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247 -- Walking Tyrant w/ Psychic Scream, Enhanced Senses (BS), Toxin Sacs (STR), BS/VC, and two Tyrant Guard

174 -- Flying Tyrant w/ Psychic Scream, Adrenal Glands (I), Toxin Sacs (STR), Toxic Miasma, Wings, Scytal x2

240 -- Two units of 6 Genestealers w/ Extended Carapace

 40 -- 8 Gaunts

240 -- 3 units of 2 Raveners w/ Scytal and Rending Claws

195 -- 3 Zoanthropes with Warp Blast and Psychic Scream

339 -- 3 Dakkafex

374 -- 2 Gunfexes w/ Enhanced Senses (BS), Adrenal Glands (WS), Reinforced Chitin, Bonded Exoskeleton, and BS/VC

Still not decided on how I should run the Raveners... 1/1/4? I'm still not sold on a Flyrant with two Devourers... I like the killiness of the Flyrant of doom. Anyways, suggestions/comments? I'm thinking that Zill is only going to get better with viable Eldar being pushed towards an all/mostly skimmer force.

I like my CC tyrant too. But a devourer-tyrant with implant attack is almost as cool...I just don't like it. I love the way my flying dude looks and putting two puny guns on him would piss me off. Plus it keeps him from pwning whole squads of powerfist marines when they charge him.

I've been over it a lot and I don't think you should upgrade your gunfexes more than +1 wound unless you give them everything (regenerate, 5 wounds, T7, 2+). Once the monster is T7 with 5 wounds and 2+ it's really hard to prevent it from regenerating I have played around 20 games with my list and have yet to lose more than one gunfex and only lost that to blind luck (13/24 rends with assault cannons).

1/1/4 raveners is the best way I've found. The 4 man squad dies a lot, but what I usually do is break cover with them at the same time I rush with 24 gaunts and the flying Tyrant and the other two 1 man squads. So the 4 man squad often does the dying and lets everything else get to combat. Or they get to combat and literally own everything. When 3 x 2 raveners hit the board, killing 4 raveners gets you 2 squads removed. When 4/1/1, killing 4 raveners only gets you one squad (or 2 out of the big squad and both the little squads). So with 4/1/1 you are at worst left with 1 x 2, raveners, or better, 2 x 1 raveners. SO sometimes it's better and it's never any worse. That's my rationale anyway.

One of your zoanthropes needs to have synapse. Trust me on this. Try it out without, but escalation is VERY annoying without some synapse on the board turn 1.

The flyrant needs warp field. It helps a lot. Implant attack is also an absolute must for the character assassination trick (charge a character and his retine, only engage the character, kill the character and leave the squad without attacks).

Genestealers I have found to be overrated. Not much that 6 genestealers can do that you couldn't do better with 24 gaunts.

My list looks like this but I trade both squads of genestealers for 16 gaunts and a bunch of upgrades on my carnifexes/tyrant.

I think you'd do just fine to go with around 40 more gaunts, no stealers, and upgrades on your Flyrant.

There's only a single unit that'd be weak during Escalation (the gaunt unit). Everything is either fearless and/or ld10. I just don't see the purpose in dropping a scream so that one unit of gaunts can scuttle somewhere... Realistically you're not even going to want to move them until some of the big boys arrives. With 50+ guants (as you suggested) I'd see the use, but I digress...

I don't think you're going to convince me that having 50 gaunts is a good idea in a Zilla list. All they're going to do is clog up my movement phase and make large melees that I can't shoot through. Especially with many Eldar lists leaning towards a minimum of 10 Harlies, I think that the relative value of Genestealers went way up. As long as the Harlies don't get the charge on them, 'Stealers are the only unit that a) Harlies fear, and b) you want to risk getting into combat with Harlies.

I'm gonna' run with 1/1/4 for the time being and see how it goes. I like the logic behind it.

The big reason that I put the extra toughness on the Gunfexes is due to points--I can't put any more MC's in the list and I'm *not* sold on more Gaunts. That, and it *does* increase his survivability against virtually everything that's going to be fired at him. The only weapon it's not going to affect is a Railgun.

All together I'm leery of removing any screams. It seems to me that as long as you play smart you won't be making many/any saves with the Flying Tyrant O' Doom I do agree on the Implant Attack though. I think I'm going to tool him up a smidge--Just move some points around amongst the MC's.
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I literally *just* finished the army. The water effects are drying on the bases now I'm just not real excited about doing any more units for right now. I've no more patience for modeling/painting/basing right now, ugh.

I remove a warp blast for a synapse, personally.

You run into problems in escalation in scenarios like this:

No synapse on board, and I get 4 carnifexes but neither tyrant (doh). How do you even handle that, rules wise--they make Ld10 to walk on the board, and if they don't they are removed?

Carnies and raveners still have to roll IB. I wouldn't bet my life on rolling LD10 on multiple squads. But then I am particularly unlucky

Gaunts are actually fantastic against Harlequins. Two squads of gaunts shooting harlequins is (16 shots, 12 hits, 6 wounds, 4 dead harlequins). Doh! And when the harlequins charge, what do they charge? That's right, they charge gaunts. Becauset hey don't have any other choice.

