I've been building some army combinations (still to be tested), and keep falling on the same: I can't find a way to get real profit of a synapse unit based on Hive tyrants...

ive tyrants are cool big general/terminators... useless when the enemy can snipe out the only one in the formation just by choosing "I shoot AT". Different things I've been checking finding no way of running them:

1) It goes all alone with infantry (fried tyrant...)

2) It goes shielded with combat AVs: the gaunts are out of need with big smashers in a unit, it'd be great to have two or three hive tyrants then, to ensure they're alive, but you end up with 12 or 18 gaunts which you don't really need, won't really help except for getting loses in close combat and the formation will be extremely expensive (and still quite snipeable)

3) Hide the tyrant behind firing LVs (zoanthrope/biovore/meiotic spore), as there are no assault LVs anymore (what happened to raveners???). With bothoptions his mobility is reduced a bit, and the tyrant becomes a turret bodyguard, which has never been. I don't really like the idea.

4) Hide the tyrant behind expendable LV meiotic spores: sounds great, as they're scouts, keeping unwanted problems out, expanding the formation if needed... but then you check on movement 10cm, and it sucks for an assault boss. They're quite an expensive AA only things for a screen when you can't regenerate them, aren't day? (and not enough to scout the formation, on purpose I guess)

5) Hide the tyrant behind firing AVs, most probably hidden behind LVs: this seems to give the better sounding formations, but they raise in cost so fast and quite over what you expect them to do. Again the gaunts will be of little use, and the hive tyrant has become a bodyguard, instead of a general...

I still think on the Hive tyrant as the only being capable of outmatching a pair of combat exarchs on their game (WH40k_2nd ed), or the whirlwind of razors capable of drilling through 2-3 units without sweating (WH40k 3-4th) Anybody has had something with a hive tyrant really performing over a tyranid warriors + gaunts alignment?

I was wondering if it would be something out of mind to separate tyranid warrior synapse swarms and hive tyrant synapse swarms into two different types and give them different options, so both the people that sees to many options in that synapse formations and the people that expect to have a powerful and resilient hive tyrant find their thoughts.

There could still be a rule stating you can only include one hive tyrant for each tyranid warrior formation, so the gaunt wave is kept working.

Any thoughts?

Certainly if competitive (as opposed to test) games show the ht laking from lists, it certainly is a concern.

Av is always going to be a problem while mycetic spores remain absent.

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It's a list design issue, not a stat issue. I find myself taking tyrants all the time when mocking up lists for Leviathan 3.0 (second game this friday!). The reason is, of course, the specialist swarms - swarms without gaunts. My first instinct is to always match synapse type with the majority of the units, so warriors leads gaunts, tyrants lead carnifexes, zoanthropes lead biovores and tervigons lead tyrannofexes.

The last one is a bit weird I admit.

etrius´s idea seems fine to me, allowing tyrant to lead more specialised swarms could make it playable, also would reduce the "too many" options from current swarm. Limiting this specialised swarm to 1 for each normal swarm would maintain the "big swar" idea of the list

Seeing as the Onachus list is a 'gaunt swarm' list, the compulsory gaunts may stay. Hive Tyrants do have one very important thing that warriors lack, Leader. So if you do include any AVs in a swarm it's probably a good idea to use a Tyrant.

The other thing in Leviathan that makes Tyrants worth taking are Tyrant Guards. LV, Expendable and a decent save; it's almost as though they were designed to protect Tyrants...



Given that only the little stuff is swarmable, I don't think leviathan will have a problem with people not taking little stuff, even though the option is there not to. The special rules make it desirable to have gaunts etc, so the army list doesn't need to strictly enforce it.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Indeed the tyrant guard was "invented" to protect the hive tyrants once WH40k rules changed and the "small people" couldn't cover the big guys. The problem is they aren't old core creatures, so they have no room in the Tyranids_v10. I agree it's the way I like it.

About the leader in hive tyrant synapse swarms, I can tell is one of the things I like most about putting a hive tyrant there (not forgetting commander), but 1 is really little for letting the big guys shot in a synapse formation & 3 big guys, 1 hyve tyrant and 6 gaunts = 350-380 points... quite a lot to lose them after somebody flanks and "snipes" your tyrant by the proximity rule, and three big guys is not a lot... If you want to increase big guys, cost raises steadily, and if you want to give them one or two extra HTs for safety or additional leaders, then you’re easy over 700 (compare it to 10 leman rush…).

