Everyone Ive come across seems to think so, they say its really bad and Ive seen a ton of passing comments on here that suggest the thing to hold any bad release up to is the nid release to see if its as bad.
I myself was thinking of picking up either nids or guard soon but all this talk of a bad dex is off putting, is it true?

Ive heard they have lost the parasite and the doom, which already sucks.

Well if you are going by what the internet says, then you are really missing out.

Question is, do you need to win with plastic toy soldiers? Do you go to tourneys and need to win with plastic toy soldiers? Or do you want to have fun with plastic toy soldiers and win and lose?

Lots of people claim Nids suck. I find that funny since a few other people say they do really good with the Nid dex.

So if you want to win, then Nids are not for you. They are not a forgiving army if you make mistakes.

If you want to have fun, they have a great miniature line, takes time to learn to play with, but can be FUN. You can be shooty, you can be assaulty, you can go horde or elite few. You can even mix and match them all.

No allies, so you are already handicapped because other people can do shenanigans and Nid players can't.

Then again, you can see people saying Guard are great, while others say they suck now.

Go with what you think is cool and you like the looks of. If you need to win with plastic toy soldiers, Nids are not for you then.

It's not so much that its bad, per say, but that it is a disappointment. The last Nid codex was not great either, but at least there were more viable play styles, losing the mycetic spore was a major blow and really hurt variety. Not only that but with the new and, well its definitely not improved, changed instinctive behavior suddenly we need to stay closer together than most other armies. Not only that but some of the more useful aspects were nerfed or flat out removed like the Tervigan, Hive Guard, Doom, and BRB psychic powers.

However thats not say that there were not some improvements in the codex such as points reduction, Venomthropes, and the different formations. The only problem is that using things like the formations really limit the variety, and it doesn't help that some tournaments are not allowing the formations.

Honestly they are a mid tier now, just like they were before, with the possibility of being high tier with the inclusion of formations. This is all just my personal opinion of course and it may vary depending on where you are playing and why you are playing. Regardless good luck on whatever army you decide on and may your dice always roll well.

- Jace

Yeah, not bad as in they are impossible to win with. Just a bland and disappointing release.

The main problem is it's unbalanced, so you have units that are clearly better than other units. Taking certain things, like Raveners, is just a flat out bad idea. What makes it annoying is many people realised the lack of balance within minutes of reading the book and those imbalances still apply now 4 months down the track, yet somehow GW managed to completely miss it when they were writing it, does make it somewhat disappointing.

Depends on what matters to you. If all you care about is winning it's a decent book, especially with the formations.
If you want a well-written book with variety, good internal balance and flavour this isn't the Codex you're looking for.
If you want a book full of gorgeous new artwork and lots of new fluff this still isn't the Codex you're looking for.

The book is fun. That's the important thing to me. The dataslates also happen to be totally awesome, and represent units that I take anyhow (warriors and lictors for example).

As an entire dex that runs off Cover, no, they are garbage.

Tau and Eldar being the top codexies atm have far too much IC in their mainstay and completely gak on Tyranids just as badly as they do Nurgle Daemons who rely on Cover.

If Tau, JUST TAU, had marker lights changed and their IC neutered, Tyranids would be amazing. But the fact that they exist and pretty much all the competitive zones for tournies (If anyone was at Adepticon... you know what I'm speaking of) ALL TAU, ALL TRIP-TIDES & Wraith Knights. The entire game has devolved into who can cram the most Tides and Knights into the smallest point armies with Markerlights possible.

It's not really power level. By itself, it can put out a mean shooty army. With the additional DLC purchases, it can be outright nasty. That said, most people are angry because of its imbalance, bland rules, loss of models, loss of an entire form of deployment, and not really solving the problem with the assault side.

DLC should never be a form of balance...

GoliothOnline wrote:
DLC should never be a form of balance...

I have to disagree on this, the concept of using DLC to balance is not necessarily bad in and of itself. I fully support the idea of revisiting codex's that are, for lack of a better term, floundering because of the meta, edition changes, or any of the other things that are problem right now, in order to make them more even with everyone else. That being said what they did with the tyranid supplements stinks of a money grab rather genuinely fixing the codex, just my opinion of course.

 Jaceevoke wrote:

GoliothOnline wrote:
DLC should never be a form of balance...

I have to disagree on this, the concept of using DLC to balance is not necessarily bad in and of itself. I fully support the idea of revisiting codex's that are, for lack of a better term, floundering because of the meta, edition changes, or any of the other things that are problem right now, in order to make them more even with everyone else. That being said what they did with the tyranid supplements stinks of a money grab rather genuinely fixing the codex, just my opinion of course.

agreed, it doesnt have to be a bad thing. PrinceRaven nailed it though..... not much more to add than that.

I still love my nids. But loosing things like scything talons, ymgarls, doom, drop spores made NO sense. They took an army that assaults really well and made it bland. It seems that 6th edition absolutely hates assault and wants to change every army into a gun line.

Would i still pick up nids today if i didnt already have them, Yes I would. They are fun to use still, just slightly less so.

Just to plan to make it into cc or shooting range of a tau gunline, it rarely happens.

Lots of people claim Nids suck. I find that funny since a few other people say they do really good with the Nid dex.

Well firstly those things are not mutually exclusive. Good players can do really well with Blood Angels. On top of that, the dex can SUCK (it does) and still be a powerful army (It can be).

The dex doesn't suck because it's weak, it sucks because its boring.


Also, as compared to the codex before it, it literally has less units. We lost Ymgarl Genestealers, Parasite, Doom and Mycetic Spores, and gained only Haruspex, Crone and Exocrine. Being that the Haruspex is a boring badly priced Carnifex and Crone is pretty much a harpy variant for the same FOC slot, we lost 4 really unique units and gained 2 pretty bland ones and 1 middling one (exocrine).


We also lost a bunch of options, no more biomancy means no more psyker spam, no more pods mean no more steel rain, ScyTal nerf means no more Tyrgons or CC Tyrants and Armored Shell being removed for no real reason at all means no more walking Tyrants. Nerfs to Tyranid Prime means we have one IC in the book and he is pretty much unplayable, right next to his buddy the Swarmlord who with the loss of Biomancy combined with an unexplained point increase, is probably the worst unit in the dex next to the Pyrovore. Hive Guard had their BS nerfed a point making their 2 shot guns about as unreliable as the Tyrannofex's Rupture Cannon, which also surprisingly enough sees no play. Terrible shooting isn't helped by the fact that one of our of coolest tools was taken away from us, in that Old Adversary no longer gives a Preferred Enemy bubble for helping out your low BS shooting, and instead does some junk ass power that I can't even remember right now it's so useless, for the same price as the old one. Tervigon's also became 195 points making them ridiculously overpriced and the only reason anyone stills plays them is an aftershock of how good they were last dex, people aren't seeming to realise now that they are only 30 points cheaper than a Flyrant but 50 whole points more expensive than a Dakkafex, for a unit that does very little, when at this range you could expect something game changing. This + loss of Biomancy + Catalyst no longer being purchasble + needing 30 termagants instead of 10 to take him as a troop, was enough to nerf our mainstay unit into unplayability. Gargoyles who used to get auto wounds on a to-hit roll of 6, now instead get to swap out any number of their wounding attacks for attacks that give out blinding tests. It sounds like it doesn't measure up, and its even worse and far less points efficient in practice, just ignore this ability. Zoanthropes, who were my favourite elite slot choice, are what you would call unplayable, the loss of the critical mobility granted to them from Pods is probably enough, but to seal the deal they lost options for rulebook powers, and became brotherhood meaning they take all their tests as one. Zoanthropes have one of the most unreliable powers in the game, a lot of the time they miss, the best thing about them was that if 2 or even just 1 got through they are S10 AP1, and have a good chance of blowing up whatever they hit. Now its all or nothing, meaning I probably wouldn't play them even if I had pods. Just another terrible, unexplained change. All this, plus little to NO CHANGES or even NERFS to the stuff that was begging for help, such as Raveners, Shrikes, Rippers, Pyrovores, Genestealers, Hormagants, Rupture Cannon, etc, just gives very little to get excited about. And to summarize, I really can't understate how restrictive the rulebook powers things are. If we were not intended to have T7-9 MC's I can understand, although it was hardly broken in the scheme of things. However locking us in to nothing but a Psyker table that doesn't know what it wants its theme to be, with the inclusion of a bunch of absolutely crap powers, is not fun whatsoever.

And I'm not even going to mention Instinctive Behaviour changes I'm sure you've heard how much they sucked as well.


This is not what they should have given us as our update for going into 6th ed and paying $80 for a codex.


It's not all bad though, Carnifex and Tyrannofex got cheap enough to be playable, Venomthrope gives a Shrouded bubble, Mawlocs got cheaper and their blast got better, Termagants got a point cheaper, Crones & Exocrine are powerful without being overpowered (good balance). Lictors are BORDERING on playable , probably only if you use the dataslates and a list built around them, but still its something. Biovores got cheaper and an extra wound. Flyrants can take a template weapon (although firing it means not shooting the Devourers for a turn). There isn't much else that I can think of that makes me happy, most of the fun to be found in fact is in our dataslates. The book itself is terrible and they don't do much to fix it up.


It is undeniably two things, a strong army and a bland codex. There is fun to be had however.

Exalted for being one of the most thought out, reasonable posts I've seen on this topic. It takes a lot of effort to hit all the changes that made the codex less enjoyable with out going into hate mongering.

Nids won't be rolling any tournaments like the deathstar cheese lists but at least you won't be TFG. They are still totally competitive in standard games and I've seen a number of people do really well with the new codex.

 Greenizbest wrote:
Nids won't be rolling any tournaments like the deathstar cheese lists but at least you won't be TFG.

For now, anyway. Better enjoy that while it lasts.

If you only look at every army's top-tier competetive list, they're fine. In the top four or five armies, in fact. On the other hand, the new codex has LOTS of huge problems which never should have existed in the first place. For example:
The total number of units decreased. Four cool, unique, and sometimes invaluable options were lost in exhange for three meh options.
What we had left loses variety. Walkrants and Swarmlords became even less playable than before. Flyrants are very obviously the best unit in the codex, no contest. In fact, there are maybe five units which are near must-takes, and almost everything else falls utterly flat. The new options, (mainly the bio-artefacts,) are stupid and generally worthless.
Almost no new fluff. The amount of copy-paste and lazy writing is HUGE...
Broken rules. You can take armies without warlords, breaking the game. Pyrovores can nuke the entire board. These are mistakes which shouldn't have made it past the first draft.

