I think the large majority agrees that merging should only occur when an uncontrolled swarm is absorbed by a controlled swarm. It also seems to be the consensus that an absorbed swarm should count as destroyed for victory conditions (BTS and tiebreak points). Finally, everyone seems to agree that merged swarms carry all the BMs of both.

That leaves the 3 issues of range for merging, timing of merging, and merging broken swarms.

Range choices:
Everything from the absorbed swarm withing 15cm of a synapse creature
Absorbed swarm in normal formation coherency

Timing choices:
End phase only
During the turn (presumably ending any further actions, similar to WE boarding)

Merging Broken Swarms:
Merge normally, take all BMs (one per unit)
No merging until the broken swarm rallies

=========

I prefer normal formation coherency because it sounds like it would be the fastest and easiest to determine. One measurement and you're done.

In the interest of lowering any BTS/tiebreak trickery to the minimum, I would go for merge during the turn. If it happens at the end of a formation's action, the Nid player has to decide before knowing the full outcome of the turn and the opponent would theoretically have an opportunity to react prior to end phase counting of goals or points. Merging in the end phase would allow the Nid opponent to assess the situation in detail and make an optimized decision without the opponent having any recourse.

I personally favor letting the swarms merge even when broken and just add the BMs. It's simple and, to me, reflects the synapse re-asserting control from the Hive Mind in keeping with the background.


If you did an in-turn merge and restricted broken swarms from merging, the net effect restricts merging in an important way. A broken swarm would have to go through at least one end phase (and successfully rally) before it could merge. The main drawback is that it's a fiddly way to work in a restriction. My preference would be to keep it clean and try to balance it before working in a back-door mechanic like that.

Something to watch out for: Depending on the implementation, you could get oddities where people could move a small swarm with some BM's on it, leave a unit or two behind to break itself, end up moving 75cm in total with 15cm move units, and then join a larger swarm (Bringing it above half strength, or whatever). Very gamey.

For that reason, it may be best to work only with swarms that aren't broken, or something... My point is that I don't think you'd have to work hard to get some odd behaviours.

_________________
Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

I actually think that would be pretty hard to pull off with uncontrolled swarms and lots of Expendable units, but I agree there are some potential issues.

Don't brood units lose Expendable if there's no Synapse in the swarm?

I would also go with using coherency as the easiest means, bearing in mind that could still result in units being out of (synapse) control at the end of the turn and removed anyway. The only slight anomaly here being that until this happens at the end of the turn, the merged swarm has become artificially large.

I agree merging should be allowed during the turn, and obviously the 'merged' formation may not activate once this happens under the same restrictions as WE transport. And for simplicity all BMs go across onto the 'merged' formation synapse group.

Finally, I think it should be made clear the by definition an 'uncontrolled' swarm must have lost all its Synapses before it can merge into another swarm (which I think would be very hard to engineer).

Could Synapse creatures detach from their current swarm to pick up the loose ones instead?

During the turn, normal coherency, no further actions that turn, broken formations can't merge.

That's my preferences.

Here's what Onachus is using:



I tied it to synapse creature death to abstractly represent synapse control. In the fluff/40k, leaderless brood creatures retreat to the closest synapse creature. Rather than write a rule to that effect the reduction in initiative and inability to do anything objective wise is meant to give a strong incentive for a player to absorb the formation.

I allowed it only in the end phase to ensure no unit gets to activate twice. If we allowed it in the action phase a swarm could loose its synapse, break, withdraw to another unit, be absorbed and then activate again.

I used 15cm of a synapse creature instead of coherency with their formation as a way to represent synapse range as well.

_________________
Dave

Blog

NetEA Tournament Pack Website

Squats 2019-10-17

Doing it in the end phase still allows you to voluntarily break a formation during the turn, get 45-75cm of movement to meet up with the swarm you want to join, in order to prep for an assault the following turn, or bring a formation above half strength for tie breaks, etc.

_________________
Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

[quote="zombocom"]During the turn, normal coherency, no further actions that turn, broken formations can't merge.
quote]

I will be playtesting this in two up and coming games this and next week, one at 3-4 and the other at 5k. Brief batreps about all findings will be posted.

_________________
MoK's Painting Blog
Now Showing:
Mok's Modular Modern Messy Guard Army

The absorbed formation can't bring more BMs than units, so it will never change the status of the absorbing formation.


It may still be simplest to put it in the end phase, but I don't think double activation is a driving reason. WE boarding restricts this successfully and the Nid merge version would be more straightforward than the WE transport rules, e.g. "Once swarms merge, the resulting formation may take no further action during the turn."

Noted.

_________________
Dave

Blog

NetEA Tournament Pack Website

Squats 2019-10-17

Merging Swarms could be a part of the Marshal action.
It could even be a choice between removing Blastmarkers or merging individual units from the Synapseless Swarm.

_________________
We are returned!
http://www.epic-wargaming.de/