What should Tyranids do the best?

[autoxidation]

Catching up on some recent threads with the announcement of 9th, I liked kazetanade comment here.

May 14, 2020 9:10:14 GMT kazetanade said:

Do you know what makes Nids good? You realize Nids are the pre-buff SM of the Xenos races - we do everything, but worse than everyone else.

We do horde worse than Orks, mobility and psychic worse than Elder, shooting worse than Tau, melee worse than Harlequins and GSC, mortal wounds worse than Necrons.

This is not too related to your point, more of a personal rant.

Related to your point though, is that while Nids do the toolbox role pretty well, we are quite cp starved to do it. Having a lot of tools is pointless if you don't have the resources to use them, and double batt is way too little to make use of them well. Balancing this is pretty key to any well functioning army.

It got me thinking... What should the Tyranids be the best at? In previous editions, Tyranids had fast, easily killed smaller gribbles and the biggest, toughest monsters at the time (except for maybe the C'Tan, the Wraithlord, and the Avatar). If Tyranid monsters made it into combat with vehicles, the vehicles very quickly died. 8th is obviously very different.

Genestealers are very quick in 8th, but only with Kraken and usually with the help of some stratagems + the Swarmlord.

For 9th, I'd like to see Tyranids be the best at moving across the table. Maybe a swarm version of Harlequins. Fast, hard hitting CC in the swarm style with moderate fire support tools instead of the elite style of our favorite murder clowns.

What about everyone else?

[infornography]

In 5th ed, Tyranids were best at alternative deployment methods.

We could strike by pod, outflank, tunneling, deep strike, laying in wait, and flying.

We could do null deployment lists and just give the really cinematic feel of coming from all directions. Even really good players had a hard time countering all our deployment shenanigans.

[timcz]

May 28, 2020 20:18:19 GMT infornography said:

In 5th ed, Tyranids were best at alternative deployment methods.

We could strike by pod, outflank, tunneling, deep strike, laying in wait, and flying.

We could do null deployment lists and just give the really cinematic feel of coming from all directions. Even really good players had a hard time countering all our deployment shenanigans.

This I like and would most welcome.

[Kyokii]

Ditto. Kraken stratagems put nids in the right direction, being able to surge swarms across the table alongside trygon dragging more gribblies up from underground and spores raining from above.
Target saturation is something nids have done really well in the past. And I'd like to see more of it. Multiple deployment styles lend toward that, imo

[dan3dim]

What I think Tyranids should have three different stage.
Scout - Genestealer and Lictors. Assassins mode.
Invasion- Warriors, hoards and bigger monsters. Waves of hoards mode
Devoured- Hive tyrant and guards. Defending mode.

Leave lots of deep strike to GSC.

[princeyg]

May 28, 2020 20:18:19 GMT infornography said:

In 5th ed, Tyranids were best at alternative deployment methods.

We could strike by pod, outflank, tunneling, deep strike, laying in wait, and flying.

We could do null deployment lists and just give the really cinematic feel of coming from all directions. Even really good players had a hard time countering all our deployment shenanigans.

This. Very much this.

I`m pretty sure a lot of nid players got into them as a result of films like Aliens or Starship Troopers where excitement is generated  by having hordes of bugs or whatever assail the heroes from all sides (and often unexpected angles of attack).

Indeed, my 9th ed Lictor speculation thread is about improvements to exactly this sort of thing ( shameless plug ).

When I think of fluff decriptions of Nids its always things like "and the sky was black with wings" or "and then the ground erupted underneath poor guardsman Jones"

Now, yes, I understand GSC have kinda taken this type of warfare for themselves and maybe should be the absolute best at pure ambush but I feel Nids should be able to combine multiple vectors of attack with threat saturation employing a mix of big and small bugs.

[Kitane]

We were close to this when we got our 8th edition codex. Coming and charging from all sides in T1, the Swarmlord moving whatever was needed into an even better position, even fresh arrivals. Our codex was clearly designed and playtested around this.

It was great.

Then the core rules nerfs came.

[dan3dim]

I don’t understand those Nerf at all. When GW told us all there are no more turn 1 “in your face” deep strikes... and here came new space marines....

[kazetanade]

Cuz Drop Pods brah. How else you gonna sell them?

Honestly, I am actually alright with what they did to the Tyranid Codex - the feel was definitely thematic when I could drop a few Drop Pods, Flyrants, Trygon Swarms, Raveners up at one go to completely wreck whatever it was we were looking at, but it's definitely too oppressive for the health of a game. Besides, who feels 7 Flyrants is a nice way to play our army? I hated 7th Ed precisely because only 1 army list was barely viable.

