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 NenkotaMoon wrote:
Well now Tyranids are Immune, this time with no losses possible from moral from what the preview said.

No?

They increased synapse range from 6"-12" IIRC (thats the fearless bit)
while Instinctive Behavior (the rule that penalizes you in addition to normal morale applying when out of synapse) was increased to 24".

the_scotsman wrote:

 NenkotaMoon wrote:
Well now Tyranids are Immune, this time with no losses possible from moral from what the preview said.

No?

They increased synapse range from 6"-12" IIRC (thats the fearless bit)
while Instinctive Behavior (the rule that penalizes you in addition to normal morale applying when out of synapse) was increased to 24".

Yes?

The rule does say;

Synapse

"<Hive Fleet> units automatically pass morale tests if they are within 12" of any friendly <Hive Fleet> units with this ability"

Found here.

So they're immune if they're within 12" of a synapse unit.

Tyran wrote:
Only if they cost 3 pts each and have a 5+ armor. Oh and get orders that basically duplicate their firepower and a few other tricks.

So yeah no.

That's cute. Gaunts are going to be just as big of a deal as Conscripts were, thanks to Hive Tyrants having an 18" Synapse and normal Synapse critters sitting at 12".

I wonder if the new age of Tyranid super swarms will rise?

And people thought conscripts were bad enough for a screen!

Of course, Tyranids don't have anything nearly as hard to shift as Conscripts, and their Synapse generators are mostly things that you can shoot at. The cheapest Termagants cost the same as Infantry and have worse guns and worse saves. Synapse with character protection costs at least 90 points, I think.

Could it be that different armies work in different ways with the same rules because the total picture is different?

Nah that would be ludicrous...

 Blacksails wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 NenkotaMoon wrote:
Well now Tyranids are Immune, this time with no losses possible from moral from what the preview said.

No?

They increased synapse range from 6"-12" IIRC (thats the fearless bit)
while Instinctive Behavior (the rule that penalizes you in addition to normal morale applying when out of synapse) was increased to 24".

Yes?

The rule does say;

Synapse

"<Hive Fleet> units automatically pass morale tests if they are within 12" of any friendly <Hive Fleet> units with this ability"

Found here.

So they're immune if they're within 12" of a synapse unit.

I think he's disputing the "now" part. There's nothing new about synapse doing that, it's always done it, the only thing it changed is the range.

 ross-128 wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 NenkotaMoon wrote:
Well now Tyranids are Immune, this time with no losses possible from moral from what the preview said.

No?

They increased synapse range from 6"-12" IIRC (thats the fearless bit)
while Instinctive Behavior (the rule that penalizes you in addition to normal morale applying when out of synapse) was increased to 24".

Yes?

The rule does say;

Synapse

"<Hive Fleet> units automatically pass morale tests if they are within 12" of any friendly <Hive Fleet> units with this ability"

Found here.

So they're immune if they're within 12" of a synapse unit.

I think he's disputing the "now" part. There's nothing new about synapse doing that, it's always done it, the only thing it changed is the range.

That's fair. Either way, we all agree that they're immune, the range got buffed, and IB is far less punishing. All good things for the Nids.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Tyran wrote:
Only if they cost 3 pts each and have a 5+ armor. Oh and get orders that basically duplicate their firepower and a few other tricks.

So yeah no.

That's cute. Gaunts are going to be just as big of a deal as Conscripts were, thanks to Hive Tyrants having an 18" Synapse and normal Synapse critters sitting at 12".

No way. Different cost, different role, different army.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Of course, Tyranids don't have anything nearly as hard to shift as Conscripts, and their Synapse generators are mostly things that you can shoot at. The cheapest Termagants cost the same as Infantry and have worse guns and worse saves.

You have one point less of a save and your gun is half the range but Assault instead of Rapid Fire...however you're equal to a Guardsman in terms of WS/BS.

Synapse with character protection costs at least 90 points, I think.

But there's the rub. You don't need Synapse to be on a character. Tyranids aren't just sitting on characters for their Synapse. There are units and even Fortifications that have Synapse or modify it.

