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I decided to do this one out at greater length,

Inspired by Shep, Yermom, etc. I want to contribute to the Nid discussion. Coincidently, I've been thinking of a list that's very different from what's mostly being used. I decided to give it a stab on Wednesday, and played a game.

I tried to get the most gunline-ey enemy I could find for my foe, but they are thin on the ground around here and I was in a WM game most of the night. I ended up taking on shooty marines. It's as close as I could locally get.

My list:

Tyrannid Prime w/double Boneswords
Parasite of Motrex
4 Warriors, one has venom cannon
4 Warriors, one has venom cannon
15 Gargoyles
9 Raveners w/rending claws
9 Raveners w/rending claws
3 Pyrovores w/spod
3 Lictors
5 Ymgarl Stealers
1 Tyrannofex w/Rupture cannon

My enemy's list:

Pedro Kantor
Darnath Lysander
9 Sternguard w/4 combi meltas, lascannon and power fist, + rhino w/dozer blade
10 Sternguard w/4 combi meltas, lascannon, + rhino w/dozer blade
10 Sternguard w/4 combi meltas, lascannon, + rhino w/dozer blade
10 Tac marines w/meltagun, lascannon, + rhino w/dozer blade
10 Tac marines w/meltagun, lascannon, + rhino w/dozer blade
10 Tac Marines w/meltagun, lascannon, + rhino w/dozer blade

Mission: Drawfest

Deployment: Pitched Battle

Terrain: There were some rocks in the middle, and a ruined building on his side, and a pair of foests on the edge, also some ruins on my side.

Objectives: He stuck his in his building (hereafter The Fort). I put mine behind my ruins

Go first: He won the roll, decided to go first/deploy first.

His deployment: He combat squadded the tac squads, put the lascannon halves in the building, the others stayed in their rhino. He had a simple formation of tac rhinos in the front and sternguard rhinos in the back, 3 wide with Pedro joining the 9 man squad in the back middle parked in the fort

My deployment: I put my Ravagers in the middle, with the Tyranid Prime joined to one squad, behind the Gargoyles with the Parasite joined to them. The Tyrannofex loafed around east of there, near the Warriors in the rubble (hard to decide whether to reserve them, but I didn't think he'd fire on them, and their venom cannons might have done something)

I put the Ymgarls in the eastern forest, at this stage still thinking he was going to come for my objective. Not enough play vs. Gunlines, methinks

Top 1:

He shoots his orbital bombardment at my Raveners. I'd totally forgotten Pedro had that, so we are quite bunched up. Fortunately it scatters a long way, only hits + wounds 4. I have them go to ground (inexplicably, dunno what I was thinking) for the 6+ and manage to make one. He then shoots the other 5 lascannons at my Tyrannofex, gets a little unlucky and only gets 2 wounds. He smokes the 2 tac rhinos w/the melta combat squads.

Bottom 1:

Everyone not currently gone to ground (looking at you Prime and Raveners) moves up the field a ways. Warrior shooting does nothing to a rhino, Tyrannofex fires through the fortified building and immobilizes Pedro's rhino.

Top 2:

He fires on the Ravagers a bit, but is blocked by cover saves. He fires on the Gargoyles and kills about half. Still no real movement, other than the front rhinos shuffling a bit to get the 4+ to hit.

Bottom 2:

I get the Lictors and Ymgarl's, go time. I move up, once again. The Ymgarl's move + run and multi-charge his rhinos, destroying a Sternguard rhino. The lictors (contesting his objective) shoot flesh hooks into one of his rhinos backs, destroying it. The Tyrannofex fires and destroys a front rhino, spilling out it's 5 man contents. The Parasite eats a 4th rhino, using his gargoyle allies to multi-charge into a 5 man marine squad, he took a wound on the way in from terrain. The Raveners in the front squad spill out and devour the 5 man squad that disembarked from the Tyrannofex's victim rhino.

Top 3:

Lysander has his work cut out for him. My foe only has 2 intact rhinos, and one is immobilized. He maneuvers his squads of marines around in the forst. He shoots the Ravners with meltas, killing a few, but 6 are still alive. He shoots the Lictors, but their stealth + the fortified ruins makes this fail. He shoots the Ymgarl's and kills them. His mobile rhino starts heading my way via an end run. Lysander kills the remaining Raveners, but takes 2 wounds in the process. A ten man tac squad (guess they didn't all combat squad), charges the Lictors, but even Pedro's encouragement can't make them win. They kill 1 lictor, but lose 4 marines, and the lictors hit and run. Parasite loses the rest of his garoyles, but kills 2 Marines. They don't make new bugs. He remobilizes a rhino.

