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I don't understand all the Tyranid hate. People love trashing the Nids, just crapping all over the codex.
Personally, I think the Codex is as rich and interesting as anything from Phil Kelly or Matt Ward, but I'm not exactly a tyranid player.
That's really the big thing I want to preface with, and why this is in tactics.
I'm not a Tyranid player, but they look pretty good to me, and I'd like to either be validated or proven wrong.

Now, over the last few weeks, a group of us have each taken turns running the best tyranid armies we could come up with against each other's best lists.
The most common build was Swarmlord/Tervigons, which by consensus seemed like the best use of the codex.

We each had a blast just chewing up and spitting out necron, csm, salamanders, space wolves... until something amazing happened.

We automatically assumed that Grey Knights would just wipe the nids off the table without much effort, really, not a single Eternal Warrior in the 'nid 'dex, and every GK is armed with a force weapon, what chance do they have?

A draigowing at 2500 points clashed with a 4 Tervigon Swarmlord list that was loaded with Shrikes/Lashwhips and the resulting battle took 6 stressful hours of careful decision making, delicate maneuvering, and frequent prayers to the emperor for blessed dice. Suddenly everybody wanted in on the action.

Over the next week we played 7 games, all Tyranids vs Grey Knights, taking the best netlists of each army and slamming them against each other. Shadow vs. Force Weapons, High cost elites vs. hundreds of points worth of free termagants, super tight force orgs vs. massive numbers of scoring units, VenDreads locked in CC with Tervigons for entire games, two psyker heavy armies just shutting each other down all over the place, it's amazing.

While you can tailor lists to compensate for these match ups, the kind of Take All Comers lists that win tourneys needed very little tweaking to produce some really interesting games. Yeah once in a while, a swarmlord gets ID'd with 6 wounds; and sometimes a Doom of Malantai wipes out a purifier squad. Reinforced Aegis vs. Zoanthropes seems like a one sided fight, but punching a dreadnought a couple times with a trygon solves that problem pretty fast. Crusaders against Termagants is fun for everyone. Purifiers self destructing when their psychic attack becomes perilous because of shadow, that's a game changer. Mindstrike missiles and yes, even orbital relays suddenly become a lot more important, and Holy crap, shrikes vs. paladins is totally unpredictable.

Okay, so that's the background, here's where the tactics stuff comes in.

With GK being so frequently played in tournaments, what can the tyranid player do to make sure his list is as competitive as possible?

Here's what we've learned in our week of GK vs Nids:

Genestealers aren't worth including, Tervigons/Termagants are more than enough troops to secure any number of objectives. GK embarrass genestealers.
Shrikes with LW/BS are worth every point, they sweep through purifiers, strikers, and interceptors with ease, and they fill the hole vacated by genestealers, and draw so much fire that the rest of the army thrives.
Hive Guards and Zoanthropes are amazing at playing leap frog when it comes to dealing with advancing elites, a good list will include either or both, preferably both, Zoanthropes to pop mechanized armies, and Hive Guard to slow advancing troops. Personally, I like Zoanthropes more, but Reinforced Aegis can screw them up.
2 Trygons and 1 Tfex seems like the optimum loadout for HS, but flipping those numbers doesn't hurt if you'd rather have another cannon.
The Swarmlord should roll with at least 2 Tyrant Guards, if not 3, with lash whips, just to offset the draigo+libby stormraven rush. If everyone in the assault is swinging at initiative 1, then the swarmlord has the edge.
Psych-out grenades are a bitch, so is sanctuary, bubblewrap precious psykers in Tgants and counter-charge. Don't be afraid of the force weapons, shadow makes them very unreliable, but don't underestimate them either, always bring extra units to the assault.
The longer the CC goes on, the better it is for the Tyranid player, You outnumber the GK player by at least 2 or 3 to 1, often more, the rest of the board is yours.
Make sure you wipe entire units out. A single GK with a force weapon is as deadly as an entire squad.
Feel No Pain! With the exception of coteaz lists, the GK bring virtually no low AP guns to the fight, often eschewing lazorbacks for psybacks (as is the current style)

I'm really hoping to see some good back and forth on this one, I'm kind of fascinated by the match up and I'd love to hear about other peoples strategies and experiences.