A brood of 3 Warriors is 72 points with their basic loadout of Devourers(which I might add are S4 18"--6 inches shy of the basic Guard weapon for an additional point of Strength and being Assault instead of Rapid Fire) and Scything Talons. That's a Troops choice granting a 12 inch bubble of morale immunity.
Can they be targeted immediately? Sure.
But you can then park a Tyranid Prime(104 points) within 6" of the Warriors to add 1 to the Warriors' Hit rolls, granting effectively 18" of Synapse coverage between the two units and bolstering the combat capabilities of one of your Synapse units and adding a bit of immunity to targeting to one of your Synapse creatures.

For all the whining you have been doing concerning Guard and Conscripts+Commissars in particular, it's not surprising you completely miss the point and definitely not surprising to see you be so hypocritical.

Yeah, a 'nid prime is kind of a beast to begin with. The synapse and +1 to hit (in shooting AND melee) aura are icing on the cake.

Especially once they hit melee (and even ranged-equipped Warriors REALLY want to be in melee), where they'll be hitting on 2+ re-rolling 1s.

Yeah Synapse is definitely not the Tyranid aura ability. The +1 To-Hit is.

 Kanluwen wrote:

You have one point less of a save and your gun is half the range but Assault instead of Rapid Fire

Right. So, like I said, they have a worse save and a worse gun. I mean, the math here is pretty clear. Conscripts are 67% more durable per point than cheap Termagants in the face of AP0 shooting. Meanwhile the Termagants shoot worse than Conscripts inside 12", can't shoot to 24" at all, and are only about 14% shootier when they advance to hit something that would otherwise be between 12" and 24" of the Conscripts. Fearless Termagants are just far less good than fearless Conscripts.

But there's the rub. You don't need Synapse to be on a character. Tyranids aren't just sitting on characters for their Synapse. There are units and even Fortifications that have Synapse or modify it.

A brood of 3 Warriors is 72 points with their basic loadout of Devourers(which I might add are S4 18"--6 inches shy of the basic Guard weapon for an additional point of Strength and being Assault instead of Rapid Fire) and Scything Talons. That's a Troops choice granting a 12 inch bubble of morale immunity.
Can they be targeted immediately? Sure.
But you can then park a Tyranid Prime(104 points) within 6" of the Warriors to add 1 to the Warriors' Hit rolls, granting effectively 18" of Synapse coverage between the two units and bolstering the combat capabilities of one of your Synapse units and adding a bit of immunity to targeting to one of your Synapse creatures.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. The problem people had with Conscripts and Commissars is that the Conscripts were basically impossible to remove efficiently and you also couldn't do anything about the Commissar, who was dirt cheap. You're having to pay a lot more here to get fearless on your gaunts, and as I pointed out above they're not nearly as hard to kill as Conscripts anyway. I'm not really sure why you're even bringing the Warriors. So, okay, maybe there's a Tyranid Prime keeping the gaunts in line. He's about triple the cost of a Commissar and his buff is not worth a whole lot unless you're bringing lots more Warriors. In this case, just kill them with bolters -- that actually works on gaunts, unlike Conscripts.

I'm still not sure why people calculate "durability per point" as if that means anything.

A unit takes up space on the board, so its physical size effects how well it screens (which is better, 30 1 wound T1 models, or 1 30 wound T1 model, if every model is on a 25mm base)?

A unit can be buffed with in-game abilities that drastically alter its relative "whatever per point"? (Tell me which got more models for cheaper, a 20 man Termagant squad that regenerated 10 models per turn for 6 turns and therefore was worth 70 models or a 30 man conscript squad who dies)?

A unit can be subjected to things on the table top which affect its relative durability (Will Tyranids have the Catalyst power giving Gaunts an extra 5+ FNP like Disgustingly Resilient)?

There is much much much much much more to a given unit than "whatever per point". There is much more to this game than math.

"I'm still not sure why people calculate "durability per point" as if that means anything."

It means a LOT. It's why upgrading marines makes them more fragile.

"There is much more to this game than math."

