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Hello Dakka,

So I am making a Nid army and trying not to make it unnecessarily expensive.

I want to include a Trevigon as part of my strategy and have already bought the model but am feeling overwhelmed by that upper limit of gaunts that may be spawned.

I plan to deploy with 16 devigaunts to make it a troop choice. These leaves me with 10 termagaunts with fleshborers in my collection.

I have 12 ripper models I am thinking I'll glue individually to 25mm bases, paint, and base. Then I'd like to proxy them as termagaunts with fleshborers.

However, these proxies would only be last on - first off the table. As is I'd only spawn them after the 10 gaunts run out and replace them with gaunts as the gaunt models die.

Is this safe?

Perhaps 10 termagaunts isnt enough.... would 34 be enough with the 12 rippers as a backup for a statistical abnormality?

Do tournaments require players fielding a tervigon to bring 50+ gaunts... ! ??

< Taken by the void dragon >

In short you need the Guants. IIRC the wording on the "ability" states you don't place if you don't have sufficient models or something of the sort.

Tervigons are amazing, but you'll need like 60 Gaunts in your cache.

At this point we are way outside of YMDC, however, for my nid army I bought a bucket load of these: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440297a&prodId=prod1050155

Basically, it's 5 termagants for a bit less than buying them in the 12 gant box. Also, because the price was so cheap it made it easier buying piece meal than getting larger groups at once.

Granted, you can't pose them but that's okay.

Right, Thanks for the info and quick reply.

Uhhhg... I was afraid that was the answer.

I guess I'll go with 34 total gaunts in my collection as that is all I can afford. I'll use the rippers as proxies if needed but I won't try to bring it to any Tournies.

I have always been a casual player and it looks like its staying that way

Side note, when playing nids I usually have 2 tervigons and it is an extremely rare day when I have more than 30 or so are on the table at the same time.

For a few reasons: First doubles, at least for me, come up way too often. Second, they are fire magnets as each group of gaunts is a KP for missions that allow that. Third, when missions don't allow for KP then you usually have to hold objectives and they are still fire magnets.

For my opponent it's like stomping on cockroaches..

Now, your average roll on 2D6 is going to be 7. So, if the Tervigon is on the board the entire game you can expect to spawn 42 of the bugs. Limiting this is that you will role doubles, on average, 1 in 6 attempts. Which means somewhere along the way the tervigon will likely stop dropping babies.

I dont' know why but it's rare for me to get 4 spawns out of a single Tervigon.

tl;dr:
Play it a few times. You'll get an idea of how many you really need.

With 2 I've had 70 spawned gants. I'm planning on having 3 in the near future... Meaning I need a case just to carry spawn gants in. Sad face.

Cool. Thanks for the input.

Should be average of 21 per termie right? its the huge variance that is the problem.

My usual opponent usually gets 1-2 spawns off before he rolls doubles and can not spawn anymore.

Clively, it's 3d6, not 2d6, so the average will be 10.5. Not sure the odds of getting doubles though.

Yea your best bet is to just get more as I have a friend who recently used a tervigon in one of our last big games and the first 2 turns it spawned 16 gaunts each turn, then turn 3 was like 12 and turn 4 was like 15 iirc but then the tervigon died so it wasnt even done spawning. That was the most gaunts hes ever used and he almost ran out.

Chance of getting doubles should be around 44% per roll, if I did my math right.

if you do not have the models to put out after spawning than put what you have on the table and the rest are gone.

This is part of being a tyranid player. I play 5 tervigons.

You can convert your own models. i recomend getting some green stuff and working with that. I took all the arms off my hormagaunst and put fleshborrers on them now they are termagaunts. you can make your own fleshborrers and you can even go as far as making your own termagaunst out of bits but if you where proxing with rippers, nononono. Casual games sure, but you are asking if this is ok in a tournament. and trust me, you do not want to play in a tournement where they would allow anything like you are suggesting.

than you'd have people calling McDoubles rhinos and when they die they just pick it up and eat it. mmmmmm rhinos.

Thanks for the info!