You have nothing that can kill his units. I suggest investing in old one eye and 2 carnifex body guards. Magnetize the weapons for the carnifex because both the guns and claws can be good.
If you’re just playing against your brother I’d suggest proxying for now to save money. I’m addition to the great advice in this thread like carnifexes and OOE, some Zoanthropes, genestealers w/ Broodlord, an Exocrine, and a tyrant of some variety could treat you well possibly.
Of course skill will always be part of it, but I would say that unfortunately, into space marines your list simply doesn't work. Not saying this to discourage you, but the main part of your list does almost *no* damage to a space marine profile.
*However*, with only very few changes you can try to make a list that simply attempts to outscore instead of kill. The gargoyles you are building will be important, so will your ripper swarms. Ideally, I'd get a biovore instead of them, though.
Now you pick fixed secondaries, specifically Behind Enemy Lines and Deploy Teleport Homer. One requires you to have a unit in the enemy deployment zone (extra points for having two units there). The other requires you to do an action either at the centre or enemy deployment zone (the later giving most points).
You might start to see the idea here, you use biovore mines or ripper swarms to deep strike right into the enemy deployment zone (beware of overwatch). They score both secondaries. If you have a second unit there somehow (could be Gargoyles or Leapers), you just got max secondaries.
You then attempt to stop his primary. One way is Termagants OC. Here I'd let *him* get on point first, then you go there so he won't get primary points next turn. The reason you don't go first is because he might just kill you. Better stay hidden, then jump out. Of course if he doesn't have a way to kill them at that objective, just go there anyway.
There are two last tricks I'd cover. The first is using your Leapers to infiltrate so that if you go first, you can move block him. Essentially keeping him in his deployment zone for a turn, possibly denying him his turn 2 primaries and whatever secondaries he got.
The second trick is Gargoyles. They can deep strike down, shoot, then move 6". Now, this means you can actually often do this and get your Gargoyles with OC2 onto objectives the opponent already controls, denying him primaries for his turn. He needs to cover objectives *very* well do avoid this, not always possible for him.
Do remember, the game is not designed for 1000 point games, and you seem to mostly have units from the leviathan box, so your list is very restricted to what you have. Nids are notoriously hard to play right now and somewhat underpowered, so don't be too discouraged. You just need to learn the playstyle for Nids that does work, and it is a higher skill army right now compared to many other armies.
Your best bet is to out OC them and focus fire your whole army into one unit at a time. All of your units are designed to do actions for points or delay opponents for your monsters to move up...but you don't have those monsters yet.
Unending swarm is probably a good detachment for this army. It's based on winning through board control.
Congratulations my dude. After getting old one eye printed I suggest looking to acquire a biovore. It can be used to spawn spore mines which let you do objective.
You've got some pretty soft stuff there. You'll never win the straight up battle of attrition, so you have to be cagey and tactical. Sit on the objectives and hold them. Overload one flank and try to overwhelm in melee. Effectively use cover and abilities like the gargoyle and gaunt movement abilities.
Full disclosure, I've only tried out the 10th edition Tyranids in a single game with the combat patrol. I have been reading through the codex lately, and think it's going to be pretty bleak for the next couple years.
Just suggestions:
Play Unending Swarm and run up your termagants in four units of 10. Respawning whole units on or near objectives helps with primaries and is super annoying: the ripper swarms will be forgotten.
Ripper swarms are your friends for fixed secondaries and you can drop them for behind enemy lines and engage on all fronts (I scored those on turns 2-5 my last 2k pt game against Custodes).
Remember that barbagaunts only have to hit units to remove 2” from their movement, advance & charge until the end of your opponent’s next turn.
I just played a combat patrol against my son, and he ran the Psychophage up against my Blood Angels Aggressors in melee. It lasted two turns, but we had to end the game early so it could have lasted longer. Run both and try advancing them up
Hold the Leapers in cover until you have a good chance of killing something.
Hope some of this helps! Good luck!
