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Hello i have a hive tyrant set waiting to be constructed i am going to give it wings but am uncertain of what weapon to give it any advice?

Well, the twin-linked devourers are the better mechanical choice, but they don't really give you those parts on the model. Oddly enough, there's only 2 arms on the winged Hive Tyrant as 2 of its arm slots have wings.

Most competitive lists go for the TL Devourers. While the parts for all 4 aren't included in the kits it shouldn't be that hard to make them yourself from leftover Gaunt kits. Some people have even used the Fleshborer Hive parts from the T-fex kit to represent their Devs.

Yeah, but where are they putting them? On a 4th set of limbs? Cause his other 3 are busy.

i used dual deathspitter arms (left and right), attached two devourers to each deathspitter and ended with a nasty looking tri-gun that i use to represent twin-linked devourers.

on my other flyrant, i gave him a lash whip and bonesword and duel sycthing talons by greenstuffing an extra arm socket so he can have 6 arms techinically (including the wings)

bottom line: greenstuff + imagination = awesome

I wouldn't go with the Venom Cannon, they're a generally underwhelming weapon and you're relying on the 1 shot. TL Devourers are almost always a welcome weapon because they just throw out a ton of shots

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Oddly enough, there's only 2 arms on the winged Hive Tyrant as 2 of its arm slots have wings.

Completely on purpose - all Tyranids have 6 limbs, not 8. Even the Tyranids with 4 and a back gun have either atrophied middle arms connected to it (biovore) or the fron arms take both front arm positions (pyrovore). Even the art for the gunmouth Tyrannofex had atrophied arms connected to the gunmouth.

Easiest way to give a Flyrant dual Devourers is with the Tyrannofexes Fleshborer hives, if you have them spare. Another is, as said, cobble together some combined arms, like a couple of Devourers fused together on one arm.

Venom Cannons are hit or miss. I tend to have good luck with my Warriors toting a Venom Cannon, though I can't see myself ever using a Heavy Venom Cannon. The -1 on the damage table hurts it more than it should.

If I want a HVC I take a Harpy. It is twin linked and a lot less expensive. Take the Twin Dev w/ BLW.

 Mythra wrote:
Take the Twin Dev w/ BLW.

I wouldn't even recommend the Lashwhip/Bonesword. A flyrant in 6th does it's best work when it keeps flying. Wait until you have a good opportinuty to Swoop, take it, and start demolishing things with two sets of Devourers. Flyrants with Lashwhip/Bonesword have issues in combat - particularly, anything weak enough to not worry a Hive Tyrant they simply don't have the attacks to beat in one turn, meaning it's bogged in combat for multiple turns, and not swooping and mulching things with Devourers. Anything tough enough to make you WANT the lashwhip/bonesword is probably going to hit hard enough and be tough enough to withstand the hits and dish out enough hurt to kill the Flyrant.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Mythra wrote:
Take the Twin Dev w/ BLW.

I wouldn't even recommend the Lashwhip/Bonesword. A flyrant in 6th does it's best work when it keeps flying. Wait until you have a good opportinuty to Swoop, take it, and start demolishing things with two sets of Devourers. Flyrants with Lashwhip/Bonesword have issues in combat - particularly, anything weak enough to not worry a Hive Tyrant they simply don't have the attacks to beat in one turn, meaning it's bogged in combat for multiple turns, and not swooping and mulching things with Devourers. Anything tough enough to make you WANT the lashwhip/bonesword is probably going to hit hard enough and be tough enough to withstand the hits and dish out enough hurt to kill the Flyrant.

I think he meant 'Brain Leech Worms' by BLW.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Yeah, but where are they putting them? On a 4th set of limbs? Cause his other 3 are busy.

I carved out the second set of plates on the carapace, drilled out the area a bit more, then pinned the wings in place and modeled some green stuff around it fill in and make it look more fleshy. Pretty lazy of GW to not include some way to mount the wings like that, such as that plate actually having a socket that you could add the plate to if you didn't want to mount wings. Since wings don't replace an weapon option its perfectly legal too.

Rumbleguts wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Yeah, but where are they putting them? On a 4th set of limbs? Cause his other 3 are busy.

I carved out the second set of plates on the carapace, drilled out the area a bit more, then pinned the wings in place and modeled some green stuff around it fill in and make it look more fleshy. Pretty lazy of GW to not include some way to mount the wings like that, such as that plate actually having a socket that you could add the plate to if you didn't want to mount wings. Since wings don't replace an weapon option its perfectly legal too.

