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The main thing is, it is not as easy as you think to get enough heavy weapons.
You have more anti-MC weapons than most lists do, and your entire group of heavy and special weapons firing at MCs in the open with no cover of any sort, with no overkill (basically, the best you could ever possibly hope for in one turn) is 12 wounds.

5+ cover alone drops that to 8, assuming again that your entire list can fire at them.

The main problem is the massive resiliency.

As for Assault Marines, they aren't as helpful against stealers as you might hope, especially at that many points.
10 AM charge 6 stealers.
Stealers strike first (or simo if you charge into cover and use frags)
12 Attacks, 2 Casualties outright from rending. 4 more hit, 2 wounds, maybe another casualty.
24 Attacks back, 12 hit, 6 wounds, 4 stealers drop. (Note, PF probably does better, but the SW carriers also lose a couple of attacks. Probably 5 casualties overall)
You win combat, but they are synapsed and don't fall back. This is good for you, as otherwise you eat a great deal of fire before being charged.
You get charged by 6 stealers. (minimum, possibly other assistance)
18 Attacks, 3 rends and 6 hits. 3 wounds, total 4 casualties.
That leaves 4 Marines to attack back. You can see where this is going.
The kicker? They spent alot less on those 12 genestealers than you spent on your 10 assault marines, and they may very well be carrying 8 man units, or 4+ saves, either of which help them out.

As for Daemon Princes, if anything can actually take out a tooled Prince, it is a tooled Hive Tyrant with Implant Attacks.
Of course, the same goes vice versa. I would probably call the winner the one that wins Initiative.

Main problem is massive resiliency? You look at what you have to destroy, which might be for example 30 T6 wounds, then you take a sample amount of weapons and count how many turns you have to fire them all in order to destroy the said enemy when they're both in or out of cover. If you have more guns, you need less turns, just like you need more turns and/or more guns if the targets are in cover. If the table is favourable and there's no cover, you can succeed with a weaker strategy or a weaker army list than normally.

So as simple as it sounds what you need to do is max out your guns and prevent the enemy from assaulting you, meaning retreating with your troops to deny the enemy a charge of any kind. If you only max your guns but don't move, you might lose since you didn't get as many turns of shooting as you would've liked, and even if you move but only brought a few heavy weapons, 6 turns won't be enough for you to destroy the targets. Take a calculator in your hand, build an army list, spend some time clicking the numbers in and you can see whether your army can defeat this type of Nids or not.

Godzilla Nids have little in the way of strategic units that could prevent the enemy turns of shooting because most players ignore fast (or masses of) Gaunts, Lictors etc, so the battle will be fought on the shooty player's terms, and on his calculator.

For example, if I bring a Daemon Prince, a Lieutenant, 9 Obliterators, 6 las/plas squads, and four possessed Predators with TL Lascannon turrets and HB sponsons as a 2000 point army, I have 27 heavy weapons and 6 special weapons. If the range to the enemy is 24 inches, Obliterators will fire with TL Plasma Guns.

The Obliterators cause 5.33 wounds.
The Tactical Plasma Guns cause 2,66 wounds.
The Tactical Lascannons cause 3,33 wounds.
The Predator Heavy Bolters cause 1,77 wounds.
The Predator Lascannons cause 2,92 wounds.

