BaconCatBug wrote:
What's the best ranged anti-tank for nids now? Is it Biovores? Looking for something to crack open stuff for my Jeanstealers to nom the juicy bits inside.

Are GSC Leman Russes worth using?

 Strat_N8 wrote:
If I may add one more for the ranged options:

Platform: Demolition Charge Acolyte
Avg Dmg: 2.03 wounds
Cost: 21
Cost per dmg: 10.34

If you factor in the rest of the unit's melee attacks (and a second Demolition Charge), the expected damage goes up to about 5.83 wounds for 12.85 points per wound. Not too bad.

 Traceoftoxin wrote:


[Edit] I guess it never made it there. Here's the chart.

 Traceoftoxin wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
What's the best ranged anti-tank for nids now? Is it Biovores? Looking for something to crack open stuff for my Jeanstealers to nom the juicy bits inside.

Are GSC Leman Russes worth using?

There's a handy table in the OP I made that shows efficiency vs T7 3+. Hint, Biovores are not on it because they are not efficient damage dealers except vs things with good invulns or higher T. Their real strength is that they can strongly limit enemy movement, and even their misses have the opportunity to deal damage later (If you do the math figuring that all of their misses would also do dmg to the target, then they are one of the most efficient AT sources we have. But only getting damage out of half of their shots on the target means they are... half as effective).

[Edit] I guess it never made it there. Here's the chart.

 Jin wrote:

 Traceoftoxin wrote:


[Edit] I guess it never made it there. Here's the chart.

So it sounds like it's worth shilling out the points for the toxin sacs after all.

Tyri wrote:
Question to Trevigon. If i make a game with 1000 Points and i use a Trevigon, do i calculate te Points for the sapwning Termagants or can i spanw every round Termagants for free?

Tyri wrote:
Question to Trevigon. If i make a game with 1000 Points and i use a Trevigon, do i calculate te Points for the sapwning Termagants or can i spanw every round Termagants for free?

Sneggy wrote:
So I took my Tyranids to the Seven Circles of Hull GT last weekend, the following is a write up of how the games went down.

Spoiler:

My list:
Kraken Battlion:
Hive Tyrant-MRC, HVC, chameleon, adrenal, toxin, wings
Broodlord

19 genestealers
15 genestealers
19 hormagaunts

lictor

Carnifex-4xdevourers, adrenal, spores, monstrous acid maw, bone mace(burning my last 2 pts, never used it)


Kronos Battalion:

Neurothrope
Neurothrope

30 Termagants-20 devourers
3 rippers
3 rippers

Kronos Spearhead:

Malanthrope (after CA release goodbye my friend, you didnt help much anyway)

3 Hive guard-impalers

exocrine
biovore
biovore
biovore.

We could switch warlord, warlord traits and powers between games hence not listing them.

Game 1 Vs Blood Angels:
His list was 4xdevastators with missiles, 5 land speeders with bolters/multi meltas in varying combos starting on the board.
In reserve he had the sanguinor, 2 big sanguinary guard units, 2 sanguinary priests and 2 sanguinary ancients.

We are playing table quarters and itc mission with bonus pts for characters scoring.
I deployed to block his deep strike out of my zone and put the stealers to push out forwards. Lictor, both ripper units and flyrant in reserve.

He took first turn and nuked the carnifex. Rest of his fire was pretty ineffective. Killed some screening termagants and put a handful of wounds on the exocrine, not enough to drop him a tier. his reserves stay off.

My first turn I pop double advance on the small stealer unit. Other stealer unit advances too. Both well within charge range. I keep my reserves off and push up with my screening units to deny him drop zones.
I open fire and kill 3 land speeders along with a unit of devastators. I move the biovores and manage to miss with 2 and put them out to deny more drop zones.
My stealers both make their charges. End result. He has a land speeder on 1 wound fighting the 19 unit and the 15 unit kills a land speeder and piles into both devastator units.

Turn two he realises if he doesnt drop in I'm going to deny him anywhere to drop and be tabled. He drops in to my left next to the stealers and broodlord (whos exposed) with everybody. Land speeder leaves combat and shoots ineffectually at the exocrine.
His sanguinary guard all have plasma pistols and nuke the broodlord.

He fails his charges as its now an 11" to the stealers.

My turn two I drop in everything, rippers go to the far corners for recon. Flyrant and lictor drop in to do some fighting.
Smites+psychic scream+shooting kill all but 2 of one unit of sanguinary guard.
I charge in with stealers and slaughter the other unit except the champion. the sanguinor makes an obnoxious amount of saves and lives. A handful of stealers die. The other unit+characters are being wrapped up by hormagaunts.
on the other side the small stealer squad butchers more devastators (I wrapped him to avoid a fall back) theres 1 left alive.

His turn three he punchs around a bit but its over really. We end up with one sanguinary priest in combat with 30 termagants and I offer him to hand me the max pts (I could have stayed locking him all game and scored every single pt) and call it a game.
Tyranid Win! 42-4


Game two Vs Admech:
his list: Cawl, Dakka robots, triple onager, big unit of destroyers, some rangers/vanguard to be in the way. a domius and an enginseer to fill detachments.
Deployment is diagonal. Bonus pt is hold your opponents priority objective.

Boards got very little blocking terrain so I deploy to rush him and hope to weather the storm. One unit of stealers in reserve to lictor taxi, lictor, rippers and tyrant in reserve as usual. He deploys in gunline formation: toys at the back, chumps at the front.
He goes first, pops into double shoot mode and pops wrath of mars. He kills: all the hormagaunts, all the termagants, 12 of the stealers, the carnifex dies immediately(its a theme)
My turn I pop double advance on the surviving stealers, drop everything in to take recon with the rippers and to charge his left flank with the tyrant/stealers/lictor.
Exocrine walks out from behind its hiding spot. I spend my shooting wittling 3 units of troops down to 1 guy. psychic does the same with smites, the tyrant whiffs his smite/psychic screams at an onager.
Double advance stealers charge the 3 1-man squads. They slaughter them, pop the overrun strategem, then the attack again strategem and tie up the robots, 2 onagers and the destroyers.
The tyrant managed to charge the onager he cast at but flubs his attacks (just like he did his shots. I swear hes a double 1's machine.)

