I finally had a chance to get my new nids onto a table at our local club and got two games in against Cadians and Black Templars (new experimental airdrop list). I'm in the process of writing up a full report of my game against Mard's Cadians (2-0 victory to Cadians on turn 4), but as that'll take a few days here are some thoughts on the list in the mean time.
I took:
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Primary Synapse
350 - Major swarm, Hive Tyrant, 4x Zoanthropes, 3x Carnifex, Mycetic spore
350 - Major swarm, Hive Tyrant, 4x Zoanthropes, 3x Carnifex, Mycetic spore
200 - Minor Swarm, 3 Warriors, 10x Gaunts (8 Termagants/2 Hormagaunts)
200 - Minor Swarm, 3 Warriors, 10x Gaunts (8 Termagants/2 Hormagaunts)
200 - Minor Swarm, 3 Warriors, 10x Gaunts (8 Termagants/2 Hormagaunts)
Secondary Synape
400 - Attack Swarm. Barbed Hierodule Prime, 2x Barbed Hierodule.
275 - Nest swarm. 8x Biovores.
275 - Nest swarm. 8x Biovores.
200 - Nest swarm. 4x Biovores.
200 - Infestation swarm. 3x Ravener Alpha, 5x Ravener.
Independent
200 - Genestealer swarm. 7x Genestealers with Broodlord
150 - Bio-vessel. Razorfiend.
Seems like a flexible list, perhaps a bit light on shooting, but as you say later, taking a lot of Gaunts/Raveners can certainly compensate for that.
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1. Formations in this list take casualties easily, but remain unbroken and combat effective for a surprisingly long time
This feels right, and I love it. Fun example: a Warlord Titan unloaded on a small swarm of warriors and gaunts, killed half the gaunts and a warrior for only 2 BMs, and the formation was still able to activate and destroy a unit of Cadian Sentinels. Love it: if you don't kill the synapse, the nids just keep coming.
Capturing that dynamic is really hard with Tyranids, but I agree that the current rules does a good job of striking a balance. The original french list didn't have expendable on the Gaunts, perhaps because they felt it still made them too powerful, but it just feels weird that Tyranids would care about their cannon fodder getting killed.
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2. Carnifexes are still not great.
Carnifexes need BtB engages to achieve anything but are extremely slow and struggle to get there. This makes them worthless in the Onachus list but potentially useful in Dagon with mycetic spores. The problem is, 350pts for a unit with 3 carnifexes that planetfalls to a preplotted location with only a 20cm threat bubble just doesn't feel great. You'll probably be able to engage something on arrival, but the odds are it won't be the heavily armoured BTS unit you want to use those MW attacks against. Even in BtB combat, carnifexes with their low numbers and relatively few attacks don't quite feel impressive enough to justify the points (spaceship + spore) needed to get them there.
One thing we wanted to avoid was armies with tonnes of 4++ AVs running around. It turned out to be really powerful. Carnifexes got to keep their 4++, but at the cost of being kind of slow. On the upside, they're a really good bodyguard for a Hive Tyrant or a Dagon Overlord.
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In my opinion, carnifexes should be faster, deadlier, or both. Some thoughts on ways to achieve that:
-Give carnifexes infiltrate, possibly in combination with a reduction of movement to 15cm. This feels thematic (they're screamer-killers! they scream and charge!), and would give them a better chance of making it to BtB from a spore drop.
-Reduction in cost to 3 for 100 points or 4 carnifexes for 125-150 pts. I'm unconvinced that carnifexes are any better than haruspexes as-is (despite their higher points cost), but haruspexes aren't as reliant on 200+ points of spaceship and spores to get where they need to be.
-Increase stats: add an extra MW CC attack, or CC2+. Alternative: carnifexes in 40k have had decent ranged firepower for some time now. Adding +1EA (FF) or a Venom Cannon would at least give carnifexes something to do if they can't reach BtB.
The main principle has been to keep the stats as close to Onachus as possible, but putting 15cm Infiltrate on the Carnifexes could be an option. Two problems I see tho: 1 Taking drop swarms is already really powerful, this would make it more so. 2. Making Carnifexes 15cm means you would only ever take them in a drop swarm.
