Warseer: not getting Tyranids

Well with the release of the Tyranid FAQ, GW has effectively shut down most reserve based lists. Silly of them but hey, whatever floats their boat. Tyranids however are still one of the premier armies to do with their ability to munch any army not in tanks or mobile and with enough guns to silence their opponent's tanks before they can get into combat. Unforunately...Warseer doesn't understand this. We can look at it closely in detail through my Armies in 5th articles but let's take a quick peek at a poll over on Warseer. Yikes, only 41.87% at the time of posting this, believe Tyranids are a good or great army in 5th edition. If we look at my rebuttal of JWolf's army rankings here, you'll see I rated them 3rd and even JWolf has them at 6th whilst Stelek drops them in at 2nd. So let's take a look at why potentially Warseer is confused on this topic (I'd love to see a Tau one, 99% vote as bad? lol). I'm not going to look at everyone's posts but will take a peek at a few that jump out to me as just...well wrong. Note: with the 'average' label we get a much better percentage of 81.92%. Will cover this later.

First off, a ton of people are saying Tyranids are filled with bad choices and are thus left with mono-builds. Bursting your bubble time. Here are the good units and will see use in some sort of list:

• Hive Tyrant
• Tyranid Prime
• Swarmlord
• Hive Guard
• Deathleaper
• Venomthrope 
• Zoanthropes
• Tyranid Warriors
• Termagants
• Hormagaunts
• Tervigon
• Raveners
• Gargoyles
• Harpy
• Carnifex
• Tyrannofex
• Trygon

There are also some less useful units like Genestealers, Shrikes, Mawlocs and Lictors who aren't really terrible but won't see much use. So we're basically looking at roughly 80% of the codex as highly viable. I see your mono-build and call your bluff. Eldar & Tau? They are mono-builds. DE? They use what...4 choices? We've got 17 choices in that list there alone. Let's take a quick quote to target on some specific points of the Tyranid army's "power." This is from Fixer:

"Tournament point of view:

The best competetive lists you can make are broadly average. They'll play against Vulkan marines and most power armor in a fair fight, most Eldar and everyone else that likes to hang around in the middle of the field. However they will seriously struggle against Orks, Imperial Guard, Twin Lash Chaos. Against competetive Space Wolves they possess a chance of survival far lower than that of a Snowball hell filled with fiery anti-freeze.

Worst than that though is the fact that all Tyranid army lists are pretty much the same. There's only a handful of units that really perform on the average-to-good scale and the rest are dire, overpriced or a complete liability. "

First off, what? Eldar armies like to hang around the middle of the field? I think you're confusing Marines and Eldar there. Eldar play stand-off then bum-rush you as needed because you know, they're fast. Why are they going to struggle against Orks when they are the best combat army in the game and Orks attempt to be a combat army? They certainly don't fear Lootas w/3+/FNP on whatever MC needs to stay alive and T-Fexes protected from Missile spam from the Wolves (and again, please join me in combat says my 6+ MCs w/preferred enemy and Lash Whips hanging about). Lash Chaos is a joke, move my Gants around I dare you. Shame my firepower blasts your Oblits/DPs off the board early (you know, those terrible Tyannofexes and Hive Guard? + S9 blasts?). Imperial Guard are a pain for any army not in tanks with their mass of blasts but luckily Tyranids have great suppression fire. I again see your "mono-Tyranid" codex and raise you "the real Tyranid codex" outlined above.

Then we get a couple of posts from people like TheShadowCow who say the codex is wonderful with a lot of options and possibilities with competitive builds. He's been drinking the kool-aid! Then there's Thud...I know he drinks the kool-aid the fiend, and he seems to say the same thing. So let's scroll and find some responses to these posts...*scrolls through a bunch of non-sensical posts, rants about fluff, tea parties, buying new models...* well I actually can't find anything rebutting the fact that Tyranids have options and competitive builds...thank you Warseer. There is a lot of whining and I think a ton of people are annoyed because the fluff sucks (hey, if you've been reading GW army books lately, the fluff is always like this. Whatever army book it is, they CANNOT lose or if they did lose it's some master plan of losing to win) and their hold-over army from 4th edition doesn't work. Awww you've got to adapt and change? Shame. Buy new models? That's annoying, especially with GW's regular price hikes but they have to stay in business. Best way to stay in business? Release new units (or buff old units that no one used) which are good (and balanced for the Greater Good) so the older players go out and buy a little something for their army. They can't live off of new players coming in or older players starting completely new armies. It's just not feasible from a business perspective but if they can get a 2-3 boxes plus some blisters (Tervigons & Hive Guard in this case) from the older players, well you're doing good business. Beyond the fact the 4th edtion 'Nidzilla' list sucked. Hi tanks! Hope I can hurter you!

