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Went to a tourney, and had a couple interesting games yesterday with my Nids/GSC/Astra Militarum

My List:


Round #1 I demolished a guy that was tac marines + dreadnoughts. Got 40/42 possible points for ITC champs missions.

Round #2:

Do you guys have any advice on how to go 2nd against the Eldar Meta list? or just how to face it generally. I could probably put hundreds of Gants on the table and win, but that doesn't feel like a fun way to play. Kronos denying quicken on the Shining spears helped, but not enough. I feel like I've got nothing that can threaten the Dark Reapers that he can't neutralize with charging / screening / interceptoring.

Round #3:

This game really showed off the Exocrine. Boy did he exceed my expectations. I took the exocrine mainly because I only had 6 hive guard, and no lemun russes. Overall, I liked that Kronos detachment alot in that tourney list.

I was wondering if you guys had any thought on the viability of an Exocrine as a big "Look over here, shoot me" target. I was blown away that he survived 3 turns of bombardment from plague crawlers, and a round of shooting from a xiphon and fire raptor. If I'm playing GSC, am I better off with a lemun russ? More Hive Guard? Do I have enough Vehicle/ monster killing power in that army?

Against CWE you need to Beta DS them IMO. FHT's DSing and doing lots of damage along with anything else you can get into melee. Even if Rippers get into melee with Dark Reapers they are done for a turn or 2.

Against Shiny Spears you MUST charge them, do not let them get into 6" of you, they will get 40 shots that rend and then some S6/S8 shots and finally an insane melee turn. Their str is rapid fire and amazing charge turn, they do not get weapon str bonus if they do not charge.

So after a few games as much as I like the economy of the 2 DIV/Mon Rending claws flyrant I think for the targets it needs to be used against a pure melee 2xMon sytal flyrant is more effective with it's rerolling 1's and extra attack. I tend to use the Dev gaunt bomb to clear screens so I like my Flyrants to punch hard into the tough enemies and I am finding the 12 DIV shots not to be cutting the mustard vs the average of 2 more hits in melee that the twin SYTALS are giving. What do you all say?

That said I have several pure gun kitted Flyrants that do very well with full 4xDIV or 2DIV/HVC(Which is often made into Mysama)

My next list I'm planning to field 2 pure melee flyrants with sytals and one HVC/DIV Flyrant. I think this will be the basis of most of my current lists usually a Battalion and a spearhead.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Against CWE you need to Beta DS them IMO. FHT's DSing and doing lots of damage along with anything else you can get into melee. Even if Rippers get into melee with Dark Reapers they are done for a turn or 2.

Against Shiny Spears you MUST charge them, do not let them get into 6" of you, they will get 40 shots that rend and then some S6/S8 shots and finally an insane melee turn. Their str is rapid fire and amazing charge turn, they do not get weapon str bonus if they do not charge.

You understand that neither of those things are possible against most tourney meta eldar armies, right? In this game it was impossible for me to DS in within 18" to shoot the flyrant devourers at the Dark Reapers. Also, one of the Flyrants lost a pile of wounds to Dark Reapers interceptoring him. The Shining Spears start very well screened. Then move 36" or just start off the table.. They will always get the 1st assault on you, before you can assault them. Thanks to Kronos and deepest shadow, I was able to limit the shining spears to 18" movement, but they popped court of the young king, and made some insane charge. He rolled 11, so that let them move 14" if I recall. Not much you can do about that, especially when our long range guns are 36" range.

If I did manage to tie up a unit of dark reapers with a unit of rippers, they would leave combat, and spend 1 command point to act normally. It's likely a problem without a solution, I was just hoping I was missing something.

tag8833 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Against CWE you need to Beta DS them IMO. FHT's DSing and doing lots of damage along with anything else you can get into melee. Even if Rippers get into melee with Dark Reapers they are done for a turn or 2.

Against Shiny Spears you MUST charge them, do not let them get into 6" of you, they will get 40 shots that rend and then some S6/S8 shots and finally an insane melee turn. Their str is rapid fire and amazing charge turn, they do not get weapon str bonus if they do not charge.

