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I now I have seen this discussed in some other threads but I wanted to talk about my experience since adding them in my lists.



How I run them:

I run 20 dev gants in a spore pod. This seems to be the usual tactic as they are short range and pretty fragile overall. Plus this lets you drop them with a decent amount of accuracy to get what you need.


Ideal target:

This is where I may differ from how some people run them. I use mine to go after hard targets. I attack things that have a great save or my other units have a bad chance at damaging. I pick on terminators, Seer Councils, pathfinders and the life. All to great success.

Lets look at terminators. You get 60 shots, 30 hit. You then get 15 wounds. thats 15 saves, or 2-3 dead Terminators. While it doesn't seem drastic its actually pretty good. The odds are the same for pathfinders and similar for a fortuned seer council. Another plus is a 20 strong unit will be able to weather damage, and if the oppenent wants them gone badily, it will save firepower from everything else closing in.

While not the best use. I have even wrecked a battlewagon by dropping these guys down behind it and glancing it today.


Pros:

Throw out enough wounds to force failed saves.

A great distraction when you are still advancing your main force.

Can damage vehicles



Downsides:

Hard to keep in synapse range after they DS. Flamers will toast them outright.

They have a high point cost, around 260.


So any additional thoughts or comments on other ways to use these little devils?

I have a "tyranid gunline" that uses them. Its really the only time I've really liked them, but I do like them quite a bit in the context of the list.

I run them 15 strong, and they start the game with venomthrope coverage and in range of the counter-assault/poison/furious charge bubble.

Not fun to be shot at by, and not particularly fun for most units to charge them, and they are still just acting as a screen for hive guard/tervigons/t-fex.

EDIT: I'd like to add that your version with the spore pod would work really well with a hive tyrant and hive commander. Buying the unit allows you to buy a tervigon as a troop. And hive commander allows that tervigon to outflank. When you are rolling for reserves, make sure you roll the tervigons location prior to deep striking the pod. Then have the pod DS near the side that the tervigon is going to be arriving from. It's likely that your unit will have synapse, and a potential catalyst should you want that.

It'll end up being a very difficult to handle forward advance for your opponent to deal with, while the rest of your army does what it wants to do.

Also remember that not having synapse isn't really that bad as long as their is synapse between your unit and it's own table edge. Unless of course you are about to be charged in close combat, and then get swept. And even then you've got a pretty good initiative with which to escape.

One important thing to remember that really gives the devouerer armed gaunts. The -1 Ldr modifier applied to any unit wounded by these. Its a great and worthwhile component that i often forget to make my foe apply. No longer though. I ran shrike and a whole assault unit off the board last game that proved to be a crushing blow to my foe.
Back on topic... I run Devil gaunts in every list because of their massed fire, and i try to pair them with a unit that is more threatening than they are. that way my foe has to pick one or the other, and being forced to chooseensures that one gets through.

I am another who really like to utilize Devourer armed Gaunts.

I find a good sized brood of them is quite capable of making enemy commanders second guess on target priority when they feel 30-60 S4 shots coming down the line at them. I also use them to target enemy units I'd rather not deal with using other methods such as lower shot-count or melee broods. I've done well to soften up Daemon Princes, special chracters & Terminator squads before they could come to bear on other aspects of my list.

I don't get much milage out of the 'fear factor' leadership penalty as someone mentioned but it's a nice bonus.

sennacherib wrote: One important thing to remember that really gives the devouerer armed gaunts. The -1 Ldr modifier applied to any unit wounded by these. Its a great and worthwhile component that i often forget to make my foe apply. No longer though. I ran shrike and a whole assault unit off the board last game that proved to be a crushing blow to my foe.
Back on topic... I run Devil gaunts in every list because of their massed fire, and i try to pair them with a unit that is more threatening than they are. that way my foe has to pick one or the other, and being forced to chooseensures that one gets through.

Remembering this is an excellent point. So far I have forgotten to use the -1 every single time I force a check.