Thoughts on the Toxicrene and Maleceptor

[Dylan4President]

Hi folks just wondering what your thoughts are on the new Tyranid creatures? The Toxicrene definitely seems the better of the two, although Poison (2+) isn't maybe that amazing in the context of our other MCs wounding most things on a 2+ anyway. Granted, in theory it can kill a Wraithknight with one strike, but if you manage to get a Toxicrene into assault with something like a Wraithknight or Riptide then your opponent is playing it wrong.

The Toxicrene might be an effective horde killer, with its ignoring cover large blast and (albeit one-use only) Toxic Miasma; but then again, hordes aren't the problem for Nids, vehicles are. And what's with most of of our bio-engineered weapons of close destruction having the same Weapon Skill as a Guardsman?! And they're soooo slow...

Am I missing something about the Maleceptor? It's more expensive than 4 Zoanthropes (!) and its main psychic attack seems awful. Its ability to choose a specific target within a unit is dependent on you harnessing 3 or more Warp Charges. To obtain 3 Warp Charges you'll need to be rolling six or seven dice to guarantee any chance of success. So its ability to 'shoot' three times in one Psychic Phase is dependent on you having around 20 Warp Charges a turn- none of which are going to any of your army's other psychic powers.

It's psychic power is classed as a focussed witchfire- I presume you still have to roll to hit on its mighty Ballistic Skill of 3? (I haven't seen anything about it hitting automatically.) If you do manage to hit then your opponent will be taking a Leadership Test on three dice (brings back bad memories of Mindshackle Scarabs!). You're probably aiming for character with this- many of whom have Leadership 10- so they have a fair chance of making their roll. If they do fail, then they're not even removed from play, they simply suffer D3 wounds. Most main characters are on three wounds or more, so you're then hoping to roll a 5 or 6 on your wounds roll! And then they get their invulnerable saves...

So why would you ever use this bug? Any suggestions or comments on either creature would be appreciated. Thanks.

[DarkLink]

The maleceptor is just plain bad. The toxicrene is very meh, but if you deepstrike it in the new pod there might be a solid use for it. Use the pod and its shrouded to go after backfield units.

[Theik]

I look at things purely from a rule of cool perspective, so I'm going to go with "sweet, a monstrous creature synapse in elite". Now I just need a good troop choice monster and my big bugs list is off-and-away!

[daboarder]

Hi folks just wondering what your thoughts are on the new Tyranid creatures? The Toxicrene definitely seems the better of the two, although Poison (2+) isn't maybe that amazing in the context of our other MCs wounding most things on a 2+ anyway. Granted, in theory it can kill a Wraithknight with one strike, but if you manage to get a Toxicrene into assault with something like a Wraithknight or Riptide then your opponent is playing it wrong.

The Toxicrene might be an effective horde killer, with its ignoring cover large blast and (albeit one-use only) Toxic Miasma; but then again, hordes aren't the problem for Nids, vehicles are. And what's with most of of our bio-engineered weapons of close destruction having the same Weapon Skill as a Guardsman?! And they're soooo slow...

Am I missing something about the Maleceptor? It's more expensive than 4 Zoanthropes (!) and its main psychic attack seems awful. Its ability to choose a specific target within a unit is dependent on you harnessing 3 or more Warp Charges. To obtain 3 Warp Charges you'll need to be rolling six or seven dice to guarantee any chance of success. So its ability to 'shoot' three times in one Psychic Phase is dependent on you having around 20 Warp Charges a turn- none of which are going to any of your army's other psychic powers.

It's psychic power is classed as a focussed witchfire- I presume you still have to roll to hit on its mighty Ballistic Skill of 3? (I haven't seen anything about it hitting automatically.) If you do manage to hit then your opponent will be taking a Leadership Test on three dice (brings back bad memories of Mindshackle Scarabs!). You're probably aiming for character with this- many of whom have Leadership 10- so they have a fair chance of making their roll. If they do fail, then they're not even removed from play, they simply suffer D3 wounds. Most main characters are on three wounds or more, so you're then hoping to roll a 5 or 6 on your wounds roll! And then they get their invulnerable saves...

So why would you ever use this bug? Any suggestions or comments on either creature would be appreciated. Thanks.

No you're pretty spot on. The pod gives the tox a role and the maleceptor is a bait and switch waiting to happen

[Reldane]

Toxicrene: its poisoned 2+ along with a str of 5 means its getting 35/36 on wound rolls with ap2 into t4 can potentially cause some problems, it also has acid blood which can add a few extra ap2 hits on the unit your fighting. its template ignores cover and wounds on a 2 which is never bad, the more armour saves you can force your opponent to make the more they will fail. that having been said; you can't drop one and win the game with it (as it should be being a fairly cheep single MC)

Maleceptor: with rolling to cast and then rolling to hit this is going to struggle to get much done especially for its rather steep price, having said that if you have the psychic dice it isn't a bad place to channel them though. I would generally avoid characters when aiming its psycic power instead using it to try and take out the heavy/special weapons in units as most basic models have LD8 at best. this means that should you cast and hit you can be fairly confident of taking out a dangerous weapon.

now both of them only have a 4+ save which personally I am not too opposed to, it encourages your opponent to split fire between your MC, grav cannons at the 3+ sv auto cannons at the 4+ making it less likely for you to remove a whole model.

as has already been said the Toxicrine really wants the new drop pod to get into a strong position and the Maleceptor suffers from being just too costly and havign too many chances to fail