main weapon is 2 heavy flamers?

Yeah, I'd skip the Hive Crone, too.

[No One]

nidsallday said:

guess in 8th/9th the HAD to assigne a weapon keyword to every weapon and thats why assault was super prevalent. now its possible to have "blank" keyword weapons the necessaty to tack assault or whatever on is gone.

Yes and no. Going way back (4-7th at the least), literally every gun was assault: very definitely a design choice for mobility. They've gone away from that with some of our actually heavy guns recently. But yeah, I think it is largely just that there didn't used to be anything in between 'very mobile' (assault) and 'not mobile' (heavy), without giving more shots for some reason (rapid fire) or being otherwise permissive+restrictive (pistol).

[parzaius]

It's easy for folks who just started playing to not know this, but mobility was one of the Tyranid factions main strengths for a long time. Tyranids don't get transports, but in exchange, we had way better movement stats. Back when everybody moved 4" by default, Nids moved 6". 50% faster due to all the extra legs. Then, for many editions, one of the core features was "Fleet of Claw," which let us get bonus dice to advance more reliably. Additionally, we had Assault weapons instead of Rapid Fire or Heavy to be able to move and shoot rather than get more/better shots. And, more recently, in 8th we had a ton of movement stratagems and abilities, letting Swarmlord slingshot stealers all the way across the board, then retreat back to safety. Like, this was a major faction identity element.

But, with 10th, a LOT of nids lost 1-3" of movement on top of losing assault from their guns, and getting synapse cut in half. All of these make us no more mobile than any other force, with the added feature of being heavily reliant on sticking close to central points. With 9th edition's clenched unit coherency and 10th's 30% cut to swarm sizes added in, you can't daisy chain to synapse, you have to travel in huge, centralized blobs that can only move as fast as its slowest unit. We're like a deathstar, but without the defense, offense, or characters that can be safely embedded in units.

It's a bummer. But hey, maybe the codex will fix some things?

[No One]

parzaius said:

But, with 10th, a LOT of nids lost 1-3" of movement on top of losing assault from their guns, and getting synapse cut in half. All of these make us no more mobile than any other force

Eh, I think our relative mobility (at least to 9e) is essentially the same. We lost movement, but so did a lot of other armies, to say nothing of Fly changes. Biggest loss of mobility is no advance and charge outside horms, though we at least have a way for getting assault on anything as slight compensation. Also gargs, gargs look fun.

[purestrain]

Walkrant has 6" Assault aura, I think we have enough aggression

[parzaius]

Jun 24, 2023 1:53:14 GMT No One said:

parzaius said:

But, with 10th, a LOT of nids lost 1-3" of movement on top of losing assault from their guns, and getting synapse cut in half. All of these make us no more mobile than any other force

Eh, I think our relative mobility (at least to 9e) is essentially the same. We lost movement, but so did a lot of other armies, to say nothing of Fly changes. Biggest loss of mobility is no advance and charge outside horms, though we at least have a way for getting assault on anything as slight compensation. Also gargs, gargs look fun.

Deathleaper lost 2"
Genestealers lost Advance and charge (back in 9th)
Hive Tyrant lost 1"
Lictor lost 2"
Maleceptor lost Advance and Cast
Mawloc lost Set Up Anywhere
Parasite lost 4"
Raveners lost 2"
Ripper Swarms lost Sky Slasher option for 6" movement loss
Screamer-Killer lost 2"
Sporocyst lost Deploy 12" away
Swarmlord lost 1"
Venomthropes lost 2"
Winged Tyrant lost 4"
Zoanthropes lost 1" AND Advance and Cast

I dunno, man. 15 out of 33 units. Seems like a fair number of lost movement points on top of half-range synapse, losing assault (outside of a 6" bubble around one of our most expensive models), and still having no transports in an edition where vehicles are so absurdly tough that transports might actually be viable for once.

But hey: go play some games. Let me know if you feel like Tyranids didn't lose a step or two.

[No One]

There is a word in there you seem to have missed: relative i.e. yes we did, so did a lot of other armies. Did we lose more off datasheet? Maybe. Do we care about the Fly changes less than a lot of other armies? Yes. Edit: From my almost irrelevant sample size of 1.5 games , onslaught change is way bigger than the smaller M losses when every gun is and was heavy, but eh. Zoans also got 6" range, which with free strat reserves is maybe better.

