Topic: what is the best hive tyrant

[lt_sparky]

ive tried a few kinds out but they are either to expensive or just not good enough. does anyone have a true killer of a tyrnat? please let me know about it, maybe a personal experiance with your favorite tyrant that would be great. just basically give me some ideas for an awesome tyrant

[BlackSavage]

Wings, Toxin sacs, warp field, 2X ST. Its not that expensive so it leaves point for other things and it gets the job done.

[Riaddon]

thats already pretty expensive, though horribly effective. But on that tyrant I would at least add flesh hooks. It is annoying if such an expensive tyrant does not get to hit, because it will go after anything it fights in cover. And the point cost for flesh hooks is marginal.


Another thing I would sometimes give this tyrant, is implant attack. To make it even more usefull vs multiwound models, another mild upgrade compared to what it already is.

That is the very most I would invest however, and the base tyrant as laid out by Blacksavage is exactly what I always use.

[BlackSavage]

I dont see the point of implant attacks. If you have a unit with a character in it, hit it in the flank so the character cannot reach you and start munching on it. Could get lucky and break it, or at least cut it down while the character moves up to hit, then keep munchin on the unit (depending on how strong the character is). Could just take it out while ignoring that one 50+ pt model.

[Benandorf]

Wings, Toxin sacs, warp field, 2X ST. Its not that expensive so it leaves point for other things and it gets the job done.

This minus warp field is the best flyrant, IMHO.

And dakkatyrant is best shooty tyrant (ES, TS, 2x TL Devs, 1 Guard)

[Macman_EKIM]

My flyrant is exactly like what blacksavage posted, he does ok, ive had some bad luck with him.

Now the dakka tyrant on the other hand that is just a beast, i use him in every game and he never ceases to amaze me. Ive had him take out a squad of termies b4(they werent even shootin back). Not many people will consider him a threat unless they know there bugs.

[YuenglingDragon]

The dakka Tyrant might be the best possible build.  Guards make him practically invincible because of the number of wounds you have to get through.  He kills about 3 MEq's or 6 GEq's per turn with shooting.  He can land a fair amount of glancing hits on light vehicles, too.

[lt_sparky]

and i asume the dakka tyrant will have toxin sacs and enhanced senses right, does it have wings

[Macman_EKIM]

toxin sacs for sure, enhanced sences is purely up to you, you will have the reroll to hit ethier way. so it all depends on how well u roll i guess.

I have heard of using a dakka tyrant w/wings to get there quicker but the wings prety much paint a target on him. tyrant guard are usualy your best bet with him

[YuenglingDragon]

Agreed.  I like Enhanced Senses.  You get almost 90% accuracy with it opposed to 75% without it.

[Benandorf]

On a shooty tyrant of any kind, Enhanced Senses are almost mandatory.  The damage you will do will more than make up for the points; killing one extra MEQ will do it, and you should kill an extra one EACH TURN.

[Macman_EKIM]

ha ha funny story about my dakka tyrant and enhanced sences.

Ok so for some idiotic reason i thought that the tyrant and the carnifex had the same bs when upgraded. Soooooo when i first started using my dakka tryant i always gave him enhanced sences. So here comes the kinda funny part, i only ever thought he hit on a 4+ so i paid for the upgrade but never actualy took it into account. The sad part was that he still did amazing.

o and this was when i first started playing nids so a nid newb mistake. and i can be kinda not so bright sometimes :S

lol rofl lmfao wasent that funny. lol maybe not just thought i would share that he still has the potential to be very lethal "without" enhanced sences.

[GenestealerAlpha]

Tyrant
Venom Cannon
TL Deathspitter
Catalyst
Toxin Sacs
Enhanced senses
Toxic Miasma

3x Tyrant guards
Lash whips
Rending claws
implant attack

There basically nothing the above cannot kill.  It's not cheap but worth every penny.  Ate a C'tan at the last tourney.

[Benandorf]

No.  It's not worth a damn.  It can be danced and ignored all day long, and won't do a whole lot of damage in shooting.  So you get str 7-8 shots each turn from a 300+ point brood.  Sure, it can kill stuff in combat, but even if it kills a c'tan, it's still not made back its points.  And, again, a competent opponent will let dance around you.  Not to mention that it won't even take fire, because no one will waste shots on something that unkillable.

Two flyrants or three dakkatyrants would do a much better job infilicting casualties. And the dakkatyrants can survive more (they have more wounds).

[GenestealerAlpha]

Actually it earns its pointsb back rather quickly when it starts popping his vehicles.

Haha I've run this Tyrant for awhile and all my opponents gripe about it.   Yes it is nigh unkillable and rarely ever dies.  However ignored, and danced around?  A big resounding no.  You can't ignore something standing in the middle of the table with a 36" range.

Last tournament 3 games all good examples of the effect of this Tyrant.
1st game vs Ultramarines  Turn 1 Tyrant advances and cuts a heavy bolter dev squad down to 2.  Next turn it kills a dreadnaught.  Turn 3 a Predator loses it's main gun.  Turn 4 he kills the Predator, turn 5 another Dreadnaught, turn 6 a Razorback.  Add that up and tell me it's less than 325pts.

