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Hi Dakka,
Looking at the new leaked ork codex, it seems that the orks are a far better melee army than the tyranids mostly due to very cheap and reasonably effective boyz and very fast support and tie-up units (stormboys, koptas, trukkboys, bikes and warboss on bike).
Are the "masters of melee" (Tyranids) outclassed?
I've got a all-melee Tyranid army and think I would get swamped in a match up against orks.
Or would it be just time to get some (gasp) melee carnifexes out?
Nah, thinking about it, bad idea, the klaw will tear it apart, even with T7 which would give it invincibility against S3 choppas.

Opinions?

Greets
Schepp himself

No. Tyranids are still better. It is just that the way that Tyranids are competitively played right now does not matchup very well in H2H with how Orks are percieved to play. It is very hard to have 8-12 strong units of genestealers jump into 30 strong units of orks and anticipate surviving long. If you know you are facing Orks, you can build a Tyranid list to better Orks in H2H. If you are bringing your all-comers RTT/GT list of Tyranids, you are gonna have a tough fight.

Darrian

I don't think the claw is the big downer on T7 CC fex's, but the fact that there are 3 slots which can effectively take it - the 3 heavy slots. Given how much nids really benefit from fex VC/BS I can't see them being given over to CC fexs, Klaw or no Klaw.


The best anti ork-boy CC fex I can think of is
+I
+WS
Exoskeleton
regen
scythe tail
miasma
2 talons
toxin
185pts

sv2+ could still be useful to halve the shooting wounds.

The klaw is looking at averaging 15 attacks to kill the fex, Even the slugga nob who charges on first round is looking at 2 full turns (4 rounds) to do 5 wounds on average, a regenerating fex has a good chance of getting 1 of those back before it dies, so 5 combat rounds. The fex will average 13 dead orks in 4 rounds, so a 20 strong mob would be looking in a bit of a bad way as it may have run away first. Bio-plasma could be added to increase that likely hood.

A shoota Nob doesn't have his slugga ( I believe - correct me if im wrong) is struggling as he can expect to need more rounds to do the 5 wounds, with more chance of regen kicking in. The fex could well be lasting 7 rounds if regen kicks in twice, in 6 rounds the fex will likely kill 20 orks, more if he had bio plasma. That could leave even a 30 strong mob struggling to stay in the fight long enough for the nob. Though the shootas would be more likely to have done a wound or more from shooting.

They are not brilliant ork killers in their own right, but negating everything but the klaw makes them the most reliable tarpit the nids have against orks, and possibly a good unit if combined with something to inflict some casualties first. But I don't think that makes it that good - what would it do against other stuff, and what would you replace the nice anti-tank VC/BS fex's with.

Well, I was rather thinking that the ork unit will be tied up with some gaunts and the carnifex could try to charge in way that he can avoid the klaw. Problem is that the boyz are so cheap that you can't get two tyranid units for one ork unit.

And Darrian, what tyranid army would beat orks in HtH?

Greets
Schepp himself

Genies and spine gaunts backed by broodlord and tyrants?

What are orks going to field that can go toe to toe with a CC tweeked tyrant or broodlord?

Boyz?
They seem to be pretty hard against everything HtH orientated due to high rate of attacks and if things get ugly a nasty (untargetable) powerklaw.

Greets
Schepp himself

jfrazell wrote:Genies and spine gaunts backed by broodlord and tyrants?

What are orks going to field that can go toe to toe with a CC tweeked tyrant or broodlord?

