Fixing Tyranids Thread

Previous threads:
I guess I'm remaking this time if only so I don't have to worry about finding the thread later when the other anons are wondering what I'm up to.

Not much to report currently in the way of status updates, just refining some things here and there. Hive Tyrant and Warrior sheets should be finalized soon.

Bump

You guys are gonna have to come back and keep discussing/bumping the threads for me or I'm just gonna let this one die and I'll make another one when I have something to post.

Hive Tyrant and Carnifex strains more or less done.

Got some more biomorphs figured out, starting to move ideas around from core things over to Formation special rules and Progenitor Fleet Traits.

I'm going to bed now, when I wake up I have some errands and things to get out of the way and then I'll start churning out datasheets. Should have a playtest worthy doc by Friday.

Were you and those other posters still going to make those fixed 40k rules if eighth turns out to either not change anything or make it aoslite?

With sigmarizing rules there will bo no need to fix them anymore - this is what I'm waiting for

What if the sigmar rules are bad too?

At the current moment in time that project's been pretty much abandoned but I could always go back to it if 8th is a disappointment, yeah.

I'm just thankful that someone takes their time to try to do something about the current codex. The hard part is going to try to let my gaming friends let me use it.

Sidenote, I really love all the Rob Cirillo concept art that was done for 4th ed.

The current Tyrant Guard models that finally look similar to the ones he was drawing back then are god tier.

I guess I can ask this here:
Do tyranids often inherit local species into their war strains? Or do they just adapt to local conditions through encounters with the creatures?
I'm writefagging a story where the planet is ~90% water, so I was thinking about some Tyranid sea creatures, gaining crab-like exoskeletons and such, and carnifexes becoming floating islands that bring hordes of barnacle-like rippers under its shell.

>Do tyranids often inherit local species into their war strains?
No.

>Or do they just adapt to local conditions through encounters with the creatures?
This one is more correct. They don't necessarily even need to encounter any creatures though. They just adapt to the environment itself on its own terms.

>I'm writefagging a story where the planet is ~90% water, so I was thinking about some Tyranid sea creatures, gaining crab-like exoskeletons and such, and carnifexes becoming floating islands that bring hordes of barnacle-like rippers under its shell.
The first planet Tyranids were ever encountered on - you know, "Tyran" - that was over 90% water, and they were never mentioned as being particularly different there than anywhere else. All Tyranids are baseline amphibious (I even have that in the rules in my Codex) and they already have exoskeletons that could be considered crustacean-esque and breathe through gills that function equally well in air or fluid.

That said, coming up with some new adaptations here or there like the barnacle-rippers could be pretty cool and totally in-line with the fluff.

Cool, thanks

Status update, putting together the meat of the playtest doc right now. Only a matter of days until it's at a usable state, even though it won't have absolutely everything.

Question: Did you make any modifications to the movement or running for Gants and Gaunts?

Termagants basically have Battle Focus (Run and Shoot or vice versa) and got Fleet back, while Horms have Run and charge (and charge as Jump infantry, so get Hammer of Wrath and can move over intervening terrain freely).

Onslaught also lets a unit move d6" in the Psychic phase (re-roll with Fleet), so they can stack that with their move and Run (and charge for Horms) for a potential 30" threat range on the Horms, averaging 23", if you want to spend the Warp Charges.

Warriors are Brotherhood of Psykers ML1 and come with Onslaught stock.

I went through a lot of different versions of this and this one has been the most satisfying overall.

Forgot the trip.

Most of the bio-weapons are done. Still dicking around with the Rupture Cannon and a couple other things.

>30 inch threat range
The boys are back in town
Loving what you're doing btw, I'll try and get some playtests done with my group when it's all said and done

All playtesting is definitely appreciated.

That's a fun looking list, by the way.

Bump for the swarm

What's wrong with them? Are they going through a Nid-Life crisis?

...

It's just our Instinctive Behavior, don't worry.

Bumping for life support

On an unrelated note, how good are shrikes with rending claws? I really like the idea of CC tyranids but I know theyre not sorta mediocre at it

In the current Codex? Extraordinarily overcosted. You're paying 30ppm for a T4 5+ save model that will just get doubled out by Strength 8 and have its 3 Wounds count for nothing (or worse, help the opponent more during combat resolution because two hits with a powerfist dealt 6 Wounds).

That's if they don't just die to bolter fire or flamers or basically anything else.

To give them Rending claws and assault grenades is also another 9 points each, so we're talking like 40point models with about the same survivability as Orks.

Shame I really like the idea of them

Think im gonna try making a CC orientated army regardless, only play games with friends anyway so just see how it goes

Go for it user, and if your friends are down to playtest unofficial rules I'll have something ready for you in a couple more days.

Working on the Gargantuans now, also flipping back and forth to Formations.

