Thursday, February 10, 2011

Meet Jerry: Hive Tyrant (Rant) - Discordian


He is all that is left of my 2000sih collection of Tyranids. Honestly he was the only model I bought, the rest of it was two battle forces my friend had lost in his basement. He never actually played them, he just had them for some reason. Jerry is the standard new metal Hive Tyrant plus the wings from GW's Balrog. I even took the time to magnetize his arms, which was really easy just make sure your poles are right or it will get very annoying later.

Size Inconvenience - Yes, Sweet looking - YES


CAW CAW


Decisions Decisions


I had this whole paint scheme based around those creepy moths with eyes on there wings. A whole bunch of gaunts where done like this, but they where some of the first to go so I don't have any pictures of them.

Boo


Ultimately I think the main reason I gave up on Tyranids was because I simply hated playing the horde. As much as I liked the picture of a ton of ravenous creatures scurrying across the battle field it was a bitch and a half to field.

Hide your kids hide your wives




Now for the rant part of my post........

Jerry as show equipped would have run around 200 points when I first made him. Now in the new edition it comes to around 230, losing the grenades and 2+ for some cool psychic shooting powers and higher weapon skill (and this is without any of his actually useful upgrades).

The fact that the new tyrant can't get warp field kind of made me mad but I understood it seeing how it changed. I got really mad though when I found out all of the new monsters in the book get 6 wounds while the tyrant is stuck at 4 and for the most part costs way more. Sure he can take guard but that makes him more expensive (Also they don't get Move Through Cover for some freaking reason). All in all I just felt the hive tyrant got shafted in the new edition because all the newer things where made as better choices.

GW ruining all your standard choices with each new edition


Give him wings he becomes easy to kill and super expensive. Give him guard and he becomes super slow and super duper expensive. Plus now he becomes easier to just ignore. I do this to my friend all the time, ill kill the rest of his army and if I have time ill circle back around and take out the tyrant. He just isn't the pressing of a issue when Ive got genestealers all up in my picnic baskets. I wouldn't mind this if when the tyrant showed up he had some fun, but my games go either one of two ways.
-I kill the rest of the army breathing down my neck and turn my guns on the tyrant right before he gets in range to do things

-Or the main bulk of his army kills me and when the tyrant finally shows up its party time because theres nothing left to do

I have another friend who uses them just to give him +2 to reserves (One normal and one Swarm lord). It worked really good because the rest of his army was in reserves and was waiting for turn two where they'd pop out of every unturned rock in my deployment zone. Pretty devastating because he did this to me in Ard'boyz against my poor tau. But for the rest of the game his tyrants where just walking and did nothing else.

They're on the Everything!


I don't like the idea of tyrants being cheerleaders. And if I see them try and do more they end up being picked off way to easily considering how much a investment they are. Sure you can put up distractions or something to draw fire but if your playing against anyone who has a general knowledge about bugs he wont get very far even on the best of days.

Also your opponent will be laughing at you from inside terrain because nobody worth a dam has grenades anymore.

P.S. There is one thing in the Codex that pissing me off more then Jerry's makeover. Its the simple fact that Ravenors have acute senses............. WHY!!!
(Gothmog's Notes: For those of you who don't know, the Ravenor has no range over 18" and the minimum night fighting is 18", so you would never need to re-roll for night fighting as accute senses allows.)