For a total of 16,1 wounds per turn of firing at 24" when the targets are not in cover, or 11,32 wounds if all the targets are in cover. The truth is of course something in between because some targets are in cover, and some are not. Also, not all the Plasma Guns can always fire since they might be out of range, but I still know for a fact that the true overall damage is higher than this because Obliterators rapid firing with Plasma Guns during that final turn before an assault is imminent is a sight to behold indeed. 9 rapid firing Obliterators cause 10,66 wounds on big Tyranid critters, compensating for two whole turns of Tactical Plasma Guns not firing at all. Later on the Tactical Plasma Guns will naturally also rapid fire. Overall, even if we would simply assume that we cause 16,1 wounds per turn, we would need 2 or 3 (over 48 T6 wounds) turns at best to wipe out a considerable Tyranid army. If the enemy army would be fearsome enough in size or managed to silence some of our guns, we can assume that in 4 turns we wipe any zilla army from the table. In all these calculations we are ignoring the two I6 Chaos heroes that with incredible speed can charge a wounded TMC and finish it off. The heroes are capable of causing 2 wounds each on the charge. I've also ignored the 24 men with Bolters who cause a wound per turn, and two wounds per turn when rapid firing. Of course since there's no gain in defeating an opponent in 2 turns or 3 turns or 4 turns, most of the units are deployed as far back as possible while having the best fire lanes available, aiming for a turn 6 massacre. As a final note, you only need to destroy about 60% of the enemy army and still get a 20-0 win if your own losses are minimal and you kept to the mission. The Chaos army above can achieve that 60% in a heartbeat.

Now, start dropping guns from the above army list, and you constantly cause less wounds and need more turns, or outrageous luck in extreme cases, in order to win. There's nothing to be afraid in a Godzilla Nid army except that you can't allow yourself to take a knife to a gunfight! Some of the GT winners know all these facts by heart and aim to build an army list that doesn't wipe out the enemy in 2 turns because that would hurt their sportsmanship and composition. Their image as a player would also suffer as they would be conveiced as a cheeser and a powerplayer. Instead of maxing out they build a list with careful calculation that only barely manages to wipe out the Nids during the last phase of turn six, still gaining a 20-0 win and other players' falsely placed admirations.

If the Tyranid player was smart enough and didn't fall into following a stupid trend started by someone who didn't have a clue, and actually took units that are faster and cheaper than monstrous creatures, he would then have had the power and ability to force the enemy into having less turns to shoot at his slower and more expensive models. 9 Obliterators causing 5.33 wounds on a Gunfex or Dakkafexes costs the Tyranid player anything between 140 to 200 points, while the same models shooting at Spinegaunts only costs him 75 points.

A simple matchup really, eh, and if you didn't figure it out by now I think pure Godzilla Nids only work against opponents who didn't prepare and brought a sad excuse of an army to the tournament. It's just like armoured company in the sense that it's bringing tanks to the table and hoping that the opponents it has to play against won't have a lot of anti-tank weapons. Too much hoping for my tastes.

And your rebuttal.....?

2000 points is just too high for Zilla imo~. 1850 is the max points value where they're going to be effective simply due to the fact that you can only ever bring 8 MC's + Tyrant Guard. At 1500 and 1850 I think it's still really competitive--With your calculations Therion, you're still assuming that your whole army is firing at them and that you're taking no casualties which harm your heavy weapons. Sure, IW is probably the worst matchup for'em, but I don't think it'd be a crap shoot like you're showing. /shrug

I think Therion is pretty much on the ball on the type of matchup IW is for zilla nids. It's a really tough game, much better for the nids at 1500-1850, but still very tough. I think, in retrospect, that his analysis of gaunt swarm v. genestealers is on the money too (in his zilla army list). My nids have been doing a lot better against MEQ/2+ save armies since I added more gaunts and cut back genestealers.

I still keep some stealers, but go more raveners than stealers, since they're bunches faster.

I think a 60 gaunts, 10 raveners and the full monster/choir would give the oblit IW list a pretty solid run for its money. And yes this means I was wrong in my criticism of Therion's previous analysis of the list

Actually it is more likely than not in a stealer vs marine CC that the stealers emtpy the kill zone and are thus not hit back AT ALL! (oh so sad)

The upgrades the tyrant recieved with the new dex are made for killing DPs, acid maw allows rerolls to failed wound rolls and with init6 and implant attack if your lucky you can kill a DP before it attacks back!

Init6, 6 attacks on charge with superior ws, reroll to wound, implant=dead DP....on average (course I never manage in an actual game!)



Winged tyrant, 3 units of ravaners



Or if he used terrain to block los and...oh yea shot back
Things might be different than the above case.....