You understand that neither of those things are possible against most tourney meta eldar armies, right? In this game it was impossible for me to DS in within 18" to shoot the flyrant devourers at the Dark Reapers. Also, one of the Flyrants lost a pile of wounds to Dark Reapers interceptoring him. The Shining Spears start very well screened. Then move 36" or just start off the table.. They will always get the 1st assault on you, before you can assault them. Thanks to Kronos and deepest shadow, I was able to limit the shining spears to 18" movement, but they popped court of the young king, and made some insane charge. He rolled 11, so that let them move 14" if I recall. Not much you can do about that, especially when our long range guns are 36" range.

If I did manage to tie up a unit of dark reapers with a unit of rippers, they would leave combat, and spend 1 command point to act normally. It's likely a problem without a solution, I was just hoping I was missing something.

You could not come withe 18". But what about 24"? Mr devourer. Long and hard. Shoots like a boomstick. Yeah?

I played a game yesterday.

2k points
Mission: Retrieval

Me


My opponent


Objectives were pretty evenly placed with 1 in each of our deployment zones and 1 just outside of each of them.

I deployed my raveners, redterror, prime, warriors, gaunts and gants into tunnels.

My ripper swarms were placed 9" in from my back corners and lined out towards the center of my deployment zone to block off deepstrikes and at the front line of my deployment zone in a similar way. Neurothropes spaced out int he middle. with the Malanthrope and Exocrine in a good area to keep the Exocrine protected by the -1 hit aura. The hivegaurd near the front and as best as could be out of LoS. There did end up being a small pocket in the back of my deployment zone where a few marines could drop in. But otherwise there was nowhere to deepstrike on me.

He had rhinos full of dudes, dudes in terrain and in buildings, and his jump packs in deepstrike.


Despite having less deployments then me I won the roll off. So deepstrikes happened. One batch of Raveners showed up with the Red Terror in his back field. One showed up along one board edge with the Hormagaunts in front and the Warriors/prime behind these ones closer to the bulk of his rhinos. The last was deployed on the other side of his deployment with the termagants.

Double shoot stratagem with the termagant bomb. It wasn't as effective as I hoped because we had a lot of large terrain pieces so his 3+ was a 2+. Guys died, but not as much as I would have liked.

The venom canons went to work on the rhinos along with the hive guard and biovores while the deathspitters chewed threw some more infantry. I didn't charge with the Hormagaunts yet because the closest unit, a rhino, had died and he deployed the marines inside back far enough that I would have needed to make a 10" charge. Better to not loose some dudes to pointless overwatch. The exocrine managed to wipe a unit of marines flat out and grabbed me first blood.

He made deepstriked assault marines into the little pocket in my deployment and one in front of my list and fired every las cannon or plasmas and whatever he could to try and take down my exocrine. One assault unit got it tied up in combat and the other went for the malanthrope (my warlord). He shot at my warriors and prime (with snipers) but didn't manage to hurt anything too bad (Hooray +1 sv). He gathered up all his marines from the rhinos and charged my hormgaunts probably hoping to get them before they could get him. Caustic Blood. I killed a small batch of his marines for trying to fight me. He turned his bikers into the Redterror/raveners. By the end of the round I was firmly in control of 2 objectives, contesting 1, had first blood, was feeling pretty good about myself.


Turn 2 I set about dismantling the assault marines/character in my deployment zone. I fell back with the exocrine and malanthrope and began a barrage of smite spam, spore mines, impaler canons, and charged what little survived with the rippers to make them deal with what I wanted them to deal with. 2 biovores and 1 implaer canon went back to work on his second rhino. I fell back with the hormagaunts and let rip with the deathspitters taking out a bulk of the marines that were in the fight with the hormagaunts. Just keep firing shots into his dudes.

By the end of turn 3 he had completely lost 2/3rds of the board. My exocrine had died but my Neurothropes were moving forward to add smites to my other heavy fire. The Termagants remained mostly unharmed, the Hormagaunts still existed but barely and the warriors started suffering some losses. A few raveners had dropped.

