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So, I just got myself a nice gift for my upcoming birthday, a large Warhammer carrying case for my growing Tyranid forces, and I was looking at all the space I could fit Carnifexes and other large monsterous creatures in, and I had a thought.

What is the general concensus on a brood of nine Carnifexes outfitted with dual Scything Talons, Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs, and Bio-plasma for 200pts a model? Do IG troops take one look at this, hand their commisar an autocannon, and say, "Shoot us now", or is it one big target? Do they generally survive a march from across the board into close combat? A fun idea was to get a Trygon to use the subterranean assualt rule, so another question is just how much trouble would something that big be if it popped up in their backfield, or to a side, or even just in front of their lines?

Look forward to hearing more on your guys' concensus

UH.

I play imperial guard and a friend of mine plays tyranids and hes got 2 carnifexs and to be honest Ive never had a problem killing them and he pretty much wont take them as I kill them off before he does anything. I dont think they are a threatening unit at all, if my friend massed more maybe but then you start getting into crazy poinnts and if that most will still die before they even get close to combat.

If you were to give them Mysetic spores then i would see them as Plasuable , But against any shooty Army you will get Butt F*cked so hard as you cross toward them , They are a giant " Shoot ME " sign with almost no reasonable cover save ......ripe for large bore weaponary . I'd say drop some upgrades and give them the spores for a faster delivery system

Most of the time they get to melee, hit a few things, kill the squad they are engaged with, then get shot to death by rapid fire plasma and quantity of fire. The huge nerf fexes took in the 5th codex made them nearly unplayable. Tyrants do everything better, but are also way overcosted. 4th tyrants and fexes were much, much more reasonably priced though the 4th ranged weapons are quite outdated for 6th power creep.

The trouble with using pods is you can only fit one 'fex in a pod. So you only get one carnifex per brood.

The problem with using the Trygon's subterranean assault is it only works for infantry, not monstrous creatures. (also it's really unreliable)

Personally I don't think there is much point in taking melee carnifexes. In close combat a trygon is just better, with more attacks, higher initiative, and fleet. However a carnifex can definitely outshoot a trygon.
Two sets of twin-linked devourers is the most popular loadout, although I've also had some success using a single set of devourers paired up with bio-plasma.

Bioplasmas an add on not a replacement so while it would be really expensive you could get all 3 thought only two shootable a turn but reliable range against both hard and soft targets and horde

I have tryed to advocate this before, but the wounds of the fexes are just to exspensive per wound (they cost 40 points per wound.) (For that you could get A warrior with boneswords if that is what you're into.) If you buy 3 trygons you are paying something 35 points per wound. Not only is the trygon better in a fight, but it also has fleet so it is easier to get into melle.

If you want to take tyranids you could try to field them bare boned with feel no pain from tervigons. The reason to take broods of carnifexes could benefit from that.

The problem is carnifexes are rubbish. They cost to mutch. They are to slow. They get shot down.

If you want to field them, use them in a dakka pod with brainleech worms (12 S6 shots with re-rolls is hard to come by in any codex.) Or brainleech worms and a tyrant prime. Then you are "only" paying 30 points per wound, and you can take 5 wounds before eather of them die.

If you want to use 9 Carnifexes, you're not going to be able to use Pods. Instead, you'll have to footslog, in which case you'll need to keep them alive. Make sure you take advantage of cover - put up a Gargoyle screen in front of them and hide a couple Venomthropes behind them as a back-up. Also, give the Fexes 2x Brainleech Devourers - people are going to be screaming in rage when they find out you have 108 S6 twin-linked shots coming their way.

To be honest though, that's going to be ridiculously expensive. I'd rather have 2 or 3 Tyrannofexes with Acid Spray/Desiccator Larvae/Cluster Spines which require less baby sitting and would be cheaper in total.

9 carnifexes makes your list extremely unbalanced. You will smash those armies not equipped to deal with so many MC's, but against better players with more balanced lists, you will have a much harder time. If you're looking for a balanced, Take-All-Comer's list, I wouldn't recommend spamming carnifexes. However, if the excitement of running 9+ MC's is what you like and you don't really care about winning as much as you do smashing head, then definitely go for it.

