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 Niiai wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
I'm hearing a lot of good things about 2 Rippers, 2 Lictors and 2 Mawlocs for scramblers, objective denial, linebreaker, etc. Are people leaning more into tyranid units that don't do much damage but give great board control?

Thinking of selling off my Deathwatch and going in on nids, you see. Hive guard, 90 hormagaunts, an exocrine, zoanthropes, neurothropes and the above DS units, is the idea. Solid board control, invulns on nearly everything, great mortal wounds.

I know nids are thoroughly mid-table at the moment, but I'm so sick of SM spam that it almost feels dirty to own any.

I do believe most good nid players have givin up winning in a fair fight. Instead they lean very hard into the objective game.

I have kind of a problem with the concept of "fair game". In most cases, "fair" means, your opponent has good line of sight while sitting in cover himself and being in possession of long range weaponry to shoot you "heroic" of the board, the tyranids not beeing much more than targets in a shooting gallery. This has not changed much over the past editions, and in addition we lost parts of our really heavy close combat punch to compensate.
I remember all too well to often play the mission instead of killing the enemy in past times.
And so it is with 9th again, but at least the cover is better. Control the board, play the mission and stop the enemy doing so. In some cases you even dont need to be that tactical, because your enemy wants to "purge the enemy" so hard, it rather helps your goals than his.
So, dont ever be ashamed to play "dirty". The narrative heroism pushes meq so much, you have to use the tricks you got, while brute force does not help us much in most cases.

If my opponent crabs about why I sacrifice units and do not give him his "deserved" right to heroically kick the damned xenos into oblivion AND win the game, I always respond that the hivemind does not care about losses in any case as long the world is consumed an the final goals are reached. *micdrop*

I use almost any trick I can pull up my sleeves to do so, and "fair" is no term to use in this game as long the odds are not the same.

While I might be wrong I was under the assumption that nids VS SM was so bad for us? 2 exoshrine who are quite standard line up quite well VS space marines.

It are other armies nids have a hard time against? Or am I reading the room wrong? (gunline / playing objectives nids lists that is.)

Also I think you and I use the word fair differently. In my mind playing fair is trying to kill the other players models. As opposed to flodding the board with 6++ ghaunts or playing objectives. (Does not matter if I am dead if I won the game.)

Also it is not the narrative heroisemn that pushes SM so much. It is in fact the rules they have coupled with said rules not costing much points compared to other options in the game. If for instance we lovered the cost of a tyranids warrior to 5 points and a carnifex to 15 points I suspect 'the narrative destruction of the great devourer' would really shine through in the game.

The narrative is a pissing contest. In a world where everyone is the best, branding you as sub par would not really hold up. (Actually being slightly bellow average would not be so bad when everyone is the best, because the average would be the best.)

"Playing to kill the other players models" has nothing to do with fairness. Pretty much any strategy game will tell you that killing the enemy is not the objective, but a means of completing the objective, and that sometimes there are better means.

At most you can say it isn't fair to be bringing tournament level lists into casual games, in which case I would agree, but that is only somewhat related with the above.

I do not think we think in the same terms.

 Tyran wrote:
"Playing to kill the other players models" has nothing to do with fairness. Pretty much any strategy game will tell you that killing the enemy is not the objective, but a means of completing the objective, and that sometimes there are better means.

At most you can say it isn't fair to be bringing tournament level lists into casual games, in which case I would agree, but that is only somewhat related with the above.

Yeah. I think there is some confusion being made between 'fair' and 'straightforward'. If an opponent thinks it is 'unfair' of someone to NOT run straight into his guns and instead focus on the objectives I'd say that opponent has some serious issues to work out.

 DaBraken wrote:

 Niiai wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
I'm hearing a lot of good things about 2 Rippers, 2 Lictors and 2 Mawlocs for scramblers, objective denial, linebreaker, etc. Are people leaning more into tyranid units that don't do much damage but give great board control?

