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A few months back I started a thread where I asked people about what they think will happen to units that can assault from reserve. Whether or not they would keep such an ability when they get a new codex. The majority of people seemed to think they would retain those abilities. I am quite saddened by the fact that the rumors for both Vanguard Veterans and Ymgarl Genestealers seems to indicate they will no longer be able to assault after performing their various arrivals from reserve. Why are you doing this to me GW? Why?

I mean, where either of these units just so devastating that they needed that nerf? Have any of you ever been smashed by Vanguard Vets of Ymgarls?

Ymgarl Genestealers are specifically permitted to assault after spawning. Genestealers are a nasty shock assault unit. Lots of attacks, high WS, and an inevitable pile of rends. A buddy of mine popped a rhino with regular stealers and not only destroyed it, but had enough to block them from escaping and destroyed the unit.

Vanguards would be effective, too, never played against them.

At a tournament this summer I had 6 Ymgarls go through 3 grey hunter squads, losing usually only 1-2 against each squad. Combined with all the ways in the nids book to get +1 reserve, having a unit of these coming in pretty much guaranteed on turn2 is pretty devistating

The only real defense against ymgarls is to deny their deployment. Limit and occupy the area terrain on the table, and they will be destroyed on deployment.

6th ed seems pretty amendment on the no-instant-assault angle, and frankly, I think it's a good direction. In 5th, there were so many things that could just show up, and charge without any penalty or response from the other player.

Wolf scouts show up in my IG backfield and instantly lay waste to my heavy weapon teams. There's nothing I can do about it. It just happens, and they die. This was a dumb game mechanic. It's not fun, and its not tactical.

The nerf-bat may have swung too far in the other direction, what with overwatch and all that accumulating to make reserve-assault units particularly hard to use, but the way they were before was even more broken.

Ideally, I wouldve liked to have seen deepstriking or outflaking (or otherwise surprise deployment) units gain a "snapshots only" rule for enemy units targeting them. This would make them more survivable, but still let the other player react to their arrival by moving away, repositioning, blocking, etc etc. Sounds like the tyranid lictors will get this exact rule in the next codex, but it wouldve been cool if it was a stock mechanic.

I think that the overwatch rule would have been effective enough of a deterrent to outflanked/reserves assaults. The pendulum did swing too far, I agree. It really gagged the role of the genestealers.

My experience with overwatch is that its a nice bonus, but you cant rely on it for anything. Sure, it might kill a genestealer or two, but that unit getting charged is still dead. Theres no player input there, they just die. I cant choose to move them somewhere else, or prepare for the genestealer assault. There's no way I can survive through superior tactics. It makes the game even more shallow anytime one player has a "i kill this unit, and there's nothing you can do"

With shooting, there's LoS, cover, range, all these variables that come into play that at least gives the defending player SOME input to keep their guys alive and negate some damage. With assault units out of reserve, there's none of that depth. The addition of overwatch doesnt really make up for reliable variables, like moving, or difficult terrain, or speedbumping.

I disagree. Especially with nids, the heaviest assault army, as they have no grenade like upgrades, hiding in difficult/area terrain would help break charges. and avoiding table edges would prevent the outflank charge. When I played against a Space Wolf army in 5th, I learned quickly to stay away from the back of my table edge.

I can't do anything about a massive Tau gunline bringing down the sky on my head with a ridiculous rain of missiles, pulse rifle shots, and Ion blasts besides try and shoot back and attempt to advance through a withering hellstorm of fire.

You can't do anything about Terminators dropping in out of nowhere and frying something you like with combi-flamers or plasma guns or meltas.

Massive gunline guard is also something you really can't do much about and can be as ruinous to face as any good assault. Probably more so if they brought lots of artillery.

You can't really do anything about massed wave serpents drowning you in s7 shots, or Necrons slaughtering everything within 24' and using nightfighting to make sure you're not going to hit them until they're in gauss flayer range.

