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SoB v Tyranid need help


Mosk

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Today is the first time I have ever played against rippers. The army was 1 hive tyrant, 2 gaunt squads (small small small squads all with devourers) 3 carnifex, and then a ton of rippers.

 

Rippers are awesome but flamers should take em out right? Yes, but how else can you take em out, from a far first?

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SoBs really shine against Tyranids. Tactics are to let them come to you.

 

When I deploy (whether first or second) I will spread out the forces to encourage my opponent to remain spread out as well, however even if he remains in a small footprint, it is still easy to defeat him. On the first turn you want to feign weakness, bring your Rhinos and troops tighter and hidden behind cover. Have one or two Rhinos with Sisters separate and "pretend" to flank his army. Baiting Tyranids is important for getting his army to be where you need them to be. Use Exorcists (and/or Retributors) in the shooting phase to attempt to widdle down his Monstrous creatures focusing on the tank buster shooters first and firing from cover.

 

As his army gets closer, you need to once again bait him into assaulting your Rhinos. Drive two Rhinos so that they move over 6" and remain just within assault range so that he cant surround them (best to link them together end on end if you can) and yet still needs 6's to hit them in assault. Continue using Exos (and/or Retributors) to hit Monstrous creatures. If he has Monstrous Creatures closing in for assault that are designed for it, use your Seraphim to tie them up. Assault them and use SotM to keep your 'phim alive for your assault and his subsequent assault phases. If they are still alive at the end of his assault phases, they should always be hitting and running.

 

Once he has closed to assault, he should be engaged with your Rhinos primarily (except in the case of the Monstrous Creatures). If you have played your Rhinos correctly, you should be able to bail out on your movement phase and hit multitudes of bugs with a single flamer template (multiple templates are almost guaranteed to decimate the entire squad) and double tap the hell out of them. Once you clear out the majority of the first waves of bugs, you should be able to use Divinely Guided double taps to finish off Monstrous Creatures (since you will likely need 6's to wound, may as well make them AP1 to hurt even more).

 

After the front wave of Nids is wiped out (with more than likely minimal losses from the Sisters), you should be able to clean up the rest with your remaining Seraphim and still running Rhinos. Don't forget you can also move Rhinos up to 6" and still fire weapons out the top hatch like your Heavy Flamers.

 

 

Oh, and as far as your question on Rippers... Since they are swarms with a 6+ armor save, all of your template wounds are going to destroy two of the 3 wounds of each model. Add in the fact that you will likely be double tapping and multiple templating (Flamer, Combi-flamer, Heavy Flamer options), and you should have no trouble wiping them out in a single shooting phase.

 

 

 

JUST REMEMBER! USE YOUR RHINOS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE! That is all...

Like Togeloo says, but some things i'd like to mention:

 

Flamers are nice against Nids, but still keep those IPs on Seraphims and Canoness. Best way to use Seraphim against Nids is to counter assault any nids that manage to get to the CC and to hunt MCs with IPs. This means that flamers would be useless in Seraphim squads.

 

Shoot Genestealers first. Anything Genestealers assault will most likely die. It is possible that land raider is nowdays safe from them, but even so, don't take chances. Another priority target is that flying hive, take that down with Exorchists.

 

As mentioned, flamers are nice, but massed bolters and heavy bolters can do much the same and it is lot easier to do it.

i guess it depends on the quality of the 'nid player.

 

if your opponent knows how to play his bugs you WILL be torn apart.

 

be very thankful your opponent didn't use genestealers, as they will shred rhinos and their occupants, and no, land raiders are not safe from rending claws :sweat:. rippers are more of an annoyance than anything else. they're great at tying up ICs in assault for multiple rounds so the big bugs can get into range. shooting at them if there are any other targets is generally a waste.

 

also don't forget that it's not uncommon for nids to have fleet or other methods of extending their movement, hell some units can even get a 12" assault. basically, you WILL be assaulted on the 2nd turn unless you play on a big table (more than 6x4) and keep hiding away in the farthest corner.

 

a CC flying hive tyrant or a well equipped sniper fex will punch through a land raider too.