It's not lazy, it's actually good design. For Tyranids, they've stuck with a specific design. One of them is 6 limbs. No official models have more or less, because Tyranids don't have more or less. There's ways around it without adding an 8th set of limbs which ruins the uniform look of the race.

 -Loki- wrote:
It's not lazy, it's actually good design. For Tyranids, they've stuck with a specific design. One of them is 6 limbs. No official models have more or less, because Tyranids don't have more or less. There's ways around it without adding an 8th set of limbs which ruins the uniform look of the race.

Spore Mines are in fact the only Tyranid model that doesn't follow the standard of six limbs and a tail.

As for the OPs question, unless you nearly always against 4+ save armies, Devourers will always be the better choice in terms of damage output and flexibility.

jonnyboy wrote:
Hello i have a hive tyrant set waiting to be constructed i am going to give it wings but am uncertain of what weapon to give it any advice?

Venom cannons are terrible, they're a bit better now but they still suck eggs. You may as well just strike them out from your codex because they are just that bad. They're not Pyrovore level bad but there's not much room to go further down.

Heavy Venom Cannons are not good on a Flyrant. On a Harpy they are marginally better because they are at least TL. The TL-devourers are significantly better since the mobility of the flyrant allows it to get at rear and side armor easily. If you face something that would need a S7+ weapon to deal with (like a landraider) then it is better to assault it and use smash.

As for the model, the arms can be found in the Carnifex box since the Carnifex can also wield TL-Devourers and TL-Deathspitters. I have also seen some people take the devourers off the termigant box and attach them to the end of a Tyrant's sword arm (the cut off the ends so they match up).

 Kain wrote:

jonnyboy wrote:
Hello i have a hive tyrant set waiting to be constructed i am going to give it wings but am uncertain of what weapon to give it any advice?

Venom cannons are terrible, they're a bit better now but they still suck eggs. You may as well just strike them out from your codex because they are just that bad. They're not Pyrovore level bad but there's not much room to go further down.

I tend to get good use out of a regular Venom Cannon in my Warrior squad, but then I'm kind of an anomoly in that I field Warriors at all, and have success with them.

It helps that my opponent tends to play Eldar varieties, so their AP4 is good for smashing through nearly all infantry armour.

I've converted up some Devourers for my Hive Tyrant by sticking 4 infantry sized devourers to a set of crushing claws (2 each), allowing me to be WYSIWYG for wings and two sets of devourers without going over the 4 arm slot limit.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Kain wrote:

jonnyboy wrote:
Hello i have a hive tyrant set waiting to be constructed i am going to give it wings but am uncertain of what weapon to give it any advice?

Venom cannons are terrible, they're a bit better now but they still suck eggs. You may as well just strike them out from your codex because they are just that bad. They're not Pyrovore level bad but there's not much room to go further down.

I tend to get good use out of a regular Venom Cannon in my Warrior squad, but then I'm kind of an anomoly in that I field Warriors at all, and have success with them.

It helps that my opponent tends to play Eldar varieties, so their AP4 is good for smashing through nearly all infantry armour.

And I still have yet to pop a tank with the supposed "anti-vehicle" weapon.

I had 3 Harpies in a 1750 Tournament list w/ HVCs they killed land raiders, Transports, EldarWarith lords.

Between the Flyrant, 3 Harpies, and 3 Zoans in drop pods I tabled 2 people and won all the rest of my games.

With 3 Twin HVCs and 3 Lance Zoans there was no Vehicle I couldn't kill in a round. That just left me Terv, Biovore, Hive Guard, and a Flyrant to clean up the troops.

 Mythra wrote:
I had 3 Harpies in a 1750 Tournament list w/ HVCs they killed land raiders, Transports, EldarWarith lords.

Between the Flyrant, 3 Harpies, and 3 Zoans in drop pods I tabled 2 people and won all the rest of my games.

With 3 Twin HVCs and 3 Lance Zoans there was no Vehicle I couldn't kill in a round. That just left me Terv, Biovore, Hive Guard, and a Flyrant to clean up the troops.

That seems to be something of an outlier considering how difficult it is to get a good shot on a tank with a unit that has fairly mediocre BS given blast scattering. And S9 shouldn't be regularly popping Land Raiders. The whole problem with the HVC is that in spite of it being annoying to work with, the return you get is distinctly...lackluster. That being said if you really wanted to go all out anti-tank you could have a fun list made mainly out of HVC Hive tyrants, HVC harpies, Genestealers, Hive Guard/Zoanthropes and Rupture Cannon Tyrannofexes. I doubt it'd win a lot but it'd be fun as hell to watch.