Say take and hold mission...you take your army (all 7 MCs....7 models (hard to hide) and stick them behind a forrest, wait for the last turn and walk onto the objective, shooting and assualting anyone off the objective as you go.....

Having the toughest guns rarely guarantees you a win....or even an advantage in the case of immobile or slow guns.

If IW beats zilla so well how come you never hear of this?

Posted By Therion- on 09/25/2006 2:39 AM

There's nothing to be afraid in a Godzilla Nid army except that you can't allow yourself to take a knife to a gunfight! 

Sigged.

Saying a list sucks because IW beats it is a bit of a stretch.
The number of lists that can even compete on the same levels as IW are very slim.


Anyway, the standard zilla list will almost assuredly include three units of raveners and a winged tyrant, and usually gaunts too, particularly at 2000 points.
However, the gaunts don't protect you as much as you might think, as they can't block LOS to your MCs. Leaping/flying gaunts can get into close combat faster, but are also more expensive than spine or termagaunts.

Now, zilla nids do rely on your opponent not bringing enough heavy weapons to deal with them. Against most armies, they can get away with this. Most lists don't have 9 models that can have whatever weapon they need at the time. Most lists don't have 4 Heavy Support choices.
Most lists don't take more than 15 high strength, high ap weapons. For the vast majority of lists, doing so would cause them to instantly lose against any horde army, or even mostly infantry MEQ lists.

Even still, the matchup against IW is not as one sided as you make it appear. Charge the wounded MCs with your killy chaos character and they will then be charged right back by stealers. 3 or 4 stealers should kill a 2 wound Lt on the charge. If it has an invulnerable, a 6 stealer brood should still handle it.

Stealers, raveners and gaunts should tie up or injure oblits decently. Vehicles can be stopped from firing with tremendous ease by Gunfex, with Dakkafex supporting fire. Even Chaos Preds can be damaged over enough time by them. There is nothing that protects them from Glancing 6 or Pen 4+.

On the other hand, as you said, massed plasma fire is pain. Another pain is the fact that they are T4(5) with 2+ armor and a 5+ Inv.

On the other other hand, Dakkafexs should be forcing fall backs (which Chaos marines don't have ATSKF to rely on) and torrent of fire checks on 6 man las/plas, their favored targets.

Really, it comes down mostly to player skill because they are both top tier lists. I will not deny that overall, the IW list is stronger. But it is no secret that the Iron Warriors is the strongest competetive list in the game.
Other people are learning that the zilla nids are a top tier list as well though.

You can't stop a possessed predator very easily with a venom cannon

Chaos marines just have MOCU which lets them reroll LD9. That's basically ATSKNF until you get within scream range.

Stealers I don't think will ever get to fight vs. IW. They are too vulnerable to the 8 heavy bolters on preds. Too easy to punch a hole through a carni and then gat all the stealers behind it to death.

Don't get me wrong. I think Zilla is a top tier list, because pretty much Lysanderwing (30 always going first terminators who start in optimal range == gay) and IW are the only ones with a solid answer to it in a Take All Comers environment. Most other armies have to compromise their integrity against other armies to be able to shake Zilla down easily, but assault cannons and obliterators are good at everything. Thankfully, normal marines need landspeeders in order to get enough assault cannons to be scary (and we all know what happens when you bring a paper airplane army against dakkafexes).

You can go a lot of tournaments without running into 9 obliterators or the dreaded yellowboys. And even when you do hit them, you've got a lot of avenues for victory.

also: Daemon bombs are not really as scary to Zilla as people make them out to be. When you put 8 gaunts in cover in front of your carnifex, daemonettes suddenly don't look so great. Getting shot the next turn and making your instability test at -4 is not happiness.

Most SM lists can have 20+ heavy weapons, two or three dev squads each with 4 missle launchers (12) 6 las/plasma squads (24), then fast attack squads with plasma pistols or flamers (plas guns add 2 more to 26). Then add maybe a couple of tornado's and you have 3 assault cannons and 3 HBs (32) then a commander with a powerfist and plasma pistol (33)

There you go, loads of heavy and specialized weapons. Understandably the use of ranged weapons is important, but for these kinds of nids armies, it seems to me that there are two very scary threats. First, the assaulting genestealers (when aren't they a threat??) and then the gaunts which are in the way (or at least forcing leadership for non MC units).

