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offtop:
i accidentally read the name of the thread as Grot Devourer.

 koooaei wrote:
offtop:
i accidentally read the name of the thread as Grot Devourer.

If life gives you melons, you might be dyslexic. ^_^

 Zimko wrote:
It seems to me, that a lot of people harp genestealers as the best thing in our codex. But experience for me has shown them to be less than that. Sure, a solid charge will kill something, but 5++ isn't enough to save them from small arms fire on turn 2. It's way too easy to turn your 240 pts of genestealers into a pile of purple goo.

I haven't used genestealers in the past 3 ITC tournaments I participated in and finished 3rd, 1st and 1st in those tournaments. (24, 16 and 12 people). Other players that brought genestealers were crushed by swarm armies. Poxwalkers are especially effective at eating genestealers and adding them to their own number.

Is anyone else finding the same thing? Is anyone having good success with genestealers?

I also don't use Genestealers (personal preference). It's not that I think they are bad at all. I think they 100% do what people say they do when you get them into a fight (which isn't hard). But good doesn't mean invulnerable and there are other options to consider with other benefits.

I think nids are going to do best with a very Synergetic TAC list that focuses on quick threat overload. We need a bit of everything with heavy hitters (hive guard, exocrines, carnifex, trygons), quick melee threats (hormagaunts, genestealers), and support (Warriors, shrikes, biovores, malanthropes), while mixing in psychic buffers (tervigons if you go swarm heavy, hive tyrants, zoanthropes).

You need to build your list so each component is maximizing it's effectiveness and synergy with each other element so that the enemy has no good obvious targets without letting something else through and so that our relatively easy to kill units can die without the list falling apart.

Redundancy and distract. It's all about redundancy and distraction.

NackaNid wrote:
How do you protect your high-wounds-HQ like OOE and Swarmlord? I really tries to hide them but they always get blasted T1 or T2 without doing anything. Swarmlords ability whith Hive Commander is amazing but for 300pts... no for me. OOE is cheap but I having trouble getting him into combat, any tips?

By having them on the shelf, sadly. Swarmlord is a 300pts one-trick-pony imo. He comes down with a pod, send in Genestealers for a charge, and is killed/crippled the following turn.
OOE is just pants, too slow and too easy to kill at 10 wounds. He could work as a defensive unit if you can hide him from LOS and if you can force your enemy to come to you. At 9 wounds he would be great, but Tyranids can't have nice things.
Malanthrope is a Forgeworld unit, which isn't ok everywhere. You should check with your local dudes/TO. Plus they are gunline protection, not really fit for a fast, aggressive build.

C4790M wrote:
Decided to run a Tyranid Prime in a 1500pt game vs salamanders today, actually surprised me with how much he did. Had him fully kitted with adrenal glands, toxin sacs, flesh hooks, boneswords and deathspitter. He did well, spending the latter half of the game in combat with a squad of primaris, keeping them tied up until he was reinforced with genestealers. He even dealt the finishing blow on the enemy warlord.

Not an amazing model, not worth taking over any of the similar costed HQs as of now, but I was plesently suprised. Anyone else got good experiences with this guy?

No, he's soo bad. The only reason I take him, is that Forgeworld (Malanthropes) aren't allowed in the local major tournament, so at 100pts he's the cheapest synapse babysitter we have that can't be targeted. GW could've done so much with this guy. He could've been given wings (buffing Shrikes and serving as forward synapse for aggressive builds). He lost 10pts regeneration, lost good cc weapons (Bonesword nerf) and provides no rerolls. Has no invo save.
At the moment, there's no reason to field him if Forgeworld is ok in your region.

 Zimko wrote:
It seems to me, that a lot of people harp genestealers as the best thing in our codex. But experience for me has shown them to be less than that. Sure, a solid charge will kill something, but 5++ isn't enough to save them from small arms fire on turn 2. It's way too easy to turn your 240 pts of genestealers into a pile of purple goo.

I haven't used genestealers in the past 3 ITC tournaments I participated in and finished 3rd, 1st and 1st in those tournaments. (24, 16 and 12 people). Other players that brought genestealers were crushed by swarm armies. Poxwalkers are especially effective at eating genestealers and adding them to their own number.

Is anyone else finding the same thing? Is anyone having good success with genestealers?