Too bad tankspam guard is dead.

The -1 on the damage table is a relic from 3rd edition that GW seem to not want to get rid of. In 3rd, Tyranids weren't meant to take out armour at range, so Venom Cannons had a -1 on the damage table. In 4th, they still had issues with armour at range, it just didn't matter because in a 1500pt army you could fit half a dozen Carnifexes with room to play with still.

5th edition went head on into giving them anti armour ranged weapons. Rupture Cannons, Impaler Cannons, Warp Lance (an S10, AP1 lance? Crazy talk!). It's followed over into 6th edition with Brainleech Devourers being phenomenal at stripping hull points.

But they left that old relic of a rule on Venom Cannons. I'm hoping it was because Cruddace wanted some weapons to be throwbacks (which is why he put Spike Rifles and Stranglewebs back in), but he just seemed to want to make them all terrible. The other option is it's another sign of his incompetently written book.

 -Loki- wrote:
The -1 on the damage table is a relic from 3rd edition that GW seem to not want to get rid of. In 3rd, Tyranids weren't meant to take out armour at range, so Venom Cannons had a -1 on the damage table. In 4th, they still had issues with armour at range, it just didn't matter because in a 1500pt army you could fit half a dozen Carnifexes with room to play with still.

5th edition went head on into giving them anti armour ranged weapons. Rupture Cannons, Impaler Cannons, Warp Lance (an S10, AP1 lance? Crazy talk!). It's followed over into 6th edition with Brainleech Devourers being phenomenal at stripping hull points.

But they left that old relic of a rule on Venom Cannons. I'm hoping it was because Cruddace wanted some weapons to be throwbacks (which is why he put Spike Rifles and Stranglewebs back in), but he just seemed to want to make them all terrible. The other option is it's another sign of his incompetently written book.

I still don't get why Rupture Cannons can blow through land raiders but bounce off Space marine armor. Ap2 would have made infinitely more sense. Actually, the AP values for most Tyranid tank killing shots as a rule don't make a whole lot of sense. The gist of the 5e dex was that we should try to claw open vehicles in melee with monstrous creatures which in practice was a nearly unworkable idea. Shooting was just there to make it easier to get to the "tear your face off" stage, but Cruddace's vision of how the army should play didn't quite mesh with reality.

 Kain wrote:
That seems to be something of an outlier considering how difficult it is to get a good shot on a tank with a unit that has fairly mediocre BS given blast scattering.

With Tyranid BS, a scatter weapon is effectively a 4+ to hit. Harpies have then Twin Linked, so you can reroll the scatter. HVCs become quite accurate on Harpies.

 Kain wrote:
And S9 shouldn't be regularly popping Land Raiders.

When 3 of the are twin linked firing, backed up with Warp Lance toting Zoanthropes emerging from pods, Land Raiders can easily be stripped of hull points.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kain wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
The -1 on the damage table is a relic from 3rd edition that GW seem to not want to get rid of. In 3rd, Tyranids weren't meant to take out armour at range, so Venom Cannons had a -1 on the damage table. In 4th, they still had issues with armour at range, it just didn't matter because in a 1500pt army you could fit half a dozen Carnifexes with room to play with still.

5th edition went head on into giving them anti armour ranged weapons. Rupture Cannons, Impaler Cannons, Warp Lance (an S10, AP1 lance? Crazy talk!). It's followed over into 6th edition with Brainleech Devourers being phenomenal at stripping hull points.

But they left that old relic of a rule on Venom Cannons. I'm hoping it was because Cruddace wanted some weapons to be throwbacks (which is why he put Spike Rifles and Stranglewebs back in), but he just seemed to want to make them all terrible. The other option is it's another sign of his incompetently written book.

I still don't get why Rupture Cannons can blow through land raiders but bounce off Space marine armor. Ap2 would have made infinitely more sense. Actually, the AP values for most Tyranid tank killing shots as a rule don't make a whole lot of sense. The gist of the 5e dex was that we should try to claw open vehicles in melee with monstrous creatures which in practice was a nearly unworkable idea. Shooting was just there to make it easier to get to the "tear your face off" stage, but Cruddace's vision of how the army should play didn't quite mesh with reality.