Second threat, you have to deal with the problems involving the monstrous nids, zoanthropes, and carnafexes. My money is placed on first downing these guys with your heavy weapons. Most likely they will be in cover, which will make life harder, they will have 4+ at worst 5+ right? Right. So your heavy weapons, while they will be useful will be dramatically less useful against the big nids when they are in cover. My advice, from what I can surmise, is that you should focus fire, on what? I dont really know cause I'm just talking here, but focus fire until zilla nid after nid falls down.

What I've experienced, is a problem when the Assaulters start to get close. Then you have a problem, if your shooters get assaulted your in trouble, because you have lost a point of suppression. At the same time, you have to deal with the assaulters. My guess, is have something to get rid of the genestealers, (MOST important they will rip your dudes to pieces).

Thats what I have, but then again most likely its going to come down to lady luck, and your own cereberal fortitude.

The fifth rule of Marine Club is: Guns on landspeeders don't count toward your heavy weapon total.

Static missile launchers are of dubious benefit because you can't bring enough mobile AP2 guns to bear to scare off the flying Tyrant. That's why Iron Warriors rule and space marines drool.

You start swapping those dev squads for terminator squads, and the game gets at least interesting.

Also, it isn't just that other lists can't bring enough heavy weapons to down zilla nids.
Any list can do that. Just like they can do the same to Armoured Companies.

The problem is, most lists don't do that, because for 95% of the lists out there it means lowering the amount of weapons for killing infantry, including 3+ infantry.
With IW & Assault Cannon based lists, they can do both.

Hmm. VCs vs preds. One S10 hit, most of the time the S8 shouldn't do much. So with two gunfexes you should glance preds once. They get a 50% chance to ignore it, I believe (if you don't roll a six anyway).
Yeah, your only real hope is to let loose with the warp blasts.

Possessed preds ignore stunned and lower. So 50% of the glancing chart. And they still shoot on a 5, just can't move, and on a 4lose a gun.

...and they have plenty of guns each I'm glad to hear you are using more Gaunts now Longshot. I always knew it would be better to have some cannonfodder around. No matter how horrendous casualties Obliterators or Preds might inflict on Spinegaunts, it's not nearly as bad as what they cause on Carnifexes and Genestealers. The only way to win with any army is to not let the enemy fight on his terms.

Yeah I worked it out Having horrendous casualties on 40 pt squads is hardly something to worry about. Any time something that could be shooting a lascannon shoots a gaunt == points for me. Any time a squad of fearless gaunts soaks up an obliterator squad for a turn of firing, again, points.

I think it's important to have some serious counterassault, but I'm maxing out raveners before I bother buying genestealers. They're just flat out better. People constantly underestimate how fast my list is with all the raveners gaunts and tyrant runnin together.

So basically "most" SM lists are immobile and lose by default on most missions that require you to move (those being.....pretty much all missions)

4th ed is all about mobility.... Most SM lists I see take preds over Devs for HS though I do see both.
Granted I play 1500pts as that is the normal level here in Finland.


Getting alot of fodder into 1500pts lists is sometimes tough, at 2k you can easily have 100 gaunts if you really want....personally I like scuttling spinegaunts in bigger games though I rarely play any.

No no no, I don't mean to say that most lists aren't mobile. In fact most lists are like as you say vsurma. However, my point was that if a SM wanted to have loads of heavy weapons, they certainly could do so at the extreme lack of mobility.

The only reason I take a large amount of heavy weapons is because Dark Angels are automatically intractable, which is very nice if you expect to succumb to other heavy fire.

Just out of curiosity, how do the gaunts eat up fire from the oblits?
I would think they would ignore them and fire at the big guys.
I think having a few is a good idea, for tying up, preventing charges on the fex, occasional screen/extra bodies for stealers/raveners, but I don't see how they would help prevent fire on your MCs?

