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As the title suggests, there is a Tyranid player where I live who has a stupidly nasty Tyranid Army. It goes like this.

Swarmlord+Tyrant Guard, which kill everything in close combat;
Doom of Malan'tai, which more or less drop-pods in with a mysetic spore and kills almost everything that doesn't have a cover save;
Trygon which pops up around the end-game usually, adding to the list of monsters.

Those first two are the main problems, he also uses Genestealers to outflank (usually annhilating one unit without fail before being cshot to ribbons), Warriors and Termagants to start off with and deep striking gargoyles as well. The problem is the Swarmlord/Doom of Malan'tai double whammy. I play a foot-slogging codex SM army with no vehicles except for a dread with lascannon/missile launcher config. I also have a librarian and chapter master, who are accompanied by a sternguard and vanguard squad respectively. It has occurred to me that tanks are the answer, but moneys is scarce, so...

I'm also starting an Eldar force, (tactically more fun, I think), and have only got an Avatar so far. I'm planning to have scatter-laser mounted war walkers as well, but the rest of the force is kinda a blank sheet. I just wanna know:- who do you think would win in a fight, the Avatar or the Swarmlord?

General thoughts / specific tactics are welcome, this guy's army has a virtually perfect win record, and I would greatly admire any advice on how to tackle it. Like I said, I suspect tanks *might* be the answer, but then again I saw it tear apart a heavily mechanized World Eaters army with little difficulty.

you could switch to spacewolves and spam missile launchers. bugs dont have much with a better than 3+ armor save and very few invulnerable saves. you could play blood angels and smash his face in close combat. he'd never see that coming. for codex marines - vulkan + many meltas + many flamers. a unit of stern guard with 10 twin linked melta guns would bake his hq choice. the way you deal with genestealers is by chumping a unit of scouts or tacticals in order to draw them out of cover, then hosing them with bolters or flamers. accept that the stealers will kill something; just make sure it's something that isn't worth the genestealers weight in points. leave the vanguard at home. you aren't going to beat bugs up close with codex marines (th/ss termies mb an exception. sometimes) you deal with malantai by hitting him with meltaguns lascannons missile launchers etc. anything that causes instant death. you can handle him with bolters before he gets all big and ugly but after that instant death is the way to go. assault termies with thunder hamers can knock him down in close combat also.

I echo the above, but without switching to Space Puppies. Don't give in to bandwagon hopping!

4x missile launcher devastators are the poor man's anti-everything. They're also darned good at just about everything, and most Tyranids won't be able to bring enough shooting to worry them. If he drops Doom on your devastators then you should be thankful.

Also, Dreadnoughts. Get Dreadnaughts stuck in with any non-MC who forgets to bring Rending, and you will have that unit stuck for the rest of the game. Assault Cannons are also great because either you can wound MCs on a 4, or put no-save wounds on Warriors/Ravenors reliably. Give it a heavy flamer, and watch the bugs burn.

And the last piece of advice is precisely the one you don't want to hear; Mech up. It's expensive, yes, but so game changing. Even if you can only buy one vehicle every now and then, start the process of getting everything in a ride.

First, never underestimate the power of the CM's Orbital Bombardment. Dropping a first round s10 av1 pieplate with pinning at -1ld can be highly effective, even if it misses its primary target. Aim at the massed broods and hope for a good drift.
Second, the Dread.... The Dccw is a s10 power weapon, always a good idea vs big bugs.
Third, the Libby.... Your best bet on powers are most likely Null Zone and Vortex.

Of course others with more experience against nids may have better suggestions.

first, welcome to the board.

second, i'm not sure that switching to the most OP codex in the game is the answer, butif it was me, i'd focus lots of brightlance, fire prism, firedragon, and dark reaper spam on his TMCs and try and use my avatar and any banshees to screen my shooty guys from gaunts.

well switching to wolves certainly isnt going to hurt anything. codex marines arent as shooty at range but you can still do it. missile launcher devastator squads + lascannon razorbacks for example.

You don't need cover for anything besides zoenthropes and the doom.

Dev squads in corners are just begging to be eaten by genestealers.

The doom is helpless against dreads in CC if the doom's str is not already sky high. If you can get a dread into CC with the doom before it's wounds go above 6 it will just end up stuck in CC with the dread until it gets instakilled by a DCCW.

The cookie cutter solution for deepstriking units has always been including an inquisitor and a retinue that includes mystics.