Its basically over as my opponent only has cawl, the dominus and 2 units of rangers not locked/falling back. he fights on but the game is just a series of him falling back and me smiting/shooting/pummeling him.
Tyranids win! 38-9 I think.

Game three Vs Grey Knights
His list:
3 Grand masters in dreadknights, Draigo, apothecary, 5 paladins, 4 interceptor squads.
Deployment is the pointy hammer and anvil. Mission is 6 objectives, hold 5 for the bonus pt.
Firstly this guy got my best sportsman vote. He got a bad match up and played it like a champ, great fun throughout, we were pointing out little mistakes, helping each other out, just generally having a good time. This was top table at a GT and it could have easily been a few beers deep gaming at home. I was pretty fortunate that all my opponents were a good laugh, only really had one game where someone got a little salty. But Toby especially was great fun.

First time warlord traits matter, i put soul hunger on my Nuerothrope.

I screen with hormagaunts out front, second termagant screen 4" behind so he can only rapid fire the hormagaunts and block out my deployment zone so he cant touch me. I deploy heavy right to encourage him on the left. small stealer unit in infestation, lictor, rippers and tyrant in deep strike.
He deploys interceptors and apothecary on the board, rest in deep strike.

He takes first turn and drops everything in, interceptors use their shunt to join the front lines. I let him cast gate so the apothecary can join in too. I want to drop my rippers on the objectives in his deployment zone so am happy to let him clear it out.
He smites, gets sanctuary off on the warlord grand master and kills a few hormagaunts. One of the grand masters takes a couple of wounds from soul hunger.
He shoots down the hive guard (nowhere to hide them sadly), plinks a couple of wounds off the exocrine and kills most of the hormagaunts. He charges into the remaining hormagaunts (he opted not to kill them all so he could) and slaughters them unsurprisingly. One uit made a long enough charge to consolidate and stop my termagants shooting.

My turn, termagants fall back. genestealers move up to clear out that unit of interceptors. Infestation unit pops out the ground and looks menacingly at a grand master. carnifex moves towards him (hey look its still alive.)
Rippers and lictor drop onto objectives. Tyrant drops in to charge some interceptors as the dreadknights are wrapped up safe.
Psychic plinks a few wounds on the nearest dreadknight. My shooting mainly focuses on annihilating the paladins (exocrine popped the extra damage strategem and did most of the work.)
Big stealers charge the interceptors. Small stealers and carnifex charge the dreadknight. Tyrant and lictor charge the same interceptor unit.
Small stealers go first and flub vs his dreadknight. He promptly interrupts and kills the carnifex (one day you'll survive turn one mr carnifex, one day)
Other stealers annihilate the interceptors. tyrant kills all but 1 interceptor and he removes casualties to pull the lictor out of combat.

His turn two he tries to gate the dreadknight out of combat with the stealers. I pop the kronos strategem and the dreadknight dies to the mortal wounds. Ouch.
He mostly focuses on dakkaing the stealers who were fighting the dreadknight and trying to kill the flyrant. It was at this stage we learnt my flyrants invincible.

My turn two I shoot a dreadkngiht to 1 wound. Stealers put the other down a good chunk. All but 2 interceptors are dead. The tyrant hops out of combat and smites, psychic screams, shoots and then charges the apothecary. It appears he too is immortal as he lives on 2 wounds.

His turn three he moves the apothecary away and goes for a last hurrah. It ends abruptly. He perils the apothecaries power. Dies, the perils death bubble hits the 1 wound grand master dies too. We both laugh.

I finish off everything bar draigo who I block with termagants.
Draigo butchers the termagants then the exocrine lights him up.

Tyranids win! Cant remember exact score. 35-20 or somewhere round there.

Thus ends Day 1. Tyranids have been on the top table all day. I'm sat in 1st place and I know day 2 will begin with a horror list.

Game four VS Gulliman and his flying friends.
So my next opponent seems to have based his list around a crotchety old man shouting at aircraft. Somehow this makes the aircraft better.
His list: Gulliman, Tigurius, 2 culexus, 2x5 scouts oh and 4 stormravens.
Deployment is hammer and anvil, mission is central objective is the bonus point.

I deploy my biovores, hive guard and Neruothropes inside windowless buildings. Both stealer units in infestation, lictors, rippers and hive tyrant in reserve. The rest i hide as best I can, knowing it wont help.
He deploys in gulliman formation. All the birds at the back. boss at the front so turn 1 he can move up and have them all surrounding the boss. Everybody except the culexus in the birds. 1 Culexus sits on his objective. The other is as far forward as possible.

He goes first, flies up to mid table (meeting gulliman there, he was deployed far enough forward a high advance got him central. Forward culexus walks into a building and holds the central objective.
He shoots and kills all the horms, terms, exocrine. broodlord and malanthrope live as it took the fourth bird to clear out the screens. Carnifex is cowering behind a wall so magically survives.

My first turn I drop in the tyrant to smite/scream/shoot/assault a stormraven out the sky. 1 unit of stealers uses the lictor taxi and pops up in his deployment zone to charge the culexus.
Rippers drops into more buildings to get recon. Infestation unit of stealers pops up. he pops his intercept strategem and nukes him to 1 model.
The carnifex is definitely going to die turn two so marchs up to take some shots first.Broodlord rushes the centre to steal the middle objective and hang out in the same building the culexus is in.
Tyrants fails both powers (i hate you tyrant), Broodlord smites the Raven nearest the tyrant and does a wound. Shooting put the raven down to 3 wounds. (note the carnifex was clearly too busy celebrating still being alive to actually hurt anybody)

I make all my charges. malanthrope charges a stormraven (mostly in defiance), broodlord charges the culexus, tyrant charges the stormraven. He rolls ridiculously on overwatch and does 10 wounds to the flyrant....
Genestealers charge the other culexus.

