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Yeah, everyone is talking about Kronos like it's the second coming of tyrnaids, and it's the one I am least afraid of seeing across the table from me, playing as Eldar, Salamanders, or Chaos Marines. Hell, there are plenty of factions and armies out there that don't care about psychic options. I think you have a greater chance of picking Kronos and finding your opponent took a non-psycic army than you do of taking Jormungander and finding your opponent took Imperial Fists / Iron Warriors.

Spoletta wrote:

 D6Damager wrote:
I think that it is clear that overall improvements have been made via hive fleets and strategems, however, I still feel that internal balance is still messed up with the actual units.

I feel like this will turn out to be Codex: Kronos Carnifex. Probably still won't see Maleceptors, Haruspex, or Toxicrenes outside of casual play. Tervigon is still overpriced and fragile etc...

Carnifices are not that good, they work only in a well balanced nid list. Spamming daffafexes is a recipe for disaster, you will suffer tanks. When you need the combined fire of half your army (8 dakkafexes) to down a razorback and your range is 18", it will not end well.

Dakkafexes are good and 2 or 3 per list will be common, but they are not spammable.

Also, why Kronos?? They will never stay still!

I think this is one of those kneejerk reactions to large dice rolls like when people claimed Guardsman lasgun spam could destroy land raiders in a single turn.

Kronos is a mistake. Not looking forward to go against them and it's not because of Kronos shenanigans.

 Knight wrote:
Kronos is a mistake. Not looking forward to go against them and it's not because of Kronos shenanigans.

May I ask why then?

ThePorcupine wrote:
No it's not all that, I'd go so far as to say it's not great, but its a hell of a lot better than any vehicle. Doesn't it dish out mortal wounds when it charges? And doesn't its WS increase when it charges too? Or is that a separate upgrade.

It might dish out one mortal wound on a 4+?

It's low enough damage that it's essentially a vehicle in melee: you're going to use it to charge and soak overwatch and that's it. its damage output is negligible, even against something like guardsmen.

 D6Damager wrote:

 SideshowLucifer wrote:
I don't think it will affect smite spam armies much. Even if they use the stratagem, smite is still castable and models only suffer the damage near the warlord.
Now realize that most times, it will be just a single -1 to cast due to shadows and it isn't any worse than the other fleets.

Seriously, people are acting lime that stratagem is always in effect and the warlord will always be close by.

The main buffs to the army are ranged attacks at the expense of mobility.

Shutting down a Warptime, Death Hex, Doom, Da Jump, Vortex of Doom etc. etc. whenever you feel like it and without rolling as long as you have 1 CP will be clutch in a lot of games. It would have been more fair to simply add a bonus to the Deny the Witch roll instead of something completely reliable and cheap as that stratagem.

Your absolutly right that it is great against a clutch power. That's the value of it. My argument is that it does mostly nothing against smite spam.

 SideshowLucifer wrote:

 D6Damager wrote:

 SideshowLucifer wrote:
I don't think it will affect smite spam armies much. Even if they use the stratagem, smite is still castable and models only suffer the damage near the warlord.
Now realize that most times, it will be just a single -1 to cast due to shadows and it isn't any worse than the other fleets.

Seriously, people are acting lime that stratagem is always in effect and the warlord will always be close by.

The main buffs to the army are ranged attacks at the expense of mobility.

Shutting down a Warptime, Death Hex, Doom, Da Jump, Vortex of Doom etc. etc. whenever you feel like it and without rolling as long as you have 1 CP will be clutch in a lot of games. It would have been more fair to simply add a bonus to the Deny the Witch roll instead of something completely reliable and cheap as that stratagem.

Your absolutly right that it is great against a clutch power. That's the value of it. My argument is that it does mostly nothing against smite spam.

But it MIGHT kill one Grey Knight a turn if they can't roll a 5+! So broken!

As a non-Nid player, everything I've heard about it makes me want to finally get around to painting those Space Hulk Genestealers I've had assembled for 20+ years and getting some more monsters. So either my armies are scared or my wallet is.

craggy wrote:
As a non-Nid player, everything I've heard about it makes me want to finally get around to painting those Space Hulk Genestealers I've had assembled for 20+ years and getting some more monsters. So either my armies are scared or my wallet is.

Look into behemot, leviathan or hydra as your genestealer armie.

 Niiai wrote:

craggy wrote:
As a non-Nid player, everything I've heard about it makes me want to finally get around to painting those Space Hulk Genestealers I've had assembled for 20+ years and getting some more monsters. So either my armies are scared or my wallet is.

