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I have to agree with lots of shooting. I play ultra marines. Missle launchers are a good trick to use. They are cheap, they can do pretty well vs their ships and you can switch them to templates and kill troops. Also have used attack bikes vs them with good results. Pretty cheap, fast and can pound. Don't get into assault tho. It's a win for them. Shoot them down like the paper they are otherwise. Auto cannons, assault cannons, even heavy bolters are good too.

Ailaros wrote:As has been thoroughly mentioned, their main weakness is the fact that literally everything is open-topped, and practically everything is AV10. That and, unless they're specially tooled, they're usually pretty terrible in close combat.

Put another way, DE are strong because it's hard to put damage on them, but when you can, they fold like superman on laundry day.

This is one of those times when high volumes of mid-strength firepower and a bit of long-range firepower really does a lot. In the case of imperium units, this means taking autocannons. As such, do whatever the equivalent for tyranid is (dakkafexes?)

I agree with most of that, but usually pretty terrible in CC? I guess that's probably accurate in the way most people play them, but I would say wyches, mandrakes, and wracks are all quite capable in CC, and Grotesques and Incubi and pretty much all the special characters are plain nasty in CC. Vect, Lilith and Drazhar are all just nasty in CC.

I don't agree that they are terrible in cc either. Gross understatement. De are scary cc. High initiative, poisonous attacks and high we doesnt cry terrible cc.


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Ws not we sorry.

ShadarLogoth wrote: usually pretty terrible in CC? I guess that's probably accurate in the way most people play them, but I would say wyches, mandrakes, and wracks are all quite capable in CC, and Grotesques and Incubi and pretty much all the special characters are plain nasty in CC.

Devil Dog wrote:I don't agree that they are terrible in cc either. Gross understatement. De are scary cc.

Go back and read what I actually wrote. DE CAN be scary in close combat, but only if they tool their army to be scary in close combat. If they're spending their time on venom and ravager spam (like most DE), they're not spending the points to bring good CC units. Wyches are good, but if they're in an army that only contains a single squad of them and the rest is shooting-based, well, it's not hard to focus on the wyche's raider and isolate them from the action.

Plus, DE may have high initiative, but they still have low toughness and terrible armor saves.

Add to that, only squad leaders carry poisoned weapons, except for wracks.
imo, MC vs DE are toast. Horde armies may have chance of getting close, cause of ther sheer mass of models.
for weakness: cc for the shooters, range for the cc, transport spam, ignoring armor saves and fnp, you have to plan a lot to get it done.
The best successors are IG and SM.
IG: a lot of cheap squads that have a chance to crack open the transports, a few shots for the heavy slot, and outgunning the foe.
SM: good saves, basically good for both cc and shooting, specialised unites have the same problem as DE, just not in that great a volume. Your devastator has a slight chance to survive a wytch assault, but a kabalite vs an assault squad...well i like all space elves, but in that case, i wouldnt bet on them. Wytches vs assault marines: the marines need to be thinned first, like with eldar tacs, but DE love to stay in that combat until the end of your assault phase.
As i have written in a few other topics, my main build is no cc but tons of focused shots. Vs that, a lot of good dice. And 2+3+ unites.

a nother weaknes for DE is 750+. In low armies, those 4+ aoutowounds are a killer, but above that, vehicles start to come in - exc. for Mec'dar w 3 transports and 2 walkers for 750, but thats a nother topic ^^. Against these, DE have to get shock prows, and be willing to sac the transports in order to crack open the enemy - espechially if the transports have WD already!

to summ it all up: Yes, they have a fair amount of weaknesses, but back it up /w modility and pure evil

For Tyranids, utilize range bands and FNP. Hive Guard, then Tervigons, then Tyrannofexes.

Space them appropriately so that, if they want to take out the T-fexes, they have to get into range of the Hive Guard, and if they want to take out the Hive Guard, they have to get by the FNP/cover from units.

