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4e nids can bring up to six of carnifexes, though no more than three of them with 2+ armour, or over a hundred gaunts. Similar to how 4e orks can mob up or bring the big wagons (or bikes, or kans, etc). When constructing your list your best bet is going to be an all comers approach that fits your style of play and tweak it as you get more experience.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Edit: I bet Zoanthropes were invulnerable 3+. Lots of bolters against them is pretty ideal.

4e Zoanthropes, so 6++ invulnerable and 2+ armour.

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Edit: I bet Zoanthropes were invulnerable 3+. Lots of bolters against them is pretty ideal.

4e Zoanthropes, so 6++ invulnerable and 2+ armour.

Hah. So like the exact opposite of what I was thinking. Scratch the bolters, then.

 LinkiePuppo wrote:


Yeah! I appreciate that!
So Ork Friend's list was:

Swarm Lord with Tyrant guard, Ol' One Eye
3 squads of 30 Termagants
1 Squad of 3 Zonethropes
1 Suqad of 3 Warriors
2 Squads of 10 Gene-stealers
and 3 Screamer Killer Carnafexes.

The real thing that killed me was not getting the first turn, and the genestealers locking up my Devastator Marines.

And, I may do that After next time. I asked Ork Friend for a rematch with the same lists, but I could ask if we could make MINOR adjustments. :p

Thank you for the suggestions!

Was this a hybrid list of 3rd and 4th edition? And are you guys just ignoring force org chart restrictions? I might have missed it, but I don't think old one eye was in the 4th ed codex, and even with old one eye, with three carnifexes and the zoanthrope brood, that's 5 heavy support choices.

I'm not saying you guys can't play the way you want, I'm just wondering what restrictions you might be sticking to. Also, are you just calling a hive tyrant a swarm lord? Or did you make some kind of custom 4th edition swarm lord?

EDIT: wait a second, just thought of something, is your friend using the 5th edition tyranids codex for a 4th edition game? That kinda makes a difference.

In 4th ed you could take Carnifexes as Elites if they were less than 115 points.

Old One Eye was introduced in 3rd edition and it was a Carnifex with Crushing Claws that could Regenerate (upgrades unavailable in 3rd ed). In 4th edition they just made Crushing Claws and Regeneration generic upgrades, so you could just build "Old One Eye" as it existed in the 3rd ed book.

There were no named Tyranids in the 4th ed book, which is the most appropriate approach to Nids, imo.

 LinkiePuppo wrote:


So Ork Friend's list was:

Swarm Lord with Tyrant guard, Ol' One Eye
3 squads of 30 Termagants
1 Squad of 3 Zonethropes
1 Suqad of 3 Warriors
2 Squads of 10 Gene-stealers
and 3 Screamer Killer Carnafexes.

Looks like Ork Friend was using the 5th edition book, or some hybrid. Swarmlord was introduced in 5th. Zoanthropes were not squadded in 4th. They were a 0-1 selection where you could purchase up to 3 who operated independently on the tabletop.

 Arschbombe wrote:
Looks like Ork Friend was using the 5th edition book, or some hybrid. Swarmlord was introduced in 5th. Zoanthropes were not squadded in 4th. They were a 0-1 selection where you could purchase up to 3 who operated independently on the tabletop.

Good spot on the swarmlord.

That does make it FoC compliant (5e fexes could be squadded). But it also makes it over 2000pts as listed (~200pts over assuming 3 tyrant guard and NO upgrades at all) whereas eyeballing the marine list looks to be coming in a little under 2k

A.T. wrote:

That does make it FoC compliant (5e fexes could be squadded). But it also makes it over 2000pts as listed (~200pts over assuming 3 tyrant guard and NO upgrades at all) whereas eyeballing the marine list looks to be coming in a little under 2k

It might just be that OP is naming things incorrectly based on what he was told by Ork Friend. As written it looks like a 5th edition list that comes in at 2170 points assuming no upgrades on anything apart from the Screamer Killers that need Bio Plasma to meet the unofficial archetype.

