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My brothers interest in his nids is deteriorating and I think these could help pull him back, so for example is there any psychic shenanigans that nids are capable of or are there any cool builds?

Tervigons and Flyrants................all chock full of biomancy goodness.

 g0atsticks wrote:
Tervigons and Flyrants................all chock full of biomancy goodness.

I second that. In our meta, we have yet to find a way to defeat a Tervigon spam list with all extra powers bought so that they can roll 3 times on the Biomancy table and get Iron arms and Endurance.

Drop a doom, and some zoanthropes with phycic screech into a Tau gunline, fly up 2 hive tyrants with Phycic scream use brainleech worms to lower leadership further before phycic attack.

Watch themm all die to the mass amount of leadership checks, bonus points for using deatleaper with it.

Amoras wrote:
Drop a doom, and some zoanthropes with phycic screech into a Tau gunline, fly up 2 hive tyrants with Phycic scream use brainleech worms to lower leadership further before phycic attack.

Watch themm all die to the mass amount of leadership checks, bonus points for using deatleaper with it.

Devourers only affect the morale test at the end of the phase, so they wouldn't help Psychic Scream or Psychic Shriek.

I'm having a fair bit of success with a heavy deep striking list (dakkafex, devilgants, Zoanthropes and Doom of Malan'tai in spores supported by Flyrants with a Tervigon or two to hold objectives), but that could be because I face a lot of gunline armies.

I know our elite slots are tight. I can't give up the Doom of Malan'tai. I love Yumgirls and their sweet abilities, its pure cheese and I love cheese.

Big fan of the Hive Guard Brood, but am thinking of dropping them in favor of 3 Zoanthroaps in a Mycetic Spore. I know they will blow up what ever I deem worthy, its just they are T4, and that has me a bit nervous. They'll soak up the fire for sure, but I'd love to have them around for turns to come. What can I do to make sure this happens????

Best bet is probaly to drop scary stuff along with themm.
If a doom, the zoanthropes and some trygons show up togheter he is unlikely to be able to deal with it all.

I do not know the names, but I faced 'nids a few times; I was not liking the spore mines trick (screws up deployment zones), neither the special 'nids that gave a 5+ save to units around him.

Others might have recommended it, but like I said, no idea on the names.

You could always go for devilgants, deathleaper, and broodlord negative leadership modifiers+ psychic shriek. Lower their units leadership, then use a couple of zoey's or other psychic bugs to drop psychic shriek bombs. No saves, no rolls to hit. Just psychic test and deny the witch to get through.

Inquisitor Jex wrote:
I do not know the names, but I faced 'nids a few times; I was not liking the spore mines trick (screws up deployment zones), neither the special 'nids that gave a 5+ save to units around him.

Others might have recommended it, but like I said, no idea on the names.

That would be Spore Mine Clusters and Venomthropes. Spore Mine Clusters are bad, for 10 points you get 3 spores that will probably scatter into each other and spontaneously combust, and even if they don't your opponent will just take them out with whatever short ranged shooting they have on hand. Venomthropes are... well.... They're pricey, in the highly competitive Elites slot, have received a nerf or two from FAQs and are painfully squishy targets for easy first blood. That said, army wide cover is nice to have, and if your matches tend to suffer from planet bowling ball syndrome (significantly less than any reasonable sort of terrain) they can be handy. Overall they're not good, but they're not bad, they're just mediocre, if you do decide to use Venomthropes for the love of all that is six-limbed and chitinous make sure you hide them so your enemy can't draw line of sight, or they're toast.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
You could always go for devilgants, deathleaper, and broodlord negative leadership modifiers+ psychic shriek. Lower their units leadership, then use a couple of zoey's or other psychic bugs to drop psychic shriek bombs. No saves, no rolls to hit. Just psychic test and deny the witch to get through.

Devourers they don't affect all leadership tests, just the morale test at the end of the shooting phase, also you do need to roll to hit with Psychic Shriek.

 g0atsticks wrote:
Tervigons and Flyrants................all chock full of biomancy goodness.

What he said. It's proven and effective.

Also, Swarmlord is pretty great. With Iron Arm, he's almost unkillable.

