Ranking tyranid units - noob question

[guy]

Hello,

I'm in the process of gathering a good general view of the nids strenghts and weaknesses, and tried to "tier" the units according to general consensus and battle reports, i'd like this list to be criticized by the experienced players on this forum !

In [], the favored hive fleet.

X - Auto include
A - Core units
B - Excellent units
C - Good units with a weakness
D - Disappointing
E - Overpriced, and/or broken

edited to reflect advices given

X - Hive Tyrant with wings [behemoth]

A Biovores - Board control [Kronos]
A Genestealer - elite infantry clearing [Kraken]
A Neurothorpe - cheapest HQ
A Termagants with fleshborer - cheapest screening [Leviathan]
A Hive Guards - impaler canon [Kronos]

B Hormagant - fast moving tarpit unit [Kraken]
B Devilgant - powerful horde clearer, but needs to be deepstriked [Kronos]
B Gargoyles - deepstrike tarpit [behemoth]
B Dakkafex - horde cleaning with resilience [Kronos]
B Old One eye - a melee beast, carnifex buffer, character; he needs protection, and is slightly too expensive [kraken]
B Ripper Swarm - cheap objective snatcher [leviathan]

Good units with a weakness :
C Exocrine - effective, but immobile [Kronos]
C Malanthrope - really expensive, but decent HQ [Jormungandr warlord trait]
C Trygon - tank opener, tunnel borer, enemy tends to run away from him tho, diminishing its utility [Behemoth]
C Mawloc - 12 wounds focus fire target + pointblank deepstrike MW provider, pathetic melee [Jormungandr]
C Acidfex - reliable high damage dealer, but short range [Kronos/Kraken]
C Broodlord - melee beast, character protection, but fragile 6 wounds and overpriced [Kraken/Leviathan]
C Raveners - cheap jormungandr tunnel, but no synapse [Jormungandr]
C Swarmlord - powerful but fragile one-trick pony [Kraken/leviathan]
C Meleefex - resilient and powerful, but slow [Kraken]
C Tyranid Warriors - not really powerful, not resilient, but they have synaspe [jormungandr]
C Rupturefex - punishing degrading profile, but works well at full health [Kronos]
C Spores Mucolid - cheapest anti-deepstrike zoneholder
C Trygon Prime - trygon with synapse [Behemoth]
C Tyranid Shrikes - warriors with 12 movement. the problem is that warriors are not a good investment overall, too expensive to tarpit (obviously) and not that powerful for the price [Kraken]
C Spores Meiotic - can be deployed before battle, but after scouts, so its not as good against armies with scouting units (craftworld)

Disappointing :
D Zoanthropes - poor synergies when piling up the models
D Venomthropes - slightly reduces alpha snipe effectiveness. That's all it does tho
D Hive Tyrant (walking) - without character protection, a waste of points [kraken/Leviathan]
D Tyrant Guard - too slow, lacking 1 hitpoint to really shine as a Bodyguards [Kraken/Leviathan]
D CarniStoneCrusher - vehicle killer, but tricky to bring in the action unmolested [kraken]
D Deathleaper
D Lictor - disappointing as a unit, but has a use to fill an elite slot for cheap
D Pyrovores - unit size too small to make a good impact as a DS unit, cheapest elite tax [Kraken]
D Harpy - bad, but less worse than Hive Crone
D Red terror - way too expensive
D Toxicrene - a big monster with no purpose[Kraken]

Overpriced, and/or broken :
E Tervigon
E Haruspex
E Maleceptor
E Tyranid prime
E Hive Crone

[devilrules]

exocrine, gargoyles and trygon should all go down one level in my opinion.
raveners go to A if jormongander for cheap tunnels.
zonathropes are d in my opinion as neurothrope is so much better for value.
hive guard are s
ripper swarms are a

[hiveoverall]

Jormun Mawloc for that 2+ "cover included" save is definately B. Even with other HF traits i'd say. 12 wounds for 100 points ! And its jaw attack is now pretty strong too. Exocrine is more of an "A" than a "S", yet(though i never tried it) I'll wager a pair of Kronos exocrines WILL ruin any opponent's day !

[acehilator]

You don't have a clear distinction between S and A, or to be more precise your explanations are wrong? A unit can't go higher than auto-include, so S should be auto-include, A for mainstay/core units.

Because of the ridiculous amount of list building options open to us, HT with wings it the only auto-include unit.

Ever since Jormungandr Tunnels, Trygons/Trygon Prime are down to B/C.