Massive amounts of orks with hidden fists. Played a 1850 game vs a very well balanced nid army, more close combat oriented. Packed a flyrant wit cc setup, broodlord with 12? steelers, 2 big units of gaunts, one shooty one choppy, 2 shooty fexes, 3 zoanthropes, and some tyranid warriors. I knew with infiltrate the broodlord would soon be chopping up my only good shooting units, my lootas. So I sacked 2 trukkboyz uints into him one after the other. Each charge was left with one boy and the nob, claw killed 2 or 3 steelers a go. He won, but only left him and 3 steelers at the end. Flyrant was takent down by trukk boyz and warboss. My 30 strong shoota squad was tied up whole game by 32 close combat gaunts. It was beautiful, he charged, and had leaping, so got 75 attacks. He dident know every ork is toughness 4. I only ended up losing 10 orks, and he in turn lost 8. Then I let him know above 12 there fearless. His smile turned into a frown. Anyway broodlord was finished off by zagstucks unit. Lootas preformed great, killing both fexes first turn, before there nasty reroll weapons of doom made the scene. Killed 20 of the 32 shooty gaunts, and a zoanthrope. This was my all comers list, I dident even know what he was going to play when I made it. But I will tell you what, this army made it alot closer than the nid army I faced the next week with 5 fexes, a flyrant, and 5 8 man genestealer units. A carnifex or 2 fell every round, and warboss on the bike took the shooty flyrant (whats the point of a shooty flyrant) solo. After that it came down to 30ish steelers vs 70ish boyz. Attrition won that for me.

I never understood the whole "hidden powerfist" thing. It's not like you can't single them out for killing if they're in the kill-zone, you just need enough attacks. If they're attacks that would instantly kill a nob, all the better.

Part of assault is laying up for an assault, moving so that when you make your assault moves the kill-zone is where it will give you the most advantage and your opponent the most disadvantage. Blast weapons are especially good for discouraging a nice tight melee formation that would render fancy manouevering moot. And Tyranids have plenty of those.

One of the overlooked choices in the Tyranid list that will really work well on the Orks are tyrant guard. I would have 3 with each of my walking Tyrants and that would add 6 T:6 wounds to the tyrant and 9 more S:5 WS:5 I:5 attacks a round. That alone will cause 4 more wounds on the orks per round. On average the tyrant w/guard will kill 5+ orks per turn and will account for 36 ork attacks per round to cause a single wound on the unit, not counting the klaw.

Darrian

Yeah, I thought about that, too. How about lash whips instead of scything talons on the guards?

Aren't guards pretty much mandatory on shooty (or better: snipey) Tyrants anyway?

Greets
Schepp himself

Nurglitch: I agree with you completely about setting up assaults in the fashion you describe. There's also a defensive measures as well when you know you are going to be assaulted. You can definitely have a 'hidden powerfist'.

However, bear in mind, a lot of people still don't know the rules when moving models into assault. I've lost count how many tourneys I've had to remind people to look at the rulebook and read how to move an assaulting unit.

@Schepp, lash whips are cool, but they rarely get the multiple effect of 2 or 3 tyrant guard being in B2B with an opposing model to reduce his number of attacks by more than one. If all you are going to achieve is one less attack for each ork that is in B2B with the tyrant guard, I would rather have the additional attack of the scything talons.

I have only seen one player use guards, me. Unless my HT has wings, he has guard(s).

Darrian

Nurglitch:

I never understood the whole "hidden powerfist" thing. It's not like you can't single them out for killing if they're in the kill-zone, you just need enough attacks.

You make it sound so easy.

Darrian13 wrote: If all you are going to achieve is one less attack for each ork that is in B2B with the tyrant guard, I would rather have the additional attack of the scything talons.

Ah well, I confused the lash effect with the defend ability of the eldar exarch where the whole squad loses one attack.

Problems I see with unhiddening the hidden powerklaw is that you have to
1) get the charge which is harder vs. orks than against other armies (generally speaking, the basic ork can be boosted with fleet)
2) Even if you get the charge, the Nob can be hidden within the unit so you cannot get him in the first round of combat (out of 2" engagement zone) The second round will be a crowded bashing without chances to single him effectively (or does torrent of fire work in assaults?)
3) Even the basic ork can whittle down a broodlord or tyrant with so many, possibly S4 attacks.

Greets
Schepp himself

2) Even if you get the charge, the Nob can be hidden within the unit so you cannot get him in the first round of combat (out of 2" engagement zone) The second round will be a crowded bashing without chances to single him effectively (or does torrent of fire work in assaults?)