 

as ridiculous as it sounds, exorcists missiles auto-kill rippers due to doubling of their toughness.

and no, land raiders are not safe from rending claws :)

 

They are safe from Stealer rending unless they have toxin sacs (and even then they can only glance at best), but it's rare that people give their Stealers toxin.

 

That rhino tactic that Toogeloo is fine until you face dedicated CC Carnifex, which will have 6 attacks on the charge, so even hitting the Rhinos on 6's means they should average 1 hit per assault, and with strength 10 that's an auto penetrate. Even the Tyrant with str6 will destroy rhinos incredibly quickly.

 

On the subject of Rippers, ignore them until you have to deal with them. They have very short ranged guns (if he even gave them guns), and aren't scoring units. Also, as said, they are vulnerable to blasts ans templates, meaning they take 2 wounds for every wound scored. They are also only t3, and if that wasn't enough, they don't benefit from Synapse. This means that anything str6+ will insta-kill a base, and anything with a template or blast that isn't str6+ will still do double wounds.

and no, land raiders are not safe from rending claws :D

 

They are safe from Stealer rending unless they have toxin sacs (and even then they can only glance at best), but it's rare that people give their Stealers toxin.

 

That rhino tactic that Toogeloo is fine until you face dedicated CC Carnifex, which will have 6 attacks on the charge, so even hitting the Rhinos on 6's means they should average 1 hit per assault, and with strength 10 that's an auto penetrate. Even the Tyrant with str6 will destroy rhinos incredibly quickly.

 

On the subject of Rippers, ignore them until you have to deal with them. They have very short ranged guns (if he even gave them guns), and aren't scoring units. Also, as said, they are vulnerable to blasts ans templates, meaning they take 2 wounds for every wound scored. They are also only t3, and if that wasn't enough, they don't benefit from Synapse. This means that anything str6+ will insta-kill a base, and anything with a template or blast that isn't str6+ will still do double wounds.

Lungboy here has pretty much hit the nail on the head. The weakness of your opponent's list is that he's only got 2 scoring units and he's obviously trying to go for victory by total and utter detruction. So for 2 games out of 3 he's at an immdeiate disadvantage.

 

The other thing I'd have to say that I find invaluable when facing nids is the concept of making your opponent bunch his units together (giving away some of my secrest here to my opponents but I'm sure they've noticed this!). This means some crafty deployment and a tactic of funnelling your opponent through the use of terrain and troop withdrawal. Make them do the running, hit them hard and repeatedly with fire and then back away! It's a sign of a confident general if you know that rushing headlong towards your enemy does not always mean victory.

 

Finally with this roster the old addage of 'shoot the big ones first' applies totally. Go for the tyrant asap (thus removing the only synapse on the table!) then focus on the fex, but do it one at a time. Remember, a fex with 1 wound can still do as much damage as a fex with full wounds, so pick a MC and keep chipping away at it untill it falls, then move to the next one.

a Close combat carnifex normaly has Crushing claws, Scything talons and tusks and a 2+ save and toughness 7.

 

so d6+2 on the charge.

 

really nasty people add fleshhooks and assualt into terrain.

 

Those things are a good reason for Seraphim to carry IPs and Evicerators.

and no, land raiders are not safe from rending claws :)

 

They are safe from Stealer rending unless they have toxin sacs (and even then they can only glance at best), but it's rare that people give their Stealers toxin.

 

That rhino tactic that Toogeloo is fine until you face dedicated CC Carnifex, which will have 6 attacks on the charge, so even hitting the Rhinos on 6's means they should average 1 hit per assault, and with strength 10 that's an auto penetrate. Even the Tyrant with str6 will destroy rhinos incredibly quickly.

 

On the subject of Rippers, ignore them until you have to deal with them. They have very short ranged guns (if he even gave them guns), and aren't scoring units. Also, as said, they are vulnerable to blasts ans templates, meaning they take 2 wounds for every wound scored. They are also only t3, and if that wasn't enough, they don't benefit from Synapse. This means that anything str6+ will insta-kill a base, and anything with a template or blast that isn't str6+ will still do double wounds.

