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So the new Tyranid Vanguard Dataslate has landed:

Manufactorum Genestealers
The formations allow your genestealers to set up in ruins or unoccupied building within 6" of your enemy, and have hit and run
5 Stealer broods, but may not include additional stealers

Lictor Forest Brood
Lictor Forest brood formation inside forests can infiltrate up to 6" from the enemy, and have the shrouded rule in forest.
This is 5 broods of a single model.

Deathleaper's Assassin Brood
The Deathleaper brood makes anyone within 12" of a model from the brood have -1 LD - this could be pretty massive combined with a few other rules (shadows, Its after me, the horror, Psychic Shriek ect..)
Deathleaper + 5 lictor broods of 1 model

Broodlord's Hunting Pack
Another Broodlord hunting pack formation when it comes from reserves can deploy into any unoccupied building. It can also be deployed in any ruin terrain during setup as long as its 6" away from the enemy.
They also have hunting pack, which when deployed, your formation has preferred enemy against any nominated enemy unit.
3 Stealer broods and 1 must have a brood lord. only a single broodlord allowed.

Gargoyle Bio-Bombs
The gargoyle bomb is 3 units of gargoyles and 3 units of spore mines, and allows the spore mines when ever they start a move action (move, run , charge) within 6" of a gargoyle to move at 6", or no longer half the distance when running or charging.

On the whole I think it's a massive disappointment and a very underwhelming addition to an already lacklustre codex. Other than being able to sometimes Infiltrate units to within 6" of your opponent in jungles or ruins, there's nothing worth taking. You still can't assault out of Reserve or Infiltrate with anything, meaning your infiltrated units will still got shot to hell or simply avoided before you can get them into combat.

Does anyone see anything in this Dataslate that's remotely viable? Thoughts and feelings, please!

Terrein specific rules are not the good . On our boards we never have forests and all the buildings we use are ruins and not actual buildings as per BRB .

The Deathleaper formation would be nice , if it was cumulative each lictor -1Ld . paying gor 5 lictors and DL does free up and an HQ slot , but it costs a lot of points . Unless someone knows he wants to kill a non tzench psyker , it won't realy work .

Makumba wrote:
Terrein specific rules are not the good . On our boards we never have forests and all the buildings we use are ruins and not actual buildings as per BRB .

The Deathleaper formation would be nice , if it was cumulative each lictor -1Ld . paying gor 5 lictors and DL does free up and an HQ slot , but it costs a lot of points . Unless someone knows he wants to kill a non tzench psyker , it won't realy work .

Bro, you can't say a rule (s) not good bcause it isnt relevant to your table. You adjust to the rules, the dataslates aren't written with you in mind.

I agree that terrain specific rules aren't good. Not everyone has the same table.

I tend to find that a lot of people set up defensively in and around ruins with their long ranged weapons teams, and infiltrating lots of Genestealers within 6" of them would cause said units all kinds of problems. Having said that, no ruins or jungle makes the whole tactic null and void, so if you don't use many ruins or much terrain, the Dataslate is indeed pretty useless to you.

The rules say they can infiltrate 6" in to a building not in to ruins.
So if you play with non bought bunkers or civilian buildings with actual AV , then yeah awesome . You set up 6" away from your opponent and either you get turn 1 and don't charge or you go second and your opponent has a tasty stealer unit 6" away from him .

Bro, you can't say a rule (s) not good bcause it isnt relevant to your table. You adjust to the rules, the dataslates aren't written with you in mind.

how many people play with non fortification builds with AV normaly , how offten are forests used and how many of them are on tables to make the formation viable ? You would have to know the set up of terrain , before the game , which more or less limits the formation viability to pre build tables , narrative games where you know your fighting in a city or jungle or asking a 3ed person to set up terrain and him being your friend and placing the type of terrain you need near every deployment zone . And if you end up on a table with no forests or no buildings you get a formation that can't use its special rules , but isn't free . Which imo goes well under the definition of bad.

These formnations are actuallly pretty darn expensive points-wise. All of them are 200+ points but more like 250+ (the cheapest being the Gargoyle formation with 225 and the second cheapest is the Lictor Forest Brood with 250). That's like 2 Mawlocs!

Yeah that's what I'm struggling with, they might allow units to be taken outside of FOC restrictions but the points costs remain the same for the models and quite frankly they could be better utilised elsewhere simply because the special rules given to these 'formations' as such simply aren't good enough to take over another useful unit.

