Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

These calculations don't seem to factor in the ranged vs melee aspects of deathspitters raveners. Sure you could deep strike within 9" of a target and shoot with 12" weapons... but that means you will be shooting bubble wrap units. With 18" guns, you have a larger selection of targets to shoot at.

In my army for example, I leave the bubble wrap shooting to devgaunts from a Trygon. The raveners then shoot at something behind them, and if any bubble wrap survives then raveners can charge to try and finish them off.

So how bad are warriors/raveners this edition? Raveners are easily my favorite model of the tyranids, though i like their aesthetics as a whole.

Ive always wanted to start a tyranid army but their dex was so bad it wasnt even funny. Things have change, but if warriors/raveners are still trash then eff it

The last page or so has been discussing them. They're pretty decent. You can deliver an entire unit of warriors with a Trygon and possibly charge on turn one. And raveners can deliver themselves. They're probably not going to be in a super competitive list but they're definitely a solid tier 2.

Take em to some local shop games and have fun. The tyranids have an excellent internal balance this edition. There are very few bad options compared to other armies.

i'll backpeddle a few pages and read from there then thanks.

Not really worried about the competitive scene since i dont ever play tournaments anyway (GW has never, ever balanced a game good enough for tournament play). All i care is theyre not auto-lose like they (and orks) were last edition.

How many Biovores is too many biovores ?

I fielded 4 last game and for their points they were MVPs

Someone here is playing something like 36 Biovores in a 2000 pts army.

 adamsouza wrote:
How many Biovores is too many biovores ?

I fielded 4 last game and for their points they were MVPs

How big was the army? I'm planning on 4 Biovores in 1500pts

Why were they MVP's curiously??

With the new progress in computer modeling I am hoping we get a pyrovore and biovore kit. The last remaining thing would be a lictor/deathleaper kit, with some other new unit. Perhaps a sniper, we do not have that.

Oh, and shrik conversion kit. And nids would have everything!

We could use a unique swarmlord. Though I wouldn't need it. I already built one from a forgeworld walking tyrant.

I would also really appreciate a plastic hierodule kit, completely redesigned to not have that stupid face.

Razerous wrote:

 adamsouza wrote:
How many Biovores is too many biovores ?

I fielded 4 last game and for their points they were MVPs

How big was the army? I'm planning on 4 Biovores in 1500pts

Why were they MVP's curiously??

I had 4 in a 2K army. Was up against a Ultramarines Spearhead that was Robute, the tank commander in a landraider, 2 new redemptor dreads, a chaplain Dread, and 20 Legion of the Damned. Soo much high tough, 2+ and 3++, that the mortal wounds are from the Biovores and Hive Tyrants were the only thing killing anything.

I worked up a new 2K list with 21 Biovores. I'm hoping to have enough mortal wounds a round to delete almost any enemy model/unit in a turn.

 Niiai wrote:
With the new progress in computer modeling I am hoping we get a pyrovore and biovore kit. The last remaining thing would be a lictor/deathleaper kit, with some other new unit. Perhaps a sniper, we do not have that.

Oh, and shrik conversion kit. And nids would have everything!

I can second the desire for snipers, the lack of makes dealing with character heavy lists a chore, esp conscript spam. I'm toying with the idea of running a cheap genestealer cults supreme command (2 Magus, 1 Primus and some Purestrains) to let me take a large amount of Ratlings in a brood brothers detachment

21 Biovores...sounds like a lot of fun :/

Astmeister wrote:Someone here is playing something like 36 Biovores in a 2000 pts army.

That was me but I reduced it to 24. Needed more points for a balanced list.

adamsouza wrote:

Razerous wrote:

 adamsouza wrote:
How many Biovores is too many biovores ?

I fielded 4 last game and for their points they were MVPs

How big was the army? I'm planning on 4 Biovores in 1500pts

Why were they MVP's curiously??

I had 4 in a 2K army. Was up against a Ultramarines Spearhead that was Robute, the tank commander in a landraider, 2 new redemptor dreads, a chaplain Dread, and 20 Legion of the Damned. Soo much high tough, 2+ and 3++, that the mortal wounds are from the Biovores and Hive Tyrants were the only thing killing anything.

I worked up a new 2K list with 21 Biovores. I'm hoping to have enough mortal wounds a round to delete almost any enemy model/unit in a turn.

I just found out that the spore bombs can 'explode' if they're within 3 inch of an enemy unit at the end of the charge phase. Doesn't say that the need to assault them self. The can just move + advance within 3 inch and explode without charging. Also doesn't say it need to be the owners assault phase so it's possible to field them within 3 inch of a trygon and if any enemy unit charge the trygon the can explode within 3 inch.

