Brand New Player, Looking for 500 point army

[gublyb]

Hey all. I'm brand new to 40k in general and have chosen tyranids to be my first army after a friend gifted me a box of termagants. A few of my friends are all getting started playing 40k and its likely we're only really going to play against each other. My friends are playing Blood Angels, Tau, Necrons and Chaos Space Marines respectively, all of us starting at 500 points. I know barely anything about the game and live in a country where getting in product is difficult/expensive, so I really only want to get stuff I know that I'll use, and stuff that will at least be useful against my friend's lists.

With that in mind and after wandering all over the internet looking for advice, I thought I'd ask here what you all think. What's a good 500pt army for a brand new player? I was attracted to the Tyranids because of the psychic and tricky tunneling stuff they could do which seemed cool. Any and all advice is greatly appreciated, as I don't want to make any bad choices of purchases.

[Phelddagrif]

You will always use termagants and rippers, do get like another box or 2 more boxes of them, hive tyrant is a good starter aswell, but it's important to magnetize it, you basically get 3 models with a lot of loadouts loadouts in one box if you magnetize it, then maybe get a hive guard/zoanthrope squad, or some warriors, hive tyrant with wings is broken in 500-1000 games, so i highly recommend building lists around him, smth like, Tyrant with wings devourers and rending claws, murderous size, and resonance barb/chameleonic mutation + 30 termagants + hive guard/zoanthropes

[piersonsmuppet]

I'll second Phelddagrif's recommendations of the Hive Tyrant, Warriors, and Hive Guard. Look into magnetizing all three of them, they all have multiple weapon loadouts and you never know how the weapons will change in the next codex. You can build a competent 500pt army with the addition of those, and have models you can continue to use up to 2000 pts. Zoans are not great at 500pts, too hard to take 4+ models. However, they are a great buy once you decide to expand to 1000pt games. You don't need to buy a second termagant box right away, you can just make the rippers with 2 per base for now and add more to the bases later (only really matters for tourny's though). Another good choice that will serve well for this edition is lictors. They serve like rippers, but trade objective secure for the INFANTRY keyword allowing them to do more secondary actions (*unconfirmed* - they may be getting a new model with codex drop so might be worth waiting). This is an example 500pts list including the recommended units that should work well after a few games.  As a new player, I suggest messing around with different loadout options to get a feel for what you like/dislike (might help you decide on units you want to buy in the future).

++ Patrol Detachment 0CP (Tyranids) [26 PL, 3CP, 496pts] ++

+ Configuration +

Battle Size [3CP]: 1. Combat Patrol (0-50 Total PL / 0-500 Points)

Detachment Command Cost

Hive Fleet: Leviathan

+ HQ +

Hive Tyrant [11 PL, 215pts]: Adrenal Glands, Monstrous Rending Claws, Power: Catalyst, Power: Psychic Scream, Power: Smite, Resonance Barb, Toxin Sacs, Two Devourers with Brainleech Worms, Warlord, Wings
. . Adaptive Physiology: Murderous Size

+ Troops +

Ripper Swarms [2 PL, 36pts]
. . 3x Ripper Swarm: 3x Claws and Teeth

Termagants [3 PL, 50pts]
. . 10x Termagant (Fleshborer): 10x Fleshborer

Tyranid Warriors [4 PL, 60pts]
. . Tyranid Warrior: Lash Whip and Bonesword, Scything Talons
. . Tyranid Warrior: Lash Whip and Bonesword, Scything Talons
. . Tyranid Warrior: Lash Whip and Bonesword, Scything Talons

+ Elites +

Hive Guard [6 PL, 135pts]
. . 3x Hive Guard (Impaler): 3x Impaler Cannon