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So I was looking around my buddy's nid codex a few days ago and I realized that short of playing the "you can't fit the model cause my stuff is in the way" game, there's absolutely no way to keep my doomsday arks alive at 1500 points. He'll just field a pair of 3 zoenthrope squads in spore pods and then use the improved reserves rolls from his HQ. Ergo, both pods safe deep strike 12in away from my arks and proceed to drop 3 s10 lances into each.

As much as I adore the new Necron codex, and as much of a vast improvement it is, I honestly can't come up with a counter-strategy to this that won't either be a waste of 400+ points, or force me to do nothing for the first 2-3 turns.

Any ideas?

3 squads of 3 Zoans + a pod is 660 points. And those zoans will be destroyed VERY quickly afterwards.

He loses 660 points and has no other (real) AT, you lose 400ish points and have plenty of vehicles left (if you want them). I see no problems.

If he only takes one set of 3 zoans + a pod, you're only going to lose one vehicle before you pop the zoans - since they can't split fire.

If you're that worried about it (which you shouldn't be) one 65 point Spyder can babysit quite a lot in it's anti-psyker bubble.

More realistically, just kill the Zoanthropes with the rest of your army. They aren't tough.

its more I'm looking at him doing that, a 30 rack of gaunts and then a bunch of MCs. I turn around to pop the two squads of zoenthropes, his gaunts charge forward and subsequently tie my entire army into combat while his mc pick off the few things left that can handle the rest of the army.

It's more I'm at a loss as to what to field that can also punch his MCs and/or take out swaths of gaunts.

Scarabs are out due to the gaunts haveing counter-attack.

Doomsday Arks, Monoliths, Annhilation barges all suffer from the "no way to stop the zoenthropes from killing 2 of them T2" issue.

So obviously, the answer is to avoid the use of mech, and thus reduce the zoenthropes to just dropping small blasts on the rest of the army. In this case they're easy enough to drop, but I now lack any sort of punch in the army.

Mass immortal with tesla will handle most of the lower toughness stuff Nids could throw in there (gaunts, genestealers, etc.), but they're going to do nothing against say a swarm lord and a pair of carnifexes.

Maybe mass immortal w/tesla and 2 OLs fielding full courts of HoD crypteks...

Are you really going to dump half your army on account of what your enemy MAY do? Why not have redundant units and multiple threats that he has to deal with, but more than he can in 1 turn? You will lose units. Just make him lose more. This is Gaming 102. You already know the rules. Don't be reactionary. Force your opponents hand.

At worst, field the army you want and see how it does. He might not even bring those Zoenthrope Squads in Spore Pods.

If your Tyranid player is using 3 squads of poddng Zoeys, then he is not making a very good TAC list.

Don't adjust your list, for this one possible occurrence, your enemy is already winning if you do that.

Between rolling 3 Psy tests, and 3 rolls to hit, it's quite possible that he is not going to even hit you.

I think you'll find that if he is throwing that many points into Zoenthropes, that you'll be able to clean up the rest of his army pretty easy.

2 squads... dunno where people are getting 3 from "a pair of 3 zoenthropes in spore pods" :/

And to elaborate, he pretty much came out and said "no, that's exactly how i'd deal with your mech" after I asked him about how he'd handle doomsday arks, so I'm trying to plan a contingency plan. And 2 squads of zoenthropes in pods is not too terribly expensive when everyone else around (save our sole Ork player) are playing either MEQ or heavy vehicle lists (mechdar, raider DE, guard, marines, etc.)

WanderingFox wrote:2 squads... dunno where people are getting 3 from "a pair of 3 zoenthropes in spore pods" :/

The point still stands. If you are adjusting your entire army, on the possibility of two units, your enemy is winning. Don't be afraid to lose a vehicle or two.

Perhaps, maybe just let him drop them and hang back with the army. They'll have to come in eventually, and he won't have charge range till T2 or 3 anyway...

Eldritch lance spamming makes tyranid players cry.

As for the zoans? Keep your Ark in a corner (shouldn't need to move) and hope the guy scatters off table trying to get his zoans in.

Just, uh, don't use a Tesseract Labyrinth. Those are evil.

A c'tan could help here. Especially if they are hiding near area terrain. Love watching things deep striking into terrain while writhing world scape is up.

Nebulas1 ninja'd me here. Writhing Worldscape and Sentient Singularity make any deep striking very risky. It's a pricey selection, but C'Tan are the Necron version of big bugs and pack a wallop in close combat.

shield your flanks with scarabs, let the zoans drop, kill them with scarabs or shooting, when the termigaunts move up, scarab them, shoot everything else

this really isnt complicated stuff.

Umm Grundz, unless I've missed something there is absolutely no way a group of scarabs will even get an attack off vs. gaunts.

They have counter-attack. That means a 30 pack of gaunts will get SIXTY swings on me before I get to take my attacks with my scarabs. Even a 10 base swarm doesn't stand much of a chance of living through that.

... And why do they have Counter-Attack?

Gaunts get it while they have a model within 6" of a tervigon.

Gaunts die in droves to any kind of shooting. Just blast them with your warriors. If your opponent isn't careful, you can draw the termagants more than 6" away from the tervigon when you charge them. I'm not sure if this would stop them from getting counterattack (maybe someone else can help out here), but I know it stops them from getting the other tervigon benefits such as poison weapons.

Well he pulled exactly what I thought he was going to:

30 rack of gaunts, hive tyrant, swarmlord, tervigon, 10 man genestealers w/broodlord, and 2 pods w/ 2 zoenthropes each.

I ran 4 10man immortal squads each with 2 harbinger's of destruction, and 2 overlords on barges with weave/shifter/scarabs/scythe and one with a tachyon arrow.

As predicted the zoeps did jack-diddly as they had no targets (gogo flat out sweep attacks). The game was amazingly close as I couldn't pop the tervigon until after he got the gaunts into melee (too many wiffs and had to divert fire to the outflanking genestealers). Overall, it works but it could use a little refinement to give it a little more punch.

Thinking of dropping a squad of immortals for a 2/3 heavy/destroyer unit and seeing how that goes.

You could also consider a triarch stalker with twinlinked heavy gauss cannon or just vanilla. What your really wanting with them is their targeting relay ability allowing all subsequent units to count their shots as twin linked after getting hit with the stalker(almost guaranteed with twin linked) You can have your immortals around this unit to make it very hard for him to deepstrike within the 12 inches you said?

From my own personal experience Wraiths with beamers kill Nid MCs. Shoot him 3 times and he has to make 3 4+ saves ... bound to fail one.

Also a Ci tan with the Defensive Grenades and the Dangerous Terrain ability will laugh at his swarms. My last game with nids the Dangerous Terrain halved all his swarms and brought down a good portion of his MCs wounds.

And for some punch in you warrior units throw in a lord with mind shackled. Let w/e gets into melee with you beat up on its self on top of a war scythe.