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It's quite hard to define a strong faction at the moment.
Tau, Orks, Astra Militarum, CWE, Drukhary, Tyranids... all have some serious hard counters right now, so no faction is a sure pick for a tournament.

There are some faction that are clearly underpowered like GK, but after the last round of nerfs i don't think that any mono codex can be considered truly over the top.

There is no faction right now that has all the tools needed to win consistently in the CA missions.

Even the Astra Militarum lacks too many tools and has too many exploitable weaknesses to be considered "solid all around".

The "best" mono codici are Tyranids and AM, but not because they are the strogest, but because they are the ones which allow more builds and playstiles, so they are a safer investement for a player that wants to start a new faction and stick to it for 4 years or more. They will be hardly get crippled by a targeted nerf in the future like what just happened to ynnari.

 Shadenuat wrote:
Voted Astra Militarum for a chance for them to get nerfed instead of my own army.

lol!
the best reason to vote on pools like this one

Spoletta wrote:
The "best" mono codici are Tyranids and AM, but not because they are the strogest, but because they are the ones which allow more builds and playstiles, so they are a safer investement for a player that wants to start a new faction and stick to it for 4 years or more. They will be hardly get crippled by a targeted nerf in the future like what just happened to ynnari.

Both armies have been bottom dog pile in the past. Both will be that again eventually.

tneva82 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
The "best" mono codici are Tyranids and AM, but not because they are the strogest, but because they are the ones which allow more builds and playstiles, so they are a safer investement for a player that wants to start a new faction and stick to it for 4 years or more. They will be hardly get crippled by a targeted nerf in the future like what just happened to ynnari.

Both armies have been bottom dog pile in the past. Both will be that again eventually.

And?

All factions had their time in the trash bin, even CWE.

I'm saying that those codici right now are the least likely to get crippled, short of an edition change which right now is fairly unlikely. If tomorrow disintegrators are nerfed, the Drukhary are done. Same for marines and GMan. CWE and Alaitoc or flyers.
AM and nids need multiple rules/models to be changed to be seriously impacted, because they have a lot of good choices.

After CA point drops I think Tau is up there as the best mono codex. As a Tau player.

Drukhari are very good too as a mono codex, maybe even better, and after the nerfs to Aeldary sinergy I don't see that much point in souping them because what have Ynnari or Craftworld that don't have Drukhari? Maybe with Harlequins.

Imperial Guard is still very solid and can crush a ton of other mono armies, but lacks the tools to compete agaisnt the other codex. But for being one of the first codex of the edition they really can't complain (I know theres bad units), they have been playing more than a year with a really good and competent codex. Even the bad units used in a casual context are absolutely usable. And if you are using bad units is because:
-You are playing in a casual enviroment
-You are playing in a ultra competitive enviroment but just don't care.
And in the second option, everybody knows that even "good" options don't work unless you use the TOP options or are a really good player that has found some strategy mere mortals and internet-generals haven't achieve yet.


But as Spoletta has said I think from a "whats better for a player", Drukhari, Imperial Guard and Tyranids are the best "Mono codex" because are the ones that offer more options in playstile and many of then at least playable in a semi competitive enviroment, and in general with lists that are normal, I mean, you could see them in the fluff, instead of very strange assortement of units. So for the casual player, they are the better ones.

I keep seeing guard being an army that 'lacks the tools' or some variation of that and I straight up don't get it.

There is an astra militarum unit in the top 3 of just about every aspect of the game.

ERJAK wrote:
There is an astra militarum unit in the top 3 of just about every aspect of the game.

Unit for movement, psychic, assault, shooting, morale? Or mortal wounds, rapid redeployment, enemy/stratagem disruption/debuffs/etc. (depending on what you mean by aspect).

They've got very strong contenders - guard squad is hard to beat for chaff and their guns are many and varied. But they aren't going to shut down any psychic phases or surprise you by suddenly redeploying mid-game for instance. What helps guard is that they are strong in a lot of the places where it's always good to be strong - a good psychic defense won't help you against crons for instance.

How many ways do people actually think their is to play Tyranids? Is there anyone still actually trying to make a Kronos gunline work, or play Trygon-reserves, or what are people actually doing that doesn't boil down to Genestealer / Hive Guard / maybe Carnifex + some HQ's, or swarm style with psykers?

