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I used to play during second edition so I wasn't around when the Tau, Tyranids, and Necron came out, but I love the "Aliens" aspect of them, so I recently picked up the codex to see what they are all about.

I know Space Marines and Orks intimately, and from the pure specs, the Tyranids seem extremely powerful. That being said why do I see all these posts angry about the Tyranids? From the looks of things, it seems that legacy nid players feel they got the short end of the stick with this codex. Were the nids really that overpowered in previous releases, or is it 6th and 7th edition BRB changes that screwed them? Help me understand before I plunk down a couple hundred more dollars to put together a third army and find that it is completely hobbled. BTW win at all costs means nothing to me, I'm more about a tasty, flavorful game (otherwise I would never have picked up Orks)

Thanks,

Lynkon

Well I've been using them just fine, but apparently tournament players find them in a power level below the current 'top 3'... if that means anything to you.

I don't ever play against the 'doomsdays' notorious lists like the riptide spam, wave serpent spam either. Tyranids are fun though, even when you lose.

basically, 'Nid players are kinda grumpy about how GW has been changing the rules since 5th.

5th ed- Glances not killing really hurt the 'Nids ranged AT. Also, Kill points resulted in Biovores giving your opponent points every time you shot. Some 'Nid units also produced an excess of Killpoints. All fairly minor, but then...

Tyranids 5th ed.- Increase MC's cost by about 50%, huge numbers of missing models, loss of biomorphs, a lot of units that were just plain bad, all our good units in two slots, our high-S weapons got nerfed further, no grenades, etc. Simply adding Hive Guard to the 4th ed. Dex would have resulted in a stronger 'Dex with more options.

1st 5th ed FAQ: Every ambiguous rule or situation was resolved to the detriment of Tyranids, with no obvious reason.

5th Ed. Meta: The proliferation of AT weapons hurt our Monstrous Creatures hard. We also saw the arrival of Grey Knights (Force weapon spam, cleansing flare) and Dark Eldar (Splinter Spam), which really wrecked our Monstrous creatures.

6th Ed- No assaults from reserves, and a whole slew of other assault nerfs. Flyers and Psychic stuff also further railroaded viable builds to "Tervigons and Flyrants".

6th ed Codex: MC's went down in cost. And lost the Scything Talons re-roll. A lot of units vanished from the codex. Hive guard got dropped to BS3, for no real reason. Didn't really gain anything compared to the last book.

7th ed.- I'll be honest, I've kinda stopped paying attention at this point.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
basically, 'Nid players are kinda grumpy about how GW has been changing the rules since 5th.

5th ed- Glances not killing really hurt the 'Nids ranged AT. Also, Kill points resulted in Biovores giving your opponent points every time you shot. Some 'Nid units also produced an excess of Killpoints. All fairly minor, but then...

Tyranids 5th ed.- Increase MC's cost by about 50%, huge numbers of missing models, loss of biomorphs, a lot of units that were just plain bad, all our good units in two slots, our high-S weapons got nerfed further, no grenades, etc. Simply adding Hive Guard to the 4th ed. Dex would have resulted in a stronger 'Dex with more options.

1st 5th ed FAQ: Every ambiguous rule or situation was resolved to the detriment of Tyranids, with no obvious reason.

5th Ed. Meta: The proliferation of AT weapons hurt our Monstrous Creatures hard. We also saw the arrival of Grey Knights (Force weapon spam, cleansing flare) and Dark Eldar (Splinter Spam), which really wrecked our Monstrous creatures.

6th Ed- No assaults from reserves, and a whole slew of other assault nerfs. Flyers and Psychic stuff also further railroaded viable builds to "Tervigons and Flyrants".

6th ed Codex: MC's went down in cost. And lost the Scything Talons re-roll. A lot of units vanished from the codex. Hive guard got dropped to BS3, for no real reason. Didn't really gain anything compared to the last book.

7th ed.- I'll be honest, I've kinda stopped paying attention at this point.

I agree with a lot of this plus if feels like each codex update proceeds to remove options from the Tyranid army and focus on nerfing rather than trying to bring the Tyranid army to life on the tabletop. For example old favorites from the 5th book such as Tervigon, Hive Guard, and Trygon were nerfed hard in the 6th book yet units that were already bad either had no changes like genestealers and warriors or got even worse. Basically what suppose to be the most adaptive army feel like it continues to be pushed into monobuilds just to even have a chance against other factions and the army just does not feel right IMO it almost like the army punishes you for trying to play it. Like the how IB table giving units a 50% chance to either run away or start killing themselves, it just reeks of why adds this to the army if it only makes the player even more frustrated?

