Collecting tyranids in 6th. Part 4 - Hoppy-Droppy (Gribbie-killy)

It’s definitely the 6-edition, the time when we can fully realize out drop-nidz ideas!
Hoppy-Droppy is my favourite list, cause it’s fun to play! Of course, there can be different approaches to building a drop list, but here is my variants.

One of my favorite units in 6-ed is Dakagaunts! For a mere price of 170 points you receive a spore with 13 gribbles who shoot out 39 S4 + 6 S6 shots a round! It’s sometimes enough to wreck a transport and kill the filling stuff.




Just an example of a list on this idea:

1850 Pts  Hoppy-Droppy Tyranids Army

HQ

Hive Tyrant - Twin Devourer with Brainleech Worms (x2); Wings; Leech Essence; Paroxism;  Hive Commander; Old Adversary

 Hive Tyrant - Twin Devourer with Brainleech Worms (x2); Wings; Leech Essence; Paroxism; Old Adversary

Elites

 The Doom of Malan'tai in Mycetic Spore

Troops

Tervigon - Stinger Salvo; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs; Catalyst

15 Termagant Brood with Devourers in Mycetic Spore

15 Termagant Brood with Devourers in Mycetic Spore

15 Termagant Brood with Devourers in Mycetic Spore

15 Termagant Brood with Devourers in Mycetic Spore

Heavy support

Mawloc

Unit by unit:

Devilgaunts (termagants with devourers)  in sporepods– are the main unit of the army. They always start in reserve, shooting down everything they see. Do not take more than 15 in a spore, cause we still have a 2” from the spore vase deployment. In our local meta spores must be mounted on a 2” monster bases so I find it comfortable to run 13-15 in a single spore. Remember that sporepods always shoot at the closest targets, so if you land near soft troops, you may want to shoot them down before spore to hit something touch like a Rhino with S6 shots. Or you may want to wrech a rhino prior to gants shooting.

Flyrants. One of them buff reserves, while both of them buff gaunts shooting and give synapse to our dropping units. They also can open transports for gaunts shooting and bring down flyers as well. I usually reserve one tyrant (warlord) deepstriking the other one to put warlord in a safer position after arriving. Remember about precise shots! Take out special weapons from opponent’s squads with them.

Tervigon. The home scoring and backfield synapse. It defends itself with FnP and gaunt countercharge. After Drop, Tervigon can cast FnP on Warlord for example. Don’t change powers, as FnP is the most valuable power for this one.

Mawlock. He can move opponent’s units out of cover and closer to our gaunts, as well as open up transports BEFORE Dooms life leech ability, that is awesome! It also forces opponents to spread forces in anti-blast fashion.

The Doom. It is our Joker, which can solo win the game. Change Cataclysm for Psychic shreek if there are not many targets for large blast. Remember that Cataclysm can blow up even a land raider!

Tactics:

Drop army is not easy to operate. Most of our units are fragile. I’ll highlight some main rules:

You have limited deployment options: Tervigon+Mawloc on the table is the main option. Reserve all the others. Mawlock give cover to Tervigon, Tervigon uses FnP on itself and bares opponent’s shooting in the backfiels until our Round2. If opponent has not much firepower it can be wise to deploy tyrants on board to bring him some pain from turn 1.

Turn 2 drop is an art itself:) There are 3 main tactics:

1 - Take the center! Drop everything in the center and owerwhelm your opponent with firepower.

2 - Refused flank. Drop everything on one flank, while threatening the other flank with a sinle cheap unit like Doom or one brood of gants. It’s very good tactic to wipe out one flank, being in safe position, cause the other enemy flank is too far away to rapid fire or assault your gants.

3 - Holding back. Drop in your deployment zone to prevent casualties if you have an advantage of markers in your deploy, for example. Just swarm on objectives, forcing your opponent to lose some more turns on moving through the table.

Drop sequence. I usually drop tyrants first, cause they can mishap on our own dropped units. Then I try to drop some spores in front of tyrants to give cover for tyrants and to keep gaunts in 6” area from tyrants! Also, drop Mawloc before dropping gants, you know why:)

Also, I try to drop spores near the back of the transports to do some S6 shooting at them if there any possibilities.

I must say that at first I played aggressively and lost a lot of games. Now I try to go through a refused flank tactic where possible to save my gribbles for the turn3-4-5-6, cause they are scoring units!

Starting army:

Here is the army I took to the local tourney. I expected the solo-tourney, but it went as a double tourney and as a result I placed only 7 of 20. Nevertheless I’m sure that this list is competitive!

1000 Pts Hoppy-Droppy Tyranids Army

HQ

Hive tyrant  - twin-linked devourers with brainleech worms, hive commander, old adversary, wings

Elites

8*ymgarl genestealer

Troops

Tervigon - Stinger Salvo; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs; Catalyst

13 Termagant Brood with Devourers in Mycetic Spore

10 Termagant Brood with Devourers in Mycetic Spore

Ymgarls are taken as anti-tank! Yep, they are great tankbusters! Deploy Tervigon, reserving the remaining units and kill the key unit from your opponent’s army turn 2 = win.

Army cost:

To collect this army one will need

(according to http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landingArmy.jsp?catId=cat440179a&rootCatGameStyle=):

53.75$ - Hive Tyrant

57.75$ -Tervigon

116$ - Four termagant boxes (48 termagants)

30$ - Genestealer brood

10-100$ - 2 spores. You can scratch build them, or buy  from hydracast or the like.

Total:  267.5$ - 357.5$

You can actually buy 2 hormagant and 2 termagant boxes and convert hormies to devourer gants (as I did). They look awesome!

You also will counter a Monstrous devourers problem, as there are no one in a tyrant box!

It is not expensive but interesting to play, effective and beautiful army with a lot of minis to convert, paint and play:)