Tyranid struggles

[Ultramarine vet]

So to start off, hopefully I'm putting this in the right section. This is for tyranid help, but space marines and units I have used against the tyranids will be mentioned.

 

I have battled my dad 3 times now as of recently. 1st battle was fairly close, but I won. 2nd game, he was forced to resign after round 2. And then this last game, resignation was reached after round 1. So as far as I can see, it's getting worse and worse for the tyranids every battle.

 

The plan on the Tyranid's behalf revolves around a ton of reinforcements. Half the army, as much as he can legally do. Trygon tunnels for termagaunts, tyrannocytes to bring in genestealers or carnifexs, etc. The problem has been that I bring several scout squads and place them in the middle of the table and around my deployment to deny the tyranid reinforcements and allow for board control superiority. My centurion devastators, land Raider, stormtalons, and predator tanks do way too much damage to him before his reserves can come in to help. Usually the field is empty of tyranids and space marines are all over the table. At this point, his reserves have to land piece meal right where I want them and then the rest is mop up duty.

 

This isn't very fun for either of us, considering I'm a competitor. I want a really good fight, and the tyranids have struggled mightily.

 

So my question is, what is the best way for tyranids to destroy tanks? I always field predators and whirlwinds in the rear, with a dreadnought near them at all times. I suggested to him, maybe harpies and flyrants with heavy venom cannons. Anything else they can do to destroy tanks, or is that most optimal? Also, is doing no reserves and just throwing everything he has at me on the table worth while?

Edited March 15, 2020 by Ultramarine vet

[Azekai]

Dial it back a notch and don't put your silly scouts all over?

Or just use index rules, before GW lost their minds and made space marines the objectively best army to boost their sales.

[Ultramarine vet]

Dial it back a notch and don't put your silly scouts all over?

Or just use index rules, before GW lost their minds and made space marines the objectively best army to boost their sales.

I don't know about marines being the best army. Not the case at all in my opinion. But that's exactly what it is, an opinion. And we do not believe in taking it easy on someone, like you suggested. Those "silly" scouts are very useful to my army, and it's foolish to not field them. I know that if I do not, it will be the other way around. I know this from experience, because if they arrive all over the place, they CAN shoot me to bits. So no, I will not leave them out.

[Spacecow]

I play against marines a lot and I don’t use reserves much. I go for a very aggressive strategy. Tie up key components melee wise as fast as possible.

 

I also invest in psychic powers. Cause they can weaken the lines fast.

 

My top picks:

Genestelaers, swarmlord, broodlord, flyrant, carnifex

 

I might have a mawloc in reserve to cause havoc. But I know it’s a throw away unit.

 

Nids are fun to play with really. But there is a balance problem which pushes the army to be played in a certain way, if you want to actually have some board control.

 

Or you dual it down if give your dad some space. Or your dad is going to have to dial it down with the reserves and play nids in a more aggressive way :)

[jbaeza94]

I play against mostly marines.

 

Vehicles in general give nids a problem due to a lack of high strength/ap weapons. Something I recently just proxied to try out, a suicide unit of 6 hive guard with shock cannons. I brought them in with deathleaper (first time running him too). Shock cannons are pretty nice vs vehicles. Against vehicles, every wound roll will provide a mortal wound. 6s wil provide d3 mortals. With a full squad of 6 and single minded annihilation,I was able to kill an impulsor and severely bracketed an executioner. Those mortal wounds really came in handy. Deathleaper was able to tie up the aggressors inside to prevent their shooting. He lost 0 wounds, they had to hit on 6s against him. Now, I don't expect this to happen every time. Im hoping for one vehicle tbh.

 

My play style with nids is board control and objective hunting. It's the way to win imo. We have the potential for having blobs of models all over our half of the board. No need to rush into your back lines where you just get shot to pieces by rapid fire everything. I suggest tone down these reserves alot, or use them to snipe objectives. 1 or 2 units in the back is good, I really like my trygon with monstrous size adaptation. Sporocyst with triple pyrovores could clear 5 scouts I think, but id consider these suicide units though, and maybe not worth the points

 

I'd suggest no harpies. We have better gun platforms.

