The following comes from the Warhammer-community site.
Last week, we had a look at some of the new rules for the Forge World miniatures covered in Imperial Armour Index: Space Marines and Imperial Armour Index: Chaos.
Today we take a look at some units from Imperial Armour Index: Xenos.
We’ll start off with a Tyranid, one of the most popular Forge World additions to the hive fleet forces in the last edition due to both its durability, synapse and protective gas-cloud aura – the Malanthrope. We can see from the range of useful abilities this guy has, he’ll likely still be seen in many forces.
Next up, the Ork Meka-Dread. With the increase in vehicle durability, and the deadliness of combat, Ork Dread-based armies become a very viable option, and this bruiser is the guy you want at the front of the charge:
Our final preview is of the XV109 Y’vahra Battlesuit. This highly mobile cousin of the Riptide dishes out just as much devastating firepower as he did last edition, so you’ll still see plenty of these advanced Battlesuits on the battlefield.
All these of these units, as well as the full Tyranid, T’au Empire, Ork, Aeldari and Necron ranges of Forge World models are covered in the upcoming Imperial Armour Index: Xenos, available soon and designed to be used with the new edition of Warhammer 40,000.
What do you all think?
Well, guess that cat’s out of the bag. So. Malanthrope. Auto-take Nid unit, lol. EDIT: well, assuming the language on the -1 to hit gets fixed, of course. It should say units, not models.
The Y’Vahra likewise, is devastatingly god. Meka Dread is a better KFF caddie than the Morkanaut, IMO.
What do you all think?
If the Y’vahra sits in around 350-400 points it’s gonna be crazy good. The real kicked will be the Supremacy suit, because I have this sneaking suspicion double supremacy Suits will be a thing.
I am extremely excited about the Y’Vahra. Might need more than just 1
I’ve got three that love showing up to the party together lol
Good thing I have 2! Had a test game with Venomthropes and they were very meh.. the combination of Shrouding Spores, Synapse, and more wounds is “soooooooooo good.”
I didn’t have enough mid-level synapse and my army fell apart at the end of the game. Not as bad as regular IB in 7th, but the extra casualties hurt.
Yes, the Malanthrope is a champion. He does so much he is essentially a no-brainer choice. Being a character alone, makes him amazing.
Venomes are cheap and they give you a bigger footprint on their -1 to hit aura. But, they’re fairly easily picked off.
There is no ending clause to Prey Adaptation so the implication is that the army gets the re-rolls forever, evwn if the Malanthrope is killed. Is that how it was play-tested?
Presumably it wouldn’t work once the Malanthrope is dead, since model abilities don’t work when they’re not on the table. But short of that, yeah.
He’s going to be like 200 points tho. 🙁
I guess we’ll have to wait and see on that one.
A bummer he’s Forgeworld Apocalypse though and not allowed in standard 40K. Local TO is pretty adamant that he will never allow FW units in 40K. In no small part because they are direct order only so little to no profit for the gaming store, and partly because the TO can’t be arsed to allow the plethora of crazy FW rules to keep track of.
This has been his stance for the last 15 years.
Forgeworld has been allowed in standard 40k for the last two editions and now 8th as well. Forgeworld isn’t “Apocalypse” any more, it’s just standard play. Unless using Titans of course 😛
Doesn’t matter if Apocalypse is gone as a playstyle, it’s still FW units, direct order only and no profit for a lot of extra work.
Can you tell us more on the malanthrope? It seems quiet expansive and only models within 3″ get the -1 to hit. Is it a typo or mistake by FW?
The malanthrope of old was stupidly undercosted and protected way too much. As a Tyranid player, it will Rest In Peace much like the old Doom of Malantai – being taken from stupidly overpowered to just good. It is definitely still useful and if can’t be targeted, so that’s great. Not sure if I need one in my Nid list but that’s because I’m going all out turn 1 assault! Not really the malanthrope’s style 🙂
The Malanthrope may only affect models, however this allows Tyranid players to help protect monstrous creatures since the Venomthropes cannot.
So walk him up with the Swarmlord or park him near an Exocrine.
Ah, bummer. The Malanthrope verbiage is off. You shoot units, not models in 8th ed. You can’t have -1 to hit for half a unit, for example.
That will need an errata.
All three of them need some sort of fixing. The Malanthrope has that bit, the Y’vahra has typos, and the Dread has a profile listed for Rokkit-Bomms that it has no way to take. I’m kind of surprised they didn’t at least give the ones they were going to use for their showcase post an extra read-through.
The Spore Node of the Sporocyst also need an errata. It’s a weapon that it doesn’t come equipped with, and it’s not listed in the index at all so you can’t buy it. But it’s listed on the datasheet.
And the mystery of the Tyrant Guards/Hive Guards. Are they 1-3 or 3-9?
So how to abilities like the Y’Vahra’s leap work in matched play since all units have to be on the board by turn three. The match play rule Tactical Reserves says, “any unit that has not arrived on the battlefield by end of turn three counts as having been destroyed.” Does arrived mean, once it has been placed on the battlefield once, it is all good,go ahead and use these abilities whenever? Or does arrive mean whenever it is placed on the board and anything being place on the board after turn three is a no-no and thus you could not use these types of abilities after turn two (if you used it after turn two you would be placing a unit on the battlefield on turn 4 or later) ?
Once on the table, you can leave and come back.
