Time to fight some Tyranids...

[igotsmeakabob!!]

So, I'm playing against a friend's Tyranids on Sunday in an 1850pt game. I'm really not used to fighting Tyranids, mostly because no one else plays them.

So, what units would be most effective against his hordes of termagants, tervigons, carnifex(es?), biovores, mawlock/trygon, zoanthropes and hive guard?

[Scorcher505]

Template weapons. Heavy flamers, flamestorm baals, and vindicators. And make sure the damn zoanthroaps are taken care of asap, especially doom if he takes him, and if he does not have doom his list is fail... or balanced

[igotsmeakabob!!]

I've only played against him once before, and I only won that game because it was kill points and I fled from his scary monstrous creatures... I didn't really have a whole lot to deal with them.

[Burningblood]

DC or furioso dreads with blood tallons to support your assault squads against termegaunt and hive guard swarms. IF you have a Redeemer I'd use it. or three of them. :angry: Aside from that, I would say make sure you soften everything up with those templates, as mentioned above. You might want to take DC since he can give some of his units feel no pain. Sick.

[igotsmeakabob!!]

I imagine the Death Co. might actually have some fun with 'nids.. the question then is how man? 5 w/ TH in a Razorback or 10 with TH+PW in a Land Raider, Rhino or Stormraven?

 

Nah, currently all I have is a regular land raider and a half-built crusader.

[Aramis_the_Red]

Agreed, zoanthropes/doom are a high priority. Take those out early, and you should do well. Also, outside of talon dreads, Mephiston is the God king of monstrous creature slayers.

[Burningblood]

I think this would be a good time for jump packs, but in my opinion, its always a good time for dc with jump packs. However it might even be better to use some pw armed dc in your landraider.

[mysteriousmaskedmystery]

assault cannons are a nice way of smacking down things like zoanthropes and MC too.

[Whitefireinferno]

Take Seth Glue him to a dinnerplate as a base and watch Whirlwind of gore work some magic ;) ..But yeah other than Talon dreds for hordes also consider Sternguard and load on the combi flamers and heavy flamers remember bugs hate fire and a heavy flamer rips straight through 80% of them with no saves and then for the others the Special issue ammo comes into play.

[igotsmeakabob!!]

My Sternguard are combi-plasma equipped. Good for MC-killing, I imagine.

[Gridlocked]

I'd take Seth for awesomly funny whirling death attack!

[Whitefireinferno]

Yeah that will do over the big gribbleys decently with either the plas shots or the SIA All the same I plan on building a FlameSternguard to use my TLHF Razor "Fires of Cretia" as a anti horde unit fo when I play my pesky nid and ork mates as a 5 man unit with 2 heavy flamers and 3 combi-flamers for epic firery templat death mainly because I love the line "I love the smell of Nahpalm in the morning" from I think it was Platoon and hell hell 3 heavy flamer templates and 3 normal flamer templates are going to butcher any big unit of bugs/orks and the 6th spot in the Razor will be a Preist possibly with another flame template.

 

You would'nt guess I like fire ;)

[Angelus Mortifer]

You could also consider a 5-man naked Dev Squad with 4 Plasma Cannons for 150pts, which is pretty reasonable if you ask me. Throw in a naked Priest to cover "Get's Hot" for 200pts, and they'll have additional longevity and also act as a good target priority headache.

[Twin .44]

Flamers, Boltguns, Close Combat marines and a :cuss ton of lascannons. Take a Burna Baal, lascannon devvies, Land Raider, and Mephiston.

[Lynnean]

Forceweapons. Libby dreads; Mephyiston; and other libbies. to take care of his troops; use DC or assault squads. or even DC dreads with Blood Talons. Forceweapons are the bane of every big 'nid Creature. they die by bushes to it.

Blood talons Can (re: can) ruin 1 or more Troop choices per turn.

[Whitefireinferno]

Hmm I would'nt be too keen to jump on the libby spam due to the bugs psyker defense

[RedMoon]

ya my friend runs a list with doom and the swarm lord both of those are horrible and my only losses were to him i have nothing to deal with swarm lord and 3 guard its just wrong.. lol

[igotsmeakabob!!]

Hrm, so taking all the recommendations in this thread together, I get something like a 3500pt list. That would definitely crush my friend's 1850pts :P

[Fortunate Son]

It was already mentioned once, but to say it again...

Plasma is the bane of tyranids.

I would take all the plasma you can.

That has always been the best way to take out tyranids.

[SnorriSnorrison]

Tactical Squads in Rhinos to shoot the gaunts, Lascannons/MM for the big bugs, DC or something similar for countercharge or to wipe out weakened units. A Reclusiarch and a Libby work well, but Mephiston rocks it all. Let him go for the fexes and minor creatures without whip and bonesword. And stay away from the Swarmlord, when equipped with whip and bonesword.

When you kill those termagaunts-breeding fexes, his troops will suffer and you can concentrate on eliminating the bigger stuff.

 

I´d even consider Jp-DC a nice hammer unit to wipe out some stuff, with a Chaplain or even Reclusiarch. And Furioso-Dreads with Blood Fists, heavy flamer and meltagun. Send them against the bugs you´ve weakened but didn´t manage to kill.