Other fun and not as talked about options. Deathleaper takes an enemy character's LD down a D3, which, combined with Shadow of the Warp, pretty much nullifies an enemy psycher. Also, Deathleaper can redeploy anywhere he'd like without scatter, which is pretty great for linebreaker. His statline and rending on 5+ is amazing, and he has shrouding. Overall a steal if you can get over the fact you used to be considered marginal at best.

Carnifex's equipped with 2 sets of twin linked devourers (otherwise known as Dakkafexen) are pretty amazing. They're great anti-infantry, good anti-MC, and OK anti-air in a pinch. Drop one in a pod for pin-point dakka goodness, or run them in groups of 2 across the field and watch them own a quadrant.

Running out of break-time...

The doom of Malen'tai in a Mycetic Spore is pretty awesome/broken, he neutralizes most troops picks, and loads up on the wounds giving the rest of your army a free turn of movement while soaking up tons of fire.

So: Flyrants, Tervigons, Doom of Malen'tai.

All must takes in ANY NIDS list.

If your dropping stuff like doom and zoanthroapes in drop a squad of 20 devilgaunts in a pod and watch them wiped squads off the board with the sheer amount of saves they need to take or watch a vehicles get glanced to death. My friend drops 3 of these squads and it just takes whole units off the table. Then his tervigon, flyrants and Doom arent just the biggest threats now.

Great fun can be had with the Swarmlord, a Prime with Bonesword/Lash Whip/Toxin Sacks/Regenerate and a single Tyrant Guard with Lash Whip.

This unit will be majority Toughness 6 (if not higher, if your Swarmlord gets Iron Arm,possibly giving you majority Toughness 9), and will absolutely wreck whatever it touches in assault. The Prime and the Swarmlord work together wonderfully when it comes to challenges, giving you the choice of who to use for what to ensure maximum carnage (it is often better to have the Prime accept the challenge, and have a Swarmlord with Warp Speed unleash 5-8 attacks on the rank and file to completely exterminate the enemy unit).

tyrant guard are "free" slot unit that I think gets underused in flyrant lists. They are a 3+, T6 beast in a codex low on decent saves. And they do not have to join the Tyrant, I tend to take a Prime with the Flyrant, make it the Warlord and stick him with the TG for that nice T6.

The Psychic Choir builds are scarey with 3 to 9 psychic screams backed up by dominations, terrify and puppet master. Broodlords, tyrants and Trevgions going happy on the Biomancy. The list gives you a solid core of both shooty and gribbly to make the opponent work for it.

Dakka fexs take them in squads of 2.... oh and the skyshield does fantastic as well. myself and 2 others took nids to adeptacon championships and had 2 losses between the 3 of us and one of us day 2ed

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
You could always go for devilgants, deathleaper, and broodlord negative leadership modifiers+ psychic shriek. Lower their units leadership, then use a couple of zoey's or other psychic bugs to drop psychic shriek bombs. No saves, no rolls to hit. Just psychic test and deny the witch to get through.

Devourers they don't affect all leadership tests, just the morale test at the end of the shooting phase, also you do need to roll to hit with Psychic Shriek.

You're correct- my bad. Was at work and didn't have my codex on me. Broodlords+ Psychic Shriek still works just fine though. Was thinking about Psychic Scream, which automatically hits all units within 2d6". Which also works nicely with multiple Broodlords+Deathleaper.

Broodlords, unfortunately, cannot use any psychic witchfires, as per the FAQ awhile back...

Q: Can a Tyranid Broodlord (which has BS 0) use a witchfire psychic
power that doesn’t require a roll To Hit? If not, is he able to re-roll the
psychic power because he cannot use it? (p40)
A: No to both questions

Considering this is a pretty big blow (beams, nova, mealstroms, and focused witchfires all being under the witchfire heading) , I have a hard time wanting to field one over some of the other psychic choir options.

EDIT....erm, nevermind. My reading comprehension was off when I read the above comment. You guys were speaking about the Broodlord's ability to negatively effect a target's leadership, not use witchfires. Gotcha...

either way. unless your trying to get invisibility for the swarmlord.....you better be rollin' of the biomancy chart.

People talk about the Swarmlord Deathstar taking out anything...have you played against Draigo? He's like, "You're a psyker? Sweet, that means you're I1 and I'm S10; oh, and you get negatives to a bunch of stats. Plus, you aren't Eternal Warrior, so I just need to roll 3, 3, 4 on a 3d6 to insta-kill you."

