So I'm reading Goatboy's BOLS article and scoffing at the detractors saying the new Tyranid MC's are good and you just have to be smart with them to catch dem Wave Serpents before they blow your whole army to smithereenies. This is a foolish mindset. One, it assumes you will always be smarter than your opponent. In a hobby that attracts the high IQ crowd, the odds are good you're going to run into someone with more mental firepower than you've got every so often. Second, I don't care how skilled you are, if you take lousy tools, and your opponent takes good tools, no amount of superior ability is going to help you overcome your disadvantage. If I race Jimmie Johnson and we trade cars, he is not going to beat me in my Hyundai four banger just because he's a better driver.
So anyway, I'm reading Goatboy's article, and agreeing with him that the new stuff is too slow (I have blown footslogging Nid MC lists with Dimacherons and Malanthropes off the board with a CSM army before they got close enough to call me a tosser.) when I look over at the blogroll and see that there are brand new Nid drop pods are coming out next week that can deliver these baddies to the fight. It was like GW was all "HAHA! Screw you, Goatboy!!! We already thought of that!".
Anyway, it's good to see that Nids are getting some love, and also that GW will probably just keep dropping new releases for all the armies on a weekly basis, and with the rumor mill on full lockdown (No one called the new Nids.) it should be fun to see what surprises they have in store. So no more grousing about the new books being bland, k?
K...
Time for a picture break!
It's taking a long time to review IA XIII. This Renegades and Assholes list is particularly confusing as there are all sorts of goofy one-offs, so it's easy to get stuff wrong.
We'll take a look at the HQ section today.
Renegade Command Squad
I mean, it's not that great at shooting, and not great in assault either. The Arch Demagogue is an IC, however, and doesn't have to join his squad, so he can take a covenant, and go join some other better unit like Chaos Bikers and give them fleet, or rerolls to wound. Fleet Mutilators with Abaddon in a Land Raider! Heh...
The Covenant you select unlocks various units with the Slaanesh one being bad (Sonic Dreds are crap and Noise Marines should be troops.), Tzeentch and Nurgle being good, and Khorne possibly being alright because you can take a bunch of infantry to surround the Blood Slaughterers to sort of herd them the right direction. You can also take no covenant which unlocks what appears to be pretty garbage Marauder squads.
Finally, the Arch Demagogue can take a devotion, which you can read about on Frontline Gaming because that page is missing from my copy. The one that makes him psychic sounds pretty good.
In short, you bring this unit to make use of the covenant, and also because you have to bring one.
Rogue Psyker Coven
A bizarre unit that I at first thought was 35 for all of them because my copy is blurry, but is actually 35 points per model, which is laughable. The psykers themselves must operate solo for the whole game, so they give up five easy KP. If one suffers a perils, it is replaced by a Possessed (not the CSM kind) model and I guess gives up two easy KP! All three of their powers are short ranged and bad. Creeping Terror would be nice if it worked on Space Marines, but they're too out of tough with their feelings for it to work on them. I guess Unnatural Vigor is okay.
There is no way these guys are worth their points, but besides devotions on your Arch Dude, there's not much in the way of psykering going on.
Renegade Enforcers Cadre
The evil Commissars. They get you plus 1 to your Uncertain Worth roll and execute a model if the unit fails morale, however that does not make you automatically pass like Summary Execution, it just gets you a reroll, so it's like the old Ork bosspole. For 25 points, that's pretty steep, but you can attach them to Infantry squads and they can tote another set of meltabombs.
They can also bring combat drug injectors, and they pass that shit around which grants Rage but might kill D3 models. Getting the charge with a slow blob is often difficult, but 50 Mutant Rabble with this guy and a fearless CSM IC, like a Dark Apostle could possibly get there and poke something to death.
A short list, and nothing impressive, but I think the only thing that's supposed to be impressive about the army is how much money you spent getting all those models on the table.