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thinking about starting a nid army..... reason being is my DE are already sort of maxed, and ive already got tau, 2 SM chapters, a GK army, orks and gaurd.... so yea. lots of armys... no interest in doing SoB or 'crons untill they get updated, and chaos is out since pretty much everyone here plays them. so im going unique and going bugs. i like the idea of a challenging army, thats not going to kick ass every time - latley games with my DE are almost autowins.

so with the preamble out of the way. im looking for suggestions on what to get, what works and what dosent. afte perusing the codex, i like the idea of trygon primes deepstriking up followed by swarms of other stuff... along with maybe some sneaky lictors etc. in other words, not line up a swarm and march the table. although i do want to have a good mix of MC and smaller bugs. i want to play a very "fluffy" list.

anyhow, any suggestions or tips and tricks etc on these would be much apreciated and helpful.

Boo

...

Well im a nid player and so far I have 2500pt. About the trygon.... I would suggest getting more than one because it will become a bullet magnet the moment it pops up from deep strike. as for the licators I dont really count on them for much. If you want, since nids only allow 6 troop choices. You can make genesterlers yimgarels.... havent heard of any army that can withstand 20-30 gensterles popping up from reserve out of a hole the trygon made. I put together a list of units that I recomend you buy to start of with.

HQ
Hive tyrant

Elites
Hive guardx3 (work better in pairs)
Zonthrope

Troops
Battel Force which includes the following..
3 Warriors
16 Termagants
16 Hormagants
8 Genstealers (More the merrier!)
3 Ripperswarms

Heavy support
Trygon(Prime upgrade)
Carnafex 2 if possible.
Mawloc (read about what he can do in the codex, good stuff )

As for other Models cant really say because I dont have many of the others so Good luck

i was thinking of something following 3 trygon primes, along with a tyrant, a tyranid prime, a bunch of warriors and then the rest filled out with gaunts and stealers. the idea is the 3 trygons pop up and do their shooting thing, and draw tons of fire, then next turn a mess load of the small stuff follows out, and finally the warriors and tyrant to mop up. no idea if it would work, and vrs a fast army like DE i think i would be hosed..dunno tho.

my friend and I have built him a 3k list, I'm sketchy on the features, but I know the gist of it:

2 Tervigons HQ

3 30 man termagants
3 tervigons Troops

3 30 man gargoyles

2 3 man hive guard squads for range
1 3 man venomthrope for cover

3 trygon primes for tank busting and distraction.

works fairly well. Look out for THSS.

About the trygon primes... I have three and i will agree on your idea. The Mawloc has no shooting but when he deep strikes he can use a large blast templat and instant kill tons of midels under neeth it. Just look it up in the codex

Good Luck

i like the idea of the trygon prime... since his deepstrike wont mishap, he can shoot like crazy, AND other units can follow him out, effectivlly making my deployment zone whereever the heck i feel like. should allow me to get up close and personal with whatever is out there. just wondering about giving them regen, and what should follow?

If you're going to get a reserve based army, give you're Hive Tyrant the hive comander ability. It's worth it. I've found that regeneration isn't worth the points you pay for it....

I've heard that things coming out of the Trygon hole doesn't really work, i believe you can't assault coming from reserve that way. Plus i'm not sure if you have to roll for everything to come from reserve at the same time as the Trygon, or get to wait until Trygon is on the board, either way your Trygon/s might not come on turn 2, or even turn 3... It doesn't seem like a reliable tactic. I'm not even sure if Trygons 'deep striking' works at all, your presumably going to put them close to the enemy, which puts then in Melta/Plasma Rapid fire range etc, meaning they are much more likely to die before doing much. If there is an infantry squad with rubbish armour saves, then you might kill a few with shooting, but know where near 240 points worth, and if your spending 720 on 3 Trygon Primes, having Hive Guard/Tervigons, your not leaving much room for killy Genestelers or possibly hormagaunts. When using big creatures, its actually quite difficult to make Nids a proper Horde army and be effective. I'm just not keen on the reserve Trygon idea...

