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I am facing off against the local DE player tomarrow and i Know that i need some help. DE are from what i understand really awful to face with nids. This will be my first time and i want to at least have a good game and NOT get slaughtered. Since i have never faced them i have trolled a bit here and there to try and figure out what i can do to try and mitigate the massacre. I play a non- monstrouse creature horde list. I was thinking that i might try to put everything in reserve and then come on piecemeal to try and trap my foe where i could hopefully wipe really nasty squads with shooting and at least mitigate his ability to alpha stike my best units.
my usual 1500 pt list
2x Warrior prime with adrenal glads, lash whip/ bonesword.
3 hiveguard
3 zoanthroaps
8 Ymgarl
16 hormaguants with toxin
20 termagaunts
20 Devourerguants
12 genestealers with toxin sacks
10 genestealers

Am i just gonna get ripped to bits or are there little tweaks i can make in my list that would help
i was thinking that i could swap the toxin on the hormagaunts for adrenal glands. that might help a bit on the charge. Other than that, any advice would be appreciated.

You are going to get eviscerated.

If you want to stand a chance against DE, you need to pack as many guns as you can into the list. Genestealers, gants....none of that is going to do you any good.

If you have room to maneuver, change out the warriors for more hive guard (or they are going to get instapopped), lose all your genestealers and replace them with a tyrannofex or more hive guard, add some deep-striking zoeys....

Even an exceptional tyranid player using a fully gun-based tyranid army is going to have a struggle against DE - needing 4+ and more often 6+ to hit vehicles while getting mass slaughtered by splinter cannons, lances and blasters taking down MCs and their infantry hiding in the protection of their vehicles.

Your list hasn't a chance. Hope you have the tools to fix it.


*EDIT* And before anyone comes along and huffs at my casual disregard for Tyranids and this tyranid list in particular - if you feel like I'm wrong, PM me. We'll set up a Vassal game; loser pays the winner $50. =D

It depends very mutch of what type of d eldar list you face.

Eather he is mech light (yay) or mech heavy (nay!)

Top prioraty would be transports (they all die easaly) and get your monsters into close combat if he has scourges, helions or warriors, and shoot the wyches if he has them. If he has wracks / grotesque try to move away from them.

I would perhaps have more hiveguards to bring down the blasted transports. Zoanthropes are a bit redundant I think (it is like killing emty cans with a sledgehammer.)

@Dash- The warrior primes are my HQ.
Hivetyrant with VC and 2 tyrant guard w/ lashwips
warrior prime with Lashwhip/bonesword and adrenals
3 zoanthroaps with pod
3 hiveguard
3 hiveguard
20 termagaunts
20 termagaunts
20 termagaunts
20 Devourerguants
20 gargoyls with toxin sacks

he plays a all mech army. not sure what his units are called because they are all new to me and look much the same.

Well, the fact that you're not running MC's is good in this case, DE slaughter them.

DE is an insane match-up for nids. I really don't know...the Hive Guard will wreck his transports if they hit, but besides that...I don't know.

@ Dash - What in a Tyranid list do you hate facing? If nothing, then please say why. I know you play DE extremely well, your input can be invaluable for sennacherib.

@ sennacherib - do you know what the general makeup of his list is?

IF you get first turn, find out which transports have his wyches/wracks in them. Anything that has CC units in it, it needs to be top priority for you. If you can keep him out of CC, you stand a better chance.

Make his shooty units come to you. Our range on warriors cuts in half if we move because we are Rapid Fire, and if they don't have transports anymore, they will take a bit to get to you. Once he is in a range you think you can reliably make, charge his warriors and overwhelm them with numbers.

Shoot any of his CC units to death, otherwise, horde or not, he will just slice through them.

Just like the Eldar, DE are very specialized. However, unlike the Eldar, you could call us the General Specialists, as our units fall into two categories, shooty and assaulty.

Our shooty units are VERY good at shooting, but have a high enough initiative that if you CC them, they will still get some attacks.

