Sounds good, but I'd love to see it combined with a purchased spawning pool.

The wording needs tightening (there's no such thing as a 'dead pile'), but I'm OK with this if the current rule (no cross swarm spawning, period) really isn't an option.

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I like the rule, however it might be useful if there's a throw away comment saying that the BTS is set at the start of the game and does not change.

This is more just to reenforce the normal rules and stop anyone going well this group is now bigger than that one...?

Isn't the BTS objective fluid? As in, kill the most expensive formation on the board, even if there's a more expensive one waiting in the reserves (but if the formation in reserve enters before the first formation is destroyed, that formation now becomes the BTS objective). If I'm understanding the rule right, just say that the cost of formations is locked at the start of the game and is unaffected by spawning.

And if I'm wrong, just ignore me

Yes you are right,

This


is what i was trying to say we should have - it's early and i'm not awake

Conceptually, yes. I think that's a relatively uncomplicated way of addressing all the complaints - not 100% fixed in all cases, but mitigated across the board.

The main question is whether this simple concept will result in some fiddly effects once swarms start cross-swarm spawning. That will take playtesting.

I think the verbiage needs a little work, e.g. "dead pile" isn't a defined rule term...


And at the end of the spawning rule section...


You'll probably end up with a design note at some point to give guidance and explain that it looks fiddly, but it's not so bad (assuming that's the actual playtest result).

Neal's wording looks good to me, and this is a good compromise solution.

It's got my vote too

Note that this leaves it open for full-strength swarms to "steal" units from under-strength swarms, and thereby allowing those swarms to spawn whatever is left.

E.g. swarm A has lost 3 hormagaunts, swarm B has lost 2 termagants and a gargoyle and swarm C is at full strength. Say that swarm A is likely to end up in a firefight next turn, and swarm C rolls 3 for spawning. The player could have swarm C spawn first and take the hormagaunts, and then swarm A is allowed to spawn the termagants and the gargoyle even though it's not at full strength and should theoretically be spawning hormies.

It won't need extra rules for timing as players already choose the order they rally formations in, right? And it eliminates the need to keep dead units separate by source formation, so allowing such (small scale) shenanigans might a price worth paying to keep the rules text down.

You will end up with some form of tracking, either a dedicated dead pile for each formation or frequent checking of the army list (or maybe the nid player does it by memory, but that's not very transparent to the opponent and might lead to bad feelings if the nid player gets confused and accidentally (or "accidentally"!) spawns a unit that's a better fit than what it was allowed to spawn).

Eh, I like Neal's wording. I don't think my concerns are very important, but I thought I should mention them.

Agreed on all points. It's a mitigation, not elimination and we'll have to see how gamey it is and how many questions it raises in actual play (potentially an FAQ nightmare).

shouldn't be too much of an FAQ nightmare, though something will need to be said about what happens when swarm X looses say 3 termagants, Swarm Y then spawns those 3 termagants and then swarm X tries to spawn...

1 FAQ should cover that, but playtests will hopefully show where else it fails

You could say that formations that have taken losses must spawn before those that haven't, but this is getting needlessly complicated again.

you can still end up with the same problem though as you might not spawn back enough to complete the swarm on the first go, the second swarm gets the rest and (miraculously) the following turn the casualties taken aren't the correct ones to complete the first swarm due to spawning.

I think a generic catch all FAQ will be fine, I doubt it will actually have a massive game play impact.
The FAQ could also rule the other way, that the damaged swarm that has no original units left to spawn (as they've been spawned elsewhere) may not spawn new units.

ie. untill that swarm can spawn back the original units it may not spawn units from other formations. Could represent the swarm being in utter disarray due to an attack.

This would give a negative impact to selective spawning.

Spawning shouldn't be banned for such an arbitrary reason.

IMHO it should be tested with the "loophole" allowed. If it's a problem in play restrictions could be added, but we should probably test if it actually is a problem before adding rules to restrict it.