stormoffires wrote:

 Leth wrote:
My point on the tunnel is that it gives you OPTIONS. It doesnt have to be crazy powerful, it doesnt even have to be a rule for the model to really impact its value. It may not even come up often, but it gives you potential options.

Have a trygon pop up right next to their objective or in the middle of their deployment zone. Now your reserve units have the OPTION of exiting there. Now do you plan around it? Nope, you are not taking the trygon for the tunnel but it provides potential.

what if all your reserve models come on turn 2.. then nothing can use the tunnel. Or what if your trygon fails to come in turn 2, that means nothing can use the tunnel till turn 4. Even if a unit gets to use the tunnel its only 1 unit per turn, starting earliest turn 3. GW realllly doesnt want you to cross the board anymore :-p

Nate668 wrote:
One interesting thing that I hadn't noticed before I picked up a copy of the book is that the Hausperex is an Elite choice, rather than Heavy Support like I thought. You can now field MC's in each FoC category, which sounds pretty awesome to me. Here's a quick example with 8 individual MC's:

Flyrant - 230
Flyrant - 230
30 Termagants - 120
30 Termagants - 120
Tervigon - 195
Tervigon - 195
Hausperex - 160
Venomthropes x3 - 135
Dakkafex - 150
Mawloc - 140
Exocrine - 170

TOTAL - 1845

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
Does anyone think either of the venom cannons or the strangle cannons (stranglethorn, barbed strangler) are worth taking now? They've all gone down in cost by five points, the venom no longer suffer -1 to vehicle damage, and the Pinning on strangle weapons, coupled with SitW, can cause havoc to psyker based units.

That and I've always loved the look of the guns, especially on big MCs like Tyrants and Carnifexes.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I'm thinking that the biovores would work well with the FMCs. The main problem with the Harpy and the Crone is that they are very vunerable to the Quad Gun, which everyone can take.

Biovores can be used to attack the Quad Gun from a safe distance, perhaps even pinning the squad manning it (or even better, killing it)

CleverAntics wrote:
HQ:

Spoiler:

Hive Tyrant - 230 pts
2x TL Brainleech Worm Devourers
Wings

Hive Tyrant - 230 pts
2x TL Brainleech Worm Devourers

Elite:

2x Venomthropes
1x Venomthropes

Troop:

30x Termagants

Tervigon
Regeneration

Fast Attack:

Harpy
Cluster Spines

Harpy
Cluster Spines

Harpy
Cluster Spines

Heavy Support:

Exocrine
Exocrine
3x Biovores

Finding it hard to make any other sort of list come together. With the reduction in points upon most FMCs/MCs, the first impression I got was the Codex is kinda promoting/pushing MC Mash; or Nidzilla. Seems a bit hard NOT to take 2x or 3x of the same thing, i.e. spamming. So, figured Target Saturation might be worth a shot as per the list above; 5x FMCs and 4x regular ones. Shooting list that can fare alright in Combat; can deal with armor, hordes via the pie-plate mania and a fluctuation in AP via the Exocrines for heavier infantry. Or for taking pot-shots at vehicles if nothing else presents itself. A fair amount of utility, I think, although Troops is kinda light. Hence Momma.

Thought about making the 3rd Flier a Crone, but compared the two and found that the Harpy appears to offer more utility in this; does the same as anything else, shouldn't have a problem with fliers given the various amounts of Vector Strikes and 2x Flyrants with TL Brainleech Worm Devourers. The Flyrants should be able to glance an AR 12 Flier to death by themselves according to averages with their guns.

I dunno. Toying around with things, but like aforementioned, it's hard for me to turn away from MC Mash. Not to mention MCs are my favorite unit in the game anyway. Given I tried to do this with the last Codex, this one fares a lot better and seems to kinda reward it.

Also, so far as some things go...not hellbent on keeping Venomthropes, and the Regeneration on Momma was because I had 30 extra points to mess around with even after adding 3x Venomthropes. Had 165 pts, wasn't sure what to do with it and so got some Venomthropes for MC livability - mostly the Harpies. So, technically have 165 pts I wasn't sure what to do with. Venomthropes themselves have Shrouded, and MODELS within 6" get Shrouded; since it specifies models, won't work very well for the 30x Termagants, because I'm sure that doesn't mean one model in range will give the whole unit Shrouded. If I'm thinking right, that definitely means that they are meant to be used in conjunction with MCs.

