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Had a few test games against Avariel who likes to play Spacewolves and got massacred every game.

This is the list I been playing against.

HQ
Rune Priest w chooser of the slain

Elite
3 Wolfguard
2 combi melta, Razorback w Las cannon + TL Plasma Gun


3 Wolfguard
2 combi melta, Razorback w Las cannon + TL Plasma Gun


3 Wolfguard
2 combi melta, Razorback w Las cannon + TL Plasma Gun

Troops
5 Grey Hunters
flamer, Razorback w Las cannon + TL Plasma Gun


5 Grey Hunters
flamer, Razorback w Las cannon + TL Plasma Gun


5 Grey Hunters
flamer, Razorback w Las cannon + TL Plasma Gun


5 Grey Hunters
flamer, Razorback w Las cannon + TL Plasma Gun


5 Grey Hunters
flamer, Razorback w Las cannon + TL Plasma Gun


Fast Attack
Landspeeder
Heavy Bolter + Typhoon Missle Launcher

Landspeeder
Heavy Bolter + Typhoon Missle Launcher

Landspeeder
Heavy Bolter + Typhoon Missle Launcher

Heavy Support
3 Long Fangs
2 Missle Launchers, Rhino

3 Long Fangs
2 Missle Launchers, Rhino

3 Long Fangs
2 Missle Launchers, Rhino


My first tyranid list was trying to do a drop assault type list

Tyrant with Hive commander and stranglethorn cannon

2 Zoanthropes in Pod

2 Zoanthropes in Pod

Death Leaper

30 Termigaunts

30 Termigaunts

pimped out Tervigon

pimped out Tervigon

Fast
4 Raveners


Heavy
Trygon

Trygon

This was an absolute disaster as deathleaper even rolling a 2 was not that effective at stoping jaws and I got shot up so bad with all the Las and missles and the Trygon arrived and stunned a Razorback and then was gone to las plas and missles. Zoanthropes did nothing as they got negated by Runic weapon or missed or just didn't roll a destroyed result. Raveners arrived before there was a tunnel so did nothing but get insta killed by missles later. Jaws killed my Tervigons and my gaunts got swept by Grey Hunters with Flamers who assaulted after burning.

The above list also lost really bad to mech vet IG with Vendettas and melta vets.

Tyrant is just expensive and didn't do much just for the +1 reserves so droping him

Deathleaper was ok but not amazing. Will keep trying him.

Zoanthropes did nothing at all and were almost useless in both games They stunned 1 rhino and killed 1 Chimera before eating it to missles or psycannons . They are fired.

Super gaunt tervigon package was ok till the tervi got jawsed will keep trying them.

Raveners with no way to ensure they come in after the Trygon to use the tunnel these aren't good. I love the models though.

Trygons should be called Try Gones cause they TRY to pop a vehicle and probably fail and then are GONE when they eat all the las/plas/missle fire. They are also fired.


After some adjustments to my list from my opponent I ended up with this

HQ
Tyranid Prime with boneswords goes in Hive Guard

elite
3 hive guard

3 hive guard

death leaper

troops
30 Termigaunts

30 Termigaunts

pimped out Tervigon

pimped out Tervigon

heavy
tyranofex w rupture cannon

tyranofex w rupture cannon

so here we go with another game I roll a 1 for the deathleaper just great. here we go with dawn of war boo I only walk on my init 1 monsters just enough to be out of jaws range but the priest drove 12 first turn inside a long fangs rhino and then drives another 6 and I'm eating a jaws and a tyranofex goes bye bye before I can even shoot cause I didn't spot anything first turn joy. I am fairing slightly better because I have a cover layer of gaunts - hive guard - mcs with FNP on the hive guard. I am able to destroy his the Rune Priest Rhino but he gets out the back and I can no longer shoot him because he is out of los. priest jaws my tervigon next turn and then I finally kill him and the long fangs off. the gaunts get double burned and assaulted and dead, remaining t-fex keeps missing or not getting a kill shot but isn't getting shot either as everything is getting shot into hive guard and the remaining tervigon which finally drop and then its just clean up time for wolves.

