Rise of the Swarm

Well after my last 2 outings I was disappointed with the results of my chaos army. While playing my chaos I went 3-1 at the Adepticon Gladiator, 1-0-2 at the Adepticon Championships and 1-1-3 at the Slaughter in Space. 

My 2 losses have been to Dark Eldar, but my ties have been mostly due to the missions. The TOs are writing missions that take a lot of Troops to achieve, and ones where you need to be able to move quickly. My chaos has a lot of foot slogging, and at both tournaments the lack of troops really hurt me. 

But you say that Chaos won the Slaughter in Space, well yes they did, but it was one of the only few builds that win now with chaos. He took a Mech Chaos list with Plague Marines being his troops. He has Mech for speed, and one of the most durable troops in the game. I own 0 nurgle units, and my army is based around Tzeentch which is one of the worst builds that you can do. Thousand Sons are gimped because everyone now gets a 4+ cover save which diminished both their AP 3 bolters, and their 4+ inv save. Add to this that all of the 5^th edition codexes now have anti-psycher wargear, and all of them have new psychic powers that chaos are unable to stop. I was playing against Eldar and my Aspiring Sorcerer lined up a Winds of Chaos template into a Pathfinders squad, and because of runes of warding I lost him to a perils of the warp. That is a ton of points just wasted in the dead sorcerer, and it lets the pathfinders survive, and it cripples my Thousand Sons squad. 

So I thought I would re-evaluate my prohibition on 5^th edition codexes. I looked around and I am seeing a lot of Space Marine players, Imperial Guard players, and a ton of Space Wolf and Blood Angels players. The odd thing is that I am not seeing to many Tyranid players. So I am thinking about un-retiring my 'Nids.

3^rd edition Tyranids

I started collecting my Tyranids back in 3^rd edition. I was playing Thousand Sons as my main army, and they were totally opposite to them. Instead of being slow, hard and small, they were fast, soft and a horde. I had a big jump start with the army because the GW store in Glendale had a special event each week where you bought a box of troops and each week they had a small tournament with them and at the end if you won the tournament you received a free box of models. So I won a lot and had most of my army paid for with my winnings.  

4th edition Tyranids

I did not go very far with the Tyranids in 3^rd edition, but when the 4^th edition army book came out, I built a Godzilla army and started to crush people in RTTs. I won so much in fact, that I retired that army. It got to the point where my opponents hated the army so much that I was getting killed on comp and sports that I was not winning even though I was going 3-0 with a well painted army. My Tyranids had a brief resurrection a few years ago at Adepticon. We put together a stealer-shock list and had some success with it. I liked it so much that I brought it to Games Day LA and was 2-0 and playing on the top table when I drew Greg Sparks in the last round and we fought to a tie and had Scott Simpson who was playing on table #2 leap over both of us. 

5^th Edition

Shortly after Gamesday LA 5^th edition came out, and I again retired my Tyranids. I wanted to stay away from my Tyranids and any other 5^th edition army, but with the missions that TOs are putting up, I need to play a new army. 

Tyranid play

Pros

I kind of like the Tyranids because with the demise of Orks, and the rise of Mech, people are moving away from anti-horde wargear. Now that the Space Wolves and Blood Angels are fighting it out with IG for army superiority, it seems like the Tyranids can slip in now that everyone is trying to stop MEQ/Mech armies. Tyranids also have a lot of good troop options, and specialty units that can fill a lot of rolls.  

Cons

One of my big concerns is that with the tournament points limits going up to 2000 points, in 2-2.5 hours, how difficult will it be to get full games in? The advantage that the 'Nids have is that they are an assault army for the most part. That means that shooting armies will be cowering in the back of their deployment zone. The problems I had with my Eldar is that they are a shooting army and I was lay back and then I have to move up at the end of the game, but if the game went short I could not get to any objectives. For once in my life it might be good if I slow-play ;) The other thing is that if I fight an assault army there will be a big scrum in the middle of the table and that should sort itself out in a short time. Another problem is that armies do better when they fit your play style, and I am a shooter, not an assaulter. I am not aggressive in my game play and I need to change if this army is going to work for me.