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I've now played 5 games of 6E against my buddy who runs Nidzilla with a deathstar and I have yet to beat him. I'm having a lot of trouble dealing with all of the T6 wounds with 3+ armor saves. In our last game he had 2 tervigons, 2 trygons, 3 units of Hive Guard and a Tyrant with 2+ armor/3x Tyrant Guard/Prime deathstar. We did Purge the Alien and there didn't seem to be much I could do to keep from being overrun. The deathstar and a trygon had FNP the entire game, and everything stayed close to the deathstar for PE. Destroyers are good, but 3 groups of Hive Guard with PE are pretty deadly for vehicles I've discovered. I'm trying to avoid just bringing flyer spam against him because there's got to be a way to beat T6 without using a vehicle type that seems unfair vs tyranids, right?

Here's what I've tried so far:

Warriors - not very effective. Rapid-fire S4 vs T6 doesn't do much, plus if you're 12" from a MC you're probably going to be dead next turn. S4 overwatch vs T6 with a 3+ save is laughable.
Immortals - Tried with Tesla. Slightly better than warriors at 24" S5, but even a full group of 10 with assault 1 weapons won't do much against T6 3+. Gauss would give me rapid-fire, but if there's an MC within 12" they're probably about to die.
Destroyers - These seem to be my best bet. Still only S5, but with AP3 and PE I can actually throw a few wounds on T6 every turn. Plus they can stay out of range pretty easily with their 12" move.
Wraiths - Great in theory, but S8 Hive Guard shooting insta-kills them. I've tried with a destroyer lord up front with SW but that's an expensive group and I can only make so many 2+ saves before the Look our Sir rolls have to happen and bases die. It takes 2 turns to get them into CC if I'm lucky. Even with a 3+ invul they haven't made it across the board with more than 2 bases left.
C'Tan - Expensive, and 8 Hive Guard shots generally kill them.
Monolith - This thing actually lived an entire game. Dropping a S8 AP3 Large Blast every turn was nice. It attracts the Hive Guard shots, so other things have a chance to live a bit longer. It's expensive and slow though.
Deathmarks - I put the HfH on the deathstar and put 2 Harbingers of Despair with them. This group arrives via Deep Strike right in front of it and the harbingers drop their S8 AP1 templates and wound on a 2+ while the deathmarks rapid-fire. This suicide group actually dropped a tyrant guard and brought everything else down to 1 wound. They were killed pretty quickly in the assault, but they did their job nicely.
Tesla - Getting extra hits are nice, but I'm rarely seeing enough extra hits to get through 3+ saves. I've had this issue with both immortals and annihilation barges.
Mindshackle Scarabs - Awesome when they work, but when they don't you die. MCs don't care if you have 2+ armor so any of them with higher than I2 usually kill you... especially if they have Boneswords. I had a tyrant kill itself in a challenge and then lost combat with the rest of the unit and got swept at the end of the assault phase.
Warscythes - Nice... if you can live long enough to use them. I2 makes that difficult vs any MCs that aren't tervigons. CC isn't where you want to be.

I'm thinking of trying 3 full groups of Destroyers and possibly 2-3 Doomsday Arks and/or a Monolith. That will give me the AP3 and AP1 punch that I need to get through armor on most of the MCs. What else can I try to deal with the T6 spam that I'm seeing? These beatings I'm taking from a codex that seemed to be nerfed in 6E has been rather demoralizing for me.

Destroteks. S8 DS 2 shots with a nice Precision shot bonus.

Heavy Destroyers as well. S9 DS2, reroll all 1s to hit and wound.

Doom Scythes - S10, DS1.

There is a maxiumum number of hive guard he can take and he is going to need them to take down your night sythes, doom sythes and wraiths. If you have enough of the former he wont be able to kill them all.

MSS cost like 20 points and you can challenge his MC and they cannot say no. They will then work half the time. Being able to beat a 250 point MC with a 55 point upgrade character 50% of the time is godly.

Sigvatr wrote:Destroteks. S8 DS 2 shots with a nice Precision shot bonus.

I had only brought one of these before for SP, but for the price these guys should be very helpful spread out in my troops who are otherwise fairly useless against MCs.

Sigvatr wrote:Heavy Destroyers as well. S9 DS2, reroll all 1s to hit and wound.

This is what I was thinking. 2 full groups of Destroyers with 3 Heavy Destroyers each should be able to drop an MC each shooting phase. I'm really liking Destroyers in 6E.

Exergy wrote:MSS cost like 20 points and you can challenge his MC and they cannot say no. They will then work half the time. Being able to beat a 250 point MC with a 55 point upgrade character 50% of the time is godly.

The only MCs Tyranids have that are characters are the Broodlord, Hive Tyrant and Tervigon, so those are the only models that would have to accept a challenge, but I do see your point. Against a deathstar the other casualties are most likely going to cause my unit to fail a morale and get swept, but I should just be avoiding deathstars. A unit of 10 warriors with a MSS Lord vs a lone Trygon should have a 50% chance of beating it. If MSS don't work then the trygon is going to just destroy that unit, but 50% is better than the chance they had without him. At 50pts a Lord from a Royal Court with just the MSS upgrage is a very good bargain considering it gives them a chance to survive where they would otherwise have 0 chance. Another 10pts for a warscythe is even better.

