Hormaguants Army

[rysgame]

For one, this is my first post here. I was told this is the best place for 'Nid knowledge! Anyways. I am starting a fluff/fun army with a solid troop choices of hormogaunts! I figure with 30 gaunts and +1 attack that should be 90 attacks with a charge at full strength, my figuring being my friends who all play infantry heavy armies will just cry with the onslaught of the swarm! Any ideas?

[vecuu]

Welcome to the Hive!

A couple of tips:

-make sure you keep your Hormagaunts in Synapse range. They need to stay Fearless at all times.
-make sure to keep your broods relatively large in size. Most players go for 20 Hormagaunt range. With 15 being the absolute extreme minimum, and few players running 30man broods. 3 20man broods gives more tactical options than 2 30man broods.
-Toxin Sacs are great for anti-infantry. Without TS, you'll be wounding Toughness 4 models on a 5+ (read: all Space Marines)
-Adrenal Glands are the only way Hormagaunts have the ability to wound light vehicles

Generally speaking, Hormagaunts are run in a brood of 20+ either as:
-ToxiGaunts (only Toxin Sacs)
or
-SuperGaunts (both Toxin Sacs and Adrenal Glands)

VanillaGaunts (no upgrades) don't really do that much damage and tend to be use more as cannon fodder or tarpitting units, both roles of which tend to be played better by Termagants as they are 1pt cheaper per model.

[coredump]

I agree with most of the above. I personally favor TS/AG on them. (wound on 4+ with a reroll), but that does make them a bit pricey.

If you want offense ability, I would keep them in the 150-200 pt range for a brood.


As for synapse.... that can go either way. Fearless is good, but Rage is also good; you need to decide which is best on a case by case basis.

If you are looking for a HG 'based' army, I would say 2-3 units of 20 HGs with TS/AG.
You can also take a brood of 10-20 vanilla HGs; these would start as a line in front of the other broods to provide a cover save, and can be the initial assaulting brood in order to absorb Overwatch wounds. (could even multi assault and perhaps absorb multi overwatch.


Westrider used to run them a lot in 5E, I am not sure if he still is in 6E.

[infornography]

Note also that while expensive, supergaunts get to reroll wound rolls on the assault against most enemies including space marines. This is a huge benefit.

Hormies are decent, but slightly overpriced this edition. Expect huge attrition rates. One thing that helps is to field a swarm of 10 to 20 basic termagants in front of the hormagants so they get cover saves. The enemy then either has to mow down the termagants first saving your hormagants some casualties as they march up the board, or they have to let you get cover saves which will save about a third of your hormagants from an untimely demise.

Either way, as said, you need to keep them in synapse. It is tempting to get them out of synapse so you can get a chance at the rage bonus, but fearless is much more worth it in the long run. They are far more valuable in combat than running for the board edge. This is one of the few jobs that warriors are particularly well suited to since they are the shortest synapse we got, they can get cover saves from the termagants as well AND they will provide a high priority target to the enemy other than the Hormagants. Then have a tervigon backing them up from behind in case the warriors get wiped out.

This is one of the strategies often employed with swarm armies. Feel free to develop your own, but this gives you a starting place to work from.

[Deleted]

Giving them psyker support is great too for stuff like Dome and SL can be great for bestowing goodies on your broods. I personally would always run them with atleast TS, if you eed a screen toss some Gargoyles in front and rush them at the enemy. They won't have a choice and will have to ignore the incoming Hormagaunt waves to deal with the flapping tide of HoW and Blinding Venom coming there way. Welcome to the hive!

[disband85]

Lately I've been giving my hive tyrant hive commander, for +1 reserve rolls and gives a troop choice outflank. I give it to a unit of hormagaunts and outflank them right next to an enemy unit. They can't assault the same turn but the next turn they will probably fail their synapse test (leadership 6) and get rage, giving them +2 attacks on the charge.

Probably wouldn't work tho if u only outflanked with a single unit, it'll get targeted bad... I tend to put half my army in reserve then put them under the enemy's nose in turn 2.

[commandersasha]

I never had much luck with Hormagants in 5th, but in 6th they have proved much more useful, now that even if they fail their IB test, you can still choose what to do with them.
I initially tried leaving them without synapse, to try for the rage, but quickly found that even a mediocre shooting attack from an enemy can cause 25% loss, and then you're falling back. I rely on a Zoeanthrope spore to drop Synapse on them if they're charging ahead, or outflanking. The rage is too rare to rely on as a strategy, and the risks outweigh it.
I can see a hormie list being fluffy, fun and scary! Good luck with it!

[coredump]

I think 60mm has a better suggestion than mine. TI screen gaunts, use vanilla gargs instead of HGs or termies.

Termies are too slow for a screen.

[WestRider]

Nov 5, 2012 2:39:57 GMT coredump said:

Westrider used to run them a lot in 5E, I am not sure if he still is in 6E.

Honestly, I've mostly been using my other Armies in 6th, as Guard+Space Wolves has been a long time dream of mine, and then a Chaos Dex that was actually fun to play came out and I've fallen back into that pretty hard.

I did get a couple of Games in with my Nids toward the start of 6th, tho, and had good results with fully tooled up Hormies. They're almost as fast as Beasts except for the Charge Turn, and they hit hard against just about anything but Walkers or Vehicles with 11+ Rear AV.

The caveat, tho, is that those Games were against other Assault-centric Armies, so I was typically able to make it to Combat without substantial losses, and because I'm pretty good at Screening, was generally getting the Charge as well.

[Jabberwocky]

If supporting with Psykers, you can get a 24" fearless buff which keeps them out of synapse to still get rage.

Swarmlord can be a good force multiplier for hormies granting furious charge as well as using psychic powers to them.

I love the way they play in theory, in practice though the constant falling over and time it takes to move a swarm puts me off from using regularly.