I like gaunts, and think having at least two small spinegaunts is a priority, but I see them as more incidentally useful rather than vital.

If you don't shoot the gaunts, you get a 40-60pt squad of gaunts tying up obliterators on turn 3.

Yeah, but surely they have some incidental fire somewhere.

Well actually, I guess they don't. They are so tooled that they don't really have incidental firepower to take out the gaunts.

Hmm. That combined with all the other aforementioned uses make really cheap gaunts a steal. Mainly though, the really cheap part helps.

I have to playtest it a few more times but so far even against assault heavy armies, the gaunts/tyrant guard/raveners have been better than stealers. The stealers do OK, but seem to be just too pricy. They are worth killing at 120-160 pts a squad, whereas gaunts and raveners are not really (raveners are worth killing, just tough to kill due to their extreme assault range - if you get close enough to start shooting raveners you're in the prime firing range of the rest of the army).

Posted By The Happy Anarchist on 09/26/2006 9:46 PM
Yeah, but surely they have some incidental fire somewhere.

Well actually, I guess they don't. They are so tooled that they don't really have incidental firepower to take out the gaunts.

Hmm. That combined with all the other aforementioned uses make really cheap gaunts a steal. Mainly though, the really cheap part helps.

Of course if we're talking about the IW their Obliterators can choose HB's and kill 15 Spinegaunts in one volley. Those 15 Spinegaunts just happen to be worth a lot less than the 5.5 wounds on a Tyrant or a Carnifex, which they would've caused had those Gaunts not been a threat. Same thing applies to TL Las/HB sponson Preds - They can kill a lot of Gaunts but the Nid player isn't losing as much points as he is when the Preds are shooting at TMCs, so each time the Gaunts start dying the big bugs start smiling.

And they can't choose not to target the gaunts without losing the firepower of the oblits anyways when they get charged.

I see now. Nifty.

I think the SOB can be quite effective on a Choir army since they have natural resistence to the LD checks with shield of faith and also the Book of St. Lucius. Plus the mobile firepower that the exorcists bring is plenty to take down all those zoeys. Devine Guidance works great against Nidzilla lists since you need those 6's anyways to hurt the bigger bugs. The best defense against Nidzilla is deployment and target selection. You really have to be paying attention to what is the more immediate threat every turn otherwise you are wasting shots.

Capt K

This sounds pretty bad for anyone who doesn't play Godzilla nids, is it actually possible to beat them ? Especially as a player of non-MEq /Eldar armies...

What does a typical 1500 Godzilla list look like ?

Winged tyrant
walking VC tyrant with guard

spinegaunts/stealers

3 devilfexs (2*tl devourers, senses)
3 ravaners (sometimes up to 6)
2 sniperfexs (vc/bs,senses)
3 zoans

This is for 1500pts but even at 1750 its much the same, add a guard, upgrade the fexs abit, take a few more ravs and the rest in gaunts/stealers.

Personally I am changing my winged tyrant into a 2nd walking guard tyrant with VC/dev and relying on stealers and ravs for the CC punch. Just to try something new for a change.

They aren't Iron Warriors bad, but they are pretty tough.

Exorcists can't shoot while shaken. Not a significant threat.

My thinking is mobile sisters will reach the dakkafexes and kill a couple of them, but killing 3 dakkafexes is 339 pts (woot). But they're not fast enough to get rapid fire bolters past the dakkafexes. If they get close enough to the dakkafexes to unload on the gunfexes/walking tyrant/flyrant, they will be owned by the dakkafexes. The exorcists will simply not win a gunfight with a walking tyrant and 2 fexes.

I fear playing a shootie army on a sparse table, that's about it really.

Longshot: the Exorcists out range the nids longest ranged gun, so tell me how the Exorcists are shaken? I have no fear against a nidzilla list with my SOB. The way sisters with that battle is being smart with target selections.

Capt K

Do you really think you are going to stay 42" away from a Carnifex? Clue in buddy. We play on tables that are 48" by 60" and have terrain on them.