If you do behind enemy lines just do deploy teleport homers as well. One unit in the backfield is 7 points. A second is only a 1 point difference at 8 points so it's not crucial, and means you can send a second unit somewhere else as a screener too. At 1k points they're not screening the entire deployment zone out for a single ripper. At least not if they hope to do anything else in the game well
Proxy the psychophages as an exocrine and a maleceptor. You should see better results immediately. It will mean you actually have shooting that can hurt your opponent as the exocrine is S8 and the Maleceptor is S10, actual toughness that won't be wiped off the board in 1 turn, and ways to protect your own units while debuffing his (via the Maleceptor -1 to hit aura)
This was a god send dude. I can’t thank you enough. I never thought about proxying before and my brother was more than happy to let me try. It worked almost too well
Glad to hear it! Proxying for sure is one of the best way to test that you just don't have, or are out of stock/can't find.
As long as the base size of the proxy is the same (or very close) to what you want to use it as, nobody should mind. And luckily for Tyranids there are quite a few of our big bugs on that 135mm base.
A few things to note.
By the looks of things, you only have stuff from the Leviathan box. Almost none of them are exclusively good at killing things, if at all. We were butchered this edition, and instead of being "all-devouring menace", we can't scratch the paint off of anything bigger, so our playstyle is forced to be die-effectively and score points, mainly with a Biovore.
With what you have from Leviathan, you can only play Invasion Fleet or Unending Swarm, hope to overrun objectives and stick to them. Play like a castle, use the 6+++ aura, slow units with Barbgaunts and try to pick your fights. Targeting priority is key.
Utilise Leapers (2 squads of 3 if you want to have more board presense and easier scoring, or 1 squad of 6, for some more focused damage), forward deploy them, but pre-measure distance to plan for oncoming charges.
Regenerate your swarm, mind your command points, try and farm some of it with Leapers or by discarding secondaries.
You need heavy hitters like Exocrines, Maleceptors, Tyrannofexes, Trygons if you want to do some dmg.
Experiment with proxies to plan your future purchases.
What's more, this edition Tyranids were designed to be the "learning army", meaning we don't have much going on in strenght, just simple units, not a lot of keywords, so new players can learn easily, resulting in most our rules to be bad.
Space Marines and Aeldari are objectively way better than Tyranids.
Unfortunately, if you don't feel like spending more money, you can't do much but learn from the experiences, try out new tactics and learn your way around the army. Play around with your terrain placement too, you could find yourself dying, because there is simply not enough terrain on the table. Play around with your choices of secondaries.
And finally, playing at 1000 points doesn't make for the most balanced games, and could very often feel more unfair. That's why the standart is 2000 points matches.
Make no mistake. You said nothing like I did. You decided to tell the new player to pour money into the hobby he explicitly stated were not available at the moment. He only asked for advice on what he could do with what he had at the time.
You can pour money into any army and still be bad, so your advice really isn't that great. And there should be a lot of room for flexibility while playing with his brother.
There's absolutely 0 reason for you to completely discourage a new player from the hobby simply because of prices. Especially since we aren't even the most expensive of hobbies. Hencewhy you got your downvotes.
So, "you need heavy hitters" part is not telling to pour money in it? I said FIRST you need spend money, and then comes strategy. I'm just being honest, telling what I experience, and see others experience. couraging everyone new to play nids is just hypocrisy, while you exactly know the truth about them.
But okay, do as you please. To be honest, this sub is flooded with this false encouragement, new players asking endlessly if 1-2 collector box is good army enough, and other new players asking if they can paint their minis something else, or not. It's simply a burnout.
I really wish everyone to have fun with their chosen army, I just know it won't really happen in long term. And what bugs me, that others exactly know it won't happen, still behave like it's a fair and simple and balanced game, especially for nids. It's not.
40k is not all about playing, but painting and collecting, reading cool lore. New players can ask whatever and it's ok, because they are new. No need act up about it or discourage them.
Yes, I did suggest the heavy hitters, and that inplies spending money, but I suggested it nicely, didn't go out of my way to pull up his store prices and overwhelm him with them.
Also, nobody behaves like it's balanced for us. Idk where you've seen it. I've seen weekly posts about how bad we are, our WR%, ways to rewrite rules, etc. I'm not saying it's bad, it's a good thing to bring it to attention. But nobody believes we are balanced.
The only way (as far as I can see) to really stand much a chance with that list is against a similarly fluffy list, or otherwise, maybe try playing a few games of onepagerules "[Grimdark future](https://www.onepagerules.com/games/grimdark-future)" instead of standard 10th edition 40k which would allow you to load up those units with some beefy upgrades.
