The thirty strong termagant blob and you: How I came to loathe the Tervigon tax.

Hey everyone, BeeCee here...

Wow, it's been a long time since I've had a chance to talk to you. Real life has taken a turn for insanity this summer but things look to be slowing down a little bit more.

I wanted to talk about something that I have been struggling with as a Tyranid player and in talking to the other guys on this blog, I realized I'm not the only one. The question is, "How do I effectively use the thirty strong termagant brood required to unlock my Tervigon?"

Hi, we're not just in units of 10 anymore.

On its own a termagant does not look like much. It is WS/BS 3, T3, and a 6+ save. You aren't going to move heaven and earth with numbers like that.

The termagant does provide one incredible service however. Because the hive mind doesn't care at all about them, they make great moving cover saves for the units behind them. Combine that with a venomthrope and you are looking at a 3+ cover save for anything behind them. There is a little bit of finesse required when you use the blob. It is imperative that your blob of gaunts does not slow down your advance with your tyrannofex and exocrines. This is where it gets a little bit dicey. You need enough gaunts to sustain losses but not too many to slow your big boys down.

Here is an example of the thin line concept.

I'm sure you're thinking, "Hey thanks for the common sense BeeCee, everyone and their mom knows that I want to screen my big guys with little guys!" While this is true, do you sometimes get yourself caught in a situation where you have a ball of gaunts in front of your big guys which doesn't allow them to effective move forward? Did your gaunts clip difficult terrain and they slowed to a crawl forcing your entire army to gridlock like rush hour traffic?

In this example the gaunts will keep the MCs pinned in their own deployment zone indefinitely

Ignoring the makeshift terrain you can easily see that my desire to ensure a cover save was my own undoing in this game as it was turn three before my Tyranid monstrous creatures were able to really contribute to the battle. Combine that with the limited range of some of the Tyranid heavy hitters, it makes for easy target selection for your opponent.

With that in mind, next time let's talk about the Exocrine, the body guard of the hive fleet.