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.

 Zimko wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Spreelock wrote:
Hey guys, i'm looking for an advice. What are the most efficient ways to play Leviathan and Kraken? I have Behemoth and Hydra tyranids myself, but i'm looking forward to build more. After watching the whole orktober orks-stuff, I decided NOT to jump into battlewagon and turned my intrests back to nids..

The most efficient ways?

Kraken is pretty self-explanitory. Genestealers, genestealers and more genestealers. Some Hormagaunt screens. Swarmlord. A unit of Hive Guard maybe for that double shoot strat. Flyrants with MRC and Dakka.

Leviathan isn't as common but it's most effective in 2 kinds of list. As a support detachment for a Kraken list, you can take a Supreme Command with Flyrants with four devourers. Leviathan helps boost a Flyrant's resiliency, and taking a full 3 of them can saturate enemy fire.
The second way to use Leviathan is in a swarm based list. Take a huge hoard of gants (like 120+) and support them with Neurothropes, Venomthropes and Zoanthropes. Saturate the board with resilient little bugs and smite anything that gets close.

Thanks, yeah the Kraken seems very powerful. Is it worth trying Leviathan with War on all fronts?

 Spreelock wrote:

 Zimko wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Spreelock wrote:
Hey guys, i'm looking for an advice. What are the most efficient ways to play Leviathan and Kraken? I have Behemoth and Hydra tyranids myself, but i'm looking forward to build more. After watching the whole orktober orks-stuff, I decided NOT to jump into battlewagon and turned my intrests back to nids..

The most efficient ways?

Kraken is pretty self-explanitory. Genestealers, genestealers and more genestealers. Some Hormagaunt screens. Swarmlord. A unit of Hive Guard maybe for that double shoot strat. Flyrants with MRC and Dakka.

Leviathan isn't as common but it's most effective in 2 kinds of list. As a support detachment for a Kraken list, you can take a Supreme Command with Flyrants with four devourers. Leviathan helps boost a Flyrant's resiliency, and taking a full 3 of them can saturate enemy fire.
The second way to use Leviathan is in a swarm based list. Take a huge hoard of gants (like 120+) and support them with Neurothropes, Venomthropes and Zoanthropes. Saturate the board with resilient little bugs and smite anything that gets close.

Thanks, yeah the Kraken seems very powerful. Is it worth trying Leviathan with War on all fronts?

War on all fronts is not something you plan your list around. It's more something to keep in mind of without actually worrying about achieving. But if you wanted to try to use it, I'd suggest a Battalion with 3 units of Rippers and 3 Flyrants. Rippers are always useful and disposable enough to try to throw into melee for this stratagem... or they can sit on objectives like they normally do.

Yeah, and most of the gaunt units already have rerolls of 1, for being a big enough unit. I was not going to build a list around it. My warlord is anyway going to be a Hydra tervigon, with endless regeneration. Any thoughs on that? I kinda like it as a fluffy, alien broodmother. There was actually even rules for that in the 7th edition Apocalypse.

Tervigons won’t really accomplish much beyond smiting, but they’ll keep a 30-man unit of termagants alive indefinitely.

Yeah, I like the idea of Tervigons a lot. But They seem difficult to manage in practice.

That said, the best use I can think of one currently is locking a Castellan in combat with Gants and just re-genning them indefinitely. Surround the thing right and it's going to have a tough time leaving combat, forcing it to just stomp 4 pt models for the rest of the game.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Yeah, I like the idea of Tervigons a lot. But They seem difficult to manage in practice.

That said, the best use I can think of one currently is locking a Castellan in combat with Gants and just re-genning them indefinitely. Surround the thing right and it's going to have a tough time leaving combat, forcing it to just stomp 4 pt models for the rest of the game.

It can walk over the gants. Doesn't work.

The thing literally needs to be cut in cost by 1/2.

It's base is wide enough to make walking at least 1" beyond a well positioned squad difficult or impossible. In fact I think if you've degraded it by one level, it's impossible for it to escape if it's surrounded.

I'm thinking about tervigon with 30 gaunt blob, with loads of devourers. That way my warlord is safe from the deep strikes.

 Spreelock wrote:
I'm thinking about tervigon with 30 gaunt blob, with loads of devourers. That way my warlord is safe from the deep strikes.

Remember, Mama Bug can only respawn Fleshborer Gants, not Devourer ones.

Thats right, maybe she will have 20 devourers and 10 fleshborers gaunt with her.

 Spreelock wrote:
Thats right, maybe she will have 20 devourers and 10 fleshborers gaunt with her.

