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The gaming community, it seems, has deemed the Tyranids to suffer greatly from their most recent Codex. Whether this be from a friendly game stand point or a Tournament ’meta-game’ one, most Tyranid players & most other players will agree on these two things: 1) Carnifex’s are overpriced & 2) The Pyrovore is poor.

However if you absolutely HAD to take a Pyrovore choice in a game, how would you do so & what use might they possibly be, given the level of synergy that the Tyranids require to be used most effectively?

Let’s look at the Stats & Rules:

WS3 BS3 S4 T4 W2 I1 A1 LD6 Sv4+ 45pts each, 1-3 choice. May take a Mycetic Spore
Flamespurt = Heavy Flamer (Strength 5 AP 4 Template Assault 1)
Acid Blood, Volatile, Instinctive Behaviour – Feed (if a Pyrovore is subject to Feed it may still fire its Flamespurt – which, given their low LD value, is a good thing).

They do have a great model, so at the very least they have aesthetics on their side…

If I HAD to take them here’s how I might:

3 Pyrovores – 135pts + Mycetic Spore w/Barbed Strangler – 55pts = 190pts

Pyrovores are clearly designed to be a sweep & clear unit & will only ever be of use if you attach a Mycetic Spore, which is, to me, one of the best ‘Transports’ in the game. It Deep Strikes, is not a vehicle, so can fire on the turn in which it arrives ( ) & can take a fair few weapons with large templates, as well as being yet another valid target for your enemy to destroy, especially if you place it onto or near an objective. It is also just as ‘Accurate’ as a Drop Pod. I love them. I’d try and get a unit pinned for a turn with the Spore in order to Flamespurt my target unit as much as possible. Hopefully engaging said unit in combat with another unit to try & 'mop' them up, before moving onto a new target.

SHOOTING

Once they disembark a unit of Pyrovores can fire their ‘Heavy Flamers’, meaning in order to use them effectively you’ll need to get a good Deep Strike roll (with things like the Lictor’s Pheromone Trail rule you can get pretty accurate/arrive early on) & position them within range & against a unit you know you can cause casualties to. This happens to be most Infantry units in the game. Even against Marines there’ll be potentially a lot of Strength 5 hits if you include the Mycetic Spore’s shooting as well.

This is really all Pyrovore’s have going for them. They are, more or less, a dedicated strike choice, whether you need them to decimate a unit of Ork Boyz or attempt to kill a 5 man Devastator-type unit hiding in cover towards the back of the board or help to clear a Troop Choice from an objective somewhere.

Against Horde armies like Ork & Guard footslogger lists, the Pyrovores will cause a potentially devastating amount of carnage on any turn in which they arrive, killing most of these types of Troop units on 2’s or 3’s. They can easily kill just as many Eldar/Dark Eldar units (if you can get close to them) and if your Pyrovores manage to wipe out or else cripple an Aspect Warrior-type squad or any form of Troop choice then they’d have done their job. Against the majority of armies Pyrovores & their Spore should be targeting your opponent’s Troops/Infantry Heavy Weapon choices or else small isolated units of Elites (or IG Command Squads) in the hope of weakening them enough to become less effective. However the majority of armies are Marine/Marine Assault based & Pyrovores are particularly poor against them. Even so they will unlikely make a good return on their points as they will no doubt be killed in the following turn...unles you use the Spore to block some LOS.

ASSAULT

In combat the Pyrovores aren’t great. Yes they ignore armour saves but have a less than average WS, just a single attack and an Initiative of 1 to top them off. If an enemy unit engages them in combat they should die fairly quickly but due to their Acid Blood rule may cause at least a couple of instant kill type casualties against most basic Infantry units in return. If they are assaulted by a unit with Power Fists (Terminators or Ork Meganobz) they may stand a slight chance to take one or two down with them and may also explode in a modest fashion, as we will see below…
The only other bonus they have is that they’ll have a Mycetic Spore behind them & if your opponent gets carried away and consolidates towards it then you might get a few more kills.

