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I agreed an annihilation game with my friend, who collect tyranids. I need to know what is the best tank against them (note that I will include 2 squads of 3 russes, and I have every leman russ type except the eradicator.). I have one bane wolf, a manticore, a valkyrie, a basilisk and Leman russ tanks (11).

Why squadrons of three? That makes them somewhat difficult to maneuver, and you can't benefit from cover shenanigans either.

use three standard russes. and just load up in chimera's.
use plasma and melta from the vets/CCS to take down the big bugs.

Eradicator is nice anti-trash backup. Against nids it''s 2+ wound no cover, no armour.
Also consider pask punisher. It's damn pricey but 29 bs4 shots, that re-rolls wounds will blow away almost every MC in one turn.

The Pask Punisher is a terrible tank. Yes, on average, you'll do 3.58 wounds to a T6 +3 MC a turn. That's at 24 inch range, so you can at most 2 turns of shooting if your opponent is especially slow. That's one dead trygon, if it is charging across the field. If it deep strikes, you'll get one turn, meaning no dead trygon and 250 points down the drain.
Also, the tank can't move if it wants to fire at any kind of effect. So everything will be autohitting that juicy AV 11 behind.

Plasma is a great way to take down MC's. Manticores are great against hordes. The standard leman russes should give you nice template coverage.

if he has lots of big bugs i reccomend the Demolisher.

even a tiny touch on a Carnifex's base will yield a Str10 hit with no armor save.



as many large blasts as you can get. you could run 3 normal Russes, 3 Demolishers, and 3 Basilisks. the basilisks can take away the cover Nids rely on with indirect fire, the Russes can blast from long range and the Demolishers can get them at short range.


if he has warriors, shoot some Str8 in their direction. they will pop quite easily.

Kubik wrote:Eradicator is nice anti-trash backup. Against nids it''s 2+ wound no cover, no armour.
Also consider pask punisher. It's damn pricey but 29 bs4 shots, that re-rolls wounds will blow away almost every MC in one turn.

Your advice is terrible. Way to recommend the two biggest wastes of points in the heavy support section. Do you have an anti-IG vendetta (no pun intended) and want him to lose?

Ok maybe with punisher I crossed the line a little, but I don't see anything bad with Eradicator, and I don't understand people problem with it. I tried it a couple of times, and it served well. Ok, he's useless against power armour, but when You know, you play against something else why not to give it a try?

Don't use the banewolf. Make it a hellhound and make bugs cry.

Wow, I came on this thread expecting everybody to be saying "executioner with plasma sponsons," but I don't see it anywhere.

The problem with single-shot big blasts against nids is that your huge blast only causes 1 wound on a big bug. So with normal scatters and a ton of big blasts, you'll need like 9 blasts to have any chance of killing a 6-wound big bug. But with 5 str7 ap2 blasts per turn (four if you move) an executioner can nearly take out a big bug by itself.

Take a couple of standard russes because they're cheap and can insta-kill zoans and warriors, then load up with as many executioners as you can afford. Add hull heavy flamers for free to toast the little bugs, and no nid army will be able to stand against you.

Kubik wrote:Ok maybe with punisher I crossed the line a little, but I don't see anything bad with Eradicator, and I don't understand people problem with it. I tried it a couple of times, and it served well. Ok, he's useless against power armour, but when You know, you play against something else why not to give it a try?

Meta game is mech meq, so any ap4 large pie has popularity issues.

Then again, against nids, the eradicator is still a semi-valide choice. Not that I'd take one over the executioner, but if your opponent is running a zerg rush instead of MC's, you could use it to pick out squads of tougher bugs.

Meh, giving up all that range, 2S, 1AP and paying 15 points MORE just makes the tank a bad deal. IG has no shortage of AP4 cover ignoring weapons (like all those hull heavy flamers) that do an admirable job of clearing out the riffraff.

Irdiumstern wrote:The Pask Punisher is a terrible tank. Yes, on average, you'll do 3.58 wounds to a T6 +3 MC a turn. That's at 24 inch range, so you can at most 2 turns of shooting if your opponent is especially slow. That's one dead trygon, if it is charging across the field. If it deep strikes, you'll get one turn, meaning no dead trygon and 250 points down the drain.
Also, the tank can't move if it wants to fire at any kind of effect. So everything will be autohitting that juicy AV 11 behind.

That is horrible logic
there is virtually nothing that can bring down, point for point, a tyranid MC in one turn of shooting. (that doesn't cause instant death) If there was, every game would last about 3 turns, tops, and end in a wipeout.

Pask is better than say, a normal leman that wil put about 1 wound on the MC, but not as good as a plasma executor.

the answer to this one is obvious: take 9 hydras. In a single turn they...

- Put 6 wounds on a trygon or equivalent monstrous creature

- Put 31 wounds worth of warriors down

- Put down 33 gaunts.

657 points and you basically wreck any one thing your opponent has every turn. Fill in the rest with plasma and lasguns, and there's not going to be a lot your opponent can do.

Vanilla Russ - Always a great choice

Plasma Executioner - Good for taking down MC's as no-one likes that Ap2

Eradicator - Good for flushing out bugs hiding in cover or screened by Venomthropes

Demolisher - Short range, but packs a fething huge punch with S10, wounding almost any bug on 2+ with Ap2.

