The BFG: Expanded Revised Rules Thread (New Years 2022 Update!)

[DrDaniel5]

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But if I use 10 Iconoclasts and get within the prow of a battleship I can cripple/destroy it in one go.

if you're within 15 cm of a armor 5+ship and it is braced that's an expected value of 4.5 damage. If that same ship is armor 6+ that's 2.25 damage. This is without locking on for the purposes of comparison as the feeder tendrils have no re roll ability.

10 feeder tendrils are going to do less actual damage, but they're going to break every system on the ship around twice and basically take the ship out of the game as it wanders off trying to fix everything.

[Mewens]

Apologies for the incoming novel. TL;DR: Iconoclasts, under the right circumstances, have a decent, but not great, chance of crippling a fresh battleship. Feeder tendrils don't do much damage, but simply destroy a ship's systems several times and limit repairs, thus de facto crippling them.

Even with Locked On Iconoclasts within 15 cm of a closing battleship, vs. a 5+ braced ship, you're looking at 7.5 damage. That's 1.25 crits, so you'll usually expect 1 critical effect and an average of like 0.57 damage from crits; let's call that 8 total. While 10 Iconoclasts can ruin a battleship, they often (that is, more times than not) won't even cripple it unless it's already on a few blast markers.

Let's compare that to 12 Drone escorts (240 points at 20 points each, so comparable to 10 iconoclasts at 25 points.) Armor's irrelevant, as are shields, so the only defense we need to look at is bracing. You're going to score an average of 18 hit-and-run attacks and 6 wounds; brace will reduce that to 9 and 3, respectively.  5/6 of your hit and runs will cripple a system, with 4/6 crippling a weapons system; on average, you're going to break 7.5 systems, with 6 of those being weapons. Those hit-and-runs have an expected damage value of 1/6, not counting Fire!, so you're going to pile on a little more than 4 wounds on average, in total. None of this is taking into account the 50/50 chance you have of critting off your up-front damage.

So now you've got a battleship that likely has 4/5 of its systems out, with 8 repair dice — but halved, since you've got a bunch of tyranids sitting on your base. (I haven't yet run into a situation where I didn't park my Drones on my target.) With 4 dice, you're going to see one-or-more 6s 52.8% of the time. You'll only see two-or-more 6s about 10% of the time. Your best-case realistic scenario is repairing a single weapon system and having two online next turn; the most common scenario is a 50/50 chance at having a single weapons system operational.

Keep in mind that we gave the Iconoclasts the best possible scenario: They could Lock On with a closing capital within 15 cm. The Drones will get their result from any angle, without orders. Also, you will see 12 escort Drones; they're tax ships. Nid player must take them to field Charybdis and Proteus ships. I'm not convinced you'll regularly see 10 Iconoclasts.

***

I'm fairly new to BFG, so I'm not sure how much weight anyone should give my opinion, but my games with nids have been one-sided affairs. I point at the enemy, roll All Ahead Full once, and then begin deleting ships, usually on turn 2. The games are often decided in the first round of shooting: Did they kill enough of my escorts to limit my feeder tendril spam, or not? If they did, then I'm in for a bad time: Nid guns are ungainly (6+ lances and front-only batteries). If I get to feast on ships, then I'm basically halving their fleet points in one go. It's a very all-or-nothing fleet in its current incarnation, and that leads to frustrating, repetitive games.

Personally, I think that feeder tendrils only become problematic when you can load them up on cheap bodies. I don't think they should be available, period, at 20 points a piece; they feel fine on 35-point Kraken Predators, where they're strong but not overwhelming.

My solution: Don't offer feeder tendrils as an option on Drone escorts. Nid shooting in general might need to be slightly better to compensate for no feeder tendril spam (with my sense being that Bio-plasma could get a sprucing, perhaps limiting its shield-piercing to within 15 cm but making it a 4+ lance at all ranges), but I haven't played enough games w/ no-tendril Drones to really get a feel for it.

Edits: grammar

[Green_Squad_Leader]

Very well put. My games vs tyranids have mirrored the "one shot at this" aspect of your post. The super cheap escorts are very cool, but the mass feeder tendrils do seem too good. Again if it was an attack that actually had to hit it wouldn't be broken but it appears no changes to the current rules will be considered...

[horizon]

No one faced my 3 strong Iconoclast squadron of utter mayhem then. 


Alas, if feeder tendrils are an issue then scratch the whole thing. Are massive claws okay? Then let models with tendrils count as claws.

Or go wild:
Feeder tendrils

These grab a ship when in contact. Make a leadership test: if successful then the enemy ship is pushed remaining movement distance in the direction the tyranid escort is flying. Counts as BM in contact as well.

Against bigger vessels: leadership test on 3D6.
 

Sumtin like that. Quite cool tbh.

