Neal, what you just described (a wave of Nids and army wide spawning) sounded a lot like the standard hit allocation mechanism.

Put another way, could 'army-wide' spawning be as simple as adding the current spawning values up, applying some factors and dice, and then allocating the result per Synapse / spawning point as evenly as possible?

spawning is not necessarily that.
It's also advanced scout creatures springing ambushes, synapseless creatures finding the hive again, nids coming out of the ventilation shaft/sewer/ducts/etc... Its the "oh my god they're everywhere" rule.

Exactly.

I think "same-swarm" spawning has it's own "gamey-ness" to it. It allows the enemy to minimize spawning. By focusing on a small number of formations, the enemy can prevent most Nid formations from having anything to spawn.

Also, it misses the effect as it was intended. Nids are supposed to be a multi-directional threat, growing wherever the opponent's attention lags. Same-swarm rewards intense fire discipline rather than forcing an opponent to balance current and future threats. Future threats will rarely grow.

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There are several conditions a swarm has to fulfill before this can be abused:

1) The formation has a small number of units
2) Has taken damage to be below but still near half-unit-count
3) Can spawn enough to cross back over half-unit-count

So, basically, the only formations this "tiebreak points grab" could apply to is a synapse-led bio-arty/bio-tank formation. That's 2 or 3 formations, max. And, of course, in-game actions will further restrict that. Some formations won't take enough damage to count for tiebreak regardless of spawning. Some formations will be wiped out or damaged to the point they can't spawn enough.

Also, it's a known ability so people can take it into account. People choose how to go for points all the time and they can do so against Nids as well, e.g. "It's 4th turn and probably going to tie. If I attack that Fex horde he might be able to spawn back for tiebreak, so I'll go after a different formation where I can actually score points."

I can see that it might be an issue in a Nidzilla list, where a few gribbly formations could provide spawn fodder for a bunch of biotank formations, but for a normal list I just don't see a problem.

Can you explain what you feel is unfair about that?

I'd disagree with that - with 5 or 6 swarms coming at you, plus 'stealers, Lictors and Trygons popping up all over the place, focused fire might reducing spawning in 2 or perhaps 3 spawns, but it will leave all those other very dangerous threats alone - exactly that mulit-directional threat you're talking about. Tactically, I'm not even sure how I would counter the "spawn everywhere" rule - pot shots won't make any difference (especially with gaunts as Expendable), breaking swarms won't matter either, as all the 'nid player has to do is put models wherever he wants. It's almost like tethered teleporting, but for free and without BMs!

I don't know if I can explain it any better than I've already tried to Neal.

If a player kills over half of a formation of hard to kill bugs, a 'nid player shouldn't be able to deny them those tiebreak VPs by spawning back little, easier to kill stuff. That seems unfair to me.

On the gamey-ness of spawning back to the same formation, OK, I can agree with that, it's not a perfect representation of the fluff, but at least it can't be abused as "spawn where you like" can. We've played at least two dozen games where spawning has to come from formation losses and keeping track of where the dead come from isn't that big of a chore. We usually just group them along the 'nid edge in-line with the formation they belong to on the board.

I'll also add that spawning back losses denies the "magic shift" abuse that's common with spawn where you like. If a player is allowed to choose what spawns where then they're going to spawn what they need where they need it. That's gives a decent form of flexibility that a horde army probably shouldn’t have.

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I haven't played with nids, but I have to say that I like the idea of army-wide spawning where spawning points are divided as evenly as possible across formations and mechanically assigned. Should give the feel of an ever-growing horde without the cheese of targeted spawning.

Those don't spawn. They can be targeted while still gaming the Nids' ability to spawn.

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OK. I guess it just doesn't bother me. Maybe that's because the "Nids want to play for tiebreak" is ingrained in my mindset.


Spawning gobs of units while nearly on top of the enemy was "magic shift." Cutting it to ~2-4 units already took care of this.

Do you have an example where you think it was abused? I started going back through batreps and I can't find anything that seems abusive to me.

Not from an Onachus playtest, spawning formation losses prevents what I was referring to with the magic shift.

When I played 9.2.1 I had more free reign when it came to choosing what I brought back. If I had a formation that looked like it was going to assault a good FF/poor CC unit I'd spawn back as many CC specialists as I could. On the other hand, if I was going to be supporting an assault because the formation had blast markers I would spawn back as many FF units as I could.

You're introducing a lot of flexibility when spawning from one pool, and frankly it just seems like the Hive Mind is closing its eyes, crossing its fingers and saying "I wish, I wish, I wish I had some XXX here! Hey what do you know! There's some XXX coming over now! What luck!"

You can still get away with this when spawning losses but it's much more limited, mainly because your spawn pool is much smaller per formation and your choices more limited because of it.

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I know that, thanks, but they are still part of this "multi-directional threat" you talk about.

Why not just spawn from the back of the board, say to the formation closest to the Tyranid player's table edge? That would give the sense of a wave after wave of bugs coming forward as opposed to just appearing on the front lines, regardless of whether or not they come from a pool or back to the specific formation from whence they came.

I'm just thinking along the same lines as the books; the Tyranids aren't really described as reorganizing on the front lines. You kill them on the front lines and more show up from the rear in another wave. It would be darned easy to figure out proximity to a table edge, it isn't tied to an objective so non-tourney scenarios aren't a problem, and it would be fast. Roll dice, look down, place units, done!

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It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

You could this to the blitz objective in the GTS. That would introduce some extra strategery into the deployment of objectives.

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Sorry. I didn't intend to be dismissive. I was more focused on the gamey aspect.

It's a nice idea, but I'd prefer the table edge - not only is it not tied to the GT scenario, but to me, spawning from the Blitz would feel as if the Nids are all coming from it.

no worries. I was just trying to point out that 'nids do the multi-directional threat thing pretty well anyway, so the "spawn-where-you-like" rule would be additional to this (hence the gamey-ness of it - it would be like some air assault special rule for Marines, when they already do air assault perfectly well)