To be fair to the bio artefacts, I like the concept behind them. Tyranid fluff is full of one off monstrosities that annihilate everything until they're laid low at huge cost to the enemy. The idea behind most of them are neat. Like, a Hive Tyrant with a biochemical liquefier, or a Prime with crab like Rending Claws that absorbs enough genetic information to let the carrier fight the opponent better.

The problem with them is they all just ever so slightly fall short and don't evoke that one off monstrosity feel, just more like a rare but ordinary creature. Like the rest of the book, it just feels like a missed opportunity.

Waaaghpower wrote:
If you only look at every army's top-tier competetive list, they're fine. In the top four or five armies, in fact. On the other hand, the new codex has LOTS of huge problems which never should have existed in the first place. For example:
The total number of units decreased. Four cool, unique, and sometimes invaluable options were lost in exhange for three meh options.
What we had left loses variety. Walkrants and Swarmlords became even less playable than before. Flyrants are very obviously the best unit in the codex, no contest. In fact, there are maybe five units which are near must-takes, and almost everything else falls utterly flat. The new options, (mainly the bio-artefacts,) are stupid and generally worthless.
Almost no new fluff. The amount of copy-paste and lazy writing is HUGE...
Broken rules. You can take armies without warlords, breaking the game. Pyrovores can nuke the entire board. These are mistakes which shouldn't have made it past the first draft.

I agree for the most part, although I think Flyrants are hugely overrated - there just isn't much else in the slot. Also those broken rules aren't really relevant nor am I 100% sure they are broken... how do you take an army without a warlord?

You play Kill Team? In anything else it's an illegal list, just like having only 1 Troops choice.

 SHUPPET wrote:
how do you take an army without a warlord?

The Tervigon is an HQ choice, but not a character. Technically, the BRB says that you must nominate an HQ choice character to be your warlord (page 111).

My frustration with the book (and my warning to any new Tyranid player) is that in addition to being boring and overcosted, many of our units feel useless, even in casual games. You can still have fun with Tyranids, but be prepared to be frustrated. Your awesome Tyranid Warriors with boneswords (great models) will rarely reach combat. Your Genestealers will trip over terrain and get shredded by the most common firepower in the game. Your most elite, terrifying assassin will be afraid to charge a unit with 2 flamers. Watch as your awesome new monstrous creature, the Haruspex, struggles to kill more than 2 Guardsmen a turn.

"THAT bad"?
Heck no. its a good dex.

Sure, it lost a few things from last codex, but the current dex has alot of verity units, even if not all are high-end ones.

And when you are after the high-end ones, you got your flyrants, who are outright brutal, the crones who are also quite destructive, zoans who are annyoing as hell, etc, etc.

Psyker powers? sure you lost the biomancy, but we all know biomancy MCs is outright broken, and the hive mind powers are honestly absurdly strong. the lance is one of the strongest witchfires, the "run and shoot" reacts powerfully with FMC, the one that lowers enemy BS and WS can outright remove his ability to fight back, etc.

The new nids has alot of potential, and alot of room for tactical plays, but people nowdays just seem to go by the notion that if you don't have a glaring obvious auto-win button, the codex sucks.

 BoomWolf wrote:
people nowdays just seem to go by the notion that if you don't have a glaring obvious auto-win button, the codex sucks.

You've never actually paid attention to the complaints at all, have you?

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
people nowdays just seem to go by the notion that if you don't have a glaring obvious auto-win button, the codex sucks.

You've never actually paid attention to the complaints at all, have you?

This.

Clearly didn't even read the responses in this thread let alone any of the previous ones.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
people nowdays just seem to go by the notion that if you don't have a glaring obvious auto-win button, the codex sucks.

You've never actually paid attention to the complaints at all, have you?

This.

Clearly didn't even read the responses in this thread let alone any of the previous ones.

The fact I don't AGREE to them, does not mean I "Clearly didn't even read the responses in this thread let alone any of the previous ones"

The loss of most fun units and the stupid nerfs of more or less functioning units with basically nothing new to be excited about, completely discouraged me to play with the current Codex. So I can't speak from practical experience. With friends I will play with the old Codex.

Otherwise what SHUPPET said.

Boom - May i ask how none of those changes seems to bother you, or how you think they are better please?

As mentioned, there are around 4-5 decent units now.
Everything else has had a huge nerf in 1 way or another.
Also, keep in mind alot of people will be pissed since no one likes units being removed outright from a book.

Not only have they done that, they have also jumped up the cost of regular units/models to the point they are borderline on value.

This codex really is a bad joke compared to the previous one.
Infact, nid dex's just get worse as they go on IMO.

Jackal:

Most nerfs and/or removals were of the annoying things that were unhealthy for the game. cheap troop unit MC that can spawn even more units, is a nightmare to remove is a strong unit, but a BAD one for the game, so it an elite solo dude who can reliably kill multiple squads the turn he shows up on the board with several armies having little to nothing to do about it.

The simple truth is that the fact something is not AS good as it was, does not make it bad by default. yes, many nid options were nerfed-but they were unhealthy for the game, and drained the fun from anyone playing against them, and anyone playing WITH them, as they reduced the game to a simple "march forward" playstyle with no need, use or even possibility for any tactics, plays or even choice.
A machine could play old nids and be just as effective as it was SO dumbed down I could tell just what my opponent would do every single turn before he even deployed, and the only question was "can I get lucky enough rolls to stop it"

Now, i know that "run them down" is nice and all fluff wise, but it should not be a game stratagy. so yes, the "run them down" units got nerfed, hard.
The ones that require minimal brain functions to use properly got better though.
Mawlocks? do I want to use them to blast a squad, or is the important thing right now is to insure he appears?
Spores? cheap and useful little annoyances.
The new flyers? giving room for the "nid air" list to work, with thier incredible vector striking power.
New psyker powers? mostly used to trigger new playstyles rather then give raw power now. (run and gun, easy-pin enemies before assault, reduce enemy WS and BS to make them a non-threat while you deal with others, etc.)
Etc, etc. there are many little nasty surprises waiting for the unwary opponent there.

Of course it will crumble the instant you would try the old playstyle, but that's OK, the old playstyle could hardly be called like that, as there was no "play" involved, the new codex gives you alot of reasonable choices, rather then a hand-picked few absurdly OP ones (and we all know the old tervi was just that)
The internet just love pointing anything not absurd as useless, sure nids wont win any turnies, but not because they are bad, its because they are freaking WELL BALANCED, in a meta dominated by a handful of OP builds.

In a world without the "tier 0" trouble-makers (divination's brokenness, T-Ctan, revenant, wave serpents, 2++ combos, and tau's odd interactions with riptides) the nids could be a top-tier army, the only thing holding them back is that they got nothing OP, and got no access to allied shenanigans (who are also only a problem due to the very same "tier 0" problems )
Its a fair match against SM, against AM, against riptide-free tau, against none-grimored demons, against SoB/CSM/DA, and only eldar really have multiple shenanigans-again the very few OP stuff that except them its fair play.

The reason the nid codex looks bad to some, is because he is compared to the top of the top, but you are comparing a "tier 1" to a "tier 0", by this tier system:

Tier 0-"god tier", if its here, its game braking powerful and almost auto-win against anything not tier 0, SHOULD NOT EXIST.
Tier 1-"top tier", extremely good but nothing game-braking.
Tier 2-"mid tier", slightly behind tier 1, but still fair play. usually requires higher tactics, but also capeable of said higher tactics.
Tier 3-"low tier", its playing on hard mode, but can still pull off some niche tactics others cannot, and can take out tier 1s with them.
Tier 4-"crap tier", everyhing this can do, someone else does better. no reason to ever use these, SHOULD NOT EXIST.

So, nids are bad because they cannot pull an equal stand against lists that abuse multiple tier 0 choices at once? lists built directly to abuse MULTIPLE mistakes at the core game balance?
Take tier 0 away, by removing, fixing or nutering them, and nids are at the top of the pack, with powerful FMC, fearless troops, the some of the strongest non-divination psyker powers out there (with the ability to have alot of psykers), strong psyker defense, accsess to both hordes and MC spam and many, many options-even if some are situational or subpar, they are all THERE, unlike some armies that have only 2 or 3 options in several of the slot types.
Nids are wonderful, once you stop comparing them to the mistakes and start comparing them to how the game SHOULD be, as in-how MOST things are.

^ In short, if all you care about is winning, yay Nids?

The other way around, once you dont look at just winning, nids gives you many options on how to play, but its just that none of them is a tier 0 one.

So no, you haven't read the responses in the thread.

People aren't saying that the codex can't build some strong armies. It absolutely can. But it's boring.

The problem with the new psyker powers allowing you to build a new play style is that your list might not accommodate it.
Mawlocs are overrated.
Spores are only useful for now - until the coolest thing the can do gets FAQed (create spores from Biovores missing, charge with them that turn).
New flyer (singular) - People don't take it for the Vector Strike. They take it for the tentaclids.

Also, I have an issue with your description of the Doom:
"elite solo dude who can reliably kill multiple squads the turn he shows up on the board with several armies having little to nothing to do about it. " Reliably? Are you kidding? Demonstrably false. It was rare that he ever killed a single squad for me, let alone reliably multiple. Little to nothing to do? How do those armies handle Hammernator squads?

People are also complaining about the Synapse nerf. Not that the benefit changed (still Fearless) or that the range changed (still 12") but that being out of Synapse is so horrifically bad now... for no increase in benefit. That Lurking unit? There's ~25% per turn out of Synapse that they break and run away.

Most lists have room for 5 synapse creatures - once those are gone Instinctive Behaviour is just bad news bears.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Jackal:

Most nerfs and/or removals were of the annoying things that were unhealthy for the game. cheap troop unit MC that can spawn even more units, is a nightmare to remove is a strong unit, but a BAD one for the game, so it an elite solo dude who can reliably kill multiple squads the turn he shows up on the board with several armies having little to nothing to do about it.

The ones that require minimal brain functions to use properly got better though.
.

Well, I gotta say, after reading that entire post, you've convinced me to change my way of thinking.


You are right, Rippers were so annoying and bad for the game in the last codex, making them cost 9 points more was exactly what we needed to make the game more enjoyable!

/end sarcasm




You made one example - Tervigon - who was arguably in need of balancing. He was changed, but not balanced, instead hes far more unbalanced than he was before just on the opposite side of the spectrum now. Anyone still playing this guy is an idiot, plain and simple. Terrible 200 point troop choice. However in the last dex I could just as well build a list without him, and did many times. Although, that troop slot was seriously bare. However, contrary to your opinion, its even worse now, as our sensible options went from Termagant / Tervigon / Warrior, to just Termagant or Warrior.

