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So with formations being king in the current meta, I'm curious as to why I never see the Leviathan Rising/Shield of Baal Tyranid formations in use. Some of them, especially the Endless Swarm and Skyblight Swarm, seem to give the 'Nids a much-needed boost to overall horde survivability. Is this a "better of paper than in practice" situation? Am I missing something, or are Tyranids just so disadvantaged in the current meta that not even infinitely respawning bugs can't help them?

 EnTyme wrote:
So with formations being king in the current meta, I'm curious as to why I never see the Leviathan Rising/Shield of Baal Tyranid formations in use. Some of them, especially the Endless Swarm and Skyblight Swarm, seem to give the 'Nids a much-needed boost to overall horde survivability. Is this a "better of paper than in practice" situation? Am I missing something, or are Tyranids just so disadvantaged in the current meta that not even infinitely respawning bugs can't help them?

I think it's largely due to lack of Nids players. I think these formations are great, but I think it's A) not enough people play Nids B) those that do don't want to shell out $$$ for formations

When they are in use, Skyblight is one of the more popular formations.

However the current Tyranid Meta focuses on masses of Devourer Flyrants, and the Skyblight formation just adds on too much tax units. Especially when Mucolids provide an extremely cheap troops tax that also support the flyrants in the form of a homing battle cannon shot to flyers.

Well most unit arnt that good to begin with, endless swarm just doesnt do anything other than place bodies on the field.

Gants cant hurt most vehicles, do almost no wounds to anything, and cant take saves over than cover (mostly 5+ cover too unles you have Venom/Malanthropes) they just die in waves and are way to slow, if they do come back they need to March across the table, that alone will take 3 turns.

Gants also dont have gear like ALL other armies, Every unit other than Deamons and Gants can get upgrades like PW's, Heavy/Assault, Rending etc... Gants literally are just Bolt Pistol Guardsmen, with nothing to give them other than Poison or Furious charge at an Extremely high point cost (2-3pts) also 0 grenades (so Furious charge is almost pointless anyways) , they just cant do enough for their points.

At least Chaos Cultist get an extra CC and dont need Synapse with same point costs as gants to get better better Heavy/Assault weapons, Cultist can even get Marks.... Its bad when CSM basic troop are better than Nids.


Other formations require you take to gear you never would take anyways, or at least in those combos.

Believe it or not you can play warriors with the right gear, MSU of warriors (2-3 units) arnt bad, you can get them to have 4+ cover too, but you want them as cheap as you can with a roll in mind, either Rending for +1 CC and chance to break armor (its really cheap too) Or shooty, but not both, they still are weak to S8 and only 4+ saves. The formation for Warriors dont let you do this, the force you to take an extra 50-80pts of worthless gear almost doubling the cost of the unit or taken with Primes (extremely over costed, Primes need to be 60pts Base not 125)


The Few good Formations are on units that are over costed.
Alot of the formations make you take units you dont want, Tyrant node makes you take a Tyrant Guard and cannot take wings (In this BRB wings are to important back in 5th ed I would take this formation in a heart beat.)

Other things like Trygon's special Rule is just completely Broken (I mean literally broken you cant use it) Its just to impossible to use. But b.c of this the Subterranean Swarm WOULD be an amazing Formation if it wasnt for 2 things
1) Cant charge
2) Raveners are terrible, most costly than warriors and even easier to die....


Ok here are some good ones

Skyblight:
This Formations got little better specially if you are playing with the new FAQ's, But dont play it if you are running 1500pts or less, its better at 2k.

Manufactorum Genestealers and Hunting Pack:
Can be played, but with some of the new SM stuff they became alittle harder to play. If you playing GSC the Broodlord Hunting Pack is AMAZING b.c you can have the Broodlord "the Horror" then the GSC can Shriek with a -2 making it do 2 more wounds, you can Kill a Riptide this way easily on turn 1.

Licter Forest:
Amazing MSU unit for Maelstrom this won me the game a couple times. Playing Kill Points or eternal I wouldnt take it.


Over all you want 3-4 Flyrants with x2 Dakka, Malonthrope some M. Spores and filler for flavor vs your meta.

Edit for Spelling Sorry English is hard for me.

