What is the general opinion of tyranids right now?

[angelofrage]

I've just started collecting them with the new plastic kits coming out. I love me a deathstar so Swarmlord + guard (and possibly a prime) are going to be in, plus some tervigons and trygons. I accept they're not the most powerful, but there seems to be enough in the codex that works (tervigons, trygons, hive guard, genestealers, primes, warriors, gargoyles, doom, zoenthropes, etc) to let me produce a list that will be competitive enough in my games with friends as well as giving me different options ("nidzilla" or all reserves) to try out.

[Reivax26]

I have a few thoughts on the matter. Nids suffer from a lot of the same problems that my Daemons do. Certain armies are really hard matchups for both armies (Dark Eldar spamming poison weapons....). Anyway, Nids have an ok codex compared to some of the armies. No they don't get transports but in a way that could help in certain games. Take a look at the Razorback spam lists for Blood Angels and Wolves. Those lists have a boat load of kill points tied up in armor 11 vehicles. Look at all the ways Nids can wreck those armies that are designed to sit back and not move. Flanking stealers, Tyranofexes, Hive Guard, anything with a Heavy Venom Cannon. I still believe that Tyranids are a very competitive army even in tournaments. Not too long ago we had a guy win back to back tournaments with his Nids. I played him in the finals of one with my Black Templars and his list was brutal. Its all about how you play them and thinking outside the box.

[Panzer MkIV]

My opinion of the current Tyranid Codex: Horrible internal and external balance with the clear signs of a rush job that wasn't playtested.

So...a bad codex

Also because the codex can win tournaments doesn't mean it's a good codex

[Mikial]

We just added Nids to our army collection (my wife liked the models and the fluff). After maybe 8 - 10 games we're doing pretty good with them. In terms of a win/loss record: several ties on kill points, a couple losses and a win. But in terms of pure fun and a very good looking army? They score a 9.5.

Having said that, I agree with the poorly thought out codex and poor list design, but overall they are a great army. Looking forward to 6th Ed.

[Seville]

I love the new models coming out and I have a few painted up somewhere here in my apartment. But I keep reading that they are trash, is that true or just overreaction? What is your opinion?

My general opinion of Tyranids is that the models look really awesome, they are really cool thematically, and they are a ton of fun to play as and against. They are the quintessential 40k foe.

Oh, did you mean "competitively" or whatever? Who cares?

[Grimtuff]

Oh, did you mean "competitively" or whatever? Who cares?

A lot of people evidently...

If you're investing a lot of money in an army, to have it fighting against itself just to try to scrape a win is just not gravy for some. Tyranids are far from some peripheral "back of the book" list where you can justify them having a less than stellar power level by saying "hey that's part of the fun of the list" such as with Kroot, some FW lists etc. They are one of the major players of 40k's setting and as a result many people would expect them to have a codex that is up to scratch.

[Snorky_the_goblin]

I do fully agree that the book feels rushed, howerver WHY Cruddace?

The Nids are very fun to play if you like thinking synergy and sneakiness, or just get to your local store and dump some 180 Gaunts and some Carnificies on the table and ask your opponent wich unit he would take out first. Trust me it is worth it for the look on his face if he did not bring 3 manticores or mobs of burnas muahaha. Also of note is the first turn burrowing Mawloc mening you now it strikes on turn two, now take three off them and bye bye Longfangs heh.

[Draconis]

If you really want to see the state of Nids, pick up a nid codex. Now, make a 2k point list out of it. K, next step is pick up an IG codex and make a 2k point list out of it. You'll quickly get the idea since they were done by the same author. Huge and vast difference.

[Obake123]

I played a game against Orks on Sunday that I think highlighted many of the best and worst things about Tyranids.

THe models are fantastic, with a real army identity to tie them together. My new Winged Tyrant looked great on the table and the Trygon I'd borrowed for the game looked ace beside him. I need to get one.

All but one unit in my army was wither dormant on the board, tunneled in, dropped out of the sky or outflanked over the sides of the board. Fun, fast and risky deployment that kept my oponant off balance and got my army right in his face.

Where many of them bogged down for half the game or died.

Half my army spent three turns trying to take out two truks and a battlewagon. One finally died under 19 hits! My monsterous creatures died easilly in CC because the lack an Invulnerable save despite their insane points cost.

I love playing 'nid, love the models, but the rules are poorly thought out, badly overpointed in some key areas and the codex is so.... dull... compared to the last one.

[Souleater]

The models are great. The codex is poorly written. The 5th Edition rules seem almost biased against us. As an army...my beloved Tyranids are not in a happy place. I feel guilty playing against a Nid army with my Dark Eldar because I know the person across the table is not going to have a fun time.

MCs are pretty fragile for their cost and often lacking in WS, Attacks or I. With the amount of anti-vehicle weaponry toted these days it isn't hard to kill off a TMC. I find killing a bunch of vehicles more difficult.

If our MCs had higher Toughness, an extra wound with EW but no INV saves they would be tough to kill but feel different to Chaos MCs.

Mid-sized bugs fare worse still. With their lamentable T4 they are ID'd by most AT guns. Sure, they might well be getting a 4+ Cover but when the kill takes out an expensive or useful creature it is still worth trying.

The expense of the above creatures reduces the number of gribblies available in the army. I look at my modern, balanced-horde and wonder where the hell the 'horde' element actually is. Synapse is actually a curse in CC...not only do we lose roughly the same amount of gaunts again but we get that same number of wounds repeated onto every other brood in the assault. The amount of additional units we have to back up our broods with to make them effective seems a little high.

