He's big, he's bad, he's a floating brain!! The Doom of Malantai has drifted eerily into every tournament list I've seen this year, and for good reason. He has the potential to wreak havoc upon an unwary foe and at 90 points (plus 40 for your Mycetic Spore, of course) he's a cheap date. So why aren't I jumping up and down with glee as a Tyranid player, with this gift of a unit in my Codex? Well, that's what I hope to address in this post...1+ The Doom of Malan'tai
So is he really that great? This is of course a matter of opinion and how you play the game but based on my experience I have to say you're damn right he is! For such a small investment the threat of him alone is almost worth it. Either your opponent underestimates the scale of the destruction the Doom's capacle of, or you force him onto the defensive (either in cover or in vehicles) and to spread out. If he does the latter he has for a start lowered the body count in his army by taking all those transports, which are for the most part easily handled by the trusty Hive Guard (and Monstrous Creatures later). Secondly, and importantly, if he spreads out to deny you multiple targets from the 6" radius of Doom, he allows you to adopt an offensive approach with fast or deep striking/outflanking units, focussing a large part of your army upon a small part of his. Merely by including the Doom in your list you are inviting your opponent to screw something up.
Toughness 4? -Pfft!
Yes, Instant Death is his one weakness, but it is his ONLY weakness. Trying to instant kill the Doom is the most reliable way to kill him, especially once he starts leaching up wounds. So you know that on the turn he arrives, the Doom will have every Missile Launcher, Lascannon, Rokkit & Railgun pointing sqarely at him. Your opponent is forced to divert all of those expensive weapons on this 100-point guy, meanwhile Hive Tyrant, Tervigons and Trygons scuttle up the field happily towards their eagerly awaited meal. There are of course a couple of things in the game that ignore invulnerable saves but they are in such a minority that they're almost not worth factoring into consideration.
WHAT? Spirit Leech still works while he's locked in assault - and in my turn too???
There are few things as demoralising to an opponent (and this is speaking from bitter experience) of being on the receiving end of your first serious Dooming! If you're not equipped for him he's very difficult to shift once he gets up and running. Even if his impact attack isn't crippling (and quite often it is, I've seen him take out whole units of Khorne Berzerkers, multiple monstrous creatures, scores of guardsmen and gaunts), if allowed to fester in your opponents backline he can begin to seem like a one man army.
A No-Brainer
The Mycetic Spore is the real power behind the Doom's punch. On the turn the Doom arrives, he still gets to use his Spirit-Leach, and use his psychic shooting attack if he likes. He gets to do this without fear of reprisal, there is nothing the enemy can do to stop you trying this. Barring a disastrous Deep-strike scatter roll, you should be able to get you opponent taking at least one of those nasty 3D6 Ld tests on the turn the Doom arrives. Buying the Doom buys you a free hit, a cheap shot, a swift kick to the shins to distract your foe whilst your other units close in. Even if you should be so unlucky that when he hits home he has little effect on the battle and is dispatched a turn later, you've only 'wasted' a small portion of your army. You're Tryanids, there's plenty more where that came from!!
The Doom of 40K?
Well I suppose he stands up to the fluff - maybe he's just about powerful enough to destroy an entire Eldar Craftworld (really, Robin Cruddace? Not one of those guardians managed to pop off a Bright Lance at him?). I say this in jest of course, he's far from invincible. He's just a very cheap trick. In the current gaming climate just about every army has one (in some cases two or three) in their arsenal. The individually-armed Nob Bikers, the Jetbike Seer Councils, Necron Monoliths, Mephiston The Lord of Auto-win, Rune Priests... the list goes on. Now I don't have a problem using powerful units - I'm partial to a bit of cheese, I can take quite a lot actually! And I have no problem facing off against these super-units. In a tournament setting anything's fair game. Whilst I admire my regular gaming opponent Kenny for his refusal to resort to running 'Twin Lash' in his Chaos Marines lists, this attitude seems to be in the minority. Of course people use and abuse the lists to get the most out of them, most people want to win! I think what these units do more than anything is expose the gap between players' expectations of how the game should be and how it is; and more importantly the gap between the Games Designers' ideas about what they've written and how it will be used and abused on the tabletop. More and more in White Dwarf articles, the re-formatting of Throne of Skulls etc., GW seem to be discouraging people from using the rules they've written to win games. They seem to have acknowledged, albeit indirectly, that there is inmbalance in their rules system and the army lists but they're kindly asking us to 'play fair'. Surely the best way to get players to play fair is to work fairness into the rules, not tie themselves in knots with ever increasingly extravagant and convoluted special rules? Anyway this has already turned into more of a rant than I'd intended - does anyone else feel as though 40K is descending into battle of the super-units? Or then again, is that what it always was, is and ever shall be?
-Askepios
