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I've made this thread so all the Warrior chatter that is clogging up the rumour thread can be directed here, and nothing gets locked this way

I'll just copy my latest Warrior comment here to get it out of the Rumor thread

I could see Eternal Warrior perhaps, but T5 is overkill. Giving them a 3+ save on top of either of those would just be ridiculous. Maybe if you paid 80 points per Warrior I could see it.

T is the most valuable statline of any infantry model. Increasing a Warrior's T to 5 is an incredible boost in strength. It doesn't just make them immune to Krak missiles. It also makes them extremely more durable against all small arms fire, and makes close combat against them incredibly more difficult, especially for S3 armies. Boosting the T of Warriors could be done, but you'd need to pay for it with more points.

The problem with Warriors is that you don't get much offensive capabilities for their cost. They can't dish out more firepower than a unit of Devourer Gaunts for the same price. The Warriors main value is in its survivability due to its 3 Wounds, and the fact that it's a Synapse creature.

In 5th, the Tyranids didn't need either of these things. The Tervigon essentially replaced Warriors. You have a unit that can spawn offensive units that will outdamage a warrior squad over the course of a game. It has a ton of wounds, and then in 6th edition it got incredible psychic abilities on top of all that.

If you increased a Warrior's T to 5, and paid more points for the privilege, you'd just have Warriors that again, nobody would take. Sure they'd be really tough to kill but you're probably better off fielding a Monstrous Creature.

What Warriors need is a slight points reduction and an increase in their offensive capability, or new special powers that enhance the army around them that make them worth taking. They also need for their Monstrous Creatures to be a bit more balanced in terms of cost and abilities so that Warriors are a viable alternative. Right now Monstrous Creatures are just so incredibly good that it's hard to argue for taking anything else. Part of that isn't the Tyranid Codex fault, it's the 6th Edition rules fault.

I also think that all the complaining about Instant Death on Warriors isn't really a complaint about the Tyranid Codex so much as it's a complaint that the meta-game of 5th Edition encouraged mass spamming of Krak missiles by most 5th Edition codexes, such as Space Wolves.

I personally don't think you should design a unit around the current meta-game. The meta-game is always going to be changing. It'd be just as stupid to give the Tyranids some sort of weapon that worked very specifically well against a Screamerstar, for example. It would eventually be useless in 6th months when the new hotness arrives and people aren't using the screamerstar anymore.

It's not just about the current metagame - if an army doesn't take AT weapons, they're going to fail in general. AT weapons pop Warriors and work well against MCs. Small arms work well against Warriors. Basically every gun your opponent has works well against them - unlike most other units. MCs? Pshaw - anti-infantry guns might score a wound once in a while, you use AT weapons against them. Gaunt swarm? Pshaw - AT weapons are a waste of firepower against them, use ant-infantry guns.
Warriors? Shoot anything at them it'll work fine.

If increasing them to T5 and increasing points means no one would take them, then increasing the points is a bad idea. I'd drop Tervigons out of my list in a heartbeat for T5 warriors. Tervigons replaced Warriors because Warriors are unreliable and have no strengths. Making them T5 would give them survivability against small arms.


edit: We all agree that Terminators are overpriced, right? So why can't we agree that Warriors are overpriced?

The only saving grace for Warriors right now is the lack of S8 in the game.

Most armies you come across right now...and basically since GKs came out is S6-7 based.

rigeld2 wrote:
It's not just about the current metagame - if an army doesn't take AT weapons, they're going to fail in general. AT weapons pop Warriors and work well against MCs. Small arms work well against Warriors. Basically every gun your opponent has works well against them - unlike most other units. MCs? Pshaw - anti-infantry guns might score a wound once in a while, you use AT weapons against them. Gaunt swarm? Pshaw - AT weapons are a waste of firepower against them, use ant-infantry guns.
Warriors? Shoot anything at them it'll work fine.

If increasing them to T5 and increasing points means no one would take them, then increasing the points is a bad idea. I'd drop Tervigons out of my list in a heartbeat for T5 warriors. Tervigons replaced Warriors because Warriors are unreliable and have no strengths. Making them T5 would give them survivability against small arms.


edit: We all agree that Terminators are overpriced, right? So why can't we agree that Warriors are overpriced?

Rigeld2 knows what's going on. To quote myself from the nid rumor thread from a dozen or so pages back....

The problem with middle rank bugs is that they are vulnerable to EVERYTHING.