Tyrannofexes are going to be fun stuff.

>Gargantuan tfex
Almost feel bad about making mine a tervigon
Almost

Those are Gargantuan too, don't worry. I can't justify making two models that are the same exact size (literally just the same body) have different unit types like that.

Neither of them get stomp attacks though, so that reins in some of the bullshit that most GCs have. Here's I'll just post the special rule actually:

>Skittering Gait: A model with this special rule is never slowed by Difficult Terrain, and can move freely over non-Vehicle, non-Monstrous Creature models as long as it does not end its move on top of any other models, but cannot make Stomp attacks.

Needs some Tryon primes. The tunnels are nice for respawning gaunts and extra synapse is never a bad thing.

I ran a brood of 3 with swords and either poisoned or adrenal glands. used them as a sweeper unit: damage the target unit (2+ armor if bringing rending claws, 3+ with swords) in shooting or from reporting with gaunts to dwindle numbers and slow them down. Really works well if you keep them as backline defense. Their mobility allows them to cover synapse gaps and still deal with flanking threats like bikes and assault marines.

A couple of nice ideas after brainstorming with my group:

Have the Trygon, Trygon prime, and Mawloc be GMC's, or at least have some of the rules. Instead of stomp attacks, you could have a single stomp using the flamer template representing the massive tails.

Trygon and trygon prime needs to gain haywire on 6's to hit with their shooting attacks.

All snake bodied nids (ravenors, Mawloc, trygons, rippers) need the beast type (or beast MC)

hormagaunt's bounding leap should add 3" to move, run, and charge like dunestriders

the harpy/hive crone should have something like a "born for the skies" rules, negating the need for grounding tests.

>Have the Trygon, Trygon prime, and Mawloc be GMC's, or at least have some of the rules. Instead of stomp attacks, you could have a single stomp using the flamer template representing the massive tails.
>Trygon and trygon prime needs to gain haywire on 6's to hit with their shooting attacks.
Already have both of these EXACTLY, except the tail smash has -1 to the Stomp table.

>All snake bodied nids (ravenors, Mawloc, trygons, rippers) need the beast type (or beast MC)
Not for Rippers, Raveners already have it, and GCs already move 12".

>hormagaunt's bounding leap should add 3" to move, run, and charge like dunestriders
At one point I was doing it this way but after carefully comparing all the options and existing rules, and factoring in that Onslaught is another D6" of movement, I went with this:
>Bounding Leap: This unit can Run and charge in the same turn. In addition, when charging, this unit is treated as a Jump unit.
It fits better in my opinion due to the way I did Termagants (have a similar rule called Bestial Agility that let's them Run and shoot) and the Wulfen have Bounding Lope now which is very similar.

>the harpy/hive crone should have something like a "born for the skies" rules, negating the need for grounding tests.
Again, something I have almost exactly.
>Born in the Skies: This model adds 1 to the roll when making Grounding tests.

A little eerie how well that matched up. Hive Minds think alike?

>hive minds think alike
Wow, sorry I suggested them then if they were already present! Amazing what happens when you apply some thought and common sense to models and their rules. Really makes you wonder what the rules designers were thinking initially!

>Wow, sorry I suggested them then if they were already present!
No need to be sorry, seeing other people came to the same conclusions helps reinforce that the rule is intuitive and logical. It's good to see!

>Amazing what happens when you apply some thought and common sense to models and their rules. Really makes you wonder what the rules designers were thinking initially!
I wonder about that every time I play this game.

I usually take two if I'm not feeling the rippers
I think so at least

>what the rules designers were thinking initially
He wasnt
Cruddace is a literal fucking retard

Abolutely none of the books are from perspectives outside the Imperium, what makes you think that Space Marines will ever not be the best army by a long shot?

Bump for Tyran

Bump for Prandium

Azezal
Anything you're stumped on.
I could spitball ideas if i knownwhat you're working on?

Still not sure what's happening with the Maleceptor.

Lemme check my master To Do list and see what I come up with.

Most of the hold-up is just me being busy with real life things in between trying to get work done on this.

Sidenote
If anyone doesn't know what Prandium means in Latin, go look it up (and if you don't know what Prandium means in the context of 40k go read up on Hive Fleet Behemoth).

Holy shit, my sides

I'm not sure the maleceptor needs much.
Bump it's invuln to a 4++ and drop its price so its a viable choice for MC psyker.

>water nids
thats the fluff im working on for my nids. good taste

Bump for Sirocco

So, under your build, how viable would a flying circus be? By that I mean an all winged army following CAD restrictions.

Presumably anything would be viable since that's how nids are supposed to work

I meant how did he change the rules/upgrades/cost/stats for Gargoyles, Flyrants, Crones, Harpies, and Shrikes.

oh and its unique power should probably just be warp charge 1 if you're meant to be casting it 3 times to be effective.

