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That said, dedicated cc units that get in your face early on can only really be dealt with via gants. No stealers, no backfield threats, and while hive guard shooting is great, the tyrannofex and hive tyrant shooting is sub par for the points. A dedicated shooting force should cripple the nid shooting, a dedicated assault force should cripple the nids in cc. Its not an autoloss, mind, but with everything bunched up I can see a multiassault taking a huge chunk of the nid army to task.

DevianID you do not really play nids do you? :-) No transports = bunched up. Zynapse = bunched up. No invounerable saves mens you need to bring your own coversave = bunched up. The only way out of that would be eather drop pods or genestealers. No matter what dedicated CC unit you have (with perhaps the exeption of purifiers and crowe and some AV13 dreadnoughts) you do NOT want to charge genestealers under any circumstance.

DCA with GK grenades will do a lot of damage to stealers.

They are good in CC - perhaps the best we have point for point - but real dedicated CC units will destroy them.

Niiai, I was responding to your previous post. In your previous post, you had a list that was 8 hive guard, 2 tervigons, 1 HVC tyrant with preferred enemy, and 2 tervigons. You dont have genestealers. You had gants and t6 low attack MCs.

So yeah, charging your bunched up block of MC with a dedicated assault force is going to be real bad for you. As is multi assults using massed gant kills to flood your MCs with fearless saves.

So in the IG example, imagine straken with a few veteran squads. Straken charges one of your ws3 MCs, hitting on 3s and wounding on 3s. The guardsmen multiassault into gants, hitting on 4s wounding on 3's after shooting them down a bit depending on how big your spawn rolls were. Meanwhile, all the other firepower in the list, the vendettas, hydras and manticores, lay into your hive guard and priority targets. Their range leaves only your tyrannofexes and HVC adequately able to shoot back, or deal with a CC threat that makes up a small part of the IG forces.

DevianID wrote:Niiai, I was responding to your previous post. In your previous post, you had a list that was 8 hive guard, 2 tervigons, 1 HVC tyrant with preferred enemy, and 2 tervigons. You dont have genestealers. You had gants and t6 low attack MCs.

So yeah, charging your bunched up block of MC with a dedicated assault force is going to be real bad for you. As is multi assults using massed gant kills to flood your MCs with fearless saves.

So in the IG example, imagine straken with a few veteran squads. Straken charges one of your ws3 MCs, hitting on 3s and wounding on 3s. The guardsmen multiassault into gants, hitting on 4s wounding on 3's after shooting them down a bit depending on how big your spawn rolls were. Meanwhile, all the other firepower in the list, the vendettas, hydras and manticores, lay into your hive guard and priority targets. Their range leaves only your tyrannofexes and HVC adequately able to shoot back, or deal with a CC threat that makes up a small part of the IG forces.

Kind of off topic, but what sane IG player is going to charge vet squads in while running straken? If they're running straken, they'll be running 20 and 30 man powerblobs with commisars and melta weapons, which I think would do a heck of a lot more damage than a couple of tiny vet squads. Each sarge will have a power weapon and melta bombs, as well as the commisar packing a power weapon, and 2 to 3 guardsmen with melta/flamers, which would put out a lot more hurt than a 10 man vet squad I would think. Not to mention the fact that a multiassault would be a LOT easier to pull off with 30 guys as opposed to 10.

While I'm asking this, why would you multi assault a MC and a squad of gaunts at the same time? I know there's a reason why people do it, I just wanted to know how it worked specifically, especially since I'm going blob guard and wanted to know this trick. Something about killing the gaunts and winning combat hurts the MC as well, but thats about all I know.

DevianID I am not baited into a hypothetical debate with you where my sugested list gets piched vs varius others in a worst for that list scenario. If you want to do that sort of thing take it elsewhere.

This thread is about helping the original poster and it is deeply rooted in the good balanced tyranid codex with a steep cost on moast units and the fact that 5th edition is about transports, and IG in particular that the original poster had problems with.

The problem with lots of Tervis is if you run up against SW with JotWW... There is no real defense and it eats Tervis.

MrMoustaffa wrote:While I'm asking this, why would you multi assault a MC and a squad of gaunts at the same time? I know there's a reason why people do it, I just wanted to know how it worked specifically, especially since I'm going blob guard and wanted to know this trick. Something about killing the gaunts and winning combat hurts the MC as well, but thats about all I know.

