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im relativly new to playing 40k and i decided tyranids cause i love swarming people but i really dont know much about them can anyone help me with tips and ideas for using them properly

Here's a few quick points

Buy a lot of genestealers and outflank with them.

Hormaguants are garbage convert them all into Spine Guants.

TL Devourers are amazing in pairs on any MC.

Warriors should only be equipped with deathspitters and scything talons, or 2 X scything talons. Don't bother with any upgrades they are not really worth it.

you NEED 3 x zoanthropes to kill tanks.


I might post more when I have time, or you post more about your army.

im still building my army but i have 1 tyrant 2 fexes 3 zoeys 36 gaunts 16 stealers 1 broodlord 4 gargoyles and 6 warriors

Tyranids have several different builds that are/can be successful. I will run through a brief outline of them for you.

1. Nidzilla
A real power list. Its main and obvious strength is an abundance of T6 models with 4 wounds on the table. Very few armies can contend with this sort of list. its generally best to take the shooty route since MCs designed for cc tend to get overwhelmed by sheer numbers and end up taking lots of no retreat wounds. Stealers make a great troops choice for this list too since there is very little synapse coverage on the table. So, MCs hurt from afar while closing the gap slowly, stealers either get held on sides to outflank or wait behind the MCs to counter attack.

2. Stealer shock
Not as common as you might think. A list like this has some real strengths...great cc, lots of models, can close the distance between foes quickly. Unfortunately it has one real drawback. It struggles greatly against armour, especially if the tanks are moving. And a landraider or a monolith can just make the game stupidly one sided. Only the broodlord can scratch the raider unless you take the (expensive) strength upgrade for the regular guys and nothing can hit the monolith. Of course you can include some fexes, but with the amount of stealers being run there won't be many points left to bring many and any smart opponent will target the big guys first.

3. Swarm
This list brings a lot of little guys to the table. Cheap and expendable you can just keep throwing them at the objectives on the table and chances are the opponent won't be able to remove them all. However to keep them where you want you will LOTS of synapse. Also kill points missions will destroy you.

4. Warrior spam
With the new rules to blast weapons warriors with deathspitters now reign. Having 27 such models with 2 wounds each and immunity to instant death means no infantry should be able to withstand such a barrage. And all this for around 700 points. However this list does have a weakness. In fact its a problem for most nid players out there. TANKS. The only reliable way to completely destroy them at range are Barbed stranglers (which only hit 33% of the time) and zoanthropes (BS 3). Landraiders can cause real grief but with so many warriors its best to just ignore them. With this list however its possible to fit quite a few fexes in so they have it slightly better than stealer shock.

5. Fast attack
This is a list of my own personal making (or will be once I get the models). I'm not trying to take credit if someone else has done it before me but i have seen very few players writing up a list that is pure speed and assault. I intend to make my list full of lictors, raveners, leaping warriors, a flyrant and hormagaunts. The whole point of this list is to assault with everything by turn 2. It will NOT be able to deal with landraiders but everything else will be hitting rear armour so it shouldn't be a problem.

Overall nids (in my experience) have more options for building a balanced list than most other armies and can actually be competitive. Thats the way I started and now I have moved onto designing lists after observing whats been submitted on dakkadakka. Good luck with your nids and welcome to the swarm.

Clthomps wrote:Here's a few quick points

Buy a lot of genestealers and outflank with them.

Hormaguants are garbage convert them all into Spine Guants.

TL Devourers are amazing in pairs on any MC.

Warriors should only be equipped with deathspitters and scything talons, or 2 X scything talons. Don't bother with any upgrades they are not really worth it.

you NEED 3 x zoanthropes to kill tanks.

This. Some extra notes of my own:

Biovores are trash. Ignore them.

Find out what your opponents tend to go after, and beef the other units in future games. For example, if they tend to go after your Genestealers, give your Gaunts +1 Str and better guns.

