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My LGS is going to run a Tale of Gamers escalation event (similar to Tale of 4 Warlords, I guess?) over a few months, where everyone will start with an unpainted force of 500 points. The goal is to build up to a fully painted 1500 point army by the end of 3 months while playing games during that time frame. I'm thinking about doing Tyranids, as I've wanted to get an MC list started and this seems like a good opportunity. Problem is, I don't know as much about Nids as I'd like, and that leads me to a couple of questions:

1. I see the 15 point troop Mucolid Spores, but looking at GW site, it looks like the only way to get one is in the Sporocyst kit. Does anyone use the smaller spores for this? I don't like using things that are that much of a size difference, but the actual mucolid spore just doesn't look like it should be 15 points to me. Or instead, are there any decent alternate models that can be bought on their own to represent the larger spore? I have no plan to use the sporocyst and would rather not shell out that kind of money for each spore.

2. The Malanthrope. I see these in most lists and batreps. I'm assuming it's worth picking up, and I'm guessing it's good because of synapse and the shrouded bubble, but is there anything else about this model I need to pay extra attention to?

EDIT:
3. What books am I going to need to field the spores as troops and a malanthrope? Everything else I'm doing seems to be in the codex.

#1 I cannot answer as I have no idea.

#2 Most people use it specifically for the Shrouded bubble and Synapse. The only other rule it really has deals with killing things in melee, which is not where you want it.

#3. Mucolid Spores can be found in Shield of Baal Leviathan. Malanthropes are in Forgeworld's Imperial Armour Volume 4: THe Anphelion (sp?) Project, Second edition.

Forge World have a Different Large Sporemine of Offer, which you could likely get away with using as a Mucolid, Not sure what slot it fills normally..

Yeah Malanthropes are kinda kewl.. but you can do pretty much the same effect with Venomphropes.. (If you can have a few non MC's in your army)

Most use the forgeworld Meiotic spores as Mucolids.
Grab some when you get a malanthrope.

Speaking of which, the malanthrope is fantastic. Tough, cheap synapse. Shrouded bubble. Not amazing in combat, but has a neat rule where it can shut down an enemy character in a challenge.

Costs a little less than 2 venomthropes, but is much better than them.

GodDamUser wrote:
Yeah Malanthropes are kinda kewl.. but you can do pretty much the same effect with Venomphropes.. (If you can have a few non MC's in your army)

The benefit of the Malenthrope is that you get synapse AND shrouding in one package. So instead of having to use two elite slots to bring venomthropes for shrouding and zoanthropes for synapse, you can just use one slot. The downside is that you lose out on psychic powers. But most tourney players take them for that reason.

Thanks for all the help, everyone!