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I was thinking about starting a Tyranid army, mostly for P&M, but I do still play. I really like the big monstrous creatures and am wondering if it is still worth it to play a Nid'zilla build.

Very viable if you include the minimum Termagants for the Tervigons. Of course that will entail needing plenty of Termagants but it's the only way seeing as you need troops anyhow. Twin Flyrants, 3 Tervigons with Trygons and Dakkafexen is nasty.

Nidzilla did change though - the old days of overloading on Carnifexes are gone. Now it's Tervigons and Trygons.

It really depends on your local meta. Nidzilla doesn't fare well against missile spam but at my local gamestore there is a Nidzilla player who does quite well for herself. Oddly enough no Tervigon as well. She does units of warriors in maciatic spores with Lashwhip boneswords and deathspitters, I think a prime runs on one of them. A Tyrant with two guard old adversary and the 2+ save, Trygon prime, 6 biovores. Not sure what all else. Weird list but as I said she has had success with it.

*edited for spelling

If you have a DE player in the area, I suggest not.

If she's podding the Prime with the Warriors, GW FAQd that out for who-the-hell-knows-why :-/

Weird. I will have to check which one is in a pod as there are two units. Worst comes to worst she deploys the prime in the other squad. Wonder why they decided that wasnt ok...

Because GW hates Tyranids for some reason. The list of our Codex/FAQ wtfs is quite lengthy.

I honestly don't buy the whole 'GW made Tyranids suck because they hate them' argument. It's a range of products. Deliberately sabotaging it for any reason when they put a lot of money into new kits for it makes zero sense (yes, GW markeing, blah, blah, blah). Not to mention it was meant to be their best selling xenos line prior to 5th edition.

Basically, they rushed the codex to conincide with Space Hulk. They also gave it to someone who doesn't understand the army (I'd even go as far as to say Cruddace didn't like them). It was poor decision making, but it wasn't done deliberately to sabotage the army - Kirby would have a word with them deliberately doing something to reduce his dividends. To Cruddaces credit, he did try to expand the range with new monstrous creatures and mid sized creatures.

While it's sad, and Tyranid players are justifiably upset at how they were treated in 5th edition, it was just a bad mixture of poor decision making and in the case of the second wave, poor legal advice.

I've always wanted to build a big genestealer army. Something like a hundred models, with some hive guard, and maybe some trygon primes.

I've always liked genestealers. In terms I can clearly explain: "Damn son, they straight ice cold, like for real, son"

I don't think GW really hates Tyranids, but there's no way they didn't know Tyranids were getting screwed. You can flip through the Codex for 10 minutes and know it's jacked up. I'm sure they had some internal review . . .

If it was just because it was rushed, what's up with our FAQs?

Anyhow, I did not mean to go off on a tangent like that in a thread like this. Tyranids are still a blast and flat out awesome, so don't be dettered by our current Codex/FAQ.

Take it how you want but I really like Crudacce codex, bar ofc the Carnifex nerfed too far and Pyrovore.

 Squidmanlolz wrote:
I was thinking about starting a Tyranid army, mostly for P&M, but I do still play. I really like the big monstrous creatures and am wondering if it is still worth it to play a Nid'zilla build.

I am like you in that I am more into the painting and modeling than I am actually playing. There are tons of modeling possibilities with Tyranids so I really do think that you won't regret starting an army in that regard.

As far as the codex goes, I honestly don't think the codex shows as much evidence of GW hating Tyranids as it does them wanting you to buy specific models. It is very easy to learn to love only a few units in each unit category (HQ, elite, etc.) when it comes to competitive builds. In my opinion this is what tends to bottleneck competitive players into only a couple of truly different lists which tends to make them a little more boring than some of the other armies out there.

Most of our MC's are generally regarded as competitive excluding OOE and the Tyrannofex (IMO). Although to be fair I haven't play-tested the latter, I'm just going off of what I've seen around here and on another forum. There is another forum called Tyranidhive that can give you a lot more information on the varieties available within the list. Some of the players there have come up with some really good strategies.

Here is a list that I've used with a lot of success and it doesn't even have any fliers (too broke to afford them...grad school):

Swarmlord w/1guard
Tervigon (fairly basic, but he is the warlord and hangs back so I can be a little more fearless with the SL...also I force my opponents to think about their targets a lot more than just letting the SL be the warlord. He also poops out troops so the rest of your army is moving full speed across the table and you aren't giving up home-field objectives)

3 Hive Guard
2 Hive Guard (The Hive guard change a lot depending on my mood, I also use the DoM, yealers, and zoan's here a lot...but this was a T6 build)
Deathleaper (psychic defense and line breaker alone make him worth the points)

2x 10 Termagants
2x Tervi's with Crushing Claws, (more of a cc specialist, these move up with the gants to take objectives and push stuff around)

2x Mawlocs
1 Dakkafex

That's 57 T6 wounds I believe...all of which are true threats and it gives some versatility. Turn 2 you outflank the tervi and drop in the mawlocs and possibly the DL. That's 18 T6 wounds right on top of my opponents forces and I've usually killed quite a bit of infantry on the way in...which is great against gunlines (IMO 1 of our 2 main weaknesses, the other being flyers). So far my swarmlord hasn't died in this list configuration, but in all fairness I've only played about 6 games or so. The Heavy support can change quite a bit and maintain a competitive edge, but I find that Mawlocs fill a big gap in our list and that is pie plate damage. Against armies like guard or orks it is much easier to come in kill a vehicle/and or some troops instead of popping up like a trygon and dying during the turn in which you drop to a bunch of undamaged shooty units.

Hope some of this helps. I got a little long winded, but that usually happens when I take a break from work to talk about 40k.