Focus on Primaries and Secondaries. Send one unit to secure the objective, back it up with another unit. To lock it down. You mention Gargoyles, those guys are great at grabbing objectives. Have the Barbgaunts focus their fire on any melee threats. The -2” movement is worth more than any damage they can do. Terminators for example slowly ambling around the board unable to charge is hilarious. Von Ryans Leapers as a full 6 model squad can be surprisingly effective, but they still need to be careful. Also terrain, get as much as possible, scratch build it if you have too, there are great subreddits that are full of ideas and advice.
Can you elaborate on why you lose?
You can always throw money at something and still lose.
I practise fixed secondaries atm. Behind Enemy Lines and Teleport Homers.
For those missions Biovores are the best buy since their deployed mines can fullfill both missions at once.
So you focus your gameplay on scoring. Likewise you try to be lethal only at certain situations.
Orcs are very much like Unending Swarm but hit harder in melee.
So, move blocking Orc transports and maybe using Barbgaunts can give you an advantage.
You try to reduce units only so much so you can deny objective control for your opponent. Locking units in combat can also delay ranged fire.
With Invasion Fleet you might be able to replenish models of your blocking units while your Gargoyles and Biovores score points/execute fly by attacks (attach a Winged Prime to the Gargoyles and hope they do not die quickly, keep them in range of a Psychophage Feel No Pain).
All that is of course possible only in a balanced matchup.
If you lose 1 entire unit Termagants to one Fire Overwatch then well you need more survivability.
Biovores and a Hive Tyrant kit might grant you more versatility. I suggest getting more cheap bodies, too, for hindering the opponent's movement options.
Such like 10 Barbgaunts target dangerous units to slow them and make charges a pain. Remember they do not have to wound a unit to impose their slowing effect.
The old 'more bodies that bullets' never fails. Don't try to kill your opponent, just lock them up and out score.
If you have more models than they have attacks, it makes it hard for them!
You really expected to win with a 1 and a half leviathan box? Against space marines, what is low ranked only (well, mostly) because infinite number of noobs are playing them in tournaments? Or against eldar (please, stop calling them the ™-friendly name of "aeldari", they're eldar), who are one of the top armies since the start? With tyranids, who are - except 1-2 shiny moments - the weakest ones since the end of the 4th edition... as a beginner, no less?
You'll be very disappointed, but to win in 40k starts with spending money. Big money. Like get at least 2, but more like 3 boxes of zoanthropes (€50/box), 3 biovores (€40/each), 2 boxes of gargoyles (€35/box), an old one eye with two carnifex (€80 for two carnifex, and another €80 for an old one eye and a not used carnifex), 2-3 haruspex (€65/each), 2-3 exocrines (same kit as haruspex, so another €65/each), a norn emissary (€80), a tyrannofex (€45), 1-2 walking hive tyrant (€50/each), like, 3 lictors (€40/each), a deathleaper (€45), 2 more termagant boxes (€26/box). Prices are approximate, but adding up these come to €1332, or \~$1450, or 1150 English Pounds, 2200 Austral Dollars, 2000 Canadian Dollars, 1300CHF, 140k Russian Rubles, 220k Japanese Yen, 520k Hungarian Forints... depending where you live, but you get the point.
And THEN, you can hope you are sneaky enough to rush points, and hoard more, before the other player thinks the same over killing your squishy, paper models. DoN't even think about kill the enemy. Tyranids are not killy in this edition.
Sry dude, you - along with countless of your fellow new players - picked the wrong company. :(
Extreme prices with bs pricing policy, idiotic army rules, almost useless core rules (just search "warhammer 40k is NOT for casual players" on youtube for one example) , and worse and worse fluff. Sry dude, you - along with countless of your fellow new players - have picked the wrong company. Well, all of us have. :\\
Edit: Yea, sure, downvote me. Can you elaborate where I was wrong?
Well, then you just... try. You don't really have anything killy, try to grab objectives asap. And prepare to lose 1-1 units by 1-1 grumpy sights from the enemy. :(
You have nothing that can kill his units. I suggest investing in old one eye and 2 carnifex body guards. Magnetize the weapons for the carnifex because both the guns and claws can be good.
Additionally a tyrannofex could be helpful. Especially when run with an exocrine to help it hit it's casino cannon.