Tyranids are pretty decent mono army, but you two are clearly answering "what's the best written codex" when the OP clearly states "what is the STRONGEST mono codex", so you're already wrong. But even from a writing standpoint, half the Tyranid Dex is gak and of the other half, there's tons of redundant stuff. I really don't think it's even close to Drukhari and Guard in comparison to how diverse good lists can be.

I voted Drukhari.

Overall the meta is in a very good place though. Nice to see most factions represented in some form or another, even if it's just a little bit.

Spoletta wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
The "best" mono codici are Tyranids and AM, but not because they are the strogest, but because they are the ones which allow more builds and playstiles, so they are a safer investement for a player that wants to start a new faction and stick to it for 4 years or more. They will be hardly get crippled by a targeted nerf in the future like what just happened to ynnari.

Both armies have been bottom dog pile in the past. Both will be that again eventually.

And?

All factions had their time in the trash bin, even CWE.

I'm saying that those codici right now are the least likely to get crippled, short of an edition change which right now is fairly unlikely. If tomorrow disintegrators are nerfed, the Drukhary are done. Same for marines and GMan. CWE and Alaitoc or flyers.
AM and nids need multiple rules/models to be changed to be seriously impacted, because they have a lot of good choices.

And if Hive Guard get nerfed, Tyranid's are done, and literally completely out of worthwhile AT options. A nerf btw, that you personally said was very likely, and argued in favor of. I think Drukhari on the other hand are one of the best armies in the game and have far more to lean back on if Disintegrators go down. Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more with this assessment.

Imperial Guard, Eldar and Tau, in no real order.

Dark Eldar are only slightly behind those 3

Tau have been borderline OP since CA18. They can compete with the cheesiest soup just fine.

Cynista wrote:
Imperial Guard, Eldar and Tau, in no real order.

Dark Eldar are only slightly behind those 3

Tau have been borderline OP since CA18. They can compete with the cheesiest soup just fine.

Harlequins aren't in there. I play Tau, one of my regular opponents plays Harlequins. The -1 to hit, Reroll hits & wounds in combat, and 4++ save on everything? It is a bit much to fight against.
Not sure if Harlequins count as mono codex, but I had to get my 2 cents in.

 carldooley wrote:

Cynista wrote:
Imperial Guard, Eldar and Tau, in no real order.

Dark Eldar are only slightly behind those 3

Tau have been borderline OP since CA18. They can compete with the cheesiest soup just fine.

Harlequins aren't in there. I play Tau, one of my regular opponents plays Harlequins. The -1 to hit, Reroll hits & wounds in combat, and 4++ save on everything? It is a bit much to fight against.

Without doom/Jinx, they're nowhere near as scary as they used to be.

 Horst wrote:

 carldooley wrote:

Cynista wrote:
Imperial Guard, Eldar and Tau, in no real order.

Dark Eldar are only slightly behind those 3

Tau have been borderline OP since CA18. They can compete with the cheesiest soup just fine.

Harlequins aren't in there. I play Tau, one of my regular opponents plays Harlequins. The -1 to hit, Reroll hits & wounds in combat, and 4++ save on everything? It is a bit much to fight against.

Without doom/Jinx, they're nowhere near as scary as they used to be.

I agree. And a 4++ on a 1 wound troupe isn’t bad when using en masse shots like missile sides. Skyweavers will even fall. Weight of fire is key to things like that, same with Adeptus Custodes

When shooting is strong it makes sense that both Astra Militarum and T'au gunlines are top contenders. However, both suffer massively against the -1 to hit trait putting Alaitoc CWE on the map. Hell in smaller games even Ravenguard Intercessors are a real pain.

Drukhari seem to have a few powerful builds and stratagems.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
The "best" mono codici are Tyranids and AM, but not because they are the strogest, but because they are the ones which allow more builds and playstiles, so they are a safer investement for a player that wants to start a new faction and stick to it for 4 years or more. They will be hardly get crippled by a targeted nerf in the future like what just happened to ynnari.

Both armies have been bottom dog pile in the past. Both will be that again eventually.

And?

All factions had their time in the trash bin, even CWE.

I'm saying that those codici right now are the least likely to get crippled, short of an edition change which right now is fairly unlikely. If tomorrow disintegrators are nerfed, the Drukhary are done. Same for marines and GMan. CWE and Alaitoc or flyers.
AM and nids need multiple rules/models to be changed to be seriously impacted, because they have a lot of good choices.

