Skyblight Tyranids: Taking the Blog Back from the Wolves for a Day.

Greetings friends,

BeeCee here with a quick update.

As you can imagine, Wolf fury has gripped the blog in force. Not only are there some strong units in the codex, but also Chandler and Ron are Space Wolf players. Ron posted up his list and one of the things he mentioned is that it might struggle versus Skyblight. What a perfect time for me to post the Skyblight list I am working on for the Renegade Open in November.

First let's talk about Skyblight. Before seventh edition, the gargoyles in Skyblight represented the only Objective Secured units in the game. It also represented the only way to get three hive tyrants in to your list without running multiple detachments, which was not a big thing in sixth.

Things have changed, with the onset of seventh edition, objective secured is on almost all troops, multiple detachments are no big deal, etc...

7th Edition is blowing the doors off 40k!

So let's talk about the list. At 1850 the list looks like this:

HQ

Hive Tyrant with wings, 2x brainleech devourers, electroshock grubs.
Hive Tyrant with wings, 2x brainleech devourers, electroshock grubs.

Troops

3 Ripper bases with deep strike
3 Ripper bases with deep strike

Elites

Venomthrope

Heavy Support

Mawloc
Mawloc

Skyblight Formation

Hive Tyrant with wings, 2xbrainleech devourers, electroshock grubs
Hive crone with stinger salvo (just adds a little more flexibility to his shooting)
Harpy with stranglethorn cannon
Harpy with heavy venom cannon
15 Gargoyles
15 Gargoyles
15 Gargoyles

I purposely opted to not have a strong ground element to this list because a single large target like a Tervigon becomes a likely target for the majority of my opponent's ground based firepower.

I am missing one!

The Good

With six flying monstrous creatures This army represents a ton of air power. Flying hive tyrants are the undisputed masters of the Tyranid codex and having three of them in the list will be fun. The gargoyles return to play on a 4+ after being wiped out, so if the dice get hot you have an unlimited amount of troops. Deep striking rippers provide a bit of flexibility and can sometimes get lost in the shuffle as they sit on an objective gnawing on themselves.

MY MAWLOC SCATTERED AGAIN!

The Bad

Mawlocs might be the most hit or miss unit in the entire game. When they are on, they ruin people's days, but when they are off you better hope you have a few beers to drown your sorrow in. The biggest challenge in learning to play this list will dealing with mawloc inconsistency and being in position to place overwhelming offense on an area of the board when they do hit.

Harpies are also considered one of the weaknesses of the Skyblight formation. I have to make sure I am getting the most out of them with my target selection to make sure they are solid contributors in my list. Hopefully there will be plenty of opportunities for me to use the spore mine flyover tactic.

The To Do List

So now that we've taken a tour of the list, I have to paint it all. Between now and November 21st I will need to have 45 gargoyles, 2 harpies, 2 mawlocs, 6 ripper bases, and another hive tyrant completely painted.

Stay tuned for pics of my barely tabletop painting prowess!