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What do you think about this statement?

 Traceoftoxin wrote:

If you think Tyranids can't currently give any codex in the game a run for their money in a game that goes to it's natural conclusion, you need to play more. As it stands, the biggest reason Tyranids aren't a top tier tournament codex is you simply cannot play a 100+ model army (That may even have returning models) to turn 5/6 in 2.5 hours. Our book has all the tools to completely dominate objective based games.

It makes me remember a few weeks ago when I asked about gaunt spam lists.

I think it might be true. I've been playing with the Endless Swarm formation and so far it's been a successful list simply because it covers the board, limiting movement for the opponent.

On a related note, is there an official ruling for whether the Endless Swarm Formation has 2 or 3 termagant broods?

Tyran wrote:
What do you think about this statement?

 Traceoftoxin wrote:

If you think Tyranids can't currently give any codex in the game a run for their money in a game that goes to it's natural conclusion, you need to play more. As it stands, the biggest reason Tyranids aren't a top tier tournament codex is you simply cannot play a 100+ model army (That may even have returning models) to turn 5/6 in 2.5 hours. Our book has all the tools to completely dominate objective based games.

It makes me remember a few weeks ago when I asked about gaunt spam lists.

As the horde player, I would normally agree. The differences mostly come from what your opponent brings. I got my oldest friend into the game with IG, and I'm not afraid to admit that as his most often opponent, he brings a solid IG list that is very dangerous to my tyranids, packed with flamers and grenade launchers. Right now, the game is heavily centric on elite small model count armies that can bring overwhelming firepower in as small a package as possible, or just doing something your opponent just cannot stop through MSU spam.

Tyranids field massive hordes quiet easily, but even I will admit that once I drop 150-250 models on the table for even small point games, there is only so much I can do. Templates rip quite a large chunk out of my blobs, and with a lot of the tourney staples currently seeing action, it doesn't take much to completely neuter a blob to the point where I have to pull it back to a rear objective to go to ground while I have fresh blobs take their place.

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
Probably not. It will still be valuable information here if Genestealer Cults are battle brothers with Tyranids.

Unfortunately, I don't see them changing the information and the GSC from Deathwatch are Allies of Convenience........I don't get it

 Battlesong wrote:

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
Probably not. It will still be valuable information here if Genestealer Cults are battle brothers with Tyranids.

Unfortunately, I don't see them changing the information and the GSC from Deathwatch are Allies of Convenience........I don't get it

Hopefully Allies of convenience was a gapstop to stop invis shenanigans. Now that GS cult have their own psy powers they will likely loose invis and can maby be battle brothers again.... I'm being optimistic.

Timeshadow wrote:

 Battlesong wrote:

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
Probably not. It will still be valuable information here if Genestealer Cults are battle brothers with Tyranids.

Unfortunately, I don't see them changing the information and the GSC from Deathwatch are Allies of Convenience........I don't get it

Hopefully Allies of convenience was a gapstop to stop invis shenanigans. Now that GS cult have their own psy powers they will likely loose invis and can maby be battle brothers again.... I'm being optimistic.

invis shenanigans??? What unit in a Tyranid army would it be called over powered on? One MC which dies to heave fire even with Invis on it?? Raveners? Maybe ... nothing realy. Is there a lot of thing it would be helpful on.. Yes a lot of thing.

It was not long ago that Tyranids had full BRB powers and it was not called shenanigans..

Getting really tired people saying that.!!

shadowfinder wrote:

Timeshadow wrote:

 Battlesong wrote:

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
Probably not. It will still be valuable information here if Genestealer Cults are battle brothers with Tyranids.

Unfortunately, I don't see them changing the information and the GSC from Deathwatch are Allies of Convenience........I don't get it

Hopefully Allies of convenience was a gapstop to stop invis shenanigans. Now that GS cult have their own psy powers they will likely loose invis and can maby be battle brothers again.... I'm being optimistic.

invis shenanigans??? What unit in a Tyranid army would it be called over powered on? One MC which dies to heave fire even with Invis on it?? Raveners? Maybe ... nothing realy. Is there a lot of thing it would be helpful on.. Yes a lot of thing.

It was not long ago that Tyranids had full BRB powers and it was not called shenanigans..

Getting really tired people saying that.!!

I agree that invisible nids are no worse than I've seen from other Armies but it seems that GW thinks differently. As I mentioned before it gives us a non flyrant tool in the box which is a good thing.

shadowfinder wrote:

Timeshadow wrote:

 Battlesong wrote:

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
Probably not. It will still be valuable information here if Genestealer Cults are battle brothers with Tyranids.

