Not Impressed by New Nids

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**Waaaghpower**

So, I just played my first competitive game against new Nids, (I have played and seen a few before, but this was my first comp. one,) and I have to say I found them to be underwhelming.
It was an 1850 game.
I took Coteaz, a Hereticus Inquisitor, a Rune Priest, 3 Drop Pods (2 with 2x Plasma, one with 2x Melta), 5 Missile Launchers in Long Fangs, 5 Plasma Cannons in fangs, Tigurius, 5 Scouts with Camo Cloaks and Telion, and a Stormraven with an Assault Cannon and Multi-Melta. The Plasma Fangs had Plasma Pistols and Wolf Standards, and I had intentionally splurged elsewhere as well on worthless or mediocre but fun options. (Like Telion.)

He had a Flyrant, a walking CC Tyrant, a Harpy, 2 Exocrines, 2 Carnifaxes in a brood, a Venomthrope, 60 Gants, and 2 Tervigons.

I wiped the floor with him. By endgame, he had killed... My Hereticus inquisitor and the scouts. Most of my Grey Hunter squads were at half strength, true, and I had lost 3 Heavy Weapons and a captain between my Long Fangs, but that's all the damage he caused. His army was completely gone by turn 4. I wouldn't have even lost the Inquisitor if it weren't for really bad dice. In fact, I had mediocre to bad dice all game. (Despite having rerolls, 2 Plasma Cannons got hot and failed to fire in the first 2 turns.) By turn 3 his Synapse was all gone and I just had cleanup to do. This is in spite of my intentionally sloppy list building (I could have gotten 5 more missile launchers with no practical differences to the rest of my list, and with points to spare,) and my fairly silly list as a whole. (Four psykers to buff 2 Heavy Weapons squad is obvious overkill. I had more prescience than I did units to cast it on.)

So, did he just bring a bad list? It wasn't the dice that killed him, for sure, he had good rolls all game. His tactics weren't bad, either. (And he put a bunch of LOS blocking terrain in front of my Aegis Line/All of my guns thanks to friggin' alternating terrain, too. Thank goodness for lots of targets, windows, and Perfect Timing.)
(Lemme tell you, Psycollum is hilarious with 5 Plasma Cannons when you can use it, albeit not that much more useful than Prescience.)

**majendie**

Shouldn't you be putting your Aegis down *after* all the terrain is placed? It's a deployment step, not a terrain placement, right? I could be wrong there...

We've all had games like this - I've had games where I've been wiped out when I thought on paper I shouldn't have been, and vice-versa. If he got all your squads to half strength but didn't kill much, possibly he was spreading his fire out too thin? I find Tyranids (and, well, most armies in this) are best focused rather than dispersed - if he was attacking different units with each of his, perhaps he never really brought enough concentrated force to bear to break through.

Hard to say though - on paper that looks like a strong force, at least strong enough to deal with your Wolves...

**Waaaghpower**

You place Fortifications first, then terrain. (Assuming you use Alternating terrain. I much preffered 5th ed, where you actually had to make a balanced table since you didn't know which side you'd be getting...)

For a more in-depth review of the game, here's how it went down.
I got turn one, and between BS10 Ignores Cover Plasma, sone stray Missile Launchers and Scouts, and both Plasma Grey Hunters squads I was able to down the walking Tyrant, 1 Tervigon, and 1 Carnifax. With all of his return fire, he killed the Plasma Cannon captain, 1 Plasma Cannon, the Hereticus Inquisitor (My Warlord), and like 3 Grey Hunters between the two squads. He then assaulted 1 squad with his Carnifax, and the other with one bubble of Gants. Carnifax killed 4 Grey Hunters and they failed leadership, escaping, Grey Hubters started cutting down Gants (despite failing counter-attack.) Both Wolf Standards were activated... And didn't do a damned thing. Not a single re-rolled one passed.
Turn two, I brought in the Stormraven, (Drop Pod rolled a 1,) killed the Flyrant, hurt an Exocrine, finished off the last Carnifax, killed some Gants. One Exocrine was then out of Synapse and had to shoot at a Drop Pod (It caused 2 Hull Points!) The other killed a Missile Launcher. Harpy hurt and then assaulted my scouts. Kiled all but one, who remained locked in combat. His Tervigon spawned 9 Gants.
Turn 3, my last Drop Pod came in. Between it,my Plasma Cannons, the not-locked-in-combat Grey Hunters, and my Missile Launchers I killed the last Tervigon and both Exocrines. With no Synapse, it was all downhill for him from there. His Harpy whiffed all three attacks on my turn in CC,so we were stuck in combat until the end of his turn. I finished the close combat with the first gant squad that assaulted me, too.
After that, it was just a mop-up. I killed his harpy pretty easily (5 Twin-Linked Ignores cover Missile Launchers, a Lascannon with the same buffs, and 5 Plasma Cannons.) Cleanup on the Gants was easy peasy.

**Noctem**

I swear I read that you deploy fortifications after terrain.