I don't play Tyranids, but a friend does, and the thing that frustrates him the most is all the things that are available to every army in the game except Tyranids. In 6th, Tyranids were the only army that could never ally with another faction. They were also the only faction that couldn't fire emplaced weapons in fortifications (it makes sense that they couldn't understand the non-biotech of other races, but it meant you couldn't make "counts-as" Tyranid equivalents of the Aegis gun, for example). When they got their new codex, they became the only faction that couldn't use any of the basic psychic disciplines. From a fluff perspective, it wouldn't be that hard to let Tyranids get similar effects that use their own paradigm (bioforms that act like fortifications, Hivemind powers with the same battlefield effect as psychic disciplines), but in every case they chose to restrict Tyranids more than any other faction.

All water under the bridge though. 7th edition made Tyranid shooty FMC more survivable and they can stack a lot of psychic dice in the list. The Psychic school they do have access too is pretty decent for what the bugs do,

If you are not interested in tournament play with them, they are a lot of fun.

Th0rh4mm3r wrote:
All water under the bridge though. 7th edition made Tyranid shooty FMC more survivable and they can stack a lot of psychic dice in the list. The Psychic school they do have access too is pretty decent for what the bugs do,

If you are not interested in tournament play with them, they are a lot of fun.

The problem is from what I been seeing is that the more casual players are hurt the most by changes made by the codex updates and edition changes. If your only interest is in winning the you simply find the most powerful combination of units possible and go from there. However, if your a more casual player who is trying to reenact a famous battle involving Tyranids you start running into issues like your huge trygon getting wrecked by a dreadnought etc. It just feels wrong to me that the Tyranid's best build is having a large number of FMC that stay in the air as long as possible and just shoot things. What if I want to swarm my opponent with gaunts and smash his vehicles with MC in melee? The current codex actually punishes builds like this.

There are three major 'gripes' as far as I can see a very long-term Tyranid player

1) Random changes in direction between editions (loads of biomorphs to very few, changes to army-wide (and game-changing) special rules, random alterations to units (e.g. Hive Guard going from BS4 in 5th to BS3 in 6th for no obvious reason).

2) An obvious weakness to whatever is "strong" in a particular edition. In 5th it was flyer spam (lack of Skyfire in our forces) and in 6th it will be the return of massed armoured vehicles (nerfs to smash etc)

3) Tyranids are supposed to be an army that can get up close and rip the enemy apart with an avalanche of clawed monsters. With assault suffering in recent editions, and our dedicated assault troops not being as polished as they should be it is frustrating to not be able to touch a really, really cool part of the background for Tyranids.

Playing nids feels like playing a game of baseball with a friend who is using an aluminum bat and you are holding a plastic bat.

I feel largely that our tools are severely limited. If I am looking at the options in the codex from a purely "useful for this purpose", it comes across as:
Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs, Dies before it can assault, smashes ground vehicles (woo carnifex! ), Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs...

If I look at it from a fluffy perspective, as has already stated, I find myself wincing at some of the choices I'll be making.

That said, I've recently decided that if I'm going to lose anyway, because I'm not taking mono-build + skyblight, I'll just play the models I like and pray for the day my opponent puts down a foot slogging ork boy army and we have a glorious meat grinder bloodbath.

The problem with the latest Tyranid codex is that even more stuff was gutted just because GW didnt have an official model for it, and on top of that, there are only two effective builds for the Nid army now - multiple Venomthrope Shrouded bubble or Skyblight Swarm. Oh and Genestealers have been catching dust for quite a while now.

However, perhaps the fact that everyone can score now has given more weight to MCs once more, though of course this same thing applies to all other factions and their tanks etc. as well.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
basically, 'Nid players are kinda grumpy about how GW has been changing the rules since 5th.

5th ed- Glances not killing really hurt the 'Nids ranged AT. Also, Kill points resulted in Biovores giving your opponent points every time you shot. Some 'Nid units also produced an excess of Killpoints. All fairly minor, but then...

Tyranids 5th ed.- Increase MC's cost by about 50%, huge numbers of missing models, loss of biomorphs, a lot of units that were just plain bad, all our good units in two slots, our high-S weapons got nerfed further, no grenades, etc. Simply adding Hive Guard to the 4th ed. Dex would have resulted in a stronger 'Dex with more options.

1st 5th ed FAQ: Every ambiguous rule or situation was resolved to the detriment of Tyranids, with no obvious reason.

5th Ed. Meta: The proliferation of AT weapons hurt our Monstrous Creatures hard. We also saw the arrival of Grey Knights (Force weapon spam, cleansing flare) and Dark Eldar (Splinter Spam), which really wrecked our Monstrous creatures.

6th Ed- No assaults from reserves, and a whole slew of other assault nerfs. Flyers and Psychic stuff also further railroaded viable builds to "Tervigons and Flyrants".

6th ed Codex: MC's went down in cost. And lost the Scything Talons re-roll. A lot of units vanished from the codex. Hive guard got dropped to BS3, for no real reason. Didn't really gain anything compared to the last book.

7th ed.- I'll be honest, I've kinda stopped paying attention at this point.

7th ed - all Tyranid MCs got neutered by the Smash Attack nerf. Now any derpy enemy hero and his dreadnought friend can take on Nid MCs. Also have fun getting off psychic powers from Zoanthropes now.

