Unit of the Week: Toxicrene

[Xenith]

++Toxicrene++

 

 

We have a new unit of the week! This week it's old C'thulu tentacle face himself, the Toxicrene. What are you thoughts, and how best would you use these?

• To compliment a list, or to build a list around? Will the beta rules affect your list(s)?
• What size unit? Will you be running multiple units?
• What Hive Fleet Traits, Adaptative Physiologies and Stratagems do you prefer and how much does it depend on the above choices?
• Are you buffing this unit? If so, how?
• Uses in Matched, Narrative and Open Play

Over to you.

 

[Arson Fire]

This thing degrades harshly for a melee monster. Losing a full three combat characteristics, WS, S, and A. You really want to put dermic symbiosis on it to mitigate that if you are intent on taking one.

Its basic melee profile is a bit weak, but better than some tyranid monsters. The d3 damage is starting to feel a bit weedy in the current game, but at least it gets a reasonable number of attacks.

 

The ability to shoot its 'gun' into and out of combat is an interesting gimmick, but not especially powerful.

 

The main reason you would want to take one of these is for the Grasping Tendrils stratagem added in Blood of Baal. The ability to prevent an enemy unit from falling back is quite nice, particularly as a counter to the Desperate Breakout stratagem. I could almost see one of these paired up with genestealers, allowing you to perform some of the old hostaging maneuvers without your opponent being able to break out via CP.

 

The main reason against fielding one of these models is the tentacle arms. They're immense, and give the model such a wide profile that it's actually quite hard to fit it between terrain pieces on many tables. Making it difficult to move across the table. It's not uncommon to have to reverse it into combat.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Arson Fire

[Evil Eye]

I always rather liked how the Toxicrene looks. A shame the rules are somewhat mediocre, the idea of a monster-sized Venomthrope is a cool one. I had wondered for a fluffy list about doing an army with Venomthropes and Toxicrenes predominantly, for a toxic tentacled nightmare swarm.

[TheNewman]

I've considered a list that uses Toxicrenes and Venomthropes to spam "I fight first" since that's a reallt strong rule, with a Maleceptor or two for stacking the -1S and -1 to hit. I don't even have the models to proxy it though.