**citadel**

Terrain is placed after fortifications, so Aegis -> Terrain.

In regards to the nid list, I can't really say it's the best. I don't see much cohesion or synergy to it. To go through it point by point:

HQ - Walking CC tyrant is asking to get shot up before it has a chance to make it to melee range. Was it a naked HT without guards? Or a Swarmlord with guards? Or without? Because if no guards... eek. Any walkrant really needs guns if you want to give it any sort of threat generation, otherwise you'll just get kited and shot down. If you reaaaaaally want a CC rant, go with wings, otherwise you have no real delivery method. Otherwise, stick with the 2dakka flyrant. I imagine you just LFanged down his walkrant when it became a threat, and otherwise ignored it.

FA - Harpys are ok, but I'd rather see the Crone if he has the model. Tenticlids, S8 Vector Strike, and a FMC S6 template will win out over the STC/HVC. The -5 initiative thing is nice, but really needs to have synergy with the rest of an assault based army that does not appear to be in that list.

HS - In my opinion, the real weakness in that list are the 2 Exocrines. At bs3/4, they're decent, but you can't really rely on them to do any of your dirty work and they can be handled relatively easily. Rather than 2 exo, advise him to try 1 tyranno with ASpray + E.Grubbs and 1 exo/1bio + two dakkafex. This HS would be much stronger, more resilient, and creates many more threat scenarios than 2 Exo and 2 dakkafex.

Troop - 60 terma, true swarm, and does unlock the double Tervigon but to be quite honest, I don't ever really see a reason to run more than 1 Tervigon (if even one). Take small squads of troops and you can make up all the models that you would have spawned out, and use the extra points to net a squad of 25~ gargs, or a tyranno, or another FMC, or 3 zoeys or... it goes on and on. Tervi are nice, but considering all of our MCs are that much cheaper and we can swarm the field with scoring gribbles anyway, they're not necessary to be competitive. Synapse can be maintained much easier and cheaper with 2zoey + 1zoey for elite units. Without the tervigons, he has a ton of more room to play with troops, scoring, and other threat generators than 2 tervigons.

Overall, I really feel like he lost when he decided to go with the 2 Exo and 2 Tervigon, 1 flyrant and 1 cc walkrant. Whole lotta points for not very much gain, and if the exo's miss (which, they will, and often) the nid wont be doing much damage.

Edit - Saw your battle summary after my post. After having said most of that, it looks like you had a pretty awesome Turn 1. Losing a tyrant, terv, and carni so quick is brutal, and leaves the nid with around 1200 points and limited synapse. I guess he didn't have any tyrant guard for the walkrant, which really, that's just a nonobad.

**Andilus Greatsword**

Nids need LOS-blocking terrain severely, since they have to either footslog, fly in the distraction units or use reserve shenanigans to get anywhere. If they didn't have much, then that could contribute significantly to a major loss.

It sounds like he had an okay list though. They probably shouldn't have bothered with the CC Tyrant or the Harpy, and I'd argue that 2x 30 Gaunts is overkill to get 2 scoring Tervigons - that might be just me though. Still, the list was decent enough, and should have put up a bit more of a fight.

**Waaaghpower**

No Hive Guard on the Walkrant, he had a CC Build, I killed him turn one for First Blood and Slay the Warlord.

The First Turn was brutal on him, but it's not because of bad dice. The dice were pretty flat average across the board.Onr squad of Grey Hunters did a bit better than expected, but my MLs did slightly worse so it balanced out.
There was plenty of LOS blocking terrain.In fact, building were placed directly in front of most of the Aegis Line. (I really hate Alternating terrain. Narrative really is much better.)

He was proxying the Harpy anyways, so it could have been a crone for all I cared.

**citadel**

Yeah, seems like a mixture of an unoptimized list + brutal turn 1. Don't get me wrong, his list isn't terrible, but lacks focus and direction. I'd invite him to check out http://thetyranidhive.proboards.com/ if he wants to read up on some effective nid strategies. Otherwise, well done!

**PrinceRaven**

It's actually a decent list apart from the walking Tyrant when it comes to Tyranids without formations, but we really need the formations to compete at the same level as books with allies.

**xttz**

It was a MC-heavy ground army against missile and plasma spam with psyker support. Basically he brought paper and you brought scissors...

I'd also question the double Tervigon choice - they don't provide reliable buffs anymore and act as a real liability for other Termagants. His troops have no chance once the Tervis start to drop.

There's no doubt it would have been a very different story if the Nid player had chosen the popular flying circus build (especially with the new formation). Plasma cannons can't do much against that, and multiple Crones would have made short work of the Stormraven, leaving you to rely on failed grounding tests.

**AllSeeingSkink**

I don't think they had a very good list. They went nidzilla but with 1 walking tyrant, 1 flying tyrant and nothing much to tie up the enemy while the foot slogging MC's plod up the board being blown apart.

