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Post by Adam on Apr 13, 2010 10:09:33 GMT -5
Alrighty, I've finished the Nid army list. It needs to be written up and given points costs, which is going to take quite a while due to all the biomorphs, but the actual list is complete. I'm pretty pleased with it. It's an army that relies on terrifying and intimidating your opponent, presenting them with a profusion of targets. The synapse is the stuff you need to kill in order to collapse the swarm, but the Genestealers will shred you if you don't shoot them, there are a lot of Gaunts coming at you, and they're flooding in from all directions. Trygon tunnels and Primogenitors (renamed Tervigons) provide forward spawn points so that your Hormagaunts can put constant pressure on the enemy, even if they die every turn. Biovores and Hive Tyrants mess with your opponent's freedom of movement and tactics. Zoanthropes make killing the swarm that much more difficult. And all of it wants to eat your face off.
With such potency at the swarm's disposal, it's no wonder that I'm going to be taking a lot of liberties with points costs. Gaunts will definitely be overpriced (after all, you get to recycle them!) and I imagine most units will be slightly too expensive due to the resilience they get as being part of a Tyranid horde. The thing with Nids is that while they die easily, you can only kill them so quickly, and the rest will eat your face. By themselves, a unit of Warriors or Raveners are nowhere near tough enough to withstand any reasonable amount of firepower. Maybe if you upgraded them. But put Catalyst on that unit and it's guaranteed to survive until the end of the turn. Put Gaunts in front of them and cast Wave of Teeth and an unskilled opponent will only be able to shoot at them once (and that at a -2 to hit, if you've enough Gaunts). Beating Nids involves keeping a cool head and using manoeuvrability to either move around them or take the fight directly to them. It'll be a bit easier in IF than in 40K (the 40K version of this list is soon to come, it's likely; screw you Cruddace, I'll write my own Codex). As it is, I've never lost to a gunline with 3rd or 4th edition Nids. This list takes that even further: if you don't move, if you don't play intelligently, you're almost certainly screwed. But, of course, there's an equal burden on the Tyranid player. If you want your stuff to survive, you have to force your opponent's hand. This list allows you to actually consciously do that, rather than just throwing everything towards the oppposite deployment zone as fast as possible, which has a similar effect but is a bit of a one-trick pony. Clever positioning of Primogenitors or Trygon tunnels here allows you to create no-fly zones for your opponent. "Come over here, and I'll bomb you with Gargoyles." The presence of Animathropes*, Trygons, Carnifexes or Genestealers is a threat your opponent can't ignore, so why not take two of each?
*Doom of Malantai, but it can teleport as well. Anima = some form of the word 'soul' in Latin.
There are further opportunities. An idea that's just struck me is the ability to kill off your own Gaunt units so that you can recycle them in different places next turn. Might give that to Primogenitors and see what happens. Might as well playtest what's there first.
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Post by Adam on Apr 27, 2010 14:35:16 GMT -5
Special rules and Hive Tyrant entry.I'm typing the whole thing up, including fluff because I want to (and the size of the unit entries won't usually allow more than one to fit into a page...). I'm leaving the points costs off for now, to be done later, in the hope of gathering some feedback first and seeing if any pertinent changes can be made. The army has three pages of special rules. THREE PAGES! Sure, one of those pages is pretty much just biomorphs, but still. I knew Tyranids were unique, but not *this* unique... I suppose a lot of it is stuff that's not needed at all in 40K, due to the preexistence of the Strength stat, lack of being able to shoot while in melee, separate WS and BS stats, etc. Adapting Tyranidic traits to IF's ruleset takes a surprising amount of tweaking. Oh well, I don't think any of it's particularly complicated at least. I may change the format to something similar to the way it was in the Codex - columns of text with fluff in between each weapon/biomorph description, making it more readable - in future. It's a good job I play 'Nids, because I don't think I'd be willing to do this for any other army, especially not all the points-costing. The others generally aren't that complex or support plenty of trimming-down, but maintaining the character of Nids means options, variable weaponry, the works. I'm slightly nervous of doing the Chaos list because I know it's going to require a similar amount of work and inclusion of variety.
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Post by Oliver on Apr 27, 2010 16:17:18 GMT -5
The template version of bio-plasma is much better than the regular version, what's the thinking behind that? Also, the rule for Tusked makes an allusion to 'being able to use bite attacks when charging' but it doesn't say that you can't anywhere else. Otherwise, it all looks pretty cool.