That's your best bet, if you want maximum firepower AND respawning.

I usually play with swarmlord as a hq, but my swarmy tends to get obliterated by dropping scions with melta/plasma. Hopefully, gaunt blob and endless regeneration are the key for cutting off the deep strikes shenanigangs..

 Spreelock wrote:
I usually play with swarmlord as a hq, but my swarmy tends to get obliterated by dropping scions with melta/plasma. Hopefully, gaunt blob and endless regeneration are the key for cutting off the deep strikes shenanigangs..

Gaunt screen should easily prevent deep strikers from taking out swarmy. Tervigon is just a big waste of points. For the same cost you can field 60 more termagaunts. And if you need Synapse and Smite in an HQ slot then a Neurothrope is only 70 points and can't be targeted from shooting.

 Insectum7 wrote:
It's base is wide enough to make walking at least 1" beyond a well positioned squad difficult or impossible. In fact I think if you've degraded it by one level, it's impossible for it to escape if it's surrounded.

It moves 12 inches and mechanicus knights can act at full power for 1 CP. Not saying it's not possible but you would need a lot of units. More than 30 gants


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Spreelock wrote:
Thats right, maybe she will have 20 devourers and 10 fleshborers gaunt with her.

Typically I am running 20 mans with 10 of each.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It's base is wide enough to make walking at least 1" beyond a well positioned squad difficult or impossible. In fact I think if you've degraded it by one level, it's impossible for it to escape if it's surrounded.

It moves 12 inches and mechanicus knights can act at full power for 1 CP. Not saying it's not possible but you would need a lot of units. More than 30 gants

Just for clarity the castellan moves 10"

Found my Hormagants hiding in a box in a corner yesterday, so now I need to put them in a list. I also need someone to teach me Hormagants, because I haven't run them since 5th ed and don't know what the little tricks to get the best out of them are.


This is what I came up with:

Jorungandr Battalion: Malan, Swarmy, 19x Genestealers, 30x Hormies, 30x Devilgants, 6x shock Guard, 3x Raveners w/rending and deathspitters;
Kronos Patrol: Neuro, 3x Ripper, 3x Ripper, 5x Impaler Guard, 5x Impaler Guard.

The list should play in a straightforward enough manner: use the Malanthrope to keep things alive first turn, catapult a cc threat with Swarmy, deep strike either the shock guard or the Termagants using the Raveners. Kronos provides back line shooting and some DS objective grabbing.

If I drop the Raveners + 3 Rippers I can run a Pod instead, which lets me swap Jorungandr into Kraken. I gain the speed boost, but l have to cut down to 20 devilgaunts.

If I drop the Raveners and all the Rippers I can run a Trygon as my gaunt delivery mechanism, but that forces me to deploy the shock Guard on the table every game, costing me flexibility against things like Knights. I would also have to restructure the Kronos as a spearhead and run all the Hive Guard as Kronos.

Thoughts?

babelfish wrote:
Found my Hormagants hiding in a box in a corner yesterday, so now I need to put them in a list. I also need someone to teach me Hormagants, because I haven't run them since 5th ed and don't know what the little tricks to get the best out of them are.

Hormagaunts are a melee tarpit unit, good for shutting down gunlines.
Don't expect them to kill anything in combat. That's what genestealers are for. Hormagaunts exploit their 6" pile-in and consolidate moves to tag enemy units in combat, and prevent them from shooting.

Here is a standard assault move which you can do with pretty much any assault unit.

(by 'not forced to allocate any attacks to it', I mean you literally cannot allocate any attacks to it)

Hormagaunts are just really good at it, as their 6" pile-in + consolidate moves give them a ton of distance to leap forward and lock up enemy units.

Those diagrams are great.

But man... the 8th edition assault phase is dumb as feth.

 barboggo wrote:
Those diagrams are great.

But man... the 8th edition assault phase is dumb as feth.

I wouldn't say "dumb", but very, very "gamey". :-p Its some weird Warmahordes crap... but clearly valid and important strategy. It definitely highlights how odd GW games are at an abstract rule's level.

What units do you think they'll change in terms of points in the next CA? I reckon atleast 40% of our units need a hefty points decrease

I unfortunately don't see much change happening.... they could surprise us but unless every codex is getting complete pts revisions I don't see much change happening. Hopefully we don't get much if any increases... some of our stuff is very competitive.

