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**Crazy_Carnifex**

Finally, someone agrees with me!

**Grunt_For_Christ**

About the venom cannons and lictors and such?

**Rockit**

Grunt_For_Christ wrote:Believe it or not my biovores have wrecked at least one AV13 vehicle every single game for the past 12 months of gaming. They're wonderful and some of the best AT around for me at least. A 48" range and 3 chances to score a 4 & 5 on two dice isn't that bad considering our other options. Zoans are great if you're able to wait for 3 turns to use the warp blast that only has a 50% chance of hitting, only has 1 shot, and can kill the guy using it.

Well I am definately in the 'or NOT' crowd on Biovore (spore mine) effectiveness, good show for you having great success.

I do however LOVE Zoanthropes and have no problem using them effectively in each of my games, we seem to be on opposite sides of the fence in this regard.

I also do well with Venom Cannons, bouncing vehicles around and regularly preventing them from maneuvering or shooting, which is just fine by me.

**Lukus83**

Wow, I had no idea there was so much VC hate around. I find them very useful (on gunfexes). I know it has it's limits but you can only take a max of 3 zoanthropes and biovores just don't cut it against landraiders. I'm currently playing around with the biovores though (not everyone can/does spam landraiders) combined with 2 gunfexes.

So far I'm liking the combination.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, I also agree with devourers on warriors being twin linked...awesome, but also reasonably expensive. I was in fact referring to the deathspitter + scything as a common choice because its cheap and effective. Also has a slight range bonus compared to the devourers which also adds another negative (being that close to the enemy with no cc weapons can be dangerous).

**Railguns**

Re-read the pheromone trail rules "Lictors do not benefit from this re-roll. Lictors do not help eachother or themselves in coming in.

Venom Cannons are hated because they are laughably overpriced (40 POINTS!) weapon that can only really shake or stun enemy vehicles and can't even be used against infantry to decent effect unless you want to waste your main and probably only tank stalling ranged attack against something with a 4+ save or worse. Broken Loose already put it well enough to understand by just about anyone. The problem is, they are our only real ranged weapon that acts like any other armies' lascannons or autocannons in an edition that heavily favors mechanized armies that can just walk away from our traditional smashy approach to anti-vehicle work. We can only take it on 3 platforms, and only 2 of those can use it with a S high enough to threaten tanks, and even then the threat they pose is heavily neutered. Other armies could potentially field a dozen or more high strength shots with low AP a turn from models with higher BS, and pay far less points than what we do without the inability to penetrate. It is simply a mediocre weapon that we NEED to use because we have no alternatives. What are you gonna do, try and use 3 Zoanthropes who have to get within 18", pass a psychic test, hit at bs3, and roll for penetration and then roll damage? Biovore bio-acid mines that need to not scatter so they hit a tank, then roll high enough on 2 dice without strength to get through armor?

I think it would be great for tyranids to have other ways to destroy vehicles than to simply shoot lots of high strength shots at them like everybody else but our current methods are just unnacceptably bad unless your opponent lets you assault him.

**Grunt_For_Christ**

Agreed on venom cannons being overpriced for what they do. I'd rather take the 40 points and get 6 more gaunts as a screen for my bigger guys. Either that or work more on getting a CC carnifex that'll wreck vehicles with the best of them.

You're right in that we only have 3 platforms and they're all dodgy at best. Hopefully in the next codex the venom cannon will come back at the same cost but not have the glancing hindrance... And maybe limit it at S9 to make marine players happy.

**Che-Vito**

Thank you all for your help. The battle will be this evening, but I will post a battle report afterwards (and will post a link to it in this thread).

**Grunt_For_Christ**

That would be great. Looking forward to hear how it goes

**Che-Vito**

Grunt_For_Christ wrote:That would be great. Looking forward to hear how it goes

Battle Report wrote:I will sum the fight up for you. I didn't pay enough attention to detail, or get any photos, so it isn't worth a battle report.

The instructions for the game were that a player and myself who both play Tau, were going to play against 1 Tyranid player. The Nid player would make 2 1500-point lists, and the Tau player and myself would each make a 1500 point list. I cooperated a large amount with the Tau player, and we finalized our lists together. Ultimately, it ended up with roughly the following:

Tau Forces:
-3 Hammerheads (with railgun, multitracker, flechette launcher, disruption pods, 1 seeker missile each, and SMS)
-6 Fire Warrior squads with Devilfish (with marker drone, shield drone, bonding knife, Devilfish equipped similar to Hammerhead)
-2 sniper drone squads
-2 XV8 commanders (plasma rifle, fusion blaster, iridium armor, 2 shield drones)
-an Ethereal
-a Piranha (fusion blaster and gun drones)
-a squad of 6 Stealth Suits with burst cannons
-a 10 Kroot squad with a Shaper

Tyranid Forces:
-4 Zoanthropes (had psychic blast)
-6 Carnifexes (not sure of upgrades, but had extra armor and a Barbed "something" ranged attack)
-2 Hive Tyrants, with Guard
-2 Squads of Warriors
-3 Squads of Gaunts
-1 squad of Genestealers

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Mission: Seize Ground

Terrain:
Opponents side had 2 patches of forrest, my side of the board had terrain on the right that blocked LOS from my corner to most of the board, making the strategy of splitting the Tyranids up, quite hard to execute. Deploy to left and right hand side regardless, hoping to split the Nid forces up.