9 fexes with frag spines
3 units of 11 gaunts
1 troop tervi with catalyst
1 hq tervi with catalyst

That's 2k points, and that's hard as crap to deal with. FNP on stuff, plus all those MC's, and tons of troops to kill. Your opponent will be hard pressed to kill everything even with force weapons.

Pretty much any Dark Eldar army would be a hard counter to this though.

Most armies don't boast enough weapons with the range and the strength to deal with that many MCs before they crash into the enemy line, but every basic DE grunt's weapon can. There are also a few other armies out there that can spam enough mid-high strength weaponry with long range that would absolutely devastate this list.

But hey, if that's what you wanna play, play it.

So, general opinion is that it is a bullet magnet. About what I expected. Still, must say that my heart skips a beat thinking that that would be 3 hellstorm templates in an Apocalypse game, for 300 pts more.

 Lokas wrote:
Pretty much any Dark Eldar army would be a hard counter to this though.

Most armies don't boast enough weapons with the range and the strength to deal with that many MCs before they crash into the enemy line, but every basic DE grunt's weapon can. There are also a few other armies out there that can spam enough mid-high strength weaponry with long range that would absolutely devastate this list.

But hey, if that's what you wanna play, play it.

I don't think you need the high strength.
Anything good against a 15 point tactical marine is going to be good against a 200 point carnifex.
Anything that bypasses a marines 3+ armor is also going to wound a carnifex on a 3+ or 2+ and bypasses the carnifex 3+ save.

If you wanted to try lots of carnifex, I'd go with 3 units of 2, and squeeze in 3 tervigons and a gargoyle screen. You should have enough support that way to disrupt some of the shooting.

-Matt

9 fexes with frag spines
3 units of 11 gaunts
1 troop tervi with catalyst
1 hq tervi with catalyst

This seems like a bitt of rubbish. Only 2 synapse creatures. While the intension is to give the fexes arge no doubt moast objective games would be a matter of killing 74 gaunts and 1 tervigon on averadge. What I would do is to focus any available 36-48" range gunn in my army (that would be quite a lott at 2k) to take out the tervigons. Withouth the synapse the gaunts would be shattered like leaves. The few carnifexes that I did not manadge to "dance around" (like my SW drop pod list) would be dangerush, but it would have an MSU problem.

If my nid army met this I would throw 20 poison gargoyles on the fexes and see what happens. I do not think this would pose mutch of a problem for eather of them. For my DE this would be target practice. (How can you stop venoms?)

Lack of synapse doesn't matter much since they're fearless anyways, and getting instinctive behaviour actually helps them now (+2 attacks on the charge? Hellz yes). But the army is very 1-dimensional, it doesn't have a hope of dealing with flyers, mobility, etc.

Also, whoever said a Carnifex is vulnerable to the same stuff as a Tac Marine isn't exactly correct. For the most part, S5 or lower weapons are laughed off by Fexes but it's once you reach S6+ and AP3 or lower than they begin to cry big crocodile tears.

The synapse would not be a problem for the fexes, it would be a problem for the scoring units as the tervigons would be the first to die. Unless some pretty fantastick terain is present it would be within turn one or two. Any blast templates hitting the tervigons after that would be bad news.

You don't need or want synapse on your rear objective holders, they must not be fearless so they can go to ground for a 3+ cover save.

Let us not forget that tervigons make more gaunts, so at the very least this army would have 6 scoring units, one of which is a MC that can stomp towards the enemy line.

If you're worried about losing tervigons, then the old fex wall for cover plus FNP solves that problem.

Juraigamer...They will aprocemently make 2 units of 10 gaunts each, so the scoring units will be 5 units of gaunts and 1 tervigon. (If the tervigons live past turn 1.)

Sometimes when I read on these forums I am really wondering if we are playing the same game. I always meet a wall of range 36+ guns with high S and some blast templates. All of thet will mop up so little resistance in one or two turns, just ignore the fexes they are so slow anyway. And with the multi charge rules they are lucky of they can take out more then one unit each turn from round 3 and out the game...so the oponent would have lost...6 units during hus turn 4 or 5. At 2000 point game.