Thinking of selling off my Deathwatch and going in on nids, you see. Hive guard, 90 hormagaunts, an exocrine, zoanthropes, neurothropes and the above DS units, is the idea. Solid board control, invulns on nearly everything, great mortal wounds.

I know nids are thoroughly mid-table at the moment, but I'm so sick of SM spam that it almost feels dirty to own any.

I do believe most good nid players have givin up winning in a fair fight. Instead they lean very hard into the objective game.

I have kind of a problem with the concept of "fair game". In most cases, "fair" means, your opponent has good line of sight while sitting in cover himself and being in possession of long range weaponry to shoot you "heroic" of the board, the tyranids not beeing much more than targets in a shooting gallery. This has not changed much over the past editions, and in addition we lost parts of our really heavy close combat punch to compensate.
I remember all too well to often play the mission instead of killing the enemy in past times.
And so it is with 9th again, but at least the cover is better. Control the board, play the mission and stop the enemy doing so. In some cases you even dont need to be that tactical, because your enemy wants to "purge the enemy" so hard, it rather helps your goals than his.
So, dont ever be ashamed to play "dirty". The narrative heroism pushes meq so much, you have to use the tricks you got, while brute force does not help us much in most cases.

If my opponent crabs about why I sacrifice units and do not give him his "deserved" right to heroically kick the damned xenos into oblivion AND win the game, I always respond that the hivemind does not care about losses in any case as long the world is consumed an the final goals are reached. *micdrop*

I use almost any trick I can pull up my sleeves to do so, and "fair" is no term to use in this game as long the odds are not the same.

Hah hah that was indeed true for many editions, or you had the sky blight formation in 7 th, but I remember those times too.

But honestly I kill my opponents fine now that I have 3 dimachaerons and hierodules.Yes if I face an Sm army with tons of eradicators (or other skew towards anti tank) I will lose, but honestly if you can grab FW goodness then nids are not anymore in « play the objective by flooding the board or doing other weird stuff » territory.

I can kit ash dimachaeron fine. Hierodules, not so much... They are expensive!

Been out for awhile and was just getting back to finish out my bugs and maybe play a bit, then see that yet another new addition has dropped. Sounds like we are not yet recovering the damage of 5e. Assuming no access to FW, what are we looking at these days, and were has GW stashed all the rules?

You are looking at descent but not great.

Grab 2 exoshrine, and your choose of forge world monsters/hiveguards/zoanthropes. These are your offensive units.

Grab some gaunt chaff.

Grab 2 units of ripper swarms. 2 units of lictors. Use these to grab secondery objectives. Mawlocks and Pyro ores are optional here.

And build from there.

Rules are found in nid codex. And in blood of baal psykick awakening. Happy scoring.

barnowl wrote:
Been out for awhile and was just getting back to finish out my bugs and maybe play a bit, then see that yet another new addition has dropped. Sounds like we are not yet recovering the damage of 5e. Assuming no access to FW, what are we looking at these days, and were has GW stashed all the rules?

Without FW you can do stuff but mainly in the area of shooting and board covering / objective grabbing and holding, but yes like Niiai said, decent not great. Gaunt spam is inferior to ork boy spam in every way, and most of the codex doesn’t hold well against good lists.

Zoanthropes work for some people (I am not a fan but I can see the appeal as leviathan).

Even Acid Tyranofex has worked for some comp players

 Niiai wrote:
You are looking at descent but not great.

Grab 2 exoshrine, and your choose of forge world monsters/hiveguards/zoanthropes. These are your offensive units.

Grab some gaunt chaff.

Grab 2 units of ripper swarms. 2 units of lictors. Use these to grab secondery objectives. Mawlocks and Pyro ores are optional here.

And build from there.

Rules are found in nid codex. And in blood of baal psykick awakening. Happy scoring.

Only tournament loss I've had was against pretty much this.

One thing the player did differently was he brought Swarmlord and a Flyrant in addition to the 2 Exos, 2 5man Zoans, lictors, etc.