Yeah Genestealers really need Catalyst to remain a threat after 1 round of enemy shooting. They are glasscannons for sure, and you need multiple simultaneous threats to have success, but that's hardly news. 20 Hive Commandered Genestealers can win a game, much like 20 Berzerkers with Forward Operatives. But against good players with screens, they usually don't work.

You've played 3 ITC tournaments already in 8th ed? What Tyranid list did you use?

 N.I.B. wrote:


Yeah Genestealers really need Catalyst to remain a threat after 1 round of enemy shooting. They are glasscannons for sure, and you need multiple simultaneous threats to have success, but that's hardly news. 20 Hive Commandered Genestealers can win a game, much like 20 Berzerkers with Forward Operatives. But against good players with screens, they usually don't work.

You've played 3 ITC tournaments already in 8th ed? What Tyranid list did you use?

This is my current 2k list. It's actually undeafeted but I placed 3rd due to points and only 3 rounds for that tournament.

Brigade:
HQ:
Swarmlord
Old One Eye
Malonthrope
Elite:
4 Zoanthropes (Nuerothrope included)
4 Zoanthropes (Neurothrope included)
Red Terror
Fast Attack:
3x Raveners with rending claws and deathspitters.
3x Raveners with rending claws and deathspitters.
3x Raveners with rending claws and deathspitters.
Troops:
20 Devgaunts
10 Termagaunts
10 Termagaunts
10 Termagaunts
3 Rippers
3 Rippers
Heavy Support:
Trygon Prime with glands
2x Biovores
2x Biovores
1x Biovores
1x Biovores

12 command points. 8 deep striking units. I usually get to see most of my opponents deployment before I placed my first unit. This helps a lot with keeping Swarmlord and Old One Eye alive for the first turn. On my first turn, I use onslaught and hive commander to launch old one eye across the board and he has yet to fail to reach combat. The Swarmlord I will hide as best I can until a target presents itself for him to use the same trick on. Last tournament I killed Gurlyman against two different opponents because of smite spam and a Swarmlord charge.

Our local tournament shop has 2 large LOS blockers on every board. Without those, this list wouldn't work.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and biovores have been awesome for creating barriers for enemy movement. The relic is one of my easiest matches because spore mines block their path and I deep strike a large force near the relic. The raveners throw themselves into melee while the devgaunts pick it up and run.

The Red Terror has been surprisingly effective. I picked it up to fill an elites slot, buff raveners, and to be another deep striker. But he has managed to swallow a Librarian, and Archon, a Big Mek, and a Pain Boy.

I like the look of that list, here's hoping we get some nice things to spend all those CP on soon!

How well do the zoans do? I find they just sit around doing nothing and I'd just rather take another broodlord as a psyker, or hive guard for the elite slot instead. Super smite is nice but its all they do.

I agree on the red terror though - swallow whole is great. I just kitbashed one and ran it in a 500pt skirmish against my roommates guardsmen - it ate both his commissar and commander!

The Zoanthropes have been excellent. With 4 models, it begs for my opponent to expend enough shooting to kill 1 in each unit, and doing so can waste potential shots against other units. And with 3++ saves, whatever shooting they do use may not work out.

And if my opponent decides not to shoot them, an average of 8 mortal wounds each turn and a cast of the horror or catalyst AND providing synapse to the deep strikers after the Trygon Prime dies will make them pay for ignoring them.

The Zoanthropes are actually the sole reason I was able to kill Girllyman twice. I killed everything around him, baited him to charge some of my stuff, then surrounded him with gaunts so he couldn't escape while Zoanthropes peppered him with mortal wounds.

Movement and placing is critical to use them. But they can be incredibly annoying for opponents. One game, I faced a Shadowsword? (Baneblade variant) and I had a unit of Zoanthropes use the horror on it every turn while charging random units just to force those units to fallback and not shoot. 2 remained at the end of the game because there were too many other threats and their 3++ saved them many times.

Zimko wrote:It seems to me, that a lot of people harp genestealers as the best thing in our codex. But experience for me has shown them to be less than that. Sure, a solid charge will kill something, but 5++ isn't enough to save them from small arms fire on turn 2. It's way too easy to turn your 240 pts of genestealers into a pile of purple goo.

I haven't used genestealers in the past 3 ITC tournaments I participated in and finished 3rd, 1st and 1st in those tournaments. (24, 16 and 12 people). Other players that brought genestealers were crushed by swarm armies. Poxwalkers are especially effective at eating genestealers and adding them to their own number.

