[Hivemind] Secondary Objectives for Tyranids

[Xenith]

I thought I'd kick off some tactical discussions about the new codex - tentatively under the [Hivemind] heading (to maybe make them easier to find?) to help us get the most from the codex and win more games!

 

This topic will cover general secodnaries for Tyranids, and also their new specific secondaries - let us know what you're taking, how well it's working, and how you're building your army to maximise these secondaries. 

 

Tyranids Specific Secondaries Summary:

 

Synaptic Insignt (Direct copy from GT: Nachmund) - No Mercy, No Respite

Kill 4, 3+ wound models in your turn with synapse creatures to get 3VP, max 12.

 

Cranial Feasting - Purge The Enemy

Kill characters and unit champions in melee with tentacle face beasties

 

Spore Nodes - Shadow Operations

Perform action with a Troops Unit within 6" of opposing DZ, 4VP each time. 

 

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My thoughts:

 

Spore Nodes: Of these, this would seem to be the easiest to complete, with the others requiring specialised units (or luck) and to kill stuff in combat. Nodes competes with things like banners, nachmund data and homers. For us, this is strictly a better homers, and reduces the ramdom roll for nachmund data. If you were doing either of these, you can probably switch to nodes and have a lot of success! 

 

Feasting - to max this you need to kill the warlord in melee, get a reroll, then kill eight (yes, eight!) other characters or unit champions - all with tentacle units/genestealers. This is a very hard ask for me - the only instance I can think of picking this over assassinate would be if my opponent was fielding MSU (10+ weak units that all need to be in buffing range) and I was running a genestealer themed army. 

 

Synaptic Insight - If you have a shedload of synapse, then this might be doable, though it's also really dependant on your opponent's army, which is the downfall. If 2W models counted, but you needed to kill more, this would be ok, but against marines, unless they're running a pure gravis army, you'll struggle to score. If you're facing a buggy list, for example, you need to kill 2 buggys get get 4 synaptic tally, which is 4VP, which is better than the 2VP you get via Bring It Down...however BID can be completed by anything. How often are your synapse creatures going to be killing large models? Maybe this will change with the new heavy venom cannon, and a psychic heavy army might do wonders here!

[Plague _Lord]

In my opinion they are all fluffy but bad.

Only spore nodes is worth a look at but it requires troops to complete which is a bummer.

I think, RND/banners will be a staple. Maybe warp ritual or psychic interrogation will be fine aswell. Engage on all fronts with lictors?

[Brother Nathan]

whilst they are interesting choices and fluffy atm  dont see me taking any of them. do these invalidate the previous nid one from the updated rules set?havent got rund to compare the synaptic kill one form it. 

[Arson Fire]

Cranial feasting isn't quite as bad as the OP suggests. It doesn't require you to kill things with a Feeder Tendril model to get the victory points. You can kill them in melee with any unit.

Feeder Tendril units just have improved chances to gain a command point from it.

That said, you're still talking about killing 8 characters or unit champions in melee in addition to the warlord. A savvy opponent may choose to allocate any shooting wounds to their sergeants first in order to deny you the points. On top of that it's a very situational secondary, as not all armies even have unit champions.

 

Spore nodes requiring you to take the action far apart from where you previously took the action makes it actually kinda difficult. To max it you would need your troops to traverse most of your opponents deployment zone over the course of the game. Keeping sufficient troops alive and mobile over that much of the game in your opponents deployment zone seems like a tall order to me. But maybe it has some play.

 

Synaptic Insight was actually released in a white dwarf article 2 or 3 months before the codex release. So it has been around a while. It's the weakest of the three, being so dependent on your opponents army composition, your own, along with the inconvenience of spacing out your kills.

 

The secondary objectives are the weakest part of an otherwise very strong codex. None of them are particularly good. I think I'll be sticking to core secondaries for the most part.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Arson Fire

[Xenith]

Good thoughts all! 

 

In my opinion they are all fluffy but bad.

Only spore nodes is worth a look at but it requires troops to complete which is a bummer.

I think, RND/banners will be a staple. Maybe warp ritual or psychic interrogation will be fine aswell. Engage on all fronts with lictors?

