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Hello friends!

I have a question for all you bugs out there, what shall we do now in this new edition of warhammer? Will our meta change to a more shooting oriented meta or stay at an assault heavy one? What combos can we see rocking out and which ones will bite the dust! Should we keep the army at all, or should we get on that swap shop and hope for the best? Just trying to see if tyranids can be competitive this edition, and if so, how? Thank you very much for any and all help!

Stay beautiful

P.S. Sorry if this sounds kinda doom and gloom, not meant to sound like that, just want some solid advice and tactics

Still a bit hazy at the moment. Our anti-infantry prospects are looking up with lists becoming de-meched, and our shooting just became crazy with Old Adversary lists. We also have some of the most populous psyker choices in the game (Zoanthropes, Tyrants, Broodlords, etc) so we can write bit pskyer-spam lists with good psychic defence to boot (Shadow in the Warp + Deny the Witch). Fearless also became much better for us. Monstrous creatures are worse at wrecking vehicles, but are more powerful in assaults now. Genestealers took a bit of a nerf with no more outflanking assaults though.

Monstrous creatures are worse? No sir, Monstrous creatures guarantee dead vehicles.

Scything Talon Carnifex /w Adrenal Glands charges a LR that moved: 81.5% Chance per hit to remove a hull point. Since they get 5 (or 6 if out of Synapse range) attacks on the charge, that's nearly a guaranteed dead LR.

Venom Cannon got a boost; it removes a hull point, which means 3 successful glances, and most vehicles are dead.

No fearless wounds. Termagants can tarpit like never before.

Two words; Flying Tyrant. Holy crap is this thing awesome now.

S6 MCs don't get 2D6 armour pen anymore, so they have a harder time vs vehicles (and smash lowers their number of attacks). Also, depends on the AV value, lower AV is fine but AV14 is hard to crack now.

The new rules mean that MCs are worse at taking vehicles out, but vehicles are easier to be taken out, so it evens out. The Carnifex, however, doesn't care about smash attacks because he's got S9. I field a Winged Tyrant with Biomancy (T9 and only hit on 6's!?), and another Hive Tyrant with Old Adversary, Armoured Shell, and 2X TL devourers, guiding a unit of 2 or 3 carnifexes with more devourers.

Andilus Greatsword wrote:S6 MCs don't get 2D6 armour pen anymore, so they have a harder time vs vehicles (and smash lowers their number of attacks). Also, depends on the AV value, lower AV is fine but AV14 is hard to crack now.

Against monoliths maybe, as the change from a 4+ to a 3+ To Hit isn't much, but against say, Land Raiders, who usually went at cruising speeds (and needing 6s to hit), they certainly got better. Also keep in mind that Smash only lowers the attack characteristic, previously harmless MCs like Tervigons get 3 S10 attacks on the charge, with rerolls to pen, somewhere in the league of having an 80% chance to at least glance on a MOVING AV14 no less.

Trygon with AG in 5th versus a cruising LR was 7 attacks, rerolls to hit against 6s to hit, around 2 hit, about 50% chance to glance or pen, so about 1 result average.
Trygon without AG in 6th versus cruising LR is 4 smash attacks (or 5 if feeding), rerolls to hit against 3+ to hit, 2.66 (roughly 3 raging), 75% chance to glance or pen (I assume you only attempt to reroll 1-3). 2 results average, slightly better on Raging.

Certainly I agree that against monoliths trygons will suffer (though you'd have to do the math yourself), but our best tank hunter doubling it's chance to outright kill one of the toughest vehicles in the game, and the rest of our mcs become several times more reliable in at least scoring some damage on it, is hardly a nerf.

And this is without considering the absurdly good odds that all of our mcs have in wrecking lighter vehicle in a single charge.

I played my first game with the new rules yesterday and I can honestly say I was pleased! I was amazed at how easy Rhinos go down this edition, three glancing hits is not that hard really.. I think Tyranids got some nice buffs, and I'm not yet seeing big flaws. I think the Swarm list is now viable option again, with Adrenal Glands they're a threat to most Tanks, and without fearless wounds at the end of combat your swarm will last longer. The change from 4+ to 5+ with cover saves didn't make a difference at all really, I lost maybe an extra wound on a Trygon and 3 extra gaunts..

While Tyranids do get stronger in some areas, they get weaker in others.

No infiltrate and charge at the top of turn 1, no reserve charge definitely hurts a lot. Ymgarls really feel this.

Only half your army in reserve also hurts if you liked to reserve everything before.

Fearless not causing wounds can be a huge deal for some nid armies, basically any combat that you were losing by huge margins. Now, it still sucks if you are losing by huge margins, but unlike before your lots of smallish gant units due to tervigons dont all die in one bad combat.

Hive guard ignore lots of cover still, including jink and night fighting, and can kill a land raider a lot easier now. Thus zoans are not required nearly as much.

Tervigon's onslaught power may be great if it lets you run and still assault with fleet, as you will get quite a bit better charge range on fleet units. Feel no pain is also better on MCs in some matchups, as you get it versus las cannons now.

A flying tyrant may be worth it, but getting grounded by any hit on a 3+ is kind of harsh when you are facing MSU with lots of separate units to shoot with. I think I like a walking Old Adversary tyrant more.

While it sucks that we cant use guns bought with fortification slots, they can still fire at BS2. The 3+ cover that fortifications bring (or 4+ with 2+ go to ground with the wall) may be worth it since we cant reserve everything and cant afford to have our important monsters and hive guard get smoked on turn 1 by heavy weapons.

Gargoyles have been good for a while, but they get even better now that things like hormagants can not run for more assault distance. Gargoyles can get an extra attack with Hammer of Wrath now too, for cheapish init 10 wounds, though it is unclear if poison applies to HoW.

Anyway, in closing... A base list I see being good will look something like

Old adversary shooting tyrant with 2x devourers
tyrant guard
9 hive guard
2 tervigons with crushing claws et all (smash is sweet with crushing claws)
2x10 gants
2 stealer units with broodlords.

Fortification (bastion or defense line) with quad gun

This gives decent close combat, great shooting, you always have some cover for turn 1, the stealers can still infiltrate or outflank for the mission, and the gant screen is better at keeping enemy assaults at bay.

You seem to be nerfing your own army somewhat! Let me help...

DevianID wrote:
No infiltrate and charge at the top of turn 1, no reserve charge definitely hurts a lot. Ymgarls really feel this.

Ymgarls are still allowed to assault from reserve, provided you use the Dormancy rule to bring them in on turn 2/3. The rulebook has an exception for special rules from codexes, and the 'nid codex explicitly states Ymgarls are allowed to assault the turn they arrive.

DevianID wrote:Only half your army in reserve also hurts if you liked to reserve everything before.

Note that units that must arrive from reserve are an exception to this (spore pods), and aren't counted toward the total. It's still possible to do a nearly null-deployment. However you do automatically lose the game if you have no units on the table at the end of any turn, so you need to start with something on the field and have it survive the first turn.

DevianID wrote:A flying tyrant may be worth it, but getting grounded by any hit on a 3+ is kind of harsh when you are facing MSU with lots of separate units to shoot with. I think I like a walking Old Adversary tyrant more.

This is wrong. Flying MC's roll once for grounding after a whole unit shoots at them and scores any hits - not for each hit. They're also safe on a 3+, it's 1/2 that makes them crash.