Our assaulty units are VERY VERY good at assault, no matter what type of unit they assault, be it horde (termagaunts) or elites assault units(warriors/HT). Our wyches and wracks can grind your hordes down fast and they can tarpit your elite assaults long enough to destroy them.

This is not mentioning all the other CC/Shooty units we have, this is just the two troops that we have.

But if you cripple his transports, thats the best chance that you have, because if he has to walk to you, you have the advantage!!!!! DE are very hurt without our mobility.

thanks for the advice, makes a lot of sence. Shoot down transports especially the ones with the CC units. Then shoot up the cc specialist units. this i will try to do.
I dont know his list since its all new to me and he plays most of his stuff in transports. Hes not using the DE models but playing with regular eldar figs. I know its cheesy but its what hes got so ...
what kind of set up should i use. just put everything out there, bubble wrap the big stuff with termaguants and hope for the best.

I personally love deep striking against the eldar and dark eldar. I agree with the other posters about deep striking a unit of zoanthropes, you can use them to hammer his void ravens which will be the greatest threat to your hoards. I also like deep striking warriors. If you deck out your warriors with death spitters and a venom cannon they can really harass raiders and maybe even ravagers pretty good given their low armor values. A full squad can deliver 24 shots at str 5 vs a str 10 av and one str 6 blast your most likely going to get at least a glance and hopefully prevent the raiders from moving. As for your preference towards pirmes I rarely ever use them, I take tyrant with commander, and the majority of the time between just about 70 to 80 present of my force will make it on the board in the second turn with deep strike, which can be a nasty surprise for DE trying to keep their distance from your bugs. Plus commander gives you the ability to out flank one unit, i love to do this with raveners iif you give them rending they can trash just about any eldar or dark eldar vehicle, and as their beasts they have fleet and charge 12" Plus implosion missiles and shatter field missles aren't nearly the threat to warriors and raveners that they are to gaunts and stealers as ravs and warriors have three wounds, and warriors get 4+ saves, and have a 50% chance of surviving an implosion missile attacks which gaunts and stealers have like a 0 percent chance of making it.

I would drop the zoans for 3 more hive guard, they have a longer range and with the number of shots they do and at strength 7, they will still reliably down the transports farther back than the zoans do, even with their mycetic spore. Bring the spore as an upgrade to another unit, and drop it between two of his transports, and you can hopefully rip one open with it.


possibly drop the gargoyles and see how many more devourers you can fit onto your tremagaunts. They will more reliably glance and pen than the gargoyles in CC, and they have alot more shots at a longer range.

The lash whips are a good idea on yoru CC units to help mitigate how many hits you will have to take.

Other than that, I don't know Tyranids well enough to upgrade that second list anymore.

This will still be an uphill battle for you, but with some luck, you should be able to at least pull a draw.

i would actually suggest taking down any trueborns woth carbines/cannons. those will mulch any infantry you have, as will venoms. see those, take them down asap. for close combat, wychs can do OK, but with str 3 unless they get 2 pain tokens, or the +1 str on drugs. otherwise try to focus on one aspect and wipe it before moving on.

that said, nids are imho very disadvantage against DE. itll be a hard game where you face mass ranged poison, high init lots of attacks in close combat, and power weapons or equivilant up the wazoo. combined with tons of insta-gibb wargear it makes for a tough fight either ranged or combat. i would suggest playing defensivly. hug cover and try to win on objectives. and DONT feed him cheap units of gaunts because that will generate pain tokens wich make them even deadlier.

as a dark eldar player though, i can honestly say i feel conflicted providing this info, but i enjoy close matches and hate to see anyone getting tabled. good luck.

DarthSpader wrote:as a dark eldar player though, i can honestly say i feel conflicted providing this info, but i enjoy close matches and hate to see anyone getting tabled. good luck.

I feel the same as you, darth, but at least by giving the ways to possibly beat us, it challenges us to come up with even better ways to keep them guessing!!! Our codex has so much more variety than it used to, we can always bring a different army type, with something new thrown in almost every game that someone wasnt expecting.

