If nothing else, I think the fact people are modifying the 'official' lists so extensively means there are either there is alot of chaff in the special rules (also my opinion), that the list construction is over complicated (looks that way to mee, to), or both.

I would reiterate the experiences I had against the list with the changes Angron made.

The list played like 'nids. Tracking the effects the spawning rule would have had, we found it to be superfluous. The formation jumping abilities were unneeded, and Synapse range would not have had an influence.

The extra blast marker reduction was completely usless, as, as far as we could tell, 'nids almost never take BMs. Keep Synapse to the rear, and the only way to get to them is to go through the entire Swarm. They don't take BMs in engage, because they either win (and usually don't lose Synapse), or lose and break, often whittling the Swarm down to just Synapse anyway. THe Fearless nature of Synapse meant no hackdowns, no extra casualties to BM, etc, meaning the formations were very resilient, but useless due to being broken, and easily rebroken.

The units were well balanced and characterful, and brutal in CC. As such, Engaging in the 5+ cm band to prevent countercharges was the best bet, again as would be expected. There are just too many rules with little effect on the game in the list, IMO.

_________________
SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Rule X (Spawning in this case) does not deter me from playing, no. It is an extra special rule, and so, by definition, does complicate things. Therefore, it should make the army encourage the style of play Tyranids are best at. If the rule encourages the Tyranid player to fall back to get the extra spawn points, it is not encouraging the right behaviors. If it is ineffective (and it certainly seemes to be to me) at close range where Tyranids should be, it is unneccessary and should be removed.



Crossfire did not come up, it's true. You've obviously played more games with 'nids than me, so being able to reference an instance in which you were able to destroy all synapse creatures is not neccessarily representative. Are you able to reliably (in a majority or significant minority of games) take advantage of the rules for synapseless formations? Also, the point was with reference to the BM removal. 'Nids don't seem to take significant numbers of BMs in the majority of circumstances. Why is the special rule even required?



Then make one rule that reliably does the same thing. A variation on "mob up", for instance, allowing broken or synapseless formations to combine in the endphase if in unit coherency, would not encourage backing off, and would allow damaged units to regain combat effectiveness.



So have them home back to any formation. The same outcome will happen in 80%-90% of cases I'd think: going to the nearest Synapse Swarm. In the remainder, the Tyranid player may decide to 'pick up' the formation later in the turn, or attach to a nearby formation that is not the nearest. The outcome will be the same.

_________________
SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

The thing is, the Spawning rule is *SPECIFICALLY* designed to do this... a Tyranid swarm that gets kicked around must move away from the enemy if it wants to "heal"; the Tyranid player has to make the "tough choice" of moving their swarms out of their optimum zone of offensive effectiveness to a defensive posture with the hope of being able to strike back stronger later or maintain an aggressive posture with a weakened swarm and hope that their strong assault capabilities can see them through... to me, that is *precisely* "the right behaviours" of Tyranids.

Tyranids are NOT just a mindless CHARGE! CHARGE! CHARGE! army, they ("It", if the Hive Mind is a singular entity) are horrifically smart and will use a variety of approaches to overcome an enemy. Withdrawing to "lick their wounds" and also draw the enemy towards them, seems to be a completely valid representation of the way Tyranids would fight. In contrast to Orks, say, who would just keep on powering in to the enemy.

What do you mean by "extra blast marker reduction"?

As to taking Blast markers: Tyranid swarms get Blast markers for getting shot at as normal, unless the Swarm has a leader in it, two enemy formations shooting at it means it will keep a Blast marker in the following turn, which means it's very possible to fail activations.

How often do your opponents "clip" your swarms? A Blast marker placed earlier negates and out-numbering bonus the Swarm might have, and then loosing some Gaunts or other Broods from the periphery, with little chance to strike back, means the Swarm is likely to loose... if that's a 20 unit swarm, when it comes back, it's going to have *TEN* Blast markers

Relentless. Not really extra BM reduction, but easier BM removal.

The point is that the BMs don't add up enough to make it neccessary to be easier to remove, at least in the games we played.

In the Engage actions, Swarms were usually down to the Fearless synapses when they lost, so they'd come back with a couple BMs at most.

If falling back is the way Spawning was designed, then so be it. Not sure I agree, but there it is. I'm sure Angron will be playing more, assuming he can get some issues with supply sorted, so we'll see how things go...

_________________
SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.