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Just picked up a third Tyrant Guard to complete a minimum Hive Mind formation for Apocalypse (Hive Tyrant, 3 Tyrant Guard, 3+ Zoanthropes). I'm wondering whether I should upgrade the Tyrant with Extended Carapace. It's a no-brainer to leave him at 3+ when with Tyrant Guard in a normal game, so that they can actually soak up wounds for him. However, upon re-reading the text of the formation, I noticed that the models form a single UNIT. So the interaction of Majority Toughness and Mixed Armor saves could get interesting, and putting Extended Carapace on the Tyrant might actually become useful:

Majority toughness is 6 (HT + 3 TG = 4 models, vs 3 Zoeys with T4). Largest save group is 2+ (HT + 3 Zoeys, vs 3 TG with 3+ save).

So opponents are wounding vs T6, but you get to use 2+ saves for the first 4 wounds from any volley. Once one Zoey is down, then the armor save groups will be equal (HT + 2 Zoeys vs 3 TG), so a subsequent volley would wound the 3+ save group first and knock out a TG. Back and forth you go, whittling down one Zoey, then one TG, etc. until only the Tyrant is left. And that's a 2+ save Tyrant. This of course assumes that no one unloads a bunch of AP2 or AP1 all at once, nailing the majority Zoeys/Tyrant.

The only advantage to giving the Tyrant a 3+ save (other than point-shaving) would be to keep the first Zoey around longer. But then after all of the whittling, you're left with a 3+ save Tyrant on the field. Also, LOTS of Apoc templates seem to be AP3...

The ping-pong armor save group assignment could be taken advantage of by opponents - alternating Plasma volleys one turn with Missile Launchers the next

Actually, does the Mixed Armor save rule kick in even when all of the wounds inflicted are of sufficient AP to ignore every armor save of the unit? There doesn't seem to be an exception in there for Armor Piercing, so I guess it does. Hmmm....

The formation's special power is interesting - Pinning ain't great, but Pinning with 3+ Psychic Screams is decent. No point in giving the Zoeys Synapse since they have to hang with the Tyrant anyways, so it looks like the unit could put out 3+ Warp Blasts at S10 and 3 Venom Cannon shots at S8 if they don't do the Psychic Pulse.

Probably not really worth either the points, or losing the spread-out synapse from free ranging Zoeys, but looks like it could be fun to try out.