Broodlord puts 3 wounds on the culexus. genestealers put 2 on the other culexus, tyrant does 2 sodding wounds to the stormraven (I hate you tyrant) and it survives on 1 wound. The malanthrope hilariously wounds the stormraven it charged. I consolidate round to mortal wound the 1 wound raven with his poison bubble (because if shouting at planes works so does being mildly floaty and poisonous) naturally it fails to go off. What a horrible turn.

His turn two, he pulls back from all combats (except the stealers vs culexus where he cant escape) he deploys some scouts to steal the central objective back (my broodlord and tyrant were outnumbering his culexus for it.) In shooting he kills th remaining stealer from the intercepted squad. The carnifex dies messily (welp I guess turn two is better than turn one you useless bastard) as does the malanthrope. All this was 1 stormraven.
So the other 3 level their guns on the 2 wound hive tyrant and unload an unholy fully re-rollable fusillade at him. The smoke clears and he is obviously completely unscathed. (I love you tyrant)
Gulliman grumbles something about things being better back in the old days and charges the tyrant. the Tyrants stupid heavy venom cannon which up until now has rolled 3 shots every single time and missed with all three rolls 2 shots, 1 hit, 1 wound. failed save. Blam gulliman down to 6 wounds. Nice parting shot.
Gulliman hits with all, wounds with all. The tyrant who has decided he wants my love passes all his invulnerable saves.....
He swings back and put 3 more damage on Gulliman.
In the eternal combat between the culexus and the genestealers a lively debate about the pros and cons of using psychic powers to enslave humanity and cross breed them with an alien master race has broken out and nobody bothers to kill anybody. This conitnues for another 2 rounds.

My turn 3. Tyrant hops out of combat but keeps Gulliman close. Broodlord makes Gulliman closest. I smite, smite and psychic scream. fail them all......Hive tyrant shoots. Nope that lightening isnt striking twice.
I do manage to clear out some scouts and a biovore finishes off the 1 wound stormraven (I'm also throwing spore mines everywhere which tigurius is smiting/bolt pistolling off each turn.)
well, best do it the old fashioned way, Tyrant and Broodlord charge ultrasmurf.
Broodlord goes first and whiffs...not now broodlord, you've been so good. My opponent burns HIS LAST TWO command points to interrupt and hit the tyrant. All hit, all wound......all saved. (You Mr Tyrant have won my affection.)
The Tyrant then of course goes back and puts Gulliman face down in the dirt. It appears he stepped on him too as Smurfy McSmurface stays face down in the dirt. There may have been some whooping.
As mentioned before the genestealers and culexus are now having afternoon tea and nobody does anything.

His turn 4. Storm ravens get their blood revenge and kill the hive tyrant and broodlord....fair enough. They did a lot more work than I could reasonably expect.
His remaining scouts, tigurius and the wounded culexus loiter in the central building holding the bonus point.
My stealers and his other culexus continue their pillow fight.

My turn 4: The genestealers have heard quite enough from the culexus so leave him alone and run to the central building. My shooting wounds the central culexus and puts a ton of spore mines around the building.
In combat the stealers charge everybody in the building. They butcher the scouts, put tigurius on 1 wound and kill the culexus (oh so you don't mind actually fighting culexus, just that other ones your friend?)
They lose a couple to tigurius.
My rippers building hopped and charged the culexus the stealers left behind. Just to ObSec his objective away. Hilariously they only take 1 wound and put one on the culexus.

His turn 5:
His storm ravens now have zero targets so fly out of range and sit at the back of the board facing the wrong way. I labelled this the 'sulking because daddies dead' formation.
Tigurius goes super smite and kills all but 1 genestealer. He promptly bops that genestealer on the head with his Rod of Tigurius (who names their rod after themselves?)

My turn 5.
Tigurius survives the hive guard shooting.
I fire the biovores at the stromraven closest to the culexus trying to miss, I get 2 mines nearby.
Tigurius sits rather smugly in his building, then 3 spore mines come floating through the wall and all the air becomes acid. Tigurius dies, presumably messily.
The rippers and culexus have a detailed conversation about the issues of fracking. One ripper is bored to death.

His turn 6:
he realises I'm going to spore mine him again and table him. His Culexus runs away from rippers and spore mines in possibly the wimpiest tactical retreat of all time.

My turn 6: I chase his culexus with spore mines and fire more at him. He survives but its funny enough I dont care.

Final score: 28-26 in favour of the tyranids. Really tight game, some super bizarre dice on both sides. man of the match goes to line of sight blocking terrain and spore mines.


Game Five Vs THAT daemon list.
My opponent has: Magnus, 80 or so brims/blues, 6 daemon princes, changeling and a herald of tzeentch.
Deployment is dawn of war. cant remember bonus point as nobody got it.
Warlord trait is obviously soul hunger again.

We both deploy in bubble wrap formation. Horms at the front for me, brims for him. All the tasty goodness behind.
I keep tyrant, rippers and lictor off the board as is tradition.

He takes first turn (lost the roll every game....) and flies magnus up. Everybody else moves up to stay behind the advancing brims.
Psychic phase. I get him with the kronos strategem for weaver of fates. Takes 2 mortal wounds from soul hunger. He warptimes on a 9 and I deny on a 10. Phew, dodged both bullets.
Only a couple of princes are in smite range and are either blocked or kill a couple of horms,

My turn one: I double advance the genestalers to be 1" from magnus. The horms also advance towards the brims to hold his lines back.
Flyrant drops in to shoot and smite magnus, stays out of range of daemon prince retaliation.
Psychic: he blocks the smites, I catalyst the genestealers and onslaught the hormagaunts.
Shooting: pop the extra damage strategem on the exocrine. He whiffs really and only does 6 wounds to magnus. Hive guard make up for it between them and Biovores Magnus is down to 5 wounds.
Combat: stealers charge into magnus, horms charge the brims.
Stealers rip magnus to shreds. I overkill him by 8 wounds. the horms kill a handful of brims and lose a couple in return. I use consolidate to tag an objective.

