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While non bug players drool over the thoughts of adding Melta vets to GK armies, or Farseers casting Doom upon their adversaries, the nids should start drooling over Psychic Combinations.
For Nids, the Biomancy field is loaded. Every single power could benefit the hungry bug in ways far beyond the Codex powers.
Take the Hive Tyrant. 2 powers (mastery level 2). Now add Iron Arm (D3 to S&T) and Eternal...A S/T7-9 Eternal. As to the second power, How would Endurance add to that? FnP and It Will Not Die. Yes please. Or Warp Speed. D3 added to Initiative and number of attacks along with Fleet. How many allied HQs have the potential for S9, T9, I8, A7, W4 Eternal?
How about the Doom? Remember, Spirit /leech is NOT a power. It is built into the model. So he drops down next to that pesky guard blob and sucks up some life. The survivors then get hit with
Hemorage. Or he gets Iron Arm so he becomes S/T5-8 and Eternal...with all them wounds he just sucked up...no more instant melta death as he rampages unit by unit sucking the life out of them. And if he happens to fail an Instinctive Test and suffers Rage...well, thats a good thing now.
Zoenthropes can now be reconfigured. No vehicles that your Monsters or Hive Guard shooting cant handle? Turn your Zoes into Mini-Dooms with Life Leech or Hemorage. Or close combat monsters with Iron Arm and Warp Speed. Facing Deathwing? Keep the Primaris Power of Smite for that S4 AP2 Assault4 shooting. 3 Zoes shooting Smite will pretty well wreck a Termi Squad each turn.
And any bug within 24" with enfeeble (-1 to both S&T) will be a Genesteelers best freind, Now bashing MEQ on 3/3s while the "canned food" can only respond with 5/5s. Even that nasty PF Sgt will be at S3/6...so no more insta-kills on Warrior Broods.

So rejoice Bug-Brothers. Let our food drool and slave over what combinations of tasty treats will become the next Interwebs buzz-list. The Hive Mind now has access to new and wonderous powers that can be taken or not, unit by unit, depending on the need. With these new psychic powers, who needs allies (that you were just going to eat anyways).

Biomancy is fantastic and a large buff to Nids, imo. However, I do want to point out that all of our psykers are actually Mastery Level 1, aside from the Swarmlord.

The Hive Tyrant, while awesome, can't get Iron Arm and Warp Speed in the same turn.
The Zoanthropes can be great support units, but most of the powers are useless (even with Iron Arm or Warp Speed, they're still bad in combat).
Our Broodlord is BS 0, so there are several powers that are 100% useless for him - Smite, Life Leech, Haemorrage.

Don't get me wrong. I play Nids and I love taking multiple psykers with Biomancy - it's just not the best thing in the world.

Fine if you can pick, but the randomness of the powers means they are good but not something you can build an army around. Wrong power on wrong unit and all those plans are completely boned ...

"How about the Doom? Remember, Spirit /leech is NOT a power. It is built into the model. So he drops down next to that pesky guard blob and sucks up some life. The survivors then get hit with
Hemorage. Or he gets Iron Arm so he becomes S/T5-8 and Eternal...".

I didnt realise you could do that, keep his auto power and get one roll, that's pretty sweet.

I agree with Ruminator, You can't base the army on getting the powers you want. If you get them they are indeed a nice boost.

The concern I have at the moment is that the Meta will lean towards Psychics and Flyers. This will force the Meta into counters for both. Aegis defense and Skyfire and a big use of characters that almost nullify the use of pyschic powers.

I expect to see lists containing things to deal with flyers and to shutdown phschic powers unless you are playing them heavily yourself.

Which in turn will move people away from psychic powers and flyers.

The problem is in 6th, if you refuse to deal with flyers and phsychic powers your army will have an uphill struggle.

I personally am more excited about Telepathy. 6 Zoanthropes, all with Psychic Shriek. Within 12" of a big horde with low leadership. Imagine the devastation.

I'm a big fan of TK. Broodlords with OM, Gate, or TK shield are all really good. Not as big on Biomancy as they make good units better, but it doesn't add anything tacticly.

The thing that a lot of non-Nid players who talk about "Randomness" causing you to not be able to count on stuff. Nids spam psykers even if we don't mean too. My 5th ed 2K list had 6 of them and has 15 power slots. If I go with TK on all of them I should get 2-3 of each power in my army as I have a 1 in 5 chance to get each one.

And I get to choose the powers I want for each army I face in a tournament.
Facing lots of flyers, go TK and try to spam OM.
Lots of mobs?Go Telepathy and default to Shriek.
Lots of Elite CC troops? Go Biomancy.

There are only 2 models that can shut us down psychicly. Rune Priests and Farseers. In those cases it becomes kill the guy with the ball. I like Deathleaper and Ymgarls for that.

dkellyj wrote:Take the Hive Tyrant. 2 powers (mastery level 2).