Look into behemot, leviathan or hydra as your genestealer armie.

I don't have the time, or the paint, but might give some of them a go at painting, just for fun, and as a change from other stuff.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 SideshowLucifer wrote:

 D6Damager wrote:

 SideshowLucifer wrote:
I don't think it will affect smite spam armies much. Even if they use the stratagem, smite is still castable and models only suffer the damage near the warlord.
Now realize that most times, it will be just a single -1 to cast due to shadows and it isn't any worse than the other fleets.

Seriously, people are acting lime that stratagem is always in effect and the warlord will always be close by.

The main buffs to the army are ranged attacks at the expense of mobility.

Shutting down a Warptime, Death Hex, Doom, Da Jump, Vortex of Doom etc. etc. whenever you feel like it and without rolling as long as you have 1 CP will be clutch in a lot of games. It would have been more fair to simply add a bonus to the Deny the Witch roll instead of something completely reliable and cheap as that stratagem.

Your absolutly right that it is great against a clutch power. That's the value of it. My argument is that it does mostly nothing against smite spam.

But it MIGHT kill one Grey Knight a turn if they can't roll a 5+! So broken!

It goes deeper than that. You know that every turn, one of your powers is basically guaranteed to fail. And if your opponent isn't stupid (always assume your opponent is smarter than you), you're going to end up losing the one you need most at that time.

In the case of Eldar and the Runes of Battle, that also presents a very good chance of losing the psyker with the power. Yes, a Warlock is only 35 points, but if he's your only caster with Quicken, you're entire army has lost a significant portion of its mobility. Some armies use their psychic powers for big plays, and your opponent will see those coming too. The loss of that Warlock might not just end at that Warlock, it could end up costing the entire squad he was supporting. Alternatively, the ability to deny an early charge could end up allowing the Tyranids to set up and wipe out a large portion of your army in response.

If you measure your psykers just in points to smite value, of course it's not worth much. But if you consider the value of your psykers as force multipliers, you can end up losing a lot to a once-per-turn auto fail (+D3 Mortal wounds).

 Fafnir wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 SideshowLucifer wrote:

 D6Damager wrote:

 SideshowLucifer wrote:
I don't think it will affect smite spam armies much. Even if they use the stratagem, smite is still castable and models only suffer the damage near the warlord.
Now realize that most times, it will be just a single -1 to cast due to shadows and it isn't any worse than the other fleets.

Seriously, people are acting lime that stratagem is always in effect and the warlord will always be close by.

The main buffs to the army are ranged attacks at the expense of mobility.

Shutting down a Warptime, Death Hex, Doom, Da Jump, Vortex of Doom etc. etc. whenever you feel like it and without rolling as long as you have 1 CP will be clutch in a lot of games. It would have been more fair to simply add a bonus to the Deny the Witch roll instead of something completely reliable and cheap as that stratagem.

Your absolutly right that it is great against a clutch power. That's the value of it. My argument is that it does mostly nothing against smite spam.

But it MIGHT kill one Grey Knight a turn if they can't roll a 5+! So broken!

It goes deeper than that. You know that every turn, one of your powers is basically guaranteed to fail. And if your opponent isn't stupid (always assume your opponent is smarter than you), you're going to end up losing the one you need most at that time.

In the case of Eldar and the Runes of Battle, that also presents a very good chance of losing the psyker with the power. Yes, a Warlock is only 35 points, but if he's your only caster with Quicken, you're entire army has lost a significant portion of its mobility. Some armies use their psychic powers for big plays, and your opponent will see those coming too. The loss of that Warlock might not just end at that Warlock, it could end up costing the entire squad he was supporting. Alternatively, the ability to deny an early charge could end up allowing the Tyranids to set up and wipe out a large portion of your army in response.

If you measure your psykers just in points to smite value, of course it's not worth much. But if you consider the value of your psykers as force multipliers, you can end up losing a lot to a once-per-turn auto fail (+D3 Mortal wounds).

But again there are ways to play around it. Especially if you KNOW that Kronos is going to be across the table from you. You aren't just going to blindly wander into their Shadow/Stratagem range if you know they might explode your psykers brain. Using your own example you can easily use Quicken from outside the 18" psyker-death bubble if you plan ahead a bit and are careful with your ranges. All the Kronos Problem does is force you to actually consider your positioning and that is in no way a bad thing.

A lot of what you're suģgesting relies on the Eldar player being completly braindead.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Dakkafexes... I think this is one of those kneejerk reactions to large dice rolls like when people claimed Guardsman lasgun spam could destroy land raiders in a single turn.