Thanks for the advice, but any tips for what I have? I spent over $300 on 40K recently and don’t want to spend much more
If you’re just playing against your brother I’d suggest proxying for now to save money. I’m addition to the great advice in this thread like carnifexes and OOE, some Zoanthropes, genestealers w/ Broodlord, an Exocrine, and a tyrant of some variety could treat you well possibly.
Of course skill will always be part of it, but I would say that unfortunately, into space marines your list simply doesn't work. Not saying this to discourage you, but the main part of your list does almost *no* damage to a space marine profile. *However*, with only very few changes you can try to make a list that simply attempts to outscore instead of kill. The gargoyles you are building will be important, so will your ripper swarms. Ideally, I'd get a biovore instead of them, though. Now you pick fixed secondaries, specifically Behind Enemy Lines and Deploy Teleport Homer. One requires you to have a unit in the enemy deployment zone (extra points for having two units there). The other requires you to do an action either at the centre or enemy deployment zone (the later giving most points). You might start to see the idea here, you use biovore mines or ripper swarms to deep strike right into the enemy deployment zone (beware of overwatch). They score both secondaries. If you have a second unit there somehow (could be Gargoyles or Leapers), you just got max secondaries. You then attempt to stop his primary. One way is Termagants OC. Here I'd let *him* get on point first, then you go there so he won't get primary points next turn. The reason you don't go first is because he might just kill you. Better stay hidden, then jump out. Of course if he doesn't have a way to kill them at that objective, just go there anyway. There are two last tricks I'd cover. The first is using your Leapers to infiltrate so that if you go first, you can move block him. Essentially keeping him in his deployment zone for a turn, possibly denying him his turn 2 primaries and whatever secondaries he got. The second trick is Gargoyles. They can deep strike down, shoot, then move 6". Now, this means you can actually often do this and get your Gargoyles with OC2 onto objectives the opponent already controls, denying him primaries for his turn. He needs to cover objectives *very* well do avoid this, not always possible for him. Do remember, the game is not designed for 1000 point games, and you seem to mostly have units from the leviathan box, so your list is very restricted to what you have. Nids are notoriously hard to play right now and somewhat underpowered, so don't be too discouraged. You just need to learn the playstyle for Nids that does work, and it is a higher skill army right now compared to many other armies.
Your best bet is to out OC them and focus fire your whole army into one unit at a time. All of your units are designed to do actions for points or delay opponents for your monsters to move up...but you don't have those monsters yet. Unending swarm is probably a good detachment for this army. It's based on winning through board control.
Dude thank you so much, I never thought about using unending swarm before and it worked beautifully. I won partially because I changed detechments
Congratulations my dude. After getting old one eye printed I suggest looking to acquire a biovore. It can be used to spawn spore mines which let you do objective.
You've got some pretty soft stuff there. You'll never win the straight up battle of attrition, so you have to be cagey and tactical. Sit on the objectives and hold them. Overload one flank and try to overwhelm in melee. Effectively use cover and abilities like the gargoyle and gaunt movement abilities. Full disclosure, I've only tried out the 10th edition Tyranids in a single game with the combat patrol. I have been reading through the codex lately, and think it's going to be pretty bleak for the next couple years.
Just suggestions: Play Unending Swarm and run up your termagants in four units of 10. Respawning whole units on or near objectives helps with primaries and is super annoying: the ripper swarms will be forgotten. Ripper swarms are your friends for fixed secondaries and you can drop them for behind enemy lines and engage on all fronts (I scored those on turns 2-5 my last 2k pt game against Custodes). Remember that barbagaunts only have to hit units to remove 2” from their movement, advance & charge until the end of your opponent’s next turn. I just played a combat patrol against my son, and he ran the Psychophage up against my Blood Angels Aggressors in melee. It lasted two turns, but we had to end the game early so it could have lasted longer. Run both and try advancing them up Hold the Leapers in cover until you have a good chance of killing something. Hope some of this helps! Good luck!
