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Tyranids
Aggro Combo Control Tournament Quality
An alternative to Tervigon-Trygon & Hive Mind - Termagant
A Kith-esque approach that uses termagants a little differently.
a) Powering them up by shrinking the game rather than by giving them hive mind buffs.
b) Using them as enablers for CwC and Mycetic Spores.
Shrink the game a la Kith by taking as much command as you can. Trigger planet abilities at will with SWP. Use Mycetic spores for shenanigans.
Okay, so Swarmlord doesn't have Archon's Palace, not does he have Sslyth Mercenaries or Syren Zythlex. He does have Brood Warriors and is guaranteed to start with Savage Warrior Prime, bane of cappers (and bane of Zythlex).
Savage Warrior Prime may not be able to deny your opponent in the way that Lictor can, but he is permanently removing an enemy piece from the board. (He can even double tap via Plannum in niche circumstances).He has a number of good planet triggers in this deck. Biovore Spore Launchers out of Y'Varn are amazing with Mycetic Spores in play - you can even move it straight into an upstream battle, fully readied! Other effects help to keep the opponent down on either cards or resources, and you up.
Like Kith, you want to focus on either card or resource lock, depending on opposition, planet flop, initial draw.
The Termagants are valuable en masse, but this isn't about turning them into powerhouses. Getting hammers on them with Brood Warriors is great, although it does leave SL's commitment a tad predictable (disadvantage of no Tervigon). Swarm Guard are good roadblocks and protect your termagants from AoE, forcing your opponent to kill him to clear them efficiently. AoE termagants via Biovore are good fun, and of course having them spread around does help the Mycetic Spores (an advantage of the otherwise weak spread effect compared to Kith's Khymera focus point).
One of SL's advantages is having access to both Rout and Support destruction, to both Swarm & chunky hitters (especially with Regeneration), to AoE and targeted damage (HVC on Biovore is nice, albeit rare, even with Y'Varn). The deck can be used in a few different ways and the key is to tailor your approach to the opposition you are facing.
SWP shrinks the game, Pyrovore shrinks the game, solid Command shrinks the game (atleast the opponent's). Swarms, Mycetic behemoths and Synapse creatures all like shrunk games.
Fall Back is there because SWP is in the thick of things, and also because Biovore can bet straight back into the action (fully readied) if killed.
Regen usually goes on the Horde or the Guard, depending on circumstances. It's good on Warriors, Pyrovore and Biovore too.
The biggest weakness of the deck is vulnerability to an early bloodying. With no Tervigon or Spawn Termagants, only the Horde serves to bolster SL's ability. Mycetics Spore shenanigans and Clogged with Corpses both rely on keeping him healthy.
It's in its early stages, so as always, feedback of any kind appreciated.
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13 Comments
Why you were 3 Heavy Venom Cannon? You only can use on the Bivore Spore Launcher.
If going SL with SWP, adding at least a single Consumption should work well to get out of sticky situations. You have tokens to sacrifice and hopefully the double snipe means your opponent is low on capping units, making him lose more valuable targets.
And I think Regeneration is one of the strongest Nid cards, a little too good to pass given the current options. Definitely should play three copies.
If I had to cut something, it would be a copy of either the Venom Cannon, CwC or Mycetic Spores. They're good cards here, but three copies of each are largely unecessary IMO.
I know you've been experimenting with the Polluter recently, have you tried him in this deck? He can work well with the SL especially in combination with Mycetic Spores and adds to the movement shenanigans.
I like the deck though, keep us posted on how it's working.
I really want X3 hordes with this deck
you might be getting greedy with no mercy in this deck. if the idea is a lot of dmg coming from AOE tokens.
Maybe take that out and and a horde, regen and fallback?
@ nigthcrawlers - I think that might be a good idea, those three cards do seem more useful than No Mercy with this particular set up. I think I got lured in by how amazing it is in OOE/Polluter.
@ Koz - I will try and give SL-Polluter a go at some point. It does sound like that would create huge post-commit flexibility. Would you change much of the deck if doing it that way, or do you see Polluter and SWP as a straight swap? Polluter has actually become my favourite Synapse by far in OOE now, though it's hard to say how he'll fare once people get used to him.
