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I'm starting to get into 40K for the first time now that the new rules are out and I've been working on building a Tyranid force. I see people on Dakka taking Termagants as apposed to Hormagaunts and have heard the the Hormas aren't as good in 6th edition. What are some people's thoughts on this? I've been trying to put together a close combat themed army but I've heard shooting is where it's at in 6th. My regular opponents will be Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Death Guard, and Imperial Guard.

I had originally preferred the idea of Hormagaunts but if this is not the best tactical decision I would like to know before dropping some cash on them.

The more popular choice is termagants so you can take tervigons as troops and spit out more termagants. As most of the missions are holding objectives tervigons give you more options as they spit out scoring units. The risk is this also gives your opponent more opportunities to get points so it can be high risk high reward. It is nice to have a MC sit on an objective though.

Hormies are better in CC and i still like them but going the other route i mentioned with termies/tervigons is more effective generally.

They're crazy, hormagaunts are awesome, and they absolutely shred transports if you give them adrenal glands.

Transports that are armor 10 are really weak to hormagaunts with furious charge. You can also add +1 attack to the hormagaunts if they are not in synapse, since rage gives +2 attack on charge!

I do belive homogaunts with adrenalin glands or just blanc will be very goodin this edition. Winn a fight and you have a swwping advance roll on 1d6 +5! suck it humies

GIving your normal opponents your in for a long hard fight with 'nids. Hormies are about the best 6 point CC unit you can get. The high init and synapse web let's you do neat tactics like bouncing them back in to assault the turn after they lose an assault. The lose of No Retreat has made keeping them stuck in with Synapse has become a great tarpit trick. Hormies really improved in 6th.

Termiguants are still solid, and the high volume of fire that Devilgaunts put out, plus the loss of assault from outflank, has made Devilgaunts the new best outflank unit nid's have.

In 6th realistically you are going to need both. The termigaunts act as a softener and general shield, while the hormie's act as a cheap hammer unit. You are still going to need either bonesword warriors or 'stealers to slow down TEQ units.

As mentioned above, if you decide on Termagants, pair them with Tervigons, as the pair can make for an amazing army core. If you instead decide on Hormagaunts, take them in big units, as they are obviously very easy to kill and there is no way of replacing them. I'd probably go with winged hive tyrants with them as they can give a bubble of preferred enemy in needs be and can keep up with them as they slaughter their way through most things. Although... Saying that, possibly mixing the two could work well? Tervigons as HQs, a couple of termagant units and a pair (or three) units of Hormagaunts could work well. Someone correct me if I'm wrong; I may have gonew of on a tangent her

Colonel Dakura wrote:As mentioned above, if you decide on Termagants, pair them with Tervigons, as the pair can make for an amazing army core. If you instead decide on Hormagaunts, take them in big units, as they are obviously very easy to kill and there is no way of replacing them. I'd probably go with winged hive tyrants with them as they can give a bubble of preferred enemy in needs be and can keep up with them as they slaughter their way through most things. Although... Saying that, possibly mixing the two could work well? Tervigons as HQs, a couple of termagant units and a pair (or three) units of Hormagaunts could work well. Someone correct me if I'm wrong; I may have gonew of on a tangent her

Not a bad Core for a nid force. I would probably make that a Devilgaunt brood with 3 20+ hormigant broods. Probably run one brood stripped as a forward screen, and build the other 2 with TS and AG. Tossing a a brood or 2 of Gargoyles and possible a Shrike brood with dual Boneswords and sything talons + one with a Swords and VC as TEQ threat. Maybe add a Mawloc as it is one of the few units that gets to "assault" on the DS, same reason to run at least one Ymgral brood. Should work both 5th and 6th rules.

Yup, definitely ran on a tangent

I think the OP title should be "Gaunts, Gants or Gargs?"

Gargoyles > Gaunts

Gants >All in creation.

I do like the fact that the humblest bug can be the best bug. As for Gargoyles, they are troops in 20% of objective games, jump infantry + fleet makes them insanely fast; To kill a vehicle, you need about 13 adrenal gaunts or 15 adrenal gargs. 15 gargs do more wounds, have more models, are faster and can shoot > as compared to 13 gaunts.

My 2 pennies.

So, I know nothing whatever about tyranid, but there are a couple of things to note in general.