By the end of the game I had full control of 2 objectives. He had one. I could easily grab a 3rd with the termagants and grab line breaker. We called the game after a bit of movement because it was imossible for him to shift the balance.

A win for Jorm.


Final Thoughts.

This was not the list I want, just what I had built. But the strategy worked. My Raveners with the troops did a lot of work on his units. He had to split himself in several directions to deal with the threats on his doorstep leaving my backfield a impenetrable fortified area that I just kept pushing forward out of. He couldn't deal with it all. Even if I lost first turn he would have done too little against what I had on the board and the burrowers would have layed the pressure on him just the same.

Raveners and Warriors are durable because of their 3 wounds and cover, deathspitters are pretty great en mass, and controlling the board is incredibly powerful. He had to fight me on my terms the entire game and I leveraged that to my advantage.

So you spent 6 of your 8 CPs for your alpha?

Did you miss some cp in the later turns? Or did it work out quite well?

Just some general thoughts I have had while playing nids lately:

- I really wish we had a 'hidder powerfist/claw' somewhere. I really hate it when my units get bogged down by a big unit with a good save and high T. Even the math on genstealers does not look so good in it. My regular opponent usually use an ork death rollar with nobs in it. That death roller I can never shoot down before it makes CC, and it just pounds what ever it is against. Also, the nobs jumping out with warius weapons are so randomly good.

The closest we come at a hidden power claw is the broodlord and old one eye.

- The venom cannon for the tyranid warrior is very random and un-reliable. I hate the D3 shots , even though for the most part they averadge at 6 almost each roll. What I do not like is the d3 damage on the shots that do make it through a save.

- Tyranid warriors, at least in leviathan, are supricingly though. They survive far more then they should.

- The 'War on all fronts' stratgem from leviathan is very good. The pay off on only 1 CP is very strong. Do not use models with scything tallons though! What is hard is how to trigger it. Last game a malanthrope charged in with the swarmlord. I have activated it with a neuronthrope before. But I am having a hard time finding a good flying ynit. The one hive tyrant I have is pure shooting. Sugestions are welcome.

- Running 6 hive guards are great until you meet T8 tanks. I really have problems with T8 tanks.

- Do not make 2 big charges in one turn. I made 2 charges with genstealers. One agaunst a unit of blobs and one vs a gorka morka porka (I forget witch one it is, the cunning one) After I activated my one unit, 2 cp made the other charge target wipe out my GS unit. (It did not help that I rolled all 1 and 2's. Out of 16 genstealers, 3 orks died. :-p)

Sugestions for how to get more 'hidden powerclaws' or just activating the leviathan 'war on all front' is welcome. I am contemplating a flyrant with crushing claws and adrenal glands.

I've been saying for years Nids lack Sargent's with weapons and it hurts us more than we think. But everyone tells me its stupid or i'm wrong :(

Glad to see i'm not the only one.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
I've been saying for years Nids lack Sargent's with weapons and it hurts us more than we think. But everyone tells me its stupid or i'm wrong :(

Glad to see i'm not the only one.

Well, we are the only arm that has no induvidualaty. I would argue it is quite thematic. No stars and medals allow our hormogaunt to level up and yeald the deadly crushing claw. When the battle is over, into the digestive pool they go. If the hive mind wanted High S and AP they would just make some carnifexes. From a game balance perspective, well, we doo need some weaknes, besides the 5th to 7th edition curse of overcosting. I like it. That being said, I need to find a work around,

Chaos daemons have many units that dont also.

But Nids used to have sargent like units int he past, you could even make them. It was pseudo sargents, but they could still do it in minor ways.

Nids are about adapting, if they needed to hid 1 strong weapon, they would.

I always thought it would be kinda cool if you could add a single warrior to a unit of gaunts as a sort of sergeant model.

It would basically invalidate synapse in the current system, so wouldn't work very well without wider changes to the army.