HQ: Swarmlord 280
3 Tyrant Guard 180

Elite: 1 Zoanthrope Brood of 3 180

Troops:
3 x 30 Termagants 450
2 x10 Genestealers 280

Heavy Support:
Old One Eye 260
Carnifex Brood of 3 (2xST, bio plasma) 540

I'm going to be real, and I gave this warning at the start of the thread: I am an idiot.
I don't know Tyranids and could be naming things wrong.
But if it helps, I can post the pre-game pictures before the gene-stealers infiltrated.

I can ask him if he made an honest mistake, but I can assure you that it was probably a genuine mistake. I mean, the 4e codex has been out of print for... what? almost 20 years?
And Google is as reliable as a discarded banana peel. (meaning it's trash.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, my Space Marine force follows the 4e force org, and is 2000 points.

 LinkiePuppo wrote:
I can ask him if he made an honest mistake, but I can assure you that it was probably a genuine mistake. I mean, the 4e codex has been out of print for... what? almost 20 years?

While it's a lot of points over it does only equate to a single model - i.e. forgetting to add the cost of old one-eye, so a mistake is possible.


The cover images for the 4e and 5e Tyranid books are extremely similar. Funnily enough carnifexes in 5e are much more expensive and less flexible than 4e and 5e stealers can't get frag grenade-style upgrades to assault into cover (though they can infiltrate without a broodlord) so a 5e stealer/fex list is arguably weaker than one from the 4e book.

5e tyranids weren't bad as such but were not one of the powerhouses of the 5e line-up. And they are much easier to get used to playing as they lack the stat-changing biomorphs of 4e that allowed players to field things like 2+ save carnifexes (rather than the 5e edition codex missile bait monsters).

One thought I had was just, if you and your friend agreed to break normal FoC restrictions (1-2 hq, 0-3 elite, 2-6 troops, 0-3 fast attack, 0-3 heavy support) that its ok, friendly games are just that, friendly.

Another thought I had was, 3x devastator squads, 1 with 4 missiles, 1 with 4 heavy bolters, 1 with 4 lascannons, plop 2-3 rhino's in front of them to block line of sight so they don't get shot at before you have a chance to unleash firepower.

I remember back in 3e, people used to run 6 man tactical squads, with plasma gun and lascannon, with a razorback that had whatever weapon you wanted on top. 3-4 of those tac squads is a lot of firepower you can spread out or concentrate.

I think we're just trying to figure out which specific codex your friend is using just so we can understand the stats/rules and upgrades that are available to provide better ideas of how you could counter them.

For instance, genestealers are 16 points each in 3rd with some upgrades available that could make them 22 points each, in 4th edition they are 16 points each and could have upgrades to be 37 points each. Genestealers in 5th edition are 14 points each and could have upgrades that make them 24 points each, and could have a broodlord in the squad/swarm.

Warriors are troops in 5th ed codex, in 3rd and 4th ed codex they can be elite or HQ. Warriors in the 5th ed codex start as 30 points each, they're 14 points each in 4th ed codex, 22 points each in the 3rd ed codex.

Zoanthropes have a 2+ armor save in 3rd ed codex, 2+ save in the 4th ed codex, 5+ save in the 5th ed codex.

So it can sometimes be important in these details to figure out which one it is.

 LinkiePuppo wrote:
I'm going to be real, and I gave this warning at the start of the thread: I am an idiot.
I don't know Tyranids and could be naming things wrong.
But if it helps, I can post the pre-game pictures before the gene-stealers infiltrated.

You're not an idiot.

Thanks for the photos. They clearly show the Swarmlord model, a 3rd edition Carnifex (very possibly could be the actual Old One Eye model), 3 original Screamer Killer models (from RT), and three 4th edition Zoanthropes deployed as a squad.

I can ask him if he made an honest mistake, but I can assure you that it was probably a genuine mistake. I mean, the 4e codex has been out of print for... what? almost 20 years?
And Google is as reliable as a discarded banana peel. (meaning it's trash.)