Momma will likely sit back with the Exocrines and Biovores, and being only ML 1 and unless she roles up a good power, will use the primaris to extend Synapse if needed. Popping out babies to run to other objectives, etc. As for the Harpy - and Crone for that matter - Synapse isn't really that much of a worry. Only Momma in the back with a Venomthrope hiding behind her in area terrain or ruins is the lynchpin for Synapse. The Flyrants are there for extra FMCs and Synapse; which, in my opinion, doesn't really help that much for the Harpies. They're Fearless, for one, and they're LD 10. It'd be kinda hard to fail that Instinctive Behavior. Plus, they're not that survivable and I am not that worried about protecting 150 pt 4+ armor MCs.

Currently looking to see how a less MC oriented army will look, but it seems something of this vein LOOKS good...but we'll have to see. 5x FMCs alone seems a good enough positive.

What I came up with so far. *Shrugs*

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Regarding Crones- if you land it in cover, how do you handle LOS? Is it still just where the model is mounted? Sorry for the general question.

Enceladus wrote:
I actually think Genestealers will find some use if the new dataslate is as rumoured. I'll be infiltrating them with a Broodlord and pinning whatever I can set my sights on!

What is rumored?

Tyranid Vanguard. It's a dataslate that's supposed to have rules for a detachment of stealers and lictors.

 Therion wrote:

Deshkar wrote:
Just played my first game with the new codex.
Brought a pretty extreme list.

Pretty extreme indeed, 4 Flyrants, 4 elites, 3 fa, 3 hs and 0 troops at all. As far as the Tau list is concerned it's markedly mid-tier as far as Tau power levels go. It almost tried to give you a free win by bringing so many Broadsides against two Mawlocs, when most tournament players dont use any Broadsides at all, or at most use one unit of three.

Swara wrote:
Forts: 75
Spawning pool - Sky shield landing pad

stormoffires wrote:
any UNIT can use trygon tunnel now, so a brood of carnifexs could come up, or even tervigons! but without an FAQ allowing units to be held in reserves this is unreliable and could fail horribly.

stormoffires wrote:im starting to think crons are gonna suck... with only being able to fire 2 weapons you have to pick... 2 missles... vector strike/1 missle... vector strick/flame... hmm harpys might be better off.

 C-Fex wrote:
How about the Trygon Prime with the Miasmic Cannon? It gives him some extra firepower if you DS him in. It makes him pretty expensive coming out at 255 points.
BUT he pops up with 12 str5 shots from the bioelectric pulse, and then either a blast or template attack with the miasmic cannon which wounds on 2+
I'll be trying it out. I've never been a competitive player so I'm not sure if this would be great or not.

 McNinja wrote:
Is it just me, or are Mawlocs incredible now? I mean, they have Terror from the Deep... BUT THEY CAN NOW DO IT TWICE (though it has to be in the same spot).

Holy crap, really? You literally get a mulligan if you can't place the Mawloc after the first round of wounds.

 Therion wrote:
A lot of optimism in this thread. I think it's both welcome and admirable.

To me it seems the Nids aren't that far from being a mid-tier army. The fact just is that there are too many unnecessary nerfs and penalties in the book for it to really compete. Many of the lists that seemingly have a lot of stuff have massive problems with synapse. If your only synapse models are 2 Hive Tyrants I'm not sure how the army is supposed to remain functional very long.

It's a pretty crappy deal that if you take four small units of Gants as your troops, like many other armies are doing with their cheap stuff, and just try to hide them and keep them alive, they'll need babysitting from synapse creatures throughout. On the other hand, if you take just one Tervigon and 30 Gants as your troops, not only is it more expensive but that Tervigon has a massive bullseye on its face. Once it blows, it'll blow up the Gaunts its babysitting, and the others will just IB out. So then you decide to take two Tervigons and 60 Gants, and now you're basically spending 620 points on units that won't do anything all game when what you'd actually like to spend on troops is about 160 points. The Tervigons in the previous edition of the codex were so much more efficient in every way imaginable (as described in jy2's post).

 sfshilo wrote:
It seems to me this codex is not meant to have power units.