Spore nodes needing troops is annoying, but I'm thinking 10 man hormie/gargoyle units to perform this - they're only there to die anyway right, and have 10/11/12" movement now with adrenals, so can get into position easily, and can hide. RND and banners are good choices, though RND caps at 12. Engage can't be done with lictors anymore, you need units of 3+ or monsters, unfortunately. Interrogation is also a good one, but I find yo max it you want to keep your opponent's characters alive, and you need to devote one of your psykers to this.

 

whilst they are interesting choices and fluffy atm  dont see me taking any of them. do these invalidate the previous nid one from the updated rules set?havent got rund to compare the synaptic kill one form it. 

They appear to be exactly the same, just formatted differently in the codex.

 

Cranial feasting isn't quite as bad as the OP suggests. It doesn't require you to kill things with a Feeder Tendril model to get the victory points. You can kill them in melee with any unit.
Feeder Tendril units just have improved chances to gain a command point from it.
That said, you're still talking about killing 8 characters or unit champions in melee in addition to the warlord. A savvy opponent may choose to allocate any shooting wounds to their sergeants first in order to deny you the points. On top of that it's a very situational secondary, as not all armies even have unit champions.

Spore nodes requiring you to take the action far apart from where you previously took the action makes it actually kinda difficult. To max it you would need your troops to traverse most of your opponents deployment zone over the course of the game. Keeping sufficient troops alive and mobile over that much of the game in your opponents deployment zone seems like a tall order to me. But maybe it has some play.

Synaptic Insight was actually released in a white dwarf article 2 or 3 months before the codex release. So it has been around a while. It's the weakest of the three, being so dependent on your opponents army composition, your own, along with the inconvenience of spacing out your kills.

The secondary objectives are the weakest part of an otherwise very strong codex. None of them are particularly good. I think I'll be sticking to core secondaries for the most part.

 

Yea, you can use any unit to kill in melee, however the big score is the command point, meaning you'd need to kill 3 characters in melee to guarantee (as much as possible) getting the 4+ needed for a non FEEDER TENDRILS model, which is a big ask (just take assassinate?).

 

Check the wording on Spore Nodes - it's "within 6" of your opponent's deployment zone", not within, so generally 18" from your DZ, or in a table quarters mission, you start 9" away from their DZ - however cannot score this turn 1 so hang back a bit. The marker positioning is also similar to the set bombs primary for one of the missions - it's pretty easy for a single unit to put markers >6" away from one another even if it doesnt move, and you only need 4 to max the objective. This one is worth trying for sure. 

Edited April 20, 2022 by Xenith

[Arson Fire]

The spore nodes wording is kinda bad. Yes it says you can perform the action while 6" away from the enemy deployment zone. However, you can only place the spore node created by the action within the enemy deployment zone, and it can also only be placed within 1" of your unit. So effectively you have to be within 1" of the enemy deployment zone for it to work. Otherwise you aren't able to place the node.

[Xenith]

That's me misreading it then - oh well, I guess it's a worse teleport homers then?

[Brother Nathan]

so yeah the working on synaptic insught is the same, and its a bit meh. you need to kill a minimum of 2 units a turn to get vps. and they have to be things with mor ethan 3 wounds to count. which fairly narrows down targets. though it has me thinking...  synaptic enhancement on a tyranofex with rupture cannon. becomes a synapse creature and can oneshot most tnks, leviathan, reroll a hit per turn with said gun. can one shot most tanks. has the 4+to be wounded. tough unit and good killing ability can probably get something each turn. give tyrant with shardgullet can likely do the same. zoanthropes and malceptor and neurothrope seem to be very good in this dex and have potential to using powers and such seriously smash some such too. now with units do we add up the wounds of wiped out for this too? if we do great but i doubt ti. i dont think any of the rest of our dex will really help much with this but we can use other units to whittle down to let these units finish off. would be fun using parasite to take final wounds off with such too... 

[Xenith]

so yeah the working on synaptic insught is the same, and its a bit meh. you need to kill a minimum of 2 units a turn to get vps. 