Unfortunately, I don't see them changing the information and the GSC from Deathwatch are Allies of Convenience........I don't get it

Hopefully Allies of convenience was a gapstop to stop invis shenanigans. Now that GS cult have their own psy powers they will likely loose invis and can maby be battle brothers again.... I'm being optimistic.

invis shenanigans??? What unit in a Tyranid army would it be called over powered on? One MC which dies to heave fire even with Invis on it?? Raveners? Maybe ... nothing realy. Is there a lot of thing it would be helpful on.. Yes a lot of thing.

It was not long ago that Tyranids had full BRB powers and it was not called shenanigans..

Getting really tired people saying that.!!

I miss having Biomancy. It would ramp the codex up another tier with just that change alone. After seeing the leaked GSC rules, the cynic in me half way thinks that they were made allies of convenience just so Nids wouldn't have access to biomancy again.

Well, purestrains got a massive boost in GSC. Either they'll update them in Codex: Nids, or boot them out of the codex.

GSC GS are also elites, so never OS. They're really solid, but HNR is a really big deal for GS, especially Troops GS. Means you can hit a unit, then bounce out to grab an objective. Would be nice to get stealth/HNR on Nid stealers, if we got the 3A then I'd reckon they would be a very common entry.

Looking like the Patriarch+GS formation may be a really good addition to a normal Nid army, as from what I've read it looks like that gets 3 rolls on the ambush table?

While the pick your ambush warlord trait is amazing, I'm not sure I'd want to make a Patriarch my warlord.

The REAL show stopper in that book, from what I'm gathering, is the 8(9?) point guys with 3A and rending who can take an open topped transport. That puts Boyz to shame. Even 1 of those hitting most things in the game will be quite painful. Against deathstar units, you could easily slam 4-5 of them into it from multiple sides, heavily splitting up the enemy's attacks while pouring a ton of your own in. Possibility to have a ton of psychic dice to shut down invis is also a really big deal.

The familiars are REALLY good, basically a GS attack profile for 5 points, no reason to never spend the 10 points and put 2 of those on a patriarch.

Lots of good stuff in this book, although I don't know how it'll do for staying power in long games. The shadows/ambush looks like it could be really powerful for objective grabbing and keeping backfield units from being chipped away.

Interested to have a full copy of the book in the coming days.

So I see people talking how GSC is going to use Tyranids to improve their army filling holes such as anit air flyrants but now we have access to some decent mid/long range firepower from GSC allies. Also with GSC Genestealers allied in there will never be a reason to use our Genestealers again (rippers/gaunts are much better/cheaper OS Troops than Stealers)

I'm kind of bummed out that GW decided to make Genestealer Cult AoC with IG, as it might very well be that in a while we till think of Genestealer Cult as a prolongation of IG, and not of Tyranids.

I have a hunch that IG benefits more from GC than Tyranids do. And that's a hard pill to swallow.

At the very least an GC/IG army should be forced to have the GC as the primary detachment, seeing how the only instance they would play nice with eachother would be with IG as tools in the hands of the Cult. IG could never use and trust units of traitorous alien half-breed guards, who wants to slaughter all non-Tyranids. It defies all logic. Once the Genestealer Cult set their century old plan in motion and uncover their horrible monstrous off-spring to ravage the planet, they wont join forces with any human scum against any third party, and even less will they be enlisted in the armies of the Imperium.

"How did we win against the Genestealer Cult general?"
"Why, we recruted them of course! It was scary for a few hours, but as it turned out they were merely cold and hungry and wanted nice bunk-beds to sleep in."

 N.I.B. wrote:
I'm kind of bummed out that GW decided to make Genestealer Cult AoC with IG, as it might very well be that in a while we till think of Genestealer Cult as a prolongation of IG, and not of Tyranids.

I have a hunch that IG benefits more from GC than Tyranids do. And that's a hard pill to swallow.

At the very least an GC/IG army should be forced to have the GC as the primary detachment, seeing how the only instance they would play nice with eachother would be with IG as tools in the hands of the Cult. IG could never use and trust units of traitorous alien half-breed guards, who wants to slaughter all non-Tyranids. It defies all logic. Once the Genestealer Cult set their century old plan in motion and uncover their horrible monstrous off-spring to ravage the planet, they wont join forces with any human scum against any third party, and even less will they be enlisted in the armies of the Imperium.