I can make anti-DE lists for most armies...nids...I don't know where I would start. You can't run nidzilla or swarms. I'd say lots of outflanking genestealers and try to bait the DE to a table edge with some big target of course cover helps a lot.

DE really tend to struggle against armies like tau and mech IG the most. Basically the less engineered for war you are the better shot against DE you have. SM can rifleman dread spam and take a lot of razorbacks with assault cannons. Tzeentch daemons w/ BoC and plenty of plasma plagues for CSM. Craftworld eldar just need to S 6 spam. War walkers are nasty. Basically you need more targets than the de player has shots. Play the percentages game, not every DL shot will hit and only 1/3 FF will be passed.

Another good tactic is to treat them like a Glass Hammer. If you can survive the inital impact then the hammer should break. DE can't stand a shoot out. The figurative hammer will break.

Focus on S6+ in bulk and you won't go far from wrong against the paper plane using glass soldiers.

Tyrranofex is a terrible idea against DE.

For it cost - it will go down really fast to Lance Fire, backed by Splinter fire. I mean really fast.
All those 3 Ravagers that is in every list suddenly becoming extremely cost effective against Tyranids. 3+ to Hit 2+ to wound, no save.

Basically you need more targets than the de player has shots.

Thats not really possible, DE play MSU better and cheaper then every other army. They are number 1 of all armies with number of targets they can shoot per turn.

DE CAN be scary in close combat, but only if they tool their army to be scary in close combat. If they're spending their time on venom and ravager spam (like most DE), they're not spending the points to bring good CC units.

But that is not actually advantage for Tyranids and anyone. If its standart MSU venom spam everything that enemy CC touch will die , but in doing so it will be fully exposed to Splinter Cannons next turn.
If DE player choses to have any dedicated melee squads Tyranids will not win against them. It doesnt take special tooling or otherwise to have 15 helions on board or have raider full of wracks with 2 flamers and hell of a lot poison atacks.

Tyranids in horde aspect have a lot of gakky saves, low toughness, low initiative. Even with FnP torrent based DE CC atacks will just cleave its way throu the horde, triggering Fearless saves or Sweepeng Advance.
Monsters just die to Splinter and Lance fire, even worse then hoardes, those at least can have cover and FnP.

Certain units are plain nightmare for Nids. In our comunity it is popular to take large gang of helions with Baron, provide them with 2 pain tokens from haemy and wracks and saw hell amongst enemy.
You are looking at Fleet Jump Infanry with 3+ FnP saves against shooting , 45 S5 atacks at i7 and 30 poisoned shots and Hit and Run. I cant imagine a single unit of Nids that can survive the charge of the gang.

So my thought about it - nids have little chance in open contest , they must strike from Spores , Dakka Gaunts , Hive Guards , Zoans etc..just get the advantage of first atack and deny enemy mobility.

I wish I could help more with nid approach to defeating them. It's a tough army to beat for anyone, but not impossible. So many gosh darn transports.

Devil Dog wrote:I wish I could help more with nid approach to defeating them. It's a tough army to beat for anyone, but not impossible. So many gosh darn transports.

A tough army to beat... oh, the irony

DE have matchups that greatly favor them (Daemons, Nids) and matchups that often go downhill very fast (Mech IG, Grey Knight Dreadnought/Razorspam). That puts them somewhere highup in the middle bracket if you look at them competitively. They are hardly tough to beat for anyone, they are just tough to beat for specific armies. Any army that can put out a large number of medium strength shots can wipe them off the board pretty fast.

I wouldn't be so quick to say GK...any marine army kitted out to deal with DE yes. Mainly Tau and IG are the worst to play DE against. Orks, horde IG, and nids are tough to play against DE. Outflank and try to get that first blow. If you can tank out the venoms your army has a much better chance. So like I said try to lure the DE over to a board edge to assault with genestealers. Yamgaryl poping up and assualting could be mean to the ravagers.

