Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Cheap drops plus fills brigades faster, only reason I can see for it

C4790M wrote:
I keep seeing people take biovores in units of 1 instead of 3. Is this so you can place down cheap units to force the opponent to reveal deployment information or is there a reason to do so that I'm not seeing

There are a few reasons.
1. You can cheaply fill a spearhead for an extra CP.
2. We thrive on reserves. I personally use 8 units of reserves. To make this legal, I need as many drops on the board as I can.
3. It makes target priority for my opponent a mess. For example, if he has a Las predator, he has to decide how to split his fire before shooting. Thus increasing the odds that they will waste shots.

There are only a couple downsides worth mentioning. 1 is that they can easily give up first blood, but as tyranids I'm rather used to that. 2 is that you will never get to go first (Or get +1 in ITC) but knowing this is the case is why I make sure I take as many reserve units as possi la to deny my opponents targets and to get the jump on them when I do get first turn.

Don't know if you guys want a quick battle report, but here goes anyway! It became a bit long.....

Nids vs AM in 1850 points

Glorius Nids Army - Praise Be:

Hive tyrant
- Stranglethorn cannon
- Monstrous bonesword

Tervigon

Broodlord

Termagaunts
- 15 Devourer
- 15 Flesborer

Termagaunts
- 28 fleshborer

Zoanthrope (3) w/ Neurothrope

2x Carnifexes
- Stranglethorn cannon
- Monstrous claws

Carnifex with 2x two Deathspitters

Exocrine

Mawloc (burrowed)

2x ripper swarms (burrowed)

Filthy filthy AM


3 company comanders
-Boltgun , Chainsword


Tempestor Prime
-Plasma Pistol , Power maul

6x Infantry Squad
- 7x Guardsman
- Guardsman W/ Flamer
- Guardsman w/ Vox-caster (on three)
- Sergeant with Chainsword, Laspistol

Veteran Command Squad
- Lascannon

Veteran squad
- 3 flamer
- 1 heavy flamer
- lascannon

Hellhound
- hevy flamer
- inferno cannon

Heavy wpn squad
- 3x mortar

2x Manticore
- Storm eagle rockets

Baneblade - Lord of War
- Autocannon
- Demolisher cannon
- Heavy Stubber
- Twin heavy bolter
- 2 Lascannon & Twin Heavy Flamer Sponsons
- 2x Lascannon [40pts], 2x Twin heavy flamer

2x 5 Roughriders inc seargant
- hunting lance

1 commissar Elite w / plasma pistol (grav chute)
4x tempetus Scion w meltagun (grav chute)


Retrival mission

1st round:
Tyranids has the initiativ since AM had way more units.

I have all my termagaunts on my left flank facing his mortars and lascannon squads. They are accompanied by my Tervigon (warlord with reroll wounds), Broodlord, 1 carnifex with Stranglethorn, and one with 4 deathspitters
My right flank is zoantrhopes, exocrine, hive tyrant and my last Carnifex with stranglethorn facing his infatnry. They deployed late. The sides should have been reversed, but I it just became that way.

His baneblade is in the middle

Mawloc and 2 ripper squads are burrowed.

We have the spearhead (or whatever the deployment is called where you have a point..)

I advance on all flanks and get very few shots off because of distance. Exocrine finds an elevated position and lightly wounds the Hellhound. The Hellhound takes some wounds from my Dakkafexes as well.
Some cover for my main gaunts force. Very little action. Zoanthropes are out of range

AM first turn is hard. A lot of shooting. My Tervigon gets one or two missiles in her. IMore or less halved with wounds. Exocrine is halved. Hive tyrant is down to 1 wound. I had FNP up on my Hive Tyrant. That saved it.

Hellhound and some infantry moves up to face my termagaunts with flamers. Only fires flames at termagaunts and in total 8 dies..

He also dropped in some rough riders and a the melta squad - they almost killed my Tervigon. 4-5 wounds left.


Second round

Heavy advancing with my right flank - my Hive Tyrant is now very very slow. In order to stay alive he has to charge into CC. Only option is to try with Onslaught. Which works. He gets in CC and doesn't die from 10 overwatch - they only had str 3.