You guys don't actually have the 4th edition codex? I'll send you a digital copy.
As already mentioned, the 5th edition book was mostly a side grade. It added cool things like Trygons, Hive Guard, and the Doom of Malantai, but also made Carnifexes way over priced. Warriors went from 2 wounds to 3, but lost immunity to instant death. Most of the army had difficulty assaulting units in cover.

 Arschbombe wrote:
As already mentioned, the 5th edition book was mostly a side grade. Most of the army had difficulty assaulting units in cover.

One step forwards two steps back for the 5e genestealers IIRC.
Cheaper and infiltrate across the board rather than just the broodlords squad but no more assaulting turn 1, no frags, weaker rending.


I used to run a 1500pt 5e nids list from time to time - parasite, a big blob of gargoyles with glands and sacs, three squads of infiltrating steelers, two trygons, and two squads of 5 rending raveners.
It was... ok in 5th for a bit of fun and a turn 2 charge. But lack of flesh hooks really beat it up, and incoming fire from templates was that much stronger.

A.T. wrote:


One step forwards two steps back for the 5e genestealers IIRC.
Cheaper and infiltrate across the board rather than just the broodlords squad but no more assaulting turn 1, no frags, weaker rending.

I used to run a 1500pt 5e nids list from time to time - parasite, a big blob of gargoyles with glands and sacs, three squads of infiltrating steelers, two trygons, and two squads of 5 rending raveners.
It was... ok in 5th for a bit of fun and a turn 2 charge. But lack of flesh hooks really beat it up, and incoming fire from templates was that much stronger.

IIRC the only nids who could assault into cover and strike at initiative were Lictors who still had flesh hooks and Carnifexes with the spine banks upgrade. The Fexes were I1 so it hardly mattered.

You guys don't actually have the 4th edition codex? I'll send you a digital copy.
As already mentioned, the 5th edition book was mostly a side grade. It added cool things like Trygons, Hive Guard, and the Doom of Malantai, but also made Carnifexes way over priced. Warriors went from 2 wounds to 3, but lost immunity to instant death. Most of the army had difficulty assaulting units in cover.

:0! That would be appreciated!
I already have the 4e Space Marine one.

But yeah, Ork friend is also an Old head. Lmao.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

A.T. wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:
As already mentioned, the 5th edition book was mostly a side grade. Most of the army had difficulty assaulting units in cover.

One step forwards two steps back for the 5e genestealers IIRC.
Cheaper and infiltrate across the board rather than just the broodlords squad but no more assaulting turn 1, no frags, weaker rending.


I used to run a 1500pt 5e nids list from time to time - parasite, a big blob of gargoyles with glands and sacs, three squads of infiltrating steelers, two trygons, and two squads of 5 rending raveners.
It was... ok in 5th for a bit of fun and a turn 2 charge. But lack of flesh hooks really beat it up, and incoming fire from templates was that much stronger.

I have another old hammer friend who plays exclusively tyranids… that sounds pretty close to what he like running.

“Opps too many gargoyles”.

Just wanted to point out that there are a couple of old hammer efforts in the Proposed Rules section that you might want to check out. They're generally designed to correct the various issues in the "classic" editions of 3rd through 7th. They also report that it's usually fairly simple to use any of the codex books from any of those editions so that players can still use the models they want. So it's not a huge problem that Ork Friend is using the 5th edition Nid book against your 4th edition Marines.

Yeah there were plenty of people who were still using 3e books for a big chunk of 5e anyway - Space Wolves, Grey Knights, Sisters of Battle, Dark Eldar and Necrons IIRC had to wait until 5e was up and running before they got any new book and they didn't have any new book in 4e.

