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WhiteDog wrote:
Seeing those batrep, it seems like 6ed 40K is now all about taking liberties with the force organisation, through allies, and now formations. I like the idea in a sense, as those nids formations gives us a lot of possibilities to build up a diverse and interesting list, but at the same time it bothers me somehow.

Yeah, it's got its ups and downs. Some armies can totally abuse it, while other armies need it just to be viable in a competitive setting.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Maybe they'll do away with the FOC in the next edition and go to percentages like Fantasy.

You may be right. I do see it heading towards the direction of Fantasy. Now you've got Look-Out-Sirs, random charge lengths, an increased role for psychic powers (a la Fantasy magic), Storm of Magic, etc. There are a lot of similarities and I can definitely see the publishers looking to Fantasy for some inspiration in terms of game design.

Polythemus wrote:
Jy2 although you seem to be a nice person, i root against you everytime and feel justified in doing so. Being a dark angel only player its nice to see my nemesis (wriathwing necrons) feel the hurt. I'm glad that the maligned tyranids seem to have a couple of viable builds with the newest dataslate. i do feel however that we just witnessed a meta shift in this game and like the resilience of necrons which can be hard to deal with i feel that tyranids are about to explode.

as an aside i think this is a good example of how GW buisness strategy needs an update. I recently read on feait 212 that after polling customers, a survey found that buyers buy models for their looks over their rules. that may be true up to a point but when buying hordes of models is made so palatable by effective rules more people are likely to buy more models. before this data slate people might have had a few gargoyles or flying monsterous creatures, now they are likely to buy more and its entirely due to the rule set.

Haha....no worries. I think sometimes when one wins too much, his opponents start becoming the underdogs. A lot of people....including me....like to root for the underdogs. And of course, some people just don't like certain armies (like how I usually root against Eldar or Tau).

Definitely both the models and their rules will affect their sales. A good model with good rules is a winning combo....in terms of $$$ for GW.

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
A great match, and I am glad to see that the Tyranids did so well. That being said, I am really curious about what would have happened in the early game had Geoff not run his fliers off the board. With the numbers he had, and with the scythes not coming on that next turn, I find it more than likely that most of the wraithes would have been quickly destroyed.

That being said, even though Reecius was not there, It seems like he had a hand in the game in spirit, fouling up dice roles left, right, and center. You guys might want to get some virgin dice that he hasn't touched.

They would have got hit by my 3 night scythes that came in from reserves. And without the defense of the venomthrope + ruins, I would have downed probably 3-4 FMC's (2 of those harpies/crons only had 1W remaining). You DON'T really want to assault wraiths with a MSS D-lord, but if you DON"T get into combat, you are going to lose some of those FMC's. Thus, playing defensively was a smart (though conservative) play by my opponent. I think he had more to lose than to gain by giving my flyers the alpha-strike on his FMC's.

Haha....we used our own dice. Can't really blame Reece for that.

The new formation is super nasty. I cannot say whether it is OP as all the components of it are pretty reasonable when looked at individually it just packs so many FMC, great ground presence to tarpit opponents, and has good scoring to top it off that it is practically incomparable to practically any other army.

This natrep gives a nice test run off it but it is hard to say OP or not from it as the dice were wonky. There was also some shell shock I imagine as this type of list wasn't even possible under 2000 pts until this data slate and the garges are a totally new thing that the rules may have been played wrong (they could have been contested by the wraiths or destroyer lords).

InControl was hilarious there. I imagine everyone is really happy that the dataslates came through for the nids. I wonder what the 3rd one will do? It is very possible that the nids+dataslates will turn into a real buffet of an army with a vast number of different good builds.

Looking forward to more nids. Perhaps when frontline gets more crones assembled we could see some nid on nid with the living arty vs skyblight.

I respect Jim a lot. InControl knows what he is doing. I don't think gargoyles are going to be all that popular as they are a pain to model and transport, so there is that. Jim's dice betrayed him plus they didn't play the rule correctly for how gargoyles deny objectives (IMO). If I see repeated winning results across the country I'll become a true believer.

