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im thinking of using some spare cash to make a small Tyranid monster list, what would be good units to take when swarms of gaunts or Genes arent present?

Ive already got 3 carnifexes laying around, are they a good building block?

Exocrines for sure, they are just amazing. Tyrants/Flyrants for HQ's, also OOE is very strong still.

This is a though question. By general standars nids are not doing to hott. The unit people are sircling as good performers are warriors with blood of baal enchansments, and neoronthropes.

The one list that has put i performance was gaunt spam. Booring to collect and play.

That beeing said nids have seversl cool and good monsters. I would recomend rupture cannon and acid spray tyranofexes. Exoshrines are supposably the bees knees.

Old one eye us good. Hive tyrant/flyrant are good, butbin my personal ooinion theyboerform bad vs T8 witch is what I play a lot. Carnifexes also are baf against that.

This leads to the talk of the venon/heavy venom cannon. Those are odd. They can help with yout AT, but the model yiu take it on is a generallist. You use the tange of the venom cannon vs tanks but not the rest of the model.

Carnifexes would help out in a monsters list as they can fill several roles, and nids have no good melee monster. Shooting monsters, and melee carnifexes. The 24 shot hive tyrant and carnifex are very good vs infantery though.

Stay away from mawlocks and trygons.

Nids are doing just fine actually, they are placing in many top 5's and even more in top 10's with a few in top 3. They just had a top 3 placing this weekend at a GT and 2 more well placings there also. They have 3 different lists doing well most of 9th. They are for sure the top of the mid tier armies. A lot of the lists are either spam, Exocrines + Zoans, SPam Gants, or also spam Exocrines + gants. Its a lot of Gants + something else, which is the basic idea of Nids for the most part lol.

Also Mawlocks are in a better spot than Trygons, I personally still like them and would use them, but you need to build a list with them in mind, they don't work in just any list.

I have been playing with nidzilla since 7th, but have yet to have a chance to play them in 9th (stupid covid) so cant say for certain.

Flyrants are good

Old one eye. Used to run him but i am not so sure in 9th. As after physic awakening one of the custom traits is +1 to it on a charge, getting charged etc. With the cap on modifiers of +1 makes the alpha trait a little redundant, and though he is a melee beat stick i don't think he is quiet worth the points

malenthropes a bit over costed but can be handy to babysit the rupture fexs to provide the -1 to hit buble and back up synapse

Carnifexs i run as dakka fexs i.e. 4 deveourers with brain leech worms, spore cysts and then i usually take monstrous acid maw and they do work, but a little squishy (run them as jormugdur for a 2+ save most of the time and they are a bit more resilient but with so much anti tank running around they still get removed quick) with 9th i am tempted to swap out the monstrous acid maws for enhanced senses at we can shoot into combat now

exocrines are great anti marines shooting, but you want redundancy as they will get targeted down fast

tyranofexs, i have always run them with rupture cannons and they perform pretty well, but and argument can certainly be made for acid spray.

then and the unit that actually wins me games because everyone forgets about them is ripper swarms.

Blood of Baal and the 9th ed CP changes really brought new life to the nidzilla list framework.

Old One Eye+Carnifexes is something you do see quite a bit, the only thing I would caution you with it is that carnifexes look like they should be good at melee, but really they underperform compared to other melee units in that style (dreadnoughts, helbrutes, deff dreads, Talos Pain Engines...melee 'fexes bring no guns at all yet underperform vs even gun+arm style dreadnoughts in melee on the charge)

My friend whose competitive wisdom I trust runs a nidzilla list setup heavy on the following units:

1) 1 Malanthrope. The malanthrope in itself is not a good model, yet in Blood of Baal gained a stratagem to give a -1 to strength aura to things within 6", fairly useful in a nidzilla list setup.

2) if you run carnifexes, run them as Dakka-fexes (twin devourers). These guys are effective anti-infantry

3) Dakka Hive Tyrants, with wings. Another solid piece for a nidzilla list.

