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I've been thinking about making a Tyranid Army for about a year now and have finally decided to take the plunge.

I care more about themed armies and having fun rather than being competitive but I would like to be at least win a game once in a blue moon.



I've begun work on a 1k army that contains:

Old One Eye

Mucolid Troop Tax

5-spore Meiotic Spore Brood

3x Sporocyst w/ deathspitters

2x Maxed Sporefield Formations



Now I have a few questions for those who have used these units before -



Spore Mines

1. I know they're squishy as anything and are slow. Therefore how easy is it to get these into combat and so to explode on the enemy?

2. Do they get wrecked by Overwatch and die on the charge, necessitating something to soak overwatch first?



Mucolids

1. I know they're three wounds and have shrouded but in reality how much do they seem to take on the table, can they soak a round of fire or two from infantry units or do they just flop?

2. How effective are they really for their supposed AA role, do you have to use a full brood of 3 to guarantee an air kill?

3. Deepstrike or Float-slog(+infiltration with the sporefield mucolids), Deepstriking forces you to do nothing for a turn but infiltration/ Float-slogging takes time and you're vulnerable to both... so what's best?



Meiotics

1. They're basically heavy flamer blasts that can drop spore mines if they miss or get shot but how effective are they in practice?

2. Is the 12" scatter extremely inhibitive or is surrounding your enemy with small groups of spore mines actually viable?



Sporocysts

1. Do you treat them as a vehicle for firing arcs or as a monstrous creature? They're classed as a monstrous creature and yet are immobile and so shouldn't be able to get weapons to fire 360 from those spots on its body.

2. Is the 15pt spawn every turn enough to help with board control or is it just a pathetic drop that means feth all considering how slow the mines are?

3. In practice, how much fire do the Sporocysts draw? Do enemy players feel threatened by them and focus them or are they ignored etc.?



Thanks for all responses in advance.

Did you not post this same thing elsewhere? I am sure people already responded to say the list would not work. Spores are all about area denial and forcing your opponent to waste their fire, not killing things.

 Elric of Grans wrote:
Did you not post this same thing elsewhere? I am sure people already responded to say the list would not work. Spores are all about area denial and forcing your opponent to waste their fire, not killing things.

Yeah I posted in the main tyranid thread but only got 2 responses before it got drowned in the myriad conversations going on there, so I decided to create its own thread.

I know it's not competitive but I'm just asking specific questions about each unit.

If you're bringing things on from reserves maybe put some points into swarmlord and take out old one eye (he really isn't that good) as he helps with all of your reserves and is one of the best challengers in the game he is a bit squishy though so you'll need hive gaurd and also some biovores keeping with the theme as they eat infantry for breakfast. Other then that I like the theme here but if you want effective spores you also need some bodies eg. gaunts to run around.

I understand theme and the like, thats great, but the army you've posted literally cant do anything. It cant score, it can barely move (Sporocysts cant move at all) and Old One Eye can fail his IB tests and you lose control of him.

You have no shooting (Sporocyst shooting just wont hack it) so pretty much all any opponent you ever play has to do is sit back and shoot you off the table, even if you deepstrike.

Spore Mines are hard to get into combat unless a Biovore plops them right down next to a unit. Of COURSE they get wrecked by overwatch, just one regular flamer can take them all out, if you just read their profile it tells you everything.

Mucolids at best have a 2+ cover save. Thats good, but they suffer the same issues as spore mines. Your opponent has to be brain dead to intentionally fly close enough to a mucolid to allow an air assault.

Meiotics are still only S5 AP4 when they manage to hit someone, and your opponent has to again make a BAD decision just to get them charged. Not to mention they are expensive for how little they do.

Sporocysts are MC's and you can go to YMDC for the various arguments whether they can or cannot fire 360' (Or more than 2 weapons) GW did a really poor job writing their rules, so its best to come to an agreement with your opponent before playing. Normally they wont draw a lot of fire because they dont really do anything, but your army is so sparse they might get shot at.

If you want to run a ton of mines, do so, but you need an accompanying ARMY to go with it. A legion of non scoring, slow, non shooting, hyper fragile units with one big crappy carnifex is not going to do anything or be fun to play for you or your opponent. I could take a 1k list of Pyrovores and Haruspexes and it would be more effective, and that is truly saying something.