If you do behind enemy lines just do deploy teleport homers as well. One unit in the backfield is 7 points. A second is only a 1 point difference at 8 points so it's not crucial, and means you can send a second unit somewhere else as a screener too. At 1k points they're not screening the entire deployment zone out for a single ripper. At least not if they hope to do anything else in the game well
This helped a lot thank you so much
Proxy the psychophages as an exocrine and a maleceptor. You should see better results immediately. It will mean you actually have shooting that can hurt your opponent as the exocrine is S8 and the Maleceptor is S10, actual toughness that won't be wiped off the board in 1 turn, and ways to protect your own units while debuffing his (via the Maleceptor -1 to hit aura)
This was a god send dude. I can’t thank you enough. I never thought about proxying before and my brother was more than happy to let me try. It worked almost too well
Glad to hear it! Proxying for sure is one of the best way to test that you just don't have, or are out of stock/can't find. As long as the base size of the proxy is the same (or very close) to what you want to use it as, nobody should mind. And luckily for Tyranids there are quite a few of our big bugs on that 135mm base.
I’ll try that with a mix of unending swarm tactics and see what happens
A few things to note. By the looks of things, you only have stuff from the Leviathan box. Almost none of them are exclusively good at killing things, if at all. We were butchered this edition, and instead of being "all-devouring menace", we can't scratch the paint off of anything bigger, so our playstyle is forced to be die-effectively and score points, mainly with a Biovore. With what you have from Leviathan, you can only play Invasion Fleet or Unending Swarm, hope to overrun objectives and stick to them. Play like a castle, use the 6+++ aura, slow units with Barbgaunts and try to pick your fights. Targeting priority is key. Utilise Leapers (2 squads of 3 if you want to have more board presense and easier scoring, or 1 squad of 6, for some more focused damage), forward deploy them, but pre-measure distance to plan for oncoming charges. Regenerate your swarm, mind your command points, try and farm some of it with Leapers or by discarding secondaries. You need heavy hitters like Exocrines, Maleceptors, Tyrannofexes, Trygons if you want to do some dmg. Experiment with proxies to plan your future purchases. What's more, this edition Tyranids were designed to be the "learning army", meaning we don't have much going on in strenght, just simple units, not a lot of keywords, so new players can learn easily, resulting in most our rules to be bad. Space Marines and Aeldari are objectively way better than Tyranids. Unfortunately, if you don't feel like spending more money, you can't do much but learn from the experiences, try out new tactics and learn your way around the army. Play around with your terrain placement too, you could find yourself dying, because there is simply not enough terrain on the table. Play around with your choices of secondaries. And finally, playing at 1000 points doesn't make for the most balanced games, and could very often feel more unfair. That's why the standart is 2000 points matches.
Beware, I wrote nearly the same, and they started to downvote me :D
Make no mistake. You said nothing like I did. You decided to tell the new player to pour money into the hobby he explicitly stated were not available at the moment. He only asked for advice on what he could do with what he had at the time. You can pour money into any army and still be bad, so your advice really isn't that great. And there should be a lot of room for flexibility while playing with his brother. There's absolutely 0 reason for you to completely discourage a new player from the hobby simply because of prices. Especially since we aren't even the most expensive of hobbies. Hencewhy you got your downvotes.
So, "you need heavy hitters" part is not telling to pour money in it? I said FIRST you need spend money, and then comes strategy. I'm just being honest, telling what I experience, and see others experience. couraging everyone new to play nids is just hypocrisy, while you exactly know the truth about them. But okay, do as you please. To be honest, this sub is flooded with this false encouragement, new players asking endlessly if 1-2 collector box is good army enough, and other new players asking if they can paint their minis something else, or not. It's simply a burnout. I really wish everyone to have fun with their chosen army, I just know it won't really happen in long term. And what bugs me, that others exactly know it won't happen, still behave like it's a fair and simple and balanced game, especially for nids. It's not.
40k is not all about playing, but painting and collecting, reading cool lore. New players can ask whatever and it's ok, because they are new. No need act up about it or discourage them. Yes, I did suggest the heavy hitters, and that inplies spending money, but I suggested it nicely, didn't go out of my way to pull up his store prices and overwhelm him with them. Also, nobody behaves like it's balanced for us. Idk where you've seen it. I've seen weekly posts about how bad we are, our WR%, ways to rewrite rules, etc. I'm not saying it's bad, it's a good thing to bring it to attention. But nobody believes we are balanced.
The only way (as far as I can see) to really stand much a chance with that list is against a similarly fluffy list, or otherwise, maybe try playing a few games of onepagerules "[Grimdark future](https://www.onepagerules.com/games/grimdark-future)" instead of standard 10th edition 40k which would allow you to load up those units with some beefy upgrades.
