First Nid Crusade List

[IcarusWaxWings]

My FLGS will be starting a Crusade League soon (to which I'll be in charge of) and I want to bring my Tyranids to the table. After a bit of internal debate between aiming for more competitive list with Exocrine and Hive Guard, or For-Fun, I've decided to go for fun. That doesn't mean I want to be steam-rolled however so I'm hoping for any ideas to possible better my Order of Battle or some tips for Nids in 9th.

===

Hive Fleet Marowit (Custom): Adaptive Exoskeleton, Metamorphic Regrowth

* Tervigon - Toxin Sacs, Adrenal Glands, Catalyst,Adaptive Physiology (Dermic Symbiosis)

* Tyranid Prime - Toxin Sacs, Adrenal Glands, Flesh Hooks, Boneswords, Deathspitter, Adaptive Physiology (Enhanced Resistance)

* 20x Termagants - Toxin Sacs, Adrenal Glands, 10x Fleshborers, 10x Devourers

* 6x Warriors - Toxin Sacs, Adrenal Glands, Flesh Hooks, Boneswords, 4x Deathspitters, 2x Barbed Stranglers, Adaptive Physiology (Enhanced Resistance)

* 6x Warriors - Toxin Sacs, Adrenal Glands, Flesh Hooks, Boneswords, 4x Deathspitters, 2x Venom Cannons, Adaptive Physiology (Enhanced Resistance)

* Lictor

* Haruspex - Adaptive Physiology (?)


PL 49/50; RP 0/5 remaining
===

The narrative of the Order is that it's the remnants of a Bioship crash landed during a battle with Imperial forces, recovered by Magos Biologis sect of Adeptus Mechanicus, where they find the unconscious bodies of several organisms and transported them for study. After regaining awareness, the Hive Mind connections of the Prime and Tervigon called forth a skulking Lictor to infiltrate and free them. Now they're a splinter force, seeking biomass to reform their numbers and might.

For the Haruspex, I can't decide which Adaptive Physiology I want to give it. Dermic Symbiosis feels great for survivability and keep it swinging on its already mediocre ability for longer. Murderous Size looks good to make sure what he hits doesn't survive the conflict. And lastly, Accelerated Digestion feels really fluffy and like a lesser for of survivability if he gets into combat. Any suggestions on which option might be the best?

I give the Tervigon Dermic Symbiosis because I expect it to get a lot of hate when it begins churning out gaunt squads and/rebolstering the gaunt blob. Especially since at least one of the people to be playing had played with me during 7th edition when I used Tervigons over Hive Tyrants for Gaunt-Spawn Spam. I imagine he won't be keen to see that happening again. Plus, it's always felt dumb to me that Tervigons never had an invuln to begin with.

The Lictor is for lore flavor as well as deep-strike objective grabbing and, if extremely lucky, character assassination and brain slurping.

Prime and his lads are, as my hopes are leaning, going to be the proverbial workhorses of the army. With luck, they'll draw more attention than the Tervigon so it can spawn obsec units to snatch objectives. And with more luck and correct CP expenditure, survive said attention.

I don't expect too win much, or probably at all, but I'm hoping to at least force my opponents to work for it.

Has anyone tried a Tervigon or Haruspex in a Crusade? Any ideas to improve the roster? Suggestion on which Physiology for the Haruspex would be appreciated as well as opinions of if the Tervigon should even have one.

[Kilmor]

Accelerated Digestion or Murderous size I think would be best for the Hauraspex depending on what you think your main opponents would be. I would go with murderous size as you need to kill things to trigger either of the regens. I think the spex will do fine for you at the begining but once the army sizes and board sizes increase you'll struggle to get him to make combat before dying. I think the warriors will be a good unit for you, though I favor venom cannons over barbed stranglers unless you know you are fighting green tide orks. Enhanced resistance on the Tyranid prime might be a bit of a waste. He will hardly get targeted if you play him right and most of the time he would get hit by a strong attack when he is targeted, at least that has been my experience.

I found my lictor to be an odd part of my crusade list as objectives are generally screened out where he cant appear on them and secondaries/actions don't give you points in the game, only experience to the unit. So the only reason for him to sneak around half the time was to rank him up. If you deploy him and move him up with your warriors at times that might let him perform an action on an objective if the mission depends. Lictors are fun to use, just keep in mind they might play a little different in crusade due to how secondaries work.

[iniquity]

Honestly ive only had horrible experiences with crusade. My friend playing custodes got so ridicously strong it just became unenjoyable.

Having said that, i would 100% take a behemoth flyrant with talons and murderous size and just race him to the point where he ignores invulns, hes quite funny when you eventually add a swarmlord.

We only did a 4 man crusade and the book keeping got ricidulous as well. I would have a think about how you are going to be recvording/making people record things

[IcarusWaxWings]

Mar 22, 2021 12:36:15 GMT Kilmor said:

Accelerated Digestion or Murderous size I think would be best for the Hauraspex depending on what you think your main opponents would be. I would go with murderous size as you need to kill things to trigger either of the regens. I think the spex will do fine for you at the begining but once the army sizes and board sizes increase you'll struggle to get him to make combat before dying. I think the warriors will be a good unit for you, though I favor venom cannons over barbed stranglers unless you know you are fighting green tide orks. Enhanced resistance on the Tyranid prime might be a bit of a waste. He will hardly get targeted if you play him right and most of the time he would get hit by a strong attack when he is targeted, at least that has been my experience.