And I think they're being underestimated honestly. And I don't think anyone's expecting these things to pop landraiders... Though it will put a couple wounds on any 3+ vehicles... I just crunched the numbers and a Punisher tank commander w/3 heavy bolters is exactly twice the cost of a dakkafex and does twice (give or take 1 or 2 percentage points) the expected wounds against guardsmen, marines, gaunts, and genestealers (even after firing punisher turret twice).

A 105 point dakkafex (without any faction bonuses) is expected to kill...
8.89 guardsmen per turn
3.56 marines per turn
11.1 gaunts per turn
7.11 genestealers per turn

Unsurprisingly punishers are a staple in a lot of guard lists. I fully expect dakkafexes to be a staple just the same. If I played nids I'd probably take three or four. 420 points gives all the infantry killing power you'll ever need... probably.

But this is all from a guard player's point of view. It could be that nids don't even need anti-infantry specialist. Who knows haha.

 Sim-Life wrote:

But again there are ways to play around it. Especially if you KNOW that Kronos is going to be across the table from you. You aren't just going to blindly wander into their Shadow/Stratagem range if you know they might explode your psykers brain. Using your own example you can easily use Quicken from outside the 18" psyker-death bubble if you plan ahead a bit and are careful with your ranges. All the Kronos Problem does is force you to actually consider your positioning and that is in no way a bad thing.

A lot of what you're suģgesting relies on the Eldar player being completly braindead.

First off, if we start talking about tailored lists, everything goes out the window. Second of all:

Tyranid player gets turn one (they will have more command points, they'll be able to afford the rerolls if they need them). Tyranid player deep strikes Rippers into position (24" stratagem range), and then rushes a flyrant up the table with Metabolic Movement (average 39"), dropping an 18" radius bubble of SITW and Kronos effects, as well as a 24" bubble of stratagem range around your greatest congregation of psykers (at this point, the Rippers aren't particularly necessary, but we'll assume that they're to ensure full table coverage. Alternatively, your opponent can throw them down after the Flyrant dies for further turns of psychic denial). They then rush their Kraken forces up the table, setting themselves up for a turn 2 charge (if they have shooting stuff, they do that too, we'll also assume that there's no other janky turn 1 reserves or fighty stuff to add further pressure, they'll essentially give you a free turn aside from the lone Flyrant for this example).


Your psychic phase is pretty neutered at this point, as well as the big plays that go with it. With an 18" range on your powers, and the huge bubble presented by the Flyrant and Friends, there's really no safe way to set your psykers up (and even if you do manage to make some safe spots, odds are that those safe spots will be far enough away from the relevant combat zone that those psykers will not be contributing to the fight).

Your opponent has essentially left the Flyrant up as an offering, but in doing so, that's firepower that would be directed away from the rest of the swarm. That said, you're in a position where you have to kill that Flyrant, or else it will ravage your squishies while still putting up that bubble of denial. At T7, W12, and 4++, you're going to have to put in some significant firepower to take it down. Regardless of how you handle it, the Tyranids get their turn 2 charge into your lines, and now you're in serious trouble, because that one Flyrant has denied not just most of your psychic shenanigans, but also forced you to siphon most of your own offenses into it just by being present. While the Tyranid player can put you into a situation where you're forced to make some sacrifices for free, you yourself are compromised in that end, and it becomes very difficult to mount the offenses of your own to put your opponent in a similar position.

That whole last paragraph is literally what Nids tactics have always been. The term "Distraction Carnifex" wasn't a theory that someone drempt up.

You're basically complaing that Nids are now played the way they're supposed to play rather than spamming the only one or two units that work well.

Losing your warlord isn't exactly free either.

 Fafnir wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

But again there are ways to play around it. Especially if you KNOW that Kronos is going to be across the table from you. You aren't just going to blindly wander into their Shadow/Stratagem range if you know they might explode your psykers brain. Using your own example you can easily use Quicken from outside the 18" psyker-death bubble if you plan ahead a bit and are careful with your ranges. All the Kronos Problem does is force you to actually consider your positioning and that is in no way a bad thing.

A lot of what you're suģgesting relies on the Eldar player being completly braindead.