 

Just remember that the wording says 'models' not 'units', so if your tyrant wipes a squad of 5 3 wound heavy intercessors in melee, then you're already there! 

[Brother Nathan]

tried synaptic insight on saturday and managed to get 9 pointsout of it before i wiped my opponent out in turn 3. was pretty straightforward in the 3 turns. killing a few tanks a turn was easy with combined firepower nids bring. tyrannofex easily one shotting tanks and dreads is a great model to stick synapse on and hive tyrant with shardgullet is a threat to anything. and even finished a dread off with short range smite. a few times i nearly failed and left somethng with 2 wounds but the warrior venomcannons were good for making sure it was gone. add on a few supersmites and i found most damage was doneby synapse and te non synapse ws better to use to weaken things before synapse finished things off.

[Xenith]

Great to see - I agree that the synapse upgrade is probably excellent/necessary if you want this secondary - on a TFex or Exocrine. The Exo can probably get it on it's own against the right target! 

[Brother Nathan]

id say the exocrine has more options of where it can earn its in any game it was popping vehicles as well as melting marines where as the tfex will flatten tanks  and open characters with ease but has few options of where its of use. ie after id popped all his tanks it was only trying to take popshots at things in cover would be more worthwhile if it wasnt capped but  hink id near maxed out my killing....

[Brother Nathan]

for those wanting to figure which secondary's are worth it this may help figure what's good. https://www.goonhammer.com/hammer-of-math-objective-scoring-in-nachmund/ realistically if you can reliably score 8 points from a secondary it seems to be above average. you win or loose on primary though so don't go for anything that will deter from that. mistake i took n my last game was taking the phsy one that you need to be centre of board when my neurothrope who had the obj secure trait was then wasted as objectives were around the edge of the board. i could have done better with interrogation. 

so on the nids ones if you arnt building your army to hit your opponents backlines then don't go for the spore nodes one. if you arnt going synapse heavy anyway don't go for synaptic insight. cranial feasting... yup takes an army build and focus. but how easy is this to do with armys built to still achieve their other primary and secondary objectives...? 

[Brother Nathan]

was looking through my options and considering a more in your face approach ofr a few of my upcoming matches and planning deathleper use etc and was then thinking of bringing broodlord who is probably our worst phsy model and the thought occurred, he can only cast once but as he can infiltrate would it be worth while taking him to try the psy rituals as he can start in position nd be doing either interrogation or psy ritual  turn 1? psy ritual the issue is him remaining there and surviving, he probably wont be contributing much else if thats his use? is that worth the cost or sitting for 3 turns? interrogation i suppose he can go off after things and still be hopefully submitting points to the secondary score pool even if it goes wrong and any other unit can jump in to help claim it.

[Xenith]

I still think interrogation is better, you can miss one turn of it for reasons and still get equal points to a maxed out ritual. Only reason I can think of that ritual might be better is if your opponent keeps their characters >24" away from you, but in that case the advance positions broodlord messes with that also! Definitely some good food for thought.

[Brother Nathan]

so the spore objective has been enited, does this make it work? goon hammers view is this

The Spore Nodes Secondary Objective was fixed.

There was some bad wording on this secondary objective that required the placed Spore Node be wholly within your opponent’s deployment zone and 1″ of the model, but this ignored situations where a unit could be more than 3″ away from the opponent’s deployment zone and still within the 6″ required to do the action. Now you just drop the objective marker within 1″ of the unit doing the action.

 

thoughts?

[Xenith]

Personally, I think that makes it one of the best/easiest in the game. Really powerful change.

 

With the multitude of diagonal deploys in the game now, at least in Nachmund, it's really easy to get within 6" of the DZ and drop one. This is a better homers, and homers was alredy decent for some army builds. 

 

It seems like a guaranteed 15 to me, as long as you bring enough troops. 

[Plague _Lord]

Personally, I think that makes it one of the best/easiest in the game. Really powerful change.

 

With the multitude of diagonal deploys in the game now, at least in Nachmund, it's really easy to get within 6" of the DZ and drop one. This is a better homers, and homers was alredy decent for some army builds. 

