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And that's what I get for not re-reading and then repeatedly rereading the rules. Oh well, at least the warriors/gaunts could do it. Actually that sounds better than the fex. Did the same mistake with ravenors and the trygon tunnel. Though I never actually played it.

Thanks

Doomthumbs wrote:Yup. A single unit of Troops may outflank.
Not a single unit, which would include Heavy Support Carnifexes.

Although a Troop Tervigon is practically as intimidating as a Carnifex if you want to try and Outflank it (but it would probably be a waste unless you had some support for it, as its synergies with other critters is immensely beneficial to you).

Shep wrote:

This is a good 'multiple threat' style list. Good enough for you to just start playtesting. There are things you've got that i don't like, and things you don't have that I really like.... but the changes are too nitpicky and wouldn't really make sense unless it was in the context of a game.

I say just get some table time with this thing. Having a nid list pumping on all cylinders makes it exponentially more devastating. People may ignore genestealers/gargoyles just long enough for you to slap feel no pain and furious charge/preferred enemy on them. Or they might hammer your ymgarls/gargs on turn 1 and two, leaving you free to get trygons across the table untouched and your tervigons free to cover the board in gants.

Or they'll split their fire and get tabled.

Yeah, you're right about getting to some testing. Frankly, i haven't got all the models yet, but i don't wanna waste money on mini's i'm not gonna need in any list.

But anyways, the list was much based on (as i think i DID mention earlier) having alot of "psycological impact creatures", such as a decent amount of MC's, which screams "shoot me, not the smaller ones!" and the Ymgarls dormanting/outflanking aswell. And with a good amount of buffer-units, that can improove almost any creature nearby, i think it could show to be a decent list.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback - much appreciated!

This list crushed everything it faced. First it beat a mech blood angel list. Secondly it beat a solid mech guard list. However both players admitted that the guard player had some bad die roll whiffs early in the game that could have made the game more competitive. Third round it nearly tabled a mech marine player but on the last turn a speeder scout squad was able to move, assault gants and claim the main objective and then had the game end right afterwards giving him a draw. If the game went another turn it would have been three major victories. Looking at the list he's got a lot of points soaked up into the swarm lord and tyrant with thin troops but he made it work and work very well.

HQ

Swarmlord w/ 1 guard w/ lash whip
Hive Tyrant, wings, lash whip, bonesword, scything talons, parox, lecch, hive commander

Elites
3x zolanthropes w/ pod
6 hive guard

Troops
10 gants fleshborer
Tervigon stinger salvo, catalyst
5 Genestealer w/ Broodlord
12 horms no upgrades

Fast
4 shrikes scything talons, lash whip/bonesword

Heavy
Trygon Prime, adrenal glands

I'm curious about hearing more about how he made it all work. For a Reserve-based list, having that much points in SWL + HT w/ hive C seems like a great choice.
- Furthermore, he used Shrikes!? How'd they work out for him?

Billinator wrote:

I'm curious about hearing more about how he made it all work. For a Reserve-based list, having that much points in SWL + HT w/ hive C seems like a great choice.
- Furthermore, he used Shrikes!? How'd they work out for him?

I wasn't able to see it in action as much as I'd like as I was never playing at a table next to him to keep an eye on how he deployed etc. The Shrikes I know followed the Flyrant around and I don't think he reserved much aside from the zolanthropes. I think with the flyrant and shrikes extra speed it poses a bit more of a target priority issue. They're a much more immediate threat than the swarmlord or some of the little gribblies. He was able to use cover well to keep it from simply being shot off the table. I might get to see it again tonight in action. If I do I'll report back.

I started as a nids codex hater and have come around since.
Tyranid prime are simply the best all around character. I start them off attatched to a advancing squad of termagaunts or hige gaurd, then brake from that squad and charge them in with a nearby unit of ymgarl stealers when they erupt from cover. Together with stealers they make a mess of MEQ units.

i find that i learn more about to play something well if i know it's weaknesses so i started this thread here on Tyranid weaknesses i hope it helps.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/340480.page#2339542

Thanks for the information. i have alot of reading to do.

this is great!! i've learned alot from your info thanks for compialing it

i've also told my freinds about it and they've been reading it

Why the hatred for shrikes? I think they have potential. People aren't patient enough. They can stay behind cover until round 3 or so and come out if need be. They're more or less guaranteed to strike first and cause good damage with lash whip/bone sword combo.