Advancing with my right carnifex as well more firing at Hellhound. Exocrine fires at Banleblade. Hits ok, but he has way to many wounds (24...!!)

Left side is dealing with the newly dropped in people, rough riders are dealt with by termagaunts (fleshborer). The main force is replenished and shoots at hellhound and a infatnry unit (splittfire is awesomme!!) wounding both hellhound and leaves one infantry model left.

First blood is mine.

Charging the hellhound with termagaunts - lose very few to overwatch and box him in. Actually deals a few wounds. Tries to charge with broodlord, but he fails.

Zoanthropes gives onslaught to HT and some wounds at infantry. Nothing big.

Wake up my Mawoc to tamper with his left (my right) flank and the infantry. Much rejoicing. Only deals 1 MW when he appears.

His resopond is of course to shoot more. Kill my Tervigon, reduce my Exocrine to 2 wounds, fire some more missile at my Carnifexes, they all survive for now and has a slight panic about that big monster Mawloc less than 2 inches away from his men while he's fighting my hive tyrant with 1 wound.

He fires all of his infantry and one missile at my Mawloc and kills him. Also charges into my HT with one more group to kill him. Uses a bayonett order so they can attack again in the shooting phase - sneaky sneaky. Doesn't manage to inflict one cruicial wound to him. Str 3 is very low!

Third round

Hellhound dies from smite, so my termagaunts can shoot at some poor unit. I forget that I actually delivers almost 60 shots and overkill a troop.
Resulting charge is failed, but Broodlord comes in and gives 6 wounds to a unit of 4, and then just consolidtes into a new fight. I really like that!

I now own my left flank. Advancing a bit with my second termagaunts squad

Tries to kill more of Banenblade, but all my effort has reduces him by 6 wounds. not enough by a long shot

Bring in Ripper swarms to take a victory points.

A carnifex again is trying to survive by getting into his infantry on his right flank next to my HT. I would love to see that tail in infantry action! Uses onslaught again with sucess! and charges. has 3 wounds left and it should be ok, but with flamers and whatnot he takes 4 wounds from overwatch! and dies file trying.

AM now has a bit more focus and kills off Exocrine and half my zoantrhope squad - lots and lots of shots of low caliber is what takes down zoantrhopes. volume kills them.
I have some rerolls and almighty saves (2 wounds left and needed 6+ to save, to hits incomming dealing D6 each. Managed to reroll into 2 pairs of 6. Great times)

The front termagaunt squad is out of synapse since my broodlord charged... so they first take heavy losses from flamers from baneblade, then from LD.

All in all, Nids are still alive, but need to get in close combat in order to survive. Still possible, but the board is now split with baneblade in the middle.

The end
We spent 5 hours doing three rounds each - not that much time wasted on rules. maybe 20 minutes? I don't understand how people can be so quick about battles.....!
But the clock being what is was we had to quit. Nids won by time schedule and the point taking Ripper Swarms...!

In conclusion:
I really liked termagaunts with different wpn and tervigon! what a combo! epsecially againts T4 little saves units
Exocrine is good, but a bit weak against tanks with T8, but dm 2 and two rounds of course makes it up (I'm getting a new one in the mail today!
Mawloc where fantastic distracions and would have wrecked his infantry if he had survived.

Not sure about how I played the zoantrhopes this time. Need to think.
Carnifexes are still fun and are decent at shooting.

It would have been fun to replace one of the termagaunts with Genestelaers, but with this much flamers I'm glad I didn't
and boxing in a tank is fun! In 7ed you could just run over them, there's no such option in 8ed I think.

And I should try to avoidj Baneblade. get out of his way, and into CC. don't waste ammo on him. just secure VP and survive.

Hope this was ok!

Normally I lost against Necrons in 7ed. Now I'm almost equal to them and AM is the new king..... I'll take any dirty victory I can!

Good battle report. I would suggest never making a tervigon your warlord it's too easy to kill him and he is already a big target. Yah the bane blade is a tough nut to crack you need to get a few big bugs into assault to put a decent dent into it or sporemine/smite it to death.

