Tervigon the Ultimate 'Nid unit?

[coredump]

the terv has always been a powerful and useful model. But I just never liked it, and almost never ran it.

I really like its new incarnation, and will gladly run one or two in my lists.

[doberman]

Hating the Tervigon because it is used often? Really? LOL, thats the dumbest reason yet. Better stop using Termgaunts, hive guard and anything else useful.

[romorini]

Jul 15, 2012 13:17:10 GMT TheContortionist said:

i've always loved tervigons. they are shes not hes. all tryranid are girls actually.

Fluffy side-note:

I think the Hive Tyrant is the only explicit exception. They are the same 'sub-species' as the Dominatrix, with Tyrants being a group of tiny males tending to/directed by a much larger female.

On topic:

Tervigons are powerful units, they can open up a whole flank all on their own (with decent spawn rolls), and if you don't want to deal with the questions Onslaught creates, you can still dip into the psychic power chart of your choice with two rolls on the chart. On top of that, it's still a fairly nasty monstrous creature.

The problem many be that's it's not as good an MC as a Trygon, as good a hive leader as a Tyrant, or produce as good a swarm as what you can buy from the FOC. We don't have many generalists in our codex, so I think that is what throws people off.

[Psychichobo]

What threw most people off was the fact that they never saw the use of a tonne of gaunts spawned from a weak fat MC. Eventually, more and more people began to realise that the Terv is actually rather brutal in CC, as are the gaunts it produces. A lot of people just didn't know how to use it properly. Same with Tyrannofex, people just sat him back firing his cannon and wasting 3/4 of his points.

[nurglitch]

Contrary to popular belief, I didn't rate the Tervigon highly because it was a liability, rather than because it was popular. That said I thought that the reason the Tyranids had become popularly considered un-competitive was, in part, a result of so many armies using Tervigons. The combination of Brood Primogenitor (requiring 6" between Termagants, both for bonuses such as Counter-Attack, Ld10, Adrenal Glands and Toxin Sacs, and the penalty when it died, and often both in the same Assault phase) and Fearless made sure that creating Termagants exposed the Tervigon.

Now that No Retreat is gone, and the beautiful new model released, creating Termagants is no longer a bad risk, and the Tervigon benefits from a host of new Monstrous Creature effects such as Hammer of Wrath, Fear, Smash, and so on. I also think that the new edition rules favour the existing Tervigon psychic powers over the random ones that can be rolled on the psychic discipline tables.

[Space is pretty big]

So I guess this makes the Tervigon super man? Undisputedly one of the most effective characters, yet everyone hates him because of how dull he is XD.

[zephoid]

I hate tervigon fluff and i have expressed my absolute disgust many times. I find it worse than BA-necrons brofest or Drago waltzing in the warp. It is an incredibly inefficient unit in an army that is build on being as efficient as possible. You are literally putting your factories on the front line to be bombed or taken out by tanks. Where is the logic in that? It's also somehow the psychic commander even though the hive TYRANT is supposed to be the commander and the hub of synapse. Also, it got rid of the one thing that DID make sense: endless swarm. That was a great rule that really had use in larger games.

In game, i LOVED fighting against tervigons. Fearless meant that one good charge could kill half an army between brood progenitor and fearless. without the charge bonus, gaunts were not much of a threat. Without fearless they become much, much stronger. Being eldar i still dont fear them at all and i can pick them off at range pretty easily with warp hunters, nightwings, fire dragons, and war walkers.

[nurglitch]

Tervigons aren't factories. They're pre-loaded with Termagants, with the intention of conserving biomass until it needed to be deployed. It's a 'swarm in a bottle'.

Sometimes I think that the whole spawning thing was originally a sop to those of us with a metric ton of Battle for Macragge Termagants, although one lucky guy I know has the much smaller plastic 2nd edition Termagants, which represent the Tervigon-deployed Termagants pretty well.

