Tyranids - 1k - MaMamadness

This was a list that I created for a new Tyranid player on Reddit. It's a basic 1k point list that features many of the "must haves" found in nearly every Tyranid list.

HQ:

Tervigon (catalyst + toxin sacs + adrenal glands) - 195pts

Elites:

1x Hive Guard - 50pts

1x Hive Guard - 50pts

1x Zoanthrope - 60pts

Troops:

11x Gaunts - 55pts

Tervigon (catalyst + toxin sacs + adrenal glands) - 195pts

14x Genestealers - 196pts

14x Genestealers - 196pts

total: 998pts

Genestealers are nasty. Everyone knows it. What makes them crumple? Any type of shooting attack. The Tervigons casts Catalyst on the Genestealers to help mitigate that a bit. You start the game and you infiltrate the genestealers anywhere from 6-12'' in front of your army (make sure they are within the 12'' catalyst range and in cover).

The lone 10 man gaunt squad is for holding down any back field objectives. Tervigons stand behind the Hive Guard to net the Tervigons a 4+ cover. The Tervigons spawn the gaunts in front of the Hive Guard to give them a cover save. The Zoanthrope stands behind the Tervigons and should be completely out of LOS and will just be used to zap any tough armor or to supply Synapse if needed. Zoanthropes are a week unit and suffer the same problems that warriors do (missiles). The 3+ invul helps them but make sure you keep them out of LOS as much as possible.

The Tervigons should be running each turn. You want to keep the pressure up. A tervigon can rock most basic squads simply due to how resilient they are. Be careful of multicharges when a squad will charge your Tervigon and the gaunts. The Guants will have poisoned attacks which will make them fairly nasty and with furious charge from adrenal glands (they gain the poison and FC from sticking close to their mama's) will make them pretty nasty to mess with (don't forget they will get poisoned rerolls against most opponents on the charge.

Unfortunately, Tyranids really don't have many options. So many of their units are blatantly bad or exceptionally good. So you often time get lists that are a bit pigeon holed into using the same several units in differing sizes and what not. It's a bit spammy, but it's one of the few ways to get a semi-competitive build.

I give this list a 6.5 Goodbeary out of 10. It's really no fault of the list, but more the codex. There are simply no cheap solutions for de-meching an opponent in this codex. This list only has 3 ranged options for destroying transports which in the long run will not last. Relying on the momagons and the genestealers to break armor is not a solution in 40k 5th edtion.