His turn two:
He decides to go for it. Jumps the princes over the horm screen. He smites and shoots through 8 or so of the small stealer squad, he also takes a couple more wounds from soul hunger. Then charge the broodlord and small stealers, killing the broodlord and leaving a handful of stealers alive.

My turn two.
With the princes out its open season. Exocrine, Biovores and hive guard claim 2 between them. Hive tyrant shoots another and then assaults it to kill it. Carnifex (remember him, still alive turn 2, 2 games in a row) shoots the same daemon prince as the hive tyrant but doesnt do anything and also charges but does nothing.

His turn three: His last 3 princes are locked with the 4 genestealers. he smites and butchers them in combat then is mostly stood around. The brims and characters are just retreating to claim what objectives they can.

My turn three: I take down 2 more princes (carnifex and hive tyrant tag team again, with the tyrant doing literally all the work) i waste my hive guard, exocrines and 2 biovores as he moved some brims closer to them.
In combat i butcher some brims and tie up his last prince with the stealers

His turn four: massed smite (hes out of soul hunger range at this stage) and the daemon prince take out most of the genestealers.

My turn four: I kill the last prince (tag teamed again, carnifex still isn't doing anything) and a bunch more brims. The pile never seems to get smaller though.
I did make a hole and the last stealers plus the lictor pour through and eat the herald and the changeling.
With just brims and blues left we agree he can score objective pts for the last 2 turns as it makes no difference and call it there.
Another really fun opponent just a horrible match up. I had him out psychic'd, out combated, and definitely outshot.

game ends 38-9 I think,

Tyranid go 5-0 and end the tournament top of the pile.
second place at the event was an imperial soup list mostly of sisters. How far we have come since 7th edition.

Final thoughts:
That carnifex was useless, looked good on paper but too short ranged to shoot often, no ap when he does shoot, not enough attacks in combat to reliably be a threat. In the end he just turned out to be the stereotype of a distraction carnifex.
Stealers were a little lacklustre too, I rolled well below average with them most games but they never really destroyed anything impressive. Mostly just bullied scouts, rangers, devastators etc. Anything half decent they whiffed against.
Termagants were nice but considering losing the devourers or cutting down how many. In every game I used them as chaff/screening. Dont think they fired much except the last game at brims.
Rippers are all stars, those dudes got me like 12pts every game. I think 2 units is the sweet spot. Along with the lictor taxi to do objective and recon duty.
exocrine is good but a big target. not sold on him. His damage output is brutal but I feel against a top long ranged list i either have to hide him and walk out turn one reducing his effectiveness or lose him.
I would replace him with more Hive Guard. Ignoring LOS is huge and makes my list work.
Ultimately I think I'll switch to pure Kronos Brigade and go heavy on Hive Guard and Biovores, genestealer are still needed for their fear factor and speed but I dont rate them as pure hammer.
Flyrants are solid (especially if your rolls are less swingy than mine. Mine was worthless games 1-2, mediocre game 3 then an absolute menace game 4 and 5.)
Neurothropes feel good but wasteful. The onslaught one especially, I only cast onslaught once or twice per game, the rest of the time hes just a smite machine.
Broodlord is super fragile, too prone to whiffing in combat. With my reduced reliance on stealers I think hes probably going to be cut too.
poor old Malanthrope is a solid unit but probably getting cut due to his price hike. Without the exocrine to babysit hes just not needed.


So next list will likely see flyrants, neurothrope, horms, terms, rippers, stealers, then as many hive guard and Bivores as I can afford. fast attack needs filling for the brigade so might see terms get swapped out for gargoyles or the return of my beloved shrikes.

Thanks for the read folks, hope you enjoyed it.

Sneggy wrote:
So I took my Tyranids to the Seven Circles of Hull GT last weekend, the following is a write up of how the games went down.

second place at the event was an imperial soup list mostly of sisters. How far we have come since 7th edition.

Sneggy wrote:
So I took my Tyranids to the Seven Circles of Hull GT last weekend, the following is a write up of how the games went down.

Spoiler:

My list:
Kraken Battlion:
Hive Tyrant-MRC, HVC, chameleon, adrenal, toxin, wings
Broodlord

19 genestealers
15 genestealers
19 hormagaunts

lictor

Carnifex-4xdevourers, adrenal, spores, monstrous acid maw, bone mace(burning my last 2 pts, never used it)


Kronos Battalion:

Neurothrope
Neurothrope

30 Termagants-20 devourers
3 rippers
3 rippers

Kronos Spearhead:

Malanthrope (after CA release goodbye my friend, you didnt help much anyway)

3 Hive guard-impalers

exocrine
biovore
biovore
biovore.

We could switch warlord, warlord traits and powers between games hence not listing them.

Game 1 Vs Blood Angels:
His list was 4xdevastators with missiles, 5 land speeders with bolters/multi meltas in varying combos starting on the board.
In reserve he had the sanguinor, 2 big sanguinary guard units, 2 sanguinary priests and 2 sanguinary ancients.

We are playing table quarters and itc mission with bonus pts for characters scoring.
I deployed to block his deep strike out of my zone and put the stealers to push out forwards. Lictor, both ripper units and flyrant in reserve.

He took first turn and nuked the carnifex. Rest of his fire was pretty ineffective. Killed some screening termagants and put a handful of wounds on the exocrine, not enough to drop him a tier. his reserves stay off.

My first turn I pop double advance on the small stealer unit. Other stealer unit advances too. Both well within charge range. I keep my reserves off and push up with my screening units to deny him drop zones.
I open fire and kill 3 land speeders along with a unit of devastators. I move the biovores and manage to miss with 2 and put them out to deny more drop zones.
My stealers both make their charges. End result. He has a land speeder on 1 wound fighting the 19 unit and the 15 unit kills a land speeder and piles into both devastator units.

Turn two he realises if he doesnt drop in I'm going to deny him anywhere to drop and be tabled. He drops in to my left next to the stealers and broodlord (whos exposed) with everybody. Land speeder leaves combat and shoots ineffectually at the exocrine.
His sanguinary guard all have plasma pistols and nuke the broodlord.

