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I am a nid player and as you can see in my sig, I have a reasonably good WL record with them.

My disappointment comes with the fluff of it. Not the written one. The psychology of it.

When I think Tyranids, I think Aliens. Sigourney Weaver Aliens. Scary, slimy bastards. Skulking in the dark, taking marines out one by one. That's one of the main reasons I chose Tyranids as my army.

I hope that in 6th ed. (whenever that is) that Tyranids become the new power army. Not just because I play them. It is just proper. They're aliens, for G's sakes!!! If no one fears them (as they don't now), it ruins the whole image of the army. Instead of the human confidently firing his flashlight pistol at the nid and watching them drop like flies, he'd be shaking in his boots, looking over his shoulder.

The unfortunate side is, if they become overpowered like GK or IG, everyone will jump on their bandwagon. I don't want that either.

bucheonman wrote:I am a nid player and as you can see in my sig, I have a reasonably good WL record with them.

My disappointment comes with the fluff of it. Not the written one. The psychology of it.

When I think Tyranids, I think Aliens. Sigourney Weaver Aliens. Scary, slimy bastards. Skulking in the dark, taking marines out one by one. That's one of the main reasons I chose Tyranids as my army.

I hope that in 6th ed. (whenever that is) that Tyranids become the new power army. Not just because I play them. It is just proper. They're aliens, for G's sakes!!! If no one fears them (as they don't now), it ruins the whole image of the army. Instead of the human confidently firing his flashlight pistol at the nid and watching them drop like flies, he'd be shaking in his boots, looking over his shoulder.

The unfortunate side is, if they become overpowered like GK or IG, everyone will jump on their bandwagon. I don't want that either.

I personally feel that we went from being a Above-Average army to just an Average army.

The changed we got were both good and bad. But they more so put us back into the swarm lists rather than Nidzilla. Look at the results for Adepticon. I see that a Nid player reached the top 4. That's saying something. Almost any army (Sorry Necrons) can be great if used properly and it takes a lot of play testing to get down what units you like and work good.

Nids can be scary. An example I can give is I was rushing someone and he was backing into a corner and just trying to pick me off (I was playing against Tau) and he felt he would just keep out of range and pick me off till the end of the game. That was until a mycetic spore came down and cut him off his escape route. This caused him to become engulfed and he had no idea what to do. The game ended in a tie because it took a little too long for the spore to come in, but all in all I had him sweating it until the last turn.

I do hope for a small improvement come next edition. But for now we're not terrible by any means.

Tyranids are an interesting 2nd tier army.

As far as fluff goes, surely the whole point about 40K is that humans fear everything. They fear aliens, mutants, Chaos, robots, the Inquisition, the Black Ships, the Adeptus Mechnicum....

I imagine the general reaction to a violent galaxy engulfing menace like the Tyranids is more like, "Oh Emporer! Here we go again," than "We're doomed, I tell you, doomed!"

I think the Nid book is actually pretty well written balance wise. Sure there are some duds, especially due the FAQ, that make many of the rules silly (spinefists, trygon tunnel, etc). However, they can be really strong and wipe armies off the board.

Its just when they meet those extreme builds of 15 space wolf missiles, 57 dark lances, or 32 transports that its an uphill battle. However, I think theyre getting better as people are learning to play them. 10 months ago I was getting cursed out on here, even by those "top tier" tourny players, for saying taking 5 tervigons are terrible, and now upon my return I see those same players are only bringing a max of two. People are realizing the advantages of the carnifex despite what it looks like on paper, and how trygons with T6 and 3+ are not all that against many of the extreme builds (still great, just not *all* that). Units are getting their points levels optimized (ex. 2 hive guard) which surprisingly opens up a lot of room for nids quickly, allowing greater redundancy and synergy.

I can go on, but they are getting better and if it werent for the easy point and shoot top tier armies (or if terrain would actually block line of sight), Tyranids would be considered one of the best I think.

Well, in our recent 40k glad cup league, the 2 nid players which qualified in the knock out finals round of 8 ended up fighting each other for the top ..so it was all nids finals....