That's an issue with the armour and AP issue as a whole. A Krak Missile should, really, blow a Terminator to peices. It doesn't.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Kain wrote:
That seems to be something of an outlier considering how difficult it is to get a good shot on a tank with a unit that has fairly mediocre BS given blast scattering.

With Tyranid BS, a scatter weapon is effectively a 4+ to hit. Harpies have then Twin Linked, so you can reroll the scatter. HVCs become quite accurate on Harpies.

 Kain wrote:
And S9 shouldn't be regularly popping Land Raiders.

When 3 of the are twin linked firing, backed up with Warp Lance toting Zoanthropes emerging from pods, Land Raiders can easily be stripped of hull points.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kain wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
The -1 on the damage table is a relic from 3rd edition that GW seem to not want to get rid of. In 3rd, Tyranids weren't meant to take out armour at range, so Venom Cannons had a -1 on the damage table. In 4th, they still had issues with armour at range, it just didn't matter because in a 1500pt army you could fit half a dozen Carnifexes with room to play with still.

5th edition went head on into giving them anti armour ranged weapons. Rupture Cannons, Impaler Cannons, Warp Lance (an S10, AP1 lance? Crazy talk!). It's followed over into 6th edition with Brainleech Devourers being phenomenal at stripping hull points.

But they left that old relic of a rule on Venom Cannons. I'm hoping it was because Cruddace wanted some weapons to be throwbacks (which is why he put Spike Rifles and Stranglewebs back in), but he just seemed to want to make them all terrible. The other option is it's another sign of his incompetently written book.

I still don't get why Rupture Cannons can blow through land raiders but bounce off Space marine armor. Ap2 would have made infinitely more sense. Actually, the AP values for most Tyranid tank killing shots as a rule don't make a whole lot of sense. The gist of the 5e dex was that we should try to claw open vehicles in melee with monstrous creatures which in practice was a nearly unworkable idea. Shooting was just there to make it easier to get to the "tear your face off" stage, but Cruddace's vision of how the army should play didn't quite mesh with reality.

That's an issue with the armour and AP issue as a whole. A Krak Missile should, really, blow a Terminator to peices. It doesn't.

I'm trying to imagine a Tyrannofex shooting a Space marine with this organic cannonball nearly as big as the Space marine's torso screaming down at him at hypersonic speeds, only to bounce harmlessly off his breastplate. Because that seems like the kind of mental image Cruddace wants to foster.

Also thanks for the advice, it may convince me to bring back my air arm for my Soviet Tyranids (I was really, really bored and had a lot of diesel punk bits, valhallan stuff, along with red and yellow paint).

Yup I hit them 1st with the Zoans and if they fail to kill the Land Raider then shoot the HVC twin linked Harpy.

3 Zoans w/ lance will usually kill the land raider anyhow.

I was popping Rhinos and Chimeras like nothing tho.



EDIT add: Aren't Nids already Communists. Not like they have individual property -- everything belongs to the hive.

 Kain wrote:
I'm trying to imagine a Tyrannofex shooting a Space marine with this organic cannonball nearly as big as the Space marine's torso screaming down at him at hypersonic speeds, only to bounce harmlessly off his breastplate. Because that seems like the kind of mental image Cruddace wants to foster.

Well no, the mental image he wants to foster is exactly what the gun does to vehicles. If both hit, it kills them dead. Two strength 10 hits on a vehicle will do serious damage. He doesn't, however, want them being too destructive with bonuses on the damage table, because, for some reason, he wants Tyranid ranged anti tank to still have drawbacks. So he didn't give them AP 1 or 2.

The downside is what you describe - a pair of cannonball sized projectiles that cause the opposing tank to implode simply bouncing off a Space Marine. Downside to the dual use of the AP system - if a writer wants something to be particularly destructive against vehicles on strength, but not on the damage table, he gives it a low AP, which has the unfortunate side effect of making it worse against heavy infantry, which are actually less armoured than the tank. I agree AP3 would have been sensible, but his choices for most of the book were hardly sensible.

Another good example is the Autocannon. That thing is meant to fire rounds equivalent to what tanks fire today, just a lot taster. Easily good enough to blow apart a Space Marine, but it was designed to bust light vehicles. It's S7 accomplishes this. .But they're AP 4.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mythra wrote:
EDIT add: Aren't Nids already Communists. Not like they have individual property -- everything belongs to the hive.

Well no, because they're not working for the Hive Mind. They are the Hive Mind. Every one of them.