Last time I faced a baneblade, I used the horror on it every turn with Zoanthropes and safely ignored it. With a 5+ to hit, it's not that scary anymore.

Nice!

Good point regarding "The horror"! I'll keep that in mind.

I've never tried having anything else than hive tyrant a warlord, so this was a first. Both hive tyrant and tervigon can be targeted, but HT had inv of 5+, so that's better I guess. Just a spur of the moment, give the 6+ warlord trait to tervigon, it might survive..

We normally play without knowing what the other guy brings out what mission we play.

I think we could start deciding missions in advance. But not knowing what you meet is all fun. Even though I really hate everybody's LoW...

I have a barbed hierodule - I think I need to use it more!

Try a Malanthrope. I always make a Malonthrope my warlord cause it's so hard to kill due to the character rule.

 Zimko wrote:
Last time I faced a baneblade, I used the horror on it every turn with Zoanthropes and safely ignored it. With a 5+ to hit, it's not that scary anymore.

Ohh, that's nice! I'll have to remember that.

Actually, that plus a Malanthrope is even more interesting...

I found a Tyrnaid Battleforce in one of the less visited FLGS. It has genestealers, warriors, both kinds of gaunts, but weirdly - no HQ unit. I'll buy a Start Collecting box next paycheck but was suprised to see that battleforces were ever sold without HQs.

Is there a primer on Tyranid tactis I could read somewhere? I've been looking over lists, but a lot of the decisions don't make sense to me. I'd like to get an idea of what I want before I start gluing all these tormagaunts to a single weapon profile.

On a side note, I haven't heard anything about a tyranid codex? Is one still expected this year?

 ChargerIIC wrote:
I found a Tyrnaid Battleforce in one of the less visited FLGS. It has genestealers, warriors, both kinds of gaunts, but weirdly - no HQ unit. I'll buy a Start Collecting box next paycheck but was suprised to see that battleforces were ever sold without HQs.

Is there a primer on Tyranid tactis I could read somewhere? I've been looking over lists, but a lot of the decisions don't make sense to me. I'd like to get an idea of what I want before I start gluing all these tormagaunts to a single weapon profile.

On a side note, I haven't heard anything about a tyranid codex? Is one still expected this year?

Actually I remember that warriors used to be a HQ/Elite option. A lot of info in this post so what kind of armylist decisions look weird to you?

 ChargerIIC wrote:
I found a Tyrnaid Battleforce in one of the less visited FLGS. It has genestealers, warriors, both kinds of gaunts, but weirdly - no HQ unit. I'll buy a Start Collecting box next paycheck but was suprised to see that battleforces were ever sold without HQs.

Is there a primer on Tyranid tactis I could read somewhere? I've been looking over lists, but a lot of the decisions don't make sense to me. I'd like to get an idea of what I want before I start gluing all these tormagaunts to a single weapon profile.

On a side note, I haven't heard anything about a tyranid codex? Is one still expected this year?

Tyranid book in November.

Briefly, because I'm new to Nids, from what I'm seeing Termagaunts are best outfitted with a mix of Fleshborers and Devourers. Fleshborers are the best weapon for 0 points, giving you (replaceable) wound-soakers. Devourers are sort of amazing guns on the little guys, so you take those for your offensive punch. Some say 15 Fleshborers to 15 Devourers, others prefer a different ratio.

You want at least 10 flesh borers on a squad as others cannot be regened, even if you are not planning on using a tervigon using about a 50/50 split of dev/flesh saves points as you pick which dies though if you are bringing them with trygon tunnel or tyrannocyte then that goes out the window as you want max punch on that first turn.

It was explained in the errata that if you have devourer termagaunts you can still respawn/replenish. they just come back with fleshborers.

So you should bring some fleshborers, because they will always die, but then you keep your devourers for as long as you can. Odds are they'll die faster than you can keep up anyway, but it's a good challenge

Yeah running 10-20 Fleshborers at the front of a 30 man Termagant squad is the best way to do it. If taking Termagants you want some Devourers they are great value, but they are wasted points at the front line too often unless you have delivery.


