Viability of a swarm list

[shrike]

hey guys, thinking bout playing a swarm list. Not necessarily endless swarm. Perhaps just one that uses a hive fleet detachment for the 9 troop slots.

Hoping to get around 120 Gants on the board at least. Can you guys give me an idea how this might stack up against other armies?

[eskimo]

Depends on what models you use. Flamers are a pain as they ignore the Venom's cover. For objective they are good. Opponents who have little mass fire end up wasting high strength weapons on Gaunts as the synapse is out of LOS and dislike being tied up in assault despite not being a killy threat. It can take forever to play though. Flyers can be ignored as you can prevent them moving through sheer board domination and takes can't move where they like.

Feed the enemy Gaunts all game while you seize the objectives, as per the fluff
Just remember to protect the synapse with surrounding models and using LOS blocking terrain.

[gigasnail]

Large swarm lists suffer from a couple of issues aside from the obvious blasts problem. Being S3 means they can't hurt mech unless you pay for expensive upgrades. The time it takes to play/move this army also counts against it.

If you're just looking for board control and don't have to worry about time constraints and there are no tau, SM, eldar, or AM players in your area, things look a lot better (go ahead, dig out 4-6 30 wound fearless blocks of gribblies out of their 2+ cover, it'll be a minute).

The issue is that most areas are going to have common bad match ups just in casual play, not even taking the tourney time constraints into account (whi CH you may or may not care about).

You can give certain builds and many casual lists absolute fits though.

[yoritomo]

You should do fine. In almost 20 years of playing tyranids I've never lost a game where I've taken 100 gaunts.

While IG is a pretty bad match up it isn't hopeless. And I'd dispute how bad a game against space marines or tau would be. The simple fact is that most armies just aren't prepared to deal with that amount of bodies. There are a lot of armies out there that are focusing the weapons they take to either high strength (for vehicles) or low Ap (for MEQ), both of these are wasted on a gaunt.

Gigasnail is correct that you won't be able to touch many units your opponent can field. The answer to this is to play the mission above all else. You'll be fine in anything but kill point missions and do much better in malestrom missions where your gaunts can score on multiple turns.

I actually find the biggest weakness a swarm list has is that it is weak in assault. Any model that is better than a guardsman will destroy a unit of gaunts. It doesn't hurt to have a unit or two around your gaunts to counter assault any units that try and charge your gaunts.

[shrike]

Feb 13, 2015 23:19:33 GMT gigasnail said:

Large swarm lists suffer from a couple of issues aside from the obvious blasts problem. Being S3 means they can't hurt mech unless you pay for expensive upgrades. The time it takes to play/move this army also counts against it.

If you're just looking for board control and don't have to worry about time constraints and there are no tau, SM, eldar, or AM players in your area, things look a lot better (go ahead, dig out 4-6 30 wound fearless blocks of gribblies out of their 2+ cover, it'll be a minute).

The issue is that most areas are going to have common bad match ups just in casual play, not even taking the tourney time constraints into account (whi CH you may or may not care about).

You can give certain builds and many casual lists absolute fits though.

With hive fleet detachment, I'm looking to field 3 flyrants and those pretty much handle most things that the swarms can't right? Also planning to field Tyrannofex in a pod to deal with backfield shooting armies like tau and IG.

Think that works well?

[gigasnail]

it could. maybe? run it and see. i'm not a fan of the swarm armies because they are hard countered by things i see commonly, because they lack punch, and they take too long to move/play. there are a lot of things they can handle (especially new players/softer/casual lists) though.

give it a run.

[yoritomo]

I agree, give it a try.

Even if you lose you're going to learn some important lessons. The first is how to move your models quickly. It may take a while, but after a few games you'll pick it up. You'll also learn how to space out your models, preferably by sight alone. If you can't space out your models then you're going to take too many casualties from things like thud guns and pie plates (5" blasts). And I don't want to think of the apoc blast *shudder* Lastly you'll learn what it feels like to pick up models. Lots and lots of models. You will pick up enough models to become desensitized to their deaths. And one day you'll be shocked to see that you've picked up just about every model you played and still won the game (or almost won). That is a great feeling.

[doomreaper9]

If I had to decide on a shooty big bug to hit the enemy's back fire support it would be the Exocrine instead of the Tyrannifex. I rather have 6 shots then just 2 shots at a the same BS of 3. Not only that the Exocrine is a lot cheaper to field.

[yowster12]

Feb 14, 2015 14:05:58 GMT doomreaper9 said:

If I had to decide on a shooty big bug to hit the enemy's back fire support it would be the Exocrine instead of the Tyrannifex. I rather have 6 shots then just 2 shots at a the same BS of 3. Not only that the Exocrine is a lot cheaper to field.

He is talking about Acid Spray Tfex who can clear squads of almost any xenos army infantry and Guardsmen and being template ignores cover.

[doomreaper9]

Oh ok didn't realize. I thought he was taking a ruptured cannon.

[eskimo]

Unless playing 2k points, 3 Flyrants, Tfex, pod and extra synapse i think you could be running short on points to warrant a swarm of any threat, game wise. But that's just me ofc.

[gigasnail]

^you need a core to do the heavy lifting no matter what kind of list you have.

[Herbiithrope]

Love the visual. The only deterant is painting that many bullets, er bodies. The Template-fex is a great idea. Maybe imbed a Prime for fixed synapse, just bounce him from group to group as needed.

[shrike]

Feb 14, 2015 19:18:01 GMT eskimo said:

Unless playing 2k points, 3 Flyrants, Tfex, pod and extra synapse i think you could be running short on points to warrant a swarm of any threat, game wise. But that's just me ofc.

I'll be playing 1850 and yeah I am worried about synapse. But with hive fleet detachment's rerollable IB's I think it should mitigate it a bit. Are the flyrants not enough you think?

[shrike]

Feb 15, 2015 5:41:01 GMT Herbiithrope said:

Love the visual. The only deterant is painting that many bullets, er bodies. The Template-fex is a great idea. Maybe imbed a Prime for fixed synapse, just bounce him from group to group as needed.

Sounds Good but is that worth dropping a hive tyrant for?