Is anyone else finding the same thing? Is anyone having good success with genestealers?

They are most definitely overrated in comparison to our other troops who are also good, but Stealers are great as well. They take a dedicated investment of points you need enough to get through, and the rest of your army should pretty much support that to be honest. Much more restrictive unit than the others but potentially the strongest, all are good though

 Zimko wrote:

Brigade:
HQ:
Swarmlord
Old One Eye
Malonthrope
Elite:
4 Zoanthropes (Nuerothrope included)
4 Zoanthropes (Neurothrope included)
Red Terror
Fast Attack:
3x Raveners with rending claws and deathspitters.
3x Raveners with rending claws and deathspitters.
3x Raveners with rending claws and deathspitters.
Troops:
20 Devgaunts
10 Termagaunts
10 Termagaunts
10 Termagaunts
3 Rippers
3 Rippers
Heavy Support:
Trygon Prime with glands
2x Biovores
2x Biovores
1x Biovores
1x Biovores

Nice to see something different for a change. It's 2003pts tho.

Zimko wrote:The Zoanthropes have been excellent. With 4 models, it begs for my opponent to expend enough shooting to kill 1 in each unit, and doing so can waste potential shots against other units. And with 3++ saves, whatever shooting they do use may not work out.

And if my opponent decides not to shoot them, an average of 8 mortal wounds each turn and a cast of the horror or catalyst AND providing synapse to the deep strikers after the Trygon Prime dies will make them pay for ignoring them.

The Zoanthropes are actually the sole reason I was able to kill Girllyman twice. I killed everything around him, baited him to charge some of my stuff, then surrounded him with gaunts so he couldn't escape while Zoanthropes peppered him with mortal wounds.

Movement and placing is critical to use them. But they can be incredibly annoying for opponents. One game, I faced a Shadowsword? (Baneblade variant) and I had a unit of Zoanthropes use the horror on it every turn while charging random units just to force those units to fallback and not shoot. 2 remained at the end of the game because there were too many other threats and their 3++ saved them many times.

I cannot get behind the idea that zoantropes could be considered 'good' or even 'decent'. If an enemy cannot comfortably shoot down 2 single zoantropes from each unit with split fire then it's not worth mentioning, and from that point on they're to expensive for regular 'smite'.

SHUPPET wrote:

Zimko wrote:It seems to me, that a lot of people harp genestealers as the best thing in our codex. But experience for me has shown them to be less than that. Sure, a solid charge will kill something, but 5++ isn't enough to save them from small arms fire on turn 2. It's way too easy to turn your 240 pts of genestealers into a pile of purple goo.

I haven't used genestealers in the past 3 ITC tournaments I participated in and finished 3rd, 1st and 1st in those tournaments. (24, 16 and 12 people). Other players that brought genestealers were crushed by swarm armies. Poxwalkers are especially effective at eating genestealers and adding them to their own number.

Is anyone else finding the same thing? Is anyone having good success with genestealers?

They are most definitely overrated in comparison to our other troops who are also good, but Stealers are great as well. They take a dedicated investment of points you need enough to get through, and the rest of your army should pretty much support that to be honest. Much more restrictive unit than the others but potentially the strongest, all are good though

You either want to trap stuff or kill stuff in close combat. Genestealers are great for taking on almost anything but I don't like them simply walking forward, even with their speed. One unit of 20 coming out of a trygon hole or tyrannocyte with immediately 'catalyst' is my favourite setup. Use the CP for the psychic power and/or reroll charge to get the best out of them.

I thought the same about Zoanthropes until I tried them. At first I only had 1 unit. Then after several successful games with them, I added another unit.

The issue people run into is that they MUST kill Old One Eye first. They MUST kill the Swarmlord first. They MUST kill the Trygon Prime first. And they MUST kill 2 Zoanthropes first. So they will try to split fire to accomplish this, and with either bad luck for them, or good 3++ saves for me, they fail to do all they wanted. Then you capitalize.

