The E40K Tyranids have some SERIOUS problems, which led me to recently sell
off the army (actually I traded it for a bunch of marine/eldar stuff to
bolster those armies).
Tyranid problems (off the top of my head):
No flak. Zero. Harridans and gargoyles just die die die, so you have to
take huge amounts to stave off enemy air power. While Harridans seem OK at
first glance, your enemy can target any of your fliers he wishes in an
engagement. Guess what gets shot down first in every game? 50 points worth
of Harridan. That leaves a bunch of gargoyles to simply soak up enemy fire.
You're paying 16 points per model for a flying, dying screen.
The Bio-titans are worthless. No shields. No regeneration. The cop out
answer from the design team of "regen is represented by high wounds and
armor" is rubbish. Bio-titans will be targeted by anti-tank (goodbye high
armor) and decimated before they can do anything remotely interesting with
anit-tank shots rolling over into criticals. We instituted a house rule that
allowed the bio-titan player (that was me) to roll at the end of the turn to
regenerate wounds (like void shields). They still got smoked. They are
grossly overpointed in comparison to the other titans.
The ability to ignore blast markers is worthless when incoming anti-tank
fire cherry-picks your synapse line out of the detachment, resulting in a
leaderless swarm that must now take leadership tests. This tactic is cheesy,
but both legal and in the enemy player's best interest.
I understand that the whole point of a tyranid swarm is to beat the enemy to
death in CC, but it just doesn't happen that way. Even using drop pods (to
avoid attrition moving across the table) you have to be in the enemy's face
right away or be gunned down to death). The space marines just go into
overwatch and shoot you to death and the eldar just laugh and move away so
they can shoot you from afar. Haven't played an epic Guard army, but I
suspect the artillery would accomplish the same thing. Orks can be dealt
with unless there's a gargant.
I tried numerous troop configurations and varied my tactics, but the end
result was a solid tyranid thumping.
All in all, the least viable of the armies in current edition. They really
need some sort of fix.
-----Original Message-----
From: Francois Bruntz <fbruntz_at_...>
To: space-marine_at_... <space-marine@...>
Date: Tuesday, May 26, 1998 5:40 AM
Subject: [Epic] About Tyranids
>Salutations,
>
>I've been recently contacted by a French player (yes, there are French
>players connected to Internet!) who plays the Tyranids.
>He thinks that if this race was too powerful in SM/TL (not wrong), it is
>now too weak in Epic 40k.
>As I've never played against the bugs in the new version, I would like
>to know the opinion of the other bug players about this topic.
>
>The same player thought about changing the Tyranid army list to
>compensate its lack of firepower and its several other weaknesses :
>
>Tyranid Warriors and Lictors
> Heavy Weapons +10 points *
> Assault +1 point *
> Save +4 points
>
>* Choose only one upgrade
>
>What do you think about this?
>
>Francois Bruntz
>Apprenti MIAGE (Universite Paris XII - IBM France)
>
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Received on Tue May 26 1998 - 15:19:11 UTC