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I don't much care for them shooting guns either.

With that out of the way, can you good people give me some suggestions on the best loadouts for a non-winged CC Tyrant? Since he's special though, I may allow him to be shooty, in which case what's the best loadout for a shooty Tyrant surrounded by CC underlings? (I'm not adverse to psychic "shooting".)  

What about non-winged CC Warriors? Rending Claws and Scything Talons?

And how about a couple CC Carnifi? I'm partial to the ole One Eye crab clawed version.

Thanks!

 

A CC Carnifex is either wasted points that will never fight, or free points as it's gunned down. CC Warriors (at least, those w/o Leaping) and Tyrants are only marginally better than that, without wings.

Simply put, a CC army needs an additional movement ability, be it jump packs, transports, Fleeting, raging forward, or what-have-you. Otherwise, they spend too much time slogging forward, and being gunned down before they can bring the enemy to action.

If you're hellbent on the all-CC tyranids, you'll depend on Hormagaunts and Gargoyles to hold the enemy for your bigger stuff to reach them, which means that you'll need lots of said little guys to make sure that the fight's still going for them to reach.

yeah, most people think a venom cannon and devourers are much better value on a non-winged tyrant. Plus a few Guard to use as ablative armour and give extra nastiness should you ever actually make it into CC

I'd like to interject that there are some pretty solid rumors that in Apocalypse, carnifexes will have the ability to deep strike So perhaps a CC Carnie list won't be so bad...

But yeah, your best bet is a flood of little guys running ahead to tie the enemy up, OR you can always try that TMC list and try to box the enemy in with enough big fatties coming forward from all angles. That tactic doesn't work as well though :-|

As if they were not broken already.

GW design monkey 1: People arent taking crushing claws
GW design monkey 2: Thats because devourers are too cheap
GW design monkey 1: But we dont make mistakes, so we need extra rules not price changes
GW design monkey 2: How about we give thm rending
Player: Sorry wont work
GW design monkey 1: How about we deep strike them then the crushing claws get to roxxor
GW design monkey 2: Great idea, now they have a chance against those holofield Falcons and rock hard Dark Angel lists too.
Player: Help carnifexes are deepstriking everywhere and they all have devourers, help!!

As far as I know Apocalypse allows you to take Mycetic Spores, Nid Drop Pods if you will, that can carry 5 Carnifexes each. It would be fun to experiment with a bunch of cheap close combat Screamer Killers. I mean, ten to fifteen monstrous creatures dropping on top of your friend's Baneblades and Leman Russes are going to cause some trouble.

EDIT: Maybe I should've read the entire thread as someone already mentioned this. Anyway, it's a nice idea, but one has to wonder whether you'd just want to deep strike Dakkafexes instead -- Afterall even though they have guns they're still monstrous creatures capable of entering close combat.

While the possiblities are intriguing, chances are I won't be playing Apocalypse. I guess I'm looking for a flexible CC swarm for use in medium to smaller games. As has always been the case with me, I place more importance on fluff and aesthetics than having armies that win all the time.

The "overwhelm the enemy with lots of little guys" not only sounds tactically viable, but it also sounds very Tyranidy and cinematic. Fighting off waves of teeth and claws while the really scary stuff looms ever nearer...

So when we're talking little guys (no gargoyles please), are we talking basic hormagaunts or what? Any biomorphs?

Let's get really picky and say I want to keep the "stupid" dinobugs (gaunts, carnifi) as CC as possible, but I'll allow smart dinobugs such as warriors and the Tyrant (with guard) scything talons and one gun each. What guns would you choose?

Should I take Zoanthropes? CC Raveners? Tons of Rippers?

Thanks for all you suggestions so far.

That's the most hilarious idea GW has ever done to the Tyranids (playing a save game here. I want to avoid "ever").
Carnifexes raining from the sky... how ridiculous is that?

And I'm a fan of CC Carnifexes!

