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That table is pretty arbitrary... an obvious example is that a Fex is far more likely to survive an encounter with a quad gun than a Crone.

Oh, and a good reason to use a Fex over a Harpy is if you own lots of Carnifexes but don't own any Harpies

roxor08 wrote:
Is your table arbitrarily using the 1-10 range to rank those units? Just for the sake of argument, I would say that a T-fex with AG should be a 3 for maneuverability vs the stock dakkafex.

Sure Adrenals would up the mobility of anything by 1. but in the table I was using TFex with thorax Electroshock Grubs as my comparison because that is how I run him 90% of the time, and I felt like it was more comparable to a Carnifex w/ 2 TL Devourers.

I mainly put numerical rankings to see where people disagree. They are just my opinions there isn't any formula behind it.

You gave a Carnifex survivability a 4 and an Exocrine a 6.

Same toughness. Same armor save. One more wound on an Exocrine. And it's easier to get obscured with a Carnifex.

rigeld2 wrote:
You gave a Carnifex survivability a 4 and an Exocrine a 6.

Same toughness. Same armor save. One more wound on an Exocrine. And it's easier to get obscured with a Carnifex.

And the Crone and Harpy have a 6...?

And an exocrine has a 5 for range while a dakkafex has a 3 - despite there being only a 6" difference.

I think you just don't like the Carnifex - which is fine. Just admit you don't like it. It's worked really well for many other people.

Dakkafexes are one of the best units in the Codex, second only to the Flyrants. Sadly one of their drawbacks is their lack of mobility, which prevents them from being useful in the Hive Mind more powerful weapon, the Skyblight Swarm.

But if you aren't running a Skyblight Swarm because reasons, then Dakkafexes are almost a must.

rigeld2 wrote:
You gave a Carnifex survivability a 4 and an Exocrine a 6.

Same toughness. Same armor save. One more wound on an Exocrine. And it's easier to get obscured with a Carnifex.

+1 for 1 additional wound. +1 for the role that the Exocrine serves, which is ranged fire support. That means it doesn't run out front like the Carnifex. I went back and forward between 5 and 6 for the Exocrine.

 ductvader wrote:
And the Crone and Harpy have a 6...?

-1 for 1 less Toughness, + 1 for 1 wound. + 2 for swooping requiring snapshots. I probably should have docked a point for their play style. You have to fly them right at the enemy to use them optimally. Especially the Crone.

rigeld2 wrote:
And an exocrine has a 5 for range while a dakkafex has a 3 - despite there being only a 6" difference.

That 6" is an extra turn of shooting which is a pretty big deal.

rigeld2 wrote:
I think you just don't like the Carnifex - which is fine. Just admit you don't like it. It's worked really well for many other people.

It isn't about liking or not liking Canifexes. I love the model. I have 4 of them. I think of them like I riddle that I haven't figured out how to solve. People seem to find them effective in a way that I haven't. Maybe it is because my meta is almost entirely gun line armies.

A few ignorant newbie questions to interject:

A true 6th Ed. Dakkafex loadout, what is it, specifically? Is it two Devourer arms, (left & right) at 12 shots, or is it four Devourer arms at 12 shots?

If it's two arms and there's an extra set of arm sockets available, should they be filled with something like an HVC or ScyTals?

tag8833 wrote:
It isn't about liking or not liking Canifexes. I love the model. I have 4 of them. I think of them like I riddle that I haven't figured out how to solve. People seem to find them effective in a way that I haven't. Maybe it is because my meta is almost entirely gun line armies.

Entirely gun line with average to lacking terrain? I could see Fexes not doing well there.
My normal 1850 list has 6 Carnifexes. I'm "fortunate" to have 2 different metas that I play in - the Houston hyper-competitive meta where Tau is common and the players are highly skilled, and my local meta where there's a lot of new blood and Tau are few and far between (Necron and Eldar are more common). In the Houston meta I do well, but I do often lose an entire Fex unit. In my local meta I often do really well, rarely losing an entire fex unit. The Houston meta also has a good amount of terrain, including a large amount of LoS blocking. The local meta is the opposite as far as terrain goes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

notbriang wrote:
A few ignorant newbie questions to interject:

A true 6th Ed. Dakkafex loadout, what is it, specifically? Is it two Devourer arms, (left & right) at 12 shots, or is it four Devourer arms at 12 shots?

