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Just how badly have the new Tyranids been "nerfed"? The consensus so far on the Internet between experienced Tyranid players as well as many veteran players alike is that the new codex is worse than the previous one. Some have even gone so far as to proclaim Tyranids as being the worst army in the game currently! Well, I must have tunnel vision, because I can only see how good the codex can potentially be. Yes, I know we have lost a lot since our previous dex, but I am not one to dwell on the past. I am also not one to give up so easily on my beloved Tyranids. Instead, I look towards the future. And the future is this. We've been given a book that is somewhat limited in terms of the "tools" that it has. However, its strength is that most of those "tools" have gone down in price. So while you may not have a tool for all occasions, you do have lots of the same tools in case 1 wears down. For this game, I am going to take full advantage of that.

Now for my first report, I was kind of conflicted in what I should run. There are many interesting and potentially good units in the book. My first tendency was to give each unit a try. However, I decided against that. Instead of building an army that showcases a variety of units, I opted to go with a highly optimized and what I feel is a very competitive Tyranid army. No, this list isn't trying to be nice. This list isn't trying to test out a variety of tyranid units. This list is just one lean, mean devouring machine. Instead I chose to test out what I feel can be a very competitive Tyranid build - Maximum Threat Overload (MTO) Tyranids. And I'm going to have to bring my best, because I will be going up against one of the best armies in the game today....Taudar! What better way to show the competitive level of tyranids than by challenging one of the strongest armies.

My opponent, Spam Adam, is a very experienced Tau player and his list is really mean. Of all the armies that my tournament necrons have beaten, Tau is the one army that has consistently given them the most trouble. Now my tyranids will be facing that same army - Adam's Triptide Tau! So if you want to check out what the various Tyranid units can do, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to wait for one of my future battle reports. However, if you want to see what bad-a$$es tyranids can be....if you want to see my Hive Fleet Pandora kick a$$ and take names....then you've come to the right place.

Ladies and gents, prepare for war!


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2K NEW Tyranids! Maximum Threat Overlord Hive Fleet Pandora vs Triptide Tau


2000 Tyranids - Double-FOC's



Flyrant - Wings, 2xTL-Brainleech Devourers
Flyrant - Wings, 2xTL-Brainleech Devourers
Flyrant - Wings, 2xTL-Brainleech Devourers
Flyrant - Wings, 2xTL-Brainleech Devourers

1x Venomthrope
1x Zoanthrope
1x Zoanthrope

Tervigon
30x Termagants
10x Termagants
10x Termagants

17x Gargoyles
5x Raveners - Rending Claws
5x Raveners - Rending Claws

Bastion



2000 Tau + Eldar



This is an approximation of his list:

Primary:

Tau Commander - Plasma Rifle, Iridium Armour, Command & Control Node, Multi-Spectrum Suite, Puretide Engram Neurochip, Vectored Retro-thrusters

Riptide - Heavy Burst Cannon, TL-SMS, Early Warning Override, Velocity Tracker
Riptide - Heavy Burst Cannon, TL-SMS, Early Warning Override, Velocity Tracker
Riptide - Heavy Burst Cannon, TL-SMS, Early Warning Override, Velocity Tracker

6x Fire Warriors - Devilfish w/TL-SMS + Disruption Pods
6x Fire Warriors - Devilfish w/TL-SMS + Disruption Pods
13x Kroots

7x Pathfinders
7x Pathfinders
7x Pathfinders

2x Broadsides - Early Warning Override, TL-SMS, TL-HYMP
2x Broadsides - Early Warning Override, TL-SMS, TL-HYMP
2x Broadsides - Early Warning Override, TL-SMS, TL-HYMP

Allied Detachment:

Farseer - Jetbike

3x Windrider Jetbikes


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Mission: Bay Area Open

Primary: The Scouring - 4-pts

Secondary: Purge the Alien - 3-pts

Bonus: First Blood, Linebreaker, Slay the Warlord - 1-pt each


Deployment: Hammer & Anvil


Initiative: Tyranids


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PRE-GAME THOUGHTS:

Really wasn't expecting to see Ravenors in there. I hope you gave it your best in this one as for a lot of people, this will be 'it' for making up there mine on new Nids.

As always I have the up most faith in you and Pandora.

I'm guessing the Raveners are for backfield disruption.

I don't quite understand why you wouldn't take two Mawlocs instead. They are even better and suit the theme much more appropriately.

Harpies would also have suited nicely. 6 FMC FTW!

Lots of LoS terain on that board that should certainly help the nids close in.

Still all that str 8 will slaughter the medium size nids.

Should be in interesting match.

would be much more valid if you didnt have to rely on double FOC to spam the most decent thing we have

TBH JY2, you are not playing competitve Nids now, you are playing Codex Hive tyrant.