 

One last suggestion, tone it down in your lists against your old man. I get you like competitive, and marines ARE competitive, but nids are not. Dont tailor list to him, I'm not sure if that grea deepstrike denial is how you play always or only because your dad's likes reserves. Maybe try theme lists against him, or bring out those models that don't get used anymore. Im not sure how new he is to the army, but maybe he needs to find out what works as well, and that's kinda hard to figure out against meta lists.

[Irate Khornate]

Against a competitive Marine Army, not many people are going to fare well. Unless the Marine player is making absolutely stupid decisions. Play testers stated games were over by round 3 against other Marines, most other games ended either turn one or two. You are playing one of, if not the strongest army in the game right now. To be perfectly honest, he will be at a major disadvantage against you. Even with him taking The meta tyranid list against you, you playing a fluffy Army will make him have to work for every point he gets. If you want to have a better fight, you are going to have to deliberately tone down your lists. Either that, or find another Marine player to test against. I hate to be like that, but he's bringing a knife to a gunfight.

[tychobi]

I play both armies. Your dad is putting a low tier build that you now know how to juggle on the chopping block and its no fun to beat up on him? Fine switch armies. If you want to learn from a hard counter situation play the underdog. How would you beat your list?

[Reigart]

Happy to try and answer your question, but it seems like you may have part of the question answered already.   Your dad may need to switch up his playing style. 

 

Reserves are tricky with nids because against high rate of fire armies, they can quickly find themselves undermanned.  Also, you seem to have mastered zoning out different things, so his reliance on reserves is ill-advised.  Effectively, he’s making it easier for you because he’s not forcing target priority decisions.  As you said, he’s arriving piece meal.

 

Nids need numbers and redundancies.  Generally they lack invulnerable saves (given the things you’ve mentioned) and even when they have saves it’s pretty inferior to other armies.  Nids don’t get 2+ saves native and cover in this edition is a joke.  Furthermore, nids lack high strength and high AP weaponry.  They don’t have any -3 AP or better ranged weaponry that is strength 8 or above (except the rupture cannon, which is on an unreliable platform: the tyrannofex) Meaning armies with good saves will be able to mitigate the damage from nid weaponry if not taken in mass.  

 

 What hive fleet is using?

 

Why is he bent on reserves?

 

 Has he thought about starting the tyrannocyte on the battlefield in order to protect his genestealers?  If it gets destroyed they can deploy 3 inches closer to you.  Scouts should are great genestealers fodder.  He should be able to charge them, kill them and slingshot up the board.

has he tried mortal wounds?  Between smites and spores, nids can put out a lot of mortal wounds.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Reigart

[Ultramarine vet]

Thank you all for the very insightful comments. I will mention that all of my space marine lists are completely without primaris marines. I use nothing but firstborn space marines, as I do not like primaris marines at all. Just letting you all know, because I'm sure it'll be interesting and helpful to know that.

 

I also want everyone to know that I am not beating on a noob.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Ultramarine vet

[Reigart]

Well, tyranids do actually - two units come to mind.

 

1. Meitic (spelling?) Spores from forgeworld

 

2. Sporocysts - in fact I've been theorycrafting around them. The drawback is that they're fortifications

[Ultramarine vet]

Happy to try and answer your question, but it seems like you may have part of the question answered already. Your dad may need to switch up his playing style.

 

Reserves are tricky with nids because against high rate of fire armies, they can quickly find themselves undermanned. Also, you seem to have mastered zoning out different things, so his reliance on reserves is ill-advised. Effectively, he’s making it easier for you because he’s not forcing target priority decisions. As you said, he’s arriving piece meal.

 

Nids need numbers and redundancies. Generally they lack invulnerable saves (given the things you’ve mentioned) and even when they have saves it’s pretty inferior to other armies. Nids don’t get 2+ saves native and cover in this edition is a joke. Furthermore, nids lack high strength and high AP weaponry. They don’t have any -3 AP or better ranged weaponry that is strength 8 or above (except the rupture cannon, which is on an unreliable platform: the tyrannofex) Meaning armies with good saves will be able to mitigate the damage from nid weaponry if not taken in mass.

 

What hive fleet is using?

 

Why is he bent on reserves?

 

Has he thought about starting the tyrannocyte on the battlefield in order to protect his genestealers? If it gets destroyed they can deploy 3 inches closer to you. Scouts should are great genestealers fodder. He should be able to charge them, kill them and slingshot up the board.

has he tried mortal wounds? Between smites and spores, nids can put out a lot of mortal wounds.

