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Cheers for the comments folks! All helpful!

Currently trying to upload the latest codex editions bit-by-bit on the google drive

 The Warp Forge wrote:
If you played 5th ed. what factions did you play?
Why did you play those factions?
What made those factions you played so much fun? What was the most enjoyable game you had in 5th ed. with this faction?

Long post incoming -

Daemonhunters - My main faction going into late 4th/early 5th after a break. Chosen for the models as on the tabletop they were extremely lacking, pure daemonhunters had this odd defensive but poor at shooting style (stormbolters weren't half bad early on but got weaker and weaker as they faced more vehicles and heavy weapons).
Their terminators and grand master were very solid, and stormtroopers could park cars with the best of them. Ultimately they were more allies than an army, particularly with Witch Hunters as the codex cross-over between the two meant that hybrid lists could be flipped between books with almost no change.
Best game - probably one of the early ones against CSM, where the arrival of the single GKT squad heralded a shift in the game as they shut down psychic powers and went after the daemon prince(s) - albeit very ineffectually if the prince ran off :p Honourable mention to the occasional daemonhost game, they were mostly terrible but sometimes rolled well at opportune moments.

Witch Hunters - My most played faction in 5th. Higher rewards for planning and positioning due to the faith mechanic being used to bypass the defenses of elite unit or to invulnerable up and hold for a turn before deliberately removing squad vets to ensure a well timed squad break/death. The rules effectively punished the opponent for wiping out squads by giving the sisters more faith (and on the flipside damaged squads quickly lost their mojo). Later into 5th the sisters were a high second tier parking lot codex and ran it with more style than most (unless you went all in with stormtroopers for maximum hulls and minimum style) - the witch hunters sisters were one of the better/best mechanised troops choices for some time in an edition where troops were troops and transports were top notch.
On the downside they were very limited and outdated, half my games were trying to find a different list to break up the monotony including krieg inductions and possession rules from the DH codex to make a proto-saint (which turned out to be far too powerful)
Best game - early on in the edition I turned up to a game where the opponent had set up the board and deployed already. Rows of vehicle-blocking mid height walls, range markers, and a chaos army dug in on the high ground with a ton of artillery and a lash prince. With no reason to hold onto faith for the bulk of the army crawling through the killing zone I blew it all on a single seraphim squad which hit and run clean across the board in a series of improbable rolls and invulnerable saves before running out of faith and promptly dying instantly. By that time they had taken out every heavy unit on the board (including the prince) and kept things occupied long enough to the rest of the army to clear the tank traps and sweep up the defenders.
Honourable mention - I told a CSM player I was going to run a penitent list for a change. He turned up with a zerker list full of light troop-mulching units. I turned up with zealots... led by nine penitent engines and karamazov. Turns out that penitents are terrible right up until your opponent doesn't bring anti-armour weapons, and they swept across the board so quickly that the rest of the army couldn't keep pace even at full run.

Sisters of Battle - Late 5th Cruddace. Flipped the faction on its head making troops dead weight, faith non-scaling and mostly unplannable, but also brought out a fair few units that weren't used in the previous book including dominion scouts, affordable retributors, and the ultimate spoiler unit in the form of a literally unkillable celestine. After three editions of running mostly the same lists and units it was a nice change in a way, but overall weaker than the 3e book mostly due to its troops.
Best game - end of 5th against newcrons playing an old spearhead(vehicles) game. The objective was for players to go end to end on a long-length board aiming to push through the midfield clash and reach the opposition deployment zone to score (3-4 turns flat out) with almost all units starting in reserve. The cron player disabled everything I had on the board turn 1 while my return fire (a lot of big guns) killed exactly one Cron... who stood up again. Turn 2 he had his entire army in my deployment zone including multiple flyers and wraith units.
At that point the game was dead and over, or at least it should have been with crons barely any losing models no matter what was thrown at them. Somehow a small bastion of sisters held out in the middle of the deployment zone and then on the last turn the cron player failed _everything_ as his nearly pristine army was wiped off the board by small arms, late arrivials, and stragglers.
By no means a good showing for the sisters, but damn satifying with the cron player going for the wipeout rather than the win and leaning on the vast superiority of his codex over positioning and tactics.

Imperial Guard / Krieg - As inducted units only. The temptation was always there to take less sisters/daemonhunters units in favour of the stronger guard units. Notable for being strong enough to keep the games worst player ever in the fight... almost.
Best game - gunlines and parking lots don't make for the best games, but I do have vague memories of an al'rahem inducted force that rolled in right over the top of a denied flank deployment.