Torrent does work in assault, but it's irrelevant unless bionics is involved somewhere, since it requires as many wounds as there are engaged models and MC attacks ignore armour saves. Let's say there are four Orks (including Nob) engaged with a Tyrant, and the Tyrant scores exactly four wounds. Result: three dead boys and a Nob with one wound, with or without factoring in Torrent. If there were five wounds, the result would be three dead boys and a dead Nob, again regardless of Torrent.

In my experience, Orks have always been more melee than Bugs. I have the good fortune to know a really outstanding Ork player that has never lost a tournament game, and he's been in quite a few, with his Orks.
In all the games he played using Orks against Tyranids from 2nd edition on, he's only lost one that I know of.
It all seems to come down to having the right number of flamers, truks, and Nobs with power klaws to counter the speed and power of a Tyranid army. Add in all the assault rokkits that an Ork army can field along with all the other shooting going on, and chances were, he'd have a pretty shot up Bug army, fexes and all by the time the Orks got to the close combat on turn 2.He's always made his army to have the advantage of numbers over most Tyranid players he's faced, and with the new codex, he's pretty well unstoppable. It's kind of like someone who was naturally a good athlete suddenly getting into steroids.

tegeus-Cromis: Yes, it does sound easy. Stuff usually sounds easier than it is and learning to (a) pay attention to the important art of arranging one's pieces on the board, and (b) remember that art when you're pushing plastic, is the tricky part. It's basically a matter of practice, although the appropriate corollary to that is that only perfect practice makes perfect: if you practice stupid then stupid is how you'll turn out.

Relapse wrote: In my experience, Orks have always been more melee than Bugs. I have the good fortune to know a really outstanding Ork player that has never lost a tournament game, and he's been in quite a few, with his Orks.
In all the games he played using Orks against Tyranids from 2nd edition on, he's only lost one that I know of.
It all seems to come down to having the right number of flamers, truks, and Nobs with power klaws to counter the speed and power of a Tyranid army. Add in all the assault rokkits that an Ork army can field along with all the other shooting going on, and chances were, he'd have a pretty shot up Bug army, fexes and all by the time the Orks got to the close combat on turn 2.He's always made his army to have the advantage of numbers over most Tyranid players he's faced, and with the new codex, he's pretty well unstoppable. It's kind of like someone who was naturally a good athlete suddenly getting into steroids.

But is that a melee army which I believe was the question. To those better than I, what would be the best assaulty Nid list vs. an assaulty ork list? And can we in fact push to 300 minis in total on a standard board at 1850

Nurglitch:

Yes, it does sound easy. Stuff usually sounds easier than it is and learning to (a) pay attention to the important art of arranging one's pieces on the board, and (b) remember that art when you're pushing plastic, is the tricky part. It's basically a matter of practice, although the appropriate corollary to that is that only perfect practice makes perfect: if you practice stupid then stupid is how you'll turn out.

Of course, it's also possible to practice countering such tactics. A nob in the midst of his mob will be next to impossible to killzone snipe, and good luck killzone sniping anything when it's charging you.

A Nob in a mob but outside the kill-zone cannot be sniped. And enough bodies in the kill-zone will make sniping a matter of having very good luck. That's okay. A Nob outside of the kill-zone is nothing to worry about. You simply massacre the available Orks, break the unit, and run them down in a sweeping advance. Especially with Tyranids though an assault that leaves Orks outside of the kill-zone is an assault that was badly timed and did not use enough Tyranid units. Like any other army assaulting one-to-one is a foolishly risky proposition and two units assaulting one is almost okay, and three on one is just about right.

A Nob in a kill-zone saturated with bodies means that you haven't properly thinned the mob before assaulting. If they're going to turtle up then you should sit back and shell them with spore-mines, deathspitters, and barbed-stranglers.

If the mob is charging your Tyranids, then you've mucked up. I mean it happens. Sometimes it's inevitable. But I've seen games where the Tyranid player massed as close to the Ork deployment zone as possible and then was somehow surprised when the Orks got the first turn and got stuck in on that turn or the next. I mean just because you can close quickly doesn't mean you have to.

