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I just got into an escalation league, and I am seriously disappointed with the base Tyranid codex. It seems to be saddled with some of the lamest rules in the existing codexes.

Based on how the codex plays right now, what rule changes do you believe need to be made to bring the codex "up to spec"? This means changes so ALL units are viable, from small 250 pt. games to 3,000 pts or more.

Some of the things I considering testing, based on how things have played out so far:

SYNAPSE:
Get rid of instinctive behavior for the entire army (no Leadership test & stupid tables to roll on to see if your army eats itself). Give all non-synapse creatures a Leadership of 9. Being IN Synapse gives units Fearless, Fleet and Rage.

ADRENAL GLANDS
+1 WS and +1 Initiative.

GAUNTS:
Change Hormigaunts, Termagants and Gargoyles from infantry to beasts. You can combine any of the three in a single squad.
Hormigaunts can take Rending Claws.
The Devouring Horde: This rule applies to Hormigaunts, Termigants, Gargoyles, Ripper Swarms, Genestealers, Tyranid Warriors, Raveners and Carnifexes. When three or more models with this rule are in base-to-base contact with an enemy model, all engaged models with this rule may give up their melee attacks to make a single attack with a Strength equal to the number of models with this rule in base contact with the enemy model, up to a maximum of Strength 10. Bulky models count as two models, Very Bulky models count as 3 models, Monsterous Creatures count as 5 models. This attack has AP –, uses the majority WS, and occurs at the Initiative of the lowest attacking model. You can combine attackers in such a way to gain multiple attacks against a target, but each attack must have minimum Strength of 3.

GENESTEALERS
give Genestealers 3 attacks (Claw, Claw + 2nd set of Claws)
Genestealers can take Acid Blood for 5 pts./model
-4 pts/model to give them scything claws.

TERVIGON:
A Tervigon has a transport capacity of 20, and is considered an open-topped vehicle for affecting occupants and disembarking. A Tervigon cannot spawn Hormagaunts or Termagants if troops disembark. Units cannot board a Tervigon, they may only disembark. A Tervigon cannot carry Bulky or Very Bulky models.
A Tervigon can spawn Hormagaunts, Termagant, Gargoyle or Ripper Swarm broods. The broods cannot have mixed models.
[Remove rule that causes Termagants to explode in synapse range]

And feth you GW for not providing a point cost for the Red Terror.

I haven't hit the bigger units yet, so no comments on them yet. Agree, Disagree, got more units to fix their rules?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
And the Warlord table:

1) : Choose one piece of terrain (excluding intact buildings) on the board. Your units may deep strike (on a 2+) from that piece of terrain with no chance of mishap

2) Heightened Senses: The Warlord and all friendly models within 12" gain a +1 to Initiative. If you are using Night Fighting rules, these units gain the Night Vision rule.

3) Synaptic Lynchpin: The warlord's Synapse range is 18". Further, once per game units within Synapse range can reroll failed To Hit rolls.

4) Mind Eater: Your army gains 2 VP for each enemy model with the Independent Character special rule your army slays

5) Shard of the Hive Mind: The Warlord gains one additional Psychic power and adds +1 to its Mastery Level. If the Warlord is not normally psychic, it becomes a psyker and gains Mastery Level 1.

6) Adaptive Biology: If the Warlord suffers one or more unsaved Wounds, it gains the Feel No Pain (5+) special rule at the beginning of its next Movement phase and keeps it for the remainder of the game.

I like some parts of this and dislike others.

SYNAPSE
Synapse definitely needs a rework. Having your army sit around, possibly kill itself, and wait to be killed is no fun. Of course, having a chance to buff yourself for *not* maintaining synapse isn't a great mechanic either. I say get rid of the instinctive behavior thing and have synapse grant fearless and adamantine will. Maybe allow for other bonuses with certain detachments/formations.

Adrenal Glands
Works for me.

