Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

All the nid players in my group play genestealer heavy - 6 squads of 6-10, varying level of tooled-out-ness - particularly in lower point games (under 2000).  Well, this is fine and dandy because my Chaos boys usually ally with them, but tomorrow I've got a 1500pt one-off against my nid buddy.  His list will likely be flyrant, 2 gunfex, some zoans, then 6x 6 stealers with scuttle, carapace, scytals, hooks. 

I ... need some help

Disregarding what's in my list (I've got the firepower to concentrate and kill the flyrant or a fex in one turn, but that's without bothering with stealers), any good tactics against the scuttling stealer shock force?  Deploy deeper in my deployment zone, try my best to concentrate fire on the stealers at hand ... but then there's the flyrant zipping in and the gunfex dropping templates.  I can pray for a combo charge of demonettes + furious charge speed lord, which finally makes me go before the stealers, but usually results in girly demon bits ...

Looking for some general tactics against this nasty nasty build.

- Salvage

EDIT: Uh, I mean the bad kind of "girly demon bits" ... ")

General strategy is to take a lot of Obliterators and possessed Predators (tl las + twin hb), get good firelanes and pack all your firepower together so that when something shows its face you can shoot back at it with all your guns. Obliterators are really perfect for dealing with that kind of force as you can either use heavy bolters to wipe out entire Stealer units or linked Plasma Guns to annihilate big bugs.

Can't really give you any advice if I don't know what's in your army, but if you're using Daemonettes you don't want to get unlucky with scatters.

I was looking for more general in-game advice for any MEQ army, not really list concerns. My army is pretty much set at what is painted, which sadly includes just 1 oblit


But what I take away is pack firepower together and work to maximize firelanes. I thought maybe a compacted / castled deployment might be good, and barbed stranglers don't really bother me that much with BS3 behind them.

- Salvage

EDIT: Here's my list, as odd as it may be ...

Speed Lord - S6 I6 5 attaks on charge, ikon

6 1k Sons - Sorc w/ fist, bolt of change, 3 thralls

6 Noise Marines - blastmaster, plasma

1 Oblit

10 CSM - autocannon, plasma, AC w/ kai gun, pw

8 CSM - infiltrate, lascannon, flamer, AC w/ fist, combi-flamer, mutation

2x 6 Demonettes

6 Havoks - 3 ML

Dread - plasma, hull, heavy flamer, armor

 

Thanks for the help.

Well, your list isn't so bad. It's a cool army. However, sadly in 40K army lists do impact your game performance a great deal and if your opponent is playing tooled Zilla Nids there's very little you can do to compete with what you got there. I guess if your opponent isn't all that smart and you manage to summon those Daemonettes where you want them you might be able to take down a couple monsters in one go and cripple the Nids a bit.

With an army like yours I'd go for a draw. Use range to your advantage and don't be afraid to start moving your squads away from the Nid advance even though this would mean you don't get to shoot with the moving units that turn. You'll score some victory points with your shooting, limit your enemy to only one or two turns of close combat at best, and hopefully grab a minor victory. Sacrifice the Daemonettes against the monsters but try to save all your other stuff. I've managed to beat semi Zilla Nids with very balanced Space Marines by just playing points denial and counter attack.

I alweays thought that fully tooling up stealers was a bad idea. Scuttlers, good sometimes, carapace, good always, verything else, too many points added on.

Also why no hormagaunts? They get to you a turn quicker and tie up opponents in double tap range of your advancing stealers.

Very odd. Yet it looks like its working.

Last 1v1 game I had vs nids was against a more 'classic' nid army - flyrant, broodlord + posse, VC fex, 2x warriors with guns + scytals, 2x hormagaunts, 6-8 stealers, a zoan or two. Killed his flyrant turn 1, then was impressed with my CSM when the hormagaunts hit my line and didn't cause much mayhem at all. 1 swarm locked in with my 10-man and were killed in a few turns (which was not great because the warriors got to advance unmolested), and the other (more depleted) hit the 6 noise marines and were actually beaten off for the loss of 4 noisy boys!

But mostly I picked the list apart. Got the combo charge on the stealers, so my lord took them out with maybe 2 chicks dead, fex died late game to mass fire and then more demonettes, and the girls finally finished off the bothersome warriors. Broodlord and his stealers were tanked by the 1k Sons and the 8-man with 2x flamers (he got stuck in difficult terrain , then baked / fisted).

I don't expect such luck tonight against the Stealer Spam list

- Salvage