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Well just started collecting nids and I thought the Get Started set would be a decent start seeing it provides a Flyrant and Gargoyles with some warriors thrown in.

At the moments I have

1x Flyrant with 2x twin-linked devourer with brainleech worms

3x warriors, one with lashwhip & bonesword + rending claws, the other two with rending claws + devourer.

10x base gargoyles.

Not 100% sure what direction to go. I was thinking of getting another box and equipping them identically. Then Getting some Lictors, Hive Guard, Mawloc & a Trygon Prime. I was thinking the Hive Guard would make decent AT, Lictors for non-scattering DS, using the Mawloc as a hit and run unit using it's ability and the Prime being a killer and a way to help my Warriors get close to the enemy.

Any help and suggestion would be greatly appreciated seeing this is my first dive into a non guard or space marine force.

A horde on foot looks great. So buy some monsters for that...

If you want to play competitive the answer are more flyrants and mawlocs, as these works against invis.

I wouldn't recommend the trygon prime. Trygons are among the worst MCs in the codex. Trygon primes aren't really much better. They are a combat monster that's bad in combat, and their tunnel rule is horribly unreliable. Only working about 1/3 of the time.
The rest of those units aren't bad choices though (well, warriors are bad, but they come along with the starter box so you may as well put them to use)
I'd recommend a box of venomthropes/zoanthropes being among your first additions. A couple of venomthropes makes a tyranid army much more survivable (malanthropes are the same thing but even better, if you can get forgeworld stuff).



If you're wanting your army to be tournament competitive, then flying hive tyrant spam is unfortunately about the best we can do.
Pretty much any tyranid list is going to include two or more flyrants. However, the rest of the army can be played a few ways.
A couple of examples:


Lictor Shame became famous after winning last years LVO. It involves reserve manipulation and trickiness.
Lictors precision deepstrike mawlocs onto targets, grab objectives, and aren't too shabby in combat either.
Mawlocs are great. Their deepstrike attack hits invisible units, and can even be used to hit models in an ongoing combat (including your own models).
Spore mines are cheap and aren't worth any victory points, so are used to block movement and absorb overwatch. Also handy for putting in a bunker to man a comms relay.
The ever-present flyrants zoom around and take out things the mawlocs and lictors can't.



Another option is the 'trapdoor spider', or tyranid gunline. Basically exploiting tyranids easy access to 2+ cover saves to castle up with ranged firepower. Once alpha strikey things have bounced off and key threats have been removed, you pounce.
Key units are malanthropes/venomthropes to provide the cover, and a barbed hierodule to provide much of the firepower.
Other things like biovores and exocrines provide a bit more ranged support. Flyrants are around as always, but played defensively until it's time to strike.
This playstyle was popular a year or two ago. Massive amounts of ignores cover weaponry in recent codexes, along with D weapons, have killed it off for competitive games. It is still quite effective against other 7.0 level armies though.



I'm not a fan of swarm armies. Unlike say, orks, tyranid swarm units can't mix in strong weapons like power klaws. Making them little better than tarpits.
However one approach is to use the Endless Swarm formation (3 units of termagants, 3 of hormagaunts. They respawn on a 4+ when killed), along with trygon tunnels. So respawning units can appear out of the tunnels.
Tervigon spam used to be a thing for swarm armies, but it kind of died with the most recent codex nerfing them into the ground.

From what I read online the Primes can be quite good in cc. 5+ attacks at S6 and WS5 seems okay (Plus the 12 S5 shots before it charges? What is their weakness? Also how is the tunnel rule unreliable? I thought it was simple enough with one unit a turn auto entering via it?

I was thinking about venomthropes, although I'm also tempted to get some zoanthropes. I did also see online nids now have access to telekinesis, but couldn't find anything myself to back this up.

The tunnel rule is bad because you can't use it until the turn after the Trygon arrives. So you have to hope you fail reserve rolls for the right unit while passing the trygon reserve roll.

I like the crone, it can be a fairly decent anti-vehicle platform, although somewhat limited in how much it can do per turn. S8 Vector Strike is great, the haywire missiles are great and also twin-linked against flyers, and the regular template gun is S6. Template is more anti-infantry though.

