My Dirty Secret: Tyranids

<p>&lt;p&gt;I have a mildly guilty confession: I'm really a bug-lover at heart. They were my first, real army when I got back into warhammer after a long, long hiatus, and I just fell head over heels. The fluff, the models, the variance in gameplay from never ending swarm to elite, precision strikes and units that put full, specialist squads to shame. That, and damn near everything is plastic, and cheaply bought used. These things dragged me in, but the hassle of stripping and repainting a horde bugged me, so I decided to get out of them. Just as I sell them, a new codex gets announced and I get a smoking deal on three tervigons, two trygons, six hive guard, several boxes of gants, and a flying tyrant all in box. So I am back, and slowly building and painting the swarm a squad at a time, and starting to think tactics using what I have learned running the doomtrain with the screaming claws. Here are what I've started coming up with.</p>
<p>1) Board Control.<br>
The dark kin do it well with mobility and firepower. Tyranids have the wonderful capability of pouring models into every nook and cranny, and neatly snipping off my opponents options with a knife of expendable units. Tervigons will serve a pivotal role in this regard by reinforcing my extended lines, replenishing the troops, and providing a hardy synaptic node to keep the line from folding without a significant push. In games with short edge deployments, I can make a concerted effort to cover the whole four foot battleline, and literally sweep the opposition.</p>
<p>2) Objective Control<br>
The screaming claws are wonderful, but they win by killing. Holding anything isn't viable, the low toughness and lack of armour makes them too susceptible to low grade fire to be viable control units. Tyranids suffer the same weakness in gants, but counter it by halving the squad costs, replenishing troop counts with tervigons, and making everything fearless. I can actively play a game of out-controlling my opponent, by putting mcs, mass termagants, and warriors on any objective I want.</p>
<p>3) Assault Swarms<br>
The screaming claws put more pressure on more flexible targets then any army I have seen, including a circus. What they lack however, is a viable assault line. Wyches are good, but expensive for their fragility. The army lacks tyranids ability to simply use numbers as a means of victory. Fearless hordes of poisonous strength four attacks make tyranids unbelievable at close range. Add in the number of psykers with buffs and the options for truly elite units like the swarmlord or bonesword lashwhip warriors/prime, and you have in my opinion a top tier assault army. Adepticon featuring two nid lists in the top sixteen supports my opinion.