 

I would much rather have a CC Fex hit my Rhino than my girls. The point of the Rhino tactics against bugs is to ensure the bugs attack the Rhinos and not the girls inside. So great, the Fex just tore up my ride, but guess what? Now I can bail out and lay 8 Double taps, a Melta/Flamer, and a Heavy Flamer into it. Divine Guidance since I need 6's to wound anyways, and I should put a decent dent in that Fex. Oh, but guess what, I also stated you should have two Rhinos doing this, so that means I have not just one squad double tapping into mister carni, but two.

 

Trust me, I have dealt with this scenario a plethora of times, and no CC Fex has ever survived my Bolter wielding might. Rhinos are your strongest asset against Bugs, whether you are getting charged by hordes and then bail out to catch 10+ bugs per template, or if you are dealing with MCs and just need to lay every round of ammunition you can into one. Tyranid armies are like the Rock to the Sister's Paper, and I stand by that.

But if you have them end to end as you described, when the Carnifex destroys the first Rhino the exit is blocked by the second rhino so the squad inside is destroyed too.Plus any decent Nid player will have a unit of Stealers ready behind the Fex to engage any Sisters that do make it out of the wrecked Rhino.

Ok, first of all, Rhinos have 3 Exit points, so a Fex cannot stand around the entire vehicle, nor should you assume that even if they are end on end (even if they only have one exit point) that a player would ever block his exit points completely, end on end could mean the fronts of the rhinos are touching too. Being end on end makes it so that I can bail out of the Rhino with it creating a wall between me and the enemy. Second of all, you cant declare an assault after you destroy a vehicle in order to attack the girls inside; all assaults must be declared before at the beginning of the assault phase (its not the same as the shooting phase). Finally, you make the assumption that the Fex is going to wreck or explode the Rhino in the first place. Using your numbers, it only has a 16% chance of hitting, which then leaves only a 33% chance to wreck or destroy the Rhino.

 

 

Even if there are Genestealers nearby, I still have the second Rhino AND any other Rhino clad units and Seraphim nearby. As I said, you feign weakness and force the opponent to you, so all of your units are nearby. Your Exorcists should have been picking off units, including the possible CC Fex as it got closer. Sister's do have the advantage that is really only offset by both a better general and bad dice rolling.

 

 

One last thing, in objective games, don't be in a rush to get to them, focus on your opponent first. In my experience, players who focus on getting obejectives early, end up spreading their forces too thin and become easier to move through. Get in the habit of grabbing Objectives on turn five while trying to fight within 15" of them for turns 3 and 4 and trying to keep your units clustered together. Don't get greedy either, keep a count of how many troops your opponent has and always make sure you can hold one more than him without contestation, so if you focus on killing troops only, you can actually win the game with just a single uncontested objective near your deployment zone.

Ok, first of all, Rhinos have 3 Exit points, so a Fex cannot stand around the entire vehicle, nor should you assume that even if they are end on end (even if they only have one exit point) that a player would ever block his exit points completely, end on end could mean the fronts of the rhinos are touching too. Being end on end makes it so that I can bail out of the Rhino with it creating a wall between me and the enemy. Second of all, you cant declare an assault after you destroy a vehicle in order to attack the girls inside; all assaults must be declared before at the beginning of the assault phase (its not the same as the shooting phase). Finally, you make the assumption that the Fex is going to wreck or explode the Rhino in the first place. Using your numbers, it only has a 16% chance of hitting, which then leaves only a 33% chance to wreck or destroy the Rhino.

 

 

Even if there are Genestealers nearby, I still have the second Rhino AND any other Rhino clad units and Seraphim nearby. As I said, you feign weakness and force the opponent to you, so all of your units are nearby. Your Exorcists should have been picking off units, including the possible CC Fex as it got closer. Sister's do have the advantage that is really only offset by both a better general and bad dice rolling.

 

 

One last thing, in objective games, don't be in a rush to get to them, focus on your opponent first. In my experience, players who focus on getting obejectives early, end up spreading their forces too thin and become easier to move through. Get in the habit of grabbing Objectives on turn five while trying to fight within 15" of them for turns 3 and 4 and trying to keep your units clustered together. Don't get greedy either, keep a count of how many troops your opponent has and always make sure you can hold one more than him without contestation, so if you focus on killing troops only, you can actually win the game with just a single uncontested objective near your deployment zone.

