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Thanks slicendice glad I could provide some inspiration

So after playing some 15 games with the new nids, I have been a bit perplexed by the poor results from my Dakkafex+Warrior Prime combo. Specifically focusing in on Mr. Fex. I've played them against SW, Vanilla SM of all flavors, DE, more SW, Tau, Sisters, Chaos, more SW, Deamons, Orcs, Nids, and GK. While I do quite well, the carnie doesn't seam to be throwing his weight around. Each time, the shooting nets me little in rewards...and in assaults...Mr. Carnie kills 2 on a good day thanks to WS 3. Nor is his unit a enemy fire magnet as the focus is usually on the horde stealers, tervies, or the Hive Tyrant.

Several people sing gospel by them, including Hulksmash. I'm just not seeing it.

I ran some numbers and they don't seem to promising either.

(Termies = Terminators)


So based on theory hammer and my personal results on the table. I think I will be giving this bad boy a rest. Maybe exchanging him for some ravenors or a Trygon.

Sadly, I fear you're quite right to retire the twin Brainleech Dakka Fex. Over the past year I've been experimenting with them as well and in roughly 20 games, I can only recall 3 times where they actually did what I wanted them to achieve. Once was against Imperial Guard. Only 1 of the 2 survived but they managed to take down 2 Chimera chassis and their contents . Their shining moment happened 2 weeks ago while fighting Chaos Marines. For this game the 2 Carnies had their weapon loadout changed from pure Dakka to Brainleech and Heavy Venom Cannon. Working in concert with Hive Guard, who'd exploded a rhino just moments before, the Carnies unleashed the small blast on the clumped up squad of 10 Berzerkers. Not only did both blasts not scatter but the squad was also within range of the Brainleech guns. The Berzerkers were vaporised right there on the spot.

As those instances of brilliance and efficiency are so few and far between, I've come to the conclusion that the points are better spent on another Tervigon and 20 more Devilgants.

For a company that claims they are first and foremost a model company, it really boggles my mind why GW would make the rules for such a beautiful (and expensive) kit so horrible...

Raveners, in spite of now having 3 wounds and new plastic kit, are just not worth it compared to Shrikes. Both units die just as easily but the Shrikes move faster, are synapse and thanks to their whips and swords, whatever unit they get to usually just vanishes. Contrary to Carnifexes, I've lost count how often Shrikes have exceeded expectations, both mine and my opponents'. The funniest such occasion was when my opponent, who didn't know how lash whips or bone swords worked, lashed a squad of 4 Warriors closer to him and charged them with only 3 Chaos Marines at his side. Things didn't end well...

Barring the use of Shrikes, a Trigon Prime would definitely be your best bet.

Yeah, I figured you would be in strong agreement; you weren't really keen on the Dakkafex in the beginning. I was highly thinking about adding another Tervie and some guants. Probably be the best bang for the buck. The only issue is that their is already a crap load of models (with 28 stealers, 2 tervies + 60-90 guant horde) on the field as is and I am already slow playing the hell out of matches.

Don't get me wrong I love the model, which is why I built 2 of them, but they're sadly not what they used to be. There is a use for them that I haven't tested yet and that is the role of bodyguards for a Hive Tyrant. Deploying 2 Dakkafexes, 2 Venomthropes and 3 Hive Guard alondside a Tyrant with Old Adversary would make for a very tenacious and shooty Death Star, especially if you give all Monstrous Creatures in the group Heavy Venom Cannons. Give the group a bubble-wrap of Hormies or Devilgants and you something that is both very hard to eliminate and too dangerous to ignore. Old Adversary would help the Fexes in CC thanks to the re-rolls so you could depend on them actually hitting something once they get in close.

As for your army, I see your point. If you already have 2 Tervies and a scittering horde there's no real point in adding another Tervie/Gant group.

As I run a very shooty Nids, what I typically sub in for the Dakkafexes is one of the 3 options.

6 Hive Guard, 2 Biovores

3 Hive Guard, 1 Trigon Prime with Adrenal Glands

6 Biovores, 2 Venomthropes

(20 points leftover for more Gants)

The second option tends to be my favourite as I get 8 more T6 wounds, an extra 6 shots at 24 with a higher strength as well as an extra source of Synapse.

Are there any options you've been pondering to replace the Dakkafexes or to try and make them more effective?

Well, I never went the two Dakkfex route. I always kept it to 1 dakkafex with attached Alpha Warrior. The alpha warrior which can jump in and out of squads seems to hold his own, so I could keep him and attach him to either the Hive Tyrant squad or HG unit and from there he can jump into guant spam squads if nessessary.

Otherwise, if I ditch both, that leaves me with 300 points.