Hulksmash who play's both will probably have something good to say on this.

It is funn to hear somebody having good experiences with the 'Nids. I would really asume that the GK had them dead, but I can se how all those boddies just weight them down.

I also see that you are including some very untradisonaly fast attack units. That is cool. For me it is all ravvaners (for CC awsomeness) and gargoyles (for a cheap cover carpet.)

Also, be shure to try out the prime with a dakka dakka carnifex. 12 S6 with reroll at 18 is not so bad, and he has coversave!

I also really like the new HQ from the new Forge World book. It is pretty nifty.

Have you played at points levels lower than 2500? At 1850 a Coteaz list (that I will build at some point) can run 6 dreads and about 50 henchmen all in chimeras. Dreads will shoot down Shrikes so fast it's not even funny, and at 50pts a pop they are knocking out a healthy percentage of your army. These Dreads are also great at killing Hive guard if they get LoS and have the superior range as well. Multilasers en masse also work. You can only make so many 4+ saves.

Genestealers are also a must have for an allcomers list in my opinion. They apply pressure early allowing big bugs to get into favourable positions having taken a lot less punishment. Even when you pit them up against Purifiers (with Catalyst support of course...you did conga line them so you can pass psychic tests without hood interruption right?) you will lose approximately 4 genestealers to Cleansing Flame (if you took 20). Then you rip the squad to pieces. Even better is if you can get shadow support in there.

Trygons are pretty much obsolete now. While Shadows does make ID more unreliable you can be sure when it does work you it will cost you.

Zoanthropes are also pretty much useless when it comes to playing vs GK. Passing psychic tests on 6 is not fun, but fortunately they are also unnecessary in matchups vs DE as well. The high S lance is just overkill. Hive guard work so much better.

Ultimately it's a tough matchup for nids but by no means un-winnable. I play both Nids and GK so I have a bit of experience with both (but mostly nids). Hopefully others will also provide their views.

ymgarls are good vs GKs i hear

The main issue with the Nid codex is not that it is uncompetitive, because it can certainly match up well against 5th edition lists, its more that it is closer to the 4th edition codices in terms of diversity/flexibility. Nids are very dependent on units working together, similar to Eldar actually, but also play very differently to most armies due to a lack of vehicles which makes them tough to use.

In any case Grey Knights are not the worst matchup Nids can get anyway. GK may have plenty of extra toys, but they still die like any Marine and Nids know how to eat their way through MEQ lists. The worst army you can face with Nids is a Dark Eldar Venom Spam list, they are more mobile than you so you will never catch them and they have a massive firepower advantage. With no vehicles to hide in stuff just gets chewed up by mass poison shots, with Darklight weapons finishing off the MCs.

Powerguy, one of the reasons that the Tyranid codex is so interesting is because it forces you to think of your entire army as a single organism; which is a brilliant stroke when you consider that's what the army is supposed to be.

I think a lot of players dig in like they're looking for the killer app, the Long Fangs or the Venoms to build their army around, but the tyranid require a wholistic synergy that may intimidate players.

Alright, GK player here with a Nid playing girlfriend reporting in here, and I have some questions:

Were any of these games played at less than 2500? Both GK and Nid lists play just a bit differently at 1500 than they do at 2500.

Shrikes with LW/BS are worth every point, they sweep through purifiers, strikers, and interceptors with ease, and they fill the hole vacated by genestealers, and draw so much fire that the rest of the army thrives.

How big was this squad? I've ran into these, and they tended to get APed and IDed by rifleman fire quickly, even with cover.

Don't be afraid of the force weapons, shadow makes them very unreliable,

While this is true for a PAGK centric list, did no one running GKT/GKPs bring a banner? My local meta alone has eldar, weaken resolve IG (occasionaly with ogryns) and a few nid players as is. Why would someone building a TAC list leave banners behind if they were accounting for their terminators to get into CC?

Holy crap, shrikes vs. paladins is totally unpredictable.