If it's two arms and there's an extra set of arm sockets available, should they be filled with something like an HVC or ScyTals?

1 set is 2 arms, giving 6 shots (twin linked).
Dakka fex is 2 sets, 4 arms, giving 12 shots (twin linked).

tag8833 wrote:

 ductvader wrote:
And the Crone and Harpy have a 6...?

-1 for 1 less Toughness, + 1 for 1 wound. + 2 for swooping requiring snapshots. I probably should have docked a point for their play style. You have to fly them right at the enemy to use them optimally. Especially the Crone.

And another -1 or -2 for the 4+ sv

notbriang wrote:
A few ignorant newbie questions to interject:

A true 6th Ed. Dakkafex loadout, what is it, specifically? Is it two Devourer arms, (left & right) at 12 shots, or is it four Devourer arms at 12 shots?

If it's two arms and there's an extra set of arm sockets available, should they be filled with something like an HVC or ScyTals?

Since the kit only has one set and these can often be needed for flyrants as well, you will see many conversions for devourer armed fexes/hive tyrants. One of my models I got from someone else had a stranglethorn cannon converted with 4 gaunt devourers attached to the end to represent 2 sets of TL devs so he put a pair of sycthing talons in the other sockets. Since we lost re-rolls with scything talons one set is just decoration.

rigeld2 wrote:

tag8833 wrote:
It isn't about liking or not liking Canifexes. I love the model. I have 4 of them. I think of them like I riddle that I haven't figured out how to solve. People seem to find them effective in a way that I haven't. Maybe it is because my meta is almost entirely gun line armies.

Entirely gun line with average to lacking terrain? I could see Fexes not doing well there.
My normal 1850 list has 6 Carnifexes. I'm "fortunate" to have 2 different metas that I play in - the Houston hyper-competitive meta where Tau is common and the players are highly skilled, and my local meta where there's a lot of new blood and Tau are few and far between (Necron and Eldar are more common). In the Houston meta I do well, but I do often lose an entire Fex unit. In my local meta I often do really well, rarely losing an entire fex unit. The Houston meta also has a good amount of terrain, including a large amount of LoS blocking. The local meta is the opposite as far as terrain goes.

I've been upping the terrain LOS blocking in my games. I may have used "gun line" as a key word where I didn't mean to. Tau gun line is the easiest game for me to get because everybody fear them, but there are Dark Eldar, Marines, IG, Eldar, Demons (beasts of Nurgle), Necrons, and Orks. Except for the demons player, the Orks, and one of the Necrons, everybody mainly holds back at max range and fire away, or castle up inside vehicles. Not many scout moves, or Assault attempts. Even the Ork player likes to run 30+ lootas, and when I played him, the only assault he tried was a biker warboss into a Mawloc. His 8 or 9 Nob biker unit was going to assault a Zoey, but killed it in shooting.

 ductvader wrote:

tag8833 wrote:

 ductvader wrote:
And the Crone and Harpy have a 6...?

-1 for 1 less Toughness, + 1 for 1 wound. + 2 for swooping requiring snapshots. I probably should have docked a point for their play style. You have to fly them right at the enemy to use them optimally. Especially the Crone.

And another -1 or -2 for the 4+ sv

Good point. They are very survivable in the air, but once they hit the dirt it is over pretty fast.

 Ventus wrote:
Since the kit only has one set and these can often be needed for flyrants as well, you will see many conversions for devourer armed fexes/hive tyrants. One of my models I got from someone else had a stranglethorn cannon converted with 4 gaunt devourers attached to the end to represent 2 sets of TL devs so he put a pair of sycthing talons in the other sockets. Since we lost re-rolls with scything talons one set is just decoration.

I run Gaunt devourers. They are only a little bit small, and don't look that out of place.

Played in Dark Star GT 74 People turned out, Had a great showing, going 3 and 2, with all 3 wins being tabled opponents and my 2 losses actually coming to.....

wait


ORCS, W T F ....

