So if I have understood this correctly, you have no problem with the Nids making a 'march' activation to take another Swarm under control, and possibly would even allow a 'broken' swarm to merge with another (possibly resulting in the merged swarm not being broken).

Rather your concern is the NID player using a 'gamey' manoeuver to advance a swarm (controlled or otherwise) an excessive distance?

What I think you are proposing is that the Nid player declares the swarm will march, and it makes two nomal moves. In making the third move it then leaves behind sufficient units to cause it to break; and because it is now 'broken', the swarm then makes a further two 'withdrawal' moves, or a minimum of 75 cms in one direction. Worse, in the right circumstances, this could be used to merge with another swarm with few BMs, and the resulting swarm would no longer be broken (though it would have a lot of BMS).
Finally it could be achieved by either an 'uncontrolled' or more likely a 'controlled' swarm merging with one of the opposite type.

Ingenious, but is this actually practical and permissible? I thought that 'Expendable' would mean that the swarm would not get BMs for losing brood creatures - so a swarm will typically not have many BMs and would have to drop most of its brood critters to break itself, which seems to be a self-defeating exercise.

If this is a real problem would a FAQ suffice to ban the practice?

Actually I'm not particularly convinced that swarms merging during games is a good idea at all. :-)


Quite practical, by my eye, if the other rules changes go through.


Isn't it like Ork Grots, so that if a formation totally consists of Expendable units, then they lose the benefit entirely?

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If the swarm has Synapse creatures - then no, they do not get BMs. If it is 'uncontrolled', then there is a -2 or -3 to activate on top of the other factors which means it is highly unlikely to march in the first place - but if it succeeded, then it would get BMs for dropping units.

Is this the only reason you are so opposed to merging? After all, the enemy will have killed a swarm and potentially crippled a second - even if the Nids have managed to mob forwards - and it would take a considerable amount of luck / skill to pull this off and end up in an advantageous position.

But you'd still get to have a 45cm move, by using your hold move to move 15cm and drop some units, break, then move another 30cm, and join another swarm.


I'm sure Chris could manage something :-)

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The equivalent of a 'march', which seems to represent the relentless and apparently unstoppable nature of the bugs rather well don't you think?

But I do agree that getting 75cms out of a foot-slogger is a bit OTT and in practice I would still agree that this practice would be 'questionable' at least even on a 'Hold' - my real concern is that no-one else seems to have spotted it other than yourself - - - .

Well, any normal army can do the same, of course, but unlike the Tyranids they wouldn't be guaranteed to be able to rally the units after doing so.

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Well, the obvious solution to that is not allowing merging while broken. However, as previously noted, that seriously dampens the ability to do it at all. So the tradeoff seems to be "utilitarian but potentially wonky" versus "why bother?".

Or to only allow the merge in the end phase. Is there a legitimate need to allow it in the action phase when it's open to abuse?

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It's open to the "abuse" (Or "usage") in the end phase too.

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Just don't allow merging when broken. A synapseless formation that's broken shouldn't be coordinated enough to merge.

It also neatly sidesteps all the potential problems.

What are the abuse scenarios for broken formations being absorbed in the end phase?

The chances of a synapse-less, broken swarm rallying in the end phase are pretty slim with an initiative decrease. It's kind of harsh to disallow them from being absorbed as they're not going to do much for you for the rest of the game.

From a fluff/40k rule prospective broken and leaderless brood retreat towards the closest synapse creature, I would think that allowing broken swarms to be absorbed would fit rather well.

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The fact that you can still get a 15cm move formation to move up to 75cm in a single turn* and then get to use it the following turn.

*Or get a 20cm move formation to move up to 1 metre.

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There's also the "It's 4th turn, hey, I can merge this formation, and gain an advantage in countback."

If you want to do it "out of activation", it should be done at the start of the turn, IMO.

Morgan Vening

I have posted a proposal in the C&C thread that 'uncontrolled' brood creatures are removed anyway - which also sidesteps this problem in the end-phase.

However, I am still not conviced that it is a significant issue, and certainly not sufficient to prevent swarms from merging. Note, by removing 'uncontrolled' broods in the end-phase, we are only giving the Nid player a very small window of opportunity to regain control in this fashion - and reducing the window for 'gameyness' by the same token.

I am also not convinced on the 'count-back' question - by definition, one swarm has been killed - and arguably the remaining Nid formations could be growing in size through spawning anyway. So it could actually simplify the scoring system.

Of more concern to me is the ability to pass critters from one swarm to another, and especially where there are two heavily intermingled swarms; so which unit belongs to which swarm should the whole lot be shot or attacked??

Also, the potential under the proposed approach that lacks a 'control' radius for a small number of synapse groups and swarms, or even just a single synapse group to control a single swarm spread across the entire table.

@E&C - But you can do that with a broken swarm with leadership anyway, and most other armies for that matter. I'm not seeing how this is open to abuse?

@MV - What's countback?

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