I had a couple of games of Death Angle last night using the latest expansion, Deathwing.

We played using the Tyranid expansion and only the marines from Deathwing. My gaming group is now in the habit of winning Death Angel each game even if it is normally a tight cut thing.

We got completely slaughtered with the new marines. The first game it didn't help that the range zero marines were completely out of the way of being able to engage and the initial onslaught was two major swarms. The second game it just felt like our powers were not cutting in because we just didn't get the number of support tokens to really fuel our powers. It didn't help that the Trail of Destruction roll came up zero.

When I'd first looked at the expansion, I'd thought it was power creep. I'm pretty sure I've changed my mind.

Just wondering other peoples experience and thoughts on the matter.

I agree that they are weaker.

As a caveat, you should expect some adjustment time as you learn the strengths, weaknesses, and synergies of the new abilities, plus where to best position and support the new marines.

However the new squads have more abilities which require support tokens to work, more special ability die rolls, more abilities used instead of attacking, and fewer defensive abilities. They offset this by giving you some abilities that sound like power creep, but especially for experienced players I think you will see a sharp drop in your win rate.

Of course I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Like you, I was experiencing high win rates before the last two expansions. It's just that the Tyranids looked like a difficulty increase, whereas the Deathwings appear easier at first glance.

I'm tempted to give it a go without Tyranids· Should make it easier. Fundamentally that expansions give the enemies more powers. The only way I can see it helping the marines is that sometimes you may get slightly smaller swarms due to flanking, but that seems very much an edge case.

I'd try them again with the base set. Tyranids are more difficult than the standard genestealer horde, so that may have shifted the difficulty. That, plus inexperience of the team's strengths, can make them seem different than they actually are.

Sometimes its just the luck of the dice and cards, how they come out.