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Hi there,
Once more, I'm looking for your help, fellow Dakkanauts !
A friend of mine has a small tyranid army, expanding each month. For the moment, he has a winged hive tyrant, a "tyranid swarm" box, 2 zoanthropes, 1 venomthrope and a trygon prime, IIRC .
He plan to buy one more zoanthrope and to make just one big squad of three zoanthropes.
(recently I killed all his synapse creatures in a 925 point game, when his zoanthropes were separate units, I guess he doesn't want it to happen again ).

So, my question is: what synapse creature to add ? I know he wants one more winged hive tyrant in the future, but for the moment he his hesitating between:

- a Tervigon:

- 2 units of warriors

- a big unit of tyranid shrikes .

I want to help him to do the right choice, but I'm not a tyranid specialist (I prefer to purge them ! ), so a little help is welcomed

We don't play competitively, there isn't any "broken" combo during our games.

I think the 2 units of warriors are the right choice: easier to hide than a tervigon or a big unit of 5, 2 synapse units are better than one, they can have objective secured...

The shrikes are really fragile, and the tervigon doesn't add much to the army: he already has a lot of gaunts.

What do you think ?

Thanks !

Shrikes are definitely not a choice.

If he has lots of Guants, then a Tervigon actually is the right choice, as you no longer have to spend the points on them, just spawn them for free. Also, Tervigons have a better save and don't get Insta-killed by Str8+ weapons.

Anyone know if Tervigons can still be purchased as Troops if you field a Guant unit? Cuz that is the cherry on top.

 Galef wrote:
Shrikes are definitely not a choice.

If he has lots of Guants, then a Tervigon actually is the right choice, as you no longer have to spend the points on them, just spawn them for free. Also, Tervigons have a better save and don't get Insta-killed by Str8+ weapons.

Anyone know if Tervigons can still be purchased as Troops if you field a Guant unit? Cuz that is the cherry on top.

I think it does, the Nids player just need 30 Termagant to bring the Tervigon into troops slot.
Tervigon is the obvious best choice, But just be careful and get it well protected, (i.e. like park in ruins and keep breeding), if it dies all Termagants nearby will explodes with it.

Awesome, so field 30 Gaunts with some devourers mixed in (about 10-20 per unit). park the Tervigon on an objective in a ruin next to the Venomthrope and done.

Ok, tervigon then^^

Tervigon is easily the best choice.

Warriors die far too easily to S8+ weapons.
Shrikes are just plain worse as they are more fragile.

The tervigon spawns free units and is far more resilient.
So it will stay about alot longer.



Having a somewhat large nids army the current book does not favour the use of warriors for any use.
I have a pure warrior list and I've tried playing it, but warriors are just far too brittle now :(

Tervigon 100% but ensure a malanthrope of venomthrope is close by and shield the tervigon to get intervening models plus shroaded to keep her safe. Grav and plasma will own her without a decent cover. And if they ignore cover you're SOOL anyways.

As stated, Tervigon is the best choice. However, whilst neither warriors nor shrikes are great at all, I contest that Shrikes are worse than warriors. In my opinion, they're considerably better - kit them out for melee and they will murder things if you can get them there, but as jump infantry they have a better chance of doing so than warriors do.

In general, zoans, malanthropes and flyrants are your go to synapse anchors, though tervigons are certainly not an awful choice either.

More Flyrants

Benlisted wrote:
As stated, Tervigon is the best choice. However, whilst neither warriors nor shrikes are great at all, I contest that Shrikes are worse than warriors. In my opinion, they're considerably better - kit them out for melee and they will murder things if you can get them there, but as jump infantry they have a better chance of doing so than warriors do.

In general, zoans, malanthropes and flyrants are your go to synapse anchors, though tervigons are certainly not an awful choice either.

Agreed.
Although despite their awesomeness, I don't really consider flyrants synapse anchors. Since they don't tend to stick around with the main army much past the first turn.
Malanthropes are my favourite by far. Tough, cheap, and they also make everything around them harder to kill! A perfect synapse anchor.

I know they're not a popular choice, but if you're not going super-competitive, the warrior kits are awesome sculps and I've found they're usually way down on the enemy's threat level, so they generally don't get killed very often if they sit back in some ruins and lob shots at stuff.

100 points for three and they unlock the Living Artillery Node, which is pretty good.

Plus, because nobody uses them, they can be found cheap on eBay!

Warriors with Deathspitters and the odd Venom Cannon can do respectable damage and are surprisingly resilient in cover. You can get six for the price of one Tervigon, that's two units that are both Objective Secured and have Synapse Creature, eighteen wounds, and are not bad in close combat. They suck against Ignores Cover and Str 8, AP4, sure. But they are pretty awesome if you don't see a lot of that. Mostly they advance with your little bugs and Venomthropes and lay down fire while your opponent frantically shoots at Hormagaunts and such before they get tarpitted forever.

I'd use Tervigons, if only because it's the only one out of the list that won't die to a battlecannon to the face (which is all too common these days, in equivalents if not directly copies).

It also helps that Tervigons can spawn more Gaunts and can be taken as troop choices if you got gaunts, so you can grab ObSec for it.

Eventually, he is going for a Tervigon. He is afraid by the warriors' T4^^
Thanks for help, Dakkanauts !

why would you listen to people that don't play Tyranids.

Shrikes are really good. They are one of our fastest units are good vs grav
weapons. and can be kitted to taste.
Tervigon is ok

I would still do the tervigon. It's not super necessary with his current list but I'm not a fan of the zoanthropes. Too fragile. You want durable synapse. And pooping out babies helps a lot. Can never have too many bodies