But yeah, it's been stiffened in close combat, and still vulnerable to something shooting it up.

[zephoid]

The problem with "swarm in a bottle" is that it cant conserve biomass. You spent so much biomass to create the tervigon that it would just be better to create more termagaunts. Also, you are putting all your eggs in one basket. I wonder what air strikes will be targeting... not the small termigaunts that blend in with cover and are pretty small targets, but the huge MC that wanders around the field and happens to be with 100+ termagaunts. It really is not a benefit at all. The point of the swarm is that it doesnt matter if you kill one creature as there are 1000 more where it came from. With the tervigon you are actually able to put a pretty big dent in local forces by killing a few of them. The swarm is supposed to have flexibility, not spam one creature all over the board and just wander into them continuously.

[nurglitch]

So is your problem that the unit doesn't match your expectations of the background? I like to think of Tyranids as lovecraftian aliens, with individual models just the parts of the Tyranid super-organism that interacts with the matter in our locality. The notion of the Swarmlord being to a Hive Tyrant what the Hive Tyrant is to a Termagant seems right when you think of them as only partially extruded into the material universe. Much like the quotes in the Necronomicon speak of the Great Old Ones and their relation to Cthulhu, both mostly at right angles to the normal world, but generally in exclusive directions.

Because, both in ficton and gamewise, that Tervigon is going to require a different kind of weapon from what will sweep up hordes of Termagants. I expect a proliferation of template weapons to combat a surge in Fearless hordes. Have you seen what Imperial Guard Platoons can do? And Ork Shoota Mobs?

The Tervigon is a Tyranid transport vehicle, nothing much else, at least beyond the Imperial Guard Chimera functioning as a command and control node as well as ferrying the endless wave of Imperial Guardsmen into combat.

[alamomelt]

Jul 15, 2012 8:44:11 GMT Space is pretty big said:

Next you take away some of the issues that he faced in 5th.
He can get cover now from units like Warriors, who in turn can get cover from gaunts. He no longer spawns Kill points (usually.)

Where is this cover change? We've missed this completely in my group's reading of the rules.

[coredump]

MCs are now treated as infantry, not vehicles. So any 25% cover will do, including between intervening models. Also, area terrain works.

[maeloke]

Jul 15, 2012 18:05:59 GMT Space is pretty big said:

Hehe carful guys, if you keep hating the Tervigon because of how commonly it's used, you're going to become Tyranid Hipsters!

Sippin' Moka-screechos at Claw-bucks while Typin' on Krakin'-book pros.

Damn. You got me. I am *such* a tyranid hipster.

The fluff of the tervigon isn't *that* bad. I like that it gives opportunity to play the whole endless swarm strategy while trying to maintain game balance... I just think it's just an unfortunate model, and the strategies that have evolved around it make for really mechanistic, non-fluffy gameplay.

Nids should be a chaotic assaulting swarm, not a terrain-squatting, unit-stacking parade of linear formations. Moreover, why does our most effective mass-buff and utility critter only improve one type of troop? Why wouldn't the swarm produce similar creatures for all their broods - or better still, just improve all of them at once? That's what synapse is supposed to accomplish.

Anyhow, I'm still not playing 'em. Maybe I'll make up some house rules for a Horvigon to play with friends. If they go for it, I'm definitely sculpting my own model...

[zephoid]

Hormies have, and always will (NO! bad Ward!) be egg laying. This makes them much, much harder to kill since hormies burrow. Individuals can burrow, lay eggs, and days later more hormies rush over areas that were thought cleared. This is how all gaunts should reproduce. Either be spawned on the surface by birthing structures WELL behind enemy lines, dropped in from spore pods, or spawned from eggs on the lines.