Mulicharge gaunts and a Carnifex. Slaughter the gaunts. You win CC by over 9000. Carnifex, even though you never swung at him, gets to take over 9000 No Retreat! saves for being Fearless.

Except, niiai, you recommended a list in this topic that is not balanced in any way, it was all shooting save for 2 tervigons, and its is bad. At least in my opinion. Am I unable to explain why your list is bad versus ig? Cause that is what I did/tried to show.

As to mrmoustaffa, the straken plus vet list is one of the most successful ig lists, as unlike the blob ig you still get tons of chimeras with more speed and more melta. Mike brandt at the very least.won some events with it, and others play it similiar to him.

Really appreciate all your suggestions. I didnt realise a zoan had AP1 so i guess that helps 20% still seems to lend itself to failing more often than i would like haha!

I Think i'll have to try some tervigons out too, as long as you arent forced to spawn units in kill point games.

With the no retreat info, If a guard player loses combat and passes his leadership test does he take no retreat armour saves too?

Only a select few guard units are fearless, so most of the time they dont worry about No retreat. Instead they take regular morale checks and you can run them down, which is even better!

Now, IG players planning on getting into CC usually take some commisars, who give stubborn and a reroll for leadership. This is kind of the worst case senario, as they are not subject to no retreat, are not subject to morale check modifiers, and get a reroll to boot.

DevianID wrote:Except, niiai, you recommended a list in this topic that is not balanced in any way, it was all shooting save for 2 tervigons, and its is bad. At least in my opinion. Am I unable to explain why your list is bad versus ig? Cause that is what I did/tried to show.

As to mrmoustaffa, the straken plus vet list is one of the most successful ig lists, as unlike the blob ig you still get tons of chimeras with more speed and more melta. Mike brandt at the very least.won some events with it, and others play it similiar to him.

Well no the way he put it, there were 3 vet squads and straken on foot charging a MC and some gaunts, not in chimeras. I know the typical meltavet/chimera list (leafblower or whatever its called) that's very popular and know what you're talking about. However, chimera vets would be screwed in assault because most guys never give them power weapons, and there's only 10 in a squad max, as opposed to the 30 man blob with 4 pw, 3 melta bombs, and 3 melta weapons as well. Yeah with straken they the vets would have furious charge and all that, but they wouldn't have the extra PW's and 30 or so extra guardsmen that pile on the wounds like the blob has, as well as the fact that the vets wouldn't have a commissar, and would be more likely to run.

I haven't seen the actual straken/vet list though, I'll need to look that up some time.

Also, thanks for explaining how that multicharge thing works guys, I'll be sure to try that next time I fight some MC's

Smokebelch wrote: we need to find a way to set up the table impartially :S

Local GW shop is pretty poor for terrain too which probably doesnt aid his judgement!

Project2501 wrote:I'm pretty sure the table quarter being filled with terrain is from the BRB, though I'm at work on my phone so I can't rummage through it atm for you :(.

At the very least, roll a dice and whomever gets the highest roll gets to pick and place the first piece of terrain, alternating between you both untill all theterrain is placed. I can't see how anyone could weasel their way out of that.

Smokebelch wrote:
Any tips on setting up the board? I think im gonna show him some pics of some board setups to educate him!

Thanks again

Fill a table quarter, then take it all off and alternate putting it back on. It becomes a little game in itself, which may help you convince him. I try to have at least one, if not two or three LoS blocking pieces that could hide a tank (and I play the IG gunline! Fair's fair...), plus some more that would block infantry, plus some that would only provide cover (see through/over). Of all that it's a mix of area terrain (woods, rough, etc.), impassable terrain (buildings we're too lazy to make/play rules for, big rocks), and 'directional' terrain (walls, hedges, etc.) - mostly area terrain and buildings make up my boards. We have 25% and go back and forth, and usually end up with fun, balanced boards.

I understand that tyrannofexs advancing with a tervigon spam list with the prerequisite hive guard (and potentially even a venomthrope for consistent cover) and whatever other filler you like (gants and gargs don't seem like they'd be doing you much good) makes a great aggressive castle that has a lot of reach.
You have a lot more access to high strength fire that way and have some big meaty +2 armor bodies to obscure things with

I keep hearing things about how mawlocs don't suck, but I have no idea how they are to be used.

I'm also not convinced of your opponent's ability to hold objectives.

Happy hunting. Tyranids look so cool. I'm so impressed with the way they've been designed to work like one big machine, though I worry it's because they are so underpowered they require a lot of fine tuning...