Ive had a crack at a Tyranid faction.

I made a strategy guide along the lines of the other strategy guides at board game geek.

It has all the bits for print and play

https://boardgamegee...372766#22372766 << nid rules and guide, including card images

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uN6glmBC9xQv3RcqyHdxVpKQMnpbHJW-Cp8zm16exlI/edit?usp=sharing << MOST UP TO DATE RULE DOCO

TYRANID FACTION

STRATEGY : Capillary towers let them recycle ground units and structures into fleets, move somewhere else and then vomit units back down with orbital bombardments, mycetic spores and hive ship factories. The ability to raise an extra resource token through domination also eases the tyranids need to hold large land areas.

Because their ground forces are so vulnerable in small numbers and to orbital bombardment, they might work best when clumped together in just one or two sectors and slowly move en-masse gathering objectives and perhaps not bothering to have any factories on the ground at all. It would be awesome if it worked that way in practice. Play to their strengths and build a hive ship ASAP. Defend by attacking with it. Their home is in space - planets are just food.

TACTICS : Their primary characteristic is a preference for attack and very little defence and a fanatical tenacity/morale, which means you cannot afford to wait them out - they will keep coming until they are destroyed or you run away/die. But they are susceptible to being shot to pieces because they dont generate much defence from cards except by sacrificing units. They have almost no morale generating ability - their main moral source being embodied in unrouted troops. Rally ability is OK (synapse creatures), but not of much value to their fragile infantry.

Overall, they are the most fragile race on the ground, so need their ability to pump up numbers and throw heaps of troops into every battle, and their attack/defence profile means all battles will tend to the bloody on both sides. Bastions (vast tunnel networks) will greatly help to defend crucial planets and objective tokens.

CL0 - (6) gaunts ................. [1] <1> \3/ fragile but incredibly tenacious.

CL0 - (6) devourer cruisers . [1] <2> \3/ exist to protect hive ships

CL1 - (6) tyranid warriors ... [3] <2> \3/ more effective version of the light units

CL2 - (3) carnifex ............... [4] <3> \3/ the damage soaks of the land forces

CL2 - (3) hive ship .............. [3] <6> \4/ huuge! can be upgraded to mobile factory!

CL3 - (3) bio titan ............... [5] <4> \3/ toughest ‘nid land unit available

DOMINATE ABILITY: Gain 1 extra resource token of any type in addition to whatever other resource tokens are acquired.

STARTING TROOPS: (best to use Eldar figures)

2 devourer cruisers

3 gaunts

1 warrior

1 factory

6 materials

Due to the number of ships, this is most easily played with the eldar figures and cards, although I have added card substitutes for Chaos and marines as well.

Get a job at FFG and make this happen please.

Get a job at FFG and make this happen please.

Play it yourself man, using the Eldar figures! and report back here with the results!

(FFG, I will do this this for free to get my name on the box )

here is my first playtest report

https://boardgamegeek.com/article/22187502#22187502

Just a note: Ive modified the faction to use the eldar rather than marines figures, based on a move from 6 carnifexes to 6 devourer cruisers to better reflect their space-going nature.

PLAYTEST 2:

Major difference was change in the unit makeup from 6 carnifexes to 6 devourer cruisers.

This was an epic 6 turn game between orcs and nids. nids won.

WHAT WE KNEW

Orcs would be too strong on the ground, particularly early, so the Nids had to keep them at arms length long enough to get two cities and a hive ship on the board.

EARLY GAME

Setup was not botched by the nids this time, and with the aid of the two starter ships, they managed to set up such that the orcs would have a very hard time orc-rockin for some early kills. The nids built another devourer in the first turn to aid in this stonewalling job. It felt a lot like an eldar defensive play but the quality of the ships was waaaaay less.

The two-world eldar home system was in a corner and proved adequate, although finding that second planet to build a safe 2nd city again proved difficult, and in the end the 2nd city ended up being taken from the orcs by the hive ship (built with multiple forge tokens and 1 city).

Strategically it felt like playing eldar with the difference being rather than teleporting units to the front lines, the front line was the hive ship which by the end of the game had gone from one corner to the opposite far corner, and by which time the orcs had completely taken over the Nids starting system.

The hive ship factory was really, really useful and it was well worth thinking about how best to use it because there were a few left field options that pop up. I believe it probably needs to be nerfed such that you cant build units and structures with the same deploy (technically you can because units are deployed first, then structures, so its not really the ship thats building the structures, but an explicit rule will be introduced to override this)

COMBAT
The nids, trying to play aggressively got thrashed in two early skirmishes against Nobs, although going in with greater numbers (in one case two warriors and 2 reinforcement token VS 1 Nob 1 reinforcement token)... Reason was the the Orcs had Party Wagon by this stage (couldnt move due to the ships so they built up instead). And that extra reinforcement coming in helped a lot through the sheer amount of HP they had, plus if the nids dont throw at least a few shields when they only have tier 0 cards, it makes it really hard.

The lesson is if the nids are behind in upgrade cards, they need to bring *overwhelming* numbers to the fight. If they cant do this, then dont fight, because its really expensive. Losing nids very rarely get a chance to retreat.

Later I found Swarm Lord to be a really good counter to party wagon, and as luck would have it, party wagon failed to make an appearance for 3 combats in a row which really cramped the orc options.

The final huge battle for the winning flag was a carnifex + warrior vs a nob and 2 orc boyz, with 2 reinforcements on both sides. 7 dice on each side and the orcs threw 5G, 2S while the orcs threw 4G, 2S, 1M

unfortunately for the orcs they didnt draw party wagon, so they went for sea of green, adding a reinforcement and routing a gaunt. The nids game plan was simple. throw as many guns at the orcs as they could muster in the first round with an all out shock of impact, and luckily they drew screamer killer and detonated the carnifex straight up for 6(g) and used the morale dice to throw up 3(s) as well.
The orcs were decimated with all orc boys and reinforcements being destroyed and the nob routed. The warrior was safe, and all that was left to do was sacrifice guns and gaunts playing warrior and termaguant to fend off the orcs and win on morale.

Somewhat unlucky for the orcs with the dice rolled on both sides and cards drawn on both sides favouring the nids, and it could have gone the other way fairly easily had the orcs drawn party wagon(s) and/or a bit more defence in the dice.

OVERALL I think it worked really well. the game was tense and swung back and forth. battles were tense with wins and loses on both sides. The Nids felt fairly eldar like in the first two rounds, but the strategy diverged once the hive ship came on board.

In retrospect, the orcs may have benefitted from building a ship or two earlier than they did to engage the nid devourers which are even crappier than onslaughts D = 1/2/3 vs O = 1/3/2

The easiest way to delay that nid hive ship is to attack their resource base ASAP, and dont let them chose the fights.

I feel that the presence of a Nid faction in a game will force all the other players to consider naval options pretty early, even Orcs, so will make for a different feeling game for everyone.

Its possible that an Eldar vs Nids game would be a whitewash for the Eldar due to their huge starting naval superiority and the Nids only marginally better land forces, mostly due to numbers. In this case the Nids would be best served during setup by build orc-like land bridges as much as possible, and investing in bastions to prevent being bombed to pieces.

I made a strategy guide along the lines of the other strategy guides at board game geek.

It has all the bits for print and play

https://boardgamegeek.com/article/22372766#22372766