Poison weapons are awesome against T6 creatures which the Bugs have a lot of. Poison weapons are not so great against T3 creatures which the OP has 100 of in his list. The DE poison weapons become effectively str 3 against those 100 little bugs and no one ever says how easy basic guardsman shoot down little Bugs.

A venom will average 2 kills with 12 poison shots against the little bugs in cover. The DE player will need to assault the little bugs with Wyches to get rid of them. You need to get rid of the Wyches asap.

With the Wyches gone his ability to chase you off of objectives will be severely diminished. The Gants can sit and go to ground if need be on an objective. KP missions you should have an advantage also.

Make sure you go 2nd in all objective missions. You don't want him zomming to a spot at the end of the game. I think your list can weather the 1st turn fire.

I usually agree with Dash, but not this time. even the humble fleshborer can even glance open toped tanks. I'd take them on gants. Dark eldar can be fast. but swarmed over. They have to hit ard and fast. Things that wouldn't work very well on other armies work wonders on dark eldar..

I have only played DE once, but this is what I have found:

Hive Guard ruin their Day. They create a 24" radius, strictly enforced no-fly zone.

If one of the DE units gets within shooting range of a 'Nids unit, that unit is getting chewed up. Deathspitters and Bio-Electric pulses trash raiders up almost as well as Hive Guard, while Devourers can do significant damage, despite the fact that they can only glance.

Above all, you need to control the board. If your opponent is running away from your shooting, you are not getting hit as hard.

sexiest_hero wrote:I usually agree with Dash, but not this time. even the humble fleshborer can even glance open toped tanks. I'd take them on gants. Dark eldar can be fast. but swarmed over. They have to hit ard and fast. Things that wouldn't work very well on other armies work wonders on dark eldar..

Well, like I said - I encourage you to put your money where your mouth is. Build the tyranid list that you think will give my Dark Eldar the shivers, and we'll meet on Vassal with some stakes to make it worth the effort. My Dark Eldar have nothing but disdain for the entire codex.

Dashofpepper wrote:

sexiest_hero wrote:I usually agree with Dash, but not this time. even the humble fleshborer can even glance open toped tanks. I'd take them on gants. Dark eldar can be fast. but swarmed over. They have to hit ard and fast. Things that wouldn't work very well on other armies work wonders on dark eldar..

Well, like I said - I encourage you to put your money where your mouth is. Build the tyranid list that you think will give my Dark Eldar the shivers, and we'll meet on Vassal with some stakes to make it worth the effort. My Dark Eldar have nothing but disdain for the entire codex.

The solution to every 40k DE problem is not challenge Dashofpepper.

First, unless it is one of the premier players of a particular codex in the world who may have a unique strategy and/or knows of a way to try (keyword try) and beat the DE codex as is, we can probably just simply hand you the $50 up front rather than play the game and get humiliated anyway.

For we have done nothing constructive other than to show that Dark Eldar have a great codex at this current point in time. And that Dashofpepper is an elite, world class player (no sarcasm or vemon needed. We have seen your record and others speak of you highly of your skills).

But then again, who are we to dispense advice if we cannot beat Dashofpepper or are unwilling/unable (monetarily) to challenge him? Or worse, unwilling to play in the first place simply because we fear to learn, learn how to try and beat a codex when the balance obvious favors one over the other and lose consistenly until you fine tune your army to stand a chance. Again, it's not ironclad you will win, but to fine tune your codex and your strategies to better favor you in a match up without weaken the whole against others.

Dash has already provided his thoughts on the matter. Others (including sexiest_hero) has offered fine tuned adjustments to your army or counterarguments for other strategies. It is more productive to take the advice, fine tune the army the best you can, and go try and win. If you lose, ask the opponent what you can do to make it better in a different match up, and then work from there.

well. things were so bad that its not even worth reporting. It was a total waste of my time to go down put my models on the table, then remove them after rolling some dice and leave. I would have had more fun studying the chemistry of fecal bacteriaphage. I would like to believe that there are things that i can do to tweak my list so that i would stand a chance playing DE, and still have a chance against other lists, but judging from the unbalanced nature of the contest it seems like it would be a waste of time.
Why would GW produce such an unbalanced load of cheese thats my big question.

