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OK. Thanks for clearing it up for me.

oz of the north wrote:

lonestarr777 wrote:

oz of the north wrote:

lonestarr777 wrote:

oz of the north wrote:
They have received a lot of love though especially through the release of the new models, a 3w 15 point troop choice and so many formations that easily mitigate all your weak spots.

Still having more than 2 competitive builds would be ridiculous, some codices only have 1 such as GK.

None of that addresses the problems with TMCs I and other's have pointed out. Yes a W3 15pt troop is nice, but its still just a sporemine and you still need chaff for slogging monsters. As for formations, none of them mitigate poor WS and a lack of gernades.

You honestly just sound salty over the GK book, not that I can blame you.

Don't really care about the GK book, more of a wolves player. The TMCs, such as carnifexes need to be ws3, first of all they are basically mindless drones, so the finer points of combat escape them. Also if they had all those items they would be extremely over powered. For the issues of lack of grenades, their high toughness should be enough to mitigate that. If going against ta tac squad, if they want to go through your armor they need to use power weapons, which usually will only be wounding on 6s, or grenades. Then still only wound on 4s and you get your armor. So going after your opponent really is not that big of an issue and with how easy it is for your army to get FnP on anything if you have a psyker that can also mitigate it.

Where as an army like SW can only get it through, the warlord trait, which is from their main codex which is useless compared to champions, or a wolf priest and in still both instances it's only a 6+++. Wolves can bring a rune priest, but then it is a 1/6 where as it is less for nids.


Also every army needs a weakness, such as GK lacking any long rang shooting, or DA lacking anything good.

First, please do not use fluff to justify your arguements. A carnifex is a mindless beast but it can easliy argued its only purpose is combat and thus deserving of a higher WS.

Second as a wolf player with access to one of the most hideously powerfull beatstick units in the game. I really dont see where youre getting we should just be happy with a half dozen useless monsters that most of your book can shred.

Finally getting acess to FNP requires a roll of a 1 when generating our psyker powers. I can count how many times Ive been lucky enough to get it on one hand. Trust me, would be alot happier if I could hand that out like candy to my units.

I love my bugs, dont get me wrong. But I know damn well most things in my book are nothing are little more than handicaps.

Most of your best units TWC can do nothing to, they cannot do a single thing to a flyrant, and if carnifexes get the charge their HoW will crush wolves, but even if you cannot get FnP most of your psychic powers are good and the psychic units they are on have a decent purpose. Such as tervigon or tyrants, even zoantropes can act as mobile synapse. Where as the wolves powers are terrible to useless and the user is meh.

Regarding the fluff that was just added, the 2nd part was important, where I stated that if you made them WS4 they would be way overpowered or cost more points than you would want to spend.

I get the strong feeling that you don't actually know the Tyranid psychic powers that well....The issue with the Tyranid psychic powers is that they are 50/50 shooting and buff. This is bad because I can get a shooting based power on a Tervigon, where it isn't going to do much good. Or I can get a buff power on my Flyrant who is going to spend most of the game out of range to cast it.

Also how are, at most, 3d3 S9 no AP hits going to crush TWC?

I get this weird sensation that you play against Tyranids very rarely or you play against the same guy time and time again and he fields mostly the same stuff every game.

Again, the point of this conversation is that most TMCs are really useless, not that Tyranids as a whole are useless. I would contend that they are a lower tier army, one of the worst, with the exception that the Flyrant is a massively powerful crutch. Just like CSM when 6th first came out and they had the massive crutch that was the Heldrake.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:

oz of the north wrote:

lonestarr777 wrote:

oz of the north wrote:

lonestarr777 wrote:

oz of the north wrote:
They have received a lot of love though especially through the release of the new models, a 3w 15 point troop choice and so many formations that easily mitigate all your weak spots.

Still having more than 2 competitive builds would be ridiculous, some codices only have 1 such as GK.

None of that addresses the problems with TMCs I and other's have pointed out. Yes a W3 15pt troop is nice, but its still just a sporemine and you still need chaff for slogging monsters. As for formations, none of them mitigate poor WS and a lack of gernades.