Nids are about efficiency. Destroy worlds, harvest the biomass, move to the next. They are a doomsday machine set in motion. If you have read the novel Revalation Space or Pandora's star its a bit of a hybrid of those two. Either set in motion by some race long gone or a genetic culmination of a species that outgrew its own system.A Hive mind based organization allows Tyranids to be incredibly hard to kill, have a distributed thought processing network, and coordinate far more effectively than any general. To that extent, the Hive Tyrant is a decision making unit. Because of the nature of cluster processing, you need one location to culminate all information from a large area to be able finally complete the thought process. Thats why hive tyrants, and ultimately the swarmlord, are so important. However, they are not essential to the operation of the hive, they simply organize smaller clusters of decisions. If the swarmlord dies, the hive tyrants make decisions on their own. If a tyrant dies, the warriors or zoanthropes take over. Even location based synapse nodes that arent a part of the table top game could make decisions. Thats the nature of the tyranid structure and why it is so effective.

So where do tervigons fit in. Well, they arent at the level of warriors, but they arent a tyrant. Are they commanders? If so, why are they dual purposed out to be transports. They would need to be mobile to transport gaunts but they would have to remain in an area to command it. Do they transport gaunts and then just throw themselves at the front lines? in that case, why are they so psychically adept. Zoans devote their entire being to be able to be psychic conduits. Tyrants (the old ones) had a massive armored flair at the back of their head to be able to store a psychic manifesting conduit. The current models.... none of them follow the pattern. If such a tiny head can store a psychic conduit for the hive mind, why is the zoan build as it is.... Even besides the model, why would you put such effort into a conduit that you are throwing at the front lines. Why not simply send carnifexes that are build with nothing but resilience and strength in mind. They are much better suited to assaults.

So tervigons sit somewhere in the middle... not engaging, just.... "supporting". In that case, why not genetically modify a zoanthrope to do the same thing. Also, why are your transports walking everywhere. Why not make harradian transports for gaunts. Much quicker, doesnt need to be a psychic link, and able to rapidly re-deploy forces or create whole flanks where the enemy doesnt even know you exist till its too late. Similar to the concept of mounted infantry in WW1. Better yet, do away with transporting gaunts above ground. You have trygons and mawlocks that can burrow very well, why not put gaunt transports under ground where they are far more protected. Think of what a bunch of deepstriking tervigons could do with spawning 50+ gaunts right next to the enemy and shooting/assaulting them right there. That is where transporting them makes sense. When the creature transporting is probably slower than what its transporting, its really not effective.

Nids are about getting things done in the most logical way. If it should be done one way, it can be done that way. Thats the flexibility of the tyrand army. They can adapt and change. 5th edition codex has none of that. You simply take the 25% of the codex that is actually viable in a competitive setting and spam it all over the board.

[infornography]

If that is your view of how Tervigons are played no wonder you hate them.

What I have had a lot of success with in 5th ed and my one game of 6th so far is that the Tervigons are my front line. As they move across the field my Flyrant comes in from reserve, my Trygon pops out of the ground, my ymgarls come out of hiding, and my swarmlord heads up the other side of the field. My opponent is kept off his footing by pure target saturation and can't afford to focus down the still very durable tervigons. Meanwhile they are spawning out swarms of termagants who make a break for the nearest objective. Anything that gets in melee range of the tervis gets smashed into oblivion unless it is a particularly tough unit, in which case it will still cost them dearly.

The Swarmlord unit aims to take down the enemy's hardest nut to crack.

Meanwhile assaulting a tervigon means facing a stinger swarm overwatch followed by a hammer of wrath attack probably on that unit's sergeant or leader because I called a challenge out. If the leader abstains, then I squish tons of weaker infantry with fewer power klaws/fists etc. If they accept then I squish their leader without much support of the rest of the unit.

I think you underestimate how tough 6 wounds 6 toughness really is. Especially if you pull Iron Arm or Endure from the biomancy deck.

Also 1d3+3 strength 10 attacks AP2 attacks? really really awesome. That will ID a Warboss.

If you are hiding your tervigons in the back field, you are NOT using them right. They are a force to be reckoned with and should be one of your most valued front liners.