He fails his charges as its now an 11" to the stealers.

My turn two I drop in everything, rippers go to the far corners for recon. Flyrant and lictor drop in to do some fighting.
Smites+psychic scream+shooting kill all but 2 of one unit of sanguinary guard.
I charge in with stealers and slaughter the other unit except the champion. the sanguinor makes an obnoxious amount of saves and lives. A handful of stealers die. The other unit+characters are being wrapped up by hormagaunts.
on the other side the small stealer squad butchers more devastators (I wrapped him to avoid a fall back) theres 1 left alive.

His turn three he punchs around a bit but its over really. We end up with one sanguinary priest in combat with 30 termagants and I offer him to hand me the max pts (I could have stayed locking him all game and scored every single pt) and call it a game.
Tyranid Win! 42-4


Game two Vs Admech:
his list: Cawl, Dakka robots, triple onager, big unit of destroyers, some rangers/vanguard to be in the way. a domius and an enginseer to fill detachments.
Deployment is diagonal. Bonus pt is hold your opponents priority objective.

Boards got very little blocking terrain so I deploy to rush him and hope to weather the storm. One unit of stealers in reserve to lictor taxi, lictor, rippers and tyrant in reserve as usual. He deploys in gunline formation: toys at the back, chumps at the front.
He goes first, pops into double shoot mode and pops wrath of mars. He kills: all the hormagaunts, all the termagants, 12 of the stealers, the carnifex dies immediately(its a theme)
My turn I pop double advance on the surviving stealers, drop everything in to take recon with the rippers and to charge his left flank with the tyrant/stealers/lictor.
Exocrine walks out from behind its hiding spot. I spend my shooting wittling 3 units of troops down to 1 guy. psychic does the same with smites, the tyrant whiffs his smite/psychic screams at an onager.
Double advance stealers charge the 3 1-man squads. They slaughter them, pop the overrun strategem, then the attack again strategem and tie up the robots, 2 onagers and the destroyers.
The tyrant managed to charge the onager he cast at but flubs his attacks (just like he did his shots. I swear hes a double 1's machine.)

Its basically over as my opponent only has cawl, the dominus and 2 units of rangers not locked/falling back. he fights on but the game is just a series of him falling back and me smiting/shooting/pummeling him.
Tyranids win! 38-9 I think.

Game three Vs Grey Knights
His list:
3 Grand masters in dreadknights, Draigo, apothecary, 5 paladins, 4 interceptor squads.
Deployment is the pointy hammer and anvil. Mission is 6 objectives, hold 5 for the bonus pt.
Firstly this guy got my best sportsman vote. He got a bad match up and played it like a champ, great fun throughout, we were pointing out little mistakes, helping each other out, just generally having a good time. This was top table at a GT and it could have easily been a few beers deep gaming at home. I was pretty fortunate that all my opponents were a good laugh, only really had one game where someone got a little salty. But Toby especially was great fun.

First time warlord traits matter, i put soul hunger on my Nuerothrope.

I screen with hormagaunts out front, second termagant screen 4" behind so he can only rapid fire the hormagaunts and block out my deployment zone so he cant touch me. I deploy heavy right to encourage him on the left. small stealer unit in infestation, lictor, rippers and tyrant in deep strike.
He deploys interceptors and apothecary on the board, rest in deep strike.

He takes first turn and drops everything in, interceptors use their shunt to join the front lines. I let him cast gate so the apothecary can join in too. I want to drop my rippers on the objectives in his deployment zone so am happy to let him clear it out.
He smites, gets sanctuary off on the warlord grand master and kills a few hormagaunts. One of the grand masters takes a couple of wounds from soul hunger.
He shoots down the hive guard (nowhere to hide them sadly), plinks a couple of wounds off the exocrine and kills most of the hormagaunts. He charges into the remaining hormagaunts (he opted not to kill them all so he could) and slaughters them unsurprisingly. One uit made a long enough charge to consolidate and stop my termagants shooting.

My turn, termagants fall back. genestealers move up to clear out that unit of interceptors. Infestation unit pops out the ground and looks menacingly at a grand master. carnifex moves towards him (hey look its still alive.)
Rippers and lictor drop onto objectives. Tyrant drops in to charge some interceptors as the dreadknights are wrapped up safe.
Psychic plinks a few wounds on the nearest dreadknight. My shooting mainly focuses on annihilating the paladins (exocrine popped the extra damage strategem and did most of the work.)
Big stealers charge the interceptors. Small stealers and carnifex charge the dreadknight. Tyrant and lictor charge the same interceptor unit.
Small stealers go first and flub vs his dreadknight. He promptly interrupts and kills the carnifex (one day you'll survive turn one mr carnifex, one day)
Other stealers annihilate the interceptors. tyrant kills all but 1 interceptor and he removes casualties to pull the lictor out of combat.

His turn two he tries to gate the dreadknight out of combat with the stealers. I pop the kronos strategem and the dreadknight dies to the mortal wounds. Ouch.
He mostly focuses on dakkaing the stealers who were fighting the dreadknight and trying to kill the flyrant. It was at this stage we learnt my flyrants invincible.

My turn two I shoot a dreadkngiht to 1 wound. Stealers put the other down a good chunk. All but 2 interceptors are dead. The tyrant hops out of combat and smites, psychic screams, shoots and then charges the apothecary. It appears he too is immortal as he lives on 2 wounds.

His turn three he moves the apothecary away and goes for a last hurrah. It ends abruptly. He perils the apothecaries power. Dies, the perils death bubble hits the 1 wound grand master dies too. We both laugh.

I finish off everything bar draigo who I block with termagants.
Draigo butchers the termagants then the exocrine lights him up.

Tyranids win! Cant remember exact score. 35-20 or somewhere round there.

Thus ends Day 1. Tyranids have been on the top table all day. I'm sat in 1st place and I know day 2 will begin with a horror list.