[parzaius]

Jun 24, 2023 4:23:39 GMT No One said:

There is a word in there you seem to have missed: relative i.e. yes we did, so did a lot of other armies. Did we lose more off datasheet? Maybe. Do we care about the Fly changes less than a lot of other armies? Yes.

This is a legitimate question: are there other factions besides Tyranids who do not have any transport options? Chaos Daemons? Do their daemon engines have transport capacity?

[dkng]

AP-2 on Hierodules and Hierophant melee is simply a slap on our face.
Back on mobility - sorry my friend but saying other armies also lost movement is not an argument because they at least got tougher transports which nowadays can drop their cargo after moving. Huge change. And we have just two units that can reliably destroy those at distance - one with shortish range and one already deemed weak for the points (Zoans and Tyrfex).
With weak shooting, weak melee (how many units with melee ap barter than 2 we have? 3… Fexes with claws, OOE, Tervigon) and poor saves across the board mobility was all we had left. And now they stripped us of our last advantage. Sad times really.

[nidsallday]

Jun 24, 2023 7:11:53 GMT dkng said:

AP-2 on Hierodules and Hierophant melee is simply a slap on our face.
Back on mobility - sorry my friend but saying other armies also lost movement is not an argument because they at least got tougher transports which nowadays can drop their cargo after moving. Huge change. And we have just two units that can reliably destroy those at distance - one with shortish range and one already deemed weak for the points (Zoans and Tyrfex).
With weak shooting, weak melee (how many units with melee ap barter than 2 we have? 3… Fexes with claws, OOE, Tervigon) and poor saves across the board mobility was all we had left. And now they stripped us of our last advantage. Sad times really.

as i posted in another thread, still hoping all the missed buffs on monsters compared to vehicles is due to the monster mash detachment in the codex. hope this gives us a bit of an edge and flavor back. but else, i think we are in for a rough ride. lets see.

[N.I.B.]

Only had one game yet, but yeah I felt the slowness. Forced to have Walkrant in a central bubble to provide Assault to Zoanthropes (who now can't shoot their psychic power in melee), Tyrant Guards slow as before which feels just as stupid as usual for a unit a bodyguarding M8 character.

[dkng]

I can’t think of any army having it worse in the attached units department than Tyranids. Unmatching M and T (apart from Neurotyrant), only two leaders giving bonuses to attached units. Why couldn’t they keep Neurothropes and Tyranid Primes as leaders? Why can’t Tervigon join Termagants?
Two weeks or so ago I wrote somewhere around here to be more optimistic and stop moaning. Now as the whole picture is here my hopes are lost. As for now I really lost interest in playing Tyranids. Slow, boring, weak with no interesting combos and tricks. And I doubt that Codex will change anything significantly. We are again doomed to be pushovers.

[No One]

parzaius said:

This is a legitimate question: are there other factions besides Tyranids who do not have any transport options? Chaos Daemons? Do their daemon engines have transport capacity?

Daemons and knights.

dkng said:

Now as the whole picture is here my hopes are lost. As for now I really lost interest in playing Tyranids. Slow, boring, weak with no interesting combos and tricks. And I doubt that Codex will change anything significantly.

Yeah, feels quite bland. I've been playing nidzilla for a while now so the lack of attachment options or strats isn't exactly a large change for me, so I'll probably keep poking away if the general state of 10e doesn't discourage me. But also GSC definitely interest me more from a listbuilding perspective.

We are again doomed to be pushovers.

This doesn't follow that. It is very possible to be the strongest army in the game by pure, basic datasheet stat checks. We're definitely not at that level of course, but I do think we're at the datasheet statcheck level of 'legitimate threat' for most armies (Eldar should roll us, but that's not exactly an us issue).

[Iryan]

Losing cool and interesting aspects of units and/or general gameplay are a much more pressing concerns for me than actual competitive strength, personally. And we lost a lot of interesting abilities. Like almost all cool psyker stuff when we used to be probably the 4th most psyker-intensive army after GK, TS, and maybe Daemons. At least Zoanthropes are kinda back to their warp lance glory, but most units that at least had the OPTION to dish out psychic dakka can't do that anymore. Hell, the Tervigon lost all psychic abilities while gaining absolutely nothing; it just had one of its preexisting abilities rebranded as being psychic. And at this rate, the most we could probably hope for in terms of changing that would be some kind of stratagem in the codex that gives one Psyker character model a powerful shooting attack for one turn.

At least biovores can still shower sporemines over the battlefield.

[No One]

Yeah, comp strength can be fixed by points. Blandness is only fixed by datasheet etc rewrites, which GW are much more loath to do.