I reckon its innovative list building. As a marine player i would be very hard pressed to deal with this. High 200s per unit of sternguard might kill 1 maybe 2 MCs before you reach me, and i would get wounds from vindicators etc, but those MCs will crash into my line and from there its only a matter of time


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You will also get to laugh at all those lists that took fliers just to shoot at other fliers

I'd rather go with 9 carnifexes with double devourers each
could combine it with onslaught tervigons for rushing in.

This should enable to pop out most transports, or prevent the opponent from endlessly running away.

imho i found that in this edition of 40k my carni's were easily taken out by IG so i'd say run 3 in a Mycetic Spore each so they dont really have a chance to get shot or just use Trygons/Mawlocs

Arleucs wrote:
I'd rather go with 9 carnifexes with double devourers each
could combine it with onslaught tervigons for rushing in.

This should enable to pop out most transports, or prevent the opponent from endlessly running away.

I checked the costs on this, at 2000pts you'd have the Dakkafexes, 1 Tyrant Prime, 1 naked Tervigon and 10 Termagaunts, nothing else. You'd get destroyed.

Try 3 with a Prime with Regen attached.

Then start bouncing wounds with LoS and then tell me how killiable they are.

Give the Prime a bonesword and Lash for extra killy flavour.

Haha,

In any case, 9 carnifexes don't leave much space, even if it means taking 1-2 less, I still think the dakkafexes are the best option.

a kinda dumb army would be 3 broods of dakkafexes + 2x10 gaunts + 3 tervigons (not sure on the points though, but should be around 2000, and there are still 9 MC...)

you could go all onslaught on the 3 broods, or roll for biomancy and laugh at opponents getting enfeebled and shot down by S6 devourers

I think this tactic might perform better at lover point costs. Like say 1000 or 1250.

One time at 1500, I force-fed two Carnifexen to a Necron gunline. One actually made it through the entire army shooting at them to cause some ruckus. The important part was that it bought me time for everything else to run up at the same time. I couldn't deal with his fliers though. Your list would have an even more pronounced issue with fliers than mine would, though I think you'd own anything on foot far better than most people seem to think.

The trick (for me) is to give them Regen, and then swap out which one is up front as they start to take wounds. With a certain amount of luck, you can soak wounds such that you have a couple fexen left when you should have only had one left. Regen across up to three wounds is nice also, though not something to rely upon.

 Niiai wrote:
They will aprocemently make 2 units of 10 gaunts each, so the scoring units will be 5 units of gaunts and 1 tervigon. (If the tervigons live past turn 1.)

Sometimes when I read on these forums I am really wondering if we are playing the same game.

There's 4 troops normally, and if both tervies crap out on turn one, that's 6 scoring units. Now there's 2 extra targets in the army to shoot at, and if you waste shots on the troop tervigon, I'll make she he has cover from the beginning and FNP after that.

Furthermore those shots are not hitting the other tervigon or the other 9 monsterous creatures. Which means they are getting closer. All the time. Until you switch targets.

We are playing the same game, the difference is some people only play net lists, while others understand their codexes and can actually write working, non-meta lists that deviate from the norm, and then win with them. All damn day long.

Thunderfire cannons... AWAY!

Arleucs wrote:
Haha,

In any case, 9 carnifexes don't leave much space, even if it means taking 1-2 less, I still think the dakkafexes are the best option.

a kinda dumb army would be 3 broods of dakkafexes + 2x10 gaunts + 3 tervigons (not sure on the points though, but should be around 2000, and there are still 9 MC...)

you could go all onslaught on the 3 broods, or roll for biomancy and laugh at opponents getting enfeebled and shot down by S6 devourers

It'd be closer to 2500pts actually...

I like Carnifex lists. I have pretty good luck with them, unless facing plasma pistols (They always seem to die to plasma pistols). OOE, Scream Killers, Dakkafex, I have had all of them live the whole game, last 2 games Dakka went the game with out ever taking a wound.

I am not playing carnifex lists, but still running 2 or 3 fex a brood is a good way to up your MC count for nidzilla fun.