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Hey guys, I got a wild hair and was wondering what the average of the Tyranid stats were. I decided to take an average of the stats accounting for maxing each unit and each unit that maxes the FOC (example: 54 Warriors, 120 Genestealers, 180 Termagants, 180 Hormagaunts, 54 Rippers). What I found wasn't to thrilling.

Average Tyranid
WS BS S T W I A LD SV Cost
4 3 4 4 3 4 2 8 5+ 66

What are the average stat lines of other Xenos compared to my model? Despite the MCs, the stats aren't impressive especially for the average price.

Well that's the point of the Tyranids, after all. Hordes of gakky troops backed by monstrous creatures that wreck people.

Well that was my hypothesis, that the MCs would offset the gaunts and the average would equal out to a MEQ, however, that doesn't seem to be the case.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
MCs are one of the key reason to pick Tyranids, but it seems all the MCs are doing is raising the price.

broodstar wrote:Well that was my hypothesis, that the MCs would offset the gaunts and the average would equal out to a MEQ, however, that doesn't seem to be the case.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
MCs are one of the key reason to pick Tyranids, but it seems all the MCs are doing is raising the price.

That and outside of a armoured shell Tyrant or Tyrannofex, TMCs tend to be a great deal easier to kill than vehicles of the equivalent cost.

Kain wrote:

broodstar wrote:Well that was my hypothesis, that the MCs would offset the gaunts and the average would equal out to a MEQ, however, that doesn't seem to be the case.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
MCs are one of the key reason to pick Tyranids, but it seems all the MCs are doing is raising the price.

That and outside of a armoured shell Tyrant or Tyrannofex, TMCs tend to be a great deal easier to kill than vehicles of the equivalent cost.

Actually not really, lets look at the armor pen and to wound tables:

S AV T D6
8 14 10 6
8 13 9 5
8 12 8 4
8 11 7 3
8 10 6 2

So essentially, a Carnifex is what a Rhino with 4 wounds.

I don't understand what you did here. I cleaned up your statline so it's more easily readible.

WS BS S T W I A LD SV Cost
4 3 4 4 3 4 2 8 5+ 66

Here are my questions:

1) How did you come up with 66 points? That's more than any one model in your study. If you add one of each together you get 65, is that what you meant?

2) How did you come up with 3 wounds average? Warriors and Rippers have three wounds, Termagants, Hormagaunts and Genestealers have one each, I don't get it.

3) How the heck is the average BS 3? The HIGHEST BS is 3, and genestealers have a BS of 0.

I just don't get how you did this.

Squash wrote:I don't understand what you did here. I cleaned up your statline so it's more easily readible.

WS BS S T W I A LD SV Cost
4 3 4 4 3 4 2 8 5+ 66

Here are my questions:

1) How did you come up with 66 points? That's more than any one model in your study. If you add one of each together you get 65, is that what you meant?

2) How did you come up with 3 wounds average? Warriors and Rippers have three wounds, Termagants, Hormagaunts and Genestealers have one each, I don't get it.

3) How the heck is the average BS 3? The HIGHEST BS is 3, and genestealers have a BS of 0.

I just don't get how you did this.

Tfexes and Hive guard have BS4.

Tfexes don't. They're BS3.
Zoanthropes are BS4 though.

Squash wrote:I don't understand what you did here. I cleaned up your statline so it's more easily readible.

WS BS S T W I A LD SV Cost
4 3 4 4 3 4 2 8 5+ 66

Here are my questions:

1) How did you come up with 66 points? That's more than any one model in your study. If you add one of each together you get 65, is that what you meant?

2) How did you come up with 3 wounds average? Warriors and Rippers have three wounds, Termagants, Hormagaunts and Genestealers have one each, I don't get it.

3) How the heck is the average BS 3? The HIGHEST BS is 3, and genestealers have a BS of 0.

I just don't get how you did this.

I was just using the troops choices to show you how I did it, so take what I showed you for the troops and apply it for the whole FOC.