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Post by Adam on Apr 27, 2010 16:28:45 GMT -5
The template version of bio-plasma is much better than the regular version, what's the thinking behind that? Deliberate. It does have a slight weakness in that it's not always possible to get the central point of the template to land on the desired target, but that's not really a mitigating factor. One boring attack isn't a whole lot for monstrous creatures; they get that from biting anyway (that is something I should've put in - bioplasma replaces the bite). The upgrade essentially gives them a sort-of-template (more like a flamer, really, as you have to roll to hit) on their bite weapon, for troop killin'. On Warriors, it's intended to give them some actual ability to kick ass in melee, something they don't really excel at given their price. On Gargoyles, it turns them into amusing-and-highly-effective anti-infantry suicide bombs. Also, the rule for Tusked makes an allusion to 'being able to use bite attacks when charging' but it doesn't say that you can't anywhere else. Tyranids don't normally have Charge. The wording of the rule essentially gives the model the ability to make Charge attacks, but only with its bite weapon, as opposed to its crushing claws/bonesword/lash whips, which are all significantly better. I'll clear it up. Otherwise, it all looks pretty cool. Awesome. Thanks for the feedback!
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Post by Adam on Apr 28, 2010 11:53:38 GMT -5
Six more units done.Now has the Broodlord, all the Troops units (Gaunts, Hormagaunts, Gargoyles, Genestealers), some extra runaway fluff about Genestealer Cults that wouldn't fit on the Genestealer page but was too cool to pass up, and Tyranid Warriors. I'm not entirely sure about the way Warrior broods are set up, what with the +1/3rd cost to add new models, and costs for weapons being per-model (which at IF's points granularity level, could end up being quite inaccurate). I haven't yet come up with a better way of structuring them, though (any ideas?).
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Post by Adam on May 1, 2010 20:32:25 GMT -5
More 'nids.All the unit rules are up, although about a third of them lack fluff, and they're still all devoid of points costs. Ah well. If I get time, I'll put in some provisional points costs before tonight's OUWarS session so I can playtest them - presumably without biomorphs or a whole lot of weapon variety. (If not, well, I don't think I've actually tried IG yet...)
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Post by Oliver on May 2, 2010 10:33:32 GMT -5
A little proofreading: It might make more sense to have all the Spore Mines on the board move the same distance in the same direction each turn: it'd take much less bookkeeping, and you could justify it by saying they all drift with the wind. The wording of the Lictor's Chameleonic Skin rule could do with clarification, though not urgently - the second sentence is a little ambiguous. Also, it seems odd that Raveners and the Trygon can move as fast through solid rock as over it. Other than that, it all looks pretty cool. Looking forward to the fluff for the second half of the list!
In other news, when will the IG list be up on here? I thought you said you had it done...
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Post by Adam on May 3, 2010 3:42:12 GMT -5
A little proofreading: It might make more sense to have all the Spore Mines on the board move the same distance in the same direction each turn ...I thought they did. Must've missed a sentence somewhere. Fixed. It's a bit moot though, because playtesting yesterday revealed something that screws Nids over a bit: horde armies in IF just don't work. I already had to fudge quite a few things to get them into the game the way I wanted them; on-table, it doesn't work. Gaunts take up so much space that shooting over them at the stuff behind them is impossible for most units, on both sides. My Hive Tyrant didn't get to kill anything until about turn 5, and my Warriors did little. The Animathrope was fine, but only because it could teleport. Gaunts can also dish out huge amounts of damage via Without Number and various other abilities ensuring there's always loads of them in position to do so. I think there's still room for such tricks in 40K, but Nids don't really work in IF. The game was fun, if imbalanced. Luke's Librarian got a kill-count of 48 by repeatedly nuking enormous Gaunt units with Invocation of Will (which needs a nerf). The Animathrope teleported around eating people's souls, which was broken, but amusing. The game ended with Luke sort-of-winning as his one remaining model, a Dreadnought, killed the one remaining model I had that could hurt it, my Hive Tyrant. I still had a ton of stuff left, but none of it was capable of vehicle-busting. Nids' lack of anti-vehicle power seems problematic - the stuff that kills vehicles is, as usual, a significant target. Nothing new there, but it does become more of a problem in IF where Carnifexes can actually take more than one turn to kill a Dreadnought. Gasp! In the end, though, the proposed fixes and gameplay problems that came up just seemed a little too much. I'll keep the list, as it won't take a huge amount of adaptation to turn it into the 40K version. The Without Number/The Swarm Rises/Primogenitor