Let's continue scrolling. I like how some individuals point out Hive Tyrants are now excellent buffer choices and at bet this is called a "lateral"  movement by the naysayers but more often downright piss poor. Right, preferred enemy bubbles suck... Lot of "HQ choices suck," too. Well fine if you don't want to pay 200pts for your army to have a nice combat rock, paroxysm orgy or army buff that's okay but you dislike the Tyranid Prime? Really? <100pts for a rock solid HQ with a brilliant statline to provide wounds for any squad or make Warriors really beasty? Can I stop reading? I'm only on page3! Oh here's a great line from Griffindale:

"The new nids are a fun and interesting looking army. Most nids players that complain either did play or wanted to play an army that was basically, "my army moves towards you until I win". A lack of strategy and imagination is the main reason for most "tyranid whine". The other reason for most of it is some sort of sense of entitlement tyranid players seem to have which I find both mind boggling and disgusting."

Spot on my fantasy lion/eagle thing. Here's another great one from Bonzai:

"No offence to anyone, but I think that a lot of the griping going on is similar to what happened to the Necrons when 5th edition came out. You had a bunch of people who played with the same list, the same way, for years. A couple monoliths and bunch of warriors, and they were set. Over time they became set in their ways. Then 5th edition came around and that play style didn't work anymore. People cried, complained, and screamed that Necrons were nearly unplayable now. That about the time I started with them, and I do very well with them. I had no preconceptions, learned the dex from scratch, and developed my tactics from the ground up. I was not hindered by the 5th edition rule sets, as they were the only rules I knew. Guess what? I do just fine with them. In fact, since I started playing them, our shop has experienced a sort of Necron rennisance, with five or six new players taking them up."

These posts seem to be classic representations of what is going on in this thread. Here's an odd one from Norsehawk:

"Removing eternal warrior from the entire army is definitely more painful than what happened to the chaos codex. removing the ability to deal with 90% of psykers (since they hide in tanks) with the faq was the icing on the cake. Can the SitW even effect a Librarian Dred? he's a vehicle."

This was in relation to comparing the Tyranid "nerf" to the Chaos codex (apples and oranges much?). SitW nerf was a pain but if you're within 12", you should be cracking the tanks soon anyway. Perhaps they wanted you to go buy the Deathleaper model? Gogogo (hey at least they didn't release a DoM model and then "nerf" it. Can you imagine the outcry of grief? lol). Do you know how...just plain jaw droppingly good Tyranids would be with Eternal Warrior? What, I have 3 wound T4 Warriors and Raveners x15 backed up with Tervigons & hordes of minions with dead awesome shooting from my Hive Guard/Tyannofexes & everyone has Preferred Enemy? (2500 pts obviously). Way to create a broken book. The Libby dread isn't in a vehicle though is he? He's a vehicle. Here's another post which sums up why individuals seem to dislike the Tyranid codex:

"I don't give a crap about Hive Guard being good anti-tank units, I don't care about Tervigons and their stupid spawning rules. What ever happened to the alien swarm and why is it replaced by a handful of stupid monstrous creatures. "

Because we play a game of BALANCE. You cannot have 5pt models reliably kill tanks and you therefore need bigger guys to do so. This isn't a realistic game or I'd field 5 TH/SS terminators and win most games. If you want to go ahead and play with your horde, do it but then you'll be complaining about losing and well sorry, you need a balanced army to win in 40k and hordes aren't balanced. You also know that Tyranids generally end up with 100+ models in-game? Isn't that hordey enough? And I've stopped reading and this is turning a bit into a rant. So let's go back to the average percetange we recorded. To refresh your memories it was basically 82%, pretty good. Unfortunately these type of threads (and forums in general really) highlight how vocal the minority is. From these statistics you'd expect more people to be sitting on the whiners but it's more often the other way around (even if they aren't backing up what they are saying). Even then, people touting about the average label seem to compare them to some very odd armies. Marines, tick but they aren't 'average' books people.

I guess what this article is trying to point out is Tyranids are a damn fine codex. Sure the pictures and fluff sucks, but the stuff you pay for (the rules?) is great. Again, there are only a couple no way units and only a few meh units with the vast majority being good if not great choices with competition within FoC slots. Whilst Tervigons may be the best "Troop" choice around, there are armies that can operate without them AND there are a multitude of armies that operate around that core. I really wish people would stop whining about GW and their army books because the list they want to use isn't competitive or the fluff sucks or they nerfed their favorite unit. It happens. I've got 5-10 models of each Aspect Warrior outside of Fire Dragons & Dire Avengers which I never use. I love the models and their fluff but I don't sit here and complain about it. I'll think wistfully and pull them out in fun games for giggles but I take it and move on to what I can do with my Eldar or my other armies. If you don't like what GW has done to the Tyranids, get out of the kitchen.