Grey Knights - Played them for a couple of games and shelved them. Night and day compared to the daemonhunters dex in both power and style - they were marine hunters (and nid hunters) at heart, not daemonhunters. Several radically different playable lists and all top tier with some serious shenanigans on top.
Best game - arguably worst game, a doubles match with a nid player against two marine lists. The GK were across the board in stormravens and wrecked both marine players pretty much single handedly before the nid player had much across the midfield line. No tactics, just hammer.

Chaos Marines (4e) - When we ran 'good vs evil' type tournaments i'd usually switch to my chaos force. Tzeentch player at heart but warband player in practice, against marines in the early years of 5th (pre wolves particularly) there was a lot of local superiority to be found in the chaos list - tough fearless objective holding plague marines, the infamous lash which was just as abusive as you might imagine, plenty of big guns, termicide drops, and I was fond of the occasional daemon driveby (4e lesser daemons could be summoned out of a passing rhino directly into close combat). They felt 'old' next to newmarines, but much less vanilla and one up-ed them in a few areas (melta on jump troops!) until later marine+1 books pushed the power level up.
Best game - the opponent had spent a huge chunk of points on a maxed-out marine command unit, 2+/3++ everywhere. The lash prince pushed it back into the corner each turn while the rest of my army ignored them and beat up on the undersized remaining opposition. Not strategic brilliance by any means, but amusing at the time.

Black Templars (4e) - Came about as a result of a 'tale of four gamers' style monthly painting event. When their points were updated mid-5th I ran them for a while - they had a number of units that would be considered 'bad' in the 5e marine book which were actually good when used by the templars - i.e. terminator squad with one heavy weapon vs templar squad with two heavy weapons and tank hunters, and the fairly uninspiring tactical marines vs the minimalistic las-plas units. In particular they were a good foot-based marine army in an age of rhinos and drop pods.
Best game - another denied flank deployment. My usual go-to core unit was a full block of assault terminators with a chaplain, servitors, and champion which promptly mistook itself for an eldar skimmer and zealed clean across the board in double quick time. Templars could be bizarrely rapid.

Orks - Another case of 2nd ed models getting time off the shelf (with generous use of proxies). While bikes, lootas, etc were usually considered the premium list I always liked to run an extreme skew battlewagon list. The orks really didn't need their wound shenanigans to be good, particularly early on, and could run a couple of different styles of play which was good when most of your games were against the same players and tailored lists were an issue.
Best game - five battlewagons wheel to wheel against a 5e space wolves list. Full speed ahead. The wolves firepower didn't put a scratch in them, one particularly brave death or glory dreadnought did not find glory under the deffrollas as the wolves got pretty literally run over in this one.

Dark Eldar (3e) - The classic glass cannon army, 1000pts got you 40 troops, 10 dark lances, 9 dissies - and that wasn't even trying. Proxied them a few times against marine books and it was more a numbers game than any sense of tactics - you could end up with more high strength AP2 shots than your opponent had significant models and the dark eldar were accurate, mobile, and mostly scoring.
I remember that the codex ran out of steam as soon as you got into the higher points levels, you literally ran out of good units to field.
Best game - against an unwary blood angel opponent running mephiston and terminators as a hammer. First turn mephiston jumped too far ahead and had to go to ground as his terminator bodyguards couldn't catch up with him. Second turn he had to go to ground again because the terminators were all dead, and the rest of the army was in the midst of being outflanked by more lances, dissies, skimmers and horrorfexes. When you matched up badly against 3rd edition DE it could get very ugly very quickly.

Tyranids (5e) - The local nid player ran gaunt hordes, zoanthropes, tervigons and mawlocs -the usual 5e fare. I had a lot of old nid models from my 2nd ed and space hulk days so I figured i'd give them a go as well, running a shock force simply because it was different from the nid players lists. Smaller games only with the parasite leading gargoyles, infiltrating stealers, trygons and raveners. The whole army would hit the enemy lines together 2nd or 3rd turn and in the smaller games there wouldn't be enough to shoot them off the board. At higher points it didn't really scale up to something that would work, similar to DE.
Best game - n/a. Mostly just quick hashed out theory games seeing how different lists actually performed.

