Geoff “InControl” Robinson, of Starcraft 2 fame, is here to chime in on the new Nids and remaining positive in the face of some crummy rumors.
Hello everyone iNcontroL here, your resident Tyranid player from FLG, Team Zer0 Comp and the fine state of California.
It is almost that time. The new Tyranid Codex that we have been hearing rumors about for months is almost upon us. So what do we do? We stalk the forums and read up on all the exciting rumors and leaked pictures, etc. As we draw near though little tidbits of information comes out and we start to get a bit worried, angry and scared. Scything talons don’t give re-rolls? No Biomancy psychic powers? Genestealers still as useful as nipples on a breastplate? We rode high on the roller coaster of excitement and now, if you read the forums, it all seems to come crashing down.
Sack up, you whining Nancys! We are Tyranid players. The Great-fucking-Devourer. We are a ravenous swarm of endless hunger laced with teeth (forging a narrative here). Getting away from my throbbing narrative we have ALWAYS dealt with this. Tyranids are not Eldar. They are not the Tau. We don’t get to point at a model and say “bang” and then it disappears. We have to roll 15 dice to get them to save 3 times and then we say “fuck it” and run up the board so we can eat em with our teeth. My point here is Tyranids were never going to be the army you picked because the Codex gave you an easy win (except in 4th edition, -ed). We need to strategize and command a hell of a game to win against a worthy opponent and I would have it no other way.
The Codex comes out this Saturday and we will have our answers. We will put our heads together and figure out what our future armies are going to look like. Somehow I am already hearing people use the term “mono build” COME ON? Are we really going to go there already? I saw an extremely shallow codex previous to this new one. We didn’t have a lot in the way of options. I see a new codex where the viability of a lot of models has shot up. I see customization in the form of bio-artifacts, Tyranid specific psychic powers and upgrades. No they aren’t the best and no there doesn’t appear to be too many auto-picks. But damn it, that excites me. I want to craft the hardest hitting Tyranid army and I want to set trends. I don’t want to look at a Codex and be limited by a box of 1750 “no-brainer” choices.
I am excited about the following:
1. Catalyst gives FNP to the caster/unit as well as another unit.
2. We have an artifact that can give a model the ymgarl ability, HELLO UBER MC
3. We have an artifact that can give +6 range on synapse (access to ’24 range with another upgrade)
4. Inexpensive MC’s – Tyrannofex is 60 pts cheaper, Carnifexes 20-30 pts cheaper as well as Flyrant
5. Haruspex sounds like a tar-pit nightmare from a Japanese eel porn shoot gone wrong, YES.
6. Biovores are cheaper / better. Sorry? Did you just say I can have my cake AND eat it too?
7. Regeneration is 4+ — why yes, yes I would like my MC to live like a damn Highlander.
8. SitW is buffed vs LD 9 or lower and slightly worse vs 10 – current meta? This is GOOD.
9. Death Leaper/Old One Eye became kinda usable! HARDEST OF NARRATIVESSSSSS
10. Utility. Having a real Codex I can continue to work with to make an army. OPTIONS, thx!
Look, I get it. Our Genestealers still suck and Warriors probably won’t get that synapse Eternal Warrior we wanted. Pyrovores are still the least seen model in all of WH40k (I have more Harridans than Pyrovores). We are concerned because we expected a golden codex from on high to come down and give us a chance to see what it is like to have our race complained about for winning too much.
What I would tell you is be patient. We will know a lot more on Saturday and even then it probably won’t be one of those days where we have all the answers. We will need to test out our theories. We will need to conduct trials with different units, abilities and upgrades. We will share ideas and we will have a damn good time doing it. I played Tyranids many a moon ago when you could deck out a Tyrant with hundreds of points of bad assery. Was it good for competition? Hell no! But I loved explaining to my friends that this 500pt clot of gore is bad news bears and you best be heading for some hills. We are coming in on an era where we will see Tyranid diversity and cleverness.. we too will need to find those evil combos and synergistic pairings that make this game so great.