But as the OP has mentioned, it's not the competitiveness of the nids in question, but the internal balance and fluff....

Well, nothing is perfect...

I'd just rather see more leadership reducing abilities on the basic units, and a re-write of No Retreat!. Thats all... And maybe a bump of toughness up on Tyranid Warriors, but thats pushing it.

In truth, I'm not sure what the OP is getting at. Are you saying its frustrating because the players don't fear your army because it's not competitive? Or that the game rules don't make it scary enough or that the fluff isn't terrifying to you?

Being a nid player of old, seeing most casual opponents worry over which gribbly spiky killy thing to shoot before it macerated his pink squishy units (in tin cans or otherwise) is what I consider to be effectively scary, however you put it. No, power gamers might not be so intimidated, but I've still seen vet gamers make the wrong choices just because an mc was getting close to his lines. So as for the psychology of it I'm just not sure which bit is causing an issue?

Same as above, the answer is simple, what i found is this.

Want to be scary? run super compettitive lists.

Play like a monster aswell.

What lists are you running?

IM playing HEAVY reserve/deepstrike and it scares the crap out of Space Marine players (all variants).

We have a troop choices that just eats Terminators and Nobs with little issue (regular Genestears, maybe throw in some rending claws for laughs).
And another that is cheap and deadly even against MEQ, poisoned hormies.

We have an MC HQ that you can take as a troops that throws out 3D6 nids a turn that can capture, kill, and control the board.

On the subject of MC, ever seen or played a Nidzilla list?

Heck, the fluff alone is why i bought them, you have a Zoan that floated his happy brain into an Eldar Soul-Stone room, where they store their dead when they arent being used in a fight, and aborbed EVERYTHING growing immensly powerful. And to this day Deepstriking the Doom of Malantai in the middle of infantry, or embarked infantry makes opponents cry B(&^#% and demand to see my codex, even though im playing it RAW.

The thing forces all infantry units to take a leadership test on a 3D6 and take a power weapon wound for each point failed by. Oh, and ever point inflicted the Doom heals 1W to a max of 10, and its STR is also dependant on the number of wounds it has.

The thing about the Tyranid codex is that it doesn't have any obvious extreme power builds like SW missile launcher spam, and so on.

That makes a lot of people think it is a weak codex.

I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying you make, but nids are pretty feared, just as everything. And why would them being the next power army be proper? They aren't necessarily the largest threat, and everyone is slightly biased towards their army being the most powerful in the fluff.

Kilkrazy wrote:The thing about the Tyranid codex is that it doesn't have any obvious extreme power builds like SW missile launcher spam, and so on.

Every codex should be that way. But GW has to sell models after all...

Nids are fine as a whole. Their fluff might not be to your liking but who says you can't make your own hive fleet that acts the way you want?

I think the OP is more frustrated with the fluff than the actual competitiveness of the Nids. I am too to a degree, but not for the same reason. Personally I dislike how they took away the "faceless swarm" from the swarm and gave them characters.

It is not about characters. I just feel that, to a beginner, Tyranids may seem like the scariest army. They are unique. No tanks. More monsters than any other lists. Also the aliens in our mass media are always made out to be tougher than humans. Look at Aliens, Aliens vs Predator, World Invasion, LA. All those movies, aliens make mincemeat out of humans. They were scary, they were mysterious.

I am not here to argue about Nids competitiveness. I also play Orks, which are arguably a more competitive army, but I do better with Nids. They are powerful enough for my liking. It would be cool to see them get some love from GW ala Dark Eldar or Blood Angels but not to the level of Grey Knights or something like that.

In my experience, the people who fear Tyranids are mostly newbies.

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:I think the OP is more frustrated with the fluff than the actual competitiveness of the Nids. I am too to a degree, but not for the same reason. Personally I dislike how they took away the "faceless swarm" from the swarm and gave them characters.

Eh?

Tyranids have always essentially had "characters".

Old One Eye and The Red Terror ring a bell?

