Friday, March 11, 2011

Tyranids old school is new school

My tournament list through all of 2009 and the begining of 2010 with the old tyranid book was a nightmare for any army.  It went litterally undefeated in GT's for the entire year.  It won me 2nd overall at necronomicon (which I only lost because of my comp score), and it won me 2nd best general at mechanicon.  I even managed to draw against Rob Baer's leaf blower guard back when leaf blower was new and hot shit. 

The list was basically 2 dakka tyrants with some guard, 3 dakka fexes, 3 gun fexes to supress tanks, some out flanking stealers to keep people from deploying in the corners, and some WON gaunts to be a shield then come bak to be objectives.  It had 43 T6 wounds, and pumped out 48 S6 shots a turn.  In combat it was 8 monsterous creaturesas well.  It was truely my nastiet abomination to date.

What can we do with nids now?

Well for starters we can go for swarmlord or a dakka tyrant.  Both have their pros and cons.  Dakka tyrant adds dakka and gives everything preffered enemy which is really nice.  Swarmlord answers all of those death stars and mephiston that are just a pain in the ass.  He's also more of a tool box being that he can give furious charge or prefered enemy to any unit when I need it. 

We dont get dakka fexes for elites but we do get hive guard.  Hive guard are a good substitute for those gun fexes that we used to run.  And in heavies we can load up and take 3 dakkafexes.  Fro troops we can still get some outflanking stealers, for even less points!  And are standard gaunt screens.  Now they dont have WON but what we do have is tervigons!  They make even more gaunts which is better than WON I'd say.

So lets see what we can do with all of this.

HQ
Swarmlord 280
Guard- lash whips 65

Elites
2 Hive Guard 100
2 Hive Guard 100
2 Hive Guard 100

Troops
10 Gaunts 50
10 Gaunts 50
5 Stealers 70
5 Stealers 70
Tervigon- AG TS Catalyst 195
Tervigon- AG TS Catalyst 195

Heavy
Carnifex- 2 Twin linked devourers 190
Carnifex- 2 Twin linked devourers 190
Carnifex- 2 Twin linked devourers 190

1845

So what do we have here compared to the old list?  44 T6 wounds, 36 S 6 shots, 12 S8 shots, and a swarmlord some FNP from the tervies, and some gaunts spawnage for even more killyness.  Also the devourers can mess up some rhinos and razorbacks, or shake some hydras, chimeras,  manticores, and vendettas.  They can also really mess with dark eldar.

Thoughts?

8 comments:

  1. Interesting; necromance an old list. On the shooting level, IMHO the new list is better because 12 S8 shots is better than old venom cannon or mass devourers stun against tank spam. Old dakka fex have better BS, so 8 shots compare to the new 12 shots with BS 3 is it about the same.

    Assault level; the old list feels better. While swarmy is pure badass, but the old list have more MC with higher str on the assault. Even when they focus down a MC from the old list, you have more to back up on the assault, but the new list, after they focus down or weaken swarmy, your assault force end up much weaker than the old list. Of course, I can't overlook poison + FC gaunts. Those things won me so much games in objective missions.

    Tervigon in assault is rather funny. It tide up 20 Orks boys with the Tervigon with FNP, his power klaw is not doing so well. He was only able to manage 2 wounds per turn. Pop some gaunts, give them FNP, counter charge, won't the assault. I don't remember my old dakka fex ever manage to kill 20 ork boys by itself.

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  2. It's deffinitely got potential as an army. I tested it today but about half way through my game I received some really emotionally disturbing news that I'd rather not get into here. But, I was completely unable to focus or have any desire to contine playing. I do recall a point in the game in fact where my opponent told me to take 2 armor saves and I was unable to pick up my dice...

    I played like crap from there on and had no fun whatsoever. None of which was my opponents fault, so I have to give him credit. I do think however that a unit of ymgarls is completely necessary to make this army work.

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  3. One important missing detail from the old bugs is the psychic choir... That was just plain nasty nasty .

    G

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  4. I never ran psychic choir. I mean obviously it worked and it was worthwhile to run. Just saying I was more than successful without it so I don't feel like I'm losing too much.

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  5. The Swarmlord certainly gives it a nice close combat punch. I was wondering though about dropping a Tervigon and going with a pair of Dakka-rants with Old Adversary and one guard each?

    60 Str 6 shots from five monsters puts it about on par with the old lists shooting.

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  6. Played a test game aganst space wolves with 19 missles, 10 wolf guard termies, and jaws. I just wanted to see if I could hold my own and put up a fight against it. I really couldn't. I think by the end of his turn 6 I was tabled, and I had only killed a rhino, 3 units of grey hunters, 1 long fang squad, he still had about 8oo points left. I think to properly run tyranids I need to adopt more of a horde style build which relies less on monsterous creatures.

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  7. Missile spam is why I usually go with T-fex for my Heavy support and a Gargoyle screen for cover saves. Jaws of course just makes it worse.

    Of course anything you do to mitigate the missiles turns it into not the old list.

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