Yep both losses to Orcs, just dumb dumb play on my part not taking them seriously, I also was far to easy going in the first game and let my opponent make a bunch of rules error's that were all in his favor, I actually thought it wouldn't matter. Sadly he repaired a vehicle and deffa rolled over my MAWLOCK :( to gain the victory last turn.

My list wasn't what I wanted either and I grabbed one wrong model !

Flyrant, Flyrant, 3x Mawlocks, Crone, 80 Gaunts, Tervigon, Venom, Bastion.

I'll say the Mawlocks were super stars, wiping out whole squads and really just being all stars. Took 2nd best Nid player, losing out by 1 point, and it was in painting sadly.

I wanted to run only 2 Mawlocks and have a Harpy instead.

Anyways, I'm fairly happy with the play of the new Nids, I used to always run Dakka-Fex in pods, I feel foot slogging they are just not strong enough anymore.

Skyblight makes me a happy camper and I plan to run it in the upcoming 40Kegger event!

I think people undervalue outflanking devil-gaunts, they were very good at clearing off objectives for me!

tag8833 wrote:
6 of the wounds were from seeker missiles from skyrays with Marker light buffs. No saves of any kind. At that point I just had to make around 27 of 32 saves from Broadsides, Riptides and Crises Suites with Buffmander to stay alive. I didn't do it, but that isn't bad rolls. That is typical rolls. I very, very rarely see firewarriors. Because they die unlike riptides, broadsides, and suites, the Tau players in my local meta almost never take them.

Mate..

There is literally nothing in the game that would survive an entire Tau army being shot at them. You can not use that as a reference to say a Carnifex does not survive a battle, in fact name me one thing that would survive all that shooting?

@Stormbreed

Congrats! Tyranids are definitely strong against the more "normal" armies. However, you have to be careful about under-estimating your opponent. That's what happened to one of my opponents who ran Tyranids against my Walking Dead Chaos list. What should have probably been an easy victory for him turned out to be a massacre for me because his big guys got stuck in combat with hordes of zombies. Lol.


---------------------------------------------------------


Guys, going to be out of this thread for a few days. Going to my very 1st Adepticon ever. I only wish I was bringing my bugs but alas, they aren't done yet.

Good luck!!!

Thanks!

Good luck jy2! I'm assuming you'll be bringing your dreaded WraithCrons?

bodazoka wrote:

tag8833 wrote:
6 of the wounds were from seeker missiles from skyrays with Marker light buffs. No saves of any kind. At that point I just had to make around 27 of 32 saves from Broadsides, Riptides and Crises Suites with Buffmander to stay alive. I didn't do it, but that isn't bad rolls. That is typical rolls. I very, very rarely see firewarriors. Because they die unlike riptides, broadsides, and suites, the Tau players in my local meta almost never take them.

Mate..

There is literally nothing in the game that would survive an entire Tau army being shot at them. You can not use that as a reference to say a Carnifex does not survive a battle, in fact name me one thing that would survive all that shooting?

A Screamerstar.

 Tyran wrote:
A Screamerstar.

I knew someone would post that!

Ok.. outside of game breaking broken cheese!

 jifel wrote:
Good luck jy2! I'm assuming you'll be bringing your dreaded WraithCrons?

Yup. Mainly because my Tyranids aren't tournament-ready yet. But it is also because I'm not quite satisfied at their (my necrons) performance at the LVO, so here's hoping that I can do better than that.

 Ventus wrote:

Since the kit only has one set and these can often be needed for flyrants as well, you will see many conversions for devourer armed fexes/hive tyrants. One of my models I got from someone else had a stranglethorn cannon converted with 4 gaunt devourers attached to the end to represent 2 sets of TL devs so he put a pair of sycthing talons in the other sockets. Since we lost re-rolls with scything talons one set is just decoration.

It's also really easy to make them from spare Crushing Claws and gaunt devourers. Every Nid player has spare claws.



Certainly far cheaper than the insane price FW charge for a pair.

