Tyranid Army Lists in 5th Edition, part four
This is the last in a series of articles discussing some of the variety of options that the Tyranids have available in 5th edition. You can find the first one here. These are based on lists that were previously competitive and I'll point out if they still are, or what changes might be made to make them more so. I have posted and discussed 2-3 armies each week, giving information on how to build the armylist, what it does and how to work it. These lists are designed at 1500pts, so they can be more easily scaled up or down to meet your requirements.

Armored Core
The Armored Core was an unusual Tyranid army, based around a heavy concentration of firepower and some Kill Point denial. It played totally differently than a regular Tyranid force. The concept of the army was to deploy and maintain a very tight wedge formation, usually to one side or the other of the battlefield. By doing so, you were concentrating the entirety of your army against perhaps 1/3 of the enemy army. With those odds, Tyranid firepower makes a difference rather quickly. In addition, the army was actually quite effective at killing vehicles (Tyrant and Carnifex VCs and Carnifex Barbed stranglers and high-strength Warp Blasts could all take out up to AV14, while the TL-Devourers of the Elite Carnifi could take out AV12 easily, due to their volume of fire.) This would quickly transform your advantage even further as all the vehicles of the enemy died. Sadly, this is no longer an option. With the changes to the vehicle damage table, glancing hits can no longer reasonably cause damage to a vehicle. We are back to just being able to Shake or Stun it. With that change, this style of army is no longer effective. It would be best played more like a standard Godzilla army (sit in cover and shoot, using Genestealers as charge denial,) or as The Wall.

As this particular style of army is much less effective now in it's standard role, I won't be writing up an army list for it. One direction that I considered taking it was using a close-combat orientation to take out the vehicles, which will bring it close to the new army list for Synergy Spearhead. With 6 Monstrous Creatures stomping after the vehicles, you should take most of them down quickly if you are up against a mechanized list. (Remember, they can't do much damage to you if they are scooting around at high speed to avoid being hit.) With that said, let's move on to the Synergy Spearhead.

Synergy Spearhead
As I was looking at the (at the time) new codex, I realized that there were quite a few biomorphs and options that worked better if there was more than one kind of Tyranid in the area to take advantage of them. A chief example would be Feeder Tendrils, which has an area effect, allowing nearby broods to get the advantage as well. Another example would be Psychic Scream, which greatly increases the chances (among other things) of an enemy unit breaking from combat. This gave me an idea, which is, generally speaking, a Bad Thing :)

164 Hive Tyrant WS6, S6, 2+Sv 2xScything Talons, Implant Attack, Flesh Hooks, Toxic Miasma, Psychic Scream
164 Hive Tyrant WS6, S6, 2+Sv 2xScything Talons, Implant Attack, Flesh Hooks, Toxic Miasma, Psychic Scream

113 Carnifex 2xST, WS4, Toxic Miasma
113 Carnifex 2xST, WS4, Toxic Miasma

170 10x Genestealer Feeder Tendrils
170 10x Genestealer Feeder Tendrils
170 10x Genestealer Feeder Tendrils
120 Carnifex 2xST, WS4, I2, Toxic Miasma, Flesh Hooks
120 Carnifex 2xST, WS4, I2, Toxic Miasma, Flesh Hooks
195 3xZoanthrope Psychic Scream Warp Blast

1499pts

Tactics
The concept here is to make several "force packages" that support each other and carve through the enemy army in a single, concentrated Spearhead. Make 2-3 groups, each positioned close to the other. Each group will consist of at least 2 Monstrous Creatures and a brood of Genestealers. The Zoanthropes move along behind the groups, trying to stay mostly screened from enemy fire and within the protective umbrella of Synapse provided by the Tyrants in case something does get to shoot at them. Similarly, place the Genestealers mostly behind your MCs to give them cover but still let them be close, so that their Feeder Tendrils allow all the Carnifexes to reroll missed hits. As you charge, spread the Monstrous Creatures slightly so that the Genestealers can pile in between them for the combat. Each grouping should be able to take down an entire squad of Space Marines on the charge. Should they have anyone left, they will likely run, then simply chase them down with those I6 Genestealers and keep going.

Until one of your battlegroups has taken major damage, you will likely wipe out any unit you hit in a single turn. One way to counteract this is by spreading your group out a bit. This will lessen the effect of the Synergy, but it's an effective way to cut down the damage you do. Alternately, try to hit more than one unit at a time. Since you are going to end up in front of the enemy guns in their turn, you want to take out as much as you can to limit that return fire. You will have a good chance of taking both squads out when you win the combat (unless they are Fearless and have large squads, in which case you'll be tied up during their turn, but probably not after that) and run them down. Even Imperial Guard can't afford to give their squads away as 2 for 1 specials very long!