Murderous Size was my first instinct, especially since we have a lot of Marine players at my FLGS. I'm really hoping to get good use from him, but I'm sure he's going to end up like my Scythed Hierodule always does; killed turn 1. While I've only taken it in 2 matches between 8th and 9th, my ScyHiero has never made it to melee and died T1. Hopefully the same fate doesn't await my Haruspex but everyone love squishing bugs mercilessly.

The Barbed Stranglers in Warrior Unit 1 could easily be swapped to Venom Cannons. I only made them Strangers to use them as D6 shot Deathspitters. I don't anticipate fighting much high T units, but I suppose it isn't a bad idea to be prepared.

We did a mini-Crusade over the past month, trying a couple ideas out to customize the Crusade rules for our purpose and the amoint of sniper units taken is what lead to my decision to put Enhanced Resistance on the Prime. I think every marine player had at least one unit of Eliminators at their disposal. Yet another reason for my Lictor, I suppose, so I can tangle snipers up for at least 1 round maybe.

Mar 22, 2021 16:34:13 GMT iniquity said:

Honestly ive only had horrible experiences with crusade. My friend playing custodes got so ridicously strong it just became unenjoyable.

We only did a 4 man crusade and the book keeping got ricidulous as well. I would have a think about how you are going to be recvording/making people record things

I'm hoping we don't get anyone that goes super competitive and we all have fun lists (wishful thinking, I know). I've gotten positive feedback from our players of the test crusade we did, so I'm optimistic about things. For paperwork, I also run the store Blood Bowl scene and a couple of our 40k guys play too, so a few of us are used to post-game paperwork. And match end-results are going too be posted on a discord server, so keeping track of W/L/D will be simple as long as everyone remembers to post them.

[Kilmor]

Mar 22, 2021 18:35:04 GMT IcarusWaxWings said:

Mar 22, 2021 12:36:15 GMT Kilmor said:

Accelerated Digestion or Murderous size I think would be best for the Hauraspex depending on what you think your main opponents would be. I would go with murderous size as you need to kill things to trigger either of the regens. I think the spex will do fine for you at the begining but once the army sizes and board sizes increase you'll struggle to get him to make combat before dying. I think the warriors will be a good unit for you, though I favor venom cannons over barbed stranglers unless you know you are fighting green tide orks. Enhanced resistance on the Tyranid prime might be a bit of a waste. He will hardly get targeted if you play him right and most of the time he would get hit by a strong attack when he is targeted, at least that has been my experience.

Murderous Size was my first instinct, especially since we have a lot of Marine players at my FLGS. I'm really hoping to get good use from him, but I'm sure he's going to end up like my Scythed Hierodule always does; killed turn 1. While I've only taken it in 2 matches between 8th and 9th, my ScyHiero has never made it to melee and died T1. Hopefully the same fate doesn't await my Haruspex but everyone love squishing bugs mercilessly.

Are you using the new FW rules for the Hierodule? I have been using my scythed'dule in crusade and he has been crazy good. He didn't start dying in games until people got to about 100 PL. I started being a bit more aggressive with him and stopped putting catalyst on him. He never dies turn one though and almost always makes a turn 1 charge. I'm adding a Maleceptor and a Malanthrope soon to help keep him alive longer.

If you think your opponents will have that much fire power, I'm not sure how well the Haruspex will do for you. Your current list doesn't have any other immediate threats unless you're hurling your warriors forward as well. I'm not saying it wont work, just to be weary of giving the enemy easy target priorities.

[IcarusWaxWings]

This'll be my first Crusade experience. My two games with my Hiero have been Matched Play. In 8th edition, Dhrukari gat the first turn and zoomed several Raiders(?) up and unleashed a deadly rave of dark lances on him. Most recently, I was playing a 2v2 game of Knights/Custodes vs Nids/Space Wolves. We got Turn 1 and I was poised to get a T1 charge on some melee Armegers (I don't know knights enough to purposely spell their names, sorry), but apparently Custodes have a gross strategem to reduce a charge by D6 inches and he rolled a 4 which was enough to make me fail, even after a reroll. Cue mass fire from knights and a charge from the would-be-prey and my Hiero died, though he at least Death Throes and did some damage on the way out.

In the case of my Haruspex for the Crusade, I think my biggest threats to him will likely be Tau Broadsides (why are they so low power level for that mass output of shots?), Lascannons, and possible a Bloodthirster that may or may not be taken by the Khorne Daemon player. He just got it and has the 'shiny new model' excitement to use it.

I won't lie and say the plan isn't to hurl my warriors head-first into combats, hence why I have them all Enhanced Resistance. I've thought about also giving LWBS instead of dual boneswords, in case their charged instead. I don't lie giving up that extra attack but guaranteeing they all get to swing back if butchered in melee is a nice just-in-case.