The general state of the Tyranids

[mattblowers]

Dec 29, 2020 17:51:06 GMT nidzy said:

I have an an enormous amount of fun playing 9th ed so far, what haven't you liked about how the games played besides nids being behind on the power creep?

I guess to each their own. The power creep shows me nothing has really changed. I think the game is fine for casual, but I play in a really competitive environment and it sucks the fun right out of the room for me. This edition feels same as the last: you need a super maxed list or you will get destroyed. I used to be able to play whatever I wanted and still have a chance, those days are largely over.

Bolt Action is far more balanced at the moment and even a ‘bad’ themed list stands a chance. Most gamers move on from 40K as they get older, maybe 40K is for the young bucks.

[purestrain]

When it takes 10 years for them to make a tournament pack of their own, this game is the worst iteration of competitive I've seen since competitive crazy 8s

[yoritomo]

Games Workshop has repeatedly said that they are a model company. Over the past 25+ years that 40K has been around it has been made perfectly clear that Games Workshop never intended for 40K to be played competitively. Heck, they didn't even use play testers until 8th edition.

You're playing a game in a way that the designers never intended, then complain about the game not playing the way you want it to play.


While I don't believe that anyone at GW understands how to design a tyranid codex since Andy Chambers left, I do believe that tyranids are exactly where Games Workshop wants them to be. The models look fantastic (I'm not a fan of modern tyranid sculpts, but they're still good), the internal balance of the codex is fine, and there is a ton of flavor in the rules themselves. The external balance is off, but for a casual game it's good enough.

My advice is to enjoy building the models, then enjoy painting the models. When you're done then try to enjoy pushing them around the table. As other people have said, tyranids are a high skill army. If you focus on learning something new every time you play the game you'll eventually get better and start winning some games.

[infornography]

I was under the impression that since the new leadership took over around the end of 7th ed that they no longer hold that stance at all. Do you have a recent quote for this or are you basing this off their leadership from the 6th and 7th edition era?

[yoritomo]

I'm basing this off of 20+ years of playing 40K.

We could have a discussion on the current leadership behind 40K versus the past leadership, but I'd rather not derail this thread.

[kukie]

personally I see NIDS as them like GUARD and YOU WILL WIN!!! and play them like Tyranids and YOU WILL LOSE!!! Tyranids are lizard bugs that want to bite your face off, but there MELEE SUCKS. Genestealers are overpriced and too squishy. The most efficent units in the codex are exocrines, hive guard, neurothropes and the those lizard troops with little rifles (termagaunts). Pretty much when I play then like imperial guard with lots of termaguants in the front screening and taking objectives and exocrines and hive guard in the back laying down artillery fire I do well. I play them like alien bugs that want to charge and kill... I don't do so well. Back in 8th when Genestealers were cheaper and marines didn't dominate the meta with there extra attacks I could do some work. but now if i don't have exocrines, hive guard, and lots of termaguants I lose. Maybe it's just my meta but Play them like guard and you Win, play them like the cool alien face bitting lizard bugs they truely are and you will be salty wondering why a troop of 5 harlequins just beat your Flyrant in melee? 


there is a way way to make them better in melee with forgeworld monsters... so if you got $450 for 3 dimatrerons to spare go for it. just pray they don't nerf them... I'm I salty??? I feel salty....

[yoritomo]

I see you've discovered the dirty little secret with nids. We are an army that shines when we are 6-18" away from the enemy. Farther away and the enemy is out of range of most of our guns and psychic powers. Closer and they expose our lack of efficient melee. The longer you can keep the enemy in that sweet spot the better you will do.


I'd also like to say a few words about genestealers. Stealers do not suck. A lot of people will try to tell you that they do; don't listen to them. People will say that stealers suck because their points went up in 9th edition. Everything's points went up in 9th edition. The logical conclusion to that argument is that everything sucks because their points went up. It is foolish to say that stealers suck because they cost more.

Now, if you want to say that the new marines are better because they have an extra wound, that is a fair argument to make. Likewise, if you want to say that new marines are better because GW has been handing out attacks like ice cream at a birthday party, that too is a valid argument to make. That doesn't change how they play against necrons, or chaos marines (yet), or tau, or any other faction. In light of the new codices and unit buffs in them I believe that they will need to be buffed/reworked in the new codex, but they haven't released enough codices for them to be terrible.

[kazetanade]

Genestealers arent BAD when taken in a vacumn, but they're not ideal when taken in the context of the current abilities and units being fielded by other armies.

