I am back with my continued breakdown of the Tyranids codex.
I am going to make this a short one and just go over the troops selection. Troops are what win games, so let's see what the Tyranids have to offer.
Tyranid Warrior Brood - I love the concept of warriors but they just seem to be missing the mark. I don't feel like a warrior is worth the 30 points. They come with a Devourer and Scything talons so they can kind of do melee and ranged. You can customize them to your liking however. I would suggest giving them a more focused role. One huge improvement is that you don't have to upgrade the entire brood with weapons or biomorphs but can mix and match. You could just upgrade one guy and save the points, good job GW. This is not a horrible unit but they have not really changed from 5th edition. In 5th the reason why warriors were bad is that a missile launchers or anything strength 8 would instant kill them. I mean even just mass small arms fire would kill them. If they would have had Toughness 5 or had a 3+ saves I think these guys would be phenomenal. But as they say, if if and buts were sugar and nuts, we would all have a merry Christmas.
Genestealers Brood - Genestealers, yay! Everyone loves genestealers but...wait. SWEET EMPEROR WHY IS THE BROODLORD SO EXPENSIVE! For 60 points I could have a paladin, not some 4+ save chump. So Genestealers are decent, they have taken a hit because of overwatch and they haven't been given anything to combat that. They only have melee abilities so they are of singular use. Basically they are a melee unit with rending, infiltrate, fleet and move through cover. Infiltrate them in and hope they survive to tear at your opponent's lines.
Termagant - These are the cultist of the Tyranids book. A cheap troop with meager stats that will do their jobs on an objective. What else could you ask for? I would give these guys Devourers and make them something your opponent cant just ignore. It does double their cost to 8 points each but that is a lot of fire power coming from a 30 man group. 90 strength 4 shots is comical. Also as a plus, for every group of 30 Termagants you can take a Tervigon as a troop choice. This is a good unit and will see a lot of play.
Hormagaunts - The melee counterpart of termagants come in slightly more expensive at 5 points. These may be my favorite troop choice in the book. 30 of these guys with toxin sacs will rip through a lot of units. For example let's send them against a 5 man squad of thunder hammer terminators. The gaunts will come in with 90 attacks on the charge, 45 hits, about 23 wounds, killing 4 terminators approximately. The Emperor's finest just got turned into a nom nom meal. If you want to go all out give them Adrenal glands which will make sure you kill all of them in one turn of combat. Though that makes them even more expensive and you usually don't want to kill something in one round of combat. If you do that just means your opponent gets an opportunity to shoot you. These guys have Fleet and Bounding leap, both will help you get where you need to be. At initiative 5 you will cut into most things before they can strike. Their armor save is crud so you are going to need to assault in groups so one can eat the overwatch or just mentally know not all of them will make it in. My one problem with this unit is the atrocity that is the new Scything talons. Instead of letting you reroll your 1's to hit and letting you reroll all to hit with two pair, they are now just AP6. I feel like they wanted to redesign them then just said give them an arbitrary AP value instead. This is insulting. The change affects what units? Boyz? Cultist? Other guants? Anything with a save of 6 wasn't probably going to save them in the first place. But don't let that take away from a great unit. These guys are truly....the heart of the swarm.
Ripper Swarms - Am I the only one who thinks these guys are cute? These guys are swarms and as such they can't score. A troop that can't score isn't worth much in my opinion. They have bad stats and only redeeming factor is that they have 3 wounds. However any strength 6 weapon will instantly kill them so that isn't even going for them. Unless you are doing a themed army I would sit these guys out. Hormagaunts will do the job better.
Alright guys, sorry that this one didn't include the Elites as I was planning but hopefully you enjoyed it. Feel free to comment with your thoughts. Follow me for more ramblings or my next showcase if you enjoyed this.