Lash whips, hive gaurd, and devourer gaunts in drop pods should have done the trick.

Sorry to hear. It is tough to win these rock/scissors/paper games when you are rock and they are paper.

sennacherib wrote:ok i got raped.
its really frustrating to see how easily DE can tear through nids. In general it leaves me dissapointed in GW and the game. I realise that my having just gotten flayed left a bad taste in my mouth but it just seems like DE are over the top in some respects. They are faster, can out melee, out shoot, out maneuver nids.
As dash said he has nothing but disdain for my dex. It might be different if he were playing a dex that was more balanced but tourni players tend to gravitate to whatever list/codex gives them an advantage. I appreciate the advice you all gave. It didnt really help but knowing to hang in cover and shoot at any melee unit that came close was good sound advice.
I play the game because i enjoy model building, painting, etc. and to play with the option of winning once in a while. Next time i just wont waste my time playing DE.

A loss, no matter how devestating, is still a learning experience.

As of this time, the DE codex is ranked as one of the three best armies around, and if you face an experienced player, ask them what would they do in your shoes against his or her army.

Of course, the general consensus is is that DE have the advantage against Tyranids and most other armies.

That being said, you will not always face DE. One bad matchup is often too small a sampling size for what your army can do.

If you do face a DE list and specifically one match, definately try and retool your army to fight against it. Otherwise, continue to tweak your list as an all-comers list capable of fighting on even or better terms against other armies.

Hop over here for more advice and see what others have said about a Tyranid list:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/319613.page

sennacherib wrote:well. things were so bad that its not even worth reporting. It was a total waste of my time to go down put my models on the table, then remove them after rolling some dice and leave. I would have had more fun studying the chemistry of fecal bacteriaphage. I would like to believe that there are things that i can do to tweak my list so that i would stand a chance playing DE, and still have a chance against other lists, but judging from the unbalanced nature of the contest it seems like it would be a waste of time.
Why would GW produce such an unbalanced load of cheese thats my big question.

If you took the list you posted, then you shouldn't have expected anything else. 40k isn't unbalanced, nor is is cheese the right accusation; rather, you took a terrible list against an army designed to kill yours. If you want to stand against Dark Eldar, you need to take the advise given here - it would suit you well against other armies too. 6-9 Hive Guard is a good start - if you were packing nine of them in your list, and had BLOS terrain on your table, the DE player would have not been able to roll you over so easily.

I appreciate the advice. Just frustrated that there is such an imbalance between codex. Dash though i have never met him, would be fun to play on an even playing field. Without the crutch of a superior codex who knows what might happen. Not saying that i would win, just saying.

What list did you end up runing?
You also have to understand this is a game of tactics and luck your opponent could roll all the saving throws in the world and you could fail a 2+ armor save 6times then next game you could kill 50% of his units on turn 1 it's alll luck man

Nids are a great army if your wanna cry against every army out there run necronz (not saying they can't win but there kinda bad right now)

I play Tau and Nids Tau have great guns but gak toughness and crap ballistic skill but can take upgrades for most of the unit to get +1 ballistic but the points add up I love my Tau but they are best used in a 2v2 match where you can get a horde army to cover you
Nids are great us they are almost always fearless have alot of wounds and great toughness but you have so many list options you have a hard time making the right list

just keep your head up don't give up and keep playing it's all about fun

To be fair, Dash could probably beat you even if he deliberately made a list that couldn't handle tyranids. His venom spam list would inflict 36 casualties against anything with an armor save of 5 or worse, and no invuln or cover, per turn. Not counting the dark lances, and the troops embarked in the venoms. Or the beastmaster squad I seem to recall him having. The only counter to it is armor spam, which tyranids can't pull, and even against that, which the list is absolutely horrible equipped to deal with, he has a 75% win rate. I don't, however, believe that he's reliable with advice on how the codex functions. His accomplishments are all generalship, not list building. Someone less skilled than he is trying to follow his advice won't succeed.