Beckett wrote:

Tyrranofex is a terrible idea against DE.

For it cost - it will go down really fast to Lance Fire, backed by Splinter fire. I mean really fast.
All those 3 Ravagers that is in every list suddenly becoming extremely cost effective against Tyranids. 3+ to Hit 2+ to wound, no save.

I think that as an isolated example, yes - the T-Fex doesn't seem worth it. But when you put it in context of the whole army, I think it becomes a lot more viable.

If you have for example, your T-Fex is getting a cover save (not hard with two Tervies and 6 Hive Guard to hide behind), then it will take three ravagers rolling averagely 2-3 turns of solid shooting to take him down (assuming your T-Fex and HG aren't taking any down in return).

If you have 35-40 FnP Stealers in cover, infiltrating towards the DE lines, then little to no splinter fire will be supporting these ravagers as they try to take down as many stealers as possible.

By the time the DE have dealt with your stealers and Fex, they'll have 6 HG in range, and 2 Tervies with loads of gants bearing down on them. Still a very hard game and an uphill battle (and yes, I know all this sounds very good in theory and different armies/people operate differently etc etc) but you get the general idea.

And yes - you can do a Tfex, 6 Hive Guard, 2 Tervies, 35 stealers and 10 gants in a 1,500 pnt list.

Having said all this, I agree with you that Spods are prob the best way to go against DE, but I think it's harder to make an all-comers list like this...where as the list I wrote above performs reliably and well against most builds (IMHO/Experience).

Dark Eldar are super weak to armor value 12 spam.
Armor value 12 is where you want your armor, since having higher doesn't help against dark eldar. Most armor value 12 vehicles have a large number of strength 6-8 shots. Those shots have no trouble destroying raiders and popping through feel no pain on toughness 3.

If you're playing an army that isn't mech..like tyranids...your best best is to get as much medium strength (5-7) shooting as you can. If you have no shots, the dark eldar will just use their speed, range, and firepower to kill you without taking any losses. You don't necesseraily need a lot of range, but your shooting help to create "zones" that limit dark eldar movement and give you a chance to get into hth.

My main opponent every saturday is Tyranids. I must say the games were originally 80%/20% wins to me but now they are about 50/50.

Basically what we figured out was...

-Outflank with nearly everything
-A null-deployment army and deep-strike everything in thanks to hive-commander ability works wonders
-Mawloc str9 ap 1 hit large blast is insane.
-Devo gaunts cannot destroy a DE vehicle but it can overload its defenses and cripple it with stuns.
-The small blast weapon that warriors get can destroy our vehicles (I think its str 6 AP 4)
-Lashwhip
-No seriously screw lashwhip, I hate that thing, we hit an bottom initiative and the hive tyrant can insta-death us in return. THAN he goes and toxic miasma's too.
-Lastly do not under-estimate rending. The AP 2 hit negates feel-no-pain, Genestealers can guarantee at least about 4-5 get through.
-Toxin sacks re-roll wounds on us due to our low str


Thats all I can remember so far, but yeah our Agonisers and poison do help with us take down tyranids, but its not so lop-sided once you eventually work us out.

Mawloc str9 ap 1 hit large blast is insane.

Wait...isn't it a 6/2...admittedly it's been awhile since I checked the mawlock entry.

Beckett wrote:

Tyrranofex is a terrible idea against DE.

For it cost - it will go down really fast to Lance Fire, backed by Splinter fire. I mean really fast.
All those 3 Ravagers that is in every list suddenly becoming extremely cost effective against Tyranids. 3+ to Hit 2+ to wound, no save.



I think that as an isolated example, yes - the T-Fex doesn't seem worth it. But when you put it in context of the whole army, I think it becomes a lot more viable.

