All Tyranids all the time. Time is of the essence!

[Lt. Col. Hawkrin]

Fighting Tyranids in less then an hour any and all help is needed brothers.

Requisition for help initialized. 1000 pts I have no air support.

[The Hawk!]

Flamers... Flamers.... And for good measure, some Heavy Flamers. Bring it Down on Monstrous Creatures. Armour Superiority Brother.... The Emporer Protects. Cover them with as many templates as quickly as you can... And the Bugs are gonna smell like Victory in no time. Good luck Hawkrin, may the dice gods be with you my friend

Dave

[Wraelis]

Missile launchers and lots of autocannons are great for killing monstrous creatures! You can also use missile launchers to instant death warriors, raveners, and biovores!

[Paradill]

Depends on the list, some lists are all but immune to Flamers. The above is good advice, but I would also add that the humble LRBT can kill anything they have.

[Lt. Col. Hawkrin]

Thanks for all the great advice troopers. I'll see what I can muster from the Departmento Munitorum. I'll post results here afterwards.

[Wraelis]

Also, a vet squad or company command squad kitted out with Plasma Guns (coupled with the bring it down order for twin linked) can absolutely destroy monstrous creatures as well.

[yvain]

I only fought nids once when I just started. And I just could not score a kill on his two Tervigons. He rolled biomancy for both powers and managed to get iron army for each and endurance for another.

I just couldn't hurt the stupid things. I ended up using every unit I had and barely made a dent.

Ordered basilisk and a vendetta that week.

[Lt. Col. Hawkrin]

So yeah the game went like this...

My guard

HQ:
Creed and kell command squad w/vox caster and master of ordanance.

Troops:
1 Infantry platoon w/

Platoon command squad w/ 4 flamers and chimera w/multi laser and heavy flamer (outflanking via creed)

1 infantry blob of 30 w/3 autocannons, 3 flamers, vox caster and commissar.

2x veteran squads each w/vox caster one with 2x flamers a one with 2x grenade launchers

Heavy Support:
1 leman russ squadron w/

1 Leman russ battle tank w/3 heavy bolters

1 Leman russ punisher w/1x lascannon and sponson heavy bolters

His Nids.

HQ:
Hive tyrant w/lashwhip and bonesword and heavy venom cannon

Elite:
1x Venomthrope

3x Hive guard

Troops:
10x hormagaunts

10x termagaunts

Fast attack:
10x Gargoyles

Heavy support:
1x Tyrannofex w/fleshborer hive and regeneration

1x Carnifex w/crushing claws, heavy venom cannon and regeneration

1250 pts per side.

I lost horribly, did no wounds to his monstrous creatures the whole game. Died by turn 4.

[WestRider]

That's about what I predicted when I saw the Lists. Everyone talks Flamers when going up against Nids, but in my experience, a solid Guard Army will have enough Lasguns and such to clear out the chaff without much trouble (especially with the option for FRFSRF). What you need to worry about when you're picking Specials and Heavies is the big guys.

For me, it's pretty much all about Plasmaguns, Lascannon, and Missile Launchers here, because against everything where you need them, you can Twin-Link them with Bring It Down, so even on BS3 Units, you're hitting well, and Overheats aren't much of a problem.

Some more general comments on the list:
- Creed and Kell are incredibly expensive at 1250. In a list like this, without too many targets for Orders, they really aren't bringing much more than a bare bones CCS would for a fifth of the cost.
- Kell and the Vox Casters are mutually redundant. Either will take you up above a 90% success rate on your Orders. Both is just overkill. I'd stick with the Voxes, since they cost a quarter of what Kell does, and Ld 8 with a Re-roll is better than Ld 10.
- Make use of your Special Weapons slots in the CCS. They're another BS4 Unit, and they're not Scoring, so often you can get more aggressive with them in the endgame than you could with the remnants of a Veteran Squad or something else that needs to be Holding Objectives.
- Flamers and Veterans aren't a great fit. You're wasting the BS4 on a job that a PCS can do just as well for half the price.
- Why are the Russes Squadroned? You've got two more HS slots open, and keeping those two together is often going to result in overkill and/or poor Target Priority options. I'd go with a Heavy Bolter in both Hull Mounts, too.

[macknight]

Ratlings are often overlooked against tyranids, they can wound easily on those monstrous creatures bypassing its toughness, 3+ has to fail some time.

[Lt. Col. Hawkrin]

Problem with my buddy is he beefs his monstrous creatures to hell with 2+ saves, regeneration and all that.

I see what your saying though about creed and kell btw I won't be doing that again.

Some cool things that happened during the game though was my vet squad wiping out a unit of gargoyles and my platoon cs outflanking and flaming his gaunts almost to death untill he brought his hive guard to bear on them.

Any thoughts on target priority for me? i know I have to kill the big ones but when his entire army is big ones I don't know which to target first.

That used to be a simple answer of synapse first but loss of synapse doesn't seem like it neuters his army anymore.

