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OK, I know this is gonna be a stupid question and I think I already know the answer... How do you beat an army of melee Tyranids with melee style Space Marines?

The guys I normally play with have a well balanced board of open ground and cover but my BA army, atm, doesn't have much in the way of ranged units. I have a dev squad, DC Razorback with twin las', 10 man tac squad and a 5 man sternguard vet squad. Just to clarify, the points we're playing atm is 1250 as not all of us have the money to keep buying more to bulk out our armies so pretty tight on points as it is. Most of my points get eaten up pretty quickly and I have no rhino as of yet to deploy heavy hitters to the front, just the DC who I normally try and wait to flank the tougher guys but they just get ripped to shreds (as expected).

Any pointers?

Thanks in advance. = )
Regards, Giles.

Space Marines are a master-of-none army, making them rather weak in cc against the bugs. On the other hand, Space Marines are rather quite elite. Only dedicated cc Space Marine units will be able to best Nids. A good example would be Assault Terminators. Assault Marines knitted out with powerfists or other special cc weapons might work against certain units.

shiftystylin wrote:OK, I know this is gonna be a stupid question and I think I already know the answer... How do you beat an army of melee Tyranids with melee style Space Marines?

Army wide, you really can't. Space Marines are supposed to be well-rounded, and Tyrannids are CC monsters.

There are a few counters, but as a general rule if you want to beat Nids you shoot them.

GangstaMuffin24 wrote:if you want to beat Nids you shoot them.

Pro tip,

I never played nids but I hear the best way to kill them is with a lot of shots or flamers

Yeah sorry, let me rephrase that as "How do you beat them with Blood Angels"? Most of (infact I think all) BA elites are close combat but still don't really do much. Would I be better off fielding more firepower or more elite cc's as my mixture doesn't appear to be doing the trick...

That and everytime I fight my friend, he is extremely lucky and I'm not regarding roll's, he has the dark one's luck...

Sanguinary Priest attached Assault Marines kill just about anything. Baal Preds are nice for slaughtering hordes too. If your friend runs a Nid' Zilla list, then take some Devies and camp out with lots of guns. Counter-charge them with Death Company in Rhinos or Assault Marines when they come.

As both a BA player and a Nid player, always remember it is better to charge then be charged.....even if the odds are not on your side, you really don't want the enemy to have the charge bonus. I'm not saying charge MC's with scouts, but if your faced with a good sized force of normal units, most have a good number of base attacks so don't give them any more. Not a real game winning tip but.....still sound assault advice.

Stormraven with Twinlinked Heavy Bolters,Twinlinked Assault Cannons,Hurricane Pattern Sponsons.....Blender for smaller bugs and the Blood Strike Missile will kill the MC's.

On charging, only a few Nids have the benefit of assualt grenades so if you don't get the charge off yourself making them charge into cover negates their charge to some extent.

If you only have limited shooting then target priority is massively important. Don't just shoot the big stuff as an auto choice as this often has T6 so save that for the lascannons etc. S6 or less is better used at T4 models.

bombboy1252 wrote:

GangstaMuffin24 wrote:if you want to beat Nids you shoot them.

Pro tip,

I never played nids but I hear the best way to kill them is with a lot of shots or flamers

Actually yea, shooting nids is where its at, because they ARE the CC authority. My Orks care WAY more damage shooting nids then jumping into CC by a huge margin. Sure once they are whittled down, Ill charge, but even still some of those nids can kill so much with only 4 or 5 of em. Infact one of my worst games against nids, my wife's blob of genestealers killed 3 boyz mobs on its own. Granted it was bad rolling for me, and some luck for her, but still, it happened. I just couldnt believe it

Heres a tactic I've been thinking about doing to my rival. Gift him weighted dice so they always roll 1's. LoL. On a more serious note use plenty of flame templates nothing like roasted bugs for breakfast good protein.

Your biggest worry is honestly going to be genestealers, I think. Gaunts/Gants can be minimized to a great extent by even -vanilla- assault marines, warriors and most of the MCs by assault terminators, and with all the nifty stuff like stormravens, baal preds, FNP spam, furious charge, you should have no issues. Just be sure to shoot the crap out of any genestealer broods you come across.