Game four VS Gulliman and his flying friends.
So my next opponent seems to have based his list around a crotchety old man shouting at aircraft. Somehow this makes the aircraft better.
His list: Gulliman, Tigurius, 2 culexus, 2x5 scouts oh and 4 stormravens.
Deployment is hammer and anvil, mission is central objective is the bonus point.

I deploy my biovores, hive guard and Neruothropes inside windowless buildings. Both stealer units in infestation, lictors, rippers and hive tyrant in reserve. The rest i hide as best I can, knowing it wont help.
He deploys in gulliman formation. All the birds at the back. boss at the front so turn 1 he can move up and have them all surrounding the boss. Everybody except the culexus in the birds. 1 Culexus sits on his objective. The other is as far forward as possible.

He goes first, flies up to mid table (meeting gulliman there, he was deployed far enough forward a high advance got him central. Forward culexus walks into a building and holds the central objective.
He shoots and kills all the horms, terms, exocrine. broodlord and malanthrope live as it took the fourth bird to clear out the screens. Carnifex is cowering behind a wall so magically survives.

My first turn I drop in the tyrant to smite/scream/shoot/assault a stormraven out the sky. 1 unit of stealers uses the lictor taxi and pops up in his deployment zone to charge the culexus.
Rippers drops into more buildings to get recon. Infestation unit of stealers pops up. he pops his intercept strategem and nukes him to 1 model.
The carnifex is definitely going to die turn two so marchs up to take some shots first.Broodlord rushes the centre to steal the middle objective and hang out in the same building the culexus is in.
Tyrants fails both powers (i hate you tyrant), Broodlord smites the Raven nearest the tyrant and does a wound. Shooting put the raven down to 3 wounds. (note the carnifex was clearly too busy celebrating still being alive to actually hurt anybody)

I make all my charges. malanthrope charges a stormraven (mostly in defiance), broodlord charges the culexus, tyrant charges the stormraven. He rolls ridiculously on overwatch and does 10 wounds to the flyrant....
Genestealers charge the other culexus.

Broodlord puts 3 wounds on the culexus. genestealers put 2 on the other culexus, tyrant does 2 sodding wounds to the stormraven (I hate you tyrant) and it survives on 1 wound. The malanthrope hilariously wounds the stormraven it charged. I consolidate round to mortal wound the 1 wound raven with his poison bubble (because if shouting at planes works so does being mildly floaty and poisonous) naturally it fails to go off. What a horrible turn.

His turn two, he pulls back from all combats (except the stealers vs culexus where he cant escape) he deploys some scouts to steal the central objective back (my broodlord and tyrant were outnumbering his culexus for it.) In shooting he kills th remaining stealer from the intercepted squad. The carnifex dies messily (welp I guess turn two is better than turn one you useless bastard) as does the malanthrope. All this was 1 stormraven.
So the other 3 level their guns on the 2 wound hive tyrant and unload an unholy fully re-rollable fusillade at him. The smoke clears and he is obviously completely unscathed. (I love you tyrant)
Gulliman grumbles something about things being better back in the old days and charges the tyrant. the Tyrants stupid heavy venom cannon which up until now has rolled 3 shots every single time and missed with all three rolls 2 shots, 1 hit, 1 wound. failed save. Blam gulliman down to 6 wounds. Nice parting shot.
Gulliman hits with all, wounds with all. The tyrant who has decided he wants my love passes all his invulnerable saves.....
He swings back and put 3 more damage on Gulliman.
In the eternal combat between the culexus and the genestealers a lively debate about the pros and cons of using psychic powers to enslave humanity and cross breed them with an alien master race has broken out and nobody bothers to kill anybody. This conitnues for another 2 rounds.

My turn 3. Tyrant hops out of combat but keeps Gulliman close. Broodlord makes Gulliman closest. I smite, smite and psychic scream. fail them all......Hive tyrant shoots. Nope that lightening isnt striking twice.
I do manage to clear out some scouts and a biovore finishes off the 1 wound stormraven (I'm also throwing spore mines everywhere which tigurius is smiting/bolt pistolling off each turn.)
well, best do it the old fashioned way, Tyrant and Broodlord charge ultrasmurf.
Broodlord goes first and whiffs...not now broodlord, you've been so good. My opponent burns HIS LAST TWO command points to interrupt and hit the tyrant. All hit, all wound......all saved. (You Mr Tyrant have won my affection.)
The Tyrant then of course goes back and puts Gulliman face down in the dirt. It appears he stepped on him too as Smurfy McSmurface stays face down in the dirt. There may have been some whooping.
As mentioned before the genestealers and culexus are now having afternoon tea and nobody does anything.

His turn 4. Storm ravens get their blood revenge and kill the hive tyrant and broodlord....fair enough. They did a lot more work than I could reasonably expect.
His remaining scouts, tigurius and the wounded culexus loiter in the central building holding the bonus point.
My stealers and his other culexus continue their pillow fight.

My turn 4: The genestealers have heard quite enough from the culexus so leave him alone and run to the central building. My shooting wounds the central culexus and puts a ton of spore mines around the building.
In combat the stealers charge everybody in the building. They butcher the scouts, put tigurius on 1 wound and kill the culexus (oh so you don't mind actually fighting culexus, just that other ones your friend?)
They lose a couple to tigurius.
My rippers building hopped and charged the culexus the stealers left behind. Just to ObSec his objective away. Hilariously they only take 1 wound and put one on the culexus.

His turn 5:
His storm ravens now have zero targets so fly out of range and sit at the back of the board facing the wrong way. I labelled this the 'sulking because daddies dead' formation.
Tigurius goes super smite and kills all but 1 genestealer. He promptly bops that genestealer on the head with his Rod of Tigurius (who names their rod after themselves?)

My turn 5.
Tigurius survives the hive guard shooting.
I fire the biovores at the stromraven closest to the culexus trying to miss, I get 2 mines nearby.
Tigurius sits rather smugly in his building, then 3 spore mines come floating through the wall and all the air becomes acid. Tigurius dies, presumably messily.
The rippers and culexus have a detailed conversation about the issues of fracking. One ripper is bored to death.

