BIG BUGS! - an anatomical dissection....

[Marshal Wilhelm]

After enjoying reading 'The Melta Myth' and the different ways to skin a tank, I started thinking about how this applies to the soon re-released Tyranids.... :D

 

I guess the 2d6 pen and +1 damage is somewhat lost on the soft-centres of their Monstous Creatures.... :)

 

Well the little ones will get a standard dose of bolter, heavy bolter and whirlwind at a guess but how do you go about cracking the big nuts?

 

I saw not just weaponry spruiking but also some 'how to' in 'The Melta Myth'. So how do you tackle Hive Tyrants, Tyrant Guard, and Carnifex?

 

Is it reasonable to expect a squad of 4 LC Devs or Tri-Las Pred to take them out before they start MONSTROUS CREATUREing your men?

 

Does Melta work versus Big Bugs?

 

Do tell....

[greatcrusade08]

2 words my friend:

Sniper scouts.. MC's dont have inv saves so any rends will auto wound, plus when your wounding on 4's life is peachy ;)

 

Gc08

 

Edit: not everyone likes snipers so the other choices that are also good against other armies would be the massed plasma command squads and the 4 ML dev squads

[eyescrossed]

I like lots of plasma.

 

Plasma is a lot better at killing MCs than Melta, and people can't say "that's only within 12 inches", because Meltas have to be within 12" to do any damage anyway ;)

 

Also, since I play Chaos, I have a big squad of Termies with lots of upgrades (yes they're a bad choice, but they're still fun to field) that normally Deep Strike next to one of the buggers, try to take off a wound or two with combined shooting, then wait the inevitable assault and battle with my Chaos Lord with Plaguebringer (Power weapon, 4+ to wound, +D6 attacks).

 

Wow, monster sentence.

[Hellios]

in 4th edition I always used to have my Khorne berzerkers stand back and wait for MC's in tyranid armies come to me so I could rapid fire 3 plasma pistols and with 6 plasma shots very few MC's made it into CC with me and then they got fisted.

 

 

Can't rapid fire my pistols any more but bigger plasma guns certainly work.

[I AM THE AWESOME]

Unfortunately, this is one situation in which the universal answer 'Vindicators' doesn't apply. :wub:

 

So instead, I'm going to echo eyescrossed here and say plasma is the way to go. I like my 4 plasma gun command squad. Sternguard work as well, but firstly if they're armed with combi-weapons I'd prefer something that has a little more... impact than just a handful of S7 shots. Secondly, hellfire rounds are AP5 and more often than not MCs will have a 3+ or 2+ armor save, so they don't work so well.

[Koremu]

Unfortunately, this is one situation in which the universal answer 'Vindicators' doesn't apply. :wub:

Meh. Fire the Vindicator at it anyway. Even if it deviates you'll probably hit something.

 

Vast Quantities of Lascannon are also worth applying.

 

But mostly, Plasma and Assault Terminators.

[Giga]

Everything that reliably kills vehicles will also reliably kill MCs. Some stuff that doesn't kill vehicles all that reliably will nevertheless destroy MCs. Just about the only anti-vehicle thing MCs are immune to are grenades.

 

With vanilla marines, there is really no need to take special units just to kill MCs.

 

Melta is king against them. If you keep it on speeders & attack bikes, your multimeltas (TL-ed if you're running vulkan) have an effective range of 36". Nids have small range on their weapons, so they will be deploying closer to you, and often running to get closer, all to get into range to shoot/assault you up, hence the 36" total multimelta range is more then enough to hit them, and then wound them. Most MCs have T6, so meltas are wounding on 2+, and they don't have invulnerable saves. The fact you don't need 2d6 armor penetration only makes it better, because you don't have to worry about getting into melta range or getting counter-assaulted if you fail to kill that MC. Just use your superior mobility to zoom around and shoot them where they can't get cover.

 

Lesser anti-tank weapons in your arsenal, such as the lascannons on the landraider, free MLs on the tacticals, the ac/ls predator, plasma, etc. will all do just fine against nid MCs. You don't really have to take any more of these then you normally would.

 

 

 

Some other stuff that will make short work of MCs:

 

- Sternguard (shoot em up and watch em try to pass 10+ saves with their 3+ armor save, also sternguard can take meltaguns & combimeltas)

- Thunder hammer & storm shield terminators

- Lysander

- Calgar (though his 4+ invulnerable save isn't all that reliable)

 

 

Here are some tips for assaulting MCs:

 

HIVE TYRANT AND GUARD RETINUE - if you want to assault this bunch of freaks with your th/ss termies, make sure you shoot the living hell out of them before you do so. You really want some of those guards dead before you assault the tyrant, because if you get 2-3 guards + the tyrant hitting your th/ss terminators, it's very likely they're going to kill some of your terminators before they even get to swing their hammers. Always thin tyrant + guard units down before assaulting them. ALWAYS.