So stop your whining and bitching. That is for Eldar and Tau players that don’t understand what not being able to reroll means. We are the Great Devourer. We don’t get allies because if anyone tried we’d bite their head off shit it out and have it broken down to be made into a Hive Tyrant’s fist.
1. You’re not guranteed to get it. 😛 (1 of 6)
2. It costs 8 Termagaunts. (Current pricing)
3. Also for the low cost of 8 Termagaunts.
4. True, these are finally decent.
5. It is basically a Blood Angel Furiouso with claws. KG 3 and 3 A. Regains 1 Wound if it dealt damage in CC. I’m not sure about it…
6. True, there are straight up better. 🙂
7. Cost is 6 Termagaunts
8. Yeah, SiW is still fine.
9. Now that is a positive attitude. “Kinda usable” being the key words. 😉
10. I feel like I have less options than now, even with the new units.
But it’s great to read something positive. Helps to not give into the despair. 😉
Keep it coming.
Preach it brother, Well said. The people who are bitching are the same guys who said mech was dead and the wraith lord is garbage.
As a space marine and Tau player I personally am a little scared of that new dex.
Either way bring it on
🙂
Been playin’ nids since you were spankin’ it to momma’s Frederick’s catalog or crying while stepdad sat you and front of Ed, Edd, and Eddie and told you to be quiet while they disappeared for a while. Don’t be tellin’ me to chill, son. 🙂
Time will tell how this pans out, but the reason for early disappointment is the apparent (yes, wait and see, which I will) failure to fix problems that a playtesting 6 year old can find, internally balance the codex, or make multiple viable builds. Early reports say this is all fail.
I will continue to play and take no prisoners with ‘nids and will adapt to whatever the monobuild that is available to us shakes out to be. GW just missed to an opportunity to take an iconic 40k army and make it fun to own.
I am glad someone else are relatively optimistic, but some of your points aren´t valid.
1. Catalyst are now 1/6 or 1/3 chance to get, not a given anymore for Tervigons for example.
2.It only applies on assault phase, and you cannot have the same upgrade two turns in a row. So 99% of the time, useless? 😛
3. Synapse range wasn´t the problem, trying to make our synapse creature survive long enough WAS the problem. + It is like 40 points, not worth it.
4. 100% correct, and the Hive Tyrant allegedly got a BS boost, which is nice. But Carni lost an attack and Tyranno can only use 2 out of 3, instead of 3 weapons.
5. Sounds cool, looks awesome. Won´t doing anything in games 😛
6. Yupp, cannot complain there.
7.Regenerate doesn´t help if your MC cannot surve the turn X wave of shooting, and at best, you have 50% chance of getting just 1 wound, won´t help that much. Pluss, it´s expensive.
8. There is no Meta in 40k, terrain, objectives and dice play a bigger orle. But yes, against LD 9, it has a higher probability.
9. I love your enthusiasm 😛
10. Options? So far it seems it will be a mono build 4 years again. With still no allies, fortification for us 😛
Hey man, I am glad you are optimistic, but I have, as most people, I love/hate relationship to GW. They can get away with random changes to a game and codex, and get away with it. But we like their models and lore.
you do know you could get an hive tyrant with a 30 synapse range if you are lucky on the warlord table and with physic power rolls and that is a massive range.
Also I hope to see the return of the carnifex now it is cheaper.
Isn’t Deathleaper dropping the LD of an enemy character by D3 kinda really good?
He’s did that in the last codex, but still never saw the table. True a lot of that was because he was in an elite slot which competed with hive guard, ymgarls, an d zoans. it’s also very situational. Very useful against some armies and useless against others. Not something you can rely on for a multi round competitive tournament. Mainly though with 5+ save in combat and T4 he’s kind of lackluster. what he did have going for him was mobility and if we truly did lose the where did lose the where did it go then that’s a difficult nerf to overcome.
Geoff… you are the man! Eerrr… I mean primary devourer. I agree about not wanting a point and click “children’s army”. Geoff:1 Whiny Internet: 0.
