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Are Tyranids now forced to take warpblast equipped Zoanthropes to down tanks. It doesn't seem like the number of venom cannon shots required to down a av14 tank really works in a Tyranid army given the new glancing rules.

I get you can assault a tank and rip it to pieces with the MCs in the army, but that's considering you catch them, which I wouldn't count on.

Maybe you get lucky with 3 fexes all shooting at it and get it badly damage/destroyed in 1 round of shooting, but I doubt it.

Cogito

I have seen them in most lists now for that reason. With that said, I think they are a sub-optimal choice due to their short range and low BS. I think it may be better to just invest in the third Carnie and just aggressively move forward.

3rd Carnie? 6th Carnie!

Also, flyrants are pretty successful at chasing down tanks. 6+2d6 against rear armour goes a long way.

I have found my Zoanthropes extrememely useful in 5th. To the point that I do field two in most every game.

The blast needs neither to-hit nor Psy test to str5 ap3 blast at 24". The anti-tank is shady, but with 3 Zoanthropes as one HS slot, two can focus on AT fire, and reasonably threaten vehicles - all three is a bad thing to ignore and a hard thing to kill.

The fact that that leaves three Choices for more Hive Mind powers is nice. Carnifex still need Syanpse to be immune to ID, for example.

Psychic scream x3 is also highly amusing. There are some quite abusive lists lying around here for that.

With a 6” move and 18” range you’ll have to wait a few turns before the zoanthrope can hit. Even if you do get close enough you’re a 50% chance of missing, and then a further 50% chance of failing to penetrate. It’s not something you really want to rely on.

On the other hand, keeping the other guy’s tanks quiet with a VC armed ‘fex until your assault troops reach them is a solid plan. If the other guy’s tanks are anything but landraiders then I’ll back my ‘stealers to get up close and trash the tank. If the other guy has a land raider then your flyrant will be invaluable (and bonus points for the land raider wreck being about the only thing able to offer decent cover to your flyrant).

That said, Zoanthropes are excellent. They’re versatile, able to threaten both MEQ and heavy tanks, they’re resilient and they’re a good source of back up synapse. I like to pack a lot of versatility and redundancy into my lists, and zoanthropes are one of the key parts of that.