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I'm trying to figure out which type of gaunt is the best and would like to hear peoples opinions on this. I realize this is a fairly open ended question so I'll try to narrow down what I'm looking for. I'm trying to figure out which type of gaunt would be best in a swarm army, and want to know which type of gaunt seems to do the most for its points cost. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Spinegaunts are popular because they're the cheapest thing you can get at only 5 pts a guy. It's a Gaunt with Spinefists.

Then again, for only one point more, you get the termagaunt who gets a S4 shot with re-rolling to wound. I mainly fight orks and I only pack these, well worth the investment for me - last time a small mob of my termies killed close to a dozen or so boyz.

Everyone agrees on devourer gaunts being overpriced and without number being rubbish, though, so spine- and termagaunts are the most viable options really.

It really depends on what role you want your Gaunt to fill in your army.

If you are looking for a meat shield unit that can simply absorb a lot of damage, tie units up in close combat and be a big scoring unit, then you want to go with Spinegaunts. At 5 points a model you just can't go wrong. Also, any Tyranid army in which you attempt to get a large amount of your models into close combat should be supported by Spinegaunts (as point for point they do the best in combat). In the case of a list that uses Scuttling Stealers as a mainstay, having a unit or two of Scuttling Gaunts to soak fire from any failed target priority tests is definitely not a bad idea.

Termagaunts on a point by point basis do more damage to MEQs than any type of Gaunt, and are therfore a good choice if you want to add a little more shooty firepower to an army that already uses shooting (like a Godzilla list). Their S4 also means they are able to damage targets Spinegaunts or Devourergaunts can't damage (like AV10 vehicles). Termagaunts are also cheap enough that they still make a pretty darn good tarpit unit should the enemy want to come and charge your shooting MCs.

Devourergaunts can also be taken in a pure shooting army where you really want to take advantage of the extra 6" of range the gun provides.

In general, any upgrades besides the weapons themselves, +1S for the Devourergaunt, and Scuttlers (in some army types) is a bad idea as the role of a gaunt in any form is to be a cheap unit and no matter what upgrades you give them they still are going to die as easy as ever, so it is always good to shoot for the cheapest gaunt you can get away with that also fills your need.

Gw handled gaunts well, all three basic types have their uses.

However I prefer Devourergaunts for shooting roles not just for the extra range, but the extrra atack. Doubling your attacks is far superior to adding +1S and Ap5.

What Termagants are good for is as a one size fits al gaunt, it has enough shooting to do damage and is just cheap enough to be a worthwhile screen.

In any event you do not want to add any other upgrades, ultimately more gaunts will offer more shooting in the long run as more survive to shoot.

Howver I do admit to a severe bias against Spinegaunts because I hate the miniatures, so I just wont have them.

I just got into the game a year ago, starting off with nids. I remember when selecting my flavor of gaunt that I wasn't crazy about the spinegaunt models either.

I'd decided spinegaunts were probably the best deal, but something about the models just looked kind of weird with the giant "stapler" hands pointing straight ahead.

I changed my mind, though, when I started playing around with other ways to build the models. Termagaunts don't have as many posing options as spinegaunts, at least not without breaking out the green stuff.

Spinegaunts built off of hormagaunt bodies look pretty cool, at least IMO. That approach has the added benefit of allowing you to go 1/2 terms and 1/2 spines and get 16 gaunts out of a single box. Spinegaunts on regular bodies can also be made to look cooler by giving them more dynamic poses; angle the head up/down/to one side, pose the arms at more extreme angles, bend the tails... I've been pretty happy with how mine are turning out.

Dire Wombat wrote:I just got into the game a year ago, starting off with nids. I remember when selecting my flavor of gaunt that I wasn't crazy about the spinegaunt models either.

I'd decided spinegaunts were probably the best deal, but something about the models just looked kind of weird with the giant "stapler" hands pointing straight ahead.

I changed my mind, though, when I started playing around with other ways to build the models. Termagaunts don't have as many posing options as spinegaunts, at least not without breaking out the green stuff.

Spinegaunts built off of hormagaunt bodies look pretty cool, at least IMO. That approach has the added benefit of allowing you to go 1/2 terms and 1/2 spines and get 16 gaunts out of a single box. Spinegaunts on regular bodies can also be made to look cooler by giving them more dynamic poses; angle the head up/down/to one side, pose the arms at more extreme angles, bend the tails... I've been pretty happy with how mine are turning out.

