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So, I played someone over the weekend who has been using a list with a bunch of kraken genestealers and swarmlord.

Before I continue, I should note that I'm not complaining about this, as I wound up winning the game. And it was pretty fun, honestly. It was refreshing to fight another melee army, and the game was just a big back-and forth of charges and countercharges and stuff getting wiped out in melee.

That being said, at the end, I have to look at what's going on and question whether or not it is legal, and if it is, if it's a little cheesy.

So, first up, due to swarmlord, genestealers #1 get to move and advance twice and charge (advance is 3D6 and pick the highest due to kraken). Genestealers #2 get to double their advance roll due to a kraken stratagem. So unit #1 is moving ~24", and unit #2 is moving ~17". And a broodlord is using yet another stratagem (metabolic overdrive?) to keep pace, but not charge, but give them all +1 to hit.

I mean, that all sounds a little ridiculous. Moving around 24" and still charging sounds crazy. As an ork, I've got da jump, but even that has the restriction of being out of 9" of enemy models, and having to make a 9" charge, and I can only do it once per turn.

My opponent said that it was his first loss of 8th, and I can see why. 40 genestealers basically getting a guaranteed turn 1 charge, always, is probably hard to deal with for a lot of armies.

If all of the above is legal, does it have any substantial weaknesses, other than just using crazy amounts of screeners or transports? How does/would an elite army like space marines deal with it?

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
As an ork,

This is why this seems ridiculous. Orks don't get special rules that help us succeed, we get special rules that make us fail in funny ways so our opponent can laugh at us.

Yes its legal. It is intentional design that accomplishes two things:

1) faster games. A hallmark complaint of older editions. Especially tournament games where 2.5 hours is not a long time and sandbagging is considered a viable tournament tactic.

2) melee armies complained that it wasn't fair that they had to position themselves for a couple of turns before they could charge and shooting armies could take you apart startiing in turn 1.

So now melee armies can take you apart in turn 1 too. And the game is typically over by turn 2 or 3 at the latest.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
As an ork,

This is why this seems ridiculous. Orks don't get special rules that help us succeed, we get special rules that make us fail in funny ways so our opponent can laugh at us.

Da Jump and reroll charge is pretty effective. I'm sure they will get a stratagem that gives them some sort of movement bonus.

It's a very strong tactic for sure, but it has weaknesses.

- Screening units are an excellent counter, and are pretty much mandatory nowadays (Space Marine Scouts are actually great at this)
- If the Tyranids don't get first turn, their genestealers will melt like nothing
- If the opponent has his heavy-hitting stuff far back, or in reserve, the alpha-strike is not very useful

Games go differently than in 7th, and army lists and deployment need to reflect the new possibilities. And hey, it's still a lot better than wolfstars with electrodisplacement...

Ravenwing Blackknights can advance 20" and charge with a stratagem.

A codex army using all kinds of special rules and stratagems lost to an index army.

Nothing in that scenario screams overpowered.

It just sounds like the codex army has tools that allow for deeper tactics, that aren't necessarily good. Swarmlord was probably misplayed in this scenario. You can use him to alpha, but doing an alpha with 2x squads of GS is like throwing them away in 8th... and that's stupid, they're our hardest hitting unit. You absolutely have to be careful with them.

Although i will say that Orks do counter melee Nids pretty well.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
As an ork,

This is why this seems ridiculous. Orks don't get special rules that help us succeed, we get special rules that make us fail in funny ways so our opponent can laugh at us.

Every night I pray to Mork and Gork that we get just half of what the tyranids got.

 Marmatag wrote:
A codex army using all kinds of special rules and stratagems lost to an index army.

Nothing in that scenario screams overpowered.

It just sounds like the codex army has tools that allow for deeper tactics, that aren't necessarily good. Swarmlord was probably misplayed in this scenario. You can use him to alpha, but doing an alpha with 2x squads of GS is like throwing them away in 8th... and that's stupid, they're our hardest hitting unit. You absolutely have to be careful with them.

Although i will say that Orks do counter melee Nids pretty well.

Well, like I said, I wasn't complaining, exactly, but I guess I haven't personally seen anything like that in 8th before. It certainly seems strong.

He did note that he made a mistake by sending both squads of GS into a single unit of boyz. The just one was more than enough. The genestealers then got shot up by shoota boyz and charged by nobz and more boyz. He then counter charged with carnifexi and swarmy, and then I counter charged with garg squiggoth. Generally, yes, orks did counter the list well enough, but it was certainly scary.