Turn 1 Nids:
Was unsure of whether to take first turn or not (Initiative was seized, but decided not to go first). With only 24" between the enemy and myself, it seemed like a poor idea to push forward, but by hanging back the amount of shooting we could do through the cover and our own units was minimal.

So, the Nids went first, Immobilized a tank, and killed several members of various Fire Warrior squads, and running a Sniper Team off the table. Kroot squad was forced to go to the ground, but only took a single casualty.

Turn 1 Tau:
Pushed tanks/transports forward, took shots at some of the bigger units, and did quite poorly. Killed 1 Zoanthrope and several Warriors

Turn 2 Nids:
Outflanking Genestealers and Gaunts hit from the flanks. The Genestealers wiped engaged a unit of Fire Warriors, and remained in combat until the Tau turn. The Gaunts assaulted a Fire Warrior squad, and were beaten by the Fire Warriors who proceded to run them down. The Tyranids knocked the weapon system off a tank, and prepared to assault next turn.

The Piranha was destroyed by a Warp Blast. Kroot squad was wiped by shots from a Carnifex.

Turn 2 Tau: continued to do some shooting, put several wounds on a Carnifex, and knocked out two squads of Gaunts. Most of the shooting against larger targets proved to be pretty ineffective, even with heavy weapons. Stealth Squad deep struck behind Tyranid lines, and managed to not get a single wound on a Zoanthrope.
Fire Warrior squad was finished off by Genestealers.

1 Crisis Commander deep struck, and scattered off the table. (to be fair, the unit was 10" from the table edge, so it wasn't much of a risk, the Tyranids were closer than the table edge!)

Turn 3: Tyranids
Assaulted/shot at remaining Tau units.
-Sniper squad destroyed
-all but 3 Devilfish destroyed
-all but 1 Fire Warrior squad destroyed

What remained was the 3 Hammerheads, 3 Devilfish, 1 squad of Fire Warriors with the Ethereal, and 1 Crisis Commander who managed to draw in combat with 2 Lictors and a Carnifex.

Turn 3: Tau
-conceded.

Ultimately, I think the game would've been a bit more matched with different deployment types and terrain, but my opponent was absolutely better at the game then myself as well. (granted, he's been playing for quite some time with Tyranids, and works at the store...so I'm not too down on myself.)

The short initial distance between units, as well as the limited space to maneuver, would've made it quite hard to play a game of mobile warfare with the Fire Warrior squads, and the terrain proved quite troublesome.

There is always next time though...

**Railguns**

(I'm gonna tackle your combined lists as if it were all yours for simplicity's sake)

If I were you I think I would drop the seeker missiles from each of the vehicles. As your list goes, to use them you have to have a firewarrior squad out of its transport and sitting still for a turn for one guy to try and hit with a markerlight and probably waste the pulserifle shots of the squad. Your near invulnerability to Tyranid ground units when being mounted isn't any good when you aren't mounted. Which is one of the reasons I don't like the sniper drone squads, beyond the fact that once the controller fails an armor save the whole unit is borked.

Beyond the seeker missiles, your vehicle upgrades are solid, and with the points saved you can probably buy your stealth team the BS upgrade so that they can really grind up gaunts n such.

I'm of the opinion that Ethereals really don't add much for such a potentially dangerous downside especially if your firewarriors are going to spend most of the game inside devilfish.

I like Kroot, and usually get the most mileage out of them by sitting them in a forest and having them do their best pill-box impression. They shoot pretty well for line troops and present your opponent with the decision to either let them pelt away at his models with all those S4 shots or assault them in cover to clear them out and fall victim to all those S4 attacks. Although this doesn't really work against units with frags and REALLY doesn't work if they have a flamer, it really screws up Nids when they didn't(or couldn't) bring along the flesh hooks upgrade. 10 might be too few, especially when they are so cheap(8 points since you brought a shaper). You may want to experiment with no shaper so you can get away with 20 near-bolters with good cover saves for 140 points sitting on objectives, but I'm not comfortable with the leadership 7 for that.