"How did we win against the Genestealer Cult general?"
"Why, we recruted them of course! It was scary for a few hours, but as it turned out they were merely cold and hungry and wanted nice bunk-beds to sleep in."

Well think of it as a win for Tyranids.

If AM/Guard are allies that means we have our "claws" in those units and they are doing their job.

I could also see if just as or before the Cult is ready to uprise another army comes to invade and the Cult needs to fight alongside the Guard to A) keep control of the world for their gods, and B) the invaders would kill them all such as Necrons or chaos or even Orks so they need to use every tactic at their disposal just to survive. (of course after if they win the cultists need to take over since they can't explain away what just happened, if they don't win it really dosen't matter.)

I'm a bit late, but thanks for your help, guys.
Appreciated it.

 N.I.B. wrote:
I'm kind of bummed out that GW decided to make Genestealer Cult AoC with IG, as it might very well be that in a while we till think of Genestealer Cult as a prolongation of IG, and not of Tyranids.

I have a hunch that IG benefits more from GC than Tyranids do. And that's a hard pill to swallow.

I think both armies can benefit a lot from GSC allies. IG gains some surprisingly mobile objective grabbers, and some nice CC support. Nids gain ranged anti tank and a hedge against deathstars. By anti Deathstar I mean this; the problem Nids have against deathstars is that we tend lose all of our ground units, which forces our air units to land and get mulched. GSCs allow us to play keep away games from the Death Stars. They get close, the unit can go back into reserves and try for another objective next turn. This helps even up the kill point disparity that we usual face.

Overall it's nice to have the options.

If you want a fluffy reason for an IG army to ally in a small number of GS cultists, there are three I can think of pretty easily:

1) The IG leadership doesn't know that the GS cultists are anything other than human. This could be because they were a PDF or militia unit that hasn't been contacted for a while but has made it to the battlefield rendezvous point; "we know we have some forces on the left flank, don't know too much about them, believed to be planetary militia of some kind, by the Emperor they DO seem to be making a mess of those Orks, fantastic." Or it could be that the GS cult has somehow clouded the minds of the Guard -- not to the point of taking them over, just to the point that they do not look too hard for biomorphs.

2) The IG leadership doesn't care that the GS cultists are anything other than human. Desperate times, or rather dodgy Guard, could mean this is the case. The Guard leadership may fully anticipate wiping out the Cult... once this more dangerous threat has been dealt with.

3) Although the Cult is the smaller faction numerically, they have still completely subverted the Guard. Enough of their number have enough positions of power (counting for all purposes as sergeants, command squads, etc.).

Anyone think the advent of the better Stealer stats under GSC will see them drop from the next Nid codex?
Personnally I do.

I don't, as Stealers are Tyranid shock troops.

 Traceoftoxin wrote:
GSC GS are also elites, so never OS. They're really solid, but HNR is a really big deal for GS, especially Troops GS. Means you can hit a unit, then bounce out to grab an objective. Would be nice to get stealth/HNR on Nid stealers, if we got the 3A then I'd reckon they would be a very common entry.

Looking like the Patriarch+GS formation may be a really good addition to a normal Nid army, as from what I've read it looks like that gets 3 rolls on the ambush table?

I have the book and can't see any way that this happens. It's not a formation bonus for gene stealers as far as I can see. The subterranean uprising formation gives you two rolls on the table, increased to three rolls if a primus joins the unit. However, that formation only includes metamorphs, aberrants and acolytes (and of course the primus).

Would love to be missing something, as three rolls on the table actually means that more games than not you'll be assaulting from reserves on either turn 1 or turn 2.

Yeah, looking at it I had just misread. Even still, taking a single subterranean uprisisng formation with nids would be pretty solid.

 Ratius wrote:
Anyone think the advent of the better Stealer stats under GSC will see them drop from the next Nid codex?
Personnally I do.

I don't.

Genestealers in a Tyranid army are spawned, or released from stasis, before the battle.

Genestealers in a Genestealer Cult are born and raised by the cult for years. They are essentially veteran Genestealers.

Mate, fluff = rules.
Nor sales in a new Nid codex.
GSC have trumped any sort of new stealer nid release imo :(

 Ratius wrote:
Mate, fluff = rules.
Nor sales in a new Nid codex.
GSC have trumped any sort of new stealer nid release imo :(

I don't understand your response.

I gave you a reason why the stat lines for Genestealers are different in the two codexes.