Atm there's something that doesn't quite click for me with SL. I find both this version and Tervigon/Trygon are good, but both seem a bit draw reliant and have some pretty bad matchups. I expected SL to be my preferred Warlord both because he looks the stronger of the two in the anti-elite meta, and because of my affinity with Kith. However I'm having much more success with OOE (and really enjoying him). Not sure whether it's me or the decks (as I say I've run the more typical SL too).
This deck is epic when everything falls together, the trouble is I'm not sure how consistently that will occur.
You are not alone in your feelings of SL vs OOE. By the time the testing cycle for the set came to an end, I was of the same opinion, OOE just seemed better overall. SL is good, but swarm has vulnerabilities and there are bad match ups as you've noted.
As for the Polluter in this deck, a straight swap may be just fine. It's been awhile since I ran my deck, but I was running x2 Gargoyles in place of the x2 Fall Backs for more movement shenanigans, although I don't really think they are necessary (and can be iffy since they require infest). I've also tried different versions by swapping the Biovores with Stranglers or Spikers and all three versions have advantages/disadvantages, but broadly I agree with your approach of not going "full on hive mind" because it just kills the command game. I think it comes down a matter of preference as to which unit to run, so I'd just experiment around with different hive mind units in the Biovore slot and see what you like best.
I'm glad the Polluter is getting some love though, he's the trickiest to play by far and I knew he'd be the least favorite as a result. My personal favorite remains the Blazer though, mostly because he has the most flexibility. The Lictor, SWP, and the Polluter all basically encourage (or require) you to commit your Syn unit to a different planet than your Warlord to be effective, but the Blazer can choose to "double down" at the same planet to swing a key battle for you. Plus I love pinging cheap cappers, lol. My second favorite is a tie between the Polluter and SWP. I love them both quite a bit. I'd say that the fact that there's so much diversity in opinion as to what the best Syn unit is equals a success for the playtest efforts
If you end up testing out some variants, let us know how they perform.
I've had the opportunity to do a little testing. A few things of note:
OOE is much better command sniping than the Swarmlord which is probably why most people have a preference for OOE. Sniping a Bloodied Reaver is extremely risky with the Swarmlord while OOE can take it on with far less worry when holding a shield. OOE also has the ability to throw out a lot of firepower at a warlord (with a potential No Mercy follow-up) which can make it intimidating it take on.
Extracting value out of the Swarmlord's ability is also very difficult. It's not like Kith where she brings a lot of firepower to wherever she snipes and you can quickly extract value from the token in most circumstances. Unless you're committing to 2 consistently, getting the most out of the tokens over the short-term is substantially harder and they aren't nearly as strong as a Khymera when they do get in a fight.
Clogged with Corpses is interesting though. It's difficult to use in OOE for obvious reasons but it's pretty trivial to fire out of Swarmlord. It's easily the most playable support hate at a time where Ammo Depot and Palace both have substantially game-warping effects and at least one signature support is outright broken.
SWP isn't as strong as the command oriented Synapse units because of the 6/6 start (and lack of depth in the 'Nid cardpool. Although you can try to shrink the game but taking out opposing command farmers, you're still conceding a turn worth of command (usually something like 2C1R) which starts compounding over turns (though not as quickly if the farmer were unmolested).
Wondereye also has some absurd bullying potential with just a single Lurking Hormagaunt out early-game, and conversely the finish of letting him be bloodied by transferred damage and then continuing to take transferred damage on his bloodied side, because hey the game is going to end this round anyway. Throw in Venomjank Polluter and you can create constant early-planet pressure whilst still knocking off cappers upstream.
Swarm lord does have those key control elements with Corpses and Horror, but it doesn't quite compensate for the areas in which he feels lacking, I think.
Interesting strategy. How does it contend with opponents playing Destructors though? Because Destructors are so efficient, it ends up costing you too much to bully one that you lose the long game, at least with most decks that attempt such a strategy.
Hey GKZhukov - have any changes been made to this deck after further testing? I'm playing around with OOE and am quite happy with my deck at the moment - would like to see some more Swarmlord builds floating around the forums.
Do we all still have the same opinion of OOE > Swarmlord in pretty much every aspect?
I ended up to focusing much more on OOE in the end alas, so haven't really played around with this much lately. Sorry!
@GKZhukov - Did you ever go back to this deck? I am wondering a) why you did not include Spawn Termagants, as it gives you total freedom of movement with Mycetic Spores, and
whether you have tried Soaring Gargoyles? They also seem very good with Mycetic Spores - able to chase off sniping warlords or to help out Swarmlord or SWP.