Personally I love Living Artillery Node and it easily integrates into my current list. The main thing here to remember is every time a new internet meta list is born 1000 kittens are sacrificed to the cheese god.

Polythemus wrote:
Jy2 although you seem to be a nice person, i root against you everytime and feel justified in doing so. Being a dark angel only player its nice to see my nemesis (wriathwing necrons) feel the hurt. I'm glad that the maligned tyranids seem to have a couple of viable builds with the newest dataslate. i do feel however that we just witnessed a meta shift in this game and like the resilience of necrons which can be hard to deal with i feel that tyranids are about to explode.

as an aside i think this is a good example of how GW buisness strategy needs an update. I recently read on feait 212 that after polling customers, a survey found that buyers buy models for their looks over their rules. that may be true up to a point but when buying hordes of models is made so palatable by effective rules more people are likely to buy more models. before this data slate people might have had a few gargoyles or flying monsterous creatures, now they are likely to buy more and its entirely due to the rule set.

I wanted to get a few crones anyhow, but not 4. The rules are influencing me to get an additional 2.

Then they will be nerfed. Lol...

 jy2 wrote:

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
A great match, and I am glad to see that the Tyranids did so well. That being said, I am really curious about what would have happened in the early game had Geoff not run his fliers off the board. With the numbers he had, and with the scythes not coming on that next turn, I find it more than likely that most of the wraithes would have been quickly destroyed.

That being said, even though Reecius was not there, It seems like he had a hand in the game in spirit, fouling up dice roles left, right, and center. You guys might want to get some virgin dice that he hasn't touched.

They would have got hit by my 3 night scythes that came in from reserves. And without the defense of the venomthrope + ruins, I would have downed probably 3-4 FMC's (2 of those harpies/crons only had 1W remaining). You DON'T really want to assault wraiths with a MSS D-lord, but if you DON"T get into combat, you are going to lose some of those FMC's. Thus, playing defensively was a smart (though conservative) play by my opponent. I think he had more to lose than to gain by giving my flyers the alpha-strike on his FMC's.

Haha....we used our own dice. Can't really blame Reece for that.

Ah, then running them off definitely was the better move. I don't think I heard Geoff mention how many wounds those birds had left. And I can agree with the MSS. Never had to deal with it personally, but I know what they will do to my warlords when they rock dual boneswords.

 Brothererekose wrote:
I recommend for all who watch these FrontLineGaming batreps, that you make a "Guess When the Noisy Bus Drives By" and note your time before watching.

Just for bragging rights. I anticipated it a lot earlier than 19:42, though. Bonus: We get to actually see it drive by!

InControl, man, you do a great play-by-play game-call.

Jim, it's good to see your 'Crons lose.

Haha....yeah, I think people are starting to hate them again now that more Tau and other players are going back to crons.

BTW, InControl's real life job is a commentator so that is why he is so great at doing those play-by-play comments. He does it for a living!

 Valek wrote:
wish we had some formations for necrons, making those underplayed units a bit better, as wraithwing seems the only thing that works which is very sad

well played though

Necrons do have the advantage of being great allies to almost any army. That is where you will see the variety for Necrons. Besides wraithwing, I also run my Grey Knightcrons (my Draicronic Measures Grey Knights), Orkcrons, NecrOrks, NecTau and the Chaoscrons....and that is in addition to my Fun-crons as well.

Jdredsox wrote:
So at the moment sky blight has the edge over living artillery? I've watched both reps and I have to say the way that LA tore apart Tau really impressed me (and I love carnifexes). If the rumours of a new edition are true then I imagine a shift away from flyers and FMC may be on the cards. Maybe it's just me though.

Thanks for sharing this rep guys, always enjoy it when you guys post!

You're welcome.

There is no comparison. Living Artillery is fun. You can have good games with it. Skyblight is mind-blowingly good to the point that some will consider OP. You can win tournaments with it.

 Reecius wrote:
Well played, Jim and Geoff! You guys played a great game.