Saying we now have the option of "nid air" aka flier spam doesn't mean much when we lost a similar option at the same time, Deepstriking bioRain. And tell me that was a less creative and fun playstyle than FMC spam, please, just say it =/

All the "new" psyker powers were already available if we wanted them bro. Now instead of having the option of codex powers and the powers from the rulebook (you know, the same powers all the other armies get access to), we have only lost options, not gained any.

 BoomWolf wrote:
The reason the nid codex looks bad to some, is because he is compared to the top of the top, but you are comparing a "tier 1" to a "tier 0", by this tier system:

blah blah blah,

So, nids are bad because they cannot pull an equal stand against lists that abuse multiple tier 0 choices at once? lists built directly to abuse MULTIPLE mistakes at the core game balance?

What? What what what?
Dude I don't know if you have selective memory or not, but the last dex couldn't do this either. I started playing Nids in 5th because I legitmately wanted an underpowered army. The last thing I want is this taken away from me, I love a challenging army. I just want more playable options inside my dex, we're not balancing them against Tau we are balancing them against themselves. I really suggest you read through some of the earlier posts in this thread (which you say you did, but I can tell you did not). All you have done so far is point out a couple of the very few positive things (that I will say were already mentioned) and twist other negatives to sound like they are positive.

Tervigon balance would have been nice, a couple of extra points. Tervigon being nerfed to unplayability would have also been acceptable to freshen lists up, assuming some of the other junk in the slot was made playable. But if you think the "changes" given to Hormagants / Genestealers / Rippers are balanced as is of now, your opinion on this dex is clearly skewed. I have thrown around the term "unplayable" a lot in this thread, but because it's so accurate. Horm is the only one there who is not a terrible unit in any dex, and in this one he's still borderline useless because he's basically just a more expensive Termagant who doesn't shoot and needs to get 18" closer to apply the same damage. Oh and can't take Devourers. Stop parading the Tervigon nerf as if it opened up options by giving us a more balanced troop slot, because it did exactly the opposite, look a little deeper than the surface.

 BoomWolf wrote:
The other way around, once you dont look at just winning, nids gives you many options on how to play, but its just that none of them is a tier 0 one.

Really? Because your whole thing sounded like "guys, Tyranids can compete with tier 2, everything's fine." Their ability to compete is not my problem, my problem is that the book is bland, uninspired, and rushed with terrible internal balance and rules that both restrict list building and do not match the Tyranid fluff. It feels too much like a NPC Codex.

Also, the support for Doom being removed is one of the stupidest statements I ever see in regards to people trying to support the dex changes.

"oh Doom was op and so many armies couldn't counter him"

SO THEN BALANCE HIM

The removal of a unique optional choice is not an improvement to the dex


EDIT: actual quote in question

 BoomWolf wrote:
so is an elite solo dude who can reliably kill multiple squads the turn he shows up on the board with several armies having little to nothing to do about it

Hooray for good logic. Let's support having less options if it means we get a dex that can win more games ! Then we will act like everyone else is only complaining because they didn't get a "Tier 0" codex ! Read their actual complaints? Sheesh that would be a waste of time, I'll just say I did because we all know the real reason any of them are less than pleased with their codex must be because they haven't taken home 1st place at all those upper level tournaments most of them don't actually enter, right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
The other way around, once you dont look at just winning, nids gives you many options on how to play, but its just that none of them is a tier 0 one.

Really? Because your whole thing sounded like "guys, Tyranids can compete with tier 2, everything's fine." Their ability to compete is not my problem, my problem is that the book is bland, uninspired, and rushed with terrible internal balance and rules that both restrict list building and do not match the Tyranid fluff. It feels too much like a NPC Codex.

Oh yeah. This ^ x10000

It's funny, we were so good at overselling the Doom that people are still scared of it.

Tyranids have a tier 0 army, its the skyblight formation. As far as variety the army is one of the most varied model ranges in gaming. To boot the book features more options than most other books as far as raw choice. Most of the choices are not competitive; exactly like every army list ever made by GW. Ask Eldar players why the craftwolds only produce warp spiders nowadays.

They lost things, things with no models, things if you had modeled can be used as other stuff. Its not great but frankly its the same situation every army is in. You lose things, you gain things (were about even on lost and gained units).

The only true quibble was spores, mine are now terrain and void shield generators. They replaced a Space Marine gimmick and forced us back to playing like the fluff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The doom was a pile of rules used as a crutch to great effect. I'm frankly doing fine without that ezmode trash thank you very much.

 lazarian wrote:
Tyranids have a tier 0 army, its the skyblight formation.

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
Tyranids have a tier 0 army, its the skyblight formation.

The only reason I said tier 0 was in direct response to ad hoc definitions used in this very thread. Skyblight is too powerful for casual 40k and is public enemy #1 for the anti dataslate crowd. It turns Tyranids from a midling army to a TFG eye roll that is unfun and unfair to play.

Yet you list it in defence of Nids in 6th, however describe Doom as "EZmode trash", and support the decision to remove him from the dex as opposed to just balancing him if you felt he was OP, in favour of a +1000 pt formation? So much room for list building opened up right there!/sarcasm again

 lazarian wrote:
The only true quibble was spores, mine are now terrain and void shield generators. They replaced a Space Marine gimmick and forced us back to playing like the fluff.

Yeah, totally unfluffy to use spores to assault a planet. Never happened in the fluff at all.

The doom was a pile of rules used as a crutch to great effect. I'm frankly doing fine without that ezmode trash thank you very much.

... Wow. A Tyranid player calling the Doom ezmode trash? It was only good against players who had no idea how to deal with it. To players who did, it was simply an area denial unit.

Which, in a pod, was very effective. Not because it killed units (hell, it was uncommon for mine to live longer than 1-2 turns) but because it carved out a large section of the board as Tyranid only.

In other news it feel that Tau and Eldar are EZMODE TRASH right now, hoping that when 7th gets released they will be removed from the game as well. Stupid crutches that people rely on! Let them all burn next to Doom, the Mycetic Spore, and the worst offender of them all, The Parasite Of Mortrex! The game is better off without them! To hell with balancing, the game just got a new army with Imperial Knights anyway, so we gained about as much as we lost!

 SHUPPET wrote:
Yet you list it in defence of Nids in 6th, however describe Doom as "EZmode trash", and support the decision to remove him from the dex as opposed to just balancing him if you felt he was OP, in favour of a +1000 pt formation? So much room for list building opened upright there!/sarcasm again

In a perfect world we would have all of these lost options and more. We are dealing with a paradigm that does not give us that. My vitriol for the Doom comes from its supporters romanticizing a made up block of rules from the last book that never got model support. This block of rules were the annoying 'internet meme' of the last book. People would stink less over it if the rules sucked. Who gives a gak for most of the missing Guard crap for instance, only Marbo got played.

Were more on the same page than you realize. I own 6 spore mines, it sucks. With that loss however I'm not going full bore sunk cost fallacy. I'm playing my army and doing well with it, all while having fun.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:
In other news it feel that Tau and Eldar are EZMODE TRASH right now, hoping that when 7th gets released they will be removed from the game as well. Stupid crutches that people rely on! Let them all burn next to Doom, the Mycetic Spore, and the worst offender of them all, The Parasite Of Mortrex! The game is better off without them! To hell with balancing, the game just got a new army with Imperial Knights anyway, so we gained about as much as we lost!

You do know they make stuff to sell right? Post chapterhouse you can't be this mad can you? They make rules for what they have lying around. This sucks but can't come as a shock. Within this paradigm we were last man out. Orks are going to be chopped next, I strongly implore you to hold onto your butt if you play them since something you like may not be here soon.

Tau really can't beat Skyblight plus sensible terrain placement regardless. Eldar can't seemingly beat Daemons if Adepticon is any indication. Tyranids maul most of escalation unlike Eldar or the aforementioned Tau. The game isnt balanced so bemoaning balance only gets so far

GW isn't balancing crap, take what wins in your meta or gentlemens agreement lists that are fun.

rigeld-so you ASSUME bad faq on spores, and due to that they are bad? also comparing hammernators to doom is NOTHING alike, you got a turn to kill the hammernators or get away-doable. doom? fair chance of him dealing 300+ points worth of dead units the turn he hits the field, unless you had high LD army, or interceptor bonanza. he dealt insane damage before most players even get a chance to do anything about it. and about the synaps nerf? yes, true, it hits harder now, but also hits less as nowdays some units dont even care about losing it.


SHUPPET-never said EVERYTHING is good, rippers are an obvious flop. comparing biorain to FMC spam is pointless, as the two are nothing alike. and biorain honestly feels like a bad game concept in an army who's supposed "thing" is that he needs to get to you, but once he's there you are dead. and last dex did NOT abuse glaring mistakes in game balance? possible T9 FnP troops did NOT remove any game from the game? because it was SUCH a healthy mechanic to have your scoring troops be virtually unkillable by half the codcies out there?
Doom could NOT be balanced, his entire core "unique optimal choice" was exacly BECAUSE he did a craptop of damage, and there was nothing that could be done about it, just like sir marbo people keep crying about. things you cannot defend against are BAD design, either they are overwhelming and become no-brainers, or not getting enough done and become pointless. there is just no middle ground on "no response" type of things, in any game. no game ever managed to make such kind of abilities to work properly, because their very nature defies the basic principles of a game-interaction.
Also, your insistence that I don't even read what was written as complaints of the codex begins to annoy me, it appears that your mind cannot comprehend the fact some people look at things from different perspectives then you do, are not bothered by the same things, or do not see the same things as problem.
I care not about the nid codex, I care not about how powerful it is, or how unique, fluffy or even fun it is (thought I also disagree with you about these proportions, I'd rate them all higher then you apperantly)-I care about how HEALTHY it is to the game, and currently the nid codex IS healthy to the game, while the old one was not, due to a heavy sum of troubles caused by either specific unit's design, or by absurd interactions that overshadowed the parts of it that WERE fine, just like eldar codex is today, and to a lesser extend tau codex. (tau to a lesser extend because all of it's issues seem to intersect with the ion accelerator, making it the hub of them all)

 SHUPPET wrote:
In other news it feel that Tau and Eldar are EZMODE TRASH right now, hoping that when 7th gets released they will be removed from the game as well. Stupid crutches that people rely on! Let them all burn next to Doom, the Mycetic Spore, and the worst offender of them all, The Parasite Of Mortrex! The game is better off without them! To hell with balancing, the game just got a new army with Imperial Knights anyway, so we gained about as much as we lost!