And if Hive Guard get nerfed, Tyranid's are done, and literally completely out of worthwhile AT options. A nerf btw, that you personally said was very likely, and argued in favor of. I think Drukhari on the other hand are one of the best armies in the game and have far more to lean back on if Disintegrators go down. Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more with this assessment.

Actually, i am still in favor of that nerf, because as you said hive guards are in every list and overshadowing other choices in the codex. This is a clear sign that they must be taken down a notch.
I regularly play a lot of lists, from Leviathan to Jormu lists without any stealer or hive guard, and guess who i face normally? Guards and Tau. I win some and lose some, because again "Average players, average lists, mono codex --> Good games = Good codici". Mono codici lists are more than good enough to compete in the local events, and there you can actually see how all these codici are faring one against each other.
Tyranids suffer when you aim for big events, because we simply have no answers to knights, but that is a perversion of the current meta more than a problem of the nid dex. On it's own the nid dex is 100% capable of playing an even match against a full AM army (provided that you use sensible missions, not ITC killfest crap).

 Sleep Spell wrote:
When shooting is strong it makes sense that both Astra Militarum and T'au gunlines are top contenders. However, both suffer massively against the -1 to hit trait putting Alaitoc CWE on the map. Hell in smaller games even Ravenguard Intercessors are a real pain.

Drukhari seem to have a few powerful builds and stratagems.

I don’t know about guard, but as far as fliers go tau does have ways to mitigate that -1 (granted they have a -2 but it still helps) and to Reroll all
Failed hits and wounds, which also helps. Idk if guard has something similar
Unfortunately I think some people didn’t even read what the thread was about and simply picked the army they place cause... reasons

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

 Sleep Spell wrote:
When shooting is strong it makes sense that both Astra Militarum and T'au gunlines are top contenders. However, both suffer massively against the -1 to hit trait putting Alaitoc CWE on the map. Hell in smaller games even Ravenguard Intercessors are a real pain.

Drukhari seem to have a few powerful builds and stratagems.

I don’t know about guard, but as far as fliers go tau does have ways to mitigate that -1 (granted they have a -2 but it still helps) and to Reroll all
Failed hits and wounds, which also helps. Idk if guard has something similar
Unfortunately I think some people didn’t even read what the thread was about and simply picked the army they place cause... reasons

Agreed some of the T'au big guns have that ability at the cost of losing other useful traits (a meaningful choice which is good). But that -1 trait is amazing and far outweighs any other army trait when facing BS4. Forcing reroll of 5's is much better than eating a shooting phase of reroll 4's or 3's
Might be biased since I just seem to have a hard time with CWE...

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

 Sleep Spell wrote:
When shooting is strong it makes sense that both Astra Militarum and T'au gunlines are top contenders. However, both suffer massively against the -1 to hit trait putting Alaitoc CWE on the map. Hell in smaller games even Ravenguard Intercessors are a real pain.

Drukhari seem to have a few powerful builds and stratagems.

I don’t know about guard, but as far as fliers go tau does have ways to mitigate that -1 (granted they have a -2 but it still helps) and to Reroll all
Failed hits and wounds, which also helps. Idk if guard has something similar
Unfortunately I think some people didn’t even read what the thread was about and simply picked the army they place cause... reasons

Rerolling to hit when afflicted by hit penalties is useless at BS4.

A Straight BS 4 averages 0,5 hits, or 0,33 with a -1 penalty. You lose a third of your output.
A rerolled BS 4 averages 0,75 hits, or 0,5 with a -1 penalty. You lose a third of your output.

Actually i think that this is true for all BS values. Hit penalties do not care if you are rerolling or not, in percentage they are always inflicting the same penalty.
The only defence to hit penalties is having an high BS stat, or gimmicks like Orks DDD and Dark Reapers.

Spoletta wrote:

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

 Sleep Spell wrote:
When shooting is strong it makes sense that both Astra Militarum and T'au gunlines are top contenders. However, both suffer massively against the -1 to hit trait putting Alaitoc CWE on the map. Hell in smaller games even Ravenguard Intercessors are a real pain.

Drukhari seem to have a few powerful builds and stratagems.