 Baldeagle91 wrote:
From what I read online the Primes can be quite good in cc. 5+ attacks at S6 and WS5 seems okay (Plus the 12 S5 shots before it charges? What is their weakness? Also how is the tunnel rule unreliable? I thought it was simple enough with one unit a turn auto entering via it?

I was thinking about venomthropes, although I'm also tempted to get some zoanthropes. I did also see online nids now have access to telekinesis, but couldn't find anything myself to back this up.

Primes are bad, for very few more points you can have a Hive Tyrant. Primes used to be good in the Old Codex, they were so good that they nerfed them and over priced them, at the same time IC rules changed to make them even worst AND at the same time gave MC more rules. So it is literally a complete waste of points to take a Prime. It has no FnP, no Invul, extremely over costed upgrades.

A hive Tyrant is 40pts more, it gets better upgrades (for the same cost might I add) can Fly, it is a MC (this is huge!) a Lv 2 Psyker, more Wounds/ WS/Str/toughness.
MC rules especially with Wings are already worth the 40pts difference, then add those extra little things. thats why Primes are over costed.


The Tunnel rule is single handed the most crappy unreliable rule in the game!
1) The Trygon must DS 1st
2) Units cant use the tunnel the turn the Trygon comes out
3) If your Trygon fails the Reserves roll and the "Tunneling" units dont, they cant use the tunnel and must DS or walk onto the table edge (you cant deny your own dice rolls for reserves)
4) If your trygon does come on at the same time your "Tunnel" units are they again cant use the Tunnel
5) You cant charge out of the tunnel
6) If the trygon scatters the models could be coming out in a bad place
7) If an enemy unit stands on the marker or clse enough he can deny your use of the marker "Units using the Tunnel must be wholly within 6" of the marker"

Venomthropes are Amazing I would 100% get a box of them. I fyou can play FW at your area instead get Malanthropes, its like a MC Venomthrope (it does the same thing, just way more survival and cheaper than 2 venomthropes). If not get 2-3 venomthropes they are well worth it.

Zoanthropes are not... no they are not worth it at all, for 1 VERY good reason. 1) to many dice rolls (aka to many placed they can fail).
Zoanthropes have to....
1) Roll to see if powers go off
2) Other play can deny the power
3) Roll to hit
4) then roll to wound

Thats 4 checks to see if it fails. They will fail more than they wont (Not b.c I say so, but b.c by % chances its a higher chance of failure than success rates).

GSC (Genestealer Cults) Have telekinese not Tyranids, GCS is a Faction similar to Tyranids, like GKs are similar to BA, they are similar but dont use the same rules.

Now as to what you should get next? Honestly I would get Venomthropes (or a Malanthrope) a Hive Crone, 1 more Tyrant and some gants, even tho gants are not great, they still are a cheap scoring unit that you can fill holes with.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Baldeagle91 wrote:
From what I read online the Primes can be quite good in cc. 5+ attacks at S6 and WS5 seems okay (Plus the 12 S5 shots before it charges? What is their weakness? Also how is the tunnel rule unreliable? I thought it was simple enough with one unit a turn auto entering via it?

I was thinking about venomthropes, although I'm also tempted to get some zoanthropes. I did also see online nids now have access to telekinesis, but couldn't find anything myself to back this up.

Primes are bad, for very few more points you can have a Hive Tyrant. Primes used to be good in the Old Codex, they were so good that they nerfed them and over priced them, at the same time IC rules changed to make them even worst AND at the same time gave MC more rules. So it is literally a complete waste of points to take a Prime. It has no FnP, no Invul, extremely over costed upgrades.

A hive Tyrant is 40pts more, it gets better upgrades (for the same cost might I add) can Fly, it is a MC (this is huge!) a Lv 2 Psyker, more Wounds/ WS/Str/toughness.
MC rules especially with Wings are already worth the 40pts difference, then add those extra little things. thats why Primes are over costed.