The double move Flyrant threw me off pretty badly and he munched on a key character as a result. Then his Hormagants just screened me out completely from being able to drop threats to handle the Exos (big anti tank died to Exos t1 and Eradicators couldn't reach).

Tyranids are not bad at all in 9th. Fiancee' also plays this and wins most games she plays casually. Their only issue is they are extremely limited to a few core units they don't really have a choice to bring. If you want to bring a fluffy list of gants/carnfiexes/walkrant, you're not going to do to well to an average space marine list.

Bit of a random question, but has anyone had experience running Tyranids in Crusade games? I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to use due to a combination of 2 factors:

1. Crusade doesn't use reinforcement points, so Spawn Termagants and the three stratagems that create Genestealers, Spore Mines, and replacement infantry can be used with abandon.

2. The way before-the-battle stratagem upgrades are handled in Crusade allows for any number of units to be upgraded with Adaptive Physiologies provided enough requisition points are available and one is willing to eat the crusade point cost.

Are there any odd lists that may be immediately apparent?

 Strat_N8 wrote:
Bit of a random question, but has anyone had experience running Tyranids in Crusade games? I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to use due to a combination of 2 factors:

1. Crusade doesn't use reinforcement points, so Spawn Termagants and the three stratagems that create Genestealers, Spore Mines, and replacement infantry can be used with abandon.

2. The way before-the-battle stratagem upgrades are handled in Crusade allows for any number of units to be upgraded with Adaptive Physiologies provided enough requisition points are available and one is willing to eat the crusade point cost.

Are there any odd lists that may be immediately apparent?

I can’t help, but would also like to hear opinions. My son and I have been playing Crusade all of 9th, and as I grow my swarm, he’s mostly likely going to be my opponent, and will probably want to keep using his crusade list.

One thing that sticks out from reading here is that a lot of people suggest focusing on the secondaries and win conditions. You don’t have secondaries in crusades, just agendas that are for XP, not VP. So “play the mission” is going to be a lot rougher. Ironically, this plays into the narrative strength of nids. You are going to loose a lot of your early battles, but your units are going to get a lot of XP. They are going to evolve, and get stronger. And learn how best to defeat their prey.

Stacking the pre-game strats will boost your CP to pretty ridiculous levels. This is going to hand your opponent a lot of Command Points. Worth it? Probably.

You can hand out more warlord traits and relics then normal as well. This might open up some of the not-the-best ones that normally get passed over.

The battle traits should stack with everything (is there a cap on +/- for charge rolls like there is on to-hit?), and offer ways of getting re-rolls, extra move/charge range, resilience etc. The crusade relics would need to be re-skinned to something a little more bug-like, but could add some buffs to characters.

For summoning, the strats are going to burn a lot of command points for a basic unit. Might be nice in a pinch, but would those CP be better spent leveraging a experienced one? I do think they are something that should be kept in mind. With no caps on kicking out new units, Gaunt factory lists might be viable. Summoned units don’t gain XP, but if you are just flooding the table with chaff, could be nice. Just try to save any actions that would generate XP for the guys who get to keep it.

One thing to remember in crusade is to give the lesser used units a go!

Whilst that haruspex may not be cutting edge on the competitive scene, get a couple of xp upgrades on it and the thing becomes a killing machine!!

Secondly, remember that most of the advice on this forum is geared towards matched play, and as you point out, crusade's lack of secondaries REALLY changes the game and I feel it may be an idea to suggest a seperate tactics section for crusade/narrative rather than derailing this main thread? just a thought.

My experience so far has come down to... crusade is certainly the most fun way to play Nids, in fact while i started with kraken, after my first (and unfortunately only) 3 games i have decided to restart with a custom fleet all of my own.

Recommendations for units to try?

Haruspex
Walking Tyrants
TERVIGONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (seriously, these are kinda overpowered in crusade).
Spore mine clusters.(via the sporefield strat)
Lictors (for pheromone trailing units such as 3 pyrovores)

Some Tyranid special rules are not quite clear, so my gaming group has allowed me to buy physiologies for my units at 1 rp per unit when the unit is purchased (max 1 per unit) providing i do not buy any actual warlord traits.

