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The Tyranid Swarm box is awesome. You basically get the gargoyles and carnifex for free.

Davor wrote:
What is your play style? Do you like shooty or assaulty armies? Are you a hoardy or few elite player? Maybe a combination of all of the above?

Do you need to win? Do you play for fun? Do you plan on going to tournaments and want to win?

Also what edition of the codex is? Is it the hard cover 6th edition codex, or a soft cover previous edition? Make sure there.

*edit* Hit the reply button too soon. Looks like you bought it. My questions are still valid so when you want to continue making your fleet bigger.

Yeah man. The trade deal is done, but I'll resurrect this post if I ever get to buying stuff.

Just FYI, I mainly play Necrons, and I want to get into something different for flavors sake. This deal kinda landed on me without me looking for it. I always liked Tyranids just or the models. I don't need to win, but of course I prefer winning. I play mostly for fun in a pretty competitve environment list-wise, but I do not play tournaments, and don't have any interest in doing so (this is not anti- "tournament players" rant, its just not my cup of tea). I'll be getting 6th Edition version of the Tyranid Codex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Davor wrote:
The Tyranid Swarm box is awesome. You basically get the gargoyles and carnifex for free.

Yup...I'm thinking that when I can afford it, this seems like the most cost-effective way to beef up my troop choices and add a little something else to boot.

 jasper76 wrote:
I'm closing in on a deal for a starter Tyranid army + Codex. and I forgot to solicit feedback on the most important thing:

Is the Tyranid codex fun to play?

Without the formations it's a soulless, flavorless skeleton that plays as boringly as the badly done lore in the codex reads. It's very obviously something Gw half assed so you'd need to buy overpriced slates, supplements, and forgeworld to get the most out of your collection.

And yes, I am bitter about being screwed by Gw for two editions straight.

The formations add much needed flavor and fun though. They're all cool to use even if there are some that are vastly superior to the others.

 jasper76 wrote:

 eskimo wrote:
Feel proud you don't have crutches like Quad Guns and ADLs.

Oh hell no. If this deal goes through, I'll eventually pick up one of these puppies, or convert something similar.

Unless, of course, the Codex prohibits you from brining fortifications...in which case I will ignore that rule, and eventually pick up one of these puppies, or convert something similar.

I've seen a few variants of them, and i will admit i've been heavily tempted. It just feels wrong in the way of Nids playing like everyone else.

But if the walls were living and had wounds then i'd get some for sure.

But if playing tournies then you gotta do what you gotta do.



Good to see the positive posts in this thread!

<deleted for redundancy>

Just avoid playing DE venom spam....still one of the most one sided games in 40k

Are people still playing the Tyranids-sucks-ever-so-much song? I've been dominating most of my games with Tyranids and there are a lot of batreps that confirms that Tyranids has a good power level. If you're still stuck on spamming Mawlocs and Tervigons, while calling everything else gak, then yes, you're going to lose.

Pick up biovores, get Aegis, abuse the gak out of Venomthropes and deploy aggressively with multiple threats. Learn to win.

PS: Tyranids have been reported to be on par with Space Marines, while only really struggles vs TauDar lists. Although it is still worth mentioning that tournaments that uses BP is hard for the Tyranids, since the games tends to be closer.

Zewrath wrote:
Are people still playing the Tyranids-sucks-ever-so-much song? I've been dominating most of my games with Tyranids and there are a lot of batreps that confirms that Tyranids has a good power level. If you're still stuck on spamming Mawlocs and Tervigons, while calling everything else gak, then yes, you're going to lose.

Pick up biovores, get Aegis, abuse the gak out of Venomthropes and deploy aggressively with multiple threats. Learn to win.

PS: Tyranids have been reported to be on par with Space Marines, while only really struggles vs TauDar lists. Although it is still worth mentioning that tournaments that uses BP is hard for the Tyranids, since the games tends to be closer.

Anectdote: Noun, a story concerning one's personal and unscientific experiences. Frequently confused with evidence despite not being equivalent even in large amounts due to lack of scientific rigor.