GAUNTS
Making them beasts is interesting. It would require a price increase which sort of detracts from the horde feeling they have going on. Gargoyles would lose hammer of wrath and gain no movement boost other than not worrying about terrain. Combining them seems messy, and I'm not a fan of it personally. ^_^;

Rending claws for gaunts? Sure. At what points cost though? Claws make them comparable to daemonettes. Claws plus mixed units makes me feel like you're trying to get a "hidden rending claw with gargoyle blinding" unit, which seems way too micro management heavy for how I like my 'nids, personally. Rending claws are also a bit redundant with the devouring horde.

I like the devouring horde rule. It's useless for carnifexes, but it's a nice way to let little bugs deal with vehicles. The current wording is potentially messy though. I'd change it to only work against MCs and vehicles to avoid 6 gaunts getting a strength 6 attack against a marine or something.

GENESTEALERS
These guys need a boost, but I'm not sure your changes really help them. They either need to be cheaper or else have a better delivery method. Give them a way to boost their cover saves, assault after outflank, some grenades, or any other number of things. Broodlords are way too pricey as well.

TERVIGON
I mostly like this. I'd probably exclude gargoyles from the things it can spawn as they're basically better termagaunts.

TRAITS
I mostly like these. Mind Eater seems a little too good against some armies (harlequins would probably hemmorhage VP). Adaptive Biology is possibly redundant with the 'nid power that grants FNP, and the Personal table's equivalent is probably better.

Note that I have weirdly specific things that I'd like out of 'nids, so take my critique with a grain of salt.

Thanks for taking the time, Wyldhunt.

Hormigaunts and Termagants were at one time beasts (I think it's the 4E codex I was looking at that). Hormi's seem to need some sort of movement boost as in the games I've played so far they've just been target practice trying to get them into close combat. Emperor help you if the enemy is in cover, they have no current ability to counter being reduced to Initiative 1.

I hadn't realized Gargoyles got Hammer of Wrath - that's interesting. Probably should exclude them from all this gaunt reconfiguring, I just initially thought it'd be nice if they were considered interchangable units.

On the Rending claws for gaunts, I thought it would just make a nice modeling option, and if you can give genestealers scything talons, I don't see why you couldn't give hormigaunts the reverse.

If they were ever to redo the miniatures for hormigaunts/termigants into a either/or kit I think the "any mix of hormis/termis would make a lot more sense. Also, I'd like to see it possible to turn the second set of (otherwise useless) claws on both models into a second set of weapons (similar to tyranid warriors, but at an additional cost, not "built in"). Having gaunts with one pair of scything talons and a pair of spinefists/ a fleshborer/ devourer would go a long way to negating some of the shortfalls of hormigaunts not having any ranged attacks to "soften up" foes before getting into HtH (though conceivably, you could go the other way, giving a gaunt two pairs of scything talons, and thus 3 HtH attacks....).

On Devouring Horde, the main downside is you have to be base-to-base. I find it difficult to even get 3 hormigaunts in actual base-to-base because of the way the mini hangs off the base. I'm not really sure how many mini you'll actually be able to surround a man-sized mini, but just being in the melee combat doesn't trigger the ability, you have to actually be in base-to-base, so it really should only help against the bigger models.

Genestealers ought to have Stealth, at the least. With the possibility of buying Shrouded (a supernatural augmentation brought on by the presence of the Hive Mind - a physical manifestation of the "Shadow in the Warp"). Not sure on points - maybe 3 pts/model to add shrouded?

I'm always leery of allowing 1st turn assaults - if units could extract themselves from assaults, it wouldn't bother me so much.

On the Tervigon, yeah, the gargoyles were a stretch. Perhaps it should be ditched or automatically neuters the Tervigon due to the "strain".

On the traits, Adaptive Biology was right off the existing table

I recall hormigaunts being beasts in 4th edition. I'm not sure termagaunts were. Being beasts was sort of the hormagaunts' equivalent of their current run rule. Hormagaunts generally move fast enough to arrive at the enemy lines, in my experience. The issue is that upgrades make them too expensive, and they often lack a good target as transports and MCs aren't terribly scared of them. Toxin sacs let them threaten vehicles, but then you hemmorhage points when the enemy shoots them.