Thanks for the insight, Amish. So it like the same situation as the IG and Chaos formations: They add some nifty special rules and there are a few worth looking at, but don't address the issues with the codex. Hopefully these will be compatible with any future codex updates the 'Nids get.

NP and GL with Nids

You can win with them for sure.

But MC and Spore spam isnt the Nids way sadly :(

Played against some of those formations, and the ones I aced are nasty. It is just that you would need to overhaul your entire army to construct them and risk having a useless army once the formation is no longer supported. This isn't that alluring for veteran nid players.

 oldzoggy wrote:
Played against some of those formations, and the ones I aced are nasty. It is just that you would need to overhaul your entire army to construct them and risk having a useless army once the formation is no longer supported. This isn't that alluring for veteran nid players.

Me and 2 other friends all have well over 15K points in nids Each, we all went over all the formations many times trying to get nids to work, but against the top armies its pointless, Eldar, Tau, Necrons just walk all over everything, SM with Formations need to grind them down a few turns but its still easy for them.

What have you been using and playing against to get some of them to work? My Local only plays highly competitive.

One of the nastier Tyranid formation combinations I have faced was an army with Lictors in formation form. Mawlocks, Flyrants and multiple never ending spore mine formations. Those accurate deep strikes combined with never ending spore mines was quite nasty and required me to completely overhaul my regular game plan.

One general note I don't play the typical top lists / netlist lists so it might effect them less then it did me.

 oldzoggy wrote:
One of the nastier Tyranid formation combinations I have faced was an army with Lictors in formation form. Mawlocks, Flyrants and multiple never ending spore mine formations. Those accurate deep strikes combined with never ending spore mines was quite nasty and required me to completely overhaul my regular game plan.

One general note I don't play the typical top lists / netlist lists so it might effect them less then it did me.

Yeah I said the Lictor one was good, its used in Net lists alot actually.

The LAN, ones with any type of Warriors, Loads of Gants or Goyles, and Trygon Formations are mostly junk.

Tyranids were some of the first Formations with the Rising Leviathan series, and suffered from the same pre-Decurion power creep. The Formations are just weak. If Living Artillery was made now, the Exocrine would be getting double shots, the Biovores would get AP-1 for each model in the unit and the Warriors would just be a Synapse tax but still might increase their range for the creatures in the Formation. In Skyblight, the flyers would all have +1 to their Jink, or rerollable for whatever reason. But, because they were created way back when the game was just haunted by Serpent Spam and Grav-Cents, they do not stack up to modern Formations or even modern armies.

Skyblight is still good, but Pentyrant is better. More room for Mawlocs and Lictors and other Flyrants when you don't have Harpy tax.

I haven't played in ages, since 5th edition, just coming back, and I believe the new FAQ nerfs the Nid formation even more.

So it doesn't matter on turn 5 or say last turn if your gargoyles are coming back, if they can't reach where you want them to go because you didn't deep strike them on turn one or when they arrive, then they can't deep strike when they come back.

I could be wrong but this is what I understand so please correct me if I am wrong. I quit playing because it was always an uphill battle with them and it seems the same in 7th edition. So why bother spending all that money in futility?

 oldzoggy wrote:
Played against some of those formations, and the ones I aced are nasty. It is just that you would need to overhaul your entire army to construct them and risk having a useless army once the formation is no longer supported. This isn't that alluring for veteran nid players.

My Carnifex still remembers the Crudace-ening

Davor wrote:
I haven't played in ages, since 5th edition, just coming back, and I believe the new FAQ nerfs the Nid formation even more.

So it doesn't matter on turn 5 or say last turn if your gargoyles are coming back, if they can't reach where you want them to go because you didn't deep strike them on turn one or when they arrive, then they can't deep strike when they come back.

I could be wrong but this is what I understand so please correct me if I am wrong. I quit playing because it was always an uphill battle with them and it seems the same in 7th edition. So why bother spending all that money in futility?

Are you talking about a Formation?

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Davor wrote:
I haven't played in ages, since 5th edition, just coming back, and I believe the new FAQ nerfs the Nid formation even more.

So it doesn't matter on turn 5 or say last turn if your gargoyles are coming back, if they can't reach where you want them to go because you didn't deep strike them on turn one or when they arrive, then they can't deep strike when they come back.