Smugness: Noun, an emotion frequently displayed by people who believe that if they can do something and others can't with the same tools in hand, it clearly must be their fault for not sharing in their messianic abilities, and not because extenuating circumstances have made said tools preform better in one environment over what is the majority result.

 Kain wrote:

Zewrath wrote:
Are people still playing the Tyranids-sucks-ever-so-much song? I've been dominating most of my games with Tyranids and there are a lot of batreps that confirms that Tyranids has a good power level. If you're still stuck on spamming Mawlocs and Tervigons, while calling everything else gak, then yes, you're going to lose.

Pick up biovores, get Aegis, abuse the gak out of Venomthropes and deploy aggressively with multiple threats. Learn to win.

PS: Tyranids have been reported to be on par with Space Marines, while only really struggles vs TauDar lists. Although it is still worth mentioning that tournaments that uses BP is hard for the Tyranids, since the games tends to be closer.

Anectdote: Noun, a story concerning one's personal and unscientific experiences. Frequently confused with evidence despite not being equivalent even in large amounts due to lack of scientific rigor.

Smugness: Noun, an emotion frequently displayed by people who believe that if they can do something and others can't with the same tools in hand, it clearly must be their fault for not sharing in their messianic abilities, and not because extenuating circumstances have made said tools preform better in one environment over what is the majority result.

Perform*

It's a cute attempt to troll though, and without wasting more words on you, I think I'll just leave you to wallow in your own tears of how oh-ever-so-bad your codex is, while newer batreps from several tourneys confirms what I'm saying.

Batreps are actually anecdotal as well. I'd love to see some statistics regarding win/loss or finishing rank though. I'd love to see that my favorite bugs are doing well.

Zewrath wrote:

 Kain wrote:

Zewrath wrote:
Are people still playing the Tyranids-sucks-ever-so-much song? I've been dominating most of my games with Tyranids and there are a lot of batreps that confirms that Tyranids has a good power level. If you're still stuck on spamming Mawlocs and Tervigons, while calling everything else gak, then yes, you're going to lose.

Pick up biovores, get Aegis, abuse the gak out of Venomthropes and deploy aggressively with multiple threats. Learn to win.

PS: Tyranids have been reported to be on par with Space Marines, while only really struggles vs TauDar lists. Although it is still worth mentioning that tournaments that uses BP is hard for the Tyranids, since the games tends to be closer.

Anectdote: Noun, a story concerning one's personal and unscientific experiences. Frequently confused with evidence despite not being equivalent even in large amounts due to lack of scientific rigor.

Smugness: Noun, an emotion frequently displayed by people who believe that if they can do something and others can't with the same tools in hand, it clearly must be their fault for not sharing in their messianic abilities, and not because extenuating circumstances have made said tools preform better in one environment over what is the majority result.

Perform*

It's a cute attempt to troll though, and without wasting more words on you, I think I'll just leave you to wallow in your own tears of how oh-ever-so-bad your codex is, while newer batreps from several tourneys confirms what I'm saying.

Also anectdotal.

As someone working to a doctorate in the sciences (it involves dinosaurs) I know the rigors of what is good evidence and what isn't.

And some batreps is not evidence I'd consider as scientifically meaningful.

The Tyranid Book suffers from most all the problems the last book did, and so all the truly top tier lists rely on spamming the hell out of formations.

And son, I've been playing Nids since the first codex waaaaay back in 6e and have collected enough of them to be able to afford a house if I sold them all, I don't like smugs saying that this army is secretly top tier and that it's just that everyone playing them badly because it's both incredibly condescending to the point of feeling like outright bullying other players and outright wrong.

The main advantage to the Tyranid book following the death of BRB psychic choir lists is FMC and Biovore/Dakkafex spam. Everything else is just gravy you tack on when you can't add anymore.

Formations give limitless supplies of scoring units, FoC free FMCs and said Biovores and Dakkafexes.

And going through the placings of the major tournies; you'll notice that formationless Tyranids place far lower than those that do have formations.

