I'll try some of these ideas in my next game.

I like the semi-disposable idea, Gaunts give Combat Res but less than normal. You gain by killing them, but not auto-win amounts.

I hesitated to suggest it as it involves maths, and we know GW games and gamers are terrified of maths..apparently.

Essentially each Gaunt is worth 0.5 a kill, rounding up.

So you kill 5 gaunts, that's 3 Combat Res.

The Assault only armour save would have an effect, dropping the Combat res by 1-2 effectively, but I don't like counter-intuitive rules for the sake of rules. There is no background reason why Gaunts become better armoured when the enemy is closer and shooting at them.

There is plenty of background reasons for why Gaunts would be worth very little or affect the Nids very little if killed in droves.

The suggestion of more Outnumbering modifiers is interesting, but TBH, Nids are rarely going to outnumber by 4:1, especially after the Engagements casualties, and the fact the opponent chooses when, where and who engages.

Epic rounds down as a general rule. So 5 dead gaunts gives 2 casualties to the enemy.

Actually, Epic rounds *up* as a general rule!

SPECIAL RULE
Rounding

In Epic, all fractions are rounded up unless
the rules specifically say otherwise.
Generosity rules where 6mm soldiers are
concerned!

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

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

One of the complaints raised here is that the enemy will always be able to put a Blast marker on the swarm they want to attack with a token shot.

One of the proposals that I'm examining is that Tyranids do *NOT* take a Blast marker for merely coming under fire; as I wrote in my after action report:

Not taking Blast markers for coming under fire is *fantastic*!  No more "token" Blast markers slowing the swarms down as Tyranids don't care if you just take potshots at them, you've actually got to do damage to them to get them to notice your efforts.

Possibly combined with expendable on Gaunts, this would mean that an enemy would have to actually *hurt* a swarm to put Blast markers on it and wouldn't be getting an easy +2 for BM effects when initiating an assault.

To me it seems good from both a rule standpoint and from a 'feel' standpoint.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

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

I was erring on the side of downplaying the Nid bonus, so as to ease the rule suggestion.

And on basic maths,  

It would, if you kill enough stuff... or take out something other than a basic Gaunt.  Which seems *completely* in character to the army.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

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

I'm extremely loathe to make gaunts' deaths not count in an assault, or count half for one simple reason - formations of nothing but gaunts plus warriors will be just about unbeatable.

You can't shoot it to death, there are too many.
You can't break it with shooting, they ignore almost all BMs.
You can't assault it, all your kills will be wasted.

The Grot rule works because there are low numbers of Grots. If you could take a formation of nothing but 100 Grots and a few Nobs it'd be unbeatable without sniper.

Secondly, Tyranids are already excellent in assaults, and assault based armies already struggle against them. If you make the vast majority of the assault kills count for nothing, how exactly is an assault based army ever supposed to beat nids?

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Not taking Blast markers for coming under fire is *fantastic*!  No more "token" Blast markers slowing the swarms down as Tyranids don't care if you just take potshots at them, you've actually got to do damage to them to get them to notice your efforts.

The example can be repeated for Eldar Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents, heck even IG Storm Troopers in Valkyries...

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Neal

Combat res also represents the morale boost of killing dozens of gaunts for the enemy, so halving it seems strange.

What about you count casualties as usual, so if the enemy can gun down 6 gaunts they get +6 modifer.  However nid do nt suffer combat loses from, combat res.  So if you beat a nid formation, no matter by how much you just break it.

This would represent the hive mind pulling back its foot troops, in good order, if it comes up stiff resistance.

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Tyranid air marshal