Now you are just being a tard on purpose.
Eldar ARE ezmode, and need a vast fix, because they got many problems and they unraval the game hard, but unlike the doom-they CAN be fixed, they are not flawed by concept, but by pure strength. wave serphants can be fixed by simply nerfing the shield, and the seers by fixed the divination that causes problems across the entire game, not just the eldar. (and honestly, I still dont understand how the jetbike guardians can be troops, its ALSO a design mistake and they are obviously belonging to FA)
Tau on the other hand, got distbalized from one thing only, the ion accelerator, and should you make the tiny fix of tuning it to AP3, the entire army gets corrected by a domino effect (as it requires alternate low-ap sources to be taken to fix the glaring hole, who drains your HS or your EL slots-as only they got any, as well as your precious points, as plasmasides/plasmacrisis are not cheap-making the riptides less of a deal as you got less points to spam them to begin with, and even if you do, they cannot handle SV2 without going into probably lethal CC)

PrinceRaven-whole other problem there, and one I have not touched, I just talked about game health issues, not how enjoyable or fluffy the army is, the two issues-while have some connections, are not one and the same. new nid codex is far better for the game's health, but not nececerly more fluffy. as for restricted, I choose to disagree, the LAST codex was far more restricted, due to "no-brainer" choices that made most of your list completely obvious to the level of "doom in spore, fill out as many tervigons as possible, spice up with remaining points", because it was honestly just too good to even try anything else.


(and no, you were not "so good at overselling the doom", I have seen, and suffered the consequences, of a doom taking down over 300 points worth of models the moment his spore arrived, multiple times, by himself.)

 BoomWolf wrote:
I care not about the nid codex[...] I care about [a bunch of other gak]

Time for you to leave my friend, you've clearly misread the thread title

rigeld2 wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
The only true quibble was spores, mine are now terrain and void shield generators. They replaced a Space Marine gimmick and forced us back to playing like the fluff.

Yeah, totally unfluffy to use spores to assault a planet. Never happened in the fluff at all.

They own the fluff and have chosen to downplay that. This is lazy on their part, of course. If this is what reves your engine I strongly encourage you to find what is fun for you in the book. Ask someone to let you play said old book or just adapt like the Hive Mind would want you too.

Ultimately were here and spending this much time and effort over deriding it is the opposite of helpful. Chaos players get tiresome after a point with all their very valid, but ultimately meaningless, posts, we can do better and have our feathers unruffled in the process.

 BoomWolf wrote:
rigeld-so you ASSUME bad faq on spores, and due to that they are bad?

Given the trend with Tyranid FAQs, yes I expect a bad FAQ.
And no - that's not the only reason they're not great. They're (normally) a waste of a FA slot. So they only chance to interact with them is if a Biovore misses - meaning you'll be doing less damage on average.

also comparing hammernators to doom is NOTHING alike, you got a turn to kill the hammernators or get away-doable. doom? fair chance of him dealing 300+ points worth of dead units the turn he hits the field, unless you had high LD army, or interceptor bonanza. he dealt insane damage before most players even get a chance to do anything about it.

Not a chance. Losing 300 points of units to Doom the turn he drops is nothing but dice. It wasn't reliable.
High LD army? Like Necrons, Marines, many Eldar, etc... you do remember he allowed Cover saves, right?

and about the synaps nerf? yes, true, it hits harder now, but also hits less as nowdays some units dont even care about losing it.

Untrue. They always care about losing it (except Genestealers, who didn't care in the old codex either). Failing the LD test always has a negative effect.

Doom could NOT be balanced, his entire core "unique optimal choice" was exacly BECAUSE he did a craptop of damage, and there was nothing that could be done about it, just like sir marbo people keep crying about. things you cannot defend against are BAD design, either they are overwhelming and become no-brainers, or not getting enough done and become pointless. there is just no middle ground on "no response" type of things, in any game. no game ever managed to make such kind of abilities to work properly, because their very nature defies the basic principles of a game-interaction.

No one really cries about Sly (except now that he's gone).
And there is a response - not the turn he comes down, certainly, but every turn after that. Just like literally every shooting Deep Striking unit - you cannot respond the turn they come down.
Make him cost more. A 170 point non MC coming down in a pod would be relatively balanced. Taking pods away he'd have to have Eternal Warrior or something like it to cross the table though.

and to a lesser extend tau codex. (tau to a lesser extend because all of it's issues seem to intersect with the ion accelerator, making it the hub of them all)

Wait - a codex that literally gets to ignore many of the basic rules of the game for little to no cost is healthy?
Note that Target Lock, Multi-tracker, and Markerlights have literally nothing to do with the Ion Accelerator... plus Black Sun Filters.

(and no, you were not "so good at overselling the doom", I have seen, and suffered the consequences, of a doom taking down over 300 points worth of models the moment his spore arrived, multiple times, by himself.)

Then you were witness, multiple times, to very good dicerolling by your opponent and poor dicerolling by yourself. Simple fact. I won't deny that it happened (it happened for me once) but it's unlikely to happen.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
I care not about the nid codex[...] I care about [a bunch of other gak]

Time for you to leave my friend, you've clearly misread the thread title

Time to stop using snipping of sentences to alter the meaning of what I say to what fits your purposes, its the fist sign of having nothing of substance to say.

rigeld2 wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
and about the synaps nerf? yes, true, it hits harder now, but also hits less as nowdays some units dont even care about losing it.

Untrue. They always care about losing it (except Genestealers, who didn't care in the old codex either). Failing the LD test always has a negative effect.

False, on many MCs there is effectifly no downside even if you fail the LD check. we did a list of them once, there are like 10 units in the codex who has no synapse, yet lose nothing or nearly nothing when i they ail the check.

rigeld2 wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
Doom could NOT be balanced, his entire core "unique optimal choice" was exacly BECAUSE he did a craptop of damage, and there was nothing that could be done about it, just like sir marbo people keep crying about. things you cannot defend against are BAD design, either they are overwhelming and become no-brainers, or not getting enough done and become pointless. there is just no middle ground on "no response" type of things, in any game. no game ever managed to make such kind of abilities to work properly, because their very nature defies the basic principles of a game-interaction.

No one really cries about Sly (except now that he's gone).
And there is a response - not the turn he comes down, certainly, but every turn after that. Just like literally every shooting Deep Striking unit - you cannot respond the turn they come down.
Make him cost more. A 170 point non MC coming down in a pod would be relatively balanced. Taking pods away he'd have to have Eternal Warrior or something like it to cross the table though

Nobody cried about sly because he was on a small enough scale to go unnoticed, but he WAS an design mistake, and a no-brainer.
The issue with doom is nothing at all the turn after he lands, he is unlikely to be allowed to live over a turn, but as he was last codex-he COULD kill over 1.5 times his cost the moment he dropped, with no response possible, no strings attached, and a cost low enough to be viable addition to any possible list.
WITHOUT pods, he's pointless. especially when the very thing that broke him turned into a generic psyker power-who anyone might get. a power that is not even a problem if you dont have a pod.

@BoomWolf - I think your ideas are being fought so hard because GW did none of that that balance the game. Look at the new AM dex that just game out...My guard friends are giddy like Christmas morning children and they should be... because that book should generate a meta shift of some kind.

My brand new skyblight army is already being changed because I've suffered back to back tablings by the new AM.

They are not going to "nerf" the eldar or tau or anything of that nature. The AM book is proof that they are not below pushing out new power books... So stripping out the uniqueness ( even if it was powerful) from the nids.. is pretty much a gut punch and then laughing about it.

There are scores and scores of people around me I can beat all day everyday with my Nids. Why? They play fluffy.. they don't understand the game or they just are not that good. Soon as I take that same list to even an RTT I'm lucky not to be in the bottom bracket. I take that list to a GT and its a fair bet I'm bottom bracket.

 lazarian wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
The only true quibble was spores, mine are now terrain and void shield generators. They replaced a Space Marine gimmick and forced us back to playing like the fluff.

Yeah, totally unfluffy to use spores to assault a planet. Never happened in the fluff at all.

They own the fluff and have chosen to downplay that. This is lazy on their part, of course. If this is what reves your engine I strongly encourage you to find what is fun for you in the book. Ask someone to let you play said old book or just adapt like the Hive Mind would want you too.

Oh, I've adapted. I continue to play Nids and will for as far as I can tell.
I just took issue with your statement of "playing like the fluff" when the fluff supports spore pods.

Ultimately were here and spending this much time and effort over deriding it is the opposite of helpful. Chaos players get tiresome after a point with all their very valid, but ultimately meaningless, posts, we can do better and have our feathers unruffled in the process.

Someone asked if the codex was that bad. We're answering why we do/don't think so. That's a problem?

Suppose the people upset over the new Tyranid book 'win' every online message board discussion they foist into. What exactly is the endgame? They get to sit in the corner with Chaos players and use their hard won indignation as warmth. They get to be a south or north going Zax while most gamers build a freeway overhead and move on playing.

There is the slight chance that with enough Internet backlash we can get GW to realise they should have someone slightly more competent* heading the team and actually give them the time to do a decent job.

* Not that Cruddace is generally incompetent, he just clearly does not know what to do with Tyranids.

rigeld2 wrote:

 lazarian wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
The only true quibble was spores, mine are now terrain and void shield generators. They replaced a Space Marine gimmick and forced us back to playing like the fluff.

Yeah, totally unfluffy to use spores to assault a planet. Never happened in the fluff at all.

They own the fluff and have chosen to downplay that. This is lazy on their part, of course. If this is what reves your engine I strongly encourage you to find what is fun for you in the book. Ask someone to let you play said old book or just adapt like the Hive Mind would want you too.

Oh, I've adapted. I continue to play Nids and will for as far as I can tell.
I just took issue with your statement of "playing like the fluff" when the fluff supports spore pods.

Ultimately were here and spending this much time and effort over deriding it is the opposite of helpful. Chaos players get tiresome after a point with all their very valid, but ultimately meaningless, posts, we can do better and have our feathers unruffled in the process.

Someone asked if the codex was that bad. We're answering why we do/don't think so. That's a problem?

It quickly delved into a sinkhole of negativity, like all of these threads. The book in a vacuum is in a good spot, especially with dataslates. It was a mess to get here but the OP answer can only be 'no'. Were doing fine.

Using the concepts of dataslates as a good "fix" is poor... as you have to pay $15 additionally of a book that's copy and pasted 5E with less choices and harsher restrictions on synapse.

Therefore a competitive list is one that either must use formations (if they are even allowed in your local scene), or you must maximize the number of units that can be effective outside of synapse, meaning an MC/FMC spam list.