 

It seems like a guaranteed 15 to me, as long as you bring enough troops. 

 

It looks decent but you have to build around maxing this perticular secondary. So either taking a trygon and using subterranean assault to bring in some warriors or hormagaunts or using encircle the pray to deepstrike gargoyles and providing they survive do it again on turn 4. Another option is a small 10man squad deplyoed upfield via infestation but you again have to count on them surviving or just you going first.

 

I think 8pts is very easy to get and 12 should be a given, with only 15 being hardish. Jorgumandr can max this no problemo. After nids get balanced, Jorgmandr might be a strong option because of a guaranteed 15pts from this secondary.

[Xenith]

 

It looks decent but you have to build around maxing this perticular secondary. 

 

Same as every secondary, no? I don't think it's as difficult as you say - at most you're 24" from your opponent's DZ, meaning you have 2 turns to cover 18", something hormies and gargoyles do in their sleep, and Kraken gants/warriors can. Normal gants and warriors can do it from turn 3 onwards allowing your other stuff to move up if they want. Realistically, there's no minimum unit size, like engage, no rolling like RND, all you need is a sole survivor from a gaunt unit to do it, not too hard with Synapse. 

 

Plans don't often survive contact with the enemy though, so if your opponent can wipe all your troops, then you can't do this one. Howver if they're focussing on killing gaunts, they might have lost the greater battle. 

 

Agree 8/12 should be generally achievable, even then 12 is generally a great score for a secondary. 

 

In a very extreme example, you can spend 280pts and 2CP to stick 4x10 gants ito strategic reserves and bring them on turn 2, 3, 4 and 5 to max this out. However it's unlikely you wont have any other troops alive by then. 1CP and 140pts to guarantee it might be better.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Xenith

[Plague _Lord]

 

 

It looks decent but you have to build around maxing this perticular secondary. 

 

Same as every secondary, no? I don't think it's as difficult as you say - at most you're 24" from your opponent's DZ, meaning you have 2 turns to cover 18", something hormies and gargoyles do in their sleep, and Kraken gants/warriors can. Normal gants and warriors can do it from turn 3 onwards allowing your other stuff to move up if they want. Realistically, there's no minimum unit size, like engage, no rolling like RND, all you need is a sole survivor from a gaunt unit to do it, not too hard with Synapse. 

 

Plans don't often survive contact with the enemy though, so if your opponent can wipe all your troops, then you can't do this one. Howver if they're focussing on killing gaunts, they might have lost the greater battle. 

 

Agree 8/12 should be generally achievable, even then 12 is generally a great score for a secondary. 

 

In a very extreme example, you can spend 280pts and 2CP to stick 4x10 gants ito strategic reserves and bring them on turn 2, 3, 4 and 5 to max this out. However it's unlikely you wont have any other troops alive by then. 1CP and 140pts to guarantee it might be better.

 

 

I don't know. Most armies can take out even a 30 man squad of hormagaunts a turn with ease. It all depends on the terrain loadout - either you can hide small troops squads on the way to the enemy DZ or you have to have a plan to somehow get them into the backfield, i.e. spending a lot of CP for reserves shenanigans. If I see my opponent take this seconadary and starting his troops on the board then those troops have target priority high and I can assure you not many will reach their target.

 

I'm not saying it's immpossible to max this, just that because it has to be troops that complete the action, you really have to build your army around taking this secondary every game (since our troops aren't amazing if taken in large quantities otherwise).

[Brother Nathan]

so goonhammer has a secondary objectives article on the recent preformance. current averages of nids secondarys is...

link to article  https://www.goonhammer.com/hammer-of-math-secondary-objectives-may-2022/

[Brother Nathan]

had anther game last night(will have a few treads for findings. under new rules set and updates by my understandings i only managed to get 6 from synaptic insight as i just wasn't able to get my synapse to finish anything off.  also took assassinate as my opponent had 3 characters and i got hem ll. i completely messed the last up as i thought id taken interrogation... but it was ritual when i anally went to try to use it wasting  my purpose taken broodlord and didn't get him near centre of battlefield