Set up multiassaults where you can cause lots of no retreat wounds on MCs, use your vehicles along with any terrain to funnel little ones into blobs for flamers,see if you can lure his units out of synapse so they can be swept, SHOOT HIS GENESTEALERS.

Everyone always blindly says "use flamers" and I can tell you, those are very situational. IF the bug player is using coherency or even close to it, youll only tag a couple bugs, and a nid horde losing a couple bugs, like Orks, is laughable and very manageable. Also the problem is, you have to be right on them to hit them with a flamer, and unless its termagaunts, assaulting them is usually a bad thing.

Again, shoot the bugs with your everyday normal weapons. Its again very similar to how you face horde Orks, shoot the piss out of them, small arms fire will do far more damage then a flamer or a small blast. I know when Im packing the table with boyz, Im spread out as much as possible. Only once in awhile will someone tag a bunch of boyz with a flamer or a small blast.

The thing about flamers is it put's you in assault range which you want to do to nids not have them do to you. Flamers are assault weapons you can take 2 per assault squad if it's 10 strong plus a combi-flamer. And nids have to be in close proximity of each other for synaspe. Sorry for my spelling. To sum it up synapse means bunched uped nids, you do not want them assaulting you you want to assault them.

Nids are my premier and favourite army.I know what kills me more than anything.



There used to be an old rule in third ed that made you shoot the biggest creture near to you first. Now, that has been erased, and it is now optioonal to choose a target. However, the rule (Shoot the Big Ones), should be a guidline to you. The Hive Tyrants, warriors and Zoanthropes are vital. Without synapse coverage, the Feeders will be easy to lead around using the rage,while the Lurkser will be staying put,allowing you to gain ground.

Carnifexes, Mawlocs and MCs in general are dangerous, no two ways about it. They won't help the mini-gaunts if they are dead, and Rippers aren't going to be smashing anything in a fight.

Shoot the Big Ones.



If you are playing objectives, target his smallest troops unit first. Most units will be fearless from synapse, so wiping otu the unit is the only solution. Targetting the big 30 strong gaunt brood won't wipe them ouit, but 5 Steallers go down like a sack of potatoes against Rapid Firing Bolters.

Sweet, lot's of good advice! I was assuming the answer to be "more guns!" Our next match is this Sunday coming so will hopefully have some news on trying out a different strategy. I will try and get a picture of the board too but my mate has got a bit funny about me asking for advice... But then what are forums filled with awesome guys for?

I was speaking to the manager in our local Antics who has suggested taking combi-melta's and plasma's against MCs and was getting a bit excited that maybe I could equip my DC with combi's but sadly after a brief look in the codex, you can't... :(

Would anyone recommend this, if so it might be worth building a squad of Sternguards+combi's with a Sanguinary Priest to jump in a Rhino/Razorback as the points won't be that much more expensive and get rid of my Sanguinary Guard as they just get their ass handed to them anyway... I think they're over-rated as elites anyway...

Your best bet is to lay down and die. The hive fleets will consume all, anyway. There is no hope. LAY DOWN AND DIE, THE HIVE MIND COMMANDS IT!!!

Biotite wrote:Your best bet is to lay down and die. The hive fleets will consume all, anyway. There is no hope. LAY DOWN AND DIE, THE HIVE MIND COMMANDS IT!!!

ROFL.

starraptor wrote:The thing about flamers is it put's you in assault range which you want to do to nids not have them do to you. Flamers are assault weapons you can take 2 per assault squad if it's 10 strong plus a combi-flamer. And nids have to be in close proximity of each other for synaspe. Sorry for my spelling. To sum it up synapse means bunched uped nids, you do not want them assaulting you you want to assault them.

I don't know how you got this idea. One model in a unit being within 12" of one synapse creature grants the entire unit synapse. Bunching up Tyranids for synapse it completely unnecessary.

He means that all models will be within 12" of others. So flamers ahve a good chance of hitting more than 1 unit, or blasts will scatter onto other things.

Well after a long battle today whilst having the Formula 1 on in the background, and got close to a win.