The best Nid army i have played against at 1750 is roughly: 2 HQ Tervigons (Catalyst, not sure if any other upgrades) 2x3 Hive Guard 6 or 7 Ymgarl stealers, 14+15 man genestealer squads, with Toxin Sacs and a Broodlord each, 15ish Gargoyles and a Trygon with AG. The player who uses this wins a high proportion of games, obviously find it hard against DE and Space Wolves, which both seem extremely anti-Nids when you think about it.

If you want to go reserve style, i was thinking of an army along the lines of Swarmlord (for +1 reserves mainly, and he's cool), Doom in mycetic spore (for that danger element, might do nothing, but can do a lot of damage so is high priority for enemy) 2 smallish Ymgarl squads, at least one Stealer squad, maybe a Tervigon a few Spore Mines and 2/3 Mawlocs. Main idea is to put pressure on enemy deployment, Spore mines limit deployment slightly, Mawlocs are dangerous if your enemy doesn't plan for them, Ymgarls will be coming on in their deployment zone (or near), Stealers can infiltrate or outflank providing either immediate danger, or flanking opportunities, Doom is used to scare the enemy, he might not be uber, but he can certainly do some damage. Its not as killy as possible, but it would be quite interesting to use i think...

Basically, you need to pick a play style or units you like, a basic run down of whats good in my opinion and experience:

Tervigon, most common element of all Nid lists for a very good reason. Can make large stealer squads hard to kill with FNP, can either be a troop itself, or leave to spawn until turn 5 for extra troop. Can use Gaunts offensively if taking Toxin and/or AG. Basically its very good.

Hive Guard, ok only 24" range, but Nids need to get close, and these T6, 2 wounds models move with the rest of the army, popping open transports at will. 2 S8 shots each at 50 points is a bargain in my opinion. Squads of 2 are good, not putting too many shots at tanks at once, but sometimes you need an elite slot or two for something else, so have to take a squad of 3. I would never bother taking more than 6....2x3 or 3x2...

Zooanthropes, although i don't feel they are reliable enough, they are still probably the best option for killing Land Raiders, so for that reason need consideration.

Hormagaunts, I personally feel then need TS and AG, which makes them 10 points each i think, quite expensive but then they are very good infantry killers in combat, especially against other Nids, Gaurdsmen, Orks etc. Where you can deal lots of wounds, and your opponent has a rubbish save, its all good. Can be used to take out Rhinos, predators etc with AV10 on the rear, not a reliable tank killing unit, but a squad of 10 with AG, won't get too much attention and might just take out a tank or two.

Genestealers. They need Toxin sacs, and really they need FNP from the Tervigon. When you have that, Stealers become one of the most killy units in the game, nothing else needs to be said....

Gargoyles, perfect screening unit, gets in the way, if given upgrades can actually kill things as well. Basically a fairly cheap unit that will probably be fairly useful.

Raveners, these are rarely seen but if armed right can do a lot of shooting damage and i think need to be taken in more lists. Although maybe their job can be done more effectively by cheaper options...

Trygons, big and nasty, they win combats, can kill tanks. you can make them Synapse, give them AG just to make killing Land Raiders a bit easier...

Tyrannofex's, expensive and best taken in pairs. Second best option for taking out AV14...T6 is Nids best feature imo, and these creatures like Tervigons, Hive Guard, Trygons etc are just hard to get rid of at range with out a lot of lascannons....

Other things like Carnifex's, Primes, Hive Tyrants, Warriors can all be used and used well, i just haven't really seen them in use much so can't comment that much on them. But i certainly wouldn't be calling them the best units in the codex....

Hope that helps a bit.

yea i think my trygon deepstrike hole thing is kind of reliant on everything showing up when i want it. - ie the trygons first, followed by whatever else. i think if i take a 2 level aproach i will have better odds... a trygon prime with maybe a big unit of warriors and stealers to pop up from the hole, backed up by a good amount of swarm on the ground, and perhaps a harpy+gargoyles as a fast air option... anyone actually use the harpy? how does it stack up?

I haven't used or seen anyone use the harpy, but I've heard it's best used in pairs and with lots and lots of gargoyles. I've tried the Trygon tunnel thing, and it really dosn't work. You would be better off using "Null Deployment". If you don't know what that is, then search for "Null Deployment" on youtube. I've tried it and it worked really well.