Since 8th Ed Day 1 release, Genestealers had this ideal target type: They like going after T4 elite models, where their damage is maximized and "consistent". Go up to T5, and scoring the kills on the unit becomes hard to predict or rely on. Go down to T3, and you trade extremely inefficiently (especially in the days of massive guard blobs and their humongous bubble wrap patterns). In 8th, these points were alright because Genestealers had access to some crazy good tricks which drained CP like mad, but made them veritable threats to most armies. In 9th, we've lost: 1. Multicharge for setups, making us much more subsceptible to wraps, and 2. Wraps to keep large units safe, as people can now fall back for 1cp (or 2cp, cant remember), 3. Blast rule now making the unit very subsceptible to stray shots taking big chunks out of it, and 4. Trading efficiency is down by a LOT because it takes 300 points of Genestealers to kill 150-200pts of Marines that can actually kill you first, whereas it used to be 240pts for 240pts (basically, their ideal targets have all gotten more efficient for tankiness, reducing their effectiveness and hence efficiency by a large margin).

Add this to their 8th Ed issues: 1. Expensive per model, 2. Delivery issues, 3. Place to hide/cross midfield, etc etc etc, and it can be difficult to make Genestealers work well in current environment.

I'd like to take the chance to reiterate a core belief of mine - Tyranids are the (old) SM of the xenos races. Tyranids can do everything - melee, shooting, psychic, movement shenanigans, monster mash, horde, you name it. We also have the most open set of strategems in the game by design (no other codex has ANY UNIT moves twice, ANY UNIT fights twice, ANY INFANTRY shoots twice, ANY PSYKER casts twice, and even those that do usually have a condition attached or will have only 1 out of all of those). By contrast of doing everything, we dont do anything particularly well, which was what SM had the issue of previously. Together with the targetted buffs from our last book, this ultimately leads Tyranids to be a "toolbox army" that plays better with a set of reactionary tools of both utility and offensive capability. Tyranids' strength is that it can do everything (hell, even our SHOOTING UNITS have combat capabilities, wth?) - so to do well, you need to be able to leverage doing everything from the army design, and build a core strategy out of that.

The issue with most lists is that we will lean heavily into Shooting or Melee, which may face a reasonably good matchup against more traditional builds but also face difficult counters that we cant play around because we didnt design to deal with it. Our toolbox nature is doubled assuming we play into GSC too, which gives us a whole new level of tools to work with.

Just my two cents on the whole "army identity" thing.

[beetlejuice]

Dec 29, 2020 19:43:05 GMT infornography said:

I think Mawloc's damage is just not likely to be all that useful. MWs come at too high a premium and quite frankly 3 damage is just not much at all. Having a big monster able to account for a single custodes figure for example before being pounded into dust just isn't going to be a good tradeoff and that is pretty much the best he can hope for unless he finishes off something big. I think I would honestly rather just have him be cheaper and able to cause problems for enemy deep strikers and able to pop up wherever he likes most cases.

You can not look at the mawloc and say he is 125 pts for 3 MW and that is it. He does so much more. I’ve always managed to put him next to two units (usually 1+a character) so that’s usually 2d3+ MW. If you delay for turn 3 you can sometimes find a spot hitting 3 units. But sometimes I don’t even use the strat and just contest an objective held by 1 model. Or just roadblock non fly units with the abundance of terrain on 9th tables. This way he is usually worth 5-10 primary (in addition to MW) plus scorea either linebreaker or engage on all fronts for even more VP and then acts as distraction carnifex saving some stray shots from my actually important monsters. If he would get WS3+ he would be great for chaff clear subsequent turns.

One of the big buffs to the dima was the damage table. We have to many melee monsters that degrade 2-3 important stats like WS, S, A making them basically useless as soon as they hit mid bracket.

[niiai]

Dec 30, 2020 5:10:16 GMT yoritomo said:

I see you've discovered the dirty little secret with nids. We are an army that shines when we are 6-18" away from the enemy. Farther away and the enemy is out of range of most of our guns and psychic powers. Closer and they expose our lack of efficient melee. The longer you can keep the enemy in that sweet spot the better you will do.


I'd also like to say a few words about genestealers. Stealers do not suck. A lot of people will try to tell you that they do; don't listen to them. People will say that stealers suck because their points went up in 9th edition. Everything's points went up in 9th edition. The logical conclusion to that argument is that everything sucks because their points went up. It is foolish to say that stealers suck because they cost more.

Now, if you want to say that the new marines are better because they have an extra wound, that is a fair argument to make. Likewise, if you want to say that new marines are better because GW has been handing out attacks like ice cream at a birthday party, that too is a valid argument to make. That doesn't change how they play against necrons, or chaos marines (yet), or tau, or any other faction. In light of the new codices and unit buffs in them I believe that they will need to be buffed/reworked in the new codex, but they haven't released enough codices for them to be terrible.

While you are right that Genestealer might not be bad just because of points, several other things hurt them more.

Not being abel to tripod because of the breakout stratagem. This is a big one.

The old combo was declare two charges, attack one and combine stratagem to attack on the other target. With the new rules of failed charges this is hard to impossible. (When you do not have the movement to clear a conga line.)