Units that have been terrible got worse. Units that were good got deleted. An entire play style was deleted. No matter how you choose to hash it, you cannot look at a "glass half full" when it may be just a quarter full to begin with. It's been no secret that Nids have suffered with a bad book all through 5E and are now worse off again with a physically more expensive product that requires additional $15 purchases to make something that's worth a damn.

And what do we acheive by having negative threads? Hopefully people get fed up and start doing what we need the most: Stop buying GW product.

If people stop buying, then they either course correct or crash. We don't want the latter, we want the former. But if you complain and actively buy new product, then you're doing it wrong. The book isn't good even "in a vacuum". It's not a big enough change from the 5E book to warrant the price tag on top of deleting units, raising points costs, removing flexibility, and adding new units that are either tepid or spammable.

Addendum: The access to biomancy was completely fluffy for Tyranids. The fact that Iron Arm is an innately broken spell overall doesn't change this, it just highlights that one spell is bad. Which is the inherant outcome of not paying points for spells but for rolling them. At 35~50pts for Iron Arm, it'd be much more balanced.

The Tyranid codex isn't bad in a competitive sense. I've seen MC spam lists do well even in person. The problem with them is that the book suffers from incredibly bad internal balance which makes some units "Do not take if you want a chance at winning" status while making others "TAKE THIS!TAKE THIS!". The book is bad in that it discourages variety since you can't take most combinations of units without seriously hampering yourself. It also nerfed things that didn't need to be nerfed, removed some good units and gave strange price bumps where they weren't needed.

And now it's even worse with the new Data-slates. You thought Codex: FMC is bad? Prepare for Codex: Skyblight Formation.

You know a book is bad when NO ONE wants to actually design it. Look at the author for tyranids. Yeah.


There are two sides to being competitive. One is the tourney scene, where lists start min-maxing and only the broken units really see large quantities of play. Then there is being competitive in the casual scene. No one wants to lose every single casual game, it just isnt fun.

Where is Tyranids? Given just the basic codex, you end up with tourney competitive lists being nearly the only way to win even casual games. The sheer quantity of underpowered units in the new tyranid codex is nearly staggering. Where Eldar may have the worst unit in the game with Banshees, Tyranids then follow that with half the codex before you get to another armies' worst. Almost every single time you have a choice of two units, one is almost ALWAYS better for the vast majority of situations. Often the difference is so far apart that you cant build a list with the less powerful one and expect to win even casual games.


Whats even worse is that Tyranids was THE codex to break this current shooting meta. There is potential in the 6th rules to assault, you just have to have enough special rules to make assault viable. Throwing the ability to move through cover without slowing on most of the assault units would have been a great start. Then adding scout and outflank to a lot of other units would help reinforce the scattered nature of tyranid deployment. Adding things like lictor assault from deepstrike, giving genestealers assault from outflank and/ or stealth/shroud on outflank/infiltrate, and improving Mawloc and Trygon rules would have made tyranids into a more dynamic glass cannon assault army that focuses on mobility rather than a conventional army. Where 5th DE were the shooting glass cannons, Tyranids could have been the fast assault glass cannons for 6th.

Hell, 6th would have been a better addition of the had made assault Tyranids OP. Breaking the meta, requiring some counter-assault units to counter Tyranid speed, reducing the appeal of gunlines, and giving more of a use to vehicles with the lower AT ability of tyranid hordes would all have been GOOD for the game. But they made the codex literally as bland as possible without giving everything marine stat lines. Nothing stands out as an interesting role that did not exist in the 5th codex that was sub par back then.

2/10 codex writing. One of the biggest disappointments of all the codexes written since i started in 4th. Even the chaos codex doesnt match up to this. Sigh.... heres hoping for a 7th nid codex.

 BoomWolf wrote:
PrinceRaven-whole other problem there, and one I have not touched, I just talked about game health issues, not how enjoyable or fluffy the army is, the two issues-while have some connections, are not one and the same. new nid codex is far better for the game's health, but not nececerly more fluffy. as for restricted, I choose to disagree, the LAST codex was far more restricted, due to "no-brainer" choices that made most of your list completely obvious to the level of "doom in spore, fill out as many tervigons as possible, spice up with remaining points", because it was honestly just too good to even try anything else.

I have to aggree here. Every single list had 2-3 troops tervigon and a spored Doom. There wasn't that much choice before.
Doom +spore was too strong. Everyone said it killed at least it's point in enemie units and probably took fire from all the army for one turn. (or the enemie had to massively spread his army)

Sad thing, they decided to scrap both. I loved the idea of the spore pods, and it wasn't anything OP with the normal units. SPecialy how only one MC could be in one. If they still wanted to scrap spore pods, they could have left Doom and maybe up a bit his cost or a minor nerf. But then people would probably complain he's totally useless.

Tervigons. People act like it's total crap now, but it's still extremely good. Just not auto-include, but getting one as troop is awesome. Backfield synapse (you need it anyway for biovores, and units on objectives), will create at least one troop units, extremely tough MC troop to sit on one objective, one power, can take template.

I'm sad too about the Parasite (only way to use the free rippers models you get with termies) and the scytal nerf.

As for FAQs....it doesn't look like GW is planning to making any new ones. So no reason to assume they'll further nerf everything.

Overall, it's still a good fun codex, with formation there's a few different playstyle. And the models are awesomely uniques.

Addaran wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
PrinceRaven-whole other problem there, and one I have not touched, I just talked about game health issues, not how enjoyable or fluffy the army is, the two issues-while have some connections, are not one and the same. new nid codex is far better for the game's health, but not nececerly more fluffy. as for restricted, I choose to disagree, the LAST codex was far more restricted, due to "no-brainer" choices that made most of your list completely obvious to the level of "doom in spore, fill out as many tervigons as possible, spice up with remaining points", because it was honestly just too good to even try anything else.

I have to aggree here. Every single list had 2-3 troops tervigon and a spored Doom. There wasn't that much choice before.
Doom +spore was too strong. Everyone said it killed at least it's point in enemie units and probably took fire from all the army for one turn. (or the enemie had to massively spread his army)

It's true, the 5th book was unbalanced as well and some units were in severe need of a nerfing, so I was actually looking forward to the 6th book because I hoped it would make the book more balanced in general. However, it's basically a reprint of the 5th book, but with nearly all of our good units nerfed and almost no units buffed to make up for it (aside from Fexes, and that was just a points drop). Ditching spore pods makes playing against shooting armies extremely difficult without FMCs or mass outflanking. Instinctive behaviour is now a crippling weakness too. The new book just isn't fun to play with in general, which is a massive disappointment.

I disagree - it's a lot of fun if you're into Nidzilla (which I am).

I have several Mycetic spores, a Doom model, converted Ymgarl Stealers. a horde of rippers to accompany my soon to be converted Parasite. No, I am not happy with this Codex.
The last one was inspirational with giving us a flood of new units and psychic powers, the current one is basically a big "no-dinner-stay-in-your-room", without saying what our offensive action was.

I played nidzilla before, I still play it now. ( loath horde play to my core) so from a "fluff" standpoint. ( yes, the play style is all the fluff I care about) I'm happy...

I just don't like the book from a competitive standpoint. I mean, If I'm paying a grand to attend a tourney.. I'm not bringing my nids..

My biggest gripes:

1) Warriors and Primes are functionally worse for more points. This especially applies to the close combat versions and is largely a function of the next problem.

2) Spore Pods were removed. So the premier close combat army of the shooting era lost its one method of getting units closer to the enemy that does not involve slogging a bunch of bolter bait across the table.

3) Synapse Nerf is needlessly time consuming. I get that they wanted to make synapse more of a concern, but there were ways to do it without making it a random table exercise.

4) Lack of any ground based skyfire is ludicrous. Nids are literally the only newer book without any direct access to ground based skyfire (unless you count Sisters), which forces you to either bowl for 6s on Hive Guard or take the extremely limited Crone.

5) Genestealers got worse without any fixes. They were overpriced before and now they cannot even take scything talons anymore.

6) Bonesword Nerf. Sort of ties into number one, but did these really need to go to AP3? Were 50pt warriors tearing through terms really an issue?

7) Venomthrope band aid. These should have been squad add ons (ala Wolf Guard or IG Commisars) that you buy five in one elite slot. Instead, they are a useless unit that can get torrented off of the table before they have any impact on the game that should cost half of what they do.

Things I like:
1) Carnifexes are somewhat playable again.

2) Hormagants are viable once more.

3) Most Gaunt options seem fairly priced.

 BoomWolf wrote:
PrinceRaven-whole other problem there, and one I have not touched, I just talked about game health issues, not how enjoyable or fluffy the army is, the two issues-while have some connections, are not one and the same. new nid codex is far better for the game's health, but not nececerly more fluffy. as for restricted, I choose to disagree, the LAST codex was far more restricted, due to "no-brainer" choices that made most of your list completely obvious to the level of "doom in spore, fill out as many tervigons as possible, spice up with remaining points", because it was honestly just too good to even try anything else.

Absolutely not. Between Mycetic Spores and the Hive Commander / Alien Cunning rules, the 5E codex was far less restrictive. It certainly didn't force you to walk short-range units like Zoanthropes across the board while your opponent avoided or shot them. They also didn't even bother to fix the Trygon tunnel rules into a usable state. Up until the 6E assault changes, Genestealers were a perfectly viable (and common) alternative to Tervigons. Outflanking or podded Devilgaunts were also a decent option. Tervigons may have been strong, but they certainly weren't a restriction on the codex.

There's a huge difference between having some undercosted units that could be taken, and just flat out losing essential deployment options across the board. The 6E codex comes with some new "no-brainer" units that are pretty obvious. I don't think for a second it opened more options, because GW spent far more time taking them away and writing them into paid DLC.

Addaran wrote:
I have to aggree here. Every single list had 2-3 troops tervigon and a spored Doom. There wasn't that much choice before.
Doom +spore was too strong. Everyone said it killed at least it's point in enemie units and probably took fire from all the army for one turn. (or the enemie had to massively spread his army)

Sad thing, they decided to scrap both. I loved the idea of the spore pods, and it wasn't anything OP with the normal units. SPecialy how only one MC could be in one. If they still wanted to scrap spore pods, they could have left Doom and maybe up a bit his cost or a minor nerf. But then people would probably complain he's totally useless.

I'm not going to cry over DoM. He was a special character unit with cheesy rules that a lot of players used as a crutch in an otherwise bland codex. Hell, I've converted and used him before, and his absence really doesn't bother me at all, it was a single model in the army.

