Helston wrote:I'm thinking of entering my first tourney in a few months and I could do with some of your advice.
HQ
Tyranid Prime - Scything Talons and rending claws - 80
Tyranid Prime - Scything Talons and rending claws - 80
Tyranid Primes can be pretty points efficient as an
HQ, but these seem to be a bit tacked on. Keeping one to fill the mandatory
HQ slot is fine, but without any upgrades most people won't be particularly frightened of these. I'd recommend dropping one (80pts saved).
Helston wrote:Elites
The Doom in Mycetic Spore - 130
Hive Guards x2 - 100
Hive Guards x2 - 100
Troops
Termagants x16 with devourers - 160
I agree that the Devourers are not going to be a great buy here. With 16 walking models these units will become the quick target of long-range low-
ap guns to quickly knock them out, not only because they're 10pts each but because they do pose a slight threat. Termagants with Tervigons are best left bare to be used as unit shields and boosted with the Tervigon's own biomorphs. I'd recommend to drop this down to 10 models with standard Fleshborers, saving 110pts to put into other units (190pts saved).
Helston wrote:Tervigon - Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacks, Catalyst, Onslaught - 210
If you are purchasing Catalyst (which you should), then Onslaught is an expensive and very situational power which will likely go unused because you'll be Catalysting a unit every turn. Save yourself 15pts and drop Onslaught. I'd probably also recommend swapping Stinger Salvo for Cluster Spines because it's free and a S5 Large Blast is more useful than 4 shots are middling
BS (205pts saved).
Helston wrote:Genestealers x8 - 112
Genestealers x8 - 112
Heavy Support
Biovore x3 - 135
I actually quite like Biovores, but I'd recommend limiting them to 2 unless you've got no where else for the points to go (250pts saved). There's too many vehicles in the game to invest too many points into S4 barrage shots. They can be useful and if you manage to catch a unit with Sv4+ out in the open can quickly pay for themselves.
Helston wrote:Tyrannofex -Rupture Cannon, Desiccator larvae and Clusterspines - 265
Tyrannofex -Rupture Cannon, Desiccator larvae and Clusterspines - 265
Total - 1749
Would I stand a chance with this list?
One Tyrannofex at 1750pts is potentially not a bad idea, but two is dedicating far too much of your army. I would recommend dropping one to put toward other units (515pts saved).
Having gone through the list, we've just cleared 515pts--now let's put those to good use!
If you are going to dedicate two Elite slots toward Hive Guard, you'll want to max them out to provided longer life and better chances of cracking enemy armor (100pts spent on 2 Hive Guard, 415pts left).
For 15pts a Tyranid Prime can become an
IC killer and deterrant by becoming equipped with a Bonesword and Lashwhip (keeping the Scything Talons for the reroll) (15pts spend, 400pts left). Unless you have a special plan for it, I'd recommend attaching the Tyranid Prime to one of the Hive Guard units to scare away anyone trying to assault them to shut them down in shooting, which also gives your TP majority T6 for the purposes of wounding in shooting and allows you to allocate things like some S8 AP4 hits from the
TL-
AC Dreadnoughts everyone loves nowadays to the Sv3+ of your prime.
You may want to consider bulking your Troop numbers and Synapse net by adding another pair of 10 Termagants and a Tervigon with the same biomorph setup (245pts spent, 155pts left). This gives you double the Catalyst power, which helps against gunline armies and much greater surviveability for the core of your army. You could also opt to leave off the 50pts of Termagants and put the Tervigon in the
HQ, but Troop
MCs are just great to have.
Next to the Genestealers. Genestealers are a gamble, either dying horribly to bolter fire or murdering everything in sight. To this end you want to keep them alive as long as possible and that means Broodlords. For 62pts each you can add a Broodlord to your units (with Scything Talons), giving you a much stronger, faster, and tougher model with one of the most power psyker powers in the game (Hypnotize). A lot of people think Broodlords are too expensive and you should just get more Genestealers for that price, but think of it this way--each time your unit takes wounds from an AP5 weapon that the model either saves or absorbs it has saved you a model that would have been lost without any chance. The S5 helps quite a bit against shredding vehicle armor and Hypnotize will shut down just about any
IC or strong single model in close combat. Putting 2 Broodlords into the list is 124pts, leaving you 33pts remaining to either add biomorphs or tweak unit sizes (including dropping a single Genestealer to have back the 3rd Biovore if you want).
Hopefully this makes sense to you and by no means do you have to follow it exactly, but this should help great with your army resilience and damage output overall.
4500 
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7000pts
