Desert Hydra

to be honest, Krea OR Aggy would be better than both, depending on your opponent's list. What you have to be careful with, with the Hydra is not being engaged first. The Hydra is rather frail because of it's craptacular defense; a single heavy from just about any army can box it in 1 turn with decent rolls. On the other hand, if you deny the charge, it can generally make through that first assault and hyper regen + snack its way to a decent amount of health before they get another chance. Add in some beasthandler medicates and his ability to bounce back becomes pure nastiness. Mak 1 and Jackhammer with him works really well and the option of 5, 6 inch sprays when you are facing a spam list is gorgeous. My favorite thing about him is placing him near 1 edge of the board, the Cyclops shaman on the other side, and my caster in the center, then using sandstorm with all 3 makes Cygnar gunline lists cry.

People are going to start calling me a Xerxis2 fanboy around here, but he fixes your mat issues with Rapport. He also runs the Hydra exceptionally well, again with the huge 14" threat (Rush and Field Marshal) and an alpha potential on feat turn that will make your opponent tear up. Even its rat6 is buffed on feat turn (made into rat8ish).

Its base Mat6 isn't terrible against the average heavy, though. If you're facing Legion or Circle, boosting to hit on most of your 5 initials will guarantee the beast's death, probably with fury to spare.

As for support, I happen to run very little with Makeda1 for the hydra specifically. I find her jamming game absurdly effective, which allows me to set up a powerful screen for delivery.

A friend turned me on to the Shaman and a Krea to support my Xerxis2 Hydra. Shooting armies dislike having their gun range lowered on top of an arm21 garg. I happen to run two Sentries in that list, so Shield Guard is also happening, but it's probably not necessary considering you can heal up your Hydra pretty easily if it got hurt on the way in.

I agree with Demonic in that the Hydra is in no way a hardy model, considering its point cost. Deflecting shooting is one thing, but if it's attacked in melee by any significant threat it's probably going down. My best approach so far against this weakness has been enormous threat ranges, making sure my alpha hits hard and true, wiping out the things that hunt it before they get their chance to pounce.

to an extent. No matter how long of a reach they have, they can never reach your back lines because of it. With the negative 3 range even cygnar gunlines get cursed. 12-14 inches becomes 9-11. Their snipers suddenly can't even shoot as long as the hydra can spray. The issue becomes when they cast down the spells to see through it and get in close enough to still pull off a decent combo attack. However, it still does turn a cygnar gunline into something closer to if we attempted to make a gunline x.x; engaging them before they get up close becomes cake since you have those additional 3 inches. they have to expose their ability users to make their other units able to see through the cloud cover. With that and a Krea I've been able to fully engage focus fire type lists. Only Khador has really been able to walk over my Hydra list... though the Khador player I had to face qualified for the world tourney x.x; Him and our merc user *shudders* when that guy plays his merc list it's just nasty; you never know what the hell he's going to throw at you next.

Wanted to add my 2 cents in here for Morghoul1 and/or a Shaman. Just be careful of running him outside of the command range (I still think his base will be in Morghoul1's CMD even after a 12" charge). I use something like this:

Morghoul1
- Desert Hydra
- Cyclops Shaman
- Basilisk Krea
- Aradus Soldier
- Rhinodon
Zaadesh1
-Titan Gladiator

PGBH (min)

Like noted earlier in the thread, Makeda1 is also a good choice.

Tbh, it can pain in the ass. But between the free maltreatment and zaadesh1, you can take a lot of pressure off.

I tend to use the Rhinodon to trade up and throw away when it can go to SPD7 and POW21 under enrage and abuse for a 12 pt model.

Consider trading the shaman for more handlers or min Karax

I've been playing it with Xekaar and his feat is Firetruckin bonkers with sandstorm. My hydra was also supported by agonizer, and this basically gave me an invincibility turn. Threat range is long enough to take something and play 2 turns consecutively.

My list was designed to handle infantry (and did amazingly good against it) but failed a bit short on protecting the caster and had troubles clearing paths. Xekaar's low impact later in the game also doesn't help. I feel it will be bonkers with some free points from a tier list, but mortality is ABSURD with the gargantuan. Everything you spray or charge dies, and 9 attacks proved to be enough to kill 2 heavies if one was under mortality.

Most games Psycho Surgery, Regeneration[D3+3] and beast handlers healed it for more than 30 boxes, allowing me to survive multiple charges.