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Has anyone tried taking 1-2 broods of 3 biovores? since most nid lists seem to sport hiveguard/zoanthropes for transport cracking, once cracked the multiple templates from 1-2 biovores units could cause serious damage for limited amount of effort/points. The biggest downside is you give up 1-2 heavy slots which seem to be better spent on trygons/mawlocks but if you had the space...thoughts? What has been your in game experience?

I'm not sure that nids need more anti infatry firepower. Everything in the codex kills infantry well, while only a few things kill tanks.

The only thing that biovores have in their favor is range. I could see them being useful taking down SW or IG gun lines, but with the rise of mech I don't think that you're going to be seeing those all that often.

Large blast, causes pinning, AP4. They are also long-range and reasonably cheap. They are definitely good.

The draw-backs are you have to baby sit them if you don't want to risk instinct, you have to hide them and they will always be vulnerable to getting out-flanked or deep-struck up because they are squishy.

Since I don't want a lot of MCs in my list because of fluff reasons, I'm currently building biovores. Tau FWs, eldar on foot and IG HWS are prime targets.

Thank you for the good list of potential troubles SaaR.

As for meta game, I don't play in any big tournaments. But I do still hope that the BA codex will shake up the mechanized gunline standard a bit. Their abundance of assault troops with melta weapons seems to be just the thing needed to do that. And such a change would allow for more varied tyranid lists, even in tournaments.

Well, I played a game as Orks recently against a guy who ran 2 Biovores in his rear field, alongside 6 Hive Guard. My max-size Kommando squad with Snikrot came in on turn two and killed all 8 in three turns of combat. The Biovores died in the first round.

That's been my only experience with Biovores. Otherwise, I've never seen them.

Soup and a roll wrote:Large blast, causes pinning, AP4. They are also long-range and reasonably cheap. They are definitely good.

The draw-backs are you have to baby sit them if you don't want to risk instinct, you have to hide them and they will always be vulnerable to getting out-flanked or deep-struck up because they are squishy.

Sporemine launcher is an assault weapon, they can keep up with the swarm and hide behind other MCs.

I haven't actually played with them yet, but they seem a useful thing to have trundling along at the back of an army near to some MCs, disrupting the enemy's distant shooty/heavy infantry.

The only thing that's put me off so far is that I hate metal models and haven't worked out how to make a plastic biovore

ED209 wrote:

Soup and a roll wrote:Large blast, causes pinning, AP4. They are also long-range and reasonably cheap. They are definitely good.

The draw-backs are you have to baby sit them if you don't want to risk instinct, you have to hide them and they will always be vulnerable to getting out-flanked or deep-struck up because they are squishy.

Sporemine launcher is an assault weapon, they can keep up with the swarm and hide behind other MCs.

Holy F. Surely you jest? I'm going to check this out after work and if you're lying to me ED209, oooh, I might not be liable for my actions.

Soup and a roll wrote:

ED209 wrote:

Soup and a roll wrote:Large blast, causes pinning, AP4. They are also long-range and reasonably cheap. They are definitely good.

The draw-backs are you have to baby sit them if you don't want to risk instinct, you have to hide them and they will always be vulnerable to getting out-flanked or deep-struck up because they are squishy.

Sporemine launcher is an assault weapon, they can keep up with the swarm and hide behind other MCs.

Holy F. Surely you jest? I'm going to check this out after work and if you're lying to me ED209, oooh, I might not be liable for my actions.

It is indeed an assault-1 weapon.

GG

Nids only have assault weapons, being an assault army that makes the best sense. =]

Oshova

Mmmmmmm. That makes me all warm on the inside. Shows that I should read the dex properly rather than going 'I've played Nids since I was knee-high! Don't need to tell me the rules. Damn whipper-snapper...'

(Thanks Ed209)

Ok then, forget needing to leave them at the back. That means, with their massive range, they'll hit anything on the table so you can bother devastators and opened topped vehicles. They are expensive compared to your average warriors/raveners and die just as easily to missile launchers. They'll definitely draw fire as well, especially against armies worried about pinning and ap4. Don't underestimate your opponents fear of pie plates. Also, having spore mines floating about if you miss is rarely a bad thing.

No! Absolutly not! You should never take any biovores, or anything like Barbed stranglers or spores mines for that matter! You should go ahead and downright tear apart those pages of your codex as if they never existed!

What you need is more anti vehicules weapons, and stuff to kill marines! Its true!

*Run back to his densly packed Imperial Guards Platoon line*

Archimus, you're overlooking the fact that the Tyranids codex is entirely devoted to anti-infantry weaponry. Termagants with devourers, hormagaunts, warriors, genestealers, the Doom, hive tyrants, trygons, gargoyles, rippers, damn near ANYTHING in the codex is designed to be an anti-infantry weapon.

So, dedicating a heavy support slot to a S4 large blast squad isn't really going to do much good. They can't crack vehicles, AP4 won't help if the opponent is in cover (which, if you're taking advantage of your 48" range, they will be), and what good is S4 when you could just drop a bunch of poisoned attacks on them from everything else in the codex?

Biovores aren't bad, they're redundant. I can table somebody stupid enough to use footslogging guardsmen with 2 or 3 squads of troops. Why should I bother devoting a fragile, overspecialized gun unit to that purpose?

This is why we recommend that Tyranid players focus on breaking tanks first, because (short of TH/SS terminators) eliminating the squad inside the invincible metal box is trivial.

Most nid armies just don't need biovores.

Not all nid lists are good at dealing with swarms.

If a list has 9 Thropes it will have no issues cracking tanks. If the same list spends a lot of points on MEQ killing Tyranid warriors with boneswords and hive tyrant(s) I could see it having a need for long range anti infantry support.