I feel that Tyranids embody the Toolbox kit about the same as SM does - if you notice, SM is the one "army" that can have multiple different army types tied to it, using vastly different Chapters to get different playstyles. Short of the power of each of those chapters (after their Super Doctrines and the NuMarine changes in general), Tyranid Codex works in a very similar way (just need a change to Gorgon /Hydra, and a Super Doctrine, and we'd have something going). So instead of going for the massive options for deployment (which honestly just does not have as much mechanical/gameplay meaning in this current ed - every form of non-board deployment is basically a deepstrike or an outflank), I would rather Nids be designed to take advantage of all 4 phases properly with cheap(er, by a lot) and effective toolbox options, with a much heavier emphasis on controlling the Psychic Phase via more effective stacking penalties to casting, slight buffs to casting, and a wider variety of spells with utility effects. We're already at the stage where we are required to (and when built properly, are able to) manipulate 2 phases to our advantage.

What this entails really as follows:

-Cheaper Hordes (3pts per Gants/Gaunts, 4pts per Gargs, 8pts per GS)
-Revamp to how SitW works (I'd say -1 to cast @ 24", -2 to cast @ 12", -3 to cast @ 6", in addition to the psychic punishment strategem/WLT we have)
- Slight buffs to casting consistency ( +1 to cast for having multiple Synapse/Psykers in range of the caster)
- Another tree for 6 more spells of utility impact (stacking FNPs, double movements, conferring Invuls, + to charge, + or rr to hits), preferably with some aura effects to emphasize Tyranid synergy play.
- Make our specialist beasts BETTER AT THEIR JOBS, or give them all reasonable melee. Our entire army should be WS3+ minimum, and all monsters should have 4A at least.

With the combination of increased movement, some level of durability increases, and the current available durability buffs, I think we'd be in place to play a wide selection from the Tyranid army range, which leaves the final problem being the models' rules themselves (rather than have delivery be the main problem for these models, which is always an extremely frustrating thing).

[garg]

I would like horde be more of a thing without having to field 250+ models. Maybe some kind of baked in endless swarm mechanic or some other way that it feels like swarm of bodies

Edit what i think could be cool is to have stacking buffs with synapse. So a unit is in range of one synapse it is like now, two and it gets banner style shoot/attack on death. That said I wouldn't want it to force us into a certain style.

[dranzyl]

I would like to add to those:

Support for different playstyles (warriors are almost there i think, but hordes are severely lacking).

Warlord traits that are worth it.

Ability to take more adaptations (i mean orks got that in their kustom jobs, why we got stack with the 'you can only have one extra warlord trait' side is beyond me).

[N.I.B.]

Jank of all trades, master of none. Yeah. Nids don't have a soul, because they don't have a champion in the ivory tower anymore. Come back Phil Kelly!

+1 on the 5th ed comment. My null deployment list is still the most fun I've had in 40K. Mycetic spores, 40pts.

[guy]

I can't see the tyranids best at anything. They should be good at everything, an unspecialized mass of diverse organisms able to mimic other forms of life, but not excel at anything due to their lack of individual sense of self.

In game terms, i think tyranids are rightly "statted", ie they usually have outright or slightly "worse" versions of other armies abilities, but most of the time they are badly priced, especially the elite/heavies who should see large discounts for lacking invulnerables, a poor degrading profile, and slow movement.

To answer the original question, I think the tyranids could use a baseline bonus to charge ie they feel absolutely no fear of charging another unit, so they should mostly arrive there even if heavily damaged.
In game terms, all tyranid melee units under the effect of synapse could use a +2 to charge rolls, which would turn a current 25% chance to successfully charge, to a 41% chance.

[afewveiws]

Tyranids should be generally cheaper since they come in great numbers. Desent at everything but not the best is ideal for them but they view everything as disposable because they just recycle the bodies.

As for the multiple deployment and reserve tactics... that is thier main trick. The exist to invade from all over the place, flyers and drop pods for the initial assault of a planet, tunnelers for surprise invasions of structures and recon, invisible assassins, genesteler infestations among the enemy ranks, and the standard running gribblies supported by massive beasts of destruction.

What gsc has that seperates them from nids is the amount of charecters they bring and the amount of protection they can grant those chosen few. They still do the guerrilla tactics things but also have access to human tech.

[dranzyl]

Well we could do hordes really well so the first thing 9th did was try to eliminate hordes

More on topic things nids should be good at (and perhaps more importantly be viable when doing them):
Hordes of griblies, mellee combat, powerfull monsters, adaptable units, multitude of psykers.