4) Exocrines and Hive Guard. The former being an extremely good anti-marine tool, the latter being very effective again at that job with new 9th ed obscuring terrain.

5) one big unit of Tyranid Warriors. Unyielding Chitin is an incredibly potent BoB stratagem for keeping your warriors alive and synergizing with a Nidzilla list setup.

6) he does use Toxicrenes because he loves them, but says they're mid-tier at best.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basic idea, you can construct a reasonably competitive list with a mixture of shooting threats and melee threats in front of them to prevent the enemy from tying them up, and a bunch of nasty melee units out front happy to slug it out on objectives.

Skew your list so anti-infantry firepower is pretty much useless, and spend your CP on defensive abilities to keep your big dudes alive.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Nids are doing just fine actually, they are placing in many top 5's and even more in top 10's with a few in top 3. They just had a top 3 placing this weekend at a GT and 2 more well placings there also. They have 3 different lists doing well most of 9th. They are for sure the top of the mid tier armies. A lot of the lists are either spam, Exocrines + Zoans, SPam Gants, or also spam Exocrines + gants. Its a lot of Gants + something else, which is the basic idea of Nids for the most part lol.

Also Mawlocks are in a better spot than Trygons, I personally still like them and would use them, but you need to build a list with them in mind, they don't work in just any list.

That's blatantly false, there's only 1 top 3 Tyr list and it was a skew 200 Gant list in Australia

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Nids are doing just fine actually, they are placing in many top 5's and even more in top 10's with a few in top 3. They just had a top 3 placing this weekend at a GT and 2 more well placings there also. They have 3 different lists doing well most of 9th. They are for sure the top of the mid tier armies. A lot of the lists are either spam, Exocrines + Zoans, SPam Gants, or also spam Exocrines + gants. Its a lot of Gants + something else, which is the basic idea of Nids for the most part lol.

Also Mawlocks are in a better spot than Trygons, I personally still like them and would use them, but you need to build a list with them in mind, they don't work in just any list.

That's blatantly false, there's only 1 top 3 Tyr list and it was a skew 200 Gant list in Australia

Rumble’s First 9th GT Tournament! Nids took 2nd.

Just b.c you didn't see or hear about it doesn't mean its not true. And Gant lists are not Skewed... thats like saying a Ork list with Boys is skewed.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Nids are doing just fine actually, they are placing in many top 5's and even more in top 10's with a few in top 3. They just had a top 3 placing this weekend at a GT and 2 more well placings there also. They have 3 different lists doing well most of 9th. They are for sure the top of the mid tier armies. A lot of the lists are either spam, Exocrines + Zoans, SPam Gants, or also spam Exocrines + gants. Its a lot of Gants + something else, which is the basic idea of Nids for the most part lol.

Also Mawlocks are in a better spot than Trygons, I personally still like them and would use them, but you need to build a list with them in mind, they don't work in just any list.

That's blatantly false, there's only 1 top 3 Tyr list and it was a skew 200 Gant list in Australia

Rumble’s First 9th GT Tournament! Nids took 2nd.

Just b.c you didn't see or hear about it doesn't mean its not true. And Gant lists are not Skewed... thats like saying a Ork list with Boys is skewed.

Taking only Exocrines, Zoanthropes and Ripper Swarms in Tournament consisting of 28 players with few marines (30% only) and playing against other Xenos and Imperial Armies for the most part...not exactly the best perspective of an army right?
And gants themselves ARE a skew unit since you need to take them en masse and hope your enemy doesn't have the right weapons to clear 60+ of them each turn (which is possible if you go for marine countering weapons) whilst doing ZERO damage; on the other hand the Ork Boys actually have the attacks and strenght to destroy the T4/T5 2W/3W marine profiles that have been spammed around lately

if I were going to run a nidzilla list I'd set it up something like this:

1 patrol, maybe 2 patrols with a single squad of rippers as troops if I REALLY wanted more of one slot in particular.