Apart from static tables at tournaments, the terrain specific rules shouldn't be considered worthless if you and your opponent are playing by the terrain placement rules in the BRB. You and your opponent place terrain one piece at a time, and I know if I was planning to play with some models that had rules surrounding specific types of terrain, I'd be bringing a few pieces of it to the table.

GW doesn't make decent trees or jungle terrain, but that shouldn't stop us from building our own woods and or jungle themed terrain pieces to use in our games. We are modelers to some degree aren't we?

Having said that, the dataslate itself is somewhat of a letdown. Its not necessarily a swing and a miss, but I doubt i'll be incorporating any of these rules into my lists, and I'm a fan of genestealers and Deathleaper.

 Voidwraith wrote:
Apart from static tables at tournaments, the terrain specific rules shouldn't be considered worthless if you and your opponent are playing by the terrain placement rules in the BRB. You and your opponent place terrain one piece at a time, and I know if I was planning to play with some models that had rules surrounding specific types of terrain, I'd be bringing a few pieces of it to the table.

GW doesn't make decent trees or jungle terrain, but that shouldn't stop us from building our own woods and or jungle themed terrain pieces to use in our games. We are modelers to some degree aren't we?

And then your opponent walls off all those forests/ruins with impassable terrain. Or better yet, he places a table-wide impassable river right in the center so your army can't cross the table and he only has to deal with your silly formation.

Oh yeah, terrain placement is the answer !

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Voidwraith wrote:
Apart from static tables at tournaments, the terrain specific rules shouldn't be considered worthless if you and your opponent are playing by the terrain placement rules in the BRB. You and your opponent place terrain one piece at a time, and I know if I was planning to play with some models that had rules surrounding specific types of terrain, I'd be bringing a few pieces of it to the table.

GW doesn't make decent trees or jungle terrain, but that shouldn't stop us from building our own woods and or jungle themed terrain pieces to use in our games. We are modelers to some degree aren't we?

And then your opponent walls off all those forests/ruins with impassable terrain. Or better yet, he places a table-wide impassable river right in the center so your army can't cross the table and he only has to deal with your silly formation.

Oh yeah, terrain placement is the answer !

I know you were just trying to be a D-bag with your response, but honestly, you need to up your game. The rules for terrain placement wouldn't even allow for "walling off," and, honestly, a table-wide impassable river?? Who's being ridiculous?

 Voidwraith wrote:

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Voidwraith wrote:
Apart from static tables at tournaments, the terrain specific rules shouldn't be considered worthless if you and your opponent are playing by the terrain placement rules in the BRB. You and your opponent place terrain one piece at a time, and I know if I was planning to play with some models that had rules surrounding specific types of terrain, I'd be bringing a few pieces of it to the table.

GW doesn't make decent trees or jungle terrain, but that shouldn't stop us from building our own woods and or jungle themed terrain pieces to use in our games. We are modelers to some degree aren't we?

And then your opponent walls off all those forests/ruins with impassable terrain. Or better yet, he places a table-wide impassable river right in the center so your army can't cross the table and he only has to deal with your silly formation.

Oh yeah, terrain placement is the answer !

I know you were just trying to be a D-bag with your response, but honestly, you need to up your game. The rules for terrain placement wouldn't even allow for "walling off," and, honestly, a table-wide impassable river?? Who's being ridiculous?

Why? you can place D3 terrain pieces per 2'x2' section. That's more than enough to create a wall in the middle of the table or at least create a maze/bottleneck. This isn't ridiculous, you can do it according to the rules so why wouldn't you?

And if you - the Tyranid player - want to play the terrain game, then your opoonent has all the right to play that game too. You place forests in his deployment zone for your advantage and he places an impassable wall in the middle of the table for his advantage. And I have a feeling that his advantage will hard-counter yours TBH.

I'm rather disappointed these appear to be formation slates instead of supplents or mini alternate codexes.

The opportunity for things like a Genestealer cult or whatnot was great. All we get are more formations?

Why don't they just do away with the foc? They seem to want to sell riptides and big kits anyhoo.

It is a dataslate not a suppliment. What did you expect? These things have never been that awesome.

That being said, hit and run genestealers could be nice.

GW doesn't make decent trees or jungle terrain, but that shouldn't stop us from building our own woods and or jungle themed terrain pieces to use in our games. We are modelers to some degree aren't we?

Like aside for them being bad LoS blockers in w40k/Inifnity , problematic to play in WFB and being the wrong size for warmachine/horde ? And Good luck to army tailored terrain being allowed by any opponent that isn't your friends or owns you something.