To avoid losing a unit of genestealers after charging 2 units, use paroxysm. It makes a unit unable to fight until everything else fights, so they can't use the strategem to fight because the unit is not elegible to fight yet.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
I've been saying for years Nids lack Sargent's with weapons and it hurts us more than we think. But everyone tells me its stupid or i'm wrong :(

Glad to see i'm not the only one.

well, we do have precedent in devilgaunts, it would be tre cool if we could add in crushing claw Hormagaunts...str 6 would be very useful.


Maybe next edition?

 Niiai wrote:
[...]
- The 'War on all fronts' stratgem from leviathan is very good. The pay off on only 1 CP is very strong. Do not use models with scything tallons though! What is hard is how to trigger it. Last game a malanthrope charged in with the swarmlord. I have activated it with a neuronthrope before. But I am having a hard time finding a good flying ynit. The one hive tyrant I have is pure shooting. Sugestions are welcome.
[...]
Sugestions for how to get more 'hidden powerclaws' or just activating the leviathan 'war on all front' is welcome. I am contemplating a flyrant with crushing claws and adrenal glands.

War on all fronts:
Sky-Slasher Swarm and Gargoles (blinding venom) can be used. They are cheap and mobile and mostly not worth shooting on them, especially with the 6+++.
I did it with harpies too, because they give you the bonus, that the enemy unit can not be activated with cps to fight second. With this trick i kicked some berserkers to dust with termagants and some warriors as support. It also worked quite well with a troop of bulgryns who surrounded my warlord in cc, not beeing able to hit anything until everyone else had trampeled on them. There was not much bulgryn left afterwards.
Its situational, and i think you can build an army around 'War on all fronts' beeing effective enough, but it wil be hard work to build the list.
Maybe with shrikes and Warriors? Maybe combine with a prime...

Hidden powerclaws:
'Weapon Monsters' are not possible any more since some editions, so you have to work with the swarmy elements and flood the enemy with quantity, not quality.
The acid maw for genestealers is some kind of low budget version, but you cant hide good damage outputs in 'normal' stuff.
It would have to be a character to hide, or be part of the unit. The latter is not possible, the former leaves you with broodlord (cc monster+smite) and neurothrope (smite + scream). The prime, Red Terror and Deathleaper beeing not that hard of a hitter.
Edit:
Tyranids have more of the 'obvious powerclaw'. So threat overload is your way to go, or drown in bodies.

 DaBraken wrote:
So you spent 6 of your 8 CPs for your alpha?

Did you miss some cp in the later turns? Or did it work out quite well?

No. I spent 4. Red terror and ravs can deepstrike on their own. Termagants warrior hormagaunts and prime needed the cp.

And it wasnt really all about the alpha strike. If my oppnent went first they would have no viable targets because almost all visible targets were characters hiding behind batches of ripper swarms or protected by the malanthrope.

I not only secured my alpha strike and board control i negated his.

I did spend my other 4. Caustic blood and shoot twice primarily.

By the 3rd turn i had done my damage and was just cleaning up. I didnt need any more cp to win out.


Also i was playing nice building my list this way. I had the hq and troops to take several battalions or a brigade and grab more cp if i wanted.

pinecone77 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
I've been saying for years Nids lack Sargent's with weapons and it hurts us more than we think. But everyone tells me its stupid or i'm wrong :(

Glad to see i'm not the only one.

well, we do have precedent in devilgaunts, it would be tre cool if we could add in crushing claw Hormagaunts...str 6 would be very useful.


Maybe next edition?

I would LOVE that! lol

atm im thoroughly convinced Tyranids are the most balanced and well thought out codex out of all of them currently. We have all the tools, good mobility, cheap bodies, access to mortal wounds for tough stuff (which we need since we don't have really good long range AT). The only thing nids lack are durability and sticking power. I think that is a pretty fair trade off for having everything else.

If carnifex's suddenly had 2+/5++ we would be too strong.


I think we got hit a bit too hard on our FW units. Barbed and Scythed hierodules should be cheaper (should not cost much more than 2 leman russ tanks for the barbed), and the Malanthrope is way too expensive for what he brings (most armies get a -1 to hit aura for free or at 6" range). He should be 115 points and drop to 7 wounds instead of 9.

