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This is a fun list I have all the models for. I want a list that is both fun to play and fun to play against. Who doesn't love shooting endless hordes of bugs?

Combined Arms Detachment
HQ
1x Hive Tyrant w/ Wings, 2x Devours with Brainleech, Electroshock Grubs - 240
1x Tervigon w/ Electroshock Grubs - 205

Elites
1x Venomthrope - 45
4x Zoanthropes with a Neurothrope upgrade - 225
1x Venomthrope - 45

Troops
3x Warriors w/ Scything Talons, Rending Claws and Adrenal Glands - 120
3x Warriors w/ Scything Talons, Rending Claws and Adrenal Glands - 120

Fast Attack
10x Gargoyles - 60
4x Raveners w/ Scything Talons, Rending Claws - 140

Heavy Support
1x Trygon Prime - 230

Endless Swarm Formation
3x Warriors w/ Scything Talons, Rending Claws and Adrenal Glands - 120
10x Hormagaunts w/ Adrenal Glands - 70
10x Hormagaunts w/ Adrenal Glands - 70
10x Hormagaunts w/ Adrenal Glands - 70
10x Termagants w/ Devourers - 80
10x Termagants w/ Devourers - 80
10x Termagants w/ Devourers - 80

I have all the models assembled and most painted. Are there any tweaks to optimize the list or make it more fun? Ideally I want to keep the core of Endless Swarm and Tervigon.

Edit: Changed up the Elite slots a bit.

Maybe trade that lone zoanthrope for a venomthrope? With massed numbers, that spore cloud is likely worth its weight in gold.

The Trygon Prime is also vital to let you express-line replacement broods to the front line, and you've got plenty of redundant synapse....

It should work. My only comment is that the Gargoyles might be better taken as more gaunts and split up into the recycling broods, since 10 gargoyles are a nice easy first target (since they won't come back).

locarno24 wrote:
Maybe trade that lone zoanthrope for a venomthrope? With massed numbers, that spore cloud is likely worth its weight in gold.

The Trygon Prime is also vital to let you express-line replacement broods to the front line, and you've got plenty of redundant synapse....

It should work. My only comment is that the Gargoyles might be better taken as more gaunts and split up into the recycling broods, since 10 gargoyles are a nice easy first target (since they won't come back).

Thanks for the reply. I've been debating on what to do with the elites slots. I only have 2 Venomthrope models so I've been debating with myself on whether to split the Elite choices like this... 1x Venomthrope, 1x Venomthrope, 4x Zoanthropes with Neuro.... or like how I have it above. Malenthropes are a nice compromise, combining synapse and spore clouds with more durability, but I don't have any of those yet.

Splitting the Venomthropes gives more Spore Cloud coverage. Splitting the Zoanthropes gives more Synapse and Psychic dice. I suppose I have enough overlapping Synapse, so really the only advantage is the Psychic dice. You're probably right, I should just take 2 units of Venomthropes.

I threw in the gargoyles because I like how they look and the Blind attack can surprise people. They might be ignored. I'll leave them in for now but if they perform too poorly I'll get rid of them in favor of more something.

Edit: I've made the change to the Elite slots in the OP to split the Venomthropes and combine the Zoanthropes.

Always nice to see another endless swarm list! Interestingly your list here looks pretty similar to my own when I started out.

So, first things first, your elites. For endless swarm, malanthropes are your bread and butter. They bring resilient synapse and a shrouded bubble for your gaunts for a bargain pricetag. Personally I wouldn't leave home without at least two when running the swarm. If you have trouble getting the model, google malanthrope conversions - people have done a lot of inventive and effective ones. Venoms are good but mals are better, and zoans, whilst handy for anti-tank, don't synergise with the list enormously well.

For your HQs you have a bit of a decision to make. Whilst in casual games one single flyrant and one single tervigon is fine, in more competitive games a single one of either of these isn't going to have much impact - the enemy will down it very quickly. The more traditional Nid route is to spam flyrants (up to 6!!), but here a max of three could be taken (more on where the points could come from later) with a hive fleet detachment. These guys would give you some awesome firepower and if you take electroshock grubs (hint: you should) a way to deal with high AV. But if your group is more casual, flyrant spam is not going to win you friends and moreover, it's quite dull. So the other option is go the whole hog on tervigons, running 2-3 - each with egrubs and probably crushing claws to take out things like drop pods. Obviously this accentuates the swarm theme. Whichever way you go you're using a similar principle of redundancy - if one of these things dies, its fine cos you have backups,

For your troops, I would not use warriors. They are slow, very vulnerable to str8 instant deaths and expensive. Deepstriking ripper swarms in a CAD or mucolid spores for bargain basement troops are way better options and will save a ton of points. If you add malanthropes, your synapse should still be fine.

Fast attack, raveners are similar to warriors - too easily killed for what they bring, and thats especially the case here, where they are by far the obvious target out of your army as they rush out ahead. I'd drop them entirely. The gargoyles are a bit more iffy - personally I don't think they fit too well with the endless swarm - the enemy will kill the faster, non-respawning gargs preferentially, but they're not dreadfull in there.