What happened in Jy2's test games? No updates at all.

bodazoka wrote:

tag8833 wrote:
6 of the wounds were from seeker missiles from skyrays with Marker light buffs. No saves of any kind. At that point I just had to make around 27 of 32 saves from Broadsides, Riptides and Crises Suites with Buffmander to stay alive. I didn't do it, but that isn't bad rolls. That is typical rolls. I very, very rarely see firewarriors. Because they die unlike riptides, broadsides, and suites, the Tau players in my local meta almost never take them.

Mate..

There is literally nothing in the game that would survive an entire Tau army being shot at them. You can not use that as a reference to say a Carnifex does not survive a battle, in fact name me one thing that would survive all that shooting?

Things that can survive a Tau Alpha Strike:
A TFex
A Flyrant behind a bastion
A Crone in reserves
Biovores behind terrain
A squad of 30 Gaunts
A Mawloc in Reserves.

I wasn't arguing that I should be able to avoid giving up first blood to Tau. I was just arguing that 3 Dakkafexes with adrenals clocking in at 495 points is too much to give up first turn. If he shoots at an exocrine first. He will kill it. But he won't be able to kill 2 Exocrines on the 1st turn. So I'm out 170 as opposed to 495 a much better result. Lets say I was running those Dakkafexes in separate squads of one CFex. I would probably have lost 2 of the 3 of them. That is 330 points. Still too much.

Lets say I'm facing Space marine gunline with Space Wolf allies, which is an army I've seen. Space wolves drop in a drop pod with a rune priest. Because Carnifexes are slow with short range and come in broods. They need to be near the edge of my deployment zone. That makes them harder to effectively bubble wrap against Jaws. A Tfex doesn't stand up any better in this case, but at least Tfexes run solo, so the chance of getting 2 is much lower.

Both of these scenarios are scenarios that go better if I run solo fexes, which is something I haven't done, and I will gladly give that a try. I'm going to run 3 broods of 1 Cfex. 2 Dakka Fexes and 1 AG + HVC Fex (unless someone would recommend other wargear). I'll give that a few looks against a few different armies, and see if the results come out better than my past experiences running broods of Carnifexes.

tag8833 wrote:
Things that can survive a Tau Alpha Strike:
A TFex
A Flyrant behind a bastion
A Crone in reserves
Biovores behind terrain
A squad of 30 Gaunts
A Mawloc in Reserves.

I wasn't arguing that I should be able to avoid giving up first blood to Tau. I was just arguing that 3 Dakkafexes with adrenals clocking in at 495 points is too much to give up first turn. If he shoots at an exocrine first. He will kill it. But he won't be able to kill 2 Exocrines on the 1st turn. So I'm out 170 as opposed to 495 a much better result. Lets say I was running those Dakkafexes in separate squads of one CFex. I would probably have lost 2 of the 3 of them. That is 330 points. Still too much.

Lets say I'm facing Space marine gunline with Space Wolf allies, which is an army I've seen. Space wolves drop in a drop pod with a rune priest. Because Carnifexes are slow with short range and come in broods. They need to be near the edge of my deployment zone. That makes them harder to effectively bubble wrap against Jaws. A Tfex doesn't stand up any better in this case, but at least Tfexes run solo, so the chance of getting 2 is much lower.

Both of these scenarios are scenarios that go better if I run solo fexes, which is something I haven't done, and I will gladly give that a try. I'm going to run 3 broods of 1 Cfex. 2 Dakka Fexes and 1 AG + HVC Fex (unless someone would recommend other wargear). I'll give that a few looks against a few different armies, and see if the results come out better than my past experiences running broods of Carnifexes.

Using things in reserve or out of LOS as an argument is just silly, and no a squad of gaunts or a Tfex will not survive as much shooting as your Fex's did.. FWIW the Biovores out of LOS will not survive either! What you are arguing is in YOUR meta these things are the case, where i had a problem with that is when you assumed that there survivability is based on your experience. I and it seems allot of others here do not loose nearly as many Fex's as you do as early. I completely agree though that in your meta if you are loosing the brood too fast you should split them up and now we have data slates with them out of FOC

Regardless of all this, if your meta is mostly castles and fire power you'd have more luck with a crap ton of FMC 's (and maybe a couple of Mawloc's) anyway id assume.