Blast hurt them. Flamer getting better hurt them. Bolter fire is really good VS them and many run bolter weapons.

They are also bad at holding objectives.

Most armies who take two big groups and the sawarmlord for slingshot run out of points in the list to 'play the good stuff'.

One carry over problem from 8th edition is that they just die a lot. My regular opponent plays orks. Two boys are almost the same as one Genestealer, and just as deadly. Only I loose a lot of Genestealer when I charge to overwatch and he does not. (Da jump + boys also means he gets to charge them first with a high probability. Be turn 1 or 2 depending on screening.)

One on dakkadakka said that if you chained the nodes you have a good chance to hold your home objective with your gs for a counter charge with a small group of 10 or 15. That is smart and a good use of them. (The node pops when they are within 9. But you can deploy within 6. So a best case scenario they are 10 away. You deploy 4 away and need a 4 charge. 4, 5 and 6 inch charges are relatively easy. A 7 charge is above 50/50 before reroll.)

Nids is not all doom and gloom. I am very happy with the army. I just feel the branding as a melee army is weard when we have very few good melee units.

[infornography]

While yes, many things went up in points in 9th, some things went up substantially more percentagewise than others. Genestealers for example. Also quite a lot didn't go up at all or actually went down in points. I wish that points had just doubled across the board and then were adjusted where needed with the new higher precision scale to work with, instead they kind of arbitrarily rounded things up to the next 5 in some places and rolled weapons into unit costs a lot. Increasing points was a good idea, how they did it was ... not.

That isn't to say I think 9th is bad. There is a lot to like in 9th. Just that to dismiss concerns over cost increases as 'everybody got them' is a bit disingenuous.

[niiai]

The game is what it is. I am enjoying it. Although I am bissy painting mostly these days. Covid hit Berger quite good å few months back.

[calbanite]

Neurothrope, Great, Psychic Support / Smite Chip Damage / Character Protected
Broodlord, Great, Counter Charge / Smite Chip Damage / Character Protected
Malanthrope, Amazing, -1 Hit Bubble / Character Protected
Swarmlord, Situationally Great, Melee Beater / Hive Commander
OOE, Situationally Great, Melee Beater / Counter Charge / Character Protected

Termagants, Amazing, Tough Objective Holder / Screening
Rippers, Amazing, Deepstrike Objective Holder
Warriors?, Meh, See comment below

Lictors, Amazing, Deepstrike Objective Holder
Hive Guard, Good, S8 Indirect Fire
Zoanthropes, Good, Tough Objective Holder / Smite Chip Damage
Venomthropes?, Good, Malanthrope Substitute

Dimachaeron, Amazing, Fast Melee Beater (Murderous Size)
Meiotic Spores?, Meme. Losing scout deploy hurts, but they do have much higher average damage now. Toying with Swarmlord + Metabolic Overdrive to yeet mines at people from behind Obscuring.

Exocrine, Great, Symbiostorm Target / Anti-Marine
Barbed Hierodule, Good, Tough S8 Ranged DPS
Scythed Hierodule, Good, Tough Melee S10 Missile (Dermic Symbiosis)
Mawloc, Good, Deepstrike Distraction / Push off cheap objective holders

Harridan, Meme

These are the only units in the Tyranid Codex.

Ignore everything else. They don't exist.

I wouldn't even count Warriors as viable anymore, because the entire game is centered around dealing with Elite Infantry and Warriors insta-die to a single melta shot. They are bad. Stop bringing them. They can't kill Marines and they can't survive vs Marines. You're gonna face Marines. You HAVE to plan on making a list that can kill Marines or not instantly lose to a list designed to kill Marines.

I'm also inclined to remove Hive Guard from my lists, because of D3 random damage is extremely inefficient vs 2 wound marines.

I hate to admit we have maybe 10 viable units, but those units do their jobs very well this edition.

[beetlejuice]

Decent summary. Still occasional use for hive tyrant with reso barb or superflyrant, maleceptor in T8 spam, and hormagaunts for grabbing objective or deploying scramblers midfield turn 1.

[niiai]

That list is a bit harsh. I would add the following.

Pyrovores are functionally fine, and a one model infantry unit who can do actions.

I do not know if flyrants, tyrants or carnifexes are worth it. But if they are it is because of 24 shots at bs 3.

Mines are our cheapest source of screening VS deeps trike. (Da jump, etc.)

One person on here has had sickness with tarmagaunts (melee?) and the move twice atratagem. He would surround transports but not be in melee preventing the occupants from leaving. (Emergency breakout is worded oddly.) I do not remember his name but he plays VS fairly good armies. (It is the same player that uses mawlocks.)

Tyranofexes with flamer are good. (In theory the rupture cannon us good VS T8, but the exoshrine are better in all comers list as you rarely meet T8 en mass. (I do though in my friends orks.))