You could add the Parasite to the squad, except he is way overpriced.

The Harpy, now that is a big piece of crap. I looked at it many times and I can not find a use for it. I rolled it up vs a dreadnought and it killed the dreadnought only 1 in 5 times. Lovely 2 attacks.

he Harpy, now that is a big piece of crap. I looked at it many times and I can not find a use for it. I rolled it up vs a dreadnought and it killed the dreadnought only 1 in 5 times. Lovely 2 attacks.

You're doing it wrong.


I'ts got a twinlinked heavy Venom cannon to shake tanks. It' cuts I in half when it assaults afecting the whole squad. making sure your Termagants strike first.

But with only 2 attacks, it would have a hard time beating up even gretchin. T5 and 4+ save won't go far.

It's got some nifty abilities and guns but they don't justify its points.

I look forward to the day someone shows me what kind of damage they do.

I have now played 14 complete games in 5th and a few games that ended abruptly due to time constraints, also witnessed many games. I think I have enough experience now to rate each unit.

I am going to group each Tyranid choice in 6 rankings: A+, A, B, C, D, and F

A+: Useful in every list, should be taken every game or nearly every game. Always gives your army a competitive edge.

A: To be taken in almost every game. A real staple of the army. Occasionally not taken due to point constraints, theme, etc.

B: Useful in most lists. Occasionally sucks, but will do well for you more times than not.

C: Occasionally good, but fails a fair number of times. Slightly overpriced. Limited usage due to situation.

D: Not a good choice. it will fail more times than not. Highly overpriced, veru situational.

F: Not at all useful. Don't consider it when you make a list. Use only for fun or themed lists in non-competitve environment.

A+: Hive Guard, Tervigon

Tervigon goes withut saying. Hive Guard are a mainstay in every list.

A: Termagants, Tyranid Prime, Doom of Malan'tai, Ymgarl Genestealers, Genestealers

Unless I theme my list otherwise, every list I have uses gants. They do well with Tervigon support. The Tyranid Prime is cheap and versatile. The Doom is just plain nasty. Tygarls and genestealers always make their points back for me after killing many enemy and causing mass disruption in the enemy lines. Most of the time my list is about 70-80% from A+ and A columns.

B: Hive Tyrant, Swarmlord, Tyrant Guard, Tyranid Warriors, Gargoyles, Zoanthropes, Trygon

I consider the tyrant and Swarmie to be situational. With their guard or wings, armored shell or the like, they eat up a lot of my points. A winged tyrant is difficult to protect but nasty if it reaches the enemy.

Gargoyles do well as a flying screen or with tyrant synergy. Trygon is very good on paper but bad deployment or bad luck with a deep strike roll can ruin his day. he must be used conservatively and remember he has fleet of foot.

I know I'll be flamed for it, but I like Warriors. They always do well for me. They are melta/rocket bait but most of the time I offer the opponent so many threats, they don't get shot. Team them with a prime. I take twin boneswords and deathspitters.

C: Carnifex, Tyrannofex, Biovore, Shrikers, Venomthrope, Mycetic Spore, Hormagaunts, Harpy, Lictor, Ravener

Carnifex has its uses but can be easily shot down. T-fex with a rupture cannon is overpriced but has high utility. Biovores are too weak with lurk rules and only S 4. Shrikes die too easily to small arms fire. Venomthrope dies too easily as well but has an obvious usage. The spore is great for getting something into enemy lines fast (Doom, especially) but is too easy to kill and gives your opponent easy KP.

I had the Harpy as a D but after using it twice, I moved it up to a C. It has to be used conservatively for a moving platform to fire 2 pie-plates a turn onto low-armored infantry. Lictor is only useful situationally, as it is not a MC.