It really was a good game, and I can't complain much, but I have seen that list totally shitstomp some chaos/marine lists, and I'm not sure how they could really win.

Honestly, at this point, the longer it takes the Ork codex to come out the better it is for you ultimately. Hopefully by that time they'll need to give the Orks so much juice to be competitive that they'll wildly overshoot the mark and have to scale them back over time.

Or, you could get hosed, like you have been since 2nd edition (purely my opinion based on emotional overreactions, not on any valid datapoints).

If you are worried about that consider we have genestealer nodes if we have genestealers in our army: we get to place 4 counters on the board within our deployment zone and during any movement phase genestealers can disembark within 6" (effectively giving an extra 6" movement). It protects our elite melee bugs from being blasted off the table before we get a chance to rush across the board. The only drawback is if a node is approached by an enemy within 9" it is removed and if all 4 are removed any genestealers placed in reserve using this are counted as destroyed. Of course we can place them and our gribbles to protect them for that first critical turn negating most of the hazard.

So using these our genestealers have an effective first turn movement of 8+6+d6" for an average of 17.5" before adding any other bonuses from strats or fleet traits. Not to mention 2d6 for charge distance.

 Galas wrote:
Ravenwing Blackknights can advance 20" and charge with a stratagem.

That's honestly not nearly as scary as 80 rending attacks that hit on 2+s. And they're probably giving up effective shooting due to the advance. I'd take some bikes charging over genestealers like 90% of the time. They're harder to kill, granted, and while I don't know their exact stats I'd assume that they would barely be able to scratch a boyz squad, rather than auto-delete them.

And in truth, bikes moving that fast and charging at least makes more sense than genestealers.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:

He did note that he made a mistake by sending both squads of GS into a single unit of boyz. The just one was more than enough. The genestealers then got shot up by shoota boyz and charged by nobz and more boyz. He then counter charged with carnifexi and swarmy, and then I counter charged with garg squiggoth. Generally, yes, orks did counter the list well enough, but it was certainly scary.

It really was a good game, and I can't complain much, but I have seen that list totally shitstomp some chaos/marine lists, and I'm not sure how they could really win.

Honestly it sounds like a fun game. I would like to run my Nids list with Swarmlord against you and your Orks. (Not many people out here play Orks, it's mostly Chaos Soup and Guard Soup).

So, i'll see if i can emphasize this properly:

Charging both his Genestealers into your Boyz was a mistake of epic proportions. One squad of Stealers should annihilate a squad of Boyz.

With the length of the move that he has, I would have liked to see him pop out a Trygon and do a charge with that first to try and prevent overwatch, and multi-charge your pants off with his Stealers. Then, pay 3CP to pile in and fight twice. Or, pay a CP to move after charging, then pile in, and bubble wrap something big in the back line. It's an expensive maneuver, and I personally try to lock things up with chaff but it would prevent a whole shooting phase. And, if you use the psychic phase properly you'll fight first on your opponents turn (if you're planning this gambit, go all in).

Anyway. Sounds like a fun game. I wouldn't say that's overpowered. It's very clearly less powerful than Alpha Legion Berzerkers doing their LOLFACE deploy.

We Magic the Gathering now.

It's just one more of these alpha strike turn 1-2 game ender things. Too much of those in 8th reducing importance of actually putting models to the table. Spend lots of time planning army list, unpacking and deploying, game over quicker than that in turn 1-2.

Game has had too much alpha strike for many editions so what does GW do? Reduce it? Nope. Up it to the ridiculous level.

tneva82 wrote:
It's just one more of these alpha strike turn 1-2 game ender things. Too much of those in 8th reducing importance of actually putting models to the table. Spend lots of time planning army list, unpacking and deploying, game over quicker than that in turn 1-2.

Game has had too much alpha strike for many editions so what does GW do? Reduce it? Nope. Up it to the ridiculous level.

I think that's a natural consequence of making Turn 1 the most important turn for every army.

In older editions, melee armies (and the melee elements of balanced shooting armies) had to work their way up the board, and jumped from cover to cover to preserve themselves against enemy shooting. Oh, wait, you can't do that now, because there's barely any cover in 8th edition, and even LOS-blocking terrain doesn't help you against a few (but common) weapon systems.