Can a riptide be pinned, or broadsides, or seer council, warp spiders. -2 ld pin checks are not going to be easy to make. And how many will they have to make. Just a few key units not able to move and snapshooting can be huge
Im not sure MC can be pinned, Bikes can never be pinned,
I looked this morning on the mcs and couldnt find anything. most of the time they have stuff like fearless or instability but riptides dont.
MCs cannot go to ground. don’t have the woman in front of me to check on the rule intertions but that may be what he is referring to.
Hah. rule book not woman. Dang voice to text feature
They can be pinned, but only if they are not fearless, which most of them are. The Riptide, for example, can be pinned.
Can’t be worse than the CSM codex! Buck up campers!
Nothing inspires confidence quite like this statement!
This is a spectacular article. Well done sir, well done. You brought a tear to my eye.
Remember that everyone was crapping all over the Eldar codex about how terrible it was when the first real info was leaking out
So far from what I have seen it seems like Nids are losing a lot of flavor and variety in the form of psychic powers from the BRB. In its place it’s looking like you’re going to be able to field far more units than before which can be a good thing. If the never ending 4d6 spawning tervigon is true then all you need is 1-2 of those bad boys and your troops are set. From there you’re more than likely going to have a ton of points to fill out your army to your specification. I’m sure it’s still going to be a good codex it just needs a bit of time like every other codex.
Tyranids are not going to be as powerful as Tau or Eldar, but they definitely will be playable. The trick is to look to the future and not to reminisce about the past.
In any case, good players will still win with them.
if it is really 4+ Regen there has to be a drawback or it is expensive
30pts, and it is 4+
30pts to have a 50% chance to heal one wound per turn. Lets hope it actually follows the old one roll per wound format once we get the book. Not likely but one can dream 🙂
That is stupidely OP
30 points to maybe regain 1 wound per turn is absolute garbage.
The drawback is that you have to survive to your next turn to get a chance to regain a wound.
in the plus column, 1 of the big ones you forgot is that venomthropes now grant shrouded, hopegully still to nearby UNITS not models. This is something they should have done all along. This could synergize really well with other units and cover to help the swarm ans mcs make it across the board. The problem of course will be facing tau and other ignores cover armies
Doesn’t need to apply to units. As long as one model in a unit has Shrouded or Stealth, the whole unit gets it.
Hell yes.
The mawloc got better, it’s much cheaper and when you place the blast marker if all the models don’t die, you place the blast marker a 2nd time 🙂 oh and what’s a Fredericks catalogue??
Reading that thing about the synapse increasing artifact has my first list now containing that + the primaris power on my warlord HQ so that he can take midfield behind some los blocking terrain and just give all my 180 gants fearless.
I want to see iNcontrol use the new dex Vs Bigpig with the old dex, it will be a frontline gaming version of pay per veiw boxing match :))
I love you Geoff, you made my day lmao
Nevermind me, the fucking Synapse thing costs 40 motherloving asstasting spermsucking fistjamming points….FUCK!
Exactly, the dumb thing should be like 15pts.
and the Ymgarl artifact is just EITHER +1A +1S or +1Sv for 1 assault phase! hahahaha!
Anyway, I’m trying to stay positive here too, honestly I am, so I’m just gonna hope that ALL of these rumours, every single one, are fabrications of some deranged poowanking lunatic masturbating on public transports while slamming his diseased pecker around on his Ipad.
The Ymgarl artifact is like the obliterator rule, you choose one for each assault phase, but can’t be used twice in a row. you can go +1 A, +1Sv, +1A, +1Sv, etc or mix and match it doesn’t matter, I kind of like that. if you can put that on Trygons i’ll be happy, I love trygons lol
It’s just really expensive and only works in assault and you can’t repeat the same effect. I am not really sold on it, myself.
I like when the internet has this kind of first reaction to a codex. They had it for CSM, and for Daemons, DA and also C:SM to some degree. And I like all of those books (all though DA did get the short end in many ways). All of these books needs some thought to play, these armies doesn’t play themselves. So when the internet has this kind of knee jerk reaction before the book is even out and people have had time to experiment and play with it… I get happy. Seems like a good book indeed!
