|
Tyranids
At that time, the Tyranids didn't have a codex, just the mini-dex in the back of the book. I scoured the internet for information about them and found that most people used waves. They'd put a bunch of termagants up front, blocking Line of Sight to the Hormagaunts behind them, which would block LOS to the Genestealers and Monstrous Creatures at the back. This sounded interesting, but after noodling around with some points and ideas, I decided I'd be better off turning the swarm around. At the time, 100pts would get me 10 Hormagaunts, which would be quickly wiped out by Bolter fire. On the other talon, 105pts would get me a Carnifex with 4 T6 Wounds that would last a lot longer and still block LOS to the Genestealers I put behind it. As an added benefit, it was a lot cheaper to buy a few Carnifi and Tyrants than dozens of Hormagaunts and Termagants, not to mention easier to paint them up! At this time, my paint scheme was primarily White with some black lines and details (but not much!) I rationalized this as an arctic camouflage and decided that my hive fleet attacked planets starting at the poles and working outward to give them more time to build up forces before the denizens of the planet were aware they were under attack. Once the 3rd edition codex came out, I bought some of the new plastic Gaunts. I'd seen a fabulous conversion by Sherman Bishop that used the old metal hormagaunt body with extra sets of the Scything Talons to replace it's legs. It looked very creepy, so I decided to do the same with mine. Once I'd completed that, the other models looked funny next to them, so I also converted my Monstrous Creatures to look like that. (I briefly toyed with converting my Genestealers in the same way, but ultimately decided that would be too much work.)
At this time, I was fielding my Gaunts as upgraded Hormagaunts, which let them get across the board more quickly. I also started becoming disappointed in my Genestealers and Carnifi, since they couldn't keep up with the faster creatures. That meant I just focused on using those upgraded Hormagaunts and trying to find other fast things to pair them up with. Toward the end of 3rd edition, however, I found myself looking at my Genestealers again.
My Genestealer army was kind of a reaction to standard Tyranid advice at the time. "Genestealers are a waste of points and won't achieve anything for you, and taking Lictors is just giving your opponent VPs." I had said it a lot myself, and I'd seen it a lot more. Eventually I decided to see what I could do with these poor, maligned bioconstructs. Quite a lot, it turned out. It was worth it just to see other players nearly wet themselves when I pulled out 50 or so Genestealers for a 1500pt game! The Lictors and the Flyrant would generally occupy the enemy army's shooting for the first 2 turns or so, and the Genestealers wouldn't be too far behind them. Nasty, nasty, nasty! At this time, I switched my paint scheme to a simple version of my current red and black.
With 4th edition came Fleet of Claw for Genestealers and Gaunts as well as the Mutation system, plus much more customization opportunities for each unit. (You could buy the baseline model, then upgrade them a bunch of different ways and get different weapons for them, making them range from very cheap to extremely expensive.) While I started this edition with a version of my old fast-attack swarm (upgraded horms and Flyrant) and my Genestealer list, I started looking more at other options.
The 4th edition codex had made the Godzilla army a possibility (mostly Monstrous Creatures) and quite a few people were having tournament success with it. Eventually I decided to try it out. I had my own take on it, however. Most people used 2 Troops of cheap Gaunts or Rippers to fill the minimum slots and spent all their points on upgrading the big bugs. While I don't deny this met with tournament success, I felt it could be improved on. I used Genestealers as an Apex counterassault unit instead of the nearly useless gaunts or rippers, and I also used a psychic Choir of Zoanthropes with Psychic Scream. (I also gave this to my Hive Tyrants.) The entire army was kept in a wedge and ran right down the enemy's throat. The psychic screams gave a -5 to leadership, and the various Monstrous Creatures would shoot at a unit enough to make it take a Morale test, forcing it to fall back, often off the board edge. The only army I had regular trouble against was an Armored Company, and if I'd just given myself a few more antitank weapons, I probably would have done well against it, too. When I made my Godzilla army, I seriously upgraded my paint scheme and did some neat jungle basing for them, since there weren't very many models.
There were a lot of ways to make a successful Tyranid army under the 4th edition codex (or as I like to say, there's more than one way to skin a Catachan!) My last Tyranid army of 4th edition was a result of this kind of experimentation: The Swarm. I decided to see how much damage I could do with cheap Gaunts. The idea was to have so many models that they couldn't all be shot down, and to completely gum up the enemy army with my Gaunts, then slowly wear them down with lots and lots of crappy attacks. At lower point values (up to around 1000) this worked really, really well. Beyond that and it was much more difficult to keep all the Gaunts in Synapse range, and it was hard to do enough damage to wipe out the enemy army. I think it might've worked better with the addition of some Genestealers or other damage unit to help out the Gaunts, but by the time I got to that point, I was tired of the army. (Painting 150-ish Gaunts had taken a lot out of me.)
I haven't come back to my Tyranids for more than the odd game since the Swarm army, but there are still some things I'd like to try with them in 5th edition. One would be my Godzilla army and another is a variant on my old Genestealer army. Imagine a Flyrant and some Lictors and 6 Broods of Outflanking Genestealers! The other option goes back to an idea I had a long time ago, based in part on a conversation with somebody on Warpshadow (great Tyranid website) and in part on an idea I got from reading about someone's Chaos army. Hide a Flyrant and some Biovores in your backfield. Have 3 Lictors set to come in and deepstrike 18 Raveners on that same point. The Lictors pop up basically in combat, providing cover saves for the Raveners, who then engage on the next turn, while the Flyrant comes to join the fun. With that many high-Initiative Rending attacks (even with the Rending nerf) it should do massive amounts of damage to the enemy army in a short amount of time. Not sure if it'd be a tourney-winner, but I think it'd be fun to play, which is kind of the point!
If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know |