The value of genestealers vs. harlequins is somewhat dubious, as they will not protect your monsters from getting assaulted like gaunts will. If you throw 50 gaunts in front of your monsters, your opponent has to literally wade through the fearless gaunts to get to your carnifexes. If you put 12 genestealers out in front I think you can figure out what happens.

I talked a lot of crap about genestealers being great but I'll eat crow once again here for therion. My gaunt squads have won me a lot more games than my genestealers did. they regularly would just cost me points because people would go after them for the easy Vps. No problem that can be solved by genestealers isn't better solved by 3x the numbers in fearless gaunts.

The worry about assault blocking your line of sight is kind of ridiculous since monsters can shoot right over the assault. Or charge your Tyrant into it and make a Lvl 3 wall any time you want.

and if you're goin to take more assaulty guys you shouldn't bother taking slow stealers until you have maxed out your raveners, since for the points they are superior (roughly the same attacks, but 6+d6+12).

Imagine a Godzilla list with:

4 x 8 gaunts (160 pts)
3 x 4 raveners (480 pts)
tot: 640

or

20 carapaced genestealers (400 pts)
6 raveners split up (240 pts)

which would you rather have? I think the choice is pretty obvious there. raveners can do really really mean things when they march up behind a wall of monsters and then cart out 19-24"

Regarding the Flying Tyrant's scream;

Fire warriors and Necrons is why you give him a 2+ save.

10 fire warriors rapid firing 3+ save tyrant: 20 shots, 10 hits, 3.33 wounds, 1.11 wounds unsaved
10 fire warriors rapid firing 2+ save tyrant: 20 shots, 10 hits, 3.33 wounds, .55 wounds unsaved.

You give him the 2+ and you take away the ability of armies that rely on massed non-Ap firepower to win to do so. Lots of armies like this that you will normally loathe facing...Orks with rokkits are now a laugh fest.

If you can hide your pieplate sized based Tyrant long enough to get him into assault without taking shots that's great. personally, my flying Tyrant always takes some shots--just one more way to split up my opponents' firepower so they wound lots of things but don't kill them. His maneuverability makes it so you can easily limit what can shoot at him.

Unless I'm reading this wrong, Carnifexes are Fearless. They automatically pass their IB test that they have to take at the begining of the turn. Sooooooo, you're talking about taking an IB test on your Gaunts (prefer to have them scuttle anyway, with their speed imo~), your Raveners, and your Zoeys. /shrug

As for the Stealer/Gaunt point... You don't put Stealers in front of your MC's. You offer up a 113 point 'Fex and protect them until they in turn can charge the Harlies. With less models on the table I think you're going to see a lot of "Harlies charge and wipe out their target, then get turned into puree by 6 TL Dev's the next turn".

IB test is a leadership test, not a moral test. So fearless doesn't allow a carni to auto pass and IB roll. The result being carni won't fallback because of fearless but he won't be able to move if he fails his test.

As far as IB and reserves, can a unit be required to make a leadership test when off the board?

Carnifexes definitely do not autopass IB. Nor do Raveners or Zoanthropes.

What I don't get about the carnifex/stealer thing is:

Why should you sacrifice one of your carnifexes? From playing Zilla for a while now, Dakkafexes are the majority of your offensive shooting power. Sacrificing one of them to get your genestealers into a losing combat with Harlequins is a bad idea (Harlies have a 5+ invulnerable save, and more attacks at the same initiative, for around the same points...this is a bad combat to be in!).

Instead you can sacrifice gaunts to the harlequins and then shoot them with your carnifexes. This is by far a superior method.

The rule on IB is:
"Any time you move you make a leadership test to do so" if I recall
and the rule on Reserves is:
"Move on from the table edge."

So yes you have to roll to move on, and if you fail you break...and no one knows what happens. I play it that if things break when coming onto the board, they count as fleeing off the board edge and are destroyed, but I tend to play the least beneficial ruleset.

Carnifexes however according to the rules, just do not move if they fail to roll their IB, so they (unlike raveners/zoeys) do not break off the board, which is nice. They just fail to come on.

How you play that with your friends is up to you, but me, I fix it by just taking a synapse zoey and hiding him in escalation

I believe that the general consensus on Fearless nids is that only models on the board at the start of the turn must take IB tests. If you're Fex moves on from reserves, he is not actually present at the start of the turn and therefore can't take IB tests.

Do Khornate things take Blood Frenzy tests in the turn they come on from Reserves? Do Chaos Dreadnoughts have to roll for insanity when they're still off the board? What happens if the Dreadnought rolls "Fire Frenzy"?

Basically, it's hard to figure out what happens in these cases if you assume that you make the roll for off-board units. Whereas if you only roll for on-board units, then it's easy to play it without breaking any rules.

There's somewhat of an analogy in terms of daemon summoning: you can only use icons that are on the board at the start of the turn, not from units that walk/fly/slither on from reserves or disembark from transports. It's a bit of a stretch, but it has the general idea that "units off the board at the start of the turn don't get/have to do start-of-turn things".