Ranged combat has enjoyed a great deal of superiority to assault since at least 4e, with the pendulum swinging further, and further to shooting each edition until now where a good shooting army takes significantly less skill and luck to pull off than a good assault army.

in 5e, my assault tyranid army was nasty and feared in our local group. Lots of genestealers and hormogaunts. it did require a lot of finesse as nids can do nothing against most shooting in the game. Once 6e hit, I had to completely change it to shooting. My stealers have been growing dust ever since.

on another note, I'm doing a 2500 point tournament using 60 genestealers. I want to see that hit!

The intention behind the change is quite clear. When you pull a surprise from up your sleeve, your opponent gets at least *one* chance to deal with it.
This is shown even with the brand spanking new flyers, thanks to the existence of units that have both Interceptor and Skyfire.

again, I could see that overwatch was meant to make assaulting more dangerous, but banning outflanked assaults dinged the genestealers' main tactic too much.

The trend may be towards no assaulting after coming in from reserve. The newest version of the Lucius Drop Pod rules now specifically state that the dreadnought cannot assault out of it on the turn it arrives.

They have made some of the new Apocalypse formations assault out of reserve. But Apocalypse isn't normal play :p

They took it away from Lictors...but if you've seen the rumors for lictor rules...they very nearly assault out of reservyways with the suprise durability

I would hope the tyranid codex gets some assault benefits to make them a multi-threat army again. Nowadays, all you can do is shoot, fly, and spawn.

Bell says that the turn ymgarls and lictors come out of reserve all enemy shots at them are snap shots only.

With stealers you have numbers to stay alive...lictors have the multiwound thing going for them with stealth...and deathleaper is supposed to upgrade them for shrouding.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And the "dominatrix" auto FnP bubble will make for a lot of different and amazing formations...guarantee we're going to see tyrant blobs and carnifexes forming up in front of them...not to mention everything you can do with warriors and stealers.

 ductvader wrote:
Bell says that the turn ymgarls and lictors come out of reserve all enemy shots at them are snap shots only.

it doesn't say that at all. It says

Ymgarl Genestealers - New special arrival rule is shared with the Lictor, may now purchase standard Genestealer biomorph upgrades.

Ymgarls and Lictors will share their deployment method. I underlined the important part - new special arrival rule. As in there's a new rule that both Lictos and Ymgarls share, if the rumour is correct. So no, we have no idea if they will be able to assault from reserves, all we know is there's potentially a new rule that both units share. Unless they've expanded on it elsewhere, that is, as I've only been following some of the rumours here.

 McGibs wrote:
6th ed seems pretty amendment on the no-instant-assault angle, and frankly, I think it's a good direction. In 5th, there were so many things that could just show up, and charge without any penalty or response from the other player.

Wolf scouts show up in my IG backfield and instantly lay waste to my heavy weapon teams. There's nothing I can do about it. It just happens, and they die. This was a dumb game mechanic. It's not fun, and its not tactical.

Tau strip away all my cover saves and just blast me off the table. There's nothing I can do about it because I don't have anything that can show up and charge their heavy weapon teams to tie them up without standing there for a turn and dying horribly. It's not fun, and it's not tactical.

The whole point of these sorts of units is to act as a counter to heavy weapons teams and force people to play in a tactical way to deal with them.

Never said that tau shooting wasnt dumb. I said that assaulting out of reserves is dumb.

Theyre both dumb things.

I think removing tactical options instead of taking the effort to balance them to create an interesting and tactical game is dumb.

I agree. Assaulting out of reserves removes the tactical option of defensive reaction just like Markerlights removing cover saves removes the tactical option of... cover.

Letting things assualt from cover was dumb, but not allowing them to assualt out of cover -without balancing the issue- was too far in the opposite direction. Hence why I suggested they should have some boost when arriving (ie: snap shots only against them). This would let them still do what their role is (taking out backfield targets), while still giving some tactical options to the other player (oh gak, genestealers, good thing I have a chance to re-position my guys).
Things like tau markerlights, would be really nice if you could take friggin cover saves against those lasers in an attempt to react to them (better go to ground, because if i dont, those markerlt broadsides are going to glass me)

40k be dumb, yo.

