Flying Hive tyrants

The flying hive tyrant was another lost creature in 5th ed. I have played a few games with 1 in 6th ed as part of the Bio bomb nid list. They provide some high mobility, scary assault capability and good shooting.

The one I have been running so far is set up as follows
Hive Tyrant, Wings, Toxic Miasma, Old Adversory, Brainleech Devourer, Bonesword and Lash Whip
Starting powers are Life Leech and Paroxysm.

Weapon Load out
The hardest call is double Devourer or Lash Whip bone sword Devourer. The extra shooting is awesome but one of the great things about the mobility of a Winged tyrant is that they can dive out of the air and jump into a combat to keep them out of sight of opposing heavy shooting opponents. The downside of the new rules is that your hugely killy monster will often get challenged by some punk. You win combat but not by much - having your opponent stick around is not necessarily a bad thing though. So in combats like that the bonesword is an advantage as with rerolls from the supporting crowd invulns can be a pain accordingly the chance of instant death from the sword is beneficial. The lash whip also means that you at least get to attack simultaneously when diving into cover. If running Tyrants in pairs I would be inclined to give one of them the double devourer and one the whip bone sword. I will be playing around with this somewhat as with smash you can do something similar.

Toxic Miasma
In biobomb lists Toxic Miasma can be very nasty. When the Tyrant charges a unit and gets challenged by a wound soak character he won't get to kill much but at the end of combat he will likely be surrounded by many models. Toxic Miasma forces a toughness test with no cover or armour saves. With Enfeeble on the table you have the ability to make units lower Toughness -which is a very nasty combo. This forces the opponent to either challenge and take wounds per model in base afterwards or get hit by a smashy beast across the squad and lose combat and take fewer wounds afterwards.

Old Adversary - This is not cheap and was an option that I never would have taken in 5th aspreferred enemy really wasn't beneficial enough. Now with the transfer to shooting and wounds it can be devastating. Take for example a 10 man Devil Gaunt squad benefitting  from the preferred enemy aura in shooting. Their efficiency is boosted a significant 33% in terms of wound output (10 wounds instead of 7.5 v MEQ). This gets even better if Enfeeble is in the equation as you get to reroll a higher % of your misses which in turn are more likely to hit. The fact that this can benefit things like shooting Zoanthropes and Hiveguard should not be overlooked either.

As far as the Tyrant himself is concerned being able to reroll 1's in combat gives  a massive 55% boost to wound output hitting on 3's killing on 2's  (1.5 additional wounds a round of combat) and his shooting is twinlinked and wounding on 2's so again gets a boost of about 17% from the rerolls

Psychic powers.
The two existing powers are solid, he only gets to use one a turn but paroxysm can turn gaunts into killers and Nid life leech is ok at getting wounds back (Biomancy life leech is much better at S6). But that said I think though in the context of the Biobomb it is likely you will chance your arm for one of the 2 big powers - Iron Arm - which turns a flyrant into an absolute demon or Endurance which makes survivability out on his own much easier. Worst case you get a 4 shot shooting attack with AP 2 which can be used in conjunction with your brainleech devourer to shoot at a target and makes the Flyrant a little better at killing 2+ save models.

Flyrant - Survivability in the Biobomb world
A basic assumption here is that you will nearly always have endurance on your flyrant as if they stay alive they have the potential to savage your opponents army (In my last game one killed 4 tanks by himself).
So at a minimum you are only hit on 6's while swooping, have  a 5+ Jink and a 5+ FNP - not bad. This is followed up by a further 5+ to get a wound back in your own turn if you keep endurance up. Unlike a flyer you can't be 1 shotted.
Unfortunately you can crash into the ground with a bang and your survivability goes way down so if you are unlucky you can see a vast increase in shooting. Unless you have Iron arm. a Toughness 8 or 9 monstrous creature with FNP and maybe cover is going to take alot of firepower. If nothing else that lets the rest of your gribblies close the gap.and once tyranids start tying up your  units with fearless gaunts and killing vehicles then the game starts to spin their way. In terms of positioning whenever possible you should try to have your tyrant fly over terrain so when he crashes he still gets his 4+ or 5+ from cover saves.


Overall this is a very solid multi functional unit. It is not cheap though so having powers and capabilities that buff survivability and buff some units around you are a huge benefit.
I can see one or two of these guys being in most of my new nid lists.