Not really. These additional effects you describe is just MORE math.

Honestly I'm a Tyranid player (with about 4000 points worth of them) and with all the things we're getting, I'm genuinely puzzled as to why there isn't a billion threads popping up condemning us like they did with Guard, since we're essentially receiving better versions of everything people complained about them (and depending on how GSC works, we might actually get everything they have).

I think most people just hate soup, but can't hate on marines (because it ain't cool no more) nor SoB (because the internet will maul you) so they went after guard because, reasons.

Termagants aren't conscripts or guardsmen. Termagants aren't screening for manticores and wyverns.

Martel732 wrote:
"I'm still not sure why people calculate "durability per point" as if that means anything."

It means a LOT. It's why upgrading marines makes them more fragile.

"There is much more to this game than math."

Not really. These additional effects you describe is just MORE math.

It doesn't have any meaning at all - it makes them more fragile per point which is silly.

Mathematically describe to me the effect on the opponent's psychology of me deploying 3 Baneblades, even if their list has sufficient anti-tank to counter it.

Mathematically describe to me the likelyhood that any given opponent will make a tactical mistake because his wife yelled at him that morning and he is distracted.

Mathematically describe to me the probability that any given game I play will be executed flawlessly on my part.

Mathematically describe to me if being salty affects one's win-rate or not.

Mathematically describe to me what flawless execution even is.

No matter how much you rant and rave, it doesn't change the mathematical nature of this game. Some units are objectively superior played out over many iterations. The other stuff you listed are considerations, but fundamentally don't change long-term trends.

Fragility per point is a critical stat because it determines how easily your opponent can remove your points from the table. At the end of the day, you have points on the table, not just models.

I think I want to lay off hating on guard so much. Initially it looked like the eldar release was going to be weak but then they cut the cost of half the codex by 30%. Now that I have seen tyraind leaks - It is clear. Space marines are just back to having the worst codex in the game again - pigeonholed into using what would be the most gamebreaking unit in any other army (Guilliman) just to be able to compete. GG GW. Good thing I have both eldar and tyranid armies so I can actually enjoy this game.

It is looking for 2nd ed esque in terms of pecking order.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

You have one point less of a save and your gun is half the range but Assault instead of Rapid Fire

Right. So, like I said, they have a worse save and a worse gun. I mean, the math here is pretty clear. Conscripts are 67% more durable per point than cheap Termagants in the face of AP0 shooting. Meanwhile the Termagants shoot worse than Conscripts inside 12", can't shoot to 24" at all, and are only about 14% shootier when they advance to hit something that would otherwise be between 12" and 24" of the Conscripts. Fearless Termagants are just far less good than fearless Conscripts.

And what's making those Conscripts more durable?
Oh right...a Commissar, who just got nerfed to hell and back again while the Synapse range just got extended for the same effect.

But there's the rub. You don't need Synapse to be on a character. Tyranids aren't just sitting on characters for their Synapse. There are units and even Fortifications that have Synapse or modify it.

A brood of 3 Warriors is 72 points with their basic loadout of Devourers(which I might add are S4 18"--6 inches shy of the basic Guard weapon for an additional point of Strength and being Assault instead of Rapid Fire) and Scything Talons. That's a Troops choice granting a 12 inch bubble of morale immunity.
Can they be targeted immediately? Sure.
But you can then park a Tyranid Prime(104 points) within 6" of the Warriors to add 1 to the Warriors' Hit rolls, granting effectively 18" of Synapse coverage between the two units and bolstering the combat capabilities of one of your Synapse units and adding a bit of immunity to targeting to one of your Synapse creatures.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. The problem people had with Conscripts and Commissars is that the Conscripts were basically impossible to remove efficiently and you also couldn't do anything about the Commissar, who was dirt cheap. You're having to pay a lot more here to get fearless on your gaunts, and as I pointed out above they're not nearly as hard to kill as Conscripts anyway. I'm not really sure why you're even bringing the Warriors. So, okay, maybe there's a Tyranid Prime keeping the gaunts in line. He's about triple the cost of a Commissar and his buff is not worth a whole lot unless you're bringing lots more Warriors. In this case, just kill them with bolters -- that actually works on gaunts, unlike Conscripts.

