Friendly 1849 Pt List review please

[shinra1988]

Hallo all.

Just jointed today and I would love to get some feedback from some other Tyranid players.

I have been playing nids for a few week at a local club and I'm the only nids player.. so a lot of this list is what I've put together from what I've experienced.

(I understand I can field a (please do not swear) ton of tervies but I like to start out as a swarm, not hope I become one. Plus I think a big tervie army is kind of boring.)

OKAY SO

Here she be:

HQ:

Flying Hive Tyrant. - 275 pts
Wings,
Lashwhip + Boneswords,
Twin Linked BrainLeech Devs,
Toxin
Regen

Usage: Fly around and piss people off, tie up units that I Don't want to shoot, and challenge other characters to a very one sided beat-down


Elites

3x Hive Guard - 150 pts

3x Hive Guard - 150 pts

Useage: Pop tanks and pick on anyone who takes a bit of "oomph" to hurt.

Ymgarls x 8 - 184 pts

Usage: Jump out and give out free surprise hugs to any unit close enough to feel their love.

Doom + Spore - 130 pts

Usage: To stomp heads, waste terminators with pie plates, suck brains out, and absorb a metric frick ton of "OMFGKILLITKILLITKILLIT" fire so that my other units can move up and b*tch slap the enemy.

Heavy Support:

Mawloc - 170

Because my stupid trygon prime always got shot down in 10 seconds and has never ONCE made it into close combat in all 7 games I've played. (Dies 1st or 2nd turn)

Since the mawloc/trygon always seems to get shot to pieces, might as well utilize terror from the deep to hurt some people before it goes down. Plus it's cheaper and I can have more points to spare.

Troops

Hormigants x 20 w/ Tox - 160pts

Hormigants x 20 w/Tox -160 pts

Usage: Charge out of synapse, get rage, and because no one expects these guys to really do anything until SURPRISE they're chewing on your liver and running to eat your next enemy unit.

DevilGants in pod x10 - 140

DevilGants in pod x10 - 140

Usage: Drop down, shoot everyone in sight, kill a lot of people, hopefully survive next turn, repeat.

Vanilla Warriors x 3 - 90pts

Warriors + Barbed Stranger x3 - 100 pts

Usage: To provide synapse, and stand around and look cool.


/END

Okay so! Any tips or lovely knowledge that could help with this list? Improvements? Tactics you would use if you were in my shoes?

Most of my food is space marines, eldar and a tau player.

Thanks!

[shinra1988]

This all adds up to 1849.

The title says that but some people might forget that by the time they read this novel to the bottom.

-Cheers

[fragile]

Couple thoughts.

I would pick a role for your HT. Either keep him in the sky and shooty with 2 TL DEVs or go melee centric on him. Overall the Toxin sacs will probably be not worth the points. Either drop them or upgrade to Old Adversary. Regen is situational and doubtfully useful on him. On your 6 wound MCs its more effective as you will have more rolls to get a 6.

You have 4 Elites.. Need to drop one.

Also dont go charging your hormies out of Synapse too much, as you will lose fearless and they have (please do not swear) LD if they fail a morale check.

Play with the Mawloc a bit and see if you like it. Start it on the board and your guaranteed a second round arrival. Also remember that if your Trygon is eating that much firepower, the rest of your army isnt. So make use of the sacrifice.

[rampagingfex]

As mentioned, you have too many elites. Don't be afraid to take Hive Guard in units of 2 if you need to save points. That could save you 100 points if you are taking 2 squads. In your army, I'd recommend dropping the one unit of Hive Guard to get another MC in there. Either a Tervigon for synapse and support, or a Trygon/Mawloc to add target saturation when they arrive.

I think this looks like a solid army. I'm not a fan of warriors, especially with small squads that aren't really upgraded, and the fact that your Trygon keeps getting shot up means there probably isn't enough target saturation. I usually take 2+ or none. For example, one Trygon dropping into the battle is a big magnet asking to be shot. One Trygon, plus another Trygon, plus a Doom in a pod is now a completely different math equation. There isn't really a way to shoot all of them up at once, and once the Trygon gets to combat you will really love having him instead of a Mawloc. I'd use that 190 points you have in warriors to get another Trygon. Then again... you have to get synapse from somewhere if you aren't taking Tervigons. Are you sure you really don't like Tervigons?

10x devilgaunts may be a little light. You might want to combine those squads into one unit to get a little more firepower. 14-15 has been working for me, but I see a lot of 20-strong squads as well. Let us know how the 10-gaunt squads work if you try them out. What are your typical opponents? 30 shots is only 15 hits on average, so you are looking at only ~2 dead marines per turn of shooting with that squad. If you are shooting at Tau and Eldar, that probably explains the smaller squads as they are probably doing ~5-6 wounds per round of shooting. Going after rear armor 10 of a vehicle you would hit 15 times on average, then looking at only 2 glances. You could get lucky and wreck it with above average rolls, but with a few more gaunts you could have a higher odds of pulling off a wrecked vehicle if that is your choice. Anyway, depends on your environment, but try out the options and let us know how it works.

Not sure about your Hive Tyrant upgrades. I wouldn't personally have considered toxin or regen, and would have gone with Hive Commander since you have some reserves, but someone else may have some better advice on that topic.

-RF

[shinra1988]

Thanks Fragile and Rampaging Fex

I'm going to make these changes/tweaks today.

Fex, the 10x devilgants worked great, a unit of devilgants + my hive tyrant (a shooty tyrant, "Thanks Fragile") took out an entire unit of some random space wolves guys in one turn(dunno what they were, they came out of a drop pod, shot me up, realized they didn't have enough bullets, then got eaten for breakfast)

This list performed really well in the game I played last week against a drop pod space wolves army.. except for one thing.. STUPID MISHAP TABLE. I lost my doom in the drop (rolled a 1 on the mishap table) and my other devilgant unit mishapped and returned to reserves.

What was a totally one sided game in my favour, ended up as a draw.

Maybe if I remove the warriors, cut one unit of guard, I can afford a trygon prime for synapse? My tervigon soaked up a lot of fire power too, and puked up a LOT of gaunts.

I'll see what fielding a 2nd one does. (I guess I can give them a shot.)

Thanks for your help guys!

[roxor08]

Out of curiosity...how did you Mycetic spore that brought Doom in mishap? The only way a mycetic spore can suffer a mishap is missing the table. The pod always (and paraphrasing) "reduces the distance scattered by minimal amount to avoid the obstacle and yet remain 1" away from enemy models"

[GuardDog78]

I was wondering that myself...i generally drop spores no closer than 10" from the edge...spores compensate for landing on units or impassable terrain.

[shinra1988]

It scattered onto terrain, and the spacewolves player told me to roll on the mishap table, only been playing for a few weeks so I just rolled. I didn't know that.. That would have been GREAT to know then!!

[Anggul]

Believe me my friend, for 30pts more, a Trygon is well worth it over a Mawloc. Just run it up the field with Fleet and get cover which is easy because you only need to have 25% of it covered in 6th ed. With so many other things going on, my Trygon has only ever been shot down before making it into combat a couple of times. As stated by others, drop Toxin and Regen on the Tyrant, and I would suggest taking Old Adversary in it's place. You could then drop one brood of Hive Guard and the bare-bones warriors and get yourself a second Trygon for target saturation and increased close combat butchery!