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H.B.M.C. wrote:Of course, Fateweaver makes the assumption that people only ever brought Spinegaunts to 'min/max'. Which technically makes his post a personal attack against all Tyranid players who brought Spinegaunts.

It's doubly hilarious because using Old Spinegaunts meant you played horde nids, which was the worst list the codex could conjure.

Tyranids always batter me with my transports, Carnifexes, rending, etc etc

Maybe not everyone took 180 gaunts to win.

I've also heard all the moaning and bitching from known min-maxers so yes my point does have some merit; more than the point "GW IS FORCING ME TO BUY MORE GAUNT BOXES BECAUSE SPINEGAUNTS AREN'T THE CHEAPEST GAUNT AVAILABLE TO NIDS".

What has more weight? Me posting what I've seen and heard or some conspiracy theory by GW to make people spend a whopping 30pts more per gaunt brood or be FORCED to pay GW another $25 per 12 gaunts (or whatever the amount in the box is) to be able to min-max again.

The devourer was superior to the spinefist in the old codex so if people didn't take spinefists to min-max than they would have taken devil gaunts. Yet the spinegaunt was taken by 95% of people who bothered to take gaunts at all so something doesn't add up.

Mathematically, all the old gaunt types did the same damage once you considered price into account. Devilgaunts did something like twice as much damage as spinegaunts, but it evened out when considering spinegaunts got twice as many firing models. It was kind of stupid because there was no motivation to take upgraded models.

Now, devilgaunts are better, which is good, but spinegaunts are still the same as they used to be, but without Fleet and for more points. Not even comparing spinegaunts to termagants. Spinegaunts got nerfed for pretty much no reason. A unit got worse, and said unit had to be bought in large numbers to be effective. It would be like GW switching the point costs of boyz and nobz. Who would bother with the boyz? Nobz have better everything and now they're cheaper. Meanwhile, people who bought 180 boyz got the shaft for purely financial reasons.

Gaunts had weight of numbers going for them before. If you wanted a list which fits some peoples' definitions of fluff of massed gaunts, then you picked spinegaunts because they weren't more expensive than guardsmen or boyz. You can't make a swarm list with 10 point models. If you wanted a list that used gaunts effectively, you picked spinegaunts again because gaunts were so bad that changing weapons didn't make any difference. They were still going to just stop scoring once your tyrants got killed.

Broken Loose wrote:Mathematically, all the old gaunt types did the same damage once you considered price into account. Devilgaunts did something like twice as much damage as spinegaunts, but it evened out when considering spinegaunts got twice as many firing models. It was kind of stupid because there was no motivation to take upgraded models.

Now, devilgaunts are better, which is good, but spinegaunts are still the same as they used to be, but without Fleet and for more points. Not even comparing spinegaunts to termagants. Spinegaunts got nerfed for pretty much no reason. A unit got worse, and said unit had to be bought in large numbers to be effective. It would be like GW switching the point costs of boyz and nobz. Who would bother with the boyz? Nobz have better everything and now they're cheaper. Meanwhile, people who bought 180 boyz got the shaft for purely financial reasons.

Gaunts had weight of numbers going for them before. If you wanted a list which fits some peoples' definitions of fluff of massed gaunts, then you picked spinegaunts because they weren't more expensive than guardsmen or boyz. You can't make a swarm list with 10 point models. If you wanted a list that used gaunts effectively, you picked spinegaunts again because gaunts were so bad that changing weapons didn't make any difference. They were still going to just stop scoring once your tyrants got killed.

It only gets worse if you want Devourers on your Gaunts. And there's no motivation now to take upgraded Gaunts just like there wasn't any in the previous Codex, only it's for a different reason. You gotto give GW credit for staying consistent.

Well about the only upgrade taken for Gaunts that was consistently taken (from what I saw) was WoN. And that for gaunts was the only reason to bring them, to just keep as many on the field as possible.

I've seen a lot of Hive Guard at stores around here.

Maybe Relapse you are mistaking them for something else because clearly the fact your store has any left goes against the notion that they are mandatory in the 100's of 1k's or millions of Nid armies in the world.

Explains why the Trygon is sold out......err wait it's not. Guess the myth that "The Trygon is the only HS worth taking so everyone is going to take 3" has not been proven as fact (or else GW made 10M of them just in case every nid player in the world decided to take more than 3 and build apoc size Tyranid armies).