I thought it any list would be able to take Skyblight, it would be Jim's Crons.

I honestly wonder if Skyblight is TOO much. It may be OP, we need to try it against a normal army and see if it is even a game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yes, my dice are insane, they never do what I want them to do! lol

Here are my thoughts on Skyblight.

DON'T ban it. It's good. So was CronAir when it first came out. So was Tzeentch Flamer/Screamer-spam when it first came out. So was Daemon FMC-spam and Necron Wraithwing. So were Tau and Eldar. However, people still played through them. They will continue to do so with Skyblight Tyranids. It's good but it isn't re-rollabe 2++ crazy-good. The only thing I think that can be "adjusted" or "clarified" (i.e. nerfed) would be the gargoyles claiming/contesting part. Just like what you did with the re-rollable 2+/4+ bit. But that is as far as I would recommend. There are a lot of armies that can give Skyblight builds problems. However, the only problem currently is that TAC armies will now have to be able to deal with Ovesastars, Wraithwing Necrons, Seer Council/Beaststar DE, White Scars and now Skyblight bugs as well in a tournament setting.

 Tomb King wrote:

 Reecius wrote:
Well played, Jim and Geoff! You guys played a great game.

I thought it any list would be able to take Skyblight, it would be Jim's Crons.

I honestly wonder if Skyblight is TOO much. It may be OP, we need to try it against a normal army and see if it is even a game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yes, my dice are insane, they never do what I want them to do! lol

Yea I am with you on the OP assessment. TBH this isn't a meta switch if it isn't allowed and I am not certain it will be. It will be interesting to see what the major GT's allow and don't allow.

It's not so bad that it should be banned. It is no worse than any of the other top-tier armies currently.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
This is one game. It is good but to be honest I don't necessarily think it is that good.

I can see some potential problem matchups with it, but it is definitely good enough to hang with the "big boys" in tournament play.

DarthDiggler wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:
This is one game. It is good but to be honest I don't necessarily think it is that good.

I agree. Marine bike lists can pack 3 Stalkers fairly easy. The Stalkers already help vs Heldrakes. If this bug list starts popping up, then it wouldn't take much to take 3 Stalkers.

Pack 3 stalkers and you miss out on the TFC. That would be a big mistake. You need barrage sniping to deal with the seer councils/beaststars as well as infantry (and those blasted regenerating gargoyles as well, especially if Skyblight players take them in units of 15-20).

 ansacs wrote:
The new formation is super nasty. I cannot say whether it is OP as all the components of it are pretty reasonable when looked at individually it just packs so many FMC, great ground presence to tarpit opponents, and has good scoring to top it off that it is practically incomparable to practically any other army.

This natrep gives a nice test run off it but it is hard to say OP or not from it as the dice were wonky. There was also some shell shock I imagine as this type of list wasn't even possible under 2000 pts until this data slate and the garges are a totally new thing that the rules may have been played wrong (they could have been contested by the wraiths or destroyer lords).

InControl was hilarious there. I imagine everyone is really happy that the dataslates came through for the nids. I wonder what the 3rd one will do? It is very possible that the nids+dataslates will turn into a real buffet of an army with a vast number of different good builds.

Looking forward to more nids. Perhaps when frontline gets more crones assembled we could see some nid on nid with the living arty vs skyblight.

OP is really subjective. Against normal lists, yes, many would probably consider it OP. Then again, many would consider any of the top tier lists OP as well. I don't believe it would be fair to compare Skyblight to a normal list however. You need to compare it to the other top tournament armies and in that regards, no, it definitely isn't OP. I definitely had confidence that my necrons can beat this Tyranid army if it wasn't for the dice failing on my part in the 2nd half of the game.

However, I definitely don't recommend someone to take this army to his local gaming store (LGS) and using it against Joe Casual or John Newbie.

I know Tyranid players will definitely be happy for the new Dataslates. And to think that we still have 1 more dataslate coming up....