Example, instead of pimping out all your mcs, why not drown the board in troops with a crap ton of synapse mcs with no upgrades?

If troops went down that drastically then spam them with hard to kill synapse, lots of it.

I watched the frontline battle report and the guy had TWO synapse. Of course he got messed up. That is like running daemons without heralds....

EmperorForearm wrote:

Swara wrote:
Forts: 75
Spawning pool - Sky shield landing pad

This is very solid with a venom up there guarding your biovores, but it's a tad pricey unless you have a lot packed up there. If you are too crowded those good saves stop helping when their blast weapons start landing or god forbid they hit you with a helldrake.

 jy2 wrote:


And here's a very cool "trick".

Get a Bastion with quad-guns.

Put a venomthrope inside for a 6" shrouded bubble from the building.

Hide a zoan with Dominion behind it for an 18" Synapse bubble.

Put some termagants on the battlements to man the quad-guns. They will be getting 2+ cover from the battlements and the venomthrope.

Swara wrote:

would be 3 warriors 9 biovores and 2 venoms on top spread out.. Should I really worry about a heldrake? I mean baleflamer will ignore cover, but I have a 4+ invul and all but the venoms have 3 wounds.

 jy2 wrote:

Basically, there is a trade-off. The more Synapse MC's you have (i.e. tyrants and tervigons), the worse your offense will be. I don't recommend more than 2 tervigons in any list. I wouldn't even consider 2 until I get to 2K and even then, I'd probably only use 1. You need synapse, but you also need offense against the good armies. That is the reason why I advocate zoanthropes as sources for synapse.

And here's a very cool "trick".

Get a Bastion with quad-guns.

Put a venomthrope inside for a 6" shrouded bubble from the building.

Hide a zoan with Dominion behind it for an 18" Synapse bubble.

Put some termagants on the battlements to man the quad-guns. They will be getting 2+ cover from the battlements and the venomthrope.

 ImotekhTheStormlord wrote:

 jy2 wrote:


And here's a very cool "trick".

Get a Bastion with quad-guns.

Put a venomthrope inside for a 6" shrouded bubble from the building.

Hide a zoan with Dominion behind it for an 18" Synapse bubble.

Put some termagants on the battlements to man the quad-guns. They will be getting 2+ cover from the battlements and the venomthrope.

Can't tyranids not use fortifications?

 ImotekhTheStormlord wrote:

 jy2 wrote:


And here's a very cool "trick".

Get a Bastion with quad-guns.

Put a venomthrope inside for a 6" shrouded bubble from the building.

Hide a zoan with Dominion behind it for an 18" Synapse bubble.

Put some termagants on the battlements to man the quad-guns. They will be getting 2+ cover from the battlements and the venomthrope.

Can't tyranids not use fortifications?

 Happygrunt wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

Basically, there is a trade-off. The more Synapse MC's you have (i.e. tyrants and tervigons), the worse your offense will be. I don't recommend more than 2 tervigons in any list. I wouldn't even consider 2 until I get to 2K and even then, I'd probably only use 1. You need synapse, but you also need offense against the good armies. That is the reason why I advocate zoanthropes as sources for synapse.

And here's a very cool "trick".

Get a Bastion with quad-guns.

Put a venomthrope inside for a 6" shrouded bubble from the building.

Hide a zoan with Dominion behind it for an 18" Synapse bubble.

Put some termagants on the battlements to man the quad-guns. They will be getting 2+ cover from the battlements and the venomthrope.

Sounds interesting, but why won't I just shoot the Bastion?

 jy2 wrote:

 warpspider89 wrote:
Has anyone else considered the possibility of outflanking two Tervigons deep into the enemy's backfield by purchasing and using the Hive Commander upgrade on those almost-mandatory 2x flyrants? For each time it is taken a troop choice can be given outflank. Those Tervigons can then spawn after arrival & the gaunts spawned can run once spawned for a quick spread through the backfield.

It would create a situation where the enemy is forced to either divert significant resources away from the primary front to remove them or accept that they problem will continue to grow turn by turn as more scoring units appear on the new front.

