Tyrants House Rules

[kublade]

Kublade you remember that's what they said about CSM, and Dark Dangels, and Tau, and Eldar, and Marines people complained that they took away Broadsides railguns, they thought the wave serpant was over priced for what it did, they complained that marines had no flavor. And once people started play testing and finding secret like mantle of the laughing god all the nay sayers looked foolish didn't they?

While I do agree, the primary issue I have, is we have several units, that are not viable, they were not worth taking in 5th ed, they still aren't. GW didn't fix the main issues Tyranids had, and I certainly don't want us to be over-powered, I just want balance. I most definitely do not want to find out we have a combo just as bad as the Screamerstar. It's not balanced, it's not fun, I want to be able to be competitive, without being over-powered, and still have a good game with my opponent.

[Wolfshade]

I think a couple of points need to be made.

Firstly, GW does not hate Nids. Nids are important to them as a revenue stream, and conceptually as the only non-humanoid-like (2 arms 2 legs, head etc.) race in 40k. It is in GW's best interest to produce a balanced army so to generate sales in the new range, without being under costed which would have the long term job of driving players away as each new dex would be more ridiculous than the previous.

Secondly, it is a game and we play based on arbitary rules as laid down by GW. There is absoultely no problem with agreeing to play by different rules as long as everyone agrees in your group and says it fair.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth about how broken Doom was, and now there are complaints that it has been removed..

The trap that people fall into, not just with this codex, but with every new codex/ruleset, is to try and play the previous game. Yes, fundamentally, the flavour of an army will stay the same. Nids will remain a force that is obscene in close combat, however, how they get into combat, how lists are run, which upgrades to take/leave may shift. For instance, I cannot recall the last time I bothered to take power weapons on my DC in 6th.

It seems to me that GW are attempting to make the game slightly more complex by the strength of the armies coming out in the synergies that are created between units/characters/wargear rather than having some rather straightfoward "auto-include" unit.

[Broodingman87]

Yeah, I would agree he need more variety. I would argue that the Zoanthropes are better the Doom. My Doom wouldn't do anything but scatter way off course and eat a krak missile. And he doesn't need a pod Subterranean assault that Trygon and Hormagants. I thing this codex really punishes spammers. Also, for you Carnifex either make him Old One Eye look in Imperial armor for the Stonecrusher Carnifex, those will be more durable then regular Carnifex seeing as how you only have one.

[Rob Godin]

It's house rules - play what you like!
I've seen the new rules, and I aint touching that filth with a bargepole. My gaming buddies are all fine with me continuing with the previous codex.
I aint taking my nids to any tourney when I need the new rules, so everything is gravy

[Ang56]

As far as going back to 5th ed, I own like 8-9k pts in tyranid models thanks be to when apoc came out and GW briefly released amazingly priced apoc box sets. The 5th ed codex killed tyranids for me. They have gone relatively unplayed by me for a few years.

I was fairly disappointed with the changes when discussed in the forums prior to playing games. This weekend my gaming group has been playing a lot. I've played a little over a dozen games of varying size since friday afternoon with the new book. I've been winning around a third of my games and most of them I'm trying out a lot of different things since I haven't really found my stride with what I want to run. The stars had to be aligned correctly for me to win games against my same gaming group with the 5th ed codex (unless I fielded the like 1-2 viable lists that weren't fun to play more then once, and even then weren't that amazing since my group knew to counter them.)

I think the best thing you can do for the guys in your group is to encourage them to keep trying out different army lists and allow them to proxy whatever they want while they sort it out (for a little while anyways). I feel like I've been playing bugs a ton since release and I don't really know if I think the codex is junk or not, I haven't even landed on what i need to buy or how to remodel things. I will say I'm having more fun then I did with the last book. A lot of the units I liked from 2-3rd ed feel usable at their new pt costs again. And most of my games are going into T5-6 even coming down to VP's. I'm not getting tabled on T2-3 like I used to foot slogging across the field.

Anyways, I think the buffs aren't glaring like riptides etc. the ability to have carnifex's hit first when charging into units in cover with a bucket of AP2 with a price tag I can stomach, gaunts that got amazingly better this go around, reliable shrouding for 1-2 turns to help close the gap are pretty big deals.

[Tynskel]

The player doesn't even have a single Tervigon. He has 6 Warriors, 60 Hormogaunts, 9 Raveners, a Carnifex, a Trygon, a flying Hive Tyrant, and a Doom modified Zoanthrope. I don't see why you guys have to post completely missing the point and not adding anything useful.

I'm simply trying to come up with a couple simple rules that are fair to everyone and let him continue using his models without being the playgroup's whipping boy. The entire playgroup has agreed to this. We don't need you to tell us not to do it. It is already being done. We are simply looking for more peoples thoughts so as to be as fair as possible. Please don't post if all you have to say is get over it and use the rules as written.

Why don't you guys play with the new rules first...

[Ang56]

I agree with Tynskel, House rules are fine and can be really fun. But you said you want house rules to make the codex playable like it's not possible to compete with it as is.

Saying that I was pretty down on them after reading forums and even after reading the book. After playing games I'm starting to come around. Thinking up different lists for different opponents. Finding that I don't get tabled and my games are close, I'm even winning, I'm enjoying nids for the first time in like 5 years with this codex. You should play some games before deciding it's "unplayable".

regardless, without knowing the types of games you play, terrain, typical lists they face. suggestions from someone not a part of your group will likely not make a difference or break his list. allowing ST to retain the re-rolls would help with the units he has and not be all that risky of a first step. I think that's a pretty huge handicap to give though.

[Demonus]

If its just your friends, use the old 5th edition codex. No new stuff for you. If you use ANYTHING from the 6th edition one, you are stuck playing with the whole thing. Pretty simple.

[Nefarius Drapesh]

There was a question for a house rule or something similar to help the balance. In the specific example to help the tyranid players.
How about using more terrain/cover, including los blocking stuff. Pure shooting vs. pure melee imbalance often is just a case of the wrong battlefield.
You use random terrain deployment from the brb? Houserule: set a minimum amount of terrain pieces to place and a minimum size for what counts as a terrain piece (group smaller stuff to count as a single piece of terrain for deploying it).

[Nabterayl]

I agree with Tynskel that playing with the new codex before you throw up your hands seems like the more prudent call. If you want to house rule it ... well hey, it's your game, so of course that's fine. If you want help house ruling it, though, we're going to need better insight into what you object to in the new codex vis a vis the old. As I think is apparent by now, not everybody agrees that the new book is worthless, and even if we did, we wouldn't necessarily mean that in the same way that your group does. So what areas do you want to address with your house rules?