[Ventus]

What gets me most is not that the dex was poorly written/playtested/edited (which is bad enough), but that a decent errata could fix many of the problems and make the dex a lot better and more of the units playable without having to wait 4+ years for a new dex (possibly with similar garbage - it is GW we are talking about after all). Alas this is not a concern for GW.

[Draconis]

The rules for 5th are not against us. It's all the other codexes out there are. And the faqs. SM can do many things that we cannot not for absolutely no reason.

[Souleater]

Let me rephrase that then...the rules are written in such a way that things that don't affect SM a great deal have a significantly stronger effect on Tyranids....

Think of the difference between a vehicle blowing up after being assaulted by power armoured troops or a brood of Genestealers. I've often been punished for that kill by losing half my brood. I know this isn't unique to 5th, but it really doesn't help. It got harder to trap models in a transport.

No Retreat! might be four or five extra saves for an SM squad. For Tyranids, trying to overwhelm the enemy and work our broods together that could be an extra eight or nine deaths on the original brood....which is generally generally double that number thanks to our poor horde troops, who have very poor armour so will die more...plus loading wounds onto any other brood in the assault.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. You state that Marines are allowed to do things that we aren't. I'm not sure quite how true that is but I do think that 5th Edition was largely tested to work with MEQ...other races could go hang.

Orks were okay because their codex was well written. As a horde army their individual units can be autonomous. The are points efficient and hit fairly hard. Synergy serves them well but it isn't mandatory...and when adding a single cheap model with a KFF is all that is required one can't help but look at the cost of our 'buffers'. Yes, I do see a KFF in many Ork lists but those mobs can still do something without it.

Yet following on from the success of Orks we have several codexes with toys designed to deal with hordes very effectively.

Our codex was hacked apart. There follows a slightly self-mocking rant...

Why turn Death Spitters into Devourers all bar one stat? Everybody else is getting different weapons but they nerfed my favourite gun in the entire game into one we already have.

Why overcost MCs?

Why limit our Toughness levels given the size of our models and their lack of INV saves?

Why put the assault Pyrovore on a fragile frame and our No-LOS shooter on our toughest non-MC platform? I'm guessing it was an aesthetic choice but it would be so simply solved.

Why turn the Broodlord into a squad leader and remove his power weapon...I mean, Marines can have squad leaders...oh...wait you already covered. that one....

What was the thinking behind Spore Pods being multi-wound models with a Toughness of 4?

Carnifexes. That doesn't even need an explanation of what is wrong with the entry.

Why not call the Tyranid Prime an Alpha Warrior? Seriously, it would indicate what the model actually was. Let's skip the 'dumb names' bit though.

How did the Lictor's rules make it through playtesting? If they didn't want the entire Nid army turning up from Reserve on turn two then why put those rules in? Put the Lictor back to being an assassin, not a glorified homing beacon.

I think that's enough semi-ranting to make my point. We had a badly written codex. If it were properly written we would be in a better place. The codex feels almost like the balance of GK and SW. Somewhere in between is the balanced codex...the point they should all be at, ideally.

I know a number of MEQ players who find Genestealers terrifying because they can kill three or four Space Marines in assault. Ignoring their inherent vulnerablity to bolters and small pieces of shrubbery.

I would not dissuade anybody from picking up nids but I would point that they have one or two flaws.

[Vipoid]

[Long Post]

Sadly, I have to agree with everything here.

Tyranids have some really lovely models, and a plethora of conversion oppertunities. However, on the rules side, our codex is just badly-written - our expensive MCs and weak horde creatures feel completely out of place in the mech-heavy 5th edition, and several later codices seem specifically designed to slaughter us.

[Souleater]

But did you have to quote everything?

(Sorry, wall of text quotes immediately following a post are a pet peeve of mine.)

[Vipoid]

Sorry, is this better?

[Souleater]

Thank you, kindly. I don't think the world needs to see my rambling, repeatedly edited posts more than once

Your point about Nids feeling out of place in 5th is bang on. I haven't played my Nids as much over the last couple of years but until the Necron hit they were still pretty popular at my FLGS. Several times I've looked at a battle between Vanilla SM and Tyranids and wondered if the Nid player isn't accidentally down a couple of hundred points.

Partly this is because of the crazy cost of our MCs. Was this high cost meant to balance out the number of such creatures we could field in order to do away with Nidzilla? I don't think it did much to stop Nidzilla - a simple FoC tweak would have done that!Yet we were given four or five new MCs. What it did do was reduce the points left for the gribblies...and they aren't terribly points efficient anyway.

[Hicks]

They are playable but clunky to use against old codices. Against the new stuff they get raped bad.

[Draconis]

Sm: Putting IC in drop pod. Tyranids: No
SM: Move and fire ordnance. Move 12" and still fire. Any other army: No
SM. Target you with Psyker powers inside a transport. Fire back at said psyker? Shadow in the Warp: No.

Etc. etc. etc. The answer to any question of "Can we do this?" is sadly almost always "No, but X Space Marine Chapter can"


As for the Lictor, one of my favorite models phsysically and fluff wise is easy. They will release Ymgarls at some time. And because they can assault after deploying, people will buy them since Lictors cannot.

[suprememidgetoverlord]

Sm:
SM. Target you with Psyker powers inside a transport. Fire back at said psyker? Shadow in the Warp: No.

Actually, the FAQ says yes to this, but that doesnt change how bad we are for the rest.