You honestly just sound salty over the GK book, not that I can blame you.

Don't really care about the GK book, more of a wolves player. The TMCs, such as carnifexes need to be ws3, first of all they are basically mindless drones, so the finer points of combat escape them. Also if they had all those items they would be extremely over powered. For the issues of lack of grenades, their high toughness should be enough to mitigate that. If going against ta tac squad, if they want to go through your armor they need to use power weapons, which usually will only be wounding on 6s, or grenades. Then still only wound on 4s and you get your armor. So going after your opponent really is not that big of an issue and with how easy it is for your army to get FnP on anything if you have a psyker that can also mitigate it.

Where as an army like SW can only get it through, the warlord trait, which is from their main codex which is useless compared to champions, or a wolf priest and in still both instances it's only a 6+++. Wolves can bring a rune priest, but then it is a 1/6 where as it is less for nids.


Also every army needs a weakness, such as GK lacking any long rang shooting, or DA lacking anything good.

First, please do not use fluff to justify your arguements. A carnifex is a mindless beast but it can easliy argued its only purpose is combat and thus deserving of a higher WS.

Second as a wolf player with access to one of the most hideously powerfull beatstick units in the game. I really dont see where youre getting we should just be happy with a half dozen useless monsters that most of your book can shred.

Finally getting acess to FNP requires a roll of a 1 when generating our psyker powers. I can count how many times Ive been lucky enough to get it on one hand. Trust me, would be alot happier if I could hand that out like candy to my units.

I love my bugs, dont get me wrong. But I know damn well most things in my book are nothing are little more than handicaps.

Most of your best units TWC can do nothing to, they cannot do a single thing to a flyrant, and if carnifexes get the charge their HoW will crush wolves, but even if you cannot get FnP most of your psychic powers are good and the psychic units they are on have a decent purpose. Such as tervigon or tyrants, even zoantropes can act as mobile synapse. Where as the wolves powers are terrible to useless and the user is meh.

Regarding the fluff that was just added, the 2nd part was important, where I stated that if you made them WS4 they would be way overpowered or cost more points than you would want to spend.

I get the strong feeling that you don't actually know the Tyranid psychic powers that well....The issue with the Tyranid psychic powers is that they are 50/50 shooting and buff. This is bad because I can get a shooting based power on a Tervigon, where it isn't going to do much good. Or I can get a buff power on my Flyrant who is going to spend most of the game out of range to cast it.

Also how are, at most, 3d3 S9 no AP hits going to crush TWC?

I get this weird sensation that you play against Tyranids very rarely or you play against the same guy time and time again and he fields mostly the same stuff every game.

Again, the point of this conversation is that most TMCs are really useless, not that Tyranids as a whole are useless. I would contend that they are a lower tier army, one of the worst, with the exception that the Flyrant is a massively powerful crutch. Just like CSM when 6th first came out and they had the massive crutch that was the Heldrake.

I thought the HoW was str. 10, thought with crushing claws made str. 10. Any ways their TMCs are not useless, especially with the introduction of the drop pod thing, they have become overpowered.

I actually do play a lot of Nids players, they just use lots of formations and have been playing for quite some time, so know how their armies work and how best to use them. Granted sometimes it is with Flyrants, but even at last tournament, the winner was a Nids player that did not use a single flier. His warlord was a trygon prime, and just used a bunch of different formations in a cohesive manner.

I would disagree, I would say they are one of the top tier armies.

oz of the north wrote:

lonestarr777 wrote:

oz of the north wrote:

lonestarr777 wrote:

oz of the north wrote:
They have received a lot of love though especially through the release of the new models, a 3w 15 point troop choice and so many formations that easily mitigate all your weak spots.

Still having more than 2 competitive builds would be ridiculous, some codices only have 1 such as GK.

None of that addresses the problems with TMCs I and other's have pointed out. Yes a W3 15pt troop is nice, but its still just a sporemine and you still need chaff for slogging monsters. As for formations, none of them mitigate poor WS and a lack of gernades.

