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HQ:
1 Swarmlord
Bone Sabre; Alien Cunning; Blade Parry; Psychic Monstrosity; Swarm Leader; Leech Essence; Paroxysm; Psychic Scream; The Horror
3 Tyrant Guard
Instinctive Behavior Feed; Rending Claws; Scything Talons; Blind Rampage; Shieldwall

Elite:
3 Zoanthrope
Claws and Teeth; Warp Field; Warp Blast; Warp Lance; Synapse Creature; Shadow in the Warp
1 Mycetic Spore
Immobile Pod; Limited Sentience; Transport Spore; Lash Whip; Ripper Tentacles; Venom Cannon

1 Death Leaper
"Where is it?"; Instinctive Behavior Lurk; It's After Me!!!; Killing Strike; Pheromone Trail; What was that?; Where did it go?!; Chameleonic Skin; Flesh Hooks; Rending Claws; Scything Talons

1 The Doom of Malan'tai
Absorb Life; Instinctive Behavior Feed; Psychic Strength; Spirit Leech; Claws and Teeth; Cataclysm; Shadow in the Warp; Warp Field
1 Mycetic Spore
Immobile Pod; Limited Sentience; Transport Spore; Lash Whip; Ripper Tentacles; Venom Cannon

Troops:
20 Gaunt Brood
Instinctive Behavior Lurk; Adrenal Glands; Claws and Teeth; Toxin Sacs; Fleshborer
1 Mycetic Spore
Immobile Pod; Limited Sentience; Transport Spore; Lash Whip; Ripper Tentacles; Venom Cannon
20 Gaunt Brood
Instinctive Behavior Lurk; Adrenal Glands; Claws and Teeth; Toxin Sacs; Fleshborer
1 Mycetic Spore
Immobile Pod; Limited Sentience; Transport Spore; Lash Whip; Ripper Tentacles; Venom Cannon
20 Gaunt Brood
Instinctive Behavior Lurk; Adrenal Glands; Claws and Teeth; Toxin Sacs; Fleshborer
1 Mycetic Spore
Immobile Pod; Limited Sentience; Transport Spore; Lash Whip; Ripper Tentacles; Venom Cannon
20 Gaunt Brood
Instinctive Behavior Lurk; Adrenal Glands; Claws and Teeth; Toxin Sacs; Fleshborer
1 Mycetic Spore
Immobile Pod; Limited Sentience; Transport Spore; Lash Whip; Ripper Tentacles; Venom Cannon
20 Gaunt Brood
Instinctive Behavior Lurk; Adrenal Glands; Claws and Teeth; Toxin Sacs; Fleshborer
1 Mycetic Spore
Immobile Pod; Limited Sentience; Transport Spore; Lash Whip; Ripper Tentacles; Venom Cannon

Total Roster Cost: 1990
Model Count: 116
Kill Point Count: 17


Notes:

I wanted to try using a bunch of the special characters together, I find that the Swarmlord, Death Leaper and Doom of Malan'tai compliment each other's abilities really really well.

The focus here is really on them, while everything else is there to support them, I decided to use my Alien Cunning to mass effect by having the entire army come from reserves minus the Swarmlord.

In Dawn of War deployment I can see this army being brutal! Specially if you get first turn. And have a ton of units arriving to back up your Swarmlord on turn 2.

Everything is in mycetic spore minus the Death Leaper who arrives in style as well. I focused on giving the mycetic spores all venom cannons, due to it's strength complimenting it's Ripper Tentacles perfectly, meaning i can always shoot both at the same targets without rending neither ineffective.

Due to the mass amounts of S6 from all the spores enemy tanks AND infantry will be in trouble as I deep strike right next to them and shoot their side/rear armour and unleash the troops within to take out the infantry around.

The Zoanthrope squad is to take out the most menacing or toughest vehicles, and the doom is there to get in and cause as much mayhem as possible hopefully lowering a Farseer's leadership with the Death Leaper by 3 and then letting the Doom do the rest.

With the Swarmlord in tow most of the army will be coming in on turn 2 with only a few left overs to arrive on turn 3. I plan on getting the swarmlord into combat with the meanest baddest unit i possibly can just to try and keep him engage and out of danger. A giant mob of orks would be a great candidate.

So what do you guys think?

I plan on proxying carnifexes as mycetic spores since i dont have any spore models. But if this list proves succesful I may have to buy quite a few spores in the future.

Oh and the gaunts all have adrenal glands and toxin sacs, with everything else that will be on the field they will probably be the last thing the opponent will be worried about if I take them vanilla so i took super gaunts to make sure they also pose a great threat to anything in their vicinity vehicles included.