Also, it's pretty easy to string 4 Zoanthropes to the Malonthrope bubble and still be in range to smite and provide synapse to other units. That helps their survival a bit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 N.I.B. wrote:

 Zimko wrote:

Brigade:
HQ:
Swarmlord
Old One Eye
Malonthrope
Elite:
4 Zoanthropes (Nuerothrope included)
4 Zoanthropes (Neurothrope included)
Red Terror
Fast Attack:
3x Raveners with rending claws and deathspitters.
3x Raveners with rending claws and deathspitters.
3x Raveners with rending claws and deathspitters.
Troops:
20 Devgaunts
10 Termagaunts
10 Termagaunts
10 Termagaunts
3 Rippers
3 Rippers
Heavy Support:
Trygon Prime with glands
2x Biovores
2x Biovores
1x Biovores
1x Biovores

Nice to see something different for a change. It's 2003pts tho.

You're correct. I did that from memory. One raveners should have a devourer. Alternatively, you can give the Trygon the cheaper tail if you don't feel like tracking which raveners has a devourer.

Oh, didn't think about the footprint of the unit and the ease of stringing them to the thrope. I'm gonna test this, they can cover a really large distance if you minimise unit cohesion

Yeah, my army on the board sometimes looks like a little cthulu with 6 biovores and a Malonthrope at the center and arms of Termagaunts and Zoanthropes reaching put to objectives and such. Lol

Nid codex. Preorder 11 4 release 11th

 Lance845 wrote:
Nid codex. Preorder 11 4 release 11th

Hmm... can I paint 63 Warriors in a month. . .

Does the index being so much better than 7th give us hope our book might have a champion or two in the studio?

What are the chances the book is anywhere near the Guard juggernaut that just came out?

 Eldarain wrote:
Does the index being so much better than 7th give us hope our book might have a champion or two in the studio?

What are the chances the book is anywhere near the Guard juggernaut that just came out?

I dont want any broken units. But our index internal balance is near perfect. If we get wl traits, stratgems, hive fleet rules, and relics that offer the same flexibility in viable builds that the guard does i think nids might be the most balanced, internally and externally, codex we have seen in like... 5 years.

 Eldarain wrote:
Does the index being so much better than 7th give us hope our book might have a champion or two in the studio?

What are the chances the book is anywhere near the Guard juggernaut that just came out?

Please no, i hope that apart for some slight point changes here and there we don't get any buffs.
The only thing i want to see radically changed are spore mines.

Well the biovore could be targeted. I hope they don't nerf anything.

I expect that Red Terror, shrikes and sky swarms will not be in there. Same for the rending claws option on the tyrant.

Where do you find the release-dates? Can't find anything, anywhere... :(

I hope shrikes does not go, but i expect it as there is no kit. I just made mine this summer.

Is there any ripper kit?

Rippers won't go. They're like scarabs. No official kit, but FW supports them and they are in boxes.

What boxes has the rippers?

What do you think is going to change?

- Possibly monstrous rending claws
- Swarmlord
- "Less good TMC" adjustments, Tervigon etc.
- Umm.. ?


Interesting to consider..

 Lance845 wrote:


I dont want any broken units. But our index internal balance is near perfect. If we get wl traits, stratgems, hive fleet rules, and relics that offer the same flexibility in viable builds that the guard does i think nids might be the most balanced, internally and externally, codex we have seen in like... 5 years.

i too do not want any broken units but i feel compelled to say i personally hope they make the maleceptor, haruspex, tyrannofex and toxicrene a tad bit better. i don't think our codex(edit:index) internal balance is 'near perfect' by any stretch of the imagination

 Niiai wrote:
What boxes has the rippers?

They're sort of thrown in as filler in a bunch of box sets. IIRC, one comes on each Termagant weapon arms sprue. I think I recall them being on other sprues, but for whatever reason, I can't immediately think which ones.

Spoletta wrote:
I expect that Red Terror, shrikes and sky swarms will not be in there. Same for the rending claws option on the tyrant.

The rending claws will remain, because that's just a piece of wargear.

But yeah the Red Terror, Shrikes and Sky Swarms are probably not going to be in the codex.

Of course we will still have their index datasheets.

NackaNid wrote:
Where do you find the release-dates? Can't find anything, anywhere... :(

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/741851.page

Tyran wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
I expect that Red Terror, shrikes and sky swarms will not be in there. Same for the rending claws option on the tyrant.

The rending claws will remain, because that's just a piece of wargear.

But yeah the Red Terror, Shrikes and Sky Swarms are probably not going to be in the codex.

Of course we will still have their index datasheets.

Power mauls and axes didnt make it into the Guard codex, so I wouldnt count on the rending claws unless they come with the kit.