Tyranid Tips for Dawn of War 2

With Dawn of War 2 having been released a couple of days ago, many of you have now discovered its addictive multiplayer component. And undoubtedly a lot of you have also stumbled across the fact that there are a lot of highly skilled players to be found in ranked matches already. Many of these players, such as myself, have participated in the beta and have formed a better understanding of the various races in their time spent testing.

So for those of you who are newer to this game – or those of you who are simply looking for a little help with their play – I’ve written a couple of guides to get you started on the right track. Based on my own experiences with the beta and full release version of course.

This is the third post in the series and serves as a guide to the most alien and most numerous race in Dawn of War 2: the Tyranid.

Heroes

In Dawn of War 2 you start a game with selecting your hero and the Tyranid have three interesting options to consider. Each of these heroes has its specialty, but the offensively oriented Hive Tyrant does seem to be the popular choice.

The Hive Tyrant is a hulking melee monster that is immune to suppression and can improve nearby Tyranid units. It also comes with the ability to summon a building where Tyranid troops can reinforce and Gaunts even reinforce for free! An excellent frontline warrior with plenty of hitpoints and damage dealing capacity that can also buff and reinforce its troops? No wonder it’s the popular choice.

The Lictor Alpha is a stealth assassin of sorts. It can infiltrate (cloak) and even pull far-away units towards it, to tear them apart in melee. As you might expect from a sneakier hero, it doesn’t have much hitpoints so you’ll generally want it stalking about the map taking down easy targets, away from the frontlines.

The Ravener Alpha is somewhat similar to the Eldar Warp Spider Exarch. It too is a utility hero that can help transport Tyranid troops across the map. But rather than relying on teleports, it relies on tunnels – which can be destroyed. While the uses of such tunnels are many, it is not a particularly popular choice because it’s damage dealing capacity isn’t quite on par with the other heroes.

The Hive Tyrant certainly looks the part.

Teamgames

In teamgames you can expect to be called upon when points need capturing. Contrary to the other races you do not possess any mobile suppression units for easily defending points – you just have a lot of melee units with a couple of ranged support units.

This makes you horrible for defending a point, because you never have an advantage in defense. But it makes you excellent on the offense, with fast moving melee units that tear apart ranged defenses in no-time. So you’ll be the one attacking resource nodes and victory points not in your team’s possession, capturing them and moving on to the next target.

Your role is really quite straightforward. And don’t worry about a double, or even a triple, Tyranid team-up… because your overwhelming numbers and melee prowess can take down nearly anything.

Early game

During early game you’ll want to punch on through to your assigned victory point, usually the one closest to the enemies position. Take over resource and victory points and try to wrench the enemy out of whatever early defenses they might have set up. Break through their lines and mess them up, then run away and reinforce.

You can either opt for overwhelming numbers and speed (mass Gaunts, both Hormagaunt and Termagaunt) or overwhelming power and health (mass Warriors). This is a choice often made early on, because it determines your tactics for the entirety of the match. The most commonly used strategy is a combination of the two, with generally one or two units of warriors which operate more defensively and the rest gaunts, rippers, spores and lictors on allout offense.

An important aspect of the Tyranid to remember is that they barely use any power at all. It is not very important for you to possess any power nodes, other than ensuring your opponent doesn’t have any. Your focus should lie on requisition points and victory points.

Hormagaunt Broods are one of your early units. These critters come in groups of eight, die easily and are a melee force to be reckoned with. A potential strategy is making as many of these and the Termagaunts below as you possibly can to overwhelm hostile forces. Unfortunately they’re particularly effective against vehicles.

Termagaunt Broods are similar to your Hormagaunts. They come in groups of eight and die easily, but they’re ranged units rather than melee units. These are best used in the back of your army, supporting whatever melee force you have engaged in battle.

Warriors are powerful melee units capable of upgrading for anti-vehicle or anti-infantry domination. While they likely won’t be your most prevalent unit they are the backbone of any good Tyranid army. A good tactic is to let Hormagaunts engage the enemy and walk Warriors in right after them, so that the Warriors won’t immediately draw focus fire and can close in to optimal range – in your face – unharmed.

Ripper Swarms are cheap and useful against primarily ranged opponents. They come in groups of way-too-many and their main use is drawing fire, which they do automatically. Think of them as a mobile shield that protects all your other forces until it dies. It’s generally advisable to send them in ahead of the pack, with only one or two squads active at a time.

Spore Mines are floating bombs… and that’s pretty much it. They can float towards enemy forces, activate and then they’ll explode within a few seconds. Good for taking out heavy defenses, but easily avoided by an alert player. Particularly useless against Eldar due to their Fleet of Foot ability on all infantry.

Termagaunts and Hormagaunts are a deadly combination early on

Mid game

Contrary to the other races the Tyranid do not have any vehicles, which makes the difference between tier 1 and tier 2 a bit less noticeable. It might also have to do with the fact that only two relatively rarely used units become available at this stage of the game.