You honestly just sound salty over the GK book, not that I can blame you.

Don't really care about the GK book, more of a wolves player. The TMCs, such as carnifexes need to be ws3, first of all they are basically mindless drones, so the finer points of combat escape them. Also if they had all those items they would be extremely over powered. For the issues of lack of grenades, their high toughness should be enough to mitigate that. If going against ta tac squad, if they want to go through your armor they need to use power weapons, which usually will only be wounding on 6s, or grenades. Then still only wound on 4s and you get your armor. So going after your opponent really is not that big of an issue and with how easy it is for your army to get FnP on anything if you have a psyker that can also mitigate it.

Where as an army like SW can only get it through, the warlord trait, which is from their main codex which is useless compared to champions, or a wolf priest and in still both instances it's only a 6+++. Wolves can bring a rune priest, but then it is a 1/6 where as it is less for nids.


Also every army needs a weakness, such as GK lacking any long rang shooting, or DA lacking anything good.

First, please do not use fluff to justify your arguements. A carnifex is a mindless beast but it can easliy argued its only purpose is combat and thus deserving of a higher WS.

Second as a wolf player with access to one of the most hideously powerfull beatstick units in the game. I really dont see where youre getting we should just be happy with a half dozen useless monsters that most of your book can shred.

Finally getting acess to FNP requires a roll of a 1 when generating our psyker powers. I can count how many times Ive been lucky enough to get it on one hand. Trust me, would be alot happier if I could hand that out like candy to my units.

I love my bugs, dont get me wrong. But I know damn well most things in my book are nothing are little more than handicaps.

Most of your best units TWC can do nothing to, they cannot do a single thing to a flyrant, and if carnifexes get the charge their HoW will crush wolves, but even if you cannot get FnP most of your psychic powers are good and the psychic units they are on have a decent purpose. Such as tervigon or tyrants, even zoantropes can act as mobile synapse. Where as the wolves powers are terrible to useless and the user is meh.

Regarding the fluff that was just added, the 2nd part was important, where I stated that if you made them WS4 they would be way overpowered or cost more points than you would want to spend.

Fair enough reguardng the rules vs fluff bit. The problem is though while theory a fexes T and 3+ SHOULD carry it through a fight with a TaC squad hat isn't really the case. The fex is more likely take more wounds than he dishes out being pumped out by the survivng marines and at only 4 W more likely to be scrapped. Also a fex is only S 9, no instagibbing wolves as even the +1 S from Adrenals isnt factored into the charge.

I also consider only like three powers to be winners in our psyker phase, but thats beside the point.

Yes, flyrants are great, but that doesnt mean trygons arent over priced. Nor does it mean the Haruspex, my favorite model, is viable. Everyone just seems to tunnelvision on that one monster and pretend we shouldnt be worried that a fex can easily be melted off the board a turn.

Admittedly I play in a very mech heavy meta. Makes running anything that isnt flying circus a pain.

SGTPozy wrote:
It's because Tyranids suck! Outside of Flyrant spam wears the second worst army (after DA).

Lucky for me, guess what 2 of the armies I play are.

The tyranid MCs are not bad on their own, it's that point for point they are just aweful, other MCs(Riptides, Dread knights, and Wraith Knights) do way more damage, move faster and survive longer. Tyranid MCs lack in almost all those traits, which on its own would not be terrible it is the fact that they would need a significant point adjustment to balance them out if there isn't some other kind of bonus.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:

 Archon_Zarbyrn wrote:

The Imperial Answer wrote:
So looking at the stats for the Monstrous Creatures in the Tyranid codex is there any particular reason some of the larger ones are weaker than the Carnifex ?

Also is there any explanation for why Tyranid Monstrous Creatures that aren't the Carnifex seem to struggle against Walkers at times ?

I find it kind of odd a creature as large as a Trygon can't even harm Walkers like a Contemptor or an Orkanaut outside of Smash attacks.