I agree, except I viscerally hate the Chaos book because it fell so short of what it could be.
I agree, they could’ve done a lot more with it. But on the bright side we might get that with supplements instead!
However, after the 5:th edition book I think the 6:th edition CSM was a HUGE improvement. I really despise that one, as it was basically the same list over and over and over again – and if you made something different from the standard template you were bound to fail. With the current book you can actually mix it up a bit.
yea, I am stoked though, my list actually got 135 points cheaper. that means I can spread the love out with that extra amount of points for artifacts, maybe a 20man gargoyle squad, possibly fit old one penis in there. i’m stoked
Thanks guys 🙂 tbh after more reading I’m even more excited. Hive tyrants are bs 4 now with mastery level 2 base. Mawloc hits twice. Tentaclids are the bees knees. Venomthropes are worth a damn. There is a lot to be excited about!
New ‘dex has quite a bit to be pumped about:
-fleet on Carnifex’s will be a blessing, it’ll be mint to see these cocksuckers rumbling across the table again.
-the loss of re-rolls while a kick to the dick has been replaced with ablative wounds, by purchasing more Hormagaunts you increase the chance of them actually making it into the enemy gun line (bounding leap adding 3″ to your fleet run move will certainly help). Combine with some Venomthropes and cover you have a far better chance to get there.
-Tyranids use target saturation, what helps target saturation!? Oh that’s right, more motherfucking gribblies. What did GW do!? Gave you near 20% off most units. That is a buff even if a slight nerf (ablative wounds, remember…) that means mathematically speaking that your army is… Wait no I got this… Oh, fuck 20% bigger!
-Piss off with Scything Talons, now your Raveners just have to take Rending Claws, fuck it and enjoy the Ap5, it’s another close combat weapon so you get +1 attack as per the rules.
Oh, your Hive Tyrant can’t re-roll 1’s while gaining another attack, as he shreds shit with a Bonesword.
-Hormagaunts are nothing more then shit to choke fire lanes, embrace it.
-40k 6th Ed is about objectives, you can now choke the battlefield with assholes even easier then before.
-Lictors are 50 point non-scattering DS’ers with homing beacons strapped to their asses, if you can’t figure out how to use this with the now “twin-linked” Mawlock, you my friend are an asshat, there is no hope for you, checkers is probably beyond you.
-S8 Vector Strike. That is all.
-Tyrannofex is now sweet, oh boohoo he doesn’t wipe out Space Marines he only slaughters Tau and Eldar by the bucket load, unfortunately no one plays them…
Seriously though, this cocksucker offers board control like no-other with his sweet save, flamer and High Toughness.
Yes laser cannons can hurt him, I am aware, but you have another monstrous creature somewhere… I would assume.
-Spore fucking Mines! You drive them like homicidal helium balloons, fuck me side ways that’s awesome, take a cluster-make them S7.
How in the fuck this codex is being described as unfluffy/not accurate is beyond me, a tidal wave of bugs followed up by the rape train of MC’s sounds fluffy as fuck.
4th Ed dex was sweet, but you want to know what doesn’t scream tidal wave of terror!? An elite army of super bugs that can’t outnumber fucking Grey Knights.
Embrace the age of the unspecial bug, you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake, you are meat shields to serve the Hive. If you want heroic last stands with snow flakes then play a different army, you are the VC of 40k in my opinion, no love of life, no fear of death only hunger.
You are my new hero.
Ok so…so let me get this straight.
1) No BRB powers.
2) BS3 Hive Guard.
3) Increase in points for LW/BS on warriors and Tyrants.
4) No re-rolls for Scytals.
5) Drops in attack stats on units with scytals, thus negating their +1 attack bonus.
6) A Haruspex with a base A value of 3 with a WS of 3.
7) Swarmlord lost its reroll invulnerable saves.
8) A Harpy/Crone with T5 AS4+ and normal grounding.
9) Crushing claws no longer give + attacks.
