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I've been having some pipe dreams lately about starting nids and am interested in doing like a psychic choir with a bunch of zoanthropes.

Is this even a valid tactic and if so, how would one build a list around it? Pods? Lots of gaunts in the front to soak firepower? I don't own a single Nid model so pretty much anything is fine as I'll probably find the pieces I need eventually.

I don't know. I mean its worth a try and zoans are great in the nid army. Horde armies would smash you though and you would have very little cc. Definitely would need DoM and at least 1 flyrant to make it decent though.

I would not run drop zoans.

They have some utility in that they can provide AT or go the psychic shriek route. However, I'd rather run them on foot and use careful manuvering to keep them alive while using biomancy powers to let them act as force multipliers.

My mate runs a zoan horde, backed up by tervigons
Doom in pod
Three zoans in pod with 3 telepathy

The trick is to give them telepathy I think.. Psychic shriek
There's a primaris power that's like a Mini doom, ld test and take wounds by how many blah blah

Because they are not a psychic brotherhood they cast it three times, drop it next to a blob of IG/ Tua/ Orks/ Nids and bye bye blob... Just watch those interceptors (hide behind the pod from them so you LOS..)
Podding them in has one some spectacular (and previously impossible) victories out of a hat.

I was thinking of just having the zoans hover around a horde group instead of podding in. Most of the telepathy tree is malidictions/blessings which you can't cast the turn you arrive from reserve so might as well keep them on the table.

Have them troll around with telepathy spam for invisibility/ puppet master / hallucinations / synapse and allow a second flank to be pushed up with the main advance of Tervigon x2 while some gargoyles or maybe carnifex or trygon or something push a 2nd front with the zoans?

I am totally taken with 6 Zoanthropes running alongside a couple of Tervigons. The Tervigons (and normally an Armoured Shell Tyrant) roll their powers first, and then I start going through the Zoanthropes one by one. The goal is to get a good number of Endurance and Enfeeble results (enough to protect whatever needs it) and then I switch over to Telekinesis (aiming for Telekine Dome and Objuration Mechanicum) for additional protection and additional debuffing respectively.

The Zoanthropes themselves are pretty non-lethal, but they have an enormous impact on the game regardless.

Keep in mind that they cannot use anything requiring two Warp Charges (so no Invisibility spam unfortunately), but that's okay because a good 3 of the 5 remaining Telekinesis powers are great in one way or another so very rarely do you end up with a useless Zoanthrope. In a pinch against low leadership enemies you can start to throw Telepathy around too, but I seem to have more luck with Telekinesis.

Biomancy is a little more difficult to plan around because 2 powers are fairly useless self-buffs and Hemorrhage is horrible. That is why I prefer to let the Tervigons take the Biomancy, the only option they really don't want is Hemorrhage,

Don't forget as well that if you really need to then you can stick to Warp Blast/Lance to destroy really heavy armour,

Overall, they are probably my favourite unit and work great in large numbers.

No, no, no. Hemorrhage is amazing in a heavy Zoenthrope list. Stack the enfeebles on the unit and hit them with Hemorrhage. Toughness testing on a one is not pretty.

DarthDiggler wrote:
No, no, no. Hemorrhage is amazing in a heavy Zoenthrope list. Stack the enfeebles on the unit and hit them with Hemorrhage. Toughness testing on a one is not pretty.

I had not thought of it like that.

My LGG falls on the "Enfeebles don't stack" side of the fence though, do it's not ideal. Still, T2 Guard and Xenos are still decimated by it I suppose...

I always roll for Telekine Dome and then switch to Telepathy or Biomancy depending on the opponent. Gate of Infinity can be nasty too.

Definitely worth playing.

My list has between 4-6 zoans and doom and dropping in with spods. They all roll telepathy and that's 6 - 8 shrieks a turn. Along with that you get another roll for the zoans. Terrify and Puppet Master are amazing ( love killing my friends IG with his own LRBT ) and Dominate is also nice. Sure you might get unlucky and get a Mental Fort but with 2 rolls and only being able to use 4 of the powers due to warp charges the odds of getting anything besides mental fort are very nice.

I've got plenty of synapse coverage with my tervs, flyrant and swarmlord. I use my as a pure offensive unit that combined with my mawlocs give you something you HAVE to deal with in the back field as the rest of my army advances.

Yeah...before he left my Nid friend ran dropthropes to try and deal with the IG tanks he was expecting me to bring. I left them behind an ADL with the minimum troop/hq on a quadgun and a group of 20boyz hiding under some terrain (they were waiting for turn4 to get that objective infront of my LRBTs). He scattered closer to them, wiffed his shots against the tanks, and a mere 20boyz just clobbered 3 thropes and took like 1-2 casaulties in the process.

I'd have to say they arent that good lol. Doom is annoying as fething hell but thats about it.

Um, of course Zoey's aren't good in CC. There's a reason they're the highest BS models in the book.

that comment was more on they flopped the shooting they intended to do and a 160pt unit took them out immediately afterwords than their CC sucks. That much is obvious i know they arent suppose to be punchin things.

In the current meta what they should have been doing against IG is taking some Puppet Master, Endurance, Telekine Dome, or Objuration Mechanicum...not podding in.

They have never been particularly reliable at Tank busting, that's hit or miss.

Their versatility is unmatched in the current 40k meta.

 reaverX wrote:
My list has between 4-6 zoans and doom and dropping in with spods. They all roll telepathy and that's 6 - 8 shrieks a turn. Along with that you get another roll for the zoans. Terrify and Puppet Master are amazing ( love killing my friends IG with his own LRBT ) and Dominate is also nice. Sure you might get unlucky and get a Mental Fort but with 2 rolls and only being able to use 4 of the powers due to warp charges the odds of getting anything besides mental fort are very nice.

I've got plenty of synapse coverage with my tervs, flyrant and swarmlord. I use my as a pure offensive unit that combined with my mawlocs give you something you HAVE to deal with in the back field as the rest of my army advances.

Mental Fortitude can give nids a bunch of tricks like our own version of the IG GtG+GBITF combo. And act as emergency "synapse" effect for a unit out of normal range.
My favorite brood of Zoanthrope I have run had Gate, Endurance and Lance. It was an awful unit for the opponent, highly mobile, 3++, FNP and IWND, and finally the s10 lance attack or S5 ap3 blast..