How do you feel about shooting from reserve?
I still occasionally see drop pods come down loaded up with stacks of melta/plasma troops, able to arrive and obliterate a vehicle or MC before they can react.

I don't see much difference between that and being able to assault. It just favors shooting.

Arson Fire wrote:
How do you feel about shooting from reserve?
I still occasionally see drop pods come down loaded up with stacks of melta/plasma troops, able to arrive and obliterate a vehicle or MC before they can react.

I don't see much difference between that and being able to assault. It just favors shooting.

This is a good point. Shooting from reserves is actually safer than assaulting from reserves, because you can generally destroy whatever you're aiming at without any retaliation at all - at least in assault, if you flub it, they can hit back (and with things like Genestealers being the glass cannons they are, they'll really feel that sting).

Drop podding Sternguard, for example, can dish out far more damage than Genestealers. I haven't heard of Genestealers taking down a Reaver Titan after assaulting it from reserves, but I've seen people proxy beer can drop pods and tactical squads as Sternguard with combi meltas to accomplish just that without breaking a sweat. This is actually a better method since the drop pods guidance means you can generally place it anywhere with no fear of the squad biting it. Outflanking assaulters can easily end up on the wrong table edge.

The reason you can't assault out of reserve is because assaulting is a lot more likely to be decisive than shooting. Most of the time if a shooting unit arrives from reserve it's going to damage a non-vehicle target but probably not kill it. An assault unit, on the other hand, is almost guaranteed to wipe out whatever it charges and there's nothing you can do about it. And if it doesn't it's going to be locked in combat and safe from retaliation, which is even worse than losing the assaulted unit immediately. So IMO it's very good that they removed "my vanguard vets rolled a 'hit' to deep strike, remove your best unit from the table".

And no, overwatch doesn't counter assault units. It's a nice bit of fluff but not a serious strategy unless you have some kind of BS boost so you inflict more than token damage.

I really can't believe a guy with a genestealer as his avatar just called them "glass cannons". I have seen them in small numbers wreck some major face and it just gets worse in larger numbers. And with a broodlord, challenges can become hazardous, as his Hypnotic Gaze will lock up an opposing character.

The complete flip-flop to 6e becomingly an almost exclusively shooting version of the game really negatively affected how tyranids came to be used. I had to go out and buy new models so I would have gunners. As I stated before, if they helad just put the overwatch rules in, I could live with that, we used to joke about how they just stand there while these bugs run at them. But the blanket reserve ban hurts nids more than anything else. Hopefully, we catch a break like Tau did in obeying the rulebook.

Peregrine wrote:The reason you can't assault out of reserve is because assaulting is a lot more likely to be decisive than shooting. Most of the time if a shooting unit arrives from reserve it's going to damage a non-vehicle target but probably not kill it. An assault unit, on the other hand, is almost guaranteed to wipe out whatever it charges and there's nothing you can do about it. And if it doesn't it's going to be locked in combat and safe from retaliation, which is even worse than losing the assaulted unit immediately.

-Loki- wrote:

Arson Fire wrote:
How do you feel about shooting from reserve?
I still occasionally see drop pods come down loaded up with stacks of melta/plasma troops, able to arrive and obliterate a vehicle or MC before they can react.

I don't see much difference between that and being able to assault. It just favors shooting.

This is a good point. Shooting from reserves is actually safer than assaulting from reserves, because you can generally destroy whatever you're aiming at without any retaliation at all - at least in assault, if you flub it, they can hit back (and with things like Genestealers being the glass cannons they are, they'll really feel that sting).