Er, why? Either the shrikes will have enough attacks to wipe them on the charge, or the hammer in the squad will start IDing shrikes when it comes around to I1 and winning combats (Assuming the shrikes get the charge, sanctuary is not in effect, GKT/GKPs not in terrain, and squad sizes are remotely equal in points at contact)....Someone did bring a hammer, right? If not, why in the emperors name not?

Psych-out grenades are a bitch, so is sanctuary, bubblewrap precious psykers in Tgants and counter-charge. Don't be afraid of the force weapons, shadow makes them very unreliable, but don't underestimate them either, always bring extra units to the assault.

While I agree wholeheartedly on bubblewrapping being a good idea, what do you mean by "Counter-charge" exactly? On your assault phase, if sanctuary is present, you are still taking difficult and dangerous terrain tests to try and join in the fight, even if you won't suffer the initiative penalty should you arrive. Even then, if there are still a lot of gants in the combat, you may not WANT to go in. Throwing something valuable into a multiple combat where a large group of gants are present is an excellent way to watch a trygon take 17 No Retreat! wounds. (Extreme example with poor rolling for the trygon, and excellent rolling for cleansing flame and attacks directed at the gants, but the statement stands. You start IDing warriors or hitting gants, that's going to be a lot of wounds towards combat resolution.)

To me, it's always seemed to me that a nid army should include a venomthrope unit exactly for armies that can give them a fair fight or better in CC. Against GKs, it would give them a taste of sanctuary right back at them.

So... do you not try to stay in cover with the GKs? Because if you do, the high I that nids typically have would be negated and you'd get to kill before they do (also ignoring lash whips)

Also - yeah, at 1500 (many battles happen at this point level) there's a much bigger difference. 2000-2500 is where Nids start to be able to pick up a lot of the decent units that complement each other, and most marine lists are just getting more redundant (ime).

I'm not saying these things are universal, I'm saying this is what I observed over the course of 7 games.

Most of the games we played were in the 2000-2500 range.

Every game also brought in different players with different lists, but almost everyone kind of stuck with a core of Swarmlord/Tervigon; and after genestealer spam lost 2 consecutive games to MSU purifiers, people started reducing their presence.

The psychological effect of seeing so many perils occur from shadow in the warp meant more banners started showing up and librarians started disappearing in the final games.

The Highest point games were Draigowings vs. Full Force Orgs, and in the final days of Nidfest the lists were just being blatantly tailored for one another. Banners, Mindstrike Missiles, and Techmarines with Orbital Relays just cheesed the big nid forces, and t-fex's started filling the back fields flanked by zoanthropes.

The most interesting fights were the TAC Netlists up against each other, trying to make the best of the match ups.

Holy crap, shrikes vs. paladins is totally unpredictable.


Er, why? Either the shrikes will have enough attacks to wipe them on the charge, or the hammer in the squad will start IDing shrikes when it comes around to I1 and winning combats (Assuming the shrikes get the charge, sanctuary is not in effect, GKT/GKPs not in terrain, and squad sizes are remotely equal in points at contact)....Someone did bring a hammer, right? If not, why in the emperors name not?

It all came down to paladins making saves, and psyker vs. shadow. If sanctuary went up, shrikes went down, if the NFW were activated, shrikes got ID'd. The battles were fast, and 5 on 5 fights would end with huge disparities, sometimes 3 paladins would walk away, sometimes 4 shrikes would.

Re: the shrikes; One player was fielding 3x5 shrikes with Lashes and Boners - a hefty investment, but it paid off. One squad went down in round 2 from concentrated fire, but the other two squads dissolved PAGK in assaults.
In a following game, another player went shrike heavy, and clashed with a draigowing, and that game went to GK in the end, but there was a lot of cursing and a fair amount of dead paladins. We didn't really keep accurate batreps, we were more just experimenting and goofing around.

We were just running 1 game a night, so no one wanted to go in for less than 1850. And often armies were run by committee, making for a lot of unorthodox plays as people with different perspectives of the battle argued for certain gambits.

I think what made the entire experience so interesting for us was that none of us expected tyranids to perform so well against GK, or rather, for GK to perform so poorly against tyranids. Shadow in the warp, and overwhelming numbers against a small elite army of psykers... it's like they were perfectly made to fight each other.