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Iv been playing Fantasy and 40k for about 8-9 years and have had a bit ofa layoff, thought id start a new army to get back into it. The idea of playing with a mass of hungry aliens was always quite appealing, so tyranids seemed a logial choice. Also, im quite fond of necrons for some reason. In the end the Tyranids won out because iv never had the chance to play a horde army and would love to be on the favouable end of a model count for once. For starters i picked up a tyanid battleforce and their codex and have begun modellin and painting like a man possessed. Ideally ill be working towards a 1500-2000pt army and im going with a slight theme.

My vision for my army is that it is once that is lead exclusively by Tyranid warriors (backed up by some gene stealers, guants and rippers and 2 or 3 carnifexes). This is partly because i love the models, find them to be very effective and versatile units and it also allows me to field an entiely plastic army. My most regular opponent usually fields a fairly tactial marine-heavy space wolves force.

Heres a rough draft of my army

HQ/Elite
5 Tyranid warriors
with scything talons, deathspitters, 1 venom cannon and enhanced senses, ext carapace and possibly toxin sacs

4 Tyranid warriors
with scything talons, devourers, 1 barbed strangler and enhanced senses, ext carapace

3 Tyranid Warriors
with scything talons, rending claws and leaping, toxin sacs, bio-plasma

Troops
2 x 8 Genestealers

2 x 12 Hormaguants

7 Ripper swarms

24 Gaunts w Fleshborers

Heavy Support
2 x 3 Carnifexes (unsure how i will kit them out as yet)

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated as i dont have any mates with experience playing tyranids.
Bare in mind im looking to mainly field plastic models, so im more seeking advice on how to kit them with biomorphs.
I know everyone will say get a Hive Tyrant, so i probably will because its a great model and would be good for variety.
Also, im a new member and this is my first post, so im glad to join you all here in the Forum!

Hi, welcome! It sounds like you and me are in a similar boat. I just got back into the hobby, thought nids would be awesome, bought a bunch and am assembling/painting like my life depended on it!

I like your mix, looks like a very well-balanced army at the moment. As for biomorphs, I'm no expert on that- but I'd recommend feeder tendrils for your genestealers (gives you preferred enemy, reroll to hits for them and nearby units).

Do you have a reason for splitting the hormagaunts in two? Just from rolling it out with the odds, it seems like whatever is left from 12 actually making it into a marine squad... they might have trouble taking it down. 24, on the other hand...

Same question about your warriors, you've got them grouped 5/4/3 but I guess there are an infinite number of other combinations you could do, like 6/6... and again in CC they'll make a bigger impact that way. If it's to divide your fire more evenly, I understand, but maybe just focus on making one more "shooty" group of warriors (enhanced senses, ext carapace, toxin sacs) and one "assaulty" group. That way, you can have the assaulty group run instead of fire and keep up with your gaunts... otherwise, they're going to fall behind. If you want to take 3 squads of them, I'd make the assaulting group the largest, rather than the other way around!

If you don't want a tyrant, with 2-3 carnifexes, IMHO you don't need one! But if you get one, maybe you should drop a carnifex and focus on adding more warriors, since that's what you like anyway, and you've got plenty of screening units for them at the moment.

Just my $0.02

My main reason for splitting the hormaguants is to create more broods to count for scoring purposes, i figured that way only one of the broods can be fired at unless my opponent decides to split his fire. But i guess i could just do this with the guants and bunch the Hormies together, ill play around with that to see which is more effective.

As for the warriors i have considered different configurations, 2 broods of 6 would probably not be ideal as id have only 2 synapse units, and 4 x 3 leaves them liable to be wiped out, i sort of thought that 5x4x3 was a bit of a trade-off.

Basically the larger brood is the shooty brood, the combat brood with RC's would run and provide synapse support to the faster elements of the army like the hormaguants and genestealers, and the devourer armed warrios would probably roll with the carnifexes and be a bit of a trouble-shooting unit.