There are several ways to solve it:
1) Adding the “speacialist swarms” as in leviathan_V3
2) Downgrading the tyrant to infantry (I would do it by disallowing the Hive tyrant formation (nid list should be Hive tyrant + several warriors + a lot more gaunts), and changing the tyranid warrior formation: were it says “add up to 1 tyranid warrior for + 50 points”, changing it to “add up to one Hyve tyrant for +100 points”
3) Adding the hive tyrant just as a character option to any tyranid warrior units (odd, but could work): gives the unit reinforced armour, commander, leader, one venom cannon shot and 1 extra macro weapon attack, for +75 points (everything stays infantry in this case, for accounting the tyranid warriors as guards: and you can just use the hive tyrant miniature as the full cluster, if you don’t like reconversions).
4) Making the raveners Light Vehicles, as they were before, so the hive tyrant can count on spawning them to survive.
5) Making the gargoyles Light Vehicles could work also, but is a odder, isn’t it?
6) Changing movement of the meiotic spores to 20cm doesn’t look an odd option either, although it still looks as having the hive tyrant with Tau drones. However, in such an event I would remove their save and make them “brood (2)”.

Any thoughts on these?

i´ve told you many times not to compare any formation with leman russ formations... russes are damn powerful for their cost, but they are balanced in the list they belong to...



1- this one could work
2- im clearly against making HT infantry... las cannons have always been the main weapons to face them and doing this would make them inmune to them.
3- tyrant should have a stand on his own, so no character upgrade here... and as i said i really dislike HT being infantry
4- not sure about this one... raveners as LV could work... but fluff wise raveners should go with trigons not with HTs
5- gargoyles LV? i cant see space marines firing rocket launchers at gargoyles...
6- giving such an increase in movement to spores would change the way they are meant to work drastically, they should be working as floating mines not as seeker missiles

another way to try and solve this problem is to give synapse AVs a rule where they get something like an invulnerable save that if they pass it a brood creature (or 2) are killed instead, this could be seen as brood creatures defending their synapse creatures to death and sacrificing themselves to stop incoming fire

Nor are Raveners, but they're in the list.



1) Potentially doable in some form.
2) Absolutely not. Tyrants are huge, certainly not infantry.
3) See 2.
4) No. Raveners are the same size as Tyranid Warriors, and barely bigger than Terminators; they're infantry.
5) No.
6) No. Meiotic spores are mindless sacks drifting slowly on the breeze, not bodyguards. What you're asking for here is to change their stats to those of Tyrant guard. That isn't happening.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

another good way to make Ht more desirable would be to reduce its point value. it has clearly better stats than the warriors, but being snipeable makes it neatly worse choice so maybe it should cost the same as a warrior. this can be done in 2 ways

1- the swarm entry should be for 2 warrior/Ht and 6 gaunts. what i dislike of this option is that probably people would get the hts for their stats and add a warrior stand to assure synapse control... so usually we would see more Hts in the swarms than warriors in a 2 to 1 basis.
2- the swarm entry should be 2 warrior and 6 gaunts. the Ht would be an 0-1 (0-2 for big...etc) upgrade to the swarm (same cost as a warrior) this way there would never be more hts than warriors (what seems right fluff wise) in swarms and with such cost ht would be an interesting upgrade even being snipeable. this one seems the right way in my opinion

fluff wise, i can see armies searching and destroying synapse creatures such as HT to destroy synaptic control, Hts being so big makes them easy target for long ranged fire from leman russes and the like. So, Hts being snipeable seems right but maybe this deficiency should make it cost less.

I'm having the same problem making workable lists for my first playtest in a few weeks. When I'm looking at v10, there is the possiblity of adding a warrior for +50, which I'm not really looking at anyway. Why not add +1 Tyrant for 100 to comlement or replace the warrior upgrade. This would be workable. It is not like termagaunts are not useful, but it would at least strike a meaningful balance between the tyrant and other AV:s.

Then you could at least have 2 Tyrants, 6 gaunts and 3-4 carnifex/haruspex at 450-500 points.

/Fredmans

Shouldn't killing the Synapses be a realistic and achievable goal for your opponent? Otherwise the special rules are too powerful - virtually impossible to break, and even if they do break they can automatically rally. HTs do have 4+ RA so they aren't even that easy to kill. You could just as easily say the problem is that warriors are too easy to hide behind expendable troops...

TBH it seems tyrant guard are the logical solution to this problem, and in fact it could be that the special rules, which make synapses so important and are also army wide, make it difficult to balance HTs in lists which don't have guards (old style) vs lists that do (new style).

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