I grabbed the new White Dwarf this last week and had a good time looking at all the new plastic crack I plan on purchasing at some point. I don't know about you, but the thought of a crazy snake monster all in plastic just has me giddie with thoughts on conversions and other such nonsense. Mix that in with a pretty cool rule set as well as "monster" style design and you have some neat stuff coming up. So today I wanted to go into some thoughts about what I saw in the White Dwarf Battle Report as well as the other little bits and what it might mean to future weeknight games.
First of all the change of Synapse. Eternal Warrior is gone now. What does this mean? Well in a lot of ways, these monsters now are playing fairly. How many times have you ran up a Librarian in some vain hope of making that Carnifex psychically pop when you roll that lucky 6 to wound. Now you can. Also the really annoying tarpits of Zoanthropes, Tyranid Warriors, and other multi wound squads are now going to go away when you throw in some strength 8 and 10 cracking fists of Marine uberness. I know this was a great advantage in this old codex and hopefully all the other bits will make up for the loss of the Hive Mind's zombifying powers.
Another new thing is the looks of new additions to the Monstrous Creature slot. We first have the return of the killer Hive Tyrant. I know we have seen the rumors of the combat heavy Tyrant builds. It is something I appreciate as a return to the good old days of peeing yourself when one of these Alien beasites rampaged into combat. I know some people bemoan "super" characters but really a Hive Tyrant is supposed to be a combat monster; filled to the brim with combat awesome and craving the blood of the enemies. This new change is something I really want as it gives me a chance to take off all the devourer arms of the Tyrants I have and go find all the old bone swords, whips, and other nonsense I left behind in my bitz box.
The Trygon, Trygon Prime, and Mawloc kit is something I know I have wanted for a while. I alway wanted a FW Trygon, but never had the desire to buy one. I am not the biggest fan of Apocalypse games and never saw the need to get a big piece of resin I have to devote a day to play with. Now with the new addition to what I consider a super MC into the mix, it gives you a new way to add something visually giant and cool to the tabletop. Now they didn't go over a ton of rules for this new unit. We know for sure they deep strike, and somehow monsters can use the tunnel they came out of. The Mawloc makes a nice AP 2 template attack as well as can go back down to come up again. So what I am hoping is we have a pretty decent combat monster that is just screaming for my Space Goat Lord to go and smack with his hammer of crushing defeat.
It looks like most other things remain the same. They had the Venomthrope in the game but it didn't really survive long enough to do anything beyond give some guys a 5+ cover save. The lack of Eternal Warrior really hurts these speciality units as they don't look to have a toughness beyond 4 most of the time. We will see if this hurts their viability as the return of Vindicators and other strength 10 templates is something that will be scary for nids now (and hooray for anything that get more Vindicators on the table). Also the White Dwarf stated the Zoanthrope has a 18" inch, strengh 10 AP:1 lance weapon. This is a pretty serious anti tank weapon that if it goes off and hits, usually means a dead vehicle. We will see if they keep going this way for future releases as it is the first time we've seen that type of different abilities mixed to create that potent of an anti vehicle weapon.
The Hive Guard are another new unit who doesn't need LOS to hit things. Their weapon is pretty good for medium mech stuff, but I still feel the AP is just not low enough to really scare me. I want them to take a 4+ cover save, not their dumb 3+ armor save. It is still an interesting unit and will see if they worth it. They do look like a neat metal paper weight at the very least and and have a very cool design-sense.
The battle report didn't really go into many other rules that I thought were important to know. A bit disappointing as they most likely thought the preview codex would hit around the same time and fill in the blanks we all had about how the new Hive Mind works. I am hoping we get something to look at in a week or two, but if not look for myself to do some codex reviews like we have seen on the fantasy side when the codex does come in.
I used to play nids and plan on coming back to that old army and update things (rip off arms like some kind of vengeful god) and redoing the paint scheme. Below is the current thought on the models and some showcases pieces originally built from Zoanthropes. They are combination of Tyranid Warriors, Carnifex bits, and tiny little Hormagaunt claws. I plan on next revisiting some Tyrant Guards and then looking at my Hive Tyrants. I made one into a snake like Tyrant due to some bad mold issues on the legs and me getting tired of trying to get them to stand right. Will see what I end up doing with them and how I think they should be equipped.
As usual lets hear from you, and you know where to click if you need some commission painting.