Tyranids seem to be stuck in some kind of bad design format were almost none of their MC are allowed to have any of the following: strength and toughness higher then 6 which combined with the changes to smash screws them over when fighting vehicles, only the tyrannofex has a 2+ armor save ever other Tyranid MC is stuck with a 3+ save or worse while not having access to an inv save making them easy anti-tank bait, often have a combination of poor weapon skill, initiative without access to rerolls and finally outside of filers all the MCs are stuck moving at 6 inches a turn. Yet for all these faults Tyranid MCs cost nearly as much or more then other clearly superior units like the dreadknight, riptide, wraithknight, hell I considered the talos way better then most other tyranid MC simply due to its toughness 7 and built in feel no pain. Course Robin did work on the 5th and 6th Tyranid books and he really hates nids so that might just be his bias screwing over a whole army.

This, so much this. TMCs would be awesome if they costed about half the points the do now. I don't mind Tyranid units being worse in every way when compared to other MCs but just price them appropriately! Right now when I field Tyranids I just feel like I do not have enough units on the board at any time, I am going to take heavy casualties getting my swarm into range and that means my opponent has plenty of time to pick their targets. That works if I have redundancy built into my army but sadly Tyranids aren't cheap enough to force enough redundancy to make it across the board with threats still intact.

I could always go out and buy four Flyrants I guess...

That's what I did, shield of baal formation ftw.
Seriously thinking about trying the new Khorne Codex though.

Honestly, outside of the exocrine, hive crone (the one with tentaclids), and flying hive tyrants (with twin-linked devourers) you could pretty much toss all the other MC's (esp. when facing Grey Knights.)

Most of the new tyranid army builds just go flyer heavy, or focus on never-ending formations, gets kinda boring when you have like, 2 viable tourney builds.
Toss Gargantuan Creatures into the mix (which is interesting, since the apoc book lists Trygon Prime as a gargantuan, codex doesn't though). Barbed Harridule is really really decent at 12 str 10 ap 3 attacks.

HOW is at your base strength.

Trygon Prime isn't a character. Unless you mean the Tyranid Prime (the warrior sized one)

I don't think any reasonable person is asking for invulnerables or other ridiculous boosts. TMCs in general could be fixed very easily. Trygon moves 12", Trygon hole works for one infantry/ troops unit on the same turn. Haruspex gets something useful with his special atks, plus more attacks. Swarmlord, where do i start? Tryrant has points reduction while wings gets increased the same amount. Carnifex goes to T8 perhaps, or T7 at least. Easy fixes.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I feel like 'nids are always just barely not good. 5th edition ave them lots of cool units but no way to reliably take down vehicles. Hull points got introduced, but little bugs lost cost effective access to strength 4. Lots of bugs are psykers, but they lost access to biomancy. Etc.

I think the designers are also a little afraid of reworking their pricing as dramatically as they ought to. Losing things like armorbane and the changes to smash took away perfectly viable anti-tank options (even the tervigon would be a solid rhino killer). The abundance of insta-death and effectiveness of melee grenades makes them relatively easy to take down as does the prevalence of things like plasma. Many of the big bugs could use a hefty discount, especially the tervigon who got both worse and more expensive if I recall correctly as the designers tried to shut down its previous levels of auto-take.

Outside of tyrants, however, I'm not sure I'd want to see a terrible impressive invul save or otherdurability increases. 'Nids should have access to lots of MCs, but the law of conservation of 'nidjitsu demands that each of those MCs (bar a few) be mini-bosses rather than big bosses. No one wants an entire army of 2+ invul 10 wound 'nids.

At the very least, I'd like to see swarmlord get Eternal Warrior, it's kinda terrible that he doesn't have it.

 eskimo wrote:
HOW is at your base strength.

Trygon Prime isn't a character. Unless you mean the Tyranid Prime (the warrior sized one)

I don't think any reasonable person is asking for invulnerables or other ridiculous boosts. TMCs in general could be fixed very easily. Trygon moves 12", Trygon hole works for one infantry/ troops unit on the same turn. Haruspex gets something useful with his special atks, plus more attacks. Swarmlord, where do i start? Tryrant has points reduction while wings gets increased the same amount. Carnifex goes to T8 perhaps, or T7 at least. Easy fixes.