I wouldn't go with more than 1 outflanking tervigon. There are risks involved with outflanking as well:

1. Cannot control which side to come in from. 1/3 of the time will come in on the wrong flank.

2. No way to manipulate reserves. There's a chance you may come in on Turns 3 or later.

3. You need a durable synapse creature to anchor your backfield or midfield. I prefer to use the tervigon for this purpose as he can more easily produce gants that can reach the other objectives. He would also be more in range to use his psychic buffs - Dominion, Catalyst, Onslaught - than if he were to outflank.

4. Having 2 tervigons with 60 gants and 2 Hive Commanders can get very expensive. I'm talking about 670-pts expensive without any other upgrades on those units.

5. You'll have problems against fast armies who can quickly redeploy their units/troops....especially armies like necrons and eldar.

 LValx wrote:
New Nid codex is pretty bad....

That being said, I think you can build a list that makes it a relatively functional army. I think if you build around Flyrants/Crones/Mawlocs you can create a list that will give you the ability to win missions fairly easily. Those units are all fantastic at hunting troops and all 3 can play the denial game vs things like Taudar. FMC daemons do well vs Tau largely because they play a very cagey/tactical game. They dont beat you by tabling you, they win by contesting/killing troops. I believe Nids have the capability to do that well.

 warpspider89 wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

 warpspider89 wrote:
Has anyone else considered the possibility of outflanking two Tervigons deep into the enemy's backfield by purchasing and using the Hive Commander upgrade on those almost-mandatory 2x flyrants? For each time it is taken a troop choice can be given outflank. Those Tervigons can then spawn after arrival & the gaunts spawned can run once spawned for a quick spread through the backfield.

It would create a situation where the enemy is forced to either divert significant resources away from the primary front to remove them or accept that they problem will continue to grow turn by turn as more scoring units appear on the new front.

I wouldn't go with more than 1 outflanking tervigon. There are risks involved with outflanking as well:

1. Cannot control which side to come in from. 1/3 of the time will come in on the wrong flank.

2. No way to manipulate reserves. There's a chance you may come in on Turns 3 or later.

3. You need a durable synapse creature to anchor your backfield or midfield. I prefer to use the tervigon for this purpose as he can more easily produce gants that can reach the other objectives. He would also be more in range to use his psychic buffs - Dominion, Catalyst, Onslaught - than if he were to outflank.

4. Having 2 tervigons with 60 gants and 2 Hive Commanders can get very expensive. I'm talking about 670-pts expensive without any other upgrades on those units.

5. You'll have problems against fast armies who can quickly redeploy their units/troops....especially armies like necrons and eldar.

1. Otherwise stated that means 67% of the time it will show up on the side you choose. Those are solid odds. Further, they can appear from any location along the flank. If you get the wrong side and there is no good forward position to deploy, then send them somewhere useful in your midfield/backfield.

2. This is why two are important, though consider the fact that by turn 3 or 4 there should be much less that can deal with them.

3. Preference does not mean there are not other viable options. This is about getting scoring units into the enemy's territory for scoring/denial and pulling firepower off of the main force.

4. Yes it is expensive but that is less than half of the average cost for a tournament army and all spent on units that are commonly taken anyways. Spend the rest of the points wisely on valuable things like FMC, who can redeploy quickly to push where needed, and MC who will push the middle & anchor the main force.

5. Redeployment still results in pulling troops from one front to the other. If it is a very serious concern, then they troops could be deployed normally.

 Therion wrote:

 LValx wrote:
New Nid codex is pretty bad....

That being said, I think you can build a list that makes it a relatively functional army. I think if you build around Flyrants/Crones/Mawlocs you can create a list that will give you the ability to win missions fairly easily. Those units are all fantastic at hunting troops and all 3 can play the denial game vs things like Taudar. FMC daemons do well vs Tau largely because they play a very cagey/tactical game. They dont beat you by tabling you, they win by contesting/killing troops. I believe Nids have the capability to do that well.