Flyrants get a little bit worse, everything else with wings gets better. New Formations themed for flying circus, similar to Skyblight. Leviathan Hive Fleet "tactics" add a bit more of an edge to flying armies.

I'll elaborate more in a bit, I just woke up and have some stuff to attend to. Thanks for keeping the thread alive everyone.

I hope by "flyrants got worse" you meant "nerfed brainleech devourers"

Yes, a little, and they can also only take one pair.

What else was nerfed? Fmcs already arent that great, nerfing devourers was all that was needed imo

So tyrants can't double up on thebsame gun anymore?

Walkrants can do whatever, Flyrants are limited to only replacing one pair of scything talons.

Makes sense, nids are traditionally hexapeds after all

Complete list of Flyrant nerfs:
- Wings are 40 pts, up from 35 (not really a big deal, I just wanted the cost consistent with what Daemon Princes are paying)
- Can only replace one pair of scything talons, so no more double devourers.
- Devourer Peraphicytes (the new name for Monstrous Creature versions) are only strength 4, but gain the Living Ammo special rule (To Wound rolls of 6 Wound automatically regardless of Toughness and force armour saves to be re-rolled, if they cause an unsaved Wound the target must take a Toughness test and suffers an additional Wound for each point they fail the test by).

And that's about it. So you're going from a gun platform putting out 12 S6 shots to 6 S4 shots, but with a new special rule. They'll be slightly cheaper though since you aren't paying for the second pair of Devourers.

On the other hand they gain It Will Not Die, a 6+ invulnerable save, a bunch of new psychic powers, re-roll any dice in a Psychic test once per turn when using one tree of powers, and all the new army-wide buffs.

In other words it MORE than evens out, but they won't be as devastating of an all-around gun platform anymore.

Walkrants on the other hand can take more firepower, better armour save, and the new buffed Tyrant Guard, as a trade-off for the lower mobility.

Based

Living ammo seems rather complicated and seems powerful but i assume cost balances it?

It's not as powerful as it looks, and most weapons with that special rule went down in strength slightly to compensate. Basically they're better vs non-vehicles and worse vs vehicles.

>force armour saves to be re-rolled, if they cause an unsaved Wound the target must take a Toughness test and suffers an additional Wound for each point they fail the test by

Is that triggered on the To Wound roll of 6 or is it active all the time?

Active all the time. The full wording on the rule is more clear, I was doing a shorthand in that post.

>Living Ammo: Any To Wound roll of 6 made with this weapon Wounds the target automatically, regardless of the target’s Toughness, and successful armour saves taken against these Wounds must be re-rolled. In addition, if a model suffers an unsaved Wound from a weapon with this special rule, at the end of the current phase that model must pass a Toughness test or suffer an additional automatic Wound with no saves of any kind allowed for each point it failed the test by.

^Is the complete text.

do fleshborers have this?

The legs aren't supposed to be replaceable, and for internal balance purposes Flyrants need to have an additional opportunity cost over Walkrants.

Fleshborers and Devourers.

>My tide of termies will fuck everything
Nice

They won't even scratch vehicles though, just be aware.

And against models with a 4+ or 3+ armour save the forced re-roll from a To Wound roll of 6 is statistically only slightly better than a -1 to the save. A re-rolled 2+ is a hair better than a 3+. It's definitely not on the level of Bladestorm or anything.

I can't help but feel like one extra unsaved wound would be better than a number equal to the points they fail the test by.

Yeah, I might go with that. The amount they fail the test by was a throwback to 2e Lictor poison. I think it might also slim down the rules text which is a bit lengthy. One sec.

>Living Ammo: Any To Wound roll of 6 made with this weapon Wounds the target automatically, regardless of the target’s Toughness, and successful armour saves taken against these Wounds must be re-rolled. In addition, if a model suffers an unsaved Wound from a weapon with this special rule, at the end of the current phase that model must pass a Toughness test or suffer an additional Wound with no saves of any kind allowed.

Fixed.

Sad but understandable

Why's that?

Quick status update:

Formations are underway. Mostly done with Carnifex genofixed strains. Mostly (almost completely?) done with bio-weapons. What are people's thoughts on Spore Mines, are they in a good place right now? Can I leave them as is? In every edition since 3rd I've always found it really tiring to read their tons of rules and weird exceptions, maybe I can find a way to make them a little more simple and elegant.

The current rules work best, as far as I'm concerned. The old random movement direction + speed made me never want to take them.

Extra wounds based on a failed toughness test could potentially just fuck anything without t6+, statistically at least

I guess letting them explode from deep strike would be the only thing i could think of, and some rewording since it's current rules are a bit of a mouthful

Seconded.

I've never understood why you can't put Spore Mines in Reserves then hit a unit via Deep Strike.

Sounds good to me.