Retrogamer0001 wrote:21 Biovores...sounds like a lot of fun :/

In a competitive setting it is fun! I also field 2x tyrannocyte with devourer gaunts + 3x mawloc and deep strike them. It is always a good fight and I need to keep thinking about every move.

The best thing about the biovores is the 4 wounds each. Did some testing against 5x earthshaker cannons and if I keep them within the malanthrope reach the can survive a lot of shooting.

5x d6 shots = 17 shots = 6 hits (-1 to hit) = 5 wounds = 4 x d3 damage = 2 dead biovores. wounds could also spil over and that would mean only one dead biovore and one wounded.

So, with Tyranids as a Top Tier army now (yAy!), I wanted to ask: Are they still a shooty army, or are they now a melee army? Or has GW balanced Shooty and Melee?

 KaptinBadrukk wrote:
So, with Tyranids as a Top Tier army now (yAy!), I wanted to ask: Are they still a shooty army, or are they now a melee army? Or has GW balanced Shooty and Melee?

After 48 pages and several threads we don't know. :-)

 KaptinBadrukk wrote:
So, with Tyranids as a Top Tier army now (yAy!), I wanted to ask: Are they still a shooty army, or are they now a melee army? Or has GW balanced Shooty and Melee?

Depends on your list. You can go pretty hardcore shooty or slashy or a mix of both and it seems to all work pretty well if you build intelligently.

 KaptinBadrukk wrote:
So, with Tyranids as a Top Tier army now (yAy!), I wanted to ask: Are they still a shooty army, or are they now a melee army? Or has GW balanced Shooty and Melee?

For the shooty side, we have exocrines, hive guard and biovores, all really good at what they do. For the stabby side, we have trygons, swarmlord and genestealers. Our middle ground isn't as good but still solid though

A couple questions, as a non-Tyranid player:
How competetive are Nids now? Top tier? Above-average? Decent?
Also: What units make up a 'good' Tyranid list? I hear Biovore spam is good. Anything besides that?

I ask because a player at my LGS is complaining about how his Tyranids can't do much, and don't stand a chance against armies with a Codex, and I'm curious if there's anything to his whinging or not.

It could be matchup dependent. What does your LGS play? And lists, not just codexes.

Waaaghpower wrote:
A couple questions, as a non-Tyranid player:
How competetive are Nids now? Top tier? Above-average? Decent?
Also: What units make up a 'good' Tyranid list? I hear Biovore spam is good. Anything besides that?

I ask because a player at my LGS is complaining about how his Tyranids can't do much, and don't stand a chance against armies with a Codex, and I'm curious if there's anything to his whinging or not.

Nids are certainly above average. They're not *quite* at the Guard/SM/Chaos tier but they're in Acod Spray range of it and can still give those armies a good go. What's he playing now? A good list usually involves a shooting firebase with Malanthrope protection and fast/DS assault units to reach out and kill things in melee. Swarmlord optional, he's expensive but deadly.

 Niiai wrote:
It could be matchup dependent. What does your LGS play? And lists, not just codexes.

We've got a couple Eldar/Dark Eldar players who go heavy in air-force type lists (at least whenever I play them it's been air-force, or at least Venom or Serpents with flier backup,) a Grey Knights player who likes deathstar-esque collections, a Guard player who doesn't have much in the way of clear army comp, a few Chaos players that I haven't actually faced on the battlefield.

He was specifically salty about playing against a 3,000 point Space Marine/Sister of Battle tank-based gunline, though. I had a bunch of Battle Sisters squads spread out for screening and Storm Bolters (Yes, I know Dominions are better, sue me,) Celestine and some Seraphim, a Chapter Master and a Lieutenant, three Predators, a Mortis and Contemptor-Mortis, and a couple Tactical squads and a Terminator squad backed up by a Captain, all crammed inside a Spartan Assault Tank. I also had an Imperial Psyker, Astropath, and 7 Wyrdvanes. (There were some miscelaneous units in there, I think, to fill out detachments. I can't remember everything and would have to go back and look at my list.)
(I also intentionally did not optimize this list. If I wanted to go 'Full power', I would have - Among other things - Taken Ultramarines instead of Iron Hands so that I could use Guilliman for all the buffs I could possibly need - As well as getting 6 more Command Points, ditched the Battle Sisters in exchange for Dominions, spammed Astropaths as opposed to going mixed, and probably ditched the Terminators in exchange for some more Plasma of some kind.)

He had some-odd ninety shooty gants, a few Tervigons, a number of Exocrines, many Biovores, some medium sized units that I think were Warriors, some Hive Guard or something, five Zoanthropes, and Malanthropes as well as Venomthropes for armywide -1 To Hit coverage. (Can you tell that I don't play against Tyranids very often? I only really heard his list once as we were both setting up, so... Dunno many details, and wasn't too concerned about it.)


