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Lets talk a bit about Tyranids

Last night I played a friendly game with a good friend of mine who decided to bring his Tyranids over.

I had never really fought them aside from gimmicky fights such as forcing models to duke it out for giggles.

we Played a 3k List

I ran 2 Sets of Noise Marines with 2 Blast Masters + Excess for FNP
D-Line + QG
3 Trilas Preds
2 forgefiends with nothing but the Hades Autocannons
1 LR (DT) for 3 terminators who had Combi - Plasma
Abaddon
Sorcerer of Tzeentch + Biomancy ( GoM + Iron Arm )
Lord of Slanesh in terminator armor + SIgil
2 sets of 30 cultists
3 Heldrakes

He ran a pretty large MC army with 2 Tervs (Spawners)
2 Fly-Tyrants
Whole bunch of Gaunts (4 med sized groups)
2 Medium sized things that had 5 Wounds a piece (Cant recall the name of them for the life of me, but they had guns if that helps)
2 Trygons, one was prime
Some Biovores
Doom of M
8 Melee warriors (iirc)
Death Leaper
8 Gene Stealers
Then some other stuff I don't really recall..

We rolled deployment and got the 48" Deployment zones, having to traverse the 72" board to get to one another
We rolled Emporers Will for Game Type.
There was no Night fighting.

Now my initial response to the list was to use my Tri-Las Preds to shoot the Trygons when they came onto the board. I used my QG to ground the Hive Tyrant, Then Shot at him with the Preds to effectively kill him.. But the other Tyrand managed to Roll Biomancy's Iron arm and luckily rolled +3 boosting his T value to T9. The second turn he was already at my doorstep due to his troops having MTC So my Noise Marines were mowing those down pretty nicely. His shooting consisted of taking out my cultists who were hunkered down in a forest to gain Cover GTG whenever possible.

Now the end of the game ended up coming along at turn 6 where neither of our Relics were actually being capped, I had FB + Warlord. He had Warlord and Line Breaker. With my Drake sitting on his Relic preventing his gaunts from running back to cap it, Hover mode meant I didnt have to fly off the board, just kinda sat there and bale'd anything that tried to run at me lol

He pretty much swarmed my board and I had nothing left but 3 Noise marines who managed to tie up a Terv in combat. In the end he had both tervs up, some of those big guys with guns (that I cannot recall the name of) and 4-5 singular groups of Gaunts running around. The game ended up as a tie.

I was wondering, what everyone would have done differently? If you had my setup, What would you do?

I managed to GoM Abaddon so he got Fleshbane, but he ended up taking something like 180 shots from Gaunts and ended up dying lol He DID managed to stomp a Trygon and the 8 Gene Stealers though.. His Death Leaper Came onto the board and I immediately shot it to death with my Quadgun.

Did I do wrong trying to kill those Fly-Tyrants? Should I have let them get closer to me and tried to kill the Tervs? It just seemed so futile since they had 6 Wounds =/ Can't instant Death them either with only my STR9 Las cannons :(

#1 target the tyrant with everything first turn. Ground it and make sure it dies turn 1 over everything else. If its dead, things get much easier as you have essentially another turn at least before hes in your face. Tyrants have 4 wounds, not 6, and even at T9 lascannons take them down pretty easily once grounded. With no inv and 3+ save they arent actually very tough, but they are very expensive and can dakka a lot.

Then you move onto the tervigons. Find one without iron arm and whittle it away. Ignore the gaunts mostly, they die when the tervigon dies. Make sure the tervigons die, dont leave them with 1 wound. Even bolter fire can put a wound on them.

After the tyrant and tervigons are dead, the army becomes MUCH easier to deal with. Gaunts arent scarry. They have no grenades and are I3. Tervigon buffs them, so once hes gone its easy. Doom is pain, but spreading out mitigates his damage and you are mostly mech anyways. Deathleaper is a joke.



the "medium sized things" were carnifexes and they have 4 wounds.

See I was thinking that.. The Tyrants were a large threat, so get them to crash, shoot them lots and force wounds wherever possible.

Perhaps my rolls were simply bad, and luck was simply not on my side.

As for the Tervs, the fact they continuously gained Iron Arm to boost their toughness essentially meant I was firing my Las at other targets. Although it might have been plausible to wound them on 4s, Other targets meant I was usually wounding them on 2-3s. Perhaps I'll do that the next time. I simply find it exhausting that something with so many wounds can gain from such a powerful Psyker abilities not even from it's own codex =/

I mean, they removed Codex Daemons ability to be eternal warrior from all models (For instance and good point of reference, Blood Crushers) which made them susceptible to instant death to clear out their wound pool. But these things simply have T6+ on almost all their MCs.. I cannot recall a single weapon in my arsenal that has the ID profile either... Unless I run a troope of Thousand Sons in hopes of mashing my Sorcerers in CC to use their Force weapons lol v_v"

Any further suggestions?

Termagants are I4.

Large Tyranid armies have problems concentrating their forces. Hammer and Anvil deployment actually HELPS them, in spite of the potential distance between armies.

1) Deploy further back. Yes, Noise Marines have 24" guns; that doesn't mean you need to deploy as close as possible. You'll have plenty of time to use them; those bugs are coming to you. You want at least 30" between your lines at the start of the game, and your front line should be a screen of cultists. That way, if he chooses to send the Tyrants in before any support arrives, it doesn't cost you anything valuable.

2) Focus fire. Hive Tyrants are only annoying to a list like yours - they will shred cultists, and they will hurt noise marine squads a little, but they aren't going to win the game by themselves. Tervigons, on the other hand, CAN win the game by themselves - they are both scoring in their own right, and make additional scoring units (with large threat radii) when they arrive. They should be your first targets.

3) Vector strike is your friend - it will rip Flyrants up very easily (barring absurdly high Iron Arm results), without having to deal with rolling to hit, and without costing you any functionality from your Heldrakes.

4) Play on a bigger board. 4'x6' is too small for 3k games.

5) Get some Daemon friends. Fiends will screw with Tyranid psychics; Seekers are fast enough & hit hard enough to destroy any Tyranid Monstrous Creature you want to point them at.