Tweaks
One tweak would be to drop a few Genestealers from each brood to give the Heavy Support Carnifi Venom Cannons. This will allow you to shake or stun enemy vehicles while you move into attack range. On the negative side, this will also slow your army down a bit, since the heavies won't be able to Run every turn. You could also switch out the WS4 and Toxic Miasma for Tusked on each Carnifex. This will do slightly more damage on the charge, but it will mean that they will take a little more damage as well. Adding shooting to the MCs could also work, giving you a little less CC impact, and a slower charge in, but letting them shoot on the way can also be worthwhile. (This is probably the weakest of the tweaks, but it can still be a viable option.

The Great Devourer
This army is another very unusual list, and comes to us courtesy of Warpshadow member Vsurma, though I have "evolved" it to have a bit more shooting. This is a truly shooty Tyranid list. Like all Tyranid lists, however, it cannot hope to outshoot Tau or Imperial Guard. It can, however, hope to scare them away!

156 Hive Tyrant 2xDevourer Enhanced Senses Toxin Sacs Extended Carapace Psychic Scream
156 Hive Tyrant 2xDevourer Enhanced Senses Toxin Sacs Extended Carapace Psychic Scream

113 Elite Carnifex 2xDevourer Enhanced Senses
113 Elite Carnifex 2xDevourer Enhanced Senses
113 Elite Carnifex 2xDevourer Enhanced Senses

90 18xSpinegaunt Spinefists
95 19xSpinegaunt Spinefists
95 19xSpinegaunt Spinefists
95 19xSpinegaunt Spinefists

195 3xZoanthrope Psychic Scream Warp Blast
138 Carnifex Venom Cannon Devourer Enhanced Senses
138 Carnifex Venom Cannon Devourer Enhanced Senses
1497pts.

Tactics
The 75 Spinegaunts close with the enemy and tie up particularly nasty units in assault early on. They want to avoid creating too much cover, however! The real focus of this army is to force the enemy to take morale tests for shooting casualties. Morale tests that they will be at -5 on. Thus, they start to run away. If they are close to the board edge, they can run right off the board. By the time turns 3 and 4 roll around, your Psychic Scream umbrella should reach all the way back to their board edge, so anything that panics will have almost no chance of recovery.

You can use the Spinegaunts to engage those units with the most firepower (or really nasty assault threats,) and let your shooting take care of the rest as your MCs advance in a block similar to that of the Wall. Unlike the Wall, however, you want to spread your fire a bit, as long as the enemy is within your Psychic Scream range. This way, as many squads as possible will be forced to take Morale tests at up to -5, which should force quite a few fallbacks. Yes, this means you are letting the Food get further from you, but that's okay, those that fall back off the board edge are destroyed and the ones that don't will have a poor chance of rallying until they get out of range of your Psychic Screams. Note too that Falling Back units that are within 6 inches of an enemy model cannot rally, even Space Marines will continue to Fall Back. Remember where your Spinegaunts are and you can herd the enemy right off the board. Once the unengaged models are escorted from the board, you may turn your attention to any units still tied up by Spinegaunts.

Ah, I can hear you now. You are asking, "What about Fearless armies?" (Admit it, you were.) Typically, Fearless adds quite a price hike to a model, which means there are fewer of them around. In this case, simply concentrate your fire to take out whole units at a time. Even though your Psychic Screams won't help you, having fewer targets should make up for that rather easily.

Astute readers will notice that there are only 2 Synapse Creatures in this list. They are fairly well protected, and the real damage will be done by the parts of the army that don't require Synapse.

Tweaks
If more firepower is what you are after, you could make this a MUCH shootier list by replacing the Spinegaunts with S4 Devourergaunts. In this armylist, the Gaunts are part of the shooting design, instead of being intended to tie up the enemy. This time they will set up in cover, outside of Synapse range and Shoot! When they can Lurk (that being the "outside of Synapse range" part) they will get a bonus to their cover save, making them rather difficult to kill, and a brood of 11 should drop 2 Space Marines per turn. That may not seem like much for 110pts, but it's quite survivable and on squads that started at less than 10, that's 25% casualties, which means another Morale test!

Wrap Up
And so, my children, thus are some of the myriad guises The Great Devourer can take in it's quest to scour the galaxy of life. I hope you enjoyed my look at the new codex and some of our great new options. As always, if you have questions or suggests, please find my email below. Hopefully this will help all the overfiends out there to realize the creativity and options we have available to us and some of the interesting combinations of units and biomorphs and tactics we can use.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

Return to Warpstorm!