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So messing around with the Tyranids and a thought came to me how many points would it take to max out on tervigon as a troops ...
well you need at least 30 Termagants 150pts and 3 Tervigon is 480pts ... Now i know that doesn't give much ranged fire power but in a low points game of say 750pts i would be hard pressed to deal with this many scoring 6 wound T6 MC with 3+ saves.

I'm just wondering if any one run across a list with this set up and how well they fared against it.



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Things to Note ...
... on 3D6 there is a 44.4% chance of rolling a double and running out of Termagants (odds are 16/36) (turn 1 is 44.4; turn 2 is 69%; turn 3 is 82.8; turn 4 is 90.4%; turn 5 is 94.7%; turn 6 is 97.1%; turn 7 is 98.4%)
... on 3D6 the average roll is 10.5. With odds of 62.50% to roll at least that 10

The typical load out for a Tervigon weighs in at 195 pts. Upgrades usually taken are: Adrenal Glands to grant your gaunts furious charge. Toxin sacs to give you gaunts poisoned attacks wounding on a 4+. Catalyst to give one unit that needs it Feels No Pain.

This drives up the cost slightly. Tervigons are also somewhat lacking offensively other then creating and buffing gaunts. They can have a Strength 5 Large template with cluster spines but aren't very good in close combat with only 3 attacks at strength 5.

I have been running 2 tervigons equipped as above with two units of 20+ gaunts in my Tyranid test games and its a good troops core but it is vulnerable in some ways. Tervigons are initiative 1 so are vulnerable to Jaws of the Warp Wolf and get beat up by hard assault units. Unless you are taking Hive Guard or Warriors to give your Tervigons cover they will die to Missle Launchers and Las cannons.

I don't think taking 3 Tervigons is a good plan. I think even taking 2 is something you have to plan around carefully.

This isn't one of these cases where you can just spam stuff, and know it's a good idea. There are some choices where you know that whatever comes up, they're fairly good to deal with it. Las/Plas Razorbacks, Hammerheads, Obliterators, etc. etc. etc. If you find something like that with too low a pricetag, yeah, you snatch them up...

But a Tervigon+Gaunt team, while incredibly good at holding objectives, absorbing CC attacks, and generally a real power unit for the points, isn't very well rounded. It's basically just a very passive CC winner. So, while you'll love having one, there are LOTS of units that they can't mess with. Vehicles, especially fast, shooty ones, they can't deal with at all. Typhoons, for example, will just smoke them.

Bottom line, you have to find ways to support the Tervigon, and the answer to that isn't "even more Tervigon." It's things like pod Warriors, Tyrannofexes, Hive Guard and Zoanthropes.

I think Phryxis is spot on. I plan on using 1 tervigon in all my lists, but it would be a very difficult decision to include more than that. They are extremely defensive and passive units. Take too many and you lose the aggressive aspect of your army, since they become quite points heavy.

3 is probably a lot of fun for a one-off game where you'll need their abilities, but yeah, not so good for an all-comers tourney style army, they're just not versatile enough. I'll be building two, but don't expect to field both often. One is likely to be a permanent member of my list.

3x Upgrade Tervigons (Adrenals, Sacs, Sytals and Catalyst), 3x10+ gants, 1x Old Adversary Hive Tyrant and finally 1-3x Venomthrope.

At 1000pt or less (which is what this should come to) this should be unstoppable. I cannot empathise enough the buffing effect of preferred enemy.

I get what your saying but its still they're hard to kill ...

Well how about a trial list say 1500pts

Swarm Lord + (3) Tyrant Guard 460pts (or two winged Hive tyrants)

Tervigon x3 480pts (if you want take adrenal on one and toxin on another)

Termagants (10) x3 150pt

Mawlock x2 340pts

1430pts leaving 70pts for upgrades ...


... so fairly easy to kill the Termagants but every thing else on this list is T6 with a 3+ save; Tervigon are scoring so the enemy will be forced to fire on them ... where as every thing else is much more killy. Guess you could drop 1 of the Tervigon and Termagants units if you really wanted warriors.

At 1000pt it would be very difficult to field such a well-made heavy hitting army. You could field lots of broadsides or 15 TH/SS termies but you would suffer elsewhere in terms of troops/mobility (yes, Those MC are just infantry but each tervigon + gants is a near self-contained group).

At higher level points, you want to start adding your own force multipliers like venomthropes, lictors, etc.

3x Upgrade Tervigons (Adrenals, Sacs, Sytals and Catalyst), 3x10+ gants, 1x Old Adversary Hive Tyrant and finally 1-3x Venomthrope.

Not that anyone even plays 1000 points games, but what you're suggesting seems to be a bit over the points limit.

I'd take on it with a Rune Priest with jaws and hurricane, 15 missile launchers in 3 Long Fangs squads, two small squads of GH with flamers and 5 TWC with two storm shields and a fist.

I think this Tervigon issue was covered pretty well in Shep's reports. You don't want to spend too much on them or you lack in other areas, and three at 1500 points or even at 1750 points seems to be atleast one too many.

Therion wrote:

3x Upgrade Tervigons (Adrenals, Sacs, Sytals and Catalyst), 3x10+ gants, 1x Old Adversary Hive Tyrant and finally 1-3x Venomthrope.

Not that anyone even plays 1000 points games, but what you're suggesting seems to be a bit over the points limit.

I'd take on it with a Rune Priest with jaws and hurricane, 15 missile launchers in 3 Long Fangs squads, two small squads of GH with flamers and 5 TWC with two storm shields and a fist.

I think this Tervigon issue was covered pretty well in Shep's reports. You don't want to spend too much on them or you lack in other areas, and three at 1500 points or even at 1750 points seems to be atleast one too many.