1st patrol has a malanthrope to get that -1 to hit on my big stuff, a maxed-out squad of warriors with the Enhanced Resistance adaptive phys on them

Swarmlord to fling the warriors up into the midboard early

Brood of double devourer carnifexes for some anti-chaff firepower

exocrine+6 hive guard for anti-MEQ firepower

then maybe 1 other big melee thing for fun.

A list kinda like this:

Patrol (melee/mobility hive fleet)

Swarmlord+Warriors+Maleceptor+Toxicrene+Carnifexes

Patrol (Shooting while stationary hive fleet)

Malanthrope+min rippers+Hive Guard+2 Exocrines

Something like that.

Bringing a Maleceptor is great as it removes a str which protects your rush.

People are saying to bring OOE but I wonder if he's worth his points anymore as the buff isn't as strong as it used to be.

Regardless, mixed loadout (quads or melee) Carnifexes with sporecysts for -1 rushing with the male will do great while 3 exos will nuke w.e they target. Have a Neuro sit back to buff the exos if you're going kronos

Another fun thing is Swarmlord with A t-fex with acid spray. Have it move twice and suddenly there is an overwhelmingly dumb threat they have to manage while a horde of carnifexs come up from behind.

Finally Mawlocs are better with their strat. I've popped them a few times and done some pretty nasty damage to castles.

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Nids are doing just fine actually, they are placing in many top 5's and even more in top 10's with a few in top 3. They just had a top 3 placing this weekend at a GT and 2 more well placings there also. They have 3 different lists doing well most of 9th. They are for sure the top of the mid tier armies. A lot of the lists are either spam, Exocrines + Zoans, SPam Gants, or also spam Exocrines + gants. Its a lot of Gants + something else, which is the basic idea of Nids for the most part lol.

Also Mawlocks are in a better spot than Trygons, I personally still like them and would use them, but you need to build a list with them in mind, they don't work in just any list.

That's blatantly false, there's only 1 top 3 Tyr list and it was a skew 200 Gant list in Australia

Rumble’s First 9th GT Tournament! Nids took 2nd.

Just b.c you didn't see or hear about it doesn't mean its not true. And Gant lists are not Skewed... thats like saying a Ork list with Boys is skewed.

Taking only Exocrines, Zoanthropes and Ripper Swarms in Tournament consisting of 28 players with few marines (30% only) and playing against other Xenos and Imperial Armies for the most part...not exactly the best perspective of an army right?
And gants themselves ARE a skew unit since you need to take them en masse and hope your enemy doesn't have the right weapons to clear 60+ of them each turn (which is possible if you go for marine countering weapons) whilst doing ZERO damage; on the other hand the Ork Boys actually have the attacks and strenght to destroy the T4/T5 2W/3W marine profiles that have been spammed around lately

If Marines are dropping from the meta thent hey are not good enough, or players learn to counter them while taking on other armies, just b.c its not what you expected doesn't make it skewed. They beat out other players at a GT.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Keramory wrote:
Bringing a Maleceptor is great as it removes a str which protects your rush.

People are saying to bring OOE but I wonder if he's worth his points anymore as the buff isn't as strong as it used to be.

Regardless, mixed loadout (quads or melee) Carnifexes with sporecysts for -1 rushing with the male will do great while 3 exos will nuke w.e they target. Have a Neuro sit back to buff the exos if you're going kronos

Another fun thing is Swarmlord with A t-fex with acid spray. Have it move twice and suddenly there is an overwhelmingly dumb threat they have to manage while a horde of carnifexs come up from behind.

Finally Mawlocs are better with their strat. I've popped them a few times and done some pretty nasty damage to castles.

OOE +2 to hit can still be viable at least b.c he can counter a -1 to hit, but yeah he is slightly nerf for sure. But still great as he still good if you want a melee anti elite/tank unit.

And also Yes Swarmlord is still good, and with Obscuring you might not need Tyrant guard anymore honestly. Turn 1 double move a unit, turn 2 double move himself, etc.. you have options with obscuring that you didn't have before.