The thing is, with Tyranids those "characters" tend to be one-off, evolutionary dead ends that work for the duration of a campaign against a particular foe and then the 'template' for that character is stored for later if a similar situation arises.

It's actually a pretty sensible system, given that The Hive Mind is supposed to be constantly monitoring the situations faced by its progeny.

This is one of the reasons why things were better in second edition, where the Tyranids had so many cool special rules that made fighting against them a really atmospheric experience. There were spore raining down from the sky that had the potential to hit every enemy model on the table, special infiltrator brain leeches that could make members of your squads act funny and attack his squad mates, a rule for members of squads breaking under the pressure and freaking out. AND in second edition, if you were hit with a flamer it was persistent damage, but Tyranids were immune to it because of the Hive Mind. Now, they're less distinctive than they used to be. And Trygons are waaay over-rated. (Just sayin', if you see a unit of Meganobs in a truck within 12" of your expensive new model, it is going to die.) In my estimation, most Tyranid players would do better if they took a couple of large squads of plain Genestealers, and keep them close to their Tervigons. That combo is fething brutal!!!

Kanluwen wrote:
Eh?

Tyranids have always essentially had "characters".

Old One Eye and The Red Terror ring a bell?

The thing is, with Tyranids those "characters" tend to be one-off, evolutionary dead ends that work for the duration of a campaign against a particular foe and then the 'template' for that character is stored for later if a similar situation arises.

It's actually a pretty sensible system, given that The Hive Mind is supposed to be constantly monitoring the situations faced by its progeny.

I followed the 4th ed release closely and in one of their interviews with the designers they specifically mentions that the removal of Old One Eye and The Red Terror was to remove individuality from the swarm, and that the Nids should not have Characters. But I digress, as this thread isn't about the characters (and the article was likely lost when GW switched over to the new website layout. However it may have been on Moloch too where they interviewed Jes about the Broodlord).

This type of argument though does overlap with competitiveness somewhat. It's no surprise that every army book makes itself out to be much more powerful than every other one. However Nids have one, maybe two, builds that are competitive, and when you dont have variety people know how to counter you, which confirms the fluff on how people are taking a beatdown on the nids. Plus we use to actually gasp at how many models one can field with Nids in a single game, which again goes with the fluff in how they just swarm over you, and back then Orks and Guard were rare. Now with the two back in the limelight (and with the Guards having a serious case of "who's laughing now?") Nids lost that shock factor. At least that's how I see it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

warpcrafter wrote:This is one of the reasons why things were better in second edition, where the Tyranids had so many cool special rules that made fighting against them a really atmospheric experience. There were spore raining down from the sky that had the potential to hit every enemy model on the table, special infiltrator brain leeches that could make members of your squads act funny and attack his squad mates, a rule for members of squads breaking under the pressure and freaking out. AND in second edition, if you were hit with a flamer it was persistent damage, but Tyranids were immune to it because of the Hive Mind. Now, they're less distinctive than they used to be. And Trygons are waaay over-rated. (Just sayin', if you see a unit of Meganobs in a truck within 12" of your expensive new model, it is going to die.) In my estimation, most Tyranid players would do better if they took a couple of large squads of plain Genestealers, and keep them close to their Tervigons. That combo is fething brutal!!!

There was also the customization perk of Nids. No other army in the game lets you customize whole squads the way Nids did. Man I miss the days of Mutable Genus (this includes the amount of variations we got in 4th too, although we no longer had a system for it and mutants).

Mecha: Agreed.

Those rules from 2nd sounds like what I would want Nids to do. Even if the rules were not overpowered, but maybe stupidly powerful to some builds. Or just one of those things that occasionally works, but when it works, it REALLY worked.

Old One Eye should be taken out because he stinks.

There are no nid players anymore since most of them realized that even competitive lists get teabagged in the face by about every other codex especially any army with some sort of flamer. They are especially weak to the new GK since for 200pts you can get 10 incinerators. Incinerators in regular squads only pay 5pts for it. Although flamers work against hordes like tyranids we have an ork player in our shop that not only made it in Best Conversion in this years gamesday and white dwarf but pwns us even if every model in our armies had flamers.