First off, if we start talking about tailored lists, everything goes out the window. Second of all:

Tyranid player gets turn one (they will have more command points, they'll be able to afford the rerolls if they need them). Tyranid player deep strikes Rippers into position (24" stratagem range), and then rushes a flyrant up the table with Metabolic Movement (average 39"), dropping an 18" radius bubble of SITW and Kronos effects, as well as a 24" bubble of stratagem range around your greatest congregation of psykers (at this point, the Rippers aren't particularly necessary, but we'll assume that they're to ensure full table coverage. Alternatively, your opponent can throw them down after the Flyrant dies for further turns of psychic denial). They then rush their Kraken forces up the table, setting themselves up for a turn 2 charge (if they have shooting stuff, they do that too, we'll also assume that there's no other janky turn 1 reserves or fighty stuff to add further pressure, they'll essentially give you a free turn aside from the lone Flyrant for this example).


Your psychic phase is pretty neutered at this point, as well as the big plays that go with it. With an 18" range on your powers, and the huge bubble presented by the Flyrant and Friends, there's really no safe way to set your psykers up (and even if you do manage to make some safe spots, odds are that those safe spots will be far enough away from the relevant combat zone that those psykers will not be contributing to the fight).

Your opponent has essentially left the Flyrant up as an offering, but in doing so, that's firepower that would be directed away from the rest of the swarm. That said, you're in a position where you have to kill that Flyrant, or else it will ravage your squishies while still putting up that bubble of denial. At T7, W12, and 4++, you're going to have to put in some significant firepower to take it down. Regardless of how you handle it, the Tyranids get their turn 2 charge into your lines, and now you're in serious trouble, because that one Flyrant has denied not just most of your psychic shenanigans, but also forced you to siphon most of your own offenses into it just by being present. While the Tyranid player can put you into a situation where you're forced to make some sacrifices for free, you yourself are compromised in that end, and it becomes very difficult to mount the offenses of your own to put your opponent in a similar position.

The big problem with all of this is that your presupposing that the Eldar player is relying entirely on his Psychic powers to do work. That sounds like a terrible Eldar player.

I love seeing guard players complain about tyranids. Like we have an answer for your 36D6 mortar shots every turn. I mean come on.

And you could crush Tyranids pre-codex without using psychic powers at all with Eldar shooting. And guard shooting. So yeah. No sympathy whatsoever. Oh and "what about tzeentch daemons," lol, you have Magnus, you get +2 to cast. You can literally roll an 8 with 1 d6.

Sim-Life wrote:That whole last paragraph is literally what Nids tactics have always been. The term "Distraction Carnifex" wasn't a theory that someone drempt up.

You're basically complaing that Nids are now played the way they're supposed to play rather than spamming the only one or two units that work well.

The entire point is that the distraction carnifex now gains the ability to deny the better part of an entire phase before it even gets down to sucking up firepower, in addition to the mobility needed to harass whatever it wants to as it wants to. No, it's not a new strategy. It's just much, much more potent in the hands of this hive fleet.

SideshowLucifer wrote:Losing your warlord isn't exactly free either.

And you don't have to nominate him as your Warlord for that specific matchup unless you want to. But if there are a healthy number of 2W psykers milling about (that said, Warlocks are garbage, but squeezing the points sometimes make them a necessity), that's added pressure should you desire it. It's a cherry on top of an already very threatening cake.

Imateria wrote:
The big problem with all of this is that your presupposing that the Eldar player is relying entirely on his Psychic powers to do work. That sounds like a terrible Eldar player.

While psychic control alone isn't enough to lock down an entire game, my point is that the dominance over the psychic phase comes at very little cost (because as someone mentioned above, the Distraction Carnifex strategy isn't exactly new, the Tyranid player is likely to employ something similar anyway) in addition to the already very threatening matchup that the new Tyranids look to be able to bring to the Eldar before the element of psychic denial comes into play.

Marmatag wrote:I love seeing guard players complain about tyranids. Like we have an answer for your 36D6 mortar shots every turn. I mean come on.

And you could crush Tyranids pre-codex without using psychic powers at all with Eldar shooting. And guard shooting. So yeah. No sympathy whatsoever. Oh and "what about tzeentch daemons," lol, you have Magnus, you get +2 to cast. You can literally roll an 8 with 1 d6.

Ynnari were fine. Craftworld Eldar were garbage pre-codex (they're okay now, while Ynnari might have gotten a bit ridiculous with those point reductions--not sure on that).

 Marmatag wrote:
I love seeing guard players complain about tyranids. Like we have an answer for your 36D6 mortar shots every turn. I mean come on.

And you could crush Tyranids pre-codex without using psychic powers at all with Eldar shooting. And guard shooting. So yeah. No sympathy whatsoever. Oh and "what about tzeentch daemons," lol, you have Magnus, you get +2 to cast. You can literally roll an 8 with 1 d6.

I think nids would restrict him to a 7.