Hormagaunts...they are as cheap as gaunts but their upgrades are overpriced. Gants without a Tervigon are much worse, but with a Tervigon, termagants fight better than plain hormagaunts. I have not been impressed by them.

D: Mawloc, Parasite of Mortrex, Deathleaper, Old One Eye

Old One Eye would be cool if he could ride a mycetic spore. Alas, he can't. Mawloc simply sucks and is totally unreliable. The Parasite is only T 4 and produces swarms to give your opponent easy KP. No thanks. Deahtleaper is simply too expensive just to contest something or to screw over a psycher that may or may not be in your opponent's list.

F: Ripper Swarms, Sky-slasher Swarms, Pyrovore

PU, no thanks to any of these. If swarms didnt crumble after being away from synapse, maybe. They could hold objectives for cheaper than lurking gants. No thanks.

Disagree w/where you put the Parasite and Gargoyles. Both are awesome and both have excellent uses.

I have to agree with Hulk. I'd swap gargs and DoM, and bump up PoM to at least a B.

Gargs - can be used just as a super cheap/fast screen, or with proper support/option, they can be one of the nastiest units in the dex on the charge.

PoM - Remember that if you don't have any ripper swarm models (i.e. leave them at home), you don't have place them and therefore you give up no KP. You stick him inside of a decent gargoyle brood and all of a sudden his T4 becomes a lot less of an issue until you get into CC with a powerfist or equiv.

DoM - Entirely too hit and miss for me to give a good rating to. Sometimes he's performs fantasticly, but most of the time he's simply mediocre at best. Too easy to ID and fails against meched up opponents.

I noticed a huge upswing in my performance when I met up with 20 gargoyles screening the rest of my army.

I play most of my games on vassal. My beef with it is that people are boased against monsters. Everytime I claim cover from something, they bitch and argue, but they're very fast to claim cover for their vehicle.

I put gargoyles as B because I think termagants with tervie support are better. Termagants without the tervigon suck.

Parasite in the gargoyle squad? Novel idea, I'll give it a try. Nonetheless, that sounds quite limited. For me to consider Parasite as a B, he'd have to have more utility.

Purposely leaving your rippers at home sounds borderline cheating. Do you break out the rippers in non-KP missions and then lie to your opponent in KP missions?

Never mind, points wrong

I'd bump Raveners up to at least a B. If you give em some Hormies for screening, they are a devastating CC troop. I think the thing for me that prevents them from being an A grade troop is the lack of biomorph options. 6 Raveners with TS would be very scary for an oppnent, and would cause alot of damage. Also, they are pretty easy to kill with missile launchers, so thats another downfall the unit has.

I don't knowwhat has been said so far... 13 pages is a lot to read, but I disagree with the Zoanthropes being bad, or worse than hive guard in any way.

In most lists, the only defense for landraiders is... trygons? Um... yea.

Granted librarians are a pain to deal with... but hive guard will take out all vehicles better more efficiently (with less range) than hive guard.

Poding them is one option, but walking them is another. I hate dropping them, because it draws attention to them, destroys their ability to be synapse nodes, and ignores the fact that you still have access to the warp blast. And... if your opponent is shooting S8 weapons into the zoanthropes, your list is poorly made.. as that is the only threat they see?

Zoanthropes are very under estimated, as people assume that they will be IK'd all the time or they will never be in range without a drop pod blah blah blah. Just assumptions... not based on actually using them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also like how the venomthrope was ignored in the elites section...

While the Hive guard won't get IK from 8+ weapons sometimes I wish I could have 4 elites. Just sometimes though. I think I may need to revisit the horde with venom for cover. That was some nasty walking carpet of gribblies.

wisdomseyes1 wrote:Zoanthropes are very under estimated, as people assume that they will be IK'd all the time or they will never be in range without a drop pod blah blah blah. Just assumptions... not based on actually using them.

