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So, since the new book, I have been seeing a few posts talking about the use of spore mines. But I haven't seen any real tactica surrounding them yet. I loved my biovores in 3rd, didn't play 4th, but never really saw them used much in 4th or 5th.

So what's so good about them? (or bad)

Most of the stuff I have seen surrounds people using them as a sort of a shield, or movement director? But at strength 4 it seems hardly effective vs mech.

So anyway, tell my I should or should not use spore mines

GG

You're right, not too useful versus a lot of the mech armies out there now-a-days.

One tactic I do want to try is the bombardment tool to disrupt my enemies deployment zone. Sounds like a good way to piss some people off.

I would be tempted to take a small unit of them if a lot of my local opponents still took some kind of Devastator squad, Lootas, or similar group of infantry, unmechanised, and usually deployed them in a ruin or woods. The spore mines could be used to restrict that, somewhat. Wouldn't help much against ruins that had large upper storeys, though.

The limiting factors for Spore Mines:

Biovores can only drop one per turn. And that's only if you didn't hit the targeted unit with it in the first place. A single S4 Spore Mine isn't going to be much of a deterrent to anyone who'll get an armor save. You also only have a 33% chance to be able to direct its movement on subsequent turns as well.

Spore mines taken as a cluster get you three instead of one, but also cost you an FOC slot you could use for something else. However, Spore Mines never give up a KP, which is great in Annihilation missions, since you have nothing to lose by taking them (beyond the points anyways).

You could conceivably play deployment zone denial games with them, against certain armies. Anything mechanized laughs in your face. A smart player is just giong to ram your Mines with the front armor of a transport, or shoot them with an idle lasgun or bolt pistol.
Armies with a higher standard toughness (Marine Bikers, etc) would be smart to just gamble and make you roll that S4 hit against T5. The large blast isn't hitting a ton of models when centered on the mine itself. Maybe 3 max.

They feel like they're best used against a known opponent in non-competitive games, or at a tournament where you're intimately familiar with the local metagame. They'll decimate an IG gunline, Ork Footsloggas, and make Tau Pathfinders pee their pants. MEQ will just ignore them, though.

All a mech player really has to do is drive through them with a vehicle. The blast is placed with the hole over the mine and the vehicle takes a s2 hit.

Would they be fun to mess around with? Sure. They're a cool enough point filler.

Are they going to be even mildly effective against just about anyone? Probably not. I suspect anyone who takes it in the pants to spore mines to either have a questionable list or ability to play.