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What do I need for a reasonable Tyranid force?

 Post subject: What do I need for a reasonable Tyranid force?
PostPosted: Thu Sep 12, 2019 5:07 pm 
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I have been playing around with the online army list generator to figure out which of my models I can use and what more I need to get.

https://traitor-legion.appspot.com

I bought my figures back when GW had a sale in the early 2000s. I have way excess of some models and am short of others. I'd like your advice on what I don't need to bother paint and what I need to pick up. This is what I have

12 Lictors
12 bases of Tyranid warriors
24 bases of termagants
12 bases of gene stealers
12 bases of Hormagaunt
12 bases of Gargoyle

Dominatrix - 4
Hive tyrants - 18
Zoanthropes - 16
Assault spawn haruspex - 12
Exocrines - 12

Are there things in there which are not needed in such numbers because, for example, only X per unit, only X per army, are useful? For example, you can have three Hive tyrants per large tyranid swarm. Perhaps there is some reason why more than one isn't worth the points (just an example).

I read you can only have one Dominatrix per 2000 points.

Painting this lot will be quite a job. If I don't need some things I can keep them in the blisters and swap them for needed items.

I'm going to read through the EA rules now.


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 Post subject: Re: What do I need for a reasonable Tyranid force?
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 1:26 am 
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For epic armageddon you could check out the Epic UK site, which has lists used at UK tournaments going back several years. They use the Epic UK army list but should give you an idea.
http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/albyr.php

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 Post subject: Re: What do I need for a reasonable Tyranid force?
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 6:57 am 
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Great idea, thanks.


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 Post subject: Re: What do I need for a reasonable Tyranid force?
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 8:39 am 
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The winners don't buy a lot of hive tyrants, zoanthropes, carnifaxes or other elites. They have big mobs of the basic foot.

Looks like 6 Hive tyrants and 6 zoanthropes will be ample for a very big force.


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 Post subject: Re: What do I need for a reasonable Tyranid force?
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 2:02 pm 
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The infantry horde is generally considered stronger that the brute (AV) horde yes, though there have been some surprising results with massed brutes, especially where there's lots of ruins on the table as they ignore the traditional penalties with vehicle heavy builds - they are able to spend all their time in cover with no ill effects. I once made a big mistake in a game with Tim where I agreed to count all the buildings as ruins, and then spent the whole game with my Yme'loc shooting at him at -1 - d'oh! Should have been the one game I could win with yme'loc!

On hive tyrants: in Epic Armageddon the Inf vs AV vs LV classification makes a big difference. All-infantry formations cannot be harmed by AT weapons, and all-AV formations cannot be harmed by AP weapons. This is why the gaunt swarms are almost always led by tyranid warriors - you don't want to be granting your opponent "free" AT targets if you can avoid it, but definitely not if they are your synapse... So to stop a tyrant being sniped you'd also need carnifexes etc, which is greater expense and honestly they don't synergise particularly well with hormagaunts, which move twice as fast in assault, so the 'fexes tend to not do very much. Plus upgrades tend to be sparsely taken in EA due to the high importance of activation count[1] (important for nids to have more formations than the enemy as they almost always lose the strategy roll). A similar principle is also applied to the dominatrix - if you add AVs, then the dom can still be picked out due to the WE allocation rules, whereas a hierodule is also a war engine so can act as an ablative armour shield, protecting the dominatrix against titan killers such as deathstrikes.

[1] You'll tend to notice across armies in EA in general that the same upgrades tend to be taken - those that totally change how the formation works (like transports) or that are especially valuable (like eldar exarchs).

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 Post subject: Re: What do I need for a reasonable Tyranid force?
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 4:28 pm 
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I hadn't thought of the issue of Inf/AV/LV/ (war engine, if I understand correctly) separation. You saved me a lot of trouble by pointing this out.

As an aside, if some rule is pushing people to gamey armies, and making forces less interesting with some units not worth while, shouldn't that be addressed? E.G give AT an AI factor where a group has no vehicles, and vice versa.

I wonder if it is worth going through the Tyranid stats and thinking of how to create interest for each unit type (value and challenges).

BTW, I played Epic 20 years ago and only reread the rules today.


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 Post subject: Re: What do I need for a reasonable Tyranid force?
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 5:30 pm 
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INF is Infantry (so targets for AP shots).
AV is Armoured Vehicle (shoot them with AT).
LV counts as both for being shot at (can be hit by both AP and AT).
WE is War Engines, which count as AV for being shot at (so AT).

chortlebuffer wrote:
As an aside, if some rule is pushing people to gamey armies, and making forces less interesting with some units not worth while, shouldn't that be addressed?

Note that the EpicUK Nid list (and to a lesser extent the main NetEA Nid list) has some serious internal balance issues between the main formation types, to the extent that the lists that have done well in EpicUK tournaments are almost carbon-copies - a big bunch of Assault Swarms, some Genestealers and some Harridans, then you get a small amount of variation in Trygons or Hive Nests or Dominatrix.

As it sounds like you're planning on casual games rather than EpicUK tournaments, I suggest having a look at the FERC 2018 list at the bottom of this post: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=32946

That's the Tyranid list used by the French Epic community, and it has better internal balance and huge flexibility in what kind of list you want to do - it's much more suitable for making a usable list out of the models you want to use, rather than picking models that will work well in a list. That said, the army-level rules are more complex.

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 Post subject: Re: What do I need for a reasonable Tyranid force?
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 5:54 pm 
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Thanks for your help. You have understood what I am after very well. I will check that out.


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