Bio bomb nids

To kick off 6th ed I want to do what I normally do.... learn to master cc and psychic powers. With all the bluster about flyers and how to counter them players are forgetting just how common great psychic powers are becoming too and what a Nerf the ubiquitous psychic hood got. Nids are the natural choice for me to explore this and have a lot of fun too. After all Nids always welcome you back with open jaws. :)

So I want to introduce  the tyranid biomancy bomb, or bio bomb.

The purpose of this list is to have a ton of stacking bio buffs.
GIven this is the first post on this new blog let me start by talking about the heart of the list. the humble and forgotten zoanthrope.


zoes were known for their ineffective psychic shooting in 5th, cast,  get past psychic hoods and then roll to hit,  pen or wound and get past prevalent cover saves. It was simply too much to be effective.  Hive guard became all the rage due to their efficiency in comparison
 In 6th ed though, zoes have the tactical flexibility of changing their powers . To me biomancy is the right choice. with 2 powers to trade the zoe squad has a great chance to pick up the necessary powers to turn them Into serious force multipliers

How many other 180 point units can put out 3psychic powers a turn! especially when each has 2 to choose from.

So what powers do you need?
First negative here is that the powers are random.  But with 6 powers you are likely to get some of the ones you need. Depending on what you get the unit can behave very differently. There are 3 core powers, Enfeeble , Endurance and Iron Arm

ENFEEBLE
Very offensive and very tactical power that reduces enemy strength and toughness by 1, which dramatically increases the effectiveness of your small units. Gaunts can be instant killing stuff or just laying down far more wounds. Units like devilgaunts or gargoyles get a big boost in effectiveness and survivablility in combat (17% more wounds caused and 17% fewer wounds taken).  This is further enhanced by preferred enemy if you have the ability to double stack that.
Other uses that I have found for enfeeble include,
Dropping an enemy strength so that they can no longer instant kill you with powerfists (great for Zoes and warriors)
Dropping toughness on units that are going to receive Haemorrhage or strangleweb  shots (toughness /strength tests)
Dramatically increasing effectiveness of biovores
Making the parasite of mortrex a real terror for spawning rippers (toughness tests)
Allowing s6 flying mcs to deny fnp to models from swoop attacks or brainleech devourers (very useful v blood angel marines) by causing instant death.

In short enfeeble is always worth taking if rolled and multiple rolls really power up your army.


ENDURANCE
This is a mainstay power . Endurance gives relentless (very low use for Nids), It Will Not Die (recover wound at end of turn on 5+) and Feel No Pain.
Endurance is great on Zoes and little bugs but really shines on  the big mcs .

Combined with the ease of now getting cover on tyranid mcs the new "always on" fnp means that nid mcs are effectively twice as survivable as they were with  5+5+ saves.  It will not die just stacks to this (as does Life Leech).

every nid unit can benefit from this power and given that it has a 24 inch casting range you can pretty much hide the Zoes and buff away to your hearts content! Again always worth taking when rolled.  If you are lucky enough to roll 2or 3 if these in a unit you are off to a great start!


IRON ARM
Iron arm only affects the caster but it does provide a toughness and strength boost of d3.
This is incredibly good for mcs who move into wraithlord toughness territory but they do need some luck to pick up the power.  In a recent game a toughness 9 tyrant terrorised a blood angel back line shrugging off plasma and melta. This also stacks brilliantly with the previous two powers.
All that said what about iron arm on Zoes? At first glance this might not seem like the most useful of powers but if you roll it twice you now have a zoey unit who can stand out front. A toughness 6 unit with 3++ and 2 wounds is a bit of a beast to shift. And becomes a fantastic tarpits unit. To hold up the nasty stuff while your own nasty stuff wanders over to the combat.

Even with just one of these available in the 3 man units you can get some benefit , particularly when you lose one model the unit gets much harder to shift. The more high toughness that is dispersed around the board the harder it is for your opponent to focus fire , which improves the survivability of all your mcs.

Don't forget the strength side of this power too.  Especially if there happens to be an immobilised vehicle nearby !
One point in Iron Arm is that it is definitely 3rd in preference order.  If you roll one of the  other 2 powers first and iron arm then it may be more useful to swap it for Smite in some cases ( eg lots of termies).  In most cases though I think it is too much of a toolkit power to ignore.


Overall if you see bio Zoes across the table be very careful!  And if you are a nid general try them out  I don't think you will be disappointed!