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Okay, so someone suggested I swap out my beloved Termagants for Scuttling Spinegaunts.

I simply refuse to ditch Without Number in 5th edition, mostly for the psychological advantage of my opponents going "I'm not going to kill them, they'll just come back on next turn!" Which has led me to an interesting quandary:

Can a unit of gaunts with scuttlers and without number spontaneously outflank in the turn they redeploy?

Codex: Tyranids page 40 seems to imply no: Any brood with Without Number that is removed from play may be brought back into play at the beginning of the next Tyranid turn. It moves onto the board from the Tyranid player's board edge and has exactly the same profile and blah blah blah.

Is there any debate on this?

the discution has bin made at our lokal gw and thay say no.
when dey come back dey comback from tha back of the tabel.

Not that it is definitive but...

5th edition rules allow for those units with the scout rule (scuttlers) to outflank if brought in as reinforcements. As this is ONLY possible because of a new 5th edition option to outflank, you can make the argument that the codex statement of coming on from your long board edge was made because the outflank option did not exist.

The hardline no it can't would be backed by the old tried and true of "except where the codex says otherwise..." But this is basically somewhat moot when we are talking a mid-4th edition codex under a new core rules set that created outflanking.

I would say worthy of a call to GW (or a few) to get an official ruling out of them.

There is no need to call anyone. The rules are clear in this case.

Outflanking is a special rule that can be used when putting the unit into reserves at the beginning of the game.

The WoN rule allows the unit to return to play but it does not go back into reserve and therefore cannot utilize the outflanking rule.


See this thread for a more thorough argument:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/215796.page#346659

I think the question of "without number" outflanking is pretty much answered as a NO, you can not do it. Now onto the rest of the topic;

I've tried spinegaunts. You get what you pay for. Yes they are good and cheap, but they are like what, 4 points vs 6 points for a termagant? I think for 2 points more the termagant is much more effective at shooting. You can then choose to make the question of if you'd want to add Without Number as a separate argument. IMHO without number termagants are good but possibly too costly. I think that limited termagants are better (and cheaper) than spinegaunts Without Number.

If I ran Termagants Without Number I'd take 4 Broods of 12 and have them be my only troop choices. That is enough to ensure you would always have a significant presence of Termagants on the board at any given time. 4 refreshing troops choice is going to be hard for an opponent to deal with. Squads of 12 models are just big enough to have some effect (not as great as say 18 or 24 models!) and are also small enough to be "fragile" and actually get destroyed so you can refresh them and bring in a new squad.

The whole idea is to have this constant sea of Tyranid bodies on the table that your opponent has to deal with. If you bring too few squads you opponent gets a "break" from having to deal with the them. The problem with having only two squads is that you can not keep up an effective presence on the table with them. With 4 squads, your opponent wipes out one or two of them and then turns to dealing with the next squads, by the time he is done with those the first squads have refreshed and gotten to move onto the table to where he is having to deal with them again. With two squads your opponent can just keep wiping out the same squads again and again as they come on. Additionally the "last turn objective grab" using Without Number squads is not a "gimme". People have seen this trick. If you go 2nd then on your opponent's turn he will likely intentionally not wipe out a squad so you can refresh it. Then there is the reality that when you come on you'll have to get your opponent off that objective (which you've probably stuck in cover) but have only one turn of shooting and a single assault phase.