I love zoanthropes, but it's not instant death that's the problem. Simply, they are no harder to kill than 6 marines, using small arms or assault. (They're actually significantly worse than 6 marines in assault, owing to fewer attacks and No Retreat.)

bucheonman wrote:I play most of my games on vassal. My beef with it is that people are boased against monsters. Everytime I claim cover from something, they bitch and argue, but they're very fast to claim cover for their vehicle.

Well, that's one of many reasons I don't use Vassal. That's just something you'll have to work out with your opponent. I personally would disregard rating a unit based on Vassal because you are rating a unit designed for a 3-D game based upon experience in a 2-D environment.

I put gargoyles as B because I think termagants with tervie support are better. Termagants without the tervigon suck.

Parasite in the gargoyle squad? Novel idea, I'll give it a try. Nonetheless, that sounds quite limited. For me to consider Parasite as a B, he'd have to have more utility.

As with most things in the Nid dex, it depends on what the rest of your list looks like (which is why it's difficult/misleading to put a flat rating on a unit without context of the rest of the list). Termie/Tervigons are great, except they can be too slow for some lists. I tend to use a lot of winged/fleet critters so the PoM definately comes in very handy from time to time when I don't want to use flyrants.

Purposely leaving your rippers at home sounds borderline cheating. Do you break out the rippers in non-KP missions and then lie to your opponent in KP missions?

I don't own nor intend to own ripper swarms so it's not an issue for me. I use the rippers that come on the sprues as wound counters for multi wound creatures. I certainly would not advocate lying to your opponent about not having them for KP missions, while still keeping them stashed away for objective missions, but I see no problem with just leaving them at home. There are benefits and drawbacks of doing so unless you know ahead of time that you are for sure only going to be playing KP missions...in which case I probably would not be taking PoM for other reasons anyway.

I've never found the ripper swarms to be a problem, personally. You're getting an average of 3-4 bases per swarm, even if your opponent only fails one wound test, so it's hardly an easy kill point usually. By the time my Parasite is making rippers, she and my gargoyles are in my opponent's face, and probably my genestealers are, too, or very nearly so. Anything that gets me even more of a CC threat in my opponent's face at that point is good.

Maelstorm: Since I live somewhere with no live opponents, Vassal is my only way to play at this time. That matters to me then.

The thing I hate about swarms is how they crumble without support.

bucheonman wrote:Maelstorm: Since I live somewhere with no live opponents, Vassal is my only way to play at this time. That matters to me then.

The thing I hate about swarms is how they crumble without support.

As opposed to all other tyranids?
-----------------

Ripper swarms... bleh. They are 3 gants for the price of 2, slow, WS2 so anything with a slightly above average WS they can barely touch, not scoring, IK by S6, which most blasts are (and with swarms... that isn't a good thing). I used to try to use them... now I take all of my rippers and put them in my home made digestion pool objective markers... where they belong.

I've come up with a list that seems rally exciting as a budding nids player and its what I would like to bring with me to tournaments or at least variations on the theme.

1850 Pts - Tyranids Roster

Total Roster Cost: 1845

HQ: The Parasite of Mortrex (1#, 160 pts)
1 The Parasite of Mortrex, 160 pts

Elite: Hive Guard Brood (2#, 100 pts)
2 Hive Guard Brood, 100 pts = 2 * 50

Elite: Hive Guard Brood (2#, 100 pts)
2 Hive Guard Brood, 100 pts = 2 * 50

Elite: Hive Guard Brood (2#, 100 pts)
2 Hive Guard Brood, 100 pts = 2 * 50

Troops: Tervigon (1#, 195 pts)
1 Tervigon, 195 pts = (base cost 160 + Adrenal Glands 10 + Toxin Sacs 10 + Catalyst 15)

Troops: Tervigon (1#, 195 pts)
1 Tervigon, 195 pts = (base cost 160 + Adrenal Glands 10 + Toxin Sacs 10 + Catalyst 15)

Troops: Termagant Brood (10#, 50 pts)
10 Termagant Brood, 50 pts = 10 * 5

Troops: Termagant Brood (10#, 50 pts)
10 Termagant Brood, 50 pts = 10 * 5

Troops: Genestealer Brood (19#, 323 pts)
19 Genestealer Brood, 323 pts = 19 * 17 (base cost 14 + Toxin Sacs 3)