Trygon may not be a character, but if you do not have a character it can be a warlord. Also Haruspex does get something it gets gulp where it can remove a model with no saves allowed, and is still AP2. Then making the carnifex higher tougness would just be ridiculous, if it was 8 then it would be unstopable.

I think GW needs to shake the idea that WS3, A3 and I1 are acceptable for a slow, melee-only model that costs at least 120pts. Flyrants work because they don't rely on melee to beat face. Daemons work because they start at WS6/A5 and variously Fly, Deep Strike, Slaanesh or T7/FNP their way over the board.

Quite frankly a MC deserves to start at WS5/A4 as a base point. And unless it has T7, a 2+ save, or is capable of moving at least 12" per turn, it probably isn't worth any more than 100pts. Considering Tomb Spyders sitting pretty at 50pts for a 3-Wound, RP monster with spawning abilities and even then they are hardly a must-take among the other Necron options.

Tyranids have some competitive builds, some very good units and Flyrant spam is top tier without a doubt.

That doesn't mean that a lot of the units (many of them the iconic Tyranid units) are currently pretty trashy. You can forgive Tyranid players for wishing that Screamer-killers were decent, Genestealers were terrifying and that the glorious reputation as a close combat death-wave was lived up to in the current iteration.

Then of course there are the really facepalm units like the Maleceptor, Haruspex and Pyrovore, all of which have the potential to be awesome but are simply terribly implemented.


Most factions can say something similar about their state of affairs of course. Even the new Necrons, with their "make almost everything viable" Decurion formation, are stuck with the weirdly implemented C'tan... but that doesn't mean we cannot wish for more consistency.

The nids have ws 3 because they aren't hard to hit. The only things they have any difficulty hitting are WS 7+ everything else is 4+ or 3+. Your carnifexes aren't there to beat up guardsmen, they are there to wreck tanks and buildings, and maybe a walker or two, those are all still hit (on average) with the same odds as they would if you were ws4, just some of them will hit on 3's in return. How good do you think a carnifex should be at dodging?

oz of the north wrote:

 eskimo wrote:
HOW is at your base strength.

Trygon Prime isn't a character. Unless you mean the Tyranid Prime (the warrior sized one)

I don't think any reasonable person is asking for invulnerables or other ridiculous boosts. TMCs in general could be fixed very easily. Trygon moves 12", Trygon hole works for one infantry/ troops unit on the same turn. Haruspex gets something useful with his special atks, plus more attacks. Swarmlord, where do i start? Tryrant has points reduction while wings gets increased the same amount. Carnifex goes to T8 perhaps, or T7 at least. Easy fixes.

Trygon may not be a character, but if you do not have a character it can be a warlord. Also Haruspex does get something it gets gulp where it can remove a model with no saves allowed, and is still AP2. Then making the carnifex higher tougness would just be ridiculous, if it was 8 then it would be unstopable.

Are you kidding me? Based on what I have read in your post I just feel like you play in a meta that is very lenient and not at all like the game most of us play.

You may be right on characters, I don't have the core book on me right this minute but I am almost certain that your Warlord needs to be a character. The Haruspex does NOT have an ability to remove a model with no save allowed. It's actually ability called gulp gives it precision shots on its ONE shot a turn. Fine, keep Carnifex at T6, just reduce their point cost and allow them to buy a 2+ save. I fail to see how a Carnifex at T8 is unstoppable but a Wraithknight that moves 12" a turn at T8 is just fine....

oz of the north wrote:

 eskimo wrote:
HOW is at your base strength.

Trygon Prime isn't a character. Unless you mean the Tyranid Prime (the warrior sized one)

I don't think any reasonable person is asking for invulnerables or other ridiculous boosts. TMCs in general could be fixed very easily. Trygon moves 12", Trygon hole works for one infantry/ troops unit on the same turn. Haruspex gets something useful with his special atks, plus more attacks. Swarmlord, where do i start? Tryrant has points reduction while wings gets increased the same amount. Carnifex goes to T8 perhaps, or T7 at least. Easy fixes.