[WestRider]

The 2+Saves are why you want all the Plasma and Lascannon. It only takes 12 TL BS3 Plasma shots on average to kill a T-Fex. With Lascannon and some non-TL BS4 Plasmaguns around, that should be doable in one Turn, even at 1250.

The Hive Tyrant takes 2/3 of that. I actually had to go back and re-write a bunch of this, because I thought the Tyrant had Wings, which changes matters quite a bit.

The 2+ Saves also make Russes of any kind other than an Executioner a much less worthwhile investment. Against a list like this, you want cheap crowd control (Lasguns, Flamer PCS, Hellhounds, Girffons), and massed AP2. Anything that doesn't really fit that profile is deadweight.

Target Priority: Kind of hard with this List, a lot of it's going to be very situational.
- Keep an eye open for something that can give you First Blood. Is the Venomthrope visible? Are the Gargoyles or one of the Gaunt Broods relatively exposed?
- Taking Synapse away actually can hurt this List pretty badly. Without Synapse, the Termagants, Gargoyles, Hive Guard, and T-Fex have to pass a Ld Test (Ld 6-8) to be able to Move or fire at anything other than the nearest Enemy Unit. On top of that, the Tyrant gives you an extra VP for taking out his Warlord, always worth gunning for.
- If you get a shot at the Hive Guard, you should probably take it. Their ability to fire from hiding can make them very frustrating to deal with.
- If playing an Objectives Game, note that he's only got two Scoring Units, both very small. Kill the Hormies, kill the Termagants, and throw everything else in his way to try to slow him down while you hold onto one Objective way in your backfield.
- Other than that, Shoot the Fast Ones is actually usually a better guideline for dealing with Nids. The Gargoyles and Hormagaunts are likely to be up in your face right off the bat. If you can deal with them quickly, you're going to have a couple more Turns to cope with the rest of the List.

- Not so much Target Priority, but: If you can get at it away from Support Units, Charge the T-Fex. You'll never kill it in Close Combat, but it's only got 3 WS3 Attacks, and it costs almost 300 Points. Tying it up for a couple of Turns with 100 Points worth of Vets or a 65 Point Infantry Squad is a win for you.

[Wraelis]

2+ saves you say? That really calls for some plasma guns, good sir. You could always try out the chimera CCS plasma death wagon. I've used it time and time again against my buddy's tyranids and it's always done really well. Especially now that plasma guns can always shoot at 24", even if it moves

[emptyhat]

He only has one synapse creature? The Tyrant?


The Tyrranofex is an infantry murderer which will lurk without synapse?And the gargoyles and termagaunts lurk too. None of those have that long a range so killing the Tyrant early ruins them?

It sounds as though if you have the firepower to paste the Tyrant early then you can lead his army around by the nose.

So like Westrider seems to be saying a few missile launchers/lascannons and maybe some more battle cannons hitting the Tyrant and his guard from turn one onwards should cause him lots of problems. The autocannons are wounding the Hive guard on 3s and denying them saves too.

Then if you can kill the Tyrant (I'm sure he is trying to hide him a bit from your weapons) the raging Venomthrope, Carnifex, and termagaunts have to follow the nearest unit regardless of suitability. So perhaps if you had something fast to draw them off? Like a hellhound?

(If you happened to own a vendetta you could turn it on the Tyrant when it shows up then switch to hover and lure the feed units away from your lines with it?)

[Captain Zapp Brannigan]

Most of my experience has been gained through playing against Nids.

My top tip, Wipe a unit out completely before moving onto the next. A problem of mine was that I was blasting away at multiple MCs in the same shooting phase, meaning that he would have 3-4 MCs still with atleast 1wound who were still able to fulfil there role. Until you kill the damn things it doesn't matter if you've brought them down to 1wound because they are still going to punch back. Same can be said for targeting multiple large gaunt squads. It used to annoy the hell out of me that by the time he reached my lines he was tying up my valuable units with 5-8 squishy gaunts (admittedly it is hard to completely wipe out a 30 model squad... God Bless Mortars). At the end of the day it is a fine art of balancing between ensuring that you are able to wipe out a unit completely without going down right bat crazy and blasting everything you have on the wrong target... Beware the cannon fodder/bait.

Personally I am a big fan of Mortars for gaunts (when he fields 30 model squads it is impossible to miss) and Autocannons for the big boys, however Missile Launchers are beginning to grow on me.

A good tactic is to field a CCS with Missile Launcher and MoO. Position these guys close to a HWT kitted out with Missile Launchers. Using Bring It Down on the HWTs, you improve the odds of hitting with our puny guardsmen BS3 with re-rolls and then back it up by firing your CCS's Missile Launcher at the same MC (CSS Vet BS4 makes it feasible to field this expensive Wpn system). As for the MoO, as the CCS is remaining stationary for the Missile Launcher you may as well through him in and hope that when he misses you take out a pie plate of gaunts or wound whatever other nasties who are lurking about.

Well there's my two bits-But feel free to ignore me,
<I am only a conscript after all


"In the game of chess you can never let your adversary see your pieces"