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With a brood of 3 zoanthropes in the past, you could choose to use warp blast or not on an individual basis, and you would have a far better chance of getting, for instance, FNP. The access to a second power is pretty much useless. The odds of actually getting warp blast are no better; in a sense they're worse. Now it's three or nothing, if you have a full brood, in the past your risks were spread so you had a better chance of getting a single blast. In addition, previously you would have had access to three second powers, now we have one. We're paying 5/6 of the points for a unit that is 2/3 as useful, or less.

I don't think you know how Zoanthropes worked before. You didn't have a second power you had Warp Blast or a book power so you were stuck with one or the other for the entire game. So they now have more utility. If you kept Warp blast on them before you could shoot with all or none you could not shoot with some and cast different powers with others one turn and then shoot with all another turn as you contest. Now I can hide 2 out of LoS and still fire 3 shots at the enemy. I can choose which model all 3 shots come from so that helps me get more side armour and ignored more cover.

So they gained utility by having a second power. They gained the ability to fire all shots from 1 zoanthrope. They gained the increased importance of Synapse. They gained comparatively with their main adversaries for the AT shooty Elite role. Whilst dropping 10 points. They are better for less points.

 FlingitNow wrote:

With a brood of 3 zoanthropes in the past, you could choose to use warp blast or not on an individual basis, and you would have a far better chance of getting, for instance, FNP. The access to a second power is pretty much useless. The odds of actually getting warp blast are no better; in a sense they're worse. Now it's three or nothing, if you have a full brood, in the past your risks were spread so you had a better chance of getting a single blast. In addition, previously you would have had access to three second powers, now we have one. We're paying 5/6 of the points for a unit that is 2/3 as useful, or less.

I don't think you know how Zoanthropes worked before. You didn't have a second power you had Warp Blast or a book power so you were stuck with one or the other for the entire game. So they now have more utility. If you kept Warp blast on them before you could shoot with all or none you could not shoot with some and cast different powers with others one turn and then shoot with all another turn as you contest. Now I can hide 2 out of LoS and still fire 3 shots at the enemy. I can choose which model all 3 shots come from so that helps me get more side armour and ignored more cover.

So they gained utility by having a second power. They gained the ability to fire all shots from 1 zoanthrope. They gained the increased importance of Synapse. They gained comparatively with their main adversaries for the AT shooty Elite role. Whilst dropping 10 points. They are better for less points.

I take your point about the advantages re shooting, as you've summarised, in terms of keeping two in cover, that's a good tactic - but the second power is largely useless. They are more of an all or nothing unit than they were, when you could mix and match.

Your "advantages" are moot; for instance "they gained the increased importance of synapse"... is stretching a point , isn't it? Because they've hobbled some units re synapse, doesn't mean those unhobbled are better; they are the same. Zoeys probably lose more than other units by the loss of spores; they certainly have in our list. But still, thanks for pointing out it's not all doom & gloom.

Found out last night that Warp Blast on a flyrant makes up for some of the loss, too.

Loose some flexibility but cost less as FlingItNow points out. And since they are mastery lvl 2, a unit with a lvl 2 psyker in it (or one nearby with a psy hood) doesn't give the unit a +2 to the Deny the Witch roll. That is a small advantage. Probably offset by one Deny the Witch roll canceling all the attacks from the brood, instead of just one attack from one zoanthrope.

The biggest nerf Zoanthropes received is that a brood of 3 used to know 6 powers, had 3 disciplines to choose from as well as Warp Lance/Blast, and could cast 3 powers a turn. Now a unit of 3 knows 2 powers from 1 discipline, one of which always has to be Warp Blast, and can only cast 1 power per turn, that's a pretty huge difference and the reason why I never field more than 1 in a brood now.