[AJCHVY]

No one faced my 3 strong Iconoclast squadron of utter mayhem then. 


Alas, if feeder tendrils are an issue then scratch the whole thing. Are massive claws okay? Then let models with tendrils count as claws.

Or go wild:
Feeder tendrils

These grab a ship when in contact. Make a leadership test: if successful then the enemy ship is pushed remaining movement distance in the direction the tyranid escort is flying. Counts as BM in contact as well.

Against bigger vessels: leadership test on 3D6.
 

Sumtin like that. Quite cool tbh.

So, not trying to be harsh here but are you joking? I can't possibly imagine actually moving enemy ships like that. Sure the crushing claws can do it, but how often do you see a crushing claw armed battleship?

Attempting to balance something like that would be in my opinion extremely difficult. I'd rather not have the option for an escort to move a battleship, that makes no sense. Also, how many points would that even cost. If a 20 point escort could move a 350+ point battleship I think there may be something wrong there.

My big gripe with feeder tendrils still is as Mewens put it. Being able to take 18+ of them in a list for 20 pts a piece is was too strong. I think they work fine as is, just limit the amount that can be taken in a list.

Again, not trying to piss anyone off. The local nid players here have been not taking feeder tendrils on drone escorts and the fleet feels much more balanced.

[horizon]

Not joking. When something is wrong and can only be fixed with extra rules or shudder shudder limit on numbers one should start thinking outside of the box.

In Rogue One a much smaller rebel ship pushed an Imperial Destroyer.

Yes, I see tendrils grappling on ships and pushing or even towing them.

[AJCHVY]

I'm not asking for extra rules. A limit on a very powerful option is to me the correct answer.

Also, I was quite upset during rogue one when the small cruiser rammed and them moved a star destroyer. Even in 40k if that were to happen its likely the smaller ship would be crushed during this ram. By that logic, my ork ramships should be able to ram and move any ship in the game.

[horizon]

Perhaps they should heh heh.

Putting limits on options is the worst kind of ruling in my opinion. Because it is a fake solution to the game universe.

[AJCHVY]

There needs to be a balance between in game fiction and rules. Why can't you take as many land raiders in 40k as you want in a normal army? Because doing so would be unbalanced and therefore not fun. If we are going to play a game strictly on fluff, there will always be an army that is better than the others and people will flock to that.

I play BFG because the minis are cool, and 40k has a great universe, but I don't ever want fluff to overpower rules.

I had an ork battleship crippled in one turn by being attacked by 12+ drone escorts. That was probably one of the least fun games of BFG I've ever had. When 240 points of escorts cripple a 400 point battleship without actually having to roll to hit as well as being braced, something is wrong.

[Green_Squad_Leader]

I had a thought on another way to manage this. We could add an asterisk next to the feeder tendril options on escort drones with the following explaination:

May only be taken on Escort Drones taken in escess of the mandatory number required by a fleet's Hive Ships.

Wording needs cleaning up but the point should be clear. Doing this would help to prevent excessive spamming.  That could go a long way towards mitigating the "feel badsies" folks are suffering.

[Xca|iber]

Just a quick update: I have some potential changes for Orks and Tyranids in the pipeline at the moment, based on the recent feedback and discussion in this thread. I will post them up Soon^TM.

[horizon]

There needs to be a balance between in game fiction and rules. Why can't you take as many land raiders in 40k as you want in a normal army? Because doing so would be unbalanced and therefore not fun. If we are going to play a game strictly on fluff, there will always be an army that is better than the others and people will flock to that.

I play BFG because the minis are cool, and 40k has a great universe, but I don't ever want fluff to overpower rules.

I had an ork battleship crippled in one turn by being attacked by 12+ drone escorts. That was probably one of the least fun games of BFG I've ever had. When 240 points of escorts cripple a 400 point battleship without actually having to roll to hit as well as being braced, something is wrong.

Your still on in the loop that the feeder tendrils are to strong. Yes, good, enough example. Thus the feeder tendrils are overpowered. Limiting them in numbers breaks fluff and game mechanics. It is daft. An overpowered rule should be changed, not contained.
I only gave an example of a variant idea. Run along with it. Feed tendrils do not need to work as they do currently.

However I must say that this case has never been brought up since BFG exists. So was there someting in the old rules different (Armada)?

[Xca|iber]

At one point when afterimagedan took over BFG:R, he mentioned (Link) the Feeder Tendrils as being problematic in old Tyranid rules. However, I'm not sure which version of BFG:R he is talking about - he said Plaxor changed it to 1 H&R per Strength only, but this is not the same as the version of BFG:R Tyranids on afterimagedan's website.

Currently in BFG:XR and the BFG:R version on afterimagedan's blog, Feeder Tendrils do exactly the same as in Armada rules.