Naw wrote:
What happened in Jy2's test games? No updates at all.

Sorry, but I've been busy furiously preparing for Addpticon and other stuff. I may update it there but most likely will put it off until I come back.

 jy2 wrote:

Naw wrote:
What happened in Jy2's test games? No updates at all.

Sorry, but I've been busy furiously preparing for Addpticon and other stuff. I may update it there but most likely will put it off until I come back.

.....

I've found that the weakest link in most of the formations are surprise surprise; the Warriors due to their inherent squishiness against mid-power and high-power weapons.

With how pricey they are and how easily they go splat it's a bit hard to get them to pull their own weight before a riptide instagibs them or they get splattered by Karandras.

I'm usually inclined to keep them cheap but this makes gibbing them easier. I've settled on giving them toxin sacs, deathspitters, and rending claws for a reasonably TAC load-out. Sometimes I throw on adrenal glands too if I feel the need to hit at S5 at the start of combat.

Warriors already have a fair load of attacks at a good initiative, and rending with poison makes this load-out very respectable against MEQs and TEQs in assautl. LWs and BSs may be more effective against monstrous creatures/multiwound models, but the ability to more effectively hurt TEQ saves and threaten vehicles and rending +poison being more or less good enough against MCs/multiwounds makes the claws more attractive to me.

Due to the Prime's greatly increased price for no gain and occupation of an entire HQ slot for one unit, I don't feel very comfortable with attatching him to Warrior units anymore.

Venom cannons are pretty awful (made even worse by you only being allowed one to a brood) and I don't recommend them. Barbed stranglers are slightly better, but still I think the deathspitter is far and away the best gun you can put on Warriors.

Going pure melee does make for a great murder unit (unless faced with instant death weapons) but with the old book I rarely found stacking CCWs to be worth losing shooting and in the new book I rarely find the extra-attack/option to switch special effects worth losing out on dakka either.

With this build, Warriors are still criminally overpriced but they at least make for decent bully units (keep well away from true specialists like Hammernators and Wraiths, but anything else is fair game) and can put out respectable dakka as well.

This way, the warrior tax on formations doesn't necessarily have to be a burden.

They still either need a buff or a price cut and the fixing of some weapons options to ever really compete with Termagants as the go-to troops choice though.

"Things that can survive a Tau Alpha Strike:
A TFex
A Flyrant behind a bastion
A Crone in reserves
Biovores behind terrain
A squad of 30 Gaunts
A Mawloc in Reserves"

I Lol'd.
Let me fix that for you:

"Anything in reserves"

 Kain wrote:
I've found that the weakest link in most of the formations are surprise surprise; the Warriors due to their inherent squishiness against mid-power and high-power weapons.

With how pricey they are and how easily they go splat it's a bit hard to get them to pull their own weight before a riptide instagibs them or they get splattered by Karandras.

I'm usually inclined to keep them cheap but this makes gibbing them easier. I've settled on giving them toxin sacs, deathspitters, and rending claws for a reasonably TAC load-out. Sometimes I throw on adrenal glands too if I feel the need to hit at S5 at the start of combat.

I'd love to hear (from others too) how this kind of Warrior loadout typically performs. My gut reaction is that this is the perfect example of a sunk-cost fallacy. The extra points you're sinking into the unit doesn't really make it anymore resilent - anything likely to charge it is going to have at least I4 and land some hits, plus have far better wounds/armour for absorbing return damage. Even with these upgrades, Warriors won't be throwing out enough attacks to block anything more than a casual assault.

In my mind that's 30-45pts sunk that could have been better spent on a Venomthrope to protect them from fire, on Regeneration to keep your Hive Tyrant alive, or simply just on another Warrior to absorb damage / inflict more attacks.

As for fixing Warriors, I think changing their default loadouts and upgrade costs would go a long way. Leave them at 30pts, but include the Deathspitter as the default weapon. Allow it to be swapped with ScyTals, Rending Claws, or twin-linked Devourers for free.