The Hive Tyrant is Mastery Level One; he can cast one power per turn. (See also the FAQ.) He KNOWS two powers, but he doesn't have 2 Warp Charges.

Now add Iron Arm (D3 to S&T) and Eternal...A S/T7-9 Eternal. As to the second power, How would Endurance add to that? FnP and It Will Not Die. Yes please. Or Warp Speed. D3 added to Initiative and number of attacks along with Fleet. How many allied HQs have the potential for S9, T9, I8, A7, W4 Eternal?

While there are some very neat Biomancy powers, it's actually pretty unlikely you'll ever get exactly the combination you want. I've been using Biomancy plus the Swarmlord (who IS Mastery Level 2, and has 4 powers to swap), and I've still never rolled up Iron Arm.

Zoenthropes can now be reconfigured. No vehicles that your Monsters or Hive Guard shooting cant handle? Turn your Zoes into Mini-Dooms with Life Leech or Hemorage. Or close combat monsters with Iron Arm and Warp Speed.

Again, while Zoanthropes will KNOW two powers, they'll only be casting 1/turn. I do like having the game-time decision for deciding on Warp Lance & Blast vs. Psychic Shriek & one other random power, but I can't see them making especially good use of Biomancy.

Since the Biomancy buffs don't act as if it's targetting for a shooting attack in 6th, I love the idea of 3 Zanthropes in the centre of my army; buffing my units and Enfeebling the enemy infantry for Devilgaunts to sythe through them in droves...

Or if there are flyers, go Telekenesis; or massed Orks, potentially go Telepathy. With 6 rolls between them, you're extremely likely to get the combos that compliment eachother

My runes of warding would like a word with your tyranids...

Just another reason why I keep laughing at all this nid bandwagoning. Hurry up and stop so I can buy nids cheap on ebay.

juraigamer wrote:My runes of warding would like a word with your tyranids...

Just another reason why I keep laughing at all this nid bandwagoning. Hurry up and stop so I can buy nids cheap on ebay.

Hence why I refer to "Kill the guy with the ball".
You get (at best) 2 guys with runes of warding. They are ICs and I assume that they will never accept chalanges. They are also not cheap. They average life expectancy on a Farseer or Rune Priest is low. Deathleaper, Ymgarl stealers, Shrikes, Mawlocks, your get the idea. Hit them fast and hard and kill them.

If you are going to spam psykers you have to plan on killing the guy with the ball. And until he is dead the only units that really take a hit are the Zoans as Tervigons will keep spitting out guants and being nasty in CC. Tyrants will still be wrecking stuff and Broodlords will still be amped up challangers with a backup crew of the nastiest CC troops in the game.

And its not like we are weak on psychic defence. We have the 3rd best defence in the game (after SW and Eldar). Don't count on your Farseer doing much either.

Exactly, any anti psychics will have a huge target painted on their forehead and of course will be the primary target.

Any barrage will have to be primary as well as my troops are weak as crap.

But exaclty what Gloomfang said, we have enough fire power to get the job done. Only thing it really bothers is the Zoans.

If you were to bring pshychic defence, manticores and quad guns then i would probably cry.

Nids aren't superior but in my eyes they have become playable or better than they were in 5th.

For me I expect to see lots of Necrons, lots of IG with allies. but i guess thats a different thread all together

juraigamer wrote:My runes of warding would like a word with your tyranids...

Just another reason why I keep laughing at all this nid bandwagoning. Hurry up and stop so I can buy nids cheap on ebay.

Have fun rolling 4 dice for any physic power while in range of SitW.

juraigamer wrote:My runes of warding would like a word with your tyranids...

Just another reason why I keep laughing at all this nid bandwagoning. Hurry up and stop so I can buy nids cheap on ebay.

I raise your runes of warding with this:

swarmlord 4 powers
Winged hive tyrant, old adversary, 2 twin linked devourers 2 powers
tervigon with 3 powers
tervigon with 3 powers

3 zoanthropes with sporepod 6 powers
3 zoanthropes with sporepod 6 powers
3 zoanthropes with sporepod 6 powers

these psychic tyranid monsters are the only ones that can take a few perils and still keep coming...

It's not about the Perils, it's about the repeated failures to cast.

DaddyWarcrimes wrote:It's not about the Perils, it's about the repeated failures to cast.

That is not a huge worry for Nids. Maybe for a diffrent force, but not Nids.
For one all out psykers are Ld 10, average on 3d6 is 12. We should still get the power off almost 1/2 the time. Same with runic weapons.
The second we just have a ton of psykers. You shut down 3 there are still anouther 3 to 4 left.

Still killing the farseer is a priority to make sure we get to our max potentail and to get points for killing the warlord (if that is the case).

Average on 3d6 is 10.5 not 12 (3.5x3)

Actually, the average on 3D6 is 10. So a slightly more then 50% chance of success.