The Return of the Mycetic Spore and it brought friends!!!!!

Hello and welcome back to the webway portal!

By now the internet is filled with the loud screams of happiness and despair over what is considered to be the 'hero' of the Tyranids; the Tyrannocyte a.k.a Mycetic Spore.

I personally welcome this changes, as it allow Nid players to diversify and also allow them to use some otherwise very questionable units more regularly. But as a Dark Eldar player, I am quite aware of the threats of a pod that could bring in 20 Gaunts or a Monstrous Creature crashing down upon my realspace raids. To make matters more interesting, the kit allows one to make two other units that could affect how Dark Eldar players play the game against Nids.

Let's start with the most obvious; the Pod itself.

Now, this is no stranger to players who have played in 5th edition against the Nids, as it is considered one of their more powerful units. For the new ones, the Tyrannocyte is essentially a biological drop pod.

This unit has been buffed based upon the rules that was used here, as the toughness value is increased from Toughness 4 to 5, and now it is armed with a lot more weapons. In addition, it now hovers around until it touches something or is in range to shoot something. This is perhaps one of the most annoying attributes of the new Nid pod as it will put a wrench upon some armies' battleplan.

Nonetheless, the scariest thing about the pod is not the pod itself, but what slot the pod takes in the Nid codex. The answer? NONE. This means that as a non-dedicated transport, you can flexibly put anything into the pod depending upon the threat of the opponent?

Worried about a Riptide? Slap in a Dimachaeron from Forgeworld (this one is brutal) or an Exocrine and let her rip. Worried about that Serpent? Slap in some Hive Guards or Devourer Gaunts and let loose the fire power. Want to score an objective? Put a Tervigon and watch as it breeds and hold that objective forever (figuratively). Want to prevent vehicle movement/block LOS? Just drop it empty.

I will see at least two pods in each list, and depending on whether they are playing a Null Deployment playstyle, I will see more of them.

As for the second unit that could come out from the book, they essentially gave us what is perhaps the first unit that can assault flying monstrous creatures and flyers; the Mucolid Spore Cluster. I can see some of them being played to deny flyer-heavy armies such as Cronair or Heldrakes from dominating the skies as it will go about blowing itself up for the Hive Mind. Also it can also control opponent's ground movement due to it being a rather large model and a floating bomb.

No one likes being nuked for no other reason that being close to it. Nonetheless this one is dependent upon the playstyle of the Nid player. If the Nid player does not invest itself heavily to Flying Monstrous creatures, I can see a lot of these guys floating around to support the army.

Thirdly, we get what I consider as the first true Nid fortification, the Sporocyst. It can infiltrate, it can harrass, and it can throw out Spore clusters and even the Mucolid once per game. To add icing to the cake, it increases the range of any Synapse creature near it by 6". This is huge for nids, as with their PRimaris, you can get a whole lot of range for their synapse thus allowing the Nid player to spread out and have a greater board presence.

However, it takes up a heavy support slot, which is sucks a little as quite a number of the Nid heavy support is really good and they help a whole lot as compared to our dear friend here. Of course depending upon the list of the player, these things might see some action.

Among all of this, I find that the Pod outshines the other slots solely because the possibilities with the Pod is just too amazing, and it essentially one-up the book from being decent to being very competitive. Never have I seen a single release that salvages an entire codex like this, and for that I will give this unit my due respect. From being able to boost low-tier units such as Pyrovores to something akin to being useable to allowing units such as the Exocrine to become amazing backfield harrassers,

I seriously can't wait for all the combos that could be pulled off with the Pods and the other units!

New Dark Elves in the eyes of a Dark Eldar player

Heya all and welcome back!

Now with the new Dark Elves model being thrown towards us to be bought over, there are whole lot of things that are quite cool-looking such as the Kharybidiss. However today I am here to talk about what I am looking at for this release as a Dark Eldar player.

First of all, despite the awesomeness of some of the kits, as a 40k player I will just ignore them for the sake of keeping my priorities straight. Unfortunately that means that the big monster had lost the vote to remain on the island. Units that are rather static in nature/too fantasy-looking will also be kicked off the island, however some exceptions will be given to some things as will be explained in detail.

Thus this leaves us is what is perhaps one of the best female sculpts that had ever exited the GW factories in living memory; The ladyfolk of Naggaroth.

I will say that the most obvious models for 40kers to look for are the Witch Elves/Sisters of Slaughter as they will do very well as much better-looking and kinkier looking Wyches.

In fact thanks to the Sisters of Slaughter, you can get a whole bunch of whips that can be used as Agonisers. Also the Sister of Slaughter masks can be used by elite units such as Bloodbrides and also characters such as the Archon, Sybarites, Hekatrii and also Succubi. A good kit to get for a Dark Eldar player, and I am certain that if a Dark Eldar player has already a bucketful of bitz for Wyches such as myself, you can go wild with the conversions.

However, here is when some of you might already be scratching your head as I also included the Cauldron of Blood/ Bloodwrack Shrine as something that 40kers should look out for. Why would you care about this darn kit? Isn't it too painfully Fantasy to be used in 40k?

My answer to that is no, it has quite a number of parts that can be used in a Dark Eldar army.

For one, that entire altar without the stage can be used in making very thematic Dark Eldar terrain, as you can actually make a Incubi Shrine or something out of the Cauldron of Blood parts, while the big mirror behind the Medusa can become an objective marker.

Speaking of the Medusa itself, look at her arms, and you will see that they will act as very good weapons for the Archon, especially the clawed gauntlet. For those old school Dark Eldar player, that clawed arm can become a updated version of the clawed agoniser (which I still believe is the best agoniser).

But here is the kicker; Did you see that statue on the Cauldron of Blood at the bottom right of the WD magazine? That model is huge right? In fact a lot of the pictures showed that it is way taller than even the wyches. For those Dark Eldar players who wanted to have an Avatar but do not like a truly Craftworld  look need not look further.

That damn thing is essentially an Avatar, but a much bigger and have the looks to match it. If you managed to see the legs, it is actually striding forward like the forgeworld Avatar, and with all those spikes you can actually justify it in a Dark Eldar-Eldar army list if you use an Avatar.

I am for one very glad that I waited a little while longer before I proceed to make my Dark Eldar Avatar, as now I do not have to think too much about how to mutilate the already very dated Avatar model.

With this I will be getting a few of these once the cash starts flowing in, and I will be spending several weeks making them fit into my huge Dark Eldar army!

Chaos leaked stuff part 2

The floodgates are breached now.....
Among this second wave of leakies I am most fond of are the raptors/warp talons. The rest are kinda overdone.
As for future adversarial thoughts, anything big with a gatling cannon is not cool in my books. Will have to see what this meanie function on the table.