So, what kind of changes has the Tervigon gone through? Other than the switch to a quasi-GC.

I've changed the Spawn Termagant rules substantially. Instead of creating new units it adds D6 models to each Termagant unit (up to a maximum of three units) within 6". Doesn't run out.

Once per game, instead of doing that, you can instead move a unit of Termagants onto the board from Reserve using the Tervigon as the table edge.

Also synaptic feedback is gone, when you kill it it actually spawns a final unit of Termagants on the spot where it died instead of killing the ones around it.

Oh and it has the fleshborer hive weapon that was an option for the Tyrannofex, by default.

Does it still grant Counter Attack, or no?

Not sure yet, I'll have to see how wordy the special rules section of its datasheet comes out when I get to typing up the final version. If I have the space I'll keep it. It's not a particularly useful or powerful ability in my experience but it is fluffy. I have a psychic power that grants Counter-attack, Interceptor, and a similar thing to Tau supporting fire to all units within synapse range of the target Psyker, so maybe I could give Tervigons that power by default and a bonus to manifesting it...

We'll have to see how all this works out in playtesting. I think I've been careful to not write any one thing that's brokenly powerful, but all the synergies stacking on top of each other might reach a breaking point.

>Once per game, instead of doing that, you can instead move a unit of Termagants onto the board from Reserve using the Tervigon as the table edge.
I really like this
I might have to actually take my tervigon in my swarm again

So, how are we fixing the Swarmlord? What about the Hierodules?

Suggestion: make the hq tervigon actually different from the troop tervigon.
Currently there's no reason to take one in an hq slot unless you're running a list of just the tervigon and three gaunt squads for a 500 point game or something, so an actual incentive would be nice.

Special characters don't have unique datasheets, but the generic versions can be turned into them with the right combinations of biomorphs, mutations and genotypes.

Forge World models are not in the purview of my book, at least for now. Maybe I'll do a small supplement later.

That's a pretty cool idea. I'm not too worried about making the FoC flexible because the book is going to include around 13 Formations and 3 whole different Decurion-style Detachments, so by combining those with small CADs on the side you should be able to do pretty much anything, but I still like the idea of making a Tervigon Queen that's buffed up from the normal ones.

Are your warriors amazing now? Is all warrior viable?

Yes absolutely, that was one of the number one goals of the project.

Well, I wouldn't say ALL Warrior is viable, you want to mix in a couple units of smaller bugs to get the most out of them, but I'll get to that.

Warriors and Raveners are now Strength and Toughness 5 with 2 Wounds. Warriors are Brotherhood of Psykers ML1 and know the Onslaught power by default, which lets a friendly unit move an extra D6" in the Psychic phase. They can also Look Out, Sir! Wounds onto Gaunts within 3", so take them with cheap Termagant screens and they become much harder to kill.

There are a few genofixed warrior strain upgrades that give them additional stuff, too. Thraectors are fast leaping Warriors that can keep up with your Hormagaunts, Mutacerons are Infiltrating shooty Warriors that can mutate the ammunition in their bio-weapons to shoot different profiles like Sternguard.

Tyranid Primes are called Praefactids and they're a squad leader upgrade for the Warriors instead of a separate Independent Character, they boost the Mastery Level up to 2 for the unit while alive and are significantly cheaper.

As for Raveners, they can make a disordered charge after Deep Striking if they roll a hit on the scatter dice, and can return to Ongoing Reserves at the start of your turn same as a Mawloc. They also have Rage thanks to IB (Kill) and prehensile pincers by default which means a staggering 7 attacks on the charge (or 5 on a disordered charge).

>Reserves at the start of your turn same as a Mawloc. They also have Rage thanks to IB (Kill) and prehensile pincers by default which means a staggering 7 attacks on the charge (or 5 on a disordered charge).
Nice

...

do toxin sacs still give poison. and can raveners still take them with rending claws? if so that sounds burtal as fuck.

Yeah toxin sacs are unchanged.

You can also upgrade Ravs with a 4+ armour save instead of giving them thorax guns.

Oh and one of the Formations gives all your tunneling creatures Shrouded on the turn they emerge from Deep Strike if they stay within a certain distance of one another, from the massive amount of dust and shit that gets thrown into the air when they explode out of the ground.

>Bonded exoskeleton or chest gun
Neato

>one of the Formations gives all your tunneling creatures Shrouded on the turn they emerge from Deep Strike if they stay within a certain distance of one another, from the massive amount of dust and shit
This pleases my fleets fluff

Something like making the hq variant capable of spawning/replenishing something other than termagaunts?

I think that the Lictor's Flesh Hooks ability to be changed to S3-4 ranged attack that pulls 1 model in a unit D6 inches closer to the Lictor.

Individual models can be attacked by no more than 1 flesh hook per turn, of course.