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I've been away for a while, but it looks like Nids are now both uber popular and uber effective. Am I off base?

Nids are one of the few things my drop pod marines (terminators) have trouble with (or at least the games are generally a coinflip).

Are they the new 'thing'? Should I tool my next army around them being at the top of the food chain?

I'd give Godzilla nids as being about equal footing with mech Eldar, with the head-to-head going to mech Eldar. I'd throw SAFH Marines in there as well (Which if redux ever comes about it will kill that list as far as competing with the other two).

Both lists (Zilla and mech Eldar) give drop pods problems also (I've eaten a drop pod player who then threw a fit and quit the game).

 

Drop pod marines have had their day...I'm sure Nidz will be countered eventually as well.

I put Nid Zilla on top in a 3 game tourney setting. In a 5 game mech Eldar. I would customize for them depending.

Zilla is the reason I went from using Pods to the SAFH Marine style. I had a better time against Mech Eldar as well with the SAFH Marines.

With Pods, I just couldn't stand the whole dependancy on the reserve rolls, I'd either come in way too early, or too late with the units I needed.  That and with lots of Termies as the main thing to take down TMC's, you need as many turns as possible to roll those 6's to pull all them down.

 

 

Pods also depend on a good round of shooting when they come in, and your opponent deploying his army to your advantage. A smart opponent deploys in a corner, protects his fast vehicles, and is able to weather a few rounds of drop pod shooting while  counter shooting and assaulting.

 

 

 

 

I dunno... I see so many ways to counter my own nidzilla list (which I've almost finished selling off to start fantasy... 'zilla and 40k are losing their appeal) I can't imagine them being a top contender, let alone "king". They're so slow. The monsters die so quickly to focused fire or fists. The h2h elements (stealers, raveners, etc) are so tremendously fragile. And gaunts are garbage. I fielded 50 in my nidzilla force (spinegaunts, sometimes with some termagants mixed in) and there are plenty of "stupid gaunt tricks" you can play (holding quarters, blocking charges, denying them synapse so they flee and die in h2h and leave the opponent they locked up vulnerable to shooting at the right time, etc etc). That said, gaunt tricks alone won't win you a game, much less work against a  clever opponent.

 I'm convinced that the reason why godzilla does so well is that, basically, it's different. It's like a warmachine army in 40k. or something . Basically, though, like so many of the 'cheesy top lists',  it ignores or breaks so many 40k conventions that  many opponents lack the lists (and tactics) to deal with it. It's the same as other stupid lists, like "can't kill anything" mech eldar, or the early armored company builds, or the powerful (and underused) 100+ marine word bearers lists. People just have the tools to counter the list, and it borders on the fringes of what the 40k ruleset was even designed to accommodate. It's strange, but it's not unbeatable.

Don't get me wrong, I won plenty with my 'zilla - I just don't think it's an outstandingly versatile or particularly effective list, and I think it's sad that it's probably the best the tyranid codex has to offer. I really think that book was a missed opportunity.

Based on the Chicago GT, I'd agree that Nidzilla is one of the top lists out there. Its not unbeatable (as I hopefully proved) but its ridiculously resilient, hits hard, and is extremely difficult to counter without an OTT SAFH or really, really fast assault army.

In round 4, after three games, the top 5 tables had all the players with scores of 50 or higher. Of those armies, 6 were godzilla nids. Two of the remaining armies were tyranids as well (mine, and a shooty gaunt horde army). The other two were a mech eldar army and a Necron army.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the nids in general are the "list to beat" but I would put the list as follows:

Godzilla Nids
Mech Eldar
Destroyer Necron (maximum #s of destroyers & heavy destroyers)

In the hands of skilled players, those are very tough armies to beat. In the hands of unskilled players, they're still tough armies to beat.

Centurian, out of curiousity, what's your tyranid build? And what more specifically was the gaunt horde?

