Synapse and BTS - Issue? |
|
Tactica
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue?  Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 4:25 pm |
|
| Brood Brother |
 |
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 12:12 am
Posts: 2241
|
|
Hey all,
Something Andy and I encountered this weekend and I wanted to throw it out there to see if its really an issue for others or not.
We know the opponent must kille 50% of our Synapse Creatures for BTS.
We also know Synapse Creature for this purpose is synonomous unit and not Synapse Group.
In our games this weekend, we found that this might be able to be artificially made much more harder to achieve than intended by taking lessor synapse nodes, keeping them in reserve, and never teleporting them on.
So if I were to take 4 of these things for 200 points total (Jaldon's proposed new minimum point cost in the Norn Queen thread) and In addition, I take 5 other Synapse units on the field, I could opt to never teleport the 4 lessor synapse nodes.
My opponent now must kill all 5 synapse units on the field in order to achieve 5 of 9 kills or the nid BTS objective.
This seems to work to artificially 'protect' the nid BTS victory condition and thus effectively force the opponent to either 'wipe out' the bugs, or simply abandon any hope of obtaining that victory condition.
Is that a problem?
Also, should the BTS be based upon total Tyranid wounds in synapse vs. units?
WE can soak up quite a bit of fire, and when taking such a synapse and hiding him behind hierodules, the synapse becomes much harder to get too.
Killing 4 harridans vs. 4 hive tyrants or 4 tyranid warriors or 4 lessor hive nodes just seem radically different.
To base this on units vs. synapse wounds seems to encourage one of two play mentalities.
A) No WE and all single wound synapse with large amounts of synapse units (at least 9 in a 3000 point game) to overwhelm the enemy with so many that he cannot kill 50% of them -
B) Huge hard to kill synapse on the field - and then enough lessors kept off of the field to force all the big synapse to be killed in order to acheive BTS.
Again, is this a problem?
Cheers for your thoughts,
_________________
Rob
|
|
| Top |
|
 |
|
ragnarok
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 4:50 pm |
|
| Brood Brother |
|
 |
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2005 2:43 pm
Posts: 2084
Location: Reading, England
|
|
Just change to wording to
"The nid opponent gains BTS if the number of dead synpase creatures is equal to or greater than the number of synpase creatures on the table."
Thus holding LSN back means you have a lower break point until they appear.
I also agree that it should be that WE should count as a number of synpase equal to their DC, rather than one. It makes WE synapse even less of an attractive option.
_________________
Tyranid air marshal
|
|
| Top |
|
|
|
nealhunt
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 5:43 pm |
|
| Purestrain |
 |
Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2003 10:52 pm
Posts: 9617
Location: Nashville, TN, USA
|
|
Since off-board units don't count for anyone else's BTS, I had assumed that any off-board formations wouldn't count towards the total.
_________________
Neal
|
|
| Top |
|
|
|
ragnarok
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 6:26 pm |
|
| Brood Brother |
|
|
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2005 2:43 pm
Posts: 2084
Location: Reading, England
|
|
I thing they shouldn't count for or against the total. This will stop checky nid players buying a few spare LSNs to make it more difficult for the enemy to achieve BTS.
_________________
Tyranid air marshal
|
|
| Top |
|
|
|
Chroma
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:25 pm |
|
| Brood Brother |
|
 |
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2005 3:06 pm
Posts: 9684
Location: Montréal, QC, Canada
|
| Quote (Hena @ 06 Feb. 2006 (17:40)) | So we are all in agreement that BTS needs to talk about units on table. Since I think so too  . |
*chitter* Agreed!
"The BTS goal has been achieved against the Tyranids if the number of dead Synapse Creatures is equal to or greater than the number of Synapse Creatures in play at the end of a turn. War engine Synapse Creatures count their full DC for this purpose."
_________________
"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer
Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?
|
|
| Top |
|
|
|
ragnarok
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:05 pm |
|
| Brood Brother |
|
|
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2005 2:43 pm
Posts: 2084
Location: Reading, England
|
|
I think WE synapse should count their remaining DC for this purpose, it is a bit of maths but with the regenativae ability they have (the Dominatrix has an 80% chance of recovering DC).
_________________
Tyranid air marshal
|
|
| Top |
|
|
|
Chroma
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:21 pm |
|
| Brood Brother |
|
|
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2005 3:06 pm
Posts: 9684
Location: Montréal, QC, Canada
|
| Quote (ragnarok @ 06 Feb. 2006 (19:05)) | | I think WE synapse should count their remaining DC for this purpose, it is a bit of maths but with the regenativae ability they have (the Dominatrix has an 80% chance of recovering DC). |
Doms can also lose all their Synapse ability via a single crit, so I think it's balanced to require their destruction... that's the whole point of BTS anyway.