I will tell you exactly how it will go between Living Artillery and Skyblight builds. Here you have an army that fires mainly blasts against a mainly flyer army that they can't really hurt. Hmmmm....I wonder who I should put my money on.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
I respect Jim a lot. InControl knows what he is doing. I don't think gargoyles are going to be all that popular as they are a pain to model and transport, so there is that. Jim's dice betrayed him plus they didn't play the rule correctly for how gargoyles deny objectives (IMO). If I see repeated winning results across the country I'll become a true believer.

Personally I love Living Artillery Node and it easily integrates into my current list. The main thing here to remember is every time a new internet meta list is born 1000 kittens are sacrificed to the cheese god.

Some good points.

On the flip side, Geoff didn't really know how to use his Harpies, my Lords got back up 4 times and with all my shooting, I only managed to kill 3 FMC's. For the gargoyles, I see most Skyblight armies easily running 40-50 of them. To those folks, good luck building/painting that many!

You will see bugs winning tournaments. All you really need to do to see how good they are is to challenge Jifel to a game and have him run/proxy the formation.

Living Artillery is good. It would be what I would personally run on a more casual basis. It adds just enough zing to the army without obliterating most normal lists.

SBG wrote:

Polythemus wrote:
Jy2 although you seem to be a nice person, i root against you everytime and feel justified in doing so. Being a dark angel only player its nice to see my nemesis (wriathwing necrons) feel the hurt. I'm glad that the maligned tyranids seem to have a couple of viable builds with the newest dataslate. i do feel however that we just witnessed a meta shift in this game and like the resilience of necrons which can be hard to deal with i feel that tyranids are about to explode.

as an aside i think this is a good example of how GW buisness strategy needs an update. I recently read on feait 212 that after polling customers, a survey found that buyers buy models for their looks over their rules. that may be true up to a point but when buying hordes of models is made so palatable by effective rules more people are likely to buy more models. before this data slate people might have had a few gargoyles or flying monsterous creatures, now they are likely to buy more and its entirely due to the rule set.

I wanted to get a few crones anyhow, but not 4. The rules are influencing me to get an additional 2.

Then they will be nerfed. Lol...

You could just run 3 (magnetized to be interchangeable, of course) and then run the other Tyranid units. Units such as mawlocs, dakkafexes, biovores and tervigons are still good. And then you've got the trygon. He actually synergizes well with the Skyblight formation. His trygon tunnel can be placed strategically to allow gargoyles to re-enter play in more advantageous positions.

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:

Spoiler:

 jy2 wrote:

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
A great match, and I am glad to see that the Tyranids did so well. That being said, I am really curious about what would have happened in the early game had Geoff not run his fliers off the board. With the numbers he had, and with the scythes not coming on that next turn, I find it more than likely that most of the wraithes would have been quickly destroyed.

That being said, even though Reecius was not there, It seems like he had a hand in the game in spirit, fouling up dice roles left, right, and center. You guys might want to get some virgin dice that he hasn't touched.

They would have got hit by my 3 night scythes that came in from reserves. And without the defense of the venomthrope + ruins, I would have downed probably 3-4 FMC's (2 of those harpies/crons only had 1W remaining). You DON'T really want to assault wraiths with a MSS D-lord, but if you DON"T get into combat, you are going to lose some of those FMC's. Thus, playing defensively was a smart (though conservative) play by my opponent. I think he had more to lose than to gain by giving my flyers the alpha-strike on his FMC's.

Haha....we used our own dice. Can't really blame Reece for that.

Ah, then running them off definitely was the better move. I don't think I heard Geoff mention how many wounds those birds had left. And I can agree with the MSS. Never had to deal with it personally, but I know what they will do to my warlords when they rock dual boneswords.

My Turn 2 shooting took off 4W on 2 of his FMC's and 1W on a 3rd. I could have very easily finished off those wounded birds had they remained. Moreover, my Warlord got the Warlord Trait where I get +1 VP for winning challenges. He didn't want to give me more VP's in assault with his flyrants.