I will gripe about warriors though. They should have just rolled Shrikes, ravenors, and warriors all into one profile, gave them 4 wounds apiece, made wings or tails optional by changing them to Fast attack slot (wings dropping their save to 5+ and tails dropping their synapse). I'd also increase their base cost to 23 for the extra wound.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
atm im thoroughly convinced Tyranids are the most balanced and well thought out codex out of all of them currently. We have all the tools, good mobility, cheap bodies, access to mortal wounds for tough stuff (which we need since we don't have really good long range AT). The only thing nids lack are durability and sticking power. I think that is a pretty fair trade off for having everything else.

If carnifex's suddenly had 2+/5++ we would be too strong.


I think we got hit a bit too hard on our FW units. Barbed and Scythed hierodules should be cheaper (should not cost much more than 2 leman russ tanks for the barbed), and the Malanthrope is way too expensive for what he brings (most armies get a -1 to hit aura for free or at 6" range). He should be 115 points and drop to 7 wounds instead of 9.

I will gripe about warriors though. They should have just rolled Shrikes, ravenors, and warriors all into one profile, gave them 4 wounds apiece, made wings or tails optional by changing them to Fast attack slot (wings dropping their save to 5+ and tails dropping their synapse). I'd also increase their base cost to 23 for the extra wound.

I am fine with Warrior, shrikes, and Raveners as they are. I would have liked the Prime to gain options to be turned into a Shrike Prime (updated parasite of mortrex?) or the Red Terror (with the Red Terror gaining synapse) and it's +1 to hit applying to whatever type of unit it was built for.

Yeah, its for sure the best codex i've ever seen other than a couple minor things. 1 is the Warrior Prime, it costs a bit to much to only buff warriors and has no Heavy Bio-Cannon options, or able to get wings.

I would love Primes with Wings and Heavy weapons.

The GSC comes with a hybrid claw if you wanne do a test model hormagaunt. :p

Yeah, activating war on all fronts is hard. I am thinking maybe a 3 man group of shrikes to babysitt leviathan genestealers? Malantrope is a bit slow the turn you charge.

All the sugestions on paroxysemn are really good. Perhaps on a neuronthrope for the re-rolls?

What do people think about old one eye, or flyrant for vrushing claws (bonus can activate war on all fronts!) or GS primarch for the 'hidden powerfist'?

Hormagaunt crushing claw beta test? :p

 Lance845 wrote:

 Eihnlazer wrote:
atm im thoroughly convinced Tyranids are the most balanced and well thought out codex out of all of them currently. We have all the tools, good mobility, cheap bodies, access to mortal wounds for tough stuff (which we need since we don't have really good long range AT). The only thing nids lack are durability and sticking power. I think that is a pretty fair trade off for having everything else.

If carnifex's suddenly had 2+/5++ we would be too strong.


I think we got hit a bit too hard on our FW units. Barbed and Scythed hierodules should be cheaper (should not cost much more than 2 leman russ tanks for the barbed), and the Malanthrope is way too expensive for what he brings (most armies get a -1 to hit aura for free or at 6" range). He should be 115 points and drop to 7 wounds instead of 9.

I will gripe about warriors though. They should have just rolled Shrikes, ravenors, and warriors all into one profile, gave them 4 wounds apiece, made wings or tails optional by changing them to Fast attack slot (wings dropping their save to 5+ and tails dropping their synapse). I'd also increase their base cost to 23 for the extra wound.

I am fine with Warrior, shrikes, and Raveners as they are. I would have liked the Prime to gain options to be turned into a Shrike Prime (updated parasite of mortrex?) or the Red Terror (with the Red Terror gaining synapse) and it's +1 to hit applying to whatever type of unit it was built for.

I am in love with the warriors. 5 pt heavy bolter for each guy, with a nice heavy weapon every three models and only two points for boneswords? Yes please. I basically split the cost of the tyranid prime / the number of warriors I have and I just consider that my warriors cost this much more.At 2 units of 6 warriors a tyranid prime really is a steal. I know other stuff work better, but i think that the tyranid warriors with deathspitters, boneswords and venom cannons are perhaps the only really viable "Jack of all trades" unit that's actually decently costed. Synapse and shadow are just icings on the cake.

