I am back with my continued breakdown of the Tyranids codex.
I am going to make this a short one and just go over the troops selection. Troops are what win games, so let's see what the Tyranids have to offer.
Tyranid Warrior Brood - I love the concept of warriors but they just seem to be missing the mark. I don't feel like a warrior is worth the 30 points. They come with a Devourer and Scything talons so they can kind of do melee and ranged. You can customize them to your liking however. I would suggest giving them a more focused role. One huge improvement is that you don't have to upgrade the entire brood with weapons or biomorphs but can mix and match. You could just upgrade one guy and save the points, good job GW. This is not a horrible unit but they have not really changed from 5th edition. In 5th the reason why warriors were bad is that a missile launchers or anything strength 8 would instant kill them. I mean even just mass small arms fire would kill them. If they would have had Toughness 5 or had a 3+ saves I think these guys would be phenomenal. But as they say, if if and buts were sugar and nuts, we would all have a merry Christmas.
Genestealers Brood - Genestealers, yay! Everyone loves genestealers but...wait. SWEET EMPEROR WHY IS THE BROODLORD SO EXPENSIVE! For 60 points I could have a paladin, not some 4+ save chump. So Genestealers are decent, they have taken a hit because of overwatch and they haven't been given anything to combat that. They only have melee abilities so they are of singular use. Basically they are a melee unit with rending, infiltrate, fleet and move through cover. Infiltrate them in and hope they survive to tear at your opponent's lines.
Termagant - These are the cultist of the Tyranids book. A cheap troop with meager stats that will do their jobs on an objective. What else could you ask for? I would give these guys Devourers and make them something your opponent cant just ignore. It does double their cost to 8 points each but that is a lot of fire power coming from a 30 man group. 90 strength 4 shots is comical. Also as a plus, for every group of 30 Termagants you can take a Tervigon as a troop choice. This is a good unit and will see a lot of play.
Hormagaunts - The melee counterpart of termagants come in slightly more expensive at 5 points. These may be my favorite troop choice in the book. 30 of these guys with toxin sacs will rip through a lot of units. For example let's send them against a 5 man squad of thunder hammer terminators. The gaunts will come in with 90 attacks on the charge, 45 hits, about 23 wounds, killing 4 terminators approximately. The Emperor's finest just got turned into a nom nom meal. If you want to go all out give them Adrenal glands which will make sure you kill all of them in one turn of combat. Though that makes them even more expensive and you usually don't want to kill something in one round of combat. If you do that just means your opponent gets an opportunity to shoot you. These guys have Fleet and Bounding leap, both will help you get where you need to be. At initiative 5 you will cut into most things before they can strike. Their armor save is crud so you are going to need to assault in groups so one can eat the overwatch or just mentally know not all of them will make it in. My one problem with this unit is the atrocity that is the new Scything talons. Instead of letting you reroll your 1's to hit and letting you reroll all to hit with two pair, they are now just AP6. I feel like they wanted to redesign them then just said give them an arbitrary AP value instead. This is insulting. The change affects what units? Boyz? Cultist? Other guants? Anything with a save of 6 wasn't probably going to save them in the first place. But don't let that take away from a great unit. These guys are truly....the heart of the swarm.
Ripper Swarms - Am I the only one who thinks these guys are cute? These guys are swarms and as such they can't score. A troop that can't score isn't worth much in my opinion. They have bad stats and only redeeming factor is that they have 3 wounds. However any strength 6 weapon will instantly kill them so that isn't even going for them. Unless you are doing a themed army I would sit these guys out. Hormagaunts will do the job better.
Alright guys, sorry that this one didn't include the Elites as I was planning but hopefully you enjoyed it. Feel free to comment with your thoughts. Follow me for more ramblings or my next showcase if you enjoyed this.
Aye, I deffo think that Warriors should've had...something to make them slightly more survivable. Their stats are fairly decent but logicially they're still a Troop and thus a bit squishy by nature they're not gonna be T5 (although the option would've been excellent) and a 3+ save puts them on-par with most MCs which are clearly more heavily armoured. I think the T5 would've done it. :(
ReplyDelete'Stealers are fairly OK in my book and it's quite refreshing to see a blog where they're not panned for not having a 4+ or flesh hooks. They're also not subject to IB and so are excellent objective holders without Synapse to make them operate at 100% if threatened. Looking at the 'Lord I can't see why Warriors aren't T5, he is! I think the cost is due to the standard 'Stealer cost + the inflated stats across the board + being a psyker which always bumps the cost up in the new books. A DA Librarian pays over 30pts to go up a level so I expect some of that expense carries over to the Broodlord going from a 'Stealer to a psyker. Pairing 'Stealers up with Lictors does wonders for assaulting hostiles in cover.
Rippers! Oh, these little m0f0s, there's just something about them. I even bought three of the FW "Pile O' Rippers" swarms last weekend and I am determined to make these little guys work. Without pods to deep-strike units in with Rippers just became more important. I give mine deep strike and spine fists and drop them in on enemy units threatening my more important gribblies. Even at BS2 a standard unit of 3 bases puts out 12 rerollable shots after arriving and forces a target priority check for nearby enemies, especially if you can get a Trygon Prime, Shrikes or a Flyrant up to give them Synapse. Do they ignore the little guys who just put out the equivalent of 24 shots and run the risk of being shot again & assaulted next turn or do they take them out? People balk at their cost, but for less than the cost of 1 Marine you get another 3W and 4A. It's a shame that their melee 'morphs are expensive, but given the amount of attacks compared to a single model paying for the same upgrade...
People want their main force to get from A to B without getting gunned down and I think these guys can play a big part in that.