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Hello, and thank you for reading this, hopefully I've put it in the right forum.

To preface, I'm a fairly new WH40k player. I've got around 10-15 games over several years, playing mostly Space Marines, Necrons and a bit of Tau. I have never played, or played against, a Tyranid army.
I've decided recently that I'd like to start acquiring a Tyranid army, but can't see myself painting hundreds of gaunts.
Instead, I'd had the idea that I'd run a primarily Heavy Support style army, using Tyranid Warrior Broods and Genestealer Broods for my troops to ensure that my Swarmlord / Trygon / Tyrannofex can get into melee range to tie things up to tear things apart. I'd likely use a Carnifex brood with TL devourers as fire support.

Would this be a viable strategy, or are gaunts a necessity in any Tyranid army?

From what I've gathered the biggest benefit of gaunts is the cover save they provide to units behind them and as scoring units.

You could probably make a very good Mycetic spore/outflanking list with the way you hoped to structure your army.

Depends on how good you are, really. Our FLGS has one player who used to run bugs, and he ran total Nidzilla - Mawlocs, Trygons, and Tervigons, usually with Zoanthropes as support. It came out top of the league for a number of cycles, and even hardened players had a lot of trouble dealing with it, just because the guy was such a brilliant tactician. Heck, he came in first place in local 'Ard Boyz using a Daemon army.

And much as that seems to indicate our own lack of skill, a few of our number (who also lose to him on a regular basis) are regulars at Adepticon.

i think you need SOME smaller bugs. if anything, just as cover/meat-shields/distractions for the enemy to shoot at. i think the biggest issue is the decent MC all cost a ton of points and compete for HQ or heavy support slots. tervigons are the one exception and you need to invest in gaunts to get them into troops, plus youll be buying and painting alot of termagaunts to cover what you spawn. thankfully a unit of smaller bugs is dirt cheap, like 5-6 pts a model.

Yes, you can make a Genestealer swarm to avoid a Termagant swarm. But as all standards are swarms (or in case of the Tervigon produce swarms), you will end with a swarm.

Nidzilla is what you're talking about. This is when you use only large creatures in your army. This is very powerful and common in tournaments. Here's how you do it.

Use Warriors as your troops. Warriors can be fitted out either as excellent shooters or excellent combatants, you can do both but it's expensive.

Use Trygons as your heavy support, this is important because without gaunts or genestealers you'll lack close combat power, which trygons fix.

If you need a fast element, harpies are your bet, but it's not needed or really advisable.

Tervigons are exceptionally powerful in this list, being able to give a unit Feel No Pain, however you will need some termagant models if you get a Tervigon. This is the one time you want a Tervigon as a HQ (since you don't want to field squads of termagants which allows Tervigons to be troop choices)

You'll need a hive tyrant, Hive Commander and Old Adversary are extremely potent, here are your options.
-Flyrant (wings + double scything talons)
-Dakkarant (two twin-linked brainleech devourers)
-Deathstar (armoured shell, at *least* one Tyrant Guard, but the more the better)
-Swarmlord (*has* to have Tyrant Guard)

Of them I suggest the latter two.

For your Elites Hive Guard are popular, Zoanthropes could do the job. However, you'll probably need a unit of Venomthropes, because they amazingly give your monstrous creatures 5+ cover saves)

Then voila, you have an army of unstoppable monsters.


BUT WHAT IF YOU DON'T WANT NIDZILLA?

Well there's other ways to limit your model count. Use Tyrannofexen instead of Hive Guard. Equip your termagants with devourers. Give your genestealers toxin sacs and broodlords. Invest in Ymgarl genestealers. Use a Tyranid Prime, and stick him in a large group of deathspitter warriors for a serious shooting unit.

Just my $0.02

It is possible to have a completely non-gaunt nid army. Personally I like my mixed force. Gaunts are extremely cheap so they can be fielded without compromising your big ugly nids.

I agree that the trygon is a good close combat bet but so are carnies (but for the low I) and you can field these guys in 3s, 1 trygon only per slot. If you want a big beefy force then you could have 9 carnies in three broods.