I'm going to have to agree with slice'n'dice there, even with just venomthropes CS it's going to take at least 2 turns of shooting, and the rupture cannon by itself will be popping a ravager every other turn. Also...splinter fire, really? With FNP it takes three full venom volleys juts to cause 1 wound, PLEASE shoot your venoms at my T-Fex.

and the rupture cannon by itself will be popping a ravager every other turn

How did you come to this conclusion? 2 shots at bs 3. Pretty big chances to miss, pretty big chances to fail at 4/5+ cover.

DE afraid high-rate of fire guns for a reason, thats because medium strenght penetrate just as good as high strenght, but there are lot of them.
Rupture cannon are 2 shots at gakky balistic and high strenght. I cant see them shoothing target each turn.

And again there is no need for Splinter Fire - all Lance Fire there is will be targeted at those 250+ points hulks.

3 venoms=3*12 shots, thats 36 shots at bs 4
36*4/6(to hit)*4/6(to wound)=thats 16 wounds. even if w armor and fnp you save 3/4 of them, thats still 4 wounds. ok, can be alocated, but then you wont roll w the fex for it.
in other cases, after you alocated the wounds, you get blasted by blasterborn s8 ap2 that ignores armor and fnp. im willing to sacc 133pt for a 250 fex

When DE tool for close combate they are as deadly as anything in the game. I recently learned how deadly, the high inititve and 4+ invunerable in CC was murder, especialy since he got the combat drug that let him re-role fail to wounds in CC. With that said their weakness is low toughness, bad armour and other than lances have no real anti tank. If you can destroy their lances you can sit in your vehicles and kill them really well with just bolter shots.

Beckett wrote:

and the rupture cannon by itself will be popping a ravager every other turn

How did you come to this conclusion? 2 shots at bs 3. Pretty big chances to miss, pretty big chances to fail at 4/5+ cover.

DE afraid high-rate of fire guns for a reason, thats because medium strenght penetrate just as good as high strenght, but there are lot of them.
Rupture cannon are 2 shots at gakky balistic and high strenght. I cant see them shoothing target each turn.

And again there is no need for Splinter Fire - all Lance Fire there is will be targeted at those 250+ points hulks.

Pretty big chance to miss? Actually...no, one shot, on average, will hit with every volley. I didn't factor in cover saves, so that would drop it to one in every three turns for FF and one in 4ish for obscured. Still, that's just one gun.


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enfernux wrote:3 venoms=3*12 shots, thats 36 shots at bs 4
36*4/6(to hit)*4/6(to wound)=thats 16 wounds. even if w armor and fnp you save 3/4 of them, thats still 4 wounds. ok, can be alocated, but then you wont roll w the fex for it.
in other cases, after you alocated the wounds, you get blasted by blasterborn s8 ap2 that ignores armor and fnp. im willing to sacc 133pt for a 250 fex

The T-Fex has a 2+ save, and the splinter cannon wounds half the time, not 2/3rds So, of your 16 er 12 wounds, (1/6) will get through the save and half of those will get through FNP... So you end up with 36(2/3)(1/2)(1/6)(1/2)=1 wound.


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Oh and the blasterborn need to get there first. They would be first target before the ravagers. 1 Rupture Cannon = .44 popped or immobilised venoms per turn.

I know we're doing this all in a vacuum, and of course both the nids and DE would have other things going on, but in practice your really need to just be able to stun 3 ravagers and pop/immobilise 3 blasterborn venoms in one turn to make venomspam lists very beatable. Even with an army that suffers on ranged anti-tank, that's not entirely difficult to accomplish. (The big problem is most nid generals don't bring any ranged anti tank out side of the 30" threat range HG...and this why they fail).

Really stopping 3 ravagers (with 5+ invuls and decent deployment) and 3 blasterborn venoms (again with same things as above) isn't difficult? Maybe not for IG, Tau, or some Eldar lists but otherwise stopping all of these will tough for most armies. Then you still have to consider the other warrior squads, the wyches, beasts, scourges, reavers...etc.