And by far lower; I mean have placing groupings similar to Orks or Dark Angels.

As I said, this book is purposefully bland and skeletal so that GW can force Slates, Supplements, and Forgeworld on you to get the most out of your collection.

 Kain wrote:

As I said, this book is purposefully bland and skeletal so that GW can force Slates, Supplements, and Forgeworld on you to get the most out of your collection.

This is the only part I don't really agree with. I think they had no idea what to do with the codex, or possibly too many ideas, and when deadlines got close they pushed out what they had.

@Arrias117 - Torrent of Fire has a nice summary of the results from tournaments which they report at. To summarize, Nids pre-new codex were basically 50/50 W/L. They are 9th overall in terms of battle points scored. Post-new codex, not much has changed in terms of W/L, although with their metric the inclusion or exclusion of formations cannot be adjudged.

I'd say that without formations, Tyranids fall into the lower 3rd of armies in terms of competitiveness. With them, they bump into the middle third, maybe toward the top of that third with the right general.

Still not going to touch Tau, Eldar, Demons and to an extent Marines.

If you want to win then your idea of a fun army to play needs to fit into a rather narrow criteria. Flyrants have already been mentioned but more importantly there are just a lot of units that just plain suck. I would love to field raveners and lictors for example but.....yeah no

BrotherVord wrote:
If you want to win then your idea of a fun army to play needs to fit into a rather narrow criteria. Flyrants have already been mentioned but more importantly there are just a lot of units that just plain suck. I would love to field raveners and lictors for example but.....yeah no

Raveners do suck, but I still make room for them. They're like a little brother you pick to be on your team because you love him and, every so often he surprises you.

Yeah, winning is fun, but it shouldn't be your only source of fun.

Something to remember is competitiveness is based on your local meta, and a meta changes by location. Tyranids based against the competitive builds of other codices are weak.

Tyranids based against the builds your friends or people at your local stores builds could be quite strong, if they're not running the current hot netlists.

The mistake people make when they state Tyranids, or any other army, flat out sucks is they assume their local meta is representative of every single group. If you like the models and want to play the army, buy them and try them. If you're not having fun and/or getting walked all over by your group, you'll know your answer.

Is it fun? Yes, but sometimes no.
It it any more fun than our last terrible book? Not really
Could it have been a lot more fun if they put a bit of effort into it? Hell yes.

I started about a year ago and Tyranids is my first army. I also did a few matches as SM and Necron, but i didn't have as much fun.

A great thing with Nids is that each army looks different. Unlike the different marine chapters who have an expected color of uniform, you can just pick the colors you prefer for your personal Hive Fleet.
One of the most fun thing with the Nids is that everything is assault. So you can always move, shoot and charge with every units!
We also have a bunch of unique things. I don't think any other codex can get an MC for troop. Both an horde army or a very few model army are possible and decent.
While there is some very horrible units, almost all the units can have some uses. And if you aren't in a super competitive setting, there's a lot of different builds and strategies you can try. My lists are far from optimal but the last two games i did were very close and i gave him a good challenge. Without some big errors from my part, i could have won both.

Addaran wrote:


A great thing with Nids is that each army looks different. Unlike the different marine chapters who have an expected color of uniform, you can just pick the colors you prefer for your personal Hive Fleet.

Um...you can do that too with Marines. Make up your own chapter and have whatever colors you want. I've seen camoflaged marines or Marines with modern military schemes and gear.

Hope the OP enjoys the nids!

I play both nids and necrons (go xenos!) and can say they do indeed offer very different play experiences.

As stated the new big nid box is indeed a good deal.

The Codex
I love my bugs, they are a ton of fun. While to not rehash the topic that has been beat to death, the new book is strong it just has a lot of issues and failed to address many concerns carried over from the last book.
Mainly to many experienced players it feels rushed, not thought out and dull (yes,these are subjective terms....hence the phrase "to many...").

Regarding the data slates.
You can play without them just fine. However, while many of them are pretty underwhelming, there are a few useful ones. Ask your friends if you can use them, considering they ARE your allies.