Even if the Prime accepts the challenge, Draigo eliminates him in one round, the Swarmlord kills the Paladins, and then you're still left with those two fighting. Draigo wins like 11 times out of 10.

 brassangel wrote:
People talk about the Swarmlord Deathstar taking out anything...have you played against Draigo? He's like, "You're a psyker? Sweet, that means you're I1 and I'm S10; oh, and you get negatives to a bunch of stats. Plus, you aren't Eternal Warrior, so I just need to roll 3, 3, 4 on a 3d6 to insta-kill you."

Even if the Prime accepts the challenge, Draigo eliminates him in one round, the Swarmlord kills the Paladins, and then you're still left with those two fighting. Draigo wins like 11 times out of 10.

When you go against Draigo, you hope for Iron Arm, which DOES give you eternal warrior, and I think you also want Endurance, which all together gives you Str/T 6+d3, Eternal Warrior, Feel No Pain, It Will Not Die, and possible Preferred Enemy. Not sure about the Initiative thing, haven't had the pleasure of running Swarmy into Draigo yet, but he still gives Draigo a hard time, what with the 4+ invulnerable, and making you reroll your invulnerables.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 brassangel wrote:
People talk about the Swarmlord Deathstar taking out anything...have you played against Draigo? He's like, "You're a psyker? Sweet, that means you're I1 and I'm S10; oh, and you get negatives to a bunch of stats. Plus, you aren't Eternal Warrior, so I just need to roll 3, 3, 4 on a 3d6 to insta-kill you."

Even if the Prime accepts the challenge, Draigo eliminates him in one round, the Swarmlord kills the Paladins, and then you're still left with those two fighting. Draigo wins like 11 times out of 10.

When you go against Draigo, you hope for Iron Arm, which DOES give you eternal warrior, and I think you also want Endurance, which all together gives you Str/T 6+d3, Eternal Warrior, Feel No Pain, It Will Not Die, and possible Preferred Enemy. Not sure about the Initiative thing, haven't had the pleasure of running Swarmy into Draigo yet, but he still gives Draigo a hard time, what with the 4+ invulnerable, and making you reroll your invulnerables.

and i like my chances of 2/3 rolling for them. My self though, I'd just shoot him from the air with my Flyrant.

 g0atsticks wrote:

and i like my chances of 2/3 rolling for them. My self though, I'd just shoot him from the air with my Flyrant.

Of course, but if you did happen to roll up Iron Arm you're far more likely to run ol' Swarmy headlong into Draigo for the thrill of it.

Would love to see a swarmlord go against draigo, would be an epic battle!

With Iron Arm, Swarmlord normally takes a bit of damage but kills Draigo.

 paqman wrote:

 g0atsticks wrote:
Tervigons and Flyrants................all chock full of biomancy goodness.

I second that. In our meta, we have yet to find a way to defeat a Tervigon spam list with all extra powers bought so that they can roll 3 times on the Biomancy table and get Iron arms and Endurance.

Get someone with Space wolves or SW as allies, take a rune priest and watch them fall over to JotWW

 paqman wrote:

 g0atsticks wrote:
Tervigons and Flyrants................all chock full of biomancy goodness.

I second that. In our meta, we have yet to find a way to defeat a Tervigon spam list with all extra powers bought so that they can roll 3 times on the Biomancy table and get Iron arms and Endurance.

"Jaws of the World Wolf" Rune Priest x4 delivered via combination of Drop pods, jump packs, rhinos, and gun line. Big bugs cry.

 Byte wrote:

 paqman wrote:

 g0atsticks wrote:
Tervigons and Flyrants................all chock full of biomancy goodness.

I second that. In our meta, we have yet to find a way to defeat a Tervigon spam list with all extra powers bought so that they can roll 3 times on the Biomancy table and get Iron arms and Endurance.

"Jaws of the World Wolf" Rune Priest x4 delivered via combination of Drop pods, jump packs, rhinos, and gun line. Big bugs cry.

I used this tactic against a tau player who went turn 1 and had 7 batttle suits/ broadsides in a line and when rune priest and pod came down JAWS went off and 4 of them said ggodbye but the others got lucky with rolls lol The squad even finished off one of the battle suit squads.

Its a very nasty trick Im gunna try on my nids friend lol