Tyrant gaurd?

[afewveiws]

So in the thread about lictors and pheromone trail in 9th tyrant gaurd came up again and i was wondering if the genaeral feel of them in 9th has changed yet?

I have a fun list concept around this unit:
Swarmlord
3xwalkrant (either all dual mst or all non cannon hybrids)
1-3 max tyrant gaurd units
Plus whatever else will fit.

The tyrants will basically either be impossible to remove or you could let them die to give the tgaurd 6 attacks apiece... leviathan would likely be the best fleet for it.

Most likely terrible but with the typical -1 to hit and -1str auras you should be fairly difficult to remove.

Thoughts?

[nod007]

Point for point and wound for wound tyrant guard is exactly as expensive as hive tyrant. But guard is so much weaker, no psychic powers and less survivability.

Even though tyrant guard is fun and I hope they will get better in the new codex but now they are so bad. Only good combo with them is if you can hide guard behind cover and they cant be shot and have hive tyrant next to them

[infornography]

Tyrant guard are still drastically overcosted and have been for a long time. Until they either get MUCH BETTER or MUCH CHEAPER the general line of just bringing more Tyrants will hold true. I wish I could bring my puppies back in games without hobbling my list, but they do too little and cost too much.

In a perfect world I would like to see them cost appropriately for their statline and abilities aside from bodyguard duty, get better melee, but then have a wargear option that lets them perform as bodyguards and put an appropriate cost on THAT, but also make it buff the Tyrant Guard to match Tyrant speed and toughness when within 6". That would allow us to have a heavy infantry option separate from the bodyguard duty that GW seems to weirdly underpower and overvalue on Tyranids.

[afewveiws]

So none of the above is new information to me and i even cover the "they bad" arguement. Yes you should just take another tyrant... oh wait i already have 3 plus swarmy so that is actually not even an option in the posted general concept... so any new thoughts?

[asvic]

The problem is that you just spent 800 + 240 per guard unit points on a thing that doesn't kill anything. If you want to use it to block some objectives, then your body count will consist of guards which will die first and which will die faster than warriors for the same points which also have obsec and strats to make them even tankier. The only setup where this was viable is if the opponent really wanted to kill your tyrants - but why would he do that? Tyrants are not really scary.

[Kilmor]

Sadly right now Warriors with rending claws or boneswords are just plain better than Tyrant guard at everything but taking wounds for tyrants, which guard are not really point efficient for the reasons mentioned above. For your list above specifically, I'd recommend warriors with enhanced resistance for troops. One max squad of tyrant guard would really be enough, you only need to protect the tyrants for the first turn or two until you hit the enemy lines. Even less so if you have other threats pushing up that take target priority. Take some fast and tough threats, combined with durable warriors means your opponent needs dedicated heavy fire at every target to do real damage.

Its frustrating that Marines can so easily get a durable melee unit that can bully midfield with Bladeguard but we cant get tyrant guard to be efficient enough to really see play.

[kazetanade]

Mar 25, 2021 6:46:08 GMT afewveiws said:

So none of the above is new information to me and i even cover the "they bad" arguement. Yes you should just take another tyrant... oh wait i already have 3 plus swarmy so that is actually not even an option in the posted general concept... so any new thoughts?

The real thoughts is that most people are gearing for melee centric opponents full of Transhuman Terminators that have 4++ and come back alive one a turn.

Their statline is very close to TG statlines, but TG have maybe 1/4 of the tankiness, and 0 defensive buffs for melee where most enemy armies are gearing into. TG also have 1/8 of the output,for about 2/3 or 3/5 of the cost.

As long as the Tyrants are doing a lot of heavy lifting its all good, but more and more im seeing less support pieces in army lists. Everything is either killy in its own right, supports a wide swathe of the army with a tonne of effects/ advantages instead of just 1, or somewhere in between. With that in mind, it might be better to just bring more guns instead of more wounds for the tyrants.

Of course, fun game is fun game, and you don't need anyones permission to do something funny. As long as your opponent isn't bringing a tight competitive list, it'll be alright.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Competitively, I'd imagine that this list would have to play as a castle until the hive tyrants are killed. I'm not sure what secondaries would work well for this kind of list and could see it running into scoring issues.

The other issue I foresee when the tyrants are alive is enough line of sight blocking terrain to keep the tyrant guard out of sight so your opponent can only see the tyrants. I don't think so hat there will be enough line of sight blocking terrain to make this happen, especially when the castle needs to move up the board.

The last issue I see is how to deliver the 6+ attack tyrant guard. They're not the speediest units around, so Id imagine they'd have issues making it into combat before they are wittled down.


Please try it out and post results, however! I've mostly been playing casually, so my competitive analysis is probably lacking.