I could be wrong but this is what I understand so please correct me if I am wrong. I quit playing because it was always an uphill battle with them and it seems the same in 7th edition. So why bother spending all that money in futility?

Are you talking about a Formation?

I believe so. The new FAQ ruling that says if something is coming back again, and wants to deep strike it can only deep strike if the original unit did it.

I use Wrecker Node pretty regularly, that's because I already had the models when the formationa were eleased.

My problem with making the formations is that most of them require me to buy more models. That's nothing to do withb Nids in particular. All armies I have predate formation-hammer, and I'm growing more and more aware that these formations are primarily just ways to try to entice legacy players into buying more kits when they otherwise would have no reason to.

Nids are in such a bad spot they really need a complete overhaul rather than trying to patch things up via formations.

Davor wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Davor wrote:
I haven't played in ages, since 5th edition, just coming back, and I believe the new FAQ nerfs the Nid formation even more.

So it doesn't matter on turn 5 or say last turn if your gargoyles are coming back, if they can't reach where you want them to go because you didn't deep strike them on turn one or when they arrive, then they can't deep strike when they come back.

I could be wrong but this is what I understand so please correct me if I am wrong. I quit playing because it was always an uphill battle with them and it seems the same in 7th edition. So why bother spending all that money in futility?

Are you talking about a Formation?

I believe so. The new FAQ ruling that says if something is coming back again, and wants to deep strike it can only deep strike if the original unit did it.

I believe it actually states the it can only come back again if the unit originally had the ability to deep strike. Otherwise, they have to walk in from ongoing reserves.

I think it's been summed up nicely so far.

First - being amongst the first wave of formations created they don't have the same power spike levels as the formations contained within core codexes or supplements and also have a lot more chaff weighing them down.

Second - the Tyranid army itself is in a rather bad spot. Like, 90% of the army is just trash - overcosted and underpowered. Sadly this rings true with 90% of our FW units as well. (Compare any Hierodule to a Wraithknight or Stormsurge and then ask why Hierodules for some reason have to cost 200+ points extra).

Third - these formations don't actually lend themselves well to an army. Whereas any of the SM or Eldar formations can function as a nice addition to an army with some perks of their own...the Tyranid formations are so heavy that they practically require you to restructure your army around them.

The only 'good' ones I'd say are Skyblight (but even that is a bit point heavy for chaff) and the Lictor formations.

And the main reason I say the Lictor formations are 'good' - both Deathleaper's Assassin Brood and the Forest Brood is because they allow you to field those units OUTSIDE of the Force Org Chart.

Within the confines of the Force Org chart...

Deathleaper doesn't even begin to compare to Flyrants in HQ.

And Lictors don't compare to Malanthropes or Zoanthropes in Elites.

Seriously, the Tyranid Elite section is a bloated mess while our Fast Attack looks downright abandoned.

I'd not rate the Genestealer Units...simply because at the end of the day they're still Genestealers - hideously expensive, hideously fragile assault specialists without access to assault grenades.

 EnTyme wrote:

Davor wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Davor wrote:
I haven't played in ages, since 5th edition, just coming back, and I believe the new FAQ nerfs the Nid formation even more.

So it doesn't matter on turn 5 or say last turn if your gargoyles are coming back, if they can't reach where you want them to go because you didn't deep strike them on turn one or when they arrive, then they can't deep strike when they come back.

I could be wrong but this is what I understand so please correct me if I am wrong. I quit playing because it was always an uphill battle with them and it seems the same in 7th edition. So why bother spending all that money in futility?

Are you talking about a Formation?

I believe so. The new FAQ ruling that says if something is coming back again, and wants to deep strike it can only deep strike if the original unit did it.

I believe it actually states the it can only come back again if the unit originally had the ability to deep strike. Otherwise, they have to walk in from ongoing reserves.

Yes, It can come back, but can not DS unless it has DS rules. Gargoyles are Jump units, Jump units have DS so Goyles can DS but Gants from Endless Swarm can not.

@DarkStarSabre Genestealer units are pretty bad, I only said it if you are using GSC, the Horror + Psychic Shriek is deadly against MC and GMC.