VOLATILE

This rule is both fluffy & frustrating, for it means there’s only a 50% chance of the rule being implemented & little chance such a chance will even be initiated because they’d have to be killed either by S4(8) Power Fist attacks or by Strength 8 weapons. The chances of this happening & it being effective are slim to none as your opponent is highly unlikely to waste his Anti-MC weaponry on them when a basic rapid-firing Infantry Squad can do the job.

CONCLUSION

In short Pyrovores have a place against certain types of units. I personally rate Template weapons of all kinds as they often give a solid amount of hits against any unit they’re targeting. However, whilst I think the Pyrovore is a great concept, they fail to deliver value for their points for a lot of players & their rules don’t seem to be quite enough. If Volatile was an instant thing against any final wound caused then that would make them a little better, as would having 3 Wounds or a Toughness of 5 or a Strength 6 Template weapon.

As it is I can only see them of use against certain kinds of soft-footslogging armies/targets or in certain kinds of situations given that, in order to be any kind of threat, you’d have to take them in a unit of 3 with a Mycetic Spore – when for 5pts more a piece I could take a unit like Hive Guard instead. The fact they’re an Elites choice doesn’t help them in comparison to Lictors, Hive Guard, Zoanthropes etc…

I don’t feel Pyrovores to be an expressly ‘bad’ unit for friendly or small games. I actually tried proxying them against Terminators and Tactical Marines several times and they ranged from being unexpectedly superb to completely useless. In general they should kill a few Tactical Marines and, maybe, a Terminator or two, before being shot and/or assaulted to death in the following turn. Against Horde armies they could be devastating if your opponent gets lazy with their coherency…

For any kind of Tournament & the majority of friendly games, Pyrovores are, indeed, poor because they fail to deliver enough, yet are so close to actually being good it’s frustrating. They have a great model & concept, yet they lack just that extra bit of BBQ sauce to make them truly explosive upon the battlefield.

Do you like the concept of the Pyrovore? Have you had any successes with them? Would you consider taking them if they were made slightly better, if so what would they need in order for them to become so?

In a non mechanised enviorment you would se people who swore on taking 3 pyropores in a pod (a pyropod) and use it as a sueside unit. 3x heavy flamers shooting before the unit can be shot back at is good in any army and you would probably be abel to earn some of the points back.

The problem is that people mech up. Even if a singel unit is out of it's transport and cost around 200 points the chances that you will scatter away are quite high. Not only that but the elite slott is taken up by units sutch as zoanthropes and hive guards for people in mech heavy enviorments. Doom of malanthai, ygmars and venomthropes who insist in shenigan tricks and the lictor for people who keeps klinging to previus editions. Among those there is little lov for the pyrpore. Heck, I have had matchups where the only units they could efiently do something against where sitting inside 4 chimeras or 4 razorbacks.

In short you want units who can multi task or who are very good at one spesific task that needs done. Pyrovores are neather.

and again, this is kind of old news so please stop kikking the dead horse. ;-)

I can see a certain theme emerging here Mr.Warspawned sir!
First the defence of Chaos Spawn, which was very eloquent and well written if a little flawed on the rules front.
Now it's the Pyrovore.....which is just as maligned and overlooked among the Bug players out there.

This too is eloquent and well written and you make a few good points, I may even be convinced as to the uses of the Pyrovore.

Now turn your attention to Aun Va......I dare you!

Yes! good idea sarpadon, do the ethereals, now!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yes! good idea sarpadon, do the ethereals, now!

I remember reading a similar thread discussing the use of a Pyrovore on another site once. It seems that it has less to do with the flame spurt, and more with the Pyrovore's Acid Blood ability. Drop it into combat, hope that it gets horribly, horribly wounded, explode and use that to cause damage. Now I also recall them debating on what is considered an "unsaved wound", which could either be how many armour saves the creature failed, or how many wounds it actually suffers. This means that you could either (in theory) inflict a horrendous amount of wounds (if you charged, say, a Ork Boyz mob or a Blobsquad of 50 guardsmen) or only 2 max.

If Pyrovores could indeed inflict more wounds than it's own starting number of wounds, then I can see it being used as a great solution to high attack, low initiative squads like Ork Boyz mobs or Guard blobs.

In short you want units who can multi task or who are very good at one spesific task that needs done. Pyrovores are neather.