So essentially your strategy should be exactly the same as during early game, you’ll still largely be using the same units. It also means you can postpone your HQ upgrade much longer than any other race, leaving you with more resources to spend on units.

The Lictor is your only unit capable of infiltration or detecting infiltrated units. This is slightly unusual, because other races get infilitration detection and tier 1. These are essentially less powerful versions of the Lictor Alpha: good for sneaking behind enemy lines and nice damage dealers, but frail and easily taken out once engaged in battle.

The Zoanthrope is a powerful artillery unit. It packs quite a punch and can easily dispense with infantry and vehicles alike, but it’s extremely slow and extremely fragile. Obviously it’s meant to be at the rear of your army – firing away from a safe position. It’s always good to have one around, but more than two is wasted money.

Late game

Once you hit this part of the game your potential for wreaking havoc leaps ahead. This is the stage where you can build the Carnifex… a monstrous unit that can tear through anything and everything as long as it doesn’t carry the name Avatar. It’s tough to take down, it’s big and it can literally storm through defenses with its charge ability.

Another unit gained at this stage is the Ravener Brood which is a unit that can burrow underground to stay hidden until the time is right. This unit is powerful in melee, but can’t take much damage (unlike Warriors for example) which means they’re best used for ambushes. They can also be upgraded to become formidable ranged anti-infantry units. Nice to have, but as this stage most players simply go for a whole load of Carnifexes.

Now you still can’t effectively defend a point once you hit tier 3, but your offensive capability spikes so much with a Carnifex at your side that it doesn’t really matter. Build one, waltz all over your opponent(s) and take all of their points.

Have your Hive Tyrant build a brood nest for frontline reinforcements!

Best practices

• Tyranid forces are primarily melee-focused, which means you have to resort to entirely different tactics than with any of the other races. Luring players into traps? Not so likely when the opponent can whittle away at your trap before it springs. Instead try to split up your forces to surround and overwhelm opponents in a zerging blitzkrieg, or simply overpower them in allout frontal assaults that have your ripper swarms soaking damage and your warriors dealing it.
• That doesn’t mean you can’t use ambushes… but this only really comes around during late game as you get access to the Ravener Brood unit. Have them burrow at an ambush site and use some expendable units (ripper swarm / gaunts) to lure them into melee range.
• Lictors and the Lictor Alpha are awesome for sneaky attacks. Infiltrate and sneakily capture resource points well behind enemy lines… or better yet, have them positioned behind an opponents defenses – ready to pull their deployed suppressing/anti-vehicle weapons teams away once your main force hits from the front.
• Use the superpower ‘Without Number’ when you can for ‘free’ units.
• As a Tyranid player you live to zerg. You have so many units that you can afford to lose plenty of them, as long as your squad survives you can easily reinforce it. Especially with the Hive Tyrant around which can build a Brood Nest to reinforce nearby Gaunts for free.
• The only true anti-vehicle weapon you have is the Warrior unit. Have one of them set to tear apart vehicles during mid game and late game… otherwise you’ll just have to swarm them and hope for the best. Fortunately most vehicles aren’t particularly powerful in melee… and your Carnifex can make short work of anything.
• When playing Tyranid you’ll generally want to keep most of your army in one place so that you get the most out of your numerical advantage, a single squad alone out somewhere else is usually easy pickings for any opponent. Send some rippers to capture points for you, because they’re expendable. They’re produced to be cannon fodder anyway.
• Always try to have ripper swarms around. Send them in ahead to draw fire as your melee units close in from behind them.
• Spore Mines need to be carefully timed, so only activate them when you’re certain that you can take out some enemy units.
• To a beginner the Tyranid might seem somewhat difficult to handle. In practice this is not actually true – they are a bit weird to get to grips with because they’re so alien (like the Zerg in StarCraft, for those unfamiliar with Warhammer 40K). But otherwise they’re probably the easiest race to start out with: a mass of cheap units, little hassle with upgrades and next to no micro required for a few quick and easy wins. It does get more challenging in higher level play of course, as you need to compensate a little for your initial lack in ranged power.
• You may not need much power, but you do need some of it for upgrades and advanced units – including Warriors. Try to have at least one power node in your possession, but otherwise focus on requisition points – which you desperately need to build up your forces.

That’s it for the Tyranid. The Orks will follow next, but that is not the end!

After covering the Orks you can also expect a list of general tips for multiplayer gameplay. So keep an eye out for future DoW 2 articles on GameDrone!

You can read the other DoW 2 guides in this series at:

• Eldar Tips for Dawn of War 2
• Orks Tips for Dawn of War 2
• Space Marines Tips for Dawn of War 2

Related Posts:

• March 9, 2009 -- 22 Tips for Dawn of War 2 Multiplayer (0)
• March 3, 2009 -- Orks Tips for Dawn of War 2 (10)
• February 24, 2009 -- Eldar Tips for Dawn of War 2 (19)
• February 25, 2009 -- Space Marines Tips for Dawn of War 2 (30)
• July 24, 2010 -- Resolving StarCraft’s color glitch on modern systems (6)