Nidzilla viable in 6th?

[Vampiric16]

I have a tournament coming up in the near future, and I'm tossing around the idea of taking a horde of monsters. The nid beasties are some of the nicest models out there, and they can be a pain to kill.
What I'd like to know, is how such a list would fare in a competitive environment and 6th edition scenarios. The tourney is 1750pts, and I'm expecting a nice mix of armies. If they are gonna get whitewashed/not fun to play, then I'll expand the list I took last year (which had some success, especially against marine lists).
Cheers,
Vamp

[Pyriel]

the current (6th-ed) units to use for the Tyranid codex are three:

-Tyrants with dual devourers. 12 x str 6 shots with rerolls. use two of them.
-Carnifex with dual devourers. use two of them (three in 2k).
thats 48 str 6 shots per turn, with rerolls. this can seriously put the hurt on necron flyers. (48 dice with rerolls. wanna know how many will roll a 6?and necron flyers are AV11)
-lastly couple of tervigons for troops. use hive guard to fill points.

keep everything dirt cheap, like 195 pts per tervigon. your four troops (two tervigons and two gaunt broods) should be around 500-600 points. 4 x hiveguard, thats 800 points. use your last 950 points on the shooty monstrous creatures. they will shoot the enemy to oblivion, AND will still be AP2 when an assault is needed.

[Pyriel]

note, however, that while Nids DO have competitive builds, the biggest problem of the codex is the players wanting to play a "mainly cc army". such a thing is not exactly viable at this point in the environment. not just for nids; i've seen Grey Knights players get TABLED by even old codexes because the player, while using good units, simply had cc as a main tactic, using strong assault units instead of spamming purifiers, psycannons and psyrifledreads. at this point, cc is a secondary tactic, not the focus of a list.

so dont count on monstrous creature butchering stuff on close combat. you will be deeply dissapointed. shooting the enemy to oblivion and charging the remainers, now THAT can work.

[FashaTheDog]

I have been wondering this myself as my Nids at or above 1,850 points tend to be T6 heavy and have yet to cycle through my armies and get to them yet. In 5th I did just fine in tournaments until the Grey Knights got their new book and their plethora of pesky Nemesis Force Weapons (halberds, especially) tore me apart. Stealer bombs made a good Grey Knight counter, but now without being able to be I7 on the charge, I am struggling to find a new solution, especially considering that my models are limited to a half dozen Carnifex, a Trygon, Tyrant with 3 Guard, 35 Hormagaunts, 3 Lictors, Deathleaper, 90-ish Stealers, 3 Broodlords, a Ravener, three Warriors with talons and claws, a handful of Rippers and mines, and a Zoanthrope.

Sadly for my big guys, nothing in the new edition has made them any better against Grey Knights, but overall, I think they'll be just fine against anyone else, even though they are pure assault and always have been.

[Archibald_TK]

I have a tournament coming up in the near future, and I'm tossing around the idea of taking a horde of monsters. The nid beasties are some of the nicest models out there, and they can be a pain to kill.
What I'd like to know, is how such a list would fare in a competitive environment and 6th edition scenarios. The tourney is 1750pts, and I'm expecting a nice mix of armies. If they are gonna get whitewashed/not fun to play, then I'll expand the list I took last year (which had some success, especially against marine lists).

Tervigons as troop are still an excellent choice, especially with their psychic abilities, but 6th is a harsh environment for Tyranids MC. Trygons can no longer strike at I5 which means they can't strike before Dreadnoughts or Marines grenades. Considering their cost, their weak ranged firepower and how easy it is now to hit vehicles without relying on dual Scything Talons, they have lost a lot of their shine. The Harpy is still bad. Can't damage the heavier flyers with its fly-by attack, can't fire its main weapons at flyers due to blast, overcosted, it's still the usual super fragile "glass cannon that forgot its cannon" that it was.

Regarding Tyrants and Carnifexes, they fare better with dual Devourers, especially against armies like GK, but they have strong flaws:
- A Decent firepower, but on super costly platforms. Being able to waste a 35pt Rhino is not that impressive when you cost close to 200 pts.
- AV13 are purely and simply immune to it in a gaming environment that push people toward higher AV now that glancing are so dangerous.
- AV12 flyers (Vendetta, Stormraven) take very few damage from them, even when taking TL into account, while they themselves are very well equipped to deal with MC.
- You have a lot of shots, but your range is very small, making focus firing something more difficult, especially flyers. Also any MC down lose you a large amount of shots.
- Necrons vehicles stayed quite efficient in 6th thanks to high AV, meaning you'll probably encounter a decent amount of AV13 wall instead of full flyers forces. To add insult to injury, Necron vehicles are immune to small Tyranids in CC.

As for TMC in general:
- DE may have become more fragile, they sill hurt like hell with all of their poison and longer range weapons.
- Jaw of the World Wolf has been majorly improved in 6th, making it an even better choice than before. This is quite an issue because...
- Runepriests have such efficient anti-psykers abilities coupled with good base powers and the ability to swap with some nice schools of magic than I expect it will be quite common for SW players to field them.
- For Imperial armies that want psychic abilities, Runepriests are an excellent choice of allies. Since JotWW is now a good way to hurt Terminators and other 2+sv armies, sniping characters while denying LOS, and no longer have any shortcomings vs Jump Infantry, it's a prime candidate for anyone fielding an allied Runepriest.
- There has been such a buzz regarding Flying MC these previous weeks that you shall expect many armies to be ready to deal with high T models.

Overall, you shall fare decently with a Tervigons + Brainleech Devourer heavy list similar to what Pyriel said, but I advise going for more Hive Guards even if it means less Carnifexes, so that you don't end up facing an army that would focus fire your HG out of the board turn 1 then be immune to your remaining ranged firepower.

[unknown_lifeform]

note, however, that while Nids DO have competitive builds, the biggest problem of the codex is the players wanting to play a "mainly cc army". such a thing is not exactly viable at this point in the environment.

I play an extremely fast predominantly CC nid army and I've been having huge success under 6th. I'm sorry, but I simply don't recognise what you're saying.

[Threeshades]

MCs work well in CC if you use them right, most importantly, don't send them in alone, always have a gaunt unit along with them, to soak up attacks (which is important, now that grenades can hurt MCs). In the last edition you couldn't send gaunts and MCs into CC together because the gaunts would always lose more models than they killed which then resulted in both units haing to suffer wounds for no retreat, this is gone now, and you dont have to think twice before charging anything with gaunts and MCs.

@unknown_lifeform
Would you care to share your list with me and tell me what sort of environment you play in (typical opponents, level of competitiveness)? I rarely get to play and i would love to see how tyranids do in this edition, also i like to see what makes them successful. Shoot me a PM maybe.