You claimed that you had to spend "at least 90 points" in order to bring Synapse that gets character protection, which I might add is a rather arbitrary goalpost to put up there because y'know, no other army gets anything that brings similar without it being on a character(which means it is on an HQ or Elite choice).

Warriors are a Troops choice that brings Synapse.
When you bring Warriors you get Synapse.
When you bring a Tyranid Prime, he's an HQ choice bringing Synapse while gaining protection for being a character and buffing up your Warriors who you brought along for Synapse.

Now, continue moving those goalposts.

For all the whining you have been doing concerning Guard and Conscripts+Commissars in particular, it's not surprising you completely miss the point and definitely not surprising to see you be so hypocritical.

I genuinely do not know what you are talking about here. I don't think I've been doing anything that could reasonably be characterized as whining about Guard in general. My expressed position on the new Guard codex is that it's generally very good, if on the strong side, and I've been consistently arguing that, e.g., the Leman Russ buff and doctrines on everything are not appropriate things to complain about. I've said I'm worried about Shadowswords. I think the only thing that I've said is clearly too cheap relative to stuff other people have is the Astropath. But yeah, I thought Conscripts were too good. It is not surprising to see you completely miss the point that they were good because of how durable and dangerous they were for their cost, and not because of some hand-wavy qualitative argument like you're making here. You have a huge persecution complex on this topic.

One look at your posts in the various Guard threads tells anyone what they need to know.

You love to talk about the "cost" while completely failing to factor in things like, oh, basic board setups.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I'm still not sure why people calculate "durability per point" as if that means anything.

A unit takes up space on the board, so its physical size effects how well it screens (which is better, 30 1 wound T1 models, or 1 30 wound T1 model, if every model is on a 25mm base)?

A unit can be buffed with in-game abilities that drastically alter its relative "whatever per point"? (Tell me which got more models for cheaper, a 20 man Termagant squad that regenerated 10 models per turn for 6 turns and therefore was worth 70 models or a 30 man conscript squad who dies)?

A unit can be subjected to things on the table top which affect its relative durability (Will Tyranids have the Catalyst power giving Gaunts an extra 5+ FNP like Disgustingly Resilient)?

There is much much much much much more to a given unit than "whatever per point". There is much more to this game than math.

I mean, it's striking that when you look at the units people actually have a lot of success with in competitive play, the math also says they're good units. Mathhammer has been wildly successful at predicting what's good in 8th. Mostly your hypotheticals are silly and unrealistic. No one is comparing a swarm of 1 wound models to a single 30 wound model. For example, the comparison I just made was between Conscripts, Infantry, and Fleshborer Termagants. These are 3 and 4 point models that take up pretty similar amounts of space. It matters that Conscripts are more durable and shoot better than Termagants.

The Tervigon thing is just incoherent. You're trying to argue that the game as it is actually played on the tabletop is more complicated than I'm making it out to be -- and to some extent this is true -- but then your example of how this can be so is something that has literally never happened on the tabletop. 20-strong gaunt squads don't get reinforced by 10 every turn for 6 turns. It just doesn't happen. This is the irrelevant mathhammer. It's like arguing that Necron Warriors are insanely durable because if they get killed down to 1 model each turn you get a whole lot out of Reanimation Protocols. What happens in real games is that the whole squad gets wiped. And so if you're doing reasonable mathhammer you account for this. You don't assume that things work out that way. Instead you use your experience playing actual games to inform what kinds of scenarios you calculate numbers for.

Also, everyone has buffs. Sure, we could spend some more time looking at these, but I think other threads have done this. I don't know that Gaunts have anything nearly as good as FRFSRF used to be. It seems kind of silly to waste Catalyst on a Termagant squad -- again this strikes me as irrelevant mathhammer divorced from any understanding of how the game actually plays. The bigger deal for Termagants will be Hive Fleet Tactics, since there appear to be some solid defensive ones. With always-in-cover the Conscripts are only 33% more durable than Termagants vs AP0, although to be fair if we're giving the Conscripts a doctrine too they have some good options.

