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Daemon summoning takes a much bigger commitment to work than just rolling 3 dice with a tervigon.

I mostly see the tervigon hunker down the backfield, spawning gaunts all game.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Daemon summoning takes a much bigger commitment to work than just rolling 3 dice with a tervigon.

I mostly see the tervigon hunker down the backfield, spawning gaunts all game.

You have to be extremely lucky to spawn them all game.

A Tervigon's 'summoning' abilities are 100% safe, with the only drawback being that eventually, mom will run out of kids to poop out at some point.
A Daemon's 'summoning' abilities are incredibly strong, but require a large investment of WC's, and can potentially (and literally!) explode in your face.

What makes Daemon summoning so much better however, is that we can access every possible unit option, with the exception of; Daemon Princes, Furies, Soul Grinders & Khannons.

If Tervigons or indeed, other large Tyranids could create stronger beasts such as Genesneakers, Gargoyles, Raveners, etc... at will, and/or Hive Tyrants could explode into a brand new Hive Tyrant, then 'Bug Summoning' would be amazing!

Dont forget!!!!!

There is 1 HUGE thing about Tervigons EVERYONE is forgetting.

If it dies so does ALOT of you gants. The more will die the more units are within range.

Everytime I played a Tervigon the other play tried to kill it after spawning a unit of gants... and it was easy....... very easy for them to kill it (Grav, Wyverns, flamers, Scatter Lasers etc...)

Summoning at least if your Psykers die it doesnt kill of the spawned units :/

Experiment 626 wrote:
A Tervigon's 'summoning' abilities are 100% safe, with the only drawback being that eventually, mom will run out of kids to poop out at some point.

Negative.

First, as has already been pointed out - when a Tervigon dies it takes a huge chunk of gaunts within range with it. As it's a synapse creature, there's likely to be gaunts within range.

Secondly, it either eats up HQ slots (and compared to the Flyrant the Tervigon is a giant pile of gak) or forces a mandatory 30 man gauntsink per Troop Tervigon.

Meanwhile Daemons can summon from pretty much any Force Org slot that can generate Warp Charge dice leaving you with a lot of flexibility in how to build your Daemon army still. Considering how monobuild Tyranids generally are...eating up HQ slots or forcing 30 man gaunt broods in Troops are both very, very bad. It's not as though Tyranids actually had an abundance of good units.

Furthermore, you have to understand...from it's last incarnation Tervigons have gotten far worse.

The psychic power changes mean they have to go through the whole randomly rolling system to apply buffs - and thus risk Perils as well.

They lost their ability to spread the Toxic Sac and Adrenal Gland upgrades to nearby gaunts.

AND they went up in points. They got universally worse with 6th ed onwards.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also folks, one other thing to remember.

Tyranids also don't have an abundance of ranged AP 2 or AP 3. Daemons do.

Tyranids don't have access to I7+ MCs outside of Tyrants. Daemons do.

Tyranids don't have Belakor. Daemons do.

The summoning comparisons are almost asinine when you compare the rest.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
A Tervigon's 'summoning' abilities are 100% safe, with the only drawback being that eventually, mom will run out of kids to poop out at some point.

Negative.

First, as has already been pointed out - when a Tervigon dies it takes a huge chunk of gaunts within range with it. As it's a synapse creature, there's likely to be gaunts within range.

Secondly, it either eats up HQ slots (and compared to the Flyrant the Tervigon is a giant pile of gak) or forces a mandatory 30 man gauntsink per Troop Tervigon.

Meanwhile Daemons can summon from pretty much any Force Org slot that can generate Warp Charge dice leaving you with a lot of flexibility in how to build your Daemon army still. Considering how monobuild Tyranids generally are...eating up HQ slots or forcing 30 man gaunt broods in Troops are both very, very bad. It's not as though Tyranids actually had an abundance of good units.

Furthermore, you have to understand...from it's last incarnation Tervigons have gotten far worse.

The psychic power changes mean they have to go through the whole randomly rolling system to apply buffs - and thus risk Perils as well.

They lost their ability to spread the Toxic Sac and Adrenal Gland upgrades to nearby gaunts.

AND they went up in points. They got universally worse with 6th ed onwards.

I was speaking more of the just the 'summoning' act itself... A Tervigon has a 0% chance of harming itself to bring another unit onto the table. A Daemon can potentially kill itself outright, and even explode part of its unit, and still get exactly nothing for its troubles. (ie: roll double 6's, and then a bunch of 1-3's so that you fail your casting attempt.)