No, there really was not an opportunity for a Genestealer Cult.

People seem stuck on this idea that the only option for supplements is to go outside of the parent Codex and/or add something that the parent Codex needs to have.

Genestealer Cults are "way cool" but at this point do not make a huge amount of sense on the 40k tabletop. Add to it that just slapping "Use X from the Imperial Guard Codex for your Genestealer Cults" is a complete cheapening of the concept of Genestealer Cults and it becomes just as lazy as people are claiming these dataslates are.

It would be like bringing the "Diggas" from Gorkamorka as a Codex Orks supplement.

My take on these dataslates is that they take bad overpriced units, remove them from the FOC which is nice, and do nothing to really help them survive.

Genestealers within 6" of my opponent would be nice...if it weren't for the fact that that puts them in range of every bit of small arms fire my opponent can muster and Genestealers are not exactly going to take that kind of fire power.

The DL Assassin's WOULD be nice, if Lictors weren't so bad to begin with. I would consider running this one if it weren't for how expensive it was and how little it would really get done on its own.

I've seen some interesting lists that incorporate lost of Stealers, Mawlocs and Lictors for an alpha-strike kind of feel, but with so little synapse and such squishy units it's likely that they'll be playing to wipe the opponent off the table rather than claim objectives, and with 5/6 games being objective based I don't really fancy the chances of such a list regularly prevailing against an organised general.

Makumba wrote:

GW doesn't make decent trees or jungle terrain, but that shouldn't stop us from building our own woods and or jungle themed terrain pieces to use in our games. We are modelers to some degree aren't we?

Like aside for them being bad LoS blockers in w40k/Inifnity , problematic to play in WFB and being the wrong size for warmachine/horde ? And Good luck to army tailored terrain being allowed by any opponent that isn't your friends or owns you something.

I'm pretty astounded at the backlash from my suggesting that people actually bring something other than ruins or hills to a table. I didn't say "fill the entire table with the terrain that helps your army list" but merely to bring a few pieces to make rules that may come up in the game worthwhile. The game designers obviously have it in mind for there to be a variety of different types of terrain on the table (see the Tyranid warlord trait table)...I'm not speaking heresy by suggesting that peeps scratch build some trees and place them as terrain...

As for placing terrain for advantage...people do this to some degree whether it's with ruins, LOS blocking hills or crates/walls. Why are we stringing people up for placing a forest where they'd like it to be?

Back to the dataslate. After giving it more thought, the Deathleaper Assassin team is actually pretty great if you can shoehorn it into a list. It's the Deathleaper and 5 individual lictors, which means they can all be independent from each other on the table. Enemy units within 12" of ANY of the models in the formation suffer -1LD. So...that's a pretty huge area of -1LD, which could be a big deal considering the amount of Leadership based powers and maledictions in the Tyranid Codex. Also, your opponent has to target the models in the formation individually if he wants to get rid of them, something your opponent will most likely not want to do (you're Wraithknight is shooting at my 50pt Lictor this turn? Awesome).

Throw in a mawloc or two...with that many homing beacons there's gotta be something he can hit without scattering.

Still not sure it's worth it, but I like the functionality of that formation quite a bit.

 Voidwraith wrote:

As for placing terrain for advantage...people do this to some degree whether it's with ruins, LOS blocking hills or crates/walls. Why are we stringing people up for placing a forest where they'd like it to be?

Because this is the best way to ruin the game before it starts. If you start deploying terrain to your adentage then you opponent must od the same or fight from a disadvantage. Yeah, you can maybe trick your opponent with this once, but next time, he will be prepared with his 72" long impassable river and other iffy terrain pieces (like the 13" tall tower without stairs). You can't just take an advantage and ask your opponent to not ruin it even though he has the right and ability to do so.

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Voidwraith wrote:

As for placing terrain for advantage...people do this to some degree whether it's with ruins, LOS blocking hills or crates/walls. Why are we stringing people up for placing a forest where they'd like it to be?

Because this is the best way to ruin the game before it starts. If you start deploying terrain to your adentage then you opponent must od the same or fight from a disadvantage. Yeah, you can maybe trick your opponent with this once, but next time, he will be prepared with his 72" long impassable river and other iffy terrain pieces (like the 13" tall tower without stairs). You can't just take an advantage and ask your opponent to not ruin it even though he has the right and ability to do so.

You're taking this way too far... So you're saying that if I show up to a table with nids and during terrain deployment, I place down a forest, I'm being TFG? I personally play with forests that I've built even before there was any reason to just because it makes for a great looking table. Was I being a horrible person for making terrain that the BRB has rules for and asking people to play with it?