Maybe taking some units of 10 stock genestealers instead of 5 units of 20 guants. Real estate may be at a premium with all those pods landing 6 inches from the enemy. 3 units of 20 and 2 units of 10...

I like it!!

I'd also mix up the weapons a bit don't worry about the ripper tentacles being shot at the same target as they only have a 6" range so aren't likely to be doing much shooting, get a few cluster spines in there S5 pieplates are great .

You will probably struggle to get hold of an Eldar flying circus and those S6 Venom cannons will be unlikely to worry Wave Serpents as you'll simply struggle to get enough hits.

Also I think the Swarmlord would be totally wasted fighting Ork boyz he'll never earn his 280 points back that way, he's great against MCs and ICs and hugely over costed against anything else.

Well i considered the S5 cluster spines they certainly seem like a good choice but the problem i wanted to address with the mycetic spores was anti-tank power and range.

The venom cannon has great range so even if the spore is immobile it will almost always be guanranteed to have some targets to shoot at.

And Mech armies are difficult for Nids to deal with, with so many Str 6 weaponry going around they should be able to deal with a couple tanks wether at range or close up.

I'd agree with Kaiser regarding swapping a couple gaunt units for Genestealers. There are a number of reasons I think this would be beneficial.

1. It wouldn't ruin your plans since you could outflank them. In addition, you'd gain the "re-roll outflank edge" benefit of Alien Cunning. And a unit of genestealers with preferred enemy will scare the crap out of anyone.

2. You don't have that much synapse: Just the Swarmlord and the Zoanthrope brood. While the Swarmlord is hugely resilient and has the improved synapse range, you'll occasionally need something to go beyond that radius. Genestealers can do that without risk thanks to Brood Telepathy.

3. Poison Termagants will kill most troops through sheer weight of numbers, but dedicated CC troops that base their strength on a lot of attacks will shred you (referring most specifically to Space Wolves). Genestealers are actually frightening in sustained CC and the Broodlord can neutralize characters when the Swarmlord isn't around to do it himself. Plus, high numbers of rending Genestealers can prove a credible threat to tanks. Your spore-cannons are fine, but don't expect them to do anything besides glance.

And Mech armies are difficult for Nids to deal with,

True, though it has sort of been fixed with the Hive Guard they are pretty solid anti-transport and the Zoanthropes can take on real armour.

Venom cannon spam could work but not convinced that you'd get enough hits with them assault 1 small blast is not very accurate.

I love this list. It really captures what happens when 'nids invade in the fiction; spores rain from the sky and there's no telling where the next spore is going to hit. I would, however, caution you regarding the lack of tank-killing capability. A few tanks would really hurt against this list.

I play tested the army against Tau was interesting.

Mission: capture & control
Deployment: pitched battle
1st Turn: Tau

they deployed half their army leaving the HQ and crisis suits in reserve and i deployed the swarmlord unit and left everything else in reserve.

I had area terrain cover, 1st turn shooting only caused 1 wound on the unit as he repositioned himself to attack the Swarmlord.

Turn 1 I moved up nothing in range of any of my powers.

Turn 2 The tau got one unit from reserve which he opted to keep away from my Swarmlord with, yet still in range for his missile pods. The swarmlord took heavy firing this turn from almost an entire Tau army.

Ion Cannon, Smart Missiles, Missile Pods, Full units of fire warriors, gun drones and even a sky ray all took shots at him and killed off 2 guard and dropped the swarm lord to 2 wounds left. Losing a total of 7 wounds in 2 turns.

During my turn 2, a pissed off Swarmlord brought in ALL my reserves on turn 2. Mycetic Spores dropped everywhere surrounding the tau, disembarking gaunts, zoanthropes and the doom of malan'tai as well as a death leaper that showed up behind a devil fish.

This was my first game using the doom and oh lord that thing is a thing of beauty, it spirit leeched some fire warriors that rolled a 15! for their morale check lol lucky for them they were in area terrain and spirit leech doesnt say that it ignores cover saves so i granted them, and only 3 died. The gun drones also got leeched and both died, starting my Doom at Str 9.

The mycetic spores werent too good at shooting during this first turn as i tried to take down some Tau piranhas but kept scattering off them. But i was pleased to have range to almost everything on the table with the venom cannons. The gaunt shooting was also craptacular all in all the zoanthropes and doom were the ones doing any damage this turn, the Tyrant attempted to life leech the fire warriors and failed the death leaper failed to pop the devilfish and the zoanthropes failed to blow up the sky ray only stunning it.

The shooting as you can see went horrible but the thread of 100+ models already in their face was worth Gold.