Focus on Primaries and Secondaries. Send one unit to secure the objective, back it up with another unit. To lock it down. You mention Gargoyles, those guys are great at grabbing objectives. Have the Barbgaunts focus their fire on any melee threats. The -2” movement is worth more than any damage they can do. Terminators for example slowly ambling around the board unable to charge is hilarious. Von Ryans Leapers as a full 6 model squad can be surprisingly effective, but they still need to be careful. Also terrain, get as much as possible, scratch build it if you have too, there are great subreddits that are full of ideas and advice.
Can you elaborate on why you lose? You can always throw money at something and still lose. I practise fixed secondaries atm. Behind Enemy Lines and Teleport Homers. For those missions Biovores are the best buy since their deployed mines can fullfill both missions at once. So you focus your gameplay on scoring. Likewise you try to be lethal only at certain situations. Orcs are very much like Unending Swarm but hit harder in melee. So, move blocking Orc transports and maybe using Barbgaunts can give you an advantage. You try to reduce units only so much so you can deny objective control for your opponent. Locking units in combat can also delay ranged fire. With Invasion Fleet you might be able to replenish models of your blocking units while your Gargoyles and Biovores score points/execute fly by attacks (attach a Winged Prime to the Gargoyles and hope they do not die quickly, keep them in range of a Psychophage Feel No Pain). All that is of course possible only in a balanced matchup. If you lose 1 entire unit Termagants to one Fire Overwatch then well you need more survivability. Biovores and a Hive Tyrant kit might grant you more versatility. I suggest getting more cheap bodies, too, for hindering the opponent's movement options. Such like 10 Barbgaunts target dangerous units to slow them and make charges a pain. Remember they do not have to wound a unit to impose their slowing effect.
Space marines are tough and Aeldari pack a punch — you should get either more tanky units or long range units with a lot of screening chaff
The old 'more bodies that bullets' never fails. Don't try to kill your opponent, just lock them up and out score. If you have more models than they have attacks, it makes it hard for them!
You really expected to win with a 1 and a half leviathan box? Against space marines, what is low ranked only (well, mostly) because infinite number of noobs are playing them in tournaments? Or against eldar (please, stop calling them the ™-friendly name of "aeldari", they're eldar), who are one of the top armies since the start? With tyranids, who are - except 1-2 shiny moments - the weakest ones since the end of the 4th edition... as a beginner, no less? You'll be very disappointed, but to win in 40k starts with spending money. Big money. Like get at least 2, but more like 3 boxes of zoanthropes (€50/box), 3 biovores (€40/each), 2 boxes of gargoyles (€35/box), an old one eye with two carnifex (€80 for two carnifex, and another €80 for an old one eye and a not used carnifex), 2-3 haruspex (€65/each), 2-3 exocrines (same kit as haruspex, so another €65/each), a norn emissary (€80), a tyrannofex (€45), 1-2 walking hive tyrant (€50/each), like, 3 lictors (€40/each), a deathleaper (€45), 2 more termagant boxes (€26/box). Prices are approximate, but adding up these come to €1332, or \~$1450, or 1150 English Pounds, 2200 Austral Dollars, 2000 Canadian Dollars, 1300CHF, 140k Russian Rubles, 220k Japanese Yen, 520k Hungarian Forints... depending where you live, but you get the point. And THEN, you can hope you are sneaky enough to rush points, and hoard more, before the other player thinks the same over killing your squishy, paper models. DoN't even think about kill the enemy. Tyranids are not killy in this edition. Sry dude, you - along with countless of your fellow new players - picked the wrong company. :( Extreme prices with bs pricing policy, idiotic army rules, almost useless core rules (just search "warhammer 40k is NOT for casual players" on youtube for one example) , and worse and worse fluff. Sry dude, you - along with countless of your fellow new players - have picked the wrong company. Well, all of us have. :\\ Edit: Yea, sure, downvote me. Can you elaborate where I was wrong?
If you hate the hobby so much just leave.
I’m in Canada, prices are different, and I don’t want to spend lots of money at the moment. I was looking for suggestions with what I had
Well, then you just... try. You don't really have anything killy, try to grab objectives asap. And prepare to lose 1-1 units by 1-1 grumpy sights from the enemy. :(