I had first turn, both thanks to drops and because we were playing a Konor mission. He didn't seize. I moved in with my Sisters of Battle, cast a few versions of Smite that manifested well but only managed to nick some Gants, sprayed down some Bolter fire that did very, very little to hurt his Gants thanks to the fact that he was dug in with cover saves and I was at a -1 to hit, then rolled really poorly with my melta-pistol Seraphim and put like three wounds on a Tervigon.
Then I activated 'Killshot', gunned down his full-health Tervigon in a single volley (Even considering all the rerolls from my Chapter Master and Lieutenant, I had above-average dice,) and he ragequit after deciding that Killshot was impossibly overpowered if it wasn't a typo, and that too much of his army was going to be dead before his turn for him to possibly win, and that my Codex was far too powerful for him to beat.

To my knowledge, he hasn't played anyone else, and mentioned in our Facebook group yesterday that he was retiring his Nids for a while because "they can't really do much".



I reaally don't expect that his army, or my codex, was at fault. However, I wanted to ask here to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It sounds like he's mostly just a whiner. I could do a lot with a list built that way. Though I would want more exocrine/hiveguard/trygons for tearing apart those vehicles.

Honestly, codexes are so new that there is no way for anyone to really know what is/is not good against codex release armies yet. How could we?

But his list seems to have at least some kind of structure and some not bad units. With 90 termagants I would bring at minimum 2 tervigons (which you say he is) giving them rerolls to hit and wound and replenishing 20 models a turn while providing some psychic support for some 5+ FNP buffs if he is being intelligent about it at all.

 Lance845 wrote:
It sounds like he's mostly just a whiner. I could do a lot with a list built that way. Though I would want more exocrine/hiveguard/trygons for tearing apart those vehicles.

Honestly, codexes are so new that there is no way for anyone to really know what is/is not good against codex release armies yet. How could we?

But his list seems to have at least some kind of structure and some not bad units. With 90 termagants I would bring at minimum 2 tervigons (which you say he is) giving them rerolls to hit and wound and replenishing 20 models a turn while providing some psychic support for some 5+ FNP buffs if he is being intelligent about it at all.

He could have had more than one or two Exocrines, and I think he had like 6 Hiveguard, but I'm not sure. It's worth pointing out that this mission made Trygons kind of worthless, though - Reserves don't come in until turn 2, on a 3+, so he didn't want to bring them. (It was unclear if that restriction applied to units that already had some kind of Deep Strike role, or was only for units that couldn't normally start in reserves, but he is the guy running our Konor campaign and he made the call on it.)
(Oh, did I mention he's the guy running our campaign?)

It is also worth pointing out that those two Tervigons would definitely have died before he got a chance to use them, even if I didn't get above-average dice. I still had 16 Lascannon shots left to fire, half of which were heavily buffed, as well as 8 Autocannon shots with rerolls as well.

And really, outside of the Killshot strategem, nothing I used was really that far removed from the Indexes - I was able to take Iron Hands instead of Guilliman, but that's actually probably less effective for me. Predators and Terminators were marginally cheaper, but that just meant I didn't have to shave as much elsewhere and could take the inefficient Wyrdvane psykers instead of just spamming Astropaths.

Waaaghpower wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
It sounds like he's mostly just a whiner. I could do a lot with a list built that way. Though I would want more exocrine/hiveguard/trygons for tearing apart those vehicles.

Honestly, codexes are so new that there is no way for anyone to really know what is/is not good against codex release armies yet. How could we?

But his list seems to have at least some kind of structure and some not bad units. With 90 termagants I would bring at minimum 2 tervigons (which you say he is) giving them rerolls to hit and wound and replenishing 20 models a turn while providing some psychic support for some 5+ FNP buffs if he is being intelligent about it at all.

He could have had more than one or two Exocrines, and I think he had like 6 Hiveguard, but I'm not sure. It's worth pointing out that this mission made Trygons kind of worthless, though - Reserves don't come in until turn 2, on a 3+, so he didn't want to bring them. (It was unclear if that restriction applied to units that already had some kind of Deep Strike role, or was only for units that couldn't normally start in reserves, but he is the guy running our Konor campaign and he made the call on it.)
(Oh, did I mention he's the guy running our campaign?)

It is also worth pointing out that those two Tervigons would definitely have died before he got a chance to use them, even if I didn't get above-average dice. I still had 16 Lascannon shots left to fire, half of which were heavily buffed, as well as 8 Autocannon shots with rerolls as well.

And really, outside of the Killshot strategem, nothing I used was really that far removed from the Indexes - I was able to take Iron Hands instead of Guilliman, but that's actually probably less effective for me. Predators and Terminators were marginally cheaper, but that just meant I didn't have to shave as much elsewhere and could take the inefficient Wyrdvane psykers instead of just spamming Astropaths.

