Testing...1,2,3...

While I haven't had a ton of time around my painting desk for one reason or another over the last week, I did have a number of games set up to actually take the Nid book to the table and see what it could do.

Despite the constant whining of the internet, and the hundreds of complaints that "Nids aren't at the same level of Tau/Eldar" and "Why didn't they fix combat?" and "How come none of us are capable of responding like rational adults?", I have found that the book is a ton of fun to play with, and has a lot of options that have proven fluffy, exciting, and a blast to put on the table.

Overall, it feels like the book is on par with the previous rendition - not drastically better competition wise (at least not on the surface), but certainly not worse. Let me break down my thoughts for you.

There is a huge push in this book to run Tyranids in the fluffiest sense of the army - masses of small critters with a handful of large support monsters wading through them as the tide of bodies crashes upon the enemy.

That style of army is not what many Nids players are familiar with, but it is easy to do and it is extremely effective!

Except for the good ol' flying hive tyrant and special characters like Old One Eye and Swarmlord, just about everything in this book, in a good sized or full brood, runs 140-180 points. A brief list of everything that fits that range:

• Deathleaper
• Tyranid Prime
• 3 Hive Guard
• 3 Zoanthropes
• Haruspex
• 3 Venomthropes
• 3 Lictors
• 30 termagants
• 30 hormagaunts
• 5 warriors (with biomorphs)
• Hive Crone
• 30 Gargoyles
• Harpy
• 5 Raveners (with biomorphs)
• 5 Shrikes (with biomorphs)
• Almost all carnifex variations
• Mawloc
• Exocrine
• Tyrannofex

What this means is that, more than any other codex, Tyranid players can just plug and play whatever units they want at each FOC slot - and we rarely will have the sticker shock of other armies (nothing over 200 points naked) and the end result is that we will have more bodies on the table, whether that be MCs or swarms of infantry or a mixture of both (recommended).

I'll get into detail about the specific lessons learned in my games later tonight. Most of them have been small level games for an escalation league at my local gamestore (Next Dimension Games, check them out if you're in the city of Chicago), but I did manage to get 2 games in at 1850 over the weekend as well.

Cheers,
Nick