 

UBER ASSAULTY CARNIFEX - there's this insane 250pts type of carnifex that gets something like D6 attacks on top of their normal 4-5, has I2, 5 wounds, etc. DON'T ASSAULT THIS THING! Not even with th/ss termies. Shoot it. Shoot it dead. This should be quite easy, because this carnifex will usually be in the forefront of the nid advance, so if you deploy properly, the fex won't have a cover save. A 3 speeders mm/hf squadron + a 3 mm attack bike squadron can quite reliably take it out in a single turn of shooting, while at the same time deploying to get a cover save from the inevitable backlash.

 

WUSSY SHOOTY CARNIFEX - this sort of fex usually has tons of dakka, or some pieplates and venom cannons or w/e. Either way, feel free to assault this thing with your tacticals and assault marines. Ofc, a power fist is mandatory here. This fex has only 2 attacks, WS3, and I1, so it means your marines have a good chance to pop some wounds on it even before the powerfist starts swinging. Either way, on charge, a standard sergeant has 3 PF attacks that hit on 3+ and wound on 2+. You have a really good chance to take this fex out in 2-3 turns of assault (provided you haven't wounded it with anti-tank fire beforehand). This is good, too, because this way you're preventing the fex from doing what it's designed to do - shoot your army to hell and beyond.

 

CLOSE-COMBAT FLYRANT - kill it with shooting. This should be helluva easy if you've deployed correctly, as at one point it'll be forced to come out into the open. If you have to assault it, however, keep in mind it's only strength 6, so it can't instant-death your ICs. I like to let Vulkan take these guys 1on1, just so I can yell "YOU SHALT NOT PASS" at the end of every assault phase. :)

 

 

 

 

Since nids are, for the most part, a fire army, they will almost always act as BEATDOWN. This means you have to be CONTROL. This further means you need to take special care for how you deploy. You want to have at least 2 or 3 turns where you don't have to move your lascannon, missile launcher, and plasma platforms at all. Place your predator, land raider, etc. so that no matter what the nid player does you will always or almost always have a line of sight to his stuff. This requires a certain amount of foresight (you have to be able to predict exactly what the nid player will do), but nids being nids, they're quite predictable anyway (they will try to close in on you with their slow army and shoot/assault you to death, duh).

 

MM/HF speeders and MM attack bikes help a lot here. Their ability to reposition 12" each turn and still shoot their weapons makes it easy for them to pwn MCs. Their turbo-boost ability allows them to contest faraway objectives in later parts of the game, too. However, they're also quite fragile against nid shooting (a dakkafex can insta-pwn an entire squadron of speeders with just a little lucky shooting), so you need to take extra care on how you use them.

 

 

 

I hope this was helpful. ;)

[glsn]

I've managed to crack the 250 pt Carnifex with GKTs in close combat. He charged me and although I lost a couple GKT, I took him down to 1 wound. He had regeneration, so I had to take him out with a Vindicare Assassin before the next assault phase. This allowed me to charge what was behind him. Overall, I find the answer to 'Nids is GK. Than again, I'm biased.

[waaanial00]

I would like to jump in with sage words of warning. What works today might not work tomorrow.

 

The new codex might just change some of the "rules" we know about fighting bugs today. For example carnifexes might be granted a reasonable invulnerable save for x amount of points which might negate the effects of TH/SS terminators.

 

However at present we have Sternguard which wound big bugs quite effectively. Scout snipers which wound with some luck and numbers.

 

Lascannons, plasma cannons, plasma guns. Everything with long range, high rate of fire or low AP is grand. Anything which relies on instant death is out, unless you are GK with their crazy worded Force Weapons. High strength power weapons are great.

 

MULTI ASSAULT. Assault those gaunts and that Carnifex, kill the gaunts and watch the Carnifex die due to no retreat wounds (I really hope that gets sorted out in the new codex!).

 

 

Wan

[KhorneHunter57x]

Meh. Just charge the shooty ones and shoot the chargy ones.

 

Personally, I think that the 2 best anti-'Nid units (that will probably retain their effectiveness when they get a new codex) are Sternguard and a second squad of Sternguard. Dragonfire rounds for the small stuff and Hellfire rounds for the big stuff (and they are as good as Assault Marines when they do charge you).

[Giga]

One thing I forgot to mention are typhoon speeders.

 

A squadron of 3 typhoon speeders, if it moves 6", can fire 6 krak missiles and 9 heavy bolter shots at 36" range (total 42" effective range). That's bound to take down most fexes. ^_^

[greatcrusade08]

point for point i dont think you can beat the lowly sniper scout, 10 for 140 points is very good, especially if they are always shooting at MC's

 

Gc08

[minigun762]

I think the Combi-Predators has some real appeal. 4 high strength shots, half of which will be punching through any armor save.