I am going to change up my elites which are currently 2-2 man hive guard squads and 7 man Ygmarls. The Dakkafex represented a much needed shooty unit (its just that it sucks at the job IMHO). Therefore, I will be replacing the Ygmarls with a third 2 man HG unit. That nets me 68 points to spend elsewhere. I love ygmarls, but I need some more anti-mech dakka...that ignores cover.

So I've replaced one shooty unit with a better, cheaper shooty unit. But I am out a fast CC unit as Ymargls pop up usually on turns 2 thanks to Hive Commander...and in the back field (and a synapse if I don't keep the Alpha Warrior). So I have 268 points (or over 368 points if I shunt the Alpha), no open elite slots, 3 open heavies, and 3 open fast attacks. I need a fast CC unit to prop up the stealer swarm in the first wave...(and a synapse if I dump the Alpha Warrior).

Oh, have any of you guys assembled the new Tervie? If so, do you think you can magnitize all the parts to convert between the T-Fex and Tervie? Going to have to buy two of those to replace my carnifex stand-ins, and I like to magnitize models so as to help save time on painting.

humm, 268 points eh? Do you already have a Trigon Prime? It's fast (initiative wise), it's durable, has synapse and is more effective than Genestealers for popping Dreadnoughts in the backfield due to it's Strength.

As for the new Tervie kit, looking at the sprues on GW's website, it appears as though the kit could easily be magnetised to allow for all options. The Gant sacs look as though they just slot over the belly of the beast. As long as you don't mind seams showing up you should be fine.

hey wyoming just saw your blog on gits' blog and thought i would pop on in and say hello and great job cant wait to see waht your nids are doing next i got a buddy starting nids he has already 1000 points of stuff. i was wondering if you had any more tips that i could pass on to him

@Alabama: Welcome to the mini blogg . Well, my next project will be building 2 Tervies and another Trygon.

As to advice: I think knowing your list inside and out is about as important as creating a good list. Our codex has alot of rules and synergies which makes it a bit harder to play than the simple point and shoot armies of IG and SW. Also being able to correctly guess 12" and 6" distances is critical as most of your best synergistic abilities are at this range (Catalyst, SITW, Paradox, and Synapse are all 12", where as the tervies guant buffs and the HT prefered enemy bubble are 6".

For list building some of the more desirable units in the codex are: Tyrant w/a Guard (Paradox, Preferred Enemy Bubble, and/or Bonuses to Reserves are great synergies), Hive Guard (your only reliable anti-tank ranged weapon), Ygmarls (combined with Tyrant's Hive Commander, makes a good backfield hitter early on), Genestealers (strong cc unit), Trygon (strong cc unit), Tervigons (Catalyst, scoring, creates scoring units, and guant buff are great synergies), Parasite (hinders opponents outflankers and is a great leader for a swarm of gargoyles), Gargoyles w/ adrenals and toxic sacs(economical cc unit), guants (to make your Tervie a troop choice). In building a list, these units should form the majority of the points used.

I tend to stay very minimalistic when it comes to upgrades as I prefer a larger number of bodies. This is because tyranids are very much a "in your opponent's face" type of army and therefore sustain horrendous casualties crossing the board. So I avoid giving my Tervies anything beyond Catalyst, Adrenals, and Sacs. Genestealers and guants run naked (guants get buffs from the tervies instead). Gargoyles would be the only exception as thier TS and Adrenal upgrades are cheap and they can't get these benefits from an outside source.

@Dark Gear: I ended up cuting some point here and there and ended up taking 2 Trygons. At this point, I am going to see how the army plays with three synapse (the Tyrant Brood and the two Tervies).

For list building some of the more desirable units in the codex are: Tyrant w/a Guard (Paradox, Preferred Enemy Bubble, and/or Bonuses to Reserves are great synergies), Hive Guard (your only reliable anti-tank ranged weapon), Ygmarls (combined with Tyrant's Hive Commander, makes a good backfield hitter early on), Genestealers (strong cc unit), Trygon (strong cc unit), Tervigons (Catalyst, scoring, creates scoring units, and guant buff are great synergies), Parasite (hinders opponents outflankers and is a great leader for a swarm of gargoyles), Gargoyles w/ adrenals and toxic sacs(economical cc unit), guants (to make your Tervie a troop choice). In building a list, these units should form the majority of the points used

That's a very sound bit of advice and very similar to what I already espouse. The key difference between our approaches is that I privilege shooting over CC as I'm loathe to run headlong into an army while doing no damage during the encroachment phase. This means that Hormogaunts and Genestealers rarely, if ever, have a place in my list.

