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.

I will be playing in a RTT in about 2 months with my bugs and this is a list I thought up. Let me know what ya'll think.

HQ
Tyrant - adrenal glands(WS and I), toxin sacs, wings, 2X scytals, warpfield
197

Elites
Warriors x5 - enhanced senses, ex. carapace, 4 w/deathspitter, 1 venom cannon, scytals
170

Warriors x5 - Adrenal glands(WS and I), Ex. carapace, leaping, toxin sacs, rending and scytals
215

Lictor
80

Troops
Spinegaunts x32
160

Hormagaunts x32
adrenal glands(I)
352

Hormagaunts x23
Toxin sacs
276

Heavy
Zoanthropes x2
synapse creature
90

Carnifex
Enhanced senses, ex. carapace, r. chitin, barbed strangler, scytals
161

Point total: 1701
# of models: 102

Comments and/or suggestions?

I have to say that I disagree with the choice of almost every unit in this army. Before I break down the reasoning behind this statement I've got a couple of questions:


A) How do you envision this army winning games? In other words, what is your plan of attack generally going to be with your units in your army?


B) Does the tournament use Escalation missions?


C) Why would you be one point over in a tournament army? That isn't allowed.

To answer your Q's
A. One unit of hormies will take each far side of the board and hit the enemy on each flank with the termagaunts going up the middle. I will probably even out the hormagaunts to have 26 or 27 in a brood something like that. The tyrant and the leaping warriors will each go with a squad of hormaguants and the shooty warriors with the termies. The thropes will give synapse support where needed. The carnifex will stay back and give fire support. The lictor - becuase it's cool, i love their fluff, and i have had good luck with them before.

B. I don't know yet.

C. I do need to take 1 point off I know I just haven't decided where yet. Still doing some tweeking this is just what i have figured out right now . The tourney isn't for 2 months like i said and i won't be turning the list in for at least another few weeks.

one Q: I've been out of the 40k loop for a little so forgive my ignorance but you can give a fex a VC and a BS now right? What are the rules for shooting both those weapons on him now? Is it if he doesn't move he can fire both but if he moves he only gets to fire one? Or am I wrong?

Regarding your last question: rulebook, page 55.

Papa baby we gots ta talk.

I'm not going to say you have to have such and such exact list. I'll throw you some questions an dsee how your list or more importantly your theme would handle that (has this list been made yet or still a concept?)

I like the hordes of buggies myself

* How do you intend to take down high T creatures- Nid MC's, wraithlords/guard/avatars, demons.
* How do you intend to take down heavy armor? - anything with armor over 10 is going to give you fits.
* How do you intend to deal with skimmer heavy lists? Competitive Tau and Eldar lists are going to be skimmer heavy.
* Ironicaly I am not sure how effective this would be against heavy marine assault units (deathwing/BA)
On the positive this would be so cinematic its not funny. Visualize this list going against a flamer heavy SOB force or GK's. Just be sure to leave all the dead nid where they fall. You would need a movie camera to capture it properly its positively Alamoesque.

What you need to do is take your time-get acquainted with V4 and works for you. Welcome to the Hive mind and note there are (or were at least) tacticas about for Nids.

Here's one.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/core/articles.jsp?aid=5

There are others about.

I generally stay away from commenting on army lists that I think are in need of serious re-working. I don't like to be the bearer of such bad news.

I'm going to give your list some criticism, under the concept that you are playing to win, and you've just been out of the loop for a while. If your expectation is to just get out there and have fun, you don't have to make drastic changes, you can bring anything you want.

Hive tyrants, even flying hive tyrants, are best equipped to be shooty. Hive tyrants properly equipped can put out a frightening amount of wounds with devourers. You don't need scything talons. In any situation where you would want to be in CC, you still have a good number of base attacks that ignore armor. If anything you could take implant attack if you wanted the option to attack an independent character, but beware, most ICs these days are equipped to destroy MCs in close combat. 99% of the time shooting with either double devourers or a VC and devs will output more death than even a double scytal flyrant on the charge.

Warriors, they didn't make it this edition. They could be worse, but they will let you down. Leave them in the case, they will be back. These need to be "dakkafexes"

Lictor is no good too. If you like the model go for it. But you can only 'go for it' so much in a tourney list.

hormagaunts. If there is even one mission in your local tourney that uses escalation (I'm betting there is) then these guys are pretty much unfieldable. Genestealers are a very good replacement. Upgrade them to scuttlers and/or extended carapace. They will suffer less from your wise removal of warriors.

spinegaunts- good, great, awesome. Spinegaunts are good no problem there.

zoanthropes also awesome, but you should take a psychic power on them. either warp blast or psychic scream. If you take scream, all of them need it, you will want 3 with it and every tyrant you take should take it also.

carnifex. Drop the scytals and add a VC. and take another one


The two successful tyranid lists i've seen are 'nidzilla' and 'stealershock' Each can contain different choices, but the primary concept is simple. For nidzilla the requirement is 6+ MCs, and all of those MCs are shooty. No close combat upgrades are chosen. Either psychic scream gets taken or not, and then the large monsters are protected by some combination of gaunts and genestealers. For stealer shock, the concept is to bring the maximum number of insanely fast insanely deadly close combat killers, the genestealers. It looks very similar to the nidzilla list, but it doesn't take quite as many MCs, and more of an emphasis is put on the genestealers as your winner unit, rather than your carnifexes. This army can also be with or without psychic scream.

Hopefully some of that was helpful without sounding too patronizing. Nids are a tourney powerhouse, and there are plenty of wins to be had as you get settled back into 40k

good hunting

Alright so far i decided to give the fex a venom cannon and, what should be the other choice? I am going to drop the shooty warrior squad and maybe even the CC one, or at least reduce the CC one, and buy a broodlord with stealer retinue. What do you think of these changes will it make it more/less effective?