So because shooting starts working people over from Turn 1, and melee armies didn't like the "take cover until we charge" mechanic, gw threw up their hands and said "Screw it, we'll just have the climax of the game at Turn 1 and turns 2-6 can be the denouement." So now we have this.

With the new ITC missions it's actually really advantageous to go second in a lot of respects. The times I would go first boil down to: (a) has my opponent poorly deployed and left a big whole in his screens i can exploit or (b) is the opponent alpha legion, with squads of berzerkers ready to drop in and charge everything guaranteed.

And it's good to have LOS blocking terrain, but the armies that excel at shooting are the ones that ignore line of sight, or have a strong deep strike presence, or both. Run into an artillery heavy list on a map covered in terrain, and you'll see what i'm talking about. You need a few LOS blockers in the middle, but having ruins in deployment zones really favors a couple lists.

 Marmatag wrote:
With the new ITC missions it's actually really advantageous to go second in a lot of respects. The times I would go first boil down to: (a) has my opponent poorly deployed and left a big whole in his screens i can exploit or (b) is the opponent alpha legion, with squads of berzerkers ready to drop in and charge everything guaranteed.

And it's good to have LOS blocking terrain, but the armies that excel at shooting are the ones that ignore line of sight, or have a strong deep strike presence, or both. Run into an artillery heavy list on a map covered in terrain, and you'll see what i'm talking about. You need a few LOS blockers in the middle, but having ruins in deployment zones really favors a couple lists.

What % of games do you play that actually go to objectives? Turn 2-3 handshakes are all I get - with turn 4 being a highly likelyhood of table. In a tournament you play that out but it's really not hard to kill a few stragglers. The damage is so high in this edition it's kind of a joke - a lot of times we forget to draw our malestrom cards and just say...fck it - aint gonna matter anyways.

I remember someone brought up sanic the jean stealer a while back.

yeah its probably do able occasionally worth while but i highly doubt its all that cheesy.

iirc it required quite a lot of set up and buffs to pull off.

To pull this of the swarmlord is involved. The swarmlord is 300 points, and he is not that impresive when compared to a regular hive tyrant at around 180 points. The remaining 120 is just this slingshot effect.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It is not like other armies can not do similar things.

Genewtealer cult, roll a 6. Da jump with orks. BA death company, or just charge 3d6 with jump packs. Alpha legion. Raven guards. Etc etc etc

 Xenomancers wrote:
What % of games do you play that actually go to objectives? Turn 2-3 handshakes are all I get - with turn 4 being a highly likelyhood of table. In a tournament you play that out but it's really not hard to kill a few stragglers. The damage is so high in this edition it's kind of a joke - a lot of times we forget to draw our malestrom cards and just say...fck it - aint gonna matter anyways.

3/5 matches at SCO went to Objectives, so 60%. Couldn't stay for the 6th game sadly, had to drive back up north.

1st game I got lucky and tabled the guy by turn 5.
2nd game I dragged it out until the end, opponent won on objectives.
3rd game my opponent was totally unprepared for the type of army I brought to the table, tabled by turn 3.
4th game my opponent had a totally horrible selection of weapons for fighting my army, went to turn 6 because I couldn't back to the far end of the table to kill the one model left in his army sitting on an objective. So while it technically went to objective scoring, he was more or less tabled.
5th game I dragged it out until the end, opponent won on objectives.

I don't know, in my regular play group, most of our games get dragged out until late turns, but we've been playing against each other for *many* years and know the various scummy tricks we're fond of using, so that probably plays heavily into the meta.

 lolman1c wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
As an ork,

This is why this seems ridiculous. Orks don't get special rules that help us succeed, we get special rules that make us fail in funny ways so our opponent can laugh at us.

Every night I pray to Mork and Gork that we get just half of what the tyranids got.

Pray for more. The FAQ gutted the fun Strategems in Matched Play.

It's a problem to do with GW's poorly thought out 'fix' to the symptom of a greater problem. As some previous posters have pointed out, the game is just way too heavily weighted to early game alpha-strikes. The only way for melee units to be viable in such a meta is through abilities that allow them to also alpha strike, which means you end up with silly delivery systems like this.

GW seems to have some real difficulty in understanding that 'fast to play' does not necessarily have to mean that the game has to end on the first turn. Until the raw power of alpha strike builds in general are pulled back, crazy (potential) 53" charge (yes, genestealers can actually do that now) gimmicks are just the way it's going to be.