His turn 6:
he realises I'm going to spore mine him again and table him. His Culexus runs away from rippers and spore mines in possibly the wimpiest tactical retreat of all time.

My turn 6: I chase his culexus with spore mines and fire more at him. He survives but its funny enough I dont care.

Final score: 28-26 in favour of the tyranids. Really tight game, some super bizarre dice on both sides. man of the match goes to line of sight blocking terrain and spore mines.


Game Five Vs THAT daemon list.
My opponent has: Magnus, 80 or so brims/blues, 6 daemon princes, changeling and a herald of tzeentch.
Deployment is dawn of war. cant remember bonus point as nobody got it.
Warlord trait is obviously soul hunger again.

We both deploy in bubble wrap formation. Horms at the front for me, brims for him. All the tasty goodness behind.
I keep tyrant, rippers and lictor off the board as is tradition.

He takes first turn (lost the roll every game....) and flies magnus up. Everybody else moves up to stay behind the advancing brims.
Psychic phase. I get him with the kronos strategem for weaver of fates. Takes 2 mortal wounds from soul hunger. He warptimes on a 9 and I deny on a 10. Phew, dodged both bullets.
Only a couple of princes are in smite range and are either blocked or kill a couple of horms,

My turn one: I double advance the genestalers to be 1" from magnus. The horms also advance towards the brims to hold his lines back.
Flyrant drops in to shoot and smite magnus, stays out of range of daemon prince retaliation.
Psychic: he blocks the smites, I catalyst the genestealers and onslaught the hormagaunts.
Shooting: pop the extra damage strategem on the exocrine. He whiffs really and only does 6 wounds to magnus. Hive guard make up for it between them and Biovores Magnus is down to 5 wounds.
Combat: stealers charge into magnus, horms charge the brims.
Stealers rip magnus to shreds. I overkill him by 8 wounds. the horms kill a handful of brims and lose a couple in return. I use consolidate to tag an objective.

His turn two:
He decides to go for it. Jumps the princes over the horm screen. He smites and shoots through 8 or so of the small stealer squad, he also takes a couple more wounds from soul hunger. Then charge the broodlord and small stealers, killing the broodlord and leaving a handful of stealers alive.

My turn two.
With the princes out its open season. Exocrine, Biovores and hive guard claim 2 between them. Hive tyrant shoots another and then assaults it to kill it. Carnifex (remember him, still alive turn 2, 2 games in a row) shoots the same daemon prince as the hive tyrant but doesnt do anything and also charges but does nothing.

His turn three: His last 3 princes are locked with the 4 genestealers. he smites and butchers them in combat then is mostly stood around. The brims and characters are just retreating to claim what objectives they can.

My turn three: I take down 2 more princes (carnifex and hive tyrant tag team again, with the tyrant doing literally all the work) i waste my hive guard, exocrines and 2 biovores as he moved some brims closer to them.
In combat i butcher some brims and tie up his last prince with the stealers

His turn four: massed smite (hes out of soul hunger range at this stage) and the daemon prince take out most of the genestealers.

My turn four: I kill the last prince (tag teamed again, carnifex still isn't doing anything) and a bunch more brims. The pile never seems to get smaller though.
I did make a hole and the last stealers plus the lictor pour through and eat the herald and the changeling.
With just brims and blues left we agree he can score objective pts for the last 2 turns as it makes no difference and call it there.
Another really fun opponent just a horrible match up. I had him out psychic'd, out combated, and definitely outshot.

game ends 38-9 I think,

Tyranid go 5-0 and end the tournament top of the pile.
second place at the event was an imperial soup list mostly of sisters. How far we have come since 7th edition.

Final thoughts:
That carnifex was useless, looked good on paper but too short ranged to shoot often, no ap when he does shoot, not enough attacks in combat to reliably be a threat. In the end he just turned out to be the stereotype of a distraction carnifex.
Stealers were a little lacklustre too, I rolled well below average with them most games but they never really destroyed anything impressive. Mostly just bullied scouts, rangers, devastators etc. Anything half decent they whiffed against.
Termagants were nice but considering losing the devourers or cutting down how many. In every game I used them as chaff/screening. Dont think they fired much except the last game at brims.
Rippers are all stars, those dudes got me like 12pts every game. I think 2 units is the sweet spot. Along with the lictor taxi to do objective and recon duty.
exocrine is good but a big target. not sold on him. His damage output is brutal but I feel against a top long ranged list i either have to hide him and walk out turn one reducing his effectiveness or lose him.
I would replace him with more Hive Guard. Ignoring LOS is huge and makes my list work.
Ultimately I think I'll switch to pure Kronos Brigade and go heavy on Hive Guard and Biovores, genestealer are still needed for their fear factor and speed but I dont rate them as pure hammer.
Flyrants are solid (especially if your rolls are less swingy than mine. Mine was worthless games 1-2, mediocre game 3 then an absolute menace game 4 and 5.)
Neurothropes feel good but wasteful. The onslaught one especially, I only cast onslaught once or twice per game, the rest of the time hes just a smite machine.
Broodlord is super fragile, too prone to whiffing in combat. With my reduced reliance on stealers I think hes probably going to be cut too.
poor old Malanthrope is a solid unit but probably getting cut due to his price hike. Without the exocrine to babysit hes just not needed.


So next list will likely see flyrants, neurothrope, horms, terms, rippers, stealers, then as many hive guard and Bivores as I can afford. fast attack needs filling for the brigade so might see terms get swapped out for gargoyles or the return of my beloved shrikes.

Thanks for the read folks, hope you enjoyed it.

Marmatag wrote:You got paid for bringing Kronos in that event looking at your opponents.

I see you capped your squads at 19 to hurt your opponents ability to score. Did you feel that it made your gaunts less useful? Did you find that reducing the squad size actually helped you win games by reducing secondary objective points?

My take so far has been they'll get those 4 points regardless so just run in big blobs.

Dynas wrote:


Great questions.