Heyo! Long time no post!
Sadly, I didn't get that rematch in. We (Ork Friend and I) had more pressing matters in life, but hey, what can you do right?
Well, I just wanted to post an update about my stuff!
So, in the mail, I have 4 of the original bike squads from the 2nd-4th editions (Just before the sprue got updated in 5th I think it was), so I made a kind of- Fo-Chaplain on a bike for them!
I moved all my models to 25 mm bases, because... Little did I know that the 3" blast template can fit about 9 dudes under it if they're all clumped up... so... yeah fixed that (It's like 6 or 7 dudes when they're on 32s).
I was actually kinda shocked to learn that the new Terminators (because the old ones are hard to find, and don't even get me started on the old Terminator Chaplains), can fit onto 25mm bases!... If slightly.
AND! I finally got my hands on a Techmarine with servo-harness!! And he is quickly becoming my favorite model!

Also on the Techmarine, I included him in the group photo of all my chaplains, I am an Iron Hands successor after all, and think myself allowed to take Iron-Fathers, which is both a Techmarine... and a chaplain. lol.
I think that's also something in 4e that I can do? Which is take Scions of Mars, and give a Techmarine an extra wound, and when that happens he becomes an HQ? At the cost of points, and no Captains. which... sucks. :-( but thematic.

I don’t recall when in 4th the “new” terminators came out with their 40mm bases, but they go pretty far back. I’m the wrong person to ask, as I was using my old metals until the 10th edition plastics replaced them. There are pros and cons to being on tiny bases

For the most part the recut bikes are the same IIRC, the big change was they switched the leg/torso join to be curved to be compatable with the rest of the range.

If you are playing 4th, you should kit up a captain. That was their edition to shine. 3rd saw me put a lot of chaplains down, 5th was more librarians. They all had their moments.

 Nevelon wrote:
I don’t recall when in 4th the “new” terminators came out with their 40mm bases, but they go pretty far back.

3rd edition, though you could play with whatever base you had.

 Nevelon wrote:
I don’t recall when in 4th the “new” terminators came out with their 40mm bases, but they go pretty far back. I’m the wrong person to ask, as I was using my old metals until the 10th edition plastics replaced them. There are pros and cons to being on tiny bases.

It was 5th edition when Terminators moved over to 40s.

 LinkiePuppo wrote:
It was 5th edition when Terminators moved over to 40s.

I dug out the old models chart as I remembered my GKT coming on large bases in 3rd ed - but apparently it was just them.


Pre 2003 - all terminators small base
2003 - Grey Knight Terminators, large bases
2004 - 4e rulebook, 4e Marine codex - still the old metal terminators, small bases
2005 - 4e Templars codex - plastic marine terminators, large bases

A.T. wrote:

 LinkiePuppo wrote:
It was 5th edition when Terminators moved over to 40s.

I dug out the old models chart as I remembered my GKT coming on large bases in 3rd ed - but apparently it was just them.


Pre 2003 - all terminators small base
2003 - Grey Knight Terminators, large bases
2004 - 4e rulebook, 4e Marine codex - still the old metal terminators, small bases
2005 - 4e Templars codex - plastic marine terminators, large bases

That is just weird. GW is weird.

It's not that weird. When GW updated the models, they also updated the base sizes.

They couldn't have increased standard Terminators from 25-40mm at the same time as Grey Knights, as all of the models required slot bases.

Speaking of 4th edition, I was wondering, what might be a decent core for an IG army be? Something that could work for 3rd/4th/5th ed and be about 750-1000 points. I'm thinking an infantry platoon of some sort? What kind of heavy weapon support might be good?

BanjoJohn wrote:
Speaking of 4th edition, I was wondering, what might be a decent core for an IG army be? Something that could work for 3rd/4th/5th ed and be about 750-1000 points. I'm thinking an infantry platoon of some sort? What kind of heavy weapon support might be good?

Depends on the rest of the list?

I have vauge memories of guard players saying “use the troops shoot the tanks, and the tanks to kill the troops”. So load up the squads with LC and AC, and use the tanks to drop pie plates on things.

YMMV, just my dusty memories of the days…

 Nevelon wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:
Speaking of 4th edition, I was wondering, what might be a decent core for an IG army be? Something that could work for 3rd/4th/5th ed and be about 750-1000 points. I'm thinking an infantry platoon of some sort? What kind of heavy weapon support might be good?

Depends on the rest of the list?