Don't worry though...if you and I ever played a game, I'd let you place my "cheating forests." At that point, we'd see who was being TFG.

 Voidwraith wrote:

You're taking this way too far... So you're saying that if I show up to a table with nids and during terrain deployment, I place down a forest, I'm being TFG?

Pretty much. You want to put down a forest for the sole reason to make your special snowflake formation work. Even if we play on a cityfight terrain or on a desert terrain and there are no other forests on the whole table just that conveniently placed one on the edge of my deployment zone. Yeeeeeaaaaahhhhh... So where is my impassable river?

 Voidwraith wrote:
I personally play with forests that I've built even before there was any reason to just because it makes for a great looking table. Was I being a horrible person for making terrain that the BRB has rules for and asking people to play with it?

No. Neither would be I with my 72" long impassable river mind you. Because, y'know, I personally play with impassable rivers that I've built even before there was any reason to just because it makes for a great looking table.

I must admit the few tournaments I have attended have had minimal terrain placement - hugely in favour of gunline armies....be good to see even some reversal of this bias.

Sad really.

So is it worth the money? Not looking good from the above.....

People are being quick to poop on this little expansion, but there are a few subtle points here that can make a big difference:

1) Several of these formations can Infiltrate within assault range of enemy units, allowing you to easily assault with them on turn 1 if you choose to go second. The mere threat of that will force your opponent into targeting these formation units instead of your main advancing horde.

2) The Lictor and 'Stealer formations both work well alongside the Go to Ground / Synapse trick, letting them weather fire with 2+ or 3+ cover saves then immediately jumping into action without penalty.

3) Target saturation. By taking units outside the normal FOC, you're presenting a much higher number of separate targets.
Most of these formations consist of at least 5 units, and present a significant threat on the first turn. That means your opponent is going to be shooting with a minimum of 5 units to kill them - possibly more if they're making the most of cover saves from GtG. The Deathleaper formation especially is going to be tough to kill quickly if you have 6 multi-wound targets with 2+ cover saves, one of which can't be targeted by templates.
The Manufactorum Genestealers also work out at spending 70pts for each enemy unit tied up firing at 3+ cover saves on turn 1 - with a chance to assault them straight after.

The net effect could be that your main force is facing a fraction of the first turn firepower it would normally have to weather.

Well I'll never own 5 lictors but I see both of the two genestealer formations being very useful, especially the broodlord one.

6" is a very dangerous range, your opponent will HAVE to focus on them, which means they aren't shooting at your synapse.

I think this entire dataslate kind of works that way I'm just not gonna buy a bunch of lictors.

 Mr Morden wrote:
I must admit the few tournaments I have attended have had minimal terrain placement - hugely in favour of gunline armies....be good to see even some reversal of this bias.

Sad really.

So is it worth the money? Not looking good from the above.....

Yeah...the lack of line of sight blocking terrain has only been magnified by 6th edition, especially with the rise of Eldar and Tau. Decent terrain would go a long way to balancing the game, though I doubt even a 4" tall wall across the middle of the table would unseat Tau and Eldar from the top of the pile. Eldar are just too fast to care and Tau can always just bubble wrap with Kroot. *sigh*

My issue is that my lists are already tight on points for units I need. There is nothing here that screams out I'm worth it. ( even if I could use them where I play)

Something to point out, with the exception of a few units a lot of armies don't get to shoot everything first turn. Many troops and mid to short range shooting units don't start shooting till turn 2 or later. By putting anything that close to some ones army means you get the luxury of not only allowing them small arms fire but in many cases puts you in rapid fire range.

I'll certainly be giving both the Deathleaper's Assassin Brood and Broodlord's Hunting Pack formations a go for a few games.

The Deathleaper one in particular is a really interesting "slot this into a list for fun" idea, not being very terrain dependant and giving your opponent six MSU threats which, while hardly six Bloodthirsters, still have the potential to be very disruptive. I own three Lictors and a Deathleaper, so it's not too much of an expense to get two more Lictors to make it work.



On a seperate note, it's also got a nice little story built into it, which is nice.

I very rarely play with any forest areas, if at all, it's always ruins and built up areas so the stealer broods that can hide in ruins would be the only ones I'd try to make use of. I might give them a go alongside my Dakkafex spam. We shall see!

The terrain rules are obviously there to let us use our spods, given such an amazing amount of GW Tyranid terrain to go with them they need to compete.