stacking might need a tone-down in some way. (A fix I thought of to TSR could be to allow it to replenish units up to either the size in the army list or the size they had at the start of THIS turn, meaning that if you shoot 32 Gaunts down to 5, they can't be boosted back up to more than 8 once the turn has ended. That does make it a lot more situational.) So Tyranids are going to be more or less removed. I was talking to Luke about this on the way home and came up with the idea of replacing horde armies with specific, elite builds of said armies. Tyranids become the Tyranid Vanguard Swarm, a small army that spends as much time off-table as on, increasing in number as the game goes on and using dirty tricks to vanish from sight and reappear somewhere else - a legitimate survival-horror army. Orks get to be the small posse that follow a Big Mek around, a ragtag force of Kommandos, Flash Gitz, and so on, with lots of random gubbins and gadgets that provide bonuses in a pinch. It should seem haphazard to your opponent, but only due to variety rather than actual uncontrollability. For example, a fun thing to do with that list could be to give the Mek item upgrades that he can then entrust to various different units, meaning you never know which squad it is that has the squig-adrenalin injectors until they turn red and start eating your face. Imperial Guard will stay as they are for now; they should be fine. I don't have a whole lot of Vanguard Swarm ideas so far, but I do have a couple. Much as it pains me to say this, I think I should remove the biomorphs. I should really be fitting the army to the game, not the other way around, and the Tyranid list is full of pointless special rules that essentially try to bring bits of 40K over into IF. Biomorphs are a big part of that, and remove a degree of granularity of control for me as far as balance goes. Some of them will be granted to units by default, especially the statline bonuses. Strength is getting thrown out as well. Certain units will still have weapon options, but the weapons themselves will have Power values given in the unit's entry. With the units trimmed down in complexity I can then begin building the number of interesting things back up. This army's heroes will be the Lictor, the Broodlord, and probably a couple of other species. Alpha Warriors are a possible choice and I might as well invent some more (Mandragor? a Zoanthrope variant?). Hive Tyrants might not actually be in the list at all. The game begins with Genestealers (the main troop unit of this army), Gargoyles, the Hero, and maybe a few other isolated units. The second wave of units to appear are the Gaunts and Warriors and other such things, and the third wave comprises what heavy stuff I decide to put in. Third-wave units can be very destructive - they'll need to, as the enemy will have spent the past two turns shooting the other stuff to pieces. The unit listing might look like this: Heroes - Lictor - Broodlord - Animathrope (say) - Flying thing based on the Mandragor/Parasite of Mortrex Troops - Genestealers - Different variant of Genestealers - Gaunts - Hormagaunts - Gargoyles Elites - Warriors - Raveners - Another Genestealer variant? - Zoanthropes Monstrous Creatures - Primogenitor - Carnifex - Trygon Other - Rippers - Growth Spores (let you place extra terrain pieces) - Brood Nest (upon which the Primogenitor is an upgrade)
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Post by Oliver on May 3, 2010 9:55:52 GMT -5
It's a shame the list didn't work out for IF. Hopefully the 40K version will work better. Do you think if you doubled the ranges on everything in IF it would be less broken? Of course, that might take a lot of the tactics out of the game...
For Genestealer variants, you could have the vanilla kind, a sort with feeder tendrils and maybe some sort of psychic or Synapse bonus, and ones with more armour and scything talons. Not sure quite what their battlefield roles would be, other than the last kind being less sneaky and more bulletproof. Anyway, one of the variants should have Feeder Tendrils 'cos they look cool.
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Post by Adam on May 4, 2010 16:19:13 GMT -5
Feeder tendrils + semisynapse control is ideal - they'll be a good substitute for having Hive Tyrants and the like around. The second variant could be one with a large retractable sword on one arm (as in, it sort of folds away or splits in half and peels back to allow the Genestealer to use all four claws to climb or rip up tanks) and more stealthy, assassiny abilities, such as built-in versions of the Shooting at Shadows/Infiltration rules they might get from heroes.
Doubling the ranges would be an improvement as far as the first-attempt Tyranid list goes, but when you think about it I'm basically having to turn IF back into 40K in order to squeeze the Tyranids in. Square peg, round hole. The lists and the concepts therein will likely work beautifully in 40K (well, slightly less beautifully owing to the lack of activation-by-activation turn sequence and action point mechanics, but well enough).
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Post by Adam on May 8, 2010 20:41:22 GMT -5
Let's get some ideas up in this biznatch. I need some kind of jumping-off point from whence I can design this list; it is essentially entirely new, after all.
