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After a couple play tests with the Trygon I feel I have finally enough info on him to make some deductions and strategic reasoning.

Trygon Basics
1. Monstrous Creature, remember you are a threat to ANYTHING on the field short of a Monolith.

2. Fleet, this is very important the shooting attack of the trygon (prime) are pretty weak to be honest so at times it is best to just RUN and get into assault if possible. Staying in combat keeps your Trygon living longer.

3. 6 Wounds and 3+ Save remember while your trygon is more survivable than a Carnifex it is not jesus, it will die and there's nothing you can do about it if you arent careful with it. Make sure to not get overly excited with him.

4. Scything Talon x2, you re-roll ALL failed to hit rolls in combat. This works against TANKS unlike preferred enemy so abuse it! Specially against fast vehicles, you get 7 attacks with re-rolls to hit on all 7 so if you do not roll any 6s on the first wave you get a 2nd chance. This will be very bad news for Eldar and other armies that rely on fast mobility to avoid damage.

Options:
1. Adrenal Glands
- Good option to help fight the heavy hitters like dreadnaughts and land raiders. This is specially good against dreadnaughts that tend to be AV 12 of which you have a little less than 45% chance of not being able to damage per attack, so reduce the odds of doing no damage to guarantee you kill whatever you assault. The initiative boost also helps greatly defensively against I4 models with power weapons.

Regenerate
- MUST HAVE! I repeat MUST HAVE! If you can spare the points this is thef irst thing you should upgrade your Trygon (prime) with. Yes it's a bit expensive but you have 6 wounds! If you are downed to 1 wound left at the end of any phase you have a pretty high chance of regenerating! Remember that regenerate works while you are in close combat as well! I've used this myself, while only having 2 wounds left I assaulted a Dreadnaught hoping to glance and armament destroy it's DCCW and then wait it out in combat while my Trygon regenerated more wounds. You can do this if you assault something that you know can't kill you but that you will most likely not kill in 1 turn of combat. Hide in the combat and heal yourself!

Another great tactic is to hide the Trygon behind Trees! Trees terrain is usually pretty tall and capable of granting you a 4+ cover save. I've done this to my opponent as well, I hid my trygon behind a pair of trees and camped there for 2 turns regenerating while my opponent uselessly attempted to finish it off only to see it regaining a ton of lost wounds.

Toxin Sacs
- Do not take this, there is really no point. You will not be fighting many T7+ monsters.

This would only be good if you were only planning on taking on T6 and T5 creatures but there isn't enough of them in the game to make it worth while. As a rule of thumb never take toxin sacs on anything that will have S6.


Trygon Tactics.

- The Subterrenean assault is nice, but it is not practical! Remember you can also opt to start the Trygon normally instead of deep striking it. This is something you should always do if you do not have any Reserve modifiers or if you are playing Pitched Battle. Which brings up to deployment strategy

Pitched Battle
- Start the Trygon normally. You are 12" from your edge and only 36" away from the opponent's edge with the Trygon being capable of moving 13" - 18" a turn with a well placed assault. Try to hug vertical cover and if they shoot you i hope you brought your regenerate biomorph as suggested! It will come in very handy.

Spearhead
1st Turn
- If you have first turn, then start your trygon right in the middle! or on the top side where the distance to the enemy is roughly about 18" if he deploys all the way at the front as well. You should be able to assault sooner than he thinks.

2nd Turn
- If you are stuck going second then this is a great time to use the subterrenean assault and leave ALL your infantry units in reserve! Why? because when you come in from reserves you can walk on from any side of the board which you want to choose the side closest to your opponent. However if the Trygon shows up first then your units placed on normal reserves have the option of using his tunnel as well. This is possibly the most effective way to ever use his special rule from my experience. Spearhead is a Trygon's wet dream. Make a note of that. You can also choose to go 2nd on purpose in order to make use of this strategy. Note: You can also do all this if you have 1st turn, but I would prefer to start in the center near the edge where the distance to the enemy is shortest personally.