[Green_Squad_Leader]

I think perhaps the cost was the limiting factor before, it was hard to have enough escorts to reliably make it into contact with tendrils. The cost decrease helps nids a ton.

I agree that the current rule should be changed, the first thing we should do to figure out how is to decide what they do lore wise and what role they should fill for nids.

I would say that thematically it makes sense for tendrils to allow a ship to halt its movement and attack an board an enemy ship.  That is not an attack though so it should be an additional effect on top of whatever attack they do.

The simplest idea I can come up with is to make them the "weapons battery" version of claws, meaning that they get to make 1 attack against the target ship for each point of str against the target's armor. That makes them a lot weaker relative to massive claws and fits with the "batteries vs lances" dynamic that most of the rules already have.

It also would allow us to differentiate the power levels of feeder tendrils between capital ships and escorts by simply changing their str.

How does that sound?

[Xca|iber]

So here's what I've been considering on my end with respect to these discussions:

Feeder Tendrils:
For these I've mostly been in the same camp as Green_Squad_Leader, aiming to make them (1) do less overall damage and (2) have a chance of failure like other weapons. So what I've come up with is basically the following:

"A Tyranid ship armed with feeder tendrils may use them to attack one enemy in base contact during the shooting phase, just like any other weapon. To do so, roll a D6 per point of the weapon's strength. Each result that equals or exceeds the enemy's Armor value inflicts one hit-and-run attack on the target. If the target is a capital ship (or a defense with more than 3 starting hits), it also suffers one point of damage for each successful roll. This damage may cause critical hits as normal.

Squadron members automatically combine their feeder tendril strength when attacking the same target. If a target has multiple Armor values, combine feeder tendril strength for each group of squadron members facing a different value, then resolve those sets of attacks separately."

Along with this, the plan would be to double feeder tendril strength across the board. So a squadron of 12 escorts (as was used a few posts back) would go from ~9 H&Rs + 3 Damage against a braced Armor 5+ Battleship to ~4 H&Rs + 4 Damage (keeping in mind as well that the curve shifts down as well, since the minimum output is now 0). Overall it will do less damage than 10 Locked-On Iconoclasts at 15cm firing closing, but it requires less rigid positioning (besides base-contact) and no special orders.

Lastly, this setup prevents "fly-by" attacks, which never made sense to me. Now the Tyranids have to actually reach base-contact and stay there to make tentacle attacks, which is much more in line with the logic used elsewhere in the game.

Massive Claws:
Ok so for these I realize that they are suitably functional right now, but they're pretty clunky and for the most part it seems like they're just functioning as "point blank lances" rather than an interesting way to interact with enemy ships. (Also keep in mind that if anything changes here, Ork Klaws will probably change to match). In any case here's an outline of what I've come up with:

"When a Tyranid ship armed with massive claws rams or boards an enemy ship, it may attempt to grab the target. To do so, roll a D6 per point of massive claw strength. If at least two dice score a 4+, the target has been successfully grappled. The enemy suffers one point of damage and the Tyranid vessel immediately comes to a halt. If the target has a larger size (where Defense > Battleship > Cruiser > Escort) or slower Speed than the attacker (or both), the attack will succeed if at least two dice score a 3+ instead.

At the end of each turn, a grappled vessel must attempt a Leadership test with a -1 Ld penalty for each vessel currently grappling it. This penalty is increased to -3 Ld for each grappling ship larger than its unfortunate victim. If the test is failed, all of the vessels involved are considered locked in combat, and will follow the rules for drawn combats (as described on page 41 of the main rulebook) until the end of the next player’s turn. If the test is passed, the intrepid defender breaks free from the massive claws and may move away at its next opportunity.

Attacks from massive claws are resolved immediately upon base contact, even if the Tyranid vessel has not yet moved its minimum speed. If the attack fails to grab the target and the Tyranid ship’s movement takes it out of base contact, any boarding attempt is automatically canceled and the Tyranid may continue to act normally (but may not attempt to board again in the same turn). Furthermore, a Tyranid ship cannot attempt to use its massive claws more than once per turn, and if a Tyranid ship becomes crippled, its massive claws may no longer attack at all (immediately releasing any enemy ship it is currently grappling)."

Text-wise I don't know if this is actually shorter, but I'm hoping that it provides a clearer and more immersive function gameplay-wise. Mainly the change is that the claws do less damage (1 total on a success rather than 1 per hit each time), they only trigger on ramming/boarding attempts (again with the logic of requiring full base contact rather than "fly-by" hits), and there's no requirements for moving the ships around in complex ways. On a grab, the ships just stop, and can have the possibility of being locked down for one or more turns. (This is also why the damage is reduced - it'll be made up during sequential boarding rounds).

+++++++++++++

That's it for now regarding Tyranid game mechanics. Let me know what you all think about these potential changes.