Battle-testing Hive Fleet Kraken - DS fury!

Old School here,

I just wanted to share some of my experience with the new Nids and throw out a list I have been trying. I wanted to make a list that used an almost alpha strike theme in which I come in turn 2 and really mess up my opponent's target priority and hopefully, his tanks and squads.

The first list I ran, I called Shock and Awe, it goes something like this at 1750

Tyrant - Scything Talons, Heavy Venom Cannon, Hive Commander, Paroxysm, leech essence

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Tyrant - Wings, Dual Devourers, Hive Commander, Paroxysm, leech essence

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2 Hive Guard

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1 Doom of Malan'tai with spore pod (with spine clusters)

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2 Zoeys in Spore Pod

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10 termagants

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10 more termagants

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1 tervigon with catalyst and cluster spines

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1 tervigon with cluster spines

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Trygon Prime

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Mawloc

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The idea here is that I can DS or burrow all the pods and big snakes into the enemy turn 1 and have the option to outflank 2 troops on turn 2. I played a CSM Death Guard army and tabled it by turn 4. The Trygon Prime and the Flyrant managed to gun down a DP, the doom did nothing on the turn it came in due to the high LD of Chaos. The Zoeys killed an oblit, the Hive Guard popped a rhino and the Tervigons killed a squad of Chosen all on turn two.

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Turn three saw the Doom come into his own as the opponent ignored him, thinking he would remain ineffective - that is when he rolled a 16 for leadership on the remaining DP and a 15 on his havocs. This not only killed both of those units outright, but eneabled the doom to insta-kill a squad of Oblits. The Prime then managed to drag down a squad of termies, the mawloc popped up under a squad of plaguers and AP2'd most of them to death. My Zoeys got killed and so did the flyrant, but by turn 4 that was all I lost, while my opponent had lost 9 of his 11 possible kill points. Oh yeah, turn 4, the Doom also killed a squad of terminators racking it's KP to 4 and the number of points it killed in models to 640!

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I liked how this list performed but there is a lot of fine tuning to do. I think I will switch the doom's pod's spines to the zoey pod. I will also give the foot tyrant a strangler cannon as the venom cannon did nothing for me. I am still up in the air about the flyrant, I like his dakka power, but don't like the points-cost of the wings.

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I have also looked at using 4 squads of warriors with a Barbed strangler in each squad and either devourers or deathspitters, but have not decided. I think they will probably go ignored in much the way my gants were due to all the crazy stuff in the opponent's midst and all the damage that stuff is doing. They would replace the tervis and gants.

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I will continue playtesting and will soon be converting my tervigons and painting one of my tyrants and both of the big snake bugs. Any and all comments and feedback are appreciated, so let me know what you think.