A suitable approach might be to consider the theme of the list. I have this sketched out already, but let's reiterate. The army should pretty much turn the battlefield into a survival-horror game, with you as the cruel mastermind setting up increasingly horrific scares and challenges. Rather than absorbing bullets through numbers or resilience, the vanguard swarm ensures its survival by constantly relocating, pouncing on isolated pockets of the enemy and consuming them then fading away before heavy retaliation is brought to bear. There should be an escalation as time goes on, as the hive mind deploys reinforcements to areas of strong resistance and brood nests dotted throughout the landscape give birth to new creatures for the meat grinder. The potential for being outnumbered and outfought by increasing waves of Tyranid monsters applies pressure on the enemy to complement the Alienesque 'where are they?' attacks.
Tyranids don't have transports, and making them really really fast will just be unfair (why bother going sideways when you can dive straight into melee?). So they need some way of teleporting. As they're meant to be sneaking around and ambushing from/disappearing into the undergrowth, tying this to terrain pieces is a logical step. Not all battlefields are possessed of suitable terrain, so they'll need some way of deploying more, such as growth spores that place a terrain piece on each of the first three turns, perhaps with two on turn 1 instead. This is also quite thematic and adds a measure of board control, helping you trap your enemies both with difficult terrain and psychological threat.
Footslogging it up the battlefield with an army comprised of nothing but Genestealers is suicide, which suggests liberal use of Commando. Allowing newly-spawned units to arrive on-table and immediately dive into the action rather than hoofing it towards the enemy far too quickly to prevent the Genestealers all dying is also mandatory, so we'll need forward-deploying brood nests, monstrous creatures Insertion-ing in via mycetic spores, burrowers doing likewise from underground, and so on. That already suggests quite a few options. Broods incapable of Commando deployment should have access to mycetic spores as upgrades, which offer some degree of independence from brood nests.
The lowered model count means the units need to spend as much time as possible out of the way of enemy fire. This to me suggests redeployment in lieu of simply 'remove the unit and place it anywhere within XX" of its current position'. This way, the unit disappears from the board entirely, and comes back at the beginning of the next turn, somewhere totally different. Very survival-horror. While it's not on the table, it can't be shot at, reducing the enemy's ability to focus fire on key targets (even fragile ones like Genestealers).
This doesn't sound like an inherent ability for all units, merely the proper vanguard ones - the three 'stealer variants, the heroes, Gaunts maybe. It does sound like a grantable ability. The Lictor would be an ideal user for a pulse that allows units near it to immediately use this ability. Quite a powerful pulse as it happens; the mitigator of this system is the alternate activation setup, meaning you can't have your entire army disappear from the table straight away and then your enemy has nothing to shoot at before you charge him from some random forest in his backfield. So not a pulse, then; a one-target power. And it doesn't work on monstrous creatures. Carnifexes can't vanish into the tangle of pipes on the ceiling.
It would also befit the army to have access to some kind of retreat ability. This could again be inherent, although I think it would suit units like Zoanthropes or one of the heroes. The unit makes a sudden move or a teleport that must land it at least 12" from all enemy units and within 12" (or 14", giving two inches of leeway to deal with the real-life practicalities of having to be EXACTLY 12" away) of one enemy unit.
I had an awesome idea for Primogenitors that revolves around them disguising themselves as brood nests (which are static, but deploy forwards) but then, when it's their turn to be deployed, heave themselves up out of the ground and start being mobile spawn points. This does bring me neatly on to the arrival of reserves. Units will need limitations as to when they can arrive. My current idea is to have three waves; a certain amount of units from any wave (all of them, in the case of waves two and three) can be held back in reserve to deploy later, and each one can't be deployed before a certain point in the game. The first is comprised of your hero, the Genestealers and similar vanguard units. Gargoyles go in here too, as the precursors of major Tyranid attacks. These are deployed at the beginning (minus any reserves). The second includes Gaunt species, Warriors, and the like; these can be deployed from turn 2 onwards. The third wave appears on turn 3 or later and includes all the big killy stuff. How to decide which units come in when, or how many you can bring in per turn? Allowing the Tyranid player to choose shouldn't hurt.
The gradual escalation means that Tyranid units should be slightly underpriced. As our Apocalypse game last turn showed, splitting up a force to deepstrike into the enemy lines can be quite detrimental. It's easier in IF, where you can Insert and then charge straight away; the activation system balances it neatly. Even so, you're dropping lots of fragile, short-ranged/melee hammer units right into your enemy's prime firing range. Cover modifier or no cover modifier, that's gonna hurt. Also, if you basically have more points than he does, your opponent then knows that he's actually outnumbered and fighting as the underdog, waiting fearfully for the swarm to rise and break over him. Tyranids FTW.
It's now 20 to 3 in the morning and I want to go to bed, so I think I'll leave it here for the moment. I'll come back to this some time, it's yielded a few new thoughts and sorted out some other ones.
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