Fast Attack: Ravener Brood (6#, 210 pts)
6 Ravener Brood, 210 pts = 6 * 35 (base cost 30 + Rending Claws 5)

Fast Attack: Ravener Brood (6#, 210 pts)
6 Ravener Brood, 210 pts = 6 * 35 (base cost 30 + Rending Claws 5)

Fast Attack: Gargoyle Brood (19#, 152 pts)
19 Gargoyle Brood, 152 pts = 19 * 8 (base cost 6 + Adrenal Glands 1 + Toxin Sacs 1)

Parasite joins gargoyles and provides synapse obviously while everything else should hopefully get cover behind them.  Genestealers will infiltrate in most circumstances except possibly against grey knights and depending on setup/servo skulls/whatever.  Basically when turn 2 comes around I'm hoping to have between 4-6 charging units and if I'm up against a vehicle heavy army then there should be at least SOMETHING on foot for me to multi-assault into while charging as many vehicles with the raveners as possible.  If I just get stuns and shakes at least they aren't shooting at me I figure.  Also I'll have some very fast and durable synapse to help deal with the new grey knights and all those psychic powers right away.  Main catalyst targets will probably be the gargoyles and the genestealers.

It took me a while to realize that I could take 6 raveners with rending claws for the exact same price as a Trygon with adrenal glands which really seems like a steal considering how I basically have the same "wounds" vs str 8+ and can very easily get cover or even find some BLOS terrain.  I've played a few vassal games with a list very similar to this and I've really grown to like the 19-24" charge range of the raveners

I was wondering if Adepticon changed anyone's perspective on what's viable in a Tyranid army. In Jay Woodcock's list(placed 11th I believe) he had two Tervigons as HQ's, Zoanthropes as the 3rd elites choice, not to mention Crushing Claws on one of the Tervigons [Found the info on the list here- http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2011/04/05/adepticon-2011-pseudo-live-40k-champ-army-lists-and-anyalsis/ (Look at the 11th seed)]. Does this shake up opinions, or was just the list's synergy so good that it could ignore what most people(seem) to think about "proper" Tyranid army building? Such as, no Primes, no Trygons, and not using Tervigons as troops?
By the way, love the article. I try to soak in as much information as I can. Unfortunately I can't find many people that agree on anything.

Sinful Hero wrote:I was wondering if Adepticon changed anyone's perspective on what's viable in a Tyranid army. In Jay Woodcock's list(placed 11th I believe) he had two Tervigons as HQ's, Zoanthropes as the 3rd elites choice, not to mention Crushing Claws on one of the Tervigons [Found the info on the list here- http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2011/04/05/adepticon-2011-pseudo-live-40k-champ-army-lists-and-anyalsis/ (Look at the 11th seed)]. Does this shake up opinions, or was just the list's synergy so good that it could ignore what most people(seem) to think about "proper" Tyranid army building? Such as, no Primes, no Trygons, and not using Tervigons as troops?
By the way, love the article. I try to soak in as much information as I can. Unfortunately I can't find many people that agree on anything.

Jay did very well. I like his list (though I like poison on my 'stealers).

The interesting thing about the Tyranid codex is that many people have made many of the units work for them, albeit often after great practice. (Except Pyrovores; it's not necessary to try and make those good.) I really like the breadth of options; I just wish things like Jaws of the World Wolf and (now) Cleansing Flame didn't exist.

Mr. Drum Machine: Lists should not include points costs for individual upgrades... copyright thing. (Not sure if this is dakkadakka policy... but it is for every other forum i have been to, So I will assume so :-))

Loving this thread. I've been having brutal results with HC outflanking Hormagaunts with AD/TS. Last game they accounted for a Trygon, 2 Gaunt units, Zoanthrope brood and tied up a Swarmlord. Their chums on the other end took out a Fex, two Tervigons and a blob of Termagants.