 

Though Plasma and Power Fists are the safest choices with Snipers and Hellfire rounds also being a viable option (atleast for Loyalists).

 

For Chaos, one of the best options is actually the Daemon Prince, especially Slaanesh (against Tyrants) or Tzeentch (against Carnifex). You're hitting on 3's before they can strike, rerolling the hits/wound with Warptime and you have an Inv save to help survive the 1-2 rounds of swings that they'll get in.

[Captain Idaho]

I agree with Giga that you do not really need to change too much to kill large numbers of MCs, depending on your list of course.

 

As an example, my standard tournament list has a Landraider (2x Lascannons), Dreadnought with twin linked lascannon, a Lascannon in 1 Tactical (highly situational but I had spare points), a Missile Launcher in the other Tactical squad, a Librarian with Might of Heroes and Avenger and a then the CC ability of Honour Guard (complete with Master with Relic Blade and Champion with Relic Blade) and 2x powerfists in the 10 men Tacticals (my other units are more anti-little bugs).

 

These things are my bread and butter and I take them against most opponents, yet fit the bill nicely against Tyranids. Of course I have been toying with the idea of dropping that Librarian and a Twin-Linked Lascannon Dread for 2x Dreadnoughts with Assault Cannons. This gives me more anti-infantry and those Assault Cannons like killing MCs too!

 

I hope I showed you an example of how you can take a list capable of killing MCs without comprising your flexibility with unneccessary optimisation.

[minigun762]

I agree with Giga that you do not really need to change too much to kill large numbers of MCs, depending on your list of course.

 

With the assumption that your entire anti-tank department doesn't revolve around Melta.

 

Melta is great for tank killing but it lags behind Plasma when it comes to MCs.

the +2D6 and AP1 give you nothing against a MC whereas the short range and fewer number of shots means less chance to kill/wound them at range. S8 is better then S7 but in every situation, 2 S7 shots beats out 1 S8 shot.

LasCannons also have similar benefits, mostly due to the much larger range and sometimes the S9 vs S8 difference.

 

For me, it reinforces the fact that you can't rely on just a single weapon system to do everything. A balance of different weapons will be more useful most of the time.

[Cameron Magnus]

I recently fought a 1500 against nids using many of the tactics on the B&C.

Using plasma cannons on my two tacticals I layed into a shooty fex as well as some warriors. between those two guns alone I scored 10 wounds.

 

I also for the first time used HB Devs to great effect. They tore up the stealers and then dropped six more warriors befor putting a wound or two on a CC fex.

 

My thunderfire kept pressure on his shooty tyrant as my termies with cyclone and Kantor fineshed off the CC fex.

 

in the end he only killed 3 termies and 5 marines. I held two objectives and he only held one of the five. It was lots of luck on my part but only three of his units reached CC and they were already injured.

[Cameron Magnus]

I feel I should add to my last post with the 2000 point game that followed.

 

I kept the same list and added a LR and LRC to the mix. While this game was much closer my opponent now feared certain units so much that he kept his shootie gaunts back too long.

 

He did kill 13 marines with acid spores and his lictors and raveners did a number on me but I was able to hold on to two objectives and shoot him off of one of his.

 

He prioritized his shooting on those HB devs and the thunderfire, evidence that these weapons were of great threat to him.

 

I won this battle though due to his stealers outflanking on the far side of the board basically taking them out of the fight. Had he focussed on the objectices instead of the MC killers he could have at least drawn the fight.

[Giga]

point for point i dont think you can beat the lowly sniper scout, 10 for 140 points is very good, especially if they are always shooting at MC's

10 snipers shooting averages 5 hits, and 2-3 wounds that the MC gets to save on 3+ or 2+.

 

The snipers are also static, so your opponent can position his MCs to get cover saves against those few lucky rending wounds.

 

Also, taking just 10 sniper scouts is rarely efficient in regular marine armies. We'll usually give them a heavy weapon and camo-cloaks, so that gets to the 180 pts for 10 scouts which, considering how pathetic they are, is quite laughable seeing as they end up being more expensive then tacticals. If you're making a special list to take out a nidzilla army, then I'd say it's game, but in an allcomers army? Not worth it, IMHO. Not without telion, anyway.

 

EDIT: Point of point, here are a few units that beat the sniper scouts hands down (off the top of my head);

 

- predator with lascannon sponsors and autocannon

- a pair of mm/hf speeders

- a full squadron of mm attack bikes

- sternguard squad with two lascannons

- devs with missile launchers

 

They all cost considerably less then a full sniper squad with camocloaks & heavy wep, too. Just about the only advantage sniper scouts have is that they're troops, and that there's 10 of them... But I don't think that makes up for the lack of killing power.

[greatcrusade08]

Actually my own extensive experience trumps this opinion ^^^

 

Not only do snipers do well against MEQ armies (they do rend you know =0.8 rends a turn for mathammers) but can take down low AV armour too, and have done for me on many occasions.