Turn 3 another crisis suit unit came in and scattered where it coudlnt do too much harm, the tau ignored the spores and focused on killing the zoanthropes and the doom as well as some gaunts 2 zoanthropes died, and some gaunts.

In my turn 3 I finally got to move my guys and it was bloody as tyranids did what they do best, the doom of malan'tai once again spirit leeched the same unit of fire warriors leaving only 2 alive and bringing it to Str 10. The hive tyrant life leeched the last 2 and was now back up to 4 wounds.

Things were very grim as i shot and assaulted everywhere i could, the doom took out the hammerhead with it's cataclysm lol Str 10 AP1 blast isnt something to sneeze at. The zoanthropes once more failed to kill da sky ray the death leaper assaulted the crisis suits nearby gaunts assaulted every vehicle in range immobilizing, stunning, armament destroying and even wrecking one it was pure mayhem. The mycetic spores made better use of their venom cannons this turn getting some hits and nearly wiping out a cirsis suits unit and killing some fire warriors with that awesome ap 4.

In the end the only thing able to fight back were a single crisis suit on turn 4 which the HQ super unti didnt come in, so they were pretty much screwed and attempted to stay outside the range but the mycetic spore venom cannons proved that to be futile.

I won in turn 6 as my opponent surrendered after the game continued at the end of turn 5 and he only had his HQ unit that was delayed all game available versus the majority of my tyranid army minus the doom and some gaunts. I also had taken both objectives thanks to dropping the spores right next to them.

Unit Grading
Swarmlord - Great
- able to take many many shots and giving me a +1 to reserves was gold, if it werent for him remaning alive through 2 turns of tau shooting my whole plan would've been ruined. In future games i'll hide him better. He fails to be excellent for the lack of regenerate which would REALLY REALLY help him, and for the lack of long range weaponry.

Tyrant Guard - Excellent
- Despite my initial hate for them I must say if it werent for them, the Swarmlord would've been long gone. They granted the unit cover saves and soaked up a lot of fire.

Zoanthropes - Good
- could've done better, they always caused some damage to vehicle but nothing decisive in this game.

Death Leaper - Good
- Like all single lictors he sucks versus vehicles, however his combat abilities are pretty good just wish he would pack more of a punch on the turn he arrives.

The Doom of Malan'tai - Excellent
- Yes i am officially a fan now. This guy killed an entire fire warrior unit without even attacking it, and some gun drones and this is only because there was more vehicles than troops on the field. Otherwise he would've caused even more damage. And he blew up a hammer head before being taken out by a seeker missile.

Mycetic Spores - Great
- Their ballistic skill is the only downside really otherwise these guys are a MUST HAVE on some units like zoanthropes and other really powerful short ranged untis that can take 'em. The venom cannons are murder against things that have a 4+ save. Against vehicles they do not do so good as you may scatter in a bad direction. 5 out of 7 spores scattered in my game moving me away from my ideal striking positions.

Also does anyone know if when the spore comes in, do you need to keep 1" away from the enemy? Does the space marine drop pod need to do this? The mycetic spore entry says 'move minimum distance to avoid obstacle' so does that mean 1" away? or can you be in base contact or something?

Termagants - Great
- If only their shooting was slightly better, but their combat was amazing, they shut down most tanks on the field with furious charge and about 40 attacks on the charge. It was great.

Cool glad to you had what seems a fun game. But don't take too much from this, if the Tau player was dumb enough not to have all his guns on the table and to take a Skyray and Ionhead he is practically throwing the game with those 2 selections.

Tau are the weakest army in 40k and he's made the weakest selections in that army. As I said the Venom Cannons won't do much against vehicles...

On the rules not the spores have to avoid the obstacle being within 1" of the enemy would not be avoiding the obstacle so it if landed there it would have to roll on the msihap table. So yes they are moved 1" away from the enemy.

Nice list, but that tau army seemed sub - optimal and the general appears to be the same. Tau will be a major problem for 'nids with a properly built and run list.

Again, nice list, but I third the motion to drop 2 of the gaunt squads and add 2 x 10 genestealer squads.

FlingitNow wrote:Cool glad to you had what seems a fun game. But don't take too much from this, if the Tau player was dumb enough not to have all his guns on the table and to take a Skyray and Ionhead he is practically throwing the game with those 2 selections.

Tau are the weakest army in 40k and he's made the weakest selections in that army. As I said the Venom Cannons won't do much against vehicles...

On the rules not the spores have to avoid the obstacle being within 1" of the enemy would not be avoiding the obstacle so it if landed there it would have to roll on the msihap table. So yes they are moved 1" away from the enemy.

Well the venom cannon from the spore mines did well when it hit the intended target AV 10. I kept a devilfish damaged all game.