Small bugs don't care about lascannons, as it's a small points loss per wound taken
Big bugs don't really care about small arms, as T6 and 3+ save shrug off a HEAP of firepower that would be more effective elsewhere.

So you have your opponent firing big guns into big bugs, and small arms into small bugs. The problem is that both small arms AND big guns wreck middle rank creatures at an awful rate.

Take a 40 point warrior for example (death spitter/rending claws runs 40 point I think). He's pretty crappy on the offensive front. Devourer gants will far exceed his shooting, and pretty much anything in the book will make a mockery of his melee ability. The REAL problem though is points removed per wound suffered compared to other units in the book.

Average points of damage done per Bolter shot (BS4);
vs naked gant (5pts); 2.22 (1.48 in 5+ cover)
vs naked future gant (4 points); 1.8 (1.2 in 5+ cover)
vs warrior (40 pts); 2.22 (cover doesn't help at all)
vs shrike (50 points, twin-swords+toxin sacs); 5.555 (3.7 with a 5+ cover save)
vs Trygon/tervigon (210 points); 1.29 (cover doesn't help at all)

Average points of damage done per lascannon/missile launcher/bright lance...etc (BS4):
vs naked Gant (5 pts); 2.77
vs Warrior (40 pts); 22.22 (7.4 if they had eternal warrior)
vs shrike (50 points, twin-swords+toxin sacs); 27.77
vs Trygon/tervigon (210 points); 19.44

This is with 40 point warriors and 50 point shrikes, the numbers get increasingly worse as they go up in points, and god help the poor shrikes/raveners against bolter fire :(. As you can see, they are an optimal target for both small arms and large weapons fire power, and are only "good" against S5-7 firepower, as they strip wounds from MCs fairly well, and only do 1 wound to the warriors.

If the current warriors/shrike/ravener stats stand, they need about a 30% cost decrease to be effective (remember, gants are going to 4 points in the new book as well). That would put them at a maximum of 30 points with a solid offensive loadout.....and we know that is not happening. They absolutely CANNOT be an optimal target for both categories of weapons and be viable, they have to stand up to one or the other well. A 3+ save would make them champs against small arms, and eternal warrior fixes them against heavy weapons, T5 and W3 helps against both.....pick one option of the three.

I wonder if there is going to be a biomorph that increase toughness.

Warriors can be fixed with a very simple rule. Allow Warriors to join gaunt broods rather than always being their own separate unit. If you mixed the two then wounds from shooting are allocated to the gaunts in the front first, with only precision shots being allowed to be allocated to the Warriors if gaunts are the closer models to the shooter. I think mixing units also adds to the theme or fluff of Tyranids being a swarm, rather than an army. I really think any synapse creature should be able to join a gaunt unit.

A rule something like...

For every 5 gaunts in a unit you may include one Warrior. Gaunt units of 20 or more may also include a Prime.

A unit of 20 gaunts could then include 4 Warriors and a Prime. In this way gaunts would act as shields for the Warriors the same way that Tyrant Guards protect Hive Tyrants.

This would also work the same for adding Shrikes to Gargoyle broods.

T5 stops them being blatted by PFs and gives them a slight increase in survivability against small arms.

EW is simply overkill.

Let a Warrior brood use the Toughness of a joined Prime as well as his WS/BS.

Of course this is all moot as the book is already written and sitting in warehouses...

See, I understand where people are coming from on the Krak Missiles issue. Spam of Missiles=dead warriors. But seriously, Krak Missiles are fluffwise designed as anti-armour missiles, so if its not busting up infantry models without plot armour I have a problem with that.

The problem is that your opponent is spending far less points on those Krak Missiles than you are on your now dead Warriors.

I have 12 completed and 15 yet to be assembled. Please make them good.

 Deadshot wrote:
See, I understand where people are coming from on the Krak Missiles issue. Spam of Missiles=dead warriors. But seriously, Krak Missiles are fluffwise designed as anti-armour missiles, so if its not busting up infantry models without plot armour I have a problem with that.

For me, it has less to do with missile spam, and more to do with S8+ pie plates erasing units.

T5 2W. Same exact resistance to S4, more resistant to S3, less to S5-7, but S8 doesnt ID them. Not going to speculate on upgrades or point cost as the new codex will probably change quite a bit of how things work and add more biomorphs.

EW makes literally no sense. They are not eternal, and each codex so far has only had 1 EW character beyond Eldar's PLs.

I would like to see every unit in the codex get the old 4th Catylist default or cheap. Essentially it said you could always strike in melee, even if you died before you I step. Easy solution to lack of grenades and very fluffy.