Yes. I’m back at the Swarmlord and his awesome Hive Commander rule. I’m in love with it and I can’t help it. I just see so much potential on it that makes me keep thinking about new posibilities.

Last time I reviewed the Swarmlord on the Unit reviews section I talked about how useful this rule can be and how many posibilities it opens to give your army that extra mobility that so much needs. As I already said, moving a unit of 20 Genestealers 16″+4D6 in a turn (including charge move) is something that can be very nasty, specially for certain deployments.

But while thinking about other ways of using it, it came to my head the Flyrant. One of our bloggers, Spicerack, plays Astra Militarum, and is not even a compliment to say that he does play them really well. On his deployments, he usually creates a bubble with his infantry in a way that it is impossible to charge his nasty tanks in turn 1 with my deep strike units and lock them in combat. Of course, if you deep strike your Flyrant, you are going to be just 9″ away from him, but you’re going to charge their dumb infantry and get destroyed by shooting in the next turn, considering you don’t fail your charge moves, otherwise, not even that…

But what if, you start your game with the Flyrant in the table (or in reserves if you don’t wanna risk him getting shot)…if I move my Swarmlord 9″+D6 advance and I deep strike my Flyrant exactly 6″ in front of him, you can use the Hive Commander ability on him and make him move an extra 16″ in any direction. For average, let’s say that we roll an average 3 on advance move for the Swarmlord…that’s a 12″+6″+16″… 34″ move in turn one can let you jump that bubble and charge those juice tanks (in a happy universe where everything always works out just fine).

Mind due that for first turn positioning, if you use the Swarmlord as your Warlord, he automatically has Alien Cunning, so you can replace him after all deployments are finished in case you want to start your attack from a different angle.

The posibilities for the Hive Commander ability are endless and, in my opinion, make the points worth it if you are running a fast army. What any other combos do you guys use?