Have to wonder also where the warriors die easily comes from? Gaunts protect them nicely from AP(virtually invulnerable to AP until gaunts dissapear) and as for AT...Well compare to hive tyrant. Point to point warriors take more AT fire to take synapse out than hive tyrant...Sure individual warrior dies easily but there's more warriors around. And I take more models any day over higher armour save. Prevents lone lucky AT shot taking out synapse from brood...

Tyrant is tougher for points than warriors against macro weapons and weaker against TK but again gaunts make warriors them virtually invulnerable until gaunts have died.

You need synapses and from cheapest choices warriors are THE most survivable for point cost. Hive tyrants pale in jealousy when it comes to survivability. Plus warriors provide 3 stands for attacking.

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Nope. Nowhere near as hard in CC, and vulnerable to AP fire, so not quite as tough, but more suited for bodyguarding.

I'm fine with warriors as LV if that's the direction you choose to take. That's not the key problem for me, the key problem is the completely incorrect use of raveners as bodyguards. Tyrant guard are the synapse bodyguards, and gaunts usually also accompany warriors. Raveners are the semi-independant, tunnelling, fast moving menace. I see several possible solutions to this problem.

1) Infantry warriors would mean raveners become a worse bodyguard choice than the gaunts, which means they'll naturally become less used in that role.

2) Infantry raveners mean they can't bodyguard LV warriors.

3) Tyrant guard as a cheap LV with a decent save but little offensive ability would naturally be used as bodyguards.

4) Make Raveners sub-swarm only, as they should be background-wise.

A mixture of these ideas could be used, but something really has to be done. This over-reliance on a background-incorrect role for a non-existing model is seriously hurting the list.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Allow Raveners only for the Subterranean Swarm.
After all if you aren't allowed to add Genestealers to a brood swarm then Raveners shouldn't be too.
In Wh40k Genestealers and Raveners act together in the same swarm in Epic they have both a distinct rule wich sets them apart from the Brood Swarms.

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Of course then the Zoanthrope population explodes -- again because TWs attract cheap bodyguards.

My point on the Warrior=LV is not that it is bad in itself, but that it has created all sorts of other 'unfluffy' work-arounds to ensure that warriors have a meat shield.

I would suggest it is better to return to warrior=inf than to try to play 'whack a mole' in suppressing players' ingenuity in finding bodyguards for LV warriors.

nb, I would also suggest leaving raveners as they are until we determine whether their overuse was simply a product of the perceived need for synapse meat shields.

That said, Chroma, if you really want to allow 'nids opponents to 'shoot the big ones,' why not allow the opponent the choice of 'buying' sniper on AP units -- perhaps by eliminating one stand for every 2 or three sniper abilities.

There is that but consider this maybe. Us gamers wish to build single type lists. All Inf or AV are great as it normally means a firing formation is wasting shots, you haven't any problems getting into buildings and so on.

Maybe the discussion should be what are the typical tyranid swarms, the atypical ones and the unheard of ones (the rest).

If the swarms are meant to be mixes of AP and AT targets lv is no great shakes.

Another way of dealing with ravenors is ensuring that a formation with a mix of 'fexs and gaunts is more points effective than one with rav's. Is that currently the case?

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I don't think it's that simple. There are no typical tyranid swarms. Every player seems to have their favoured composition. There are some general observations though.

General Observations
1) Synapse unit type (WE/AV/LV) tends to attract units of a similar type. Tyrants get Fexes and Assault Spawn, Warriors get Raveners and Doms get Hierodules.
2) Swarms like to have similar unit speeds. Warriors with Raveners rather than Zoanthropes.
3) Almost always Gaunts and Gargoyles are present in some amount (Favouring Termagants over Hormagaunts but there is a mix)
4) Tyranids have a recognised Blitz guard formation that is usually a Tyrant or Synapse Node with a couple of Dactylis and Gargoyles

That does mean that Tyranid swarms gravitate towards at least 2 out of 3 unit types (Inf plus AV/LV) and all 3 isn't uncommon. There are only a few single type (Synapse) swarms and they are usually all AV (Tyrant with Fexes/Assault Spawn/Artillery) or WE (Dom plus Hierodules), the LV Warrior and Ravener variant I don't rate as generally worthwhile.