GoldenKaos wrote: I play a foot-slogging codex SM army with no vehicles except for a dread ... I suspect tanks *might* be the answer, but then again I saw it tear apart a heavily mechanized World Eaters army with little difficulty.

You're right on the money here. This guy's nid army will roll over any foot-slogging list. It's designed for close combat with foot troops, and there's no way space marines can ever hope to match it toe-to-toe. Even with huge amounts of foot-based firepower, he's designed to weather the 1-2 turns of shooting you get before he catches you, then you're dead. The World Eaters army lost because WE are a close-combat, not a shooting army. So the WE probably used his tanks to get *closer* to the nids and assault them--and again even chaos assaulty armies have little chance of beating these nids.

But a mechanized shooty space army--especially a fully mech army with all troops in rhinos and all shooting vehicles in the heavy/fast/elite slots--will completely decimate this tyranid army every time. He doesn't have enough firepower to hurt the transports or enough speed to catch them in hand-to-hand. So you just shoot him to death, then roll away when he gets close and shoot some more until he's dead, and there's not much he can do about it.

1) use TH/SS termies on the trygons, you will lose 1-2 per round of combat, but you can kill it easily.

2)Shoot the swarm lord. you don't have anything which can stand up to CC with him, especially with lash whip guard around him.

3)given his propensity for reserve shenanigans, you are going to need to think about deploying in the middle 3' of your board, make sure to pack some flamers for the gargs.

Unless you mech up, you're going to need to induct an inquisitor with 3 mystics to stop the doom, really your only two choices.

TH termies really seem like the best bet against a lot of that stuff. Doom won't do much against them and then you can just smack him down [one failed save and he's toast]. A trygon will kill maybe kill 1-2 on the charge before you utterly crush him, and even the swarmlord will have trouble. He's got 6 attacks only. Even with re-rolled saves he should only kill 3. If you've been able to set it up so you can charge him, you should annihilate his unit. Bring a chaplain along [and make sure he's behind the line of guys so he can't get in btb the first round] and even if he uses Paroxysm, you'll have a ton of attacks that re-roll misses and wound on a 2+. Lash whips mean nothing because you're I1 anyway, and if you wound him then you'll be going at the same time the next round. TH termies are a great way to go.

As far as the stealers, stay away from the table edges and just shoot them down. They're really not that great in cc once their numbers are down. Bring lots of marines and shoot them down. Consider putting some units in reserves so you're not huddled into the middle of the board when the doom of malan'tai comes down.

Codex:SM just isn't meant to be a hoard of power armor. Any one who tries to convince you that marines one foot can win against a competent opponent lives in a meta where people take correspondingly bad lists and allow that space marine player to not buy tanks. Your local gaming scene obviously does not afford you the luxury of this so your going to need some armor even (and especially) if you switch to eldar.

That being said you do have some armor that can really put the hurt on bugs and most everything else short of a land raider when properly kitted. That is your dreadnoughts. Give them two autocannon arms and they will move around the board giving nids a headache with 4 twinlinked ap4 str 7 attacks. In addition to hurting MC's its good against many things in other peoples armies. It also uses range to protect the dread from its biggest weakness which is close range since melta shots and CC with MC's will smoke him fast.

Other units you can think about using are razorbacks with Lascannons/twin-linked plasma guns for transports which will punish MC's that like to come out of pods, deepstrike, or outflank. 3 high str ap2 shots make big bugs cry especially when mounted on several mobile units that can move and shoot. The regular rhino can be decent too if you like to run 10 man squads since the missile launcher can shoot out the top. On the tacs a combi-flamer is decent for thinning out hoards of bugs that get too close to your ride. HF/MM speeders and Land speeder typhoons will give nids fits for obvious reasons and I can say from expiriance that putting three AC/HB predators on the field will thin out his stealers and gaunts at an insane rate. TH/SS terminators coming out of a landraider crusader will combine some pretty powerful anti-small bugs from the raider and anit-big bugs from the termies. A librarian will also go along way to making sure podding units of zonethropes never get a shot off with his psychic hood.

The best part of all the units I mentioned is that they don't just work against nids they have a place in almost any balanced list which means taking them wont make you strong against nids but then weak against tau for example. They make up a good solid core for you to build your army around. Once you are capable of fielding a balanced force and really understand how to win with space marines you can branch out and buy "fun" units to experiment with but in the mean time I recommend meching up to get a feel for how SM play because its much easier to get experience by playing close fought games where you have a decent chance of winning rather than getting wiped off the board all the time.