I don’t know about guard, but as far as fliers go tau does have ways to mitigate that -1 (granted they have a -2 but it still helps) and to Reroll all
Failed hits and wounds, which also helps. Idk if guard has something similar
Unfortunately I think some people didn’t even read what the thread was about and simply picked the army they place cause... reasons

Rerolling to hit when afflicted by hit penalties is useless at BS4.

A Straight BS 4 averages 0,5 hits, or 0,33 with a -1 penalty. You lose a third of your output.
A rerolled BS 4 averages 0,75 hits, or 0,5 with a -1 penalty. You lose a third of your output.

Actually i think that this is true for all BS values. Hit penalties do not care if you are rerolling or not, in percentage they are always inflicting the same penalty.
The only defence to hit penalties is having an high BS stat, or gimmicks like Orks DDD and Dark Reapers.

The other issue with hit penalties is that GW still insists on pricing weapons on BS skill, so going from a 2+ to a 4+ hurts in a different way than going from a 4+ to a 6+.

Going from 83% chance to hit to 50% while only 33%
Going from 50 % to 17% is also 33% you generally have way more weapons as they were cheaper. Though quitefrankly I still can't understand why GW has let the -2 to hit list for CW stand for so long, alitoc should have been moved to counts as cover if not moving over a year ago.

Spoletta wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
The "best" mono codici are Tyranids and AM, but not because they are the strogest, but because they are the ones which allow more builds and playstiles, so they are a safer investement for a player that wants to start a new faction and stick to it for 4 years or more. They will be hardly get crippled by a targeted nerf in the future like what just happened to ynnari.

Both armies have been bottom dog pile in the past. Both will be that again eventually.

And?

All factions had their time in the trash bin, even CWE.

I'm saying that those codici right now are the least likely to get crippled, short of an edition change which right now is fairly unlikely. If tomorrow disintegrators are nerfed, the Drukhary are done. Same for marines and GMan. CWE and Alaitoc or flyers.
AM and nids need multiple rules/models to be changed to be seriously impacted, because they have a lot of good choices.

And if Hive Guard get nerfed, Tyranid's are done, and literally completely out of worthwhile AT options. A nerf btw, that you personally said was very likely, and argued in favor of. I think Drukhari on the other hand are one of the best armies in the game and have far more to lean back on if Disintegrators go down. Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more with this assessment.

Actually, i am still in favor of that nerf, because as you said hive guards are in every list and overshadowing other choices in the codex. This is a clear sign that they must be taken down a notch.

When you approach something with absolutely no nuance I can understand how this might be your initial reaction, however that's absolutely not what it means at all. This is just surface level analysis, that because one unit is better than others in the dex that unit has to be nerfed. Even with Hive Guard, Tyranids still struggle in the AT department. The fact that there is a single other AT unit that gets played at the moment is not a sign that this unit needs nerfs, it's a sign that the other ones need to be more playable. In fact, the fact that GSC soup has opened up more AT options and Keyword Nid players are now often as not DROPPING Hive Guard for other AT options, shows that this unit is not needed for a nerf lol, its a balanced option externally in a dex lacking other options internally.

Spoletta wrote:
I regularly play a lot of lists, from Leviathan to Jormu lists without any stealer or hive guard, and guess who i face normally? Guards and Tau. I win some and lose some, because again "Average players, average lists, mono codex --> Good games = Good codici". Mono codici lists are more than good enough to compete in the local events, and there you can actually see how all these codici are faring one against each other.
Tyranids suffer when you aim for big events, because we simply have no answers to knights, but that is a perversion of the current meta more than a problem of the nid dex. On it's own the nid dex is 100% capable of playing an even match against a full AM army (provided that you use sensible missions, not ITC killfest crap).

This is just... what? So your FLGS meta, where you usually face Guards and Tau, is meant to be a representation of what everyone else is likely to encounter in their local events, and that the results of an army in your meta is a reflection of it's overall power? And you think Maelstrom missions with random ass coinflip gak like BGNT is more balanced than ITC missions? Sheesh. Just say you play semi-casually, Tyranids does alright for you, and leave it at that. Yes right now mono Tyranids struggles to bring the AT needed to deal with Knights, but that's not going to change just because the meta does LOL it just means you might see less Knights but still hit the same wall when you do, but that's not even the topic here. The point is that Tyranids without Hive Guard would struggle in anti-tank vs EVERY army, not just Knights. Having to rely on gak like Behemoth Trygon's, Crushing Claw Carnifexes, or Exogimmick *cough* sorry, Exocrines, even trying to blow up even Rhino's is going to be a problem lol, let alone the other end of that scale with Mechdar and Riptides etc.

