Oh I'd turn the D3's into D3x20pts each, or something.

And I'd only allow the spawning of complete selections from the army list page, any excesses would simply be lost, in the name of KISS.

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Has some thought been given to allowing some sort of regen on the bio titans? My recent couple of games against nids has convinced me that it should return in some form. Perhaps built into the spawning rules?

Yup, allowing 3 Spawning points to return a DC to a WE would be sweet.

Agree, seems simple to extend spawning to WE to represent regen.

Tho a caveat that you can't actually spawn new ones... though i guess they wouldn't have brood and it would be worded clear enough

I tried this in my last couple of games, except it was a +1 to rally for all formations. Any reason why you are limiting it to just synapse formations?



That text follows:


I'd like to see it updated to reflect the various Grot FAQs, that's a discussion to be had elsewhere though.



I agree with the others that the wording isn't the tightest. The last three paragraphs that cause the most confusion. Also, you don't mention how units are returned to play. Here's my suggestions for those points:





I think the wording could be tighter again. This rule is tied to the army list, and not the units. We need to specify that when a Synapse Swarm's synapse units are destroyed that these effects take affect. You also don't need the note about spawning (its covered in that rule), nor merging (why would players assume they could merge it?).

The limited actions seems overly harsh coupled with the 3+ initiative. The biggest problem I have though is that those brood creatures you've paid for can't be absorbed by another swarm to help recoup their cost once their synapse dies. A 3+ init formation with no ability to contest/control and than can only hold/advance/engage is the closest thing to worthless in EA I think. You're effectively allowing absorbing via spawning (by grabbing from another formation's spawning pool), why are we disallowing a formation from running over to a synapse-less one and absorbing its brood units?



Do LVs get cover saves by this rule?

Finally, players are going to find it confusing when they see "Synapse" in a datafax but can't find a special rule called "Synapse". If we're going to label things Synapse and Brood in the datafaxes, we should have rules for them, if only to just have them say the following:



Otherwise, everywhere it says Brood units or Synapse units we should be saying "units with the Brood special ability".

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Actually we need to say the opposite; all brood points must be spent if at all possible, else we end up with the gamey situation where a formation with losses could spawn and refuse to spend the points, so that the losses can be picked up by another formation.


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I really think that with all the caveats required, this spawning system is too complicated. It's a lot more complicated than 9.2.1 for example.

Fixed.

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It's basically 9.2.1 with extra limitations. (Separate dead/spawning pools.)

What's the goal of the spawning rule? That Tyranid Swarms grow during the game, right?

The wording overall is still a bit fuzzy (Even how many dice to roll is unclear but at least easy to fix. It says roll a number of D3 with two +D3 conditions, so how many D3 do you start with, 0D3 1D3 or as many as you want)

The other thing that comes to mind is if you are forced to spawn and are then forced to spend all your points then you would also technically be forced to spawn from other formations pools if the spawning formations pool was emptied (ie 2 termagants in the pool and 3 spawn points). That doesn't sit right for me.

There is also the somewhat gamey option of 'accidently' leaving stands from instinctive swarms (or any swarm for that matter) out of coherency to remove them to the spawning pool. Hence a slow merge by spawning to any other formation on the table.

I think at some point for spawning we are going to have to choose a flawed rule (like the versions for 9.2.1, Leviathan 2.0, Onachus or Jormungandr 0.45) rather than keep adding exceptions and caveats to get an exact version that is wordy and can be easily misunderstood.

Well we've now got a different rule thats more complicated for a small reduction in spawning to order. I can selectively place units out of coherency during a move to destroy them for no blast marker (Expendable) and then by careful selection of spawn order (Unharmed formation sacrifices a termagant, now that formation can spawn first and go for what it really wants) can gain a pretty good chance of spawning exactly what I want where I want it.

What I'd like to see happen:


- "open season" spawning... you'd be able to spawn anything from a list of smaller critters, potentially even taking the army above its starting numbers.

- The return of a "Kill Synapse units for BTS & Tie-Breaker" rule. It's clear that it's is needed if you're going to have spawning that can modify the starting composition of a formation in any way.


The total verbiage for the above would easily be less than the kind of rules we're seeing knocked about now, and it wouldn't have the "resurrection" feeling of this proposed set of rules.

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KISS

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I'm not sure spawning is workable in the long run, and would not be sad to see it go. However, I suspect I'm in the minority here, and that it will make it into the list anyway.

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The spawning rule has been re-written.

Simple Response to the wordy complaint:
Compared to the Chaos rules for summining?
Simply put, spawning, like summoning, is a difficult concept to put down into words but dead simple to explain to someone when you have them standing right next to you.

Tie Breaker/BTS
With the spawning levels so low, and thorugh our playtests of both the ressurection only spawning and the two games using this spawning, we haven't found this to be an issue in tie breakers. During playtests we still run the numbers for a tie breaker even if the battle ended due to victory objectives.Opponents that disected the Tyranid army by demolishing each swarm in turn won a little over half the tie breakers. Opponents that attempted to fight 'across the front' and not concentrate on disecting the Nid Army lost a large majority of the tie breakers.

BTS also is a non-issue for opponents whom disected the Nid Army, but was for those whom fought across the front.

Jaldon

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