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Eh?

Tyranids have always essentially had "characters".

Old One Eye and The Red Terror ring a bell?

The thing is, with Tyranids those "characters" tend to be one-off, evolutionary dead ends that work for the duration of a campaign against a particular foe and then the 'template' for that character is stored for later if a similar situation arises.

It's actually a pretty sensible system, given that The Hive Mind is supposed to be constantly monitoring the situations faced by its progeny.

I followed the 4th ed release closely and in one of their interviews with the designers they specifically mentions that the removal of Old One Eye and The Red Terror was to remove individuality from the swarm, and that the Nids should not have Characters. But I digress, as this thread isn't about the characters (and the article was likely lost when GW switched over to the new website layout. However it may have been on Moloch too where they interviewed Jes about the Broodlord).

"Old One Eye" and "The Red Terror" weren't really removed though.
They were "reabsorbed".

Hell, there was even a shoutout to it in the form of the Carnifex kit's "regeneration" head.
There's also a little theoretical postulation on the part of Inquisitor Lok in IA4 that the Trygon may be the Hive Mind "reincorporating" the Red Terror into a more useful form.

This type of argument though does overlap with competitiveness somewhat. It's no surprise that every army book makes itself out to be much more powerful than every other one. However Nids have one, maybe two, builds that are competitive, and when you dont have variety people know how to counter you, which confirms the fluff on how people are taking a beatdown on the nids. Plus we use to actually gasp at how many models one can field with Nids in a single game, which again goes with the fluff in how they just swarm over you, and back then Orks and Guard were rare. Now with the two back in the limelight (and with the Guards having a serious case of "who's laughing now?") Nids lost that shock factor. At least that's how I see it.

I just look at it as a case of the Tyranids evolving, again.
Their "click click hiss" swarm tactics are being predictable--Hive Mind says "Allright, where'd we leave that template for that nasty Swarmlord that outsmarted Calgar..." and boom, Swarmlord starts showing up everywhere that a Tactical Genius shows up

Not gonna argue with you beyond that Kan, as our arguments devolve into chicken scratches pretty quick. However the Swarmlord is more of a retcon than evolution, since if it was an evolution it wouldn't have participated in the first Tyrannic War. The departure from Swarms was also...discomforting, since that was another one of the nid's schtick. I dunno, somehow a "Mindless Swarm" running around with Named Monstrous Creatures and whatnot doesnt sit right with me.

I was simply pointing out that the developers actually used the term "reabsorbed" rather than just "discarded".

And you really can't think of them as "named" creatures.

All the designations that the Tyranids have are from Imperial designators.
Tyranids have no discernible language, so no "real" discernible names if that makes any sense.

The 'names' are basically just what the Imperium designated them as, either officially or from Guard talk, like the Parasite of Mortrex.

For example, the Doom of Malan'tai was a one off Zoanthrope evolution that the Hive Mind used because it absorbs psychic energy to use back at the enemy. By landing it in the Craftworlds infinity circuit, it was basically given unlimited power. Likely named from Navy talk when finding the dead Craftworld with an empty infinity circuit.

Then the Deathleaper. It's a more advanced evolution of Lictor, more bred with instinctive terror tactics rather than lurking on a planet, assessing population centers and guiding in a hive fleet. Likely named from Guard talk.

Then the Ymgarl Genestealers, which are remnants of another hive fleet. They're only as special as that whole hive fleet was, with a rapidly mutable genus, so mutable they can do it in seconds rather than generations. it's also an evolutionary step the hive mind does not want to reabsorb. Named officially because of their assumed origin.

These aren't special personalities in the swarm. They're one off evolutions done for single purposes, and deployed when a situation arises where they'd be useful, or devolutionary dead ends like Ymgarls. This is actually a very characteristic part of the Tyranid race.