What does bother me in the removal of spores. There was literally no reason to remove that option whatsoever. GW didn't even need to make a model for them, older Mycetic Spore rules just treated a unit using it as having Deep Strike plus a cover save the turn it arrived. It would have taken a few minutes to write that in again and it would have opened up so much flexibility in list writing. Instead we're stuck with a bunch of slow units that need to get in close to be effective. Zoanthropes took a severe hit from that change especially, as Tyranids have no viable long-ranged anti-armour. Now they have to march up the field to use an 18" weapon which is easily avoided.

Addaran wrote:
Tervigons. People act like it's total crap now, but it's still extremely good. Just not auto-include, but getting one as troop is awesome. Backfield synapse (you need it anyway for biovores, and units on objectives), will create at least one troop units, extremely tough MC troop to sit on one objective, one power, can take template.

The Tervigon is a liability, pure and simple. The aim behind the Backlash rule is pretty clearly intended as a counterbalance to spawning (focus down the big creature to stop the little ones). However it's implementation hasn't been thought through at all.

Firstly, synapse is a huge issue in this codex. The lack of it can quickly make your army fall apart, and getting enough synapse into a list can be tricky. All the options for it are either in overcrowded slots (Tyrants, Zoans), expensive (Trygon / Tyranid Primes), or are pretty soft / ineffective units (Warriors, Shrikes). That makes every synapse unit precious, and if you opponent has any sense you won't have much of it left by mid-game. That can leave you with little option for providing control over that large Termagant brood you needed to buy with the Tervigon. It's also not too likely you'd have many more troops than those still around for holding objectives. So what does your opponent do now? Easy - focus down one Terivgon and suddenly the majority of your troops are now dying or running away.

This could have been avoided by just keeping Backlash at 6" as it was before, OR only making it affect spawned units. Alongside the spawning changes this would have made it a counter to the recently-spawned units, and killing free units is fair enough. Instead the 12" range makes the Tervigon a threat to the large Termagant brood you paid points for. You end up with a critical unit whose loss not only makes it very likely for other core troops to run away, but actively kills them for no reason. It's like having a domino your opponent just has to flick to knock over half your other dominoes. Do any other armies have special rules that force several key units to die and run away when 1 is lost?

When many key units are only Ld6, the absence of synapse is enough of a punishment to Tyranids without adding further penalties. That applies to Tervigons and IB equally.

Phazael wrote:My biggest gripes:


5) Genestealers got worse without any fixes. They were overpriced before and now they cannot even take scything talons anymore.

Hive Mind Easter Gift! For only 4pts per model you can now have scytal for your genes.
(It's in the options at the end of the book. Just not sure if the BroodLord can also get some...)

xttz wrote:

Addaran wrote:
Tervigons. People act like it's total crap now, but it's still extremely good. Just not auto-include, but getting one as troop is awesome. Backfield synapse (you need it anyway for biovores, and units on objectives), will create at least one troop units, extremely tough MC troop to sit on one objective, one power, can take template.

The Tervigon is a liability, pure and simple. The aim behind the Backlash rule is pretty clearly intended as a counterbalance to spawning (focus down the big creature to stop the little ones). However it's implementation hasn't been thought through at all.

Without taking into account the IB problems, since that applies to all synapse creatures. The Tervigon isn't a liability, you just have to watch out for 1 single type of units. 12'' is still pretty small and you can have hormagaunts, scoring gargoyles or your longrange artillery (carni, biovore, tyrano, exo) near her. As soon as the baby termies pop, make them run away. Even if it didn't make babies, a scoring MC is awesome and won't die to just one huge blast. ( it would be overpriced even more if it couldn't make babies though...)

To the OP:

Play the army's because you like the look of it rather than going for "what works" I'm a CSM player who started with the 4th ed. Codex so I know what its like to have bland codex's in terms of rules, but I have stuck with my CSM because I love the models and the background

What people were whinging about when the current codex was released, was that the main two items that that were removed was Doom and Biomancy, as I observed it was because they vanished there was a Bug player pandemic flailing their arms about screaming the Dakka mansion down.

Just what I had observed.

What I would say is surprise them all, use what you like and get to grips with them by learning with experience rather than just reading the Dakka crowd telling you that everything sucks honestly I surprised myself when I took unorthodox units to two games against different Tau opponents (I took two units of KB, one included Kharn.. which Dakka spouts as crap units and you know what? during those two games they killed Riptides and I won both games ).

In short: Don't take Dakka too seriously, yes ask them what they think but remember that people can have good and bad experience's and that can be exaggerated very strongly on the net of the web, so take everything with a sack of salt on here and learn by experience how your units work, after all if you listen to everything Dakka spouts out you will be playing Deathstar + Inquisition

Boom - You managed to completely miss what i was getting at there bud.

Things that are not healthy for the game?
Im guessing your new here, because each new codex adds on to that list with new and stronger weapons / wargear.

Nids lacked alot of that to begin with, so taking more away from them really didnt help them out atall.
If anything, they were in need of a few buffs here and there to certain units and points drops in other areas.

No one wants them to become an OP army, but people want playable builds.
No one is interested in mono build armies that have little or no choices other than auto-includes.
This is now what nids have essentially become.

The dataslates have helped a fair bit in bringing them up in power, but they still lack alot of variety without those.

Also, your ideas of "unhealthy units/rules" is a bit of a joke really.
Compare those to other armies and some of the rules backing those.
Nids are very tame and have been for a while now.

I have to agree what SHUPPET and Zephoid said, among others. You can make a strong build with the nid dex and skyblight formation is strong, but overall the nid dex is a poorly written, bland and unbalanced dex with many useless units. A quick read immediately highlighted many of the problems not addressed from the previous lousy nid dex. It is a huge pile of missed opportunities and appears rushed with little effort to make a good product. And adding dataslates to provide some options for builds thta should have been better in the dex anyways is pathetic - yes a money grab - I expect soon GW will release dexes in parts - the HQ dex, the Elite dex, the Heavy support dex, etc, just to scam more money out of customers.

If I didn't already have nids (since 4th) I would not buy them and I would run screaming from 40K. I don't find nids fun anymore and just frustrating - yes you can have fun in particular games (and many people though frustrated will still have some fun) but overall IMO it is a disgrace.

 Phazael wrote:
My biggest gripes:

1) Warriors and Primes are functionally worse for more points. This especially applies to the close combat versions and is largely a function of the next problem.

2) Spore Pods were removed. So the premier close combat army of the shooting era lost its one method of getting units closer to the enemy that does not involve slogging a bunch of bolter bait across the table.

3) Synapse Nerf is needlessly time consuming. I get that they wanted to make synapse more of a concern, but there were ways to do it without making it a random table exercise.

4) Lack of any ground based skyfire is ludicrous. Nids are literally the only newer book without any direct access to ground based skyfire (unless you count Sisters), which forces you to either bowl for 6s on Hive Guard or take the extremely limited Crone.

5) Genestealers got worse without any fixes. They were overpriced before and now they cannot even take scything talons anymore.

6) Bonesword Nerf. Sort of ties into number one, but did these really need to go to AP3? Were 50pt warriors tearing through terms really an issue?

7) Venomthrope band aid. These should have been squad add ons (ala Wolf Guard or IG Commisars) that you buy five in one elite slot. Instead, they are a useless unit that can get torrented off of the table before they have any impact on the game that should cost half of what they do.

Things I like:
1) Carnifexes are somewhat playable again.

2) Hormagants are viable once more.

3) Most Gaunt options seem fairly priced.

This is largely a perfect list on what I found with the Tyranid book. A couple good things, but lots of unnecessary nerfs/changes.

I think they look awesome! And for me, that's the most important thing!!

 Price wrote:
I think they look awesome! And for me, that's the most important thing!!

Cool, how the army looks has nothing to do with the Tyranids codex though.

 BoomWolf wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
I care not about the nid codex[...] I care about [a bunch of other gak]

Time for you to leave my friend, you've clearly misread the thread title

Time to stop using snipping of sentences to alter the meaning of what I say to what fits your purposes, its the fist sign of having nothing of substance to say.

Well, this is actually what you said, I didn't twist your words, I just shortened a paragraph long quote to the meaningful part. Here's the full quote regardless and I'll respond to that instead.

 BoomWolf wrote:

I care not about the nid codex, I care not about how powerful it is, or how unique, fluffy or even fun it is (thought I also disagree with you about these proportions, I'd rate them all higher then you apperantly)-I care about how HEALTHY it is to the game, and currently the nid codex IS healthy to the game, while the old one was not, due to a heavy sum of troubles caused by either specific unit's design, or by absurd interactions that overshadowed the parts of it that WERE fine, just like eldar codex is today, and to a lesser extend tau codex. (tau to a lesser extend because all of it's issues seem to intersect with the ion accelerator, making it the hub of them all)

That is all very nice and noble of you, but completely irrelevant to whether or not OP should buy Nids or Imperial Guard based on whether or not the Tyranid Codex is well written or not.



Pro-tip for you who doesn't actually care about the Tyranid Codex: It's not.

Addaran wrote:

xttz wrote:The Tervigon is a liability, pure and simple. The aim behind the Backlash rule is pretty clearly intended as a counterbalance to spawning (focus down the big creature to stop the little ones). However it's implementation hasn't been thought through at all.

Without taking into account the IB problems, since that applies to all synapse creatures. The Tervigon isn't a liability, you just have to watch out for 1 single type of units. 12'' is still pretty small and you can have hormagaunts, scoring gargoyles or your longrange artillery (carni, biovore, tyrano, exo) near her. As soon as the baby termies pop, make them run away. Even if it didn't make babies, a scoring MC is awesome and won't die to just one huge blast. ( it would be overpriced even more if it couldn't make babies though...)

Synaptic Backlash compounds the IB problem - it's bad enough having one special rule that breaks your own units without piling another on top. So yeah, I think we will take that into account.

Tervigons directly encourage use of Termagants by:
a) Spawning them nearby (and requiring 2 turns to get out of range, assuming you can pass them off to another synapse creature)
b) Requiring you to buy a large brood in order to score with the Tervigon
It can then kill both of those units. In what reality is that not a liability? Tervigons are a big red button in the middle of your army that say to your opponent "push here to win".

When your primary defense against something is hoping that your opponent doesn't know how your codex works, that's a terrible game mechanic.

He is more expensive than a Trygon for a MC that hits half as hard. And the Trygon is a bad purchase.