1. 66 points in the average cost of all populations in the study.
2. Although we have one wound model like gaunts in the study, we also have Tervigons, Trygons, and Tyrannofexes in the study, that drive the wound count up.
3. Although there are 150 genestealers and 3 mawlocs in the study there were still a lot of BS 3's and 4's.

I wouldn't be too concerned about having a sub-MEQ stat line. If I've learned anything by playing Eldar its that if you have some decent war gear and/or special rules, you don't need high stats.

MEQ stats are nice an all, but they won't win a game. For the same points that you field a 10 man tac squad, I can outnumber you 3 to 1 with some form of guant, or scare you to death with 10 genestealers, or field 4 kited out warriors, or a carnifex etc etc. The big problems nids are suffering from are costs, anti tank and lack of grenades. Guard hording cheaper and better and then fielding the toughest tanks cheaper than the MCs of nids is another problem. The split fire fun times of missile spam of space wolves doesn't help either. Missiles happen to be the perfect nid counter and they're easily accessible in most marine codex atm.

broodstar wrote:

Kain wrote:

broodstar wrote:Well that was my hypothesis, that the MCs would offset the gaunts and the average would equal out to a MEQ, however, that doesn't seem to be the case.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
MCs are one of the key reason to pick Tyranids, but it seems all the MCs are doing is raising the price.

That and outside of a armoured shell Tyrant or Tyrannofex, TMCs tend to be a great deal easier to kill than vehicles of the equivalent cost.

Actually not really, lets look at the armor pen and to wound tables:

S AV T D6
8 14 10 6
8 13 9 5
8 12 8 4
8 11 7 3
8 10 6 2

So essentially, a Carnifex is what a Rhino with 4 wounds.

First off, a rhino is AV11/11/10, so you'd be hitting AV11 with shooting. A carnifex is NOT toughness 7.
Second, you've made your chart to work with glancing hits, not penetrating. Penetrating hits are significantly more important unless you are using melta-weapons or are firing at an open-topped vehicle. I'd suggest adjusting it for penetrating hits.

If you run the math for "average amount of X to kill a vehicle vs to kill a carnifex" in also every situation (except S9-10 lances and close-range melta-weapons) the vehicle comes out WAY ahead in terms of survivability per point. Add in the fact that all Nid monstrous creatures can still be harmed by S3/S4 fire, so you can still chuck torrent fire at them with a chance to hurt them, and they come you even worse.

Carnage43 wrote:

broodstar wrote:

Kain wrote:

broodstar wrote:Well that was my hypothesis, that the MCs would offset the gaunts and the average would equal out to a MEQ, however, that doesn't seem to be the case.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
MCs are one of the key reason to pick Tyranids, but it seems all the MCs are doing is raising the price.

That and outside of a armoured shell Tyrant or Tyrannofex, TMCs tend to be a great deal easier to kill than vehicles of the equivalent cost.

Actually not really, lets look at the armor pen and to wound tables:

S AV T D6
8 14 10 6
8 13 9 5
8 12 8 4
8 11 7 3
8 10 6 2

So essentially, a Carnifex is what a Rhino with 4 wounds.

First off, a rhino is AV11/11/10, so you'd be hitting AV11 with shooting. A carnifex is NOT toughness 7.
Second, you've made your chart to work with glancing hits, not penetrating. Penetrating hits are significantly more important unless you are using melta-weapons or are firing at an open-topped vehicle. I'd suggest adjusting it for penetrating hits.

If you run the math for "average amount of X to kill a vehicle vs to kill a carnifex" in also every situation (except S9-10 lances and close-range melta-weapons) the vehicle comes out WAY ahead in terms of survivability per point. Add in the fact that all Nid monstrous creatures can still be harmed by S3/S4 fire, so you can still chuck torrent fire at them with a chance to hurt them, and they come you even worse.