The basic layout of our board is a large compound in the centre made up of a "shrine of the aquilla" and "Sanctum Imperialis" pieces in the centre creating a defendable capture point with a skyshield landing pad on the western edge of the board and a bastion on the eastern edge. All counting as points to capture in that sort of game. The northern edge of the board is bare desert blending to blotches of tree to the south. We built this up on 6 pads each 2 feet by 1 feet so we can shift them all around.

I started on the southern edge of the board and we were playing annihilation so felt it would be a great spot to hold and setup kill teams for all the entrances of the trees. I have a flamer in a tactical squad which came in handy, a sergeant with a combi-flamer which again came in handy and my devastators which contained two entrances. I sent my sternguard and a priest out in a razorback and tried to take down his HQ and he quickly took me out but the razorback did a LOT of damage.

Thanks for the advice, I think by taking more firepower than melee I got a lot more damage but in hindsight I should have stayed where I was and waited for him to approach me with cover. Only problem was if he broke through, he would initiate the assault phase on relatively weak soldiers. Still it's a huge success as far as the learning curve is concerned and still a relatively new gamer!

sounds like you did well!

Out of curiosity, what sorts of units does your opponent bring?

yeah whats your opponents army list and bring a flamestorm flamer sponson baal will burn the little ones up fast

Wait, six pads that are 1ft by 2ft? what size table are you playing on? Quick math in my head says your table would be 4 by 3, which is kind of small, giving a 'nid cc army a clear advantage.

Less room to maneuver will hinder you a lot more than him. On a table that small try sticking to a smaller point limit, like 500 or 750 and you should yield better results.

martian_jo wrote:Wait, six pads that are 1ft by 2ft? what size table are you playing on? Quick math in my head says your table would be 4 by 3, which is kind of small, giving a 'nid cc army a clear advantage.

Less room to maneuver will hinder you a lot more than him. On a table that small try sticking to a smaller point limit, like 500 or 750 and you should yield better results.

How iv fallen to my Nid friend due to a small table, it never happened again.

I have to admit, I'm not that good with Tyranids. He could have an army that outweighs mine in points and I wouldn't know about it! But he's a good friend and I'm sure he wouldn't do that.

This is his list;
small brood of termagaunts
30 hormagaunts
3 unit Warrior brood
1 very old school lictor
1 hive tyrant w/ 2 hive guard's
3 raveners
and he has an old school trygon


Martian_jo: We play on a 6x2 configuration at opposing ends of the building. We do have a larger board at another friends house which are 6 2x2 pads but he's always too busy to bring them round!

Using trig we worked out that 6x2 gives a distance of 6.325 feet if your heading straight for eachother but 4x3 gives you only 5 so we went with that configuration but

Trig, my old enemy, we meet again...

Mathematics aside, a table that small doesn't allow for lateral movement really, just towards the enemy and away from them. Does any combat happen the first turn or second? Seems like it would just be running toward each other.

As far as the list goes, the warriors and tyrant are the only synapse creatures in the list unless he plays the trygon as a prime. Though popping those won't really put his army into that much disarray since the horms, rav, and guard would just keep barrelling straight at your lines and the termaguants would just bunker down in whatever area terrain you might have.

Dreadnoughts really help against nids, as they can easily tie up gaunts and stealers. Ironclads or regular dreads will really help.

extrenm(54) wrote:Dreadnoughts really help against nids, as they can easily tie up gaunts and stealers. Ironclads or regular dreads will really help.

You mean blood talons .

If this thread is not dead I shall give my $0.02.

Run away. Only the raveners are fast. You can BP and still outside charging range. Your tanks can move 12'' back and fire keeping them at arms reach. Refuse flank him and then you will have somewhere to run to. Mephiston will all right for cc and so should assault squads if use against isolated units.

Devastator squads with heavy bolters lay down a withering amount of firepower. Combine that with armoured horde-scythes like BaalPreds or a land raider with hurricane bolters and you'l have bullet riddled nids in no time. With regard to stealers, a good move is to get a razorback with sternguards in. The razorback's heavy bolter, combined with kraken rounds could smash up genestealers, and when they get close, move your sterns away and park a razorback broadside in their way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
* Another technique is one I call the bolter phalanx, where you just line up the marines, and make use of any high ground/ taller units behind them. Even if the first line of squads in the phalanx are assaulted, the line(s) behind can shoot at units coming behind and even assault in more dire circumstances.