Trygon may not be a character, but if you do not have a character it can be a warlord. Also Haruspex does get something it gets gulp where it can remove a model with no saves allowed, and is still AP2. Then making the carnifex higher tougness would just be ridiculous, if it was 8 then it would be unstopable.

True... Forgot about that, but that would mean a Tervigon HQ is taken. The guy who said a Nid player who won some tournaments had a Trygon Prime as warlord and no fliers, but did have formations. No mention of GC. I dunno, that all equals up to a generally bad list of the top of my head, even at casual standards.

Not gonna say you're wrong, but i really really do disagree with a T8 Fex being unstoppable. Sure the Devourers are a crutch but the Fex is not a weapons platform. Either way, look at mr Wraithknight, he's hardly that difficult to take out. The Carnifex moves 6", is I2 and plenty of S8 around which will all negate his save. At it's current standard, Fex + Devourers + Pod + Spam + Flyrants would be stupid, but tone down the stupid Devourers and you'd have no issues. Good compromise and more fluff like than a Fex with no CC weapon...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
The nids have ws 3 because they aren't hard to hit. The only things they have any difficulty hitting are WS 7+ everything else is 4+ or 3+. Your carnifexes aren't there to beat up guardsmen, they are there to wreck tanks and buildings, and maybe a walker or two, those are all still hit (on average) with the same odds as they would if you were ws4, just some of them will hit on 3's in return. How good do you think a carnifex should be at dodging?

See any Fex successfully chasing down any tanks recently?

That's why they all have guns.

There's a problem with TMC. Agreed ws4 Fex isn't needed, but something is!

 eskimo wrote:

oz of the north wrote:

 eskimo wrote:
HOW is at your base strength.

Trygon Prime isn't a character. Unless you mean the Tyranid Prime (the warrior sized one)

I don't think any reasonable person is asking for invulnerables or other ridiculous boosts. TMCs in general could be fixed very easily. Trygon moves 12", Trygon hole works for one infantry/ troops unit on the same turn. Haruspex gets something useful with his special atks, plus more attacks. Swarmlord, where do i start? Tryrant has points reduction while wings gets increased the same amount. Carnifex goes to T8 perhaps, or T7 at least. Easy fixes.

Trygon may not be a character, but if you do not have a character it can be a warlord. Also Haruspex does get something it gets gulp where it can remove a model with no saves allowed, and is still AP2. Then making the carnifex higher tougness would just be ridiculous, if it was 8 then it would be unstopable.

True... Forgot about that, but that would mean a Tervigon HQ is taken. The guy who said a Nid player who won some tournaments had a Trygon Prime as warlord and no fliers, but did have formations. No mention of GC. I dunno, that all equals up to a generally bad list of the top of my head, even at casual standards.

Not gonna say you're wrong, but i really really do disagree with a T8 Fex being unstoppable. Sure the Devourers are a crutch but the Fex is not a weapons platform. Either way, look at mr Wraithknight, he's hardly that difficult to take out. The Carnifex moves 6", is I2 and plenty of S8 around which will all negate his save. At it's current standard, Fex + Devourers + Pod + Spam + Flyrants would be stupid, but tone down the stupid Devourers and you'd have no issues. Good compromise and more fluff like than a Fex with no CC weapon...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
The nids have ws 3 because they aren't hard to hit. The only things they have any difficulty hitting are WS 7+ everything else is 4+ or 3+. Your carnifexes aren't there to beat up guardsmen, they are there to wreck tanks and buildings, and maybe a walker or two, those are all still hit (on average) with the same odds as they would if you were ws4, just some of them will hit on 3's in return. How good do you think a carnifex should be at dodging?

See any Fex successfully chasing down any tanks recently?

That's why they all have guns.

There's a problem with TMC. Agreed ws4 Fex isn't needed, but something is!

No tervigon needs to be taken if you bring just formations and do not have a character, you can choose any model to be the warlord.