Taking Orks on with Tyranids isn't simply a matter of taking units x, y, and z, it's a matter of using them like a Dark Eldar player!

jfrazell wrote:

Relapse wrote: In my experience, Orks have always been more melee than Bugs. I have the good fortune to know a really outstanding Ork player that has never lost a tournament game, and he's been in quite a few, with his Orks.
In all the games he played using Orks against Tyranids from 2nd edition on, he's only lost one that I know of.
It all seems to come down to having the right number of flamers, truks, and Nobs with power klaws to counter the speed and power of a Tyranid army. Add in all the assault rokkits that an Ork army can field along with all the other shooting going on, and chances were, he'd have a pretty shot up Bug army, fexes and all by the time the Orks got to the close combat on turn 2.He's always made his army to have the advantage of numbers over most Tyranid players he's faced, and with the new codex, he's pretty well unstoppable. It's kind of like someone who was naturally a good athlete suddenly getting into steroids.

But is that a melee army which I believe was the question.

A good and honest point you bring up, but if all shootiness were removed from each armies list, then the Orks would still have the advantage in numbers to deal out a bunch of attacks and absorb a lot of damage.

Nurglitch:

A Nob in a mob but outside the kill-zone cannot be sniped. And enough bodies in the kill-zone will make sniping a matter of having very good luck.

I was thinking more of the latter.

A Nob in a kill-zone saturated with bodies means that you haven't properly thinned the mob before assaulting. If they're going to turtle up then you should sit back and shell them with spore-mines, deathspitters, and barbed-stranglers.

Why would they "turtle up"? Unless you're stealer shock, they're going to come right at you, and it's either shoot them as much as you can and then charge them, or shoot them as much as you can and then get charged. There is no "wait until you've thinned them out enough" option.

Also, spore mines? Lawl.

Taking Orks on with Tyranids isn't simply a matter of taking units x, y, and z, it's a matter of using them like a Dark Eldar player!

You seem to have changed your conclusion considerably from 'I never understood the whole "hidden powerfist" thing. It's not like you can't single them out for killing if they're in the kill-zone, you just need enough attacks', which made dealing with those PKs sound like a matter of course.

tegeus-Cromis: By "turtle-up" I'm referring to the classic formation as used by the Roman Legions. In 40k terms I'm using it to refer to closing up spaces with a unit so that its component models are in base-to-base contact. This is the ideal formation to use when engaging in assaults because it allows more models in the unit to fight, and if necessary take a wound or two for the team (aka the well-equipped leader). Of course this is also the group of formations that is most vulnerable to blast and template weapons. If a unit of Orks does this, then moving away from them so that they cannot assault you and shelling them while doing so is an option besides shooting them and getting assaulted, and shooting them and assaulting them instead. Once the number of Orks in the unit has been "thinned" or reduced to a manageable size such that they are no longer fearless, or likely won't be fearless once you've piled into them, or simply can't hide any members you might like to target amongst masses of expendable dross, then assaulting them would be an idea. Basically I've never understood the whole "hidden power-fist" thing because power-fists and the like are simply material. It's how you use them or oppose their use that makes them dangerous. If they're hidden from the effects of your attacks, the fact is that either your luck sucks, or more likely your tactics suck because good tactics do well with the luck and material available.

Spore mines are pretty handy things. They're damned useful for sticking in front of charging Ork mobz, and the best part is that they can cause pinning since they hit like barrages.

By "turtle-up" I'm referring to the classic formation as used by the Roman Legions. In 40k terms I'm using it to refer to closing up spaces with a unit so that its component models are in base-to-base contact.

Ah, okay. I thought you were using it in its contemporary gaming sense.

If a unit of Orks does this, then moving away from them so that they cannot assault you and shelling them while doing so is an option besides shooting them and getting assaulted, and shooting them and assaulting them instead.

What I meant was that you're going to have to assault them or be assaulted by them eventually (assuming you don't just kill them all). This was in response to your turtling comment, which of course I misread.

Once the number of Orks in the unit has been "thinned" or reduced to a manageable size such that they are no longer fearless, or likely won't be fearless once you've piled into them, or simply can't hide any members you might like to target amongst masses of expendable dross, then assaulting them would be an idea. Basically I've never understood the whole "hidden power-fist" thing because power-fists and the like are simply material. It's how you use them or oppose their use that makes them dangerous. If they're hidden from the effects of your attacks, the fact is that either your luck sucks, or more likely your tactics suck because good tactics do well with the luck and material available.