I also personally use the rule that any units i buy from the same datasheet will be given the same physiology (representing the hive creating new strains of a species)

Crusade is by far the most fun I have had with my nids and I honestly cannot wait til we get our own crusade section in the codex (i am also hoping for a battlezone book featuring the ability to Tyrannoform the battlefield).

I'm spotting some point changes in the last FAQ.

Warriors -4 (this is huge)
Hyve guards -5 (both versions)
Zoans +5
Raveners -2
CFexes +5
Tfex -20 (Good!)

Yeah. I saw the Tfex. I do not know if there are others. Anybody who kows of a complete list?

Wait, carnifexes went up in points? It rather seems they forgot the 2 pair of scything tallon discount. So scything tallon carnifex went up 2 points.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/01/07/the-warhammer-40000-update-new-points-scoring-and-faqs/

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/76UtmPgtSCGKJAnW.pdf

Gaunts with devourer got 2p cheaper too!

savemelmac wrote:
Gaunts with devourer got 2p cheaper too!

Warriors double scytal 17 points, devilgaunts 7 points... really good troop choices now !

The only sad thing is, that all my Termagaunts are with fleshborers...

Spoletta wrote:
I'm spotting some point changes in the last FAQ.

Warriors -4 (this is huge)
Hyve guards -5 (both versions)
Zoans +5
Raveners -2
CFexes +5
Tfex -20 (Good!)

I still don’t think Tfex is worth it, but it may be worth a try for acidfex if you have a dermic symbiosis to spare on him

Rupture Cannon Fex is IMHO worth it if your meta is heavy on T8 vehicles, as we lack options for that at range.

Also it suffer less from all those -1 to damage abilities, unlike the Exocrine and Hive Guard that really suffer from it.

They also changed it so that monsters can fit inside our pods now and get out within 1" even if the base is over 3".

Acid Fex can now deep strike.

Yeah, big things here are warriors cheaper, devilgaunts cheaper and most importantly, my tfex and haruspex don't suffer an anuerism after dismbarking anymore.

The biggest thing is obviously the fix to the last turn scoring issue but i feel us nids have come out of this pretty well (our troop choices got a lot better in the main).

The devilgaunts are kinda ridiculous to the point I'm sure GW made a mistake there.

3 18" S4 shoots for 7pts? They are easily the best horde infantry in the game at this point.

 Tyran wrote:
The devilgaunts are kinda ridiculous to the point I'm sure GW made a mistake there.

3 18" S4 shoots for 7pts? They are easily the best horde infantry in the game at this point.

As one who has fought orks through 8th and 9th edition boys are probably better. (And some flavor of SM.) Boys have around 80% change for a first turn charge. And they just keep coming and comming. And if you kill only 29 of they they come in with a green tide and charge you all over again.

That being said gaunts are good too.

Might be greedy but I'm sad the Carnifex didn't go down. They're a hardcore staple of Nids and zero people are running them.

Dreads had the exact same issue and GW bent over backwards to make them playable. I was hoping for a few points off.

Carnifex went up?

I guess I never realised that 4-5 S6 attacks hitting on 4+, especially on a platform more expensive yet somehow less resilient than a Rhino, was the meta in 40k these days...

Maybe one day we'll have a fan on the team. I swear since I picked the army up it hasn't once played like it's described. Kudos to those who've embraced the theme of adaptation to find some jank that functions each time around.

I swear every book is thrown to someone who isn't passionate about them and is just giving the bugs enough rules to function.

I have been plying since 5th.

I know what is a non-functional codex, and in spite of our current issues were are worlds ahead of the gakky 5th and 6th edition dexes.

I had to explain to a friend who was complaining about how weak we were after starting them in 8th that it was the best book in at least 3 editions. Which was sad.