I NEVER use camo cloaks as being cheap is a strength all on its own and they are pretty good against most opponents, anything T3 can usually be pinned too!

Scoring is a big bonus! one we shouldnt be so quick to discount.

 

I stand by my original opinion, your free to ignore it as it is an opinion, but it is one based on actual gaming experience (and lots of it)

 

BTW i ran with twenty snipers for quite some time!

 

Gc08

[Giga]

Ah well, just like I always say... If it works for you, then you should use it. :rolleyes:

 

Personal experience & local metagame trumps generic advice any day.

[greatcrusade08]

Ah well, just like I always say... If it works for you, then you should use it. :)

 

Personal experience & local metagame trumps generic advice any day.

 

Very gentlemanly of you, and to think we could have settled this with a flaming war. ;)

 

Definatelty agree, i had to include the fact that it was my opinion /experience as i have met others who have had absolutely no luck with them what so ever..

It does happen and i would be stupid to ignore the fact.

 

Gc08

[minigun762]

In regard to the Sniper Scouts, I think they make great little objective campers for Loyalist Marines.

150 points buys you 10 guns (9 Snipers, 1 Heavy) that can fire out to 36" and thats alot more firepower then a Tactical squad can generate at that distance, even with the reduced BS value. I have to say that the Heavy Bolter seems the way to go, its special ammo matches perfectly with the Snipers role of anti-MC and the normal shots work best against infantry.

[Giga]

My objective campers usually are what I call my "Tactical Squad Yellow" (their squad markings are yellow), and they consist of 10 guys with flamer, chainsword+bp sergeant, and a plasma cannon guy. They also have a razorback.

 

Lots of people tell me that this isn't such a great idea for objective camping, and that a single plasma cannon on a tac squad isn't worth having them static for most of the battle, but I find that single plasma cannon never overheats, gets tons of direct hits, and regularly kills 100+ points of enemy infantry. It's really, really worth it.

 

Likewise, I rarely, if ever, manage to destroy vehicles with lascannons. I often don't even penetrate, and when I do, I usually roll a 1 on the vehicle damage chart. On the other hand, a guy at my LGS always has 3 lascannons in 3 tac squads, and always uses them as some of his best anti-tank, and it works. Playstyle & personal experience = the king. :tu:

[minigun762]

My objective campers usually are what I call my "Tactical Squad Yellow" (their squad markings are yellow), and they consist of 10 guys with flamer, chainsword+bp sergeant, and a plasma cannon guy. They also have a razorback.

 

I think thats a great sit/shoot squad and while you don't want to have an army of such squads, 1-2 can really be helpful.

I'm curious why you don't splurge on the Plasmagun though. Its only 10 points and gives you alot more punch at 24".

As for the Plasma Cannon, I think its the perfect static weapon, if I have a mobile squad they'd either be taking Heavy Bolters or Multi-Meltas.

[Warp Angel]

In the past year, the vast majority of my games have been against nids, and, with no surprise on my part, the big ones are handled quite well by the same things that I've got in the rest of my army.

 

Assault cannons, multi meltas, melta guns, heavy bolters, typhoon launchers, thunder fire cannons, plasma cannons, vindicators and massed bolter fire.

 

In the assault, every power armor unit has got a power fist to both give an opportunity to wound high T, but to also ignore armor saves.

 

If the rumors my 'nid playing friend has been digging into are true, there's supposed to be a dedicated push AWAY from 'nidzilla, with dramatically cheaper gaunts and hormogaunts, new HQ choices (Malanthrope is a strong rumor). Anti-vehicle is supposed to be much more viable for them as well. Plastic gargoyles are all but confirmed, as are points decreases across the board for them and the other non-monstrous creatures. Expect more deployment options as well, so you aren't necessarily going to have 2 turns to shoot them down before they close to hand to hand. Biovores are supposed to once again become affordable and kill-point viable, and are rumored to have a new sculpt.

 

Assuming the above is true, this DRAMATICALLY changes the current anti-armor metagame. There's simply no way to kill enough fearless 4 point gaunts with an army list full of melta, lascannon, and the like. You need templates, multiple shots per weapon, and blast markers. Assuming the deployment and anti-armor options are true, relying on armor and artillery is probably not going to be a good idea either.

 

I expect a sea change in 'all comers' lists that will reflect changes in the armor/anti-armor metagame and make taking varied weapon loadouts even more attractive than it is now.

 

Please understand that my rumors are unsourced, and may be completely off base, but I trust the general trend and am reasonably confident in my statements above. Take with a grain of salt and PLEASE do not go to this or another forum and say "golly, this is what nids are getting", because it's all just RUMORS at this point, given to you at third hand.

 

I included it as a point to consider in discussing the myth of melta.