Having a version of the Carnifex with a Venom Cannon is an interesting possibility tho.
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3. Hierodules felt mediocre
I took a 400pt unit of 3 Barbed Hierodules as a curiosity, and I don't think it really fit in well with this list. That said, it was a struggle to use well: 25cm move + 45cm range is good for shooting the enemy frontline, but those are the units you're already able to engage with gaunts or infiltrating infantry. At the same time, 5+RA with 3DC means that they die relatively easy to MW/TK ranged fire (more of a problem vs Guard than against some other lists, but still). I'm going to experiment more with these guys but at the moment I'm unconvinced that they bring much to the list. The scythed hierodule looks even worse: as with the carnifexes, why pay 125pts for a slow CC monster when you could have 10 hormagaunts for 100pts (similarly survivable in cover and don't generate BMs)?
Might be that a Hierdoule costs too much as an upgrade. Always a problem to balance units in lists where a lot of stuff does almost the same thing.
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4. Nest swarms with Biovores are great
These are a great formation. Mard and I talked a little about whether the units with 8 biovores were worth it over the units with 4 and didn't come to an obvious agreement, which is nice: the minimal Nest + 4 Biovores unit is good for plinking 1 or 2 BMs per turn and guarding an objective, but adding 4 more Biovores actually makes a moderately capable shooting garrison (assuming access to area terrain for cover saves).
We've tried spamming Nest Swarms, and while they're good, they're also really static, and Biovores are not Gaunts, which means that a few BMs will shut them down fairly quickly.
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5. Small units of infantry, especially gaunts, are good value and powerful
Small synapse swarms with 10 gaunts are dirt cheap and can cause real damage when they hit. Sniping the LV synapse creatures is certainly an option for your opponent, but the Dagon terrain rules really help keeping that from getting out of hand (and forcing the player to make hard decisions between positioning for engages vs positioning for survivability).
Agree.
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I'm a fan of the all-ravener infestation swarm: it gets where it needs to go and hits hard in assault. I don't understand why the 3 Ravener Alphas are cheaper than a single Trygon Prime. As I see it the Raveners are more survivable (don't die to TK and can get cover saves), more powerful in CC, and most importantly more likely to reach BtB due to Infiltrate.
Might be that the save on the Raveners is a bit too good, the cost too low, or the cost of the Trygons too high. Trygons are better at camping at an objective, while are a lot better at popping up in horrible places and Engaging stuff (which might be more valuable).
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Genestealers are also great: I used mine suboptimally, but they're a cheap and nasty unit that can bring turn 1 engagements while being ultimately disposable.
And they're great at holding objectives, since they don't need Synapse. So don't dispose of them too quickly.
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One criticism of the infantry side of the list: Gargoyles come in fewer numbers than gaunts (4 vs 5 for 50pts) and are also significantly worse in both FF and CC. I don't think that's a fair tradeoff for the increased speed, so would instinctively suggest either making them FF5+ or increasing the swarm size to 5 for 50pts.
We had them at parity in the beginning, but the problem was that you ended up taking them over the others a lot of the time. You should try running a Swarm sometime with Gargoyles and Tyranid Warrior Shrikes, it's a really nasty swarm.
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Overall thoughts
I like this list alot, and it feels far more interesting than the E:A/EUK tyranid lists. That said, I suspect that it might suffer from the same problem as the EUK list in that it's hard to say if any of the bigger bugs are more valuable than their equivalent points in gaunts. For example, I'd be interested to see how a list like this would play:
As Atension says below, taking a list with mostly Gaunts in it will work really well against some opponents, but if they have a lot of AT shooting like Eldar or Tau, they will rapidly destroy all your Synapse. That being said, it's really hard to strike a balance between making the Gaunts useless, or them being the only game in town.
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A list like this would normally suffer from formations being attrited to uselessness by the end of turn 2, but expendable + the ability to absorb synapseless formations into surviving synapse swarms might be able to mitigate that. Has this sort of gaunt spam list been tested?
Yeah, we've tried Gaunt spam. It works, but it's really dependent on terrain and opponent. Like I wrote above, the most powerful list we've tried so far has been an Haruspex AV rush list, ended up having to nerf some stuff because of that.