Nidzilla is very powerful, especially since their very straight forward and thus are easier to optimize (IE no noob is putting grenade launchers on their Hive Tyrant.).   The only solution is massed lascannon firing, good deployment, some counter assault to tie/kill carnifex, and a bit of luck.

Is it just me, or are Zilla nids too vulnerable to Shooty marines to ever really be the top army? Considering the same list (las/plas squads, libbies with terminator command squads, predators, tornados) is also among the best lists to fight both mech Eldar as well as other Marines, the odds of running into one are too great.

Obviously I'm missing something because the nids at the GT apparently did very well. Maybe tournament players are flocking to them because they aren't marines and don't suffer from being stigmatize for min/maxing.

Well, certainly in the Midwest Tyranids are king.

Over the last year I have played Godzilla Nids and little bug horde and I was undefeated with them. I think one of the reasons why is that they play so differently from all of the other lists, that most armies can’t counter them.

The conventional wisdom is to have a good anti-MEQ army, and hope that you do not get a bad match up. But the anti-MEQ builds struggle to deal with the fast moving assault little bug horde, or the cheap but very effective Godzilla list.

I have had some success against them with my footslogging Eldar, (I played in an RTT a few months ago where I played 3 bug players in a row). And I played and lost to Darrian13’s Godzilla list several times, so that I ended up building my army around beating it, and it did well against every other army. But my army has a lot of small arms fire. It lets me clear out all of the little bugs, and then lock the big bugs in assault.

I played Godzilla Nids twice in the gladiator last year with my Word Bearers, and I did well. But I use units like flamers (the demons), and all of my CSMs are armed with bolters so I can move to wherever I want to with my rhinos, and get out an rapid-fire.

So IMO they are tough, but not invincible. You need to have to know some tactics on how to beat them, and you have an army that is well rounded.

Posted By dumbuket on 07/31/2007 7:40 PM
Centurian, out of curiousity, what's your tyranid build? And what more specifically was the gaunt horde?

Check the Army list forum, he posted his army list there before the tourney (I think its still on the first page of the forum).

 

If you take out escalation, like they did for Chicago, zilla is just stupid strong.  The threat of an eventual omega seek and destroy mission was about the only deterrent out there

Depends on how you play the escalation rules. In the midwest, they play that you can come in on the side board edge (Which is RAW). This helps out zilla lists quite a bit.

I've won an omega recon mission with zillas too in a tourney. Granted, the kid didn't play that well.

Yeah I was going to point that out. With the ability to come on via the side board edge, especially in missions like Recon where that table edge is 15" up, it means Dakka Fex's can walk right in and start shooting to anything on that flank or most places but a 12" center of the board style radius. My first game with Necrons against Zilla was in a mission like that and I "learned" about the whole side board edge thing in that game when Dakka fex's walked up into shooting range right on the one flank I thought I was safe on (assuming they can walk on only via the long board edge). It's not pretty.

Nah, Chaos Marines are still the best list (for a while anyway)
I would say Nids are very very strong though, as are several slight variations of Marines and Eldar.

Even with coming in the side edge nids have a serrious problem with escalation. Some good players can mitigate this but it is there. You will end up coming on the table peicemeal against long range heavy weapons. This means an extra turn of getting shot or the entire army hides.

I'd say once real marines and Chaos finish getting nerfed, it'll be:

Top tier
{Nids, Eldar}
Second tier
{Tau, Necrons, IG}
Third tier
{Chaos, Orks}
Eighth tier
{Various marine armies}

Tau seriously just have their way with the nerfed Marine armies (BA, DA, BT) on a level that's ridiculous. Necrons do the same. Eldar and Nids just blow them out of the water.

The current and impending marine nerfs (assuming that marines and the other groups all get the combat squad snipping) make some really funny matchups.

Can you imagine what a speed freaks army would do to the current DA with its 7 heavy weapons, for instance? I don't like to think about it. Ugh.

