Curious About... Tyranids

[daboarder]

Have a look at the vanguard swarm formations. 3 or more stealer broods infiltrating right in front of people should be fine on a casual environment

[Captain Bubonicus]

Have a look at the vanguard swarm formations. 3 or more stealer broods infiltrating right in front of people should be fine on a casual environment

^^^This. They still ain't competitive, but the Vanguard Swarm formations at least make 'em playable enough to be fun.

[daboarder]

I love the assasin brood I just never have the points in my own swarm for it

[Dylan4President]

Hi I've played Tyranids for over a year now and have had a fair amount of success with them. I don't play tournaments, just my local gaming scene, but I'll give you a few ideas about starting a fun, relatively small Nid list.

The first thing you need to think about is Synapse. Some units, such as Hive Tyrants, Tervigons, Tyranid Warriors and Zoanthropes give you synapses coverage to the rest of your army. This makes units within the coverage fearless, and stops them from resorting to their (mainly bad) instinctive behaviour, which can be anything from going to ground, to attacking one another! Your Genestealers are about the only creatures in the codex that don't need synapse as they operate independently.

Genestealers are hard to use and are overcosted, but they are still workable. Try using them in small groups with a Broodlord- if it manages to cast The Horror on your target unit then it will make up for not having grenades. Their upgrades are pricey, although Adrenal Glands is the cheapest and will give them S5 on the charge. They do have a lot of deployment options so you've some flexibility with them.

In terms of HQs a Flying Hive Tyrant with two twin-linked Devourers is a no brainer. If you're playing smaller games, say 1000pts, then a fun HQ is the Deathleaper (a Lictor HQ). If you want to take a Tervigon as an HQ, go for it. Some people say a Troops choice Tervigon (and the 30 Termagaunts needed to unlock it) is more competitive. I can see where they're coming from, but 450 points is a lot for two objective secured troops choices, neither of which are offensive.

Everyone has different opinions about Troops choices for Nids. Some will disparage Warriors, others will swear by them. It's one of the reasons why I love Nids- each army you build can be so different. Whereas with the likes of Marines, there's always going to be a core of Tactical Squads. You'll have plenty of Genestealers already, so it's a choice between Warriors, Termagaunts and Hormagaunts. Termaguants are good screening units- they're there to die. Hormagaunts have worked well for me, they are fast and cheap; big units will tear others apart on the charge. Adrenal Glands are a nice, cheap upgrade for them. A couple of small groups of Warriors are no bad things. Give each squad a Barbed Strangler and a couple pairs of Rending Claws and you're set.

Our two best slots are Elites and Heavy. Zoanthropes and/or Hive Guard are needed to take out armour. For a game of 1000 points or less, one or two Zoanthropes is fine. Venomthropes keep your big creatures alive thanks to giving Shrouded to nearby models (doesn't work against armies with a lot of ignoring cover). The Forgeworld Mieotic Spores are a good alternative model for them. My favourite Elites though are Lictors. If they remain alive, three of them hit like a turn of bricks. However, most players apparently don't find them competitive.

All the Heavy slots are good. In a small game I'd always have a Biovore- cheap and useful. If your priority is fun, just pick a couple of big creatures from this slot and away you go. Carnifexes and Mawlocs are cheap, Exocrines are good against Marines and a Tyrannofex with an Acid Spray (an ap4 Baleflamer) is a great linebreaker.

Fast Attack is mainly mediocre, although both Flying Monstrous Creatures are not bad. And this edition is all about movement, so you'll need to invest in a couple things here.

Of the two recent Tyranid releases, the Toxicrene is quite good and the Meleceptor is garbage. The only other completely rubbish units in the codex are the infamous Pyrovores and Ripper Swarms.

We're apparently getting our Drop Pods back (hooray!) and they will open up a load of new combinations and tactics. Termagaunts with Devourers bursting out of a spore pod is a classic tactic which will soon be back on the table.

This is all just my opinion, but I hope it helps! If you go for Nids you'll have backed the winning horse, fluff wise. Come the 42nd millenium there won't be any other races left- they will all have been devoured!

[ReveredChaplainDrake]

But if he follows your other bit of advice and goes Unbound, it won't get Objective Secured...

A Tervigon is how you get the Battle-Forged Tyranid lists to work. (And I stress a Tervigon. Multiple Tervigons extends their death tantrum blanket even further.) I've got a couple of Tervigons that I'm trying to make function without snapping off their baby sac and repurposing them as Tyrannofexes, and this is how I'd do it. Tyrannocytes, the duct tape of the Tyranid codex, are the other way. Drop a Tervigon down the opponent's pants and force them to do something about the 6 wounds of MC and free Termagant brood ObSecing the backfield. Because if even one gribbly survives, there goes the neighborhood.

Even with this, I simply contest that Tyranids get so much out of Unbound that it would be silly to disregard it. On top of removing the need to take any of Tyranids' loads upon loads of chaff units, unbound gives Tyranids the unrivaled ability to essentially buy 2 WC points for the cost of a single Zoanthrope, to say nothing of your skyrocketing odds of rolling up the coveted Catalyst. ObSec could be very potent on an MC as tough as a Tervigon, but the ability to just casually buy WC points and to pick up Catalyst with such high reliability is so insane that I fully expect the new codex to forbid Tyranids from going Unbound for this very reason. Even our sad, pathetic lore would be useful if we could just buy double-A batteries like a GameBoy connoisseur.

[Dlatrex]

Hi I've played Tyranids for over a year now and have had a fair amount of success with them. I don't play tournaments, just my local gaming scene, but I'll give you a few ideas about starting a fun, relatively small Nid list.

This is all just my opinion, but I hope it helps! If you go for Nids you'll have backed the winning horse, fluff wise. Come the 42nd millenium there won't be any other races left- they will all have been devoured!

A fantastic summary. Electric; similar to you I was introduced to Nids as my first army as a result of going in halfsies with a roomate who bought battle for Macragge. In 4th they could be dressed up to survive into assault, but as everyone has said those days are gone and I should not reminisce...

In short, I love Genes, and I am still happy to run at least one brood of them in most of my army lists. And therein is what it is like with the nids; there is very little that is completely unusable (has the pyrovore improved?) but some units are more situational than others. My 2 pence would be to pick a couple of units that you know you would like to play, and that will in part dictate what you pick up to compliment it. If you want a Psychic choir maybe you pick up Zoanthropes and thus have more synapes and no long need to use warriors. Do you want to have flying gargoyles providing screening for your flyrant? Sure there are some bad weapons (spinefists) and bad biomorphs (acid blood), but for the most part everything can be used with a little planning.

I do agree that in very broad terms you might plan on swarm, mid-zilla, or nidzilla. That said I think all are viable army options, as long as they are thought out.