Bottom 3:

I bring up the back Ravener unit, tearing into a squad of Sternguard next to Lysander. Crucially, I don't get the Pyrovores this round. Dang it, he was all bunched up everywhere and I had Lictors to bring em in. The Lictors go back into the 10 man squad, tearing them down to 3 strong. The parasite continues to grind through marines, bringing them down to 1 left. Stubborn is my bane, by the by. The Tyrnanofex shoots the end run rhino down. The Warriors continue to fire, it continues to be useless.

Top 4:

Lysander goes into the new Raveners, killing them but losing the last squad member, crucial as he's running low on bodies for holding his objective. Pedro charges into the Lictors, killing them, but not in time to save the last squad members. The 5 man tac squad that just got dismounted along with the 9 man sternguard squad step up and blast the Tyrannofex, doing 3 more wounds and leaving it on the brink of death. More shooting doesn't accomplish anything important. The Parasite gets his new buddies down to 3, still no spawn. His remobilized rhino heads my way.

Bottom 4:

The Pyrovores come in, blast a bunched up Sternguard squad and kill 4. Their Spods shooting does nothing. The Tyrannofex fires on a squad, but gets nothing done, then charges in and kills 2, surviving the return attacks. The Parasite finally succumbs, but spawns a pair of ripper bases on his objective as he dies. The Tyrannid Prime messes up a Sternguard squad, (kills 3), but dies in the process.

Top 5: The rhino nears my warriors, Lysander charges the pyroves, takes a wound from their attacks, then takes his last wound from the acide sprays he gets for killing 2. The last one massacre's one inch, dang it! fighting continues to not kill the Tyrannofex, to the amazement of everyone as the fist has joined the combat. Pedro cleans the rippers off the objective and stands with the survivor of the parasite's attack.

Bottom 5: The last pyrovore fails it's instinctive behavior check and charges into the sternguard combat, He takes a wound, and he and the Tyrnanofex kill a few more enemy's. The warriors try and stop the rhino, but can't. (one unit charges + shoots, other just shoots).

The game ends.

So, a draw is all I've got to report. I was hoping for some sort of vindicating win for my Nid's first try, but I simply couldn't crack the nut of Pedro + Lysander in a 60 man mech brick, with everyone scoring and stubborn.

Scoreboard:

Parasite of Mortrex: Killed a rhino, 8 tac marines. Roughly made his points back.
Tyrannid Prime: Killed 3 Sternguard, just under points back.
9 Raveners: Killed a 5 man tac unit, took half of Lysander's wounds, Only made slightly 2/3 of points back.
9 Raveners: Killed an 8 man Sternguard squad, only made 2/3 of points back.
15 Gargoyles: Killed nothing of import. Provided cover saves and got the Parasite a multi-charge.
4 Warriors w/venom cannon: Did nothing but sit on objective. didn't die.
4 Warriors w/venom cannon: Did nothing but sit on objective. didn't die.
Lictors: Killed Rhino + full tac squad. Made 125% of points back.
Ymgarl stealers: Killed one rhino, made 50% of points back.
Pyrovores: Killed 6 Sternguard + half of Lysander, made 175% of points back. didn't die.
Tyrannofex: Killed 2 rhinos, immobilized one, 5 Sternguard. Made 2/3 of points back, didn't die.

small note: remember that pyrovores can still shoot if they fail behavior, you didn't mention it shot.

IB had it charging a unit that was locked in combat, so it couldn't shoot.

Your list was quite interesting. A friend of mine suggested a 9 lictor list, but I don't think I have the balls to try it. Same with any number of pyrovores. I feel like they are just bad flamers of tzeentch..

I do not see any appeal in parasite and I am consistently let down by gargoyles since they always seem to get shot up before they get there.

You only need 1 warrior squad at most with that set up to claim you back objective.

I've only played with a T-fex once and was let down. Although he does have a large place in this list.

The way I would use raveners is have them sit behind a wall of carnifexes/trygons and tervigons and then use their superior mobility to get an early charge. Then as the enemy deals with that slam into them with the fext/trygons and a ton of gants.

Your list while unorthodox is perplexing to me, because I'm not looking at it and going its terrible as I'm sure many players are. Perhaps it's because I'm familliar with your 40k record. I'm not sure, but keep it up.

Interesting report, through all the nids reports till now warriors arent a good choice for anything, your list seems lack of some rock hard CC units and anti vehicle/tank elements, ravener can some how do both but they just die too easily.also the performance of lictor is nice ,good to see battle report with them in action.