I have vauge memories of guard players saying “use the troops shoot the tanks, and the tanks to kill the troops”. So load up the squads with LC and AC, and use the tanks to drop pie plates on things.

YMMV, just my dusty memories of the days…

Ok well that does make sense. I'm just thinking about a non-competitive kind of "games for fun" army. I was thinking of having like.. 1 or 2 chimeras total, maybe one leman russ, maybe 2 sentinels, and then infantry platoon squads. Those vehicles look like it would be about 330 points using the 5th ed codex, so I still need my HQ and Troops, I was thinking about a company command squad, then what... 2 infantry platoons? that's about 640 without any upgrades or heavy weapon squads/special weapon squads. Maybe 1 infantry platoon and a veteran squad.

BanjoJohn wrote:

Spoiler:

 Nevelon wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:
Speaking of 4th edition, I was wondering, what might be a decent core for an IG army be? Something that could work for 3rd/4th/5th ed and be about 750-1000 points. I'm thinking an infantry platoon of some sort? What kind of heavy weapon support might be good?

Depends on the rest of the list?

I have vauge memories of guard players saying “use the troops shoot the tanks, and the tanks to kill the troops”. So load up the squads with LC and AC, and use the tanks to drop pie plates on things.

YMMV, just my dusty memories of the days…

Ok well that does make sense. I'm just thinking about a non-competitive kind of "games for fun" army. I was thinking of having like.. 1 or 2 chimeras total, maybe one leman russ, maybe 2 sentinels, and then infantry platoon squads. Those vehicles look like it would be about 330 points using the 5th ed codex, so I still need my HQ and Troops, I was thinking about a company command squad, then what... 2 infantry platoons? that's about 640 without any upgrades or heavy weapon squads/special weapon squads. Maybe 1 infantry platoon and a veteran squad.

Not to derail the thread further, but the 3e/3.5e and 5e dexes have a fair bit of difference between them in re: listbuilding, so you might want to lock in which codex you use before you try working on a basic list. That said, for 3/3.5 you'd need at least one regular infantry platoon before you could add in other troop choices, so starting a collection with 2x Command Squads and 3x Infantry Squads would roughly cover you for all three editions (1x Company Command Squad for HQ, the rest either as Vets plus a spare Command Squad, a bare-minimum platoon plus Armored Fist, or a mix of both).

Edit: For straight 5e, though, what you have should be fine - IIRC Chimera Vets are the canonical troops choice for any vehicle-heavy list, though I'm reasonably certain platoons also had their place in more casual armored/mech lists as well (the difference, presumably, being how costly ($ and points) mechanized platoons could get, which meant that it was easier to find points for the heavy metal if your platoons walked or got swapped out for Veterans).

In relation to the 3.5 imperial guard codex, whats the deal with the regimental doctrines? Specifically the "preferred special weapon" and "preferred heavy weapon"

Are those just fluffy things that don't change anything? I couldn't find anything about them. I'm looking to start a Mordian Iron Guard collection.

BanjoJohn wrote:
In relation to the 3.5 imperial guard codex, whats the deal with the regimental doctrines? Specifically the "preferred special weapon" and "preferred heavy weapon"

Preferred weapons are just fluff as far as I recall.

In terms of the better doctrine picks: Drop troops, iron discipline, close order drill (don't bunch up until you need to though), light infantry, sharpshooters, veterans.

Mordians are a fairly middle of the road pick, they don't do anything fancy but they are solid. Limit your sharpshooters to key units like command squads or you'll throw points away on rerolling lasguns (note that despite the wording you can reroll as many 1s as you get, not just one per model - it was clarified in the FAQ that they were trying to indicate that you couldn't reroll a reroll)

So I'm wondering, should I try to get a special weapon and heavy weapon in each infantry squad? I'm guessing the power/benefit of being IG is the amount of special and heavy weapons they can unload?

Should I try to max out special weapons in command/hq squads? Should I have a heavy weapon team and 2 special weapons?

So far I'm just trying to plan out the 1 command HQ, the infantry platoon command squad, and the 2 infantry squads.