I played this back in April against Gargant Big Mob and won 2-1 on the fourth turn. These are my notes from the game:
- fms of 1 spore chimney auto-break if they're shot at without taking damage. Seems silly, suggest min fm size to be 2 chimneys OR make them DC2 increasing the cost.
- spores felt too expensive at 100 pts for 3. Also they should be fearless as they're mindless, not even animalistic enough to want to run away. They were fighter bomba'd to death in short order.
- Didn't take any synapse as it's expensive at +50 but I'm likely to take on all hierophants now. This is a list about surviving and taking control of parts of the board. As such, titans will break, but I need to bring them back for the following turn. Also there's a tactic there (which I used unintentionally): rush forward first turn, get broken by enemy shots (taking maybe 2, 3 DC damage), double forward as part of the break move. End phase get 1 DC back, rally on a 1+ or 2+ (!!!), and all of a sudden my hierophant is 125cm away from where it started at the beginning of the 2nd turn. OH YEAH! Sure it has 2 BMs and 2 DC damage, but it's still very much fighting fit.
- SC or bonus to activate on engage? Since there are so few activations, these are really important. Yes, I failed a few engages but I think tyranids should have engage as a default activation like orks do with a bonus for that. SC is almost impossible to get. It'd be good to have a dominatrix upgrade for big titans, where they get the SC.
- Shooty weapons seemed a bit pointless. The ideal hierophant has some kind of shooting + as many assault improvements as possible. The shooting is just to put a bm somewhere I guess, but it's not really important. I was marching them all the time, and as soon as I was close I was engaging.
- Nothing on this list except for the hierarch can beat a mega gargant in an assault as it's got double power claws at TK(D6). I guess two hierophants together could do it!
- the rapid expansion rule is a bit pointless really. Titans will lose the game if they don't move aggressively forward. Imp Titans don't need this rule, ork titans don't need this rule, etc.
- The Viragon was the star of the show. Turned up turn 2 really close to the mega gargant. Tried to go somewhere else but failed its activation. Somehow the mg had another target to shoot up, so in turn 3 it went for the blitz shooting up some lootas on the way. Turn 4 was its star moment as it got engaged by a gargant. Luckily it drew the 1st assault resolution so it got into b2b and then tore up the gargant (didn't completely destroy it), getting access to the blitz.
- The malanthrax was right in front of the mg, and was always going to activate before it, and there was nowhere to hide. I was reluctant to throw it for the slaughter 1st turn so was a bit conservative. It went after some lootas finally managing to catch them using adrenal glands. Beat them, but not by THAT much. They moved away and rallied over the blitz, so he had to chase them to stop them claiming it, but didn't catch them again. The 20cm move is a big downgrade from the hierophant
Any questions let me know. This is what I used by the way:
Assault Biotitan 525
Crushing Claw, 1 hvy bio 25
Assault Biotitan 525
1 bio-cannon, 1 hvy bc 25
Assault Biotitan 525
1 bio-cannon, 1 hvy bc 25
Malanthrax 550
Adrenal Glands 50
Viragon 550
3 Heavy Spores 100
1 Spore chimney 50
1 Spore chimney 50