I have no clue where you are getting .44 popped/imobilised venoms per turn, but then again I don't know the nid book that well. The biggst thing is deployment and deployment styles. I can get in range easily on turn one with a standard 12" deployment. 12" in + 12" move + 3" (2+base size) for disembarking + 18" range. Thats 45" so unless you are butts up to the board edge (at which point I wouldn't suicide against you) then I will get there turn 1. I can even use another venom to block LOS which would reduce me to what 40-42" and with no LOS you can't shoot my venom.

See theoryhammer like this doesn't work because you would have other threats on the board. There is no way to do any of this without just sitting down and playing a game.

Akroma06 wrote:
I have no clue where you are getting .44 popped/imobilised venoms per turn, but then again I don't know the nid book that well. .

Rupture Cannon is a BS 3 2 shot 10/4, so... 2[shots](1/2)[BS3](2/3)[FF](2/3)[imo+] = .44, and it's actually .66 shaken or better, which against the Blasterborn is plenty sufficient.

BTW, suicide with 4 blasterborn against a T-Fex with at least a 5+ cover: 4(2÷3)(5÷6)(2÷3) = 1.48

So you would in reality need to sacrifice all 3 groups plus a minimum of 4 more lance shots to statistically bring the T-Fex down. That's 16 of your lance shots for one MC.

I certainly agree with your last take though, I'm just extrapolating the math to illustrate the fallacy in thinking blasterboprn+ravagers=all TMCs dead. If properly supported, the nids will keep plugin along long enough to take out the big shooters in the DE list and convert them from impossible scary to at least manageable.


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Oh and Akroma06, you are the supreme LOS master if you can 100% obscure one venom with another venom (nids move and shoot, although I guess you could place your 5 troop venoms in a boxish formation around the blasterborn, but even then, there seems to always be an angle somewhere.)

Yeah ok anything S10 makes short work of DE skimmers.

Wish my camera was working. The venoms can be banked with those new skimmer stands we have and thus make more or less a pure wall that can block LOS. Also consider that the army I run has a couple of raiders and 3 ravagers which can hide things quite easily.

I'm also not saying nids can't beat DE but it is deffinently an uphill battle.

WhiteZombie wrote:Low toughness is a big weakness, if you can take out a raider full of Warriors and Wyches, the explosion is also going to kill half the squad.

Dark Eldar tend to either destroy you or get wiped off the table, their absolutely deadly against Tyranids though so you will need more than a little luck to take them on.

Not much more than this here.

Rupture Cannon is a BS 3 2 shot 10/4, so... 2[shots](1/2)[BS3](2/3)[FF](2/3)[imo+] = .44

You just dont know math. You cant have any meaningfull average from 2 shots, you need more dice to have any usable average restults.

Knowledge of Rupture Fex killing 0.44 Venoms Per turn if it fired for 20 turns doesnt matter if you fire 3 turns in 2 games.

So you would in reality need to sacrifice all 3 groups plus a minimum of 4 more lance shots to statistically bring the T-Fex down

??? DE have effective 48 lance range, 3 Ravagers and some Raiders is more then enough to kill T-Fex per Turn.
For example Rupture Cannon is far more likely to not do any damage at all then say Impaler Cannon.
Its spread of probablities of results that is usefull, not average.

If you dont care about those things, better just stick to experience, your brain will sort this out for you.

Pony_law wrote:When DE tool for close combate they are as deadly as anything in the game. I recently learned how deadly, the high inititve and 4+ invunerable in CC was murder, especialy since he got the combat drug that let him re-role fail to wounds in CC. With that said their weakness is low toughness, bad armour and other than lances have no real anti tank. If you can destroy their lances you can sit in your vehicles and kill them really well with just bolter shots.

DE for CC can be a very fun army to run but they are much less powerful than their MSU shooty spam.