I fully understand & agree that Tervigon's are terrible summoners, and are overall awful in game terms!

But when it comes to just the act of creating more models, there's absolutely no risk in spawning those models, beyond rolling doubles and running out of bug sperm.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
A Tervigon's 'summoning' abilities are 100% safe, with the only drawback being that eventually, mom will run out of kids to poop out at some point.

Negative.

First, as has already been pointed out - when a Tervigon dies it takes a huge chunk of gaunts within range with it. As it's a synapse creature, there's likely to be gaunts within range.

Secondly, it either eats up HQ slots (and compared to the Flyrant the Tervigon is a giant pile of gak) or forces a mandatory 30 man gauntsink per Troop Tervigon.

Meanwhile Daemons can summon from pretty much any Force Org slot that can generate Warp Charge dice leaving you with a lot of flexibility in how to build your Daemon army still. Considering how monobuild Tyranids generally are...eating up HQ slots or forcing 30 man gaunt broods in Troops are both very, very bad. It's not as though Tyranids actually had an abundance of good units.

Furthermore, you have to understand...from it's last incarnation Tervigons have gotten far worse.

The psychic power changes mean they have to go through the whole randomly rolling system to apply buffs - and thus risk Perils as well.

They lost their ability to spread the Toxic Sac and Adrenal Gland upgrades to nearby gaunts.

AND they went up in points. They got universally worse with 6th ed onwards.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also folks, one other thing to remember.

Tyranids also don't have an abundance of ranged AP 2 or AP 3. Daemons do.

Tyranids don't have access to I7+ MCs outside of Tyrants. Daemons do.

Tyranids don't have Belakor. Daemons do.

The summoning comparisons are almost asinine when you compare the rest.

Daemons generate warp charge via hq and 1 troops unit, same as nids and their hq slots are even more crowded than nids are.

Daemons don't actually have that much flexibility in how they build their lists, you're either running fateweaver plus screamerstar / Dronesbus with horrors for troops or it's flying circus (and even then that's not winning much anymore). The variety, such as it is, comes from exchanging Be'lakor or a D-thirster for elements of one of the stars.

If you don't think daemons (bar Be'lakor) have to roll randomly or deal with Perils then your sadly mistaken. While you can stop spawning, you also devote no resources to doing it beyond the points cost of the Tervigon and it can't be denied by the opponent.

Daemons don't have an abundance of ranged weapons at all, let alone ap2. A bloodthirsters whip, the upgrade for warpgaze on the Soul grinder and the d3 shots from the tzeentch chariot are the only things I can think of, and none of those are ever taken in competitive lists. The tzeentch chariot also has an alternative fire that's ap3 and the grinder has the phlegm Cannon, but that's it for ap3 and again, only the Cannon is seen in most lists, and even then, it's 50/50 between that or the flamer. A single unit of 3 exocrines has more Ranged punch than most Daemon armies, let alone ap2 shooting.

Daemons don't have access to 12 TL str 6 shots on a fmc either.

No-one cares about initiative since the 3 units that have I7+ don't have grenades so it rarely matters.

Don't get me wrong, Daemons are in a better spot than nids by a long way, but blatant sandbagging or untruths gets you nowhere. There is no risk to the Tervigon for spawning gaunts, it's low risk, low reward. There's a sizable investment in points and risk to daemonic summoning, it's high risk, high reward. Is the reward out of line with the risk? Maybe, but I don't recall anyone winning a big tournament with a summoning list. They might have used summoning, but as a bolster, not as their main shtick.

 Drasius wrote:

Daemons generate warp charge via hq and 1 troops unit, same as nids and their hq slots are even more crowded than nids are.

You also can generate in Heavy Support (Daemon Princes). We have an insanely crowded Elites and HQ as our options or Troops if we completely cripple our monobuild to bloat with yet more points. Have I mentioned as well that what you summon...ALSO generates warp charge dice? Your HQ seems crowded til you realise that you have the option of a 2-for-1 deal on Heralds.

For the record, Synapse =/= Warp Charge Dice. Let's banish that misconception now.

Daemons don't actually have that much flexibility in how they build their lists, you're either running fateweaver plus screamerstar / Dronesbus with horrors for troops or it's flying circus (and even then that's not winning much anymore). The variety, such as it is, comes from exchanging Be'lakor or a D-thirster for elements of one of the stars.

As opposed to the Tyranid Flyrants must carry all the things. Because literally, that is the Tyranid army list right there. You already have far better options than we do.