About the winged tyrant, I have one modeled up that I think looks awesome and I can't help but use it it's just so cool. I have had good and bad experiences with him.

Yes Carnifexes can take both a Venom Cannon and Barbed Strangler and yes they can fire both weapons regardless of whether they move or not.

Your standard "Gunfex" is a Barbed Strangler, Venom Cannon, +1BS & +1Wound (163 points). Pretty much any and all Tyranid armies should take at least two of these unless you want to be seriously weak against vehicle heavy armies.

Your Zoanthropes should also be given Warp Blasts to help out in the AT role (although they can fire at infantry with their blast if need be too).

You can definitely get by with a flying CC Tyrant even though the x2 TL Devourer version is a bit more versatile. You may want to consider taking implant attacks to make sure that the Tyrant can take out characters before they can swing at you.

Tyranid warriors are a giant point sink. You are much better off taking a second (walking) Hive Tyrant with Tyrant guard instead. A good set of weapons for this beast is a Venom Cannon and a TL Devourer, +1BS & +1S (and at least one Tyrant Guard). This provides you some more AT fire and the Devourers can also cause a bit of damage against infantry units when you get closer. More importantly, this unit is MUCH more durable against a wider array of weaponry than the Tyranid Warriors, who can be torn apart by enough dedicated bolter fire or just about anything else.

If you *do* take Tyranid Warriors they should be kept absolutely as cheap as possible and only really used for Synapse support. Just rendling claws and scything talons and Extended Carapace. Maybe Leaping if you've got the extra points.

Lictors are another point sink unit. They can be a useful tool but you really have to have a focused plan for them, otherwise they are just a really expensive model that will generally do pretty much nothing before getting killed.

Hormagaunts can be useful if the tournament doesn't use Escalation. If it does, you will pretty much be sinking your army by putting so many points into Hormagaunts. The thing is, Hormagaunts should either be taken as a speed bump unit with NO upgrades or they should be fully kitted out (+1 WS,S & I) and used to do the real damage for your army. As you've taken them now, they won't really be able to dominate in the CC phase and you've put nearly a third of your army's points into those two units.

yakface makes excellent suggestions except I disagree with the 'standard' gunfex.

Many armies are 'vehicle heavy', but having a Fex with a TL Dev and VC is good enough...and 4 wounds is too.

Put in two Tyrants with any of the following and you have enough AT against all but the most extreme list, which is the IG AC--which as soon as you get to his side of the board, you'll kill.

Tyrant with +1S, +1BS, TL Dev and a VC puts out more S8 shots than 3 carnifexes do with stranglers, and they're more accurate.

Alternatively you can run with the VC, a Tyrant guard or two, and Warp Blast. Not as accurate, but it is nasty to deal with.

Yeah yeah, you can't penetrate with VC. So what? You gonna count on rolling a 6 to get through a predator hull? So long as you hit it with a Carnifex you'll do just fine keeping it neutralized. Other vehicles like Falcons you have a better shot at than say Lascannons because you'll glance them all the time anyway. Against LR's, so what if they move and fire a BS2 Lascannon shot? Lastly, against Hammerheads...blech once you stun them you can keep them stunned until they die, or the game ends. Oh wait...Dreads. Yeah, they do well against Nids. In the books and the fluff only.

Anyway I've not had any real problems taking down vehicle armies--and by running the Tyrants/Carnifexes with VC + TL Dev I still get tons of anti-infantry shots.

In my standard config, I can dump out 6 BS4 S8 shots off the Tyrants; and 6 BS3 S10 shots off the Carnifexes.

I can also still get anti-infantry fire off with all of them, and the Tyrants if they aren't killed are pretty handy with their volume of fire vs infantry.

What about a broodlord with stealer retinue? Worth it? Or maybe just a squad or 2 of stealers?

Papa_smurf wrote:What about a broodlord with stealer retinue? Worth it? Or maybe just a squad or 2 of stealers?

He's gimmicky (no infiltrate, no gimmick) and slow (no fleet).

I think he's crap all around, and the model is very bleh for me.

He was too powerful in playtesting, so was gimped.

Imagine a hidden IC in a Tyranid army you cannot shoot because of 100 Gaunts.

He really can rip most armies up when he's maxed out.

Especially now that most armies HQ's will be changed to remove the 'tool up' would make him crazy good.

I'd take him for his points cost, he could even obliterate Phoenix Lords and C'Tan. That's saying alot.

The single biggest drawback and hinderance for the Brood Lord is that he doesn't have fleet like all other Genestealers which make absolutley no sense. He is just to slow to be effective with the rest of the force (shock armies usually). Slows down his own retinue and if he's all on his own he gets shot down to easily. If infiltrate isn't allowed in the mission he's really, really, slow and probably won't ever make it to combat. I thought he would be good in a stealer shock army but the winged hive tyrant fills the role better point for point.

Stelek wrote:yakface makes excellent suggestions except I disagree with the 'standard' gunfex.

Many armies are 'vehicle heavy', but having a Fex with a TL Dev and VC is good enough...and 4 wounds is too.

I like that basic config with spine banks too. Yeah, they're short-ranged, but 5 pts is awfully cheap for two extra S6 shots with rerolled misses.

The reason I don't use the spine banks anymore is alot of fire comes my way on the heavy fexes. Either they die, or they try not to get within 12" of anyone...makes you vulnerable to assault. 18" is a great place to sit, and thus the banks are no use in my army.

agreed about the broodlord. I have one, and he dies fast. I was afraid to run stealers in a bug for the longest time, since I try to stay away from selecting my enemies targets for him. But, since the last codex came out you can finally field enough. Hence, stealer shock.