You can take 3 Stalkers and a TFC with allies.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
I respect Jim a lot. InControl knows what he is doing. I don't think gargoyles are going to be all that popular as they are a pain to model and transport, so there is that. Jim's dice betrayed him plus they didn't play the rule correctly for how gargoyles deny objectives (IMO). If I see repeated winning results across the country I'll become a true believer.

Personally I love Living Artillery Node and it easily integrates into my current list. The main thing here to remember is every time a new internet meta list is born 1000 kittens are sacrificed to the cheese god.

I can personally attest to how much of a pain Gargoyles are to assemble, paint, and transport... Fortunately I already have 40 of the things! I'm also going to be using the Living Artillery Node at first. I love it and it's easier to put into a list. However, eventually, the Skyblight will make an appearrance when I aquire sufficient FMCs,

 jy2 wrote:

*snip*

You will see bugs winning tournaments. All you really need to do to see how good they are is to challenge Jifel to a game and have him run/proxy the formation.

*snip*

Saturday ?

I have faced gargs many times.

I like LAN since I take all those broods already.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Saturday ?

I should be good for then.

Geoff made a lot of mistakes. Overwatch killing the crone, poor use of his spore cysyts - which could have cleared immortals - and more. As to whether it was a good tactic to leave the board or not - well I think there is merit in both approaches.

The thing is even with mistakes being made Geoff was able to win. This speaks to the strength of the formation. The game was close but Jim - you rolled pretty well on those D-lords; if the ganme had ended a turn earlier you would have had no chance at all; you are way more experienced with your tournament hardened list than Geoff using the models available to put one together.

So all in all a rather impressive victory. And Jim - I was rooting for you. I respect anyone who fields Necrons without crutches (no allies - no dataslates). Your list is clean.

I should start renting our my Tyranidss to local players who need more gargolyes and FMCs.

Objective secured is simply an attempt to balance the last turn advantage that Eldar/Necrons etc have of just turbo-boosting to objectives. It is no more OP than that. It turns the game back into more of a fight, than a hide and seek until the last turn.

As for the 7 FMCs.. they are definitely not OP. A Quad gun makes Harpies cry... even grounding tests do.

Fragile wrote:
Objective secured is simply an attempt to balance the last turn advantage that Eldar/Necrons etc have of just turbo-boosting to objectives. It is no more OP than that. It turns the game back into more of a fight, than a hide and seek until the last turn.

As for the 7 FMCs.. they are definitely not OP. A Quad gun makes Harpies cry... even grounding tests do.

I agree 100% with this. Gargoyles are a counter to the Jetbikes/Necron objective grabbers but are easier to kill. Everyone in the game has access to the Quad Gun and units that can shoot. Enough grounding checks will cause the bugs to fall where you can either assault/shoot them to death. You just need to figure out target priority to take out the units that pose the greater threat to your particular army.

The Skyblight is good, but it isn't broken in the slightest. At BEST you have 30 t3 models on an objective. with a 6+ save. Yes, they score in stupid ways, but really they can be killed. And you get extra T5 4+ FMCs yes. Which can each be killed by a single quadgun, without even stretching the numbers much. Broken is a 2++ re-rollable save, or ignoring cover with Ap. 2 Blasts, or destroying vehicles on a 2+, or moving 48" last turn to grab an objective.

With this you have tough scoring units yes. But, they can be killed, tied up, defended against, and their movement is good, but limited to the point where you can catch them, or see where they're going. You have extras of FMCs that were considered mediocre at first. This will be a good list, a top list, but it is not "broken". If people survived the "dreaded" 9 Night Scythe list, they will survive this.

I think Wave Serp. are OP, I think Sky Blight is OP, and there are plenty of other OP things in 40k. That is just 40k now a days. If you want to compete in tournaments use the OP. If they aren't going to balance 40k then you need to spread the OP around so everyone isn't running the same 1 or 2 armies in the tournament scene.

I like it. I want to see more variety in tournaments. Don't ban anything let the chips fall where they may. I would like to see more armies compete not less. I hope the orcs get a boost when they come out and the guard too.