I'd definitely leave mixed squads out of it. It leaves too many opportunities to make a "perfect" squad that combines the cheapness or shooting of gaunts with the high initiative and number of attacks of gaunts with the blinding power of gargoyles. I would see a lot of people blinding enemies with adrenal gland gargoyles to reduce enemy counter attacks after the hormagaunts swing, and tanking wounds on termagaunts. Devilgaunt shenanigans are bad enough. We don't need mixed squads in my opinion. Maybe make it a formation so you can build some sort of drawback into it?

I'm personally not terribly interested in giving shooting attacks to hormagaunts. A lack of shooting isn't a bug (no pun intended); it's a feature. Hormies are for choppin' guys up and serving as a disruptive front line that freaks your opponent out. Termagaunts are fore shooting guys up and dying cheaply. Upgrades, I feel, will almost never be worth it on gaunts, especially if those upgrades cost more than a point per model. Why spend points giving hormagaunts extra attacks or ranged weapons when you can just put those points into more hormagaunts? More bodies means more attacks, and it's harder for your opponent to remove those attacks because they have to inflict more wounds on the unit to do so. That said, Flesh Hooks on hormagaunts would be a nice option. Maybe 1 point per model, or perhaps X points for the entire swarm (thus rewarding you in cost efficiency for taking larger swarms of the little guys).

You're mostly right about Devouring Horde. I just see people potentially trying to cheese the combat and slowing the fight down by doing so. I think you'd get pretty much the same effect by simply saying, "models in base to base with an MC or vehicle may..." Plus, this eliminates weird situations with things like bikes or thunderwolves. 7 hormagaunts doing lots of low strength attacks seems more appropriate than them doing a single high strength attack. The higher strength is just a nice abstraction for them picking away at big targets en masse. This is a nitpick though.

I'm not sure what to do with genestealers. I like the Cryptus formation's way of handling things, but I feel like the best/simplest way to handle it is to simply lower their cost to be similar to daemonettes. Then give them the ability to take flesh hooks. Also, lower the cost of scything talons as they are simply way too expensive on such a squishy target. They should really have Stealth base, I agree, and shrouded might be a reasonable thing for the broodlord to give them (reflecting its greater cunning or psychic shenanigans or something). Honestly though, the simplest way to help them out would just be to lower the costs on them and their upgrades. They hit reasonably hard as is; They just cost too much for something that dies so easily.

If you're referring to assaulting out of reserves when you mean you're leery of first turn assaults, I'd point out that people were able to assault out of outflank for years. The solution is to simply not place your models right along the board edge until the enemy's outflankers have shown up. I'm not married to the idea though.

I know Adaptive Biology is straight from the current codex. I also know that our local 'nid player complains about it. It's worse than similar rules and also somewhat more complicated. I like the "mid-battle adaptation" flavor, but I'm not sure this ability captures that idea very well.

Hi all as a newer nid player I cannot really lean to one way or another for the points and other such changes as "balancing" issues that need to be addressed, sorry for that.

But I would like to add my 2 cents for the whole "Shadow in the warp" trait. Personally I think it should add a warp charge cost to the caster who is in range of a creature with the "shadow of the warp" trait. That, or the player must reroll successful charges or charges of a particular #. On top of that, having a added negative effect if perils is rolled. Juuuust an idea in regards to their fluff.

Kuroko1985 wrote:
Hi all as a newer nid player I cannot really lean to one way or another for the points and other such changes as "balancing" issues that need to be addressed, sorry for that.

But I would like to add my 2 cents for the whole "Shadow in the warp" trait. Personally I think it should add a warp charge cost to the caster who is in range of a creature with the "shadow of the warp" trait. That, or the player must reroll successful charges or charges of a particular #. On top of that, having a added negative effect if perils is rolled. Juuuust an idea in regards to their fluff.

Personally, I like the idea of simply imposing a -1 penalty on all psychic rolls. So a roll of a 4 would be treated as a 3, for instance, when trying to cast a power within synapse range.

Actually, the -1 sounds like a far more fair than my +1 warp charge cost. Mine was a little too crushing perhaps?