Also good to see that nids can compete against 2 of the top list, Guilliman and escort and Chaos Smite spam. Only other list I would be interested to see if we can hold up is to Astra militarum conscripts.

Reading your after action, it seems like you feel a lot of the units where meh. Would be interested to see how you change the list. Did you feel running 2 hive fleets was worth it? Did you have synapse issues?

pinecone77 wrote:Great batrep! Yep Kronos really paid off, it will surely alter the "meta" not a "must take", but the possability that it can show will haunt psych heavy lists. I guess word is not out yet...charging Magnus towards the Soul Hunger? I am feeling that the old "Dakafex" is not that good, I plan to try out Deathspitter fexen or Scythe+Gun fexen, I think those will still be usable. Too bad you did not have a Miasma Cannon for auto hits.

Congrats on the mighty win!

Marmatag wrote:

Guilliman is not a top list anymore. Marines don't have screens. I'm flatly shocked he did well against 4 storm ravens though. They must have been multi-melta & lascannon, without the assault cannons. Because assault cannons on those ravens would have chunked his face.

Traceoftoxin wrote:@sneggy - Nice reps.

Two comments about your Guilleman game.

1) ". he pops his intercept strategem and nukes him to 1 model." - Can only intercept with infantry units, and even then at -1 to hit. Sounds like a mistake that cost you quite a bit.

2) Obviously I have no idea what the board looked like, so not sure if it was even remotely feasible, but, if you remove all non-fliers, the opponent automatically loses. Some tournaments don't call tabling a full lose, so maybe you didn't do it to keep scoring points for standings. Again, wasn't there, don't know the exact tourney rules or the board, just a musing.

I think you must be rolling -really- poorly with GS. I've had some bad luck with them too, but going off the averages they're basically our best hammer against almost every target. My experience seems to be very similar to yours-despite our different lists-in that once you can get a stealer unit bouncing around inside the enemy lines, it's basically game over. Are you going to keep the GS as kraken?

Despite what everyone on the internet says, many players do not have massive screens. Of those that do, many use them to protect against assaults, but still need to come out to assault themselves, something we're fantastic at countering. We're great at tearing through 20-40 body screens, which is often all it takes to crack into a list.

Tyranids are going to drastically change the meta, and I think we're flexible enough to keep adjusting to whatever the meta becomes.

 astro_nomicon wrote:
So I'm playing around with more or less the models that I have trying to come up with something fairly competitive. What do you all think of this list? Should be fairly straight forward. Horms get in the way and use their pile ins to clog as many gears as possible, two squads of stealers up the board, 1 takes a lictor taxi, Devilgants accompany Trygon and double tap, Tyrants drop in and do what they do. Rippers for scoring objectives. I brought the Kronos detachment for some anti psyker shenanigans, but is it worth it? Also wasnt sure about the Trygon prime but I had some spare points and wasnt sure where to put them. Is this too many stealers? I'd Is the list too one dimensional? Thanks for the Flesh Hooks, Rending Claws

 jifel wrote:
Looks strong to me. Very light on shooting but certainly is fast enough to engage quickly anyways, should be fun and rewarding to play. Definitely would enjoy hearing your feedback.

So in ITC missions, what is the Hives thoughts on optimal Flyrant loadouts? Everyone seems to like DS Flyrants with MRC, AG, TS and a gun, but choosing between 2x Devourers and a HVC is very difficult for me. I've been running the Devs happily but has anyone had good success with HVC?

 Badablack wrote:
I had a game recently against Grey Knights, and ran 3 sporocysts. I dropped them down next to the marines while within range of each other with the last one within range of some warriors, and it let me daisy chain the shadow in the warp from the single actual unit of synapse critters to all of them. In a later game I used a Trygon Prime to do the same thing and pop surprise sitw across nearly their whole army.

 Traceoftoxin wrote:
Got a 2-day GT this weekend. They're not using CA, but I'm still gonna use my post-CA list, I think. I posted it a bit earlier, but just for posterity I'll do so again.

Kraken Brigade

Flyrant - 2x Dev, MRC, Warlord, Kraken Relic
Flyrant - 2x Dev, MRC
Neurothrope
Neurothrope

 Dynas wrote:
OK. Just thought of something for spore mines and Mucloid spores. I had mine drop down, and charge from DS, the overwatch killed a unit of 6, crap saves. Instead of charging why not just DS them in, and us a CP for Metabolic overdrive to move them within 3". No charge = no overwtach.

9 spore mines for 90 points (or 3 mucloids for 60), 1 CP for Metabolic Overdrive.

Great way to get some mortal wounds without having to worry abou the crappy toughness/saves on the mines. What are your thoughts? Cost to much? ANy value?

@ Trace -maybe you can give it a try at your tourney with your Mucloids. i plan on trying it this weekned. Just curious to see what people think.

 Astmeister wrote:

 Dynas wrote:
OK. Just thought of something for spore mines and Mucloid spores. I had mine drop down, and charge from DS, the overwatch killed a unit of 6, crap saves. Instead of charging why not just DS them in, and us a CP for Metabolic overdrive to move them within 3". No charge = no overwtach.

9 spore mines for 90 points (or 3 mucloids for 60), 1 CP for Metabolic Overdrive.

Great way to get some mortal wounds without having to worry abou the crappy toughness/saves on the mines. What are your thoughts? Cost to much? ANy value?

@ Trace -maybe you can give it a try at your tourney with your Mucloids. i plan on trying it this weekned. Just curious to see what people think.

Mines deploy more than 12 inch away, so this is not possible I guess.

 N.I.B. wrote:

 Traceoftoxin wrote:
Got a 2-day GT this weekend. They're not using CA, but I'm still gonna use my post-CA list, I think. I posted it a bit earlier, but just for posterity I'll do so again.

Kraken Brigade

Flyrant - 2x Dev, MRC, Warlord, Kraken Relic
Flyrant - 2x Dev, MRC
Neurothrope
Neurothrope

Why make a Flyrant your warlord? I would chose a Neurothrope and give it One Step Ahead for additional tactical shenanigans.