But 'forcing' mixed AV/Inf swarms could be a balancing mechanism as they aren't 'optimal'.

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General Plumer, 191x

Tyranid Warriors as Inf. No option for Raveners in the broods.

Special Rule:
"Shoot the big ones!"
Armies used to fighting Tyranids know to target the larger creatures in a brood where possible. To represent this, when assigning hits to the formation, every 3rd AP hit must be assigned to a non-gaunt stand.

Just a suggestion. I would like to see an implementation of a 'shoot the big ones'-type ability, but, from reading this and many other threads/posts on the topic, the current Warriors as LV causes a)problems with Raveners and b)seems to offend some peoples sensibilities.

Please not even more Tyranid Special Rules.

Your response to Light Vehicle Tyranid Warriors being vulnerable to AT fire is to make them additionally even more vulnerable to AP fire?
Haven't they suffered enough, poor little guys.

Actually, the way I read it, he is arguing for TW=infantry, but a special rule to make TWs somewhat more vulnerable within a gaunt swarm.

Yea I suppose throwing enough AP hits to cause hit to everything in it works. Not many formations can pour enough firepower and if you can do that you wipe pretty much entire swarm anyway.

Can't see any tyranid player worth his salt allowing infantry TW to be sniped just like that otherwise short of aircraft sniping. Guess you'll see lot more of that if you turn them to infantry.

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Tyranid Warriors have been infantry for most of the life cycle of EPIC Tyranids, the change to Light Vehicle has only been a recent development; so there is experience in protecting Warriors in the "as infantry" environment.

From a meta-game perspective, many players like being able to field "pure"-type formation, so all infantry or all armoured vehicles, to deny their opponents the full capabilities of their units, i.e. "wasted shots" that can't target anything in a particular formations.  Many build their armies based on this concept.

To me, it seems "un-fluffy" for the Tyranids to work in such a compartmentalized and organized way; most stories seem to talk about "mixed" swarm attacks with little critters running around the feet of the big ones as they assault the enemy.  Either that, or just waves of "little ones" later followed up by mixed "big ones".

In some earlier versions, it was possible to produce a "Termagant Terror" army with, primarily, Warriors and Termagants (with Lictors and Genestealers to taste) that was completely immune to AP fire.  That "purity", and some other factors like cheap Warriors, made it a list that really wasn't that fun to play against, even if it was a "horde of tooth and claws".

I believe aircraft "sniping" has also been reduced in the most recent FAQ and is how the NetERC recommends people play using aircraft:

Section 4.2: Aircraft
Q: Due to the extremely flexible
nature of the aircraft rules it is
possible for an aircraft to end its move
in the middle of an enemy formation,
in order to ensure that a specific
target is allocated hits before other
models. Is this legal?

A: This tactic is sometimes referred to as
‘Aircraft Sniping’ and although not against
the letter of the rules it is against their
intent. Because of this it’s a tactic that
players should avoid if they want to play
the game in the right spirit. Instead of a
detailed (and rather complex) rule to get
round the problem, we recommend that if
an aircraft ends its move within an enemy
formation then any fire is trated as coming
from the direction of approach rather than
its final position.

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Note the words should and recommend. It's not official at all so if you go into tournament and opponent decides to aircraft snipe there's NOTHING YOU CAN DO short of packing your miniatures and giving your opponent automatic maximum victory.

If you make TW's effectively invinsible until rest of the swarm is destroyed or cripled don't be surprised if you see aircrafts being used as workaround. TW's already take more firepower point for point to take out than hive tyrants. Make them even tougher and people will start looking at new ways to kill 'em.

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