Regarding Wraithknight, they cannot be in a unit, also they are drastically more expensive than a single carnifex. Also the wraithknight is from the Eldar codex, which is well known for being broken.
If a fex was toughness 8 then no str 4 could hurt it, so for a single unit with 9 wounds you would need to dedicate your entire army to kill and will most likely not kill in a single turn. Then 2 more units of 3 could be taken, that would just mean nids always win by tabeling.
Fexes are fine as they are, it just happens they hurt compared to the 3 most broken codices in Tau, Eldar and Daemons. Compared to others they are completely broken.

I don't entirely get the whole "run as many formations as you want detachment" setup. The Tervigon comes from the non-character HQ. Still, with no flyers, there's Living Artillery Node which is good, Endless Swarm which is too slow for tournies, and the Fex ones. The rest isn't special.
Even in fun games with a good friend my Trygon hasn't come out since the Necron codex dropped, i just can't afford the points for how little it brings.

9 Fex is 1350 with fleet, furious charge and armourbane. 1080 barebones.

At that kinda point cost and speed, any army of a reasonable build will run circles round it. 75% of the army having to charge means little left to be scoring.

Not to mention the synapse required so they actually move.

But if T8 was the case, i'd still take a slightly points increase. There are other TMC that benefit from T8 way more than the CC Fex.

I'm pretty sure that Tyrgon, nor Tyrgon Prime can be run as a warlord because your warlord must be HQ choice and both those fall under HS.

Anyway, it's mind boggling to me that a Trygon, the size of a damn Wraithknight has only T and S 6. Despite being a huge footprint and target and costing about the equivalent of a landraider.

Also, I gotta agree alot of the formations are just lackluster. Pushing a warrior tax ontop isn't exactly going to make me chomp at the bit for the minor bonuses they provide when I could just double my force org.

Thing is, the core problem you are all discussing is not TMC costs, effectiveness, etc.

The problem is the entire book. When nearly 20 units in a codex are never even considered in a playable list, you have a serious problem. Consider, tyrant guard, tyranid primes, deathleaper (as HQ), warriors, genestealers, horms, hive guard, lictors (as elites), zoans, pyrovores, shrikes, raveners, sky slashers, gargoyles(as fast), spore mines... and that is the NON TMC units that you rarely if ever see, then you include the TMCs and you have swarmlord, OOE, tervigons, haruspex, harpies (as fast), any fex other than DS devourers, trygons, trygon primes...

That many units that almost never see table play is just BONKERS. That is 3/4 of the codex. Just sad...very very sad. I've been playing nids since 3rd, and the codex has never been worse than it is now.

Point is, the entire codex needs to be rethought, scrap everything and restructure it so that the only armies you see aren't some way, shape or form to cram in more flyrants.

Back to TMCs, I agree that making them all super death machines in close combat or at range is not the answer. Nids are meant to be a tide of bodies, whether gribblies without number, or a wall of shifting chitin, boys over toys has always been the way of nids. One thing I do feel though is that most if not ALL nids should be WS4-5. It makes close to no sense that an army literally bred for war, with all the experience of the hive mind strikes with the same relative skill as an Imperial guard recruit. And I know the argument of "they are actually the human elite, etc" that is not my point. All other armies amass their skill from training and experience... Nids are born with the experience. and considering that the heart of the army is a close combat oriented one, that is where their greatest skill should lie.

The "everything moves at 6" " is very sad, we could definitely use a rule like charging after running or something to speed them up a bit, cause as much as I like having tons of TMCS, I don't like to have no choice but to get danced around by skimmer and bike armies. Im ok with losing the shrouding bugs, make us cheaper, faster into combat, and then the cheasy "everything has shrouded" wont be neccessary.

My 2 cents

@gameandwatch - all of those units are playable, they just aren't optimal. Just play another non-optimal army -- say Blood Angels, or Dark Eldar -- or a faction that CAN be loaded up, but isn't.

You have to be careful what you wish for. At some point, it's totally possible that you get many of the buffs that you want, at the expense of Flyrant strength. In the end, you could have a codex with many more units that are much better, but no single super-duper build.

