And if Jaldon's not interested, perhaps someone else should be appointed.

Well, Jaldon hasn't decided yet so I think we need to wait on him first. Seems only right. I know he just got back from some remote Pacific island so give him a day or two to catch-up to see what he's jumping into.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

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

As long as it is open development and ideas are considerred seriously and discussed, I have no problem with that either.

I also support Zombo taking up the mantle.

At the end of the day, is it not Chroma's decision?

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Frogbear is responsible for...
Previous World Eaters
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OK, I missed the bit about removing the Synapse range - my bad!

But this is one of the key elements in the original versions of the rules that provided balance (as Hena and others have acknowledged) even though it is a pain to word, and even worse to play.

To my mind, removing it altogether makes the Nids considerably better (the faster bugs are not tied to synapses, and a swarm can spread (gaining better support from other swarms), not to mention the difficulties of deciding which swarm is which should they become heavily intermingled!


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So, could we find a compromise here? I propose that we retain the 'go to ground' aspect of the Synapse control:-

When all the synapse creatures controlling a swarm are killed, that swarm becomes 'uncontrolled'. In the end phase all 'uncontrolled' brood creatures disband or 'go to ground', and are removed from the battlefield.

This would solve a number of current questioins, and would also provide the opponents with different means of destroying swarms.

The original rules also had Tyranid swarms that never took blast markers. :-)

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

And I am cool with that as well. The main problem that most objected to was the additional 'control radius'. I suggest that we could effectively just remove that bit to simplify things to an acceptable level.

The discussions and polls have proved very much in favour of getting rid of going to ground, instead having an initiative penalty for synapseless formations, but retaining the option to merge with another formation.

I must say I thought the polls were actually over initiative - not 'control radius' and absolutely nothing to do with 'going to ground' at all, in the slightest.

I might add that, judging by the comments over the past few days, it seems I am not alone in being confused on this point.

Could you explain further why 'going to ground' is a poor mechanic.

Because it results in killing synapse being an all or nothing thing. If you manage it, poooof, there goes a whole formation. It's also not even slightly background representative; synapseless tyranids generally lurk in the same area, but are still extremely capable and deadly. This is much better represented by being likely to fail activations and issue the hold order.

By far the majority are in favour of this change.

Also, I think at least partially the old respawning rules balanced out the removal of formations. With the new, toned down respawning, whichever iteration is settled on, this is no longer the case.

However, it seems that leaving 'uncontrolled' formations on the table, and especially with the idea of voluntarily breaking and merging, would allow the Nid player to merge with another formation - as in the C&C thread. Also, the 'toned down' spawning referred to is not in 9.2.x, (which I still think of as the 'core' list) whilst it is in Onachus and Leviathan.

Ok, I think I understand where you are coming from - keep everything on the table to represent the huge mob of bugs. Reduce the ability to spawn back numbers to achieve balance etc.

I note there is no change to the unit stats, which means that logically the opponent should be able to kill off the same number of bugs as before. But now the Nids spawning has been more than halved, so sin't that a huge nerf (not to mention the removal of spawning bigger bugs etc which seems to impact the entire army composition and people's collections)? ?

I am really not sure that this assertion is true. For example the many unhappy comments regarding the perceived impact on people's collections of metal bugs - - -

In leviathan there are a couple of ways to increase spawning numbers back up to 9.2.1 or higher levels (brood nest and tervigons)

The nerf is compensated by the removal of going to ground.

How does removing going to ground make any difference to people's collections and their usability?

Most people seem to be in favour of AV spawning but not WE spawning, so that's likely what I'll allow in the next leviathan list.