Drop podding Sternguard, for example, can dish out far more damage than Genestealers. I haven't heard of Genestealers taking down a Reaver Titan after assaulting it from reserves, but I've seen people proxy beer can drop pods and tactical squads as Sternguard with combi meltas to accomplish just that without breaking a sweat. This is actually a better method since the drop pods guidance means you can generally place it anywhere with no fear of the squad biting it. Outflanking assaulters can easily end up on the wrong table edge.

This is what I've never understood. I've seen so many units wiped out by deep-striked short-range firepower that can reliably nuke a given target without risk. I've personally dropped enough Zoanthropes to kill a Warhound in 1 turn, while my Trygons that burrow up next to it have to sit around like lemons for a turn.. The most common scenario is devilguants in a spore pod able to wipe out virtually any infantry unit they land near due to sheer volume of dice (especially if you coordinate it with Old Adversary from a Flyrant).
The only caveat is that sometimes to you need a little luck on scatter to ensure you're not landing off the board or outside Melta range of an AV14 target, etc. But with the 6" disembark move now that's pretty rare.

I don't see why it's not possible to just assault from reserve with any unit, alongside some mechanic that balances it out. There's no shortage of options here; twin-linked overwatch fire, reduced to 1D6" charge range, loss of bonus charge attacks, etc, etc. One of the things I really liked about the fake pancake rulebook last year was that overwatch fire was taken against units appearing from reserve nearby under certain conditions. Those units could then assault in the same turn and use their abilities just as effectively as shooting units.

Shooting from reserves should probably have some penalty as well, but it's good that assaulting from reserve is gone.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I really can't believe a guy with a genestealer as his avatar just called them "glass cannons". I have seen them in small numbers wreck some major face and it just gets worse in larger numbers. And with a broodlord, challenges can become hazardous, as his Hypnotic Gaze will lock up an opposing character.

The complete flip-flop to 6e becomingly an almost exclusively shooting version of the game really negatively affected how tyranids came to be used. I had to go out and buy new models so I would have gunners. As I stated before, if they helad just put the overwatch rules in, I could live with that, we used to joke about how they just stand there while these bugs run at them. But the blanket reserve ban hurts nids more than anything else. Hopefully, we catch a break like Tau did in obeying the rulebook.

'Stealers really are glass-cannons though. Thanks to the prevalence of MEQs in general there's no shortage of cheap, decent-ranged weaponry to deal with T4 models; and these are T4 models without power armour to protect them, who will often have to leave cover to get within charge range. If it wasn't enough to have to endure a normal round of shooting plus a round of overwatch, they also can't take assault grenades and will often lose another model or two before even striking. A unit of GS coming from reserve can't use most psychic buffs from the Broodlord that turn (provided you're lucky enough to roll the right ones).
As things stand I can't think of a single scenario where 'stealers are more effective than devilguants in a spore-pod for dealing with entrenched infantry. At least the guants will come with an extra bunch of S6 attacks from the pod, make better use of nearby buffs and don't cost as much to lose per model.

Really. the only saving grace for assault units in 6E are the players who don't realise how assaulting Aegis Lines works, and assume that they're safe. Provided you're not trying to jump over the line, you can get into melee without rolling for difficult terrain and therefore without the initiative penalty. I've caught out a couple of players with this in the last year, which just goes to prove how broken assaulting is in general if you're relying on a rules loophole to get anywhere.

I doubt GW will let Nids skip half the rulebook in regards to assaulting from reserve, but I do expect to see two main changes:
1) Run + assault in the same turn, much like Eldar with Battle Focus. I can also see some units like Hormas getting a bonus to Run distance, like Banshees.
2) Stealth / Shrouded being much easier to get to protect advancing infantry. I'm really hoping we get a dual-kit for the Mycetic Spore that doubles up as a Spore Chimney for area cover bonuses.

 Daba wrote:
Shooting from reserves should probably have some penalty as well, but it's good that assaulting from reserve is gone.

Funny, because Dark Angels Deathwing gain twin-linked when they deep strike...