White Dwarf Changes and Warhammer Visions

 It seems the rumoured White Dwarf change is upon us.

White Dwarf dying (apparently; I'm no astronomer!)

While White Dwarf Magazine isn't dead it has changed to a weekly format. Here's the official word.

 From GW:

"White Dwarf magazine goes weekly!

Tyranid Review: HQ Tactica

The second part of my Tyranid review. I cover the HQ section here. Again these are just my opinions.

If you disagree or have any feedback, let me know. This is as much to help me figure out the new 

Codex as to provide my review.

Hive Tyrant

It’s not a Tyranid army without a Hive Tyrant. The iconic leader of the swarm, the Hive Tyrant boasts a decent statline, Mastery Level 2, and access to most of the wargear chart. He also has the Synapse Creature and Shadow in the Warp special rules allowing him to keep both his underlings and any enemy psykers nearby in check. 

A Hive Tyrant of Hive Fleet Leviathan

Before getting into the majority of the options, we need to mention the Wings biomorph. For a reasonably minor cost you can turn your Hive Tyrant into a Flying Monstrous Creature. This provides him with much greater manoeuvrability and provides some defence as well. To get the most out of your Hive Tyrant I see very little reason to not take Wings; they just add so much to the unit. In the past a Hive Tyrant with Wings toting two pairs of Devourers with Brainleech Worms has been the go-to Tyrant load out, and I don’t think this has changed. Twelve twin-linked S6 shots that can use the Skyfire rule can do a lot of damage to most units. If you are so inclined, you’ll be fine only taking one pair of Devourers and either Scything Talons or Bonesword & Lashwhip. With two rolls on the Tyranid Discipline table there’s a moderate chance of rolling Warp Blast, and Wings provides you with Vector Strike, both of which will count as a shooting attack. This also helps close combat Hive Tyrants to remain viable.

Tyranid Review: Army Special Rules, Wargear, and Psychic Discipline Tactica

Presented here is the first part of my Tyranid Tactica/Review. Note that anything I say is merely my opinion. This is as much for me to work through the options in the new book as it is for others, so feel free to leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments.

Army Special Rules

Synapse Creature

Synapse is tremendously important to Tyranids. Possessed by many units which fill a leadership role, this rule gives the unit and all friendly models within 12” the Fearless special rule.

Instinctive Behaviour

This is the reason synapse is so important to the Tyranid army. If a Tyranid unit begins its turn outside of synapse range it must take a Leadership test. If this is failed they roll on their Instinctive Behaviour D6 table. There are three different tables; Lurk, Hunt, and Feed. On a 1-3 something bad happens, 4-5 either forces or encourages the unit to do something, and a 6 is the same as 4-5 but with a beneficial special rule. 

Hobby Update: Christmas

Been a while since I posted anything due to real life, but the past weeks have been a very busy time for the hobby.

With the release of Escalation and Stronghold Assault the 40k community has been pretty agitated due to the powerful units that have become available. It hasn't really affected Derpzilla too much; Hieronymus is considering getting the Necron Tesseract Vault kit, CA55EN the Baneblade, and I have picked up a Firestorm Redoubt. Elsewhere on the GW front, GW released their annual Christmas bundles and several were pretty good value. Hieronymus decided to start collecting an Eldar army and purchased an Eldar Ghost Warriors boxset. This makes him the second Eldar player in our playgroup, but he is limiting himself to mainly Wraith units meaning the diversity has increased.

In light of recent Tyranid leaks I have also decided to redirect the money I have saved up for the release into my Tau army in the form of the Tau Empire Firebase Support Cadre. This also allows me to use the new Tau Dataslate of the same name which should prove effective. On the subject of the new Tyranids, its sounding very disappointing. I'll get the Codex and play around with a few lists before jumping to any conclusions, but the leaks have been very disheartening. We shall see how they turn out in the end.

RIP Doom, Ymargl's, Parasite, and Snot Pods

Hieronymus and CA55EN continue to delve into Flames of War, and Departed has shown an interest in collecting a small elite British force. Infinity has also been recently invigorated due to Hieronymus getting involved with it so I imagine our forces will see some new additions fairly soon. Departed especially is looking to add to his ALEPH force, and my Tohaa have had a few releases since we last played so I might pick up some Auxiliars.

On the painting front, I finished a unit of Saurus and got distracted by my Emperor's Children. Managed to finish a few squads of marines and some Obliterators. 

As far as the blog is concerned, on the to-do list is the Dark Elves Tactica similar to the Lizardmen one, as well as one for the new Tyranids.

Lizardmen Armylists

Here I present two sample 2500pt Lizardmen lists; one with a Slann and one without a Slann. I tried to make them both vaguely competitive. Just for fun, I then created a monster mash list. It’s not as good as the other two in my opinion, but I tried to make it reasonable. I used 2500pts lists as that is what we use in the group and it is the popular size for tournaments in our area.

Lizardmen Review: Special Characters Tactica

 Here I give my thought and opinions on the Lizardmen's Special Characters as part of my Lizardmen Review/Tactica article series.

Special Characters

Kroq-Gar

The named Oldblood on Carnosaur. He weighs in at only slightly more than a tooled up Oldblood on Carnosaur which is promising. 

Lizardmen Review: Rare Tactica

Rare

Ancient Stegadon

The better of the two Stegadons we can get, the Ancient Stegadon exchanges an Initiative, an Attack, the Giant Bow, and its 4+ Scaly Skin for an extra Strength, Giant Blowpipes, and a 3+ Scaly Skin. It has the same two upgrades that the regular Stegadon had and can also upgrade its Giant Blowpipes to an Engine of the Gods.

The loss of an Initiative doesn’t make too much difference as it wasn’t great to begin with. The loss of an Attack is slightly more impactful but a Stegadon does most of its damage through Thunderstomps and Impact Hits. On that subject the extra point of Strength the Ancient has over the regular Stegadon improves makes these Strength 6. Strength 6 Thunderstomps and D6+1 Impact Hits combined with an above average resilience allows the Ancient Stegadon to go toe to toe with most infantry. The only other monster we have that I would not be afraid of sending into combat alone is the Carnosaur.

I’d still suggest giving Unstoppable Stampede a miss, but I would always take the Sharpened Horns upgrade unless you knew for a fact you wouldn’t be facing any multi-wound models. With that in mind always try to get the charge with this. Without the charge you are missing out on a lot of this monsters potential. If you are taking a Slann with High Magic, an Ancient Stegadon is one of the best targets for Walk Between Worlds. This can really help get it up there early and threatening the flanks or rears of units.