Exocrines have BS 3+ and a lot of shots, but they are targetable, cannot place them out of LoS T1, don't have an Invul, and most importantly are only 36" range and only S7. Both are serious drawbacks for its role, so definitely B.
Gargoyles - unit with a large footprint, too easy to defend against with proper deployment if your opponent knows what he is doing - C.

Rippers A - sooo good for all kinds of shenanigans
FB Gants A - best bubblewrap unit in the game
Tervigon C - works fine with enough Gants, drops to the bottom of your opponents threat assessment anyways when you have other monsters running around
Shrikes - most people don't own any, but still C I guess (don't count as troops, but more threat range and flexibility compared to Warriors)

[Squire]

For me even a non jorm mawloc deserves better than the 5th tier out of 5. It obviously isn't an offensive powerhouse, but seven S6 talon attacks, a tail attack and a pretty decent maw attack along with its mortal wound rule is enough to hurt backfield shooting units with no CC ability. Just like in 7th I feel like the mawloc has the perfect combination of cheapness, good durability, mild offense, decent speed, great deployment and a big scary looking model to be a real nuisance to the opponent, and force bad decisions. I'm struggling to imagine what a bad game for a mawloc looks like- even if it drops in, fails to do any mortal wounds and the units around it move so far away it can't charge the following turn that's already a signoficant disruption, and can then burrow again, grab on objective or continue chasing. A couple of very lucky lascannon shots could kill it, but then it's saved your army 12 wounds elsewhere

Unless somebody has a good counter argument I think the mawloc warrants tier C

[burd]

Swarmlord a B-Lister? I would argue that even at his price he is a mainstay for any stabby/choppy list that is relying on charges to lock up shooters while the rest advances.

[guy]

Mar 12, 2018 21:18:26 GMT burd said:

Swarmlord a B-Lister? I would argue that even at his price he is a mainstay for any stabby/choppy list that is relying on charges to lock up shooters while the rest advances.

Hello, B is not "bad", but it's my understanding that the swarmlord is a one-trick pony (slingshot), and as an individual unit, can be sniped with focused fire. That's a 300 pts gamble.

Basically it's an A when the tactic is a success, and a C when it does not. Hence B.

I could be wrong because i'm a noob, but if your opponent is experienced see the SW in your army list, he will know how to counter it. And at 300 pts, it's more expensive to have a counter to the counter ?

[acehilator]

Yeah Swarmy is B. The cost is not 300, it is over 400 (either Tguard or Tcyte, don't even try using him without one of those). So for the same price you can get two fully equipped HT wings wings and have some points to spare. He can work, but he attracts ALL THE AT FIRE (and is no more survivable than a regular HT), but it is not exactly rocket science to counter him. Not having the FLY keyword is limiting even as Kraken, a large unit of Stealers is the only unit worth moving besides himself, and I really wish Hive Commander had more than 6" range.

[burd]

I'm saying he is an A when bringing a flyrant plant 6 inches in front and/or just los from what would snipe him and let the flyrant go to work wherever he wants within 20 inches when onslaughted with catalyst. Which is what I do each time its hard to counter specially with elite armies and low model counts to clog the flyrants base.

[acehilator]

That is the very definition of one-trick-pony. And getting Swarmy into a position where he is out of LoS from your opponent's AT fire and able to Hive Commander the Flyrant into a good position... good luck with that.

Following the definition we decided to use in this thread, he is firmly B. Of course unit values may vary because of local meta, but we can't take that into account here.

[winterman]

Meiotic Spores are not D. They are the only unit we can use to setup board control before Turn 1 begins without blowing CPs and having reinforcement points. Whether you need that depends on the list, but lots of lists do. C at the worst, could argue they are worth more than other spores since they do more than just fill FA slots.

X,S A are all on point. I think your B and C have a lot of arguable things one way or other, but since they aren't A or D then it doesn't matter enough to bother arguing - if they fit your list or meta try them out.

I guess my issue is your def of C aka 'not worth the points'. Lot of stuff in B is not worth its points imo unless in very specific builds (aka Tfex). But you can absolutely get your points out of many of the C units in very specific builds (eg warriors are excellent in Jorm, etc). So to me those have more equivilancy then the current ranking shows. Its your list though and I have seen worse tier lists.

[kittbash]

It’s hard to tier the units like this because it’s all dependent on the meta and synergies of the different lists. But if we look at what’s in the tournament winning lists, imo, rippers, mawloc, Meiotic spores and gargoyles need to jump a tier or two, also the rupturefex should be next to the exocrine.