Upcoming Strangeway Games Tournament

This upcoming weekend (April 15th), Strangeway Games is having another 40K tournament.  The requirements are pretty straight forward.  1500 points.  No unbound lists.  Forgeworld allowed but must be approved.

I imagine that just like last time there is a good chance that there will be a ton of crazy Forgeworld armies.  However because I had a great time playing with Tyranids this past weekend at Crucible, I'm going to keep with it and field some more bugs.  It is pretty much a similar list I've been playing off and on since 6th edition.  I tend to normally go 1-1-1 or thereabouts with it on average...but at least it is fully painted and normally gives me quite a few options to take on opponents.

Here's the list so far:

Tyranid Combined Arms Detachment

HQ - Hive Tyrant (Wings, 2x TL Devourers w/ Brainleech Worms, Electroshock Grubs) - 240 points
HQ - Hive Tyrant (Wings, 2x TL Devourers w/ Brainleech Worms, Electroshock Grubs) - 240 points

Troop - 30x Termagants (TL Spinefists x30) - 120 points
Troop - Tervigon (Electroshock Grubs) - 205 points

Elite - Venomthrope - 45 points
Elite - Zoanthrope - 50 points
Elite - Zoanthrope - 50 points

Heavy - 3x Biovores - 120 points

Formation - The First Curse (Genestealer Cult)

HQ - Patriarch (2x Genestealer Familiar, +1 Mastery Level) - 125 points
Elite  -20x Purestrain Genestealers - 280 points

Pretty simple.  So this list leaves me with 25 points on the table.  What to do with it though?

So to start off I come in with two Flyrants.  They're pretty much the dudes that do work in the Nid codex.  To protect them in Turn 1 (and subsequently to an extent), I have a Venomthrope giving them Shrouded to start the game.  I picked up a few pointers on deployment from my doubles matches at Crucible.  My main concern at the moment is whether it is worth it to even have Electroshock Grubs.  In most situations, they can angle to get rear armor or a more favorable position.  I will normally shoot both the Devourers instead of the grubs as well making them a bit unnecessary.  So I could definitely stand to trim 20 points off the list right there.

The two basic troops have served me well...Termagants and a Tervigon.  Generally I enjoy using Spinefists as they give me some options for FMC's as well as give me a few more chances on Overwatch.  The Tervigon definitely can go down to Grav weaponry but staying near the Venomthrope and in decent cover gives me a shot at perhaps surviving.  Catalyst is huge, but there are other options.  In the mean time I start cranking babies out.  Only in one match in nearly 15 or so games have I been plugged up after 1 turn.  So most of the time I will generate more ObSec units and go with it.

So Zoanthropes offer me a few options.  Each one gives me 2 dice.  They give me Synapse.  They also give me some anti-vehicle using Warp Blast.  Again, at Crucible I was able to successfully use it to put some hurt on enemy vehicles.  They are somewhat easy to hide in ruins and keep feeding dice to my Flyrants.

That leaves us with Biovores.  I am a huge fan of using them to try and snipe out a heavy weapon or important character.  Strength 4, AP4 isn't great, but it also gives me a pretty good form of crowd control for fighting other horde armies.  I am normally content to field two but fielded three because of the lack of options.  I could just as easily opt to go down to 2 and gain 40 more points (putting me at 60 if I give up Electroshock Grubs on my Flyrants).  In total I'd have 85 points to play with but I'm not sure there is a better way to use those points.

...and that leaves allies.

So I could've very easily gone with the formation that gives me multiple Flyrants...but I don't own Crones or Harpies.  I also only have 2 built up Flyrants (I can probably build 2 more but don't have much interest in doing so).  As a result, I decided to check into the Genestealer Cult options.

While in general I love their infiltrate possibilities, I figured I'd give The First Curse formation a go.  It gives me an ultra awesome Broodlord to take on opponents and better yet, gives all my Genestealers a 5++ to deal with all sorts of things like Flamers.  It also creates a huge unit on the board that most opponents will want to deal with giving my Flyrants even more options to deal with things they want to deal with.

The Broodlord was upgraded to ML2 so he could try for Invisibility twice at the very least.  In most situations having Psychic Scream (Shriek?) is good enough for me.  Really most everything is good in the chart.  Invisibility?  Awesome.  Shrouding?  Works great with Stealth on Genestealers.  Terrify?  Could use the -1 to Leadership for Shriek.  Dominate or Hallucination?  Meh but at least they could work.  Mental Fortitude is the only lose but I can only roll this once and I'd still have Shriek.

So that's it.  Quite a few options and threats with the list.  It is not the best at dealing with Vehicles but I have both the shooting phase and psychic phase to deal with them potentially.

I need to figure out what would be best.  I'm 75% sure I'll remove the grubs on the Flyrants and free up 20 points.  So that would put me at 45 points.  I could add a second Venomthrope to make the unit more survivable.  I could field a unit of Hormagants but there is little use to them without any additional upgrades (Toxin Sacs or Adrenal Glands).

I could also opt to simply add a second unit of Termagants to keep in my backfield but that seems like a waste.