I have to admit, much of my list was based off of just recently watching "Aliens", so I wanted Nids with acidic blood, spawning rippers, etc. That said, there's a coherent purpose to all this nonsense.

Things I like about the Parasite:

#1: Flying Synapse
#2: 18" thread range tank popper (5 attacks at s6 w/rending is likely to open a rhino/chimera)
#3: IC
#4: Edit, think it's also got Shadow in the Warp? If so that's a fast carrier for that.

Pyrovores vs. Flamers:

I think they are similar, and both are good units. The Flamers have a better flame blast, but the Pyrovores have a Spod to make it more likely they arrive, and the acid blood and explosive tendency's to take a few points off the unit that kills them with it's charge. They work great with the Lictors guilding their spod in for perfect vomits.

On the other hand, a failed IB roll with them cost me the game.

Warriors: I think you are correct. I'm thinking about trading them out for a Tervigon a swarm of Termagaunts, or at least a pair swarms of Termagaunts that can hang with the Prime.

My general idea is that the elite slots + Tyrannofex disembark the enemy, then the raveners sweep out from behind the concealing goyles to charge.

I'd like to make a plug of Lictors as of this game. They appeared, killed an enemy's transport, then killed the squad inside it. Now, wiping out a tac squad isn't unbelievably impressive, but they could do this to any tac squad, anywhere. Maybe they'll let me down next time, but this time they were great.

I misplayed my Ymgarl's, not having them hide in my foe's fort, but I can see their potential shining through. I'm not giving up on them yet.

I'm planning on trying these guys out again next week, hopefully vs. a Guard gunline and something that fights hard. One worry I've got is that I might've spent so many points on being fast that someone who is slow and fighty will just beat me down (Kairos Crushers).

Parasites shooting attack does ahve an appeal to it, I must've missed that when i briefly read him over.

I also play daemons I like having crushers in the first wave and having droop close then using their icon to land in some flamers from the secind wave. Basically accomplishing the same thing as pyrovores for cheaper and killier.

I would reccomend a tervigon they have not once let me down.

I see your plan now, but what happens against guard or wolves or even marines who can mass enough S8+ to olitterate your raveners early on?

I personally LOVE ymgarls, I just can't bring myself to drop a unit of zoathropes for them, but it is VERY tempting.

2 squads of 9 raveners might be enought to tackle on fate crusher... maybe...

Parasite doesn't shoot, I meant that he flies 12" then charges 6".

With Daemons, I wouldn't use flamers close to crushers, because anything that close to crushers is likely crushed. Truth be told though, that's theoryhammer. My lists have always been straight Khorne.

Theory of the plan is that with a cover save there's just too many Raveners to kill early on. If they string out and don't get templated it'd take, what, four times (5/9 to get a wound, then half are cover saved) the # of lascannon/missile launcher shots as their are Raveners, with a few absorbed by the Prime for good measure? My hope is that they can survive. Haven't really tested it yet though, this was only a quasi gunline foe. Halfway in I realized that the real threat came from his 60 Marines + IC's in CC.

I think I'll give the Tervigon a try. I'm trying to go for a medium based Nid theme, but I think he's just concretely better than warriors at objective holding, provided he can get some kind of cover.

Big question on Fate Crusher is mission. I can see me winning an objective game, particularly if they fail DA. KP they are going to win unless they fail DA though, and maybe even then. I simply lack the ability to engage their main brick.

I love Lictors. 9 might be to many, 3 always and 6 is pushing it. 3 lictors in one group is pretty good imho. They are a more reliable Ymgarl stealer. Not as potentially explosive, but not as unforgiving either.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Combine the Lictor brood and Ymgarl stealer unit and you have 2 units who will pounce at a moments notice. It's the long arm of the Tyranids.

A thought just occurred. Can the Tyranid Prime join the Pyrovores in the Spod? He could carry a lash whip and bonesword to mess with their initiative for the acid blood, and it'd be one more way to get Synapse up the field.

#1: Is it legal?
#2: Is it better than having him walk with the Raveners and take lascannon fire?

Interesting report.

Parasite has Shadow. I briefly thought about doing a wing-heavy army led by the Parasite, but I think what you're doing here is more competitive.

Re: Warriors, I like them, especially in larger broods (5+), but for what you're using them for, I agree Tervigons would be much better.

Haven't given Lictors a try yet, but I want to. Like many, I had that kneejerk "what, they arrive and stand around for a turn?!?" reaction when I first read the rules. But now I think they could be pretty good if you build around them properly.

Regarding the Prime with Pyrovores, that should be completely legal. Would the whip affect the acid blood, though? Acid blood says the unit takes an I test. The whip just lowers the I of models in b2b. It sounds like acid blood is just a straight I test, like a sweeping advance. Otherwise do we go with majority I?

