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A friend of mine is having some serious frustration issues with Tyrant Guard in particular. He's really unhappy that HT/SL can be challenged out. In particular, the SL got skragged by a new Demon Prince in a challenge and the tyrant guard did nothing at all.

They still work just as well against shooting, as far as I can tell. Look out sir! is a bit less reliable than just placing wounds, but the tyrant guard still function well enough.

Has anyone found any ways to mitigate or escape the SL challenge trap?

Your Swarmlord doesn't have to accept the challenge but he will be even more useless then. I haven't read the new chaos daemon codex yet so I'm very curious how a Demon Prince killed a Swarmlord. Did your friend not get anything good out of the Biomancy chart?

Most Swarmlord deathstar units consist of a Swarmlord, 1 Tyrant Guard, and 1 Tyranid Prime. The reason for this is, with Iron Arm, their is no majority toughness so it defaults to the Iron Arm Swarmlord of T7-9. And if a challenge is issued, the Tyranid Prime can accept it while the guard and swarmlord wipe out the rest of the group.

SL killed the Demon Prince after 3 rounds, but the main problem was the DP rolled Iron Arm, and SL rolled everything but Iron Arm and Hemorrhage. So a S9 T8 (for two of the three rounds of combat) MC going at I9 with 5 attacks definitely crushes Swarmlord with no Iron Arm. I needed 6s to wound, it ignored my Instant Death... even the forced invul re-rolls weren't that helpful - it took eight wounds to kill it. And my Tyrant Guard were a waste of 180 points.

The composition suggestion is pretty good... but having to use up BOTH your HQ slots just to avoid getting screwed by challenges (and using, frankly, silly tactics to ignore majority toughness) does not seem right. I'm of the opinion that 6e totally boned Tyrant Guard - IG Bodyguards are now better at their job than Tyrant Guard.

Tzadakim wrote:
SL killed the Demon Prince after 3 rounds, but the main problem was the DP rolled Iron Arm, and SL rolled everything but Iron Arm and Hemorrhage. So a S9 T8 (for two of the three rounds of combat) MC going at I9 with 5 attacks definitely crushes Swarmlord with no Iron Arm. I needed 6s to wound, it ignored my Instant Death... even the forced invul re-rolls weren't that helpful - it took eight wounds to kill it. And my Tyrant Guard were a waste of 180 points.

The composition suggestion is pretty good... but having to use up BOTH your HQ slots just to avoid getting screwed by challenges (and using, frankly, silly tactics to ignore majority toughness) does not seem right. I'm of the opinion that 6e totally boned Tyrant Guard - IG Bodyguards are now better at their job than Tyrant Guard.

Give the Prime toxin sacs, I dare to whisper...?

Edit: The way 6ed works, you need lesser/other characters to protect characters. Tyrant Guard serve a role but it isn't that. That's what I can see a Prime excelling at.

Sounds like the Swarmlord tried to put up a good fight but that set-up wouldn't have gone well. Another option would have been to try and decline the challenge until the DP's Iron Arm wore off and hopefully Shadows of the Warp would prevent it from coming back. But that would mean you two would be stuck in combat with each other for a lot of rounds. I think an HQ can re-enter combat the round after it declines a challenge but I'll have to double check the rules on challenges.

Sadly, because Tyranids have so few Independent Characters using the two HQ slots is the only way to get double characters in a group. Pretty much all our other characters are single unit models too (Tervigon, Trygon Prime, Deathleaper, etc.) Other armies have the luxury of Seargants and putting several characters in the same unit to throw at things like Swarmlords.

The majority toughness thing is kind of an exploit but its ment to increase survivability without costing too much. You can always use multiple Tyrant Guards for the extra wounds.

This just sounds like a hard set of rolls, you not getting Iron Arm and your opponent getting it. As mentioned with SitW you should be able to outlast the DP's ability to cast Iron Arm.