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So at my Local game store, i went up against a vanilla space marine list. The list he fielded included tactical marines with missile launchers and terminators with cyclone launchers. Basically he instant killed my warriors, decimated gaunts and 'stealers with his templates, and nearly killed my tyrant with leftover bolters /missiles. Then he swept up what was left w/ his HQ squad and termies. It wasn't my best game in the world, and i can't wrap my head around how to beat a list like that.

Granted this wasn't a very good list of mine, but i was curious how to get around long range blast templates and get into assault.
Thanks ahead of time

A lot of people would suggest spore pods, outflanking or using cover effectively I suppose. The other thing would be to remember your 2-inch spacing with your hordes, it will make the blob easier to hit sure, but few models will be covered and die.

read hiveminds battle reports

A trygon or some carnifexes might be able to weather the storm and get close enough. If not, the enemy will waste a lot of fire power on them.

A Mawloc or two would definitely work. Or outflanking Genestealers.

What about that Doom of Malantai thing... That always causes a headache.

darickrp wrote:instant killed my warriors

Well, there's your first problem. I hate to say it, but warriors are terrible. They were terrible in the old codex and they're still terrible now. I'd proxy those models for something else until they're more worth taking. As others have mentioned, migrate your list away from mid-range units and more towards hordes and heavy hitters, and you'll probably do better.

Got to disagree slightly there with the warriors comment. Useless now but in the old codex they were pretty brutal. You could kit them out with S6 small blasts each or 4 twin linked S4 shots that re-rolled to wound too. They also had eternal warrior with 2 wounds which was huge.


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Also for the OP check out some of Hulksmash's or Shep's threads about nids.

Warriors only really work as a drop-pod shock unit now due to instakill missile problem you experienced.

I like to use the whole codex, but it always comes down to hive guard, tervigon, termagants I'm afraid. They are the only real competitive units in a sub-optimal codex. When I leave these at home I lose. It's becoming that simple nowadays.

Base 750 points is:

HQ tervigon, AG, TS, catalyst, STal 200
EL 2 hive guard 100
EL 2 hive guard 100
EL 2 hive guard 100
TR tervigon, AG, TS, catlaty, STal 200
TR 10 termagants 50.

Start from here and then add units around this and you can't go far wrong. Add some termagants to make the tervigon a troop and add another HQ, run some genestealers, add a 3rd hive guard to each brood etc.

Against vanilla marines they don't have a lot of CC punch so use hive guard to get them out of their rhinos/razors, kill the speeders and then batter them with masses of boosted termagants, stealers etc.

I am starting to see the potential in raveners but, as with warriors, you need to keep them out of sight behind the tervigons until they get into 12" charge range. Cover is not enough, you need to block line of sight from those missiles and a wall of hive guard and tervigons seems to be the only way I can manage that at present.

An important thing for Tyranids are target saturation. The more T6 units you put into your list the more difficult will it be for your opponent to deal with your units. for an instance, if you have a lot of T6 units in your list, units like Tyranid warriors and Raveners would be more protected, since missiles, lascannons etc would go for the larger creatures. In case your opponent chooses not to do so, they will have to deal with MCs at their door.

Another thing to remember is to have some disruption units. Ymgarls and the Doom of malan'tai are great for that purpose. However, there's other things you could do. Do you have a tyrant with hive commander and a Troop Tervigon? Then make the Tervigon outflank. Think of how threatening it is to have this guy suddenly come from the side. xD The point is to have this take away the attention of your opponent. Sure it would probably die, but we are not space marines, so thats okay. The heck, if you had some Genestealers outflanking on the same side of the board, you could cast catalyst on them.

Ymgarls are also great. Not that they atract missiles like T4 units and MCs, but they are able to take vehicles out. It is difficult for you opponent to know where the ymgarls will come from, and when they do, they are able to move, run and assault. Devestator squad you say? Kill them with the ymgarls. The heck, are there a vehicle near them, feel free to multi-assault. Wreck the hell out of the vehicle and get locked in combat with the Devastators. Then you finish off the devastators in his turn and you are free to attack again in your upcoming turn.

[edit] add a missing word in the first sentence.

Check out my thread on Tyranids being the worst 5th ed dex. We went into this ad nauseum.

darickrp wrote:So at my Local game store, i went up against a vanilla space marine list. The list he fielded included tactical marines with missile launchers and terminators with cyclone launchers. Basically he instant killed my warriors, decimated gaunts and 'stealers with his templates, and nearly killed my tyrant with leftover bolters /missiles. Then he swept up what was left w/ his HQ squad and termies. It wasn't my best game in the world, and i can't wrap my head around how to beat a list like that.

Granted this wasn't a very good list of mine, but i was curious how to get around long range blast templates and get into assault.
Thanks ahead of time

A match like that illustrates a couple of points with how bugs have to play.

They need a strong shock element and it needs tervigon support. 40-60 stealers (in large units) and/or gargoyles OR 3 trygons OR tons of ravenors-- all with feel no pain via tervigons. I prefer the stealers as they are more well rounded the gargoyles and can get cover unlike the trygons and don't attract krak missiles like ravenors -- but that is just personal preference. Note, someone mentioned outflanking stealers -- this is not what I am advocating for the shock element. Infiltrate is much better as it puts pressure on your opponent from the get go and you get turn 2 pressure much more readily then you would with outflank. Infiltrate also lacks the gambling aspect of outflank -- 1/3 chance of getting a bad side with a large unit of stealers is just not acceptable. Also deployment of said units is key -- really think through your route to the enemy, ability to get cover vai that route, spread out when visible to blast weapons or templates, option to multiassault and tricks to make it happen and abuse it, 'tails' that allow your tervigon to cast FnP from relative safety and out of range of hoods, etc. Dont just plop them down and zerg is what I am getting at.

That shock element needs support from tervigons and hiveguard. You need the feel no pain and scoring insurance from the tervigons. You need the anti-transport shots from the hiveguard. Its an unfortunate fact with Tyranids at the moment but those two units are pretty key to making the majority of builds work. There's some alternate options but its 40k hard mode, I don't think the average player will make it work but a really good player could.

A disruption element is not mandatory but opens up doors and counters some bad stuff. Ymgarls keep long fang spam and parking lots honest. A spore with 15 devouer gaunts can be handy and effective. If not running stealer shock, then small stealer units in outflank as objective grabbers is useful.

A cleanup crew, midfield unit if you can spare it is also useful. This is where a tyranid prime joining some warriors or carnifex could be handy. Or a Tyrant/swarmlord and guard. Termagants with proper tervigon support can pull stuff off also. You can drown basic 5 man terminator squads pretty easily with poisoned gaunts (it gets even nastier if you can get some preferred enemy bubble also).

Hope that helps. Without much more info that's about all that comes to mind.

ruminator wrote:

I am starting to see the potential in raveners but, as with warriors, you need to keep them out of sight behind the tervigons until they get into 12" charge range. Cover is not enough, you need to block line of sight from those missiles and a wall of hive guard and tervigons seems to be the only way I can manage that at present.

Ravenors with guns become a serious threat early when backed up by an onslaught packing trevi. If you can arrange the first turn assault then Catalyst them also, to be sure they survive the Assault.