Most of these conclusions are drawn from a) having seen the list he uses, and b) everything else from the "What to do when your army has a hard counter?" thread, where he proclaimed that IG was a hard counter to DE because he lost one game against them, when his opponent seized the initiative.

The bottom line is invest the time to research how your army functions and try to minimize the weaknesses while building the list's chances to win.

Sounds east to say, but the work in learning how to make your army better is all about pratice, experience, tweaking, re-tweaking, taking the beating to learn, ect.

So in short, go forth young ripper and grow to become a Chuck Norris-like threat to all of creation.

P.S.- Start here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/319613.page

THanks for all the advice.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:where he proclaimed that IG was a hard counter to DE because he lost one game against them, when his opponent seized the initiative.

One serious tournament game....I've lost to them outside of the big event arena playtesting, and my frustration is in my inability to create a list in my codex specifically able to deal with that threat.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:where he proclaimed that IG was a hard counter to DE because he lost one game against them, when his opponent seized the initiative.

One serious tournament game....I've lost to them outside of the big event arena playtesting, and my frustration is in my inability to create a list in my codex specifically able to deal with that threat.

How thorough has been the investigation into the DE vs IG match-up? In short, what other lists have you considered and who else have you met with in trying to find a good counter?

Dashofpepper wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:where he proclaimed that IG was a hard counter to DE because he lost one game against them, when his opponent seized the initiative.

One serious tournament game....I've lost to them outside of the big event arena playtesting, and my frustration is in my inability to create a list in my codex specifically able to deal with that threat.

thats pretty much how i feel, imagine that.
I could just rush out and buy the best and the newest and spam whatever it takes to win every game but thats not why i play. the list i first listed was the one that i play at almost every freindly match i go to. i may change out one or two things but for the most part i try to resist the urges to play only the ardest list possible. Its nice to know that you won on your own merits as a tactical player. its also nice to have a game with friends where you dont just rub your mates face in the dirt. they have a better time, they are more likely to play you again. Its a hobby for me that i enjoy.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:where he proclaimed that IG was a hard counter to DE because he lost one game against them, when his opponent seized the initiative.

One serious tournament game....I've lost to them outside of the big event arena playtesting, and my frustration is in my inability to create a list in my codex specifically able to deal with that threat.

Your list is designed to slaughter infantry, and manages against light mech because the ravagers can pop anything that doesn't pose enough of a threat at range to wipe them out turn one, and because of generalship. The fact that you focus everything on the venoms, which pose exactly no threat to vehicles (aside from the single short-ranged blaster inside, which costs you almost as much as the venom since I can't imagine the other four kabalites you have to bring with it do much of anything), with only nine long range darklight shots, is why it's not good against heavy mech.

You have something like nine venoms, is it? So twelve vehicles, only three of which pose a long-range threat to enemy tanks. You've sacrificed one common source of anti-tank in the form of raiders, in favor of the ability to table predominantly infantry-based armies. If you're also focusing on blaster kabalites and trueborn, then you're sacrificing more not-insignificant anti-tank in the form of haywire grenades. While I can't come close to your level of experience, that seems like a very lopsided list to me.

This is why I'm a little wary of any advice you have. Something working for you reflects only on your ability to use it, not the ability of a beginner or average player to do so as well.


Oh, and this is the thread revolving around that discussion. It's mostly just people trolling for the first however many pages, before anyone started suggesting genuine ideas, all of which he shot down, as I remember it.

Can't really add any more advice but I will console in your defeat as I recently got hammered by my friends DE army. It can be frustrating but don't give up and remember to not loose your cool. The speed DE move at can be intimidating and you can knee-jerk to it a lot. I play as Tau and normally don't struggle against DE (Missile pods ftw) but I lost my cool after he saved EVERY 5+ Inv save on his transport/tanks for two turns.