Punisher - No. Just no.

In short, you want blasts. Lots and lots of blasts.

Ailaros wrote:the answer to this one is obvious: take 9 hydras. In a single turn they...

- Put 6 wounds on a trygon or equivalent monstrous creature

- Put 31 wounds worth of warriors down

- Put down 33 gaunts.

657 points and you basically wreck any one thing your opponent has every turn. Fill in the rest with plasma and lasguns, and there's not going to be a lot your opponent can do.

Weren't you just hating on the Hydra in another thread? Something about having an extremely narrow target base and having crappy autocannons.

Hmm problem about the eradicator is that it seems the hellhound is a cheaper alternative. Yes against hiveguard it'll suffer, and you'll want rocket pod/HB valks anyways for fast attack but against zoans and the amount of CC MC nidz can bring, the armor and range of a eradicator is thrown out the window

Terminus wrote:Weren't you just hating on the Hydra in another thread? Something about having an extremely narrow target base

Yes, and this is part of that base, along with DE skimmers.

Autocannons are good at forcing relatively low toughness things with bad armor saves to make invul saves (zoanthropes), and are good at taking down low toughness models that only have Sv4 or worse and have to be advancing out of cover (warriors, genestealers, etc.), and, although they're not necessarily great at it, taking down monstrous creatures (half of the friggin codex). The only other things they do remarkably well against are DE skimmers (and speeders) and guard heavy weapons platoons.

Five very narrow roles. It just so happens that the entire tyranid codex blunders into most of them.

He might be taking the doom of Malantai.

I'm an IG novice, but urely the punisher is worth taking against nids? 20 shots (10 hitting on average), likely 8/9 wounds? Agianst critters with an 6+ armour save, isnt that worth considering?

Or am I just embarassing myself now?

liam0404 wrote:I'm an IG novice, but urely the punisher is worth taking against nids? 20 shots (10 hitting on average), likely 8/9 wounds? Agianst critters with an 6+ armour save, isnt that worth considering?

No, just... no.

Ok, but explain why then.

What you want are template weapons. Blast, flame, whatever you can take. Hellhound ReguRuss combo is the cheapest way to go.

See that's a better answer than "No, just no."

Hellhound spam could be frighteningly effective.

liam0404 wrote:Ok, but explain why then.

Irdiumstern already said the reason why further up this very thread...

To sumarize, the Punisher is the worst tank in the entire IG arsenal it doesn't matter what your target is, we have a better tank for the job, you are better of taking the Punisher's points in lasguns than in taking the actual tank!

Simply, the punisher isn't really worth it in points. Despite having up to 32 shots at various strengths, it's quite overpriced.

TBH I'm almost always dissapointed with regular Russ. Against smart oponent, you'll get abut 4 maybe 5 models under marker, and they will be always in cover. So... 150 pts tank kills 2 guys on averege.

sluggaslugga wrote:He might be taking the doom of Malantai.

Doom can be bad news for IG if you only have blast weapons that are S8+

If you are really worried, run a unit or two of veterans with melta. are your best bet, but they will be in the dangerzone if they fail.

Grundz wrote:
That is horrible logic
there is virtually nothing that can bring down, point for point, a tyranid MC in one turn of shooting. (that doesn't cause instant death) If there was, every game would last about 3 turns, tops, and end in a wipeout.

Pask is better than say, a normal leman that will put about 1 wound on the MC, but not as good as a plasma executor.

If you're going to insult my logic, at least back up your argument.
I'll go in depth since it seems my point did not get across.
Guns have this quality called range. The Punisher has 24" on its main gun. That's pretty short, but if it were to move 6" a turn, that would be sufficient for keeping away from assault. So far so good.
However: To get those magical 3.58 wounds (That's equivalent to 8 plasma gun shots from a BS 4 unit, btw), the Punisher cannot move. Moving 6" drops your damage to 1.7 wounds.

For the punisher to kill an MC close to it's point cost, it needs two turns of shooting. That's about all it will get before getting curbstomped, since if you move, your damage drops significantly. If your opponent happens to have +2 armor or improved movement capabilities, you are screwed with using a Punisher.

Point for Point, 2 Plasma CCS can take out a tyranid MC a turn, at 12", cheaper than a Punisher, without chimeras. At the 24" mark, they'll match it's performance while still being cheaper.
At the 24" mark, 4 plasma shots do almost exactly the same as a moving punisher, for half the price. At the 12" mark, the Plasma CCS does the same damage as a Punisher. 2 Plasma Vet Squads at 12" will kill a MC in 1 shooting phase, still coming out cheaper than the Punisher. Of course, that's shorter range.
At longer ranges, you may do less damage per turn, but you get more turns of shooting. 3 Hydras sitting still do 2.5 wounds a turn to the enemy MC on average. That's coming out slightly cheaper than the Pask Punisher still.

IG doesn't really have any perfect long range answers to MC's. Plasma is good, and will always be useful. The punisher is decent, but has no other uses in the average IG list (Terminators can be easily killed with flashlights).