Keep in mind I'm not saying that Genestealers or Hormogaunts aren't good, I'm just saying that to use them well you need to build your list to support them and that such a list is not my play style.

Trigons are definitely a great choice in the Heavy Support slot. By fielding 2 of them you'll find that you'll almost always have one pop up on a turn 2, leading to a convenient turn 3 charge. They make a great outflanker or counter outflanker. The one thing I don't quite like about them is that tunnel is about as effective as a Webway Portal, i.e., not at all. On boards with a lot of tall terrain, and thus grant cover to the Trigon, the models can be very hard to eliminate, which means your opponent will invariably have to divert a lot of resources to clear whatever is being chewed up.

Can't wait to hear more about your testing.

Yeah, the tunnel is about as effective as the lictor's support abilities (scatter mitigation and reserve bonus)...as in not effective .

Not sure how they thought a reserve bonus that only occurs after the unit arrives from reserve was a good thing.

Or why you can't just deploy Lictors on the table.

Just to flog a dead horse—If GW were serious about being first and foremost a model company, not a game company, one would think they would do their best to have terrific rules for all of their models... Lictors, Carnies, Pyrovores, Raveners, Mandrakes and Talos in particular come to mind.

Heck, even Hive Guard or Zooanthropes could benefit from having larger squad size.

The best piece of gear for tampering with Reserves belongs to the Tau IMHO. If Lictors could force a single unit out of reserves per tun, while forfeiting any other reserve rolls that turn, I'm thinking many Nid players would have bought the model. As it stands Lictors are merely cool bitz of scenery on my dusty shelves.

Cool blog dude!

The paint scheme for your 'Nids is sweet, very natural looking. I might just have to absorb some of your biomass utilise your ideas for my 'Nids!

fox and gear,

thanks for the advice ill be sure to pass it along to him right now he lacks any sort of heavy support. like i said when i first posted its only a thousand points but it will get bigger

yea i agree with the webway portal thing ( i play the deldar)

LostSoulCasey'sLaw wrote:Cool blog dude!

The paint scheme for your 'Nids is sweet, very natural looking. I might just have to absorb some of your biomass utilise your ideas for my 'Nids!

Welcome to the mini-blogg. Glad you like.

OK so...started painting again after 2 months of playing SWTOR and decided to return to painting some albino nids. The work so far: the skin is complete but for some shadow grey cammo spots near the base of his limbs. Otherwise, all that is left is to work on the upper carapace (spacewolf grey fade to white), the feeder tenticles (purple) and the claws/talons (ivory).

I like him wyfox... it's a good scheme. Are you going to color the splits in the skin any differently? I'd always imagined they were exposing some kind of inner tissue that might have a different color?

I assume you are talking about the gills on the legs and arms. No. If you look at my other nids you will notice they are simply shaded and the ridges highlighted so that all in all the areas become darker. Toxic sacs, adrenal glands, tenticles and various other sacs get a fleshy purple color.


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I also noticed that some areas of the skin have a yellow cast. That is the spot lights from my new photo light box. Pic was also taken with my new camera. The skin is various shades of nuetral grey.

looks good man! you guys depress me with my paintbrush thats all im gonna say
seriously great work man good to have you back from the empire

Hi Alabama.

Good to be back and thanks for the compliments. It really all comes down to practice and learning to thin your paints to a milk like consistancy (2%).

I've been painting since I was 16 (now nearing 32) and these were some of my earliest models:



So cheer up, things only get better with time...except back issues

i already have back issues thanks to the army. man those guys still look better than mine im jealous eh ill get there one day. now off the mmo and get your paintbrush good sir and show some awesome off.

Just a thought, but what Carnie needs is Bio-Plasma. It's a 12" Plasma Cannon that doesn't get hot. Excellent against MEQs.


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Also, here's a name: Hive Fleet Stygian.

Heah Squigs,

Bio-Plasma would be nice if it wasn't a 20 point upgrade on a model that is horribly overcosted as is. For now, I have simply shelved my carnies. If 6th edition makes them worth thier weight in points, then adding a bio-plasma head would be easy sinch the current ones are magnitized .

Hmmm Stygian. What does that name refer to?

I don't actually know. I know it means something biblical, but I actually got the name from Darksiders, to be specific, a gigantic ashworm called The Stygian.

"The word Stygian as an adjective, usually refers to the River Styx of the underworld Hades." (from Wikipedia)

Stygia was also one of the kingdoms in the world inhabited by Conan the Barbarian.

LOL guys, I actually kind of like the sound of it "Hive Fleet Stygian"

Glad to be of service! However, I may steal the albino idea, just to break up the monotony on my models. After all, imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

Go right ahead Squigs

Thank you! I shall test it out tommorow, if I get round to it.