could someone do a quick guide to playing tyranids?

[dmXD]

build order, what units to make, when to expand, what the units basic roles are, etc.

[sarrowquand]

Early game units that I've been using:
Termagaunts: (aren't great at scouting but are expendable enough for intel) ok place holders, only lose morale when not under synapse control

Hormagaunts: good damage vs infantry, can put a little extra hurt on fortresses but not ideal, cheap, but instinctive behaviour means they lose HP every turn with no synapse link

Both of them have move through cover which helps them move up quickly.

Gargoyles very good short ranged damage output, jump infantry, not that speedy , lose movement every turn with no synapse (which is a pain for reinforcements)

Tyranid Warriors: So very mediocre. will always feel like they are letting you down a little but they are a cheap synapse you can build quickly. No move through cover so they slow your swarm down.

Tyranid Prime: Very useful hero unit. This synapse unit seems to do most of the heavy lifting in the early game.

Hive Tyrant: Very cool monster , synapse hero, also flies. A couple of Space Marine Hunter tanks will shoot it down so quickly. It can boost its synapse range which might be essential the next time I play.
.........
I've been getting these guys more mid game (really need to get Carnifexes earlier)

Haruspex: Almost worthless, dies way to easily to heavy fire power. Is quite happy gobbling up light infantry because it gets any damage it inflicts back as health. Eats itself when out of synapse control (apparently getting buffed soon)

Carnifex: My go to monster in my current playthrough. Does decent melee damage, has three weapon upgrade reasearches, bone tail seems the best. Dies a little too easily so you'll want to be able to pump out replacements and start an assault with enough of them to aborb losses. eats itself without synapse help.

Lictors: Best Tyranid unit I've made. Ignore overwatch, move through cover and have a lot of move points. Damage reduction vs ranged attacks. Melee all light units to death in one turn or maybe two (meganobs managed to hold onto one or two hp after one hit). Still do decent damage vs armoured foes. Only lose morale from being out of synapse range.

Raveners Seem to be inferior at everything I want from them. They do have 5 move and move through cover so one time a unit shot out of one of my cities and wrecked some Landspeeders that weren't expecting it, (I also didn't get the gun upgrade for them yet). They eat themselves without synapse and just seem to be worse than Lictors at everything while costing almost as much in time and resources.

Malathropes Very useful unit that needs its own building. Synapse creature that founds cities, eats tiles for food at the cost of influence. Has a tentacle attack that reduces an enemy unit's damage and number of attacks by 50% (I almost always use it for this), a toxic attack that is good vs infantry and has a long cool down, and a basic attack which is weak. Any enemy killed within three tiles of it grant you a few research points. Amazing utility unit, little squishy vs heavier stuff or focus fire.

There are other gribblies but I haven't used them yet.

Expansion: I'm still learning this but you seem to want to get your cities up quickly and have early research options that help you get fast growing cities with lower loyalty penalties. Having one city feels crippling with Nids because you really need stuff from Infantry, Hero, Thrope and Monster buildings for a good swarm. Having three cities that can bring in resources and pump out units as early as possible seems to be the way. With loyalty buffs maybe getting to four or five would be sensible but I didn't get that far yet.

[Devin]

Very nice sarrowquand, I agree with most points made here.

I'll expand it with a few more:

Tervigon:
A healer / summoner hero. Deals somewhat weak melee hits, but has a ton of health for a hero.
Can heal another plus itself every turn, so very hard to kill. Summons termigants, which seem to not be temporary like some summons other factions have. Can buff nearby termigants but they're still weak cannon fodder regardless.

Zoanthrope:
A powerful "mage" unit. Has 2 damage dealing skills that seem to share a cooldown. (usable every other turn). One has range 2 and is a blast attack, good against swarms, the other is a range one huge armor piercing chunk of damage. Can also use a few debuffs, one of which requires research.

Exocrine:
A monstrous ranged attacker. Deals only moderate damage but has the distinction of being one of few tyranids actually able to deal decent damage at range.

[sarrowquand]

It is also worth noting that because most Tyranid weapons are either range 1, or close combat, and because you often need synapse creatures to keep your minions in line, you need to be carful about how you position your units to support each other and to attack the enemy; and to pick the ground you fight on carefully, choke points are bad for Tyranids but vast forests and ruins mitigate the enemy range advantage.

It also means that a slightly cheap but crummy synpase unit like a Warrior feels less wasted sitting behind your guys providing a synapse link.

Quest spoiler:

When doing the Tyranid quest it is very easy to get to the 'survive the invasions' part even if you don't want to. And the invaders can be a bit of a pain if you don't have Carnifexes and Lictors.

[Jey]

I honestly feel the Carnifex to be underwhelming since I discovered the power of the Lictor. Same cost (80 biomass), but the Lictor ignores control zone (i.e : He doesn't get stopped at adjacent cases, and if an ennemy is hidden by the war fog on a case you go on... They just go through the ennemy unit). And his instinctive behaviour is "just" a loss of moral.
Plus the Carnifex requires three researches to be really dealing damage, while the Lictor kills his way through about anything (be it infantry or tank) immediately after being researched.
A bit squishy. But that's okay because he cancels Overwatch.

