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He Guy's,

I'm starting a Tyranids army and after reading the codex I wondered if it is a good option to NOT take a Hive Tyrant but 2 Prime's with 2 Hive guards each?

Hive Guard are't HQ - they're elite. And taking Primes is always a solid option - you can attach them to all kinds of different units for different reasons.

Tervigon is the best HQ for Nids.
Some people think its best to take them as troops, but I've seen two taken as HQs with none as troops very effectively over a long period of time against a vast array of armies.

They offer so much versatility, you can take them just with Catalyst to give either something like a Trygon or big Stealer squad FNP. You could give them AG and TS to make the spawned Gants a bit more aggressive and 'capable' in certain situations. You can even make them slightly useful in combat, they are hard to kill. S6 MCs are always going to be useful in taking down tanks. So all-round a great choice.

Swarmlord is good, probably best at 1750+ though, as he needs at least one tyrant guard with him. When he makes it to combat (which he can in a lot of games, depending what else you have in your army).

Primes are good, I wouldn't attach them to Hive Guard though, seems a bit of a waste. Attaching a pair of Primes to a pair of fexes seems like a nice idea though.

It depends. All of the HQ choices are viable depending on how you want your army to work.

Hive Tyrants with guard makes a big scary unit your opponent has to deal with.

Hive tyrant with wings adds to a full reserve army

Primes are cheap and work well with a lot of the units in the codex.

Tervigons provide good support to your army, and while are better as troops, are still worthwhile as HQ choices.

The Parasite is slightly overpriced but can be useful with large numbers of gargoyles.

rodgers37 wrote:Tervigon is the best HQ for Nids.
Some people think its best to take them as troops, but I've seen two taken as HQs with none as troops very effectively over a long period of time against a vast array of armies.

The only 2 reasons to NOT take them as troops is;
1. You don't want to spend for another HQ
2. Your troops are full.

Generally speaking, I'd go with a budget prime with regen for missile eating in a HG squad and a token gant squad to make the tervigon troops. The only time you want to run them as HQ is if you have no need of the prime (rare, but some lists don't need his missile catching skills) or if you are running a 4+ Tervigon list.

Primes are good, I wouldn't attach them to Hive Guard though, seems a bit of a waste. Attaching a pair of Primes to a pair of fexes seems like a nice idea though.

2 Primes, with regen + toys + 2 fexes with twin-BL-devourers = 600 points. Sure, it's death-stary, but it's slow as dirt and has a limited reach of 18". You'd probably be better off with a Swarmlord + 3 Guard + Prime for around the same amount of points, and you wouldn't chew the HS slot that way as well, not to mention all the SL perks.

as poiinted out above, Primes are great cheap HQ's. And thier best utility is attaching a pair of primes to a pair of Shooty fexes, Giving them as a unit access to easy cover saves.

They're also awesome if you ant to spend elsewhere in your list.

Also Tervigons are the worst non-special character HQ choice, they are awesome troop choices however. There is almost no excuse not to take them as troops. Having tough scoring units is esential in 5th edition 40k as 2/3rds of the standard games are objective based.

Personnaly, I don't think tyrannic primes are that great, but this has a lot to do with tyrannic warriors not being that great as they cam be 1 shotted by str 8 and higher. So a vindicator shell or leman russ tanks will wreck them.

I watched thy tyrannic tacticia on miniwargamming, and the guy said hive tyrants are good in an over 1k point game, and other them that Terivigons are good bc you would want more stealers and hormagaunts in troops, and if you want to fill your hq in a 1k or under game.