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What ho!

Currently putting together my Nids and I'm leaning towards a fast, hard hitting swarm with Hormagaunts, Genestealers, Lictors and of course Deathleaper! Trouble is, my 1000pt list only has a single unit of Tyranid Warriors led by a Tyranid Prime which I know is going to be a bolter shell magnet. Will the other stuff be ok if the synapse gets wiped out?

Genestealers can do what they like of course. The Lictors and Deathleaper have a Ld of 10, so should be fairly independent. And the Hormagaunts have Feed as their instinctive behaviour, so once they have been herded towards the right target, should be ok when left to their own devices.

Thoughts?

Run it, see what happens. If it gives you any hope, I have used 16 hormagaunts to obliterate a squad of 5 TH/SS terminators through sheer number of armor saves. it feels good to wipe 200 pts of guys with 160 pts of gribblies.

Note: Transports and Tanks will give your gribblies trouble without a hive guard or zoanthrope around to crack 'em open. Just a thought.

IB even of hormies can still be serious problem if you're opponent knows how to use it. He can have your hormies chasing vehicles moving over 6" for the entire game and it also makes it viturally impossible for them to take or contest objectives unless the closest enemy just happens to be the guys sitting on one. Losing control of a unit is bad, you can't really get away from it even if the unit is a fighty unit and the method of losing control involves them trying to fight things. The Lictors should be OK with their good LD, but a single failed check can cause them to bolt out of cover to fight something and promptly get mowed the hell down afterwards. If at all possible, you usually want synapse for any non-GS unit.

Lictors instinctive behaviour is to lurk, so they will either fire flesh hooks or run for cover if they fail their test. Not that this especially useful either!

I have some points left over, so maybe some Shrikes might be order...

Lurking with a 6" range weapon? Wierd, I would've put money on feed.

Mastershake wrote:Lurking with a 6" range weapon? Wierd, I would've put money on feed.

I think the only reason they don't have feed is so they are not too powerful. Stops a nid player simply deploying them in their opponents deployment and watching them cause chaos. I suppose it allows the enemy a chance of shooting the lictor the pieces. The hiding it cover also fits nicely with the chameleon skin ability, as why would it adapt the ability if it didn't frequently hide in cover.

You might consider switching the hormagaunts for raveners. The Rage USR has a loop hole in that you don't have to charge the closest enemy, you only have to consolidate towards them. With the raveners 12" charge range it becomes much more difficult to control where they're going to go.

At 1000 points it's tempting to run a pure stealer shock army. something like this:

Prime w/ boneswords

2X venomthrope

10 genestealers with a broodlord

10 genestealers with a broodlord

10 genestealers with a broodlord

10 genestealers with a broodlord

A unit of genestealers will will eat most light vehicles on the charge, and you're not going to be seeing many heavy vehicles (monoliths and LR's) at that point level.

Don't forget the other half of the problem of no synapse...

Hormagaunts that lose 25% of their casualties are gone... and regrouping will be very unlikely as well.

Rage and not being able to shoot aren't a big deal. Losing fearless and having leadership 5 is.

'Sigh', all good points made. Guess it's either more Warriors or I'll roll out the Tyrant. Though don't really want to use 25% of points total on 1 model.

You could try using shrikes or a gargoyles swarm with the parasite.

Flashman wrote:'Sigh', all good points made. Guess it's either more Warriors or I'll roll out the Tyrant. Though don't really want to use 25% of points total on 1 model.

Zoanthropes and Tervigons offer synapse as well (and Dominion lets the Tervigon exert control at range).

Hormagaunts are LD 6.

Also, the PoM is a good synaptic bond at lower point games, especially if you throw him with a squad of vanilla gargs to soak wounds, and keep them behind some kind of area terrain to call cover saves.

The buzz is (and i created mine by) creating pommy out of a ravener (i used an old metal one) and a gargoyle tail/wings. You can bend the metal scytals that come on the raveners down at a 30 degree angle and they look more like the legs that are in the codex art. Also, i removed the bottom two scytals so the model would have the requisite 6 limbs for tyranids. I was very happy with how he turned out, i used a drill bit to mount him on a 40mm base and he gives quite a good profile.

*side note* PoM can cause some funny scenarios. In one game he instakilled Vulkan He'stan and got 3 rippers out of the man's stomach in the aftermath. pure hilarity ensued (on my half of the table).

You cant use anything without synapse. All it takes is a 35 point rhino tank shocking and youve just lost 20-30 hormagaunts or all your raveners. Synapse is crucial (unless you play all stealers I guess)