The Swarmlord is the only 'named' unit that they seemed to try to turn into an actual character, but even it is still just an evolution of the Hive Tyrant genus with expanded mental faculties. It is a dumb reason though - if they can give the Swarmlord the ability to think like that, surely the hive mind itself can think like that. It's basically the only one off mutation I've seen that's made entirely redundant by the base ability of something already there, in this case, the hive mind itself. Named because it seems to be the lord of the swarm, obviously. Which again, is dumb.

The Swarmlord is less a "Hive Tyrant with expanded mental faculties" and more "the Hive Mind made flesh".

The whole point of the Swarmlord is that it's supposed to be a fragment of the Hive Mind encased into a Hive Tyrant's body, and devoted to that specific warzone.

Rationale it how you want, but the minute I saw the Unique symbol appear in the nid dex a part of my Swarmy self died. And again, dont wanna argue with you because of difference in linquistics.

i dunno. when i firststarted playing ages ago, the nids were new release, and i thought the idea was awsome. bugs from space, like the aliens movie. then i read the rules, and i got turned off. i kind of agree that they should have some sort of psycological effect on foes. nothing overly serious but maybe a LD penalty, or something like that - just to emphasize the fact that anyone in a combat role, space marine or not would have some doubt or fear about fighting them. they may not turn tail and run, but people who dont show fear in the threat of great danger are fools. its heros that are able to overcome that fear and acomplish the mission. marines, would probally be afraid but their training and enhancments would allow them to supress or at least continue to fight in spite of.

some ideas:
aside from actual unit entries which i wont touch because thats a whole other ball game... but heres some 'Nid USR

the swarm: to represent the sheer numbers of targets tyranids can present, or the percieved toughness, roll a d6 for every unit that fires at a tyranid unit, after the shots are resolved. on a 5+ that unit has run out of ammo, and may not shoot next phase as they are reloading. (the unit may move and or charge normally)

aura of terror: any non tyranid, non vehicle unit within 24" of a tyranid unit, must pass a LD check at the start of its players turn. if failed, they will fall back using the normal fallback rules. if the unit is fearless or has a simaler rule, they must still check but can reroll a failed result. additonally each testing unit gets a +1 LD bonus if their is a friendly HQ unit within 12" that is not falling back as well.

just something i thought up... probally OP but maybe it fits.

Kanluwen wrote:The Swarmlord is less a "Hive Tyrant with expanded mental faculties" and more "the Hive Mind made flesh".

The whole point of the Swarmlord is that it's supposed to be a fragment of the Hive Mind encased into a Hive Tyrant's body, and devoted to that specific warzone.

My point was that that reasoning is dumb. There's no reason for the Hive Mind to need some uber powerful Hive Tyrant on the ground that is a manifestation of itself, because the Tyranid race is the Hive Mind already. It doesn't need something like that on the ground so it can make decisions, the Hive Mind is already on the ground, looking through the eyes of billions of separate organisms and relaying information and commands through synapse creatures. The idea that the Hive Mind needs something like that shows complete misunderstanding of what the Tyranids are by the person writing the book.

The other 'unique' Tyranids make sense. The Swarmlord doesn't.

To be honest Ive never understood complaints about fluff. Partly because i care more about the game and nicely painted models more than anything, but also because I thought that the point was to make your own army and fluff? Just dont include it, or rationalize it with some absurd reasoning

DarthSpader wrote:some ideas:
aside from actual unit entries which i wont touch because thats a whole other ball game... but heres some 'Nid USR

the swarm: to represent the sheer numbers of targets tyranids can present, or the percieved toughness, roll a d6 for every unit that fires at a tyranid unit, after the shots are resolved. on a 5+ that unit has run out of ammo, and may not shoot next phase as they are reloading. (the unit may move and or charge normally)

There's a rule like that in Apocalypse, for the Endless Swarm formation. 6 units of 30 Gaunts. Any units firing at them that roll any 6's to hit run out of ammo, and do nothing in that shooting phase.

It's a cool little rule, but most people aren't going to be relying on small arms to take down that many gaunts. That's what pie plates are for.

Gotta remember though that Endless Swarm was from the last edition. Ironic in that Guards now get that rule in the form of Chenkov's "Send in the Next Wave", now Nids are the ones running out of ammo. XD