Newcrons (5e) - Only played one game with the newcrons, all proxied, after a couple of local players wanted a warm-up for a tournament. Took what looked strong from the codex, deployed in a way that seemed sensible, and pretty much just moved forward shooting dead ahead.
The local cron player took a lot of victories with the newer book but his skill level went down the pan and my views of them are probably biased by how much better he did despite how much worse he was playing.
Best game - only one game. From what I remember some kind of line attack wrecked a dreadnought and it's pod on turn 1 (scythe lord?), the marine player also lost a devastator squad off the back of the board to a 'take morale test now' ability, and I don't think the crons had even lost any material going into their first turn. Called it after two turns of not even trying, back to the drawing board for the marine players.
Dishonourable mention - The local cron player brought them to an apoc game and solar flared _every_ _single_ _turn_. We would have been more annoyed but his marine allies brought an army consisting of dozens of individual single combat bike models...

Blood Angels - Dishonourable mention for the blood angels as an example of the codex creep of 5th compared to the original dex. Only played two games - one was a mock sisters list with assauld marines in infernus razorbacks (considerably cheaper than WH sisters), the other was a planetstrike game that ended on the first turn after the deepstriking angels charged and/or blew up everything - the old planetstrike and spearhead rulesets really didn't hold up well to the newer books.

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Ok, so a bit of a bump here but it may help with progression of what I aim for with the factions.

If you played 5th ed. what factions did you play?

Why did you play those factions?

What made those factions you played so much fun? What was the most enjoyable game you had in 5th ed. with this faction?

I primarily played Orks in 5th edition, gradually moving away from doing a 'horde' army to using increasing mechanization in order to keep up with the encroaching brutality that was massed Razorbacks or other powerful 40k armies. The fun thing with Orks was the fact that they had the ability to hit like a glass sledgehammer, with just the right mix of fragile-yet-cheap combined with durable-for-its-cost. There were almost no melee invulnerable saves in the army, yet clever angling and multi-assaulting allowed the army to hit hard while minimizing the return damage they suffered; in one particularly nasty game, my opponent wielded a Draigostar with tooled up melee of mass destruction...and so I charged the center of the unit with a throwaway unit of five Lootas, while hitting the flanks with Meganobz. The Lootas died horribly of course, but only counted as five wounds for Combat Resolution purposes. Each dead Grey Knight Paladin counted as two points for combat Resolution, and Meganobz have a lot of combat resolution...

Then there were the quirky shenanigans. The ability to use Deffkoptas to 'slingshoot' a Warboss into melee on turn 1 was notable; this was done by using a unit of two Deffkoptas to Scout, then biking the Warboss into coherency with the rear Kopta before they all collectively charged. Then there was the Snikrot shuffle which had its own series of memes.

Killa Kans were amazing for their cost in 5th edition, before 6th introduced Hull Points and made them a glass cannon. 7th gave them a triple nerf of lowering the Strength of their melee from 10 to 7, giving them a morale debuff (literally one of the only unique Special Rules in the game that was an outright disadvantage), and upped their base cost by at least 40% each despite them being nowhere as durable as they used to be...

Several units were just awful however. Tankbustas and Flash Gitz were both absolutely horrible in 5th, and got notably buffed in 7th (despite the rest of that Codex falling short of decency and being riddled with flaws).

I played Tau in 5th.
I enjoyed the mobility and close range firepower.

There were almost no melee invulnerable saves in the army,

Unless your fighting the mad doc cybork body army...man that thing was hard to kill. imagine hordes of orks with a 5++.... kicked the hell out of my dark angels.

 aphyon wrote:

There were almost no melee invulnerable saves in the army,

Unless your fighting the mad doc cybork body army...man that thing was hard to kill. imagine hordes of orks with a 5++.... kicked the hell out of my dark angels.

Ah right, there was that army. I didn't go down that route given the 5th ed FOC slots were so crammed/condensed. Elites were "will taking this unit remove my ability to run more Lootas," and so the Warboss or Ghaz tended to be one of the two HQs, if only for a unit of Troop Nobz (though I personally went for Troop Meganobz). That plus the KFF did not leave a whole lot of wiggle-room, so to speak.

So my builds at 2k ended up being two units of Lootas, 2 minimum MAN missiles in Deffrolla Wagons, Shoota Mobz to borrow the wagons, two units of Kanz, and I believe I had a Big Gunz Kannon Battery as my 3rd HS.