Well, I'd have to say that there's a whole world of complex to a plan that invloves backing rhinos up against each other. The problem with this whole concept is reliant on a number of things.

Firstly it doesn't account for what happens when the rhinos are popped/shaken/immobilised. Venom cannons may not be the tour de force that they once were but they can still do the business on light armour as can barbed stranglers. When this happens it's over to plan B, if there is a plan B.

The next thing is the effect of up to 10 sisters firing on an MC. I'd have to say that you are overestimating the ability of your squads effectively using DG to big bug hunt. I'm not 1 for mathhammer but with a squad of 10 rapid firing, equipped with a meltagun and a flamer you'll have 18 shots, 1 of which auto hits. Taking into account that you've got a 2 in 3 chance of hitting and counting in the flamer hit the average number of successful hits is 12 or there abouts. Then you decide to go DG and pass the AoF roll. Now you've got 11 wounds left to try and get a 6 on to kill the fex (counting in the meltashot as a speculative unsaved wound). So, using this as a very rough guide you'll get 2 maybe 3 wounds on the fex before it has chance to plough into you squad. For me them odds aren't great. Now add in your belief that you will have close range support to move in and assist, which is fair enough, but whilst you're concentrating on 1 MC what's the rest of your opponents force doing?

Like I said, nids outnumber and they'll out manouver, so that means focussing fire and killing the biggest threat first from as far away as possible.

With that being the case you need to understand that rhinos are not king for all players against nids. You may have found that you've got a sound tactic against your particular opponent but it may very well come unstruck against others. However, exorcists are and heavy bolters are universally effective and I've found that the very best tactic for fighting nids is a rolling retreat gunline with a refused flank deployment (all my troops on foot and not a rhino in sight).

Here's my usual Anti-nids force:

 

HQ:

Canoness: Jump-pack, cloak, mantle, book, Brazier, Eviscerator

Canoness: Jump-pack, cloak, book, Brazier, Eviscerator

-Those can do..well... anything. Brazier and charge a group of smaller nid, charge a carnifex. Barring bad luck, she should come on top. Preferably let the one with mantle charge a Carnifex or Hive Tyrant.

 

Troops:

 

10 Sisters, flamer, flamer, Rhino. VSS with Eviscerator and book.

10 Sisters, flamer, flamer, Rhino. VSS with Eviscerator and book.

10 Sisters, flamer, flamer, Rhino. VSS with Eviscerator and book.

-Obvioulsy, anti-troop. The goal is to hide in your rhino until you can get out and flamer small/medium nids. If your rhino gets thrashed, well, you are now in cover and ready to shoot. If worst come to worst and you're facing a TMC, divine guidance can get few wounds off and the Evis-VSS can hold her own and shave the rest off. With the BoSL, you'll tarpit the TMC for a few turns, enough for a canoness to come help out. They also can hold objectives. If points permit, change the second flamers to Heavy Flamers. More burn is always good!

 

Fast:

 

6 Dominions, 4 meltaguns, Immo. VSS with eviscerator, book and brazier.

6 Dominions, 4 meltaguns, Immo. VSS with eviscerator, book and brazier.

-Way underestimated! The Immo can obvioulsy move and shoot at 12". Very good to grill all small/medium nids. And unloading and shooting the dominions will net you a TMC if it's softened (as sould be) by the exorcists. The VSS can finish it in CC (you charge!) if bad rolls prevented killing the TMC. If worst come to worst and only small/mediums nids are on the table, well, you still have a brazier!

 

Heavy:

 

Exorcist.

Exorcist.

-Well, you know the drill: shoot the big ones!. Contrary to logic, I've had better results "softening" 2 TCM per turn (the 2 closest to my Dominions) rather than concentrating fire.

 

Roughly 1500 pts.

 

Of course, like all lists, it's not an assured winner. "Extreme" nids lists might swamp it, you might be unlucky, ect. But all in all, every unit has the capacity to hurt a TMC badly just as well as killing smaller ones. Don't forget two things: Faith can win battle! Divine guidance can make you simple bolters a TMC killing weapon. Spirit of the martyr and Hand of the Emperor turns your Canoness in a jump-packing, nigh-invulnerable TMC slayer. Rhinos have Storm bolters, use those two shots every turn. 6 SB shots will hit 4 times, killing 3 smaller nids per turn. Thats theoretically 18 gaunts per game (still 9 if they always get a cover save!!!).