[bolk]

One thing to consider is that TG is the only unit that can take Crushing Claws, though that takes them up to 50ppm, but S10 AP-3 D:D3 at 4+ WS. Sure, they're S5 and T5, but without Crushing Claws they just bring the same thing as Warriors to the table. Using them as mini-carnifexes and have Swarmy punting them up the board is the way I would go.

[panzerfront]

I've wanted to make my Tyrant Guard work but they never seem to have sufficient hitting power in combat. I've tried them cheap relying upon the rending claws but kept thinking why not just use my genestealers. I've gotten good use out of them as blockers for my Swarmlord or Hive Tyrant but I've never gotten good use from them as any sort of melee threat. I haven't tried triple Crushing Claws but I intend to when I get the models to try it.

Its just much more viable to use them as Hive Guard in terms of money.

But otherwise I wish they were either much tougher more akin to Centurion levels of toughness if they are to retain their abysmal levels of CC output (relative to other Tyranid CC units)

[afewveiws]

Maybe they'll be made viable next codex

[papo28]

People (please do not swear) on tyrant guard to much. Problem with this forum is people don't think outside of the box I run them with my unkillable power house tyrant and have yet had him die in a game. Trick is run behemoth. Give your tyrant scy tals and HVC. Give him scythe tyrant relic. Give him warlord trait to minus 1 damage after first phase of damage tyrant guard make it really easy to control that out put. Then give him the physiology to regain 3 wounds a turn. He's actually an unstoppable beast at that point. And if things get hairy you have the strat to potentially regain 6 wounds in a turn.

[killercroc]

If it works for you then by all means do it, but what I'm hearing from this explanation is "If you spend a lot of points on the Hive Tyrant, then spend even more points on a horrible bodyguard unit, then stack your Warlord choice and Relic onto one model, then throughout the game spend boat loads of CP, it makes it pretty decent" When you have to throw every possible combo you can onto a single model just to get good use out of it, it isn't really a good combo at all. Nothing stops your enemy from just targeting the Tyrant guard first then once the extra wounds are gone focus firing the Tyrant to bring it down. Yes it can regen up to 6 wounds, but that requires 2 CP plus it being in combat and have killed 3 models to do so. A huge issue with this combo, is there are so many enemy choices that can just destroy the unit before you can even react. A Space Marine squad of Hellblasters with Heavy plasma with a Captain + Lieutenant could very easily delete the Guard T1, and the Tyrant T2 before it even gets a chance to think about regening any wounds it suffered.

Personally I think the Warlord trait for -1 Dmg is bad because if your opponent is aware of it they will just hit the Tyrant with enough shots to drop it in a single turn, or just hit it with D1 weapons so it never even matters.

[papo28]

With 9th edition rules if your tyrant and guard are dying first turn there's either a problem with the way you deploy or your not running the proper amount of terrain tyrant guard are so small 3 should be fairly easy to keep out of sight until you make it into combat turn 2 which is all you need and if they want to devote the fire power needed to bring down that 300 points with catalyst and maybe even a -1 strength bubble then good luck with the rest of your army in there lines. Tyranids army excels at putting the pressure on your enemy with lots of high threat units they need to deal with. Target my tyrant fine. I have back up plans. Don't target him fine once he's in combat good luck Killing him. With behemoth +1 to wound rolls make even your lowly gaunts tank hunters with the -1 ap strat opponents just don't expect how nasty and in your face a behemoth army is. Also enemy armies are a lot more aggressive in 9th they don't bunker up anymore. If your enemy moves into the middle to secure objectives. Your army is almost all making first turn charges if you lose the roll off

[piersonsmuppet]

I'll have to agree with papo28, there should be no reason that the Tyrant Guard are deleted turn 1 if your intention is to activate Adaptive Biology with 9th's heavier terrain. I think the strategy has merit "IF" you do not worry about how points efficient the Tyrant is, and instead focus on the Tyrant's use as a mobile anti-obj sec. Having a hyper-mobile threat to an elite-army's primary scoring is nothing to scoff at when many games come down to who scored more primary points. To that end, Behemoth is probably not the right hive fleet imo. Unstoppable Hunger does not improve killing Transhuman'd units, and the Tyrant is vulnerable to being tar-pitted and ignored. I would rather employ the strategy in Kraken, no more tar-pit, or possibly Gorgon, double down on the toughness aspect.

To address the OP, I think the tactic will cause too much castle and probably detract form the army's mobility. I could see you losing out on scoring opportunities if your focus stays too much on keeping the Tyrants alive. That many Tyrant Guard will also probably be too difficult to hide, and many of your points will be shot off the table w/o having saved a Tyrant from wounds. A more effective strategy with your idea might be only 2 min guard units. This would allow you to still split the Tyrant castle, and would help keep the TG points to saving Tyrant wounds.