Saturday, 19 February 2011

Carsharing in a Mycetic Spore, NOT!

I recently read a comment on one of the blogs I frequent [I'm not sure which] where someone said that since the Tyranid FAQ came out it had 'nerfed' the use of Tyranid Prime's with a Warrior Brood in a Mycetic Spore. I read this and moved on but it kept niggling away at me and so I checked out the Tyranid FAQ.

And here's the FAQ in particular

Q: If a Tyranid unit takes a Mycetic Spore, can an Independent Character join the brood before deployment (and hence deep strike in with the brood)?
A: No.

I mean REALLY?! What is that? There's just one Tyranid Independent Character - the Tyranid Prime and he's got special rules regarding how he interacts with his standard Warrior bretheren he adds +1 to WS and BS. As an IC the Prime can join this unit and according to the 5th Edition rules an 'IC may begin the game already with a unit, by being deployed in coherency with them' [p48]. So a Prime begins the game with his unit in their pod and it's not like there isn't room, nine Warriors can fit in one pod so if you only take a brood of three there's room for the kids and a couple of DVD players for the trip!

Additionally the rule book covers Dedicated Transports and states 'The only limitation of a dedicated transport is that when it is deployed it can only carry the unit it was selected with (plus any ICs).' So an exception for Independent characters that start attached to a unit, and specifically mentioning that an IC can start with a unit inside a dedicated transport (just not Tyranids).

So why specifically do the Tyranids not like to share their Spore Pods? I even asked the manger at my local GW and he said he'd been shocked when it came out. Lets be realistic though, this isn't the fault of the rules, the Prime or the Warriors this was an FAQ that seemed to answer a question that really didn't need asking with an answer that most would have thought the opposite of all existing rules. I'm sitting here now, wondering who were all these people asking this rule? I mean all the exisiting rules state this wasn't an issue so which idiots went and made the rule Tzars at GW shine a light on something that didn't need fixing only for them to fix it with a bolter round to the cortex!

I can understand the furore over the Doom of Malantai leeching wounds from mounted troops. That's a rule that conflicts with the core rule set to the advantage of the Tyranid player, but this is a rule that is amended to be different to the core rule set to the disadvantage of the Tyranid player. It might have been nice to have had a little clarification for this answer, a simple 'No' just doesn't cut it in my book.