SpideyMonk wrote:im still building my army but i have 1 tyrant 2 fexes 3 zoeys 36 gaunts 16 stealers 1 broodlord 4 gargoyles and 6 warriors

Sounds like a good start down the road to niddom. Lukus83 gave a good breakdown of the various builds that work well with nids. Find one that sounds interesting and start filling out your army to suit it. 1 tyrant, 2 fexes, and 3 zoeys are going to hit the board in just about every build, so no wasted models there. The gaunts and stealers are also going to be a stapel in most builds so no going wrong there. depending on what you decide to do, the other models may end up on the shelf, but that's why you need to get an idea of what you want to do at this poitn so you can build towards it.

well i love any kind of horde army so im really prolly gonna do more bigger battles in my future requiring more gaunts and gargoyles but i know i need another fex cause in a lot of armies i see 3-4 and so i know for sure thats a need ill probably get another tyrants 2 tyrant guard 2 more fexes about 70 or so more gaunts a few more stealers just cause its funny lol and maybe 20 so more gargoyles

Clthomps really hit it!

I would caution, avoid combined melees with gaunts and any other unit. Gaunts usually lose melees (by number count) and the fearless armor saves they cause to more powerful friendly MCs can hurt.

14 point-per-model hormagaunts. +1ws +1I +1S.

Charge range of 19-24"

MEQ killers. Ork killers. Eldar usually fight simo with these guys but you usually pump out Alot of attacks.

Underated from what ive seen but leathal if used well.

from what iv been told a hormo gets 12 inches plus a 6 inch run if they do the 6 inch run they cant assault

yes they can. They are beasts. This gives them the fleet special rule

My advice is to find players who are ok with letting you proxy things while you're building your army, and find out what works best yourself. Even the best of internet forums are full of blowhards who just tell you what they've heard from other people because they want to sound smart.

That being said, there are some general guidelines:

Take the minimum upgrades needed for the model to do its job well.

Know what your opponents are using, for example, many infantry mounted weapons in the game are AP5 or better, making extended carapace on gaunts generally not worth the points.

Know the rules. Know the rules. Know the rules. That way when someone tells you that hormagaunts don't have fleet, you can pull out the rulebook and show them that they DO! This includes being at least familiar with others' codices.

ok so regular gaunts get a 6 inch plus a d6 fleet right? can they still shoot and if so can they assault after

Fleet doesn't mean you can shoot if you run.

Every infantry model can run, if they sacrifice shooting.

Models with fleet may assault in the same turn that they run.

It's not a separate mechanic, simply one that changes the way the run mechanic works.

Indeed, it means that any unit getting within 19" of hormagaunts is going to get charged. Wouldnt ever suggest a squad size smaller than 16, the second bonus of them is that any model within 3" of one in btb contact can fight, not just 2"

Yes, but counter charge makes that largely an irrelevant power.

Also the new fearless and armor 6+ makes these lucky to even tie when in melee with 3+ save armies.

They are a 4th edition legacy unit, relegated to mediocre in 5th, if that.

Augustus wrote:Yes, but counter charge makes that largely an irrelevant power.

Also the new fearless and armor 6+ makes these lucky to even tie when in melee with 3+ save armies.

They are a 4th edition legacy unit, relegated to mediocre in 5th, if that.

Actually, the Leap rule is a 3rd edition legacy.

Something people never seem to talk about is that Hormagaunts have lost CC effectiveness from where they were in 3rd edition. Remember that in 3rd, models not in b2b but within 2" only got a single, regular attack. Meanwhile, the 3rd edition Leap rule (IIRC) allowed Hormagaunts to use their full attacks for every model within 2". So Hormagaunts were dishing out huge numbers of attacks compared to most units in the game, which better justified their points cost.

Fourth edition changed the CC rules, and suddenly everyone got their full attacks within 2". Leap was unfortunately only tweaked, and didn't make up for the relative loss in CC effectiveness. Which brings us to 5th edition, in which the charge reaction rules allow even a charged unit to rack up a decent number of CC attacks and make the Leap rule irrelevant. And despite Hormagaunts losing all this ground to the rest of the field, they've stayed fixed at a hefty 10 pts per model.

That's why (IMO) Hormagaunts should at a minimum become A3 in their next codex (and lose the Leap rule).

I have a fair number of Hormagaunts.

In 5e, I use them so rarely its kind of sad.

I dont understand why people dont like the hormagaunts. They charge from reeeally far away. Generally get ignored because of the squad of multi-wound warriors & flyrants charging ahead of them but then dish out lots of attacks at I5, hitting on 3's and wounding on 4's vs an MEQ. Slaughter.

I think people don't like them because a standard genestealer does the job better for a minimal cost upgrade in points. I personally think they need a bit of tweaking to make them worth their points, furious charge perhaps, or just decrease their cost to 8pts each and you have a worthwhile model.

Indeed

At least they look really cool!