Tyranid Prime was not bad as extra wounds for hive guard I didn't get to use his boneswords as he got shot to death will keep him around since he is cheaper then a tyrant.

Hive Guard - did an ok job killing Rhinos and having cover and FNP made them pretty survivable till the Tervigon got jawsed. They provide cover to MCs also so they are staying.

Deathleaper was a disapointment but he isn't very good vs wolves will keep him vs marine hoods.

Super gaunt Tervigon package hates jaws but things a bit better with hive guard for cover.

Dunno about Tyranofexes they are really expensive and not very reliable with BS3 they miss often and don't have AP1 to get vehicle killes. One did die turn 2 to Jaws so will continue trying them.

Space Wolves just seem like the Tyranids Kryptonite. Anyone have any ideas on how to beat space wolves? Maybe don't take any init 1 mcs but the super gaunt tervigon package is good in other match ups.

From what I can see, you got torn apart by Jaws many, many times; I'm not familiar with 'nids, but do they have anything which a Psychic Hood-like effect?

*Disclaimer* I don't play nids.

My advice: When I come up against a new army, or am experimenting with tactics, or anything new, I make a priority out of identifying threats. I ask my opponent at the start of the game to tell me a little about each unit and what it does so that I can plan for dealing with what will hurt me the most. When I run raider spam dark eldar or mechanized orks....I want to know where the anti-tank is in each unit, what it is and what its range is so that I can plan on best killing/avoiding it.

For you....you need to figure out what hurts you the most and learn to neutralize it.

Frankly, there are very, very few armies that can hold a candle to that particular SW list, nevermind hope to beat it. It's biggest weakness is its enormous price tag.

It's not just a Tyranid problem, though they are more vulnerable to Jaws than anyone else. Normally, for Tyranids, neutralizing this is priority, however in this list it isn't possible to take care of everything simultaneously.

To start with you are going to need 6 Guards, and 3 zoans in a drop pod.

Place all the guard out of LoS and use them to crack open his ridiculous number of transports. Drop the Zoans right next to the rune priest transport and fry it, if the rest of your shooting can't kill him then at least he will have to roll 3d6 for psychic tests. After that I would suggest filling your heavy slots with Mawlocs, have them DS on the opposite side as the priest, and disappear before he can drive over to them.

With that taken care of I would suggest running a massive wall of poison gaunts, most likely 2 x 30 terms, and 30 Horms, this will help you restrict movement and kill anything that falls out of their transports.

For a HQ I would just get a tyrant with a HVC and Tactical Insight.

I am not sure how many points you are playing, so any other points I would sink into tervs w/ sacs, glands, and catalyst.

Someone reads Stelek's blog...

And against that, no, I don't see Nids being able to compete.

lots and lots of hormaguants with toxic sacks

razorlead wrote:lots and lots of hormaguants with toxic sacks

...who can't even glance the vehicles in which all 12 of the infantry units are mounted, in addition to the 3 Land Speeders.

Nids simply can't deal with that much mech saturation. It's one of the failings of codices who cram the majority of their anti tank options (Ork Dex, Nid Dex) into one FOC slot and expect everything to be hunkydory.

So is the Nid dex actually competitive, then?

Gornall wrote:So is the Nid dex actually competitive, then?

Define competitive. The book has plenty of ways to deal with a great many things, but min/max mech is annoying for anyone and especially troublesome for 'nids.

not much to add, save:

You do realize that Raveners can deep strike on their own without the trygon's tunnel?

How many MC's can the nids take now?

The only solid tactic I can think of off hand, is having more wounds than his army can chip off. I can't imagine him having a very hard time against only a handful of MC's, but maxing them out, could even the odds a little.

I can't really say though, that is a pretty tough list for most armies. Not a particularly scary amount of firepower to be entirely honest, just well distributed, and annoying to thin out. A zippy Eldar force, could lay serious hurt into a list like that though; one or two rounds of shooting just wouldn't do enough damage against Wave serpents.