KurtAngle2 wrote:
What units do you think they'll change in terms of points in the next CA? I reckon atleast 40% of our units need a hefty points decrease

Yeah there are a lot of rules and synergy issues, but if we just look at cost, I would hope they got the guts to lower the points for our never-seen monsters - Haruspex, Toxicrene, Maleceptor, Harpy, Hive Crone. Also Trygon, Walkrant and Tyrannocyte need some love. Mawloc is in a weird spot, can't really go down in points but kind of sucks now with his gimmick. Exocrine should probably go down a few points. It can't afford to have second turn, can't make use of cover because it cripples itself if it must move to shoot and the range of the gun is too short, making it easy to play around.

Mid-range units - Raveners, Lictors, Tyrant Guards. Biovores should drop ~5pts, and Pyrovores a few points.
I would say the Swarmlord is a tad overcosted, even though he shows up in top tournament lists. Take away guaranteed LOS blocking terrain in your deployment zone (which some tournaments have) and he's a risky investment at 300-411pts (Tyrant Guards).

As for HQ, The Red Terror, Broodlord and Tyranid Prime are all overcosted. Malanthrope should come down a little.

Special mention to Dimachaeron who needs a re-write rather than a point drop.

Not expecting anything of the above, even though there was a rumour about nid point drops.

Guys the plague of wishlisting has already swamped Dakka in recent times, can we please keep this thread free of it? Its not tactics, and theres more than enough threads where you can do this already.

 barboggo wrote:
Those diagrams are great.

But man... the 8th edition assault phase is dumb as feth.

Meh, i see it as advance tactics

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It's base is wide enough to make walking at least 1" beyond a well positioned squad difficult or impossible. In fact I think if you've degraded it by one level, it's impossible for it to escape if it's surrounded.

It moves 12 inches and mechanicus knights can act at full power for 1 CP. Not saying it's not possible but you would need a lot of units. More than 30 gants

As above, 10". Anyone have the dimensions of the Castellan base? Something like 4.5" by 7" I think. It would take some shuffling but 30 gants could do it, even after casualties. Even if it's tricky, locking the thing in combat is one of the most cost effective ways of neutralizing it, as it can't shoot out of combat. If a squad of gants isn't going to cut it, you could miss with biovores and place the Spore Mines into blocking positions pretty easily. Neutering a Castellan with gants and spore mines would be damn amusing.

Hello brood brothers!

I've come looking for some advice. I have almost completely assembled my GSC army. But with almost all of my dudes being T3 they just die in droves and are almost always one-shot missiles that hit the enemy, kill a unit and then promptly die. So I need an anvil and I find the idea of just "moar Leman Russes" or tanks boring.

So I was thinking about taking some Nid allies. My only requirements are that the allied detachment isn't too expensive (max 500-600 points), is durable and not a lot of models. Also not something too cheesy like 3 Exocrines. Maybe 1. I'm already painting about 100 Hybrids, I don't want to paint a load of small gribblies.

That leaves me with tough monsters as a choice. Any recommendations? Some 'Fexes might be nice. No Dakkafexes though. If I wanted to play a gunline I would play Guard. Are Warriors with a mix of CC and shooty viable or even durable enough to last 2 turns? I need something to hold the line or break enemy charges by barreling into them. If the Cult had some sort of Mining Powerlifter Dreadnought I would love to take that.

What do people think of Sporocysts with the new FAQ?

Its how i thought it would be changed to.

 Causalis wrote:
Hello brood brothers!

I've come looking for some advice. I have almost completely assembled my GSC army. But with almost all of my dudes being T3 they just die in droves and are almost always one-shot missiles that hit the enemy, kill a unit and then promptly die. So I need an anvil and I find the idea of just "moar Leman Russes" or tanks boring.

So I was thinking about taking some Nid allies. My only requirements are that the allied detachment isn't too expensive (max 500-600 points), is durable and not a lot of models. Also not something too cheesy like 3 Exocrines. Maybe 1. I'm already painting about 100 Hybrids, I don't want to paint a load of small gribblies.

That leaves me with tough monsters as a choice. Any recommendations? Some 'Fexes might be nice. No Dakkafexes though. If I wanted to play a gunline I would play Guard. Are Warriors with a mix of CC and shooty viable or even durable enough to last 2 turns? I need something to hold the line or break enemy charges by barreling into them. If the Cult had some sort of Mining Powerlifter Dreadnought I would love to take that.

Based on: no shooting, no hordes...

You could take melee 'fexes, or a trygon prime. Warriors I've never been too hot on.

You could also grab a demicharon... though it tends to die t1.

Sporocysts are very good now. Meotic spores even more so. With behemoth really dangerous for anything.