 SHUPPET wrote:
This is just... what? So your FLGS meta, where you usually face Guards and Tau, is meant to be a representation of what everyone else is likely to encounter in their local events, and that the results of an army in your meta is a reflection of it's overall power?

You DO realize that the gross majority of players are affected by what they see at their FLGS? That they are going to ignore the global meta in favor of what they see on their tables at home.

How I wasn't happy about my opponent's Warp'ead taking a half dozen wounds off my Tiger Shark in my last game, or how my opponent was horrified to find out how durable my Riptide was after removing its drone support, while still being affected by my Ethereal's 'Sense of Stone'?

 carldooley wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
This is just... what? So your FLGS meta, where you usually face Guards and Tau, is meant to be a representation of what everyone else is likely to encounter in their local events, and that the results of an army in your meta is a reflection of it's overall power?

You DO realize that the gross majority of players are affected by what they see at their FLGS? That they are going to ignore the global meta in favor of what they see on their tables at home.

Exactly my point.

Well I would say the probability that someone is going to end up playing vs IG is way higher, then somehow an list having a hard counter in the form of a kroot army. Local metas can be different, as ETC and ITC tournaments show, but while the top lists may rotate, the bottom does not.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 carldooley wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
This is just... what? So your FLGS meta, where you usually face Guards and Tau, is meant to be a representation of what everyone else is likely to encounter in their local events, and that the results of an army in your meta is a reflection of it's overall power?

You DO realize that the gross majority of players are affected by what they see at their FLGS? That they are going to ignore the global meta in favor of what they see on their tables at home.

Exactly my point.

You seem to have not read my post, so i will repeat.

When playing "With average players, average armies etc.. etc..." then what i said apply. So if you say "But at top competitive level what you said is not true" well...ok?

This whole thread is not looking at top competitive level by definition, because we are looking at no soup situations, so your comment is quite OOT.

When you play against average lists (A couple of riptides, about 20 drones, 3 broadsides. Spice up with firewarriors, marksmen with lights and stuff like that), then you can win without ever looking at stealers and hive guard, i do it regularly. No, i don't play maelstrom, the format here is the standard 1750 CA eternal war missions (which are more balanced than ITC but that is just IMHO). Disclaimer: I don't consider myself a particularly good player, nor play against noobish opponents, but not top opponents either. Everything average as i said.

Spoletta wrote:

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

 Sleep Spell wrote:
When shooting is strong it makes sense that both Astra Militarum and T'au gunlines are top contenders. However, both suffer massively against the -1 to hit trait putting Alaitoc CWE on the map. Hell in smaller games even Ravenguard Intercessors are a real pain.

Drukhari seem to have a few powerful builds and stratagems.

I don’t know about guard, but as far as fliers go tau does have ways to mitigate that -1 (granted they have a -2 but it still helps) and to Reroll all
Failed hits and wounds, which also helps. Idk if guard has something similar
Unfortunately I think some people didn’t even read what the thread was about and simply picked the army they place cause... reasons

Rerolling to hit when afflicted by hit penalties is useless at BS4.

A Straight BS 4 averages 0,5 hits, or 0,33 with a -1 penalty. You lose a third of your output.
A rerolled BS 4 averages 0,75 hits, or 0,5 with a -1 penalty. You lose a third of your output.

Actually i think that this is true for all BS values. Hit penalties do not care if you are rerolling or not, in percentage they are always inflicting the same penalty.
The only defence to hit penalties is having an high BS stat, or gimmicks like Orks DDD and Dark Reapers.

Except you clearly show that it isn't useless. Straight BS 4 hits 33% of the time, Re-roll BS 4 hits 50%, effectively removing the hit penalty. Sure you aren't getting your full bonus, but you are hitting at essentially your standard BS instead of at -1. They may mathematically inflict the same penalty, but that penalty is often just a return to normal, so the re-roll essentially negates the -1 to hit. SO it largely could be turned around to say re-rolls do not care about -1 to hit penalties if they essentially negate one another. Put simply assuming the re-roll isn't so expensive as to be the same cost as 33% more shots (chances are it isn't), the person with the -1 to hit would. So a re-roll is very much a defense against to hit penalties. Likely moreso than a high BS simply because your unit likely paid for that high BS, and is not getting the full benefit. The only true defense is to be a Dark Repear and ignore them entirely.