To be fair I stated Pyrovores are a poor choice considering you will use your Elite slots on Zoanthropes, Lictors, Hive Guard etc...I left out the vs. Mech argument because it's obvious Pyrovores are useless against it, choosing to focus on them vs. Infantry instead. I wanted to find out exactly why Pyrovores have been deemed to be so poor by many people for myself & the only way to do that is, alas, from the ground up.

Pyrovores may be a valid choice in smaller games or in scenarios of a certain type where their will be less Mech, such as Cities of Death, or in a game whereby players agree not to use Mech & slog it out instead. I fully understand that in a 'normal' game they are a poor choice - I'm not defending them, but I'm not dismissing them off-hand simply because the internet told me to. Such a study also helps me gain an understanding for the game, which I am personally in need of. I apologise if the majority of Dakka's members aren't. I assumed when I wrote the piece most people would read the title and not bother looking, or else click, see the 1,000 word article and not bother reading

Pyrovores do one specific task - saturate an enemy unit with Strength 5 auto-hits. If you use them in conjunction with Lictors then you can Deep Strike them pretty much where you want them to. Depending on the unit this will be devastating or not - I'd say if a Pyrovore unit could wipe out an Imperial Guard Command Squad, a Troop choice or an elite Eldar/Dark Eldar unit, then they'd have been worth taking. 'If's', 'but's' & other units capable of the same job, but better, aside of course

and again, this is kind of old news so please stop kikking the dead horse. ;-)

What if I have a fettish for kicking Dead Horses? How do I know my writing (or more likely the next edition/codex) won't find that magic defibulator to raise them from the dead? What if I'm a gaming masochistic necrophile ? It may be in my interest to use the worst units in the game for my own perverse pleasure, if so - how would I do so?

I'm aware this is old news to many, in which case I don't expect them to read or respond, but it may not be to new players who also want to ask the questions I've asked. If anything any of such articles I write are for my own curiosity, people can either read them or not, dismiss or not, or contribute or not...I don't much care TBH

Drop it into combat, hope that it gets horribly, horribly wounded, explode nd use that to cause damage

Unfortunatey I think it needs to be Instant Killed in order to explode & then it would need to roll a 4+ in order to do so. If it wasn't for this, I think they'd be AMAZING against Ork Boyz/Guard/Eldar. I also think they could only ever give 2 Acid Blood wounds each MAX - any other wounds would be discounted. Would Acid Blood count if they were Instant Killed by a Power Fist?

Yes! good idea sarpadon, do the ethereals, now!

Really people? Really?

Seems to me that you like a challenge Mr.Warspawned sir.... So yes, really try and defend Etherals! Please?

I must admit to leaning towards the fluff side of things rather than the WAAC side of things, so I would probably take Etherals or even Aun Va in a game.

But then you would know that huh?

sarpedons-right-hand wrote:

I must admit to leaning towards the fluff side of things rather than the WAAC side of things, so I would probably take Etherals or even Aun Va in a game.

warspawned wrote: [...left out the vs. Mech argument because it's obvious Pyrovores are useless against it, choosing to focus on them vs. Infantry instead...]

Have you met up at a tabletop recently? Because let me tell you, there are tanks out there. Imperial Guard gun lines, Space Marine gun lines, Long Fangs and razorback gunlines, Grey Knight 24" gunline, Lash whip gun lines. In short I would say that what those gunlines have in comming is that they have a lott of guns. Often mounted on or shooting out of a tank. It is like going to the circus and I am the wooden blanks he tryes to shoot.

I am not trying to be harsh, I am trying to be funny, becos if you expet your oponent to meet up withouth mech then GW has had a hell of a tyranid advertising campain in your aria.

warspawned wrote:To be fair I stated Pyrovores are a poor choice considering you will use your Elite slots on Zoanthropes, Lictors, Hive Guard etc...I left out the vs. Mech argument because it's obvious Pyrovores are useless against it, choosing to focus on them vs. Infantry instead. I wanted to find out exactly why Pyrovores have been deemed to be so poor by many people for myself & the only way to do that is, alas, from the ground up.