You have not provided any reason why Genestealers would dropped from codex Tyranids. They've been in both armies since second edition. They are the only thing that ties the two armies together. Removing them from Tyranids serves no purpose.

The only thing implied by cult stealers having better stats is that the main codex Tyranids may get buffed to match, when the next Tyranids codex comes out.

Ok.
1. the ability to get GS's these days is a penny to a pound (space hulk x3 , 2nd ed, GSC, space crusade)
2. GSC gave them a decent buff
3. Nid codex will get updated
4. GW like sales
5. unless the Nids GS match the GSC (which they wont imho) due to the above
6. GW drops them from the Nid codex
7. new unit / new idea
8. GSC is now the primary driver for GS
9. Nids GS get retconned / new unit in their place.

GW doesn't realize that good rules = sales, as the Maleceptor is a thing. To GW, having GS in both armies means doubling the sales for the same model.

Plus, there are plenty of examples of armies sharing units, or similar units. Practically all the Marine armies are the same units with some different special rules.

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
If you want a fluffy reason for an IG army to ally in a small number of GS cultists, there are three I can think of pretty easily:

1) The IG leadership doesn't know that the GS cultists are anything other than human. This could be because they were a PDF or militia unit that hasn't been contacted for a while but has made it to the battlefield rendezvous point; "we know we have some forces on the left flank, don't know too much about them, believed to be planetary militia of some kind, by the Emperor they DO seem to be making a mess of those Orks, fantastic." Or it could be that the GS cult has somehow clouded the minds of the Guard -- not to the point of taking them over, just to the point that they do not look too hard for biomorphs.

2) The IG leadership doesn't care that the GS cultists are anything other than human. Desperate times, or rather dodgy Guard, could mean this is the case. The Guard leadership may fully anticipate wiping out the Cult... once this more dangerous threat has been dealt with.

3) Although the Cult is the smaller faction numerically, they have still completely subverted the Guard. Enough of their number have enough positions of power (counting for all purposes as sergeants, command squads, etc.).

4) You get a planet as seen in some of the early 40k novels where the planet worship the Emperor as the four armed god, essential seeing the Genestealer as an avatar incarnate of the Emperor. Now you have the Imperial PDF through a warped view of the Imperial Cult believing they are fightin for the Imperium under the leadership of the Four Armed God when lead by the GSC.

The thing about GSC Genestealers vs Nids ones is that they are just better, it "shouldnt" matter why they are better, point for point they are just better in everyway.

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
If you want a fluffy reason for an IG army to ally in a small number of GS cultists, there are three I can think of pretty easily:

1) The IG leadership doesn't know that the GS cultists are anything other than human. This could be because they were a PDF or militia unit that hasn't been contacted for a while but has made it to the battlefield rendezvous point; "we know we have some forces on the left flank, don't know too much about them, believed to be planetary militia of some kind, by the Emperor they DO seem to be making a mess of those Orks, fantastic." Or it could be that the GS cult has somehow clouded the minds of the Guard -- not to the point of taking them over, just to the point that they do not look too hard for biomorphs.

2) The IG leadership doesn't care that the GS cultists are anything other than human. Desperate times, or rather dodgy Guard, could mean this is the case. The Guard leadership may fully anticipate wiping out the Cult... once this more dangerous threat has been dealt with.

3) Although the Cult is the smaller faction numerically, they have still completely subverted the Guard. Enough of their number have enough positions of power (counting for all purposes as sergeants, command squads, etc.).

Your 3) is the only option that makes sense, imo. The Cult has taken over/hypnotized the command of the Imperial forces. It's not like they wouldn't understand that the screeching three-armed monstrocities aren't human, or that they would trust Cult units enough to depend on them following orders.

 Ratius wrote:
Anyone think the advent of the better Stealer stats under GSC will see them drop from the next Nid codex?
Personnally I do.

I'd guess it's a 50/50 chance of Genestealers going the way of Eldar Harlequins and be lifted out of the 'parent' codex.

Call me an optimist, but I'm hoping that we just get GSC stealers in our next dex. Would be some of the best troops of all time, and with the malanthrope's shrouded bubble? Drooling

 luke1705 wrote:
Call me an optimist, but I'm hoping that we just get GSC stealers in our next dex. Would be some of the best troops of all time, and with the malanthrope's shrouded bubble? Drooling

I agree. But...it does violate a "meta" rule; "Tyranids are not allowed nice things"

I think there's a fair chance they'll be upgraded to GSC stats/abilities, but become Elites....I Think I'm "OK" with that...