So, on to the big one. Yes, I'm planning on keeping it in the NetEA list. If you don't like it you have two other 'nid lists to choose from that don't utilize it (EUK and EFr). I like the idea from a background prospective and think it makes the army truly unique so it's staying.

That being said, there's a lot of opinions out there on how to achieve the effect while still proving simple and balanced. Given that, I want to try something different from me putting ideas forward. It's not that I don't enjoy you guys ripping them to shreds... it's more that I don't think it will be overly productive given our time constraint. So, I'd like to do an old fashion brainstorm and see what people can come up with.

To that end, there's two rules I'm imposing on the system we end up going with. I want the system to be fair to the opponent above all else, everything else comes secondary to that.

1) What is considered half-strength for the swarm must change dynamically with the swarm if it is allowed to grow beyond its starting strength.

As an example, a swarm starts with 10 units and is considered half strength or less at 5 or less models. If the swarm grows to 16 models throughout the game its half strength must grow to 8 or less as well. It would be unfair to the opponent to have to reduce a 16 strong formation to 5 units in order to claim it as half strength or less for tiebreak.

2) The Tyranid player should not have a completely free choice of what is re-spawned where.

Essentially, I'm looking to avoid "I need a Carnifex on my right flank, one died on my left flank so I'll respawn him on the right" situations being common place.

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Dave

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Some options if you're keeping Spawning:

- Roll on a random table for units each time you spawn.
- Only allow the spawning of Gaunts and Termagants.
- Use Zombo's "spawning queue" system.

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So trying to be productive & answering the questions back to front

I would suggest that only Gaunts & Termagants are used for spawning (agreeing with one of E&C's options) & that this is taken a step further that in the half strength issue Gaunts and Termagants are not considered.

With regards to your two points:

1) This is pretty tricky, or at least requires quite a bit of book keeping. Basically you'd need to note the size of the formation when it hits maximum, or somehow keep track of which units were originally from the formation. Honestly I'm not sure either are actually worth it. Nids should have a slight advantage in a war of attrition, so a slight boost in tiebreaker points due to being about half original size doesn't seem that bad to me.

2) There are two basic ways to do this; either a list that you randomly roll a dice on to spawn units, or the Spawning Queue I use in Leviathan.

The random rolling has the advantage of being truly random, but it means coming up with a table of every spawnable unit (which will vary between lists), and also means you'll need models other than those you start the army with. Many opponents feel it's unfair to be able to add new units to the army, i.e. grow beyond starting size.

The Spawning Queue is pseudorandom; the order units die determines the order they're respawned. You need a fixed spawn order for formations, something like smallest to biggest, left to right across the board or numbering each formation.

This method has several advantages; it is effectively random, yet doesn't use any units that the army didn't start with. In fact, occasionally the spawning can even be a bit of a negative, such as a Harridan Prime spawning a slow moving biovore or similar. It also eliminates the need for rolling d3s and generating spawning points etc; just spawn one unit for being unbroken, one for being more than 30cm away and one or two extras for brood mothers or being near spawning boosters.

You'll note of course that it has also been the most popular choice in the spawning poll, albeit not by a huge margin over individual pools.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

I'm in agreement with the two gentlemen above, and like I wrote in the spawning poll thread, only allow it for HG and TG and perhaps gargoyls.

Tiny-T's sugestion of not considering them for half strength is a nice and easy solution that I actually like if the above is applied.

cheers!

A slight revision to my above suggestion, sparked off by Borka's post above:

- Harridan (Prime) formations may only Spawn Gargoyles.
- Trygon (Prime) formations may only Spawn Raveners.
- All other formations may only Spawn Termagants or Hormagaunts.



Harridan-led formations Spawning more Gargoyles would represent them flying down from on high.
Trygon-led formations Spawning would represent more Raveners tunneling up from beneath.
All other formations Spawning would represent Termagants & Hormagaunts either being born or lost critters coming under Synapse control.

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That is also an interesting suggestion.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

I agree that spawning should be in the list as it gives the nids a more unique feel. However, as of yet I have never come accross a system that was easy and quick to manage and felt fair to the opponent.

I would like to see spawning heavily restricted to basic creatures (Gaunts and Gargoyles) and extended as the regen. mechanic. If this is accepted and the spawning mechanic is kept sensible and simple and Gargoyles cost slightly more to spawn I would have little to no problem with allowing free spawning even beyond the initial size of the army.

I also agree with Tiny-tim that for the instances of tie breaks basic creatures should not count towards numbers the initial numbers of a swarm.

What I would like to know is what is the perceived spawning process going to be? (Unless I've missed it somewhere.) Then we can see what should be included and what shouldn't.

That's what we're discussing. Dave's setting a couple of boundries and asking for ideas for the spawning process.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Ok. Lets use a marshal action/regroup. Rolled pips gives a formation that number of spawning points. No automatic spawning at the end of a turn.

So similar to Necrons? i.e. choose to bring models back instead of losing BMs?

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Yes, also forces do I want units back or be more effective on the battlefield and doesn't clog up the end phase.

I understand that's the mechanic EUK were using at one point during the EUK list's development.

Did it actually get used all that much?

My impression when I heard about it was that binding it to Marshalling would mean that Spawning would only happen very rarely, due to the Tyranid list's gameplay style (More about the attacking in your face actions, and less about the sitting still shooting & removing BM's).

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The marshaling mechanic can lead to alot of units being spawned. Not necessarily a problem as you give up an activation but can create issues with blitz guards as you can marshal until you have 60-70 units in the formation. Would you allow them to grow above the initial swarm size or only return killed units.