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What I would like to see is a swarm attack option available against vehicles and opposing monsterous creatures. Masinly to bring swarm nids in line with their background and to allow players to move away from zilla armiers without losing capability against certain types of list:

Swarm Attack: Tyranid broods of four models or more may initiate a swarm attack against a single opposing ground based vehicle or monsterous creature in close combat. Instead of its normal attacks against the target allocate an automatic hit of S equal to every two wounds, rounded down, of creature involved or supporting the attack. If the swarm attack generates a hit greater than S10 allocate all remaining qualifying models in the brood towards a second attack and so on. For example: 28 Termagants piling onto a Leman Russ will cause an automatic S10 hit for the first 20 Termagants and a S4 hit for the remaining eight. If the target is a warmachine or gargantuan creature only models in base contact can participate in a swarm attack, though supporting models still get their normal attacks. all attacks are conducted against the weakest armour facing in contact with any of the attacking brood.

Drag them down: Leaping or winged tyranid models in base contact with an enemy skimmer, or winged tyranuid models in contact with an enemy flyer may launch a swarm attack. Instead of its normal attacks against the target allocate an automatic hit of S equal to every wounds of creature involved or supporting the attack. If the swarm attack generates a hit greater than S10 allocate all remaining qualifying models in the brood towards a second attack and so on. For example: 28 Hormagaunts piling onto a Falcon grav Tank will cause an automatic S10 hit for the first 10 Hormagaunts, another for the second and a S8 hit for the remaining eight.

Latch On: If a swarm attack damages its target it forfeits the protection of fast moving skimmer rules, and shields or energy fields of any type for subsequent swarm attacks from the same brood this turn.



The moral of the story is, dont fly Falcons over leaping gaunts.

Tell me what you think.

Honestly, I don't like it. Armour piercing weaponry is advanced science. If you take one brick and throw it at a window the window breaks, if you throw one million ping pong balls at a window they just bounce off.

Giving gaunts a grenade option would be OK. They are the hive mind, they can do whatever they want. Analogous to molotov coctails immobolizing a tank.

I think giving flying units in general a bonus against Skimmers (a bonus at hitting moving vehicles in general, really) is a good idea. But not that one, a bonus to hit is OK.

Orlanth: Looks a little complicated, particularly when there are existing rules that might do the trick.

It might be something to substitute the Talos Claw rule for the Swarm Attack you're suggesting. I'd suggest it as a replacement for Rending as well, but that ain't going to happen.

Similarly it might be interesting simply to have a Tyranid Brood sacrifice attacks for a better to hit roll. Imagine it like a swarm of ants where some do the lifting, some hold it together, and one or two form a weapon launched into the enemy.

Limit these co-operative attacks to Broods within Synapse and I think you get something characterful but not game-breaking.

Tacobake: Allowing Jump Infantry and Jetbikes (and Skimmers with attacks) to hit Skimmers on a 5+ might work. Leave the 4+ for the Swooping Hawk Exarch Power.

Tacobake wrote:Honestly, I don't like it. Armour piercing weaponry is advanced science. If you take one brick and throw it at a window the window breaks, if you throw one million ping pong balls at a window they just bounce off.

So many quotes I can give you,

Most tellingly is the report than gaunts dragged down an Imperial titan, though I cannot eremember off hand where I read this.

Also the nice quote from BFG about the soldier hornets attacking a pampaging pelmet as an analogy as to why littke assault boats could damage a capital ship.

Swarming is a valid staple inn many games including Warhammer and 40K. After all how do rank and file see of a Bloodthirster?

But I prefer the scene in bugs Life, when an incautious grasshopper wonders why they should go through all the trouble of frightening the ants, rather than just attacking them.
Hopper threw a nut at one. Then asked, 'did it hurt'. 'No'. So the throws another one. 'Did that hurt'. 'No'. So he opens the whole container and buries the critic in an avalanche of nuts.

If you want real life examples look at most pack animals and the way they gang together to hunt big prey.

Nurglitch wrote:Orlanth: Looks a little complicated, particularly when there are existing rules that might do the trick.

Its not complicated, I was just looking for airtight wording so it loks complicated. I can clear it up easily enough given a little bit of thought.

Orlanth wrote:

Tacobake wrote:Honestly, I don't like it. Armour piercing weaponry is advanced science. If you take one brick and throw it at a window the window breaks, if you throw one million ping pong balls at a window they just bounce off.

So many quotes I can give you,

Most tellingly is the report than gaunts dragged down an Imperial titan, though I cannot eremember off hand where I read this.

Also the nice quote from BFG about the soldier hornets attacking a pampaging pelmet as an analogy as to why littke assault boats could damage a capital ship.

Swarming is a valid staple inn many games including Warhammer and 40K. After all how do rank and file see of a Bloodthirster?

I don't want to be a mr poo ...