I think he was asking about why the trygon prime is bad, rather than the tyranid prime. (plus tyranid primes were never great in the previous codex either. Merely average. Hence everyones confusion when they got a 50% point increase).


A trygon of either variant basically exists to be a CC monster. However it fails rather dismally at this, as it doesn't have many targets it's particularly effective at fighting.
In the previous codex having 2 sets of scything talons gave them re-rolls to hit. Smash attacks also used to work differently, giving them a good number of S10 attacks. This made them pretty effective against most targets.

They are now stuck with just their 6 attacks. No ability to re-roll, making them much less reliable.
Smash was nerfed to a single attack, completely neutering their ability to take on a lot of vehicles. A dreadnaught will twist a trygons arms behind its back and steal its lunch money. A really bad matchup.
S6 means it's not great at taking on MCs from other codexes, which tend to have better strength/toughness and various CC abilities.
It doesn't have enough attacks to deal with hordes of light infantry.
It can still deal with squads of marines (if much less efficiently than it used to), so long as they don't mix in a powerfist or something. But that's about all it's good for.

Compare it to the forgeworld Dimachaeron. Similar points cost and role, except the Dimachaeron actually is a real beatstick in combat. It basically outperforms the trygon in every way.

Lots of ways you could go, a lot depends on your local "meta", and on how "studly" you want to be...

If you want to be "strong", but maybe not "tourney" strong...I'd give some strong consideration to building towards CAD: Two Tyrants, plus a SkyTyrant Formation.

So my recommendation is 1) a second Tyrant, two or more is just the current "standard" even friendly games usually call for two. 2) a box of Veno/Zoeys, build at least two as Venos.

Then decide how you want to build out the "table" force...Tervigon+ Termagants? All spores? Never Ending Swarm? Once you decide on that you can buy, and paint to suit.

I recommend looking at the following:

Zoanthropes - A brood of three with the Neurothrope upgrade provides some decent options
Venomthropes - 5+ cover in the open is great with a horde
Exocrine - Hard hitting ranged firepower with two weapon profiles for flexibility
Tyrannocyte - Gives you flexibility to DS something that you ordinarily wouldn't be able to reposition.

Yep the Dimachaeron basically spelled super doom for the Trygon. Better in every way that matters.

The Trygon certainly isn't awful, but I would rate many of our other MC options as better than it - some even as better at it's own job :(

I would certainly take 2 carnifex over a single Trygon (a little more points, but sadly comparable). If they ever get to touch a vehicle, it's dead. If they touch most infantry, that's it for those infantry. If the Trygon (or anything in our army, really) could assault out of deep strike, then that would be great and useful. As is, it just sits there for a turn hoping that no one looks at it sideways.

@Arson Fire

In 5th Ed Warrior Primes was cheaper with same melee abilities as Tyrants and you could join them with MC's so they in long turn was more survival.

I was highly competitive in 5th and I always had 2 with LW/BW and I sat them with my 2 units of Hive Guards (for anti charging, b.c I really needed Hive Guard to kill those Parking Lots).

Well I think next I'll just get another starter box to fill up my army a little (plus it's only £50).

I'm now looking at the Malanthrope.... how many is enough? The look quite nasty (in a good way) tbh.

 Baldeagle91 wrote:
Well I think next I'll just get another starter box to fill up my army a little (plus it's only £50).

I'm now looking at the Malanthrope.... how many is enough? The look quite nasty (in a good way) tbh.

You only need 1, it is 85pts, its Toughness 5 with 4 wounds and a 3+ with Shrouded, Its not bad in Melee either, S5 with Poison 2+ (so you will almost always reroll you wounds)

A good way to run the Malanthrope is in a bastion (nice opportunity for some kitbashing to show a Tyranid-corrupted bastion - add some tentacles and chitinous plates and so on...), which not only protects it, it also increases the bubble of its effect and allows you to take a comms relay (to help get your reserves in).

I wouldn't bother with the starter box, much of the contents are sub-optimal (horde tyranids are sadly very lacking, as so many armies have access to volume of fire to chop up your weak units... even if you get into combat with e.g. space marines, you lose combats...)