Martel732 wrote:No matter how much you rant and rave, it doesn't change the mathematical nature of this game. Some units are objectively superior played out over many iterations. The other stuff you listed are considerations, but fundamentally don't change long-term trends.

Fragility per point is a critical stat because it determines how easily your opponent can remove your points from the table. At the end of the day, you have points on the table, not just models.

You have models on the table, not points. Heck, if conscripts had exactly the same durability per point but only took up the space of a single 25mm base, then you'd not have anything to complain about. That by itself proves that models are still important.

Xenomancers wrote:I think I want to lay off hating on guard so much. Initially it looked like the eldar release was going to be weak but then they cut the cost of half the codex by 30%. Now that I have seen tyraind leaks - It is clear. Space marines are just back to having the worst codex in the game again - pigeonholed into using what would be the most gamebreaking unit in any other army (Guilliman) just to be able to compete. GG GW. Good thing I have both eldar and tyranid armies so I can actually enjoy this game.

Space Marines sure are. I wish the best for those poor downtrodden Space Marines, always at the bottom of tournaments year after year. I mean, it must be truly awful to have 1/3rd of all the tournament wins instead of all of them. As a Sororitas player, I deeply sympathize, and would gladly trade you my 0 tournament wins if it makes you feel better.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Honestly I'm a Tyranid player (with about 4000 points worth of them) and with all the things we're getting, I'm genuinely puzzled as to why there isn't a billion threads popping up condemning us like they did with Guard, since we're essentially receiving better versions of everything people complained about them (and depending on how GSC works, we might actually get everything they have).

I think most people just hate soup, but can't hate on marines (because it ain't cool no more) nor SoB (because the internet will maul you) so they went after guard because, reasons.

No it's not that. It's the fact that tyranids have worse durability and are coming to you. They can't camp in their deployment zone and crush you with artillery (they could try but it wouldn't work). Even if you lose to the tyranids - it was probably a fun game reminiscent of star-ship troopers or something. Losing to gaurd you just wish you never played the game and did something more interesting with your day. This is ofc speaking to the original release of the gard codex. Now seeing eldar and nids leaks. I'm not certain they are going to dominate the game anymore. It's probably going to be the eldar or nids pretty soon.

"That by itself proves that models are still important. "

No, it doesn't. Conscripts are still points on the table that happen to take up space cheaply and efficiently. Yes, models matter, but points matter more.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I think I want to lay off hating on guard so much. Initially it looked like the eldar release was going to be weak but then they cut the cost of half the codex by 30%. Now that I have seen tyraind leaks - It is clear. Space marines are just back to having the worst codex in the game again - pigeonholed into using what would be the most gamebreaking unit in any other army (Guilliman) just to be able to compete. GG GW. Good thing I have both eldar and tyranid armies so I can actually enjoy this game.

When was the last time Marines had the worst codex in the game?

To be fair I really don't consider sisters of battle an army. It's a space marine spoof army. They have always had OP rules too - they just suffer for the same reason as space marines. Their power armor sucks.

Martel732 wrote:
"That by itself proves that models are still important. "

No, it doesn't. Conscripts are still points on the table that happen to take up space cheaply and efficiently. Yes, models matter, but points matter more.

No, no they don't.

If you truly believe that, then surely you must believe that over the long run games are completely mathematically predictable. Do you think you could predict the winrate of a given Imperial Guard army over, say, 50 games?

 Blacksails wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I think I want to lay off hating on guard so much. Initially it looked like the eldar release was going to be weak but then they cut the cost of half the codex by 30%. Now that I have seen tyraind leaks - It is clear. Space marines are just back to having the worst codex in the game again - pigeonholed into using what would be the most gamebreaking unit in any other army (Guilliman) just to be able to compete. GG GW. Good thing I have both eldar and tyranid armies so I can actually enjoy this game.

When was the last time Marines had the worst codex in the game?

2nd ed.