For the first 3 battles, he used Hive Fleet Behemoth. Only the first game was close. All reserve heavy. The game we played yesterday, he used only a few reserves and chose Hive Fleet Leviathan for extra survivability. He also used 3 flyrants, and plenty of genestealers. All his flyrants had heavy venom cannons for my tanks, which worked fairly well actually. It was a close fought battle, 11-10 in victory points in the space marine's favor. I quite enjoyed it. I have told him about your tyrannocyte idea with genestealers, and it actually sounds like a great strategy. Gonna see if that can help his genestealers quite a lot, especially since I love to target them until they're destroyed. Thank you for the help! Edited March 17, 2020 by Ultramarine vet

[Xenith]

Swap armies. You play as the nids and give him your marines. See who wins. Either way you'll both learn something. 

 

I think the problem is that you're running a competitive army and he isn't?

 

Stealers in tyrannocytes when they can advance and charge like 28" per turn? Carnifexen in pods when theyre some of the strongest anti troop?

 

Tell your dad to try starting with everything on the board instead. 

 

You should also try to change your army up. You'll never get any better smashing him into the ground each time. Play something you dont normally. Give yourself a challenge. 

Edited March 30, 2020 by Xenith

[Ultramarine vet]

Swap armies. You play as the nids and give him your marines. See who wins. Either way you'll both learn something. 

 

I think the problem is that you're running a competitive army and he isn't?

 

Stealers in tyrannocytes when they can advance and charge like 28" per turn? Carnifexen in pods when theyre some of the strongest anti troop?

 

Tell your dad to try starting with everything on the board instead. 

 

You should also try to change your army up. You'll never get any better smashing him into the ground each time. Play something you dont normally. Give yourself a challenge.

 

So question about the carnifexes in pods and being anti troop. Are you saying they are good at eliminating troops? Because they seem to lack the attacks to really worry me. Unless several of them reach? The only thing I could think of with carnifexes is starting with at least 5-6 of them on the board and moving them up the field. They are just like space marine dreadnoughts, they lack wounds in terms of survivability.

[jgascoine011]

The difference between nids and space marines is insane right now.

They just cant compete. For points cost, what you get for space marines compared to nids is just insane.

 

Take the carnifex.

They are supposed to be equivalent to a dreadnought (and look how competitve they are)

For 104 points you get 6A at S12 AP-3 D3 and 8 S4 shots. All of which hit on 3s

For a whooping 2 points cheaper you get a carnifex, which has 5 attacks (if it charged) at S12 AP-3 D3 hitting on 4s!!!!! if it charged, otherwise its 5s, and 1 S6 AP-3 D3 attack.

Even a Hellbrute is getting 6 Attacks at S12 AP-3 D3 + 3 S8 AP-2 D2 attacks, again all hitting on 3s.

And they have instictive behaviour.

They are a f'ing joke.

 

 

Then the Trygon

Again, compare it to a Redemptor Dreadnought

Ok its about 10 points cheaper and has effectivly 2 more attacks. But they are at effectvily worse strength and it also has worse T and 1 less wound

It also has fewer and worse guns. And again suffers from instivtice behaviour. To counter that you can take the prime but then that is more expensive than the redemptor.

And while yes it can deepstrike, it needs it to survive the shooting from the redemptor, which will actually also beat it in combat.

 

 

While the swarmlord is good, without a delivery system he will die in turn 1 to shooting, so as such, your bringing hive tyrants with wings, so as to not pay points for a tyrnocyte to deliver an already expenisve model points wise.

 

Genestealers are a gimmic really, if you get turn 1 then great, if not well good luck

 

Bad WS/BS along with low number of attacks on a lot of units is also really screwing nids over. 

The fact that a Hive Tyrant only has 4 attacks is just a joke, when compared to a daemon prince which has 8

 

Basically what we have that is good is:

Broodlords, hive guard and exocrines.

A unit of 9 warriors with the ignore AP-1/2 and the new strat to reduce damage by 1, along with catalyst seems good

 

And even hive guard. Compare 6 of them to 3 Obliterators.

On average hive guard put out 12 S8 AP-2 D2 shots. The obliterators put out 18 S8 AP-2 D2 shots, which can also put VOTLW on.

Although hive guard do have more wounds.