Horde Help!

[duke]

hello all, I'm working on lists of varying sizes, and I'm trying to figure out something.
how can I have as large a horde as possible, while still being able to compete competitively? I'm more asking what unit types are recommended, but army lists are welcome as well.
thanks!

[Raven]

A competitive horde list in 6th is pretty much limited to Termagants + Tervigons as troops and Gargoyles in Fast Attack. To really give it a horde feel you probably either want to have Tervigons or Tyranid Primes as HQs (possibly the Parasite of Mortrex for funsies in a gargoyle heavy list), as other options are quite expensive and will detract from the horde element.

[duke]

good ideas. the thing I'm most nervous about is anti-tank.. which is tough to do in horde.

[Raven]

Adrenal Glands on Gargs lets you wreck rear AV10 through glances. Tervigons can punch through any AV and give AG to gants to get through AV10. you might want to take a unit of Hive Guard to help with mid range AV and bust open transports, but for the most part people are taking a lot more infantry than vehicles (apart from flyers, you'd basically have to ignore those) so you shouldn't too much anti-tank.

[duke]

good point. I would rather not trust glance deaths, but with the new rules- that is substantially better!
thanks for the help!

[Squire]

If I were going to do a horde above 1000 points I wouldn't go full on with the horde idea purely for practical reasons. Imagine how long it would take to deal with so many gaunts? Moving and charging would become a nightmare, games would take a long time to play and opponents may become reluctant to face that kind of army. You can still do a genuine horde without taking it to the extreme.

In 1500 points I'd consider three units of 20 termagants, 3 tervigons, a flyrant, four hive guard and then two units of gargoyles. You could be starting with about 90 gaunts on the board. With spawns from the tervigons you'd be using well over a hundred gaunts during the game. The hive guard provide long range anti tank, the flyrant and gargoyles could either move up together on one of the flanks, or just deepstrike in. I reckon I'd deepstrike them. That way at least there's a bit less being deployed and moved on the first turn

[duke]

hmm- interesting. I suppose a full army of horde would be pretty hard to move.. but I've seen some pretty large battles in my time, orks, nids, imperial guard... and they all did a pretty good job of it. I suppose it comes down to how good I can get at moving them around, and also dealing with the massive pools of dice.
although I will think about what you said. I suppose technicly it is possible to field only partially horde and still look impressive.
regardless- thanks!

[FTGTEvan]

I'm curious what point value you're looking at. I know the current suggestions mention above 1k, and I agree that's where you're going to have to start worrying about dealing with armor, but 1k and below can be fun for a horde. You can very easily get over 100 models in at 1k, at which point, anything you can't kill you can more likely than not ignore since you have the numbers to absorb casualties. For example:

Prime w/LW&BS, Dev, Regen
4 Warriors w devourers and ST, 1 venom cannon
15 Devilgants
19 Hormagaunts (ST and TS)
3x 15 Termagants
20 Gargoyles

You could also drop the hormagaunts down to 15 and give the gargs TS&AG so you have 3 units that have a shot of popping AV10 vehicles in combat. Regardless, this army is 100-104 models and will essentially take up your full deployment zone on a 4x4 board. Biggest vulnerability is obviously going to be synapse, so you'll want to probably join the Prime to a central unit of gants and hide the warriors as much as possible to keep them safe. As long as you can get them through the first turn, you'll probably have a good chance of keeping them safe since you'll have nearly 100 models bearing down on his army at that point. Most small armies will simply not have enough guns to deal with the numbers.

[Squire]

Mar 8, 2013 10:15:37 GMT duke said:

hmm- interesting. I suppose a full army of horde would be pretty hard to move.. but I've seen some pretty large battles in my time, orks, nids, imperial guard... and they all did a pretty good job of it. I suppose it comes down to how good I can get at moving them around, and also dealing with the massive pools of dice.
although I will think about what you said. I suppose technicly it is possible to field only partially horde and still look impressive.
regardless- thanks!

The thing is imperial guard aren't necessarily moving or charging all of their cheap troops. A lot of orks may be embarked on vehicles. I can definitely see the appeal of a carpet of gaunts that the opponent has practically no hope of destroying entirely, but I think I'd dread the movement phase- not to mention assembling and painting all of those little guys!

I'd recommend first building a 1000 point horde and seeing how that goes. If you wanted you could fit three tervigons (one as an HQ), three large blocks of termagants and a couple of hive guard into that. Play with it for a while and then consider what to do with the next 500 points. Either you'd be happy to continue maxing out on gaunts or cut back to a sort of semi horde by introducing some different units

In any case, I think a well supported horde could be competitive. Who prepares for upwards of 100 gaunts? With some good tervigon spawning (even with average spawning) it would be like trying to stamp out a nest of cockroaches