I am not gonne take the whole warrior debate again. But weather you like them or not the fact that they have 3 wounds and do not get ganked by a 2 wound weapon (plasma) is huge. If the SM primaris models had 3 wounds and costed just a tad more, they would not be so vonerable ingame.

Warriors stil eat multi and singel wound weapons, so they are the opposet of target saturation. (All monsters, or all infantery.)

I like leviathan warriors as well.
Agree that the prime needs some more options.

Also hate the d3 shots and d3 damage on Venom Cannons, its just another die to roll that slows down the game IMO, just make it 2 and keep it easy.

Malanthrope is over costed. His range needs to increase to the 6" and so does his speed. He has the great ability to get the rerolls for you entire army, but he is so slow it never gets into combat unless you somehow grab a screening scout unit.

 Niiai wrote:

- I really wish we had a 'hidder powerfist/claw' somewhere. I really hate it when my units get bogged down by a big unit with a good save and high T.

You're looking at it backwards, the big unit with good save and high toughness is getting bogged down by your units. If a sub-100 point unit can keep a far more costly unit tied up for a few turns I'll take that as a net win.

Anyway, the oft overlooked Tyrant Guard can do that trick to an extent since they do have access to Crushing Claws on a per model basis and GSC Acolyte Hybrids are basically tailor made for that purpose. I don't think our swarm units will ever have the ability to take an armor cracker in squad though, as all Tyranid infantry are designed to be disposable assets and the army as a whole is intended to work as a single interconnected organism rather than an army of self-sufficient squads.

 Niiai wrote:

- The 'War on all fronts' stratgem from leviathan is very good. The pay off on only 1 CP is very strong. Do not use models with scything tallons though! What is hard is how to trigger it. Last game a malanthrope charged in with the swarmlord. I have activated it with a neuronthrope before. But I am having a hard time finding a good flying ynit. The one hive tyrant I have is pure shooting. Sugestions are welcome.

Tyrannocytes are my personal favorite. Using them in their transport functionality means they will be in the thick of things anyway (along with whatever they delivered) and they aren't generally scary enough to concentrate fire against.

 Niiai wrote:

- Running 6 hive guards are great until you meet T8 tanks. I really have problems with T8 tanks.

If you have the new plastic version switch to Shock Cannons (the guns are actually designed to be able to swap between the two without magnets, really nice!). Shock Cannons work quite well against the larger vehicles though they need to be played more aggressively than Impaler Cannons.

WRT War On All Fronts - I’m building a Leviathan Outriders with a Dimachaeron, it can run up the middle of the table and take advantage of LOS-blocking terrain, not losing horizontal distance as it leaps tall buildings in a single bound. Add six Raveners and there’s two solid options for rendezvousing with a flyrant and Gargoyles - or the Harpy that’s coming along.

Not depending on pulling a WOAF off, but keeping it in mind if the opportunity arises.

Edit: also this is for a six fleets list that’s built around several themed detachments.

So took my tyranids (with a touch of genestealer cult) to warhammer worlds Heat 3 last weekend.

Took 4th after getting alpha struck viciously round one for a loss then winning pretty handily vs all other opponents.

If theres interest I'll type up my list and a bit of a report.

Converted/kitbashed Biovores complete.




I used Genestealer body. The front legs are large scything talons that I inverted and cut off the scythes. The guns are stranglethorn cannons from hive tyrant and carnifex boxes. Green stuff was added here and there to fill in cracks and odd edges.

 Niiai wrote:
I am not gonne take the whole warrior debate again. But weather you like them or not the fact that they have 3 wounds and do not get ganked by a 2 wound weapon (plasma) is huge. If the SM primaris models had 3 wounds and costed just a tad more, they would not be so vulnerable ingame.
*snip*

It would have been hilarious if primaris had turned out to be the size of warriors upon release (size equals wounds in my mind)