The first is that multi-assaulting transports just got a lot worse. Yes, you can hit them more easily, but you just got -1 A for it being a disordered charge. More importantly, in 5th ed, you could have as many charges in a multi-assault as you wanted, so long as at least one model was able to get into close combat with everything (and the rest just sort of piled in). Now in 6th ed, you can only assign minis to a secondary target only after every unit that could engage with the primary target has moved to engage the primary target. This drastically reduces the amount of damage you can do to the non-primary target, and basically rules out charging 3 or more transports in a single go.

Add to this that dudes in transports can overwatch, and then shoot you the turn after you kill the transport and then overwatch you again makes attacking with hormagaunts much riskier, especially if your opponent has a couple of flamers.

Secondly, assault just got a lot worse for a lot of reasons. It's going to be tougher to keep your guys alive to get into charge range, with a new uncertainty about how far they will be able to charge once they get there, and are now more vulnerable once the close combat is done.

As almost every choppy thing got worse, I'd think that an ebbing tide sinks all boats.

I don't have a ton of experience with Nids, but here are some observations that I made playing against them in 6th.

The shooty little ones can be devastating if crammed in mycetic spores. As long as you don't scatter off the board the pod will land. This allows you to drop in behind transports and tanks and absolutely go to town on rear armor. Now that you can glance things to death that's really useful. Also, because wounds are directional now, being able to shoot from a different direction is important as it can expose characters or single out guys out of cover.

Fleshborers will go through IG armor too. The marines will get saves, but if you throw enough shots some will end up being kill shots. If you have the points for devourers then you can hurl even more shots.

Ailaros wrote:So, I know nothing whatever about tyranid, but there are a couple of things to note in general.

The first is that multi-assaulting transports just got a lot worse. Yes, you can hit them more easily, but you just got -1 A for it being a disordered charge. More importantly, in 5th ed, you could have as many charges in a multi-assault as you wanted, so long as at least one model was able to get into close combat with everything (and the rest just sort of piled in). Now in 6th ed, you can only assign minis to a secondary target only after every unit that could engage with the primary target has moved to engage the primary target. This drastically reduces the amount of damage you can do to the non-primary target, and basically rules out charging 3 or more transports in a single go.

Add to this that dudes in transports can overwatch, and then shoot you the turn after you kill the transport and then overwatch you again makes attacking with hormagaunts much riskier, especially if your opponent has a couple of flamers.

Secondly, assault just got a lot worse for a lot of reasons. It's going to be tougher to keep your guys alive to get into charge range, with a new uncertainty about how far they will be able to charge once they get there, and are now more vulnerable once the close combat is done.

As almost every choppy thing got worse, I'd think that an ebbing tide sinks all boats.

Killing vehicles with Tyranid weaponry has just gotten much easier.

Gants and Gargs can both overwatch enemy assault units. This idea works both ways.

The amount of firepower you'd receive from most transports is fairly minimal and combined with the vastly improved to-hit vs vehicles, I think thats an overall improvement too.

Whilst the charge role is random, guestimating the distance required is not. So thats more informed decisions. Again, combine the 2d6 assault move with a 3" pile in, when you do charge, more bugs will get to attack, on average.

In terms of survivability, if we get punished by the efficient mech firepower, we will get a big benefit on 80% of missions with objectives. Otherwise, there will be many more boots on the ground & that is generally less efficient firepower and easier to get to - again, I don't see much of a problem.

Nids got a great boost, if you look at the synergy, which was always the core concept for the bugs.

barnowl wrote:GIving your normal opponents your in for a long hard fight with 'nids. Hormies are about the best 6 point CC unit you can get. The high init and synapse web let's you do neat tactics like bouncing them back in to assault the turn after they lose an assault. The lose of No Retreat has made keeping them stuck in with Synapse has become a great tarpit trick. Hormies really improved in 6th.

Termiguants are still solid, and the high volume of fire that Devilgaunts put out, plus the loss of assault from outflank, has made Devilgaunts the new best outflank unit nid's have.

In 6th realistically you are going to need both. The termigaunts act as a softener and general shield, while the hormie's act as a cheap hammer unit. You are still going to need either bonesword warriors or 'stealers to slow down TEQ units.

Whats a Devilgaunt?