 Arrias117 wrote:
I feel largely that our tools are severely limited. If I am looking at the options in the codex from a purely "useful for this purpose", it comes across as:
Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs, Dies before it can assault, smashes ground vehicles (woo carnifex! ), Kills GeQs, Kills GeQs...

If I look at it from a fluffy perspective, as has already stated, I find myself wincing at some of the choices I'll be making.

That said, I've recently decided that if I'm going to lose anyway, because I'm not taking mono-build + skyblight, I'll just play the models I like and pray for the day my opponent puts down a foot slogging ork boy army and we have a glorious meat grinder bloodbath.

While I understand and appreciate all the responses, this one bothers me the most. Back in 2nd edition, I played a green tide foot slogging Ork army backed up by a couple bigger things and a Shokk Attack Gun. It was purely for the hilarious goof-ball nature of the Orks. No game was as much fun as when a huge mob of boys would go charging across the battlefield, only to engage with two or three boys left and a huge stream of green corpses left behind them. When I left the game and stayed in touch with other players, all I would hear was a constant stream of "it's all grimdark now, the Orks aren't funny anymore, the Shokk Attack Gun is gone". Now that I'm back, I picked up the fifth edition Ork codex and realized it's not THAT different from what I remember. Once the new codex comes out (WHERE ARE YOU!?!) I'll break out the green tide again and be ready to lose every single game simply for the luls.

But that being said, I don't think I want two armies ground to pulp, especially if there aren't any laughs to be had.

I supposed it'll never happen, but I would love to put together an army of nothing but an HQ and six 30-packs of Hormagaunts painted gloss black, and face them off against IG (which I imagine to all be Private Hudson saying "Game over, man, game over" until I chewed them into paste).

Lynkon_Lawg wrote:
But that being said, I don't think I want two armies ground to pulp, especially if there aren't any laughs to be had.

I supposed it'll never happen, but I would love to put together an army of nothing but an HQ and six 30-packs of Hormagaunts painted gloss black, and face them off against IG (which I imagine to all be Private Hudson saying "Game over, man, game over" until I chewed them into paste).

... So that is pretty much one of my Nid styles complete with the Aliens esque aesthetic and color scheme. The other being warriors and raveners/shrikes everywhere.

Don't lose heart, when you get those few games where the infantry litter the field on both sides, it is a GLORIOUS game for all involved, and makes it all completely worth it. (Insert smiling ripper here)

The Scything talon nerf in the 6th codex is my biggest gripe these days (although there are lot's of gripes to be had). It was basically an army wide nerf that didn't get offset with anything. Without the rerolls from Scything talons, and no access to any of the basic psychic powers, the nids are basically the only Army in the game that have no rerolls available for them. And that makes a huge difference when playing.

 Albinonewt wrote:
The Scything talon nerf in the 6th codex is my biggest gripe these days (although there are lot's of gripes to be had). It was basically an army wide nerf that didn't get offset with anything. Without the rerolls from Scything talons, and no access to any of the basic psychic powers, the nids are basically the only Army in the game that have no rerolls available for them. And that makes a huge difference when playing.

Hey, twin linked hive tyrants baby

 Albinonewt wrote:
The Scything talon nerf in the 6th codex is my biggest gripe these days (although there are lot's of gripes to be had). It was basically an army wide nerf that didn't get offset with anything. Without the rerolls from Scything talons, and no access to any of the basic psychic powers, the nids are basically the only Army in the game that have no rerolls available for them. And that makes a huge difference when playing.

Since we are talking about Scything Talons, maybe you can answer a question. Genestealers have rending claws and have two attacks. If you take Scything Talons for 4 points per model, the Genestealer gets one additional attack per the "Designer's Note" in the Melee Weapons section. Since the Rending Claws have the "Rending" special rule, does the third attack get rolled separate from the first two, or are they all rolled together (in essence giving the Scything Talons attack "rending")?

since the basic models have four arms (genestealers) with claws, do I even need the scything talons on them for another attack or are they just a waste? I bought about 20 on ebay when you could outflank/assault (I miss null-deployment) and they all had 2 sets of rending claws.

It's too expensive to upgrade imo. Genestealers are great for certain tasks but they die to easily to invest lots of points into.

 Gunzhard wrote:
It's too expensive to upgrade imo. Genestealers are great for certain tasks but they die to easily to invest lots of points into.

Word, there is no "what you see" reason that you would not get a extra attack, "as is". But by the write up, you need to toss on Scything to get an second pair of weapons. That said, Stealers are a little overpriced as is, so adding extra cost is a poor purchase. I used to run Stealers with Toxic, for the re-rolls, but even that has been nurfed out ...about the only viable "upgrade" is a Broodlord. The Horror makes it possable to charge a gunline, and arrive intact. But you'll find few top end lists that include them....

At least now 'pinning' a gunline unit means they can no longer Overwatch.

That's a big help for us, especially with that Broodlord upgrade.

I think given the abundance of Fleet and Move Through Cover the random charge also helps us.