Dawn of War
- Deep Strike it if your enemy is the type that will sit back and camp against you. But make sure to be careful as you do not want your trygon to face off against a full army by himself. So try to deep strike it somewhat in range on your first wave (1 hq, 2 troops) to assist them. This is also a great time to put infantry in reserves if you can manage to get the Trygon early his tunnel will be of great use. Otherwise your infantry is likely to be too far to participate in the early rounds of the game anyway so it's not a big loss if they lose a turn of movement. This is specially true for termagants and other slow, short range units.

- If you are facing an opponent that will come charging you (blood angels, orks, etc) Then just start normally and let them come. Or you can deep strike and catch them in a pincer attack. I would prefer to just start normally and counter-assault.

Akaiyou wrote:
Toxin Sacs
- Do not take this, there is really no point. You will not be fighting many T7+ monsters.

This would only be good if you were only planning on taking on T6 and T5 creatures but there isn't enough of them in the game to make it worth while. As a rule of thumb never take toxin sacs on anything that will have S6.

You have some good stuff in there but I'm going to disagree that toxin sacs are a "never ever" choice. It depends on your local meta game. There's enough T5 out there and should you ever play against another nid player there will be plenty of T6.

gaunts with toxin sacs are more suited to tackle those things.

Most of a trygon's targets he will be wounding on 2+

If you give Toxin Sacs to your Trygon, you not only wound Toughness 3 and 4 on a 4+ with a reroll. I'd much rather have the standard 2+ to wound, and would agree that Toxin is a waste. I'm not even sure I want to give them to my Str 5 Alpha Warrior.

What do you think the biggest threats to keeping a Trygon alive are?

I'd assume its Missiles, Plasma and Power Fists, all of which are wounding on 2/3's and able to put out enough shots to really threaten them.
Luckily everyone loading up on Melta will be a blessing in disguise. The short range and limited number of shots means it will probably knock a wound off but with 6 you'll be doing ok.

In a tournament setting, I think most armies will be loaded up on Meltas, but if it's made for Nids, Plasma. Even with the short range, most units that are packing them are mobile enough that they should be able to get most of them in range since the Trygon's popping up right in their face. I think for Trygons to have a good chance at surviving their appearance, they need to show up at the same time as other threats, such as other Trygons, Mawloks, or podding Fexes. You'll really want a Tyrant's +1 to reserve rolls for this kind of tactic, so that's a lot of points tied up into it.

I disagree about taking Regen in a tournament scene.

The thought of mine is in a hyper focus competitive army they are going to concentrate firepower on your trygons or big bugs to pull it down anyways.

Regeneration is going to save you. You might have one turn to use it if that. You are better off spending those points in other areas.

Regen is a gamble upgrade. Going by statistics (that someone else dran and I won't take credit for figuring out) you need to be down 4 wounds before you have a good chance of getting 1 back. If you get that 1 back, you're up to 3, which is less than what they were able to do to you the turn before. You had really better hope the battlefield conditions have changed in your favor or that extra wound won't matter.

Now, if you roll a bunch of 6s, then yeah, it'll pay off big time, but I think I'd rather have the five extra Gaunts for it's price.

This is why you keep the Trygon in close combat! You can safely regenerate while in close combat. Sure you may take a wound a turn from a power fist but thats no big deal if you are down to 2 wounds. Then you have a pretty high chance of regenerating during your turn and assaulting another unit and keep the flow going.

Remember that the possibility to regain a wound stacks. If you are down one wound it's only 1/6 or 16,66%.
But next round you are down to, let's say, three wounds. Then it's the 16% from last round + the chance to regain a wound this time (which is very much higher at this point naturally).
So in conclusion: It's possible your Trygon goes down to concentrated firepower without regeneration kicking in once. But if you manage to keep him out of fire then he will do fine and the 25 points will surely pay back. Mentioned possibilities for that are, as Akaiyou said, parking him in CC or saturate the enemy with montrous targets ("Shall I shoot the Trygon untill he's dead for good or his three carnifex buddies storming at me at the other flank...?").

Greets
Schepp himself