Have you crunched the numbers on where this puts various weapons against various potential targets? At a glance, these all feel very samey; variations on the same general theme. I'm not sure what would make me want to take monstrous rending claws over the seemingly-more-versatile monstrous bone swords, for instance. The former can ignore 3+ saves instead of reducing them to a 6+ and is good against 2+ saves, but I'm generally fine with leaving my opponent a 6+ save and the list of things with 2+ armor but not an invul is pretty short. Meanwhile the monstrous bone swords appear to be equal to the claws against light infantry, better against multi-wound targets, better against vehicles, and maybe even almost as good against vehicles as monstrous crushing claws. Maybe availability and points pricing will separate them out a bit more, but they feel very samey to me. Very falchions vs halberds or force axe vs force staff.
I don't think I like lashwhips as a source of bonus attacks that also makes your bone swords less killy. Partly because it contributes to the samey feeling of the weapons. Partly because I'd be really reluctant to go from killing a marine with a single attack (bone swords) to needing a second successful attack (lashwhip + bonesword.) And if I'm taking lashwhips on my warriors, presumably to be better at clearing large units of non-marines, I have to ask myself why I'm using melee warriors for that job instead of guns or hormagaunts or genestealers.
Maybe lashwhips could have some sort of utility rule tied to them? Maybe they grant the unit something like the wyches' No Escape rule with lashwhips being in range of enemy models granting shardnet style benefits (to give you a reason to take more than one of them). Or maybe each model with a lashwhip can reduce an enemy model within 1"'s Attacks by 2 (minimum 1) at the start of the Fight phase. Or heck, just keep the, "Models with lash whips get to swing even if they already died" rule. It basically makes your lashwhip warriros into the model you feel more comfortable killing off when you get stabbed and helps your monsters get their hits in when they get murderized by some tough guy in melee.
The Swarmlord
WS 2+/3+/4+ S 6/6/6
Bone sabres S +2 AP-3 6D.
I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Swarmie should feel like a big deal, but expressing that through 6D weapons raises some flags for me. For one thing, it doesn't really help against 1 and 2 wound infantry units. So while he's able to put down a captain pretty reliably, a squad of tarpitting wyches or ork boyz or what have you won't care. For another, 6D on weapons means he's 2(?)-shotting basic dreadnaughts along with pretty much any transport short of a land raider.The swarmlord, to my understanding, is supposed to be a duelist crossed with brilliant commander (of a tyraniddy sort). These rules make me think of him as more of a brute force wrecking ball. Not especially good at dealing with hordes. Not good at overcoming an enemy's skillful techniques. Just hard hitting enough to kill anything he manages to hit.
Remove Living Battering Ram ability, increase Strength characteristic from 6 to 9.
Mechanically fine. Does kind of lose some of the cinematic appeal though. Maybe give carnifex a shock prow style stratagem so you can recapture the feel of living battering ram?
Tusk cost reduced unless the model is armed with scything talons or crushing claws. Monstrous acid maw cost reduced if the model is armed with scything talons or crushing claws. No other comments on costs in this thread because with all the changes I am suggesting here there are too many to list, this is just a note based on some awful Carnifex loadouts you can make.
Sounds tricky to convey cleanly on a rules document, but sure.
Stratagems for auto-wound on unmodified 6s to hit with (monstrous) rending claws for one unit
Hmm. When would you opt to use that stratagem? If I'm sitting there with, let's say, a tyrant, I know I only have a handful of attacks, but those attacks probably have high strength. So spending
CP is only worth it if:
A.) At least one of my to-hit rolls is a 6.
B.) The same attack that would roll a 6 to hit would also roll low enough to not wound.
So if my tyrant is making about 6 attacks, I should average a single to-hit roll of 6. Then, assuming I'm stabbing marines (S6 vs T4), I'd have a 1 in 3 chance of failing the to-wound roll. Against a T7 or T8 vehicle, that improves to a 2/3rds chance of failing to wound, but I'd still be spending
CP with a 1/3rd chance of the stratagem not accomplishing anything I wasn't going to accomplish already. And I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure just taking monstrous bone swords instead of monstrous rending claws increases my average damage against all targets enough to make them the more effective choice without having to spend
CP on them.
and a fight last Stratagem for a unit near a lash whip and (monstrous) bonesword model.
Ah. I didn't see this on my first read-through. That would help lash whips. Still feel I might prefer some sort of always-on benefit though.
EDIT: Any thoughts on how to handle the four-arms thing? It's annoying when you have something like a scything talon + rending claw genestealer and he's really only benefitting from either one or the other on a given turn. Would it make sense to go back to granting bonus attacks for multiple sets of melee weapons on 'nids?