Litko Aero
=> many small and somme medium flaming wreckage tokens.

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My gaming and painting blog : http://figsdeflogus.blogspot.fr

It's too good unless you make the units crap (FF6+, CC5+).

Short answer- how exactly?

With attritional rates on the Gaunts, you rarely outnumber other formations by a serious amount by the end of the combat.

With slow movement and SR 1, your not going to be initiating the Engagements. The opponent has to be really silly to end their move within 15-20cm of an unactivated/undamaged nid formation.

The blast marker comment is a little disturbing, it's very easy to put a BM on Nid formations- just shoot one formation at them- voila, one BM.
And one BM is all you need to have a +2 advantage as you sweep in to engage the Nid formation unmolested.

Stack onto that +1-2 for Inspiring, +6-7 for dead Gaunts, it becomes unwinnable for Nids.

I don't see how Nid infantry swarms are supposed to win Engagements at present, it's just smarter to invest points in Bio-titans and big beasts (like Dominatrix, Barbed Heirodule, etc) that can actuall stand up to a fight.

Making Gaunts truly expendable, i.e. ignore for Combat Res will mean Nids infantry can stand a chance in Engagements. Even with this rule, it's still very easy for the opponent to stack BM's and Inspiring in their favour. Winning by +3-4 rather than +9-12

I can't help but agree with this statement too.  Admittedly i've only played against the nids once but even from that one game it was quite clear how deficient they were.

They're slow.  Slow moving, and very slow on the I.  In addition you can almost engage at will and expect to win.  Move to withing 15 cm and FF and there's almost nothing the nids can do to avoid destruction.

Not counting gaunts as counting towards combat resolution is, in my mind, a good solution and fits the nid theme quite well.

They lack firepower in any significant amount but come on towards you, shrugging off damage.  You can initiate an engagement but expect to be swamped by hoardes of gaunts - the swarm shrugging off losses without caring. Really, it should be a brave general who sends a detachment into the chittering hoarde to engage - and lets face it, engagement is all nids really have, as they're slow and lack firepower compared to a lot of other armies.

I'd also be in favour of upping the movement rate for basic infantry, warriors etc up to 20cm across the board.  

Of course playtesting is essential and i'll be happy to play my part in that.  

The way i see nids working this way is that they come on, firing sporadically, till there's no-where left to run or you kill them all.

It's very easy to say that a list, or a game, is broken on the first playing.  But it is often worth at least paying attention to the designers -- they have generally already playtested the list numerous times, ideally sometimes with folks who don't have preconceptions about how the list should play.

Many of the concerns here sound valid, and they should be incorporated into ongoing review of the 'nid list, but realize that tactical mistakes and misapplications of the lists strengths may have biased your outlook.

Of course.

but at the same time, a new set of fresh brains is always a good thing to have in a project, as it's very easy to become slightly defensive and possibly bogged down with details if it's been a long labour of love.  

Not that i'm suggesting that's the case here but a couple of extra playtesters can't hurt.

Their attack power is average.

Nah, you're not stepping on any designers' toes with this, it's just that it's been heavily debated in many circles and many times... and that does *NOT* mean it shouldn't still be debated!  New insight is often found when new people bring up these issues.

Let's take your Devs in a T-Hawk example; assuming characters, that's 800 points of Marines.  An equally pointed, Common Brood swarm would look like this:

800 Point Assault Swarm
3 Tyranid Warriors
8 Gargoyles
12 Hormagaunts
16 Termagants

That's *39* units!  Versus a mere 10 for the Marines.  It's 27 FF5+ attacks, if everything is in range; highly unlikely, as the Marines will try to clip, but the Gargoyles could lay a BM on the T-hawk or countercharge to draw supporting units in, etc... hard to Theoryhammer this out as there are a *lot* of variables to consider.

Now, if the 'Gaunts are are fully "Grot expendable", the Marine attacks will do *nothing* to this Swarm, and that becomes a whole other problem.

I'd invite you to come on over to the Tyranid development forum to discuss this more!

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Tyranits need Inspiring. The Cathaclysm psychic power from Wh40k translates nicely to Inspiring in Epic.

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Absolutely.  The big devil in playtesting is stereotyped play, and it's often new folks who find the weak links.

But the new folks very often come in with stereotyped play themselves...

Which is, frankly, one of the reasons I tend to think this batrep is a good place to be looking at this issue -- we have recorded the actual conduct of the experiment as well as the outcome.

Concur.

I'd love to post some batreps, however the nid army in question is heavilly proxied at the minute and i'm a slow (RE: Lazy) Painter, so won't look too clever.

I'm sure some games will be played in recent weeks and try and get some reports up (+ do some painting!)

One possibility is to try to run some battles on Vassal.  Not sure how 'nid friendly Arma-vassal is at this point, but its a good sandbox for this kind of testing.

Playtest batreps don't need to look "clever"... they're an analysis tool, not a painting competition!  *laugh*

As long as your proxies are clearly indicated, they should be fine.

Have you looked at any of the other recent Tyranid batreps here?

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

I'll do another batrep soon(ish). I really need to improve my skills as a Tyranid player and I plan on doing just that.