Warhammer 40K: Tyranids Need The Doom of Malan’tai To Return
The Tyranids only have 6 named characters and one of them is more feared than any other. Bring back the Doom of Malan’tai!
The Doom of Malan’tai was a scourge on the tabletop. But what made this super charged Zoanthrope so scary and why should Games Workshop bring it back? Let’s take a look!
The Doom of Malan’tai Rules
First up, here are the old Doom of Malan’tai’s rules from the 5th Edition Codex. We need to look at what it did and why it caused such a fuss to generate the reputation it had.
It’s got a few rules that combined together nicely to really make it a terror.
- Spirit Leech – Every unit within 6″ would take a leadership test of 3D6. Every point they failed caused a wound with no armour saves allowed.
- Absorb Life – Each unsaved wound the Doom caused gave it +1 wound, to a max of 10 wounds.
- Psychic Strength – The Doom’s strength was equal to its remaining wounds.
- Cataclysm – Special psychic power that’s strength was based on the Doom’s current wounds. At AP 1 it could pierce through most armour in the game. It would also cause D3 damage to the Doom.
The Doom also clocked in at 90 points is kind of a steal! There’s a few things to remember as well. This was in the era of stat caps and where a weapon could instantly kill a model if it was twice it’s toughness. And that 5+ save wasn’t actually used because the Doom had Warp Field which was an invulnerable save.
What really made the Doom so deadly was combining it with the Mycetic Spore (which didn’t have a model at the time). You could plop this terror right down on the tabletop where you needed it and cause a massive amount of damage with the Spirit Leech attack. Afterwards, now that it had juiced up it’s wounds, you could unleash a large blast — probably at Strength 10 with AP 1. Causing another massive hit to things and probably being double toughness to most targets.
Could The Doom Return?
Converting the Doom of Malan’tai Rules from 5th edition to the current edition of 40k wouldn’t take much. The core is still there and with the new edition being deadlier than ever the Doom almost seems tame compared to some of the power combos out there now. That said, Spirit Leech is still it’s bread and butter. Obviously that would be converted over to mortal wound generation. That would actually work out just fine with the rest of the abilities as well.
Absorb Life could also be changed to mortal wounds only as that means the Doom would only get extra wounds from Spirit Leech and not a random melee attack. The wounds could also become uncapped as GW has long since removed any stat caps these days. Could that lead to some truly silly stats on the Doom? Absolutely. But once it has more than 9 wounds it can’t really hide any more, can it? That seems like a fair trade to me.
Cataclysm would need to be re-worked a little bit. Blast has changed as well as the AP structure. But again, that’s easy enough to convert over. The ability could still cause some damage to the Doom as well. If it was D6 hits with an AP of -4 that would be pretty close. Obviously it would have the Blast rule, too. What would have to be adjusted would be the Damage of the attack. I’ll let you argue about that in the comments. But I’d wager it would need to be at least D2.
Why Bring The Doom Back?
The main reason I’m even entertaining the discussion of bringing the Doom of Malan’tai back is because of the limited number of Characters in the Tyranid Codex. That and the fact that GW brought back the Parasite of Mortrex.
While I’m glad to see the Parasite finally get a model after all this time I think the Doom was a bit more popular among Tyranid players. In any case, a really cool new model and updated rules for the Doom would be a big hit for Tyranid players. A super powered Zoanthrope with a fancy new look is exactly the type of “new” character the Tyranids could use.
If Games Workshop can bring back the Parasite then the Doom should be on their list of Tyranid characters to bring back, too!
How would you bring back the Doom of Malan’tai in modern 40k?
