While flooding this forum with my comments, I read numerous people complaining that Tyranids were "too strong" in NetEpic and needed to be shafted. Nothing further from truth. I'm not claiming that beating Tyranids is a piece of cake but the army is nonetheless far from invincible.
Despite playing tyranids, here are some advices.
- Play a 1000 pts battle. Due to their scoring system, it's impossible for tyranids to reach the amount of victory points required (30) even if they destroy the whole opposing army!! Well, okay, even if true this advice is more a joke than anything else but thank you for your great playtesting, GW.
- Take companies and special cards if you like them, but no detachments. It's a lot harder for Tyranids to score any victory point when dealing with companies because they have to destroy each and every stand to score the victory points a second time. Of course, when detachment cards just add to the breakpoint and victory point of a mother company, it's even better!
- Avoid unbreakable companies and detachments (if you can) to deprive Tyranids from victory points. Try to compute how much VP your army is worth with Tyranids scoring system.
- If you like titans, try the following Warlord build: 2 chainfists, close-combat head, and two 2 weapons of your choice (a Plasma Destructor and a Fire Control Tower for example, or two Inferno Cannons, or a pair of Vulcan Mega Bolters, etc.) will give you an unbeatable unit. It will eat any Bio-Titan for breakfast, even Hierophants with tentacles (you still roll 3D6+19 against them, while they are at 2D6+14... It means 8 wounds received for a start) This titan build will kill any Dominatrix or lesser titan in one round and may well destroy a Hierophant in one round too.
- The Reaver titan build is possible too, but less effective: two chainfists and a CC head means a CAF of 4D6+17, decreased to 3D6+15 when facing tentacles. Still better than the Hierophant but the fight will last longer.
- Chaos builds can add a CC tail to their titans for additional brutality.
- Bring an Imperator.
- When fighting Bio-Titans, aim for legs, not the head. You have a 4+ chance of getting a critical hit, it's enormous, and 1 in 3 chances of halving the titan CAF. With a careful assault with lesser units - meaning you can still target the titan in first fire segment before resolving CC - it's a lot easier to bring it down.
- Bring flyers. Tyranids have poor fliers and can't do much against them. High flying Squat Overlords and almost everything in the Tau army list is a royal pain for Tyranids.
- Play Khorne. You'll lead on victory points all the time thanks to objectives and Tyranids will fight an uphill battle against all the bonus your machines get while being ahead. That, and the Banelord is really a good Titan.
- Tyranids are slow. Really. They can be quickly on your side, but if you have some deepstriking units (T-Hawk, pods) allowing your army to take some objectives on the Tyranid side on turn 2 or 3, the Tyranid player won't be able to bring back resources to fight you.
Well, you get the idea. I've yet to see an "invincible" tyranid army. Tyranids are vulnerable simply because they have few ways of winning (their firepower being so weak) and their scoring system force them into predictable patterns. Some armies are more vulnerable to them, IG for example, but even there some units do wonders, like Hellhounds or missile batteries.
But PLEASE don't claim that Tyranids are "soooo powerful/unbeatable/broken/whatever". Sorry, I don't buy that.
Comments?