Orlanth wrote:
But I prefer the scene in bugs Life, when an incautious grasshopper wonders why they should go through all the trouble of frightening the ants, rather than just attacking them.
Hopper threw a nut at one. Then asked, 'did it hurt'. 'No'. So the throws another one. 'Did that hurt'. 'No'. So he opens the whole container and buries the critic in an avalanche of nuts.

If you want real life examples look at most pack animals and the way they gang together to hunt big prey.

See, now that's OK since the lions claws CAN hurt the elephant. It's same as say 50 genestealers have a chance against a Land Raider, including surviving losses vs 1 genestealer who will get shot down. So genestealers are lions, and gaunts are gazelles. And gazelles can't hurt an elephant. They might scare it but they won't scare a land raider.

If you wanted to make rules where thousands of gaunts can tip over a titan or push around a land raider, that would be OK . But that doesn't mean they can actually penetrate the armour just by banging their heads against it.

In 5th ed close combat attacks attack the rear of a vehicle, I think that's supposed to be a representation of this sort of thing.

It's not the fact that they hit that bothers me, that's fine. What's not fine is the fact that the hit is S10.

Ok, that has some logic too it.

Best answer is to declare that you get the S per two wounds, regardless of target. Only attackers in base contact count vs a warmachine. But any successful damage result is translated into an automatic vehicle stunned that cannot be avoided by onboard wargear.

Thus gaunts cannot damage a vehicle, but stunning a skimmer causes its own problems and thus you get the Drag Down rule by the backdoor.

This of course assumes 4th Ed rules.

With stealers you are better going for your normal attacks.

I once played a tactics computer game, cant really remember its name but it was WW2 and I played the newly formed soviet union vs germany.

Knowing a little about the era I knew the superheavy tanks of USSR could weather just about any vehicle thrown against them apart from heavy tanks and thus I got a few of them hoping to be able to outmaneuvre those vehicles.

Now the computer had a different approach, he bought a hoard of light fast trucks with light machineguns incapable of damaging my tanks.

Lo and behold to my suprise when after wethering 3 or 4 trucks smattering of harmless bullets on the side of my tank the tank crews maral became so low that they actually jumped out of the tanks and started running from it.

That would be like sitting in a bunker and start running across a minefield because someone is throwing rocks at the bunker.

Naturally my tank crews were gunned down by the trucks in the following turn and I uninstalled the game and never played it again.

Thus in short, if 1 gaunt cant punch through a tanks armour why should 10 be able to do that?

Rending is the rule for what you describe and the units that have this special rule can breach tanks, units that dont have it cant.

After all would you think 30 orks would be allowed to swarm?

How about a unit of guardsmen combining their rapidfiering lasguns?

The list can be made very long if you want to.

It is from a balance perspective a bad idea.

Orlanth: Could you try re-writing your proposal in the most succinct way that you can? I'd like to read an elegant version.

The swarm rule seems ok but how many points are they going to pay for the ability?

The "drag them down" rule seems arbitrary. The swarm rule does a hit that has a strength = unit wounds / 2. Why does this one do a hit that's strength = unit wounds? Just because a vehicle is a skimmer hardly seems to warrent attacks against it being off the bat stronger. Skimmers already have lighter armor than normal vehicles and I can't see a reason for your attacks to be twice as strong aginst a devil fish that's flying as opposed to one that has landed.

"Latch on" is just silly. Obviously you are just trying to tailor a rule that will help you against eldar. If there was some sort of over reaching premise for this rule that applied to more than one army out there, it might be a bit more reasonable. As it stands, it just isn't.

fester wrote:Lo and behold to my suprise when after wethering 3 or 4 trucks smattering of harmless bullets on the side of my tank the tank crews maral became so low that they actually jumped out of the tanks and started running from it.

That would be like sitting in a bunker and start running across a minefield because someone is throwing rocks at the bunker.

Naturally my tank crews were gunned down by the trucks in the following turn and I uninstalled the game and never played it again.

You might be interested to know that this sort of thing actually did happen very frequently in WW2. A machine gun or two is sometimes all it takes. For one thing, incoming bullets force the crew to button down the tank, effectively blinding them (visibility via periscopes and slits is generally poor, which is why commanders usually peek out of the turret if given a chance), at which point it's easy for panic to set in. For another, I understand the impact of MG bullets on the hulls of those early tanks was sometimes enough to make the hulls ring out like giant bells of iron. So you have a bunch of scared people inside a dark, noisy metal box, unable to see clearly and thus unable to move very well, worried that the enemy might call artillery on such a prominent stationary target.

Agamemnon2:
Yes I can understand that some people went crazy and jumped out. After all in stressfull situations people do the oddest things but 2-3 machineguns having every crew in every tank bolt naturally adding to the hurt the turn based game play ment 3-4 trucks would come over a ridge some 300m from the tank, scamper unhindered while my tank crew were playing cards or somthing (despite being facing this way and just having taken out some smaller targets), drive upp to within meters of the tank and pew pew pew... out my startled crew went...

If it had happened once or twise then fine but every damn tank crew did it 100% of the time.