Edit: INAT is going with majority I. Huh.

No a MC cannot join a squad.

G

Prime is an IC and not a MC.

Nice to see you playing around with nids, and with alot of yet undocumented units to boot.

A thought just occurred. Can the Tyranid Prime join the Pyrovores in the Spod? He could carry a lash whip and bonesword to mess with their initiative for the acid blood, and it'd be one more way to get Synapse up the field.

#1: Is it legal?
#2: Is it better than having him walk with the Raveners and take lascannon fire?

#1: Tyranid Prime can join the pyrovores and while somewhat arguable, he should be able to also go in their pod with them.

#2: I think it would work well (was my first thought as to how I'd run pyrovores). Turns a suicide unit into more of a cc threat. Only draw back is not having the prime's synapse and shadow on the table from the start. I guess the other argument against is you are trying to turn a throw away unit into something it isn't. Also, The rav units are the meat in the army, so keeping them as untouched as possible might be better.

No a MC cannot join a squad.

What MC? Tyranid Prime is just a uber warrior with IC rules.

@Gorgon: The tipping point on Lictors for me was that their shots are rending, thus AP 2 can fix your AP - pen problems. Also, they are just SO FIERCE once they show up. Hit and run, move through cover, amazing statline, fleet, frag grenades, they've got it all.

Does acid blood say the unit takes an I test, or a model from the unit? I guess if you found it in Inat it must be majority. So it would only work if the majority of the unit is in contact with the Prime? Maybe not worth the extra 5 points.

Yeah, it says the "unit" takes the I test from the blood. Per the INAT, that means a tests against the majority I. Although who knows what the GW FAQ will (or won't) say.

Winterman makes a good point that you're kind of throwing more points into a suicide unit. Might work out, but you could be trying to do too much with a fire-and-forget brood.

Oh I thought he had said Trygon Prime... OOPS!!!

G

40kenthusiast wrote:A thought just occurred. Can the Tyranid Prime join the Pyrovores in the Spod? He could carry a lash whip and bonesword to mess with their initiative for the acid blood, and it'd be one more way to get Synapse up the field.

#1: Is it legal?
#2: Is it better than having him walk with the Raveners and take lascannon fire?

#1 yes it is legal as a mycetic spore can carry up to 20 infantry as listed in its description in the codex. That and it states the pyrovore unit can take a spore, thus an infantry unit joining that squad could ride with them as well. It would not be legal if the unit taking the spore was already at the capacity of 20.

#2 no it's not really worth it unless you want to waste 80 points to give the pyrovores and extra 3 wounds. As they will already run towards the nearest enemy unit and can fire while under "feed"

Just getting to this now... lots of thoughts...

Thanks for batrepping. I LOVE that you've got podding pyrovores, and to the people asking about parasite. Unfortunately the speed of his list requires him. It'd be nice to not have to spend 160 to get that synapse over to the other side of the table, but he's over there right away.

I'm not going to comment on any gunline concerns, because I know you're gonna play and batrep it. But I thought that guys list was pretty hard, and a good barometer for how a smaller faster nid list will be. All those dragonfire rounds, the good CC punch and the rhinos definitely added challenge.

Ok, to the thoughts!

Tyrannid Prime w/double Boneswords - My favorite use of primes is to accompany a non-choppy elite podding unit, and then make them hard to shut down with CC. I think he'd be great in the pyrovore pod... and then their bad behavior will get curtailed

Parasite of Motrex - There might be another way to get that synapse coverage... but it probably requires two zoanthrope pods... That is a pretty big fundamental change to the list, so for now... this is really the only choice. I wished i liked him a bit more.

4 Warriors, one has venom cannon - i bet you could run threes here. The way they are equipped, I can see what you are doing with them. See if you can't sneak another 60 points back

15 Gargoyles - This might be a bit small actually. I wonder if a shrewd opponent might spot that the ravs and the pyrovores are going to lose cover saves and synapse if they can cut through this unit quick and drop the parasite.

9 Raveners w/rending claws - Please play more games with these guys and let us know how you kept them going. I love them in concept, but I hate the synapse problem they have... it makes me always look at shrikes instead of them. But if you can keep them in cover and fearless. They are going to rock!

3 Pyrovores w/spod - You really need the flesh hooks, rupture cannon and climbing tentacles to pop transports in your list, or for the guy to not have a ton of transports. Both of those events can and will happen, and when they do, the pyrovores can just crush. I just run into too many situations where I've got my anti-infantry all set up, but the transport open doesn't happen.