The Crone is such a disfunctional unit though considering it's fragility and the fact it's a massive model on a flyer base that it can't get down from, despite actually not being a flyer. It's never going to hide from anything. It's painfully apparent the rules have changed during playtesting/planning. The model is for a flyer but Cruddy & Co just screwed it all up. Come on, 4 missiles, a flamer weapon and a vector strike, of which it can select to do two per turn, all the while being way too big and visible to justify the T5 SV4+. It's frankly quite ridiculous. The only thing more ridiculous are the admirable Tyranid players in this thread who will still try to make it work.

Tactical_Genius wrote:
Has no-one mentioned escalation yet???

 LValx wrote:

 Therion wrote:

 LValx wrote:
New Nid codex is pretty bad....

That being said, I think you can build a list that makes it a relatively functional army. I think if you build around Flyrants/Crones/Mawlocs you can create a list that will give you the ability to win missions fairly easily. Those units are all fantastic at hunting troops and all 3 can play the denial game vs things like Taudar. FMC daemons do well vs Tau largely because they play a very cagey/tactical game. They dont beat you by tabling you, they win by contesting/killing troops. I believe Nids have the capability to do that well.

The Crone is such a disfunctional unit though considering it's fragility and the fact it's a massive model on a flyer base that it can't get down from, despite actually not being a flyer. It's never going to hide from anything. It's painfully apparent the rules have changed during playtesting/planning. The model is for a flyer but Cruddy & Co just screwed it all up. Come on, 4 missiles, a flamer weapon and a vector strike, of which it can select to do two per turn, all the while being way too big and visible to justify the T5 SV4+. It's frankly quite ridiculous. The only thing more ridiculous are the admirable Tyranid players in this thread who will still try to make it work.

You aren't saying anything new or enlightening and your post's only serve to further bring down the morale of people who play the army. No one is delusional enough to think that these units are optimized or that the codex is going to be a great one, but you have to start somewhere.

I'm not sure the massed MCs running up the field will work. New codices can just shoot too well.

 Therion wrote:

Tactical_Genius wrote:
Has no-one mentioned escalation yet???

No, because everyone else do escalation (with forgeworld lords of war pdf) better than the Nids do, so it would only make matters worse.

 LValx wrote:

 Therion wrote:

 LValx wrote:
New Nid codex is pretty bad....

That being said, I think you can build a list that makes it a relatively functional army. I think if you build around Flyrants/Crones/Mawlocs you can create a list that will give you the ability to win missions fairly easily. Those units are all fantastic at hunting troops and all 3 can play the denial game vs things like Taudar. FMC daemons do well vs Tau largely because they play a very cagey/tactical game. They dont beat you by tabling you, they win by contesting/killing troops. I believe Nids have the capability to do that well.

The Crone is such a disfunctional unit though considering it's fragility and the fact it's a massive model on a flyer base that it can't get down from, despite actually not being a flyer. It's never going to hide from anything. It's painfully apparent the rules have changed during playtesting/planning. The model is for a flyer but Cruddy & Co just screwed it all up. Come on, 4 missiles, a flamer weapon and a vector strike, of which it can select to do two per turn, all the while being way too big and visible to justify the T5 SV4+. It's frankly quite ridiculous. The only thing more ridiculous are the admirable Tyranid players in this thread who will still try to make it work.

You aren't saying anything new or enlightening and your post's only serve to further bring down the morale of people who play the army. No one is delusional enough to think that these units are optimized or that the codex is going to be a great one, but you have to start somewhere.

I'm not sure the massed MCs running up the field will work. New codices can just shoot too well.

You're saying something new and englightening then? Excuse me? Is that the criteria to be able to post in this thread? You got arguments and you got counter arguments. My argument is that a top tier competitive TAC list from the Tyranids cannot be made. You can prove that wrong by against all odds building such a force and posting it here. I'll try to argue against it untill it's painfully clear I'm wrong.

To me it seems that the problems regarding the Harpy & Crone miniatures are a rather good point to bring up in relation to you comparing Nids with FMC Daemon spam. They're nothing alike.

 warpspider89 wrote:
The Flyrant & Harpy strategy should be used in-conjunction with this plan. Also Mawlocs are an inferior option because they do not contain the potential to score or to tie up MSU.

Tactical_Genius wrote:
Has no-one mentioned escalation yet???