Game 2 against Necrons goodby monolith turn 2.  I then began to eat his destroyers alive.  Turn 4 he assaulted with a C'tan that was killed.  Add that up.

Game 3 vs speed freaks.  Turn 1 a looted leman russ dies.  After that I lost count of how many vehicleswere killed.  A Nob bike squad, at least half a dozen wartrakks, and a zzap trukk.  Not to mention his warboss on a bike with the Nobz died.

Not to mention when your crazy like me and run 1 synapse at 2000pts you will run a highly survivable Tyrant such as this.  It doesn't die, it stands in the middle of the table and keeps everything that needs it in synapse range.

So this is not a cool idea it's a tournament tested hive tyrant.  It has proven highly effective.

[g00gle5]

@ Genestealeralpha

Wait for some statistics guru to come in and tell you that almost everything you just listed was very lucky.

The only weapon that could kill the monolith and Leman Russ is the venom cannon, and with 3 shots that need 6s to glance - odds weren't in your favour.

The c'tan as well being eaten by that unit, again I can't see it happening on a regular occurance.

I don't mind the idea of a shooty tyrant with 3 guard, but i think you have a lot of abilities that wouldn't come into play very often, its nice to have the insurance, but I don't think they justify themselves in the long run.

You can't ignore something standing in the middle of the table with a 36" range.

Actually when you are only having 3 shots fired at you from a 300+ point unit, I think i'd find it quite easy to ignore. That venom cannon is mildly more effective than a heavy bolter firing at infantry, and considering it glances only - I could say the same about vehicles...

Not to mention when your crazy like me and run 1 synapse at 2000pts you will run a highly survivable Tyrant such as this.  It doesn't die, it stands in the middle of the table and keeps everything that needs it in synapse range.

You have been playing forgiving players then to be honest. A 2000 point army of just about anything won't have much trouble in taking down 10 T6 wounds. I assume you run lots of more independent units however, like Stealers, to try and take the heat off them.

I agree with Benadorf's two set ups as being the most effective. I have to say though whenever I have tried a dakkafex or a dakka tyrant I find them too slow to bring their guns into range - this was againt a Dark Eldar opponent on a 6 x 4 board though, so I'll let their poor performance off those times.

[Benandorf]

Actually, against the monolith, the only way to have killed it would have to rolled two 6s with the VC.  Str 6 HT can't do amphetamine parrot against it.

Yes, you CAN ignore something sitting in the middle, when there are bigger threats from units that are actually killable.  4 medium-strength shots (the str 8 ones that cannot do more than glance vehicles) from 300 points is far from scary.  Instead, the opponent will be able to focus fire on the easier killed things and wipe them out sooner, and then turn on that monster and whittle him down to nothing.

The main problem with it as a "CC beast" is that not only does it have a fairly low number of attacks (lashwhips are bad against most things a tyrant should be fighting), and moves 6" a turn.

Running 1 synapse at 2000 points with a lot of gaunts isn't crazy; it's just stupid.  You then have 24" to deploy your units in on the line, and they have to stay within that range the entire game. Without wings, those hormagaunts will get out of range fast.

I'm not sure how it was "high effective" if you followed the rules correctly.  All of those things you popped had only the slightest chance to kill outside of combat (like, 2%), and no competent opponent will let a tank get charged by a walking tyrant.

Or maybe, seeing what your opponents were fielding and using against this unit, maybe you just need to get some good players to play against.  I've never seen a good necron player use both a Nightbringer and a Monolith in the same list.  Or send the nightbringer against something with a lot of lash whips.

Standing in the middle of a 6x4 table for synapse means that anything charging the opponent will get out of range fairly easily, and you can only contest the middle; the flanks are open.

So, maybe you've been really lucky with this build, but I can tell you that it's far from optimal points spending.  And that's what my list and I are all about: spending points in the best way possible.

[YuenglingDragon]

That mess costs 326 points.  Three hundred and twenty-six points.

I could take 20 Genestealers for that many points.  Guess who would win in a fight?  It ain't you.  I'd drop you in the first turn of combat just from rending.

[Lazarus15]

Well with that one very tough unit, then perhaps, he has a WHOLE lot of other things.  I would be interested to see what the whole list looks like before I pass judgement on his set up.  Unit effectiveness may be great inside his list, but not so great on paper by themselves.

[Benandorf]

It doesn't matter what the rest of his list looks like.  Regardless of what other stuff he's using, that set-up for HT is a waste of points.  Zilla, swarm, balanced, whatever he's playing, there's still no reason to put that many points on a unit that can be ignored so easily.  It's not a threat at range to much of anything, and in 6 turns of shooting it would kill, on average, 6.361 marines (assuming average of 2 models under the DS template per turn).  That's 95 points.  And, if you shoot at, say, a Land Raider, you have about a 4.6% chance to kill it with 6 turns of shooting at it.  And that's still only 250 points.

Realistically, you can't expect this unit to make back its points through killing, and it certainly won't make it back through taking fire for other units.