List of Lists II: ETC 2013 Tyranid Lists

It was too perfect not to use

While looking into building a list for NOVA this year I got a little caught up in the ETC 2013 games and did a good bit of list research, which, with only a couple months left before the rumored new Tyranid release, I thought it would be worthwhile to share.  Follows a compilation of the Tyranid lists from this year's ETC 2013.  The tournament format is fascinating in terms of how the teams are set up with a mix of lists to deal with the pairing process.  Some are all comers lists with a good chance of winning vs. anything, some are essentially tar pit lists known as "defenders" - built to minimize the point giveaway for any bad matchups, and some are the opposite:  "attacker" lists built to take advantage of bad matchups and score max points.  The below lists can fall into any of these categories, but one and all are competitive when piloted right.  21 of 28 nations (teams) brought a Tyranid list, ranking 6th overall both in average points scored, and in popularity of primary detachment.

I pulled these from the complete list of all armies found here, removed the points values and cleaned them up for simplicity, removing the Army Primary Detachment in all cases except Latvia's - which was worth keeping ;) I also added links to the player blogs if I could find them.  There's also a breakdown of the Tyranid lists on a French forum here, with some commentary on the role of each list and how it plays if you're Google Translate-inclined, and a difficulty rating with a scale of: + easy, ++ average, and +++ or more as difficult to handle.  I included the difficulty rating and role here.

Lists after the break:

NOVA Open 2013 - Panic, Painting, and Narrative batrep #1

Undersea-Themed Scratch-built Counts-As Daemons Army

Another NOVA Open in the can.  Me - I'm hobbling around my house with blisters the size of quarters, muscles aching, mentally and physically wiped out - but with an awesome blissful euphoria.  Three things that always make me feel good are giving back to others, gaming, and hobbying:  so this is a psychic high to match the huge psychic income deposit that was made this weekend with all three.

A quick note about the top pic:  this was a quick snap of an undersea-themed Chaos Daemons army - utterly unique in a huge (220+ armies just at the GT) field of creative awesomeness.  There always seems to be one that breaks all the conventional rules and stands out.  There were dozens of fantastic armies though - and more than a couple that I had to stop and gawk at almost every time I walked around (which was a lot).
I figured I'd do this more like a journal - as I'm too mentally fragged for anything like normal organization - and because I'm still floored at how much painting I was able to do in a ridiculously short time and wanted to capture it.  Normally I'm pretty slow.  So I made my last post on Wednesday evening late just before leaving for the hotel, with several of my units in various states of belonging to Hive Fleet Snowbank, but a list I felt would be fun to play more than it would be competitive...