If its the Termagants I wanted I would take a 30 man unit or Termies with 10 Devourers

If its the Synapse I wanted I would take 2x 3man Warrior + BrbStglr units, which is more survivable to Tervigon to everything except S8 Lrg Blasts, throws out two 36" pinning Large Blasts a turn, and hits much harder in general than a Tervigon, and covers double as much area for Synapse without threatening my actual troops



If you tell me you want some combination of the above, I would tell you take some combination of the above. Tervigon is so bad its not even funny anymore lol, he has no Synergy between his roles, and you are always paying extra points for something you cannot use or will cost you even more points.... anyone still taking it is silly... I would take Genestealers before I took Tervigon

 Phazael wrote:
5) Genestealers got worse without any fixes. They were overpriced before and now they cannot even take scything talons anymore.

Maybe actually read the Genestealer upgrade list?

Yeah, Genestealers can take ScyTals for the low low price of 4pts! /sarcasm

The fact someone in the GW design team thought that ScyTals on Genestealers were worth 4pts makes me worry about their mental health. It basically amounts to "additional CCW".

But that AP 6!

The extra attack for 'stealers is actually better than the old re-roll 1's for them... the question is why do you have to pay 4pts on top of the already overcosted models?

2pts would have been fair.

Tyranids new dex is bland through loss of units and diversity of play styles as mentioned above.

If I'm honest I've been up and down on the dex regarding whether I think it's competitive or not.
The way allies make broken ap2 ignoring cover combo's in multiple armies hits hard on the Nid dex or just ignoring cover in general.

Concerning taking Nids to a tournament and doing well, that will really depend on your matchups.
Even with bad matchups and the right list its still possible to outplay your opponent. We cannot forget that the game is largely dependant on captured and contested objectives.
If you can achieve this then you have a good chance of doing well.
The Flyrant is still king, he hugely multirole, he can buff, he can deal with flyers but most importantly he can easily contest.

I bought the codex day 1, dispite the fact that 1/2 of the book had been leaked already. I was hoping there was a page or two that made the army -not- gak in my local meta (Tons of gunline marines who love vindicators/missile devastators, as well as 4 really good eldar players).

I played two games against one of the SW players who tends to not field obviouspowerunits.

Game 1 I did ok, he still won by bottom of turn 3, because he realized how crippling the lost of synapse is now.

Game 2 I didnt get a turn 1. He killed all of my synapse with his vidicators (by by warriors), his long fangs (bye bye tyrant), and his rune priest (bye bye tervigon). After instinctive behavior I had 2 hormagaunts and a carnifex. This was a 2000 point game.

Game 3 I made i to turn 2. Pretty much a repeat of game one in terms of what happened, except one of his vindi's scattered off target turn one, sparing a squad of warriors.

Now, that being said, between the launch of 6e and the new nids book, I was undefeated in casual and competitive play. My friends wouldn't fight my nids no matter what I tried, because I -always- won.
After those 3 games, which took about an hour and a half, I returned the new codex, and cancelled the order I had made for some more bugs. To my knowledge, the FLGS still has the 10 or so copies of the nids book he was sent for the release.

The major good and bad points of the book have been stated far more times that I can count, and basically this is the only codex that REQUIRES you to buy a dataslate or two so that your book can be on par with everyone elses. My only hope for my nids, which I have quite a few of, is that they will get a "6.5" codex, kind of like what CSM got back in the day with their "3.5" book. Not much hope, but it's there. For now I'm focusing on my CSM berserker army, and I even dusted off my old farsight army to give the new awesome that is Tau a shot.


On to your actual question now. If you want an army with tons of models that just never seem to stop, get AM. If you want an army with a bunch of big, hard-hitting things, get AM. If you want an army that takes aerial superiority to the extreme, get AM. Codex: tyranids is not fun to play, especially if you have a competitive meta. That is unless you are like how I was and just happen to be a glutten for punishment.

StarHunter25 wrote:
Game 2 I didnt get a turn 1. He killed all of my synapse with his vidicators (by by warriors), his long fangs (bye bye tyrant), and his rune priest (bye bye tervigon). After instinctive behavior I had 2 hormagaunts and a carnifex. This was a 2000 point game.

How did a 24" range weapon have range on the Warriors turn one? Did you deploy them on the line?

After those 3 games, which took about an hour and a half, I returned the new codex, and cancelled the order I had made for some more bugs. To my knowledge, the FLGS still has the 10 or so copies of the nids book he was sent for the release.

Sucks for you - I continue to win often (not undefeated, as that's unreasonable - but I believe I have a positive win/loss ratio. Without dataslates.

Codex: tyranids is not fun to play, especially if you have a competitive meta. That is unless you are like how I was and just happen to be a glutten for punishment.

I respectfully disagree. I'm not having more or less fun with my bugs than I did before. And I play in a very competitive meta, and a pretty casual one (two different areas).

I've lost 4 games this year with my Daemons.

2 of those have been to Nids, both post new book.

But then I lost heavily to Orks last night, so I'm beginning to think I'm either failing to include enough crowd control in my lists or I'm playing against high model count armies wrong, so I'm not ready to make too many judgements yet, but at worst, outside of a high pressure competitive environment, I'd say the new book is "adequate."

Daemons have a bad match-up vs. Tyranids and Orks, so don't be too hard on yourself.

StarHunter25 wrote:


The major good and bad points of the book have been stated far more times that I can count, and basically this is the only codex that REQUIRES you to buy a dataslate or two so that your book can be on par with everyone elses. My only hope for my nids, which I have quite a few of, is that they will get a "6.5" codex, kind of like what CSM got back in the day with their "3.5" book. Not much hope, but it's there. For now I'm focusing on my CSM berserker army, and I even dusted off my old farsight army to give the new awesome that is Tau a shot.

The only hope I have at this stage, not only for tyranids but 40K is for a fundamental change to the way GW approaches game design. Sure they might internally realize how poor their rules/game design processes are and decide to make a better game that has tighter rules, is updated with errata when needed and has a serious effort put in balance but this seems unlikely. IMO it seems the only chance 40K has of becoming a good game (not that you cannot have a good game with 40K but we are talking about the system overall) is for enough customers to kick GW in the hibatchi financially. If players grumble about GWs poor rules and lack of adequate fixes for problems and either buy the models/books/dataslates anyways or put down the crappy material and starts/builds up another 40k army still giving money to GW they will never have an incentive to move to good game design. Of course some people will never do this because they may actually love the game or just are so heavily invested they cannot bring themselves to shelve all their 40k stuff.

But if a large amount of disgruntled players stop cursing at a dex release and then pick up their other army or start a new one and instead just stopped buying GW product then maybe GW will feel the pinch enough to take a new approach to 40K. And send GW emails telling them why you will not buy any more product until they actually get their act together and put serious effort into game design, playtesting and errata, and warn other players off this game. GW will only change if they are hurting because they have shown over many years they do not care about the game or customers and we as customers need to stop taking this crap. Yes some of us have walked away but the game does have a lot of potential and with some effort could be a really good game.

The new codex prompted me to drop 40k. That's my opinion of it.

I have seriously been wondering if GW is trying to slowly kill off the Nid fanbase so that they can eventually discontinue them without taking the blame for killing them outright, just so they don't have to deal with such a unique army anymore.

It's either that or they just don't care at all about Nids.

I refuse to believe anyone who knows how tabletop games and dice work could write the new Nid codex after the last one unless they absolutely don't give a feth.

 xttz wrote:
Tervigons directly encourage use of Termagants by:
a) Spawning them nearby (and requiring 2 turns to get out of range, assuming you can pass them off to another synapse creature)
b) Requiring you to buy a large brood in order to score with the Tervigon
It can then kill both of those units. In what reality is that not a liability? Tervigons are a big red button in the middle of your army that say to your opponent "push here to win".

When your primary defense against something is hoping that your opponent doesn't know how your codex works, that's a terrible game mechanic.

So if (a) each spawned unit of Termagants is out of range of Synapse Backash in 2 rounds, and (b) yu place the termagants you bought to unlock the Tervigon as a troop nowhere near the Tervigon itself, then it seems to me you are only ever in danger of losing (on average, rounded up) 5 termagants that you got for free. That doesn't sound bad to me. Maybe I am missing something.

Well it would normally hit 2 units of Termagants, the unit it spawned that turn and the unit it spawned the previous turn and hasn't moved away yet, so about 10 dead termagants. Also there's a 44% chance of of exhausting the termagant supply each turn, so on average it won't even spawn more than 2 units. It shouldn't hit the 30 large unit you took to take the unit, though it is limiting you by not allowing that unit within 12" of the Tervi and it's also limiting that spawned units have to move quickly out of range (not always an option and not always the best option).

Also you're probably lucky if the Tervi survives past turn 2, lol. Having both "synapse" and "backlash" is basically painting a "shoot me first!" target on it.

Granted, I don't think it's as bad as people are making out, I just would rather spend 315pts on something other than a big 30 large unit of Termagants and the Tervigon.

I think alot of the dislike for the new codex is because GW failed to add anything really different. Look at the past releases, all of them seemed to get something new and unique. SMs got gravguns, Eldar got the incredibly upgraded Wave Serpent as well as the Wraith Knight, Tau got the almighty Riptide, Chaos Marines got the Heldrake, Chaos Daemons got .....well, they got the Warpstorm table and, I guess the Khorne cannon counts.

Nids? They got stuff they already had plenty of to begin with. A shooty MC and a choppy MC? Oh, like all the other MC builds? A new flying MC? Oh, that can keep the flyrants company. Really, the only beneficial change was most of their stuff got cheaper (always a good thing), and some of the more abusive units got removed (good for the game in general). I can totally see why alot of long time nid players are bored with this release, but that shouldn't have ANY impact to new Nid players.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Well it would normally hit 2 units of Termagants, the unit it spawned that turn and the unit it spawned the previous turn and hasn't moved away yet, so about 10 dead termagants.

I'm not sure I follow this. For example, all based on averages.

R1T1: Tervigon poops out 9 termagants. They push out to the 5-6" range. Then they run.
R1T2: Your tervigon doesn't get blown up.
R2T1: Termagants spawned in R1 get out of 12" range. Tervigon poops out another unit of 9 termagants. They push out to the 5-6" range.
R2T2: Tervigon gets blowed up. Only 1 unit is in 12" range, and gets hit with 9 S3 hits...5 termagants die.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Also you're probably lucky if the Tervi survives past turn 2, lol. Having both "synapse" and "backlash" is basically painting a "shoot me first!" target on it.

