Ah, so a combination of Daemon Pool and current system. I could get behind that. Doesn't change the problem some have of cross-swarm spawning, and a split pool (spawn back by formation, plus spawn from general pool) would get too messy.

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There are two issues here that could be related:-

1. What may be spawned
   If a Tyranid army started with entirely 'gaunts, and later spawned Carnifexes (or other bigger critters), to me that would represent these critters arriving from somewhere else (rather than resurrecting the dead, Necron style). The spawning points mechanics seem to be generally accepted as a 'balanced' way of adding many small beasts or a few bigger ones, so what is the problem with bringing in something that the army did not originally have?
   
   As to the Nids army apparently shrinking or growing, this depends upon the opponent - it is up to him to kill off sufficient bugs to survive or be overwhelmed by the 'wave' isnt it?
   
   Another variation might be to allow the Nids to spawn more synapses under certain circumstances. It might be possible to do this while tracking the number of Synapses killed for tournament purposes - but that is a different (and much harder) option to balance, and not what is being suggested at the moment.
2. Where critters may be spawned
   I think this may be more critical to the list. IMHO, 'spawning' really represents the perspective of the opponent - so they are now seeing that there are more bugs out there than they originally imagined. To me, the size of the synapse (or spawning capacity) mimics the Hive mind's strategy to attack particular points rather than a totally mindless approach. In that sense, it should look and feel much like ants or bees:- individual units have particular abilbities and roles and can react to local situations (like defending against an aggressor, or returning some food to the hive) but the 'swarm' is only given a general direction to move in, not complex tactical orders.
   
   I would also suggest that terms like 'cross-swarm spawning' is not helpfull; it seems the actual objection is the sudden arrival of many (and possibly larger) critters very close to some critical part of the battlefield giving the opponent no time to react; and equally no chance to destroy them whilst they were moving to their current location.
   
   What this seems to boil down to is not so much a limitation to the number of critters that may be spawned, but rather a limitation to where they may be put - hence the suggestion of spawning in decreasing sizes from the rear.
   • Tying spawning capacity to the opponent's proximity to Nid synapses represents the awareness of what the opponent actually faces :- if opposing forces are near all synapses, the opponent now knows the actual size of the Nid threat (and the Nids spawning capability is vastly reduced). The converse is also true.
   • Putting the bigger critters as far away from opposing forces gives them more time to react. This represents critters appearing at the edge of the perception of opposing forces; they have been concentrating on killing things much closer to their position. This is simpler than some formula limiting the things that can be added to a particular swarm.
   • Allowing the Nid player freedom to choose what to add means he can put all 'spawning' points into one big critter - but it is placed a long way from the enemy, and is part of the 'multi-directional threat' referred to earlier.

No, the objection is that allowing anything other than straight formation resurrection ala necrons requires a change to the BTS and Tie Breaker rules. Hence the "cross-swarm spawning" phrase, which points out this problem.

Quite a few people don't want spawning to force a change in the GT scenario rules like it currently does.



9.2.1's spawning already does this; formations get a bonus to spawning if they are more than 30cm from the enemy, meaning they can't spawn big stuff when near the enemy. It's a lot simpler and clearer than some system of trying to work out where the "rear" of a pitched battle is.

To be fair, this depends greatly on how the Nids BTS is defined and how that fits into the tie-breaker rules. Current attempts tend to work around definitions based only on the synapses across the army. Why was this definition used rather than "the largest swarm" (however defined)?
I suspect the answer is because having one really big swarm did not really reflect the intended look & feel of the Nids; and adding critters to the BTS swarm would tend to make it harder to destroy.
(Note, requiring units to be added evenly across the whole army must address this at least in part).

On the Tie-breaker issue, the Necrons will also suffer similar problems on the tie-breaker when they resurrect units.


Agreed, but 9.2.1 also works on a swarm by swarm basis, and from what I have been reading that is apparently not liked by everyone, not least because of the BTS issue above.

Simply because "The Largest Swarm" isn't definable; no fixed formations in the army list, formations that swap units during the game, formations that spawn new units. One formation may start the game huge and then immediately merge with another formation to make a bigger one, or two other formations could merge, or one could spawn loads to get bigger etc.



The current system spreads evenly, except with the caveat that closer stuff gets less stuff and smaller stuff. Isn't that exactly what you're arguing for?



No, because they can only restore to the same formation. Nids can restore anywhere, which makes things much more complex. For example, imagine a formation of 4 carnifexs and a hive tyrant. The carnifexes are killed, but instead of spawning them back (at a much higher spawning cost) the player spawns 4 gaunts. The formation is now back above half strength in number of units. This is a problem.



I haven't seen anyone have a problem with swarm by swarm spawning; it's functionally almost identical and a whole lot simpler than what you're suggesting.

Largest swarm :-

• Has anyone tried defining this in terms of the unit's spawning cost? Thus a swarm of 4x 'Fexes would be much 'larger' than a swarm of 4x 'Gaunts.
• I thought there was resistance to allowing swarms to merge or split, at least as far as the synapses are concerned. And while passing bugs from one swarm to another can be used to bolster the strength of the BTS, this also weakens the other swarms making them potentially easier to destroy.
• Having a single swarm as a BTS target is arguably easier to destroy than killing half of all synapses, it just has to happen within the timeframe of a single turn rather than over the course of the entire game.

Tie-Breaker
If Synapses may not be passed from one swarm to another (ie swarms may not merge), the final strengths of each swarm can be measured against their starting strengths. This would be done in terms of their army cost or their 'spawning' cost rather than the actual number of critters.

Spawning mechanics
The mechanics are similar but would produce different results:- 9.2.1 allows big critters to be added anywhere, which seems to be a concern. My suggestion would return the big critters to the 'rear' of the Nid army - ie further away from the opposing forces.

And defining 'the rear' would be done by measuring against the synapses - surely not a 'difficult' thing to do?

9.2.1 doesn't allow big stuff to spawn near the enemy, because you can't get enough spawning points to spawn anything big if you're within 30cm.

My thoughts exactly. Most expensive Synapse Group would probably suffice. Independent formations could get hit hard otherwise, especially if still restricted to 1/3 of the army points. Also, in the 9.2.1 list, with the exception of the Dominatrix, it is hard to buy more expensive synapse groups than 300 points. BTS becomes part of list making, as with every other army.

/Fredmans

The force driving alternative GT rules is and always has been the overall mutability of formations before and during play. That mutability was due to 4 factors:

1) Free army selection and pre-game reorg
2) Synapse radius and in-game reorg
3) Mass spawning ability
4) Cross-swarm spawning

Attributing the need for alternative GT goals to any single factor is a terrible mischaracterization.

3 was eliminated a long time ago. 1 and 2 have strong support for elimination. Whether enough mutability remains with just cross-swarm spawning to still require alternative GT rules is pure theoryhammer at the moment.

I thought the ability for swarms to combine just passed a vote?

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I believe that vote was for absorption in the end phase (where the absorbed counts as destroyed for VCs/Tiebreak), not re-org during the action phase.

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Maybe "strong support for drastic curtailment" would have been better? At the moment, only a couple mechanisms have been discussed. Each is highly restrictive compared to synapse reorg and includes "count as destroyed" for the absorbed swarm.

It's still in-game reorganisation, so has an effect on the tiebreak for the merged formation, and requires notes about the old formation being dead for VC/Tiebreak purposes.

Sure, but there'll still need to be tiebreak guidelines.