Other things to consider are a bastion/bunker with an escape hatch - your respawning units can embark in this and catapult the,selves into forward positions on the board. So it serves a similar function to the trygon hole, but is more reliable. you could also consider a comms relay to get your trygon in more effectively (useful if you're deepstriking rippers, or gargoyles too).

As for the swarm itself, you are ofc forced to take warriors. Again though I wouldn't kit them out for melee, a single barbed strangler will let the, sit back on an objective providing synapse support. Some RC can allow em to have a go at a drop pod at a push, but no need to go for AG. The gaunts, Its always a bit of a dillemna as to whether to go for more bodies or upgrades, or neither. Personally, I have plans to run 2x barebones endless swarms to just overwhelm the foe in bodies, but devourers are very good and being able to glance transport rear armour is handy with hormas. I'd say think about putting some normal termas in to act as ablative wounds for the valuable devourers, and also try the hormas bare, or even with poison, or with a mix. A 20-strong squad popping out of an escape hatch is a nasty threat to deal with!

Hope the above helps!

Thanks for your input. It's very insightful into the competitive scene for Tyranids.

I do have Rippers I can use for Troops. I only chose Warriors because I wanted to see if 'synapse saturation' was a thing. Maybe my opponent will decide their Str 8 is better used on the bigger creatures, or the venoms or the zoanthropes or the raveners (turns out I have a lot of multi-wound T 4 units, lol), allowing my Warriors to use Fleet aggressively to engage in melee with all the hormagaunts. I kept the Warriors as cheap as possible and still be effective in melee. However, your advice is very good and I'll look into it when I can get Malenthropes. I especially like the bunker idea to supplement the Trygon tunnel.

This Thursday is my first go at the local shop in a long time. I know no one there and I have no idea how casual or competitive the scene will be. Fearing that I'll scare people out of games, I chose not to bring my more competitive Eldar or Necrons. I built the Tyranids entirely to be non-competitive but still a contender to win games and more importantly to be fun to play with and against. I think in the future I'll acquire another Tervigon and more Termagants to replace the Hive Tyrant. Then I'll look into 2 Malenthropes to replace the Venomthropes. I'll probably still use 1 brood of Zoanthropes with a Neurothrope. Then I can play with using Rippers instead of Warriors for Troop choices since all 3 elites slots will have synapse.

Another thing I might work towards is acquiring enough Gargoyles to make the Formation with a Flying HT and 2 units of Gargoyles (I forget the name). That formation plus an Endless Swarm formation would be the extreme of the swarm list I think. I'll have to get really good at moving units quickly to fit a game into a single evening though, lol.

There are a couple routes you can go with this as far as things to supplement the endless swarm, and the details of how you approach them are just that - details. Right now you're kind of between two of them.
One option is synapse overload - Put enough targets out there that the enemy cannot possibly cripple everything (without incredibly lucky rolls or some extra cheese on that pizza) by the time at least some of your army reaches assault range. Load up two gun-Tyrants with guard, as many thropes of your choice as you can, and full in with warriors. You'll need some shooty options, so maybe some ranged-oriented warriors or a dakkafex.

Another option is deepstrike/infiltrate harassment to cover the advance. Lictors, Flyrants, Gargoyles, anything that can be a nuisance turn 1 or a problem turn 2 is where you go here.

General note:
You can throw one Barbed Strangler (or bio weapon of your choice) on one warrior in a brood of 3 without crippling your melee capability - this instantly turns them into back-leading, objective-camping monsters. If two warriors have talons and rending claws, no one's going to charge them.

Zimko wrote:

Another thing I might work towards is acquiring enough Gargoyles to make the Formation with a Flying HT and 2 units of Gargoyles (I forget the name). That formation plus an Endless Swarm formation would be the extreme of the swarm list I think. I'll have to get really good at moving units quickly to fit a game into a single evening though, lol.

What I tend to see in opponents is the time spent actually moving the units is less than the time spent deciding where to move them - just have a pretty good idea on the movements you'll make by the time your turn hits and you'll be fine.

I like the synapse saturation idea better than the deep strike idea. It gives me more room to maneuver the swarm since they don't have to worry as much about stringing back to a bubble of synapse.

I've thought about dakkafexes and I really like the way they look. They will also be handy for killing drop pods. That's another future investment I will probably take. The tyranids I have now have been repurposed from my old tyranids army from 3rd edition... when they invented rending. That's why I have so many Warriors with Rending claws since back then rending was new and more powerful than it is today. (They also had wings back in the day but I took those off because they looked like crap). If I purchase new warriors then I will build them as ranged Warriors to supplement all the melee ones. At least their models haven't changed much so after some paint they won't look any different from the older models.