Models
As others pointed out magnets are your friends, especially on the big bugs.
All of my big bugs with arms have them magnitized to change weapons (talons or devourers, etc.) and any of my MC's that are dual kits (harpy/crone, trygon/mawloc, etc) are magnitized to be either one.
Do you NEED to do this? No, of course not. I just like the ability to run multiple variations without having to assemble, paint, and STORE a ton of extra models.
I don't bother to magnetize cheap/small models like termagant however.

Overall nids are a ton of fun, and while the book does not support as many diverse builds as other recent codexes, there are still a few options in there for a lot of players (well, some units are auto-include, but oh well...).

Have fun and munch as many space marines as possible!!!!

I'll second magnetising. All of my MC's get magnetised arms, though I haven't gone as far as magnetising the dual kit variants. It's just easier being able to swap weapons out as you want.

Also if a new codex comes out that makes a weapon set less than useful, you just don't use those arms until they become good again.

 -Loki- wrote:
Something to remember is competitiveness is based on your local meta, and a meta changes by location.

The only thing I absolutely need to know right know in my local Escalation/Strongholds Meta is I need access to Haywire. Once I have it, and hopefully can put it where I want it, I am golden. From the bits and pieces I've read (today, actually ), I've gathered there is access, and pretty broad access.

 jasper76 wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
Something to remember is competitiveness is based on your local meta, and a meta changes by location.

The only thing I absolutely need to know right know in my local Escalation/Strongholds Meta is I need access to Haywire. Once I have it, and hopefully can put it where I want it, I am golden. From the bits and pieces I've read (today, actually ), I've gathered there is access, and pretty broad access.

The haywire options are;

A thorax template weapon that has haywire - a few MC's can buy it.
Haywire bio-missiles on the crone. Only B3 vs ground targets, but not bad.
A haywire short ranged blast on the hive guard.

There may be something I am forgetting.

I try to put the haywire (thorax weapon called electroshock grubs) on my flying MC's and my tyrannofex.

davethepak wrote:
Hope the OP enjoys the nids!

I play both nids and necrons (go xenos!) and can say they do indeed offer very different play experiences.

As stated the new big nid box is indeed a good deal.

The Codex
I love my bugs, they are a ton of fun. While to not rehash the topic that has been beat to death, the new book is strong it just has a lot of issues and failed to address many concerns carried over from the last book.
Mainly to many experienced players it feels rushed, not thought out and dull (yes,these are subjective terms....hence the phrase "to many...").

Regarding the data slates.
You can play without them just fine. However, while many of them are pretty underwhelming, there are a few useful ones. Ask your friends if you can use them, considering they ARE your allies.

Models
As others pointed out magnets are your friends, especially on the big bugs.
All of my big bugs with arms have them magnitized to change weapons (talons or devourers, etc.) and any of my MC's that are dual kits (harpy/crone, trygon/mawloc, etc) are magnitized to be either one.
Do you NEED to do this? No, of course not. I just like the ability to run multiple variations without having to assemble, paint, and STORE a ton of extra models.
I don't bother to magnetize cheap/small models like termagant however.

Overall nids are a ton of fun, and while the book does not support as many diverse builds as other recent codexes, there are still a few options in there for a lot of players (well, some units are auto-include, but oh well...).

Have fun and munch as many space marines as possible!!!!

Very kind and illuminating!

For what its worth, my main source of fun hobby-wise has been taking all the extra kits and bashing it together again with necrons. You can do it really good with troops (a Necron Warrior can be turned into any kind of Immortal, Deathmark, Cryptek, etc. with the right bits. The vehicles, however, have such precision curves and lines that its more difficult to fabricate and convert stuff.

With Tyranids, it seems like everything's a xenomorph of one size or another , so maybe lots of kit bashing opportunities???

 jasper76 wrote:
With Tyranids, it seems like everything's a xenomorph of one size or another , so maybe lots of kit bashing opportunities???