"But the universe is such a fickle bastard that it's going to give Jim just enough hope to get semi-erect. . . only to crush it in a door jamb"

Lol, I died, have an Exalt.

 astro_nomicon wrote:
"But the universe is such a fickle bastard that it's going to give Jim just enough hope to get semi-erect. . . only to crush it in a door jamb"

Lol, I died, have an Exalt.

This and "Let me interpret Jim cause I have no idea what he is saying". Geoff is hilarious I wished I would've introduced myself at the LVO as I saw him walking around but oh well.

Thanks for the feedback and conversation guys, we appreciate it. Trying to decide what to do, but we have time before we have to make any decisions.

I am not convinced the LAN properly built will be overwhelmed that easily. It has a disadvantage against the FMC but ultimately those are not the units that win the games the gargs, gaunts, and tervi are what win games. All of those will suffer greatly from the LAN firepower and the LAN is cheap enough to get significant TMC or waves of gaunts to help out with the rest. The question is can the LAN kill the SB scoring before the SB kills the LAN's dakka.

I don't play nids myself (I have some of the old space hulk genestealers, lol) but even I am happy the nids got something on the level of top tier. I don't like it when they write dexs that cannot be played against certain lists as it is a blow out. At least if everyone has a tier 1 list then you will see an army from each faction rather than a single army in variants.

Actually I wonder if ToF could write an automatic matchup app that would determine matchups not only on BP but with a variable to avoid similar main detachments to earlier matchups. A bit more complex but I don't know how their program works or is written.

Wonder what Part III will bring ...

Dayum Reecius what a flip flop.

 Ifurita wrote:
Wonder what Part III will bring ...

Well Tyrannofex, Carnifex, Trygons, Mawlocs, Hive Tyrants, Rippers, and Sky-Slashers have failed to receive much attention. (Flyrants kinda feature in the Skyblight, but the normal variety hasn't been seen.

Based on the phases, this will most likely focus on finishing off defenders and consumption... which suggests Rippers, Haruspex and Pyrovores will be buffed. Plus, many of the big heavies remain to be seen...

I predict: And this is just a prediction, I really have no idea!

1 Tyrant/Guard/Warriors formation with buffs to psychic powers
1 Ripper/Warrior formation that can still can't score, making it meh.
1 Haruspex/Pyrovore Formation with a mostly useless special rule
A big "Trygon Assault brood' with 2 Trygons and a Mawloc (maybe a Prime?) and Raveners that is disgustingly good.
A big Carnifex/Tyrannofex wave that is kinda useful and may be nice (think power level of the Living Artillery)

@Dozer

Yeah, they went form gak to shine in the speed of a single download.

Interesting...I remember:
"Nids would be great with more FMCs!"
"We need Without Number back!"
"If only we had more durable scoring units!"

it seems that GW has created a "crowd-sourced codex" for the Tyranids.


I think the real question to ask is what happens if you allow ALL dataslates into tournaments (because that's the only "fair" way to do it). The Tau one could be pretty nasty, but in all honesty I don't think any others are at the same level of that or the Skyblight. I like what some have done and allow 1 extra detachment: an Ally, or a Formation/Dataslate.

Personally, this whole thread is just another knee jerk reaction. So what, Nids beat the Crons. Play that matchup 20 times and see what happens. Until then you have nothing more than a random dice effect and everyone is screaming OP.

Fragile wrote:
Personally, this whole thread is just another knee jerk reaction. So what, Nids beat the Crons. Play that matchup 20 times and see what happens. Until then you have nothing more than a random dice effect and everyone is screaming OP.

I think the majority people are not screaming OP but are actually in favor of keeping the formations as it adds another dimension to the tournament scene. 10-30 T3 models with a 6+ save is not a hard unit to kill by any means.

@Fragile

I don't think anyone is screaming anything, lol. We're just having a discussion.

@greyknight12

We do that in our events: only 2 sources for any army, Formations count as one.

Yes a fun and good discussion it is Reecius.