 

As for you swarm: flamers, as indicated, will cause double-wounds. So 2-flamer units can easily cause 10 wounds befors bolters fire. Meltaguns will instant-kill whole bases, as will eviscerators.

 

Phil

As I routinely do the sisters vs big bugs, mainly from the big bug side of things, I wanna toss in my opinion.

 

Since the list described for the nids can be done in 1000 points, knowing the exact point value makes a big difference.

 

However, most people who give the advantage to sisters are absolutely correct for one main reason--triple exos. Those 3 tanks, with their 10.5 shots on the move a turn, simply put down fexes and tyrants like they are going out of style. Since the nids have a hard time even getting a shaken result versus the tanks (remember to use rhinos to give the exos cover at the start of the game) I have lost many games only because of those 3 tanks.

 

Also, when saying that a single sister squad has trouble with MCs, dont forget that with divine guidance causing 2-3 wounds, by simply using 2 squads of troops shooting or 1 shooting troop and 1 charging flying nun, you can kiss that MC goodbye. Add in that you already killed several MCs with exos and you just killed em all!

 

As for rippers, think of it this way... they have 3 wounds with a crap save, you have a 3+ save with 1 attack. They have straight 3's for a profile, so do you. End result is that if they have 10, thats 40 attacks on the charge, 10 wounds, 3 sisters die. Sisters, with no faith, have 10 attacks, 5 hits, 2.5 wounds. Add in faith for st5, and even if the rippers charge they arnt winning the combat. Thus, the sisters hold after getting charged, and a single flying nun with master crafted evis will wipe the entire squad on the counter charge, probably in the same turn. (4 attacks on the charge, with master crafting means you get roughly 4.8 attacks overall, kill 2.66, and each wound counts for triple due to instant death, which of course means you win by huge margins) Now if he paid points to make the rippers better, well we didnt even talk about the sisters shooting phase, or the fact that you can pretty much just stay in the rhino.

 

A 1k points highly competetive sister list would be the exersists tank trio and a flying evis nun with trimmings, and 2 rhino sister squads. If synapse is destroyed early then the gaunts are pretty much out of the game, and carnies+rippers, due to slow speed (slower than a rhino or moving exo anyway anyway) can be dealt with at leisure.

Ok, first of all, Rhinos have 3 Exit points, so a Fex cannot stand around the entire vehicle, nor should you assume that even if they are end on end (even if they only have one exit point) that a player would ever block his exit points completely, end on end could mean the fronts of the rhinos are touching too. Being end on end makes it so that I can bail out of the Rhino with it creating a wall between me and the enemy. Second of all, you cant declare an assault after you destroy a vehicle in order to attack the girls inside; all assaults must be declared before at the beginning of the assault phase (its not the same as the shooting phase). Finally, you make the assumption that the Fex is going to wreck or explode the Rhino in the first place. Using your numbers, it only has a 16% chance of hitting, which then leaves only a 33% chance to wreck or destroy the Rhino.

 

 

Even if there are Genestealers nearby, I still have the second Rhino AND any other Rhino clad units and Seraphim nearby. As I said, you feign weakness and force the opponent to you, so all of your units are nearby. Your Exorcists should have been picking off units, including the possible CC Fex as it got closer. Sister's do have the advantage that is really only offset by both a better general and bad dice rolling.

 

 

One last thing, in objective games, don't be in a rush to get to them, focus on your opponent first. In my experience, players who focus on getting obejectives early, end up spreading their forces too thin and become easier to move through. Get in the habit of grabbing Objectives on turn five while trying to fight within 15" of them for turns 3 and 4 and trying to keep your units clustered together. Don't get greedy either, keep a count of how many troops your opponent has and always make sure you can hold one more than him without contestation, so if you focus on killing troops only, you can actually win the game with just a single uncontested objective near your deployment zone.

Well, I'd have to say that there's a whole world of complex to a plan that invloves backing rhinos up against each other. The problem with this whole concept is reliant on a number of things.