A thousand apologies. I am 15pts over, then I would suggest the above quote with one tervigon minus toxin sacs and sything talons.

As for those spacewolfs, Exactly my point.. Got some heavy clout but horribly weak in terms of objective capture games, vs anything that can engage you quickly and not gonna be that great against this list, tbh.

Oh, and your list it 5pts over

With the games I've played, the thing that's messed up my Tervigons the most is Farseers with Runes of Warding, but that was a lot of bad rolling. I went over 12 on almost every Psychic Test I tried to make, which auto-wounds, while he kept rolling a total of ~6 on his three dice. So instead of Feel No Pain on my guys, they were constantly Doomed.

Otherwise I've had good luck with them. I take them heavily upgraded with Toxin, Adrenals, Catalyst, Onslaught and Crushing Claws. I played another `Nid player who didn't have them and they made all the difference, as my Gaunts swept thru his with their rerolls to wounds and my 4+ saves. Onslaught is fun to use with my pair of T-Fexes, to get them into good position to unload their flamer and large blast on infantry units when there is not a tank I need shot right away. The Tervigons almost end up in HtH because it helps protect them from shooting, and with Crushing Claws they'll chew thru most non-assault dedicated units.

As for those spacewolfs, Exactly my point.. Got some heavy clout but horribly weak in terms of objective capture games, vs anything that can engage you quickly and not gonna be that great against this list, tbh.

I'd table that nid army 9 games out of 10 with the list I posted. The Tyranid list is so slow there's tons of time to take it out one unit at a time (the one that doesn't get FNP). When it's weakened, TWC run rampant right through it and the HQ takes out one Tervigon per turn with Jaws. As far as objectives are concerned, I refer back to my original statement of noone actually playing 1000pts games, and the fact that it's hardly surprising SM are often 'scoring unit challenged' in smaller games since if they invest heavily on troops they don't have any points left to buy killy stuff.

I played a game against a single Tervigon, and it made all the difference in the game, however i can see how it can just as easily not have made the difference due to the whole idea of it rolling and bringing on a total of 40+ gaunts in a single game. This is just the fact of rolling amazing on my opponents side, great game which ended in a tie but i know i would have lost if it continued. Anyway the Tervigon conbined with one Venomthrope makes a combo that was drastically underestimated, i would suggest taking one Tervigon within 6 inches of a Venomthrope, and a Trygon with regenerate, btw both the Tervigon and Trygon should have regenerate because any wound recovered is a moral wound against your enemy.

Ppl dont give them regen?

Here is a sample game against a 4 Tervigon list: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/274714.page

Therion wrote:

As for those spacewolfs, Exactly my point.. Got some heavy clout but horribly weak in terms of objective capture games, vs anything that can engage you quickly and not gonna be that great against this list, tbh.

I'd table that nid army 9 games out of 10 with the list I posted. The Tyranid list is so slow there's tons of time to take it out one unit at a time (the one that doesn't get FNP). When it's weakened, TWC run rampant right through it and the HQ takes out one Tervigon per turn with Jaws. As far as objectives are concerned, I refer back to my original statement of noone actually playing 1000pts games, and the fact that it's hardly surprising SM are often 'scoring unit challenged' in smaller games since if they invest heavily on troops they don't have any points left to buy killy stuff.

Ahh..

Multiple rockets are scary. But I forgot to include FNP.. I'm not sure why there would be a beastie without FNP as all three have the power (The rune staff perhaps? See below). A properly support tervigon just laughs at TWC. They dont do anything.. In terms of a tervigon hurting a TWC unit, not much will happen, granted (as they apparently get charged) but the counter-charge of gants/hive tyrant will turn them to giblets.

15 Rockets a turn is painful and will probably be the crux. But if your shooting from across the board, 4+ cover-saves are not unlikely and if you factor in FNP, Thats 2-wounds a turn.

Lastly, the rune-priest is just horribly lethal, In regards to its rune staff annd Jaws of the World Wolf. Mostly JotWW. But a 24" engagement range = Less than 18" from gants (more if one of those tervigons pops off dominion) and getting pretty close to a charge and definetly close to a "death-by-a-thousand-fleshborers" . 20 gants should do about 1.7 wounds after saves.

So.. yeah, lots of pew but you are under-estimating the crazy spankyness of triple-tervigon'ness.

LunaHound wrote:Ppl dont give them regen?

No, they don't. I think it is because regen is only really useful if your model is left at low wounds for a long time. That is not very likely to happen, since opponents tend to focus fire on powerful models at low wounds. Go Mathhammer!: If a Tervigon has lost 3 wounds, it is half dead. It can then regain 3 wounds (chance is ~0.5%). It can regain 2 wounds (~7%) It can regain 1 wound (~35%) Or it can regain zero wounds (~58%). On average it will regain 0.5 wounds each turn it spends on half life. The return is not at all big enough to be worth 30p.

I'm still keen on regen for anything with 6 wounds, if only for psychological reasons.

It can be wonderfully demoralising to your opponent to see your MC regenerating after swallowing multiple lascannon shots, especially if they wasted most of their shooting turn unsuccessfully trying to knock off the last wound off. Similarly in close combat, your opponent has to worry about the possibility of getting tarpitted by your MC that just won't die.

Both help make a regenerating tervigon a very appealing choice as an objective taker/holder.

Sooo ... How would your army deal with them. SW playes do well with JotWW if they can get within range. What about the other armies?

I would always suggest to compliment the slow moving tervigons with deep-striking high-I beasties like trygon or Mawloc. Mawloc being my favourite as you can buy more of them and they benefit more from the hive tyrant!