_________________
"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer
Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?
|
|
| Top |
|
|
|
Tactica
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:27 pm |
|
| Brood Brother |
|
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 12:12 am
Posts: 2241
|
|
Ok,
So it does appear that there are two distinct questions at hand.
1) It appears that there is a consensus that Tyranid BTS should be based upon units on the table vs. the dead pile. Good. That makes sense, but that's not the way its being played locally in my region.
Some clarification appears to be warranted.
2) There appears to be debate regarding whether or not individual DC should be significant in the synapse accounting or if a multi DC war engine should simply count as a unit - regardless of DC.
Logistically, I'm of the mind that if I have 4 Tyranid synapse in the form of war engines, and you take me down to 1 DC remaining on each of them - then you'll killed no synapse and they are still on the field giving orders to the masses.
From the opposite perspective, I can see how it would be harder for an 8 wound DC living entity to give good orders and stay focused with 7 of 8 wounds bleeding out.
Furthermore, from a game balance perspective - if the tyranid war engines have been all reduced to a single wound, a lot of damage has been done. Especially when you account for regeneration. If the opponent has to kill each one dead to get "1" synapse creature towards BTS - that really is difficult vs. trying to kill 1 tyranid warrior.
From a game perspective, one purchases Tyrand Warrior Groups and Synapse SHT as single choice in the army and each has multiple wounds. Each Synapse choice can control a Swarm.
However, it seems that if 'Tyranid Warrior Group' is 3 different synapse entities being tallied for BTS, then each wound of a SHT Synapse should also be tallied towards BTS.
Jaldon, do you have an opionion on this one?
Cheers,
_________________
Rob
|
|
| Top |
|
|
|
Tactica
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 7:09 pm |
|
| Brood Brother |
|
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 12:12 am
Posts: 2241
|
Well, at this point - it would be good to get Jaldon's take on the situation. With any luck, hell give us a direction here in relatively short order...
 
_________________
Rob
|
|
| Top |
|
|
|
Jaldon
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 2:50 am |
|
| Brood Brother |
|
Joined: Thu Sep 04, 2003 6:38 am
Posts: 720
Location: Utah, pick a Pacific Island the other half of the year.
|
What me have an opinion 
1) It appears that there is a consensus that Tyranid BTS should be based upon units on the table vs. the dead pile. Good. That makes sense, but that's not the way its being played locally in my region.
|
That was exactly the intention of the rule, this will need to be better clarified, Thank you very much for catching this. Any ideas on how to write it?
2) There appears to be debate regarding whether or not individual DC should be significant in the synapse accounting or if a multi DC war engine should simply count as a unit - regardless of DC.
Logistically, I'm of the mind that if I have 4 Tyranid synapse in the form of war engines, and you take me down to 1 DC remaining on each of them - then you'll killed no synapse and they are still on the field giving orders to the masses.
|
Exactly my feelings and how I want it reflected.
Thanks All
Jaldon
_________________
Brave sir Robin, when danger reared its ugly head he bravely turned his tail and fled, Brave sir Robin.
| Top |
|
|
|
Tactica
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:31 pm |
|
| Brood Brother |
|
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 12:12 am
Posts: 2241
|
|
Jaldon,
A question is whether or not you want to penalize units in reserve i.e. not deployed.
If you want to say units in reserve count towards BTS for the opponent, then they would become and aggregate of units killed. This would basically force anything in reserve to be used at some point. If you didn't think there was going to be a turn 4, you'd deploy them in turn 3. I don't think this is where you want to go though.
Assuming you don't count units that are never deployed, you should say as much for clarity.
"Units that were not deployed during game play do not one way or the other for BTS calculations."
I also think you need to reworld "Synapse CREATURE" in 1.72 to say Synapse UNIT.
(Otherwise, you need to capitalize Synapse Creature in 1.72 and the heading after ARMY LIST before the synapse units where TYRANID WARRIOR GROUP is listed under needs to have a caveat or something to ensure that groups of tyranid warriors are not interpreted as a single Synapse Creature for BTS.)
Cheers,
_________________
Rob
|
|
| Top |
|
|
|
dptdexys
|
Post subject: Synapse and BTS - Issue? Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:57 pm |
|
| Brood Brother |
|
 |
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 11:39 pm
Posts: 1974
Location: South Yorkshire
|
|
That is how it is though for all armies , if a unit is left in reserve or evacuated off table ?in a transport then they cannot count for BTS .
example :- SM Terminators + SC upgrade ?(Players most expensive formation / BTS) are forgotten by player to teleport in or are evacuated by T/hawk and not brought back on to table ,then they no longer count as the players BTS formation .It would be the next most expensive formation in the ?list which is either on table or already destroyed that counts as the BTS goal.
|
|
| Top |
|
|
