Tyrannocyte loadout

[shrike]

how do you guys run your pods? With deathspitters or bio cannons? Are the 25pt upgrades upgrades worth it?

[Joe the Ripper]

I would keep them cheap. They're not true TMCs with the same durability as a tyrant or tervigon. With T5, S10 attacks with double them out and rendering their 6 wound count irrelevant. Bolters are wounding on 5s, plasma still on 2s. I would treat them as a durable throw away blocking unit after they deliver their cargo. They got a good foot print to block vehicles and other large base models. Point will probably be better spent elsewhere.

[doomreaper9]

It depends on the point level. For me if it's less than 2k then one or two is enough at base cost. Now if it's more than 2k two or four them is what I would take with maybe one of them upgraded.

[gigasnail]

deathspitters.

[hiveminded]

I run them with bio-cannons. Five blasts/large blasts for 25 points is just too good to pass up.

[gigasnail]

until they start killing your own troops. that's not a privilege i'm going to pay for.

[hiveminded]

I haven't had that pleasure yet. I've had them be a real pain in the ass for my opponents though, usually forcing my opponent to divert resources to deal with the tyranocyte. I've been using them to pod MCs, so even if a blast does scatter poorly, it's maybe 1 wound. Also, you can position the blast marker on the far side of the enemy unit, to minimize the chances of hitting your own models.

On the other hand, if I were transporting 20 devgants, I'd probably take spitters.

I should note that in my area, we play it such that all five of the tyranocyte guns fire at the same target, not the vehicle arc firing thing that some people do. The bio-cannons are nasty when they're all firing at the same target.

[gigasnail]

yeah, using them with the rules as written makes them a lot more usable.

sadly...we're not all in that boat.

[N.I.B.]

Deathspitters. For 3 Venom Cannon upgrades you can buy another T-cyte.

[mattblowers]

RAW: five S4 large blasts are hard to pass up. This dumbass interpretation of making MC weapons hull mounted is possibly the lamest thing I've ever heard.

[almostmercury]

Well, they're Barbed Stranglers, not Stranglethorn Cannons (so not S6 Large Blast). But I agree.

[mattblowers]

Derp on my end.

[majoranubis]

The way I see it, they are not vehicles (we do not have any vehicles in our entire army). They are MC and are treated as such for shooting (can fire in a 360 degree arc no matter what way they are facing, just like our FMC can). I never understood what was so hard about it. MC can fire all of their weapons in any direction. A Tyrannocyte is a MC so follows said rules.

[bronyzro]

Yeah, kinda obvious that whoever wrote that particular rule wasn't an experienced Nid player.

[shrike]

Well that particular ruling makes sense to me. 5 blasts or 15 shots seem a little too powerful IMO. That 75-100 point pod will have more firepower than a squad of warriors. Makes sense to me that the restrictions make it so that you can really only get 2-3 shots in per unit as MCs can only fire 2 guns