I am unfamiliar with the new Nid dex as it stands, but I can't imagine them being entirely defenseless against a tooled list. I have absolutely no clue how many of the new units will play out over time. You can be sure to find something viable, as people begin to figure out the new dex. It isn't always about tabling your opponent, there has to be at least one way for Nids to take on a list like that.

Perhaps some kind of swarm list would work, but you would have an awfully hard time doing any reasonable damage to his army.

Nids simply can't deal with that much mech saturation

I've been wondering about this for over a week now in every thread and now all of a sudden everyone agree with me, you and everyone else saying the same thing. The small GH squads with Razorbacks and a Rune Priest with Jaws is such a solid core to build an army around that I'm absolutely in love with it.

If you want to beat your SW friend you need to do 2 things.

1) Don't take any low initiative MC's

2) Play a KP mission

Try this:

HQ: Warrior Prime

Troops: Warriors x a million

Elites: Hive Guard x3 x3

Fast Attack: Maximum Gargoyle squadx2
Flying Warriors

A big gargoyle screen to provide cover and a squad of fast Warriors to get to his line quickly. Hive Guard plink away. Warriors footslog and run to follow up on the flying warriors.

It might be enough wounds and bodies to get there fast enough to start glancing him into submission. Still think you're at a disadvantage, but it could work.

What about trying something like this as the core of your army?
(I have the german codex, so names may be off, but it should be obvious enough)

HQ
Hive Tyrant - Tactical Instincts, ect.

Troops
Hormagants w/ Sporepods -160 pts each
3 or 4 of these

Heavy Support
Mawloc x3

What you're trying to do is drop the spore pods within 1" of the castle your opponent sets up, then tunnel up mawlocs under their fairly packed troops & transports. The hormagants should keep everything tight enough to cause several deaths as the mawlocs displace the tanks.
Possibly add lictors for pinpoint mawloc murder

To me that SW list is a good indication of why not balancing Codex over all is so bad. If you had to worry about Tau in the meta game, who would destroy that list, it wouldn't show up as much if at all, which would make it more balanced for Nids

Wouldn't some hive guard, hidden my gaunts and tervigon pose a big problem for this marine list.

It would take 6 razorbacks firing both the plasma guns and the lascannon to take down a tervigon, assuming no coversaves.

The tervigon + gaunt screen would move up, covering some ravenors. The marine squads themselves are small, and don't have much staying power. The list really needs its spam to survive.

Thats going to be a rough list to fight against, but might be doable

you could try lots of small/medium squads of warriors to stack up on heavy weapons, nixing that you could try lots of spore pods to stack up on weapons. Either way you will need to eliminate the S8+ weapons quickly.

3X squads of hive guard are necessary, I would take a squad of biovores as well, I think in this case hive guard are going to be more resiliant since he isnt really stacked up on heavy weapons too badly, and volumn of fire with hive guard will be nice. If you are running hive guard you /should/ be able to win a kill points game. As you rush all these transports with, the hive guard will also not allow them an incidental cover save

Despite what other people say, I kind of like mawlocs for the specific purpose of killing backline heavy weapon squads, just because they are just as tough, do some good kaboom on entry, and have hit and run incase they get charged after deep striking they can escape and /still/ kill the heavy weapons.

I also like yargrbl stealers, if he's clumping several transports together you could eliminate more than one with them, but taking up an elite spot they are probably not worth it.

Thats still a rough list to deal with, I think the real problem with bugs isn't they can't deal with lists like that, but they need a very specialized list to do so, and they don't have anything that people would have to build specifically against unlike mech.

that spacewolflist has no closecombat at all and not very much anti horde.

units that shine vs that particular army:

- 3 liktor squads

- big squads of adrenalin gargyles

- outflanker

- 20er units of genestealers

- h.guards and spore zoans

//

units that are not good vs that army:

big monsters that have to walk and loose to the shootout or deepstrikers that get shot by closerange twin. plasma...

now look at your list and think about it.

greetings Badger

that spacewolflist has no closecombat at all and not very much anti horde.

Well, it does shoot with a few heavy bolters, 6 flamers and 12 frag missiles per turn.