It was too good of an ability for GSC, so they gave it to Tau instead.
^LOL this right here.
Lol, well, several units in the game can do this, to be fair. And again, please remember that this is only Index 40k. I would assume things will change and grow as codexes come out.
Since I converted 90 orks into acolytes they’re just going to be playing as kommandoes until they hopefully give us our rule back.
Maybe we can trade cult ambush for regular deep strike and reroll charges?
Cult Ambush is really good, IMO. Plus you get access to awesome units like Scout Sentinels and the Leman Russ, too. IMO, GSC is in a good place, they just play very differently than they did.
AHEM “assume?”
Look Reece if SOMEHOW those codex pages that you’re playtesting for Nids get leaked, I promise I won’t say anything about who broke their NDA
To be fair, taking a 75%+ of a 120+ model count army on and off the table 4-5 times in a game eats. up. so. much. time.
For the low, low price of 400pts, too!
If the malanthrope’s power level stays in line with everything else, it looks to be about 200 points. 5 inch move isn’t enough to keep up with our advancing bugs, so it looks like it will be a back field fire base support. Would rather just use the tyranid prime that’s barley over 100 points.
For the Y’Vahra’s Overcharged Burst, can you only fire one of the weapons with the Nova profile or both? The whole “using A weapon’s Nova profile” could indicate only one…
Or I may just be failing at reading comprehension haha
No, I had the same question. It’s very unclear.
A bit sad there were no Necron sheets, really interested to see the Tesseract Vault and Sentry Pylons.
Necrons get a lot o love with FW. Helps fill some of the gaps in their index list.
Does the Mals -1 impact overwatch shots so they now need a 7 to hit?
No, overwatch ignores most modifiers.
I’m assuming that overwatch shots can be re-rolls.
Yes, reroll are different than modifiers in that regard.
That is great, i also plan on ignoring all negative modifiers.
you are negative enough without the modifiers
I am hoping that the Gargantuan Squiggoth will be awesome…or at least playable.
The moment you put a painted gargantuan squiggoth on the table you are a winner in my eyes 🙂
Is the Supremacy suit any good in 8th? Or did it get screwed over like the Riptide?
Everyone seems to be missing the biggest change for the Malanthrope. It moved back to HQ like the original version. No longer in elites and at the cost of a Hive Tyrant its now a much harder choice to fit in a list.
The tyrant is honestly not my first pick for hqs, anyway. Although, you do make a good point. Being an hq means the Malanthrope can be used to unlock detachments fairly easily, which is awesome.
Reece you’ve said this a few times. Are you a Broodlord man now? Obviously Swarmy is great…and Old One Eye is much improved, but I think the Flyrant is still a #2 or #3 choice
For me it is in order of my favorite to my least favorite:
1.) Swarmy
2.) Broodlord
3.) Prime and Tervigon tie
4.) Hive Tyrant
5.) Old One Eye
And the Malanthrope will break that up most likely, but for now, that’s my top picks.
I agree, but I might put the Broodlord #1. I like OOE better than tyrant even. The tyrant doesn’t know it wants to be when it grows up.
Not sure I’m seeing the Tervigon quite where you are… but my (completely theoretical) take is otherwise the same.)
Why was there only the meka dread on the table of contents (forgeworld homepage) and no mega dread? It was also missing some weapon options. I also heard that forgeworld would put out rules for the looted wagon, but that was not present either in the table of contents.
Either way, looking forward to get the new rules for my big trakks, big squiggoth and gargantuan squiggoth. Also hoping that the grot tanks will be playable again!
I am really happy that we get rules so early and cheap from FW.
But what is their problem with writing rules without obvious mistakes that random commenters find in less than 5 minutes while reading the datasheets?
Rokkit bomms on the mek, units/models in the buff from the mala and the very poorly wording in the suit.
Does nobody there do a final proofread?
Clearly the biggest typo is the Meka-Dred being BS4+. 😜
FW’s proofreading skills have traditionally been _atrocious_. Like, borderline unconscienceable for a company that is supposedly creating professional products and selling them to customers.
I went through one of their books once (I think it was the first T’au one), and found at least one typo on every single page that had more text than just a caption for a picture. Including some that should have been caught just by spellcheck.
Really interested to see the Harridan, Hieordule, and Dimachareon. I have wanted a Harridan model for ages, but since they aren’t (weren’t?) kosher in the ITC…
I have little doubt that everything will be kosher in ITC now. The biggest issue for the Harridan was being absolutely unkillable but still having an amazing damage output (why wasn’t this an issue for Magnus, btw?)
Now that he’s hit just like every other unit (or perhaps at -1), it’s really not a big deal. Orks are still sad, but they were never that good at shooting anyway 😉
Yeah, the Harridan was rightfully banned. But a beautiful model! I’m hoping it’s good now. The Hierodules will need to be much improved to be fielded though. Pricing a Hierodule against Magnus was laughable!
The Harridan was certainly hard to kill, but I don’t think you could call its damage output anything impressive. Twelve shots, sure, but BS3 and no ability to ignore cover or anything, so with the full might of its guns you could kill… about half of a Combat Squad during 7th edition.
The hard to kill part was the lame bit tho. It almost defined the paradigm of not interacting with other models
Sure, and argued on that basis I can see why ITC decided not to allow it. But people always talk about how hard it hits when it… doesn’t.
Hey hi hello.
Just wanting to know about eldar titans