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So I've noticed that so far, Tyranids have something of a hard time achieving air superiority and have quite a few gaps in their aeriel unit list in terms of roles. So far our three true fliers are the Harridan, which is best described as a Heirodule the Hive mind went and stuck wings on that can carry some Gargoyles but is geared almost completely towards cracking enemy (super)heavy vehicles and monstrous/gargantuan creatures, the Harpy which is a semi-decent ground attack unit with a modicum of bombing ability, and the Flyrant, which can be quite a lot of things, but is used mostly as an ad hoc air superiority unit. So I thought "why not try and plug these holes?" Here's the first thing I've drawn up, to fulfill the ground to air role.

Flakvore

First seen in the ranks of Hive Fleet kraken, the Flakvore is a derivative of the Biovore genus that is has been adjusted for the purpose of dealing with aircraft, firing specialized spore mines that possess hard chitin rather than fragile skin to allow for increased penetration, these organisms explode once they sense that they are near their target, spraying shrapnel to increase the chances of successfully hitting, or can be set by the will of the hive mind to only explode after penetrating a target to increase the likelihood of defeating heavy armour at the cost of accuracy. Notably, due to the extremely high velocities at which they launch their projectiles in order to reach and destroy high flying bombers, they are quite fearsome ground vehicle hunters, their mines being quite capable of piercing through a tank. They have come to be feared by Imperial pilots and drivers and targeted with extreme prejudice whenever possible. One flaw with their morphology is that they contain such a volume of explosive mines within their bodies that if they are penetrated violently enough, they will explode with devastating consequences. Often, entire Flakvore batteries were destroyed by a single lucky shot, such as during now widely spoken of incident in the Battle of Octarius where a stray shot from a tankbusta veered away from the Carnifex the greenskin was aiming at and slammed into a Flakvore, the resulting chain reaction caused by the simultaneous destruction of thousands of Flakvores placed closely together created a crater at least fifty meters deep and three quarters of a kilometers wide, as well as wiping out tens of millions of Tyranids in the cataclysmic explosion. Some Orks claimed that it rained bits and pieces of Tyranids for at least a day following the incident.

WS2 BS3 S4 T4 W2 I1 A2 Ld6 Sv4+

Cost: 95 pts (?)

Composition: 1-3 Flakvores

Weapons and Biomorphs:
Claws and Teeth
Flak spore launcher: Can be fired with either of the following profiles: Range: 30 ' (60' against fliers) S6 AP4 blast, Heavy 1, flak cloud (The blast may hit fliers, but the user must choose and declare whether the blast will only affect fliers or if it will only affect ground units), Rending, missile lock, Skyfire, Interceptor. Or Range 30 (60' against fliers), S7, AP2, Heavy 1, 5+ Rending, Skyfire, Interceptor
Armoured Carapace

Special rules:

Instinctive behavior: Lurk
Steady: If a flakvore foregoes moving for a turn, it may "Dig in" to grant itself the benefit of the twin-linked USR next turn, this benefit will remain as long as the Flakvore does not move, doing so also improves any cover save the Flakvore may have by one, if it does not already have a cover save, it gains a 6+ cover save.
Cook off: If a flakvore is killed with a weapon that would inflict instant death, place a large blast template over it with the following profile: S7 AP2, ignores cover,5+ Rending. Being killed by weapons with template, melta, and/or blast rules will also trigger this effect.

I'm tenatively placing these in the heavy support section. The addition of rending was made to better allow them to pierce vehicles (specifically heavily armoured aircraft) without giving them a high enough strength to overpower them against infantry. These were created more to evoke giant anti-aircraft guns like the famed 88mm or ww2 than the "more dakka" flak cannons put on half tracks that the Imperial Hydra and the Ork's flakkadakka gun are based off of.


What do you think?

I think you forgot the "I win button" special rule that states that whenever you create a new unit it has to have all the tools to effectively take out anything they look at. Let's just take a look at your special rules that you added to this beauty:

Basically you made a higher than average BS Tyranid, made it have a good strength against most flyers, but added armourbane and tankhunters, meaning you will penetrate any flyer in the game with over 90% chance.

Additionally you made it almost impossible to succesfully jink/cover save against it by forcing a reroll on succesfull rolls.

Then you gave it AP1 so you would also add +2 on the damage table.

It might be able to balance this against a high(er) point cost, but to be honest "I win button" units are rather dull to play with or against.

How about some sort of Tervigon-like creature, that fires Gargoyles (or smaller Gargoyle equivalent) at Flyers in range? It might be hard to put into rules, but it sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing a Tyranid force would do: fire a cluster of Gargoyles to claw away at engines and components. Either that or it'd be a bird strike beyond belief.

Alright, i went and nerfed the flakvore down, stripped out armourbane and made Tankhunters only work on fliers as well as nerfing it's ground range as well as making it more fragile. I also made it so that taking them becomes a risk should someone shoot a krak missile at it, likely devastating your gunline as their ammunition violently explodes.

I like it.

So, next should I go for a "gunship", "fighter", "interceptor", "bomber" or all out ground attack monster?

Note that I am trying to make these a tad more specialized than the fairly general purpose Harpy.

While I see your attempts at balancing the unit, I really don't see how this could work. you have too many special rules, if you are going to have that many, don't make it multi purpose. I also specifically don't understand tank hunters on this unit, if a CLOUD of spore mines is fired at an aircraft, they are not "aiming to hit weak points" and also, I think it is unrealistic, even by 40k standards to say that any Tyranid on the ground, shooting at a flyer will be aiming for anything but cockpit or engines. Everyone else aims at these too, you don't see tank hunters from them.

Cut out two extraneous special rules, how does it look now?

Seems more balanced now, makes a lot more sense, I would play test it on vassal if people were interested.

Anyone have any ideas for what I should arm a Tyranid air superiority monstrous creature with? I'm torn between Brainleech devourers and Impaler cannons, or maybe I should just make a completely new weapon for it. Or perhaps making it rely on vector strikes would be better?

It's a cool idea, but I'd advise giving it only one fire mode to simplify things and make it less of a 'hey, let's make Pyrovores obselete by making a new Pyrovore that can shoot airplanes!" unit.

Now I just want an Apocalypse-scale version that looks like the artillery bugs in the Starship Troopers movie.

The Pyrovore is meant to be a short ranged coverbuster, the flakvore is an antiaircraft unit that like the german eighty eight millimeter gun of world war two, happens to be quite capable against vehicles. The flakvore is not going to be forcing people out of cover, and with it's point cost using it like a second rate plasma cannon is going to be not the smartest of things. It's ability to fire a flak cloud also represents how larger calibre anti aircraft artillery cloud threaten multiple aircraft bunched together in formation, most notably bomber wings. The antiarmour shell is ordered for use when thunderhawks or similarly tough aircraft are present and the usual flak cloud will not cut it.

Hi,

I think that the Hive Guard with its guided projectiles should be able to hit flyers.

Also the thing I would most like to see is the ability for flying monstrous creatures to be able to assault flyers. This fits with my view of cinematic aerial battles with Nids.