I don't think anyone has a problem with Infantry Brood Creatures being expendable, and most are fine with LV/AV Brood Creatures being expendable, but what about War Engine Brood Creatures?

One of them going down is a pretty big chunk of meat lost, so, what are people's thoughts on this?

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I don't think war engine broods should be expendable. I don't think Tyranids think in the same terms but they can ill afford the waist in resource in expended biomass to allow these creatures to be just thrown into combat without having achieved some kind of gain first.

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[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

I'd be inclined to leave them Expendable from a flavor and feel perspective.  They would have relatively little importance to the actual function of the hive mind so there's no reason their destruction would inherently disrupt command and control.  Even though they might be substantially more biomass than other broods I can still see them being sacrificed with relatively little consideration.

However, game balance trumps all.  If Expendable WEs cause problems, then take them out.

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Neal

I don't think war engines should ever be expendable. It'd certainly do a lot to sort out the WE spam list.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Not sure it will actually make much difference. In the 'Nidzilla list, I tried using three Hierodules with the intention of not replacing them when they died. The basic premis being that replacement was going to be tough to impossible anyway, so why try. So, that would have added another 3x BM to each swarm - no big deal really in a swarm that is 10-15 strong.

I tend to agree with Neal that it goes against the inate nature of swarm creatures and the Command and Control element of the game which are exercised by the Synapse creatures, so all in all I would suggest that swarm WE dying should not add BMs.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Actually, the three extra Blast markers *is* significant in that a Swarm will be unable to clear all its Blast markers in the End Phase if a 3DC War Engine goes down.

It'll go from four to two, minus one for leader, with one remaining to slow them down in the following turn; to me, that's a significant change.

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I agree with this.

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Another no from me.

Having all brood be expendable is simple to remember. There's no exceptions. If Heirodules and Trygons are too powerful either drop there cluster down to 1 only or make them more expensive I say.

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Dave

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I'm definitely starting to lean towards the "one per cluster" route in this list... in a "war engine focus" list they can, perhaps, allow more per "slot".

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