 Fafnir wrote:
GW seems to have some real difficulty in understanding that 'fast to play' does not necessarily have to mean that the game has to end on the first turn. Until the raw power of alpha strike builds in general are pulled back, crazy (potential) 53" charge (yes, genestealers can actually do that now) gimmicks are just the way it's going to be.

And frankly what's the fun of fast game that ends up in turn 1? There's so little interaction after deployment that there's actually less need to actually deploy the models on board...

Last week league game I figured I needed to do something else than bring gunline as if I had that we could literally just throw dice and see who wins! No need to take out models onto board. Just roll dice and user counter to keep track of casualties. What fun is that?

If shooty armies alpha striking cc armies was problem maybe consider such a radical idea as to weaken the shooting alpha striking rather than turn alpha striking into 11 on all armies...2h per game is good enough. No need to do it in 30 minutes. "but you can do 4!" Well yes but if game doesn't really any more require putting models on table due to super alpha striking what's the point of playing miniature game...

 adamsouza wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
As an ork,

This is why this seems ridiculous. Orks don't get special rules that help us succeed, we get special rules that make us fail in funny ways so our opponent can laugh at us.

Every night I pray to Mork and Gork that we get just half of what the tyranids got.

Pray for more. The FAQ gutted the fun Strategems in Matched Play.

I think most ork players are fearing for the ork codex to be even worse than the index, so half of what Tyranids got would still be the best codex ever

Also, my signature is on-topic

The problem is that ranged units are far too deadly. The current solution is to give melee armies ways to be equally deadly through mobility upgrades. I would prefer dramatically reduced lethality across the board and modified rules to accommodate this. Getting tabled by turn 6 should be unlikely, objectives should matter a lot more.

Let's be clear here: Genestealers moving 24" does not remove tactics, it just changes them. The fact that an index list got caught off guard and still won is pretty much proof of that. Most lists will delete the Swarmlord if he goes second, so I wouldn't worry about this list changing the meta. But Nids in general seem to be good for the meta.

Alpha strike is a problem, but good missions address that. Two armies don't have to be too imbalanced for a tabling to happen. I've wondered whether doubling wounds for every model might help.

Timeshadow wrote:
If you are worried about that consider we have genestealer nodes if we have genestealers in our army: we get to place 4 counters on the board within our deployment zone and during any movement phase genestealers can disembark within 6" (effectively giving an extra 6" movement). It protects our elite melee bugs from being blasted off the table before we get a chance to rush across the board. The only drawback is if a node is approached by an enemy within 9" it is removed and if all 4 are removed any genestealers placed in reserve using this are counted as destroyed. Of course we can place them and our gribbles to protect them for that first critical turn negating most of the hazard.

So using these our genestealers have an effective first turn movement of 8+6+d6" for an average of 17.5" before adding any other bonuses from strats or fleet traits. Not to mention 2d6 for charge distance.

If they lurk in the nodes they are deployed at the end of the movement phase. Its like DS. They just pop up and they are done moving. Unless you have swarmlord to use hive commander in the shooting phase.

Answer to OP: Its legal, not cheesey. Nids have 2 options, DS and try and get the 9" charge (like orks). Or deploy on table, and hope for first turn to charge across turn 1 like you described at the risk of not getting first turn and potential shot off the table.

I can't find the thread but I thought that you didn't have to deploy "hidden" troops until after the roll to determine who goes first. IIRC it dealt with bezerkers and Alpha Legion. That way if you lost the roll you can put you troops somewhere safe but if you won you put them in the (would otherwise be) dangerous spot that allows them the good Alpha strike.
So there really was no risk to those troops.

Perfectly Legal and Not Cheesy. Genestealers are meant to be fast shock troops. With how useless Melee is in this edition, the only way they can even get a swing in is to do so right away.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
As an ork,

This is why this seems ridiculous. Orks don't get special rules that help us succeed, we get special rules that make us fail in funny ways so our opponent can laugh at us.

Da Jump and reroll charge is pretty effective. I'm sure they will get a stratagem that gives them some sort of movement bonus.

Da Jump and Re-roll charge is not as effective as you think. Not even a 50% success rate (47.84%).

And even if you do make it, all they need to do is fall back and destroy you with shooting.