If you want big nids in purely size terms to look impressive then you want to field:
- carnifexes
- trygons
- zoanthropes
- hive tyrants
- tyrannofexes
- tervigons
- venomthropes
- hive guard

All of them are big and impressive models. Given the poor saving throws of most nids I would advise a brood of venomthropes, as they provide a cover save and also they are pretty handy in cc.

I love my nids, no matter how rubbish they may be in pure win terms but they are lovely models and look great on the table and are completely different to other 40K armies.

Try a mix of big bugs and small ones using reserve tactics. I ran 2 10 man squads of Stealers, broodlord optional, 30 strong termagants, swarmlord, hive commander tyrant, and some trygons or primes and venomthropes and massercred a platoon heavy guard list by turn 4

The tactic I like to use, I call "Leviathan's Maw." Keep yhe swarmlord, tyrant and venomthrope bunched up as far forward as possible, behind cover it you can. Keep the venom behind the tyrant for a 4+ save. Storm forward through cover.

Use the +1 reserves from both the Swarmlord and tyrant to bring in most of your reserves. If the tyrgon comes in deep strike it behind the enemy. If the Termagants DO come in turn 2 outflank the on a side with lots of units, fire, multiassault.

Each stealer unut comes in from each side. In both cases use the swarmer to reroll the side you need.

The main thing is to surround the enemy and multiassault with large termagants unit to tie up as many units as possible. The genestealers assault the assaulty stuff and vehicles. These will hopefully allow the trygon, swarmlord tyrant and venomthrope advance.




If you use more than this, any that can deepstrike join the trygon in a backfield assault. Any additional stealers help out. Anything else can either use trygon tunnels or footslog.

If you are running a low points value game you can max on trygons and tervigons and have a decent shot at overrunning an unprepared opponent before his special weapons can take you down. This is especially effective if your opponent loads up on anti tank weapons with worse than AP3.

I had heard Nidzilla was nerfed to hell in the last Codex, to the point of being unusable. Was this an exagerration?

Old Nidzilla was nerfed (lots of Carnifexes backed up by whatever else).

New Nidzilla uses different monstrous creatures (as said above, Trygons and Tervigons).

Winterkit wrote:I had heard Nidzilla was nerfed to hell in the last Codex, to the point of being unusable. Was this an exagerration?

Yeah, carnifexes got hit pretty damn hard. Trygons, Tervigons, and Tyrannofexes are good though.

ph34r wrote:

Winterkit wrote:I had heard Nidzilla was nerfed to hell in the last Codex, to the point of being unusable. Was this an exagerration?

Yeah, carnifexes got hit pretty damn hard. Trygons, Tervigons, and Tyrannofexes are good though.

All new models too (resists the urge to unleash cynical GW rant). Must be frustrating to be a 4th player who played the heavy Carnifex list though.

After scan reading peoples comments, I'm probably going to end up sounding like everyone here... but here goes my two cents:

There are three types of lists in a Tyranid Army. Hoard (gaunts, gaunts, gaunts with a little synapse), Nidzilla (MC and nothin' but the MC's), and lastly the balanced Big mommas birthing list (Tervigon central with a little of everything else).

Personally I run the latter. But from the way the 'dex is written, certain elements seem to be necessity (synapse go without saying). By this I mean, every army requires broods of Hive guard (usually two of two), and/or T-fex's with rupture cannons. I take HG in two broods of two, flanking my Tervigons.

I really rate Nidzilla lists, but, as has been stated, they are for the more advanced gamer. as even when your running an average of seven MC's up the battlefield at T6 with an average of 4-5 wounds a piece it can be tricky to get them there intact. but when they hit... your opponant will take his proverbial ball home with him.

If your just starting, I honestly rate either the stealer list that people run, or possibly a Big-mommas birthing list. these are great to get to grips with, but are also, and most importantly, fun.


Hope that gives you food for thought

Much appreciated. It's given me a lot to think about - I'd originally thought to run very Carnifex heavy, but I think I'm going to have to look into the other heavies, and maybe cut back to a single Carnifex brood.
...and I'm not looking forward to any Gray Knights match-ups!

Well what surprisingly worked best is actually not using the HS choices. Tyranids placed 4th at Adepticon last year (all hail Jay Woodcock!)