To counter this, my instinct would be to push stuff up field that must be dealt with, so that if the enemy over-targets the Tervigon, they will suffer greatly by avoiding stuff that's almost in their face. Of course, I've never played one game with Tyranids so all this might be good on paper or in my mind but go kaplunk in an actual game.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
I think alot of the dislike for the new codex is because GW failed to add anything really different. Look at the past releases, all of them seemed to get something new and unique. SMs got gravguns, Eldar got the incredibly upgraded Wave Serpent as well as the Wraith Knight, Tau got the almighty Riptide, Chaos Marines got the Heldrake, Chaos Daemons got .....well, they got the Warpstorm table and, I guess the Khorne cannon counts.

Nids? They got stuff they already had plenty of to begin with. A shooty MC and a choppy MC? Oh, like all the other MC builds? A new flying MC? Oh, that can keep the flyrants company. Really, the only beneficial change was most of their stuff got cheaper (always a good thing), and some of the more abusive units got removed (good for the game in general). I can totally see why alot of long time nid players are bored with this release, but that shouldn't have ANY impact to new Nid players.

I have to disagree. A new player may not have the baggage a veteran player of an army has or would not have lots of models in their collection that weren't given decent rules/stats/points and are subpar choices (many already suffering that position from last dex) as so can just buy the best units that work for them. But to say that the concerns brought up in this thread, for example, "shouldn't have ANY impact to new Nid players" is ridiculous. A new player is also going to have to use a dex that is poorly written with little real effort on internal balance to make the units work as an army with lots of flavour removed as well as lots of opportunities to make units work a little more like the fluff missed. The concerns about the dex are not based only on whether a strong build such as skyblight be made - it is the army overall and the usefulness and efficiency of all the units. If a new nid player wants to make a CC nid army or wants to use lots of rippers or the pyrovore or trygon or raveners or lictors or OOE, etc, out of the dex he can in a very non-competitive area, but will still find not only problems with these and other units but with general army rules and many things that don't fit the fluff even though it could easily have done so.

Do people just not take Dominion if they roll anything other than Catalyst (or maybe Onslaught) on their Tervi? I mean... it works really well as backfield Synapse. I typically don't lose mine until endgameish.

 jasper76 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Well it would normally hit 2 units of Termagants, the unit it spawned that turn and the unit it spawned the previous turn and hasn't moved away yet, so about 10 dead termagants.

I'm not sure I follow this. For example, all based on averages.

R1T1: Tervigon poops out 9 termagants. They push out to the 5-6" range. Then they run.
R1T2: Your tervigon doesn't get blown up.
R2T1: Termagants spawned in R1 get out of 12" range. Tervigon poops out another unit of 9 termagants. They push out to the 5-6" range.
R2T2: Tervigon gets blowed up. Only 1 unit is in 12" range, and gets hit with 9 S3 hits...5 termagants die.

Sorry I forgot you can run the turn you spawn. Though you also have to remember you can't actually spawn 5-6" away unless it's a small unit. The average spawn is 10 to 11 models, the unit has to be wholly within 6", so the furthest models will be 5" away at their nearest point, then even if you deploy the gants base to base, they end up filling a segment over 90 degrees around the tervi. Even if you assume there's no terrain or other units, it's not hugely practical, so you typically end up with gaunts less than 4" away. If you run both turns you should be fine though, assuming you just want the Tervigon in the back field and have room to move the Gants out of range.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Also you're probably lucky if the Tervi survives past turn 2, lol. Having both "synapse" and "backlash" is basically painting a "shoot me first!" target on it.

To counter this, my instinct would be to push stuff up field that must be dealt with, so that if the enemy over-targets the Tervigon, they will suffer greatly by avoiding stuff that's almost in their face. Of course, I've never played one game with Tyranids so all this might be good on paper or in my mind but go kaplunk in an actual game.

That's partly true, though that's true of pretty much all Tyranid monsters, they're all pretty immediate threats. I don't necessarily think it's BAD that it draws fire, but it's not the cheapest or most effective form of bullet magnet either. Because it's synapse it's quite significant when it dies, so it's hard to think "well at least they weren't shooting at XXXX" when the Tervigon is one of the worst things that can die, especially given you paid a termagant tax for it and were probably hoping for a few turns of spawning to give you some more scoring units, otherwise just buy more scoring units and babysitters to begin with.

That said, I don't think the Tervigon is THAT bad, I'd put it in the category of "viable but not essential", compared to a lot of other Tyranid units that are firmly in the "not even viable if you want to win" category.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Also you're probably lucky if the Tervi survives past turn 2, lol. Having both "synapse" and "backlash" is basically painting a "shoot me first!" target on it.

Let them. They can't shoot everything first. And something has to be the first thing to die also.

You're in for a bad time if you only are going to use units that will never be killed.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Sorry I forgot you can run the turn you spawn. Though you also have to remember you can't actually spawn 5-6" away unless it's a small unit. The average spawn is 10 to 11 models, the unit has to be wholly within 6", so the furthest models will be 5" away at their nearest point, then even if you deploy the gants base to base, they end up filling a segment over 90 degrees around the tervi. Even if you assume there's no terrain or other units, it's not hugely practical, so you typically end up with gaunts less than 4" away. If you run both turns you should be fine though, assuming you just want the Tervigon in the back field and have room to move the Gants out of range.

Yeah, I could see it turning into a total moshpit under the right circumstances.

The fact that there is multiple people now in this thread saying that its good thing the overpowered units were removed from the game hurts my faith in the intelligence of Wargamers.

Hurrdurr no point in balancing just remove from game pliz


Oh and to the guy who proclaimed "Doom couldn't be balanced! It killed 1.5x its cost everytime it came down!" For starters that suggests you are playing badly, but since both your statement and the obvious assumption that it happens because of low-level gameplay is completely anecdotal, I'll start by pointing out the fact that Doom too has a points value, and could have had his points value say, doubled, and then he would have not been overpowered even to your vastly overrated impression of the unit. Or they could have just removed his ability and gave him something else. Or made him a super Psyker. Or anything. But to give us nothing is just lazy and pathetic. Supporting the decision is even worse.

"Is the Tyranids new codex THAT bad?"

Yes.

As a person who plays multiple armies and books, yes, it is that bad.

NOTE: its not weak, its just bad. Its bland, un-imaginative and did not address many of the issues of the last book while removing many popular units.
That is bad.

Really, everything else...is just details.

 jasper76 wrote:

 xttz wrote:
Tervigons directly encourage use of Termagants by:
a) Spawning them nearby (and requiring 2 turns to get out of range, assuming you can pass them off to another synapse creature)
b) Requiring you to buy a large brood in order to score with the Tervigon
It can then kill both of those units. In what reality is that not a liability? Tervigons are a big red button in the middle of your army that say to your opponent "push here to win".

When your primary defense against something is hoping that your opponent doesn't know how your codex works, that's a terrible game mechanic.

So if (a) each spawned unit of Termagants is out of range of Synapse Backash in 2 rounds, and (b) yu place the termagants you bought to unlock the Tervigon as a troop nowhere near the Tervigon itself, then it seems to me you are only ever in danger of losing (on average, rounded up) 5 termagants that you got for free. That doesn't sound bad to me. Maybe I am missing something.

If you're actively needing to keep Ld6 units away from an expensive source of synapse, that's precisely the issue. It's tough enough to maintain synapse control against good players without needing to avoid your own units.

I only have one thing to say about this subject.

When 6th edition Chaos Deamons came out, people said it was one of the worst codices to date. Nowadays, it is counted amongst the top 3 of most competitive armies.

DaPino wrote:
I only have one thing to say about this subject.

When 6th edition Chaos Deamons came out, people said it was one of the worst codices to date. Nowadays, it is counted amongst the top 3 of most competitive armies.

Some people said the Tau Codex was bad and the Eldar Codex was uncompetitive.

People are idiots.

DaPino wrote:
I only have one thing to say about this subject.

When 6th edition Chaos Deamons came out, people said it was one of the worst codices to date. Nowadays, it is counted amongst the top 3 of most competitive armies.

I see what you are insinuating, and that's a pretty short-sighted view, if you are assuming that because this codex is widely regarded as terribly written, that logic states it will somehow not be in a years time, because of a similar response given to a different codex, when the circumstantial differences after far larger than what you are taking into recognition.


That being said, I really don't recall the demon release being that unpopular, maybe this is my memory being skewed (other than the inevitable complaints about the two current codex kings being nerfed). Then again I didn't really follow the reception for this release, although I'm sure the reception for Nids is much worse. Also, wasn't the competitive status changing Grimoire combo of the dex found within like 2 months? Because its been nearly 4 for Tyranids, and I can guarantee this dex has no Grimoire.


On top of this, your short-shortsightedness has failed to recognise that people aren't unhappy with this codex from a competitive standpoint. It's got a really powerful build in there, and is well capable of beating Demons. I'd suggest taking the time out to actually read this thread and not just the title, and then taking note of what people are unhappy with, because it isn't the strength of the dex competitively. Most of us don't care about the final rankings of our army's strongest build in the high-level tournaments that we never attend - we would much rather be able to play sensible games with our Genestealers and Rippers.

 SHUPPET wrote:

DaPino wrote:
I only have one thing to say about this subject.

When 6th edition Chaos Deamons came out, people said it was one of the worst codices to date. Nowadays, it is counted amongst the top 3 of most competitive armies.

I see what you are insinuating, and that's a pretty short-sighted view, if you are assuming that because this codex is widely regarded as terribly written, that logic states it will somehow not be in a years time, because of a similar response given to a different codex, when the circumstantial differences after far larger than what you are taking into recognition.


That being said, I really don't recall the demon release being that unpopular, maybe this is my memory being skewed (other than the inevitable complaints about the two current codex kings being nerfed). Then again I didn't really follow the reception for this release, although I'm sure the reception for Nids is much worse. Also, wasn't the competitive status changing Grimoire combo of the dex found within like 2 months? Because its been nearly 4 for Tyranids, and I can guarantee this dex has no Grimoire.


On top of this, your short-shortsightedness has failed to recognise that people aren't unhappy with this codex from a competitive standpoint. It's got a really powerful build in there, and is well capable of beating Demons. I'd suggest taking the time out to actually read this thread and not just the title, and then taking note of what people are unhappy with, because it isn't the strength of the dex competitively. Most of us don't care about the final rankings of our army's strongest build in the high-level tournaments that we never attend - we would much rather be able to play sensible games with our Genestealers and Rippers.

Yeah it's a very short-sighted view, mostly hinging on the fact that people were unhappy about Khorne getting shafted and units getting weaker (but cheaper) across the board. There's also the fact that the Daemons codex actually saw some pretty significant changes in terms of gameplay and individual units, something which wasn't so much a complaint with the Nids codex.