10) Terv Spawned gaunts cannot assault.
11) No improvement in lictors.
12) No improvement in genestealers.
13) No AS 2+ except for the Tyrannofex.
14) No form of ID protection.
15) Now our units can eat themselves out of synapse, or what have you.
16) Venom Cannon still a small blast.
17) Artifacts are all horrible for their point cost/utility.
18) Psy powers are mediocre.
19) Crone mouth gun is not torrent.
20) Pyrovores are not torrent.
21) More expensive swarms.
22) No allowance for lack of allies.
23) 30 gaunt tax to make Tervigons troops.
So basically they copy/pasted our old codex, then nerfed multiple units and rules that had been functioning fine, and gave us in return 3/4 useless big monsters and lackluster artifacts.
You can try to sugar coat shit but it will always be shit.
Oh noes, so you got 23 complaints? I can tell you’re not a Daemon player. When the new book dropped every Daemon player had a lot longer lists than that. The whole army deployment changed, making every single tactic ever used impossible. Every single troop nerfed, every single HQ nerfed, every single Elite useless. Units that to this day still has rules that are unclear or completely unusable still with no FAQ. And yet, here we are a couple of months down the line and Daemons has two of the absolutely strongest builds in the game. So please cut the crap and just deal with it. Embrace the change, do something with your new stuff, adapt and go out and win some games instead.
The price drop on most of the MCs doesn’t take them from decent to good. It takes them from bad to decent. As in, still not particularly good. Carnifexes are going to get shot off the board like you won’t believe. Eldar won’t even need high AP weapons to do it. You can take Venomthropes for a 3+ cover all you want, Warp Spiders and Wave Serpents and War Walkers are still going to drop a fex a round. Each.
The problem with hordes nowadays is that you literally need so many models as ablative wounds that you clog your own charge lanes. Having a million models doesn’t do you any good if you move 6″ forward, then have 6″ of your entire front line mowed down. My current 1750 Eldar list drops roughly 60-70 gaunts in one round of shooting. Alternatively, on average dice I put out something like 18-20 wounds on T6 3+. And there’s absolutely no ‘nid shooting that scares me. At worst, I maybe take a glance or two from brain leech devourers, or maybe, maybe take a pen from a tyrannofex. So turn 1 most of your gants are dead. Turn 2 most of your MCs are dead, and my Wraithknight ties up what few gants are left, if they even threaten me. Turns 3 and 4 are mostly cleanup. Not really difficult to kill tyrannofexes, either. Hornets will drop one in a single round of shooting.
Flying Hive Tyrants are slightly more difficult to kill, but only slightly. They might get close and drop a Wave Serpent, but then it’ll die, or I’ll shoot at it and you’ll fail a Grounding check. They’re not good enough to carry the entire game for you.
I’m just thinking of what I would do if I faced the sort of stuff I’m seeing coming out of the new codex, and I’m just plain not scared of anything in it at all.
Yeah, not enthusiastic about the new ‘nidz. Just doing the math, my Eldar list at 1750 can reliably drop 4 Carnifexes a turn, between Wave Serpents, War Walkers, Wraithknight, Warp Spiders, and Hornets. Nidz have virtually no long range shooting that can touch this, so assuming that they at least kill the Warp Spiders, that’s 4 dead turn 1, 3 dead turn 2, and there’s not much left turn 3. I can mow down their infantry just as easily. I even have the weight of fire to drop a flying Hive Tyrant without too much difficulty, and worse case scenario what’s it going to do anyways? Assault one unit, blow up a vehicle, then get shot to death? I’ll trade a Wave Serpent for that any day.
Tau might be marginally more scared, simply because they don’t have quite as mobile a nature and you can’t use markerlights to buff the roll to wound, but I don’t think they would be much worse off.
I am most sad about Swarmy getting nerfed so hard. Why? He went from king shit bad ass in combat but slow, to pretty good in combat and slow…and more expensive? So many of the changes in the new book are so arbitrary and bizarre.
But he has monster hunter now!