As you say, their real (and sadly crippling) flaw is competing for slots with Hive Guard and Zoanthropes, which are absolutely mandatory in the present mech-friendly edition of the rules. On the rare occasions on which you see anyone spend that third Elite slot for anything other than one of the two antitank units, it's usally Ymgarls, which are wonderfully disruptive and deadly. Pyrovores really can't compete with any of those three units for damage-dealing. And damage-dealing is really all they do.

warspawned wrote:Pyrovores do one specific task - saturate an enemy unit with Strength 5 auto-hits.

Yup. Which is nice, but usually less-effective than using HtH to clear units out of cover.

It's a bit off-topic for the thread, but I'd also like to make mention of the Pyrovore's also oft-overlooked cousin, which I think is even a better candidate for "useful Elite unit after the usual suspects". The Venomthrope. Which can make a HtH-heavy Tyranid force both more resistent to enemy shooting and enemy assaults. Giving every unit with a model within 6" of them 5+ cover is invaluable for big bigs, in particular. If they are supporting/Running up alongside/behind a couple of Trygons, a Tyrant, and/or Tervigons and gaunts, they make those big bugs in particular substantially more durable without having to slow their advance to hide behind or divert their moves to use terrain; they can instead move straight toward the enemy in the open field. Additionally, making enemy units which wish to assault the bugs take Dangerous Terrain tests and lose their additional attacks for charging can have a huge impact.

I am not trying to be harsh, I am trying to be funny, becos if you expet your oponent to meet up withouth mech then GW has had a hell of a tyranid advertising campain in your aria.

Of course I don't (unless they are poor and cannot afford said vehicles - or else not be able afford the petrol). I said they won't be of much use in most normal games for this very reason. They may still have uses in other circumstance, but in any Tournament - forget it. If you know you are playing against a foot-slogging horde, then they may well worth be considering, otherwise I see why they are deemed to be a waste of points/elite slot.

It's a bit off-topic for the thread, but I'd also like to make mention of the Pyrovore's also oft-overlooked cousin, which I think is even a better candidate for "useful Elite unit after the usual suspects". The Venomthrope...

Agreed, but I think Venomthropes deserve there own Topic

A point on the Venomthrope. Ork players always or mostly take a KFF its a HQ slot and costs more. Admittedly its only for use on vehicles but your using yours on MC so its only fair. That and use them in an assault and you win. Gaunts with TS and a venomthrope in an assault is usually a win for nids.

Lictors are crap for precision striking outside of 'choose when reserves come on' missions. They will arrive before the unit you're trying to drop on them in a quarter of games. The only reserve one-two I would contemplate using is a couple Trygons with a load of Gaunts in reserve in DoWor or CoD; perhaps as part of a 'start with three Tervigons' list.

I've had some good results with them in recent games.

Dropped on an objective and wiped out 20 DE Warriors, the unit and its Spore soaking up the firepower of a couple of Ravagers as my opponent panicked.

Dropped on a Zoanthrope unit and caused a bit of havoc, and drew Swarmlord backwards to deal with them. ID-causing Bonesabres led to a lot of acid explodey fun there.

Dropped on a Guard line and crippled a worrying Veteran squad. Probably would have given target confusion and LOS-blocking fun if time hadn't been called on table.

In all cases, an Ymgarl unit would have been more productive. But that's assuming they wouldn't get isolated or avoided, which isn't so easy with DS units. I do enjoy having them and the Spod in my case, just to make my opponents wary.

Mannahnin wrote:It's a bit off-topic for the thread, but I'd also like to make mention of the Pyrovore's also oft-overlooked cousin, which I think is even a better candidate for "useful Elite unit after the usual suspects". The Venomthrope. Which can make a HtH-heavy Tyranid force both more resistent to enemy shooting and enemy assaults. Giving every unit with a model within 6" of them 5+ cover is invaluable for big bigs, in particular. If they are supporting/Running up alongside/behind a couple of Trygons, a Tyrant, and/or Tervigons and gaunts, they make those big bugs in particular substantially more durable without having to slow their advance to hide behind or divert their moves to use terrain; they can instead move straight toward the enemy in the open field. Additionally, making enemy units which wish to assault the bugs take Dangerous Terrain tests and lose their additional attacks for charging can have a huge impact.

Love Venomthropes, I need to buy a second one because my opponents have learned how amazing they are...