If we want a conclusive test it should be 1850 with normal force org. Quite Curious to see your list for that point lvl.

but anyhow I want to see the Nids getting their ass kicked,

Although I'm still very interested in the outcome of this game, it'll have a lot taken away from it by the fact that you're relying on 4 Flyrants via double FoC. I look forward to seeing what your competitive Nid lists do at 1850 or single FoC when you can't just double up on the best units we have.

Tau will romp this. I've seen several betreps already with Nids taking on Tau using the new codex and Riptides have taken them apart every time. The games could've been won by 2 Riptides and little else.

I think Stealers with a Broodlord using The Horror and forcing Pinning tests on Riptides are the key to beating Tau armies. I'll be trying it soon against my brother and will let you know the outcome!

I have to agree with everyone that the double force org helps you a lot.

Since he took all of the toys and skimped on the troops the only question I have is can you kill his scoring units before he kills your hive tyrants?

Interesting aggressive approach, do you utilize the Hive commander outflank option of the Hive tyrants? I'm curious to see if there are enough Gargoyles in this list for screening purposes.

Relying on double FOC just seems like a crutch. I'd rather see an 1850 point list TBH.

Even with double FOC, this is definitely not the list I'd take for this situation.

For learning purposes, its just the same old Flyrant only with a better BS and different psychic powers, theres not too much to garner.

Interesting about the raveners! Bummer about double FOC as it limits how much I can apply from this, but still looking forward to reading it

Everyone saying JY2 is playing codex fly rants is a bit off in my mind. After all, Tau is codex Riptides then. Why not take multiples of the best unit? But, I still have to favor Tau here. That's a pure Dakka army. He won't dent the Bastion but otherwise he basically ignores Venom fire by allowing you your armor save. Terrain can keep the Ravs alive but I don't see it ending well.

PS, this is the fame the Tyrrannofex was born for!

I actually managed to win two battles against my friend who plays Tau with the new nids. My list was dual flyrants, dual zoeys, one venomthrope, 2 mawlocs, 3 dakkafexes and four MSU termagants. The key to victory against the Tau waaaaas either Horror or Paroxysm powers and taking out their markers in the first turn. If the Tau cannot shoot straight or boost their BS with markerlights, they aren't really that dangerous. The list my friend played wasn't a pure competitive list though, he had a Cadre Fireblade, 3x12 FWs, a riptide, a hammerhead, a skyray, some crisis suits with plas and melta and 3 broadsides.

TL;DR - good strategies on Tau (If you've got Horror or Paroxysm powers)
- first turn concentrate on finishing off the markerlights
- Horroring up the problem units (such as Broadsides) and then forcing a ld check will get them outta your hair quick.
- if you manage to roll Paroxysm several times - that is a really good thing. It almost shuts down any Tau unit bar vehicles.

Oh, and a Mawloc with its dual pieplate can royally screw over broadsides / crisis / FW castles. Pure fun.

I actually agree with several other posts here. While I eagerly anticipate this battle report, I would really like to see a single org force chart game against the Tau player.

After all, even though it is 2000 pts, the tau player is only using 1 FOC's worth of slots. I'm curious as to what kind of list you could manage to challenge the Tau player with below 2000 pts, Jy2!

I know I'm echoing what everybody else is saying here, but using double FOC seems a little bit of a stretch to call this competitive Tyranids. Some tournaments don't even allow double FOC even when they are at that point level, and most are less to begin with.

I'm also confused at the raveners?

What's your reasoning for picking Raveners over Shrikes? You prefer the extra point of Initiative and beast movement over jump infantry movement and extra ld10/Synapse?

 jifel wrote:
Everyone saying JY2 is playing codex fly rants is a bit off in my mind. After all, Tau is codex Riptides then. Why not take multiples of the best unit? But, I still have to favor Tau here. That's a pure Dakka army. He won't dent the Bastion but otherwise he basically ignores Venom fire by allowing you your armor save. Terrain can keep the Ravs alive but I don't see it ending well.

PS, this is the fame the Tyrrannofex was born for!

Probably because the tau list took what was legal for standard FOC. It doesn't look good when only one player is using double FOC to make his entire list work.

PS funny that you label Tau as codex riptides when they have money auto take units in every slot


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Redemption wrote:
What's your reasoning for picking Raveners over Shrikes? You prefer the extra point of Initiative and beast movement over jump infantry movement and extra ld10/Synapse?

He may be restricted to what he owns for models and didn't want to proxy for this one.

Heck, I have yet to see an actual shrike in person

I am conflicted about this bat rep.

While I agree with the concensus: The game should have been played under 2k points to avoid the double force org.

I, however, think that we are going to see Jy2 display a tactic that will become the new "monobuild" for "competitive" Tyranid lists: Bastion with Venomthrope embarked + Zoanthrope hiding out of LOS behind it.

Any person who can read, has already been able to tell that Flyrants will STILL be a crutch for Tyranid players.

Finally, while I think the Nids will be able to give Tau a run for the money based on 1 thing alone....which is the Flyrant's mobility.