3 Lictors - Entertaining. Pheromone trail doesn't really seem that important to your strategy. I think I'd rather see the lictors stay and something like the ymgarls turn into another drop pod unit.

5 Ymgarl Stealers - I definitely like them in a vacuum, but i think the pyrovores really want to see more "drop and pop" units to synergize with. These guys are great at wrecking transports, but unfortunately they do it in the assault phase, after the pyrovores have missed their chance to scoop the unit.

1 Tyrannofex w/Rupture cannon - Yep, he's got synapse coverage from the mini-warrior units, anti-transport and home base counter-cc covered.


Ultimately those ravener units are massive and expensive, but FAST. You are really responsible for having synapse coverage on them at all times, and nids still have a problem with fast synapse. Other than that... you aren't as vulnerable as a stealer shock list to the inevitable counter-flamer.

your game against IG is really going to come down to those ravs. Can they make it there intact. Can they spread out nice and wide and multi-charge chimeras. And can they get some damn rend rolls I can't wait to hear about it. And with those ravs being missile bait, I even think you could support them with non-2+ save MCs. At some point raveners need to get tried with catalyst support as well. 9 FNP rending ravs would frighten most everyone. Anyone who wasn't at least a little worried by them would be misjudging their capacity for damage.

A couple of trygon primes could give you that turn 2 synapse you need before the pyrovore + tyranid prime shows up and takes over... Thats just a completely unfounded idea I'm throwing out there. You could find those points with -1 parasite, -2 warriors, -1 t-fex. Not sure thats anything to try, but it might sound interesting to you...

thanks again for the batrep. There could be a lot going on with raveners... like I'm going to start thinking about some kind of hybrid between your list and the tervigon/carnifex list I'm screwing around with. raveners taking catalyst and screening tervigons and carnifex backing them up could be just as survivable and even more devastating to a gunline than FNP trygons... It all comes back to that damn synapse and not being fearless... haha. What a conundrum

I actually don't understand why you are down on some of your units. You managed to take down 4 rhinos in one turn in a list not using Hive gaurd or zoanthorpes. thats good.

The parasite claimed a rhino and a good deal of marines on his lonesome, you just had bad luck on the dice.

You made a few set up errors and still only lost the game to a few bad dice rolls. You should feel pretty good about your list.

I still wonder why ravs don't have access to adrenal glands. Seems like an oversight to me and it's the main reason why I don't like them plus their low Ld.

A squad of three lictors does seem to have potential with all their special abilities. There are lots of units I wish were a natural T5 and this is one of them.

G

I had my first game testing the parasite this last week too. My list was quite a bit different, but my thoughts on parasite himself were similar. I REALLY wanted to like him, but came away from the game feeling like he was pretty 'meh'. In my imagination I was thinking about all the free ripper bases I was going to get (then worrying about how I was going to get enough modeled up on the cheap), and how they were going to be tarpitting everyone for FREE. Then the reality struck: T tests are way too easy to pass. Parasite scored kills every turn from 2 until he died bottom of 4, and never managed to spawn any rippers.

That said, he did rack up a reasonable number of kills. I ran him with 19 gargs with adrenal and toxin. they all ended up in a big clustered mass melee with nobs and shoota boys, but every turn he thinned out a couple more bases on his own. Downside was that as soon as the ablative gargoyle wounds disappeared, he went down to a single instant death attack.

Overall the fact that he is an IC with wings and synapse/shadow is great. As long as he has friends he is dangerous to just about anyone in CC (implant + rending = rough). Sadly it seems like the 3 ripper oriented abilities baked into his cost balloon his points up above the point where its exciting to take him.

Yeah, I like Parasite for his 12"move, 6" charge, then pops a vehicle and wraps into melee with something via his crew. Also, being flying Synapse + Shadow. His ability to spawn Rippers is pretty much beside the point.

By switching to a Tervigon, some interesting tactics can open up if you're willing to give Onslaught a try. Granted, Catalyst seems like the obvious choice... but the ability to have your Ravenors running and shooting, and possibly charging, seems like it could really surprise people.

yeah ive started playing with onslaught a bit as well. I really have mixed feelings about it.

On one hand you can onslaught your hive guard first turn to get them some first turn shooting, which can be extremely effective.

On the other hand, once you have established your presence in the center of the table, it seems to lose a lot of its effectiveness. And on the OTHER other hand, every turn you use it, you are forgoing FNP on an MC or one of your shooty elites units.

I am thinking I may try running 1 terv with catalyst and the other with both powers (at 1500). Lets me get 1 of my shooting elites upfield on T1 but I can still double FNP in the later half of the game, and I havent expended too many points on powers.