So your idea is to shoot the unit until you've almost wiped them out? That isn't a solution to PFs/PKs, it's a solution to everything.

Of course hidden fists are "just material". Everything is. Point is, they're good material. If you're a good craftsman, you'll produce good goods from them. What's not to "get"?

tegeus-Cromis: Hmm, I should probably put a disclaimer in my signature about that since I'm really not on board with 'contemporary' gamer slang. Mind you, I think it helps to use a reasonably formal and public dialect when talking to people you don't know, such as one message boards, and assume the same until corrected.

Now, back to business...

My idea isn't to shoot the unit until I've almost wiped it out, as that's rarely convenient. I'm talking about shaping the unit by either inflicting massed casualties so that the player must remove Orks from all over the unit in order to avoid its unit coherency being broken, or by using range and lines of sight (mostly range) to shave off those Ork boyz that form an ablative wall around their Nob prior to an assault (12" range weapons are supremely ideal for this). And that's if you can't just pick the bugger off using a torrent of fire.

What's not to get is why people complain about powerfists and other specialists being hidden when there are so many ways to expose, dispose, or simply ameliorate the effect that it supposed to 'hide' them amongst the rest of the unit.

I'm sorry to say this, but I suspect that the contemporary gaming use of "turtle-up" is, while less formal, rather more public than its original use in the context of a gaming forum (albeit a tabletop-based one). Pretty much anyone who has played a real-time strategy game or two--and in my experience, this includes most of all but the most old-school gamers--will hear "turtling" and immediately think tower spam, defensive play, etc.

As for simply "shaping the unit", you should realise that the Nob could be in the very center of a Deep Strike-style flower pattern with three rings around him and he would still be engaged no matter which part of the unit you assault. Assuming turtling, you really will have to kill most of the unit to expose him. That, or you'll have a lot of range/LoS sniping to do.

I wouldn't want to overstate my case, though. There are definitely ways to counter hidden fists/klaws. It's just that to me, a statement like the one you made earlier seems to be claiming a whole lot more than that. If you didn't intend to, fair enough.

Well, I've never been one to pander to the masses, especially if the masses are being stupid so I guess I'll have to deal with the occasional misunderstanding.

And yes, of course I realize that the Nob could be at the very center of a deep mass of Orks. That's not a problem at all. If means I don't have to bugger about making sure the git isn't a problem because the Ork player has done that for me. Instead I just get to barrel in with some assault units and wipe the floor with the regular Ork boyz unmolested by power-claws or big choppas or what.

Excuse me for being stupid, then.

You don't get my meaning. The Nob can be at the very center of a deep mass of Orks and still get to attack. Try this: place a standard infantry model (representing a Nob) on the table. Then place a circle of models around it, just as in deep strike. Keep adding circles until that first model has three rings of other models surrounding it. When you're done, measure the distance between the central model and each outlying model. Guess what? 2", with a little wiggle room to spare. That means there is no model in the squad that you can contact without engaging the Nob.

Well, if the Nob at the center of a deep mass of Orks and still able to engage then they can be removed as casualties and attacking at I1 is just going to facilitate. Of course, if they are at the center of said mass of Orks then obviously you should thin or shape the unit before piling in unless you want to increase the risk of the Nob making a difference.

Well, if the Nob at the center of a deep mass of Orks and still able to engage then they can be removed as casualties and attacking at I1 is just going to facilitate.

The owning player chooses which models to remove. Sure the Nob can be removed as a casualty--if the Ork player wants to.

Of course, if they are at the center of said mass of Orks then obviously you should thin or shape the unit before piling in unless you want to increase the risk of the Nob making a difference.

So you acknowledge that this statement

And yes, of course I realize that the Nob could be at the very center of a deep mass of Orks. That's not a problem at all. If means I don't have to bugger about making sure the git isn't a problem because the Ork player has done that for me.

is patently false?

My point was in regard to range/LoS-sniping the Nob and the models in front of him.