Yup'. The Lictor is just great at scouting AND murdering anything that he discovers (including cities)

And the Tyrannofex provides the core of your army. They tank pretty well (better than Carnifex if I remember right), and they deal decent damages at 1 tile like at 3 tiles. (while the Carnifex is.... underwhelming at 2 tiles)

You add one or two hive tyrants to take care of the synapse needs and give some boosts, one or two tervigon to heal. One or two Tyranid Prime to put a -50% armor on an annoying ennemy, and you're good to go. Crush them all.


The Hormagaunts are in my opinion useless. They don't provide anything better than Termagants (yeah they ignore river. Big deal), they are more expensive, they have a bad instinctive behaviour, they can't overwatch on Orks (while termagants do that very well, and are a huge pain for all the Boys out there).... Yeah no, don't waste your biomass on them.
Gargoyles could be more useful (because Jump is a good skill)... But then again their instinctive behaviour is a pain, when you can focus on getting the Tervigon soon, and just spam termagants for FREE.

[FullMetalSlag]

Dont forget the mighty Trygon! Not only does it sick melee damage and is very fast, its Brood Tunnel Ability means that all of your reinforcements can pop out at the frontline of fighting. Once you seeded the map with tunnels, you are by far the quickest faction.

[Hide]

Originally posted by Iffu:

Gargoyles could be more useful (because Jump is a good skill)... But then again their instinctive behaviour is a pain, when you can focus on getting the Tervigon soon, and just spam termagants for FREE.

Gargoyles are insane in the early game. Yeah, they (ironically) slower than the rest of the bunch but they deal huge amounts of damage and their blinding poison is very strong as it decreases the accuracy of everything it hits in melee (even buildings).

Other than that: Exocrines - while they deal mediocre damage on range they also can go into melee where they deal a lot of extra damage so don't shy away from putting them right next to the enemy only because they are supposed to be an "artillery" unit.

[Graushwein]

Hive Crone description says that it is a synapse creature, yet it is not. For the cost, damage seems a bit light. They need to add the Shrike, which is a flying Tyranid Warriors.

They should have added Genestealers too.

Exocrine vs. Tyrannofex. I find that the expensive Tyrannofex damage is almost as low as the Exocrine. Tyrannofex is rarely able to shoot 3 squares due to ruins and forests. I don't use Tyrannofex anymore.

Carnifex is pretty good for the cost. If you send it in first, DEEP into enemy lines, to soak up overwatch to protect your heroes, it is worth it over Lictors.

Otherwise, I just want to echo (agree with) what has already.

Lictors are pure win...

Hormagaunts losing health when out of synapse is stupid. I'd be fine with them losing morale or maybe even doing less damage, like the Lictors.

Termagants are good, but understandably bad during mid-late game.

Tyranid Warriors are too squishy. If their synapse was 2 squares it would okay, or come with a respectable range 2 weapon. But because 1/4th your units need to be warriors, they just aren't worth using due to low damage and squishiness.

Gargoyles would be fine if there were flying Tyranid Warriors. But losing the ability to fulfill their core role when out of synapse was a bad design choice. Have them do less damage, like Lictors, or lose morale.

Raveners aren't what they should be, glass cannons. In fact, they should have comparable damage to current lictor, while keeping the same squishiness.

Lictors need to do a bit less damage to armored units.

Trygons are good.

Malanthrope needs a button toggle that makes it automatically consume tiles without you having to do it manually every turn, and only alert you if no tiles left. Big quality of life thing here...

[sarrowquand]

Originally posted by Warlord:

Dont forget the mighty Trygon! Not only does it sick melee damage and is very fast, its Brood Tunnel Ability means that all of your reinforcements can pop out at the frontline of fighting. Once you seeded the map with tunnels, you are by far the quickest faction.

Just got a chance to use Trygons, the tunnels are great for tactical flexibility.

[Graushwein]

Could the title of the thread be changed to Tyranid Unit Evaluation?

[Milk]

anyone know how to counter Valkyrie spam? playing a 2v2 game as 2 tyranids vs space marines and astra militarum. i managed to kill SM pretty early on and thought it'd be a cake walk after that. but then i started to get swarmed by tanks and valkyries.
i've managed to hold the line somewhat but im being slowly pushed back as i can't take down these flying units fast enough, and now i've got baneblades coming so i'm probably screwed.
are Nids underpowered at the moment? because it seems like it to me.

[Devin]

Honestly I'm not sure what tyranids are supposed to do about air units.

Also not quite sure what the best build order is at the start. Anyone got a good one?

[Jey]

Well there isn't much choice. Against air units, it's Tyrannofexes, Hive Tyrants and maybe Hive Crones and Exocrines. (Personnally I have been disappointed by Hive Crones, but who knows)

I can't say whether Tyranids are underpowered, but at medium difficulty, I don't feel any difficulty yet.

[Quasicide]

Tyranids are the most powerful faction in the game, but their units are uneven; some are lackluster, while others are death machines.

[Shin]

My favorite unit (besides the extremely powerful lictor) are the Zoanthropes. Their warp shields soak up a lot of damage and their abilities are very useful. The range one laser cuts through vehicles and they can also debuff enemies to protect your squishy units. Nerve shock is very good and worth the research.

Also Malanthropes are also very versatile with their range dmg reduction aura to help your units survive ranged a bit more and can debuff enemies. Both support units are a must have in the tyranid army if you have problems against ranged armies.