 

 

 

Snorri

[Anarchyman99]

Dare I say Scouts with Sniper Rifles? 3's then 4's and rend....and a scoring unit, but thats me. 10 with snipers and camo cloaks is 170 split into 2 units in cover...not bad and if they want to assault a 5 man scout let them.

[igotsmeakabob!!]

Sniper Rifles are 4's then 4's, and I'm not too sure how well they'd stand up to a round or two of Termagant fire, even with 3+ cover saves.

Well, the game's tomorrow. I don't even have a solid list! I guess I'd better get cracking.

[spu00sed]

As a nid player I can tell you that we hate missiles and plasma.

 

Only one nid has a 2+ save so the missiles will take apart anything big, or can switch to frag and take apart swarms.

 

Plasma cannons can do both at the smae time, and there is no half strength hits on MC (unlike on tanks) so you can scatter a bit more.

 

Las cannons are overkill and meltas one shot mean they wont do much.

 

Our middile creatures have lost eternal warrior, so warriors and ravners die to krak missiles, despite paying for an extra wound.

 

 

Nid shooting is still very good, they can throw out a ton of mid str fire. The lack of AP means very little when a single fex can fire 12 S6 twin linked shots.

 

Watch out for lashwhips and bone swords. Bone swords can kill mephs, and with lash whips they will be going first.

 

My favourite warrior build is 4 warriors with lashwhips, boneswords, death spitters (one with a barbed strangler) and toxin sacs. Lead by a prime with the same equipment. It will take anything in closecombat, but like any brood a vindicator will remove it from play in a single shot.

 

 

The shadow in the warp will shut down close magic by forcing your libbies to roll 3D6 and take them all, so don't rely on force weapons to take out MCs.

 

 

I would suggest:

Missile dev squad

not combat squading

don't spread out

plasma on vets to go big bug hunting

A libby to count any tyrant spells (having one of your assault squads reduced to WS1 isn't fun).

[Atdi]

With this list i played against my friends tyranids.

 

 

*************** 1 HQ ***************

Librarian, Jumppack Unleash Rage, Shield

- - - > 125

 

Honorguard

5 Space Marines, Jumppacks, Chapterbanner, Bloodchampion, 1 x Flamer, 1 x Mg, 1 x Powerfist

- - - > 255

 

*************** 2 Elites ***************

Sanguiniuspriest

- - - > 50

 

Furioso, Blood Claws, Hf & Mg, EA

- - - > 150

 

*************** 3 Standard ***************

Tactical Squad

10 Space Marines, Flamer, ML

+ Razorback, HB -> 55 Pkt.

- - - > 225

 

Assault Squad

10 Space Marines, 2 x Mg, Jumppacks, Powerfist

- - - > 235

 

Assault Squad

10 Space Marines, 2 x Mg, Ip, Powerfist, Jumppacks

- - - > 250

 

*************** 2 Fast Attack ***************

Baal AC+HB, EA

- - - > 160

 

 

Attack Bike, 1 x Mm

- - - > 50

 

1500

 

 

His list was roughly:

Tyrant with wings scything talons, leech, paroxysm,

Tervigon

20 termagaunts

20 hormagaunts

2x8 genestealers

2x3 ravenors with scything talons, rending claws

trygon with regeneration

1x2 zoantrophs

1x1 zoantroph

 

We played a killpoints (which was pretty because he didn´t spawned gaunts wiht his tervigon). The librarian was ace blocking half of the tyranid psychic powers, the furioso was great, too, killed 20 termagaunts in one shooting/melee phase after that 3 ravenors and took 3 wounds from the trygon and kept him in cc until the rest of my force could deal with the other bugs.

At the beginning of the game i was advancing at the tyranids but waited until round 3 til i charged with my complet force, only charged the gaunts with the furioso in turn 2 but kept the rest of my army back, because i would only have reached the hormgaunts and would then have been countercharged by the stealers and the ravenors.

 

And the end of turn 5 my friend conceded. He had only the tervigon left with 5 wounds, i had powerfist sergeant, 4 assault marines plus sarge, 3 tactical marines with flamer and sarge, sanguinary priest, 4 man honour guard, razorback, atttack bike, 5 tactical marines with ml.

 

I wouldn´t use lascannons because with ML you´re still wounding the big bugs on 2´s with no armour save because almost nothing in the tyranid force has a 2+ armour save and you can use the frag missiles against the little bugs.

[Liltom]

Mephiston is lovely against tyranids in my experience. Sanguine sword can have him killing 3 carnifexes in a turn.

 

Baal predators are good.

 

Tactical squads with priests are quite handy, as they can shoot stuff and hold up a decent counter charge to whatever is left.

 

Sanguinor performed quite well. I had him go through a large meat shield of spine gaunts, then kill a hive tyrant plus a couple of guards next turn.

 

The most important thing I found was to get stuck in. Shoot like hell, and then clobber him. If you are too conservative in your tactics and don't get stuck in, his weight of numbers (and toughness, and attacks ^_^ ) will destroy you.

 

However, I found it to be quite easy dealing with new tyranids. I've played 2 games new dex vs new dex and won both, including a small game (I think it was about 750pts) against a tyranid army containing old one eye. That was a good brawl. It ended with a (relatively) sane Tycho punching the face off Old One Eye, which was a real highlight for me =]