Now, the real bigbrain was having Grotsnik join Snikrot's Kommandos...

Cheers for the responses folks! Keep them coming. Why I'm asking is because I want to know what made these armies fun so when they come to being updated I want to keep their spirit alive and not take that feel away from players who remember them fondly

Ok, so here's a rather niche question for the veterans here. Could anyone remember what Chaos Androids were armed with, and what they could be equipped/upgraded with?

 The Warp Forge wrote:
...Ok, so here's a rather niche question for the veterans here. Could anyone remember what Chaos Androids were armed with, and what they could be equipped/upgraded with?...

That might be the oldest question anyone has ever asked. According to cursory research that model was in Space Crusade, which was the 40k precursor to WarhammerQuest, and the only other lore reference on the wiki is to an Epic rulebook. I don't think it ever had real 40k rules, but that looks like a lasgun in the picture if that helps.

Cheers! I've asked around and they were equippped with a custom gun called a "Doom Balster" (Will probs make that a special weapon) in Space Crusade, and it was a Lasgun in Epic.

Still, it's a good start for a core basic infantry for Dark Mechanicum

 aphyon wrote:

There were almost no melee invulnerable saves in the army,

Unless your fighting the mad doc cybork body army...man that thing was hard to kill. imagine hordes of orks with a 5++.... kicked the hell out of my dark angels.

Mad dok was terrible in 5th edition. He alone had the same cost of 20 boyz including a nob with bosspole and power klaw. If you gave cyb.bodies to the squad that's another 5ppm, which means 100 for a 20 man squad, or 150 for a 30 man blob. So mad dok + 30 boyz (nob, klaw) with cyb bodies were 545 points, while 2x30 boyz (nob, pole, klaw) and a big mek with KFF were only 525 points for more staying power and more lethality. You can clearly see how terrible the dok was, and I'm not even considering his curse to chase the closest enemy unit.

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Cheers! I've asked around and they were equippped with a custom gun called a "Doom Balster" (Will probs make that a special weapon) in Space Crusade, and it was a Lasgun in Epic

In terms of their epic rules it was a lasgun, high close combat value, and disobedient behaviour (which you could incorporate by having them always be the first unit to act each turn for instance). They were considered daemons for rules purposes and to my knowledge didn't have rules in the slaves to darkness book.

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Cheers! I've asked around and they were equippped with a custom gun called a "Doom Balster" (Will probs make that a special weapon) in Space Crusade, and it was a Lasgun in Epic.

Still, it's a good start for a core basic infantry for Dark Mechanicum

I'd suggest taking a look at the 30k AdMech rules. Between Skitarii, Secutarii, Thallax, Adsecularii, Scyllax, and Castellax the Mechanicum/Dark Mechanicum are possibly over-supplied with Troops already.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Cheers! I've asked around and they were equippped with a custom gun called a "Doom Balster" (Will probs make that a special weapon) in Space Crusade, and it was a Lasgun in Epic.

Still, it's a good start for a core basic infantry for Dark Mechanicum

I'd suggest taking a look at the 30k AdMech rules. Between Skitarii, Secutarii, Thallax, Adsecularii, Scyllax, and Castellax the Mechanicum/Dark Mechanicum are possibly over-supplied with Troops already.

Will do! I'll probs not give DM all of that, and make a few new units instead as I'm not trying to replicate 30K DM, but showing how they have progrerssed within the Eye since their exile into The Warp. I will have some units (Thallax, Skitarri, etc) but not all of them (or some will be shifted to other slots).

If you buy into the lore explanation for why GW can't be bothered to update any of the resin AdMech to 40k rules (the Cybernetica bots and Thallax were deemed to be pushing the bounds of AI and sidelined in favour of the more lobotomized Servitors and dumber robots that are plastic) you'd expect the Dark Mechanicum to have more of the 30k Mechanicum stuff than the loyalists. You might do different variants of the Cybernetica Cortex rules to represent that the Dark Mechanicum's stuff is less shackled than the loyalists, with fewer limitations but make it more likely that they'll go berserk and start attacking the nearest model if you push them.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
...you'd expect the Dark Mechanicum to have more of the 30k Mechanicum stuff than the loyalists.

They kind of do in things like the plague drones (vultarax).

But the 40k Dark Mechanicum seem to be all about daemonic possession and technology fused with warp energy - anything they still have would most likely be warped in the same way as chaos knights and titans if not moreso.

