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Ive heard mumblings about devourer gaunts being one of the nastiest units in the book. A full squad of 30 can chuck 90 lasgun shots at 18 inches for only 300 points. A very frightening amount of firepower for the points. The problem I have with them though is the point cost. Sure you triple their shooting effectiveness, but are adding nothing either hand to hand wise or with armor.

In my mind this makes them not worth it. But I would like to open a full discussion on this unit.

Twenty Devilgants in a Pod can come down and deal a lot of damage to enemy and hopefully cause them to run. Especially with the extra -1 to Leadership.

If you run them as a screen for a Tergigon they still get all the benefts of being Termagants (Furious Charge & Poison if the Tervigon has them, Counter-attack, etc)

You can outflank them with Hive Commander or give them a Prime to keep the unit in line.

As a unit they are similar to Eldar Guardians.

The mathhammer is pretty nice on what they can do, but halving your bodies really hurts. I intend to test this unit a bit, as I want it to work, but I think it is a little hard to call on pure theoryhammer.

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:A full squad of 30 can chuck 90 lasgun shots at 18 inches for only 300 points.

Make that bolter strength shots.

Lyracian wrote:Twenty Devilgants in a Pod can come down and deal a lot of damage to enemy

Saw this first hand. Wasn't pretty.

I used my 16 for the first time yesterday, and I do rate them!

Sure they are pretty expensive, but put them near a cheap-for-what-it-does Venomthrope, and you go some way to balancing it out, as of course the Cover Save makes them harder to kill. Now whether I want want to run more than a single Brood, I dunno. Troops slots are some of the most competed for with Nids in my opinion. Currently running 16 Devourers, 16 Hormies, 3 Warriors with Deathspitters and 8 Genestealers (yes, I bought the batallion!). Seems to work pretty nicely as a gestalt horde, with the Stealers being able to assist the Hormies (Hormies provide the numbers, Stealers do the main whacking) and the Deathspitters adding the extra firepower to the Gaunts to ensure the enemy have to take that test.

I do urge caution when theoryhammering on a unit by unit basis. Particularly with Synapse to consider, I find myself looking at army cohesion and synergy, rather than how hard an individual unit is. Even with Deathleaper, who is absolutely rock hard, his Ld modifying Special Rule works so much better when you have additional headaches for your opponent. Take Marines. If they are fielding a Captain or Chapter Master, reduce his Ld down and let rip with the Devourers wherever you wish. Without the option of swapping squad for character Ld (as his is lower) the efficiency of the Devourers goes up quite a bit, justifying their inclusion far more.

Plus, when armed with Devourers, abandoning the Gaunts in a piece of Terrain for them to lurk in works wonders, as the extra range and sheer volume of shots should disuade a great many units from flushing them out. Again, Deathleaper here can lend a claw, as get him within 12" of the hunting unit, and they roll D6 less for Difficult Terrain, giving the Devourers even more time to hammer them for their impudence!

Can you tell I love Deathleaper?

Alright. I only have 3 troop units in my 1850 nid army, playing for slaughter rather then scoring. My eldar hold back and sit on objectives, its not as fun as trying to kill off the enemy. So ill try out 24 devourer gaunts against mech orks today and let you guys know how they will do.