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Hi Guys, I'm looking at starting 'Nids as my next army and have decided to come up with a Semi-Competitive list as I'm not a fan of Gaunts so Tervigons were out of the Question, What do you guys think?

HQ:

Hive Tyrant 230
Leech Essence, Paroxysm, Wings

Troops:

5 Warriors 180
4 Deathspitters, Barbed Stranglers

5 Warriors 180
4 Deathspitters, Barbed Stranglers

8 Genestealers 160
Broodlord, Scything Talons

8 Genestealers 160
Broodlord, Scything Talons

Elites:

2 Hive Guard 100

2 Hive Guard 100

2 Zoanthropes 120

1230/1500

I have 270 points left over and had another Hive Tyrant in my original list but took this out, I know I need more monsters but I'm not sure whether to drop a Warrior from each squad and what to replace it with.

List looks fine. Watch out for S8 on your warriors. Warriors are great in my experience when they are played very specifically. I don't tend to run them as the meat of my army cause its too expensive for too little bodies that die so quickly. I like to run them as elite killing units, or a small unit of 3 as a snyapse node if I need it. Five warriors in a pod with Lash/Bone, TS; deadliest of all! Or I'll infiltrate them with Hive Commander.

One thing I would really recommend with those remaining points is a screen of gargoyles. A hive tyrant without gaurd or amored shell is a sitting duck (quack). Gargoyles are large enough (with wings) to give the Tyrant cover. You can get 40 of them with the points you have left over. They make great distracts too!

265 points for a Regenerating Trygon Prime.

Start with it on the board and it can draw alot of those Str 8 shots off ur warriors.

or go with above guy's Gargoyles idea, i personally dont like taking more than 10, because beyond being fast screens, they cant kill anything.

Here's a neat trick to help the survivability of your warriors. It wont work versus double stregth, but it helps a buttload versus Str 7 or less weapons.
If they are all unique instead of allocating wounds to remove models, you are allowed to spread 3 wounds around 3 warriors, rather than killing 1.

use this loadout:
1 Warrior Talons/Barbed Stragler.
1 Warrior Rending Claws/ Deathspitter
1 Warrior Talons/ Deathspitter
1 Warrior Talons / Devourer
1 Warrior 2xBonesword/Deathspitter.
190 points total

For only 10 more points than ur current setup.
1. You lose one deathpsitter, becomes a devourer
2. Close combat ability goes up slightly trading some hit re-rolling for some Power weapon (with insta kill ability) and rending attacks.
3. You gain the ability to allocate wounds differently, because each model is unique. you can essentially Take 11 unsaved wounds before losing a model!

There is one issue. All the warriors have to take the same load out. One can take a venom cannon or barbed strangler. Only one can different.

Karnac wrote:Here's a neat trick to help the survivability of your warriors. It wont work versus double stregth, but it helps a buttload versus Str 7 or less weapons.
If they are all unique instead of allocating wounds to remove models, you are allowed to spread 3 wounds around 3 warriors, rather than killing 1.

It'd be a neat trick if it wasn't illegal.

nvm

Walking warriors with ranged weapons do benefit from a prime, especially if you give it regen. Otherwise I would put them in a mycetic spore as they are slow and only have 18" range weaponry.

Flyant? Really needs a gargoyle screen to be effective.

8 stealers seems a bit small for me. Prefer at least 10 so if you lose a few in shooting (and you will) you have enough to still do something in combat. I think that toxin is a better upgrade than scything talons.

ruminator wrote:Walking warriors with ranged weapons do benefit from a prime, especially if you give it regen. Otherwise I would put them in a mycetic spore as they are slow and only have 18" range weaponry.

Flyant? Really needs a gargoyle screen to be effective.

8 stealers seems a bit small for me. Prefer at least 10 so if you lose a few in shooting (and you will) you have enough to still do something in combat. I think that toxin is a better upgrade than scything talons.

Only the broodlord has scything talons.

Flyrant will work just as well with or without a gargoyle screen, all I need is another monster or 2 as all the screen does is give it a 4+ Cover save, whereas other monsters will stop it from taking wounds due to fire control, There is an easy way to deal with the gargoyle screen, Missile Pods and Psycannons will still rip through it as the cover save will grant no benefit, they will die just as easy, against Marines there will not be enough firepower to kill all of the monsters.

I may add more stealers soon. I just need to find out what to fill the points in for me.

If you're planning on using slower models to give it a cover save, then why bother on the wings? Point of gargoyles is they can also move 12". If trudging along behind a tervigon then get a tyrant guard for the points instead.