-------------------------------------------------------

Overall, though, if your goal is to win lots every game you play these days, I'd play Eldar. They've got a rock-paper-scissors solution to Nids (pathfinders) and the invinceofalcons will only get better and better as each army has its heavy weapons stolen from it.

IG would be a good second choice, since no one tools to fight them and you can easily put 200 guys and 20 heavy weapons on the board still.

40k is still a shooting game, it's just that they're taking the guns away from armies one at a time.

Incidentally, Chaos is still the best right now for the next few months.

There's still nothing that reliably wins against Iron Warriors - Eldar are worse at it than they were before due to the reductions in tank popping.

I completely agree with Longshot. One can't really say whether Eldar or Nids is the stronger list because they're both excellent lists and gain an advantage over the other depending on the mission. Mech Eldar with a bike Autarch is a really solid list in escalation, and that's something that cannot be said of Tyranids. Eldar can tool against Tyranids fairly well too, but noone can tool against Falcons. In any case the raw power of the devourer copy paste cannot be underestimated.

Also it's fairly obvious that Iron Warriors is still the best army in the game. That will change of course but it remains to be seen how powerful the new Chaos ends up becoming. One thing I wouldn't be so certain about is the part of Marines being 'nerfed'. As far as I know there hasn't been any solid evidence pointing to a Codex: Space Marines revision anytime soon.

I hope Orks make a strong appearance with their new codex. Kult of Speed used to be really hardcore last edition so who knows what may yet happen.

Isn't Orks being written by Phil Kelly?

Tyranids -> Phil Kelly -> Top Tier
Eldar -> Phil Kelly -> Top Tier
Orks -> Phil Kelly -> ???

The Rise of the Xenos continues ...

- Salvage

God I sit here and pray that the Orks get a Kelly style Codex of brokenness to put us up there with Nids and Eldar.

Therion has it right though, ideas of a C:SM Redux is a long ways away from happening if at all. As such I'd keep them near the top with Eldar and Nids. My own SAFH has kept pace pretty well and I'd like to think that this can continue. Incidentally I tool out more to kill Zilla and Mech Eldar armies more than I do to worry about killing MEQ's, mainly because if I can kill Zilla I can kill MEQ's just fine. I think they're one of the best Meta-Game type things to tool out against since if you can do well against them you can do well against almost anything.

Likewise, we'll see how Chaos does. I think they'll still be a good army and may still be able to deal with Zillas and maybe even Eldar too (9 Oblits for everybody!) . We'll have to see all the specifics when the list comes out though.

Right now I'm going to say Nids, Eldar, and Marines are the "top tier" of 40k, at least after the Chaos dex gets nerfed. Hopefully in January we'll be talking about Orks joining that list, which is about the only thing that'll probably make me want to chill on learning Fantasy and play 40k in a tournament again.

Nids, Falcon Eldar, Mech Tau, and Marines generic are how I would rank them currently. I am still waiting to see if a strong BA list surfaces.

IMO, the ranking would be Nidzillas and Eldar close to one another, with advantage to Nidzilla as they can beat more armies more easily but with mech eldar beating Nidzilla, then the current Chaos, Mech Tau, Trait Marines, Necrons, Space Wolves, Dark Eldar, Sisters, IG, Black Templars, Orks, Dark Angels, Deamonhunters.

I wouldn't say zillas are the king but they will win tournaments as long as people don't expect them.

Lucky me I never face full blown zillas in tournies here, too high a comp factor. I did face 5 TMC's at my last tourny.

One more thing I've noticed, 'zillas generally do better at lower point limits. The effectiveness of a 2000 'zilla army is less than that of a 1500 point one. This is because at 1500 you can fill up most of your MC slots without too much "filler".

You should see one at 800pts.

Posted By coredump on 08/03/2007 7:48 AM
You should see one at 800pts.

Though you can't have elite fexs at that point, so does that qualify

Posted By coredump on 08/03/2007 7:48 AM
You should see one at 800pts.

800 Points isn't 40K, it's a really big game of Kill Team.