Angel wrote:Much appreciated. It's given me a lot to think about - I'd originally thought to run very Carnifex heavy, but I think I'm going to have to look into the other heavies, and maybe cut back to a single Carnifex brood.
...and I'm not looking forward to any Gray Knights match-ups!

If you can, try and use MC's with SITW, as that tends to screw with GK's more often than not. And as the above poster said, not using Heavy support options tends to work wonders. Two flyrants, some very small ten man gaunt units, two Tervigons, two Trygons and, if you have much points left from all that, invest in the doom of Malan'tai and then consider 'fex broods. Unfortunately, in 5th ed Nids 'fex broods are considered a last resort due to their massive points cost, as it tends to make them an average MC in the list.

Temember the SitW FAQ. It states that a psyker rolls an additional dice, not 3D6, if in range of a creature with SitW. Not a unit but a creature.

Meaning if a psyker is within range of 9 sitw creatures, it will roll 11D6 for the test. 2 as normal and +9 for the SitW and will autofail its psychic test. Make sure he still rolls the dice because he may take multiple perils of the warp.

Deadshot wrote:Temember the SitW FAQ. It states that a psyker rolls an additional dice, not 3D6, if in range of a creature with SitW. Not a unit but a creature.

Meaning if a psyker is within range of 9 sitw creatures, it will roll 11D6 for the test. 2 as normal and +9 for the SitW and will autofail its psychic test. Make sure he still rolls the dice because he may take multiple perils of the warp.

Bah, even I had forgotten that one... THATS PURE EVIL!!! mwah hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha *gleefully dances at the prospect of making people kill themselves*

Deadshot wrote:Temember the SitW FAQ. It states that a psyker rolls an additional dice, not 3D6, if in range of a creature with SitW. Not a unit but a creature.

Meaning if a psyker is within range of 9 sitw creatures, it will roll 11D6 for the test. 2 as normal and +9 for the SitW and will autofail its psychic test. Make sure he still rolls the dice because he may take multiple perils of the warp.

Omg! I didn't know that one, I'm puting warriors back in my list. Forget Hive Guard, I'm going to pack my list with every SItW I can.

*dances less gleefully when realising that his Malanthropes don't have SITW*

I personally found gaunts too weak and expensive for what they were. Using genestealers and deploying them via outflank in conjunction with trygons is a pretty effective force. I mean I've seen gaunt waves bounce off Imperial guard who when you realise are the same points... Even when I've had the numbers advantage it doesn't take much;cover, command squad with FNP, defensive grenades, power armour To really spoil their day.

Deadshot wrote:Temember the SitW FAQ. It states that a psyker rolls an additional dice, not 3D6, if in range of a creature with SitW. Not a unit but a creature.

Meaning if a psyker is within range of 9 sitw creatures, it will roll 11D6 for the test. 2 as normal and +9 for the SitW and will autofail its psychic test. Make sure he still rolls the dice because he may take multiple perils of the warp.

Not true.

If he's within range of 9 SitW models, he's within range of a model with SitW - it doesn't stack.

rigeld2 wrote:

Deadshot wrote:Temember the SitW FAQ. It states that a psyker rolls an additional dice, not 3D6, if in range of a creature with SitW. Not a unit but a creature.

Meaning if a psyker is within range of 9 sitw creatures, it will roll 11D6 for the test. 2 as normal and +9 for the SitW and will autofail its psychic test. Make sure he still rolls the dice because he may take multiple perils of the warp.

Not true.

If he's within range of 9 SitW models, he's within range of a model with SitW - it doesn't stack.

My question to you is: why would they change the language from 3D6 to an extra die if they meant 3D6?

As a matter of fact we have a challenge, I'm going to take this to make the call.

They dont just mean 3d6.

Runes of Witnessing vs SitW. Before the errata, what happens? After the errata it's perfectly 100% clear.

I'd love for this to be a massive Tyranid buff. It just isn't.

There is a YMDC thread for it now.

Three Trygons against my Guard army...

I had no chance :(

Tervigons, Carnifexen and Tyrannofexen have a very hard time versus JotWW so be careful.

And Grey Knights

Henners91 wrote:And Grey Knights

Grey knights are not a problem... SITW