The aesthetic design of the current Tyranids is the best thing GW have done in a long time. They're all based on the design of the Ripper, scaling up as it gets bigger. Everything has a tail, 6 limbs, the same amount of carapace plates on their head, and all weapons regardless of the unit holding them is the same. A devourer on a Termagant is a Devourer on a Warrior is a Devourer on a Hive Tyrant or Carnifex.

Also, certain types of unit are based on similar genii. Warriors, Shrikes, Primes and Lictors all share the Warrior base template. Gargoyles, Termagants and Hormagaunts all use the Gaunt base template. Hive Guard and Tyrant Guard use the Guard base template. This also makes the dual kits less jarring - an Exocrone looks like a Haruspex with a huge phallic cannon, a Tervigon looks like a Tyrannofex with an egg sac. This suits Tyranids as it just means those units were based on similar templates but made for different roles.

What all this does is makes conversions easy. If you wind up with equal amounts of Hormagaunts and Termagants, but eventually realise you aren't fond of Hormagaunts, you can just take the arms off and put some spare Termagant arms on (all Termagant boxes come with enough of each different weapon to outfit the whole squad). If you want to convert some Devourers for your Monstrous Creatures, they're the same Devourers your Termagants and Warriors come with, only modified to be held single handed. A bit of chopping and green stuff and the Devourer is right to put on a Monstrous Creature and won't look out of place. If you buy a box of Warriors and don't think they work for you, you can use the Rending Claw and Scything Talon arms, plus some shaving away of carapace, to make a brood of Lictors.

I really wish they'd bring back the Vehicle and Monstrous Creature design rules, now that they've got so many tanks and monstrous creatures that dump bits on you. Tyranid players have mountains of guns and other arms lying around that could be put to good use with a designer like they had in 3rd edition.

davethepak wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
Something to remember is competitiveness is based on your local meta, and a meta changes by location.

The only thing I absolutely need to know right know in my local Escalation/Strongholds Meta is I need access to Haywire. Once I have it, and hopefully can put it where I want it, I am golden. From the bits and pieces I've read (today, actually ), I've gathered there is access, and pretty broad access.

The haywire options are;

A thorax template weapon that has haywire - a few MC's can buy it.
Haywire bio-missiles on the crone. Only B3 vs ground targets, but not bad.
A haywire short ranged blast on the hive guard.

There may be something I am forgetting.

I try to put the haywire (thorax weapon called electroshock grubs) on my flying MC's and my tyrannofex.

This is most useful, thank you!

Zewrath wrote:

 Kain wrote:

Zewrath wrote:
Are people still playing the Tyranids-sucks-ever-so-much song? I've been dominating most of my games with Tyranids and there are a lot of batreps that confirms that Tyranids has a good power level. If you're still stuck on spamming Mawlocs and Tervigons, while calling everything else gak, then yes, you're going to lose.

Pick up biovores, get Aegis, abuse the gak out of Venomthropes and deploy aggressively with multiple threats. Learn to win.

PS: Tyranids have been reported to be on par with Space Marines, while only really struggles vs TauDar lists. Although it is still worth mentioning that tournaments that uses BP is hard for the Tyranids, since the games tends to be closer.

Anectdote: Noun, a story concerning one's personal and unscientific experiences. Frequently confused with evidence despite not being equivalent even in large amounts due to lack of scientific rigor.

Smugness: Noun, an emotion frequently displayed by people who believe that if they can do something and others can't with the same tools in hand, it clearly must be their fault for not sharing in their messianic abilities, and not because extenuating circumstances have made said tools preform better in one environment over what is the majority result.

Perform*

It's a cute attempt to troll though, and without wasting more words on you, I think I'll just leave you to wallow in your own tears of how oh-ever-so-bad your codex is, while newer batreps from several tourneys confirms what I'm saying.

Actually he's 100% right. While I agree the Tyranid Codex is good, at this point all Kain has done is point out that your statement is entirely anecdotal and does nothing to support your point of view, without him actually disagreeing with you at all. Battle reports mean nothing, and you telling everyone to play better if they want to win just suggests to everybody that you are just as likely relying on your opponents being underskilled, rather than you playing the game that much better than everybody else.