The Tervigon is one of our worst models by the way just be cautious with relying on that for any sort of serious opponent

When i ran termagants/tervigons i bring 2 tervigons with 3 10 dev 20 flesh gant squads. Its a heavy point investment but nigh invulnerable and a massive amount of dakka.

150 shots a turn rerolling 1s to hit and wound, psychic buff support, and 20 models respawning a turn.

Haven't had a Tervigon live past turn two so far this edition, so I stopped taking them. Holding out on almost everything else to see what the Dex does for us.

 SHUPPET wrote:
Yeah running 10-20 Fleshborers at the front of a 30 man Termagant squad is the best way to do it. If taking Termagants you want some Devourers they are great value, but they are wasted points at the front line too often unless you have delivery.

Just remember in 8ed you pick which models gets the wound. If you start on a model, you have to continue on that model, but it's not the closest one.
So, you can't spread out wounds to all multi wound models (it's years since that was legal) but you can have Devourers in the front, and just remove Fleshborers from the back, and also replenicsh them from Tervigon.

In theory you have a never ending barrage of assautl 3, range 18" - until someone drops a few rockets on your Tervigon...

NidsNidsNids wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Yeah running 10-20 Fleshborers at the front of a 30 man Termagant squad is the best way to do it. If taking Termagants you want some Devourers they are great value, but they are wasted points at the front line too often unless you have delivery.

Just remember in 8ed you pick which models gets the wound. If you start on a model, you have to continue on that model, but it's not the closest one.
So, you can't spread out wounds to all multi wound models (it's years since that was legal) but you can have Devourers in the front, and just remove Fleshborers from the back, and also replenicsh them from Tervigon.

In theory you have a never ending barrage of assautl 3, range 18" - until someone drops a few rockets on your Tervigon...

Welcome to the tyranid boards NidsNidsNids. None of what shuppet said about the gaunts talked about multi wound models. And I do believe when he says they are wasted when not on the front lines he does not mean putting the devourers in front of the pack, but about delivering them to the front line in a fast way, as opposed to walking/running them up.

But you are in the right place, many good advices on this board.

 Niiai wrote:

NidsNidsNids wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Yeah running 10-20 Fleshborers at the front of a 30 man Termagant squad is the best way to do it. If taking Termagants you want some Devourers they are great value, but they are wasted points at the front line too often unless you have delivery.

Just remember in 8ed you pick which models gets the wound. If you start on a model, you have to continue on that model, but it's not the closest one.
So, you can't spread out wounds to all multi wound models (it's years since that was legal) but you can have Devourers in the front, and just remove Fleshborers from the back, and also replenicsh them from Tervigon.

In theory you have a never ending barrage of assautl 3, range 18" - until someone drops a few rockets on your Tervigon...

Welcome to the tyranid boards NidsNidsNids. None of what shuppet said about the gaunts talked about multi wound models. And I do believe when he says they are wasted when not on the front lines he does not mean putting the devourers in front of the pack, but about delivering them to the front line in a fast way, as opposed to walking/running them up.

But you are in the right place, many good advices on this board.

Exactly this, it was just more a turn of phrase, putting them in front of the bullets so to speak. Hold over terminology from last edition, basically making sure you got a buffer in front of your Devourer gants or they trade kinda harshly against enemy fire. But you are both entirely right of course

Going to expressly state though that the significant amount of points for a Tervigon are better off spent on more Termagants in your example imo

I accept your olive brach Shuppet. I completely missunderstood you. You are bubble wrapping your good termagaunt troop with bad termagant troops.

I am still confused. How do you deliver them both? In this senario you are running them on foot, right?

Yes, I walk them up the board, if you are going to deliver them in a Trygon or something which is also good, I think you may as well just take all Devourers

Transports stuff up a mass devourer-gant list. It's alright dropping that 30 man squad up field, by whatever method you choose, but if their infantry are all sat in transports/out of LOS behind the vehicles then that mass of S4, AP- shooting isn't doing a lot against say a T7, 12 wound transport with a 3+ armour save. If you want to run them you need to be able to spill the infantry out to give the devourer-gants viable targets. You therefore need to match with high strength shooting such as hive guard, excocrines or a mass of smite spam. Played an ork list with mass cannons, kans and lootas in a battle wagon - I won but my termagants did little more than sit on objectives ... if you can kill the battle wagon T1 then the contents become targets for the gants but not before.