So I'm looking at at least 2 full groups of destroyers with heavy destroyer upgrades, royal courts with destroteks and minimally upgraded Lords for each of my troop choices. I'm also considering a Doom Scythe. Anything else that would be helpful for me to consider? The way my buddy moves his army, anything that gets in CC on one turn will be completely overrun the next by his main force so avoiding CC is becoming very important. What do you think my target prioritization should be against an MC list? I'm considering just ignoring the deathstar completely as it just soaks up wounds, but that PE bubble it gives is a huge pain to leave sitting on the table for an entire game.

I'd suggest using Triarch Stalkers with the Heat Ray.
Not only can it put out two S8 ap1 shots a turn, but it can also switch over to heavy flamer mode to take out all the little ones.
Add to that the Twin Linking power and now everybody else can more reliabaly hit with their shots too.
Front Armor 13 is pretty much invincilbe in CC to everything nids have except Monsterous creatures. Hive guard might be a slight issue at range, but if you bring a Monolith or other big threats, they will have to focus fire on that to kill it, which will save your Stalkers.

And for even more deadliness try out my idea for a list:
Dlord with SW and MSS and 3 wraiths with whip coils
Dlord with SW and MSS and 3 wraiths with whip coils
Monolith
2x Doomsday Arks
3x Triarch Stalkers with Heat Rays
and in a 2000 pt list that will leave you with about 400 pts to spend on troops in which you could fit 4x5 immortals and 1x5 warriors
Gauss blasters will just tear through guants and stealers

My list is pretty unconventional but I tend to roll Tyranid MCs. I run VB/PC Triarchs with a Res Orb/MSS/SW DLord and then compliment it with a couple groups of Wraiths. I'll generally send TP/DLord+Wraiths at one and send the other group at another to tie it off. Or TPs/Wraiths at one a DLord/Wraiths at another.

But again, I've got 20 Jump Infantry in my list so I've got the maneuverability and CC power to wrestle with Nids on their turf.

deathmarks demolished my prince every single game without mercy.

I play against a similar player as others have said desttek's, and heavies. The pure volume of fire from anni barges works as well. I have also had great luck with the lord star.

5 necron lords with WS and MSS joined by an Overlord with SW, WS, MSS riding an ark.

I'd think you could just take a bunch of flying units or skimmers and take out his shooting, then just fly away from him and shoot. It might take all game but you should eventually bring them down, and he really can't do anything to you at that point.

My current favorite unit in the Necron codex is a Destroyer Lord with Scythe, Orb, and Scarabs, in a squad of Praetorians with Blades and Casters. Many players prefer wraiths because they're cheaper; I like the Praetorians because they're T5 and have Entropic Strike and Reanimate. Instant death becomes much less of a problem. They also leave your Fast Attack slots alone, enabling you to take Destroyers (heavies!) which will murder MCs as well.

Mindshackles work a treat for killing MCs, and I try to take as many of them as I can in a competitive list. They're just too damn good.

Speaking as a Nid player I think your engaging wrong as it looks like the things you have tried should work. You need to remember the task to do to win most game. Unless he has a bunch of stuff your not listing.

First off if your playing Purge th Alien why are you engaging the MCs at all? If you kill the hive guard and all the termiguants and play KP denial you should be ahead of the game. Killing a spawned group of termiguants is worth just as many points as a trigon.

As for the other missions:

First thing is concitrate fire on one tervigon at a time until they are both dead. My guess is that he is low on scoring units and is betting on spawning scoring units. Killing the tervigon gets rid of a scoring unit, gets rid of a FNP and keeps future scoring units from being created.

The second thing is to tarpit the deathstar.Throwing scarabs at the unit every turn should help make it easer to kill, but more importantly keep the unit from doing much. This should also help with the hive guard, swarm them as fast as possible to shut down the shooting.

So just make sure you have lots of scoring units that are decent sized units. Kill his scoring units and stop him from making more. Then just make sure you control 1 objective and at best he can only draw. Control 2 and you will win, even if he kills off the entire rest of your army.

I find that I have problems with monoliths with big blocks of warriors in reserve. Can't kill what is not on the board and the monolith uses that teleport trick.

Do you happen to have any other armies you could ally that have a few units that could help also?

Also aegis line with a quad gun. I have found the th ADL really nerfs hive guard and the quad gun shreads MC.

Doesnt the quadgun hit ground units on 6s? And Hive Guard ignore cover, not sure what the ADL would do.

As for OP, all Tyranids hate MSS

60mm wrote:Doesnt the quadgun hit ground units on 6s? And Hive Guard ignore cover, not sure what the ADL would do.

As for OP, all Tyranids hate MSS

No, it has Interceptor rule as well as Skyfire.

Tesseract Labyrinth is fun :-)

Stalkers, Doom Scythe, moar Tesla (like 2 barges, nightscythe, doom scythe)

Destroyer Lords with MSS
Foot Lords with 2+/3++ and MSS