Greets
Schepp himself

There's a couple fluff pieces about Carnifexes being used as shock troops in this way. If I remember correctly, in the short story the Tyranid pod had more than 20 Carnifexes in it.

Mycetic spores have been around in games and fluff for a long time. We were kicking around ideas for a mycetic spore list on this forum maybe 12-18 months ago.

@Elusive -- some folks get mileage out of fairly basic Warriors with two Devourers.

I'm with you on wanting nids to be assaulty Elusive, and I actually like bigger squads of gaunts that run forward, kill and die. It's waaaaay back burner for me now, but I have a 1000 point force of counts as spiders (led by 4 bigger spiders and 1 enormous psyspider ) bought and waiting building:

Tyrant - 2x scytals, +1 I, +1 WS, +1 Sv, +1 S, implant attaks, hooks, warp blast

4 Warriors - scytals, rending, leaping, +1 I, +1 WS, +1 Sv, hooks

18 Hormagaunts - +1 I, hooks
18 Hormagaunts - +1 I, hooks
18 Hormagaunts - +1 I, hooks

The hooks are mostly there because they're spiders, so all webspinnery. The warp blast is the only shooting, and yes, I like my bugs FAST. Also, impressive stats IMO:

Tyrant
6 3 6 6 4 6 5 10 2+
Warrior
5 2 4 4 2 5 3 10 3+
Gaunt
4 3 3 3 1 5 2 5 6+

- Salvage

I have a buddy that took second in an RTT in San Diego with an all medium bug list. If i remember correctly they were nearly all warriors with leaping, rending and scything, maxed ravenors too. the army was really fast, fearless, and hit pretty hard. He was the first Nidzilla player i ever saw, pretty much pioneered the list in a vacum in my area long before the list was all over the net and then he swtitched to the medium bug list and said its a lot of fun to play and he has been winning a quite a bit with it.

I think it would be a cool army to see and would be really different.

Or you could go for the Stealer assault list that Centurian wooped arse with.

back to the original post

i know you said you were against wings...but here  is how it is, my wife wanted a nid army that flies.

we nixed the 96 gatgoyle idea becasue they only come in metal and who  the heck wants to paint that many. especially since your just going to put them onto the table and then take them right back off again.

 

so we went with one of the most customizable units in the game-the warrior

now in your case since you don't want wings you can tool them out with carapace armor, leaping, flesh hooks, rending claws, scything talons, boost strength, WS and intit as well as giving them bio plasma to deal with pesky skimmers(hitting on a 4+, instead of a 6+ at +1 S as well as the added bonus of double intit in normal CC-ie 10) . and to top it all off they are synapse creatures with 2 wounds so they can't be insta-killed froum double T weapons.

 

most people take nids or lictors for CC nids becasue they can fleet, DS or otherwise get there faster, while ignoring the usefulness of the basic warrior.

 

With the time I have spent with my Zilla nid's, I can say that my CC fex has done nothing! Except for grabbing a table quarter or an objective.

I find that for the most part, my opponents usually just ignore him and move along by. Part of the problem has been placement, I had put him on a flank, but he's just too slow for something like that. So I need to go to my LGS and try him in the middle and adjust him according to the enemies maneuverer's.

I think though with Apocalypse a CC themed Zilla force would be quite cool. As stated in earlier post, Tyranids will have access to Mycetic (sp?) Spore "drop pods." But like therion said in his post, would it still be worth taking a CC fex that cannot assault out of a drop pod? Or should you deep strike in 5 Dakka fexes and unleash devourer hell all over the emeny?

Again this is just my 2 cents!

Thanks,
Chappy P!

I had created a 'house rule' that allowed a fex to deepstrike in a normal game.

I visualized it as a big muckin' powerhouse coming to crush all... so it had to be 200+ pts, and it lost a wound upon landing.

If you take non-flying CC warriors, all I have to say to you is leaping, leaping, leaping. Beyond that, if you can actually get them there, they're terrificly choppy and will do a great job butchering most anything that you sic them on (although I do miss implant attack on warriors. )