The Konar missons have been heavily favoring SM so far. Play the normal game. Konar is nonsense. Besides that, I never deploy my deepstrikers turn 1 anyway. It's almost always better to hang onto them. And it's pretty easy for a deepstriking trygon to reach melee the turn it arrives.

Waaaghpower wrote:
A couple questions, as a non-Tyranid player:
How competetive are Nids now? Top tier? Above-average? Decent?
Also: What units make up a 'good' Tyranid list? I hear Biovore spam is good. Anything besides that?

I ask because a player at my LGS is complaining about how his Tyranids can't do much, and don't stand a chance against armies with a Codex, and I'm curious if there's anything to his whinging or not.

- Thats because a regular tyranid army get shot to pieces. Simply walking towards the enemy doesn't work. Even a list full with cheap carnifexes get's taken apart in the end.
- First round shooting can be brutal and deep strike units can be easily blocked.

Tyranids can make some nice 'one trick pony' lists but it involves spamming a particular unit and not a lot of players are willing to do that.

 Lance845 wrote:

The Konar missons have been heavily favoring SM so far. Play the normal game. Konar is nonsense. Besides that, I never deploy my deepstrikers turn 1 anyway. It's almost always better to hang onto them. And it's pretty easy for a deepstriking trygon to reach melee the turn it arrives.

I agree that Konor is kind of nonsense, but in this particular instance it wouldn't have mattered one way or the other.

Fair enough about the Trygons, though.

shogun wrote:

Astmeister wrote:Someone here is playing something like 36 Biovores in a 2000 pts army.

That was me but I reduced it to 24. Needed more points for a balanced list.

I feel like an under achiever now

I managed to a Brigade and a Spearhead in 2K
Hive Tyrant x3
Lictor x3
Mucloid x3
Ripper Swarms x3
Termigant Broods x3
Biovore x3
Biovore x3
Biovore x3
Malonthrope x1
Biovore x3
Biovore x3
Biovore x3
Biovore x3

 adamsouza wrote:

shogun wrote:

Astmeister wrote:Someone here is playing something like 36 Biovores in a 2000 pts army.

That was me but I reduced it to 24. Needed more points for a balanced list.

I feel like an under achiever now

I managed to a Brigade and a Spearhead in 2K
Hive Tyrant x3
Lictor x3
Mucloid x3
Ripper Swarms x3
Termigant Broods x3
Biovore x3
Biovore x3
Biovore x3
Malonthrope x1
Biovore x3
Biovore x3
Biovore x3
Biovore x3

I really like my 2x 20 guants + 2x tyrannocytes + 3x mawloc combo. Also got a malanthrope for babysitting the biovores and a broodlord. I forget how fast the broodlord can be.

Put the broodlord within the biovore blob. Drop the tyrannocytes + gaunts + mawlocs, and run forward with the broodlord. He is a great asset for assaulting turn 3 and synapse.

Here is my core looking to fill out the last few points with suggestions. My meta is game shop only mix of everything but very few HC spammy lists.


++ Battalion Detachment +3CP (Tyranids) [96 PL, 1818pts] ++

+ HQ +

Broodlord [8 PL, 162pts]: Power: The Horror

The Swarmlord [15 PL, 300pts]: Power: Catalyst, Power: Onslaught

+ Troops +

Genestealers [16 PL, 240pts]
. 20x Genestealer: 20x Rending Claws

Hormagaunts [9 PL, 150pts]: 30x Hormagaunt

Termagants [9 PL, 120pts]: 30x Termagant (Fleshborer)

+ Elites +

Venomthropes [4 PL, 93pts]
. 3x Venomthrope: 3x Toxic Lashes

+ Fast Attack +

Raveners [8 PL, 156pts]
. Ravener: 2x Scything Talons, Spinefists
. Ravener: 2x Scything Talons, Spinefists
. Ravener: 2x Scything Talons, Spinefists
. Ravener: 2x Scything Talons, Spinefists
. Ravener: 2x Scything Talons, Spinefists
. Ravener: 2x Scything Talons, Spinefists

+ Heavy Support +

Mawloc [5 PL, 105pts]: Prehensile Pincer Tail

Mawloc [5 PL, 105pts]: Prehensile Pincer Tail

Trygon Prime [10 PL, 214pts]: Bio-electric Pulse with Containment Spines, Biostatic Rattle, 3x Massive Scything Talons

+ Dedicated Transport +

Tyrannocyte [7 PL, 173pts]: 5x Barbed Strangler

++ Total: [96 PL, 1818pts] ++

Created with BattleScribe

I like that list. It's similar to what i've been playing (Swarmie, Genestealers, 2 Mawlocs and a Trygon). I've been tempted by Raveners because I love the models. Personally, I would want to run them with Deathspitters, so they can pop up and heavy bolter a unit that I want dead.