Exactly the reason I use 2 units of Hive Guard and two exocrines

 ruminator wrote:
Transports stuff up a mass devourer-gant list. It's alright dropping that 30 man squad up field, by whatever method you choose, but if their infantry are all sat in transports/out of LOS behind the vehicles then that mass of S4, AP- shooting isn't doing a lot against say a T7, 12 wound transport with a 3+ armour save. If you want to run them you need to be able to spill the infantry out to give the devourer-gants viable targets. You therefore need to match with high strength shooting such as hive guard, excocrines or a mass of smite spam. Played an ork list with mass cannons, kans and lootas in a battle wagon - I won but my termagants did little more than sit on objectives ... if you can kill the battle wagon T1 then the contents become targets for the gants but not before.

Yeah I just run 2 squads and run them up the field in front of everything else in my list. What you describe should probably be taken into account if you are planning on trygon tunneling them or whatever

Hi everyone!

How do you protect your high-wounds-HQ like OOE and Swarmlord? I really tries to hide them but they always get blasted T1 or T2 without doing anything. Swarmlords ability whith Hive Commander is amazing but for 300pts... no for me. OOE is cheap but I having trouble getting him into combat, any tips?

Malanthrope and LoS terrain.

Decided to run a Tyranid Prime in a 1500pt game vs salamanders today, actually surprised me with how much he did. Had him fully kitted with adrenal glands, toxin sacs, flesh hooks, boneswords and deathspitter. He did well, spending the latter half of the game in combat with a squad of primaris, keeping them tied up until he was reinforced with genestealers. He even dealt the finishing blow on the enemy warlord.

Not an amazing model, not worth taking over any of the similar costed HQs as of now, but I was plesently suprised. Anyone else got good experiences with this guy?

NackaNid wrote:
Hi everyone!

How do you protect your high-wounds-HQ like OOE and Swarmlord? I really tries to hide them but they always get blasted T1 or T2 without doing anything. Swarmlords ability whith Hive Commander is amazing but for 300pts... no for me. OOE is cheap but I having trouble getting him into combat, any tips?

You have a couple options.

For the Swarmlord you can use Tyrant Guard to gain a bunch of ablative wounds. Thats almost a must.

Malanthropes as mentioned will provide the -1 to hit bubble for everything around it. Very good for protecting key elements.

Your best way however is threat overload.

Your opponent has to consider how many shots they have to commit to killing something like OOE and the SL. And how big a threat that single model is vs whatever else is on the field. If SL is in the front lines as the most immediate threat then he is going to get shot first. Throw 2 blobs of genestealers in his face. Now what is he going to shoot first? Pop up 2 trygons on his flanks.

Tyranid Tactics are all about threat overload. You need to place so many dangers so close to his face that he doesn't know what to shoot first. At that point it doesn't matter which of your threats dies, once we are in they crumple.

Also a note on threat overload, there are two things you need to think about.

Against a mobile or long ranged army you want your threats to be hitting relativly simuntaniusly. If unit A is a threat turn 1, B turn 2, C turn 3 etc. your opponent will focus fire on unit A, B and then C. If A, B and C are a threat on the same turn that does not stop it.

You also want to plan for the end game. When the last turn of the game is over, how does the board look when you winn? Just rushing in might not be the smartest move if it leaves you wonerable later on.

It seems to me, that a lot of people harp genestealers as the best thing in our codex. But experience for me has shown them to be less than that. Sure, a solid charge will kill something, but 5++ isn't enough to save them from small arms fire on turn 2. It's way too easy to turn your 240 pts of genestealers into a pile of purple goo.

I haven't used genestealers in the past 3 ITC tournaments I participated in and finished 3rd, 1st and 1st in those tournaments. (24, 16 and 12 people). Other players that brought genestealers were crushed by swarm armies. Poxwalkers are especially effective at eating genestealers and adding them to their own number.

Is anyone else finding the same thing? Is anyone having good success with genestealers?