Firstly it doesn't account for what happens when the rhinos are popped/shaken/immobilised. Venom cannons may not be the tour de force that they once were but they can still do the business on light armour as can barbed stranglers. When this happens it's over to plan B, if there is a plan B.

The next thing is the effect of up to 10 sisters firing on an MC. I'd have to say that you are overestimating the ability of your squads effectively using DG to big bug hunt. I'm not 1 for mathhammer but with a squad of 10 rapid firing, equipped with a meltagun and a flamer you'll have 18 shots, 1 of which auto hits. Taking into account that you've got a 2 in 3 chance of hitting and counting in the flamer hit the average number of successful hits is 12 or there abouts. Then you decide to go DG and pass the AoF roll. Now you've got 11 wounds left to try and get a 6 on to kill the fex (counting in the meltashot as a speculative unsaved wound). So, using this as a very rough guide you'll get 2 maybe 3 wounds on the fex before it has chance to plough into you squad. For me them odds aren't great. Now add in your belief that you will have close range support to move in and assist, which is fair enough, but whilst you're concentrating on 1 MC what's the rest of your opponents force doing?

Like I said, nids outnumber and they'll out manouver, so that means focussing fire and killing the biggest threat first from as far away as possible.

With that being the case you need to understand that rhinos are not king for all players against nids. You may have found that you've got a sound tactic against your particular opponent but it may very well come unstruck against others. However, exorcists are and heavy bolters are universally effective and I've found that the very best tactic for fighting nids is a rolling retreat gunline with a refused flank deployment (all my troops on foot and not a rhino in sight).

 

Mathhammer would equate to ~2 wounds per squad on average not counting the Meltagun if it hits too (since the squad will not necessarily have one), so between both squads nearby and exorcist/seraphim/other support, you should be able to take down a CC Carnifex in a single round of shooting, which also reinforces the motto of the Imperium, "Shoot it 'til it's dead." As I have said, I do it all the time, and I dont just play the same Nids player over and over. There are 5 different Nids players in my area that range from Genestealer lists to multi-fexes to just plain hordes of bugs with endless comeback. I am not trying to gloat (just prove a point), but I have never lost to any of them. I am not a better general, some of them have been playing just as long or longer than me (8 months or more, I started in June last year), and one has been playing for about a decade. Sisters truly do have the advantage against Nids, and I continue to stand by that.

 

 

On aside note, your falling back gun line is more or less the same tactic I have been speaking of except that I use Rhinos. When he gets too close, I use the Rhinos as walls to prevent being assaulted, which then allows me to get out and shoot the next turn. The only time this ever fails (and has yet to happen to me) is when the Rhino Explodes/Wrecks and I fail a pinning test and have to stay put the next turn. Even still you dont panic, because your troops are nearby to support. Anyways, describing complex or finer points of tactics sometimes gets lost in translation since it is difficult to explain them three dimensionally. Suffice it to say, it does work so long as you have your units support each other and shoot what you deem is the biggest threat to your game at each moment.

There are 5 different Nids players in my area that range from Genestealer lists to multi-fexes to just plain hordes of bugs with endless comeback. I am not trying to gloat (just prove a point), but I have never lost to any of them. I am not a better general, some of them have been playing just as long or longer than me (8 months or more, I started in June last year), and one has been playing for about a decade. Sisters truly do have the advantage against Nids, and I continue to stand by that.

 

Same experience here. Only one nid player, but we've played over two dozen matches ranging from 1500 pts to 4000 pts per side. He has (counting FW stuff) about 10 000pts of nids so can make about any type of army there is. As he's also my best friend, we've spent a lot of time discussing the different tactics he could use. It come to this: St8 (or+) Ap1 weapons, bolters and flamers are very efficient at killing nids. And SoB are extremely efficient at packing this weaponry. My previous list has 12 templates, an average of 15 St8 Ap1 shots and 27 bolters... All at BS 4 and very mobile. And that's without factoring the eviscerators and faith points

 

Like I said, once in a while, a "surprise" list (all genestealer outflank with lictors or others less used medium nids) will surprise me, but usually.... As an apart, I might put in an Inquisitor-lord with 3 HBolter servitors and a psychic hood. The HB are always good, and the PH can help negate the zoathropes if he tries those (but then again, the natural SoB save is also good).

 

Phil

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