If you wanna run warriors on foot then you gotz to take a small unit of termagants or rippers to field in front of them. They needs the cover save or they'll just get popped all day by missile spam.

ruminator wrote:If you're planning on using slower models to give it a cover save, then why bother on the wings? Point of gargoyles is they can also move 12". If trudging along behind a tervigon then get a tyrant guard for the points instead.

I'm not saying he is walking it, but the fact that there will be more monsters brings the word 'Fire Control'

Harpies would work well, They are just as quick as the Tyrant and give your opponent alot to think about, as Genstealers will be coming on from the flanks later in the game, he won't shoot my warriors when there are several monsters waiting to butcher his lines. 2 Mawlocs could also work, Burrowing on the first turn and popping up later to give my opponent something to think about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ZombieJoe wrote:If you wanna run warriors on foot then you gotz to take a small unit of termagants or rippers to field in front of them. They needs the cover save or they'll just get popped all day by missile spam.

True, but i'll be hoping my Hive Guard and Zoanthropes along with other monsters can absorb the firepower while the warriors could shoot away, I could also take a prime and put them in a spore too.

Oh you poor man. You haven't seen the errata. You can't put a Prime in a Spore with Warriors. They errated that because GW is fully on stupid. Sorry to bare the bad news.

On another note, you probably still want some cheap fodder units. Termangants make great cover fall all your units. And you don't really want your only reliable anti-tank units being the guys taking up the extra shooting for the warriors to live.

Personally, I don't find warriors to be as bad as all that, but its true that there are stronger units in the codex that will compete for the points and role. If you are set on keeping the warriors as the spine of your army, then my feeling is to cut your losses on the MCs as at the moment, you're only really going to have enough to fit two in. At 1500 points they can be disposed of relatively easily.

Therefore, I would lean towards ditching the tyrants, and going with primes to boost the warrior squads. This will give you more points to beef up the stealers, possibly adding another squad. I'm not the broodlord's biggest fan in a gameplay sense, so if you're not either then shedding those for more stealers and points elsewhere would enable you to go for the numerical superiority aspect of nids.

Gargoyle screens could also be added to rush forward and tie-up enemy units until the main push of your army hits. Extra squads of hormagaunts and will screen your warriors whilst still proving to be a threat.

I should stress, that this is not advice that stipulates opitmiszing your list to the max, there are others more qualified to do so, I'm just suggesting an alternative take on what you;ve started on.

Reanimator wrote:Personally, I don't find warriors to be as bad as all that, but its true that there are stronger units in the codex that will compete for the points and role. If you are set on keeping the warriors as the spine of your army, then my feeling is to cut your losses on the MCs as at the moment, you're only really going to have enough to fit two in. At 1500 points they can be disposed of relatively easily.

Therefore, I would lean towards ditching the tyrants, and going with primes to boost the warrior squads. This will give you more points to beef up the stealers, possibly adding another squad. I'm not the broodlord's biggest fan in a gameplay sense, so if you're not either then shedding those for more stealers and points elsewhere would enable you to go for the numerical superiority aspect of nids.

Gargoyle screens could also be added to rush forward and tie-up enemy units until the main push of your army hits. Extra squads of hormagaunts and will screen your warriors whilst still proving to be a threat.

I should stress, that this is not advice that stipulates opitmiszing your list to the max, there are others more qualified to do so, I'm just suggesting an alternative take on what you;ve started on.

Normally I make competitive lists, but because I really like the look of Tyranid Monsters and don't want to go down the Tervigon road, too many gaunts that i don't like is daunting! I want to have a flyrant with maybe another monster or two in my list.

I know this list could be capable of winning at my local GW easy, and while i will have trouble in some games, it will definatley be fun to use in most with the monsters and stealers being able to butcher enemies apart.

I like the idea of Gargoyles, but I would want to add the Parasite in if i had a fair few units. If I can I will try to add some Gargoyles to screen my warriors and Flyrant while trying to fit a monster in, I could drop my warriors down to 4 each anyway, Then put the Stealers up to 10 I'll see what i could do!

Well you should pay the 25 points for hive commander to outflank the warriors and get genes in a turn earlier

then add a pod to the zoans for 40


after that you are left with 205, I would spend 105 on a prime with deathspitter, dual bone swords

next add some gargs to fill the rest of the points.

Ah ok, didn't realise you had such a strong desire to include the big bugs. If you are sticking flyrant then I'd highly recommend gargoyles. Adding Old adversary gives them a reroll for their insta-wound attack as well which is great.

Reanimator wrote:Ah ok, didn't realise you had such a strong desire to include the big bugs. If you are sticking flyrant then I'd highly recommend gargoyles. Adding Old adversary gives them a reroll for their insta-wound attack as well which is great.

I'll be rewriting my list tonight so I'll see what I can do with it, I'll post it up tomorrow, thanks for all the help so far guys!