Building from Leviathan

[Bloody Legionnaire]

Well, here I am; your token SM player who decided to keep instead of get rid of his tyranids half of Leviathan..

In all seriousness, when I started playing 40k with Space Wolves, tyranids were my most consistently played against army and essentially the army I learned to play against, so I am pretty excited for have a small collection I can keep. 

Any tips on adding to what comes in the box for a total of about 2k to 3k points? 

I definitely want to get the new Norn Emissary when it comes out as well as... well the majority of the kits tyranids are getting. Other than that, just focus on units I like and think are cool or are there certain units/builds to be focused on? 

At present I was planning on picking up to add to my collection: The Swarmlord, Tyranid Warriors, Tryannofex, eventually a Trygon, and possibly an exocrine or 2.

 

Edit: Since I didnt mention it, adding more basic troops is a given. I do understand I'm going to need more than what comes in Leviathan in the basic troop category. 

Edited August 20, 2023 by Bloody Legionnaire

[Brother Nathan]

welcome to the hive. 

 

til we get codex and see how many/if any changes happen with data sheets its very hard to know but in my opinion this is how i like to break it down. 

 

what do you need for nids... 

 

and i mean need. some are obvious like a hq/character and we've plenty and mostly everything is decent but not every is good. but with some certain hqs need certain choices or they are pointless. broodlord needs its stealers and becomes a cc beast. tyran helps shooty but can do most anything. deathleaper dosent need anyone. if you don't have 3 squads of termagaunts when you take a tervagon then theres no point. 

 

troops- we dont need... they fill ppints they are cheap they fill board. they are disposable and dont kill much so if you dont plan them to distract/score points you dont need....

 

so what else do you need? scoring and killing. and distraction. never underestimate distraction. tis why the distraction carnifex is such a go term in 40k. and for nids everything an be a distraction carnifex. but back to point.  needs

 

how do you want to score? unfortunately atm the  biovores rules are our top scoring unit in secondary's. they can take objectives but can take table quarters etc. however i expect this to get fixed.so you want enough fast enough units to get through and get points and expecting to take casultys and still do it many many ways to do that. gaunts of all varietys, leapers lictors  etc. id say dont over invest in anything as this stuff tends to die easy so more is better than best. 

 

next how do you intend to kill. and what you are facing. i usually build a generalist force but i need to be able to go from fighting guard infantry spam to khorne bezerkers to titans and tank walls. not easy but nids can do. what kills infantry... everything. next what kills tanks... not much. like really nids dont have huge anti tank. so this area of need really needs considered. we can give everything critical hits wound against tanks which helps but isnt reliable enough with saves. so consider how you want to play to get through armour especially as tanks still shoot in cc now. for shooting the toughness changes hurt some of our staples such as the exocrine (still great though) but youll want to look at tyranofex rupture canon(our best but swingiest weapon) zoanthropes are amazing and all rounders. hive guard can be equiped to do stuff...  we do have more options for cc but thats primarily stealers and monsters 

 

and final thing to note as need consideration... synapse.. our leadership aint great. whilst battleshock aint great and i wouldnt nessiarrily build around it synapse does a fair bit to reduce its effects... many of our synapse units are great so its worth having a spread of them anyway. 

 

help at all? feel free to ask qs and look at the unit of the week series for breakdowns. 

[Bloody Legionnaire]

Thanks for the reply @Brother nathan

 

In all honesty I was a bit hesitant to post right now because I know the index phase we're in is temporal and it's exactly why I was starting out thinking "just pick up models I think looks cool" but since I know nothing about nids I figured I'd do a just in case-ies post to ask. 

Honestly, I don't plan on doing anything competitive with nids, it's literally just a nostalgia and cool factor army and I'm excited to try and paint something different. Than being said, I'm thinking more of a generalist force. I have at least 10 40k armies right now and no less than 4 of those are dedicated assault armies so in an attempt to try something different I'm thinking generalist sounds good. I haven't played a game since 8th (covid really shut down the gaming community where I lived), so I've been out of the playing loop for a while.

[Brother Nathan]

fair enough. well a less convoluted answer then is id prop look at zoanthropes and a scattering of the other big monsters to reinforce  as you prefer. ath there dosent seem to be many terrible units (bar winged prime. hes trash atm) i would say watch to not get anythig that is about to get replaced but im guessing you are aware of that too.  elsewise aye go for what you like. nids are some amazing models and have some class build options. with the tyrannofex being one of my favourite for conversions. theres also a few kits you can get a lot of use out of if you can source say an extra chestpiece like the tyrant kit just needs an extra torso(3d print or second hand...) to make 2 models, zoans just need extra tail section to make zoans and venomthropes.

and nid scan generally do any form of playstyle. my opponent s are usually caught off guard when i out shoot them... they always expect choppy for some reason... 

[Xenith]

8 hours ago, Bloody Legionnaire said:

I was starting out thinking "just pick up models I think looks cool"

 

This is the best way for now! 

 

I'd disagree with @Brother nathan about the cheap troops units - ours can move at reasonable speeds, and things like hormagaunts can, on average, charge a unit on an objective 20" away and flip it with OC2. Very useful and very annoying. Termagants won't kill much, hormies are decent, retaining their AP-1 and 3A, but their real use is to choke up the board and stop your opponent from moving out onto the table. 

 

What nids do badly is anti tank, so the tyrannofex as said would be cool. I think the exocrine is maybe one of the best units in the army for the points, so that's a valid call also - and looks cool - you can also easily magnetise it to also be the haruspex, which has like 16A, and is awesome. Warriors might be decent for backfield synapse and objectve holding, while plinking some wounds off things.