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Ok, so a bit of a bump here but it may help with progression of what I aim for with the factions.

If you played 5th ed. what factions did you play?

Why did you play those factions?

What made those factions you played so much fun? What was the most enjoyable game you had in 5th ed. with this faction?

Tyranids: Big and small bugs from space. Did interesting things rule vice. Genstealers where cool. Biggest downfall was they they could not beat tanks.

DE: OH boy. Baron satonyx with beats was great fun. They where very unique to play as what usually was great VS everything else was bad here and vice versa. Mektagun sucked VS night shield (count as 6 away) but the bolter was suddenly good. Loads of stuff like that.

SW: I loved thunder wolf's, long fangs, Grey hunters and lone wolf's. The only good guys in the galaxy.

A.T. wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
...you'd expect the Dark Mechanicum to have more of the 30k Mechanicum stuff than the loyalists.

They kind of do in things like the plague drones (vultarax).

But the 40k Dark Mechanicum seem to be all about daemonic possession and technology fused with warp energy - anything they still have would most likely be warped in the same way as chaos knights and titans if not moreso.

Yeah, this.

Like I said, I'm not trying to make 30k Mechanicum for a 'Chaos' side, nor am I making 40k Ad. Mech, with spikes. I'm trying to portray how the Traitor side of the Mechanicum on how it's 'progressed' since the times of the Heresy. They have a ton of 30k units that will be used but I don't think I will be using them all, instead, making some new units recycling lore from places like FFG's, BC Combat Servitors and Chaos Androids as such.

To me the Dark Mechanicum is a cross between Skynet, Short Circuit and DOOM! The boys really just do what they want for their own personal sakes and goals and I'll try to replicate this feel in units and rules.

Reviewing 5th ed, the Tyranid Codex had its share of bad, including broken (as in, "didn't work") Lictors and Trygons.

Lictors granted +1 to Reserves if they started their turn on the table...but had to start the game in Reserves, with no bonus3s to actually arrive themselves.

Trygons had the ability to create Tunnels for infantry to emerge through in subsequent turns...but did not actually give any means for infantry to wait for a tunnel before arriving on the Tyranid board edge.

Ok, so bit of an update:

Been working on Word with the current project Chaos Space Marines. Only model I have left to translate is the Master of Possession, then I'll be updating existing characters with one extra rule (Legion Trait to give to their Legion in the same way Chapter Tactics are given to Marine characters), then I'll be making a character for each Legion. Afterwards I'll be making allies rules which is something as a point of discussion.

So I was looking at the old witch hunters codex and I liked the idea of a heavily restricted Force org. chart to lend to other codex's. when some armies (like CSM) got gutted with separation of codex's, I'd like to implement the following rules, for all intents and purposes I'll be using CSM as the example below for the rules:

"Codex: Chaos Space Marines can be used as allies with the following Codex's:

- Codex: Renegades and Heretics
- Codex: Chaos Daemons
- Codex: Dark Mechanicum

To use Codex: Chaos Space Marines as allies alongside these codex's, you may pick the following options as an additional Force Organisation chart alongside the main army this Codex is accompanying:

- HQ: 1
- Troops: 0-2
- Elites: 0-1
- Fast Attack: 0-1
- Heavy Support: 0-1

If Codex: Chaos Space Marines are used as allies to the accompanying Codex's then you cannot take named characters. If you chose this codex as your allies for another force then you cannot select any other codex to be allies with the accompanying army".

I feel if the following rules were incorporated it would be quite fair since it's a really restrictive field, that attempts to minimise cheese by limiting units and excluding characters but also would give more variety to armies and give some more individuality to forces in which would be flavourful.

Question is, what do you think? You think this could be a fun addition?

Also when the document is finished I'll leave it as a word document for now as I'll get on with other codex projects, but what I'd ask is when it's published, I'd like feedback, see what folks think, then if I see a correlation with a groupthink I can make changes and amendments to the document, before I make it look pretty and give it any more effort in photoshop.

Ok, another update:

Currently making the special character for each legion and I've ran into Warsmith Honsou for the Iron Warriors. My issue is that I don't know too much about him and while I've tried looking at Wikis, they don't seem to help too much as I'm trying not to read too much into it as I'm currently reading the Omnibus for the first time and don't want it spoiled.

So question for folks who already know the character. What is Honsou like? What is his main characteristics, traits, goal ambitions etc.