You can totally still do the Deepstrike harassment while maintaining enough Synapse to keep your swarm going, it's just going to rely on the success of your deepstriking harassment units. If your opponent can ignore them or kill them and STILL go after your swarm synapse units, you're in trouble. If you wanted to go that route, you might split the Thropes into as many separate units as possible and make sure they're in cover and near a Venomthrope, same with your Endless Swarm warriors (which you might want to kit out with ranged weaponry and play more conservatively with).

I'd provide some lists to show you what I mean, but I don't have Battlescribe here at work so...

(OP here) Here's a possible Deep Strike focused Swarm List that is a bit more competitive.

Combined Arms Detachment 1 (Primary)

HQ
1x Tervigon w/ Crushing Claws and E. Grubs - 220

Elites
1x Malanthrope - 85
1x Malanthrope - 85

Troops
3x Ripper Swarms w/ Deep Strike - 45
3x Ripper Swarms w/ Deep Strike - 45

Heavy Support
1x Trygon Prime - 230

Combined Arms Detachment 2

HQ
1x Tervigon w/ Crushing Claws - 210

Elites
1x Zoanthrope - 50
1x Zoanthrope - 50
1x Zoanthrope - 50

Troops
3x Ripper Swarms w/ Deep Strike - 45
3x Ripper Swarms w/ Deep Strike - 45

Heavy Support
1x Mawloc - 140
1x Mawloc - 140

Endless Swarm Formation
3x Warriors w/ 1 Barbed Strangler and 2 Rending Claws - 110
10x Hormagaunts w/ Adrenal Glands - 70
10x Hormagaunts w/ Adrenal Glands - 70
10x Hormagaunts w/ Adrenal Glands - 70
10x Termagants w/ Devourers - 80
10x Termagants w/ Devourers - 80
10x Termagants w/ Devourers - 80

3 big creatures and 4 ripper broods Deep Strike. Everything else supports the swarm. The two Tervigons both have Crushing Claws for Drop Pod removal. The Zoanthropes can Warp Blast them in a pinch. The Mawlocs can kill tough 2+ or invis units. The Endless Swarm still has a Trygon tunnel to use to get back into the action, but now with more Deep Strikers that can help keep the tunnel open. (preventing a Rhino or some such from sitting on the hole.) There are 9 sources of synapse and 2 sources of spore cloud. And there's 8 psychic dice.

 Zimko wrote:
(OP here) Here's a possible Deep Strike focused Swarm List that is a bit more competitive.

Combined Arms Detachment 1 (Primary)

HQ
1x Tervigon w/ Crushing Claws and E. Grubs - 220

Elites
1x Malanthrope - 85
1x Malanthrope - 85

Troops
3x Ripper Swarms w/ Deep Strike - 45
3x Ripper Swarms w/ Deep Strike - 45

Heavy Support
1x Trygon Prime - 230

Combined Arms Detachment 2

HQ
1x Tervigon w/ Crushing Claws - 210

Elites
1x Zoanthrope - 50
1x Zoanthrope - 50
1x Zoanthrope - 50

Troops
3x Ripper Swarms w/ Deep Strike - 45
3x Ripper Swarms w/ Deep Strike - 45

Heavy Support
1x Mawloc - 140
1x Mawloc - 140

Endless Swarm Formation
3x Warriors w/ 1 Barbed Strangler and 2 Rending Claws - 110
10x Hormagaunts w/ Adrenal Glands - 70
10x Hormagaunts w/ Adrenal Glands - 70
10x Hormagaunts w/ Adrenal Glands - 70
10x Termagants w/ Devourers - 80
10x Termagants w/ Devourers - 80
10x Termagants w/ Devourers - 80

3 big creatures and 4 ripper broods Deep Strike. Everything else supports the swarm. The two Tervigons both have Crushing Claws for Drop Pod removal. The Zoanthropes can Warp Blast them in a pinch. The Mawlocs can kill tough 2+ or invis units. The Endless Swarm still has a Trygon tunnel to use to get back into the action, but now with more Deep Strikers that can help keep the tunnel open. (preventing a Rhino or some such from sitting on the hole.) There are 9 sources of synapse and 2 sources of spore cloud. And there's 8 psychic dice.

Looks a pretty solid list tbh! The one thing I'd definitely do, with so much deepstriking, is add a fortification with a comms relay so you can get your reserves in (or indeed out) more reliably. Either an Aegis to save points, or if you can find 30 more, try out the bunker with escape hatch.

I played a game with a 1500 point version of the OP list. See the battle report here.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/702659.page

The venomthropes didn't survive long but were definitely worthwhile. If there were Malanthropes then they would have been much harder to take out.

I ended up needing every bit of synapse in the list. By the end of the game, only 1 brood of Warriors and the Trygon remained of my synapse.

the second list seems more viable to me. If your one trigon in the first list mishaps on deepstrike... it will suck.

WikkedTiki wrote:
the second list seems more viable to me. If your one trigon in the first list mishaps on deepstrike... it will suck.

As long as I avoid the table edge, it shouldn't mishap. They have a special rule similar to Drop Pods to avoid enemy units.