That might work against an army that has no anti-tank/anti-MC, but most armies these days have enough S6+ AP3 to dominate a slow moving nidzilla list.

If he had of taken 2 flying Tyrants, dropped a Tervigon and taken a bunch of Gargoyles, you may have had a much harder time.

Though he was up against the wall against a plasma and ML heavy Space Wolf army, you can just blow away the big bugs with you guns and then stomp the small bugs in CC.

Space Wolves are the rock to the Tyranids scissors. They're one of the best armies against them because they are very efficient at shooting them up and then the survivors will have a tough time being you in CC.

**Waaaghpower**

I'm getting that he had a mediocre list, against an army that just happened to counter him really well. (It was random draw: I was using a TAC list and so was he.)
That's a bit of a relief. I was a bit worried that they had been hit with the Nerf Bat even harder than I'd heard.

**PrinceRaven**

With the Skyblight Swarm formation I'd say Tyranids are actually stronger than they were previously.

**Waaaghpower**

PrinceRaven wrote:
With the Skyblight Swarm formation I'd say Tyranids are actually stronger than they were previously.

How does the Skyblight formation work? I've not heard much about it.

**PrinceRaven**

It consists of a winged Hive Tyrant, 2 Harpies, a Hive Crone and 3 units of Gargoyles. As well as allowing you to field up to 9 Flying Monstrous Creatures in a list, the Gargoyle broods can capture objectives and can not be contested by scoring units. And when your opponent kills a Gargoyle brood you rull a d6 and on a 4+ an identical unit to the one recently slain will arrive from Ongoing Reserves on your next turn.

**Ashiraya**

And they get this, effectively, for free?

Come on GW, the P2W gets a little OTT now.

**PrinceRaven**

Well, we have to pay the Harpy tax to get them, though there are worse tax units than Harpies *cough*warriorssuck*cough*. I don't see this as being more powerful than Space Marines being able to ally with themselves, Eldar or Tau, or Tau allying with Eldar, or Tau and Eldar in general...

**Ashiraya**

Yeah, but still. It's 'Here, pay $$$ to get free bonuses for your army.'

**PrinceRaven**

"Here, pay $$$ to get stuff to make up for the terrible codex we gave you. We could have easily put this stuff in the book, but we love blatant cash-grabs."

**Ashiraya**

Double post.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

PrinceRaven wrote:
"Here, pay $$$ to get stuff to make up for the terrible codex we gave you. We could have easily put this stuff in the book, but we love blatant cash-grabs."

Indeed, which makes the issue even worse. Pay for subpar rules, then pay for bandaid fixes. :|

**Makumba**

Most places ban formations anyway , so it doesn't realy matter .

**Hivefleet Oblivion**

PrinceRaven wrote:
With the Skyblight Swarm formation I'd say Tyranids are actually stronger than they were previously.

We played a good Eldar list with Flying Circus last week, and drew, forgot to vector strike the Crones and lost a flyrant with really unlucky rolls.

With Skyblight I'm confident we'd have minced him.

Yes, we had to pay £8 for the blinkin' dataslate (we now keep a look out for discount iTUnes cards, they're alawys available), but if you ally you generally have to shell out for another codex.The dataslate £££ dwarfed by the price of another crone and 10 gargoyles.

Now, who will swap me some tyrant wings? Remember, you're stopping money going to GW...

**xttz**

BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Yeah, but still. It's 'Here, pay $$$ to get free bonuses for your army.'

It's 'free' in the same sense that adding allies, Inquisition or Knights to other armies is 'free'. You still need the ~£10 DLC and the models. But that's getting off-topic somewhat.

Space Wolves have always fared well against Tyranid ground lists. They have a combination of troops which are solid in melee, plus good options for heavy weapons that are effective against the common T6 3+ saves. This situation is just magnified by the allies system, letting them plug up their weakness to anti-air, the main strength for Tyranids.
This fight was lost before a single die was rolled thanks to the army and list selections on each side.

**PrinceRaven**

Makumba wrote:
Most places ban formations anyway , so it doesn't realy matter .

If a club wanted to ban me from playing formations but let everyone else use allies I would find a different club.

xttz wrote:
This fight was lost before a single die was rolled thanks to the army and list selections on each side.

6th edition in a nutshell.

**Roci**

I'd bet any formation gets "banned" it will be the skyblight. The others are marginal at best and the points they eat up make it rough to round out a list.

The super scoring never contested gargoyles will send people over the edge. It will be ranked with the Tau formation.

**PrinceRaven**

They're not as powerful as you think, only scoring units can't contest them, the rest of your army can.

**Roci**

That is not as bad, I still see it banned in a lot of places. Though the nids make the most sense to allow them at this point.

As for the OP, the list wasn't the best and your list was a fairly hard counter. That said, the nids are not a power house by any means.

**Plumbumbarum**

Living artillery is decent too, if you want triple Mawlocks or dual Mawlocks and Tyrranofex but also Biovores for example

On topic, 3 exocrines and walking Tyrant without guard are not best ideas imo.