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Hey there folks! As it says in the title, having a rough time trying to decide between the two !

The players i will be playing against, proabbly 3 or 4 guys, they'll all be running some sort of marines, loyalist/chaos. I wanted to do something different and think I have it narrowed down to these two!

But are they currently any good vs a lot of Marines? I don't want to power game but it would also be nice to just not roll over and die.

I do have to say that for Drukhari I am highly interested in Reavers/Hellions, Mandrakes, Coven stuff!!
Nids, I've always liked the big gribblys over the horde of gants etc but open to suggestions!

So if you have any advice or tips on either of these armies and how you fair against the multitude of marine armies out there, I am all ears!

Thanks!

I'd go 'nids they're a great army right now and the conversion/painting possiabilities are near endless. I think they'd be a lot of fun to play with

I play drukhari, and the coven stuff is my favorite part of the army. Currently not among the best units but haemonculus and grotesques in raiders are still decent if you want to go with assault oriented units, while cronos are basically useless now and talos are still decent but if you face massed lascannons/missile launchers lists I suggest to bring something else. Wracks are a bit better now, but kabalites are still more solid.

The shooty stuff really shine in this edition and ravagers, scourges with dark lances, razorwing jetfighters and the bomber are quite good. Venoms with kabalites are effective as well.

The wych cult stuff is more difficult to field efficiently since hellions are almost useless as always, and reavers got a huge nerf.

Mandrakes are very good.

Shooty drukhari lists can perform quite well against SM while pure coven oriented armies will struggle a bit but with some experience they can achieve something. I play mixing both styles, ravagers and kabalites in venoms plus haemys and grots in raiders and IMHO they're decent/average, not bad overall but absolutely not overpowered.

Are Hellions and Reavers really that bad? Recently picked up the gangs of comorragh box set and thought I was on to a good thing! lol.

Nids have always interested me. Tyrants and Carnifexes just look so cool !

Neither.
Orks.

But if not orks then dark eldar gets my vote. It takes a special sort to play nids. Dark elves are nasty evil and thoroughly corrupted but nids are giant hungry bugs in spessss.

Both have some cool models I guess but darkies offer more opportunities to branch out. For example with harlequins. Nids are what they are and that is good but for me, I would choose e!ves of the two.

I don't know how bad it is for drukhari exactly but nids look to be rather difficult to get a hold of. There's gaunts a plenty but warriors are out of stock, biovores seem to be a good way to round out a list but are super overpriced, shrikes are likely to be kicked out of the codex... will there be any nids left in a year or two?

That said I don't see much appeal in splinter weapons so the hard to get nids interest me more.

Genestealers. Play Genestealers.

'Nids take some work to learn, but are strong, unique, and fun.
The new synapse rules are very forgiving, giant hordes of small bugs can drown opponents in bodies, and the big monsters hit like a truck.

Hyperbole aside, currently Tyranids are stitting at the top of mind tier. There are several strong builds and powerful units. The Swarmlord, Genestealers, Trygons, warriors, the Broodlord, gargoyles, Exocrines, Biovores, hormagaunts, Hive Guard, Termigants, and Tervigons are all good units.

The trick to nids is that they take practice and rely on synergy. It is easy to build a bug list that is missing some key part, but the new edition is more forgiving than the last few have been.

Both seem like good, fun choices, so I'd go with whatever you would want to paint / build more.

It's also worth mentioning that a DE collection can branch out into Eldar and Harlies, and a Nids collection can branch into Genestealer cult and IG, so those future expansions might also help you make some choices.