I did something similar. I wanted a bunch of hormagaunts and wasn't too interested in shooty bugs. I endend up using the talons of my genestealer sprues

I go 50:50 termagants Spinegaunts. The spinegaunts just run straight ahead of the main horde, temagants behind.
Although admittidly the reason I go 50:50 and not all spinegaunts is only half the box can have spinefists
:(

I use Spinegaunts for shields (either to confound the enemy or protect a more shooty unit)... enter my Devourergaunts, I put them behind Spinegaunts, let the spiners fleet ahead a turn & then go to town on the enemy with both.

I like Termagaunts for all the mentioned before reasons, strong hits & still cheap!

I do have to say the psychological effects of the Spinegaunts with re-rolling misses & Devourergaunts with tons of shots re-rolling failed wounds certainly make my opponent cringe quite often. An Eldar playing buddy states regularly that my bugs are more shooty than his elves.

Oh yeah!

Does anyone ever use hormagaunts, or are they better off being replaced with 2 spinegaunts for the same points cost?

I love Hormagaunts and against some armies very effective, however, they are real expensive dieing to quickly (low T, low save).

Alot of people hate Warriors, but using a large termagaunt unit and a 4 man warrior unit is a good combo. terms tie up the enemy while the leaping Warriors jump into HtH to finish them off.

Any job hormies can do ravenous can do better

gdurant wrote:Any job hormies can do ravenous can do better

Not really. Raveners are the prime support choice for any combat due to their high number of rending attacks and high speed. The problem is that they are very vulnerable to any fire and/or melee attack. Hormagaunst are as fast as raveners but don't pack as much punch as them, they can tie enemy units up until the second wave arrives (which isn't that much later anyways).

So two totally different roles here.

Greets
Schepp himself

I use hormagaunts (unupgraded) over spinegaunts for one simple reason:

Hormies can assault on turn 1 in some cases, and almost always on turn 2.

Spinegaunts are useless for this.

Tactically, I want to be able to take out a dev squads shooting for that critical turn 2 every single time vs never.

Being cheap is useful, but only to a certain degree. Imagine having to run across the board for 3 turns. Spinegaunts are cheap, but they're also not any kind of threat for that time period.

YMMV.

Agree with Schepp. I dropped Raveners because they were too easily destroyed. Hormagaunts can tie up devs for a long freaking time. Raveners just die. So what if you killed all the 'bodies' in the unit. Do the devs back up and start shooting you again? Yes. That's a problem I'd rather not have to deal with.

Also any mobile army can get a few shots into raveners and kill 'em. Not so with gaunts, who can take a HB dev squads firing and still have a handful of guys left. Not as big a threat, but also not annihilated.

Raveners also don't help against horde armies, who just laugh at your 2 models and swallow them up.

YMMV.

Stelek wrote:Agree with Schepp. I dropped Raveners because they were too easily destroyed. Hormagaunts can tie up devs for a long freaking time. Raveners just die. So what if you killed all the 'bodies' in the unit. Do the devs back up and start shooting you again? Yes. That's a problem I'd rather not have to deal with.

Also any mobile army can get a few shots into raveners and kill 'em. Not so with gaunts, who can take a HB dev squads firing and still have a handful of guys left. Not as big a threat, but also not annihilated.

Raveners also don't help against horde armies, who just laugh at your 2 models and swallow them up.

YMMV.

How large is the group you are running? I mean I usually find that Horma with a turn 2 assault end up off the synapse range got beaten (because they were just barely touched the enemys who are usually in the cover or at the end of the table edge) then fall back at the very turn they charged in ,some times even being sweeping advanced by their foe

That's another problem, ED. A winged Tyrant can help there reliably, but he is better of behind some juice cover. Running warriors/zoanthropes will cover that field in 5th edition pretty decently i think.

Leaping warriors can get the enemy pretty quickly, too, and extreme charges are seldom, so I haven't got this problem as often as I feared.

Greets
Schepp himself

Leaping warriors cant get there till turn 3. Thats prety slow by assault standards.

I run 16x2.

I don't have a problem with synapse, I don't charge my gaunts all the way in.

ED209 wrote:How large is the group you are running? I mean I usually find that Horma with a turn 2 assault end up off the synapse range got beaten (because they were just barely touched the enemys who are usually in the cover or at the end of the table edge) then fall back at the very turn they charged in ,some times even being sweeping advanced by their foe

The key to keeping you Hormies around is to advance your synapse & trail your hormies that can't engage toward said synapse. Have a line of coherency which tails away from the unit into synapse range. A Flyrant or unit of Flying warriors makes this less necessary & keeps synapse near even after the pile-in moves. Remember that once all the model which can be engaged are, the rest just have to be in coherencey and can snake back towards your lines.