Haha, totally makes up for everything else! =P
I reserve judgement until I get a game in, but it looks pretty damn bad, so far.
I’m not saying it’s going to bare back Taudar (seriously, it’s almost like 7th Ed Daemons all over again listening to the butt hurt caused by these bastards), but I think it’s straight up going to outperform the last book.
The Psychic Powers aren’t nearly as bad as people are making them out to be IMO, they have some serious Synergy with the army, I love the idea of FnP on a Hive Thrant, his body guard and 3 Carni’s.
Loss of re-roll to hit can be helped with the WS/BS debuff (no replacement I know), but with a 24″ range can help get ones bugs from point B (Board edge) to point A (opponents Anus).
I don’t know what the Ld.Penalty on the Pinnin one is, would love to know…
Toss in some Venomthropes to cover up the little bastards (who should be able to max out cover saves with some scenery along the way…), who in turn cover the big bastards…
I don’t know, maybe we use too much terrain in my neck of the woods, but if you can see and shoot the fuck out of every single Tyranid on the board every fucking turn then maybe you should stop playing on an empty pool table…
To everyone saying the Synapse shit is too harsh, once apon a time in the Geiger days of the Nyd if you lost all your Synapse you lost the goddamn game if my memory serves me correctly… It’s been a while ;p.
So 1 in 6 chance to get the only real good power (fnp) and cover sucks every army had an ignore cover weapon, ability, rule.
I like their powers, honestly. I think some of them are really good. The Artifacts are garbage, though.
This will be the second time Reece got down on a codex and was wrong… I promise you.. this codex is a buff overall to ‘Nids. Get ready 🙂
Man, I really need you to be right on this. Not so much for me, but my kid is stoked to play ‘Aliens’. I haven’t played them since 4th (and only a few times then). I’m trying to get him solidly hooked and grounded in good gaming fundamentals, but so far CSM (Noise Marines) have not provided the encouragement–it has taught him how to lose like a champion though. I’d rather not put Tyranids on the table and teach him how to lose with ANOTHER army….
My thoughts on this book is that when you add up the pros and cons and get to the bottom of the ledger sheet this book almost has to be a net positive. Basically everything is cheaper while being similar (though there are notable differences) to the way it was before so this alone means that the books has to be a win in terms of “can you make a competitive army out of it?”.
However…
I have some pretty huge problems with the book and I think this is why people are upset. First off, while it is true that mostly everything got cheaper I think the fact that a fair number of things just disappeared is very aggravating. Mycetic spores and Ymgarl genestealers are the big ones but losing the doom and parasite are pretty aggravating as well. Also, let’s not forget losing access to psychic powers from the main rulebook. Biomancy was one of the few things that made the old lists tick and now it’s totally gone. Additionally there are long standing problem units (warriors, genestealers, pyrovores) that got no attention at all. Then there are other mysterious things such as a codex with no ability to ally getting zero weapons/units with skyfire …this is 6th edition isn’t it? And finally there’s the old tried and true GW tactic of nerfing what was good in the previous book See: Tervigons. These guys got hit with the nerf bat HARD.
So all in all I think GW had a chance to take a codex without access to allies and give it some really interesting options to let it hang with the other 6th ed books. But instead we got the 5th ed book with point tweaks. Better than a sharp stick in the eye but still kinda lame.
Zero Skyfire? You have plenty of stuff that has Skyfire with all them FMC and S8 Vector striking on top of that. The Hive Tyrant even got cheaper with a better BS!
Perhaps I should have said “no ground units with skyfire abilities”. Yes, there are of course two FMCs in the book. Both of these follow the pattern of being better than nothing but not exactly what most people would like to see in terms of giving options and flexibility to the only codex with no allies.
Reecius when will you do a “first impression” on the nid codex I really want to see what you have to say about our great and all mighty book. Please don’t sugar coat it.
Haha, I will be real. Our book should be here in a few hours.
Do so. Mike B on whiskey 40k had an article as of late and its rather depressing… I wanted a clear assaulting solution to the tau problem, and it does not look as if this provides that…
Amen brother!