Tyranid Vanguard Swarm: Sedition and Subversion - 1850

[voraciousapathy]

This is an experimental army, created ALMOST entirely out of Formations, which is Battleforged and legal, and aims to render expensive Deathstars, Knight Spam, and silly nonsense like Farsight Suitspam and Riptides incredibly inefficient by giving them absolutely no useful targets to shoot at. It is certainly not unbeatable, but it is an entirely close-combat army which can, in fact, challenge fully-invested shooty armies by saturating the board with cheap, deadly targets, and incredible mobility. It is also quite potent against aircrafts, by giving them no safe locations to fly through, no expensive air units to target, and no expensive ground forces to pick on. Nothing is Fearless, and can Go to Ground, and everything which cannot Hit and Run is expendable, or expendable AND Shrouded.

Spore mines deepstrike and respawn when they blow up, and can be guided in Deathleaper, who can Infiltrate or Deepstrike. Spore mines and Mucolids are aimed at assaulting WITH Genestealers, in order to soak up Overwatch with Shrouded and 3 wounds -- if they don't die, they nuke the enemy unit with S8AP3 Ignores Cover Large Blasts, or S4AP4 Ignores Cover Large Blasts, and if they do die, the Genestealers charging in probably won't... and once they ARE locked in, more Mines simply deepstrike in after respawning and returning automatically from Ongoing Reserves, and file into protracted combats, one by one. Boom, boom, boom.

That's right -- you can "shoot" into close combats with this army. Sporemines can target softer models like Kroot and Fire Warriors, while Mucolids can help with Suits and Marines... and, of course, any airplanes or FMCs who happen to wander too close to the areas you're working on. They aren't safe in the air.

_____________

HQ:

Deathleaper: 130

TROOPS:

3 x Rippers: 45
*Deepstrike, Objective Secured

3 x Rippers: 45
*Deepstrike, Objective Secured

Mucolid Spore x 1: 15

Mucolid Spore x 1: 15

FORMATIONS:

Manufactorum Genestealer Brood x 3: 350 x 3 (1050)

5 x 5 Genestealers
(Hit and Run, Can Infiltrate within 6'' if in a ruin, even if visible to enemy units)

5 x 5 Genestealers
(Hit and Run, Can Infiltrate within 6'' if in a ruin, even if visible to enemy units)

5 x 5 Genestealers
(Hit and Run, Can Infiltrate within 6'' if in a ruin, even if visible to enemy units)

Sporefield Formation x 6: 90 (540)
One Formation Contains:

3 x Sporemine x 3

3 x Mucolid x 1

(All models give up no Victory Points. Cannot Deny. They Deepstrike, or Infiltrate. Each individual mine respawns on a 4+, move 3'' a turn but are never slowed by terrain, and cut run and charge distances in half. Mucolids can assault Fliers.)

_________________________

1840, 56 separate units for enemies to target, and none of them cost more than 70 points besides Deathleaper. The majority of the army is made up of 15 point respawning bombs.

Deathleaper can be innocuous somewhere, and guide in some Rippers.

Let's hear some feedback.

[Yautja]

I like it just because it looks so different. Have you the models to try it?

[voraciousapathy]

I have all 75 Genestealers, and enough Sporemines. I'll convert some golfballs into Mucolids with Greenstuff, and buy up a few Lictors after I proxy it.

Looks like a ton of fun to try out, so I'll be playing it for awhile.

[gigasnail]

the good:

all-in MSU. no need for synapse. no clear target priority decisions aside from 'shoot what's closest first.'

the bad:

no ability to kill anything outside of CC. lot of board control/scoring, but no ObSec (which may, or may not, matter at all). good initial positioning with infiltrators galore, but no mobility afterwards/all footslogging. relies on cover saves and just having too many units to kill to make it, but a pair of wyvern squadrons will ruin this list.

try it, see how it rolls. just having this many units to deal with will ruin a lot of people's day.

[voraciousapathy]

Know what kills Wyverns? Lictors.

AND, the army looks immobile, but remember, everything in it has Hit and Run and Initiative 6.. and, of course, Fleet for run rolls.

[gigasnail]

not when they're deployed and protected properly.

[jifel]

It's quite a fun idea, but I must regretfully inform you that 7 sporefields costs 630 points, not 420... The sporefield costs 90 points base not 60. Still, it's a rather fun idea, but it will suffer from a noticeable lack of anti-flyer combined with no Objective secured.

[auretioustaak]

Jan 11, 2015 23:40:40 GMT jifel said:

It's quite a fun idea  but it will suffer from a noticeable lack of anti-flyer

Mucolids can hit air. All the Lictors have Flesh Hooks which are strength 6, whilst the lictors aren't the best the mucolids however are pretty brutal.

voracious Apathy,
I read the intro through before seeing the list (obviously) and was expecting at least one endless swarm and some minimal synapse caddies when you mentioned a swarm of targets. But at 1850pts, your opponent has clear targets - the spores are a pain, but you wipe the lictors then genestealers and the army suddenly becomes much more manageable and much less of a beat stick due to the hugely increased predictability of the force. Regardless, I am very curious to see how the force plays out. I've 120+ genestealers here and was fiddling with a stealer spam army myself so am curious.

[gigasnail]

well, they *can* hit flyers, but realistically they're not going to. it's the threat/area denial that makes them worth it.

[valdrog]

Flier gotta land somewhere, this could pretty much cover the whole table , not allowing a flier to be placed anywhere.

[gigasnail]

People say this and I've never seen it happen.

[arapaima]

Interesting list, I like to see some batreps from this list

[gigasnail]

^definitely

[auretioustaak]

Jan 12, 2015 4:10:24 GMT gigasnail said:

People say this and I've never seen it happen.

Well voraciousapathy has apparently done it with his sea of blades lists in tournament play iirc, so there ya go. There's not enough models in this army to reliably do it though.

[gigasnail]

ok let me clarify: i've never seen it done in person with a list someone reasonably expected to play, as opposed to 'lol i have 300 boyz.' VA's group was also using double FOC at the time iirc, which few were doing then. you just don't often see real hordes played, for a lot of reasons.

i agree w/ you, there's probably not enough models to really do that here. however, you don't really have to make it so that the flyer can't land, you just make it awkward/difficult for them to land and *do* anything worthwhile/get good firing arcs on anything they'll care about shooting.