Spoletta wrote:


When playing "With average players, average armies etc.. etc..." then what i said apply. So if you say "But at top competitive level what you said is not true" well...ok?

This whole thread is not looking at top competitive level by definition, because we are looking at no soup situations, so your comment is quite OOT.

Have.... you even read the original post?

"So who had the best mono faction codex? By best I’m talking strongest. Is topping those tournaments in the top 5 pretty consistent. Not the “but I like this army cause its the one I play” best. Vote and post you’re reasons!"

How do you even get what you did from this? It's quite clearly about what would be the strongest mono dex in an environment with people trying the most cutthroat stuff but with the limitation of single codex play. Acting like your casual-meta Tyranid list that doesn't run Hive Guard or Stealers is somehow a relevant statistic to this question and not just an irrelevant anecdote, is purely illogical.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
Well I would say the probability that someone is going to end up playing vs IG is way higher, then somehow an list having a hard counter in the form of a kroot army. Local metas can be different, as ETC and ITC tournaments show, but while the top lists may rotate, the bottom does not.

Lol. Well being that the hard counter we are dismissing is not Kroot list, but Imperial Knights in any number, I think we can safely say that it is something that is just quite likely to be encountered.

Lol. Well being that the hard counter we are dismissing is not Kroot list, but Imperial Knights in any number, I think we can safely say that it is something that is just quite likely to be encountered

Thought it was more general and knights were just being used as an example, because I do agree that knights are in many chaos or imperial list. I was trying to put out an argument that it is hard to say that Tau for example are bad or mid tier, because someone maybe playing them without any of the monster units they have and drones.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Spoletta wrote:


When playing "With average players, average armies etc.. etc..." then what i said apply. So if you say "But at top competitive level what you said is not true" well...ok?

This whole thread is not looking at top competitive level by definition, because we are looking at no soup situations, so your comment is quite OOT.

Have.... you even read the original post?

"So who had the best mono faction codex? By best I’m talking strongest. Is topping those tournaments in the top 5 pretty consistent. Not the “but I like this army cause its the one I play” best. Vote and post you’re reasons!"

How do you even get what you did from this? It's quite clearly about what would be the strongest mono dex in an environment with people trying the most cutthroat stuff but with the limitation of single codex play. Acting like your casual-meta Tyranid list that doesn't run Hive Guard or Stealers is somehow a relevant statistic to this question and not just an irrelevant anecdote, is purely illogical.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
Well I would say the probability that someone is going to end up playing vs IG is way higher, then somehow an list having a hard counter in the form of a kroot army. Local metas can be different, as ETC and ITC tournaments show, but while the top lists may rotate, the bottom does not.

Lol. Well being that the hard counter we are dismissing is not Kroot list, but Imperial Knights in any number, I think we can safely say that it is something that is just quite likely to be encountered.

Good, and as you correctly said, there are no knights in this theoretical meta we are describing (because no one in here ever included mono knights in the competitive lists, for a good reason, they suck on objectives). So that is one problem solved.

If the question was "Which monofaction is more likely to place high in a tournament (without limiting the rest of the tournament to a monofaction)" then the easy answer would be T'au, because they have the tools to bring down the many knights that you are sure to encounter.

Notice that I didn't include Tyranids in the top dogs of this hypotetic competition, i just said that trying to understand which monofaction is better is pointless, because all of them have hard counters, and none would be a safe bet for a tournament. I said that Tyranids and AM are well designed codici because they have many builds, and are unlikely to be taken down by a single nerf. The fact that the most powerful builds include stealers and hyve guards does in no way negate what i said, because the other tyranid builds are just a few steps behind that one. Like what happened when the Tyrants were nerfed, nid lists completely changed to use different solutions, but still remained quite good. Same with biovore nerf.
If tank commanders are nerfed, AM will just use other models which are a bit less efficient, but still in the same ballpark.
If you instead nerf Alaitoc-like traits, CWE are hugely impacted.

Honestly i don't exactly understand what you are arguing.
My example of using lists without those units was to highlight that not using them is not completely crippling, but just another possible nid list which while not as good as the usual ones, is still good enough to hold the average competition (which is what nids do, because not even top mononid lists hold the top competition, for the problems we all know).