Don't get me wrong: I'm totally ok with that (I prefer that!) but many people feel that if every faction doesn't have at least one obviously, super duper spammable or brainless build, it's broken.

Personally, I wish all of those builds would be removed from the game.

 Talys wrote:
@gameandwatch - all of those units are playable, they just aren't optimal. Just play another non-optimal army -- say Blood Angels, or Dark Eldar -- or a faction that CAN be loaded up, but isn't.

You have to be careful what you wish for. At some point, it's totally possible that you get many of the buffs that you want, at the expense of Flyrant strength. In the end, you could have a codex with many more units that are much better, but no single super-duper build.

Don't get me wrong: I'm totally ok with that (I prefer that!) but many people feel that if every faction doesn't have at least one obviously, super duper spammable or brainless build, it's broken.

Personally, I wish all of those builds would be removed from the game.

As do I, I much prefer struggling to choose units than knowing which are the obvious shoe-ins. The game and hobby are more fun/ interesting to me when everything could be a good choice, makes it so everytime you face the faction it could be something totally different.

I personally think people are comparing apples to oranges with TMC. Carnifexes should not be compared to greater daemons or even DPs based on cost alone. Also, they have ranged options for a reason, and fill the dreadnaught or battle tank role. Tervigons are not meant to fight, but are purely a support unit. Toxicrenes are MC killers. Sure, there are a few less optimal choices, but tyranids seem to be designed so that each unit fills a single, specific role, even if that role is less than desirable.

Checking the new eldar roumors and nids might as well not deploy.
If as roumoured eldar bikes can spam s6 and multi shots each are mc's will just vanish. On paper our mcs are ok but trying to get them all to work as you want you need synapse and numbers but there costed so thats not really an option, i just hate the fact that the only really good option is to spam flyrants which to me is not nids.

TMC's make me feel like the cover rules for "(shooting) between the gaps in an intervening unit" doesn't require 25% coverage like normal cover does. Most people play it that it does need 25% cover, but if you play it so you don't, the TMC's become much more viable. You can run a monster mash behind a wall of gaunts and it has some survivability.

I do really wish the MC's were more balanced instead of just epic Flyrant and "meh" everything else, it would make for much more interesting Tyranid armies and more interesting games.

Skullhammer wrote:
Checking the new eldar roumors and nids might as well not deploy.
If as roumoured eldar bikes can spam s6 and multi shots each are mc's will just vanish. On paper our mcs are ok but trying to get them all to work as you want you need synapse and numbers but there costed so thats not really an option, i just hate the fact that the only really good option is to spam flyrants which to me is not nids.

A hive fleet can have more than one Hive Tyrant.

There is nothing saying they can't all be flying.

I Skullhammer is saying that Flyrants are the only good MC we have, especially if the rumors about Eldar weapons are true. They've basically got a multishot weapon now that can toast an entire squad of fexes on 4s...

If the Eldar rumors are true, I might just shelf my nids for awhile.

EDIT: Unless of course the gun has a really short range (say 12-6") and Eldar lose their ability to move in the Assault Phase. Then Fexes or other MCs might have a chance.

Other than Necrons, I think Nids will take the smallest hit. The bikes may be resilient, but a few Mawlocs popping up will destroy bikes. If nids go first can really punish eldar and stop them from being so super killy, also the ability to have mobile shrouding can cause a lot of pain.

Agreed oz now all we have to worry over is if the second roumor part is true that all distort weapons are going destroyer

Forgot about the Str. D part, hopefully that is just rumor, if that is true. Think a lot of people will start shelving armies.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
Toxicrenes are MC killers.

lol



When it comes to new Eldar, problem isn't the D weapons. It's the Scatriders. Completely bonkers.

Btw, oz of the north, you don't have a clue.

 N.I.B. wrote:

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
Toxicrenes are MC killers.

lol



When it comes to new Eldar, problem isn't the D weapons. It's the Scatriders. Completely bonkers.

Btw, oz of the north, you don't have a clue.

No clue on what?