Tyranids Large Battleline or Monster Mash

[Hippocampus Expert]

I noticed that other people's Tyranid lists include a lot more battleline units than I usually bring. I'm talking 3+ groups of 20 Termies plus 1-2 groups of 10 Gargoyles etc. Whereas I usually bring a limited battleline. Maybe two groups of 10 Termies and usually not much other battleline, so that I can spam the big Monsters. I was wondering what the balance here is and what the deal is with what seems like an excessive amount of Termagants to me. Not everyone I see doing that is running Endless Swarm.

Mostly wanted to get a sense of other people's philosophy on list building so that I can sus what works well.

[Jack Shrapnel]

I've also seen people run a lot of battleline, but other than endless swarm I don't see it having that much competitive success. Gargoyles can be extremely effective in any list of course. I think it's not a huge point investment to bring a bunch of little bugs and it gives you a ton of board control, especially if you pair with zoans for the 6+ invul aura, and even a psychophage for the FNP can make them fairly annoying to remove - but then points start adding up.

The little guys make good objective campers and screens for your more valuable units. So again I can see value in devoting a few hundred points to making them work.

The big problem is there are many armies that make it trivial to remove a unit of 20 gaunts (necrons, orks, blast heavy lists etc.) so you're getting limited value in those matchups.

I tend to start every list I build with the essentials which I think are a pair of exocrines, pair of haruspex, neurolictors, biovore and deathleaper. That gives some efficient shooting, decent melee, board control and action monkeys from the spore mines.

From there can skew hard into monsters (what I normally do) or try and cover the board with a gaunt carpet, and some supporting synapse and auras, or you can lean into the sneaky bugs (vanguard style).

The issue nids have is anti-tank. It's always kind of been that way. So you can either try and throw in zoans (terrible point efficiency for what you get) or the always swingy t-fex. (could be 12 damage - could be 2!).

So you've kind of got a few choices - present so many bodies to lower the tank efficiency or not provide optimal targets (invul monsters / swarm), be sneaky and avoid them altogether (utilizing stealth, cover, lone ops etc.) or trying to play the anti-tank game (zoans, rupture fexes, norns, lethal spam etc.).

I think tyranids more than almost any other army are a completely different beast when it comes to list building. You essentially can have an effective list, but if it's not the playstyle you enjoy, or requires too much layering buffs etc. it may not have success.

As much as I tend to be more successful than not with nid games, I still routinely get straight up tabled. (happened on Sunday in fact lol). The army is VERY prone to bad matchups (knights are in the same boat but are even MORE skewed) and it's really hard to cover every matchup. I always have to have a plan with any list I bring. How am I scoring points is the first thing I think about. We're pretty familiar with the secondaries now, so I think to myself how will I reliably score 75% of these cards with this list. You cannot try and score 100% of the cards. That's a trap. You will spread yourself too thin trying to cover every base.

Not entirely sure if that was just rambling off topic or not, but that's how I approach nid list building.

[chrisallen]

While I'd love to write more in loathe to do it all on my phone.

Battle line for Tyranids is interesting as like many of our things it works somewhat counter intuitively.

Gargoyles have an sorts of tricks. First turn press moving 12 advancing up to 6, shooting and moving another 6. This can push back whole or parts of armies for a turn. They can drop down shoot and take an objective with their move. Sending discord through the ranks.

But what termegaunts do is buy time and space. Their reactive move lets you either press forward to box out or pull back to make terrible charges. Their OC2 like with the gargoyles is amazing and really surprises people how quickly it adds up. But where they really shine is falling back. They buy time and space. Eat a charge, survive, fall back make a new line. Inbetween that your "bad men" push through and kill things. Between the bring them back Strat, hiding holes and your big targets they can really do a lot of work.