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http://thebrownpaintbrush.blogspot.com/2011/06/tyranids-vs-blood-angels-2000.html

Enjoy!

Good battle report but I would suggest taking pictures if possible next time as it will help us to see what's going on.

To many Ygmarls! You only need about 6-7 honestly. I'm also not huge on the swarmlord as I'd rather have the short ranged firepower support. The core looks similar to mine in regards to the 2xRavs, 2xGenestealers, Tervi, Gants, 6 Hiveguard. It's from there that we branch off. Interesting read but I heartily suggest if you are gonna take a big bug put a gun on it. Otherwise he's not contributing most of the game. At least in my personal experience

It was a good read though. Glad to see another person joining the swarm

@yermom
Nice battle report. Good to see you trying to make your tyranids work. tantan628 does have a good point pictures would be nice.

You should try adding brood lords to your gene stealers. This makes them more survivable since you can put a flamer wound on the brood lord.

I also do not like the swarmlord. Although really awesome in combat Swarmlord is a wee bit slow especially if you get bad run rolls. Would you run a unit of 9 thunder hammer stormshield terminators on foot? Probably not if Shrike wasn't in your list.

Cool batrep, if I had more time to play with nids I'd be much happier personally. Thus far I've liked having the swarmlord around personally and I <3 my raveners.

If I were you I would ged rid of the Tervigons. Oh and you should maybe consider some carnifexes or trygons or any other heavy support. You did well against all those tanks, but I think you were pretty lucky with the dice and lck won't hold forever.


Rant over.

The Swarmlord, through special abilities, can have a bigger impact on the game than the HT with a gun. His 18" synapse is good, but his ability to give any unit FC or PE is great. He turns Ravenors into Fiends of Slaanesh and he doesn't need to be that close to the fight to give a large unit of Hormagants (who snake back to him) FC. He is also the biggest threat Mephiston will have (in conjunction with LW Guard). His ability to reroll outflanking gives you a better shot of getting Genestealers on the correct side (bad luck it didn't happen this game). Another tactic I have used is to give Ymgarls FC, which along with their innate +1 str, makes them str 6 on the charge with rending.

I say in the right list, Swarmlord is definetly worth his points. What's the right list? Large units of Gants, Ravenors and Genestealers.

@Darth

We're going to have to agree to disagree. I don't think the Swarmlord works as well in this list. My issue is you can drop him pretty fast w/firepower as he doesn't have a 2+. And as a synergy link the way your using him I'd drop him turn one. Unless he's not moving up and not visible it's not a hard thing to do with a lot of lists now if he only has one guard.

But hey, that's the joy of the codex. So many ways to make it work for you. And if you've had good luck I say go for it. I just can't make the Swarmlord fit for me. Could just be my playstyle or mentality.

The swarmlord drops really fast for the points investment, but he's a kot of what makes my army flexible. I want to try and work some more guard in there for him, to increase his survivability. He adds a greeat combat unit, that really kept the THSS termies from walking through my army. Gaunts just doon't do it when they have FNP, and raveners would get instakilled pretty bad. He is the only answer that the book as for mmephiston really. And, he adds a credible threat to land raiders on 2 fronts. He can give the ymgarls furious charge and they become S6, which can do something, and when he charges at S7 land raiders get penned about 40% of the time.

I think the changes I'm going to make are going to envolve dropping the stealers to 5 mans, and dropping the ymgarls as necessary, and somethign else to try and get another unit of 5 raveners and a 2nd tyrant guard.

yermom
Its cool that your bat reping your test games. I should do that too. Just hard finding time to do it. Rather play another test game. We should get in some test games.

Interesting tyranid list. Actually has me slightly interested in Nids again but I just traded mine for Space Wolves doh.

I have to agree with Avariel on broodlords. Try em out their pretty good. DevianID likes them too.

Dunno if I like Ymgarls. I like my 3 zoanthrope 2x3 hive guard config I was testing. Bashing land raiders with CC just isn't that good cause well they delivered their payload.

Swarmy has his pluses and I agree you need a list built around him. I've found that the more aggressive lists work well with him. Tervigons, imo, aren't that aggressive. I like to pound the enemy deployment zone. I would try this.

Lose 2 Ymgarls, 10 Gants and 1 Tervigon. Add a Guard with whip and 16 regular stealers. The idea is to infiltrate the stealers who can snake back a little for Swarmy's ability. You can threaten the flanks with 2 outflanking stealer sqauds which should force your opponent to deploy centrally. This gives your main body of Raveners, Swarmlord and the 16 stealers a smaller target footprint to attack. They won't have to try and run all over the place because the outflanking stealers are confining the enemies units to the center of the board. I would prefer 12 man sized outflanking stealers in each unit, but what can you do.

Now you have 40 Stealers, 10 Raveners and the Swarmlord crashing into the enemy deployment zone, most of them on turn 2 with a 3+ reserve roll. In the back field you have a Tervigon and 10 Gants to hold objectives in the backfield and the 6 Hive Guard are midfield.

If you get worried about the Swarmlord getting shot up, he has 9 wounds and a 4+ cover save most of the time. You can give him FnP early until the Ymgarls show up to silence Long Fang batteries. Most likely on turn 2 those batteries will be silenced with the tide of rending that will hit the lines. I have found that as long as you have sufficient threatening units to hit the enemy deployment zone on turn 2, then the Swarmlord can survive a round or two of shooting. At the very least his will draw all the fire away from the Raveners and Genestealers who end up doing most of the damage.