What's he armed with? Does he wield a Daemon Weapon?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Reviewing 5th ed, the Tyranid Codex had its share of bad, including broken (as in, "didn't work") Lictors and Trygons.

Lictors granted +1 to Reserves if they started their turn on the table...but had to start the game in Reserves, with no bonus3s to actually arrive themselves.

Trygons had the ability to create Tunnels for infantry to emerge through in subsequent turns...but did not actually give any means for infantry to wait for a tunnel before arriving on the Tyranid board edge.

Cheers for the heads up! I'll take a look at them. I think the bugs may be my next project of updating after CSM.

Cheers for the heads up! I'll take a look at them. I think the bugs may be my next project of updating after CSM.

the 4th ed nid codex was used halfway through 5th and was a much better dex as it still had the biomorph abilities of the nids but not to the extreme of the 3rd ed codex. it gave nids many units immune to instant death, frag grenade equivalents and didn't have the stupid instinctive behavior chart. the only thing that really got better in the newer dex was zoanthropes that went from a 2+/6+ to a 3++

the 5th ed codex was a cash grab to promote new models(some of FW line got moved to plastic) at the expense of older models who got rules downgrades and points hikes(people already had loads of them by this point so GW wasn't making as much money off them). It is a very easy plugNplay to pull the new units from the 5th ed codex and place them in the 4th ed codex-hive guard, mawloc/trygon, tervegon etc...

Take 5th ed codex base points costs-then pay for the upgrades and use their effects from the 4th ed codex.

The last game i played before our new lockdown started last month was a 5th ed game using our hybrid rules. i was using the 4th ed nid codex horde warrior/gene stealer army VS a 3.5 chaos khorne berserker army. had a great game loads of fun and lots of killing on both sides.

Interesting. Cheers for the heads up! I was thinking on using the new units to help with plastering-in and cover the weakness' of the 5th ed. codex.

The one thing I found was lacking in the 5th ed. codex when reading on it was the fact they had little no support pieces that were versatile. I feel if you, say, made the Neurothrope a new unit profile with new abilities such as one Psychic Power to grant Eternal Warrior to one MC and another where it could double the shots of one ranged profile on a MC, then there could be something to grow from there.

I'll take a look at the 4th ed. codex though as I have it on the Goolge Drive.

One thing I'm not understanding from critique that keeps popping up is the lack of immune to Instant Death. I'm having trouble understanding this because whilst your MC don't have Eternal Warrior or anything close to that, you're still T6 which means against shooting at least you're immune to Instant death because nothing in the rules is over Strength 10. Was this just a Force Weapon issue where if you fought GK it was a rough time as they had Force Weapons en. masse?

 The Warp Forge wrote:
One thing I'm not understanding from critique that keeps popping up is the lack of immune to Instant Death. I'm having trouble understanding this because whilst your MC don't have Eternal Warrior or anything close to that, you're still T6 which means against shooting at least you're immune to Instant death because nothing in the rules is over Strength 10. Was this just a Force Weapon issue where if you fought GK it was a rough time as they had Force Weapons en. masse?

Tyranid Warriors were toughness 4 and S8 missile launchers and power fists were common.

This wasn't a uniquely tyranid thing as (other than thunderwolves) most 'tough' units were T4 or T4(5) - still prone to instant death by missile launcher or marine power fist but it made warriors a poor proposition. Not that it would have helped them against jaws of the world wolf which was instant death not defended by eternal warrior.

Late edition GK were just overkill. Ironically Gav Thorpe had made all daemons immune to force weapons for some reason.

Personally in my own skirmish game I just changed instant death to overkill - two wounds instead of one, with an eye on giving the bigger units odd numbers of wounds. Jury is still out on various forms of blanket instant death immunity as at the end of the day your opponent is still paying for it (unless they are GK)...

 aphyon wrote:
...it gave nids many units immune to instant death, frag grenade equivalents and didn't have the stupid instinctive behavior chart.

I recall a common problem of 5e books was that everyone and their dog (other than nids) got free frag grenades on just about everything. Guard heavy mortar teams got frag grenades...
I mean it was a kind of false choice at the end of the day as anything combat-related with an initiative higher than 1 wanted them because the penalties were so easy to get and so punitive, but it made taking cover against assault rather futile at times.

I think a fair few 4e biomorphs fall into a similar category of being an obvious enough choice that it would have made more sense to pre-fit and cost the units with some of them, reducing the size of the upgrade and making units more recognisable on the table.