DE weaknesses are half their anti tank comes from their HS choices and the other half come from their elite section preventing you from taking most of the really fun units. They dont have a good way to kill walkers in CC and while they can surpress enemy vehicles they cant really kill them efficiently. against shooting most of their units are very weak. Now it is hard for nids to take advantage of most of those weaknesses.


reroll to wound is probably the best combat drug. better than anything but +1 attack almost always. I HATE it when they get pain tokens, as with haemi's they usually start out with them and most are more than capable of getting more on their own. I wouldnt take too much away from how awesome they are 1/6 of the time.

Exergy wrote:They dont have a good way to kill walkers in CC

The Talos would like a word with you about that.
Str7, T7 Monstrous Creature with D6+1 attacks of goodness, can happily go toe to toe with just about anything.
Load it up with a TL Haywire Blaster or TL Heatlance and it's brilliantly effective at both anti-infantry and anti-vehicle. I like to throw in a TL Liquifier Gun for the giggles too.

Ovion wrote:

Exergy wrote:They dont have a good way to kill walkers in CC

The Talos would like a word with you about that.
Str7, T7 Monstrous Creature with D6+1 attacks of goodness, can happily go toe to toe with just about anything.
Load it up with a TL Haywire Blaster or TL Heatlance and it's brilliantly effective at both anti-infantry and anti-vehicle. I like to throw in a TL Liquifier Gun for the giggles too.

few DE players are going to sacrifice a ravager for a slow Talos.

I love the idea that Talos can run though. Gets me every time.

You said we don't have a good way to kill walkers.

I personally run 2 Talos and they've served me briliantly.
And most Coven players use them.
People see them as big scary death machines, and so throw most everything they can at the Str7 monster. They invaribly survive the walk, putting out HB shots along the way (having drawn fire enough my Razorwing is still standing, along with most of my raiders and venoms) and then slam into something killign it, usually making their hundred points back with ease.

no killing walkers and or tanks?
a squad of 10 wytches w haywire grenades usually leave a tank in ruins. The klaivex with demiklaves also has a neat chance of popping a walker. A few haem weapons can do the trick to.
Or just shoot a squad of walkers with a squad of blasterborn. What about reavers? 36" across the field in to cover, HnS through a line of enemy infantry than heatlance next turn.
What about our missiles? Or bombs? DE have a neat combination to pop vehicles - even walkers - you just have to read everything meny times. My only problem is they dont have an HQ that allows reavers to be taken as troops :(

Beckett wrote:

Rupture Cannon is a BS 3 2 shot 10/4, so... 2[shots](1/2)[BS3](2/3)[FF](2/3)[imo+] = .44

You just dont know math. You cant have any meaningfull average from 2 shots, you need more dice to have any usable average restults.

Knowledge of Rupture Fex killing 0.44 Venoms Per turn if it fired for 20 turns doesnt matter if you fire 3 turns in 2 games.

So you would in reality need to sacrifice all 3 groups plus a minimum of 4 more lance shots to statistically bring the T-Fex down

??? DE have effective 48 lance range, 3 Ravagers and some Raiders is more then enough to kill T-Fex per Turn.
For example Rupture Cannon is far more likely to not do any damage at all then say Impaler Cannon.
Its spread of probablities of results that is usefull, not average.

If you dont care about those things, better just stick to experience, your brain will sort this out for you.

Wow, there is so much irony in this post it tickles me. I clearly demonstrated, with my knowledge of math, that you need at least 16 lance shots to reliably take down a T-Fex in one turn. You continue to ignore this fact and your rebuttal is I need to lay off the math and let experience sort things out for me there chief?

I think I've pretty clearly demonstrated that understand the math quite well. You've clearly demonstrated that you think a 25% chance occurrence is "Pretty big chances to miss" and that you don't understand probabilities in aggregate with statements like "Knowledge of Rupture Fex killing 0.44 Venoms Per turn if it fired for 20 turns doesnt matter if you fire 3 turns in 2 games."

So, um, grats, I guess.