Ya, it's definitely in development right now. We left experimental behind with v10.0. We're looking to get it approved now and in the tourney pack.

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Squats 2019-10-17

I've had a look at the list after playing Mark's massed Dactylis and think something should be done to address them.

How about making Dactylis upgrades for the Tyranid and Nexus swarm +75 points and limited to 0-3? You could get 4BP 2 barrage template from the dedicated swarm but it would stop the core swarm combo being too powerful as I believe it is now (I'd have suffered a lot more had I not been playing SMs with ATSKNF). Most artillery units in the game are easy to kill rubbish in combat, having to kill 4+ reinforced armour creatures in a big swarm that is good in combat, rallies easily and regenerates dead small ones is a lot harder and 440 is too cheap for what they get.

I think I prefer the Epic-UK stats of 5+ Reinforced for the Tyranid slug vehicles personally, but I'm not really suggesting changing something big like that now when we're trying to get it approved.

I'd have to agree with this, it doesn't seem right to be able to get the 4BP in a core swarm for 440, that makes it only 40 points for the 6 gaunt and Hive Tyrant. Also given that they'll probably occupy the backfield, unless they're dealt with quickly they could well be around 15 strong by the time they get engaged!

That said, and to immediately contradict myself, at least in my current game, that would make them the BTS and I don't think they're necessarily *that* durable. I'd far prefer a bunch of Carnifex for that duty...

Well like I said I think 75 might be more reasonable,though perhaps a little too prohibitive, but 0-3 would just make it a non-choice I think. That would be 400+ points for a 90cm range barrage other armies get for 175-250 (and with longer range for those at the 250 level). If you were to add 150+ points of scouts etc to other armies artillery that too becomes much more resilient, but also more flexible with the extra activation. The swarm of engage oriented bugs that can do nothing else need to be discounted significantly, but as AO says to 40 points seems too little.

While Dactylis formations are more resilient than most artillery, they are still pretty lame compared to most combat units. Indeed a few light tanks managed to rout them twice in close combat and firefight, and this wasn't a vastly "against the odds" occurrence, as I realised when I charged Glyn's tanks and he realised when he charged me.

Obviously I picked these out to playtest them, but I need more than one game with them I think.

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One other thing I've noticed - is it intentional that the Dominatrix has Commander but not Leader? Seems a little odd...

The Dom has SC, which includes leader.

On the Dactylis, I think 75 points would be the next step. If they're still a problem then either another bump or a limit. Three would be 425 as compared to the 300 for the independent swarm, and 500 vs 400 for 4.

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Squats 2019-10-17

doh! My bad...

It does seem odd that you can pay 80 points to convert 3 dactylis into a core swarm with its own meat shield, or 40 points for a 4-strong swarm. If you happened to want 5 (err, suppression resistance?) it's actually free to do.

But 440 points is quite a lot, and the infantry stop them being able to garrison. Given they only have 45cm range in a SR1 army, their utility goes down a bit. You either have an expensive blitz guard which may or may not get a good barrage target, or spend a turn moving it into a useful position where it will probably attract suppressing blast markers.

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Just an FYI, only stealers and lictors can garrison due to the Vanguard Organisms list rule.

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Squats 2019-10-17

Are there any other units people are worried about in the list? No others sprang to mind reading over it.

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People were worried about Harridan popcorn, that's the only other thing I can think of.

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Squats 2019-10-17

It might be a bit late in the day to bring this up but Trygons seem a little underwhelming. I will caveat this with the fact that I'm currently playing against Necrons so I've been facing plenty of skimmers. No inflitration meant I was unable to get into b2b with anything that couldn't force a firefight and use their CC value.

As it stands right now all three of them have only got a 75% chance of inflicting 1 wound against 4+ armour in a firefight.
Maybe even just pushing their FF value to 5+ would be enough to make them a little bit more use than meat shields in these circumstances.

This is however purely anecdotal at the moment, so feel free to ignore it or come back with why they're fine as they are. Obviously, in close combat they would do far better...

I dropped them from FF5+ to 6+ in 10.2 because we found them too good in FF for 75 points each. Fighting skimmers would make them seem worthless though.

I tend to tunnel 4 of them in turn 2 at the midpoint and try to engage AVs.

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Squats 2019-10-17

EDIT: I made the following observations in a testgame vs. Orks a few days ago.

ok some feedback from me. I was used to playing the "old" list, with d3 swarming.

I have to say I don't like the new system at all. While I understand the idea to link spawning to swarm size to make larger swarms more interesting, I think that overall there isn't just enough swarming going on. A lone Tyranid Warrior who is the last survivor of a small swarm bringing back 6 bases might seem like too much, but consider that you have to move him out of enemy range (30cm). But the one base that is swarmed now is just rediculous, I am not getting a bug-swarm-overrun feeling with that

I say this also thinking about Necrons, who can bring bases back bases on their score on the rally roll. Ideally they can revive up to 6 bases, and we're talking about 4/4/4 Armour/CC/FF units here not Gaunts...

So my suggestion would be to do somenthing similar and tie it to the rally roll, whith maybe a fixed bonus per synapse unit.

Another thing is the WE limitation. While I kind of always played it like this, I only considered the Dominatrix and the Hierophant/-dule for it. Now I can't even field tunnelers and some Harridan because I go over the limit. I don't like this, in other armies you also have lot's of DC3 WE (think Baneblade) that are not tied into the 1/3 limit. This needs to be tweaked IMO.

FYI my army list usually looks something like this:

NEXUS SWARM [350]
Dominatrix

TYRANID SWARM (M) [575]
6 Termagants, 2 Hive Tyrant, 6 Hormagants, 4 Carnifex

BIOVORE SWARM (M) [275]
10 Biovore

LICTOR SWARM [250]
5 Lictor

LICTOR SWARM [250]
5 Lictor

HIEROPHANT BIO-TITAN (745.M41) [525]

TYRANID SWARM (S) [200]
Two Tyranid Warriors, 3 Termagants, 3 Hormagants

TYRANID SWARM (S) [200]
Two Tyranid Warriors, 3 Termagants, 3 Hormagants

to get to 3000 I then add Harridan, Trygon or another swarm with Hive Tyrand & Carnifex, and add a Zoanthrope here and there (I don't have any of the other models).

cheers,

You could always double up the swarm values for warriors and tyrants? Maybe shift the dom to 4/5. That way it would still be linked to swarm size and bump up swarming from 1/2 to 2/4? That might be a bit powerful thinking about it, that would be 6/12 for large swarms...

Alternatively, keep the rules the same but use a d3 base so synapse creatures add to the base roll? That would sound like the best of both worlds.