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How do you use Mawlocs in your tyranid army?
- Do you aim at the most crowded place with your emerging attack to have a chance to cut through as many miniatures as possible? Or do you prefer a calmer place which can be safely cleared out during the two "landing" trys?
- Do you focus on armor, heavy infantery, light infantery or somthing else?

Thanks for your advice!

With two S6 hits on side armour, it's fairly rubbish at killing vehicles. So avoid those (unless you're intentionally trying to mishap it. More on that later).

It is one of the few sources of AP2 firepower that tyranids have, so 2+ save units are a good target for it.

It's one of the only things in the game that is capable of putting a blast marker directly on top of an ongoing combat, including on top of your own models. Close combat is a good way to make enemy models cluster together, and the enemy models are frequently much more valuable than your own. So do put some thought into sacrificing your own guys to eat a valuable target.

It's not particularly useful after it has landed. Its attacks are few and weak. The reason you're taking it is for its deployment blasts.
With that in mind, throw it in a spot where it will do a lot of damage, but will probably mishap after the two blasts. Such as directly under an enemy deathstar unit. Or if there's a vehicle next to a weaker unit, partially underneath it.


Possible outcomes from best to worst are:
1. It mishaps and goes back into ongoing reserve, getting to eat more things next turn. Yay!
2. It kills more than you expect and deploys normally. If it survives next turn you can burrow it and go back to eating things the turn after that.
3. Mishaps and opponent places it. If they place it in a corner somewhere, then that's ok. Burrow next turn and carry on. But if they know what they're doing they'll place it in a spot where they can kill it.
4. Mishaps and dies. Bad luck, but oh well. It is one of the cheaper MCs in the codex.

Use it to hit things you know it'll kill. Simple as that. It works best against MSU, so focus on those targets mostly with it.

Arson Fire wrote:
With two S6 hits on side armour, it's fairly rubbish at killing vehicles. So avoid those (unless you're intentionally trying to mishap it. More on that later).

It is one of the few sources of AP2 firepower that tyranids have, so 2+ save units are a good target for it.

It's one of the only things in the game that is capable of putting a blast marker directly on top of an ongoing combat, including on top of your own models. Close combat is a good way to make enemy models cluster together, and the enemy models are frequently much more valuable than your own. So do put some thought into sacrificing your own guys to eat a valuable target.

It's not particularly useful after it has landed. Its attacks are few and weak. The reason you're taking it is for its deployment blasts.
With that in mind, throw it in a spot where it will do a lot of damage, but will probably mishap after the two blasts. Such as directly under an enemy deathstar unit. Or if there's a vehicle next to a weaker unit, partially underneath it.


Possible outcomes from best to worst are:
1. It mishaps and goes back into ongoing reserve, getting to eat more things next turn. Yay!
2. It kills more than you expect and deploys normally. If it survives next turn you can burrow it and go back to eating things the turn after that.
3. Mishaps and opponent places it. If they place it in a corner somewhere, then that's ok. Burrow next turn and carry on. But if they know what they're doing they'll place it in a spot where they can kill it.
4. Mishaps and dies. Bad luck, but oh well. It is one of the cheaper MCs in the codex.

Solid information, cheers for that!
I had mixed luck with one yesterday, killing 4 out of 5 termies before mishaping and getting destroyed, very nice against that 2+ save!!

I use mine to take out targets that try to hide from me, or high-priority stuff like Pathfinders with marker lights, or crisis-suit teams. It's also good for punching holes in gunlines or tackling really fast stuff that tries to run like Eldar jetbikes. Really juicy targets like 2+ armor save guys are tempting sometimes. The Mawloc is definitely not as useful against vehicles or things with strong invulnerable saves.

The key thing I often find with them is their strength VS bikes. You ignore cover and armour, which is extremely rare for nids and is incredibly good vs black knights in particular. What a wise opponent will do is try and bait out the mawloc with something else, a poorly positioned tac squad for instance - you have to try and wait it out, keep your mawlocs in reserve if possible or force the mishap.

Lictors, whilst useful to guide them in, rarely actually prevent the scatter. Opponents either steer clear of the 6" bubble or kill the lictor. The boon to them is as a deterrent - you have to waste shooting on one or avoid it. That said, if you can get one locked in melee for a turn, or HNR out, then you can set some very nice mawloc strikes up. But I can count the number of times that has worked on one hand.

As Fluxxxx said: Thanks a lot for the advice, I think I can use my Mawloc now with some better understanding!

My playing environment is heavy with power armor and terminator armor, and that's what I usually send my Mawloc after...especially Terminators and other 2+ armor save units.

IME they work better in pairs. For a single Mawloc, the chances for mishap are too great, and if your opponent gets to place the model in slaughter range, they are most likely done for since they are basically garbage in close combat. If you get destroyed by the mishap either by rolling a 1 or being placed by your opponent in a crappy spot, and you only have 1 Mawloc, the entire strategy is destroyed. With two you get more of a safety net for them to actually work as intended.

Because they get mowed down in Close Combat with relative ease, I sometimes upgrade them with Acid Blood to have those 6 wounds buy me some carnage in return...especially against very low Initiative armies like Ork, Tau, Necrons, etc. It's an added biomorph upgrade I have just started using on them as points allow, and it's paid off at least a couple times. I'm sure others may think it's a waste of points. If nothing else, it adds a little Aliens-style fun to the game.