Try to be a bit less condescending and a bit more friendly and your point of view will see much less objection. Because at the end of the day you aren't fully wrong, you just aren't right either, because you haven't supplied proper examples, either because you can't, because or you don't care enough about the logic behind your statement, just about telling people to "git gud".

 SHUPPET wrote:

Zewrath wrote:

 Kain wrote:

Zewrath wrote:
Are people still playing the Tyranids-sucks-ever-so-much song? I've been dominating most of my games with Tyranids and there are a lot of batreps that confirms that Tyranids has a good power level. If you're still stuck on spamming Mawlocs and Tervigons, while calling everything else gak, then yes, you're going to lose.

Pick up biovores, get Aegis, abuse the gak out of Venomthropes and deploy aggressively with multiple threats. Learn to win.

PS: Tyranids have been reported to be on par with Space Marines, while only really struggles vs TauDar lists. Although it is still worth mentioning that tournaments that uses BP is hard for the Tyranids, since the games tends to be closer.

Anectdote: Noun, a story concerning one's personal and unscientific experiences. Frequently confused with evidence despite not being equivalent even in large amounts due to lack of scientific rigor.

Smugness: Noun, an emotion frequently displayed by people who believe that if they can do something and others can't with the same tools in hand, it clearly must be their fault for not sharing in their messianic abilities, and not because extenuating circumstances have made said tools preform better in one environment over what is the majority result.

Perform*

It's a cute attempt to troll though, and without wasting more words on you, I think I'll just leave you to wallow in your own tears of how oh-ever-so-bad your codex is, while newer batreps from several tourneys confirms what I'm saying.

Actually he's 100% right. While I agree the Tyranid Codex is good, at this point all Kain has done is point out that your statement is entirely anecdotal and does nothing to support your point of view, without him actually disagreeing with you at all. Battle reports mean nothing, and you telling everyone to play better if they want to win just suggests to everybody that you are just as likely relying on your opponents being underskilled, rather than you playing the game that much better than everybody else.

Try to be a bit less condescending and a bit more friendly and your point of view will see much less objection. Because at the end of the day you aren't fully wrong, you just aren't right either, because you haven't supplied proper examples, either because you can't, because or you don't care enough about the logic behind your statement, just about telling people to "git gud".

I will say that formation nids are a barrel of fun and flavor and can be very competetive. My skyblight swarm spam only truly fears Eldar of either variety (their fliers especially, nightwings can be quite tough with 2+ jinks), Shotspam Tau (with ethereals and fireblades fire warriors can put out obscene weight of fire), and perhaps tailored lists.

GKs are still a brutal match up though.

With an endless swarm focused list, I actually managed to drown Green tides, Blob guard, and Cultist mobs in bodies. Boyz still out preform gaunts by a big margin point for point, but when you've got more than three hundred gaunts you really couldn't care less, doubly so when they respawn.

It feels great to actually be the army that can field the most models again.

Tyranid GCs beside the Harridan need serious buffs though, D-strength weapons make them way too vulnerable, and the Heirodule in particular has a rubbish raw statline (scythed heirodules should not get punched out by build a beat stick Raukaan chapter masters or Lysander)..

I like the word "respawn"

 Kain wrote:
Tyranid GCs beside the Harridan need serious buffs though, D-strength weapons make them way too vulnerable, and the Heirodule in particular has a rubbish raw statline (scythed heirodules should not get punched out by build a beat stick Raukaan chapter masters or Lysander).

The problem isn't really the Gargantuan Creatures, it's D strength weapons. They need to be toned down against Gargantuans. That alone will make them much more viable. As it is, facing a single D weapon is going to make you worry but not decide to leave a Heirophant at home. It's when you face an army bringing multiple D weapons to the table when you might as well just not take them.

Though I'll admit the Heirodules could use a little beefing up. They're not much tougher than the new big monstrous creatures, so not really worthy of being classed as Gargantuan.