J Mac wrote:

barnowl wrote:GIving your normal opponents your in for a long hard fight with 'nids. Hormies are about the best 6 point CC unit you can get. The high init and synapse web let's you do neat tactics like bouncing them back in to assault the turn after they lose an assault. The lose of No Retreat has made keeping them stuck in with Synapse has become a great tarpit trick. Hormies really improved in 6th.

Termiguants are still solid, and the high volume of fire that Devilgaunts put out, plus the loss of assault from outflank, has made Devilgaunts the new best outflank unit nid's have.

In 6th realistically you are going to need both. The termigaunts act as a softener and general shield, while the hormie's act as a cheap hammer unit. You are still going to need either bonesword warriors or 'stealers to slow down TEQ units.

Whats a Devilgaunt?

A termagant upgraded to carry a Devourer (18" range, assault 3 Str 4 AP -)

Razerous wrote:Nids got a great boost, if you look at the synergy, which was always the core concept for the bugs.

I wasn't trying to say that nids became a worse army, but was rather more questioning how much people were going to continue to want hormagaunts.

Ailaros wrote:

Razerous wrote:Nids got a great boost, if you look at the synergy, which was always the core concept for the bugs.

I wasn't trying to say that nids became a worse army, but was rather more questioning how much people were going to continue to want hormagaunts.

Hitting a rhino on 3+ in CC, re-rolling 1's, then only requiring 3 glancing hits to wreck said rhino, and with a unit size of 15-30 hormagaunts in cc, easily surrounding the vehicle as well with 2d6 rerollable charge plus 3" pile in, hormagaunts are a GREAT counter to a meched up space marine unit of any flavor. In regular CC, they're boss if they can assault through open terrain and you can always send a grunt unit ahead of them to tie up some marines, or what have you, then assault at Init 5 on the next charge.

Hormagaunts are still good.

tetrisphreak wrote:

J Mac wrote:

barnowl wrote:GIving your normal opponents your in for a long hard fight with 'nids. Hormies are about the best 6 point CC unit you can get. The high init and synapse web let's you do neat tactics like bouncing them back in to assault the turn after they lose an assault. The lose of No Retreat has made keeping them stuck in with Synapse has become a great tarpit trick. Hormies really improved in 6th.

Termiguants are still solid, and the high volume of fire that Devilgaunts put out, plus the loss of assault from outflank, has made Devilgaunts the new best outflank unit nid's have.

In 6th realistically you are going to need both. The termigaunts act as a softener and general shield, while the hormie's act as a cheap hammer unit. You are still going to need either bonesword warriors or 'stealers to slow down TEQ units.

Whats a Devilgaunt?

A termagant upgraded to carry a Devourer (18" range, assault 3 Str 4 AP -)

Got it, thanks. Those are some expensive gaunts then! Not worth it with 6+ save if you ask me...

Those expensive gaunts do serious damage. I regularly run a 24 Devilgants squad. No one is ever ready to take 72 strength 4 shots, even if they do get armor saves!

Especially when you protect the squad with catalyst/endurance and a nearby venomthrope, oh and a hive tyrant with old adversary.

This is great guys! You've really given me a lot to think about. I really need to get some cash together for both units. I do like gargoyles a lot but I was mainly concerned about the core choices.

I still swear by Hormagaunts, as they are really fast and nasty in CC. I usually take Toxin Sacs on mine, to counter their low strength, but with the new glancing rules Adrenal Glands are worth it as well.

Termagaunts are good as well, and I would say Termies and Hormies are equally good, but I tend to gravitate towards Hormies.

Gargoyles are absolutely beastly now. Take them.

The thing about hormagaunts is that you want to keep them cheap so that they are a horde and so that you have enough points left over for other threats. I run them in a unit of 20 with toxin sacs. I really like the swarmlord, so he gives them furious charge when they do get there they throw out a crap load of attacks, re-roling 1's to hit and re-rolling all failed rolls to wound against MEQ. The trick is that you don't completely tool them up to keep them cheap enough and actually kinda hold them back a little more than you think you should. If you send them running up in the front of your army you're opponent will say to himself, "oh gak, those guys must be pretty tough if they can go out on their own like that." But if they are in the back they will be treated just like all the little stuff and be mostly ignored. In reality I think the best place for them is an army with genestealers too. That way you have lots of threatening assault units that will tear up anything if even only a couple of guys get in combat.