If you don't think daemons (bar Be'lakor) have to roll randomly or deal with Perils then your sadly mistaken. While you can stop spawning, you also devote no resources to doing it beyond the points cost of the Tervigon and it can't be denied by the opponent.

When your Perils blats a 1 wound Horror champion or a 100 point Herald I will feel terribly bad for you. Because, you see, you're basically paying 100 points a unit to gamble for further free, better units. I'm paying 200+ points to hope that I get more than 70 points of gaunts on a good day. No resources beyond the cost of a Tervigon? You're kidding me. For a Tyranid army, which already has to be incredibly point efficient to function - a Tervigons' points cost is well and truly horrendous. It's a bloat that is either punishing us by taking up a HQ slot or punishing us by forcing us to spend about 5 times what we normally would on troops in order to gamble for 70 points of extra gaunts. FANTASTIC. REAL GAME BREAKING MECHANIC RIGHT THERE.

Daemons don't have an abundance of ranged weapons at all, let alone ap2. A bloodthirsters whip, the upgrade for warpgaze on the Soul grinder and the d3 shots from the tzeentch chariot are the only things I can think of, and none of those are ever taken in competitive lists. The tzeentch chariot also has an alternative fire that's ap3 and the grinder has the phlegm Cannon, but that's it for ap3 and again, only the Cannon is seen in most lists, and even then, it's 50/50 between that or the flamer. A single unit of 3 exocrines has more Ranged punch than most Daemon armies, let alone ap2 shooting.

A single unit of Exocrines is also a bigger point bloat than the majority of the daemon army and sits in another slot that is so competitively jockeyed for it's unrealy. Tyranids have...Exocrines. Which you will note no one takes because it's an artillery piece that forces you to have a Synapse babysitter sat on it.

Daemons don't have access to 12 TL str 6 shots on a fmc either.

If you're going to harp on about the only good thing in the entire Tyranid army please go so far to tell the whole story. 12 TL StR 6 shots at AP -. Which only truly perform if tacked on to the singular half decent unit in the entire Tyranid codex.

It's not even funny how terrible that is. The Hive Tyrant is a workhorse and a half...and that just means the next book round there's high odds they slap it to the ground and don't amend the other crippling problems within the Tyranid Codex that led to that very situation in the first place.

Do you think I want my Tyranids to fly around firing S6 spam? No. Good lord no. They're meant to be a true assault army but they're in an edition where not only has assault been nerfed to the ground but GW's design directions have gone back and forth more than a gaunt brood that keeps stepping out of synapse range.

Don't get me wrong, Daemons are in a better spot than nids by a long way, but blatant sandbagging or untruths gets you nowhere. There is no risk to the Tervigon for spawning gaunts, it's low risk, low reward. There's a sizable investment in points and risk to daemonic summoning, it's high risk, high reward. Is the reward out of line with the risk? Maybe, but I don't recall anyone winning a big tournament with a summoning list. They might have used summoning, but as a bolster, not as their main shtick.

Tch. No. I'm sorry. I'm shaking my head here.

You see, to an army that is as functionally crippled as Tyranids, where point micromanagement is literally an art (as we have one, maybe two functional units hence we have to focus on ramping the hell out of them) a Tervigon is a risk in itself. It either sits in a HQ slot (denying a Flyrant) or sits in a troops slot (forcing us to spend so much more points there than we would).

Furthermore, it is a risk. It's a low WS, low I Synapse creature - hello pretty much anything that wants to jump across and assault it. Furthermore, when it dies it takes out swathes of gaunts in collateral.

And to top it off....we average between 7 and 10 gaunts before we putter out and are less useful than, say, a 50 point Zoanthrope. Keeping the Tervigon around your gaunts is a liability - but unless you have other cheap synapse (which you won't because of the huge bloat of points you spent to get this sack of meat) you have no choice. You condemn your ability to hold objectives or your back line with a single choice.

You see, Summoning really isn't that expensive of a choice for Daemons. Not when your options pretty much are a sampling of the best units in your codex that you can summon at the right opportunity. That, if they too are psykers also have a chance to summon as well. You can literally throw all your dice into getting that bloodthirster, that unit of Beasts or those Bloodcrushers on a key turn.

I just get crappy gaunts.

Tyranids...are like CSM in one respect. Their entire codex is a collection of 5th ed point values and unit designs with the odd new unit thrown in.

And to be fair, it needs a lot of love to be brought back to scratch.

The tyranid mono-build is a single unit. The Flyrant. And when you are pretty much forced into a single HQ choice...for an army that is supposed to be based about the whole concept of change, evolution and variation....

That is the greatest tragedy of all.