 Galas wrote:

 admironheart wrote:
As an elder player I see that most of my psychic powers cannot be cast when in range ....like at all. Not even a chance to roll. There is not plus or minus or making the elder reroll or anything.....It just nerfs all the powers of 7 or better.

That is just wow. What other element in the game in any faction has a counter that just eliminates it completely?

I'm not talking about 'almost' no chance to work or really is all but useless....but actually makes it completely eliminated?

I doubt anything in the game...so no I'm not happy about that.

Ork shooting is completely eliminated by Alaitoc Eldars.

Ironically Ork Psychics is only mildly affected by the Kronos anti-psyker shenanigans. We can still smite-spam like always.

And you already blow up your psykers

 SideshowLucifer wrote:
And you already blow up your psykers

That is why we have painboyz. To fix the brainz of perilled weirdboyz

 Sim-Life wrote:
Just wondering what people who don't play nids think of the new tyranid book.
I know most nid players are pretty happy with it but I've not seen the opinion of many non-players.

We can't get it yet. :(

As a Tyranid player I'm amused by the reaction to Kronos. When I first read over the traits, the counter psychic was less interesting than the shooting buffs. I see a choice between several assault Hive Fleets and a Shooty Hive Fleet, because I don't lose games to spells. I lose games to not being able to make cc with enough bodies, or to not being able to kill vehicles.

I think Kronos is going to be scary because Exocrines, Tyranofexes, Hive Guard and Biovores are all strong and don't care about mmoving, which interests me far more than the counter psycher tricks.

babelfish wrote:
As a Tyranid player I'm amused by the reaction to Kronos. When I first read over the traits, the counter psychic was less interesting than the shooting buffs. I see a choice between several assault Hive Fleets and a Shooty Hive Fleet, because I don't lose games to spells. I lose games to not being able to make cc with enough bodies, or to not being able to kill vehicles.

I think Kronos is going to be scary because Exocrines, Tyranofexes, Hive Guard and Biovores are all strong and don't care about mmoving, which interests me far more than the counter psycher tricks.

But if we don't explode in a tide of hyperbole and exaggerations with every little piece of information. What would we talk about in these forums?

 Galas wrote:

babelfish wrote:
As a Tyranid player I'm amused by the reaction to Kronos. When I first read over the traits, the counter psychic was less interesting than the shooting buffs. I see a choice between several assault Hive Fleets and a Shooty Hive Fleet, because I don't lose games to spells. I lose games to not being able to make cc with enough bodies, or to not being able to kill vehicles.

I think Kronos is going to be scary because Exocrines, Tyranofexes, Hive Guard and Biovores are all strong and don't care about mmoving, which interests me far more than the counter psycher tricks.

But if we don't explode in a tide of hyperbole and exaggerations with every little piece of information. What would we talk about in these forums?

The game at all levels instead of just the most competitive?

 D6Damager wrote:
I think that it is clear that overall improvements have been made via hive fleets and strategems, however, I still feel that internal balance is still messed up with the actual units.

I feel like this will turn out to be Codex: Kronos Carnifex. Probably still won't see Maleceptors, Haruspex, or Toxicrenes outside of casual play. Tervigon is still overpriced and fragile etc...

Disagree, Maleceptor got much better, and could be a nice. Haruspexes got cheaper by a good degree,a nd are still decent at killing infantry. Toxicrenes have also changed in price, making them slightly more attractive. The Tervigon? I can't say as every time I've used one, it's done what I wanted it to. Stayed alive and supported Gant gunsquads with smite and the occasional catalyst where needed. With the new Hive Fleet rules, the artefacts, and how the rest of the units play out, it may be an okay unit to toss in.

But really, it'll be Hive Fleet Kronos Artillary Beasts. Tyrannofexes, Exocrines, and Hive Guard bubbled by Malanthropes along side cheap Brigades with Nuerothropes at the core to spam strats.

I'me very happy with this, ltos fo good fluff stratagems, and a few ways to completely change how you play.

I also like the new IB, Tyranids low LD already was screwed without Synapse, IB was a double hitter and needed a nerf.

The new Dakka tho IMO outshines the melee, but there is still room for large melee, Genestealers and Hgants are stronger than ever, Melee DSing do to wings with +1 charge and re-roll is amazing!

babelfish wrote:
I think Kronos is going to be scary because Exocrines, Tyranofexes, Hive Guard and Biovores are all strong and don't care about mmoving, which interests me far more than the counter psycher tricks.

They get all that plus the psyker shenanigans and cool artifact weapon. They will be a popular choice for competitive play.