^This. It's no secret that 5th edition is heavily biased against monstrous creatures and towards Vehicles. Let's not forget that there is only one bolter immune monstrous creature in the entire game and virtually every vehicle is bolter immune at it's front. Unlike Monstrous Creatures, Vehicles don't suffer spontaneous existence failure when made to face force weapons. Unlike monstrous creatures, vehicles can tank shock and push things in their way out to the side and potentially squish many of them.

Hell, the only time a Dreadnought would be more vulnerable than a Carnifex is when you involve dedicated anti-vehicle weapons, and with vehicle damage rolls, you only have a one third chance of killing the dreadnought even with a penetrating hit. A marine missile will hit a Contemptor dreadnought two thirds of the time (less if the contemptor has cover) it will only do anything at all one third of the time and will only have a chance to kill it one sixth of the time and from there it has a half chance of just ignoring the glancing hit and a one sixth chance of ignoring the pen.

Then you have the damage table, of which over half of the possible results will do little more than stun it or prevent it from shooting you (over half because I'm also counting the glancing hits), a comparatively much smaller chance of immobilizing it completely or taking off a weapon (and believe me a contemptor dread with one less weapon will still wreck your gak) and an even smaller chance of actually destroying it. This adds up to a better than even chance that an all missile launcher carrying devastator/long fang squad will do little more than annoy it before it proceeds to charge in their faces and punch their heads out through their arses, with the bolters being discounted because they can't do anything period.

The dreadnought doesn't have the number of attacks to slaughter the squad, but it does have enough coupled with a better WS than the squad does to more or less render it impotent in one go, especially on the charge, and the marines aren't going to be able to do anything to it in close comabt except for the power fist sergeant, who is no more likely to hurt it than the krak missiles.

The carnifex with all the options you're going to need to take to make it viable on the other hand, will be hit two thirds of the time, and from there it will be wounded 5/6ths of the time with no saves other than cover, and it only needs four krak missiles to drop. So that same missile squad that didn't do much more than piss off the Contemptor? Statistically speaking it's going to ruin the Carnifexes day, and it does not have the same luxury as the Contemptor did of not having to worry about the puny bolters at all, yes a bolter is only going to hurt it once out of thirty six times on average, but that's still something a carnifex has a risk of going down to.

And the Carnifex, with it's pathetic initiative, will never go first against the squad it's charging, and it's lackluster volume of attacks coupled with a rather mediocre weapons skill means that it's not going to kill the squad ever. And the power fist guy is almost certainly going to finish it off as his WS is better than the fex's, meaning that the carnifex is going to have problems hitting the damned guy while the sergeant won't have much trouble hitting the carnifex, he will wound on a 2+ and ignore the carnifex's armour save, so congratulations, that carnifex that you tricked out with such mandatory biomorphs as adrenal glands, has gotten itself killed in one turn.

Rather pointless idea to average stats. I went ahead and averaged DE stats based on the method you suggested. Warriors, Wyches, Wracks, Hellions, Grotesques, Incubi, Harlies, Mandrakes, Bloodbrides, Trueborn, Scorges, Reavers, Talos, and Cronos. I did not include beasts as it is hard to know their unit size or court of the archon for the same reason.

The results are underwelming
WS BS S T W I A Ld Sv Points
4 4 3 3 1 5 1 8 5+ 16points

all that DE junk, the MC, the grotesuqes, the elite junk it all averages out to a regular DE warrior for the cost of a space marine.

Exergy wrote:Rather pointless idea to average stats. I went ahead and averaged DE stats based on the method you suggested. Warriors, Wyches, Wracks, Hellions, Grotesques, Incubi, Harlies, Mandrakes, Bloodbrides, Trueborn, Scorges, Reavers, Talos, and Cronos. I did not include beasts as it is hard to know their unit size or court of the archon for the same reason.

QFT, there is no way you can just calculate an average stat and say it is rubish. This depends so much on the equipment and number of each units you can take as well as the individual rules associated with each unit that it is just pointeless