I guess Cruddace may have been trying to do that and did it badly. Then again Cruddace...

 aphyon wrote:
It is a very easy plugNplay to pull the new units from the 5th ed codex and place them in the 4th ed codex-hive guard, mawloc/trygon, tervegon etc...

5th ed units had their own issues: Tyrannofex's rupture cannon was a lackluster profile on a very expensive gun, the Trygon tunnel rules did not work, the Mawloc rules just were weird and the Pyrovore was the worst unit ever.

And that still leaves 6th edition units: Exocrine, Haruspex, Hive Crone and Shockcannon Hive Guard, and 7th edition units: Toxicrene, Maleceptor, Tyrannocyte, Sporocyte and Neurothrope.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 The Warp Forge wrote:


One thing I'm not understanding from critique that keeps popping up is the lack of immune to Instant Death. I'm having trouble understanding this because whilst your MC don't have Eternal Warrior or anything close to that, you're still T6 which means against shooting at least you're immune to Instant death because nothing in the rules is over Strength 10. Was this just a Force Weapon issue where if you fought GK it was a rough time as they had Force Weapons en. masse?

It is a middle bug issue, in which Warriors, Raveners and other mid size Tyranids were worthless as the whole unit could die to a single S8 large blast, in an edition in which everyone had S8+ large blasts (except Tyranids).

This, in combination to the awful lack of anti-tank options meant Tyranids couldn't fight mech armies like the IG.

It also meant that any psyker with a force weapon could happily duel and kill even the Swarmlord, which meant it was impossible to win against GK.

 Tyran wrote:
5th ed units had their own issues: Tyrannofex was worthless because AP4 on an anti-tank weapon meant it was gak at its supposed role

AP4 wasn't its problem in 5th - as an anti-tank weapon it was functionally a lascannon with higher strength and twice as many shots.

But it was also 265 points and cross eyed at a time when you could buy a tau broadside suit with a twinlinked railgun for 70. Quantity of shots on target for points paid was not a good return.

A.T. wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
5th ed units had their own issues: Tyrannofex was worthless because AP4 on an anti-tank weapon meant it was gak at its supposed role

AP4 wasn't its problem in 5th - as an anti-tank weapon it was functionally a lascannon with higher strength and twice as many shots.

But it was also 265 points and cross eyed at a time when you could buy a tau broadside suit with a twinlinked railgun for 70. Quantity of shots on target for points paid was not a good return.

AP 1 would have helped at its main role, but yes it was simply to expensive for what it did.

 Tyran wrote:

 The Warp Forge wrote:


One thing I'm not understanding from critique that keeps popping up is the lack of immune to Instant Death. I'm having trouble understanding this because whilst your MC don't have Eternal Warrior or anything close to that, you're still T6 which means against shooting at least you're immune to Instant death because nothing in the rules is over Strength 10. Was this just a Force Weapon issue where if you fought GK it was a rough time as they had Force Weapons en. masse?

It is a middle bug issue, in which Warriors, Raveners and other mid size Tyranids were worthless as the whole unit could die to a single S8 large blast, in an edition in which everyone had S8+ large blasts (except Tyranids).

This, in combination to the awful lack of anti-tank options meant Tyranids couldn't fight mech armies like the IG.

It also meant that any psyker with a force weapon could happily duel and kill even the Swarmlord, which meant it was impossible to win against GK.

 The Warp Forge wrote:

I hear you, but isn't that why Venomthopes existed, to provide a cover save to those creatures against Blast templates and such? I dunno about giving Warriors and Raveners Eternal Warrior-like rules on a 3 wound beast sounds a bit OP.

The points issue I totally get though. Bugs may need an overhaul in points.

Venomthropes didn't really provide that much protection in practice.

So would it be better to give the Warrior-esque stuff FnP, or make a new psychic power that grants FnP on a unit?

I'd rather see T5 Tyranid Warriors than T4/EW Tyranid Warriors. It still fixes the ID to S8 problem, but you can still one-shot them with S10 or Force Weapons, and it makes them more resistant to small arms. There were plenty of multi-wound T5 units in 5th (Thunderwolves, Grotesques, Ogryn, Bloodcrushers, Beasts of Nurgle) and most of them are about the same size/base as Warriors. It'd also expand the higher-T/lower-Sv corner of the design space that GW never seemed to bother with, and make higher-S/weaker AP weapons more relevant.