 Fxeni wrote:
I actually agree with several other posts here. While I eagerly anticipate this battle report, I would really like to see a single org force chart game against the Tau player.

After all, even though it is 2000 pts, the tau player is only using 1 FOC's worth of slots. I'm curious as to what kind of list you could manage to challenge the Tau player with below 2000 pts, Jy2!

Yes, it very much seems like your trying to exploit the key strong Nid unit with 4x FHT. Still curious to see how they do, even against a single FOC Tau.

Fragile wrote:

 Fxeni wrote:
I actually agree with several other posts here. While I eagerly anticipate this battle report, I would really like to see a single org force chart game against the Tau player.

After all, even though it is 2000 pts, the tau player is only using 1 FOC's worth of slots. I'm curious as to what kind of list you could manage to challenge the Tau player with below 2000 pts, Jy2!

Yes, it very much seems like your trying to exploit the key strong Nid unit with 4x FHT. Still curious to see how they do, even against a single FOC Tau.

And the guy using the 3 Riptides, and his allied slot just to get a Jetstar isn't trying to exploit the key strong unit in his codex, no?

I agree vs Tau that Mawlocs are probably better suited than Raveners, but you have to consider that one is a heavy support while the other is fast attack. Raveners vs Shrikes - Shrikes actually make more sense in a lot of cases, and now that you can mix/match wargear I might just be converting some of my 30+ warriors so i can have a unit of 3-6 escorting my raveners up the table. If only they could take bio-cannons....

Edit - holy crap they can now. Venom Cannon Shrike, you will be soon a model i own! Now to get some gargoyle wings....

So here we basically have a Nid army that uses double FOC and a Tau army that uses a single FOC. Is that the handicap that Tyranids need in order to get a competitive force going?

I think this is an extremely bad approach to take on a battle where the premise according to your own words is finding out how badly the Tyranids have been nerfed. You won't have 4 Flyrants in 1.85K pts, but the Tau will still have 3 Riptides or more.

At 2K pts I'd just rather field Tau with Tau allies with 4 Riptides and 4 Skyrays. Personally I think the Tau list is really bad (2x Devilfish when you got double FOC slots still available, and that many Broadsides in general), other than being seemingly pre-tooled against FMCs, considering barely anyone buys velocity trackers for 3 Riptides normally.

This will be interesting. At least the table doesn't overly favor the Tau.

If those flyrants get into assault, it will be uuugly however

Look forward to seeing what happens, I agree with you (in premise) that the Tyranids book is actually quite good if you use it correctly, sadly I don't think a game where you use double FOC is going to illustrate this very well, would have rather seen a single FOC build instead, since that is what most people are using to measure viability.

Double FOC is a huge boon for the Tyranids. Really not a realistic way to test the new codex.

On top of that, and much more important, you are playing on a table with 18 LOS blocking structures. That is ridiculous. to balance it out you should play another game with no terrain at all.

18 LOS blocking pieces of terrain really break the game as much as playing on the plains of Nebraska does.

Here is the prediction.

Tau will spend the game trying to kill the 4 Flyrants, Gargoyles and raveners who make it into the Tau lines bacuse of all that LOS blocking terrain. The 3 little Tau troop units get killed along with all the Bug attackers, but the Bugs still win because small squads of bug scoring units will remain alive in the backfield behind LOS blocking terrain.

The most powerful unit nids could field against that tau list is deathleaper.

We should all be happy that JY2 puts in the time and energy he does, that being said I am on board with the folks who are saying that this is a bad representation of Nids. Most folks don't play double FOC and 1850 has become the standard. I'd much rather see a Nid list using a single FOC. Double FOC is definitely the key to getting better Nid builds which is why I am biding my time for the inevitable supplement that allows Nids to ally with themselves.

Eldercaveman wrote:

Fragile wrote:

 Fxeni wrote:
I actually agree with several other posts here. While I eagerly anticipate this battle report, I would really like to see a single org force chart game against the Tau player.

After all, even though it is 2000 pts, the tau player is only using 1 FOC's worth of slots. I'm curious as to what kind of list you could manage to challenge the Tau player with below 2000 pts, Jy2!

Yes, it very much seems like your trying to exploit the key strong Nid unit with 4x FHT. Still curious to see how they do, even against a single FOC Tau.

And the guy using the 3 Riptides, and his allied slot just to get a Jetstar isn't trying to exploit the key strong unit in his codex, no?

No. 3 Riptides is perfectly legit in single FOC, although somewhat uncommon here, 4 HQs on the other hand is not. Without being disrespectful to JY2, "Well, I must have tunnel vision, because I can only see how good the codex can potentially be" is not being represented in this list. There is no doubt HTs are very strong, last codex to this one. But this list is doubling the FOC to get access to more Tyrant power. Why when the rest of your list is single FOC. Id rather see 3x Exocrines there.

It's been said about a hundred times now, but I throw my hat in at the double force org concerns as well.