I agree with sourclams: you need more Warriors. You especially need more Warriors toting guns. I'd say stick a Tervigon in there as well, for the extra Termagants, but otherwise fill up your Troops with Warriors. It might be something to take Raveners with gun symbiotes as well.

I'll add that you should have some spore mines. Lots of them.

This list isn't quite as tough as it seems, it's just made to counter what people usually take.

HQ Flying hive tyrant and Parasite

Elite Dealth leaper if yu want. Hive guard and zonethropes work here. Y.Genestealers are great as they can assault when they pop out of cover at T5 With so many tanks they will have a target, shaken and stunned is just as good as anything else. T Inflitrating genestealers and hide them in cover for troops, and outflanking warriors if you took a HT. FA is what you need, take a Unit of winged warriors a full unit of gargoyles and a harpy. Use the Gargoyles to cover the winged warriors, who in turn cover the hive tyrant and harpy. You'll be fast enough to catch him. stun him and surround him. JotWW can't do much harm, and you can start Multi-charging his army.

Or you can just play lowerpoint games, or bring an army that wreaks his if he is being a git about thinks.

I think people underestimate how much shooting that particular SW list puts out and how hard it actually is to stop it.

You've got 15 units firing at you. All the vehicles will have *at least* a 4+ cover save. It will happily trade two KP's for one the entire game--Because on turn 5/6 you're going to be wiped off the board and it'll still be functional.

No anti-horde? 6 flamers, 3 heavy bolters, 12 frag missiles per turn is some pretty good foot troop killing power.

Lol, ironic I have been playtesting against the very same list. My IG list are usually able to dismantle all of stelek list as every unit is the same and thus have the same weakness and damage output.

The list needs to go first, the way you beat it is try to glance as many vehicles as possible which reduces their shooting, considering its just av 11 its not to hard to do. With destroyed vehicles combined with glancing their fire power will dwindle down to hardly anything after the first 3 turns.

I am a new nids player, proxying against this list I think I have figured out how to beat it with the nids. In objective base missions place the objectives as close as possible to each other usually 12 inches, by doing this all of their vehicles will get in the way of each other limiting their fire lanes and mobility.

@OP
what is the point level you 2 are playing at?

That Space Wolf list is a pretty standard mech spam list, and seems a little tailored against Nids as well, which doesn't help much. The amount of firepower they can put out will toast almost anything you can get on foot, except swarms of basic guys, who the Razorbacks don't care about. Tyrannofexes would ordinarily be desirable, but a list like that is one of very few that can actually shoot down Tyrannofexes from range. One good way to fight swarms of vehicles is to try to make them block one another, as CKO said. If you can funnel the enemy tanks into chokepoints you'll be able to diminish their shooting and mobility advantages greatly. Nonetheless, I think this will be an uphill battle for the Tyranids.

Fetterkey wrote:That Space Wolf list is a pretty standard mech spam list, and seems a little tailored against Nids as well, which doesn't help much. The amount of firepower they can put out will toast almost anything you can get on foot, except swarms of basic guys, who the Razorbacks don't care about. Tyrannofexes would ordinarily be desirable, but a list like that is one of very few that can actually shoot down Tyrannofexes from range. One good way to fight swarms of vehicles is to try to make them block one another, as CKO said. If you can funnel the enemy tanks into chokepoints you'll be able to diminish their shooting and mobility advantages greatly. Nonetheless, I think this will be an uphill battle for the Tyranids.

You are correct except it isnt tailored made to beat tyranids it is more like an attempt to beat IG list at their own game. IG shooting is to far superior as multiple chimeras can glance their razorbacks which is huge when your playing the glance game. Also leman russes offer to much of an advantage as they can provide cover for chimeras and soak up lascannon fire.

However it is an up hill battle for nids especially a new nids player, thats the type of fights Kenpachi likes it!

2 Flyrants
3 X 2x zoans in a pod
Warriors, and one terv
3 X harpies
3 x Marloc


5 Flying MCs and 3 pods will kill all the transports they have on the second turn. All the Shadows of the warp will bone the psykers. And the Mawlocs can clean up stray units.